A dissertation regarding the state of play
Feb 28, 2016 2:14:47 GMT -8
Reese Cresno, Empress Naoki, and 1 more like this
Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2016 2:14:47 GMT -8
Ladies and Gentlemen. In recent times, there has been a lot of common outcry, and I would like to take this opportunity to put together a dissertation of the situation. I believe that there is a lot of dissonance, because of a lack of shared understanding.
The first, and very important thing to make note of is what the sandbox is, why it is, and how this identity was determined.
The sandbox began as a vision in the mind of Sara, the administrator/creator. It is my belief that it was envisioned as a place of freedom, allowing both interesting stories and, in particular, combat. Her own background, from what I understand, is heavily based in combat RP. In the introduction post, the sandbox is consistently referred to as a game. It is an interesting terminology to use, because “game” implies objectives, and moves to complete them. However, the sandbox is only very loosely regulated, and so there can be no concrete objectives. They must be defined by the player. I posit that the sandbox was built to accommodate all objectives and visions, even including those that run counter to the objectives and visions of other players. In fact, I would say that the rules support the ability to force outcomes upon other players, in service to a particular objective (e.g. the forced response rule, or the death avoidance rules.). This, I think, sums up the experience as a whole. Unregulated freedom to the players.
I propose, then that the common players (myself included), do not see the sandbox this way. In the community, there are a wide variety of rules, unofficial, perhaps even unspoken. A few examples might include “Don’t kill a character without OOC permission”, or “Don’t launch yourself into a scenario in progress without making sure you're not ruining the scenario”. These unspoken rules ultimately exist because the community doesn’t enjoy having their plans, their characters, or their toys, wrecked by random factors. These unspoken rules foster cooperation between the players, and form a kind of a shared etiquette that is expected between players. They add a great deal of restriction to a system that is wide open by design.
My great theory then, is that the common outcry stems from this common perception. People believe that their own work has meaning, and that there are some safeguards in place to protect this work, and these characters. They believe that the sandbox is a place that fosters cooperation and goodwill between players. The fact of the matter is that this vision is based on unofficial expectations. This vision held by the players is, therefore, inaccurate. Dangerously so, even. A lot of what is perfectly acceptable within the rules is labeled abuse because of etiquette. The rules themselves offer neither incentive nor punishment for cooperative play, while being readily adaptable to those who wish to antagonize, or ruin the run of others.
There is a school of thought, that the system is, to some degree, self regulating. That doing something too absurd is curbed by the community, and that the rules don’t need to play a part. And, to some extent, it is. However, to be entirely frank, all this really means is that the community is routinely in a state of anger and distress, in response to some abusive player or methodology that is acceptable within the rules. Being angry or distressed is an incredibly terrible state to be in, and it wears people down. It ultimately feels like something where this isn’t something the community should be responsible for, when it could easily be solved with a change of rules and administrative attitude.
Ultimately, I feel that there are two acceptable outcomes. Either the system itself needs to change to better fit with the vision of the community, and safeguards and restrictions must be put into place to actually encourage cooperation, and to protect people from those who would abuse things like forced combat. Or, alternatively, the community needs to accept that the system is currently one where people can, and will destroy your vision, if it advances their own. If we accept this type of option, then this common etiquette that currently exists is more or less incompatible with the system, and should really be abandoned as misleading, and detrimental to play.
While we are on the topic, I feel that there are a number of ways in which the current system is readily abusable, and in my opinion, it boils down to three points.
The rules regarding death avoidance.
The lack of restriction on power levels creates an environment in which there are vastly differing levels of play. For example, Naoki’s character is a very peaceful character with long term political ambitions. In a straight fight, she would be destroyed by anything more competent than the average pugilist. Meanwhile, characters like a dragon (any dragon) would require massive, continuous effort from either another dragon, or an entire band of mages or dragonslayers in order to defeat them. Because of this, any time we move beyond the realm of the unaugmented human, combat becomes inherently unfair, and battles are decided more by absolute differences in power, and less by skill on behalf of the participants. An antagonistic or abusive player can readily create a character of high power in this setting, and pick a fight with anyone they like. If the difference is great enough, the defending party has two options. They can escalate the power of their character. Or they can die. And the rules support this type of behavior, making it difficult to escalate your character’s power (Characters developing new powers in order to survive a situation is generally sloppy writing, unless that powers is their power.). And if you don’t, you will be put in a death scenario, because the rules state that there can be no surviving a shot that should kill you. There is no resurrection. Your character is done.
2. The rules regarding setting
Until very recently, I considered settings merely set pieces, flavor in the form of backdrops. not something to be overthought. But now I am told that the rules confer an absolute control over the setting to its creator. The precedent has been pretty neatly set, in this case, already. A party has established a magic weapon as “part of the setting”, and has conferred on it qualities that entirely circumvent the usual safeguards of PvP combat. Usually, to create a magical effect, a player must spend some amount of time preparing. This particular device requires no time to prepare, affecting its surroundings instantly upon demand. And, more relevantly, the rules regarding the setting confer the user absolute authority regarding responses to its attack. If the owner of the setting says that instant death occurs, it does. I suspect that in the very near future, a number of locations and topics will become functionally unassailable, because their settings are absolute. I shudder to imagine what will happen with the armies attempting to invade what is termed as a “godly” setting.
In an environment where death is permanent, a licence to kill any player who enters a topic you have written is impossibly dangerous.
3. The encouragement of “rule” type abilities.
My relationship with rule type abilities has always been a mixed one. Abilities like these are ones that impose a restriction on all people equally. For example, an ability might prevent all fire from existing in a particular area. These types of skills are perfectly acceptable in a more DMed type of RP. They allow the DM to restrict solutions to the problems he presents, or to bring characters of disparate power levels into line. I have used rule type abilities extensively as a DM. But. This sandbox is not a DMed environment, with a few exceptions. And, as a rule, the DMed scenarios are usually voluntary. You choose to participate. However, in PvP, they can readily be used as a tool to completely and absolutely sway a battle, because they always affect parties unequally. The aforementioned rule has huge implications in a fight between a knight and a fire elemental. The fire elemental will die as a result of the rule, while the knight is unaffected. A similar game is played between the knight and the fire mage. Deprived of their core abilities, these people are affected immensely by this type of ability, while the other party is entirely unaffected. In particular, though, there is a strong difference between simply being prepared (by wearing a heat resistant suit of armor, for example), and absolutely shutting down every option the other party has. I feel that this particular abuse has not been truly exploited yet, because there hasn’t been a massive push for PvP in the past, but I hold that the problem exists, and may become more pronounced as PvP rises.
The first, and very important thing to make note of is what the sandbox is, why it is, and how this identity was determined.
The sandbox began as a vision in the mind of Sara, the administrator/creator. It is my belief that it was envisioned as a place of freedom, allowing both interesting stories and, in particular, combat. Her own background, from what I understand, is heavily based in combat RP. In the introduction post, the sandbox is consistently referred to as a game. It is an interesting terminology to use, because “game” implies objectives, and moves to complete them. However, the sandbox is only very loosely regulated, and so there can be no concrete objectives. They must be defined by the player. I posit that the sandbox was built to accommodate all objectives and visions, even including those that run counter to the objectives and visions of other players. In fact, I would say that the rules support the ability to force outcomes upon other players, in service to a particular objective (e.g. the forced response rule, or the death avoidance rules.). This, I think, sums up the experience as a whole. Unregulated freedom to the players.
I propose, then that the common players (myself included), do not see the sandbox this way. In the community, there are a wide variety of rules, unofficial, perhaps even unspoken. A few examples might include “Don’t kill a character without OOC permission”, or “Don’t launch yourself into a scenario in progress without making sure you're not ruining the scenario”. These unspoken rules ultimately exist because the community doesn’t enjoy having their plans, their characters, or their toys, wrecked by random factors. These unspoken rules foster cooperation between the players, and form a kind of a shared etiquette that is expected between players. They add a great deal of restriction to a system that is wide open by design.
My great theory then, is that the common outcry stems from this common perception. People believe that their own work has meaning, and that there are some safeguards in place to protect this work, and these characters. They believe that the sandbox is a place that fosters cooperation and goodwill between players. The fact of the matter is that this vision is based on unofficial expectations. This vision held by the players is, therefore, inaccurate. Dangerously so, even. A lot of what is perfectly acceptable within the rules is labeled abuse because of etiquette. The rules themselves offer neither incentive nor punishment for cooperative play, while being readily adaptable to those who wish to antagonize, or ruin the run of others.
There is a school of thought, that the system is, to some degree, self regulating. That doing something too absurd is curbed by the community, and that the rules don’t need to play a part. And, to some extent, it is. However, to be entirely frank, all this really means is that the community is routinely in a state of anger and distress, in response to some abusive player or methodology that is acceptable within the rules. Being angry or distressed is an incredibly terrible state to be in, and it wears people down. It ultimately feels like something where this isn’t something the community should be responsible for, when it could easily be solved with a change of rules and administrative attitude.
Ultimately, I feel that there are two acceptable outcomes. Either the system itself needs to change to better fit with the vision of the community, and safeguards and restrictions must be put into place to actually encourage cooperation, and to protect people from those who would abuse things like forced combat. Or, alternatively, the community needs to accept that the system is currently one where people can, and will destroy your vision, if it advances their own. If we accept this type of option, then this common etiquette that currently exists is more or less incompatible with the system, and should really be abandoned as misleading, and detrimental to play.
While we are on the topic, I feel that there are a number of ways in which the current system is readily abusable, and in my opinion, it boils down to three points.
The rules regarding death avoidance.
The lack of restriction on power levels creates an environment in which there are vastly differing levels of play. For example, Naoki’s character is a very peaceful character with long term political ambitions. In a straight fight, she would be destroyed by anything more competent than the average pugilist. Meanwhile, characters like a dragon (any dragon) would require massive, continuous effort from either another dragon, or an entire band of mages or dragonslayers in order to defeat them. Because of this, any time we move beyond the realm of the unaugmented human, combat becomes inherently unfair, and battles are decided more by absolute differences in power, and less by skill on behalf of the participants. An antagonistic or abusive player can readily create a character of high power in this setting, and pick a fight with anyone they like. If the difference is great enough, the defending party has two options. They can escalate the power of their character. Or they can die. And the rules support this type of behavior, making it difficult to escalate your character’s power (Characters developing new powers in order to survive a situation is generally sloppy writing, unless that powers is their power.). And if you don’t, you will be put in a death scenario, because the rules state that there can be no surviving a shot that should kill you. There is no resurrection. Your character is done.
2. The rules regarding setting
Until very recently, I considered settings merely set pieces, flavor in the form of backdrops. not something to be overthought. But now I am told that the rules confer an absolute control over the setting to its creator. The precedent has been pretty neatly set, in this case, already. A party has established a magic weapon as “part of the setting”, and has conferred on it qualities that entirely circumvent the usual safeguards of PvP combat. Usually, to create a magical effect, a player must spend some amount of time preparing. This particular device requires no time to prepare, affecting its surroundings instantly upon demand. And, more relevantly, the rules regarding the setting confer the user absolute authority regarding responses to its attack. If the owner of the setting says that instant death occurs, it does. I suspect that in the very near future, a number of locations and topics will become functionally unassailable, because their settings are absolute. I shudder to imagine what will happen with the armies attempting to invade what is termed as a “godly” setting.
In an environment where death is permanent, a licence to kill any player who enters a topic you have written is impossibly dangerous.
3. The encouragement of “rule” type abilities.
My relationship with rule type abilities has always been a mixed one. Abilities like these are ones that impose a restriction on all people equally. For example, an ability might prevent all fire from existing in a particular area. These types of skills are perfectly acceptable in a more DMed type of RP. They allow the DM to restrict solutions to the problems he presents, or to bring characters of disparate power levels into line. I have used rule type abilities extensively as a DM. But. This sandbox is not a DMed environment, with a few exceptions. And, as a rule, the DMed scenarios are usually voluntary. You choose to participate. However, in PvP, they can readily be used as a tool to completely and absolutely sway a battle, because they always affect parties unequally. The aforementioned rule has huge implications in a fight between a knight and a fire elemental. The fire elemental will die as a result of the rule, while the knight is unaffected. A similar game is played between the knight and the fire mage. Deprived of their core abilities, these people are affected immensely by this type of ability, while the other party is entirely unaffected. In particular, though, there is a strong difference between simply being prepared (by wearing a heat resistant suit of armor, for example), and absolutely shutting down every option the other party has. I feel that this particular abuse has not been truly exploited yet, because there hasn’t been a massive push for PvP in the past, but I hold that the problem exists, and may become more pronounced as PvP rises.
