Tue Jun 1 15:16:10 2010

At 7 o'clock PM, Day of the Bull, 1st of the Month of the Sun
on the Theran calendar Nienka perished, never to return.

Probably time for a CF hiatus I think. Lost my temper worse than I ever have before, though it was over the most ridiculous douchebaggery I've ever seen in CF (guy found me link-dead and camped for me to reconnect with protections down in order to score a cheap kill). I prayed and was told that it's not cheating to do that. Well, whatever, I don't make the rules, but this seems like exploiting an OOC mechanic to me. Even if it is legal, it's a total assbag move, and the dude should be ashamed of himself. I would never pull that kind of crap on someone. So now this guy gets to pat himself on the back over the rage delete (and hiatus-taking). C'est la vie.

Anyway, I just don't think it's adding up for me to play CF right now. A jerky player here and there can be overlooked, but with the low player counts I just feel like I'm trapped in a fishbowl with this immortal-condoned a-hole. Throw in the grinds like explore/obs exp and edges, wands, etc and then top it off with being ignored by cabal leaders/god (nothing unreasonable here, I wasn't praying too long), and gets to be too much. CF is a great game and when it's at its best, the greatest I've ever played, but right not other ways to spend my time are looking like more fun.

So here's hoping that when I return (whether that's in a month or two years) CF is not only still here, but has gotten even better.

There's a reason we have "safe" zones to quit out in. If dropping link was abusable, people would abuse it all the time. There have to be consequences for the sake of balance. You do disappear off where, you were just unlucky.

>There's a reason we have "safe" zones to quit out in. If
>dropping link was abusable, people would abuse it all the
>time. There have to be consequences for the sake of balance.
>You do disappear off where, you were just unlucky.

I don't want to discuss the legality of it, because I have no say in the rules, and the immortal who talked to me was convinced that what he did was legal. That said, knowing that nobody would even pull him aside and say "hey, why would you pull such a douchey move?" does contribute to me not wanting to play.

Anyway, problem isn't with dieing to this guy in general, dieing because I had computer problems. It was only my second player death, after all. It's that he intentionally used the fact that I was linkdead to his advantage. I've died plenty of times from link problems in my cf career, and never been terribly bothered by it (well, a little peeved at the bad luck, but nothing big). Dieing because of connection issues is, as an immortal pointed out, part of internet gaming. But I think there's a difference between going out of your way (hanging out and waiting for the reconnect) to take OOC advantage of it, and say, continuing an active pursuit of someone who flees from you but then goes linkdead. It's the difference between killing someone only because of link problems, and killing someone despite them.

To explain the situation a bit, I was in a moderately remote place, Jerkguy was nowhere around, and my link went screwy. He then apparently found me, and then sat there (imho, this is a bad RP spot for him to sit) until I reconnected so he could bash me down. I'm not 100% positive, but I'm fairly certain he couldn't score his cheap kill until I reconnected.

I guess in these days of lower player counts I just want and expect people to be a little more sporting about things. If that's not how it is, well, fine, that's too bad and I'll take my hiatus and hope there's more of what I like about CF when I come back.

There's also the fact that if I see this guy getting titled and rewarded for being deadly it will make me want to throw up.

Post the log. Keep comments minimal. I won't let it be deleted.

>Post the log. Keep comments minimal. I won't let it be
>deleted.

I don't have any logs of this, and I don't know my Dio's password (I tried to get a new one but nobody responded). What do you want to see though? The immortal chat, my chat with the guy, or the fight?

The fight was basically nothing, one bash, three rounds of combat.

My chats with him are just me breaking role and saying "what you did isn't roleplaying, it's BS, why did you do that?"

My chats with the immortals are just me asking if he broke a rule, and then whining about it and the immortal basically saying "He didn't cheat, crap happens"

If the immortals want to out the guy, or if he wants to out himself, that's fine with me. While it would absolutely warm my heart to see this guy trashed back and forth across the forums and forced to delete in shame, I'm not going to drop his name and do that, out of respect for the game (not respect for him, of which I have none). I had a little fit shortly after it happened, but now I'm just moving on and taking my break from CF.

From a devil's advocate point of view, what you expected out of the player is no more "good RP" than what he did. As players, we often expect a certain level of sportsmanship out of everyone else, but consider:

Your enemy walks up to you. Either A) you are standing there drooling on yourself like a handicapped kid, or B) the gods are protecting you. From a purely objective, IC standpoint, the character should have no reservations killing you if it can.

Does it suck? Yep. Is the player a douche? Absolutely. Is it awful role-play? Eh, probably not (IMHO).

Just remember that CF is a relatively tiny universe. Give your CF time to a game like WoW, for example, and you're going to encounter just as many douche bags, if not more. Assholes and computer trouble are just part of the game.

I used to play Diablo 2 a LOT. Specifically, I enjoyed playing hardcore classic mode, which meant I didn't use the expansion pack and if my character died once, I lost it forever. I probably lost hundreds of hours of play because my computer hiccuped a few seconds before I walked into a cursed demon or because some asshole used a hack or dirty trick to get my killed. Thinking back on that makes me view CF as pretty forgiving and it's players as pretty alright, for the most part.

>From a devil's advocate point of view, what you expected out
>of the player is no more "good RP" than what he did. As

Just to clarify, it's not exactly bad RP that he killed me. The bad RP would be hanging out in that spot if I wasn't there. I'd have to be more specific than I want to be to clarify that, but there it is.

>Your enemy walks up to you. Either A) you are standing there
>drooling on yourself like a handicapped kid

Totally legit kill, even if it sucks for me. After all, as a player, or a character, he has no way to tell that I'm not there.

>, or B) the gods
>are protecting you. From a purely objective, IC standpoint,
>the character should have no reservations killing you if it
>can.

Except it's not really great RP for him to sit there waiting for me to be killable. There's no way to RP waiting for someone to stop being linkdead. I'd say best RP is to try a murder, scratch your head, look confused and move on because your enemy is in some strange state of divine protection.

>Just remember that CF is a relatively tiny universe. Give your
>CF time to a game like WoW, for example, and you're going to
>encounter just as many douche bags, if not more.

The problem is that with a small playerbase you end up having one of the five opponents you face being one of these people, even though there's way less than 20% actual a-holes in the playerbase. In a bigger game, that can't really happen. As the playerbase increases you don't have much chance of getting a higher-than-average proportion of a-holes to interact with. But it's a tradeoff, in CF you get to go jerk-free for long periods interspersed with having very high proportions of jerkdom when you're unlucky.


> Assholes and computer trouble are just part of the game.

There are many douchebagish moves in CF that I think fall under the category of fair things that are part of the game. Full-saccing (for no reason)? Part of the game. Dieing from laggy connection? Part of the game. Intenionally exploiting a dropped connection? Not a fair part of the game. As far as I'm concerned, everybody should be trying to minimize the impact of dropped connections. That means not capitalizing on them just to pad your pk stats.

Nobody said it's great RP for him to stand there and wait for you to reconnect. It's just no better OR worse RP for him to treat you special because of something only a player would understand. But yeah, we can all agree it's lame and a certain level of OOC perspective in our decision making has always been acceptable to keep the game fun.

For example: It makes perfect IC sense for a Maran to do everything he can to con-kill an Imperial in one session if he could. People don't do it because it's lame. The deciding factor in that decision comes down to the interaction between players, not characters, sometimes.


Unfortunately, while RP might be required on CF, PK seems to be the driving aspect these days. CF isn't inherently a competitive game, but it's certainly played by competitive people. It's also played by people who use it as an outlet for their frustrations, just like any other game or hobby. Whether it's CF, another MUD, another game, or something like a sport, some people are just out to "win" no matter what.

At the end of the day, it's just part of the game. A bad part, perhaps, but a part of the game nobody can remove completely.

Just the log. QHCF is, in its better moments, a great resource in keeping the playerbase honest.

I hear you on that! That was my biggest peeve about Rogue's characters. He lived to douche people and was consistantly rewarded for it reguardless of player outcry.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out we lost a few players to things like that.

The flip side is that some cool characters have gotten some cool titles.

When there are such instances, there are certain ways I can suggest to handle it.

1) Stop playing CF for a bit until you've cooled down over it. Not my favorite option but it is one.
2) Roll a char that is designed to beat the ever living hell out of that guy. I'd say no to this one always, cause once you are done you have a pretty useless character, so why waste the time.
3) Roll a char build that you always wanted to try or one you already like to play, with a good role. That tends to get you back into the fun aspects of CF quicker than anything. And should you see the guy, and its RP acceptable, beat the piss out of him.
4) Roll a neutral neutral herald (align/ethos brings PK a bit more into it), and play CF apart from a large part of the PK aspect just for the more RP driven part of the game. Sit back and just watch stuff and have fun.
5) Man up, realize shady annoying things are going to happen, but that jackasses aren't going to ruin it for you, and keep on rolling along. Never understood rage deletes. I did do it once, but I took it back almost immediately and played another 250 or so hours with that char which was a blast that I would have otherwise missed out on.

I like a combination of 3 and 5, specially for a good player like you that brings some good interactions to the game. Fact is, in my CF time right now I am seeing some of the best RP I ever have, even with lower player counts I find no shortage of stuff going on. Seen some really great fights, and a lot of classy behavior from players that get the short end sometimes. Are there a-holes playing? Hell yes. Are more than 5% playing those type of players? Probably not.

>5) Man up, realize shady annoying things are going to happen,
>but that jackasses aren't going to ruin it for you, and keep
>on rolling along.

This.

It's certainly no consolation right after it happens, but if you can't handle moving on immediately, your best bet is to take a breather, log out, and come back tomorrow. That cool-off period has saved some really fun characters of mine, including Fjarn.

I was really hoping you'd get inducted, considering you obviously worked at it more than...well...just about anybody. I can't induct scribes, though, so not much I could do to help.

>I was really hoping you'd get inducted, considering you
>obviously worked at it more than...well...just about anybody.
>I can't induct scribes, though, so not much I could do to
>help.

Yeah, I really thought I was on the right track. After a series of somewhat disappointing characters this one was clicking well. Radio silence from immland on all fronts was discouraging, though, and I'm not sure what more I could've done to get noticed. Maybe my backstory was too simple (record low 400 role exp for me), who knows, but given the recent thread about role exp I've concluded it's not worth putting a lot of effort into a written role. Fortunately, the role was its own end, and I was prepared to go without religion or cabal indefinitely if I had to.

Your help in pointing out people to talk to was certainly appreciated, and I was looking forward to working with you.

So I was the guy who bashed you down. Basically I was searching all over Thera for someone to kill for like the last hour and a half, see you on where, get to you and get the Gods protect him. I'm about to leave after resting up for moves and see you gain consciousness and just bashed out of instinct and a bit of frustration, you still had protections up. I felt bad afterwards when I realized you were probably stuck with that brief period where you can't do anything. I left everything including your coins, but then you had that melt down on me and I didn't feel as bad. What I don't get is, ya it sucks, but it's just one death and you didn't even lose any gear. I must have had the same thing happen to me a dozen times in the past. Sorry it ruined your time but really shouldn't have been something to delete over.

That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.

>So I was the guy who bashed you down. Basically I was ...

Well, it's nice to know it wasn't maximal douchery, though I still think it's really pretty shabby behavior, (and bad RP for you to be resting up moves there, but that's not really my business or complaint here). What I would do in that situation is fire off an emote like "emote raises his weapon to swing" and then bash after a second or two. But I realize most people are way more interested in PK stats than RP or stiff competition.

But you (and everyone else) is right, that even if it were the gravest example of unsporting play, there's no reason to get quite so upset about it. It did happen to be on a particularly frustrating day for me, but the bottom line is that I blew up and acted like a jackass in return. And that, more than anything, is why I'm still planning to take a hiatus. It'll probably be shorter than a year, but I've never been this kind of explosive crybaby in the past and I've definitely found CF increasingly frustrating recently. Whatever the underlying cause is, reacting like I did is completely unacceptable (to me), so until I get my s-hit together, I'm on a break.

Thanks for the civil replies everyone.

I'm all for taking a break when you're frustrated. That being said (and without having any idea what happened in this particular instance), keep in mind that there's always two sides to a story, and you don't necessarily know what the other guy saw.

For example, more than once I've walked into an area and seen someone in my PK. I start running to where they are, but by the time I get there, they're linkdead. In that case I'm probably going to wait around a minute and see if they reconnect.

Also keep in mind that it's not always the case that you appear linkdead to CF, even if you appear linkdead to you -- so even if you're thinking, "I was LD for five minutes, this guy had to know all of my spells would be down", that's not necessarily the case.

I would have been visible, but for some specific reasons, I couldn't be. So I don't mind addressing your issue here and taking ownership of our chat. I also thank you for keeping it civil despite your frustration, both during our talk and on these forums.

Basically, what happened to you stinks, but it happens to everyone eventually because it's a networked game. In regards to your specific complaint of using OOC mechanisms to grief - douchebaggery is obviously not condoned, but in some cases, it's virtually unpoliceable because the definition changes with perspective. What you saw as griefing, the griefer saw as an unfortunate split-second reflex decision that he felt bad about later (at least until your OOC reaction).

And what if we assume that you were right, and he was specifically waiting for you to reconnect so he could kill you? From HIS perspective, it might have seemed as though you had dropped link with the hope that he would peek into the area, not see you on where, and move on. To him, you could have been using OOC mechanisms to avoid PK, and then maybe he's the one praying about a violation.

Now, there are some instances where repeat offenders or trend-douchebags can be dealt with, but as far as I could tell, this was a one-off. And frankly, I've been on both sides of it. I've logged in to the pit naked, and didn't even know I had been in combat. I've watched my character die while I waited for the reconnect timer to pass. I've been OOC yelled at for killing someone with horrible, horrible timing, and I didn't even realize it (how was I supposed to know he'd just reconnected?). I've even been smited by my god for NOT attacking someone I assumed was linkdead/afk/lagged out (but was apparently not).

So it's really about perspective. I know that doesn't help make it any better when you're on the receiving end, but if you take a step back and really look at the situation from a neutral perspective, you'll see that there's not a lot that can (or even should) be done about this specific instance one way or the other.

While it's hard to swallow, the best bet is to thicken your skin and don't let crap like this get to you. I don't mean that condescendingly, because I know how tough it can be, especially when we routinely invest so many hours into our characters. You'll get mad and frustrated, there is no doubt. But if you take misfortune (or perceived griefing) too emotionally or too seriously, it turns a fun hobby into something way too stressful to be healthy.

Anyway, I know it didn't work out ideally for you in the end, and thanks again for being civil during our talk. And if you still need a break, we'll be here when you come back

GfhBhju