Guess they need to make the pumpkin quest steal proof

Please let it be known that i in no way intended to inflict any harm or cause any hard feelings. It is very difficult for me to ignore when someone is upset and then others jump in and tell them they are wrong and that their complaints are not valid. i really wish i could ignore such things, it would make it easier on me. i have spent a lifetime speaking out against things that are wrong as far as how they affect people go.

I am not anti-social. this is not about me. it is about a principle that i hold dear. the ability to decide who i play with, who i share with, and who i let into my private circle. i am not upset- although you might think i am by the tone this has taken at times. the ability of some people to totally ignore how their actions may affect others baffles me. that is why you often see me, when things get heated, make sure i state that it is not about me and i don't mean to hurt anyone.

i don't apologize for the stands i take. Lord knows sometimes i choose the wrong ones to defend, but i do so in all sincerity. i do apologize if i say things in a way that is offensive. i try to word things carefully. sometimes i may not be as careful as i could be.

i don't say i know everything. I don't expect everything to be the way i want it to be. in an ideal world, there would be no stands to take nor perceptions to defend. what i do know is that each thing i do and say and even think affects someone somewhere. thoughts, words and actions are like arrows. they land places- often in hearts. who knows. that one person who comes to the forums to complain and gets met with snide remarks and mean comments might decide that today was the last straw in a long list of disappointments. i would not want such a thing on my conscious. even if all it meant was that they shied away from mmo's for good.

i do tend to speak up for the underdog and the misunderstood. i guess because i have been there plenty of times myself. so for what it is worth, if i have offended anyone, i deeply apologize.

S'all good, Suka.

A world without passion would be a very sad world, indeed.

Actually the popcorn analogy would fit if you paid your dime and the popcorn was passed to you from the far end of the aisle to wherever you were sitting, and everyone between you and the vendor grabbed a handful. It only cost a dime what's the big deal if all the popcorn is gone before the bag gets to you? You can always shoot the guy another dime and hope that someone doesn't grab a handful this time (though someone may grab two).

That is illogical, it would be like seeing people playing Frisbee in the park, watching one of them overthrow and grabbing the Frisbee and walking away with it saying "You threw it, now it's mine!". Or more to the point saying you were in no way to blame because the roman candle you set off set someone's house on fire. Once it leaves your possession it becomes communal property is a principle that applies nowhere else, unless I purposely throw say handfuls of candy at a crowd. Which in essence is what this is. But it is only this way because we are given no choice. There is nowhere I can go in a city zone that anyone else cannot potentially follow. As others have said every other fun public event involves items that are free for the taking, once you charge for the item it ceases to be something that should be required to be public.

Nothing in the game has intrinsic value, just that which we give it. Be that platinum, gear, or candy corn. We value those items because of the time or effort we spend on acquiring them. There is not a great deal of effort involved in getting the corn (since the festival started I have given away 900 of them) but it is not the difficulty in acquiring it that we are speaking of it is the principle. Charge me for an item and then tell me that anyone who happens upon me can walk away with the fruits of my labor then there is a flaw in the intent of the item. Every other collectible in the game spawns and is free for the taking, the only effort required is picking it up. If i had to give 10 silver to an NPC to spawn every shiny in a zone, and once spawned anyone could pick them up I would never grab a shiny again. I would not take the fruit of someone else's hard work, and I would not pay for anyone to take mine.

I have no problem with anyone disagreeing with me, what they do with their own things and what they are comfortable with is their choice. I just agree with Suka that if we want the collection, or the achievement, we are being forced to pay for other people to do the same. Charity and giving are supposed to be choices, design it as an integral part of a bought item and you are going to find some who are not comfortable with it.

The fact that you can't target yourself to throw the bombs should have made it obvious that this was intended to be a public event. And you DO have a choice -- if you don't want to share, go find a private area. There's no shortage of them -- it's not like you have to sit there in front of the bank in Qeynos or Freeport, just go to Kelethin or Gorowyn! *That* is your option!

I like it. I had fun standing with a group of random strangers bombing them. I bought 100 pumpkins and I kept it up one night till someone got his Jack's Lantern. The next night I gave a lantern to a stranger who then gave me a tree (which is what I was trying for at that point). I still have 40 more. Yes, I have a ton of alts, but if I really want to make sure they all get their Lantern I can always buy a few hundred and make my husband sit in Kelethin with me. It's not *that* hard.

Loredena I THINK I have a tree if you want one and are on Unrest. My toons are Kelvani, Lyrielle and Elyana. Niniena, the sweet lil ratonga who befriended me and told me how to play with the pumpkins also pumpkin bombs strangers.. she is like the ratonga who saved Halloween! =D Thanks to her my hubby got his lamp. I think she threw around 50 at him!

Anyways, I believe in paying it forward so PM me if you are on Unrest and I would be happy to give you a tree!

Thank you Kelvani, such a sweet offer! I'm on Perma, not Unrest - but I finally got one of the goldleaf trees last night, so I'm happy {I know it is silly, but it's pretty! and I like the trees}

Sigh, it's only 2 candies for each pumpkin, and you get 8 "shiny" pumpkins from each. I'm sorry you are so worked up about having a few pumpkins worth of collectables picked up.

Is it really worth it for you, going on such a raging tirade over this?

It is so easy to find a quiet place in a city to do this. Just do it there.

Let the rage go, and try to enjoy things...



The cost isn't the point. It never was. It was the idea that we were looking for a specific thing and spent a lot of the corn, which I DO use for tradeskilling, BTW to get enough to achieve the completion. Why is it the entitlement generation has the innate belief that anything they want is theirs for the taking, without asking, without comment and even when told to leave, still comes back trying to do so again? As Suka pointed out, stealing is stealing. It doesn't matter if it is a penny candy or a car. Is it ok if your kid goes into a store and swipes a candy because it only costs a few cents? Really? Apparently in the entitlement generational mind it must be. As others have pointed out, if it is a community event, then market it that way. Nowhere did I see that this was a free for all, that we pay for and someone else participates. That has never been the practice so why would we believe it to be now? Make it available through some other means.

/rolls eyes

It's really hard to think of this as 'stealing' when the devs themselves have said it was designed to be shared. Plus, when it was first rolled out on test you couldn't harvest your own bombs. You *had* to work with someone else to get them! It was changed to accommodate those who play during quiet times, but this thread has me wishing they'd left it that way.

Edit: think of the little pumpkins like contested mobs - I may have been waiting in a dungeon two hours for a mob to spawn. Someone else arrives two minutes before the spawn. We both have an equal shot at it, and neither of us has the right to complain if the other person grabs it - even if one or the other of us did something to trigger the spawn. If it _can_ be tagged, then you have the right to tag it.


In EQ, it was considered very bad form to mob steal, especially a camped mob. But then that was before the entitlement generation came of age.

It's really hard to think of this as 'stealing' when the devs themselves have said it was designed to be shared. Plus, when it was first rolled out on test you couldn't harvest your own bombs. You *had* to work with someone else to get them! It was changed to accommodate those who play during quiet times, but this thread has me wishing they'd left it that way.


There WAS two of us working together on it. It was people we didn't even know who didn't even ask and came back even after being told to go away that was the problem. But then in the world of the entitlement minded, they are the only ones who matter right? The world revolves around you. As I said, if it was supposed to be a free for all, it should have been marketed that way.

lol "free for all" but you. get it?

i once knew someone who claimed he was only "appropriating" stuff. He "appropriated" just about anything he saw that he wanted including filling his dad's garage with military stuff including some cute little land bombs (made a crater in the yard and a loud boom), some m-16 and quite a few other items. in court, he was informed that the government took a dim view of "appropriating" and still called it stealing.

you can clean it up, call it anything you want including a "festival", but if an individual is paying for it and you haven't been invited and there are no signs anywhere declaring it a festival, then it is still a private party and inappropriate to simply help yourself.

and on a side note:

How DARE you complain when we come take all your stuff when a DEV claims it is ok to do so. don't you know that when you moved to Norrath you left ALL of your individual rights behind you? that nothing you have in your possession nor pay for with your plat is actually yours? that it belongs to the MASSES who have the right to come in and forcefully take it from you as they see fit? that the only rule in Norrath is those strong enough or fast enough to get it from you?

now, get back to work and earn more candy corn so we can take more away from you. don't you know you have all of Norrath to feed? (and if the dev says it is alright to steal candy from babies we will do that to. after all, we have no moral code- we only follow along when a red name says they intended it to be that way. far be it for us to actually have a conscious or think for ourselves or adhere to what is right or wrong. if an official says it is alright to raid your house, we will do it)

oh- here's a thought. you just cooked a big pot roast. anything that big is meant to be shared, right? not just for one person but totally shared? yeah you bought it and you cooked it, but that is beside the point. so here i come with my brood to take over your kitchen and help ourselves to your pot roast. it was intended buy the store to be shared, right?

oh? you didn't get any? not even one bite? what rotten luck. so go get another one and we will help you eat that one too.

oh, i forgot- you are not allowed to eat any. the person who buys it and cooks it is excluded from eating it. that's what sharing is all about. after all, eating is a public event. so what if it is your kitchen or your back yard or even your spot at the park.

No, you really are missing the point. This is a game. The game world works as the game designers wish it to, which is not in any way governed by the rules of the real world. So -- they added an item as part of a festival that was intended to result in a bunch of clickies that anyone could click. They certainly have the ways and means of preventing others from clicking them, as done in countless quests, and purposefully did not do so here. They also could have made it doable in your home or guildhall, and didn't. Both of those should have been clues as to intent.

However -- if you really want to avoid others running up you can do the throwing in off hours (I've been in front of the goblin candy trader tossing pumpkins with no one being around, even though I would have happily shared) or you can go to less traveled places. You do know that you can throw these in any of the newbie cities *and* in Antonica, Commonlands, Greater Fay, Frostfell Seas, and Timorous Deep. It is just not that hard.

Your examples are of home invasions. Those are very much different scenarios than setting up a table with a pot roast on it in the middle of a holiday festival in your town square where everyone is milling around, there are no 'owned' tables, and many people have food or drink out to share. The latter is much more like what is happening in-game than the former!

the examples you have put forth such as the original quest excluding the purchaser from participating other than to throw the items they purchased for others is no less ludicrous. to understand the frustrations of the people who have posted in this thread, just think. what if the government decided that you could only cook that pot roast outdoors in a public place where people could come grab bowls of it if they wanted? what if real life were run like a game?

just because it was "intended" to be shared, doesn't make it ok to grab them without asking when you see a couple of people off to themselves throwing them. we still have the responsibility to show restraint, common sense and good manners. the devs don't govern that, we do. to go around grabbing things without even asking permission is bad manners at best. and if people take offense, they have every right to do so. to tell them they have no right to complain or take offense because it was "intended" to be shared is wrong. they have every right to complain, every right to ask for changes and every right to be offended. people often forget that just because it is a game doesn't excuse bad manners. nor does it give you the right to trample over the feelings of others. after all, it is not just your game, it is theirs too. when i was growing up we were taught that our rights ended where others rights began. we were also taught that it wasn't nice to go around grabbing stuff just because we could.

Ok, let's go at this a different way.

Many of us *like* that we throw the pumpkins at other people and that others can click them. We've had clusters of people targetting each other and bombing each other as well as run by bombings.

What those of you who don't like the public free for all aspect are asking for is that only group members be able to click the pumpkins, and that would spoil the fun for those of us who like it the way it is. Why should we lose the ability to do a run by pumpkin toss so that you don't have to worry about someone else clicking yours, when you can instead find a quiet alleyway? After all, if I can log in and toss pumpkins in a relatively popular area and still end up clicking the majority of my own, surely you can find a loss populated area to do the same!

what we are asking for is a choice because some people don't respect the fact that we are not out there in those public squares throwing our pumpkins. i have had to leave very private spots because someone found me and decided my pumpkins was theirs. if we could choose not to be in the public doing these, most of us would host private parties or simply go home and do them. the fact that we are forced to do them in public is the problem. yes there are out of the way places, but when you find one and you think it is great and no one is around, it doesn't seem to take long for someone to find you. and no, i shouldn't have to wait until everyone else is asleep and forego sleep myself because someone else has bad manners. you don't leave social responsibility behind just because it is a game. you still need to have respect for others. if i wanted to share them, i would be in the square with a lot of other people throwing them. if i want them for myself, i choose my quiet corner. however, some people seem to think they have a right to impose on the quiet spaces we find and help themselves to our pumpkins.

it should be easy enough to resolve. that can be done in two ways.

1. let us do these in private homes and guild halls as well as cities.
or

2. set it so that if you are grouped, then no one outside that group can take them. if you are not grouped and throwing them around in the city square, then they are free to anyone.

it is also very easy for people to find you if you are off to yourself. all they have to do is do a /who in the area and then track the people. if someone is in a particular area for any length of time, the chances are high that they are throwing pumpkins- especially if they are way higher than the zone they are in.

seems funny to me that if someone asks for a compromise there seem to be a few who jump in and say there can be no compromise except in the form they present. if the shoe was on the other foot and you wanted a compromise, we would most likely hear a very different tune.

there is nothing wrong with giving people choices and making compromises. if something only works for a few people and upsets other people, the right thing to do is work out a compromise that is an acceptable solution, protecting their privacy and space while still allowing those who want it the other way to enjoy it. there should not be any situation where a reasonable compromise can't be made. to say we have to constantly dodge those who have no respect for other people is not acceptable.

Alright look - I have no issue with the suggestion of making it work in a guild hall or home - I can see having fun parties with that in fact. But: you and the OP essentially have been saying repeatedly that those of us playing as the Devs stated was intended are stealing. That doesn't really leave the rest of us feeling particularly charitable. I completely disagree with the premise that it is stealing. When I first saw the pumpkins, I assumed they were an event item, as you know there's also been hearts and candy canes in other seasonal events.

So if someone runs by your corner, sees them, and clicks, it's not unreasonable to assume they don't know. If you give a polite tell saying what you're doing (preferably telling them how to get their own!) and ask them not to continue, then yes, if they continue it is rude. I'd still argue that it is not stealing but it is certainly rude. Frankly, I'm going to say that's likely to be the outliers, and likely people who are typically rude. I've not encountered it myself but I'm sure there are some out there..