Make Syssin RP more robust

Bulrok

Xavin said:

If you can know in an instant if someone has graduated from X city's academy or is a member of Y city's militia, I don't see why city membership shouldn't be common knowledge.

Accept you can do the Academy in one city and then hop to another and never do that Academy?

Eaku

It makes it like, marginally easier to call targets in group PK, and lessers typically have about as much cross-faction RP as a moldy slice of bread anyway (i really don't think shout bragging counts, or has much to do with the API). That's about the extent of what I cared about it for. Manually setting up a name database is a pain in the unicorns, and someone's only going to be a surprise showing at a lesser once or twice.

On the other hand, I'm sure some people probably did use it to actually metagame, I've got no reason to doubt other people's word on that. So it is what it is. I do think @Xavin has a good point, though, given the wide breadth of knowledge and information you can get from honours already that something like city affiliation really isn't that big of a deal in comparison. Just by doing honours eaku you can see that he's an idiot who graduated the academy after killing a colossal rock eld and becoming an honorary indyuk warrior, or that he helped stab golgotha in the face, which would really not be more common knowledge than his city alignment imho. I mean, honours is silly for that reason, really, but I'm not going to buy something to hide it, so there you go.

Tetchta

Eaku said:

It makes it easier to call targets in group PK, and lessers typically have about as much cross-faction RP as a moldy slice of bread anyway (i really don't think shout bragging counts, or has much to do with the API). That's about the extent of what I cared about it for. Manually setting up a name database is a pain in the unicorns, and someone's only going to be a surprise showing at a lesser once or twice.

Honestly, a name database is not that big of a pain. Lessers/majors/orrery usually have the same 30 dingdongs showing up to them all the time, and most of our target lists are prebaked in from people we know who will show up. Will it makes rando wildcards a bit of a tilt? Maybe, but most of those are going to be newbs or novices who PROBABLY won't make a huge difference. This is fixed by:

1) killing all unknowns on sight
2) if you lose because this made the balance change somehow, just add them to the target list

When I was calling, I did rely on the API pretty heavily, but I was a way worse coder back then. You're going to have to work pretty hard to sell to me that making a PVP ledger that has, like, at most 40 people on it is really going to be that much of a pain.

Toz

Replace API with Aetolia Blender Interface and who cares what side anyone is on?

I don't like spying because there's not really a good counter to it, especially when it comes to fake sidehops, but this change seems fine to me. Scouter checking people's level was fun, but class swap surprises are back on the table and I like that potential for group fights.

Tetchta

Toz said:

class swap surprises are back on the table and I like that potential for group fights.

"Man they sure are taking a long time to regroup and attack...it's been almost 10 minu--!"

Eaku

It's a pain to me because it's tedious busywork, promises the future tedious busywork of updating it, and now I might have to do it again whereas I did not have to previously. It's not a huge deal, just silly in light of everything I could find out about a character already just by looking at honours, including their literal date of birth like we've got some sort of widely available census records in our brains (not that I use that information in RP anyway because it's ridiculous). Suppose my point is less name database updating is boring (it really is, though) and more that what's available in honours is a bit of a silly baseline for what's available in the API because if someone really wanted to metagame your character information, what's available in honours is already more than enough.

edit: the quote broke sorry

Toz

Tetchta said:

class swap surprises are back on the table and I like that potential for group fights.

"Man they sure are taking a long time to regroup and attack...it's been almost 10 minu--!"

It could be 5m after the fight ends with how early on I get smoked. I was just chilling there howling, somebody call PETA.

Is hide honors an artifact? Could there be a cheaper one/config made for basics and then the customization be what you pay for? I feel like anybody with that anti-honors is automatically suspect but it'd be something else to try/do.

Tetchta

If you're trying to set up a database in one day, maybe it's tedious (a bit), but most of us already have a table devoted to the enemies that typically show up to lessers. Updating an already-built database is going to take like one second if you do it right. It REALLY is not that big of a deal. It's less work than making an autobasher, by far, and yet a ton of modern systems have those all over the place. Also you definitionally can't metagame using honors because it's all IC information.

Bulrok

Spirits motto might as well be "it's fine no matter how much it inconveniences you so long as it doesn't inconvenience me".


I'm sorry you all are so inconvenienced by the removal of something that never should have offered what it offered in the first place.

Eaku

Eaku said:

It's not a huge deal,

Yeah, I'm aware it's not particularly difficult, time-consuming or a big deal, which is why I said so already and implied it earlier (when I said it made things marginally easier).

That doesn't make it any more not tedious or something I want to get used to doing again. Am I going to deal? Yes, this is about as far from earth-shattering as you can get. Do I still think it's a little silly in light of the other points I've made, if this is to guard against metagaming? Also yes - honours is a silly system.

Tetchta

Saying "honors is a silly system" is a little like saying "help files are a silly system."

Eaku

By the honours system, it's by definition not metagaming if someone I've never met IC before walks up to Eaku and says, "Ah yes hello Eaku Redwood born on Haernos 16, year 418, Invoker in the Oakengard of Duiran, who has slain three different types of colossal eld, fought in the Chaos War, including against the Chaos challengers and Golgotha himself, has brought salvation to the Chapel Gardens, slain Marcello Relovec and Belmith Scornhead, survived Herolt's questioning, and mastered the challenges of Mandre's tower, what city are you currently affiliated with since that is not in the public records I researched" but i'm sure going to think that it's silly and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If it makes sense to you, fair enough.

Tetchta

It makes sense because all players are, at the very least, minor celebrities. It's not any stranger than me going up to Brad Pitt and being like, "I thought you were super sexy in fight club. How're things with Angelina?" You can kinda pick and choose which info your character may or may not care about knowing about someone else, but you literally walk around with a lil Brain Pamphlet full of character info that just filtered to you organically. It's not weird if you accept the conventions of the setting.

Eaku

Tetchta said:

It makes sense because all players are, at the very least, minor celebrities. It's not any stranger than me going up to Brad Pitt and being like, "I thought you were super sexy in fight club. How're things with Angelina?" You can kinda pick and choose which info your character may or may not care about knowing about someone else, but you literally walk around with a lil Brain Pamphlet full of character info that just filtered to you organically. It's not weird if you accept the conventions of the setting.

I mean, sure, fair enough, but if I had a brain pamphlet of brad pitt in a world where nearly all minor celebrities are divided between two factions and four cities, you'd think my pamphlet would say which one he belongs to if it also includes half the work he's done for them

Seurimas

Eaku said:

Tetchta said:

It makes sense because all players are, at the very least, minor celebrities. It's not any stranger than me going up to Brad Pitt and being like, "I thought you were super sexy in fight club. How're things with Angelina?" You can kinda pick and choose which info your character may or may not care about knowing about someone else, but you literally walk around with a lil Brain Pamphlet full of character info that just filtered to you organically. It's not weird if you accept the conventions of the setting.

I mean, sure, fair enough, but if I had a brain pamphlet of brad pitt in a world where nearly all minor celebrities are divided between two factions and four cities, you'd think my pamphlet would say which one he belongs to if it also includes half the work he's done for them

By the same token, if your brain pamphlet got scribbled all over by an artifact crayon, the API shouldn't let you read it and it shouldn't give you a bigger, better brain pamphlet (while telling you not to peek at what should obviously be OOC information). Maybe the API ought to come back, but it definitely needs to operate under the same rules as the IG tools.

Eaku

Seurimas said:

Eaku said:

Tetchta said:

It makes sense because all players are, at the very least, minor celebrities. It's not any stranger than me going up to Brad Pitt and being like, "I thought you were super sexy in fight club. How're things with Angelina?" You can kinda pick and choose which info your character may or may not care about knowing about someone else, but you literally walk around with a lil Brain Pamphlet full of character info that just filtered to you organically. It's not weird if you accept the conventions of the setting.

I mean, sure, fair enough, but if I had a brain pamphlet of brad pitt in a world where nearly all minor celebrities are divided between two factions and four cities, you'd think my pamphlet would say which one he belongs to if it also includes half the work he's done for them

By the same token, if your brain pamphlet got scribbled all over by an artifact crayon, the API shouldn't let you read it and it shouldn't give you a bigger, better brain pamphlet (while telling you not to peek at what should obviously be OOC information). Maybe the API ought to come back, but it definitely needs to operate under the same rules as the IG tools.

Yeah, I agree. I've no desire at all to spend credits on that, but I think if you do it should work all the way through and the API should reflect the purchase.

I've got no idea how easy that sort of thing would be, though, unfortunately, so maybe it's best that the API just stays off. Sure it's a little inconvenient, but w/e it is what it is. If the API could be set up that way, though, that'd be my vote. That combined with the suggestion which @Toz made about making another way to config hide certain basic information would be great. I would definitely config unhide my city affiliation if that was an option.

Xenia

Lenoriel said:

All the ideas having to do with phase.

It's too hard to abstract the uses of phase in RP from it's potential in combat, especially group situations. Doing anything to alter how phase works is probably going to have a large effect on combat balance.

Lenoriel said:

2) Slightly less controversial, but.. historically, espionage has collected as much or more information from newspapers than from individual conversations. Make a newsroom in each city that gives anyone standing in it permission to see the city's public posts.. even make it so you need to be unphased to NSTAT them. But make them accessible. And this can be harnessed by -anyone-, not just Syssin.

I love this idea because I think it would elevate the cross-faction RP going on. I do think it would need to come with some balance like highcost+CD between uses which extended on a faction level (i.e. A city can only have this done 1 time every X number of days.), but in restricting it in this way, it will also elevate the internal RP within factions.

One draw back is this would only really work if more people were complying with your 5th suggestion if it was a room in the cities. If people aren't willing to do this, the whole goal could be undermined by blanket enemying and making it difficult to get into the room unphased. Alternatively a place like this could exist outside of a city but near to it, be considered open PK and become something that city's would care about protecting without having the assistance of their guards.

Lenoriel said:

5) Be more diligent as players about separating what you from what your character knows. If your character has no reason to move a public conversation away from a Syssin they don't IC know is a Syssin, don't do it. If your character hasn't learned IC that someone is a Syssin, try not to be more close-lipped than you would have been if they were not. In short, metagaming kills RP. Try to be more consciencious?

This is the true meat and potatoes. Only players can decide if they are playing a character in a world abstracted from themselves or not. If you like to RP and also feel some kind of way about the potential of being spied on I would suggest taking a minute to examine why that is. If the goal is to collaboratively tell stories with the other characters in the game, on some level you are going to need to enable transparency so that other people can provide the conflict in your path that keep things organic. I think this is very much a question on whether a tree makes a sound if nobody is there to watch it fall.

Lim

You guys can buff phase all you want. It will not help Syssin RP to get information that people don't want you to get.

Anyone doing anything they don't actually want anyone to know, would be taking it off spyable media, e.g. plot an election coup on web or discord rather than says and tells and emotes.

That means you are left with spying only on people who are saying, telling and RPing non-sensitive information. 

You may be disappointed, but that's the reality. It may be helpful to think of spy RP as pretty much any other RP where you need the counterparty's (implicit) consent.

This is a mechanical fix proposed for a problem that does not have a mechanical solution. 

Lenoriel

Lim said:

You guys can buff phase all you want. It will not help Syssin RP to get information that people don't want you to get.

Anyone doing anything they don't actually want anyone to know, would be taking it off spyable media, e.g. plot an election coup on web or discord rather than says and tells and emotes.

That means you are left with spying only on people who are saying, telling and RPing non-sensitive information. 

You may be disappointed, but that's the reality. It may be helpful to think of spy RP as pretty much any other RP where you need the counterparty's (implicit) consent.

This is a mechanical fix proposed for a problem that does not have a mechanical solution. 

People plotting election coups and such- or any IG action, really- in web and discord is its own major problem, well beyond the scope and intent of this discussion. That's not an espionage issue, that's metagaming. If you're gonna do something IC, it needs to be talked about IC. There are many, many ways to avoid it being overheard with almost 100% security without taking it to an OOC channel.

Tetchta

If you're planning IC actions on OOC channels, that's metagaming and you should feel extremely bad about that.

edit: and screw all that "well in an ideal world, blah blah, people are gonna do it anyway" equivocating. No, you really shouldn't be doing it, period. It's not something we should accept as "folk are gonna do it anyway." Nah. Y'all should stop it, and if it's a major thing going on in a place you can see it, you ought to be spending some energy calling it out.

Teani

I'd like to point out that since people know the Syssin exist and quite often spy on others, they are generally paranoid whenever they set out to RP something that might potentially be juicy. That means they are more likely to touch bell/check all defenses/set up precautions/move and throw eyes. It makes sense! Does this make it difficult to spy on them? Of course it does!  Whenever my character has been attempting it, I've personally felt on edge, because it's supposed to be a nerve-wracking thing for the character, especially if you're young.

What I can agree with from the OP is that it is far too easy for people in the game to get information about characters that they should perhaps not have access to. 

HONORS shows all clan affiliations, which can out people in seconds. There is a hide-honors artifact, of course, but some people like to show their accomplishments. Perhaps it would be possible to alter the artifact to make it possible to choose what to show to the public? I'd definitely buy this, but I'm not interested in hiding everything. 

API (something I'm not very knowledgeable in) is used to pull information for website banners with lots of character info, and this can also be accessed in game. That means people can pull up guild affiliation and much more, which might hurt a character's RP if they are trying to be sneaky. Other IRE fans have blocked off this information, so perhaps Admin could look into that for Aetolia?

Untitled young people tend to be a dead giveaway that someone is a Syssin, but I think that the guild could perhaps be a bit mor clever with that through inter-city RP. There are options to set people up for better chances if it's an important part of the guild RP.

Lim

Lenoriel said:

Lim said:

You guys can buff phase all you want. It will not help Syssin RP to get information that people don't want you to get.

Anyone doing anything they don't actually want anyone to know, would be taking it off spyable media, e.g. plot an election coup on web or discord rather than says and tells and emotes.

That means you are left with spying only on people who are saying, telling and RPing non-sensitive information. 

You may be disappointed, but that's the reality. It may be helpful to think of spy RP as pretty much any other RP where you need the counterparty's (implicit) consent.

This is a mechanical fix proposed for a problem that does not have a mechanical solution. 

People plotting election coups and such- or any IG action, really- in web and discord is its own major problem, well beyond the scope and intent of this discussion. That's not an espionage issue, that's metagaming. If you're gonna do something IC, it needs to be talked about IC. There are many, many ways to avoid it being overheard with almost 100% security without taking it to an OOC channel.

It is within scope of the discussion. You started this discussion stating the problem that the spy meta is no longer viable, and spying needs buffs (or spy-catching needs debuffs) to solve this problem.

I am pointing out that unless you have an effective way of clamping down on metagaming out of game, no amount of solutions you have proposed in-game will make spying any more effective or vibrant. Especially at catching any real scandalous activity. Personally, I have only ever caught mudsecks (upon which I leave in disgust and disappointment, all you freaky freaks). Never got anything really cool or political or espionagey - because these are done out of game.

It is also relevant because coding resources need to be diverted to add these proposed fixes. Coding resources are limited. As a fellow player of the game, I think we are entitled our two cents to have a say in having the limited coding resources be used on things that are actually effective at improving the game.

Now, Teani brings up an interesting point, which is that there are instances where people RP juicy content, not quite wanting to be spied on, but yet entertaining the possibility that they could be spied on. You can think of it as RPing plotting a coup, rather than actually plotting a coup.

IMO, if you want spying to be more vibrant, you stand a better chance of getting the fun you want by having more people willing to RP these scandalous activities, with the maturity to know that it is just a game, that they are not their character, and that there is a risk of getting found out that they are willing and happy to play out in character. Whether or not most of the RP playerbase is mature enough to handle that is a question of its own, but my suggestion is that you would get far more out of the spy meta if you can convince more people that it's fun to RP juicy content. It's an RP problem that would best be handled with an RP solution.

Tetchta

Lim said:

Personally, I have only ever caught mudsecks (upon which I leave in disgust and disappointment, all you freaky freaks). Never got anything really cool or political or espionagey - because these are done out of game.

I really think y'all ought to stop advertising how bad you are at espionage, because I'm starting to get really uncomfortable from the amount of secondhand embarassment I'm experiencing from it.

The scope of this thread has been all over the place over the past three pages. It started mostly on the original topic, veered for a bit onto whinging (ur fingers are typin' and ur complainin' about somethin'. That's whinging!) about the API changes, and now it's threatening to make another 90 degree turn into a conversation about metagaming, metaplots, and metapolitics. I'm getting severe whiplash here.

So, I'm not pro-buffing Phase at all (and in fact really agree with you overall, especially wrt the idea that this is a mechanical fix for a non-mechanical problem), and I already think spying is pisseasy to do; but this "we can't do x, y, z because people metagame" is a pretty significant indictment over the playerbase/player culture that's disguised as a throwaway line. Do I know that there are people are who disrespectful of OOC/IC boundaries? Yep. Dealt with a handful of extreme examples of that myself. But here's the thing: metagamers are going to metagame. We can maybe catch them in it and spread the word to others about what they do and hope that has some sort of measurable impact in how they're treated/how much impact their behavior has in the game. We could maybe name and shame, but I'm not even sure how well that works. One of my favorite versions of metagaming is the form where everyone plans everything OOC and then ends the meeting with "let's talk about this IC" and then they have the world's shortest IC discussion ever, like some sort of Anti Metagaming Ritual.

But at the end of the day, the people who don't feel bad metagaming, who think they can do it and get away with it because it's gotten them benefits all this time; some mechanical changes one way or another to things like Phase aren't going to deter those types of players OR encourage them. That said, if you think metagaming is widespread, accepted, or normalized enough that it's suddenly a thing that's going to have a major occurance uptick because of a couple balance changes, then, like, well. We should probably be talking about that (in a new thread), because that's a major problem for a game that's as RP-heavy as Aetolia is meant to be.

Xavin

I don't personally think that political stuff is metagamed all that much, but maybe I just don't see it. The issue with spying on political stuff is that at a certain point people figured out how to keep from being spied upon. Doors, bell tattoo, eye sigils/perform truth, those are all things that are common knowledge.

And honestly, not all politicing is even going to happen in says and emotes. Some of it could happen in in-character clans. Heck, I know some of Enorian's does. And clans aren't something that Syssin can actually spy on.

I used to tell people, and I think it bears saying here, that if you get spied on it's generally your own fault. And it's the truth. Houses, havens, city owned buildings leased as apartments, secured rooms in guildhalls, clans, messages, letters, all these things can be used for any roleplay, political or otherwise, and are more secure than just being out in the open. Being security minded with something as simple as a closed door and a bell tattoo goes a long way. Phase's strength is irrelevant because spying is only ever going to be as easy as your targets make it.

Tetchta

Xavin said:

I don't personally think that political stuff is metagamed all that much, but maybe I just don't see it. The issue with spying on political stuff is that at a certain point people figured out how to keep from being spied upon. Doors, bell tattoo, eye sigils/perform truth, those are all things that are common knowledge.

It does happen, it's been a recurring thing in Shadow tether over the past...while? And I think it's one of those things "if you see one cockroach, there's dozens you don't see" deals. If you see metgaming at all, especially as an outsider, you're very unlikely to be seeing all of it. As far as specifics, I only have things that directly happened to me in DMs, and some screenshots I've seen of other stuff going on, but I can definitely say that the OOC rigging of politics and other IC events definitely is a thing that happens. As for whether it's widespread across the whole game? I can't speak to that. But I know it's happened on our side of the field.

You're not wrong, though, a lot of people also just...know how to not be spied on.

Xavin

Oh I didn't mean to imply that I think it doesn't happen. I know it happens, it's always happened. I just like to think that it's not a very wide-spread phenomena. Somehow this is one of the few things that I'm not a super pessimist about.

Czcienn

Might be responding to some old posts but spying is one of those things where the more you try to do it the less chance you have of succeeding just because people naturally become more wary of it. I kind of feel like it's a binary thing here. We either make spying counter-able or we don't. You either succeed in the spying attempt or you don't.

Unfortunately, honestly if it was the former someone will take it too far and many people end up will up getting upset. There's also no real "winning" for the side "defending" against spying. At best they catch the spy and kill them and go back to the status quo.

I also think the Syssin have many avenues of exploring their identity other than "spying".

Lenoriel

Circling back to the original post... I'd love to see some feedback on the suggestions I gave there. Even if that feedback is a polite 'this is why I don't think this would work'. I get that the phase thing is the hot-button issue and like Eliadon said and many marked agree on, few people care enough about anything other than that to comment, but.. any thoughts are welcome. The idea was to talk about how to make things harder in a realistic, but realistically counterable manner, to introduce skill back into the equation rather than just phase vs. phasepull or arti vs. arti.

I am wholly and fully aware that espionage is only one aspect of the guild's identity. But it is a large one, and I'd hate to see it shrivel up. Lots of people love this sort of thing, and it's a valid line of RP and gameplay.

Toz

So, when we deal with gameplay, there's always a give-and-take. It's valid RP to be an antag who beats people up. I have to be able to succeed at that, and I risk losing that status if I get beat up in return. It's valid RP to be a politician and claim I speak for an org- I just have to win an election, and I can have that taken away. For every arena to compete in, there is an equal, proportional risk of that failure.

I genuinely believe theft and spying do not work in any meaningful way in IRE games due to the inability to enforce consequences. You cannot be permanently banned from joining another city, nor kept out of a Ministry for forever. People have also issued their way into guilds, or at least threatened to in the past. In real life, a spy caught while in the field gets executed and the information dies. In Aetolia, the spy dusts themselves off, goes "well that sucked" then turns in their report. I don't think the field can ever be evened, and it places all the potential for winning in the hand of one person (the aggressor) while the best the other (the target) can hope for is to not lose.

So, to make spying more appealing, you have to make *failing* as a spy more dangerous. How would that look? If you get caught at their newsroom, do you drop some Syssin guild newsposts? If you eavesdrop on a political conversation, can they catch you and find out a list of your guildmates? The victim is expected to be willing to lose, but the spy *can't* lose anything.

I suppose, fundamentally, I can't think of a compelling reason to lower my guard or let anyone spy on me when I'm aware it's a risk. And if you make spying more powerful, I'm just going to take further steps to obscure my information from view.

Lenoriel

Toz said:

So, to make spying more appealing, you have to make *failing* as a spy more dangerous. How would that look? If you get caught at their newsroom, do you drop some Syssin guild newsposts? If you eavesdrop on a political conversation, can they catch you and find out a list of your guildmates? The victim is expected to be willing to lose, but the spy *can't* lose anything.

Honestly? I love this idea, or something along those lines. I'm not sure how it would be implemented in practice, but yes!