New Characters and Identification Papers

[FoogooFish]

The thought hit me as Emiliana grilled a new character for his papers: anyone brought into the city by the Legion (e.g., new characters) should be assigned temporary papers. This will especially be true when the scripts are implemented for NPC Legionnaires to ask at random for papers.

I suggest that speaking with Centurio Zyfus results in all new characters receiving a different type of identification paper: a temporary "guest" paper (but not a portal pass) good for one week. That should be plenty of time for new characters to get themselves oriented, and it will be more in line with the Legion ensuring everyone in the city is documented.

[Catastrophe]

I like this idea.

[Kitsunestume]

A [Chit of Temporary Asylum], perhaps. It would certainly make sence, considering that according to the quest, everyone was brought up by the Legion. It hardly seems reasonable to turn around and clap them in irons for not having a passport or documentation.

[caterpillar]

I don't like the idea of papers at all. Why? First the price. 5000? For Identification papers? Which are mandatory for every citizen? Absurd! The government would last 10 seconds. Second. There is an absolute lack of information about it. I'm not new on server, but pretty frustrated by the whole system. I bought my papers for 5.000 coins, left the city, wanted to go back and - can't. I thought ... well, some bug, Iľl wait for DM. Nooo ... I just need yet another set of papers to get up. This info I've received OOC. I OOC asked where to buy the other set of papers. Where to get it, I was told, I have to find out ICly. Well I didn't. I've tried but no luck. And I have no gold by the way. All Sile's money went into those papers. I can't even get more gold either the spawns are too week and I don't get any or the mission is suicide.

I'm soo frustrated by the whole thing ... prices, bureaucratic nonsense of those identification cards which is worst then the whole EU altogether, just a thought of it in medieval like surroundings etc. ... I will wait about a month before I try to log in. For me is Sundren very player unfriendly right now with old character and new as well, because I'm being tired of my 3 lvl character getting killed each and every time she wants to leave Secondwind Inn in any direction.

Just my opinion. Please don't ban me.

[Catastrophe]

No one is going to ban you for your opinion on the matter.

But the papers you bought are identification papers, not the actual pass that is needed to travel in and out of the city. But you have to work with us here, because the whole pass implement is an entirely new system that we are working on. I apologize for trouble it has caused, but with many new things there are bound to be issues and bugs. So please just bear with us throughout the process.

Edit: Sorry, let me explain things a little better. What your character bought caterpillar, is identification papers. Which is basically tells Sundren who you are. Think of them like a passport someone would need in real life in order to travel. Those do cost real life money for people to get. Now with these identification papers, you will have access to be able to buy a pass to get in and out of the city. The problem with this is that the way for players to do this through a npc is being worked on being put into game.

There is players who can make passes, but you need to find out icly who they are and it is no promise you will be able to get a pass from them. I hope that helped clear things up a bit.

[DM_BAMF]

The situation pertaining to area spawns, particularly difficulty level and reward is undergoing heavy maintenance at the moment.

It really is unfortunate that the ground-side areas have become so low-level unfriendly, but rest assured, this is being reviewed and repaired area-by-area. It's not intended to be as such, and changes will be coming just as soon as they're ready.
My suggestion is to honestly hold off on seeking out major PvE conflict for a little while, and role-play.
You're not the only one in this situation, and DMs have not been silent on the client as to offering players interesting situations to deal with in the course of Sundren's drastic changes.

While some of these involve higher-level characters, for the most part, combat has been a secondary matter in the events I've both witnessed and run myself. If you're having a hard time finding others to role-play with, caterpillar, send me a tell when I'm on the client.

I don't cater to individual events, but I'd be happy to try and involve you with other players in the same boat.

[Catastrophe]

But I digress. I am sorry for your frustrations caterpillar, but please keep on topic with the post.

[Lugwy]

Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. This, plus an appropriately emphasized explanation on the requirements (and what it would cost) from Centurio Zyfus would be a boon.

Of course, you get less opportunities to soil newbie knickers, but that's an acceptable price to pay.

[Farmboy2003]

Isn't the point also that mainly adventureres need ID and passes to be in the city? I mean, it'd be a waste of time getting all the beggars, prostitutes and other commoners knee-deep in dirt official papers. But that Elf in a dress who can manipulate existence itself with his mere words? Better get a tack on him, make sure who he is and what he does.

If not, I suppose the cries of "Help, help I'm being opressed" would be much more prevalent in the city.

I'm also starting out a new character these days. And yeah, it's really hard getting any PVE action, and you get very few resources out of it. On top of that he's a heavy crafter - and that gives me double less fun things to do. But Sundren is an RP server. And it so much more fun RP'ing about things you've built or designed than actually building them!

[Torgar]

Commoners, beggars, prostitutes, and all other undesirables are being pushed into the slums area of the city, blanking on the name of it atm, it's late for me. That also will include any PC's who are found inside the city without identification papers (With a grace period for now since the system is still being fine tuned. Give legion pc's some slack, we are as new to this system as you all are). Only the wealthy can afford citizenship papers, and that is intentional. That's not a stretch for any medieval-era setting. Most large cities based around an aristocracy were divided very glaringly between the poor and noble districts. Adventurers are above the common man, the creme of the crop, and are capable of gaining the money for the ID papers when usually only the rich nobles are capable.

So, for now, wake up in the city, go RP for a bit, and if you want to head down to the surface, remember to buy equipment before you leave, and save up the 5k for the needed paperwork.

I know it seems unfair, but you have to play the cards you are dealt, and right now we have a not-quite-yet-finished system, that is being finished as we speak. There will be glitches and hiccups, and that is what we are all for. We test out the system, write our bug reports and suggestions, and then everything gets cleaned up and made better.

On another note, you also have to understand that the city is flying for a reason. I know we are already starting to settle back into "business as usual", but try to remember the city is flying because it was the only way to keep the capital and the rest of the valleys refugee's out of banite hands. So yes, they are going to be on serious lock-down to ensure that no enemy spies make it into the city. There are folk in the legion and elsewhere that have the power to issue guest passes and help you get your ID paperwork, and we are all trying to be on when we can. I won't name all of them, they can volunteer their names if they so choose, but I will admit to having ONE legionaire who is capable of allowing someone into the city, but I will stress that letting ANYONE into the city will be done through RP. I am telling you all this in the hopes I will not be bombarded OOC with tells of "Hey Bren, let me in man" or "Hey, can I score a pass?". There are many IC ways to get a hold of me, please use them.

[Yevelian]

I am with Cat on this one. The whole papers thing has frustrated me away from Sundren for the past week or so. So.... I probably won't be around much for a bit. The concept is cool in theory, but if we wanted to restrict certain characters from the city, the name of the server as "City of Sundren" should be rethought.

I bought my citizen papers or whatever, it I don't see a good way for any of my characters to spend that kind of money every three months. Maybe if the city streets were paved with gold, this would at least make my characters think the gold was going somewhere.


PS: I will be in Skyrim stealing cabbage if anyone needs me.

[Memnoch1962]

I try to keep an open mind about all of this. We all need to remember this server is free. No one pays to play. It's also IMO much more rewarding to role play than to go grinding. But if you want to do that and you keep getting pummeled by bandits, maybe some RP with a friendly mage would help.

[Yevelian]

But for how much the papers cost, those that want them, aren't we encouraging grinding?

[Doubtful]

I understand that there are a lot of concerns over the systems that are in place at the moment, rest assured we are taking them on board and are looking at different ways of handling the portal system, including different ways for those who want to use more clandestine approaches!

Further details on what is planned are located in this post here:
http://www.sundren.org/forum/showpos...48&postcount=5

Multiple changes and modifications to various issues people are having have been made, but unfortunatly with Saulus off enjoying vodka and cabbage or potato based food stuffs over in Poland we're lacking the ability to push the updates live onto the server! Once he's back, expect changes and tweaks to a raft of things!

Foogoo's suggestion has a lot of merit, a temporary one week pass/papers would be a great idea, allowing new characters to get a feel for things before departing the city.

I'd also suggest a 'Sundren Citizen, 2nd Class' a cheaper/mandatory simple set of papers that would allow a character to only access the Castrum and Cheapside, getting them hurled back into the slum if they're caught out of Castrum or the scummy hole where people like them belong. They'd also be limited to day passes in and out of the city. After all, even peons, prostitutes and the working classes need to leave occasionally.

Again, please bear with us during the current period of tweaking and bug fixing - We very much want you to enjoy the world our staff has worked hard to create and develop, if you've got suggestions on how things can be changed then please, let us know! We'd much rather have ideas than people quitting!

[Snowmane]

OK, so I started to write a post about this and half way through I realized I was going off on a rant. So I deleted it and started over. This time I will try to be constructive instead of whiney. The suggestions are in bold if you just want to hit the highlights.

First of all, the cost of the papers is very high. I believe this is meant to be a gold sink which it seems is really needed, especially now since the faction donation boxes have gone away.

5k is very expensive for a low level character. And if you consider players that are new to the server, even if you gave them a 1 week free pass, unless they played a lot and picked up on sundren's nuances very quickly (i.e. not your casual "I play once or twice a week" person) they would never be able to earn the 5k to upgrade to real papers before the pass expired and they would either have to join the legion faction(if possible) or get out of town.

I'd suggest that these costs be adjusted to 250gp per level so that those of us who have characters that hang out and rp a lot (i.e. rarely fight) won't have to grind as much. And those who are level 20 will then be paying the full 5k amount.

Second, and I know this is being addressed and is a little off-topic, but level 6-9 or so are horrible right now. I have been doing my best for a little over a week or two to round up people in that level range and help them by bringing them in to Mirakus Mines with my existing bevy of level 10-14 characters. Then once the group gets large enough or some of the characters become strong enough to handle it without me, I drop out. Fixing up the Viridale encounters really needs to be a priority, especially if characters in that level range will be required to raise 5k gold just to join and/or return flags to their factions!

*edit* I like the idea of a second class citizen set of papers - something to make the city at least somewhat accessible to younger, poorer characters who could then possibly RP their way into becoming guests of someone else to access the better parts of town.