Suggestions for Fixing Unnecessary Muflation

[Kedrin]

Ok, well, I think people should use guestlock, too. But it seems to me that guestlock is only partly functional if people can still screw up your faction. Do you think more people would use it if it included faction lock?

What do you NOT understand when people tell you that faction lock will not work in this game.

The idea of being kicked off the game when a mob you are not 'Glaring' or 'Scowling' to has you on their aggro list that you like so much will get people killed or cause more faction problems that it will help.

There has been a number of times I have walked past a green con frog in Sadri Malath when under a illusion they did not enjoy and I had to run for a zone, in fear of accidentally killing said frog with one Riposte. If I had been kicked off the game when this happen I would most likely been KoS in the main town my guild meets.

You are not the first person with this idea.

Would it be possible to add commands to restrict characters
who are guestlocked from certian zones.

When ever I give my info out i'm always worried someone may forget what
diety im pleged to, or what faction i chose (giant vs dragon), and kill
something they shouldn't.

if there could be a command like /cm blockzone [zone name]
IE /cm blockzone dragonhorn, or /cm blockzone stormkeep

Would be nice to know its not possible for some1 to mess your faction up
with your diety or dragon/giants.

also, could it be made to where summoned items are tradeable while guestlocked?
summoned food / peridots / mod rots..etc.

just some ideas. ^_^

Using the 'pledge' system as is, if you ever kill a giant or dragon you'd be unable to ever pledge to them. I don't know about you guys, but before I knew any better I had already killed member of both. So just 'pledging' wouldn't do any good.

There comes a point when we can't do anything more for you. There comes a point where if you feel the need to give out your account info, that you give it to people you can actually trust, who won't pimp you out to the rest of the server, and will listen to you when you tell them what NOT to kill.

 

[eqjenius]

What do you NOT understand when people tell you that faction lock will not work in this game.

I understand, I just tend to think there's a way to solve problems if you put your mind to it.

There has been a number of times I have walked past a green con frog in Sadri Malath when under a illusion they did not enjoy and I had to run for a zone, in fear of accidentally killing said frog with one Riposte. If I had been kicked off the game when this happen I would most likely been KoS in the main town my guild meets.

This is a real problem, guest-lock or not. In fact I'm currently KoS to Sadri for that very same reason. I've been working on the quest to get back to dubious but it's taking FOREVER.

What if the frogs in Sadri were raised in level so they were light blue? Would a faction lock work then?

EDIT: Or, what if the Sadri frogs were simply made invulnerable? Those frogs could still kill you, but there'd be no way for you to kill them (I imagine a player running through town with 40 greenies beating him up). As far as I know, there's no reason for anyone to kill Sadri frogs (a certain quest frog excepted), other than to ruin one's own faction.

 

[Kedrin]

What if the frogs in Sadri were raised in level so they were light blue? Would a faction lock work then?

no that would help nothing

EDIT: Or, what if the Sadri frogs were simply made invulnerable? Those frogs could still kill you, but there'd be no way for you to kill them (I imagine a player running through town with 40 greenies beating him up). As far as I know, there's no reason for anyone to kill Sadri frogs (a certain quest frog excepted), other than to ruin one's own faction.

other then the fact this is EQ and not WoW

 

[eqjenius]

no that would help nothing

Waaaaall... it seems like it would. It seems like it solves the very situation you just mentioned pretty easily.

Perhaps you could elaborate on what exactly it doesn't solve.

other then the fact this is EQ and not WoW

I've never actually played WoW, so I don't know what you're talking about. But WoW makes over a billion dollars a year in revenue, so they must be doing something right.

I'm gonna shoot for the moon here: why not just make all NPCs in starting cities invulnerable? There's no reason to actually kill them, so the only time you would ever kill them is when you do it accidentally. And that just sucks.

It's not like killing NPCs in Oggok gives you better faction in Athica. And you'd still have to build up faction with a city in order to do business there or avoid being attacked by the guards.

 

[Rorne]

I'm gonna shoot for the moon here: why not just make all NPCs in starting cities invulnerable? There's no reason to actually kill them, so the only time you would ever kill them is when you do it accidentally. And that just sucks.

It would ruin immersion, mess up a few quests, take away the option from people who don't care about their faction in some cities, etc.

 

[eqjenius]

It would ruin immersion, mess up a few quests, take away the option from people who don't care about their faction in some cities, etc.

'Cause the only thing keeping me immersed in the world of SoD is that I can unintentionally backslap a frog to my everlasting Sadri shame.

Quest mobs could still be killable and the faction lock issue would still be addressed.

Or why not just give all NPCs in starting cities an extra 1000 hitpoints? Or make them all level 70? Or give them all deathtouch? Or make riposte non-functional on green-con mobs?

There are a MILLION solutions to this problem which would hardly have any impact on any other aspect of the game.

 

[Rorne]

'Cause the only thing keeping me immersed in the world of SoD is that I can unintentionally backslap a frog to my everlasting Sadri shame.

Quest mobs could still be killable and the faction lock issue would still be addressed.

Or why not just give all NPCs in starting cities an extra 1000 hitpoints? Or make them all level 70? Or give them all deathtouch? Or make riposte non-functional on green-con mobs?

There are a MILLION solutions to this problem which would hardly have any impact on any other aspect of the game.

It's not the only thing of course but they are little citizens and town guards and stuff why should they be invulnerable or have a billion hp or death touch? If you want to argue that citizens should have a few more hp so they can't be one-shotted I get that but at the same time it's seriously easy to avoid killing them. I feel like you are just bringing up absurd game mechanic ideas so you can eventually double back to the guestlock thing or whatever your agenda is now and say well if we don't X why should we Y.

 

[Rorne]

Also I am sure at some point you have played a game where suddenly you encounter an essential NPC that can't be killed and it is immersion breaking. It's not a huge deal of course but it still detracts from the game. You've talked a lot about inflation and things that kill games but removing choice and making things bland and safe is a more immediate threat in modern mmos than inflation. When given a choice between just flagging a town person invulnerable vs enhancing the ramifications of killing them and making it more interactive I know which I would pick.

Even if you are limited in how you simulate your gameworld it's important at least try to put across the illusion of a living city instead of having a series of utility totem poles

 

[eqjenius]

It's not the only thing of course but they are little citizens and town guards and stuff why should they be invulnerable or have a billion hp or death touch? If you want to argue that citizens should have a few more hp so they can't be one-shotted I get that but at the same time it's seriously easy to avoid killing them. I feel like you are just bringing up absurd game mechanic ideas so you can eventually double back to the guestlock thing or whatever your agenda is now and say well if we don't X why should we Y.

It might be easy for you to avoid killing them, but I've accidentally killed them before and Kedrin just posted that he's had similar issues.

You're right that I still support the exp lock idea, but I won't bring it up again for the rest of the thread. I've already made that case as well as I can.

Right now I'd just like to see a guest-lock that more people will use. If there's one positive that comes out of this thread, I'd be satisfied with that.

 

[Obscenitor]

Or why not just give all NPCs in starting cities an extra 1000 hitpoints?

Are you proposing that someone actually spends XX amount of hours going over every single unique NPC and increases their HP stats to *potentially* prevent maybe a few accidental kills?

Or make them all level 70?

Whether a mob is green con or red con portrays the strength/power/relative importance of that NPC. Messing with that is a pretty dumb idea.

Or give them all deathtouch?

Great idea, oh and if you have a worn illusion that gets bugged when you zone so that you cannot tell you have it on (more of an issue if other people play your toon) and walk into a town you go splat.

Or make riposte non-functional on green-con mobs?

I think riposte has less to do with accidental kills than say DS or pets. Regardless, see my above comment about it being a waste of time.

Maybe it doesn't occur to you, but intricate things like this actually Do Matter to a Lot of people. And while some of your suggestions might be beneficial, they are extremely low on the priority totem pole considering what needs work. Here is a rough list:

Unfinished deity augs
Blackscale / CoI faction augs
Broken 6 mans (Ofgats)
General unfinished content (Remnants ruins, Thaz tower, DFS revamp?)
Ikisith Phase 2
SoD 3.0
General bugs/zone crashes

Now I am not sure if you are up to speed on the who's-who on staff but it is pretty thin currently, especially for Developers (only active content Developers that come to mind are Marza and Slaariel). Maybe next time before you make suggestions, you consider how staff volunteer their time as they are able and make a judgment call compared to what needs work and what you are suggesting and see if it is important or a waste of all of our collective time to read/respond to.

 

[eqjenius]

Are you proposing that someone actually spends XX amount of hours going over every single unique NPC and increases their HP stats to *potentially* prevent maybe a few accidental kills?

I think there are a whole lot of better options. But the point is that there are options, and this is one of them.

Great idea, oh and if you have a worn illusion that gets bugged when you zone so that you cannot tell you have it on (more of an issue if other people play your toon) and walk into a town you go splat.

That was my point: it's far better to go splat when you aggro an NPC than to unintentionally get your faction screwed over.

Now I am not sure if you are up to speed on the who's-who on staff but it is pretty thin currently, especially for Developers (only active content Developers that come to mind are Marza and Slaariel). Maybe next time before you make suggestions, you consider how staff volunteer their time as they are able and make a judgment call compared to what needs work and what you are suggesting and see if it is important or a waste of all of our collective time to read/respond to.

The point wasn't to keep you from killing a few NPCs accidentally. The point is to fix the guest-lock feature so that more people will use it. Resolving the above issue is part of the equation.

I would say that a suggestion is just a suggestion, and I'm not the one that determines the priority list. Obviously you feel the staff should be working on other things. I'm sure they keep these things in mind.

 

[eqjenius]

Also I am sure at some point you have played a game where suddenly you encounter an essential NPC that can't be killed and it is immersion breaking. It's not a huge deal of course but it still detracts from the game. You've talked a lot about inflation and things that kill games but removing choice and making things bland and safe is a more immediate threat in modern mmos than inflation. When given a choice between just flagging a town person invulnerable vs enhancing the ramifications of killing them and making it more interactive I know which I would pick.

Even if you are limited in how you simulate your gameworld it's important at least try to put across the illusion of a living city instead of having a series of utility totem poles

I think you make a good point, and I like that there are ramifications to your actions as well. However, the starting cities weren't really designed to be factionally interactive (unlike DHK/Stormkeep and various Ikisith factions) since moving your faction in the negative direction only does one thing: limits your choices and options available when it comes to accessing certain zones and NPCs.

I would like to retain game immersion as well, but I don't think it hurts anything if we can find ways of making it so you don't accidentally kill NPCs. It's one thing to choose to attack the healer in Athica. It's something else entirely to kill an NPC when you're not even trying. I would say that's a good example of removing choice from the game.

I'd also say that it's pretty immersion-breaking when you're running away from a green con mob for fear that the game will force you to kill it and ruin your city faction. Would you agree?

 

[Rorne]

I'd also say that it's pretty immersion-breaking when you're running away from a green con mob for fear that the game will force you to kill it and ruin your city faction. Would you agree?

No because there is nothing immersion breaking about choosing not to kill a person in a community that is acting hostile towards you for fear of being ostracized by that community.

 

[Silosobi]

In a thread about adding more grinding to a game that is already really grind heavy, you are suggesting we add immersion breaking safety features to city npcs. Do you realize Devs have already put in the time to fix this via quests?

And... you suggest we add exp lock to guest lock and then claim "The point is to fix the guest-lock feature so that more people will use it."

"I'd also say that it's pretty immersion-breaking when you're running away from a green con mob for fear that the game will force you to kill it and ruin your city faction. Would you agree?"

No. If I accidentally hit/offend/otherwise cause someone to be aggressive towards me, and I know that a fight would result in my killing them, and I don't want their friends to hate me, running away seems like a good option.

The contradictions here are absurd.

 

[eqjenius]

The contradictions here are absurd.

What's absurd is thinking I could expect you to do anything but universally oppose any idea I bring up.

You've told me that you think old bots in the system are a problem, but you won't actually post it, you oppose any attempt to resolve it and you put forward no suggestions of your own. If I try to respond to another poster's concerns, you pan that idea as well and call me hypocritical, while again bringing up no suggestions yourself even when those concerns are completely reasonable.

I'm sorry I pissed everyone off in this thread. It wasn't my plan coming in.

The in-game Grupo incident and the subsequent handling raised questions about incentives that various game mechanics create which had caught no one's attention before. This is something I was interested in before the incident, and the debate clarified some ideas for me, so I posted. I don't think Solo's a bad guy: I think the game incentivizes players to take the actions he took. I think it incentivizes the mass sharing of account information, and I think the guest-lock feature could be modified to create better account security for players. It could probably even be modified to do something about old ringers and buffbots.

I don't know if it was the way I framed things or my attitude that so many people found threatening, but I apologize for both.

Best of luck.

EDIT:

There has been a number of times I have walked past a green con frog in Sadri Malath when under a illusion they did not enjoy and I had to run for a zone, in fear of accidentally killing said frog with one Riposte. If I had been kicked off the game when this happen I would most likely been KoS in the main town my guild meets.

This isn't even applicable to the proposed fix, by the way. Engaging an NPC means attacking or casting a detrimental spell. If you did neither of these things, you wouldn't get disconnected.

 

[Rorne]

The in-game Grupo incident and the subsequent handling raised questions about incentives that various game mechanics create which had caught no one's attention before.

What exactly had never caught attention prior?

 

[Dimmi]

As a man who takes GREAT pleasure in slaughtering citizens of multiple cities...I resent all of this.

 

[eqjenius]

I've had a change of perspectives.

In my fairest assessment of the feature, adding an xp lock to guestlock would disincentivize its use. Just as guestlock currently encourages people to lend out their toon for free xps, an added xp lock would discourage people from using it because getting free xps trumps account security in this game, probably 4 times out of 5. The cat herding post summed it up well.

My solution to the problem was logically parallel to the system that's currently in place, the difference being that instead of more xps and fewer account fuckups serverwide, there would be less xps and more account fuckups. I have no opinion on which is the least bad system.

I would still like to see faction lock added to guest lock because it seems only consistent and would make it more widely used, and I haven't seen an (applicable) argument for why it wouldn't work.

 

[Rari]

Aelias, most of the people replying in this thread have been around long enough to know what the hell they are talking about to some degree and to have seen similar suggestions be brought up and put down for good reason. Its good to see you're actually considering the plausibility of some of your ideas - new ideas are great but not all new ideas are good. It doesn't mean you can't suggest them, but you should try to think about the good and the bad of an idea first. And then actually consider the input of other players, because I've seen you throw a lot of good feedback out because it contridicts with your limited view of how people play the game. People have given what I personally would consider some perfectly valid reasons on why factionlock wouldn't work and won't be implemented, so it leaves me wondering what makes arguments "applicable" in your mind and when you became the arbiter. I'm addressing this first paragraph directly at you, but I hope you do not take it as a personal attack. I've seen you take a lot of replies in this thread as such on principle and this was only meant as constructive criticism. I know you think we're all snarky and uninformed because of what your "secret friend" said, but I hope you reconsider the uninformed part.

Anyway, onto the content portion.

If guestlock made it safe to share your account with everyone, I would let anyone who wanted to use Arianne have info. It wouldn't matter to me if they could in no way harm her! I'm not even playing her right now, and maybe someone could do some Vah for me. But maybe we should put on questlock too so I don't get quests done without doing them myself. I mean, you wouldn't want characters to do quests without their owner actually working for it, right? Maybe bindlock too, because I'm bound outside Tur'Ruj and I really hate rebinding that. OOC lock because someone could get me banned with a pedo joke. Walklock would be essential...

Since sarcasm over the internet doesn't always work very well it is time to speak plainly: I don't think guestlock should make it safe to share your account with everyone on the server. You are meant to need to actually speak with and trust the people you're sharing with. After all, this is a social game. Share with your close friends and guildies if you trust them, but guestlock so they don't do something they'll regret by accident (or just in case you don't know them quite as well as you thought.) I think guestlock is fine as it is, and it is doing what it is designed to do. Guestlock has nothing to do with ringers or buffbots, and tacking the extra crap onto it I've seen proposed in this thread would only make it less effective. It is working as intended.

tl;dr: Guestlock is fine as it is.

 

[stral]

This would be stupidly exploitable. It is your responsibility to inform whoever you share with if you're on Dragon/Giant... not that hard. If they screw you, that is unfortunate for you and I'm sure you will want to rethink letting that person use your accounts.

i Asked miffane if i could share his info's with my officers when i was running TNC and he ONLY said no because someone fucked his giant faction and he didnt wan't anyone screwing up say his Athica gate neck.

"I'm retiring, what lower tier guild doesn't have a ringer enchanter yet for while I'm gone because my entire character is static if I just press this button here, so you literally couldn't break anything (not even faction!) so here play stral for 6 months."

I'm not sure this is a plausible scenario. Why would you give your character info to a lower tiered guild? Out of spite for your current guild? So that your character is even further behind the curve should you ever choose to unretire? And finally, there are already ringer toons that out there that lots of people of different tiers have access to, some guest-locked and some unlocked.

It's another incentive thing: faction lock would make more people use guest lock, but it wouldn't be because it's incentivising guest lock usage, it would be because it would incentivise whoring your character around because there'd be almost no reason not to. Faction lock was a better sell with exp lock mixed; you make it safe to give your character to literally anyone, but the exp incentive goes away. But if you're talking straight faction lock, you've got the exp incentive to give your character out, but all you're really doing is removing the biggest factor that keeps people smart about who they hand out their info to.

Put another way, since this thread is or was about mudflation, having that risk is a huge thing that keeps people from doing what grupo did. Of the few characters I've heard that did something like that over the years, they've never been mains; they've always been alts given rot gear who then handed info around because they didn't do any faction on their alts. If you take away that risk, you'd see main toons that are retiring or vacationing doing what grupo did, just on a smaller scale so they wouldn't get noticed/in-trouble for it after the recent events. Then they would truly be progressing beyond where they had been in the game before, without even having to play the game. It would actually encourage higher tier characters to retire and become the next ringo/uzzdaar if they want to wait around for a different guild or new content or whatever.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to never have to worry about the two or three people that have my info to not screw up my faction, but 'consistency' isn't really an argument to do anything, let alone do something that would be a clusterfuck to code, when it's going to encourage scummy behavior.

I'll even put as simple as possible and hopefully lay this to rest because it's a really short sighted suggestion: What keeps you from handing your info out to anyone? Item deletion? Well use guest lock. Whats left: faction, being rebound, being left at char select. Ok well take faction off that list. I've got gate necks and I can rebind so I can live with the bind risk. And you know I think I'll just let you guys play stral you look like you've got things under control, gogo xp. If you can't grasp what is being said in this post, you will never get it and I'm sorry in advance because that seems entirely possible based on the majority of this thread.

I haven't seen an (applicable) argument for why it wouldn't work.

Also I mean these quotes, I literally hit ctrl f, typed in "faction lock" and went through page by page. These all seem applicable to me.