Posts: 3,565
Threads: 107
Joined: May 2012
Staff roles: Balance Dev
I think the "death" rule is pretty solid, honestly. But I guess that's primarily because I've always self-enforced that rule anyways. It's just awkward and arguably "ooRP" to run into the same guy you just "killed" in the next system. Even with our magic life pods it's a tiny bit silly.
Our opinion about the new 4.2 rule - Joint Statement with GC| Official Faction
The New Rule
4.2 Only one reasonable demand during each piracy interaction, after requesting they stop.
- Telling someone to stop is not a demand for purposes of piracy, but they can be destroyed if they refuse
- Demanding 25mil for cargo that would only fetch maybe 10mil is not reasonable
- Demanding they drop their shields is not a reasonable demand that you can destroy them for if they refuse (Though if they do, good for you pirates)
- Demanding they drop cargo AND credits is multiple demands, and not allowed
- Demanding they give you their pants is reasonable inRP, but you can't further demand credits
Our Opinion
I admit that we couldn't imagine such rule would come out. The consequences to our faction will be radical and I will try to explain the reasons below. We believe the errors associated with the new rule happened accidentally as the goal was to make the rules more simple and thus we will offer solutions on how to fix it while staying true to the original spirit of the rule.
As it is well known, our faction is mainly invested in piracy. This is what we mostly do. But in the majority of our piracy operations, we do not simply demand some credits after the minimum RP requirement has been fulfilled.
Based on circumstances of the encounter we typically engage the target in conversation first before demanding a reasonable amount of money. We sometimes insult them, we sometimes make fun of them, we sometimes scare them or extract valuable information, this is all part of what we do. On a daily basis. It adds variety, it adds color and most importantly it is immersive.
Some of those things require us to issue multiple minor demands. Demands which do not cost something to the transports. For example, Liberty may not have much trading activity but it is filled with law enforcement or vigilantes. So if we are to have a few more moments alone with our target (and thus enjoy a more colorful interaction than a 2milordie), we need time. And we get that time by usually ordering our targets to move to a quiter place. Ordering a target to speak in system comms and say to the police officer that everything is okay, is another thing we do very often. Asking questions during an interrogation and expecting some answers is part of our roleplay. For 9 years now.
This rule by restricting us to make one demand only during an encounter is not acceptable as we cannot fulfill our roles.
Solution
The spirit of the rule is to protect transports from paying a pirate twice. Either in cargo or in credits. Subsequently this is the amendment we propose for this rule.
4.2 Only one monetary or cargo demand can be issued during each piracy interaction. This demand should be reasonable.
That way the transports are still secured from multiple piracy attempts but we can also decently fulfill our roles as pirates-criminals.
Our opinion about the new 4.2 rule - Joint Statement with GC| Official Faction
The New Rule
4.2 Only one reasonable demand during each piracy interaction, after requesting they stop.
- Telling someone to stop is not a demand for purposes of piracy, but they can be destroyed if they refuse
- Demanding 25mil for cargo that would only fetch maybe 10mil is not reasonable
- Demanding they drop their shields is not a reasonable demand that you can destroy them for if they refuse (Though if they do, good for you pirates)
- Demanding they drop cargo AND credits is multiple demands, and not allowed
- Demanding they give you their pants is reasonable inRP, but you can't further demand credits
Our Opinion
I admit that we couldn't imagine such rule would come out. The consequences to our faction will be radical and I will try to explain the reasons below. We believe the errors associated with the new rule happened accidentally as the goal was to make the rules more simple and thus we will offer solutions on how to fix it while staying true to the original spirit of the rule.
As it is well known, our faction is mainly invested in piracy. This is what we mostly do. But in the majority of our piracy operations, we do not simply demand some credits after the minimum RP requirement has been fulfilled.
Based on circumstances of the encounter we typically engage the target in conversation first before demanding a reasonable amount of money. We sometimes insult them, we sometimes make fun of them, we sometimes scare them or extract valuable information, this is all part of what we do. On a daily basis. It adds variety, it adds color and most importantly it is immersive.
Some of those things require us to issue multiple minor demands. Demands which do not cost something to the transports. For example, Liberty may not have much trading activity but it is filled with law enforcement or vigilantes. So if we are to have a few more moments alone with our target (and thus enjoy a more colorful interaction than a 2milordie), we need time. And we get that time by usually ordering our targets to move to a quiter place. Ordering a target to speak in system comms and say to the police officer that everything is okay, is another thing we do very often. Asking questions during an interrogation and expecting some answers is part of our roleplay. For 9 years now.
This rule by restricting us to make one demand only during an encounter is not acceptable as we cannot fulfill our roles.
Solution
The spirit of the rule is to protect transports from paying a pirate twice. Either in cargo or in credits. Subsequently this is the amendment we propose for this rule.
4.2 Only one monetary or cargo demand can be issued during each piracy interaction. This demand should be reasonable.
That way the transports are still secured from multiple piracy attempts but we can also decently fulfill our roles as pirates-criminals.
GC|is fully endorse the following criticism and suggestions.
(06-09-2016, 06:08 PM)The Lane Hackers Wrote:
Our opinion about the new 4.2 rule - Joint Statement with GC| Official Faction
The New Rule
4.2 Only one reasonable demand during each piracy interaction, after requesting they stop.
- Telling someone to stop is not a demand for purposes of piracy, but they can be destroyed if they refuse
- Demanding 25mil for cargo that would only fetch maybe 10mil is not reasonable
- Demanding they drop their shields is not a reasonable demand that you can destroy them for if they refuse (Though if they do, good for you pirates)
- Demanding they drop cargo AND credits is multiple demands, and not allowed
- Demanding they give you their pants is reasonable inRP, but you can't further demand credits
Our Opinion
I admit that we couldn't imagine such rule would come out. The consequences to our faction will be radical and I will try to explain the reasons below. We believe the errors associated with the new rule happened accidentally as the goal was to make the rules more simple and thus we will offer solutions on how to fix it while staying true to the original spirit of the rule.
As it is well known, our faction is mainly invested in piracy. This is what we mostly do. But in the majority of our piracy operations, we do not simply demand some credits after the minimum RP requirement has been fulfilled.
Based on circumstances of the encounter we typically engage the target in conversation first before demanding a reasonable amount of money. We sometimes insult them, we sometimes make fun of them, we sometimes scare them or extract valuable information, this is all part of what we do. On a daily basis. It adds variety, it adds color and most importantly it is immersive.
Some of those things require us to issue multiple minor demands. Demands which do not cost something to the transports. For example, Liberty may not have much trading activity but it is filled with law enforcement or vigilantes. So if we are to have a few more moments alone with our target (and thus enjoy a more colorful interaction than a 2milordie), we need time. And we get that time by usually ordering our targets to move to a quiter place. Ordering a target to speak in system comms and say to the police officer that everything is okay, is another thing we do very often. Asking questions during an interrogation and expecting some answers is part of our roleplay. For 9 years now.
This rule by restricting us to make one demand only during an encounter is not acceptable as we cannot fulfill our roles.
Solution
The spirit of the rule is to protect transports from paying a pirate twice. Either in cargo or in credits. Subsequently this is the amendment we propose for this rule.
4.2 Only one monetary or cargo demand can be issued during each piracy interaction. This demand should be reasonable.
That way the transports are still secured from multiple piracy attempts but we can also decently fulfill our roles as pirates-criminals.
I'm not a fan of this change. The rules we had were fine. They weren't perfect but did the job, all we needed was adding context for each rule specifically and additional explanation of the more complex ones. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the goal of this rework creating less confusion and helping new players in understanding the rules? If yes, both were a step back. Grammar mistakes aside (which there are plenty of), the rules are way too unclear, even compared to the "old" ones. Cutting the text short and making it open to interpretation backfires more often than not.
(06-09-2016, 02:38 AM)Drrobe Wrote: The idea was just to use common sense. If you shoot someone, RP first. Don't troll people. Make one demand per pirate encounter to be fair to others. The rules were meant to be a simplified not to create confusion, but to allow people to use common sense instead of feel like they're walking on eggshells.
A key thing to note here is that "vets", or people who established themselves as a part of the community, don't really need the rules. Sure, they lurk in from time to time to make sure they don't break any just in case, or if they have some doubts, but overall they play the game by instinct, in a natural way. For them the rules are here just so that there are some limitations that prevent them from being total dicks to other players. They know how the game works and how interaction goes more or less, which is why they rarely get sanctioned (and when they do it's usually by accident) and why 95% of the sanctions are on new players.
So what does that leave us with? Newbies. A lot of people don't understand how important they are to our server. Without making a huge wall of text about that, I'll just say that without them we'd be stuck with three or four times less players in-game. If you log at any given time and look at the player list just judging by the names you'll find that at least 60-70% are new players. And that's just by looking at the names, let alone interacting with them.
The rules, aside from providing limitations, are mostly for new players. They are here to guide them in a way to understand how this mod and server work, ensure they treat other players nicely and establish themselves as solid members of the community. The "old" rules were pretty complex. A lot of newbies had problem understanding them, granted. Not because of their complexity, but rather because they had no CONTEXT. How is someone supposed to know what OOC, RP, metagaming, powergaming, reasonable demand, pvp-dead, reengaging etc. means? Without context or a clear definition they can't. They'll have a vague, self-interpreted definition to which they'll stick which is wrong more often than not. Look at the first paragraph for my proposal to solve the problem.
By cutting the text short and making the rules open to interpretation, new players get even more confused. They lose the guidelines that were there before when more text was added for each rule, and for some rules that are now "common sense" to vets such as "Cheating" which isn't clearly defined anymore, how is a new player supposed to know what exactly is considered as cheating? Same goes for any other simplified rule. This is a complex mod and having detailed rules isn't a bad idea at all, in fact it's better than having as short as possible definitions with no context or examples which is why it backfires greatly on new players. A big problem is that it's almost impossible to notice that until it's too late (when a newbie breaks the rules), and then we have to punish them through sanctions.
In addition, a version of the rules in different languages should be a introduced. There are plenty of people, more specifically new players, who can understand and write English just enough to play on the server. When reading the rules, those same players won't understand a lot of it because of their not-so-good English on top of having barely any knowledge about the game which inevitably leads to them learning it the hard way via sanctions. We can't afford to drive away any new players that don't understand perfect English anymore, we don't have 200 players daily. Adding a multi-language version with the emphasis on "2.1 Everything must be in understandable English" to make sure they still do talk in English as much as possible would help those players understand the rules significantly more, I'm sure. If I joined Discovery 2 weeks ago and had average English skills, I'd have a great problem with both understanding the actual words in the rules and the rules themselves. Were they in my native language however, one of the problems is automatically solved. I'd propose adding a version in German, French and Russian for starters, as the most of our non-UK and non-USA population is from countries speaking those languages.
My 2 cents on why I feel this change was more detrimental than beneficial. I'll be commenting the new rules and how good/bad each of them is specifically in another post. Don't get me wrong though, the current ones have potential and can be fixed to be good overall, but it'd be a lot of fixing to do.
Oh hey I woke up, and more people taking my words out of context! Yay me!
First off, we're listening to the CONSTRUCTIVE suggestions from the community. You don't have to believe me when I say that, and you can carry on thinking whatever you want.
But to solidify that, to elaborate on what Tunicle said, we listened and acted regarding 4.2 and piracy. The INTENT was that you can make whatever demands you want, BUT you cannot engage them if they refuse your unreasonable demand. I as a pirate can go "Throw me your pants! Fly around the sun 5 times! Drop your shields!" but I wouldn't shoot them for it if they refused. Hell I can do that on my Zoner! I can't shoot them if they refuse. But you know the minute I, as a Zoner, go "Give me 10mil credits" I'd get reported in a heartbeat. Make sense? Some it does, some it won't. So, the NEW 4.2 rule states:
4.2 Demands should be reasonable and only one monetary or cargo demand can be issued during each piracy interaction.
Hopefully that makes Piracy better. Keep the suggestions coming though. Maybe you'll finally get that we do listen and are working a lot more efficiently and faster to process things that need to be taken care of.
(06-09-2016, 06:33 PM)Kalhmera Wrote: I agree with this also...
(06-09-2016, 09:55 AM)Antonio Wrote:
I'm not a fan of this change. The rules we had were fine. They weren't perfect but did the job, all we needed was adding context for each rule specifically and additional explanation of the more complex ones. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the goal of this rework creating less confusion and helping new players in understanding the rules? If yes, both were a step back. Grammar mistakes aside (which there are plenty of), the rules are way too unclear, even compared to the "old" ones. Cutting the text short and making it open to interpretation backfires more often than not.
(06-09-2016, 02:38 AM)Drrobe Wrote: The idea was just to use common sense. If you shoot someone, RP first. Don't troll people. Make one demand per pirate encounter to be fair to others. The rules were meant to be a simplified not to create confusion, but to allow people to use common sense instead of feel like they're walking on eggshells.
A key thing to note here is that "vets", or people who established themselves as a part of the community, don't really need the rules. Sure, they lurk in from time to time to make sure they don't break any just in case, or if they have some doubts, but overall they play the game by instinct, in a natural way. For them the rules are here just so that there are some limitations that prevent them from being total dicks to other players. They know how the game works and how interaction goes more or less, which is why they rarely get sanctioned (and when they do it's usually by accident) and why 95% of the sanctions are on new players.
So what does that leave us with? Newbies. A lot of people don't understand how important they are to our server. Without making a huge wall of text about that, I'll just say that without them we'd be stuck with three or four times less players in-game. If you log at any given time and look at the player list just judging by the names you'll find that at least 60-70% are new players. And that's just by looking at the names, let alone interacting with them.
The rules, aside from providing limitations, are mostly for new players. They are here to guide them in a way to understand how this mod and server work, ensure they treat other players nicely and establish themselves as solid members of the community. The "old" rules were pretty complex. A lot of newbies had problem understanding them, granted. Not because of their complexity, but rather because they had no CONTEXT. How is someone supposed to know what OOC, RP, metagaming, powergaming, reasonable demand, pvp-dead, reengaging etc. means? Without context or a clear definition they can't. They'll have a vague, self-interpreted definition to which they'll stick which is wrong more often than not. Look at the first paragraph for my proposal to solve the problem.
By cutting the text short and making the rules open to interpretation, new players get even more confused. They lose the guidelines that were there before when more text was added for each rule, and for some rules that are now "common sense" to vets such as "Cheating" which isn't clearly defined anymore, how is a new player supposed to know what exactly is considered as cheating? Same goes for any other simplified rule. This is a complex mod and having detailed rules isn't a bad idea at all, in fact it's better than having as short as possible definitions with no context or examples which is why it backfires greatly on new players. A big problem is that it's almost impossible to notice that until it's too late (when a newbie breaks the rules), and then we have to punish them through sanctions.
In addition, a version of the rules in different languages should be a introduced. There are plenty of people, more specifically new players, who can understand and write English just enough to play on the server. When reading the rules, those same players won't understand a lot of it because of their not-so-good English on top of having barely any knowledge about the game which inevitably leads to them learning it the hard way via sanctions. We can't afford to drive away any new players that don't understand perfect English anymore, we don't have 200 players daily. Adding a multi-language version with the emphasis on "2.1 Everything must be in understandable English" to make sure they still do talk in English as much as possible would help those players understand the rules significantly more, I'm sure. If I joined Discovery 2 weeks ago and had average English skills, I'd have a great problem with both understanding the actual words in the rules and the rules themselves. Were they in my native language however, one of the problems is automatically solved. I'd propose adding a version in German, French and Russian for starters, as the most of our non-UK and non-USA population is from countries speaking those languages.
My 2 cents on why I feel this change was more detrimental than beneficial. I'll be commenting the new rules and how good/bad each of them is specifically in another post. Don't get me wrong though, the current ones have potential and can be fixed to be good overall, but it'd be a lot of fixing to do.
These new rules are much simpler to read and the 3 strike system is a lot fairer.
As I see it a lot of people see the 3 strikes being a problem for the the new members we get which is somewhat true but you all have to remember the majority of us older members have more credits the god and the old sanctions meant nothing to us. However taking the guns and credits from new players was often the point that they would delete the char and start over. Look through the sanctions and you will see a few new players that lost their gear asking for it back or saying that they are screwed now.
![[Image: cdSeFev.png]](http://i.imgur.com/cdSeFev.png)
![[Image: w3gBAeX.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/w3gBAeX.gif)
![[Image: drrobe.gif]](http://sig.grumpybumpers.com/host/drrobe.gif)
