Porygon said:It's chalkenging because you keep refusing to answer my question. Which is the main point of my issue. Which means your point has not been clear lol.
So let's make this easy .
Don't say anything related to training other than why you think it's ok to drag 6 mobs thru a zone potentially killing other players, but it's not ok to intentionally drag mobs to players camps.
In both instances you're using game mechanics for personal gain at the expense of others. Is 1 only ok because you are announcing it. Therefore if I shout "train to frenzied", then it makes it ok?
The difference is intent. The player who trains to zone line didn't intend to aggro the mobs they train (atleast not in that quantity) and doesn't intend for any players in their path to get killed. Often times these players do their best to warn others around them to the hazards so they have a chance to get out of the way or move out of zone themselves to avoid the risk. In most cases these players are also repentant in their actions and usually actively take steps to assist anyone harmed by their actions. They also typically make an effort to not repeat the mistakes that previously caused the problems.
As opposed to the person intentionally dragging mobs to players camp who; A: Aggro's them with the intent to harm others for their gain, B: Never provides an advance warning, C: Does so to disrupt their game experience, D: Never makes any attempt to help players recover after potentially causing their death, and if they do not cause their death they readily bring more and E: Repeat the process as much as necessary to obtain the goal they were after (loot, camp, causing grief to players).
Ultimately, yes, I too train to zone sometimes (can never tell when invis will drop can you? so its not always a screwup on the part of the player) and like you suggest, if I see an obvious group in my path I stop and take the death before dragging mobs into them, but overall I see it as just a natural hazard of any zone as opposed to an artifical hazard of players wanting to cause you harm or interfere with your play.
I'm not sure either how many of the ridiculous comments in this thread are trolling (or re-trolling) and how many are just plain nastiness. More of the former I would guess but too many of the latter since even one is too many.
VR will decide whether to allow training and whether to recognize camps. It will be up to us to play within the limits they set - or get banned or suspended.
For purposes of a "play nice" thread, we need to assume we are playing within those limits. The question isn't what the rules allow, the question is what the community recognizes as nice or not nice within the rules.
Keldaria's point is compelling. There is a difference between whether one is nice or rude, and whether one is careful or careless, lucky or unlucky.
Deliberate griefing or camp stealing or kill stealing is never *nice* though the latter two may fall within the rules.
Accidental training may be careless, it may be unlucky, but in and of itself it has nothing to do whether the player causing it is *nice* although how he or she reacts (giving warnings, trying to avoid other players) has a *lot* to do with "niceness".
I just don't agree. The risk you take when you decide to train to zone to save yourself is too high. You say that you can warn people and that in most cases there's not people in the way... but you ultimately don't know. You're valuing your time and "life" over that of other people.
If you accidentally pull 6 mobs, well maybe you should have done a better job scouting. Or your puller should have eaten a death. That's not an excuse to potentially kill other players.
As far as invis dropping. Yeah, that was an interesting mechanic. But most players wouldn't have stopped of they came across a group. They would plow right through.
I understand, fundamentally, the difference between training and running. I just think that people that run are only a few rungs above the people that train on the ladder of jerks.
Also, just because someone has a view that you've never heard of before, or considered, or think is so outlandish ... doesn't mean they are trolling. Some people just think outside the box, and refuse to accept archaic norms from a game that got like 12% of the genre accurate. (In my mind)
@Porygon,
You pulled one example from my post out on why training should be allowed, and then doubled down on your opinion, which is why I believe the trolling point was raised. I don't think you were trolling, or that your point is outlandish, I just don't agree with it. I also would have liked if you were going to try to counter my opinion/post, that you would have tried to counter all of them versus cherry-picking one example that you may not have agreed with. Anyway, here is why I wouldn't agree with your "6 mobs point"...
First, the difference between intentional and unintentional is semantics. You don't consider a "bad pull" to be an unintentional train, when I would. I would consider a nefarious player intentionally training a group to be a "train," where a bad pull was unintentional. Now, if an unskilled player continued to make bad pull after bad pull... well... the line would start blurring and I would most likely consider that intentional at that point, or, that the player was terrible, which either way would most likely lead me (and others) to branding the player with the same reputation (aka I would avoid like the plague).
Second, from my perspective, if I was fighting at Unrest and we pulled a train "unintentionally" - my definition (sometimes not even the puller's fault, but agroing from someone's elses bad pull - but that's an entirely diffierent discussion) and it was trained to the zone - anyone with any knowledge of Unrest at all knew that fighting near the zoneline was a deathwish - even near the pools at the front of the zone. And, if you didn't, I would consider that a self-correcting error and a hard lesson for a newbie to learn, but, if they were skilled at all - they learned their lesson and didn't do it again. Or, it gave an opportunity for more skilled/veteran players to guide newer players to safer locations within the zone to hunt before being potentially trained. Any lowbies learned quick in Unrest to fight near the hedges/gazeebos or the back wall to avoid being trained. Again, having the knowledge that their "could" be trains, made more people aware of their situations.
Third, now, if that same group who trained purposelly ran through the group and /fd'd - agreed, terrible player. Or, if the player purposely tried to drop off mobs on a player that had agro to "save themselves" - yes, terrible player. If that person didn't call out /train, again, terrible player - no excuse not to have a hotkey. But, it didn't take long for the community to pick up on the terrible players either (with no server anonymity).
Further, I also only think it was "ok" to train in specific zones, not all, it would be determined by the zone itself - most with the defined zone-out that was easily accessible (Unrest/Cazic, etc.) - obviously, if you were deep in Sebillis, I'd agree the puller should eat the death. And, typically, at that point the group was high enough for a 90/96% res and it was quicker to eat the death. Which, brings up an entirely different discussion thread based on accepted trains/player levels (not going to derail this one). But, with Unrest and the like, losing your puller could mean breaking up the group due to the corpse runs (most were under 29). I conversely think it isn't selfish that a player is valuing their time and life over other people as often losing the puller would effect other people (your group), but instead it allows for more shared community beliefs and accepted norms/community building in that the accepted un-written rule of the "play nice" policy of knowing trains could happen, you annouced them, and you learned the specific paths that you trained out a zone. I'd argue that it allowed for community building versus immediately defining someone as a PoS, but as I previously stated, if a habit formed, it also allowed the server to learn who had a "bad reputation" quickly. Also, as I said in my previous post, once I was high enough level, I often liked to help out lowbies/mid-levels while I was waiting for groups and derail the trains which gave even more opportunity to build reptuation (positive in this case).
And, lastly, much like dismissing older mechanics (or lack thereof) as nostalgia, your final statement of trying to dismiss counterpoints as archaic or wrong because you have some larger knowledge pool will immediately put everyone on the defensive that has a counterpoint. Just my feedback there, and not relevant to the larger discussion points.
@Tralyan
This is a tame discussion :). Don't get me started on death penalties or corpse runs. I actually think for the most part this thread shows that the community can be respectful of each other with drastically differing opinions.
*Edit* To not clutter the thread - I got your joke Tralyan and it did make me laugh - sarcasm or responses to it never goes through text well. *cheers*
I think we all understand that any PNP is restricted to what can be consistently enforced. There seems to be a discrepancy in the opinions on what will be enforceable.
At this point there seems to be a disconnect in what some people are asking for and what is realistically enforceable, so much so that the discussion doesn't seem to be progressing any longer and is just going in circles.
philo said:I think we all understand that any PNP is restricted to what can be consistently enforced. There seems to be a discrepancy in the opinions on what will be enforceable.
At this point there seems to be a disconnect in what some people are asking for and what is realistically enforceable, so much so that the discussion doesn't seem to be progressing any longer and is just going in circles.
Actually, I'd have to disagree with that statement. While I certainly understand players wanting such clarity and focus to be on what can be verified and consistently enforced, I can easily say that my opinion differs here. I don't necessarily agree that a PnP is necessarily limited by a GM/Guides ability to consistently enforce it. To me a PnP is more about providing Guidelines for how a community should interact with one another and allowing GMs/Guides the ability to intercede in problematic or other non desirable behaivor when warranted. For me its not about creating a situation where individuals can be banned as much as its about creating a situation where you set community goals and allow GM's and Guides to mediate when players fail to live up to those goals. If players refuse to obide by GM's and Guides solutions then thats another story and is typically when the ban might come out. First temporary then permanent. Lets not fool ourselves into thinking innocent people are going to be banned because players tricked GM's or lied. In most cases its going to come down to, A: are you still doing that thing, B: are you continuing to do that thing after the GM told you to stop, C: are you repeat customer that GM's routinely have to deal with. There are no summary executions taking place but rather a series of warnings that players who get banned routinely ignore. Like players say, reputation matters, if you are getting reported every other day then its probably not because you are an upstanding player the community values. Reputation should have consequences, and hiding behind a guild of buddies who don't care how you act around non-guildies should only go so far.
Jezebel had a very nice write up on how this sort of thing worked back in EQ on page 7 of this thread where he describes it better than I could. I'm honestly not even calling for camp recognitition so much as just a general agreement that players shouldn't be a$$hats to each other and should respect each others in-game activities. Its honestly not about enforcement or getting players banned so much as its about giving players a list of community guidelines and the ability to pull a GM into the conversation if they encounter a player who opts to ignore them.
If you give a community rules, by default most players will strive to follow them. Its far better in my opinion to have a rule you know can't be enforced than to not have the rule and allow players the excuse of "its just part of the game" or "its not against the rules" to justify their behavior. To be clear, I believe there should be seperate PnP servers offered while proving a competitive servers for those who enjoy that type of gameplay. There is no reason to force these 2 crowds together when we know we will have multiple servers and a PnP doesn't require any additional hardcoding of the game to obtain.
Keldaria said: "Its far better to have a rule you know can't be enforced than to not have the rule"
Iksar has said something similar multiple times now...this has been mentioned repeatedly in this thread.
This is exactly the part about how " the discussion doesn't seem to be progressing any longer and is just going in circles." that was being referred to.
Raidan said: @Porygon
Sorry, you gave 3 examples. 2 of which don't impact other players. Which is why I didn't address them.
You can still implement mechanics for FD pulling without allowing zonewide trains. You can give mobs a radius which they will follow. Or just make aggro not immediately drop upon FD and the same exact concept would be there.
Pet pulling was never an intended mechanic. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. But the only reason this worked was because of the absurdly low levels of pets and the fact that you could outrange aggro. (I assume you're referring to for example an SK send his little pet in to pull a mob out of a pack. Because the mobs won't aggro the pet).
Regardless of how you explain training. All training has the potential to cause another player distress. You might be excited that you escaped death and don't have to deal with it. But the guy that got caught in the middle isn't happy at all. And probably thinks you're a jerk.
The issue as well isn't only with the train itself. Many groups can hide and avoid your initial train... when the mobs decide to stagger back, walking slowly, aggroing on to any mob they see. That's just a huge inconvenience for any group who is anywhere around the path the mobs take back.
As for your last point. I don't really care if you get defensive lol. A lot of the mechanics from EQ are archaic. That's why hardly none of them exist anymore. I hope they bring back a lot of the good aspects of that game. But for you to say your ability to train was a good aspect is laughable. You only want it for nostalgia. There really isn't a decent arguement you can make for why it should be there, other than I liked how eq did that.
Pet pulling was never an intended mechanic. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. But the only reason this worked was because of the absurdly low levels of pets and the fact that you could outrange aggro. (I assume you're referring to for example an SK send his little pet in to pull a mob out of a pack. Because the mobs won't aggro the pet).
There were also some AI issues with some mobs where they would ignore pets to a certain degree. Or wouldnt summon until a certain hp loss.
Porygon said:Raidan said: @Porygon I gave you reasons - you again ignored them. You only reinforced my feedback - I’ll move on.I didn't ignore them. They are just bad reasons.
I'd just add this is a matter of opinion, which doesn't make them ultimately bad, but only bad at your eyes. Which I think is the main purpose of Raidan's post : Explaining to you that your arguments and counter arguments are solely based on your own view and personal opinion, and not an universal truth.
However you seem commonly stuck in the loop of "I think it's bad thus it's bad and only my arguments are good", which outside beeing quite common humanly, doesn't bring any discussion further.
In fact, you're solely enticed to your opinion but pretty much no one agree to it. That should be a hint about it beeing either a evident truth, or just a very narrow opinion.
philo said:Keldaria said: "Its far better to have a rule you know can't be enforced than to not have the rule"
Iksar has said something similar multiple times now...this has been mentioned repeatedly in this thread.
This is exactly the part about how " the discussion doesn't seem to be progressing any longer and is just going in circles." that was being referred to.
My point wasn’t that this topic wasn’t repetitive but rather that the ability to consistently enforce a rule doesn’t necessarily matter when considering what is viable for inclusion in a PnP.
The problem you bring up about the conversation running in circles is largely to do with the nature of the topic itself. We’re still stuck on the “should a PnP exist” phase of the topic because it’s pretty hard to discuss specific versions of a PnP or what sort of content a PnP should include when the basic question of if it should exist is continually revisited and repeatedly brought up.
It’s simply hard for people like me and Iksar (for example) to discuss what theoretical rules could exist if anytime we start that topic others continue to question the need for a PnP in general. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been pushing for the idea of separate PnP servers where our desire for a PnP wouldn’t impact players who do not want them, because it attempts to side steps that issue but that doesn’t seem to have much traction either.
Unfortunately short of a dev confirming that a PnP will exist on some level, the conversation simply will remain stuck with those who desire a PnP attempting to make their case while those who dont want one make theirs. We may dabble around the edges of that topic but it’ll more or less be the same. If the PnP discussion hasn’t swayed your opinion one way or the other by now then it’s doubtful any level of discussion will.
Keldaria said: Unfortunately short of a dev confirming that a PnP will exist on some level, the conversation simply will remain stuck with those who desire a PnP attempting to make their case while those who dont want one make theirs.
I just wanted to point out that there isn't really any question on IF there will be a PnP. It's more about what is contained in this policy. So don't think that there will be no policy at all. I will refer back to Kilsin's words from page 3 of this Thread.
Kilsin said: We will have visible guidelines to follow for in-game like we do with the forums but we will not discuss or show how we come to those conclusions so as to not allow people to abuse the rules or find loopholes in them.
You can expect to see rules/guidelines though, it kind of goes without saying, e.g. Gold selling, Harassment/Abuse, Botting etc. will all be punishable offences and we will cover a lot of others in our guidelines once we publish them.
I have written four policies for the company, two of the bigger ones are focussed on in-game specifically but again, as I have said previously, it will take teamwork from everyone to help police and control these situations, community action is more powerful than many of you may think and when it fails or isn't enough, we can intervene if and when required.
So as you can see... they WILL have a policy. We just don't know all the details yet, and this whole discussion has mainly been about what we the players want or don't want to be in that policy. VR will make up their own mind about what they put in that policy. Also, there is going to be policies that VR has internally for their GM's to inforce that will NOT be publicly released. So there may be rules regarding playing nice that we won't know about unless we break said rules and get punished for them.
From page 2 in this thread:
Kilsin said: We have internal policies on a lot of things, folks, many of which cannot be shared publically yet or at all depending on the nature of them and if they can be abused externally if people have that knowledge of how we operate. We have policies in regards to in-game behaviour in place and when we get around to officially launching the game they may be published but there is a good chance that they will remain internal only for VR staff to go by when dealing with in-game incidents.
The only way people will most likely find out is when they break the in-game rules and have punishments issued.
So... just because there isn't an official published rule against something doesn't mean people are going to get away with bad behaviour.
And lastly...
Kilsin said: As I have said previously, it will take teamwork from everyone to help police and control these situations, community action is more powerful than many of you may think and when it fails or isn't enough, we can intervene if and when required.
We can do our best to discourage what we feel is bad behaviour in others... but if it gets out of the communities control the GM's will get involved.
I've never really considered that training to zone when your in trouble is a problem. However, having read above I tend to agree the nicer thing to do would be to die in a convinient spot and avoid killing others.
When we played back in the day trains to zone were socially acceptable, maybe they shouldnt have been?
My understanding though is zones are a thing of the past? The content will be HUGE and if there is a zone point at the extremes of the content you woul have to be a bit of a fool to setup a camp there.
What I can guarantee will happen though is someone will zone in just as someone is training out, this I think is innevitable.
Blood
Bloodfire said:I've never really considered that training to zone when your in trouble is a problem. However, having read above I tend to agree the nicer thing to do would be to die in a convinient spot and avoid killing others.
When we played back in the day trains to zone were socially acceptable, maybe they shouldnt have been?
My understanding though is zones are a thing of the past? The content will be HUGE and if there is a zone point at the extremes of the content you woul have to be a bit of a fool to setup a camp there.
What I can guarantee will happen though is someone will zone in just as someone is training out, this I think is innevitable.
Blood
That's easily solved by making you invincible upon loading until you make your first movement, or a timer expires (This eliminates people zoning just so they can go AFK for an extended period of time on the other side).
Fulton said:Bloodfire said:I've never really considered that training to zone when your in trouble is a problem. However, having read above I tend to agree the nicer thing to do would be to die in a convinient spot and avoid killing others.
When we played back in the day trains to zone were socially acceptable, maybe they shouldnt have been?
My understanding though is zones are a thing of the past? The content will be HUGE and if there is a zone point at the extremes of the content you woul have to be a bit of a fool to setup a camp there.
What I can guarantee will happen though is someone will zone in just as someone is training out, this I think is innevitable.
Blood
That's easily solved by making you invincible upon loading until you make your first movement, or a timer expires (This eliminates people zoning just so they can go AFK for an extended period of time on the other side).
We did train derailer groups when we were bored or didn't feel like getting too involved. We'd go into train hot zones and announce our position (usually somewhere a little more safe than the zoneline), and people would yell train and bring it to our group, and we'd work at dispatching it. If we were doing this in a zone that we were more vulnerable in, we would have a pocket cleric camped nearby.
Way too much disinformation here.
People are trying to define rules for actions that are typically very dynamic and many times just part of normal game play mechanics.
In EQ1 golden years (1998-2003), trains were largely innocent, accidental and generally complete surprises.
ACCIDENTAL TRAINS
A player could start a train simply by running past some new spawn in overland open world. And if that player had SoW or some other speed modifier they might never notice a train of monsters chasing them far behind. All the while that train is running over unsuspecting players in their path to wherever they were going.
WHY RUN OUT?
In many occassions groups would be in far away dungeons, in a hard to break camp. It may have taken an hour or more simply to get everyone to the location, fight down and break into a camp and then hold it through respawns. If things go bad and there is a wipe, if at least one group member can get out alive there is better hope for the group to be able to restart faster than everyone having to run all the way back and re-break in.
ZONE GROUPS
I would also argue that players sitting at the zone-in, afk, or whatever have no business complaining about a train killing them. The zone-in/out area of dungeons were always notoriously dangerous places and anyone saying otherwise has just never played.
MORE LOOT/XP
Many times groups waiting at the zone welcome trains, as they are cleaning up random pops generally anyway. Bringing a train to the zone was sometimes a beneficial thing for all.
This also happened in dungeons, where a powerful group at a camp would say bring the train to them if possible. And they could clean it up, rezz the player and things would get back to normal quickly.
TWINKING/PLing
Too many times problems start by groups bringing in their lowbie friend or guild member, into a much harder area than they should be. In those early days of EQ the aggro range for a low level player was much larger than a higher level-appropriate player. So they would aggro mobs around them from greater distances, creating more trains as a side-effect.
TRAIN PATHING
This is one of the most arbitrary things. Mobs would take paths completely varied to what a player would use to run away. Many more times than naught, a player has no idea they have a train on them as the train went down a different track.
A player could start running from the bottom of a dungeon and make it to the top while all the monsters chasing him and multiplying had taken different paths, only to pop up at the main zone entrance unannounced.
NEW PLAYERS / NEW DUNGEON
All these expamples above would be endlessly repeated for every new player to a new dungeon.
Typically in a dungeon as you gain levels, you could handle the harder stuff, which would be farther in. You may have just learned how the easy stuff near the entrance worked, how the mobs reacted and pathed, but farther in it is all new again. Trains happen.
THIS IS WHAT MADE EQ1 "the Golden Years" INTERESTING
All of the details I outline above led to exciting and unpredicable events in the land of EQ1. Start "fixing" mechanics, banning players for innocent actions and otherwise turning the game in WoW, EQ2 and so forth is a bad idea.
Bloodfire said:My understanding though is zones are a thing of the past? The content will be HUGE and if there is a zone point at the extremes of the content you woul have to be a bit of a fool to setup a camp there.
Apparently you have not watched the streams closely.
Halnir Cave: even with only what was a couple groups in the dungeon, we saw a lot of training and of course, trains to the zone, where else would you train to? (Halnir Cave does have more than one entrance)