Recent changes

[Bunny]

First of all this game is designed to support pvp. It's primary purpose is pvp. Why do we have such a nice crafting system? To lure people in so there will be somebody for the pvpers to track down and kill or victimize through griefing. This is darned hard to live with but it's also H & H. I'm pretty sure the devs do not want a game with a stable balance of power.

I don't think that's quite true.

Weeel.... It seems to me that there have been several players who by most accounts would be regarded as game breakers. JTG who figured out how to grief anything and anyone and ran multiple macro alts to do so. Delamore who discovered that crashing the game could net him some xp and did so repeatedly. Certain players who discovered bugged coal. Certain players who camped the Ring of Brodgar to noob harvest. And as far as I can see the only thing that these guys did that the devs disapproved of was unbalance the game too far. If they ever got an advantage that meant combat with them meant an automatic loss for all the other players, then and only then did the devs slap them down just far enough that other creative and well organized people had a hope of surviving.

In so far as the devs have had favorites - and I see no reason why they shouldn't have, given that this game is privately developed and free - their favorites have always been those who indulged in the most pvp. The one time that I know of where the devs ran player characters who openly integrated with the rest of the players was when one of them organized a counter army to show the players that the balance of power was not so unbalanced as to be unworkable.

I think the devs are elitist. They have expressed the politicas beliefs on the forum and chat that might makes right. They are strongly libertarian. Again, I see no reason why they shouldn't hold these views.

In the early days on the forum things were beginning to get a trifle unrestrained in the slanging wars, and the forums were un-moderated. I have been told that the devs only stepped in to put some controls on hostility in the forum after someone privately contacted them and pointed out that there is clear legal precedent that they can be held legally responsible for what is said on the forum. This may not be true, as it is hearsay but within a couple of hours of my friend talking about a certain other forum whose owners found themselves beggared in court, a post went up in announcements with a line something like, "Listen up kiddies, and start talking nice."

The devs are opposed to all forms of npcs. No npc will ever be as interesting an opponent as a real person. For example, they could have integrated much more hunting into the game but have chosen to make game animals rare enough to be exasperating, as anyone who has ever spent hours and hours searching for a deer can tell you. I figure that they don't want people either diverting their aggressive urges against animals, nor even training against them, except at a very minor level.

Anyway, this is my opinion. I've never been close enough to the devs to chat with them. It's the belief I've come to after reading their forum posts and observing their behavior.

[Aerocross]

I would trust myself to destroy all who offended me...whats the point of having power if you don't abuse it?

Not everyone is like you.

game masters...... that always ends well, never seen that go bad better yet, unpaid volunteer game masters, sorry but this idea, i will poop on

I did not play world 3, but I've heard that the threat of active intervention against people who exploited by the devs is what made for a healthier game environment than the dark ages that presently exist.

[ImAwesome]

I would trust myself to destroy all who offended me...whats the point of having power if you don't abuse it?

Not everyone is like you.

thats true, most people won't admit they only want power to abuse it

[Potjeh]

In so far as the devs have had favorites - and I see no reason why they shouldn't have, given that this game is privately developed and free - their favorites have always been those who indulged in the most pvp.

Mos of Jorb's Anal Friends were actually rather peaceful.

The one time that I know of where the devs ran player characters who openly integrated with the rest of the players was when one of them organized a counter army to show the players that the balance of power was not so unbalanced as to be unworkable.

And he failed miserably

I have been told that the devs only stepped in to put some controls on hostility in the forum after someone privately contacted them and pointed out that there is clear legal precedent that they can be held legally responsible for what is said on the forum. This may not be true, as it is hearsay but within a couple of hours of my friend talking about a certain other forum whose owners found themselves beggared in court, a post went up in announcements with a line something like, "Listen up kiddies, and start talking nice."

That's patently false. They promoted mods because forums were turning into a pile of garbage due to all the spam.

For example, they could have integrated much more hunting into the game but have chosen to make game animals rare enough to be exasperating, as anyone who has ever spent hours and hours searching for a deer can tell you.

That's a balance issue.

[sabinati]

The one time that I know of where the devs ran player characters who openly integrated with the rest of the players was when one of them organized a counter army to show the players that the balance of power was not so unbalanced as to be unworkable.

And he failed miserably

xanadu crushed the walls of chernobyl and toppled the despot delamore. regime change ensued. how did he fail, exactly?

[Aerocross]

Call me arrogant if you want, but I think I'm the best qualified for that job. And I still don't believe that I could maintain a high enough degree of impartiality and objectiveness. Hell, I get complaints all the time about my moderation of the forums, and they can't be all unjustified.

A measure of uncertainty in the purity of your own justice is actually a good quality for a magistrate to have in my observation.

Regarding your second point: everyone has different interests. It's impossible and unwise to try and please everyone, and that wouldn't be the objective of a good GM's actions anyway. Their duty would basically be to act as an extension of the devs' vision of what the game should be. Unless I'm mistaken, that vision doesn't include things like vaults, walls of crossroads around rams, walljumping, clients that phish peoples' passwords etc, all of which can only be stopped by the threat of punishment. Consider your example of these forums; while there may be some other problems and complaints about your moderation, would you say that the boards in a better condition now that they have people who have the ability to prune spam than they were before?

[samual82]

someone who would gm for free, and not abuse the power, and or could be assed to do even a semi reasonable job, does not exist outside some extremist american yahweh cult, and most of those believe that computer games 'is tha devil'

lets put your mild mannered polite, honest, non favourtist, humble GM, and stick him at a crossroads with santaclaus, the easter bunny, and some douchebag chinbeard with a strange tinea infection from too much useage of the 'football sock'
drop in a hundred dollar bill in the middle, whose gonna get the 100 bucks?

eventually it'll be the chinbeard, short of breath, but a hundred dollars richer


... bankseys original had to be adapted for this bit of humour, sorry banksey

[Plasmagirl]

Why not instead of making crs resource intensive, just give every village a limit of crs they can build. That will disable them to misuse it. And as for the hearth timer why not rather let ppl still be able to hearth even in agro after the 10seconds

[Bunny]

In so far as the devs have had favorites - and I see no reason why they shouldn't have, given that this game is privately developed and free - their favorites have always been those who indulged in the most pvp.

Mos of Jorb's Anal Friends were actually rather peaceful.

The one time that I know of where the devs ran player characters who openly integrated with the rest of the players was when one of them organized a counter army to show the players that the balance of power was not so unbalanced as to be unworkable.

And he failed miserably

I have been told that the devs only stepped in to put some controls on hostility in the forum after someone privately contacted them and pointed out that there is clear legal precedent that they can be held legally responsible for what is said on the forum. This may not be true, as it is hearsay but within a couple of hours of my friend talking about a certain other forum whose owners found themselves beggared in court, a post went up in announcements with a line something like, "Listen up kiddies, and start talking nice."

That's patently false. They promoted mods because forums were turning into a pile of garbage due to all the spam.

For example, they could have integrated much more hunting into the game but have chosen to make game animals rare enough to be exasperating, as anyone who has ever spent hours and hours searching for a deer can tell you.

That's a balance issue.

I think we can peaceful agree that we have come up with differing opinions on this. We've experienced H & H from different vantages. People are complex and the devs are two people, not just one and truth is rarely clear cut. It could be the devs themselves have been more and less in favour of a high degree of pvp at different times. I'm puzzled who you mean by Jorb's Anal Friends. I'm out of that knowledge loop. I am thinking in World One and World Two mostly, when JTG was a big help to the devs with game testing and when Burgingham and his then village were urged to do a raid and followed by the dev's current characters acting as observers.

Regarding when the devs stepping in to put some controls on hostility in the forum, I believe I am thinking of a time quite a few months before they appointed mods. (Other than Kaka who afaik never modded anything.) I thought they only put the mods into the forum much later when they started working on Salem and stopped putting so much time into H & H, but well before they announced Salem existed. At the time when the first restraints were put on the forum the issue might have been verbal attacks (and possibly threats) directed specifically towards female players. They didn't put in mods then, they just announced that if people didn't watch what they said on the forum they would take action.

When they did appoint mods, it seems to me that they selected people from the more pvp aggressive groups of the time and not from the less aggressive ones. Again, you know all these people much better than I do, but I remember being surprised when YOU were appointed a mod because you were the most moderate player of the lot. The mods that were appointedthen, have chilled considerably. Jackard and Burg were considerably more into conflict then than they appear to be now. At this point they are positively benign grandfathers! : )

Anyway, I find it easier to understand and thrive in the hearthlands when I work from the assumption that the devs value the pvp more highly than anything else in the game. It helps me to take my losses more philosophically.

[bmjclark]

Because it takes far more then 10 seconds to kill someone with the same UA or MC as you.

Also, the CR thing, it would have to be a lot of CRs for the limit, because big towns have a lot of CRs. They could maybe tie it back to auth, limiting how many CRs you have, so u can't use a new idol to build a CR wall around a ram, but could still use CRs effectively in a large town. But that takes more time then just changing the mats i'm sure.