Shattered Kingdoms

TL;DR most of the comments here. However I just want to make a suggestion on how the game determines if a tribunal member is attacked. It is based on how good the character's leadership skill is. A player with (not learned) will have a virtually nill or zero chance of being attacked. As the character becomes more known in their tribunal they issue more orders and gain more visibility (either through rumors, eye witness accounts, word of mouth, counter-intelligence, etc.) Once they have (mastered) the skill it is almost guaranteed chance of being attacked.

Simply put, its a reverse skill check. The better you are, the more chance you will fail in remaining secret.

[EDIT]However, there is not a valid option in the post for "makes sense with changes or a wert option.[/edit]

Okay, that does actually make sense (but it is the first I'm hearing about this). I was under the impression that the this change was implemented, but tribunals were still meant to have secretive members.















I now realize that Ain was arguing that this change does not ACTUALLY eliminate the possibilities of secret members. So there isn't really a contradiction. I just got the impression that tribunals were supposed to still have secret members, when he never really said that.

A quick question, though, with regards to the MC . . . is it a tribunal, a cabal, both, or neither, under the definitions you've given?

Up in immortal land, there was a lack of communication to the rest of the staff about how this change should be presented. I apologize to them for that. It doesn't make what Ain said completely wrong - he looked at what was done and correctly implied you could still attempt to keep yourself secret. But trying to defend this on the basis that "tribunals can still be secret" is the opposite of what I was shooting to do. Tribunal members are not secret.

As for Midnight, it's both a tribunal and a cabal. That means it has both the perks and drawbacks of both types and sometimes that can be hard to reconcile. At the moment, I believe the implementation for the guards will cause them to attack Midnight members, but Achernar would know for sure.

Okay, fair enough. I didn't realize this was what you intended for tribunals. I withdraw my objection.

It is somewhat hard to reconcile the change with the idea of the MC, as I understand it. I suppose it is something of an exception, though. Does your idea of the MC include secret members?

Honestly, Dulrik, I'm not one to pull the "this kills RP" card, but in this case, it's kind of fitting. If I go out and show some stellar RP and get inducted into the Peacekeepers at, let's say, Apprentice, and I need to go over to Menegroth for a quest, or some training, I'm killed just for walking past the guards? Doesn't this just reinforce what you didn't want to happen? The entire notion of the game not starting until a player reaches GM?

Furthermore, you view Tribunals as police officers/military, and you don't see how you could have secret members? There's undercover officers all over this country that aren't recognized by criminals as cops. There's spies sitting in other countries while working for the United States as we speak.

I'm not going to threaten to leave because of this change, but it will make me think even harder about whether or not I want to bother with tribunals on future characters, because this change does limit the amount of RP one can do while in a Tribunal. I played a Trib leader and all I had time to do back then was sit in Exile and get PK'd into the dirt(Hi, Peso!), and I have to tell you, it was the most miserable experience I've had in SK. To the point where I actually left the MUD for two years. I can't see this view of tribunals resulting in anything less than just that. With tribunal membership at an almost constant low, I think what we should be doing is enriching the history/goals of the groups, instead of just putting them in so bland a position as "You're the guard of Exile." Because, who wants to do the same job that we already have NPCs hard-coded to do?

tl;dr I disagree, and am upset by the lack of a "This hurts RP" option.

To clarify, D, I was referring to CRS. Cabals were relatively secretive prior to that. I don't necessarily LIKE this change, but I suppose I could get behind it.

You should realize that it will effect (negatively) the membership in Tribunals.

There is a very simple option here that is overlooked:

If you do not like fighting guards as a tribunal member, end the war causing them to attack you.

As I was explaining to Sleeper on AIM, it might not necessarily have a negative effect on Tribunal membership, but it certainly won't have a positive one. Even if, as he suggested to me, this is just the first step towards getting a buff for Tribunals, wouldn't it have been better to give us the buff first, and then this code change?

This was a matter of maybe three if statements. Buffs would not be so simple. I still say it would have been better to keep this on a test server until there was some carrot to go with our stick, but this was also needed to patch up an exploit before it became a common practice.

I can attest that this does in fact affect the MC. I found that out in an almost embarassing matter when it was implemented.

As far as being an apprentice and getting inducted into the peacekeepers and then going to the empire for training...what are you doing helping the economy of your land's ancient foes? =p