Your View: Gates

[Pancho 4197]

Recently I have been going around from nation to nation roleplaying. In some places, I've waited a couple hours at a gate only to give up when the nation is bustling/lively and no guard comes to the gate. This is an issue for many players and I want to see the views from the playerbase as a whole on this topic.

[MailC3p 2403]

+1, not even reading, Open the gates

[FlemishSupremacy 6115]

This stuff gets brought up every so often, mostly by bandits just wishing to do villainy in xyz. 
Ultimately, this is about making villainy at off hour and on low population communities easier, and pretending otherwise is pointless.
Nations should have the autonomy to decide what they can and cannot do with their gates.
If they want to lock you and every other outsider out, that should be their choice, even if it locks out non villain players.

Asking staff to force people's gates open so you can do your villain shtick is going to end with bad faith villains using it when to attack communities who have taken RP measures to improve their safety, through closing their gates. 

[Pancho 4197]

8 minutes ago, FlemishSupremacy said:

Asking staff to force people's gates open so you can do your villain shtick is going to end with bad faith villains using it when to attack communities who have taken RP measures to improve their safety, through closing their gates. 

If villains wanted to raid at off hours on low pop communities, raid ladders exist. But when I want to browse shops or generally walk around and roleplay, a gate being in the way isn't a roleplay means of stopping people, its mechanical. 

[Metamancy 1763]

OPEN THE GODDAMN GATES!!!!!!

[sam33497 7356]

Yes and remove citizen doors :^)

 

(Please force nations to actually maintain militaries this is the secret sauce if you want this to not be a metaplay based server)

[FadedMoonlight 450]

37 minutes ago, FlemishSupremacy said:

This stuff gets brought up every so often, mostly by bandits just wishing to do villainy in xyz. 
Ultimately, this is about making villainy at off hour and on low population communities easier, and pretending otherwise is pointless.
Nations should have the autonomy to decide what they can and cannot do with their gates.
If they want to lock you and every other outsider out, that should be their choice, even if it locks out non villain players.

Asking staff to force people's gates open so you can do your villain shtick is going to end with bad faith villains using it when to attack communities who have taken RP measures to improve their safety, through closing their gates. 

This completely changed my opinion and now I wish I could change my vote :(

[Plausifraunz 361]

Gates are fine as they are. Communities should just put their markets outside more often than they do inside. But they keep it all inside because of safety and protection and whatnot. If there's one thing I've always noticed since my year on the server is that there's always more bad faith than actual good and that stems from unfortunately OOC bleed into IC.

Guards being required all the time is rough; a guy shouldn't need to be on 24/7 and no-life LOTC just to be able to protect a city. And this is especially big for groups that are starting up or working their way up currently. 

It's sort of like asking that my front door stay unlocked because I can't be home to lock it. Mechanical or not, you still need to RP out a raid or heist. 

[Unwillingly 18096]

chronically closed gates suck but tbh retweet on flemish, this isnt something mods need jurisdiction on. if people want to reap the benefits of open gates they can and if ppl want to suffer in player traffic or general criticism from the playerbase as a consequence of not manning their gates they can

it'd just be another rule that unfairly dictates what characters can/cannot do even in situations where it doesn't make sense
"my liege there's been a lot of trouble on our roads lately, we should take precautions and try to secure the city where possible using the tools available to us"
"loyal squire of mine we cannot do that because the blue demons say our gates must stay open at all times lest we stay awake at unreasonable hours of the night"

just introduces more problems than it solves

[MailC3p 2403]

45 minutes ago, FlemishSupremacy said:

This stuff gets brought up every so often, mostly by bandits just wishing to do villainy in xyz. 
Ultimately, this is about making villainy at off hour and on low population communities easier, and pretending otherwise is pointless.
Nations should have the autonomy to decide what they can and cannot do with their gates.
If they want to lock you and every other outsider out, that should be their choice, even if it locks out non villain players.

Asking staff to force people's gates open so you can do your villain shtick is going to end with bad faith villains using it when to attack communities who have taken RP measures to improve their safety, through closing their gates. 

valid argument if it was Almaris but i can raid whenever i wanted to, i dont raid because I dont have the people nor the want to. 
 

besides that, Pancho has been an NL just as much as he has been a bandit so kinda unfair to say he wants gates open so /he/ can bandit

[FlemishSupremacy 6115]

7 minutes ago, MailC3p said:

valid argument if it was Almaris but i can raid whenever i wanted to, i dont raid because I dont have the people nor the want to. 
 

besides that, Pancho has been an NL just as much as he has been a bandit so kinda unfair to say he wants gates open so /he/ can bandit

I am fully cognizant to the fact that Pancho isn't JUST a bandit player, but he was complaining in OOC earlier today about not finding any manned gates to do a villain monologue, which I believe directly led to this post.

That said, I still believe that this discussion is usually brought up by people who want to go do villainy and don't want to spend the resources of a ladder crate. 
It is unreasonable for people to expect players to man their gates constantly when gate duty is often very, very boring. I understand that people say 'develop an active military!' but even nations with active militaries might not find players willing to just spend x amount of hours of their free time doing a job at which, 99% of the time, has nothing interesting happening.
We don't want a new player to join the server, excitedly join a military, and then be told they're expected to spend 3 hours of their limited free time starting at a gate while 1 person per 15 minutes passes through it, which they have to ask the same basic questions. That's not fun for them, and it's not even particularly immersive, as medieval cities didn't have their entrances work like this, either.

[Pancho 4197]

6 minutes ago, FlemishSupremacy said:

I am fully cognizant to the fact that Pancho isn't JUST a bandit player, but he was complaining in OOC earlier today about not finding any manned gates to do a villain monologue, which I believe directly led to this post.

I was going to a nation by persona was once apart of to preach the gospels of republicanism to a monarchist nation. It was meant to stir conflict, although not simply to PvP goon or to use a magic against poor pink tags. If a nation has activity of any amount but can't spare a single man to the gates when they are bustling, that is a major issue.

Edit to add: Or do what the Vale does and have a bell system going through their city to alert the guards someone is at the gate

[sam33497 7356]

28 minutes ago, FlemishSupremacy said:

It is unreasonable for people to expect players to man their gates constantly when gate duty is often very, very boring.

This is true. But also, why should it be the case that gates are constantly closed in the first place? If you have an active military, assumedly its not going to be easy to cause problems in your city anyways, if you want to maintain security at the exterior of your city, you can, but otherwise you can deal with stuff inside the city, or patrol the roads. I think the mindset of filtering rp from your community by purely explicit mechanical means like a gate with no rp preventing certain types of rp or rpers reaching the city is a failure of give and take on the part of the nation, and a nation is not a place for insular or secluded roleplay, it is supposed to be a gathering point for many people and types of roleplay and the fact that it isn't handled like this is severely nerfing the level of roleplay possible in the server as a whole. If you want to establish a certain standard of roleplay without villainy inside your nation's city I think you should need to actually put in a decent amount of roleplay effort to police your nation's space and make that a plausible reality, which, without surprise, is also something that creates rp, and gives a bunch of stuff for noobs to do and further engage with communities, makes conflict more organic and less of the mechanical and rule bending cheese it is now, etc

 

Note that I have no interest in villainy outside of situations where its a raid and ladder crates will be used anyways, I am speaking solely in the interest of the state of the server

[Morigung-oog 5697]

1 hour ago, Pancho said:

Recently I have been going around from nation to nation roleplaying. In some places, I've waited a couple hours at a gate only to give up when the nation is bustling/lively and no guard comes to the gate. This is an issue for many players and I want to see the views from the playerbase as a whole on this topic.

 

Kinda like this take, but also if a nation wants to deny activity, effectively shooting themselves in the foot, by keeping their gates closed its a good way to nuke inactive places.

[Hom 1987]

i think it comes down to the fact that keeping gates open or closed is an in-roleplay decision that can be responded to in-roleplay as well (laddering, sneaking in, criticizing the nation RPly for being closed off) and any sort of enforcement on the side of moderators to make nations keep their gates open just removes roleplay autonomy. if your character visits a nation repeatedly and is annoyed that they can’t enter, be annoyed in roleplay you know? it isn’t an ooc enforceable issue. i 100% agree that a general open-gate policy is the best way to run a nation, but i just wouldn’t want that to be enforced by an actual rule because then it’s no longer an RP leadership decision with pros and cons to weigh, it’s just a requirement. either people are smart about it or they’re not