Perma killing people on the water is a side effect of underwater biomes not being out until after launch, so you cannot swim down to your body to resurrect (though that likely wouldn't matter in really deep water anyway). Abusing ships to perma kill people is more of an exploit than a feature. Hence making it harder to do.

The thing is that all games are art, and like all art, the vision of the creators is really all that matters. If you don't like the game, there are thousands upon thousands out there you can play. There is no entitlement for developers to listen to players at all.

Chronicles of Elyria has always been a Roleplaying Story-telling game. PvP combat is merely a single mechanic - one of many - that allows players to add to the stories. It isn't a big part of the game on it's own, and certainly is not the focus of the game. You should be spending more time thinking about how your characters live and shape their lives than killing others.

Just so its clear, dying in the Open Ocean, as in, very deep water far from shore is still, and has been slated to be part of the game mechanics forever. It hasn't changed.

What you are most likely confusing is death on a boat close to shore. As in, if you die in a ship but could still see land, or aren't reasonably far from the shore line, you may possibly survive, and wash ashore. This is something they haven't discussed much in the past until recently.

As for things changing? This is an in-development game. Expect things to change for a myriad of reasons, one of which being folks not liking a mechanic.

Posted By Taymuraz at 6:06 PM - Mon Jul 29 2019

Perma killing people on the water is a side effect of underwater biomes not being out until after launch, so you cannot swim down to your body to resurrect (though that likely wouldn't matter in really deep water anyway). Abusing ships to perma kill people is more of an exploit than a feature. Hence making it harder to do.

The thing is that all games are art, and like all art, the vision of the creators is really all that matters. If you don't like the game, there are thousands upon thousands out there you can play. There is no entitlement for developers to listen to players at all.

Chronicles of Elyria has always been a Roleplaying Story-telling game. PvP combat is merely a single mechanic - one of many - that allows players to add to the stories. It isn't a big part of the game on it's own, and certainly is not the focus of the game. You should be spending more time thinking about how your characters live and shape their lives than killing others.

I am not really going to be trying to go out and kill people (minus death penalty) its not having less ways to kill people that is my issue, it is making the game less and less free that is my problem.

This game is advertised as a game where you are free to do whatever you want in the game. No story line no hindering until you reach X level like in most games.

The government mechanics, the economy mechanics, the exploration, and the PvP/teritorial mechanics are all part of what makes this game sound so fun and great. I am simply pointing out issues I am seeing.

I would say that restriction of player actions should be kept minimal if that freedom does not allow unintentional benevolence or hardship to certain players. I've been here a long time and have yet to read or hear of SBS concretely reneging on earlier freedoms allowed to players which I thought were unreasonable.

There's a difference between developers stepping in to fix an innocuous aspect of player freedom, and developers stepping in to fix a malignant exploit players may abuse which was not part of their plan for the world.

The line can be very blurry at times. SBS changing things like permadeath in deep sea is not exactly fixing an exploit, per se, however I see the judgment behind the decision. Permadeath is a very draconian punishment to implement even under the most reasonable justifications - to allow players to abuse it unchecked (say, to sink a vessel at sea while half the players were AFK) would destroy this game.

I would not worry about them putting things like safe zones in.

using oceans to permakill people is totally unecessary. Players can set laws and punishments for crimes. So just set punishments for crimes you want to result in permadeath with 50 years and anyone found guilty WILL face permadeath.

Permadeath far away from coasts is still in and will stay, there are just thoughts about just maybe a chance to wash on shore somewhere... under the right circumstances. To me, this makes totally sense.

And we have never had the ability to "kill people with open seas", as we never had any way to force them to leave or join a ship.

and... "no story line"... well... there is a story engine. Whether you follow it or not is up to you. But thats the same in games like Lotro or WoW... even there, you can totally level without the main story lines.

It does help, Snipehunter.

Posted By Sackeshi at 08:25 AM - Tue Jul 30 2019

This game is advertised as a game where you are free to do whatever you want in the game. No story line no hindering until you reach X level like in most games.

This is a common myth about Elyria that seems to be persistent. That isn't quite what the game has always been advertised/billed as. I have never seen any SbS crew contradict the vision outlined in their material, though of course details get tweaked as games are developed.

The world does have a story built into it. Several. Many. Who knows at this point. Our characters though also have personalised stories and the two sets of stories impact and reshape each other as the game progresses, which is what gives it it's "endlessness" feel. However the stories are not infinite of themselves and it is not a sandbox game. Rather it sits between a sandbox MMO, a more static MMO like WoW and a complex sims/city building game. Hence it isn't an MMO at all, but a MEOW (Multiplayer Evolving Online World). We will all get to do a lot of things and have a high amount of freedom greater than other MMOs typically allow, but that does not mean complete freedom everywhere as that is simply physically impossible.

People should check out the vision detailed on the front page.

Of course I am sure SbS will correct me if I am wrong on this, but I haven't seen any explanations from Caspian etc. or written material otherwise to date.

Excluding the water death situation as I believe Sackeshi was just trying to make the point using an example of how it should be up to players and npcs to set regulations that they deem are needed instead of have sbs be required to step in and make changes because players are to lazy to implement laws. If you dont like the situation your in. It's up to you to try and change that. You can view that change as an individual choice and move somewhere else. You can gather support for legislation to change it or implement a law. It can be left right or center or something completely different. But it's about the ability of players to decide. I hope I see many different places have completely different laws. It makes the stories richer instead of everyone having one set of things to follow.

Exploits are not an intended way to play the game, as per the definition of exploit.

Its taking game mechanics and utilizing them in a way that isn't acceptable to the devs. It has nothing to do with freedom.

If an exploit is defined as taking advantage of something that isn't working the way it should be, then that exploit is something that should never have been possible to begin with. Consequently, correcting it is not taking away any freedom.

Every world has constraints. Even the real world operates on rules that cannot be broken. It's just that software is often times an imperfect vehicle through which rules are expressed ... and so shit happens. :)

Posted By Kyleran at 11:39 AM - Tue Jul 30 2019

Posted By Drew Zimmerman at 08:36 AM - Tue Jul 30 Making new laws is easy, real life legislator's do so regularly, enforcing them is the true challenge.

Most players game to have fun doing whatever activities most please them.

Might not be a whole lot of volunteers to do the "work" of running and enforcing the legal system so it's up to the devs to step in and maintain some level of order.

Wow, you really have no RL experience working on policy do you? Making laws is not easier than enforcing them. Both are things people do every day. (Well, every day the legislature is in session -- which isn't every day; but law enforcement happens every day, including weekends and holidays.)

Posted By Hieronymus at 11:20 AM - Tue Jul 30 2019

If an exploit is defined as taking advantage of something that isn't working the way it should be, then that exploit is something that should never have been possible to begin with. Consequently, correcting it is not taking away any freedom.

Every world has constraints. Even the real world operates on rules that cannot be broken. It's just that software is often times an imperfect vehicle through which rules are expressed ... and so shit happens. :)

Not sure what you are saying here. Exploiting the unforeseen consequences of a rule or system is something that happens both irl and in games. Perhaps there should be no unforeseen negative consequences, but humans aren't omniscient, so any human-created set of rules (whether rl law or game programming) may have negative unforeseen consequences, some of which can be unfairly exploited by opportunists. It happens. Saying it "shouldn't happen" doesn't help prevent it or stop it when it happens.

Posted By mickdude2 at 12:38 PM - Tue Jul 30 2019

Exploits are not an intended way to play the game, as per the definition of exploit.

Its taking game mechanics and utilizing them in a way that isn't acceptable to the devs. It has nothing to do with freedom.

There is a difference between exploiting a glitch, and exploiting a rule which or mechanism that is intended to prevent one thing but allows another thing.

The former should be fixed by dev, the latter should be up to the players.