Situation control?

[Blaze]

Good Day, I'm Blaze, a relatively new player of the game. Pleased to meet you all.
Now, I am new, but I have been through a few situations that I believe I may have mis-handled, so I'm wondering if you could give me some pointers on how I might have dealt with the aforementioned events.

Both events happened near the Public Mine, am I incorrect in saying that a number of... unfortunate misunderstandings happen there regularly?

1. I was returning from hunting sheep, which were on the opposite side of the Public Mine, so I crossed it a number of times, to store my spoils. As I was heading back the third time, 2 players accused me of stealing their iron. Now, I did have go near the ore smelters, but I did not activate them; and since he - or someone resembling him - was there everytime I passed. I thought I had at least a plausible alibi, but I didn't see anyone else there aside from those two on my short sojourns, so I suppose it was plausible for them to believe I took their iron. The one with a bow threatened to shoot me, and I was pretty sure the other would support him. Now, I'm a newbie to the game, so I know how newbie equipment looks like. One was wielding a bow, but lacked a quiver; the other was holding a stone axe; and neither of them had any form of armor. I'm only level 8 in melee weapons, but I did have a sword, so tactically, if it did come to blows, I probably would have emerged the victor. Then again, it's only prudent to try to end a disagreement without violence, so I explained to them that iron ore has only a 10% chance of creating an iron bar when smelted. They grudgingly agreed, and the situation was defused.

Personally, I believe it went well, since it ended without fighting, but others might disagree, so I put it up here for you to ponder over.

2. I decided to return to mining, since I had lost most of my iron equipment to the recent server crashes. The thing was, both smelters and kilns were in use by other parties, and with the other recent experience still fresh in my mind; I decided to construct another set. You can see them, both nearby, south of the Public Mine entrance (If it was against some form of proprietry to build there, I apologize). After mining my first round of ore, I deposited them in the smelter. The kiln was incomplete at the time, so I set about rebuilding it. Then, another player - it is unknown to me whether it was one of the players from the previous event - comes up to my smelter and opens it, WHILE I WAS STILL IN VIEW (The kiln and ore smelter can be seen in the same screen.); I returned to find most of my deposited ore plundered. I wrote it off as a rude mistake, and finished up the kiln. I then decided to test it, by depositing my second round of ore and leaving plain sight. I hid behind the inn and lowered the game menu. He did it again, though he quickly ran off when I came back. As I came back from my third round of mining, he was at it again. I looked in the smelter, sure enough, most of it was gone again. I decided enough was enough, so I went and cut him down while he was still depositing MY HARD WORK into his smelter.

I probably could've handled this much better, but I believe punishment was in order for such blatant thievery. "Spare not the rod from the wayward sinner."

Of course, keep in mind that my explanation of the events is probably biased, missing parts, or other things that might smudge the truth. I'll let you decide for yourself.

[shockedfrog]

From what you've said, I think you handled both situations well. You could perhaps have asked the person in the second situation to stop before resorting to attacking them, but it sounds like he knew he was doing wrong and you were probably justified in just beating him up. I think this is one of the strengths of this game, that with the exception of some controls to keep things sane, the law is ultimately up to the players to enforce.

[jorb]

Some thoughts on PvP.

When we decided to hem in PvP by access to certain skills, our basic line of thought was that it should require a certain amount investment in a character to be able to fight PvP. Since there is always risk involved, even for the attacking party, hopefully this will make people think twice about fighting. If nothing else, it reduces the character population that can engage in PvP, and it prevents people from getting an account just to go noob killing. I also believe that the possibility of perma-death will act as a bit of a deterrent in itself.

I personally think that PvP is one of the most fun aspects of a MMORPG, and the concept "Non-PvP server" has never felt attractive to me at all. That being said, there are certainly situations we're PvP could get out of control. Bullying and mad hatter killing sprees -- getting a group of sinisters together, hanging out by the RoB to kill anyone who logs on -- come to mind. There's a fine balance between allowing the former, and policing the latter.

We have a system planned out for handling this, based on "Offense Points", where an offended party will receive, basically, little tokens representing the amount justified revenge he has vs. another player. These could then be traded, sold or used in the construction of wanted posters, and, obviously, be consumed as you take your revenge. (All the details are not clear atm) The big challenge is of course to be able to log offensive actions in a way that is representative of what actually transpired, while at the same time being hard or (preferably) impossible to exploit. Also, it is quite possible that new characters will start the game with some sort of "Mark of Innocence" flag, which would make them impossible to attack while they're still learning the game. Most likely, personal beliefs will also come into play here.

As long as it isn't obvious that it's being done solely for the purpose of ruining other people's game experience, PvP in all its forms -- theft, murder, war -- is not discouraged, quite the opposite. There is nothing wrong with a little good-ole-fashioned, decent belligerent violence, once in a while. I beat up Loftar every so often, just to show who's boss. Once, I knocked him out in a swamp, took of all his clothes, and left him to the leeches.

"Spare not the rod from the wayward sinner."

It seems I just found my new MSN caption!

[Rift]

did you do it today? cause i saw a random naked person who claimed they came from a swamp.

[sami1337]

Being naked is not random usually. Because it means they were or are going to take a swim in the swamp.

[Zolkowski]

did you do it today? cause i saw a random naked person who claimed they came from a swamp.

It was probably me lol, I did it this morning And ran into 2 people embarrassingly before I could get my clothes back on.

[Blaze]

Anywho, it didn't matter in the end, I lost all my iron when the server crashed. :<

Oh well.

[theTrav]

sounds both appropriate and hilarious

[kimya]

Good Day, I'm Blaze, a relatively new player of the game. Pleased to meet you all.
Now, I am new, but I have been through a few situations that I believe I may have mis-handled, so I'm wondering if you could give me some pointers on how I might have dealt with the aforementioned events.

Hey Blaze!

One of those two ppl was actually me (The one with the bow, on the edge of shooting you...). And i feel really sorry about that!
It really was a misunderstanding! Heres my point of view:

Me and a guy (probably) i met couple of minutes before decided to make a huge "melting-session" together. like i was in charge of getting the ore and food, while he was taking care of the charcoil supply and guarding the iron. i was just coming back from gathering food when he wrote me, quite angry, that a guy just stole all the iron. I saw the guy (you) passing me by but couldnt talk to you anymore, as you were gone. so i decided to get my bow and arrows and defend the rest of our work in case you came back.
well, you did come back and i accused you being a thief and ordered you too give back our iron (well, roleplaying and stuff, you know the drill

thing is, what i didnt know was that my new friend wasnt aware of how ore melting works - 1/10 of the ore getting iron - and i believed him. in fact, you hadnt stolen anything, he just thought you had, as nearly all of our ore was gone all of a sudden - with no iron left. i think you acted quite cool, telling us to read the forums and the rules of melting...

The other thing that happened - you beating him unconcious - again i didnt see as i was picking ore ungderground. i dont know what he did/ not did. he just wrote me, totally scared "HE KILLED ME! WHAT HAPPENS NOW?"


again, big sorry! you know you gotta be careful when melting iron at the public mine - there are a lot of ppl stealing the iron. hope everythings cleared out now!
PS: you dont wanna know how much i wanted to shoot you

[niltrias]

One thing i find interesting about this-
The place where theft/violence (Im not talking about this incident, just in general) is probably going to be the most prevalent is right at the beginning. People coming dont know what is happening, they will just wander around picking stuff up or possibly assume some innocent traveller just picked up there stuff...leading to a fairly chaotic situation. This means that the most dangerous, violent place in the game is going to be the same place that the newbies start.

Is that a good first impression for new players to this game?

I could go either way on it, but most games like to give new peeps a safe, secure enviroment to get their feet on the ground before taking the plunge into dangerous lands. Unless they play DF, then they just go out and try to colonize the 7th circle of fox-hades.