(10-02-2015, 10:43 PM)Kaiz Wrote:(10-02-2015, 10:22 AM)Warren Castille Wrote:(10-02-2015, 09:57 AM)Kaiz Wrote: I'm not sure why Grindstone insists on healing, personally. If someone wants to trudge through the event bruised and bloodied, what difference does it make?
Basically what Franz said. It was a rule since before I took over, but I like it if only because it also cuts down on the "you beat me but you didn't REALLY beat me" bullshit that gets thrown around regardless. Too many people want to safe face by not losing even when they lose, and healing between rounds just removes one more convenient excuse to get your ass kicked.
It can really diminish the winner's fun by being told "Yeah, well this doesn't count anyway because X Y Z!"(10-02-2015, 10:10 AM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote:(10-02-2015, 09:57 AM)Kaiz Wrote: I'm not sure why Grindstone insists on healing, personally. If someone wants to trudge through the event bruised and bloodied, what difference does it make?
In general, instantaneous healing pretty much removes any real danger from most situations, and that's a bit inconsistent with how the setting is presented, where NPCs do indeed fear for their safety. So magic "poof, you're all better!" healing is probably very rare. In the Conjurer questlines, healing comes up many times, but it's never as simple as wiggling your fingers and suddenly someone's okay. It's usually trying, risky, and not always guaranteed to succeed.
Because character death is a thing. And if someone goes to the Grindstone hoping to have their character killed off from sustained injuries from one or more rounds, the other people may not be cool with that. It's a matter of consent.Â
Due to the Grindstone accepting basically all physical combat players regardless of where they fall onto the "realistic" <-> "fantasy" RP meter, it would become an issue if borderline-WoL who has Inner Beast Darkside powering his massive sword-axe went on a mass killing spree at the Grindstone. Â In the same way, a player might just that "all it takes for my character to die is to get stabbed once." Maybe a little price from the end of Joe Nobody's dull sword was enough to do that. Of course, such was never communicated. And the general rule at Grindstone is "no killing." For an event that's becoming so large all the people can't render on the map in a single view, there's simply too much going on for serious injuries, "losing control", or death.Â
But at the same time, Grindstone is supposed to be about besting your opponent. I don't generally have Franz swinging for vitals or trying to impaled people. Stopping before and attack or tapping shows he -could- have finished the attack, but injuries are messy. We had a 2-3 hour long "I need all the healers focused on me" person once. And it made coordination incredibly difficult when there were other people who needed RP healing too.
I'm not even sure how one is even dependent on the other.Â
For starters, I'm talking about how players choose to receive their injuries, not how another player inflicts them. Whether I choose to have Kaiz really beat up or not has nothing to do with my opponent. The way Grindstone is structured, if my opponent stabs at me and lands a sucessful hit, it's my call if they just glanced off my armor and winded me (and that'll make me less effective), or stabbed me right through my chest (but I'll be fine).Â
Additionally, I don't see how the healing obligation controls any of what you're saying anyways. Players can still say "you beat me but not really" and decide the nature of their defeat. Whether healing is enforced or not has no bearing on any of that. Ultimately it doesn't matter anyways, since the winning and losing is dictated by dice, not roleplay, so even if someone claims that none of their injuries really hurt them, if they lost, they lost. The loser can say whatever they want to make themselves feel better, but they still lost.
I can understand why Grindstone has 'super-healing' between battles to make the event manageable, but I don't see why it's forced upon the player. If someone really cared that much about 'saving face', they don't lack for ways to do it even with enforced healing.Â
I guess overall I don't see how it prevents any of the aforementioned problems, but I do see it interfering with how a player fluffs out their participation in the event. If they want to move through each round with a 'souvenir' of their last fight, and use their injuries as part of the roleplay, they can't.
edit: PS - This is actually a minor quibble. Grindstone and runestone are a fantastic events overall. I've just never really understood why the healing was rigidly-enforced as opposed to simply being an option.
Because like I said, let's say your character attacked one of mine. And I'm in a shitty mood that day and decide that the gentle graze of your character's weapon was "just enough" to kill mine. Your character's now broken a rule of the Grindstone because I "felt like killing my character". I've technically godmodded death from your attack, and assuming I was really being a shitty person, made a huge fit out of it "just because."
...where does that leave you?
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Or in another instance, let's say my character was injured. Nothing too serious [for him], just an arm that's completely useless if no medical attention is received. But my character's pride is too much. He'd -never- let a filthy healer try to fix an injury he's received. So he continues fighting until he's basically just an armless, legless, stump. Oh, but he INSISTS on still fighting in the Grindstone and somehow wins his rolls. Now we've got a logistical issue.
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Or in perhaps the most realistic of the examples. My character takes damage. He's visibly injured and presses on anyways during a Grindstone. Someone else uses that injury to their advantage and now I have some form of a critical injury on my character. Because I'm ultra-realism (in this example), I blame the Grindstone for my character's injuries and have a generally bad time while arguing with all the healers that "they should know" when my character needs healing because he wasn't asking for it and was otherwise outright refusing it. I'm upset at the lack of OOC organization of the event because the coordinators didn't accommodate me the way I wanted and I go and rant in all my linkshells.
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Simply put, if a character has visible and/or obvious injury from a GRindstone, they're gonna get healed because it's a liability on the people helping make the event go smoothly. When there's 40+ people running around fighting each other, any number of spectators, and the organizers, the chat scroll gets messy. There's generally a healer shortage for at least the first two rounds. And healers simply don't have the time to RP out bandages or to listen to a person wail on about their injury for too long. It's basically a job. And it only takes one character throwing a fit to turn a fun event into a hassle, hence the few, but important rules.
A character with a bump, minor bruise, or scratch? Probably won't get healed if they don't complain about it. A character with significant blood loss from a nearly severed limb who happened to win the round? We're obligated to make sure that person is healed enough to continue fighting without dying. We've ultimately got nothing on what types of injuries a person incurs. We have to trust that the participants follow the rules and don't go overboard.
