Announce post #3176: Aegis and PK
4/9/2021 at 14:34
Tiur, the Gnosis
Everyone
Aegis and PK
Formal rules, now enshrined in HELP AEGIS PK
The Aegis based skills provide a unique PK problem, due to them being tied to a location and capable of acting at nearly any time, regardless of the maker's presence.
1) If you are online and any aegis you own is being actively attacked you are allowed to defend it DURING the attack.
2) If your aegis is in a hotspot location, e.g. caravan routes, major hunting area, frequently used path, or Orrery area, you cannot take revenge for its destruction.
3) Anything else is open for revenge, such as a city, shop, personal residence, etc.
All of these rules are lesser than the greater PK rules and do not override them. So if it was (real life) weeks ago, move on. It needs to make narrative sense, and an Aegis isn't important enough to plot revenge for (in game) years.
Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 2nd of Lleian, in the year 494 MA.
5
Comments
1) Is the rule always in favour of the group removing the aegises? For example, if someone takes a group to remove an aegis in one room, does the maker get the ability to grab a group to contest and defend the aegis? Or is it a thing where the maker has to solo the group if he wants to defend his aegis?
2) I bring up a relevant case, where Kaiara set up glyphs on Tcanna once when Illidan was bashing to hinder him because he was bashing over Isia. He went and killed Kaiara not just once, but twice for all that she did until she stopped. Isn't this the same situation, just semi-different tools?
3b) In that case, can we lower the L1/2/3 fast_aegis artifact costs then? >_> 500cr for a 30% reduction of speed in attuning and dampening aegises which is largely only going to be seen in cities, and therefore won't see much use.
Thanks.
Even more, shadow cannot remove traps that can be set at any time along these same hunting areas. Are we now allowed to attack someone for hitting a trap they left because reasons, especially as we can't see them unless we're specifically looking for them? Will there be an ability to remove them or possibly attempt to remove them? Will that be considered a reason enough to defend while I am trying to remove those from the pathways? What of glyphs?
I can understand the frustration that may come with having an area prepped for an upcoming conflict, but prep is not unique to Aegis, and is not unique to Shadow either. I also feel that if you engage in an aggressive action, you accept the consequences that come with that action. Shrine defiling gives you a hefty aura that lasts after and leaves you open to PK, and you're allowed to set those up in areas and are used aggressively - will there be a limiter on that next, too?
I think this is going in the wrong direction and setting a terrible precedent. World conflict is already non-existent outside sanctioned events (foci, orrery, sect, vortex/fracture/HG), and this only limits it more. And if anything, it just creates a situation where it is now encouraged to bring an entire group to defend an aegis or attack an aegis, as once the aegis is down, it doesn't matter anyhow - you're off scot free.
Add in some removal options of Traps, please, or else this feels like a double-standard aimed specifically at labyrinth @Tiur.
Edit: As an additional note, this feels like it goes against the spirit of a single death not being issuable for the most part. A single act of aggression is answered with a single act of revenge if it can be completed in a reasonable time. I try to avoid hyperbole, but feels like a bit of a slippery slope heading toward PK lawyering.
Edit: And it's my understand there was a ruling on using Aegis to claim cause as a result of that that is within the spirit of the rules they just posted.
The word REVENGE is very specifically used here. Revenge is PK for something past tense. Showing up to defend the aegis you put down during someone's attempt to destroy it is not revenge, the act is still ongoing. If they use a group, and you bring a group, neat, it's a group fight. If you go find them hours after it's gone, no.
Essentially: The Aegis are not meant to passively sit there and generate you PK cause. The core to understand is that it's not you building something and it deserves to exist; it's that you are putting something like a preemptory attack out in the world and waiting. When it hits, YOU STARTED THE FIGHT.
If you weren't there to defend it, you don't get revenge for losing the fight you started. There is some leeway left for things like making trap rooms, or tricking people into them as active combat methods. Hence only really caring about hotspot locations. Essentially, I should approve every single issue where your Aegis hits someone you have no cause on.
Ask yourself "Do I have cause against X?" Because an aegis is like an attack on a loooooong timer.
In cases where no one is hit, or it's destroyed while you're gone, we're saying that to claim revenge (pk at a later date) it needs to either have been somewhere you have a reasonable reason to pk people over or somewhere you own and were protecting. Again, think of it like a delayed attack. It is unreasonable to think you deserve cause on someone later because you started a fight and they fought back. If it's at NoT, even if it doesn't hit the person who destroyed it, it's like you left an attack waiting to hit them at any time, it's silly to give you cause for them removing it.
The aegis is aggressive. Justify its aggression, not how people respond to it.
E:
I missed the bit about single deaths. That's meant to handle people putting up silly issues, death is not that big of a deal, whatever. But if someone treats it like "I get one free pk causeless kill on every player" I'll end up punishing you because the larger picture matters more than the time saving "don't waste our time" rules.
By your own logic, any aegis is considered aggressive, including mere observation aegises or any aegises that have not even hit someone -- as well as anything that is arbitrarily referred to as a "hot spot" or "frequently used path". My problem with the new precedence that you established is that not every conflict is, nor should they be, a group-based conflict and Aetolia already exists as a game where almost every conflict boils down to groups, thus absolving individuals from the actions that their characters make. For the record, I would've been fine with a decision that was: "All aegises are wiped from Scidve/Observatory at the start of the round" or basically anything that didn't undo the three previous issues in the diametrically opposite direction from where precedence had been established. This is twice now where issues have been leveraged like to repeatedly complain things that one side doesn't agree with, despite prior receipts and decisions being known to the issuers and they press ahead with the issue anyway, in the hopes that the administration will just get tired of dealing with it and side with them. It happened with Warhounds Track, and now with aegises.
What you've effectively done now is make it to where an individual that has placed an aegis, by the wording of the rules, is now subject to it being camped by a group of people for any reason and that individual cannot do anything in retaliation unless they bring a group. Neither side has any real roleplay reason to make this a group conflict. Forgive me if I'm not interested in yet another conflict mechanism where people can just throw bodies and an automated script at something and then go hide in their city to avoid accountability for the actions of their own character. Additionally, attuning an aegis is not an offensive action in itself unless it hits a person, especially if it's just something like an Observation glyph. That's like me claiming that an Allsight Rite is somehow an aggressive action. It's not, nor is placing glyphs, or traps, or any other sort of persistent effect if they're not targeting me or doing a non-detrimental passive effect. It'd be one thing if my aegis actually hit them first or caused a detrimental effect, but I guarantee this issue is going to come up again when Shadow Sentinel becomes a thing and people go around disarming each other's traps. If your precedence here is maintained as with aegises, it's just going to boil down into: "Well, the Sentinel whose traps are being disarmed is not allowed to do anything because the disarming Sentinel roamed with a group and then the conflict is over and I can't get any retribution because they all went home". Forgive me if I don't think conflict should be based around on and off peak times and, again, who can throw the most bodies at something. The conflict should remain between the person who laid the traps (or attuned the aegis) and the person who is disarming (or dampening the aegis). Anyone else who gets involved is knowingly taking a risk in doing so, by virtue of the fact that it is not an open PK zone nor is this an established means of group combat.
As a complete aside over aegises, there are no current, feasible situations that would generate any sort of organic PK outside of the organized group PK zones we periodically have, and maybe another situation where someone goes trigger happy off of a perceived "insult" and even if there was, the aggressors can simply go and hide within their cities to "hold out" until the administration grants an arbitrary decision on a time limit in terms of what is feasible for retaliation, as well as just roaming around with a giant group. You already see this with bounties where people who actually do something against an organization will literally just never leave their org unless it's with a group or not log in until the bounty timer is run out. If that's the direction that Aetolia is going to go, I guess that's fine, but I guess I find such a design philosophy subjectively boring. I believe that if you're claiming that this is conflict-based, roleplay game, people should be held accountable for the actions of their characters. Roaming around with a group because one side either can't muster enough bodies to retaliate and then declaring the conflict objectively over from that point onwards is, at least in my opinion, a poor way of facilitating this and it flies in the face of every past decision thus far.
Edit:
For clarification because Iadra's statement below is misleading, here is the previous precedence that had been established with aegises:
Message #1553 Sent By: Alecto Received On: 11/22/2020/1:46
"(Mass: Caitria, Nisavi, Iadra) Issue 21659: There was a great deal to unpack here, but essentially
this: An Aegis being set up and attacked is cause for the person who owns the Aegis. We do not
intend to have pages of PK rules, so keeping it simple, your cause only lasts for a limited amount
of time. Finding the group in the act and having a little battle over it is plenty, we will not
approve an act that creates 'cause' like hash marks. We will not apply a set amount of time for
revenge if there was not a battle, but a RL day or so would be logical. So... one death, no
punishment, but do not use Aegis as means to collect cause for later dates."
:thumbsup:
Good rule. It makes sense and fits with the pk and the roleplay theme of the game.
revenge if there was not a battle, but a RL day or so would be logical. So... one death, no
punishment, but do not use Aegis as means to collect cause for later dates."
Ergo, I was allowed and was not penalized in the previous decisions for going after people and killing them once for the action. This was specifically because there was no means of retaliating sometimes against a large group on my own due to on/off peak times. It's worth noting that every Shadow player that came to my defense during the skrimishes we did have did it with the understanding that they were open to retaliation to those they were attacking in defense of my aegis as the conflict did not originally concern them.
In addition, I'd like to address the 'in-character resolution' that was mentioned. The only resolution that was offered was dueling Nisaavi 1v1 at NoT. Since Nisavi is a well-known combatant who is leagues above Sryaen in terms of combat ability, why the HELL would Sry want to fight him 1 on 1, knowing full well he'd lose? The options for resolution are surprise death by getting jumped or willing death by dueling. That's not a resolution either. That's simply you collecting a pound of flesh by whatever way you feel you're deserving of it.
Aetolia has had a long history of people getting caught in this perpetual cycle of endless revenge PK. I was around for it with Kurl/Osai/Sanosuke circa 10+ years ago, as were most us. While I don't necessarily care about putting aegii in hunting areas, etc - the newly stated help file that specifically mentions hostile zones like orrery - is a step in the right direction when it comes to outlining a more clear standard for PK cause in regards to Aegis (and I'd be okay if this applies to traps and glyphs as well).
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Also, you're kind of proving my point that people will initiate conflicts outside of non-PK zones with those that they think are better than them solely because they can throw bodies at it. This isn't really a feasible solution and it just creates a different endless chain of characters avoiding responsibility for their own actions.
In terms of Aegis is taking it down cause for later pk?
Message from Tiur
251 Tiur 7/30/2020
It's an obvious offensive act, but so would be taking it down. If they can catch you doing it,
it's valid for PK, but it would be silly for it to occur later.
Anything beyond that is pointless. This is the rule, we are all adults and we can all follow the rules.
????
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The situation would have been resolved had Nisavi killed Sryaen. It would not have been a resolution either Sryaen or the player would have necessarily enjoyed, but it is a resolution. Whenever we play with other people that are not computers, or interacting with other people in general, the outcome or resolution of a situation may be us losing. Finding ways to remove that as an option (even if it is a game) doesn't really promote conflict or rivalry as... everyone is then a winner.
As for revenge PK, that also feeds into the "Lets all be winners" mentality, unfortunately. If I were to (attempt) to pk Nisavi, lose, then do it again and win, and then Nisavi came after me and won, and we continued, it only continues so long as one of us continues to be the aggressor, and we have long-established rules to deal with unruly aggressors who do not accept a spoken or unspoken surrender in any rivalry. It may not be typical in your character's roleplay to consider saying "no more", but hey that is what character development, growth, and nuance is about, isn't it? Taking situations in which we fail to succeed and developing from them.
That said, I accept that the mentality of Aetolia has shifted drastically, and it feels very much now that the ideal is "Keep your PK out of my RP/Bashing". I do get and have been in the place of being on the bottom of the totem pole, so to speak, in that I could not defeat an aggressor in mechanical PK. It is frustrating, it is aggravating, it is maddening - but in the end, it forced my character to explore alternate means of resolution, or perhaps even take a hit to his pride, which in the end, was for the better for the character and story.
That is an anecdotal example and I accept that many have much worse examples of people who do not stop or continue to push long after we've said "we're done". If issues do not work or are not appropriate in this examples, or we have toxic individuals working within the letter of the rules and we're not doing some self-policing, or worse, we don't trust each other enough as a community to do the bare minimum of self-policing, well fuck - how broken of a community are we?
Edit: As a thought, too, because I keep having them immediately after hitting post: While knowing you're going to get wrecked by mechanical PK sucks, or those individuals who use their artifacts or system as a means to bully are also trash, being mechanically murdered is an easy, straightforward way to teach "Actions have consequences". If we're attempting to have a modicum of realistic approaches to our world, consequences matter. If they do not, then there is never any impetus to care about actions, and if we do not care about actions, they have no impact. Lack of impact drains impetus to act, and apathy sets in. And at that point, we're just logging in to alt-tab bash or shoot the shit on web/clans rather than contributing to the world around us. Tiny bit of a strawman, I know, but personally, I like it when my actions have consequences, even if it means I get rolled by someone better than me. It is why I got into PK in the first, to take out some Chad who was better than me so I could say I did it. Didn't always work out that way, but as I said, we need to fail sometimes to grow.
Edit Numero Dos: Last one, I swear. A lot of this would be alleviated if Shadow got more entrenchment breakers that were not blocked by say, an ent or hard-countered by another class or a monolith. We didn't have a lot of space to ask for much this last 'lead round, so I'd ask for something off-season or something. But when most encounters that are entrenched boil down to walking through traps+rites (trudging through warding or dealing with 80% RNG after 5 affs)+aegis into a room with at least one exit blocked by an elk that prevents a lure attempt, sand being stopped by overgrowth, and empress being stopped via monolith, we kind of sort of have to hard lean on keeping the entrenchment from happening.
edit: I'm also slightly concerned with some of the logic that is being put forth in some of these "arguments" that are being made. They also seem silly.
God forbid anyone who disagrees have a chance to disagree.
In any event, I will add on to what Saidenn has said. Nisavi has only ever killed anyone once and if she died in the attempt of achieving retribution against that person in terms of a 1v1, she stopped even though I technically could've perpetuated it. I've been more than amicable towards people. I mean, hell, all Kaiara's character had to do was apologize to Nisavi and that was the end of it. She even forgave Aloli way back when when her character was following someone who was target calling with scripts and she had no idea that her scripts had started hitting me. It only took an apology to get Nisavi to back off. I could've gone after people for perceived slights/insults, but I haven't despite someone's insistence on the other tether that "they can go after someone any time for any reason". I also had an opportunity to jump her but didn't because she had a newbie with her. The problem is that people would rather make themselves miserable and not play/hide in their city/rant than potentially view it as a learning opportunity or an avenue to get back at an aggressor. One of the reasons I'm truly upset is because there was no zero attempt at IC resolution by most of those involved. It was a straight jump to OOC and a discussion/coordination of issues on a Web.
Ever.
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I'm fairly sympathetic to the Aegis problem, too. The energy and drama around babysitting aegises in Orrery was very unfun for me, and seemed to be outside the spirit of the controlled pvp encounters (like why make Orrery open every 4 hours for several days when it's meant to encourage occasional, planned fighting when it really becomes more advantageous to hold the zone for 72+ hours straight), but the solution to that sort of problem is to either close off Orrery when it's not active, or have Orrery pop aegises at the start of events so you have to have an overwhelming advantage already to drop them. I really think "you can't do anything about your personal property dropped in a bashing zone or the admin will punish you" is just ... bad roleplay, honestly, and encourages griefing in the other direction ("haha you weren't online, I'm not touching youuuuuuuuu").
All I see from this is @Nisavi doing several lines of cocaine so he can stay awake during the entirety of Orrery.
What's the intended PK experience of the game?
I asked a few friends and they all mentioned some guy named Merek? @Sryaen does that ring a bell?
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