Sun Nov 19 11:48:48 2006

At 4 o'clock PM, Day of the Sun, 6th of the Month of the Dark Shades
on the Theran calendar Merrwyn perished, never to return.

I watched this character quite a bit, more than even some of my own followers. I found nothing negative about this character besides the mundane village interviews. All around solid character.

Merrwyn, if you want to post a farewell, email me or any of the moderators and we will unlock it for you.


G.

NT

I want to see just how much the staff approved of her ####, and see why she was never tossed.

n/t

Always seemed to me like a good rager. Tried hard to kill my mage using sneaky assassin-type techniques, and when those failed, insulting my ego. I shadowed her a bit and didn't see anything other than a steadfast defender, healing and watching over other ragers. My only beef was that she'd jump in on even fights instead of letting the other ragers fend for themselves...but even this is a permissible way to play a good defender I'd suppose.

Among other times she full-looted kills that weren't hers, full-looted warrior kills when a mage killed the warrior, raiding with other cabals and not caring (I could understand MAYBE if she was a goodie, but I see here she was not), even if the raiders were mages or had mages with them.

I could really go on, but this character really rubbed me the wrong way.

Its not hard to see why I couldn't beat her. Resist + kot wrist break + kan > unprepped dagger/spear spec. But it was ever so demoralizing.

I'm going to go sulk in a corner now. Just reliving the experience was traumatic. Someone hold me.

=P

I suppose I got even a few times, though. I do believe Centurions are the single biggest cause of dead ragers. Ever.

As my current villager type, I watched her full loot the corpse of a lowbie (think teens) warrior who was also an applicant, and not to return it. It all wound up in the pit. I watched her another time full loot a level 12 mage corpse, as a hero. During the rift quest, she died and because I was hanging around to corpseguard her stuff and give her back stuff, someone else ran in and one hit killed me, and she proceeded to full loot me.

Just a whole lot of really ####ty behavior.

~

Never saw any full looting, but her RP was soo annoying...to me, yeah, thats only my opinion. It all began with the interview GEEEEEZ was it painful. Even her got lost with gods names and events while asking me stupidly precise questions.

Considering Lyreiston enabled one of her more pathetic actions to happen, I KNOW the staff saw the #### she got up to.

Lyreiston gave Rellosyk 2500 exp for full looting/sac'ing my corpse.

I got the experience for blaming him. Had I just done it and ran off, I probably would not have gotten anything at all. Just goes to show you that looting/sac'ing is a player perk that some just can't deal with. (kind of like you deleting after I killed you) It's part of the game just as much as death is, and people should really just accept it and stop complaining.


"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams

Yep. Had nothing to do with the full loot sac. Everything to do with blaming me then you deleting over it.

Way to encourage the appearance thereof and the continued compulsive Full Sac/ Full looting of a player who has shown himself incapable of seeing the negative side or even caring how it makes a fellow player feel.

It's not that he does it some times, he does it every time, if for no other reason than to throw it back in the face of the other players.

His need for an E-Penis fix is evident and you gave him the lube.

I'm sure I'll be labled the bad guy again, but the truth speaks for it's self.

The good things about your posts, Pro, is that anybody who reads them knows they just have to think the exact opposite for it to be right.

There is NOTHING WRONG with full loot/sac if that is how the player wants to be.

Can I have your imp babies?

The is NOTHING wrong with a full loot/full sac, I agree with you completely. There is also though nothing wrong with choosing NOT to ever do it for the simple fact of common courtesy. I suppose its just a golden rule type thing and shows a bit more of the character of a specific person and less of the 'character'.

That's not true at all. I'd wager he speaks for the majority in this regard and you're not happy that it paints you in an ill manner.

If you read my other post, you will see that I do not full loot/sac. It is about an opinion or how the player feels. I do get that point. The problem is that some players who feel the opposite way about full loot/sacing don't have to see it your way. That does not make them wrong. As an Imm, I have no problem with any player who chooses to full loot/sac.

What's more, I would say the majority concensus would seem to indicate that Full/Looting is something that detracts from a game who's player base is steadily dwindling.

We've asked and asked and asked for years, for their to be something done to make Full looting possible but with some sort of draw back.

In the past, I have suggested a 2 second Real time lag per item taken, with thieves only having a 1 second lag per item.

The majority is down with the feeling of standing up at the altar, running back and discovering nada in el corpso.

But sometimes, it is justified. Carrionfields is very open ended in these sorts of respect so that it can accomodate all sorts of actions free of specific rules - this is what makes it different from WoW or Guildwars. Thanks to the text-based medium and the high staff-to-player ratio we can have that kind of flexibility.

I think you simply need to learn that regearing is another part of playing. You can prepare to regear faster if you expect to die. There are ways to lie/cheat/steal your way into regearing faster. There are a million ways to stash gear, or try to reduce an opponents capability to loot to near zero. These are all things that you can do but likely don't - because its easier to complain.

If you think I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who never gets looted - I can tell you you're wrong. With all my characters I've had that moment where I return to an empty corpse. But thanks to my forward thinking, and playing of a high-profile character that did get 8-man ganked and full looted several times per session, I learned to handle it easily. Don't aim high, get the basics. And learn how skill/alliances can be used to get ontop instead of an elite set.

Full looting is looked down upon when it is an OOC rage action. This is really not as common as everyone makes out. If you don't like it, IC, then learn to get around the risks. I think its an acceptable price for death.

Yhorian.

It's an action that has a negative impact on the game as a whole.

Telling a newbie to get used to it is probably an excersise in futility, in that they have already moved on to greener pastures.

I personally already have a suit ready before I go into battle. But this isn't about me and I get tired of people around here telling someone, myself or not, to get over/used to it.

It is another risk to dying. The more risks you remove, the closer we get to a quake style game where we just jump up, have an obligatory wait and are back in. That's not what this game is about.

That is why people need to be able to loot - for those who come at you like that and die like meat in the grinder - it will force them to take some extra time.


Yhorian.

Full looting does not mean death has meaning. It means that the veteran player so boned gets to happily waste upto half a hour regearing. Then risks doing it again because there are so few players making them the target of yet another assault.

For a player not a veteran it means half a day or more. Period. And that does not include time spent running the hell away from subsequent attacks while geared in pure crap.

Great for veterans, crappy for new players. Seeing the current size of the playerbase will mean Quake becomes a lot more appealing. Part of learning the world is through mentorship, and veterans are not available enough to ensure that happens.

Thera is way too big in scope for full looting. Full looting with 60+ consistently about is okay, with the current totals ranging from 30+ not so good.

Now onto fixes, several have been posted on Dio's and here as well. Time to be truly looked at.

You don't want to get full looted? Don't die. What teaches you not to die? Getting full looted and having to regear. It's nice.

Sure, it can take a little while to get some things to get up to fighting again, but not that much. Half a day? Not even the newbiest newbie. And even in a world of smaller player numbers, many are still in cabals (probably a greater percentage, I'd bet, with smaller total overall players) so they can get help and equ from their cabalmates. Others can ask for help from paladins or acolytes (who are deliberately titled to be known to everyone as acolytes). There are other ways as well, as I am sure you know. What's more, it sounds silly to say that it takes half an hour or so and that's unacceptable, when looking at it in terms of a character that has one or two or several hundred hours, as all characters can. It's the player's fault if he or she chooses to delete early, not the game's. Take the half hour and regear, and then enjoy the next fifty with your ever-improving set of gear.

And looting is good for the game. As others have noted, it:

1. Provides a real incentive not to die and makes death a risk, which is a big part of the game. Same reason death costs con rather than being able to die infinitely.

2. Provides for gear redistribution. Self explanatory.

3. Is the single best teacher for newbies (and even some experienced players) on how to regear, where to find things, which areas have gear they can get themselves, which areas have things on the ground from higher level ranking groups, etc. And teaches them how to get from area to areas as quickly as possible. This is often overlooked but a very important and useful aspect of looting.

4. Generally is the most accurate roleplay behavior.

5. Allows others to reduce their own regear time. For instance, if you loot someone and put their things in your cabal pit, when a cabalmate dies, he/she has it there and will spend less time regearing. Or can improve on a set from what was taken.

6. Increases the chances that you will be safe for a longer period of time, rather than have that same person come back to you over and over and over.

These are just some of the reasons that I had on the top of my head. Also remember that it's actually very hard to fully loot and sac someone, unless that someone is foolish. Nobody who is wearing a full set can carry another full set, both because of weight and carry number limits. That amount is further reduced by all the str and dex maledictions on someone. And further reduced by corpseguard, preventing out of pk looters from immediately taking items. For the most part, only players who either dilly dally on their way back to their corpses or who just don't return at all find themselves looking in an entirely empty corpse. Sure, there are exceptions: dying during a cabal raid means you have a lot of people there to loot you. Dying on eastern usually means scavengers. But more often than not it would be mostly impossible to really full loot or sac someone else.

Lastly, you and everyone else who says that looting and sac'ing is purely ooc or purely ####ish is just plain wrong. It's an ic act with or without ic reasons. Or should be. If someone is sac'ing you because of who you are (I know some poor guys were full looted/sac'd because the players thought they were killing one of my chars, but of course weren't) behind the screen, that's what is really wrong.

Looting is good. Embrace it.

It doesn't provie the Newbie and incentive not to die, It provides him and incentive not to play.

When the price of a good rices people tend to buy less of it or seek substitutes. That's the natural order of things.

There are plenty of substitutes for CF and we shouldn't be resistant for resistance's sake when it's a very real possibility that new people leave the first time they lose that feeling they accomplished something.

Valg himself said he traced, I think it was 4 players, who were full-looooted, and 3 of their ISP's never showed activity again even after 3 months.

I may be scewed there, but he can correct it.

Even still, we have veterance voicing complaints, and who are lambasted as whiners and told to overcome and move on. These are players whose names have been on these forums for years, why would a newbie want to give an exit opinion?

It encourages people to take less risks. Look at your last few character deletion threads where you complain that no one will face you 1 on 1. I submit to you that if you didn't full loot as much as you do with those characters, you would have received more 1 on 1 battles.

This extends even further to cabal wars, where people become much less likely to defend 1 v 3, knowing they'll be stripped bare in return for their efforts.

That's a major reason why a lot of people don't like full looting. It doesn't teach you how to die, it teaches you to avoid dying. Which makes the game more boring. Which makes people want to play less. And so on.

NT

Except some of them I didn't full loot and some I did. It had nothing to do with that. So your entire premise is flawed.

The problem is there is not ENOUGH full looting. If everyone did it, then it would be the norm and everyone would just be used to it and not worry when they die, like you describe. It's only because some people make the wrong choice that people get spoiled, and now want to impose their desire to never have any real consequences to death on the game.

Full-looting, with no reason, smacks of OOC arrogance and assholishness.

Did the Knights of the Crusade dig through the bodies of the fallen for ALL they had? No. Did the soldiers in the various World Wars carry around a sack and strip a body completely bare and stuff all of it in a sack? No. So saying you SHOULD full-loot is an obtuse statement.

Me, personally, don't have a real problem with it. I can regear a warrior-type before the ghost timer. I regear a healer-type (around hero) in about an hour, mage is similar. I usually just PK to regear though .

Now, a full-sac is really a player being an asshole, as I can't imagine why you would ever want to take everything on a bodies' corpse and sacrifice (leaving you in one place for a good amount of time) other than you want them to know you're a ####. I wanted to do it to Landren to make him delete (that's what my character wanted) but I couldn't do it because to me, it just smacked of being an asshole. I play this game for fun, it's not RL, it's not a job, and regardless of how I feel about regearing, it is a pain in the ass to have to do if you only have a set amount of time to play. Full-sacing is worse, because if you kill the person who does it to you, you can't recover any of your ####. Whoever does that to me, will, as Balrahd said it, get exactly what they returned to me when they die. Mainly nothing.

You supply precisely why there is a problem at all:

>I wanted to do it to Landren to make him delete (that's
>what my character wanted) but I couldn't do it because to me,
>it just smacked of being an asshole.

You orverrode your rp, your ic behavior, with ooc desires. Forget everything else, ignore all the other arguments and issues. This alone is and should be reason enough. You can't have it both ways and say that people shouldn't let their ooc desires - when you think those desires are negative - override their ic imperatives, but then say that they _should_ let their ooc desires override their ic imperatives when you think those desires are good.

For one thing, obviously, it's supposed to be a roleplay environment and you're supposed to act as the character would. In this instance, the character didn't.

For another, who is to say what a "good" or "negative" desire is? It all becomes very subjective, and that's not good either.

You wrote it, my friend, and I often agree with you, too, but here you dug your own grave so to speak.

When it gets taken away, RL comes into play.

.

Now I am by no means a veteran of this game. I started playing this game sometime in January/Februrary of this year. I got full looted many many times. Especially once I got into Morasfenmire's PK range. Where a death to him almost always meant full loot/full sac from my experience. Yet I'm still playing this game. In fact, if it wasn't for that experience of getting killed looted/sacced I would probably still suck more than I do right now. It's like Graatch said in his post. I learned more of the game world, how to get into areas quickly, figure out what items are found in which areas and so forth. This was really good since my first character was a an arial Air/Utility shifter. Fly + locate object made finding out what was where easy. And since he was a goodie I could ask the other hero goodies, who were mostly paladins such as Farigno, Saroiya, Adalanthal(?) where to find stuff or show me around to regear. If it wasn't for looting it would've probably taken me longer to learn how to run when to run, where to hide, and how to regear quickly. Now I can pretty much regear any character, afaik, with decent stuff before the ghost timer is over.

Another good point Graatch brings up is when people full loot for OOC reasons instead of IC reasons because they hate your forum handle or whatever. That is really lame and in poor form. Sure there are folks here who have invested a lot of their time into the game but really, it is a game. Or a hobby. Or escape. There's no real reason to take it seriously when you die. My last character Knash got his corpse butchered and almost everything taken when he got killed by Yllvyrle(sp). Some ranger was hanging around like a vulture and just moved in once she left. It really sucked but I just grabbed what I could off the ground and went to regear. And you know what? I ended up with even -better- gear than I had before. If you suck at regearing, it isn't that difficult to ask others ICly where to find equipment for your race/class. Not everyone will be helpful but no one ever is. This is when having allies come in handy. Be it a cabal or just people you are familiar with. Even if you're an evil you will have at least one or two other characters you can get to assist you.

In closing, I just want to see I personally don't see the big deal with full loot/full sac as long as it's kept in the game and not a player raging on another player or character. It's a fine line but I'm pretty sure we're all adults here so we're able to deal. Have fun.

Edit: Balrahd's post also makes me want to add something. Because I have been full looted with pervious characters and now know how to find decent gear to get back on my feet, I have found that I am more inclined to -get into more- fights than I used to. Since I know how to find gear now I am less worried of losing it so I can mix it up in PK more. Just a thought.

To regear. It's about the affect it has on the player population as a whole.

As I stated below Valg tracked a snippet of our players, which of course is by no means conclusive but in all likely hood indicative, of what happens to new players when this happens repeatedly.

Who knows, maybe you were that 4th guy who stuck it out?

>Now onto fixes, several have been posted on Dio's and here as
>well. Time to be truly looked at.

1) Fix assumes something is broken.

2) I'm still waiting on seeing an idea that doesn't break at least as much as it fixes. No, I am not interested in repeating myself on why any of 439,894 ideas break more than they fix. Embrace forum searchage.

getting rid of "Get all" except for ones own corpse, or even if you must, a corpse you just made, break it?

You don't fix something that isn't broken. What you suggest makes very little sense. Why would one person be lagged when another one isn't? Corpseguard was put in so that the killer could protect the gear. That makes sense. A person can only carry so many items based upon their dexterity. That makes sense. A person can only carry so much weight based upon their strength. That makes sense. Get all only allows you to take what you can carry in items and weight. That makes sense.

Taking away the ability to full loot based upon opinions of how it makes someone feel adds nothing to the game. Why would your opinion of how you feel about full looting be any more valid than the opposing opinion? It isn't.

Because while you did make a cursory of argument for why one would be faster then the other, you post came across to me as an angry tirade of my opinion.

I offered a suggestion, as well as my opinion. My suggestions might not be something anyone wants to ultimately sign on to, but my opinion is shared my a significant portion of the PB.

You are acting to me as if you are defending your decision to encourage this sort of thing which is your choice. That’s okay I suppose, but it does have consequences on the moral of the PB. What’s more when you consistently reward the behavior, you’re really doing nothing more than cutting your own throat and sabotaging the game.

Let me be clear about something, Full-Looting should still be a part of the game, but if you see someone who has written it in as an integral part of their role, please don’t reward them. It’s clearly a case of E-Penis and over looking it is no different than a teacher over looking a class room bully. Worse, it’s like the teacher giving the bully candy after he just stole the little kids lunch money.

Their RP may be Chaotic Evil, but that doesn’t mean it has to be hollow, or clearly the frustrations of the player himself manifesting themselves in a “In-your-face” manner.

I think this along with the effects on recruitment and the over all enjoyment of the game are why so many, (Dare I say majority?) of the PB have been asking for some sort of regulation for years. Corpse Guard was a good example of a positive Immortal reaction to the subject.

For your part, you have consistently been joined at the hip with this sort of thing. When a mortal follower of yours shows up and goes through his usual monotone imperious monolog followed by a butcher/full loot/full sack and a point to his nifty title and tattoo with a wink, my maw doesn’t gape, I throw up my hands in disgust. I’m not alone, this is not an opinion it’s tangential to your nod and wink to the players at hand.

At a glance, I think you’re opinion is in the minority and saying that, I don’t think that’s indicative that mine is correct, just that it is shared by the majority.

No. It's just that it doesn't matter. Some people do, some people don't. Get over it.

As for awarding it, you missed the reading the whole post. Don't just make things up to bolster support.

I have read enough of your posts over the long haul for a few years and have found you for the most part completely out of touch with reality.

Full looting should be possible, it is to be used in those rare circumstances where a lesson needs to be taught to some mother ####er who obviously doesn't realize what common courtesy is. The only thing that is broken with full looting is that people exercise it when they should not.. and thats not something to fix with the code.. It's something to fix with the players.

To the mentally sound, looting is there to provide an incentive to pk - that you can take your opponents stuff and gain in power... Not to further piss them in the face after you've already humiliated them and sent them into ghost shape.

And we need incentives to pk in order to keep cf from becoming a place full useless people that just gather eq, giggle and talk #### all day long. The less characters there are, the more often each character must die in order warrant the name 'Carrion Fields' instead of something silly like "World of Happycraft" ;>

That's a whole nother corn-hole issure that really frustrates players, vets and newbies alike, but expecially newbies.

I'd Rather have Rogue any day since he plays a fair game reguardless of his other flaws.

As is pking people without asking first, a few will always take offense. But it's not against the rules.

Are you dumb because you're a racist or a racist because you're dumb?

if you think the majority of players are down with being full looted. And though I never thought I would agree with Pro on anything I do on this.

I know how to regear, I've been looted enough in the past 4 years to be able to get a servicable set with 20-30 minutes with most characters. But this is not the point at all. The point is, I don't play this game to regear, I don't play this game to spend weeks waiting for my gear to repop on mobs to have a chance to regain them. I play this game for the RP and the interactions with other players, full looting does nothing to advance the fun aspects of this GAME for me. All it does is provide me an oppurtunity to question why I am still playing.

Now I know I am enough of a vet and enjoy this game enough to understand that I will not walk away anytime soon over this. But, I suspect as a whole the ease at which players are full looted/sac'd has lost this game more players over any period of time then it has helped bring in.

Looting is necessary for redistribution of limited gear but I see very little reason outside of this from a game stand point. Due to this one point I would generally be in favor of anything that didn't restrict the ability to loot gear on the small scale but made it more difficult to leave someone completely naked.

It might not be against the rules, and not wrong in that sense, but it's still wrong in that it's a ####ty thing to do absent a compelling reason.

And better than I could have said it.

I was off in what I thought, was an out-of-the-way spot to work on some skills, not being too attentive to my surroundings. When this guy started creeping up, and was intent on coming back, measures would need to be taken outside of dying, to make him leave me be.

Secondly, we were fighting for quite a while. Given his tactics, his set, and the wands he was using, not to mention his corpse, I knew this was a pretty solid player and the only way to get peace from him was to strip him. Necromancers are one of the most flip/flop frailest/deadliest classes, and I didn't want to take my chances with a vet.

Thirdly, my role was designed and based around, breaking the will of my enemies. On top of that, when he asked about his things, naturally, I lied about it and blamed Lyristeon, as my character sort of comedically scapegoated him for all of his problems. I think it came together nicely with my role, and the calibre of fight it was.

Regardless of all of that, there is nothing wrong with full-looting, it sucks, sure, but when you can slap an equivalent regear set in minutes and come back punching, you'll get it all back and them some anyways.

All your roles are based around you ####ing a player over some how.

Yes, I said player.

And yes there is #### wrong with full looting when done in the vein you always do.

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams

It was who and how she looted and sacced that made me really not like this character.

I think it's safe to say that while I didn't approve of everything this character did, we saw some of it differently than you did.

I liked this character. That's not to say that there were some actions that I would've bitched to her about, but in general, most of the stuff I saw from within the Village and as a Drillmaster really agreed with me.

Some of the things you bring up...such as full looting/saccing from a 7 on 1 gangbang doesn't really state that it's a bad character. It might be that the player has a personal vendetta against you, or that a lot of crap you did just pissed her off. Heck if I was playing a dishonorable character in the Village, I wouldn't think twice before I ganged the crap out of you. As for full looting/saccing lowbie mages, that's well within her rights as a character. Certainly it's an asshole move but she's a freaking villager who hates magic. How is it that you can see one thing but disregard anything else? It's like saying that a healer shouldn't be healing lowbies (which I agree with, but according to CF, that's well within a healer's rp prerogative).

All in all, I saw alot of good stuff from her early in her life. That's not to say later she became fed up with the character and started doing crap. But you apparently saw a lot of crap from her, and to each their own.

but you dont need to do that to lowbies. Especially mages that probably are newbish and struggle to get gear. Low ranked mages are not in the same ease of gathering as warrior types. Snow worm gear, wide copper belt, stuff like that, really doesnt add anything to the game to destroy it, other than really piss off some guy that is trying to have fun.

I think people lose track that we are playing a game. Role play is great but sometimes you need to think that there is a person on the other side who is also trying to play a game.

After a while its like the lonely kid playing bounce the ball in the schoolyard...all the other kids have gone home.

Certain players seem to bring vitriole to the game. One defeat and they have a massive amount of hatred in them. Sometimes the actions of a few make me want to quit entirely, and I think I have deleted some decent chars in the past and taken a break just because I had to ask myself 'DO I really want to spend so much time with these kind of people?"

Ahh well...

.

It was an age of chaos. Nothing was to be predictable.

Look at it from my POV for a moment. Take my religion into account.

Merrwyn dies and loses most, if not all, of their things. Outnumbered and a ghost, they grab some gear from someone who dies. They get smacked again and just so happen to not die, but lay there incapacitated surrounded by enemies. The enemies crowd around her like a bunch of vultures, who just so happen to know that the end is inevitable. Out of the blue, the guy responsible for putting gaping maws heals them, they get up and run away, leaving every vulture there with the aforementioned gaping maw. The fact that it was Spenner who happened to be Vlad was something learned after the fact. Nobody who is currently on the staff has ever, to my knowledge, picked out a player and messed with their character intentionally. I found out it was Vlad after the deletion. Sometimes, when you play a lot of memorable characters, you get immteraction that you may not want. I, like the others, do our best to make the game enjoyable. Sometimes that imm run mob can be a real bitch, but, more times than not we are also trying to be fair. Merrwyn's 2nd death to me as that mob again would have been completely unintentional and in poor form. I saw the opportunity to fix it AND cause havoc.

Sorry, but if you can't see the humor in that, you really need to get mad about it and go look in the mirror.

As for the other stuff and nothing bad being written about them, I do have a few things.

Full looting is a personal preference. My mortals don't, but other players mortals do. I am not going to write something bad about somebody who is helping to keep the gear being redistributed.

As a mortal, my character had to go through one of her god awful interviews. I say that, because I am of the opinion that telling a rager app to go read a book instead of teaching them something that is never brought up again is kind of bleh. Especially knowing that I had more mage kills than them in my first 20 hours. Having been part of the history and knowing that some of the writing of the history is different from someone who was there, I can understand the frustration of dealing with someone who talks it, but doesn't walk it.
This does not carry over from mortal to immortal. Notice, there was nothing from me or anyone else about the interviews. There is a distinct difference and a huge line that has to be drawn for parity. Merrwyn was a well-rp'd character. Just a pain in the ass.

Right off the bat let me tell you that I didn't much like Merrwyn because she ####ed with me and rejected me in our interview. Or, more accurately, refused to talk to me after a bit of conversation and said I'd have to talk to someone else, and that she would not support me. (I like to think my char doing well was a bit of a #### you to her on that, but that's neither here nor there. ) That and the general problem I have in common with Lyristeon that we both dislike interviews that spend more than a minimal amount of time on going over history and lyceum reading and things like that, which she evidently did. Keep that in mind.

Having said that, I agree 100% with Lyristeon's posts here, about the full looting and about how he dealt with Merrwyn. I saw her leave corpses entirely alone, I saw her partially loot and I saw her fully loot. And I was around a lot for a good period of time with her. So I think it's wrong to generalize and say she always, or even almost always full looted/sac'd. More generally, Merrwyn or not, I am on record and continue to believe that looting and sac'ing are perfectly reasonable and fine things to do. I did not do it with Azilaph, but I do it with other characters, and there are real identifiable concrete benefits to it, most notably gear redistribution and - believe it or not - teaching. Everyone dies and loses things sometimes. The only way to really learn to regear, and the only way to really learn where to find things, how to get there quickly, etc., is to need to really get a complete new set. This is the best teacher and simultaneously the best motivator to learn how to avoid dying again.

Back to Merrwyn. While I really hated one aspect of her roleplay - the whole "I hate men" thing - I not only liked the rest of her roleplay, but I give her a lot of props and respect for sticking to both the good and bad aspects of her roleplay at all times, no matter what. You know I prize that - hell, we did similar things, charging in when a bunch of enemies were around to see if we could hinder them or get off a good mage kill - and I don't have to like the character to doff my cap in respect for well done rp.

And there you have it.

I 'may' be biased in my opinion of her, but you must understand that I only saw the ####ty part of her roleplay, I never saw the 'I hate men' thing (in fact, didn't even know that until you mentioned it). Which is why I was waiting for the PBF. But alas, no role in the PBF so I really still to this day am clueless why she acted like such a c-word to me ALL the time (and yes, I was Empire, but I mean, still, full-looting a healer who dies to a gang of seven when the gang has mages and you are a rager).

She had to have a role, right? Or was she just made by an imm to push the fourth age along?

>It was an age of chaos. Nothing was to be predictable.
>
>Look at it from my POV for a moment. Take my religion into
>account.

I wasn't bitching about you or being treated unfairly or anything. I was genuinely shocked that Merrwyn had no real critcal remarks made considering the appaling things I saw this character do.

>Merrwyn dies and loses most, if not all, of their things.
>Outnumbered and a ghost, they grab some gear from someone who
>dies. They get smacked again and just so happen to not die,
>but lay there incapacitated surrounded by enemies. The
>enemies crowd around her like a bunch of vultures, who just so
>happen to know that the end is inevitable. Out of the blue,
>the guy responsible for putting gaping maws heals them, they
>get up and run away, leaving every vulture there with the
>aforementioned gaping maw. The fact that it was Spenner who
>happened to be Vlad was something learned after the fact.
>Nobody who is currently on the staff has ever, to my
>knowledge, picked out a player and messed with their character
>intentionally. I found out it was Vlad after the deletion.
>Sometimes, when you play a lot of memorable characters, you
>get immteraction that you may not want. I, like the others,
>do our best to make the game enjoyable. Sometimes that imm
>run mob can be a real bitch, but, more times than not we are
>also trying to be fair. Merrwyn's 2nd death to me as that mob
>again would have been completely unintentional and in poor
>form. I saw the opportunity to fix it AND cause havoc.

What I saw was, from you the response that "Hey, nobody was too concerned with Merrwyn getting her gear back" when it was in fact my standing there to give her back stuff that led to my death. She chose to keep returning to the fight over and over like a lemming, thats her deal and obviously she's not too worried about death. But while we're on the subject of poor form, the full loot on me when I was only even standing there to return her stuff to her was about as poor a form as it gets. You healing her lemming self and basically enabling her to exhibit the craptacular attitude she had was just the icing on the cake. See, I don't blame you for any of that. What pissed me when you healed her was, I knew that even though I only died because I was standing there to return her stuff, she was going to full loot me just because thats the kind of #### she was.

>
>Sorry, but if you can't see the humor in that, you really need
>to get mad about it and go look in the mirror.

I'm sure it was hysterical. Really.

>
>As for the other stuff and nothing bad being written about
>them, I do have a few things.
>
>Full looting is a personal preference. My mortals don't, but
>other players mortals do. I am not going to write something
>bad about somebody who is helping to keep the gear being
>redistributed.

My attitude about her character has very little to do with the full looting thing. Lots of people do this, and you just accept it. But I watched her loot people who she not only hadn't killed, but had no justification for looting (non-enemy warriors, VERY lowbie mages (though this one I can at least semi-justify) even some applicants to the village). When I said I had never seen her walk by ANY corpse without full looting it, I meant just that. Thats from the perspective as both an ally and an enemy.

>
>As a mortal, my character had to go through one of her god
>awful interviews. I say that, because I am of the opinion
>that telling a rager app to go read a book instead of teaching
>them something that is never brought up again is kind of bleh.
> Especially knowing that I had more mage kills than them in my
>first 20 hours. Having been part of the history and knowing
>that some of the writing of the history is different from
>someone who was there, I can understand the frustration of
>dealing with someone who talks it, but doesn't walk it.
>This does not carry over from mortal to immortal. Notice,
>there was nothing from me or anyone else about the interviews.
> There is a distinct difference and a huge line that has to be
>drawn for parity. Merrwyn was a well-rp'd character. Just a
>pain in the ass.

Here is where I just disagree. The way she acted towards people who weren't supposed to be enemies, especially people in their teens, is really not what I consider well roleplayed at all.

s

nt

I have to admit that I am a rare player of CF primarily due to the fact that I get full looted or killed and just get frustrated and delete. (I'm not very patient to say the least) but I personally don't think the looting should be changed at all.

To my mind if you have just killed someone (in the majority of roles) and you knew they would be returning for there stuff and most likely to enact some timely vengeance you would do what you could to remove any and all advantages they had including any equipment they could use against you. And as for all the people who say that it shouldn't be an IC issue of course it should CF is based around staying IC at all possible times so surely everything should be IC.

Like I say I tend to hover around the 20's rank wise and have never got very good so I get killed and looted a LOT and yes it annoys the hell out of me and I doubt I could count all the rage deletes. However I invariably end up kicking myself for doing so and jumping right back on the horse because it occurs to me that they were right to loot me and were most likely acting within their role. If this is something people cant seem to fathom then I have to wonder why they are playing a RP enforced mud when they seem to want to pick which areas should be enforced IC and which should not. I'm not faulting that style of play either but I have come across other mud's which cater for it so why aren't they playing one of those.

Well I've blathered on for long enough and probably made a few enemies so people will most likely kill me even more now but what the heck!

Elareth

I'd have to agree, it really does suck when you are full looted. But I don't think it'd feel right if you tried to take something off a corpse and got this "you have already taken too many items off that corpse". I try to cut it down to only what I need, money, and gear that's better than what I have and that I CAN'T get myself. In some situations, I don't blame full looters. If a certain player keeps ganging up on you, why not full loot to keep them from doing it again? I don't think an anti-paladin would say "No, leave his things, I feel bad taking them." do you?

I will say this, don't loot if it's not your kill, or that person doesn't have anything of yours. I won't deny that I've seen a few assholes who take everything just to #### things up for everyone else.