"Realistic World Responses"

Had mostly positive animations when I played. Biggest issue wasn't negative interaction so much as not getting any when necessary, e.g. bynners murdering a dude in sparring hall during training time.

I don't think staff sets out to deliberately give shitty animations, it's just a product of a rotten staff culture. It's not as bad as it was in the days of Nyr but you can still see undeniable remnants of it. In general, there are three types of animations:

1) Something really huge is happening and staff is present as a matter of course. This is for RPTs and such.

2) Your clan staff animates some clan NPC because that's their job. It's usually benign.

3) Somebody caught you doing something that could potentially be interpreted as questionable, and they judge you without any context.

That last one happens far more often than the first two, though. Most of us have experienced the joy of requesting our account notes only to find that someone left a bad remark three years prior where you did something that made sense but wasn't apparent to some imm. Or you're out riding and some gith attacks you, which a staff member picks up on through monitor_combat and swoops in to load up some more gith. Or you did something to become wanted and are succesfully hidden but some animated NPC comes by and totally ignores the fact that you're hidden.

These things have happened to most people, but I wager far fewer players have had unexpectedly positive animations. Have you ever been ganked by some aggro mob and had an animated NPC come to your aid? Of course not. But you've probably had a cheeky fight against some 'rinth NPC and been yelled at by Iggs for daring to try combat in the peaceful land of the Labyrinth. Staff probably isn't specifically instructed to fuck you over, but I also doubt that they're instructed to lend life and vibrancy to the gameworld. As such, they slip into the natural suspicion toward the playerbase that was fostered when Nyr took a giant dump on the game ten years ago. It's not something they've written down as guidelines but it's very much something that lives on in their tendencies.

You can play for months and be just fine, experiencing no animations at all. It's not like you have to dodge staff on a daily basis; they barely pay attention to anything if you're not a templar. But when that day comes and someone happens to be watching you, chances are that they'll do nothing until you happen to do something that could be interpreted as controversial if one squints. And then the world suddenly springs to life, hitting you like a ton of bricks.

There's one way in which staff has always failed to give players the benefit of the doubt. We're expected to take the virtual world into account, but we don't get to interpret anything on our own. You don't have the opportunity to distract that guard in order to justify sneaking past him. You don't get to wait until all soldiers have left the street before mugging that NPC. You don't have the ability to do a lot of things that a real person would actually do, so after x years of playing this game, you just don't bother to emote out the act of waiting until the landlord turns his back before picking that lock. 99% of the time, nothing happens; but some day, someone's watching and will punish you because you didn't adhere to some subjective sense of realism that didn't respond to you the last ninety-nine times you did respect it.

And when you point this out, staff will tell you that you should have wished up beforehand to give them a chance to supervise you. If you then mention that every time you've done so, the outcome was unfavorable for you... well, they'll tell you it's a HARSH WORLD RUN BY UNPAID VOLUNTEERS AND MURDER CORRUPTION BETRAYAL.

It's not "very" verboten, but it is slightly verboten. Meaning if your zone's staff isnt on and you've wished up a second time now and are clearly waiting for an animation, you'd probably get one from a staffer who 'is' available. But that animation will be a stall. Something neutral. If you were looking for an answer to a question, you would've gotten a non answer. Basically just to animate a response, but not actually give a decision that a staffer 'in the know of the situation' is capable of doing and someone unrelated to the issue isnt.

Think bugging the Folley barkeep for a sit down with the guild and getting him animated only to tell you that he's not interested to help you, it's too busy in the tavern. That sort of thing.

I think Byn gets animated for the most.

I guarantee you that no Bahamet have ever been animated to kill you within the last 10 years, Shakes. Bahamets actually have pretty peculiar walking scripts that 'do' make them visit obscure spots and places. Juuust to make a land of wilderness less safe then so many people think it is.

Relatively often, it's true. A staffer is watching over some scene, but only animates when he/she thinks a world response is necessary. Often enough, it is only negative. The reason for this is not Nyr actually. The reason for that is the impact an animation has, but shouldnt. All too often, players react negatively, or weirdly to an animation. They either take the word of an animated beggar more seriously then a PC Templar, or react negatively due to some staffer trying to intervene in whatever a PC is doing. There were instances when a staffer would animate something benign, only to get a wish up asking not to animate for them. So all too often when everything is hanky dory, a staffer watching is just letting it be, unless something clearly requires to be done.

One way to solve this, is wish ups. If you're riding out on patrol as a bynner. Just toss a wish all saying that you do and you're open to animations. Sometimes nothing will happen, or sometimes it will give a clear signal to staff that you're ready and open to an adventure. I could say for sure amongst the newer staffers there is a little fear that the tiniest of animations will produce a shitstorm on GDB, or here. As staffers learn that this player, or that player reacts normally to animations and actually 'wants' things to be animated, they'd animate more for them.

There are players for example that can be hunting, riding, and adventuring for hours. But the moment you throw out an echo of a gimpka rat, they abandon the ride, go to tavern and sit there for a rl hour. Then, ride out again. A few things like that and the signal becomes clear that the player does 'not' want to be animated for and is usually left alone.

Sometimes it's overly done though. I saw instances when a player reacted very well to an animation and the staffer begins to enjoy animating for them. Suddenly, every single hunt that player goes out to, the animations make that hunt a pain in the ass. A character wants to train some skillz hunting, but every freaking Jozhal suddenly gains intelligence and is 'not' so easy to catch. That is a little annoying. There's a need for moderation.

There are rules against animating in ways that cause the PC to lose their life. It's not guaranteed and if a character does die, there wont be a rez. But a character needs to go out of his way to specifically get himself killed. No jumping into bahamets, going straight to players and ganking them. That is literally against staff rules.

Nyr had a tendency to skirt that rule admittedly. I've seen him wipe out half of the fledgeling guild crew, just because he engaged combat without foresight and had an entire tavern insta gank PCs. Nergal was more skilled, but also an asshole. He doled out justice with NPCs baaaad. Think guild Muls coming in and two hitting people as a revenge for a gank of a PC sponsored role. While his message is clear. Dont insta kill newly created future enemies, the way he acted it out was without imagination. But Nergal was known for that.

I have no idea the echoes even came, man. I was afk. I just sat down to rest in what I thought was a safe room and came back fifteen minutes later from my bathroom break or whatever and found I was dead. My client disconnects me as soon as the game does and there's no scrollback in that case. It wasn't a huge complaint of mine at the time. It was some brand-new ranger character and I'd lost more characters than that when I was ACTIVELY playing, before I learned to stay off the met paths.

I've ran into that problem with the Byn patrol on a mud where I was a DM (which is like a storyteller but more of an uber-role where you could do anything to any group of players, instead of being locked into your 'clan'). Some other DM had loaded a dragon for a group of players who had fought it and then fled, leaving it alive in an area that generally was for low level characters. I was following a group of low levels who were headed over there. I tried to scare them off with dragon roars and the sight of a distant dragon circling, but players being players they decided that my animations were intended to ENTICE them and they rushed right at it. Before I could /switch and take control of it, the dragon had killed 2 of them and I then had it flee from the rest and put it in a safe room for the other DM to retrieve later when they logged on.

Lesson being, always expect players to rush in where angels would fear to tread.

I think you're both pretty much correct.

In my experience, it's PLAYERS who will do the most questionable crap to you. The worst thing staff has done to me that I can prove is simply ignore my characters when I needed them to intervene.

Shrug. It happened.



I also dont recall them saying it never happened. They might refuse to discuss recent ic events, or choose not to discuss it outside request tool. I might've not read the thread that you speak of, or maybe it was about something else and you are misremembering. I personally do not see them denying it point blank. But there was a lot of threads and these two did a lot of shit.