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[Completed]To PK. Or not to PK.


AmericanSimp
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Background 

 

LoTC is full of many personas varying in acknowledgement and personal power they hold. At the same time, these personas die, but whether that is permanent relies on the player behind them. 
 

According to the rules of the server the only way you can be forced to PK is through suicide which is a great rule. BUT what is suicide on LoTC? 

 

Defining ‘Suicide’ on LoTC

 

Through my time killing and being killed I have seen so many people literally commit suicide but not PK. Your probably wondering what I mean by that, and what I mean by that is say your group is running from a fight. One persona decides to stay behind, fending off the opposing group at the cost of their own life. Yet they will return to their group being praised as a hero as if they didn’t just die. In my opinion that is suicide, because that persona knew full well he was going to die staying behind alone. 


Suicide by definition is the intentional killing oneself, yet we allow personas to do so in other ways than by their own hand.

 

Another scenario would be a ‘political’ suicide. Say a persona decides they are going to break a couple rules from a nation/race to purposefully spite them. The person knows full well that punishment for breaking these rules is death, yet does the action anyways. The next day they walk straight into the home of that nation/race once again knowing the group will kill their persona. Said persona doesn’t PK and instead continues to break the rules, and continues putting themself in places that they know will get them executed over and over. I’ve personally seen this happen many times, and it’s a plague to a community because it will never end until the person gets bored of dying. 

 

So my big question to debate is, “Should suicide (Other than through ones own hand)  be allowed to continue without PK’s or should we refine the suicide rule.” 


This concludes my Ted Talk

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I think the current PK rules are fine.

 

You’re dipping into too many grey areas – breaking the laws of a nation is not an attempted suicide, as that persona may well assume they will be successful/unnoticed, they’re not intentionally killing themselves. Likewise entering combat when the odds are stacked against you, is not an indicator that the person is committing suicide. In fact, very rarely would both sides be evenly matched.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I see your point; it can suck when roleplay happens and it leads to the death of certain characters, and then that character appears again a little later as though nothing happened, but tbh this is an absolutely necessary evil. Players are here to have fun, and should never be forced to permakill their character unless it is their own choice – your fun does not outweigh theirs, no matter how little sense it may make to a particular session of RP.

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This is a great topic, thank you for bringing it up for discussion.

 

LotC has traditionally lacked in the department of fear and NVL rules and enforcements. Fear RP is almost always not enforced, as there are no rules specifically relating to it. The amount of times I’ve seen people quite literally laugh in the face of death physically pains me. The administration could really benefit from looking into NVL (Not Valuing Life) rules, because they encompass more than just suicide. In addition to covering something like your examples, they would cover people running into extreme danger without proper protections, performing extremely risky tasks or stunts, or just outright stupidity. I understand why the server doesn’t enforce PK on every death, but that doesn’t mean I agree with it or that it’s a good thing. Death has little meaning on LotC when you can just choose not to die, creating unrealistic and ultimately bad roleplay

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10 minutes ago, ShannonLeigh said:

The administration could really benefit from looking into NVL (Not Valuing Life) rules, because they encompass more than just suicide.

 

I disagree. Again, too much of a grey area. The character may be naive, mad, dumb, psychotic, etc... And none of those are justifiable permakills. If you were to accuse a player of this, there are any number of in-character excuses they could use to circumvent it. It’s just not a realistically enforceable thing.

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7 minutes ago, Wretched said:

 

I disagree. Again, too much of a grey area. The character may be naive, mad, dumb, psychotic, etc... And none of those are justifiable permakills. If you were to accuse a player of this, there are any number of in-character excuses they could use to circumvent it. It’s just not a realistically enforceable thing.

 

Except that this is a rule enforced on pretty much EVERY other roleplay community I’ve been apart of. The problem boils down to the fact that death has almost no weight or meaning on LotC. People are allowed to do ridiculous, insane things because if they die.. well, they just respawn. And staff over the years have firmly taken the stance to not enforce PKs. I understand it, but I don’t agree with it. The hundreds of other roleplay communities that do have these rules still thrive and people are still able to have fun. This isn’t something that would suddenly kill the server. If anything I believe it would improve roleplay significantly, because people would be forced to take their personal safety more seriously.

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8 minutes ago, Wretched said:

You’re dipping into too many grey areas – breaking the laws of a nation is not an attempted suicide, as that persona may well assume they will be successful/unnoticed, they’re not intentionally killing themselves


I understand your POV, but I think you misunderstood my example. That example was not for the players first time. Getting killed due to breaking the rules and dying due to lack of knowledge, stupidity, or whatever is justifiable. But if a person does it over and over I believe there’s just reason for a PK. 
 

Maybe we should talk about a scenario based PK Request system? Food for thought 

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There would also need to be an edit in nation rules for each nation, which actions justify pk versus something else so that it is extreme cases that pk is enforced rather than just something simple like killing someone in a fight... otherwise there would be 0 room for conflict

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1 minute ago, BenDaMack said:

There would also need to be an edit in nation rules for each nation, which actions justify pk versus something else so that it is extreme cases that pk is enforced rather than just something simple like killing someone in a fight... otherwise there would be 0 room for conflict

That is a very strong and valid point. Maybe to ease the server into a stronger PK clause allow nations to have 1 or 2 offenses that if committed will justify a PK clause if killed/executed on their tile in relation to the crime. All pk offenses would  require mod approval to ensure people don’t have absurd rules

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while i do mainly agree with this topic, i think we should just redo the death system COMPLETELY, because all i see are people who get their arms chopped off in rp and dont want to deal with the sacrifice so they just have their characters die and they are back like nothing ever happened

i admit that i have done this a few times but my persona never really stays the same after they die, something about them always aches or they lose a bit of their sanity each time they die. and i think it is just stupid to cut off someones leg and they just die and then later show up with that leg right as rain. ik that it could be seen as ruining your fun, but if i cut off your arm and i see u again with both arms, thats gonna ruin my fun because your not aknowloging rp on an rp server.

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16 minutes ago, ShannonLeigh said:

 

Except that this is a rule enforced on pretty much EVERY other roleplay community I’ve been apart of. The problem boils down to the fact that death has almost no weight or meaning on LotC. People are allowed to do ridiculous, insane things because if they die.. well, they just respawn. And staff over the years have firmly taken the stance to not enforce PKs. I understand it, but I don’t agree with it. The hundreds of other roleplay communities that do have these rules still thrive and people are still able to have fun. This isn’t something that would suddenly kill the server. If anything I believe it would improve roleplay significantly, because people would be forced to take their personal safety more seriously.

 

That’s a whole different argument, though. I’m addressing the idea of expanding what is defined as suicide, not whether death in general should lead to permakills. You could have a system where death is permanent and enforced, or a system where the player chooses when to permakill – any middle ground just won’t work at all in my opinion.

 

18 minutes ago, OrcSimp said:


I understand your POV, but I think you misunderstood my example. That example was not for the players first time. Getting killed due to breaking the rules and dying due to lack of knowledge, stupidity, or whatever is justifiable. But if a person does it over and over I believe there’s just reason for a PK. 
 

Maybe we should talk about a scenario based PK Request system? Food for thought 

 

Right, but who determines how many times you can die stupidly before it’s a PK? Who documents and keeps track of that? No matter how specific you make the criteria, it’s still not enforceable because it relies on either word of mouth or the word of the player in question. Sure, staff could go digging through logs and screenshots to find out, but at that point you’re investing a lot of time and effort into something that is still grey. Its a system that primes people to argue with each other, and that should be avoided.

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1 minute ago, Cheezzy_Garlik said:

while i do mainly agree with this topic, i think we should just redo the death system COMPLETELY, because all i see are people who get their arms chopped off in rp and dont want to deal with the sacrifice so they just have their characters die and they are back like nothing ever happened

i admit that i have done this a few times but my persona never really stays the same after they die, something about them always aches or they lose a bit of their sanity each time they die. and i think it is just stupid to cut off someones leg and they just die and then later show up with that leg right as rain. ik that it could be seen as ruining your fun, but if i cut off your arm and i see u again with both arms, thats gonna ruin my fun because your not aknowloging rp on an rp server.

I definitely see what your talking about all the time. Maybe having the cloud temple monks just unable to heal the loss of a limb could be a good start. Throughout the different nations there are plenty of ways to get new limbs, and this would allow for those magics to become utilized more often. 

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8 minutes ago, Wretched said:

Right, but who determines how many times you can die stupidly before it’s a PK? Who documents and keeps track of that? No matter how specific you make the criteria, it’s still not enforceable because it relies on either word of mouth or the word of the player in question. Sure, staff could go digging through logs and screenshots to find out, but at that point you’re investing a lot of time and effort into something that is still grey. Its a system that primes people to argue with each other, and that should be avoided.


Once again you bring up some good points. Like anything in this server you can’t just change it all at once, and your right in it will prime people to argue. Maybe we could start by reworking the Cloud Temple Monks? Allowing for characters to show the weight of their crimes more, especially during limb loss. Want to maybe find a middle ground in the discussion between myself and you in regards to having a more meaningful death if forced pks are out of the picture. 

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39 minutes ago, ShannonLeigh said:

 

Except that this is a rule enforced on pretty much EVERY other roleplay community I’ve been apart of. The problem boils down to the fact that death has almost no weight or meaning on LotC. People are allowed to do ridiculous, insane things because if they die.. well, they just respawn. And staff over the years have firmly taken the stance to not enforce PKs. I understand it, but I don’t agree with it. The hundreds of other roleplay communities that do have these rules still thrive and people are still able to have fun. This isn’t something that would suddenly kill the server. If anything I believe it would improve roleplay significantly, because people would be forced to take their personal safety more seriously.

To add to this, it’s also a bit unfair to players who do wish to write characters that take dying or severe consequences more seriously.  It takes away the fun from people who wish to go by logic, when there are others around them abusing the lack of rules on fear RP.  It can still be incredibly fun to RP with such rules, I’d say, because it creates more conflict with story development.

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1 hour ago, Cheezzy_Garlik said:

while i do mainly agree with this topic, i think we should just redo the death system COMPLETELY, because all i see are people who get their arms chopped off in rp and dont want to deal with the sacrifice so they just have their characters die and they are back like nothing ever happened

i admit that i have done this a few times but my persona never really stays the same after they die, something about them always aches or they lose a bit of their sanity each time they die. and i think it is just stupid to cut off someones leg and they just die and then later show up with that leg right as rain. ik that it could be seen as ruining your fun, but if i cut off your arm and i see u again with both arms, thats gonna ruin my fun because your not aknowloging rp on an rp server.

With the medicine technology we have, you’re probably powergaming if you lose an arm and don’t die. My character lost the bottom half of one of his legs and I was fully going to PK him before a Cleric showed up and stabilized him. 

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2 hours ago, ShannonLeigh said:

 

Except that this is a rule enforced on pretty much EVERY other roleplay community I’ve been apart of. The problem boils down to the fact that death has almost no weight or meaning on LotC. People are allowed to do ridiculous, insane things because if they die.. well, they just respawn. And staff over the years have firmly taken the stance to not enforce PKs. I understand it, but I don’t agree with it. The hundreds of other roleplay communities that do have these rules still thrive and people are still able to have fun. This isn’t something that would suddenly kill the server. If anything I believe it would improve roleplay significantly, because people would be forced to take their personal safety more seriously.

 

While I agree that there should be rules for NVL situations, at least to better guide players and encourage RPing the fear of death, I do think it has to be implemented very carefully. You say that won’t suddenly kill the server, but imagine the current mentality of players should this kind of concept be implemented overnight, with maybe a week of discussion beforehand-

 

We’d still have bandits who gut everyone they see for pixels or shits and grins, leading to a lot of PK’s, while when a guard force rally to put down bandits, the bandits are PK’d but make identical personas the next day. This is just an example, but it influences numerous other facets of lotc.

 

This kind of thing requires a fundamental change to our approach to roleplaying death and consequences on the server, and I really don’t think the playerbase is in a position to do that anytime soon.

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