Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Proposal: Respawn

Timed out but at quorum, 8 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 16 Feb 2023 10:55:44 UTC

Add a new special case rule called Reinitialisation. Give it the Active and Rare tags, and the following text:

If this Special Case rule has been consistently Active for the last 168 hours then it becomes inactive and any Villager may mark it as such. As a weekly action, any Villager may make a post to the blog announcing that they are Reinitialising; if they do so then they must immediately set all of their gamestate tracked values to their defaults for new players, and if the Blizzard is privately tracking any information about them then they should do likewise at their first opportunity. When a Villager has Reinitialised, they are considered to have undertaken no actions in this dynasty for the purposes of determining the validity of limited actions taken after the Reinitialisation, except for the action of Reinitialising itself.

Comments

Kevan: he/him

14-02-2023 09:59:14 UTC

I’m not sure that late game resets would be all that bad, really, so long as they weren’t part of a deliberate gameplay loop with multiple resets. If we’d be unhappy about a player respawning on day 27 and speedrunning some optimal strategy, it’s nothing that a new or idle player couldn’t do at that point.

A pure reset should also absolve the player of their past actions: if they’d already taken a particular daily, weekly or otherwise “if you have not already” action, they should become free to take it again.

Josh: Observer he/they

14-02-2023 10:17:51 UTC

I have some reluctance around action resets for the pooling potential; with any kind of item or currency trading mechanic that’s a recipe for infinite resource scams.

I think this is a rule that can always be switched back on if needed or wanted, or held on by a dynastic rule. Having it switch itself off to prevent nasty surprises feels safer.

Maybe some limitation on how frequently a player can reinitialise?

Kevan: he/him

14-02-2023 10:36:07 UTC

I think the action reset needs to be there to be fair to the resetting player; dynasties will put all kinds of things behind weekly or “if a player has not already” limits. Trading is its own question which often won’t be connected to daily or weekly actions at all.

A frequency limit would make a lot of sense - we would, I think, want to cut out having to consider any early game nonsense where we’re having to tactically choose our opening move between “walk to cargo bay and pick up toolbox” and “attack nearest player and respawn, repeat 1000 times until everyone is dead, walk to cargo bay and pick up toolbox”.

Once per week or once per dynasty both feel plausible as limits.

Josh: Observer he/they

14-02-2023 10:40:03 UTC

Okay, I’ve made some changes - look okay?

Kevan: he/him

14-02-2023 11:03:00 UTC

To be a bit more watertight I’d extend “for the purposes of determining the validity of limited actions” to say ”... taken after the Reinitialisation”, to be clear that it can’t be read as invalidating the old action.

Josh: Observer he/they

14-02-2023 11:52:10 UTC

Done, thank you

Kevan: he/him

14-02-2023 13:26:29 UTC

for Interested to see what this does to the game, and whether we reassess how much power a newly joining player actually has.

SingularByte: he/him

14-02-2023 13:32:54 UTC

for  At some point I’d probably want the 168 hour time limit repealed, but for an early trial run of the rule it’s fair enough.

Brendan: he/him

14-02-2023 17:17:58 UTC

for I appreciate that this distinctly helps me in the current situation, but it does seem like a bit of a “try turning it off and on again” approach in the larger scheme of things!

JonathanDark: he/him

14-02-2023 19:54:06 UTC

for

lendunistus: he/him

15-02-2023 16:33:46 UTC

for

Habanero:

15-02-2023 23:36:38 UTC

for

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

16-02-2023 06:07:30 UTC

for