The SW guards are not "incompetent"

Wyrmrest Accord
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It would seem that with player base discontent with content of the game comes a surge in outlaw RP. I assume this comes from people just being bored which is understandable, however I have seen this range from your basic bad guy robbing someone in a dark ally all the way to people pretty much shooting people in the middle of the city.

The problems I have found MOST of the time from this are commonly god modeing, lack of RP etiquette and most prevalent not accepting reasonable consequences. Dont get me wrong, conflict is a good story driver however the bottom line is while with in a city, towns or other populated areas guards are not going to look the other way while you do insert something crazy here.
Just because they are NPC’s does not make them non cannon or ‘push overs’ in fact they are pretty strong in lore, I would even say in war time they would let even less things fly right now.

For myself I am honestly going to ignore most criminal activity from recent bad, super edgy and sometimes down right god mode RP interactions…which is a shame because I play a character who tries to keep the peace however I have dealt everything from overly aggressive attacks IC to myself or other with no given reason, all the way to my /rolls being down right ignored. Going forward I am going to pull the ‘guards or groups of people would step in’ for many situations because they would.

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While this is technically true, there’s not really a way to hold other players accountable for their RP actions aside from social pressure. As long as someone else is acknowledging their rp, they’ll continue with it, until they potentially get blacklisted from other people’s rp from godmodding and powergaming (and some people are going to be tolerant of that anyways).

I am not sure if trying to control others through social pressure is the best approach, so honestly as you mentioned the best solution is to ignore it.

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What you think is a reasonable consequence for someone’s character and what they think is a reasonable consequence for their character are not necessarily the same. I would say this is an important thing to be aware of.

Further, it sounds like more awkward pressuring by throwing in NPC’s under your control to deal with a situation in a way you want it to go. If you dislike how the scene is going, whisper and perhaps try to explain your side. And if nothing moves from there, leave and/or ignore them.

But trying to pressure accepting consequences seems equally unnecessary. Live and let live.

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Trust me I know full well that other people will have different ideas for conflict resolution and I never claim to have any level of “control” over NPCs. I am talking about blatant obvious things that are against the general terms of player interaction like the examples I provided.

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I see. Your prior statement made that unclear.

So you say you will ignore, but also pull groups of guards, in the future. What may or may not be blatantly obvious to you depends on the situation, what sort of consequence you are trying to level, and so on. I would maintain ignore it is the only appropriate solution.

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Would you like for me to give some more examples? Also while I am not going to say ‘look at me I am the guard captain, you are under arrest.’ disregarding law enforcement to the level of people saying there basically are no guards is not right.

TBH though I am told that this is a non-issue Horde side here so what I am talking about might not be as apparent if you do not RP on Alliance often. A good MANY people RP that Stormwind is basically Freehold.

So my question to you is, why can they use the guards to there characters favor but I seemingly cant?

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The problem is that even if I agree someone else is being unreasonable in the scenario, my proposed solution would be the same.

  1. Seek OoC communication.
  2. If that fails, leave and ignore them.

I’m not saying they can. I’m saying if you can’t resolve a situation by talking it out to them person to person, then trying to throw in NPC guards or pressuring them for RPing wrong will probably not help compared to just leaving.

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Agreed 100%
I think I have just gotten to the point were I have lost my patience with people unfortunately :frowning:

((fixed, thank you below lol))

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Patience.

If you’re losing patients, you’re open to a malpractice suit.

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I think the problem is less prevalent on Horde side mostly because the attitude is different. I don’t think there’s a feeling that order has to be maintained constantly. It’s not like a total anarchy, but no one is really going to bat an eye if you break out into combat in public with someone else.

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This actually use to happen alot in Silvermoon. People would do “bad” and others would “call the guards.” It also happened alot with white knight paladins telling evildoers to “stop right there criminal skurm.”

Obviously it doesn’t usually work out unless all parties have set up the scenario beforehand.

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Otherwise it turns into “good guy who must save the day” vs. “bad guy who wants to kill/harm characters ‘realistically’” aka, without consent.

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Yep. That’s the problem with “walk-up” rp. Sometimes you gotta take the bad with the good.

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Gotta say, mate… It’s a big risk. And the sad part of RP is its unpredictability, and the occasional irrationality of the RPer. Some people will behave illogically. Hell I once got arrested by a Paladin while playing on my now-race-changed human rogue for sitting on the cathedral stairs and talking to this other random human. Apparently I was not supposed to talk about flippant things on holy ground. :man_shrugging:

My two cents? Just leave. You don’t have to linger in an RP that doesn’t make sense to you. You can communicate to them OOCly, but if it doesn’t work, don’t hang around in that RP. For your own peace of mind, just leave the RP. If you don’t see eye to eye, then neither of you will have much fun.

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I usually just sort of don’t acknowledge their authority in a comical way until they get the hint.

“Righteous and best paladin swings his 2,000-pound greatsword at your head!”

“The 2,000 pound sword bounces off my forehead like rubber and squeaks like a carnival toy.”

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I understand the problem goes both ways (trust me, as a victim of the EXTREME opposite) I know there are those who handle authority RP badly.

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In all honesty it seems like most people theses days go out of their way to avoid conflict. Ruyn’s been walking around with a severed orc hand dangling off a hook on his belt for weeks and no one’s even questioned it till my GM asked OOC during raid last night.

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I wouldn’t be surprised if someone would want to avoid the question on that mostly out of fear that it could be seen as gruesome or edgy. I know I see people emote casually about passing around body parts and heads and I try to mentally blank it out because it’s kinda awkward tbh.

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And I get that, but it also illustrates my point about avoiding conflict.

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i am a stormwind gaurd and u are all UNDER ARREST

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