Guild Behavior

[Makfly]

I agree with the OP for sure, and Celephias already mentioned the cause - Powerplaying. It exists everywhere, even in the so called "elite" roleplaying orientated guilds.

Personally I think players should be serious enough about their role in the game, to stay in-character and not kill their own allies/troops, even if they are good Xp or have some useful equipment.
But obviously that doesn't work, so the Wizards could help out too.
Look at where good equipment is places, and then find out the relationship of that NPC to other guilds. If it seems that the equipment the NPC is carrying is extremely useful for X guild, perhaps move the equipment to another NPC that's more suited, so these clashes between powerplaying & in-character play are less likely to happen.

One example is the Haradrim camp in Middle Earth. They are good Xp and everyone knows that, now the trade-off for grinding there is that you might get attacked by a Morgul Mage or an AA. It's a good setup, I think.
Now what is sorely lacking, currently, is a similar setup for the good side in Middle Earth.

We need more of these "gardens of forbidden fruits", everywhere in the game. Let the best Xp & gear be placed on NPCs that are natural allies of the enemy of your guild.
Let the Knights & Neidar have a "garden of forbidden fruits" where NPCs hold good sword & polearms and are really good Xp, and like-wise have dragonarmy camps that holds good weapons for the knights & Neidar.
To further stem any behaviour of killing ones own allies, put restrictions on the weapons. Say the big-cheese commander of the Knights of Solamnia are wielding an ancient heirloom sword, that in it's basic form are worth alot of money if sold, but not very deadly as a weapon.
But if you bring back said heirloom to Dragonarmy commander, he will have a Priest corrupt it to make it powerful, or he could simply trade you, his sword for the heirloom sword. His sword being a powerful, evil-only sword.

Now you have solved the problem of killing your own troops for good gear, and something similar could be done for Xp.
The Warden of the Black Tower in Mordor decrees that he will give out a reward for any elven ear brought back to him.
Now go kill elves in Middle Earth. Each elf drops 2 ears. Return a sack of ears to the Warden and he will summon the attention of the Dark Lord and imbue you with power, for your "good" deed. Ie, you get a load of extra Xp.
So once the turn-in mechanism is in place, you go back and lower the basis Xp for the NPCs. Thus a Haradrim NPC is simply not worth killing, unless you also do the turn-in. That way it's not worth it for an MM or AA to kill the Haradrim, but there are direct incentives to go and kill the goodies of Middle Earth.

What about the guilds that doesn't have any natural enemies?
Well, hopefully all of this will give you alot less competition at the Terel Trolls or wherever you might be grinding. Also characters from non-aligned guilds can still participate in all of this.

That post got longer than I had intended, but I hope it makes sense.

[Strider]

Yeah its sad actually.
Don't forget that Calians kill Atlas to get the GT.

Perhaps I am a bit out of the loop on this, but isn't Atlas the guy who claims to be some sort of king, challenges anyone to a fight, and doesn't even die at it's conclusion?

[Ashur]

I agree with the OP for sure, and Celephias already mentioned the cause - Powerplaying. It exists everywhere, even in the so called "elite" roleplaying orientated guilds....That post got longer than I had intended, but I hope it makes sense.

(no need to post that HUGE post twice )

This sort of thing I would be 100% behind. Once the promotion is a big enough success, I'd say we'll have enough players around to make this a reality.

[Laurel]

I knew I should have made Laurel a goblin-based minotaur and allow such creatures to join Rangers, when Laurel was Captain
Should try on Tom Bombadil for his sword now and then too ... Or get some neutrals/baddies to Raumdor, to wait for Gilbert to come out and try to drop-brawl him.

Btw. the issue with weapons on wrong NPC's is one that got me puzzled over and over again. Examples like the life-stealer blade (wielded by the boss of the only guild that can use it) were plenty stupid, before the AH and mercs were introduced.

Now you can just buy the weapons you desire, if you don't like to be involved in killing their owners. Hardly anyone does that tho ... after all everybody is allowed (code-wise) to step 1 or 2 steps from their chosen paths (i.e. kill goodies as goodie or baddies as baddie).

Currently my most favourite examples are AAs with black heavy maces/bloody skull clubs, wearing black platemails/great mithril chainmails A while ago it was BDAs with the life-stealer blade.

Btw. this approach is nothing new - plenty years ago I had someone (a very well known Gen and Igor power-player) tell Laurel (Neidar by that time) to switch align to baddie, cause he had the dark-bladed lochaber axe for her. Also witnessed a lot of people changing align just to use/wield some weapons. It goes pretty damn quick and painless between Kalaman and wights.

[Strider]

Every once in a while, it seems that arguments are made implying a theory where there is some sort of monolithic "Team Good", where each matching T-shirted member attempts their precise role in a unified master plan of maximized goodness. My exaggerations aside, I find it horribly reductive and limiting to our roles.

There can, and probably should be a self-styled benevolent dictatorship locked in a bitter and deadly conflict with an equally good freedom fighters, within the game and it's alignment framework.

That is not to say that our good guilds should ever be in direct conflict, but it is important to recognize that their goals, rules, and philosophies are aligned, rather than the same, and that when you add in the vast range of NPCs, there is certainly room for all sorts of adventure hooks.

Naturally, similar things can and perhaps should, be said about "Team Evil" and "Team Undecided, Committed To Balance, and/or Amoral"

Lastly, while I find these differences interesting, I still hold that there are too many factors working against enjoyable character-on-character fighting.

[Tarax the Terrible]

I would disagree that in the most part this is due to "Power Playing".
The bigger factors I think are equipment control and risk vs reward.

Wizards can't as a whole say this is bad because there are plenty of examples where the design of the game is such as to support the behaviour.

Laurel mentioned Tom Bombadil.
He is a bit of a neutral, but more a force for good in Middle Earth.
As given the timeline, if you kill him he will not save the hobbits and the fellowship will be different.
He has an uber non dulling super sword.
He is hard to kill because of extremely rapid unlimited heals.
When you do get the sword it can only be used by good.
So here is an example of a piece of equipment set-up perfectly to be in the ranger racks more often than not.

The azure rune-etched sword.
Evils cannot use it, but its held by a goodie, for the longest time the quest to get it was repeatable.

Laurel also mentioned the "Son of Grond" (Heavy black mace)
It is set up (most often) in the Mage's stronghold, hard to access, dangerous for their enemies.
It is designed to almost no damage versus their race.
Also designed to likely be destroyed if it touches the ground, so can't be drop brawled.
This is clearly a weapon designed for them to have control of.
And of course that is what they do, harvest it immediately to keep control.

Bakaris, if you spit on the floor he attacks you, set-up so RDA can stun him.

etc etc

And there are also wizard methods to prevent it.
DA's had various ones introduced.
Made Calof and Baxter evil align bombs to stop knights and Neidar grabbing their gear.


The worse stuff IMO is stuff set-up for "those in the know" to mainly control, or have an advantage.
Like little known ways to mitigate the threat posed by big nasty NPCs, obscure syntax etc
A lot of that has found its way into common knowledge over time, but not all.
Avenir and Terel, but also Krynn guilty here.


But imo the underlying motivation is control of the equipment.

Eg The AA troll.
Well if evil doesn't take the gear it will be quickly snapped up by Rangers who live next door.
Club making its way to their Neidar friends, and used against you.
Lots of examples like this.

And the player may often take it back to their racks and grind with a less precious piece of gear.
(Only the power players are burning the uber stuff up on making exps, that is the difference.)

The risk vs reward I am referring to the fact a lot of people these days kill when they are semi attentive.
People want to grow, but are scared to be set back by death.

Doing it in your own territory with an easy out is the ideal here.
Doing it in some remote area is less ideal, have to travel there 1st and might have limited safety net options.
Evils have it easy in this regard.
Haradrim, Neraka trolls.
Evils have Edoras and Ents nearby but these were made much less attractive by wizard nerfs and there is more risk there from hunting and blocking etc.

So want an easy slight progress? stick close to base.
It is dangerous for others to come there.
If attacked its a quick run to safety (can add this to your script).

Its not exclusive to evils they just get the best deal.
Neidar (90% of the time) and pirates have a 10 seconds run from the Mithas trolls to safety.
SU have some safety knowing scerets about the Holm, not many others use Caves but they are dangerous.
Calian and SC have better saftey than most in Calia (but not uber exp).

Others I am not so sure about.

Personally I do not bother with semi attentive killing, that is why my growth is stalled.
Would rather log on when fully attentive and kill someone else for breaking the "rules".
Judge dread as Laurel calls it, spoiling someone else's semi afk growing fest.
But I've killed evils as well as good. So don't see a problem.

(The only thing I feel hypocritical about is not killing guild mates there)
Which I honestly would like to see become more common.
But would need everyone to accept if you out killing Haradrims you are in the "battle training camp" and its a free for all. Just like the Holm.
The only wizzie change I would like to see is a Holm like door added to all these areas and it understood before entering the rewards are high but also the risks.

Without the dread threat being out there the game would become a bunch of robots racing to myth.

[Laurel]

But would need everyone to accept if you out killing Haradrims you are in the "battle training camp" and its a free for all. Just like the Holm.
The only wizzie change I would like to see is a Holm like door added to all these areas and it understood before entering the rewards are high but also the risks.

my only year-long grudge in Genesis was because of a griefer, who decided to take Holm actions outside of it
you can have plenty hard-coded solutions there, but it's players who create their policies (in this case: the coven does not honour Holm rules ... at least not when a vampyr is on the receiving end) and adhere to those policies (or not)

[Tarax the Terrible]

The only group I know that really respects the policy of the Holm is the SU.
Kudos to them.

But if being a "dread" makes you enemies, that is to be expected too.

At least these days those with the best dread powers show some withstraint.
Vamps considered everywhere their turf, and overdid the egotrip vendettas.

[Makfly]

I would disagree that in the most part this is due to "Power Playing".
The bigger factors I think are equipment control and risk vs reward.

First you disagree that it is mostly power-playing that leads to this sort of behaviour, and then you go on to post a lenghty note describing exactly the power-playing behaviour - Blatantly going against what is obvious the right way for you to act given your current role, for the sake of obtaining extra power (Equipment/Xp)
Having MM say that it's okay for them to "train" the Haradrims is a perfect example of this - They know it's going counter to the role they play in the setting, and try to set up a flimsy excuse for choosing easy Xp.

Now as I also said previously, the game is also set up in ways that tempt players to make this choice, which is of course not ideal, that's why I posted a possible solution to this. So you can blame the Wizards for the current set up, but it is the individual player that makes the choice to choose easy Xp/Equipment over playing their role.

[Recoba]

I wouldn't mind seeing some code put in to counter the worst parts of this behaviour.

Like automatically losing both guild stat and guild rank when you attack guild-friendly NPC:s. And in more severe cases like BDA killing Kitiara or MM killing Nazguls even automatic expulsion from the guild.

All guilds exist in a thematic context where NPC lords/peers influence the guild, and there is no way these lords/peers would accept that kind of behaviour. Allowing it to go unpunished is just totally out-of-theme.

And if the Liege of Gondor wants the heavy black mace to be used by Mages, then it should be moved to a neutral of unfriendly NPC. Simple as that.