Okay, Shockedfrog, We Can Take The Trees But...

[Devour]

unbeatable foxes? Even in mordor they are beatable. Unless mordor has it's own rings i don't know of.

Unbeatable without getting them trapped behind a tree. I presumed that was what he meant by "exploits".

[shockedfrog]

Versus the foxes, what you earn by abusing them helps you everywhere else. No part of the game can be considered singleplayer, except perhaps the new character creation room, and even that is arguable (taking the items from the chest will have an effect on the economy, even if it is minor).

Also, why do you think that you have the right to beat something? If foxes are unbeatable when you reach a certain area, then don't fight foxes in that area!

[Hamel]

I think everyone's overreacting a little. Sure, Shockedfrog messed up our steel, but we'll just make them again and keep it under better guard. Although, Shockedfrog did cut down our apple trees, this a good deal worse, I think players should refrain from cutting down apple trees until they can be replanted. Really, shame on you Shockedfrog.

Either way, the next time any of us Bottleneck citizens see any of Shockedfrog's alts, we will kill them. I am training a bunch of melee skill just for those momentous occasions.

[Dragooble]

its not a matter of choosing to fight foxes its protecting the people who cant beat foxes from foxes.

[Errol]

Wait a sec. Did we already politely ask Shockedfrog to stop? If not, we are the greatest idiots.

[Devour]

Versus the foxes, what you earn by abusing them helps you everywhere else. No part of the game can be considered singleplayer, except perhaps the new character creation room, and even that is arguable (taking the items from the chest will have an effect on the economy, even if it is minor).

Also, why do you think that you have the right to beat something? If foxes are unbeatable when you reach a certain area, then don't fight foxes in that area!

Not really, considering that other animals can be killed for exactly the same reason ( usually better reasons ), unless you want to argue that fox hats are actually useful.

As Dragooble said, the point of killing foxes is to stop them from knocking out other players, for the most part, and they spawn INSIDE Bottleneck, so you know. Unless you're claiming that all the B12G guys are going to overrun the map and kill and destroy all in front of them. And, if you are claiming that, let me give you a clue. We're not all sociopaths.

And, Errol, I sent him a message just after the incident implying that, if he stopped, we'd leave him alone, as we were quite happy with killing his alt.

[shockedfrog]

Errol - I don't think anyone did, haha Devour did send a friendly message after the first event, like he said, though I don't remember is saying anything like asking me to stop, i thought it was more of a 'don't worry about the people who are being too harsh' thing. Maybe I should have read between the lines, though.

Devour - 'Versus the foxes' was a reply to your previous message and could easily have read 'Versus any hostile creatures.'

Dragooble - Well, try to protect them. If protecting them is too difficult, then they should live somewhere safer until they're strong enough. Again, it's good to see people together, but they don't actually have any predetermined right to be together.

Hamel - Thanks If it makes me seem any more human to anyone, I should point out I do feel a little bit guilty when chopping down the trees given the inability to regrow them, but if i was in that village and someone else did the same thing, then after the initial 'oh no!' I would try to see it as an opportunity to improve our ability in obtaining far away items, whether through an expedition or trading, or to consider moving again to somewhere easier (as some have chosen to do - I wish those people luck, though I think you should still try to work together, or you'll be at greater risk of having your stuff stolen, and maybe not even by me. ). I'm a determined guy, but I'm never going to chop down every single tree, I need branches and apples too and if I was so greedy that I chopped down every tree but my own then I don't think those trees would be my own for much longer. All I'm really doing is speeding up the process a bit, and I'm reasonably sure that regrowing trees will be added long before it becomes 100% necessary.

[Cejer]

Pfft. Foxes just require boring micromanagement if you don't have something to block them. Shoot--jog away--shoot--jog away--shoot--jog away. Hell, leather armor would be enough to stand and take the hits. But that's beside the point.

Yes, the Bay12 community has been using an exploits. Specifically, the hunters and I have used the fact that pathfinding is not implemented in order to kill big game animals. However, while our actions at worst interpretation cause the hard work by other people to be worthless by comparison to ours, abusing exploits or missing features to grief or attack causes the hard work of other people to be undone completely and totally.

I would have little problem with logging on to discover our steel was sabotaged if there were countermeasures implemented. If communal territory, so alts can't be used, or an instant visual cue for kin and non-kin were implemented we could station guards and shoot trespassers. But have you tried working with the identification options available?

EDIT: So to be explicitly clear: I find PvP actions (overt combat or subtle theft) to be in bad taste when only the offensive half of PvP has received significant code work.

[shockedfrog]

I should point out that I'm not actually complaining about Bay 12's use of exploiting creatures, those exploits are being used by the majority of players (myself included) and at this time it's unrealistic to expect anyone to stop. There is the difference that the Bay 12 community is using it to allow them to survive in an area that they probably shouldn't be in at all. From what's been said so far, the actions of today are likely to have a major impact on the far future of the game, and as someone who intends to keep playing for some time (I've been waiting years, since the half-death of a similar game, for something like this) a balance needs to be found between making good progress and helping to test things. I personally think everybody is doing a good job of keeping this balance so far and if we can just focus more on the game and on respecting our fellow players, and less on unnecessarily harsh attacks, we can do so much more.

Also, your hard work is not undone, you simply have more hard work to do. I agree that better ways of dealing with attackers are needed, and I am doing my best to contribute to ideas that will hopefully see both the defensive and offensive sides of the game become more interesting in the future. I only used an alt once, which was a mistake, and in the game's current state I personally think players should be limited to one character at a time - the only particularly good reason to make more characters available would be if characters were forced to be specialized in such a way that multiple characters are needed to enjoy all areas of the game, and I'm strongly against that degree of specialization. (I currently have 3 characters, but only use one - the others exist because of the jiggery pokery needed due to land inheritance issues.)

[StarChaser]

Well they could have survived there without having to only use animals if you hadn't cut down all their apple trees...
I would suspect that they use Bread and other cooked items as well.

EDIT: Actually. Your whole last post contradicted EVERY other thing you have said. So once again.