Important information regarding death

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Cherek
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Posts: 3612
Joined: 04 Mar 2010 04:36

Important information regarding death

Post by Cherek » 11 Mar 2021 15:51

Code: Select all

Whaaat... another common board post??

Yes... we're probably gonna spam you with those for a while it 
seems :)

I am going to address some things that have been discussed on
the forums, and that people have contacted me about in PM's 
and mails. It's about restorations from death, and potential
removal of death.

Now, those of you who follow the forums probably know this,
already, but I took the decision to NOT restore any deaths caused 
by our changes to combat. Most deaths can be related to the
changes one way or the other, and having lots of players try
all sorts of risky things and then ask for restoration would
be messy I think, and it also opens up for various forms of
abuse. Some players would most certainly try to use the "free 
restoration" policy to their advantage in various ways, and
I can think of several "creative" ways dishonest players could
use it as well. 

One alternative that was mentioned was to simply disable
death altogether, but I think that comes with just too many 
issues as well.

Do we really want to allow players to finish super-risky quests
_without_ risk? That's not fair to those who died trying. Do we
really want players to be able to "harass" other players with
emotes, theft, etc, without any risk? And what about guilds that
punish you with death when leaving? We need a solution for those
as well, unless we want to let people out for free, which would be
unfair I think. Those are just some examples of issues with a death-
free Genesis, and there are more. So... no, we're not disabling 
death.

However, that said, and I want to be really clear about this:

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The policy of restoring players who die because of BUGS, or CODE NOT
WORKING as intended, STILL APPLIES.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

If something extreme happens that causes your death, please
contact myself and Mirandus, and we will look into your death
and see if a restoration is warranted. Now, if you die because 
you visit Terel Trolls, and get surprised of how hard they hit
you, that's not something we'd restore you for, because they ARE
working as intended. Everything is hitting harder now. However,
it has to be reasonable. If you, for example, is a myth and enter
your normal grinding area, and die in one combat round, then 
something weird is probably happening. 

So, if you run into something that you think is extreme, and die
from it, let us know. And even if you don't die, let us know
anyway! We won't restore your from normal deaths, but if your
death was caused by direct problems in the code or _unintended_ 
side-effects or bugs related to the combat change, we will of 
course restore you.

Cherek

Thalric
Rising Hero
Posts: 343
Joined: 14 Jun 2016 16:34

Re: Important information regarding death

Post by Thalric » 11 Mar 2021 16:41

Next time you do a huge change/test...

Perhaps just take 2 days out of the calendar.... and restore the entire game back to the point where you begin the test?

That would likely get you a lot more test results and people would test a LOT of things.

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Cherek
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Posts: 3612
Joined: 04 Mar 2010 04:36

Re: Important information regarding death

Post by Cherek » 11 Mar 2021 16:57

Thalric wrote:
11 Mar 2021 16:41
Next time you do a huge change/test...

Perhaps just take 2 days out of the calendar.... and restore the entire game back to the point where you begin the test?

That would likely get you a lot more test results and people would test a LOT of things.

Well... we have done that before. For example during the old wizday events, or during the server move many many years ago. It's so long ago, many may not know, or remember, what tends to happen. But, as I remember it, lots of players went completely bananas (including myself), raiding guilds, leaving guilds, switching races, joining other guilds, killing people left and right, trying risky things they would never try otherwise and gaining a lot of information by doing so, etc, etc. Some will certainly try to help out and test things for us, but we're also opening up for a lot of weird stuff happening.

Then, when things are restored, things get even more messy, because some will feel that what happened during the "crazy days" does not count, and others will hold those who did crazy stuff accountable for it, etc. There is a risk it will be messy, with many unhappy players and lots of AoP work.

It's certainly a possibility to do this, but the question is, is it worth everything that comes with it? Is a few extra deaths in the "real game" perhaps preferable compared to the chaos of a "no consequences" world? And everything that comes afterwards? To be honest, I don't know which of the two is best. The outcome so far is about three times more deaths than normal during a couple of days, and the majority have been very small players who tend to quickly recover. Things seems to have stablized after the "patch", and we're seeing almost normal death rates again (maybe still a slight increase, but too early to tell).

I don't think either option is a perfect solution, and I don't have a definite answer regarding which option is best, but I am worried about what might happen in the no-consequence test world, because I don't think it went so well in the past. Even the "death on vacation" test we did 8 (has it been that long!?) years ago came with a lot of complications.

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Redblade
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Joined: 10 Aug 2020 18:51

Re: Important information regarding death

Post by Redblade » 11 Mar 2021 17:28

You ask us to report "direct problems in the code or _unintended_ side-effects or bugs related to the combat change".
That's however fairly hard to do not knowing what is intended and what is not.

A more direct example: Is it intended for some guilds to suck now and other guilds to dominate? Would a death of "My guild now sucks"-player to a "My guild is now OP"-player be restored? I actually believe it may be a realistic situation, given some size difference and how fast a white hit can go off. And I don't think it's the intended working, is it?

On other words: wouldn't it make sense for us to provide you with feedback on all that kills us or is unexpectedly hard and you could sort it into unintended and intended (ideally with telling us afterwards)? That's however a lot of work :) Seems like a complicated situation, honestly
Auta i lómë, Aurë entuluva!
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Cherek
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Re: Important information regarding death

Post by Cherek » 11 Mar 2021 18:18

Redblade wrote:
11 Mar 2021 17:28
You ask us to report "direct problems in the code or _unintended_ side-effects or bugs related to the combat change".
That's however fairly hard to do not knowing what is intended and what is not.

A more direct example: Is it intended for some guilds to suck now and other guilds to dominate? Would a death of "My guild now sucks"-player to a "My guild is now OP"-player be restored? I actually believe it may be a realistic situation, given some size difference and how fast a white hit can go off. And I don't think it's the intended working, is it?

On other words: wouldn't it make sense for us to provide you with feedback on all that kills us or is unexpectedly hard and you could sort it into unintended and intended (ideally with telling us afterwards)? That's however a lot of work :) Seems like a complicated situation, honestly
If you are unsure of your death was "restore-worthy", then yes, mail us. We're using the same rule as we've always done regarding this. If the code is bug-free, and it's working as the coder intended it to we don't restore people. But if it's a clear bug, or not working as what can be reasonably assumed was the intention, we usually restore the player.

To give you a real example. The arena in Cirath was clearly coded with the intention of players being able to spar to death, without actually dying. Now, some players who got hit by bleeding wounds, and then got transported to the "resting area" after losing a battle, would then die in the resting area due to the wound. Technically everything worked like it should, since only the arena room is safe from death. So there was no bug. But, it was pretty clear that the original coder intended it to be safe, and bleeding wounds probably didn't even exist then. So, such a death definitely warrants a restore as the intention was for the arena to be safe.

About this change, the original intent was that everything does 2.x more damage than before, and the intent was for the world to become more dangerous. So, if your death is due to that, then no, that's not something we should restore, that was an intended design choice. But if the change had some other effect, like, it actually ended up being 10 times the damage, or some particular NPC was boosted to levels that made the encounter completely unfair, then yes, that was probably NOT intended, and then it's probably something that might warrant a restore. But we're talking extreme and unusual circumstances here.

So, yes, if you are unsure, send us a mail and we'll have a look to make sure nothing MORE than the double-ish damage happened when you died.

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Cherek
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Re: Important information regarding death

Post by Cherek » 11 Mar 2021 18:26

This is not a new rule or anything. I just wanted to clarify that we still restore people who die due to bugs and unintended code issues (related to this change or not). We've always done that.

In some other threads I said we won't restore people who die due to this change, which I feel could be intepreted like there will be no restorations no matter what. Just wanted to make sure people continue to let us know if they think their deaths were unusual. I realize it's harder to know now, so if you died, and you aren't sure if it was a reasonable death or not, let us know and we'll have a look.

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