A lot of mortals talk to me about how their playing experience is; what they like, dislike, what they would like to see, how they feel about the game, et cetera.

One of the main topics that is brought up to me is newbie/new player killing. The definition of 'newbie/new player' seems to vary between different players, but in general it means anyone less than gen 2.

Here are a few quotes from someone I was having a conversation with:

"alot of different players are saying they cant play because everytime they leave their house/clanhouse they get whacked"

"anyhow i found out while chatting with peeps that theres many newer players who either are leaving or did leave cause tehy see no point in leveling and getting gold cause it all goes to misc once they hit level 25-40 ish"

"nod i know theres no easy answer, but you might as well scrap all your awesome newbie ideas if he or anyone elses is allowed to run rampant on em"

"so other than some rule where you can only pk within a few ge

ns of yourself i dunno wtf to do'"

So the questions up for discussion are,

Is there a problem out there with newbie killing? How is the bounty system working out? Are we inadvertently making it difficult for newbies to learn to enjoy Tempus? Are we killing off our newest players?

Please weigh in on the discussion by adding your thoughts.

Thanks for your input,

• wish *

I'd get sick of it if i was a newbie. bigger players have friends that protect them and clans newbies dont. They get the brunt of peoples pk urges because there isnt many drawbacks to killing them. So then newbies lose all the eq and money they worked so hard to get in the first place and its harder for them to get back to where they were so they just get sick of it and quit.

Pk is more than an activity, it is an art form. Not everyone is good at it. Those who do engage in pk should maybe do so with some semblance of honor or at least a challenge. Yes, if i wanted to I could kill every person who is mort level 25..big f*ckin deal. I have a gen 4 character who can kill every gen 1 and 2 player on the mud who doesnt hide in their house or clanhouse, but again..big f*ckin deal.

If you pk then you should "nut up" and take on those your approximate size or someting at least close to it or you are no longer a pk'er you are then merely a bully. Note: should you decide to be a bully expect a visit from one of my characters All the pkers out there,until something better comes along, lets start choosing our targets based on who uses the project channel. If a remort got spam leveled to gen 1 that is too bad because it is open season on their a$$. Not many morts have eq any self respecting pk'er wants anyway :P Another alternative would be to kill only people within a certain gen of you assuming this is even codable. I have no idea what teh "right" answer is but maybe someone else out there does.

Bottom line is this, if we chase the new players away from the game with pk or anything else excessively harsh we will never grow as a mud. A lot of people work behind the scenes everyday to try to grow this mud so lets have some respect for them and their efforts.

i havnt noticed a whole lot of people that kill newbies, theres the "hardcore" pkers that think their badass when they kill the gen 1's and stuff, but for the most part, if a newbie stays out of the way and doesnt become a huge nuisance, then people leave them alone. I think that if anything HAD to be done, there should be a +3 -3 gen limit on pk, so a gen 5 can kill and be killed by anywhere from gens two through eight. and a gen 1 cant be killed by a gen 10…

I'd have to agree with Stick that there may not be any right answer.

Now, here are some ideas that I've thought about..and feel free to poke as many holes as you like–constructive criticism is something which will only help us find a viable solution!

First idea:
Only mortals (1-49) may kill another mortal. No remort character is able to attack, steal from, or otherwise harm a mortal character.

For the mortals, there is a 5 level range (up and down) in which you may PK. Thus, a 25th level PC could PK anyone from 20th to 30th level. A 10th level PC could PK anyone in the 5th to 15th range.

Yes, you read that right, 5th to 15th level. Why do this, you ask. Good question. By opening up PK'ing to levels below 25th, you might help to prevent higher level PC's or remorted characters from performing a PK on someone, and then sticking the victim's eq on a currently untouchable newbie character. If they want to drop the looted eq in their house or whatever, so be it…but at least they wouldn't be able to hide behind the untouchable less-than 25th level buffer that currently is exploited by some.

Remort characters would have a similar range, but of only 2 levels. So, a Gen 5 character could PK (and be PK'd by) anyone from Gen 3 up to Gen 7.

Second idea: Do away with PK'ing all-together. Before we would do this, we would have to ask ourselves these questions: 1) Why do we have PK in our mud to begin with? 2) In what circumstances does PK work? 3) In what circumstances does PK not work? 4) What is the general consensus of the active player base? 5) Does PK cause more harm to the mud than good?

Third idea: If the cause of people getting PK'd constantly is due to wanting equipment, make the ability to gain protected equipment a little easier. I don't know about "you", but I feel that 25 quest points to get an oedited item is a lot. Perhaps have a "middle ground" for oedits. Something where you can take 10 qp's and buy a "protected" flag for a piece of EQ. Also, you might be able to do some kind of coding to where any protected eq is not only wearable only by that person, but is also un-takable by anyone else–which means it would either a) stay on the corpse or b) stay where it was.

Well, those are the thoughts I had…so feel free to criticize and expand upon them as you will!

well, those idea's look good, except for

1) for one, a level 10 being able to pkill a level 5 is quite drastic… a level 10 has much more advantage over a level 5 than a level 45 does over a level 40, i think that maybe the pk min level should be set back to level 41 gen 0, like it was pre-wiz (if memory serves)

2) if pk was taken out altogether, tempus would be far less interesting

3) i cant remember what the third idea is…

Look at what Arial said. She hit the nail on the head with that one.

Panzer's first idea…I think that's the best one. I think that's what should be done. I don't know about you guys, but I didn't like being a level 30 mortal and have Miscreation kill me and take away all of my things. And I shouldn't have to stand idly by and be quiet like everyone says so I can HOPEFULLY get some of it back. Those are bully tactics. Panzer's first idea is fantastic. At least the section concerning mortals. I figure anyone gen 1 or higher is open season because you've played long enough to know what to do and what not to do. No gen 10 should be able to freely pk a mortal.

I don't think your gen restrictions are going to accomplish what many of you are trying to get at. I don't recall in recent times a gen 10 char taking out morts. (and if so I believe this is no longer a threat since the only person I can think of who fit this description is now banned from the mud)

Let's take Kraz for example. We know he pks. I am sure you all are mostly familiar with him. Big bad Kraz. Big bad GEN ONE Kraz. So set the pk system so he can't kill you with Miscreation because he's so many gens higher than you. Won't really do much, he has proven he can do just as much damage with a gen one char and he'll just hop right on Kraz and do as he pleases.

I am not excusing actions. I'm sure many of you know that I am against pk but I do realize that a lot of the players on the mud enjoy it. I don't really have a good suggestion as far as rules for pk. I do know that some people would probably be safer if they didn't run their mouths as much :P Call that bullying but I know I wouldn't walk up to some 400 lb man and spit in his face. That would be dumb. :P

Just one thing I'd like to remind you all of in your pk range suggestions. It's great to say you can't kill anyone out of your range when you're thinking of random attacks, however it becomes a far less pleasing situation if someone kills your little friend and they are screwed but you're too big to help them defend themselves. In particular consider the case where you are grouped with them and someone comes along and kills them in front of you and you can't help?

Oh, I do think it is a good idea to up the newbie protection to like level 40 or something close to that. Not level 49 though, I think that would get abused a littled too much.

Ok, just thought of something else :P

What about being able to use quest points to buy a set amount of time of being set !pk? like 1 qp = 1 week of !pk

I am not sure if that is even possible or not… something to toss around at least. It would give some people the chance to protect themselves and level up and it would promote questing.

I suppose it would be nice to know if it's even possible to do code wise and such. I'd like to know :)

Well, that is an interesting point you raise, Kraz. It is definitely something to thin kabout.

I would also think of it this way:

Under a level-restricted PK system, if I am a gen 1 pc and am helping to level my friend, a 35th level mort, and another 35th level mort comes along to kill him, at least my friend has a fighting chance against him.

I can do things to aid my friend: heals, armor, haste, defensive spells, etc…I just can't attack the person attacking my friend.

In the world we live in now, if I'm a gen 1 PC and am helping my 35th level friend, if someone who is stronger than me comes along (say a gen 2, or a buffed out gen 1) and decides to kill my friend, they don't really have a fighting chance against that PK'er, now do they? Even if I were there trying to attack the PK'er, I doubt that I'd be very effective (they don't call me Panzy for nothing!) :) and prevent them from getting killed.

I think that's really all that the majority of people, like Tresham, is asking for: a fighting chance.

If a level restriction accomplishes that, then ok. If not, well, maybe something else will work.

I'm just throwing stuff out as I think of it… :)

Interesting thought on the QP idea, Essah. The only drawbacks are that a) the imms would possibly be asked to have more quests and b) prizes like renames and implants might become "frowned upon" by morts that participate in the quest–they'd rather have even 1 qp rather than take a rename or implant, and so not choose to participate.

I don't see how gen or level restrictions will really help the situation too much, seeing as most pk is over in one hit anyway. If they don't get you in one hit, then if you're smart you recall, nurse your wounds, hold a grudge, get revenge, etc. Even in mort vs mort pkill, you're usually dead in one hit after getting blasted by a gun or hit by a combo or backstabbed. What it really sounds like you all are asking for is particular individuals not to be allowed to pk, and that wouldn't seem very fair.

To address the quest point idea, I think it could be an interesting solution to the problem except for the simple fact that a lot of newbies don't really have a lot of quest points. Quest points have always been a better prize to get in a quest than a rename ticket or an implant session because they could be saved up for oedits or !break or whatever else you may want to use them for. Not to say that rename tickets and implant sessions are crappy, you never know when you might die and would rather use a spare ticket than have to blow a qpoint on reimplanting. Not that Panzer the borg would know anything about that. ;)

Storm

I wouldn't say that people only want 1 person restricted.

I really do think Tresham spoke volumes about what "victims" of PK want: a fighting chance against their attacker.

If it is indeed like you say (pk'ing being done in "1 hit") then that is NOT very sporting, fun, or "interesting" as Heartsbane put it.

I mean come on…if I could go around killing all the other PC's in 1 or 2 hits…that would be so very, very boring.

Even Mobs last more than 1 hit or 1 round, most times…

So when it comes to PK, PC's are actually less powerful than mobs?

That doesn't seem to be right :(

sniff

I knew I sucked, but now I suck worse than a Drachanos peon!!

:(

First off, Narf.

How I see the situation is pretty simple. Tempus has a weird PK policy that allows alot of groovy and ungroovy PKing to go down. Big deal right? Well, big deal to those who have been around alot and know whats going on. Tempus is pretty much an open PK mud now from what I understand. There is quite nearly no possible way to stay away from that PK-ish-ness. So whats the problem? Well Tempus also wants more players, but our PK policy will, of course, scare away alot of so called "newbies". Well its pretty simple whats going on really, if the newbie is not digging the system then he/she should probably find another mud to waste/spend their time on. Isn't that the point of a policy in the first place? To root out the unwanted. So I personally don't see what the big deal is with PKing newbies on a MUD that promotes PKing. Sure we lose new players but then again isn't that the point of having such a PK policy. If new players can't suck it up and touch it out they should leave, thats what the PK policy is saying. I for one don't approve of the so called PK policy, however I've been around long enough to be able to avoid it all together, more or less. Anyways, its kind of hard to have it both ways with a fairly open PK policy. So basically, with the current policy we are rooting out those who probably wouldn't like Tempus in the long run anyways. Note that I'm not necessarily saying that this policy is bad or good, but rather I'm just merely stating how things currently are. I think most everyone will be hard pressed to question what I've said. With that aside, my personal feelings on the policy is such: It all boils down to how it affects me, which in this case it quite nearly doesn't at all. That is, with open PK I can still enjoy tempus just as much as with any PK policy. Why? Well, I simply believe that certainly not everyone hates me enough to go out of their way and try to kill me. Secondly, if someone really felt like killing me then big woop, its really not my problem cause I can't really do anything about it. I'm not going to go out of my way and spoil my fun to make sure that everyone loves me enough not to try and kill me, but then again thats just who I am and I'm quite sure that not everyone feels/acts this way. Once again, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say anymore… Oh wait, I think I know… Wait no I don't. Anyways, risking tautology, the situation is how it is because the policy is how it is. Big freaking deal. So we lose a few or even alot of incoming players, but then again how long do you think they would stick around at the current rate? I do have to admit that there are people out there that would stick around in a hostile enviroment because their hella stubborn or just too dumb to care, these are the so called "newbies" that we're targetting with the current policy. Of course, I have to admit again that those aren't the ONLY people who would stick around given our current status, however that attitude would make up a high percentage of the incoming and staying players.

Did I make any sense here? Or is everyone, now, more confused than ever before? Basically, Tempus can't have it both ways (more players and loose PKing-ish-ness) given the current status of the policy being implemented.

-Acid, I don't think very often therefore I might not be.

I think it is safe to say most everyone knows I like a good pk now and again. Hell to be honest i don't really care if im the victim from time to time, as long as someones blood is spilled now and then. If gen/level pk restrictions wont work then perhaps this might help some. If someone gets killed in todays Tempus, sooner or later there will be an accounting thanks to the devils, bounty hunters etc. So, a newer player who might not be able to get revenge first hand, or a player who does not wish to engage in pk, might be comforted by the knowledge that eventually the person who pk'd them will also die and it will also cost them gold, lps or eq depending on who or what kills them. Some players may very well quit if they get killed one time i dunno the statistics on that, but i think the normal player would quit when it becomes a situation where they feel it is pointless to go out and level etc because they will be dead and naked in a few minutes from pk so why bother to go out? (I.E. They have been killed repeatedly) If theres no point in leaving your house or clanhouse why bother even logging on at all? Ok so after a long winded post heres the point…Put some sort of timer on every char who gets pked that sets them !pk until the timer runs out. It could be the same exact amount of time for everyone, except for a player having a reputation who would get no such benefit. This system,(and i have seen it done elsewhere) would in itself, stop spam killing of newer players who need the protection,while affording zero protection to those like myself who pk others. Hey, if you can dish it out, you should be able to take it right? Then us pkers can run around pking each other all we want to. I mean how sorry will Admins feel for a player who is a true killer, and likely a mid to high gen crying about always getting spam killed right? P.S. For those worried that someone who is !pk for a time would make life difficult for others by mouthing off etc, just remind the player in question that the !pk protection will eventually run out, and more than likely they will improve their behavior. I await the rest of the mud's input on this… this is merely my two cents. Thanks. DS

Man, this is the best idea i've seen in a while. It would give those who get killed time to get things back and work on leveling. It doesnt unduly restrict pk for those that want to.

That is an extremely intersting idea.

You might also throw another 'modifier' into there…maybe include level somehow..

The lower your level and more innocent you are, the longer your !pk flag.

The higher level you are, the less time you get.

Just another thought, but great though Darke!

problem #1: player a (charles) has a friend (joe) who is a true killer, charles has joe kill him, hence set !pk for a given amount of time. Charles also has gen 10 character Schmo. Schmo can use charles to hold gear, and find people, with the convenience of being nopk. shrug

i agree with Dolza, Panzer, and Heartsbane but Heartsbane remeber while you are correct, that is something the Admins could deal with if it came up. DS

I agree, the benefits to a system like this, surely outweigh the possible / probable abusers. By the way, have you noticed how most abusers of bugs always get caught…

C'mon folks!

Since I posted my last idea for a pk system addition to work with teh current pk system, I ask for the thoughts of the mud and only 4 people speak up? That truly surprises me since so many of us players either despise pk or love it (very few middle of the road folks) and this is your chance for input on this issue. We can't read your minds but we can read your posts :)

DS

How about doing this

[(square root of target's max hp)/(square root of your max hp)]*your damage against players that is lower gen than you.

That way, it would be harder for high gen people to 1 hit kill others that are significantly lower than them. And classes like mages and such who naturally have low hp, would not receive as big of a penalty since their main damage is more spell dependant not some crazy skill that does a million damage.

Noticed i said against players that is lower gen than you. You wouldnt want a 1 hp character totally obliterating gen 10s out there would you? Althought it would be nifty to see a gathering of all high gen people, and a low leveled borg blowing up in their face and nuking everyone in the room.

Well not like it matters to me anymore since i still cant figure out how to make Local_echo stay on on this darn telnet for windows XP. =(

i dont think that should happen because thats one of the advantages to being gen 10. If we have a problem with newbies being pk'd, set the min pk level to 41 again, dont take away from the fun of being gen 10

getting pk'd is the best way to learn how to avoid it. I think getting pk'd as a mortal, gen 1-2 is a must. After I started getting pk'd regularly, I started setting up counter-measures. A bunch of people who leveled with me know that I used to have a trigger in case somebody claired me ("Ugh, I've been claired" four times :p). I also kept an excel spreadsheet with the names of as many players/multies I knew along with their gen, current level, damroll, hp, and other pertinent information.

I am so sick of pk, I am leaving to find a mud that doesn't have it. I'm tired of my hard earned exp and my slowly accumulated items and money being taken from me by morons who are just into pk and nothing creative. It detracts from the game, makes it even more unfair than the real world and generally destroys the ambiance of the realm. I dislike it so much that I am unwilling to invest another minute in a game that allows pk. Been there, done that. Can't remember the name of it but someone told me about a mud that had pk as an OPTION and those that want to participate can, and those that don't can toggle it off. Might be a good idea for Tempus. If this occurs, I'll be back, as there are many things I really like about Tempus! Thanks. I'll check back.

"I'm tired of my hard earned exp and my slowly accumulated items and money being taken from me by morons who are just into pk and nothing creative."

I feel the love.

Honestly, qiang, you aren't the only one who has been pk'd, newbie or not. Some people learn and get stronger, some people quit. Tempus is beautifully constructed and you won't find another MUD quite as good as this. If you want to leave and find another, it's your loss.

My opinion on the new pk system is that it's fine the way it is now. For instance, a newbie wouldn't level in an npk zone. A newbie wouldn't be strong enough to level there. And, if that newbie is strong enough, perhaps that newbie's buddy shouldn't have powerleveled him.

cough I don't much like dragging up topics that have been a "dead thread", nor seeing them pop up. Frist and foremost, things change, the pk system on tempus has gone from open after lvl 6, to basically open after lvl 40 - but not worth it.

Qiang: "I am so sick of pk, I am leaving to find a mud that doesn't have it. I'm tired of my hard earned exp and my slowly accumulated items and money being taken from me by morons who are just into pk and nothing creative. It detracts from the game, makes it even more unfair than the real world and generally destroys the ambiance of the realm. I dislike it so much that I am unwilling to invest another minute in a game that allows pk. Been there, done that. Can't remember the name of it but someone told me about a mud that had pk as an OPTION and those that want to participate can, and those that don't can toggle it off. Might be a good idea for Tempus. If this occurs, I'll be back, as there are many things I really like about Tempus! Thanks. I'll check back." -

Please do.. find a nice happy place where you can sit on your thumbs all day and not have to look over your shoulder.. where only mobs that you can predict will come after you.. no no.. no need to defend yourself and the "valuable eq/xp/gold" you have, or have any faith in what you might be able to do later on down the road, you're completely helpless and you're going to stay that way forever.. I believe there is a phrase that goes something like.. "don't get mad - get even" - when i came back after a year and some months break, after the last wipe, i proceeded to get reamed at lvl 22 for an item that didn't give any affects, again and again.. I didn't get pissy and quit, I went to work, lvled up, and proceeded to beat the living piss out of the wankers that were messing with me, then they turn around and complain that i'm unfairly picking on them, and other people start to interject about how I'm an asshole prick "newbie killer" whose trying to make up for having a small penis, and no sense of honor.. and all sorts of things that simply are not true.

PK is not worth it anymore. If you want to get jacked in HS, or smacked over the head and dragged to jail and loose all your eq.. You must have really pissed someone off.. which I can believe, hell I'd love to drag you into Learander's room myself :x congrats.. have fun on a mud where people can fuck with you and there's nothing you can do in return.

I enjoyed your post, it reminds me of someone trying to further ruin a game that I have had a lot of fun playing over the years,

PS. you wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes when this game first started..

PPS. Wash your hands before you enjoy your next meal, unless you like the smell of your shit on your thumbs.. which you might, in which case, carry on brown thumbs :P

I agree with Deneb and Caden. I don't participate in PK, and I have been PKed in the past. I think it's just fine the way it is. Clannies of mine have been PKed many times, but it's almost always because they were careless or were masterfully killed by a very experienced player. !PK, NPK and CPK are great. Repuatation is almost overkill. PK is fine.

There are so many issues with what's said here I don't even know where to begin. For starters there's no such thing as the perfect automated system, so don't try to come up with it. The harder you try, the more complicated it gets with more and more room for oversight and error. Squeeze water in your fist anyone?

I don't know how often this needs to be pointed out for people to get it but maybe it's just one more time. As Caden mentioned before, Tempus used to be newbie protection until mortal level 6, and then your ass was free game. During that time, Tempus regularly had -alot- more players than it did now. It held on to -alot- more newbies than it does now.

So where the hell did the idea that our pk is so mean and terrible that it's scaring everybody off? Tempus PK now is like powderpuff football.

Wish is hearing these complaints because of the contrast that newbies see now. They are handed -everything- to them on a silver platter now, and then suddenly they are killed. If you treat them like kings and then pkill them, it's like taking the toys away from the super-spoiled brats. We've all seen them in the grocery store, screaming their brains out and throwing a fit because mommy said 'no' to them for the first time in their 4 years of life.

To be continued…

Another thing about caressing newbies like they're your new pretty little pet. The whole no-nowho thing seeing half a dozen someone's on the who list. This is not going to make new players feel more inclined to stay on the mud. I don't know where this misconception came from but it's a fallacy. It's about the most frustrating thing in the world to type who and see 6 someones and maybe 1 person's name up there. Atleast when you're seeing "someone gossips" without knowing how many someones there are, you don't know just how out of the loop you are. 6 someones could only be 2 or 3 for all you know. All this does is put it right in the face of the newbie just how newbie they are, they complain that they can't see people, and so others go get them see invis and trans eq, oh and some other while we're at it, hrm why don't we help you level just a little… etc. etc. life is good I'm level 41.. BLAM pkilled, newbie player system-shock they say F this and leave.

Okay so the ideas posted above. The level/gen range thing isn't going to work with the way Tempus is right now. How often do you really thing you're going to have 2 people on at the same time within 10 levels of eachtoher? Even 2 people within 2 gens of eachother is rare, we simply don't have enough people playing at the same time for that to be reasonable. Should Tempus blow up and regularly have 40+ people on at any given time, then maybe.

The !pk for a period of time after you are pkilled is the best suggestion I've read in this post so far, but if it really starts to get some serious consideration it deserves it's own thread to discuss the pro's and con's so for the time being I'm going to restrain myself with much effort.

In the next episode… pkilling and the KKI parent.

Pkilling and the KKI parent.

So what is the real issue with pk? It's been brought up and discussed before, take any mob in the game and make an equivalent player based on gen level and classes. The mob is atleast 10x harder to kill than it's equivalent player. This should not be the case.

So why is this a problem? Because our characters are designed and built to be able to kill a mob that is in all other respects the same thing we are except it's a mob, but by being a mob it's 10x stronger than we are. If you had a character that was identical to the KKI parent mob in every way that would be the #1 badass character on Tempus. Just imagine that character with equipment.

Because we are purpose-built to defeat enemies 10x stonger than ourselves killing another player, which isn't even half that strong at 5x stronger than ourselves is a piece of cake. This is the root of the one-hit-kill pk situation that we have right now. To make things really clear…

-The. One-Hit-Kill. Is. The. Source. Of. PK. Woes.-

Pkillers should need to fight players the same way they must fight mobiles in order to kill them. I'm sorry that the natural progression that follows is no self-instant-recalling but everything has it's natural ripples in how it affects other things. This is nothing new, it has been discussed before how this affect can be made resonable and manageable.

I suggest for the time being, (that is, untill such a 'patch' is no longer needed) that pvp damage needs to be reduced to 1/10th and tweaked from there, and that self-teleporting of any kind (recalling, local, time warp, etc.) is not possible for a set amount of time, or untill the player has left the zone, after the player has been involved in pvp. This goes for the attacker(s) or victim(s).

I think Narc's final idea of 1/10th damage being done for pvp fighting is a good thought since they 1 hit kill PK does seem to be the problem. Perhaps instead of all damage being lowered by a tenth, there could just be a damage cap implemented to prevent a single attack from doing 1k damage. That way your skills at fighting would still prevail during the battle but the cheap kill would be avoided. Then again someone can always just stun/drowsy a player and procede to steal all their eq without killing them.

I agree with tower on this one. Taking out instant recall won't really solve the problem I think. Anyone who's ever fought a good battle in arena knows that it comes in bursts. You run around for a couple of minutes searching for the opponent. You find them, there's a flurry of moves, someone ends up wimping out and they flee to heal and regroup. The long battles are won through attrition, if you can land spelldowns or drain their mana/move, eventually the tide shifts in your favor and they can't heal as fast and you can kill them.

The modrian arena is huge. 1v1 battles take forever because of all the hunting time. And it's only maybe 50 rooms or so. Now, let's take a relatively small zone, like Mavernal. Once a character flees from their attacker, it is easy to run for the gate, bash it down and be lost in the forest forever. I guarantee no matter how experienced the PKer is, if I don't want to be found in the Northern Forest, you won't find me. And from there, it's an easy task to evade the killer for 5 minutes or so until the recall timer is up or whatever. It just becomes an annoyance at this point.

Anyways, your complaints about newbies being spoiled are very justified. PK seems to be a way of balancing it out. If a gen 1 newbie has gen 10 level eq, he's going to be killed for it. Balance! He's not going to be spam killed, reputation has seen to that. He won't be killed if he sticks to newbie zones, !pk and npk have seen to that. What more can you ask for? If anything, I'd like to see more policy that favors killers because it seems skewed waaay too far against them.

I'm not 100% sure if you were following me on the recall thing Kitano which is fine because I really didn't describe it I just mentioned it. Let me make very clear I'm talking about recalling -yourself-, someone else can -always- cast or recite recall on you or summon you.

Your description of the way combat breaks down in arena is right on, this is exactly why getting rid of self-instant-recalling is a must. If I am hunting you, and we'll just pretend right now that you felt threatened, after that first flurry, you're gonna recall. If I can't kill you in one hit, you're up and in your recall item right away. I'm asking for pkilling in one hit to be an impossibility, which means if self-instant-recalling isn't removed pkilling will never take place, it'll just be a bunch of pslapping and recalling.

Now, take your example. If you leave Mavernal, fine, recall, as far as I'm concerned, once you're out of the zone, you're a free man. If you can't leave the zone, then you need to stay out of pvp for a given amount of time in the zone before you can recall. 1 minute is a long time in that situation as far as I'm concerned. If you can keep your attacker from finding you for 1 minute without leaving the zone, you've "lost" you're attacker and can recall.

I would also like to mention the 'running man' quest. If you havn't heard of it ask around, I played in one once. The premise is pretty simple. You have one person who runs, and everybody else tries to kill him. The runner is not allowed to use any portals of any kind. With the entire mud to run on, and a quest group of about 12 people. I believe only 3 or 4 did not die.

Just because you're going to run doesn't necessarily mean you're going to live. Granted it will be hard for your killer to get you, but pkilling shouldn't be cake, that's the problem in the first place! On the flip-side, the prey should have to work a little to stay alive if the killer has to work to kill.

Hmmm, I see your point with this one. It would make zones with back doors (like mavernal) very difficult to PK in. Linear zones with 1 room exits and doors (like kki) would be much easier to PK in. Especially with 2-3 people trying to kill the victim. Spells like local teleport, spirit track/track/psilocate would become more valuable.

A problem I see with reducing PvP damage is that heals will still heal the same amount. If you take a good cleric with 1500 hp, 75% redux and massive heals, it's going to be virtually impossible to do enough damage before it could be healed. I don't think it's reasonable to code reduced heals while engaged in PvP. All this would encourage is newbie or fresh remort killing because everyone else would be impossible to kill.

Please do be noting the "date posted" of all future posts you read. You'll notice just about 2 & ¹⁄₂ years went by before "Qiang" decided to post.. over those 2 ¹⁄₂ years, a hell of a lot happened to the pk system, and anyone who has left a comment before Qiang's post, should be considered posting as how things "were" not as how they "are". I seriously don't like people digging up old threads to comment on in the manner that Qiang has chosen to do so.

The "sing me some knowledge - bard class comments" post on bards is another good example. At first, a few hours go by between comments, then days, then months, then a year and some months. Over that time span, bards went through a serires of massive re-adjustments. Yet people would continue to cite the previous posts as "how things are" as opposed to "how they were".

As far as the running man quest comments.. you only need to leave CPK, not overly hard to do, and you don't have a questor locating you and telling a horde of 10 people where you are ("He's in the HToM, Orge village, Fishing Village, Halflings")

I hope you come to mudfest next year, Qiang, so I can buy you a shot… of double-ought! shot-gun cocking noises BLAOW-BLAOW! :D

All your base are belong to us!

What's the big deal with digging up old threads? It's not going to kill you to read about other's opinions. I find it quite enjoyable. Even if the messages are offensive like Quiang's.

1/10th damage in pvp is harsh. I think if it were to become this, then a death would never happen. I also think that the zones like KKI make it too eazy for newbies. I used to think that vampires were awesome exp. But now, they give almost the same experience as a tired parent and are twice as difficult, if not more.

PS We can also help newbies by not having Legacy and Nexus enrolling them the moment they leave Academy. This is the simple truth, we help the newbies way too fucking much. It seriously takes the fun out of the game and when things go wrong, it's easy to leave. When I help out a newbie in academy, I never give him/her good eq. Only eq that can be found nearby and only advice. (From a previous post from narc. pslapping =p.)

I don't know if ¹⁄₁₀ is too much or not enough. It's the idea that's important not so much the specifics. Maybe the right place is 1/5th or 1/8th, it's certainly tweakable, and I would want it to be tweaked.

I don't really see that lowering heals would be a bad thing, the idea has always been to have that paralell the damage. Cleric's restore is hotsauce, and if it's lowered at the same rate pvp damage is than it doesn't lose any effectiveness. Same goes for heal, etc.

Vs. mobs it would have an impact however, maybe too much, maybe it would be healthy, maybe it would be a huge problem.

I guess I should state what I would hope is a given. That the methods would be tested and dialed-in before implemeted into the game that we log in to. As all things should be and I believe for the most part are before they're added.

The problem with old threads being brought to life is the excessive amounts of old and extremely outdated/useless info that is included. If Quiang wanted to whine about PK he should've just started a new PK thread since almost nothing of the old PK system is still in place.

Kitano: "I don't think it's reasonable to code reduced heals while engaged in PvP."

I'm not positive was Kitano meant by this but the way I took it was that it would probably not be too hard to code in a reduction in heal strength during a pvp fight. However that person could easily flee/wimpy into the next room for full heal/resotre strength and continue fighting at 100% hp.

I don't understand Quiang's post. It's from September of this year, the character is level 6 gen 0, with no rep…

How the fuck was he ever killed? He doesn't have any other characters, and I doubt that someone leaving the game for good would take the time to delete their characters.

Oh yeah…on to Narc's comments. Narc is saying the right thing, he's just saying it backwards. Players are WAY stronger than mobs, not the other way around. A mob with the same HP, AC, hitroll and damroll as PlayerX or (AznPlayerX if you prefer :D), would last about 3 seconds with him. And no matter how many times they fought, the player would always win. The difference between fighting that mob and a halfling would be the difference between typing , and typing kick.

That's why we have to have mobs with 125 hitroll, 80 damroll, double damage and 32,000 HP to be a challenge for the average gen 10 player. Either that or they have to be in HUGE groups.

Narc, I know this is exactly what you mean. The way you said it was kind of confusing though.

What we're both saying is that point for point players are significantly more powerful.

Why is the big question. Here is the answer in all new, easy to read, MEGA LETTERS!

1) Because the code treats mobs differently than players for all intents and purposes

2) Gen is never taken into consideration when a mob uses a skill. Therefore, if it tries to cast at your or something, it always has the same chance of success and the same effect that a mortal of the same level would. And if any of you have ever stood in the arena and let a mortal mage cast at you, you know how effective that is…

3) Mobs are not smart. They rarely use their skills. Such as power attacks, combinations of attacks, etc…

4) Mobs are not smart. They don't always know when they're losing. When they do know they're losing, they don't usually heal after they flee. When they do heal after they flee, so what? A single heal before you run in start kicking they're asses again is just a drop in the bucket.

5) Mobs have a hard time hitting you, while you have no problem hitting them.

6) And finally, mobs are just not smart.

So, the next project after the pwipe, is to close the gap between mobs and players. Things that will already be done immediately after the pwipe:

1) The code, for all combat related purposes, will not know the difference between a player and a mob.

2) Bonuses given to any particular class will carry over to mobs. For instance, if I decided to give good knights a 50 percent damage bonus against evil, mobs would get it too. So yeah, woe unto you if you're evil.

3) Gen, unlike size, does matter. A gen 10 mob in the new code has all the same benefits as a gen 10 player.

4) Eq is being seriously powered down, and skills and spells are being seriously powered up. You remember that naked mob you kill every day for the only piece of eq he has to his name? Yeah…he's back, with a vengance. Now all of that eq you have on isn't going to help you NEARLY as much. No, seriously, this is a good thing. Not only does it close the gap between mobs and players, but by putting more of the power into the character itself as opposed to eq, if you DT, it's not such a big deal. You'll also be free to wear what you WANT because you like the name rather than having to have all the best eq just to compete.

So, what does that leave to do after the pwipe you ask?

1) Rewrite the mob AI to be bigger better faster more. Mobs should use skills intelligently. This includes power moves and skill combos.

2) Write AI for every class. Right now, we only have specific AI for Knights, Rangers, and Barbs I think.

At this point we'll probably have to pwipe again…

No, I'm kidding. What we WILL have to do though is a lot of tweaking. No only on your spells and skills, but probably on the effects of AC, combat speed for different classes, eq stats, etc.

It might be rough for a while initially after the AI is written. I'll almost certainly make it too good the first time. You guys will be getting your asses kicked all over the place. :P

Now, how does all of this pertain to this thread? Well, after the gap between players and mobs is narrowed, if not completely closed, your power moves won't have to do 1500 damage to be useful. In fact, 2-300 would probably be max. The reason for this is that you won't have mobs running around with 12000 hp anymore. They won't need that many HP. 3-4000 would probably be a pretty difficult more. More than that and you'll need a group.

HENCE! No more one shot PKs. Then we have to implement what narc said. After a PK attempt you can't recall yourself in any way for some period of time after the attempt. THEN, and only then will PK cease to be the cluster fuck that it is today, and become balanced.

N

Yes you're right Nothing I was explaining same concept backwards, you're oratory skills pwnz0rz mine.

See why I'm so flippin' excited? This is dead on as it should be, I can't wait to get my ass handed to me in some real fights via. pk or otherwise! :D

There should be no way that someone could recall after being hit by another player. You should be noquit for like 3-5 ticks in which you cannot recall, be summoned, or quit. I'm sorry but I can only read the first few posts before I get bored, so if this has been addressed, well, meh.

The problem with only reading the first few posts are,

1) It was first started back early early in 2004, when you could be pimpslapped in any room on the mud, (A grand total of zero NVZ's) That would include Holy-Square, IE. I could walk in when you were just gettin' your chill on in HS, and lightning bolt you, full-loot/sac your corpse, and nothing would happen to myself for the worse, (other than that burning feeling of being just a pure ass :D)

2) Did I mention the first point?

Oh, and be careful where you point that shotty Seren :o

the thing is that everything is room based… for example, a mob can hit me as long as i'm in the same room. there's no graphic involved. so mages can't keep their distance from the other players like knights. when i play the graphical games, i would always keep a distance between me and all physical attackers. i would make sure that they can't just sneak up behind me and kill me in one blow. that's why mages get mshields. you can keep yourself safe if you can keep your distance. but since you can't do that in muds, you need the safe rooms… that should be everything… when they need to level up, they can who zone.

umm you're talkin' about something else. First off, to be killed in one hit is just not a good pk engine. Second, it's hard for me to explain as it would soooOOOooo much easier to just show you. The graphics you're talkin' about ain't the same as what I'm trying to say.

A feeling of being a pure bad ass is not a feeling for the worse. btw.

If the senseless spilling of the blood of others, in an unremorseful fashion, while leaving nothing but destruction and negative feelings in your wake, makes you feel like a pure bad ass, then that is where we depart company…

I think everything Nothing said is good, but maybe we should give the casting classes more speed and dodge. i mean honestly, how many mages would just stand there and let a knight swing his sword all over you? they'll be running all over the place and keep the distance. theives i think should be mage's preditor, they should be faster, and maybe throw in a instant kill move that works on players that's of lower level, maybe make it work 10 percent of the time, with long wait state. no-effect if misses. maybe 20 percent if the target is stunned. or maybe throw in an assassin class and give this skill to it instead.