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Make a clear rule for hand-to-hand combat.


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Now, as far as I'm aware, people can engage in fights however they want currently.

 

At least it seems like that's the case. If someone decides to do /me rushes [character] and immediately bum-rushes that character throwing scripted punches until they're downed, it's almost seen as a valid way to RP hand-to-hand combat. But it's all about fast OOC reaction time and has nothing to do with RP.

 

Why not establish a whole rule section dedicated to Combat RP to set some much-needed standards?

 

It's not like it's a minor part of the server, because I'd say that combat whether armed or unarmed, is a very common occurrence on the server. That in itself isn't a problem. My point is, if people could read in the rules how to engage properly with one another in a combat RP scenario, then it might mitigate the amount of roleplay quality reports there are. The problem lies in players having to watch and learn from other players to get a grasp as to how combat actually works on the server. Because it's never standardized, everyone is having a different approach to it, some will prefer a play-to-win approach which is minimal /mes and barely allowing for a reaction time from players, while others prefer a detailed /me RP fight.

 

Again, whether people want to drag a fight in a /me, is not my concern here. Each to their own. The real concern is the lack of allowance for OOC reaction time from the player (Not the character! That's a whole different thing OOC and IC reaction time is not the same).

 

My suggestion is the simplest there is:

 

- Enforce /me reciprocity in hand-to-hand combat. Player A punches player B, Player A should /me that and let Player B react with a /me. Whether they want to proceed with script or /me RP for their fight doesn't matter.

 

There shouldn't be room to let people get an advantage just because the other party is either typing, reading, or whatever makes them not being able to reply with a /me immediately.

 

Yes, it's against the rules, but it does happen because there is no proper combat RP to be enforced in the first place, and unless you're recording to prove you couldn't immediately reply you're screwed and labeled as a simple "Salty, can't take an L". People know what they're doing. Again, I don't want to take a low-blow by saying "This is a heavy-RP server!" but, at the same time I kind of have to pull that card. It's not only ridiculous for people to take advantage of the lack of such rules, but it's also not as "common sense" as you'd think, people will take any advantage they can get, so essentially, people are doing whatever they want in hand-to-hand at the moment and it's sort of shrugged off as being a minor inconvenience to RP.

 

Which brings me to my last point:

 

It also makes a lot of sense for situations to escalate poorly due to the state of combat RP as it is. Player A half-asses a /me and bum-rushes Player B that has a gun, Player B thinks they're getting jumped for their gun to be downed and robbed with some ass RP, Player B pulls out gun, Player B shoots Player A because Player B does not want to lose their valuable assets over a simple "/me rushes". Maybe it's not a valid reason to shoot, but:

 

Maybe people wouldn't be so quick to draw their guns if fist fights weren't about surprising people OOC'ly. That's how you get people to react stupidly disproportionate to what they'd do otherwise if they had just a little more time to think and write something.

 

/me goes to send a right hook into [character name]'s jaw, looking all pissed off. > Let Player B react > Script fight begins once the two have /me'd.

 

Is much better than:

 

/me rushes [character name]. > One-sided script fight for a few seconds just to chip away at health until Player B gets their bearings OOC and starts throwing back punches.

 

TL;DR: Make hand-to-hand combat RP less about abusing people's OOC reaction times and enforce a two-sided /me response before any scripted fighting can occur.

 

Relevant Commands/Items

 

N/A

 

How will it benefit the server?

 

There's no doubt that it's not going to be "the magic fix" to the problem, but in my 2 years here, I still apprehend hand-to-hand combat because of this, even having experienced it many times, winning, losing, does not matter to me. I just think that some clarification is much needed and it might actually tone down the amount of poor escalation situations we're having - because again most fist fights are all about OOC reaction time, and if someone has a gun, barely has time to write, and are being brought down by a two word /me and some scripted punches they're barely able to process, they're going to pull that gun and use it because they don't have time to think and write, because they're put under some stress, so they do the most logical thing which is to stop it as efficiently as they can. Poor escalation is most often a product of poor combat RP standards that are not set.

 

Edited by Mistery14
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2 hours ago, DLimit said:

Heavily supported. +1.

 

2 hours ago, Cartoonhead said:

+1 should already be a thing

 

I appreciate it a ton!

 

I just think people confuse/mix OOC and IC reaction time, or just disregard it too much, allowing for OOC reaction time makes sense, whatever happens IC happens IC. Otherwise it's borderline powergaming because you're essentially forcing your actions on other people without letting them OOC time to write and react to what you do.

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As you requested me to respond here @Mistery14, here it is.

 

Make a clear rule for hand-to-hand combat

No, but do raise the standard of the server in general where responding to emotes before doing anything script related becomes common sense (again).

This means, imo, removing most examples from rules as they're often interpreted as things you can or specifically cannot do and making the server function based on basic roleplay rules (DM, MG, PG and common sense and common courtesy).

 

This is basically how it was at server opening and people would just roleplay pretty much everything.

 

A response to an emote of someone throwing a punch can be getting hit instead of trying to dodge out of the way with Spider-Man tingle senses.

 

I imagine this is currently likely a rare occurrence, however I don't roleplay conflict as my characters never really get in any. In my experience players often try to emote some sort of response that's beneficial for their character though, however that is covered under the powergaming rule. Giving another player a chance to respond realistically, can lead to more interesting interactions as they might have thought of something the initiator did not expect. 

 

TL;DR: I agree with the premise of allowing a response before jumping into script clickery, just not the method towards achieving it.

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Some admins have ruled that you can’t just /me rushes player B then start swinging without that player having time to respond with their own emote, but yet it happens too many times to count.

 

Its something that all admins need to start enforcing more and people need to start reporting more.

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On 6/21/2022 at 6:46 PM, Jura said:

Some admins have ruled that you can’t just /me rushes player B then start swinging without that player having time to respond with their own emote, but yet it happens too many times to count.

 

Its something that all admins need to start enforcing more and people need to start reporting more.

either not a specific rule or under the rule 0 umbrella, thus rarely enforced and nobody'll take it seriously as a report as its "just a brawl bro"

minor nitpicky p2w bullshit like this is the reason theres bureaucracy on this server; players can and will optimize out the fun of risking getting their character whooped by emoting 2 words and starting to spam left-click just to come on top

+1

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8 hours ago, AlphaBatal said:

either not a specific rule or under the rule 0 umbrella, thus rarely enforced and nobody'll take it seriously as a report as its "just a brawl bro"

minor nitpicky p2w bullshit like this is the reason theres bureaucracy on this server; players can and will optimize out the fun of risking getting their character whooped by emoting 2 words and starting to spam left-click just to come on top

+1

 

This right there, definitely.

 

Truth is, I understand we're expecting some common sense, and we are getting just that from players, except it's their own individual views of common sense, not what the server defines as common sense. Rules revolving around common sense would work fine if everyone had the same definition of it, but that's not the case because you can't expect everyone to think/behave the same.

 

To some it just makes sense to /me and punch via script right away, again. We should have something somewhere in the rules, even simply under common courtesy, because that's what it essentially is, stating that at the very least when you perform a /me when interacting with someone, you should always wait for them to reply with a /me to your action in turn in any RP situation. Some semblance of /me reciprocity is the least people can do to make RP interactions enjoyable.

 

To me an RP server should always make their own RP standards clear like player interaction rules, PG rules are a great example of that, except it's super lackluster imo. People know this, and people who are aware of it abuse the shit out of it because they can play dumb in the end, to put it that way. Especially considering the relative leniency we grant to those who break the rules.

 

The correlation between the lack of allowing others some reaction time between /mes and scripted punches in fights and the way a lot of poor escalation situations happen is blatantly obvious as well but it's highly overlooked as a problem. Fights are bound to escalate to shootings if the receiving party does not even have time to think and react with a /me accordingly like they should be able to and are getting rushed with punches that could down them with little to no RP.

 

TL;DR: Lack of basic rules and clarifications of them under the excuse of common sense does not work great for hundreds of players with their own definition of Roleplay. The server has its own standards and views of RP, but so do the players. Right now we're allowing the latter to happen. Ta-da, a clear divide in the community happens because of it, people complaining about each other's RP standards on the forums as a result.

Edited by Mistery14
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37 minutes ago, Peak. said:

First rule of hand to hand combat.

 

We don't talk about hand to hand combat.

 

I suppose though, some direction may benefit from the chaos that generally occurs with fights.

 

We could absolutely use some direction. It's not a matter of adding rules to "Restrict roleplay" to anyone in this case, it's simply setting the grounds and foundation for that roleplay to happen properly in the first place.

 

And I mean, when talking about these issues, the endless argument of "If someone breaks the rules, just report them" works until it doesn't anymore. This perpetuating issue isn't going to be fixed by simply reporting each and every time it happens.

 

Players need to allow time for others to /me and roleplay, this is normal for any text-based Heavy-RP server and extends well beyond hand-to-hand combat alone, but I'm afraid I'd be biting more than I could chew if I were to suggest that at the moment. So, having this /me reciprocity apply to hand-to-hand combat alone would be a small step forward at the very least.

Edited by Mistery14
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