Raiding Clarifications

Jeremy Saunders

I absolutely hate adding PK rules to HELP PK. However, we do have some rules for raiding cities and I want to clarify things. None of this should be new to you. Before I post this in HELP PK I want to open it to discussion here. 

8) Cities and councils are considered defender zones. If you attack a city, you cannot retaliate later for any actions taken against you (or any loyal mobs) while are you in that city. If you defend your city by attacking a raider, the raider may then attack you. However, you cannot be retaliated against later unless you pursue the fight outside of the city. Attacking players cannot kill players in cities unless they have valid RP reasons. Raiding a city opens an attacker for PK, but if that PK occurs outside of the city, the defender is no longer immune to retaliation.

This includes doing things like leaving your mobs in a city waiting for someone to kill them so you have a reason to kill them later. I have no problem with leaving your loyal mobs around in an attempt to bait people to kill them so you can PK them later, but leaving them in a city is the same as raiding that city. You can attack them right then, in the city, but not later, outside of the city.

Selthis

1. Pulling people outside of the city and then killing them later because they attacked you should be a nono and should be clarified as such.

2. Need to eliminate loyal mobs to cities outside of city/towne proper.

3. Need to clarify that this includes townes as well. 

Ahkan

Totally understand why this is coming down. 

On the flip side, how are you going to address what is known as the "Timid Groundhog" strategy.

Kryss shows up to Kinsarmar to be a jerk. 

Ruga pokes his head out (10-15 rooms out). Engages in combat.
Kryss engages
Ruga runs.
Ruga screams I am teh defender.

10m later.

Ruga goes bashing by himself.

Kryss kills Ruga

Technically. Kryss is in the wrong. On the flip side, Ruga is being a dong and gaming the system. We all do it so there's no point in lying about it. It's standard strategy for city defense.

Also. I'm a huge fan of the inverse of that.
Look, Selthis is being a dong in the Khandava forest. Wytchen#5 drop a vortex for Selthis. I block his way out of the forest as we pull him into defend range. TECHNICALLY, Selthis was just outside raid range. We coaxed him into violating it. Unless you investigate this and see that I'm being a complete terd, Selthis loses the issue when he kills me later. That's a ton of work on your part considering this is going to be standard pk until there's some way to add a punishment for losing at raiding to dissuade you from doing it 24/7.

Edit: Also!
People go into cities to kill with a list of priority targets. "Ruga is a dong." "Arakis slept with my wife." "Aulani has guard privs." Honestly, if you're a security minister/aide I think you should be fair game. You've got the power to break and raid and issue pk reasons (albeit terrible ones).  If you want the responsibility to enemy/bounty/move guards, you should really enjoy the target on your head when the thugs from down south ride up into your turf.

That being said, to avoid confusion on who is a security aide, just add a new line to help <city>.
The following people are in charge of the defense of <>: Ruga, Aulani, Steve.

Not sure if this is a solid idea, but it makes sense right now.

Labil

Well, for the first part of your post, where it says 'unless you pursue the fight outside of the city', seems to cover it pretty nicely.

The second part is quite more grey. Or maybe gray. Something.

Sarrius

I don't like this addition as is because of the reasons Ahkan illustrates. Also because some defenders can never keep their mouthes shut, so they will issue when I kill then for being insulting gits and think they will win because they did it while defending.

Ahkan

Labil said:

Well, for the first part of your post, where it says 'unless you pursue the fight outside of the city', seems to cover it pretty nicely.

The second part is quite more grey. Or maybe gray. Something.

The problem you get into is with vortex and ranged attacks. I can force a fight with lure/beckon/vortex. Fights can become mobile. What we do is game this grey area and move back and forth (being jerks) and coax the other person into violating the safe ground. We do it with siege now. Juran did it with trebuchets. It's the same b.s.

Stavenn is being gamed as much as they're gaming. Don't get me wrong, some of these issues are 100% legitimate complaints. On the other hand, some of these issues are crap, based in crap and the defender is being as much of a bag of dongs as the raiders.

Like just now. Ruga was in the Khandava forest being an idiot and immediately ran to 3 rooms outside Kinsarmar. What now? :P

Labil

Well, while it might not be needed to be clearly specified, the part of 'engaging outside of the city = fair game' should apply only when you STARTED the engagement of your own volition, therefore removing lure/beckon/vortex as a valid "he 'came' to my room, so he is going to hit me, he is kosher" excuse.

Edit: Forget this, I remember now when Antioch's ferry led to siege.

Jeremy Saunders

Okay, so I should have been clear on why the rule is semi vague. We cannot possibly cover every possibility of "what ifs". I actually tried for about an hour, and then realized I had already written 4 paragraphs and was still not done.

Keep in mind we keep all the combat logs so on. So we know if someone is trying to break the rules by pulling someone in or out of city or any of the other millions of possible ways to loophole things. If you are going to be stupid like that, we will eventually nail you for it. This is pretty much the rule we follow for deciding issues when raids are involved. We are just putting it in writing so people can see it. There are always exceptions, circumstances, and issues to all of the rules we have. 

Does this paragraph get the spirit of the rule across good enough for our purposes?

Khizan

It seems fine to me. The only quibble I have with it is basically that I don't know what's considered as "in the city." Are we talking about that gray area where you're not IN the city but I'm still allowed to pull you into guards? Or are we talking about the actual city limits?

Personally, I think that defender immunity should end at the gates unless they're actively attacking people through the gates. But what if Kryss is tooling around outside the gates with vortex and we defend? Is that still no-retaliation defense? It's not in the city.

Unclear PvP rules like that lead to a sort of "Issue them all and let the Gods sort them out" response from the cities, and I hate that kind of thing. I imagine you're not too fond of mass issues, either. A bit of clarity on that front would be nice.,

Ahkan

tbh, since there's no xp loss, the threshold for what constitutes a legit issue needs to be bumped up.

I'd honestly like to see some sort of penalty for frivolous issues at this point, something like an entire level lost or something.

Kryss

Now, whilst the no-retaliation for something that takes place within city walls is all good and makes sense, I'm wondering the same as Khizan, that is, what about outside the city? What happens when the defenders give chase all about the place? What happens when certain defenders come and attack before fleeing again? What happens when the defenders stand outside the gates attempting ranged attacks and the like? All of these scenarios happen more often then any attacking inside a city. I would like to think that in these cases it should be as simple as: if you don't want to be a target for later attacks, don't engage in hostile actions outside the city walls.

Khizan

Ahkan said:

tbh, since there's no xp loss, the threshold for what constitutes a legit issue needs to be bumped up.

I'd honestly like to see some sort of penalty for frivolous issues at this point, something like an entire level lost or something.

The problem with this is that it can scare people away from making legitimate issues because they're afraid of being punished if they lose them, and that's a fairly big problem.

Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with people like Shaylei who do the whole "I swear like a drunken sailor with Tourette's but issue for saying 'damn' in my presence" thing getting punished for spurious issues. That's just 100% abuse of issues and gaming the system.

Ahkan

I can understand that. Really can't let first timers be scared of the issue-man

I'd still like to see some steps taken to eliminate some of these crappy issues. There's little or no drawback to pk anymore, so I'm really wondering 'why' there's so much issuing being thrown around for pk. The people who 'abuse' are people who definitely know better. A lot of the time they do it rapid fire so they have 2-120 bad issues in a row. If there was a reason to dissuade people from shot gun issuing, it'd make people think twice before firing off that ol' rage issue from Charon's boat. (ideally)

To clean up a lot of grey area and 'abuse', I think we may need to have a little forum pow-wow and discuss removing command abilities or at least removing the commands like

-eat

-drink

-ct/gt/rt (any tell)

-Pretty much anything not combat applicable from the list, to just remove that from temptation/interpretation. 

Dicene

Only question that policy leaves me with is what happens with raiders that block off the path into a city, wait to catch people moving into or out of the city, or stand on the edge of the city and try to vortex out. Is the scope of defending range expanded to include the area just outside of the city, or can raiders always go the embargo route and have the right to kill anyone that attacks them for their aggressive actions directly outside of the city?

Ahkan

If you're getting vortexed out of your city run 8-9 rooms into it.

If they block and kill someone who didn't deserve it. They're screwed.

Blocking/Embargo on the gates is raiding.

Dicene

Yes. I know all of these things. I'm asking if us responding to these situations that require us to enter Celidon Forest or Vardarian means we're free to be revenge ganked, just because we left the city? I feel like if it's not clarified now, it could easily be the next fad in raiding.

Labil

No one is forcing you to go out and engage them. Making the cities a real safe place should not include 'lets make safe a whole area'

I would maybe add some 2-3 rooms directly out of the gate a safe place, so you can engage people battering the gate or trying to vortex people. You take a step outside that area willingly to engage someone, and you are free to retaliation. Doing ranged combat, including doing lure/beckon/vortex, even from these safe rooms, also makes you open to ganking.

Tough, best long term solution for people that camp? Ignore them.

Sarrius

People 'raid' out of boredom and nothing else. Don't let them pull the wool over your eyes - hell, I am one of these people and I'm freely admitting it. When I have a loose justification and a way in, I'll do it to keep myself entertained.

The best way to beat a raid or a violent doorknocker is to sit and ignore them. Starve them out. Is it 'good RP'? Probably not, no, but RP more likely than not will get you killed, and if you don't want to die, so why would you willingly walk in to that situation? Most issues these days could be solved by the plantiff/issuing party just being intelligent enough not to involve themselves in the situation.

Selthis

Sarrius said:

People 'raid' out of boredom and nothing else. Don't let them pull the wool over your eyes - hell, I am one of these people and I'm freely admitting it. When I have a loose justification and a way in, I'll do it to keep myself entertained.

The best way to beat a raid or a violent doorknocker is to sit and ignore them. Starve them out. Is it 'good RP'? Probably not, no, but RP more likely than not will get you killed, and if you don't want to die, so why would you willingly walk in to that situation? Most issues these days could be solved by the plantiff/issuing party just being intelligent enough not to involve themselves in the situation.

As  a counterpoint, they could also be solved by not being overzealously being forced into making "rational decisoins" by people who  are bored  cosntantly either.  IE, don't be a prick in the roses at every opportunity.

But yes, a lot of people need to  learn to separate a bit and not get worked up over dying. 

Lartus

The Kraken is right.