Rank 8 Zone Sense

[Davor]

I am very confused about the changes but I do think it’s only a problem because so much smobbing is currently happening.

Byrgs post does actually sum of most of everyone’s thoughts.

For the sake of the game while still keeping some RP. Should just go back to only bonded pairs get zone sense. Or just the warder.

[isabel]

Arston - am not saying people should feel forced to pk as their core RP. I'm saying that zone sense for AS creates a situation where, for many of them, they are almost always running away from PK. And from a fictional world of "good vs evil" that's a problem for RP.

I take the point that in fiction a lot of the time is spent avoiding pk unless it's unavoidable (thinking of frodo and company running away in the early chapters, hiding from Nazgul), but that's also the thing - once Gandalf/wizard/channeler/smob group joins them, then what? Then if they are still treasure hunting it's not Lord of the Rings, it's Jewel Quest where the "bad guys" are not the thing to be defeated but the distractions to be ignored.

In other words, Aes Sedai status can't be frodo status. Not almost every single time. Not without changing the fundamental composition of the roleplay.

I also get that - it's what we collectively put into this that makes it the game it is. There is blame on every side. No one really wants to waste time on certain kinds of pk. PKers are also at fault for putting people off pk when pk can be such a fun and incredible thing. Every single time someone was chasing master or r8 or fade or whatever and went on a sheepish spreee where they didn't give a dung about the playing experience of other players it was one more nail on the coffin of pk. Every time players defended such behaviour with some kind of man up to this tough world logic it was another reason to shun pk. Then of course there has been the insane imbalance between the top tier players and everyone else and the refusal of many of said players to account for that when they play - "elite" PKers giving less experienced players all kinds of dung for not pking when nobody wants to keep fighting in some kind of Magnus Carlsen level gap.

I mean if we do an actual risk assessment with skill plus experience plus link plus gear plus numbers - its completely understandable why people don't choose to pk or didn't for decades.

I am -just saying- that giving players the option to instantly opt out of pk the way zone sense does (because you don't even get no quit - you don't even have the usual escape barriers that you do in pk) and that option being consistently exercised (not saying 100% one should face the threat, but consistently choosing to run away) is not core RP.

You're right that I as a player can't tell another player what I think there RP should be, but if Plumeria and Celsius Sedais can idly have tea and yawn while trollocs rampage through Tar Valon, or Plumeria, Celsius and 6 others giggle their way through some whack whack of Roland an d whoever, gating away from the presence of shadowspawn..and this happens every day every week every month every year...tell me what book I'm reading :p

[Mikhan]

Due to rank 8 zone sense being overly generous and being a way too easy way to scout for crossrace opponents, it is in the process of being removed.

Really enough said. How anyone can look at that decision, then look at the decision to give it to *all* sedai, and not see a conflict there... is just chortlesnorfling laughable. Feels like some extreme bias by whoever's making decisions up in imm-land on this one, and I highly doubt that's something we'll fix.

Either remove it across the board, or give it back to rank 8s as well (I think it's stupid and should just be gone... but its complete and utter bullshit to tell rank 8s they cant have it while giving it to every sedai). Current situation is stupid.

[Penzei]

I have mixed emotions BUT I can sum my opinion up very simply.

Rank 8 Zone sense should be an OPTION and EASY PK is not a requirement even though it happens often enough.

[arston]

Arston - am not saying people should feel forced to pk as their core RP. I'm saying that zone sense for AS creates a situation where, for many of them, they are almost always running away from PK. And from a fictional world of "good vs evil" that's a problem for RP.

I take the point that in fiction a lot of the time is spent avoiding pk unless it's unavoidable (thinking of frodo and company running away in the early chapters, hiding from Nazgul), but that's also the thing - once Gandalf/wizard/channeler/smob group joins them, then what? Then if they are still treasure hunting it's not Lord of the Rings, it's Jewel Quest where the "bad guys" are not the thing to be defeated but the distractions to be ignored.

In other words, Aes Sedai status can't be frodo status. Not almost every single time. Not without changing the fundamental composition of the roleplay.

I also get that - it's what we collectively put into this that makes it the game it is. There is blame on every side. No one really wants to waste time on certain kinds of pk. PKers are also at fault for putting people off pk when pk can be such a fun and incredible thing. Every single time someone was chasing master or r8 or fade or whatever and went on a sheepish spreee where they didn't give a dung about the playing experience of other players it was one more nail on the coffin of pk. Every time players defended such behaviour with some kind of man up to this tough world logic it was another reason to shun pk. Then of course there has been the insane imbalance between the top tier players and everyone else and the refusal of many of said players to account for that when they play - "elite" PKers giving less experienced players all kinds of dung for not pking when nobody wants to keep fighting in some kind of Magnus Carlsen level gap.

I mean if we do an actual risk assessment with skill plus experience plus link plus gear plus numbers - its completely understandable why people don't choose to pk or didn't for decades.

I am -just saying- that giving players the option to instantly opt out of pk the way zone sense does (because you don't even get no quit - you don't even have the usual escape barriers that you do in pk) and that option being consistently exercised (not saying 100% one should face the threat, but consistently choosing to run away) is not core RP.

You're right that I as a player can't tell another player what I think there RP should be, but if Plumeria and Celsius Sedais can idly have tea and yawn while trollocs rampage through Tar Valon, or Plumeria, Celsius and 6 others giggle their way through some whack whack of Roland an d whoever, gating away from the presence of shadowspawn..and this happens every day every week every month every year...tell me what book I'm reading :p

What originally attracted me so much to this game was that with the same handful of basic techniques, I could play Lord of the Rings, OR I could play Jewel Quest, OR i could play Indiana Jones and find things exploring that maybe no other player has ever found, OR if I wanted to i could play second life and sit around RP'ing.

What I DON'T like is people taking this great adaptive game and telling everyone they have to play it a specific way (and you personally Isabel are only marginally included in that, mostly quoting you for your Jewel Quest quote, though I will say that nothing in the books ever supported Aes Sedai being altruistic warriors against the Shadow, ever since the War of Power. The whole series they looking out for themselves, letting others take the casualties, and spent almost all their time in the most fortified place in the world- leagues and leagues away from any fighting. Warders having to prove themselves in the blight baffled me when I heard it and still doesnt make any sense at all bookishly).

What I don't like even MORE is trying to close off one of the few avenues that newer players have to experience the game in a positive way. Look at it from a new players perspective. They get a set of gear, go try out pk. They get pitted against someone with lots more experience, gear, clan bonuses etc, and who is going to win 99% of the time. Then they need to go get new gear. Lets suppose that the vocal people in this thread get what they want and delete zone sense and gate, to make it easier to follow tracks. This adds tremendously to the burden of anyone who would lead people around to help them regear, so its likely they are by themselves or with newish players. People are out hunting tracks, either looking for easy pk or "adding a sense of danger to the mud". I personally am much safer since theres NWIH any of you are keeping up with my tracks, so the only people you find are newer players.

So the newer players are struggling with the smobs, other players see their tracks while they are resting up for another hit, come and slaughter them. They get given another set of gear/scrounge in barrels, and feel bad about needing to ask for help. They either go try to pk again and get killed or go try to smob again and get hit by another group. Need another set. This happens over and over again where they play for weeks and have maybe one or two times where they actually win something and dont just get slaughtered, and 50 times where they start from scratch and have to ask for gear. DONT TELL ME THIS DOESNT HAPPEN BECAUSE IVE SEEN IT A THOUSAND TIMES. Eventually they get discouraged bc they feel like they are just being a burden in order to "lose" a bunch of times. And what's to keep them from quitting, they say "well thats a cool game, but there's nothing i can really DO on it without dying so....." So yeah, I am adamant about keeping an avenue thats relatively (but not completely) risk free where equipment can be gained, where new players can experience the game and at the end of the day feel like they DID something, like they not only got the gear they needed to join pk, but also that they helped contribute to others success and moved forwards in the game.

[Shinobi]

I don't think a lot of the very vague gesticulations are helpful and actual anecdotal evidence or examples are higher value than conceptual ramblings.

I don't see anyone on this game struggling with smobs.

Newer players are going to lose because they are newer players. "someone with lots more experience...is going to win 99% of the time"

This game has had a lot of plateau players stay around and choose not to improve rather than embrace the game and get better at it!

Most new players are encouraged to create thieves to smob for gear because stab makes most re-eq outside of trinkets very easy. And you can get gold. Which then lets you buy trinkets at the market. Re-equipping is not hard because you are bad at it or because you suggest it is hard.

Most newer players quit because of the community, because they lose interest, because they get sick of being adjacent to drama constantly, or because despite finding our text-based world, they didn't find a community.

The idea that we should balance a 30 year game around new players though is really shitty. I hope new players come and stick around, but we've been having fun here on and off for a whole lot longer.

[erulak]

DONT TELL ME THIS DOESNT HAPPEN BECAUSE IVE SEEN IT A THOUSAND TIMES. Eventually they get discouraged bc they feel like they are just being a burden in order to "lose" a bunch of times.

How is this any different than "plz lead me around with gate, I am helpless and can't smob without it"? Are you legit just making stuff up here?

[isabel]

Okay my flight is just taking off so I have like ten seconds
But yes we have gone through the newbie grind. It's amazing what people like tlaloc and nikky (blanking out on handles but you know who I mean), Markus, a lot of players including you Arston have done to help new players.

Nalav giving me a hundred claymores to keep going out and pking and dying with them..always remember that

More later :p

See what happens to newbies who show up to pk. I've personally emptied out clan chest requing newbies who wanted to pk north and came to fal dara. Peole like davor will just as easily toss a heron set to them..just kidding..I mean fermin obviously

[Eol]

1. Zone sense was the only real power bonus for rank 8. We had a thread a few years ago about the bonus disparity across clans.
2. Instantaneous unblockable, no timer, no cost, no fail, etc sense skills are very problematic to me. They seem like questionable game design.
3. But the game is also so damn fast that if you don't give chasers something to work with it feels like defensive people may never die. This game was created by people who played MUME where I've been led to believe there were limits how how far/fast you could run/spam before your movement cost changed. We don't really have those limitations.
4. The increased frequency of warriors in game has probably decreased the number of people who track and in my opinion was probably detrimental for the game. I acknowledge the complaint in the other thread about people not leaving tracks.
5. I've always been blown away by the distance that people could travel, gate, group fade etc. Obviously this is accentuated by long linear zones.
6. The classic way to catch gating smob groups was to be a Seanchan or CoL and just have the game tell you where they were...
7. This thread is kind of funny to me because other than the "no quit" timer change - gate hasn't been changed at all since its inception, right? The
same people who could gate through time were also the people who had warder bond and zone sense.
8. That said, it does feel like there are way more people willing to gate and to aggressively use it for more things. For a long time my feeling about gate was - no one is using this aggressively enough. If channelers had used gate back in the day as aggressively as fades used group fade it would already have been changed.
9. I feel like there's been a lot of recency bias on the forums over the last few months. Give it a month, remove the rare loads, and darkside will be back to 4 people on at 8pm central getting stomped by 8 Gaidin applicants in full gold combo with razor swords sitting Ragan.
10. However, slaughtered new players may be, it feels like it takes longer to kill everyone unless they explode in dodge. Awhile back I was in a group of 3 on darkside killing the last person to flee who I was pretty sure was a new player and I thought - damn, is this person ever going to die. Everyone has 400 hps now except me.
11. If you've read this far than off topic - I was on darkside the other day preaching the doctrine of normalization of fleelag across all characters. Zarth wisely proposed making everyone flee like they have 8 wil. In a world where no one wants to die there would be something amazing about everyone building up fleelag like a troll abser.

[Thore]

Didn't read past page 2, but how about turn zone sense on only AFTER you have NO QUIT? That way it's a useful tool for the ebb and flow of PK, but is not a generic always-on safety net.