Complications with the Marauder event aside for the time being, which trust me I have some opinions about. I believe that antagonists and villains who sorta just exist to run around and find people to mug can be considered realistic, but un-practical to the overall state of the game. Let me explain my thoughts, I'm sure everyone feels this way but antagonists should exist to fulfill a narrative gap or purpose, it's a co-operative experience where we are all attempting to write characters in satisfying ways to ourselves, that is why its important to gauge our interactions with other people on a case-by-case basis.
This also means to challenge those characters in individual ways, and I think running around and lobbing people's arms off is not a good way to do that, you're just causing undue stress in doing so, people start worrying about being optimized for PvP or are focusing down on something that already happened, and I know this happens because this has been expressed before in a few chats. You could argue quite a few things about the permissions that these folks are supposed to throw around to prevent these things from happening, but in reality many of these people are either anxious about denying the opportunity to the other player(s) or are very dedicated to the dynamic and natural interactions without interference on an OOC level (I am the latter.)
Unfortunately I don't think that random encounters call for good narrative typically (there are exceptions), I think investment is a very powerful tool to entice player engagement with eachother, this often means that villains need to be written in a way that is likeable or interesting, this further often means that antagonists need to be written 10x better than your average Telegradian hick shooting shit for a good laugh and a good time (nothing against those people.)
Its a bit of an unfair dynamic I feel like, but them's the ropes when it comes down to creating more engaging player experiences, and there are quite a few people more than capable of doing this, this is why I love Sawrock's antagonists despite being random encounter focused, because they're usually pretty interesting and have fun personalities, I mean we also know that Sawrock is one of the nicest members of the community otherwise too.
To summarize, causing player stress is very bad and will often lead to negative opinions about these sorts of things, when someone's only really creating characters to run around and PvP people and take their arms or limbs or what not instead of delivering anything substantial, of course these things can get very muddy. Forcing these events can be very unsatisfying when someone asks how they lost their arm and they just have to say something like 'I lost it when looking for a few plants in a cave somewhere.'
This also means to challenge those characters in individual ways, and I think running around and lobbing people's arms off is not a good way to do that, you're just causing undue stress in doing so, people start worrying about being optimized for PvP or are focusing down on something that already happened, and I know this happens because this has been expressed before in a few chats. You could argue quite a few things about the permissions that these folks are supposed to throw around to prevent these things from happening, but in reality many of these people are either anxious about denying the opportunity to the other player(s) or are very dedicated to the dynamic and natural interactions without interference on an OOC level (I am the latter.)
Unfortunately I don't think that random encounters call for good narrative typically (there are exceptions), I think investment is a very powerful tool to entice player engagement with eachother, this often means that villains need to be written in a way that is likeable or interesting, this further often means that antagonists need to be written 10x better than your average Telegradian hick shooting shit for a good laugh and a good time (nothing against those people.)
Its a bit of an unfair dynamic I feel like, but them's the ropes when it comes down to creating more engaging player experiences, and there are quite a few people more than capable of doing this, this is why I love Sawrock's antagonists despite being random encounter focused, because they're usually pretty interesting and have fun personalities, I mean we also know that Sawrock is one of the nicest members of the community otherwise too.
To summarize, causing player stress is very bad and will often lead to negative opinions about these sorts of things, when someone's only really creating characters to run around and PvP people and take their arms or limbs or what not instead of delivering anything substantial, of course these things can get very muddy. Forcing these events can be very unsatisfying when someone asks how they lost their arm and they just have to say something like 'I lost it when looking for a few plants in a cave somewhere.'
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