Smuggler Archive

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WesBelden wrote:

Thanks for the heads up . There's no discussion about it at the moment, but there's about to be

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Get em Wes! Show them a new meaning of pain in the neck!

The problem with griefing is that there's only so much they can do to the game mechanics to prevent it. Even if you make a theoretically perfect system, people are stupid and mean, and they WILL find another way to grief others.
The system needs to be built solidly enough that it eliminates common ways of greifing, and doesn't put any mechanics into the game that specifically make griefing easy. The rest has to be handled on an individual basis of people who abuse the system and game mechanics to harass others.

In the case of Feign Death, no matter what they choose to do with it, whatever the established game mechanic is, they then need to enforce people that abuse it to grief and exploit. As was stated in that thread, the Jedi & posture skills that do break feign death are not an exploit. That's fine, every skill in the game should have a possible counter, or else you are looking at overpowerment issues. However, if people choose to abuse the mechanics of feign death, as designed, to grief others, ie. if they decide blackbarring a feigned player, then the solution is not to nerf or remove feign death, but to punish those who refuse to play by the rules, or safeguard the specific mechanism that allows the exploit. (In the case of blackbarring, the ability to attack and damage a player who is feigned.)

To toss some realism into this, there are certainly valid justifications for shooting at a dead body an extra time to make sure it's dead, in fact this is an established military practice. However, anyone who choose to not just ensure the body was dead, but sat there pummeling or shooting it full of holes for an excessive amount of time would be considered all kinds of derranged and psychotic.

So maybe in game, if you're caught "Beating the dead horse" as it were, you get to go to the loony bin in the boonies on Rori, and take the special happy pills.

Why is FD even in this discussion? Every link provided points to corpse camping, not FD camping. Time and time again, CSRs have said FD camping and black barring is legal. You chose to go into FD - you could choose to /stand. So where's the "proof" of conflicting FD camping answers?

Message Edited by MeSleep on 01-26-2005 09:24 PM

Because Jedi and BJ dabblers are complaining about people blackbarring them while FD. The whole bloody mess is stupid, if you ask me. It's totally voluntary to PvP, fight other players, feign death, not suck it up and take the death, stay logged in and be camped, etc. etc. etc.
Sounds like he's just trying to get a definite yes or no on the griefing side of it. And I think it's something the CSRs need to come out and set forth in a black and white manner.

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Shrendyc wrote:

At this point in time, EVERYONE knows we are faking it so we ain't feigning anything. More like - "I'll just lie here so you can beat on me some more and trash my armor".

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WHo uses feign in PvP while in armor anyway? gTEF + DOT + feign for the win >)

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SpinningCloud wrote:

ana; "and all you do is encourage every padawan to be a smuggler"

And this is EXACTLY why I claim the easiest solution is to simply move the FD skill to Master Smuggler. Jedi wouldn't have enough skill points to keep Master Smuggler for FD.

You want FD you get Master Smuggler...all others be damned. Follows the KISS principle to a T.

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Problem with this is it takes a skill that is very useful to Novice Smugglers in gaining the Pistol XP needed to become a Master Smuggler, as without Pistoleer skills (which many choose not to get) it is quite difficult. On my way up to Master, I know I used FD quite a bit while working through that large amount of Pistol XP.

EDIT: And by the way, I do believe that black-barring a FD character is indeed griefing.

Message Edited by DRWolfe on 01-27-2005 04:44 PM

I don't think Feign Death should be moved. I do however think that at only the Dirty Fighting I level, feign death should be rather unreliable. You should have a low chance of succesfully feigning when hit, and a low chance to have it break when hit. As you go up the tree, you get better at it. At Master Smuggler, we see Feign Death act like it does now--still able to be negated by some skills, and still not 100% success, but able to be relied upon, and be a useful skill to the class to which it belongs, and is willing invest the skills points to earn mastery of it.
Every profession and every skill should be functional at Novice level, but if you want to be GOOD at your profession's skills you gotta put the points into it, and if you wanna be the best, you gotta be master.

If you make feign death sketchy at lower levels, people who are serious about using it as a tactic, will pick up the whole line. It allows for dabbling, but not overpowered dabbling. Jedi and BHs will find that they don't HAVE the points to get feign death, or it'll be a weak version that won't cause the problems the single-box dabblers are creating now.

This doesn't hurt the Smugglers -- we'll still have that line and keep feign death as we're used to, and it doesn't hurt the ability to dabble in various skills, as you'll still get a progression as you invest more skill points.

It does hurt the griefers, whiners, nerf cryers, and single-box dabblers. Aww, that's just such a shame!