by Azaroth | June 18th, 2010
… So let’s just bless everything. That way PKs can run free.
Statloss has been a topic of choice around here the last couple weeks. Let’s discuss for a moment.
Now, originally statloss was a reaction to a problem. I say ‘reaction’ specifically mostly because it seemed more like a reaction than a plan. UO was designed as an open world with (among other things) nothing to influence a player’s choice between good and evil. However, this “internet” thing was new at the time and players began killing other players at a rate nobody seemed to predict. Sometimes it’d cause canceled accounts. Which was cool when UO was the only game in town and up until EverQuest was about to launch, but then something had to be done immediately.
Of course I’m only assuming that’s how it played out, but I’ve always said statloss seemed like a kneejerk reaction to a problem that required a very careful solution. So now that we’ve had a decade to look back on it, what are our conclusions and what is the solution?
I think I made a post about this last year around this time. However it also had little in the way of discussion because I didn’t have a salivating gang of redassed UO-panzees swinging around waiting for IPY.
Over the years I’ve spoken about statloss a lot. Too much, maybe, if you’ve actively followed this blog (I love you too, fyi). So let’s cut to the chase on this…
Statloss is better than nothing because it provides a punishment, and you absolutely need some sort of deterrent (and you need it from day one). Believe it or not, I enjoy the fact that you can macro statloss off as a ghost (and I have no idea if that strategy was intentional or not), because it lessens the deafening suck of statloss in a way I’ll explain.
The problem is that the system happens to provide disgruntled players what is essentially a kamikaze feature to UO. Get angry or tired of the game? Go on a killing spree, shout various obscenities, quit when you die. So basically you’ve provided angry players who will, you hope, calm down and start playing again (eventually, and maybe even normally) a means to literally explode in emo rage and reduce their chances of ever returning to nearly nothing. Macroing counts off as a ghost ends up being what amounts to a time out punishment. Which is better than a kamikazeragebomb in just about any scenario. The murderer is removed from the world for a period of time, but not necessarily pushed into quitting.
However, statloss also encourages the behaviour you want to see least from your reds – grouping together to find safety in numbers, ganking, running from fair fights and so on. Nobody is going to sit around and roleplay a murderer in the depths of deceit while they’re standing around also roleplaying a sitting duck for statloss at any time, either. It’s just not very helpful in a lot of ways.
Ideally what you want is a system that actually addresses the problem in a more positive manner instead of an entirely negative one. While statloss punishes the bad guy, there’s not much more to it. Where are the incentives for the good guy? What good does it do the victim? Who is, by the way, the person you should probably be most concerned with.
Even if you have statloss, there aren’t that many people out there hunting down reds to inflict it on them. The game just doesn’t encourage it. There’s no benefit, and it’s still impossibly hard to reliably track someone down before they’ve left the scene of a crime anyway. The only benefit is the enjoyment of ruining someone’s character…
.. Which, when you think of it, should probably be enough in a game like this.
The pro here though is that statloss is a generally accepted part of UO, and were you to be looking for the solution with the most teeth that caused the least bitching and moaning, statloss would likely be it. It’s also awful easy to implement, whereas coding something custom up would take quite a bit of effort.
However. I think player justice is entirely possible if you design a system from the ground up to encourage it.
The problem is that, were I to launch the Classic IPY, the first red system that went in would have to be the last.. and I can’t launch without one. Nobody would put up with a switch after six months. Minor tweaks to an existing system perhaps, but there was a lesson to be learned when observing the backlash after the implementation of the statloss system originally, and after the shrill, bloodcurdling red-assed monkey shrieking that went on after IPY implemented its minor and ineffectual-by-committee red penalties last time.
So while I’m not going to be able to implement some massive, complicated and perfect (or “incrediblyflawedbutitried”) system for dealing with PKing, perhaps we could discuss something simpler that could be coded in a reasonable amount of time.
My proposal is to leave the world free of statloss. You’re red, you die, big deal.
For the most part.
So, awesome. No backward designed and artificial systems – the world is free and open as was intended.
However, now we attempt to address the three main factors that any good red system should:
- The Murderer (Deterrent)
- The Hero (Incentive)
- The Victim (Consolation)
To do this, we draw on existing UO mechanics that are understood (like statloss) and use them in a more effective (potentially harsher) and interactive (more difficult to inflict, less likely, more gameplay options) way, playing on their better qualities.
We introduce a hero – perhaps the “Paladin” – and we provide him incentives to kill the killers.
We also concentrate on the guy who has been ENTIRELY left out of the thinking when these systems were created in the past (and the guy that really shouldn’t have been) – The Victim. We leave him something other than high, dry and discouraged when the rest of the story has played out so that he has something to show for it all other than the memory of being camped by 15 reds at Britain GY and being called names while he tried to learn which button made him attack the skeleton.
The Paladin is a character that has entered into the sacred ranks of “The Order of the Shining Serpent” (or a TOSSer, if that’s how you want to look at it) through the completion of various quests and so on. If the Virtues system can be finished in time, there is also a high requirement there. If not, he’ll simply have had to kill a bunch of monsters to get a sweet Fame/Karma title first for some reason.
He receives points for dispatching red players, which can be used for titles, items, and other special perks. At the base level of points, he can purchase a stone that, when thrown into the Seer’s Pool in Trinsic, reveals a list and location of red players online. More points and he can purchase Paladin Armour – a complete set of which is nothing but a set of platemail, but has no meditation penalty (not blessed, but instead blows up like a chaos shield on death and needs to be repurchased. Or starts as normal plate and needs to be redusted/reblessed by a reward item if we’re going to help the player economy out). Massive amounts of points and a player can purchase from a selection of the static houses inside Trinsic as a Lord of Trinsic. Additional benefits could be things like named Paladin clothing, silver weapons or ‘silver dust’ potion for weapons, various PvE bonuses inside Deceit and Hythloth (our two hardmode dungeons), and so on.
Of course, Paladins could not participate in regular guild wars or take murder counts, and their points would decay and need to be kept up to certain levels relative to the number of murderers online (at average) to use their items, titles, and estates. We don’t want full plate Paladins running around in O/C or guild wars, or murdering blues with their unique advantage. Paladins would be characters strictly usable in PvP against player killers to keep them in check.
Now of course Paladins couldn’t gain points simply by killing red players. That’s far too exploitable. Points would be gained on the death of a red player, by your hand, once he’s debuffed and in statloss. Or “dispatched”.
The trick here is that Paladins would be able to stack debuffs on a player – weaken, clumsy, feeblemind, etc. Mindblast at various distances would temporarily lower skill points (slightly, gaining strength as you cast it closer to your target). If the murderer is killed under these effects.. they stick. Statloss.
So now punishment exists. Incentive (strong incentive, I think) is given to live the life of the Anti-PK (or the ‘No Fun Faction’). However, PKs don’t necessarily need to live entirely without honour – they just need to get the hell out of dodge when the Paladins roll in.
Giving a red player no option to macro off his counts is harsh, and we still haven’t addressed The Victim. So in order to escape death at the hands of a Paladin without statloss, a PK must be ressurrected at the Chaos Shrine within X minutes. No gating, no Help->Stuck. Playing a murderer isn’t supposed to be the easiest thing to do in the game. No red system should be a cakewalk. The Chaos Shrine isn’t the Compassion Shrine, either. You’d better have gold in your bank box, and lots of it.
If you do, the gold is taken from the bank box and distributed by Lord British to the less fortunate. Or more accurately, the people you’ve killed since you were last ressurected at the Chaos Shrine… in a little bag in their bankbox, complete with a handsome note.
“Dear PlayerNameHere,
Fantastic news!
The Paladins of Trinsic hath once again slain an enemy of these lands. The dastardly and malicious Dread Lord PudS met an untimely end on the blade of Lord Azaroth, Grand Templar of Trinsic. Enclosed is a small portion of the bounty, which the Paladins graciously donated to ease the suffering of the citizens.
Enjoy thy adventures in Britannia.
- Lord British”
Your bloodthirsty, murdering character is resurrected with a small percentage of the statloss you would have otherwise taken just to show the malevolence of the Chaos Shrine. No, we won’t be doing a murder-for-gold system.
… and so on and so forth.
So ultimately, a (deceivingly) simple system ends up effectively doing what we wanted it to do – and it does it very simply without many bells and whistles (I’m a big ‘bells and whistles’ guy, so that’s difficult).
In the end, this is far less restrictive on the average red player because instead of EVERYONE whacking you into statloss, you might have to watch out for 1-5% of the population (depending on how points decay, how many are needed to retain rewards, and how difficult doing that is made to be) – and even then, there’s a get out of jail free goldsink. However, on the flip side, there’s nothing that says we can’t provide Chaos Shrine discounts for banked Paladin heads. There’d just need to be a little work to make sure it wasn’t exploitable (no Paladins and Murderers on the same account, diminishing returns on discounts for the same Paladin’s head, Paladin loses some points for his head being used at the Chaos Shrine, and so on).
The goal here was never to make life easier for reds though. So an adjunct to this system would be something I’d pull from another larger system that was planned for launch. In fact, it looks a bit like something that was suggested in the last thread on this site. It’s more complicated and time consuming to code, but luckily some work has been done on it already. It involves NPC ‘guards’ (killable, of course) spawning at a certain percentage rate (climbing with more kills) when you kill someone, then attempting to kill you and place you in the Yew jails. Once there, occasionally there are opportunities for escape that benefit murderers with nonessential skills. So your murderer/thief, or tinkerkiller, lockpicking mass murderer, or beg-and-stabber or whatever will find themselves doing far less jailtime if they’re smart. The catch is that these opportunities have to be watched for, so macroing your time off while you dip out for a bucket of finger lickin’ KFC is less advisable if you want out really soon. Again, we’re suggesting… not demanding.
The goal here, and with the Paladin advantages, is to not only encourage different styles of play (something that I feel is sorely lacking with all of UO’s possibilities), but to solve one massive, until-now-unavoidable problem:
The good guys stink.
The big problem with Player Justice is that the bad guys are always the dudes who are good at PvP, know all the tricks, run all the third party programs, etc. The typical Anti-PK is the guy with a viking sword of power, a mismatched set of ringmail and a dog and three rabbits following him who decides it’d be great to play the hero. Surprise, this doesn’t work out well and you never hear from that hero again.
Well, let’s even the playing field a little. Not forcibly, but let’s drop incentives for the game to be played a little differently. When my character has GM tinkering or is largely a thief/lockpicker, suddenly Joe NewAnti has a much better chance. He might actually kill me if he plays his cards right, and he’d never know the difference. He killed the PK, that’s what he knows – and it was totally gnarly to him. Me? Well, I can console myself with excuses about my build. Then go get my 7xGM red and slaughter that dude.
So while I think this is all a smarter and more holistic approach to a red system, I’m going to hope that players who intend to be red don’t freak out at the suggestion. Mostly because it’s a penalty and mostly because they can. The fact that it’s not fifteen years old like statloss gives you more room to complain. It seems reasonable. It’s easier to attack. So I imagine they will. But that’s okay. Just be constructive.
This isn’t a system that’s set in stone, either. It’s just something that I figured seemed simple, easy to understand, and potentially effective enough to meet all of our needs and even give actual player justice a shot for once.
In fact, I’d even love to do things like leave Trinsic unguarded under this system and let Paladins police their own city.
So in the end, I think the beauty of something even as simple as this is that it specifically hits the basic targets for what the “red system” should do. Your killed newbie is consoled, informed of the destruction of the red’s character (schadenfreude points!) and compensated with a nice little chunk of gold that’ll make him forget the whole nasty business once his mind starts racing about all the great stuff he can buy. Your PK suddenly doesn’t NEED to roll in groups of ten, won’t get discouraged and quit when he loses connection and dies to a pack of mongbats in the forest, can actually participate in some real PvP, and has tools at his disposal to avoid statloss (which will have him participating in things like gold sinks and giving back to the victims) – Life is generally just better. The Anti-PK actually has an incentive, actually has a chance, actually has to apply some strategy, actually has some tools at his disposal, and *actually* gets to roll in and play the hero. And best of all, there’s no quitbomb in the game anymore.
Might not be fancy, but in my eyes it’s practical and straight to the point.
One downside is that you’ll have more reds. But that’s fine as long as Paladins have enough incentive to hunt them. But if they don’t, or if a system like this were to fail for some other reason, obviously there’d be the inevitable toldyouso’ers snorting and chortling about how player justice is impossible and how stupid it was to take out statloss. Fair enough, but if our goal here is to provide long term viability (obviously) while forging a new path with new goals and principles that forks from the path that lead to UO’s existing expansions, I think it’s a fine gamble to make.
As I see it, another big downside is how personal it is in comparison to the statloss system. Statloss is just there, when it happens it’s not a personal thing. Maybe you were killed by a mongbat, or slain by an elf. Either way it’s just there no matter what, and it’s a fact of life as a red.
When a Paladin sits and stacks debuffs on you and then executes you, you might get a little pissed off. At that person, at the server that has the Paladin system in place, etc. Statloss has been around for ages and is generally accepted and impersonal. There’s not a whole lot of room to complain. It’s UO’s red punishment, end of story. Get with the program, etc.
However, under a statloss system I think red characters are used for a lot of suckerpunching. Something happens in Deceit to your blue character – someone steals your loot, or is farming your spot, or says something about your mother. You recall and log out, get on your red, recall back in and PK him. Then you leave and log your red character right out. Where does the role of the Anti come in?
So statloss has people playing their blues mainly and the system I spoke about in this post would have people on their red characters more often. You’ll probably even increase the amount of PKing in the world. However, as I see it, it’s better than letting everyone and their dog have red “suckerpunch” characters that are only online for five minutes at a time and make any sort of reprisal against the murderer next to impossible. That’s artificial and stupid. We need a situation that BOTH introduces danger to the world and enables some sort of reasonable chance that the good guys win once in a while.
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beta DATE?!??!?!?!?!?!
If you were to open a preUOR server right now with statloss (or the equivalent) it would automatically be better than any server out there. Assuming it has a similar pvp system to what IPY had. With a month or less of hype it would have a population of over 1000. We don’t need much; some player accountability for the pk department to keep the non-pvpers from feeling too left out, and some decent pvp.
I keep logging into UOSA hoping to get some UO and I end up with nonsense-online. SOS!
I can’t get my PvP testers to log in long enough to thoroughly test the PvP!
Actually, it’s just one guy right now. ;)
Perhaps Beta 1 will be a small, invite only tournament.
Also: FAQ is ready. Sorry! Been busy.
Perhaps you need a second tester, sir. Maybe confine in your current tester to decide if I should be a tester as well :)
I only trust the very best from IPY!
Here’s my email: jamiemeier@hotmail.com
Just in case you change your mind. Like I said, ask your tester if I should help or not, assuming you DO need help. If he says no, that’s fine, he knows more about IPY than I do, + punch his face.
spells spells
So I’m in Ottawa for Canada Day and I’m still thinking about UO for some stupid reason. Then I read that you’re lacking testers. Honestly, give us something man. Jamie’s right about people flocking here. No doubt about it. And I’m glad that you’re concerned with the longevity of the shard but still man, it’s been a full year. It would be really nice to finally see what shape the product is taking. Having a public beta of 20+ would not hurt at all.
canada day is always awful here (regina, sask)
Do you guys blow up stuff for your day, too? I have about 200 dollars worth of fireworks (and they are cheap) ready to go in two days. Hooray for beer and explosions.
And yea, what Mazer said about what I said.
not where I am – I don’t think much of that is done in canada… canada’s pretty liberal and blowing stuff up isn’t a big thing for liberals… also americans are much more patriotic.
I agree that Americans are much more patriotic, for the most part though I think people just take advantage of the opportunity to blow up some fireworks. As for blowing things up not being a liberal thing, you must be crayons. Here in the U.S. we all can agree on setting off fireworks, at least. So long as it’s legal in your state. In Hawaii; the state that votes liberal every time, we blow the shit out of some fireworks. :)
Downtown and the U. Ottawa campus was pretty much a big street party, lots of fun. Some people do the fireworks thing but it’s rarely anything too extravagant. We actually did for Victoria Day in May since we went camping but it wasn’t anything too crazy. There was a 15 minute fireworks show but I think that happens in just about every major city. Definitely more of an American thing I’d say.
Got me thinking of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqfxmWbelcQ
Ahaha, some people around here make home-made fireworks that make some pretty insane booms. My poor dogs don’t fair too well. What about New Years, you guys blow stuff up? Now I’m just exciting to blow stuff up and thinking about fireworks.
nah nothing gets blown up
just asian guys decapitating people on the greyhound bus
And you said WE were patriotic. That’s some serious shit!
I mean it sounds great and all here, but when you actually implement something like this your gonna have EVERY red complaining that its unfair that the Pally’s run around with x x x x equipment and x x x x abilities. There should BE something good for the reds running around, I mean SOMETHING. How about when a red defeats a paladin? Shouldn’t there be some kind of incentive for that?
I do think there should be some small perk for fighting back against the paladins. But I would argue that reds already have the benefit of loot. Groups of reds can make a killing rolling through dungeons and picking off the farmers and that can’t be looked over.
Yeah, mazer beat me to it. If reds also get perks, like paladins but for killing paladins then what is encouraging people to become paladins? If you just go red you get pretty much what the paladins get without the restrictions. So this defeats the purpose of the system, to create a reason to play an npk or carry out player justice.
But I mean, couldn’t you maybe make a pally’s corpse unlootable to a red or something? Some kind of restriction against that, but giving the red some kind of incentive? With something like that, it would be a nice little Pally vs Red war constantly going on. Which would kind of setup the group effort and not exactly just be 20 reds chasing around 1 pally.
What we’re trying to get at isnt that their advantage is looting paladins. Pks kill everyone. Their advantage is that they get to run into a dungeon, find people fighting monsters and kill them for their gold. Or they can torment players and make their life hell at minoc mines… So on and so forth. Paladins are going to be restricted to fighting reds only. So if this system gets implemented and both teams get cool rewards, which one do you see 90% of the people joining? The side that can fight anyone, almost anywhere and get cool rewards for doing it? Or the side that can only fight the reds and get cool rewards? All this does is basically make a new hero vs evil system. Not a good system rewarding people for hunting reds and carrying out player justice instead of implementing stat loss.
I haves crazy idea. It’s so terrible that I haven’t taken the time to consider how in the fuck it could even work, but check it out -
The Cap and Trade system. So basically every 40 hours of game time, every character gets a credit. The credits are good towards stuff like erasing 1 long term count, or raising your chivalry or some Paladin equivalent if ur blue. After say 10 credits being tithes to the chivalric order, said blue can become a paladin with certain perks. Reds have a global meta penalty, something like no recall in dungeons or say, stat loss.
Or it could work where like, reds drop credits and that’s how paladins come to be (after tithing 10 from reds). A play on the bounty system sort of.
Or a taxation system where reds have to pay money each week or whatever, which is then donated to a [New] program by setting noobs up with equipment, some scrolls and regs, etc.
I would either like to see a system that is regulated by the players and for the players, via new mechanics, or just straight up long skill gain + stat loss for reds. Paladin idea and others are nice though but could have unforeseen effects.
I think stat loss is out dated. The paladin idea from Az is where it’s at I really think. All stat loss does now is take ONE of your characters out of action for at worst a day or two while you play your other account and either unattended macro off the few counts you have… On top of that people keep their reds online 24/7 to macro off the counts they get so its not that often they are in that deep anyway. But if you’re one of the better players who managed to accumulate hundreds before finally being hunted down then unnatended macro back up your skills from stat loss. Even with slow skill gain it’s not a difficult task in this day and age of razor macros etc to macro back up a character unnatended. A bit of gold and a few nights all whilst playing your second account.
The Paladin idea sounds good but the system needs to be simple enough that it actually is realistic to implement without 6 months of programming.
I like to develop modest games in my free time and know exactly what its like to have all these ideas in your head but when you sit down to program it, you realise its gonna take a godly amount of time to do.
Paladin idea sounds like a great balancing system so good going, Keep your main ideas, sit back, look at it and streamline its core mechanics to be as simple as you can. (debuff/dispatch system seems a bit over bloated, i.e the paladin simply dealing more then 50% of damage to the red player should result in “dispatched” and a set amount of stat/skill loss).
The skill/stat loss factor of the paladin system isn’t really up on top of my priorities with it. As I’ve said I’d rather the paladin system be getting rid of any kind of skill/stat loss system. If its going to be made that rewarding for people to hunt reds, I’d rather that be punnishment enough, the fact that they are hunted the way they hunt innocents to begin with.
If there’s no Stat loss, then why would a red fear a paladin?
Stat loss is still needed. Alone it may not be a solution but combined with the Paladin system it could. IMO, stick with the short term and long term counter system to discourage uncapped perpetual PKíng, then add the paladin “dispatched” stat loss on top to bring paticular fear to facing Paladins.
Otherwise who would play a paladin over a red? Like mentioned above, reds get to have fun where ever and when ever they want plus the loot/riches from kills and you dont need to work hard to PK. Whereas paladins will need to acheive the status, and then are effectively limited to hunting only reds, cutting off a portion of the games content from them. Paladins need to be attractive, and lets face it, there are easily going to be much fewer Paladins then reds if nothing else due to the time it takes to become one and the way Paladin will be forced to play a paticular way and so have less freedom.
Now, a slight point id like to make in general about why I think not just statloss to discourage PKíng, but incentives to being *shock* nice, are necessary for the sake of the shard:
The crux of the matter is human nature has proven that if left to their own devices, players in MMOs will be immature, disrespectful and happily boost their egos and enjoyment at the expense of others. This does not reflect the civilized real life we all live in, but in MMO’s this IS how people behave. The flaw with UO was that it never encouraged players to be anything else, and what I believe Az is trying to do here is put in a counter-measure to this aspect of UO. Currently, vanilla classic UO would be on the scales 85% heavier to PKíng, generally being a selfish ass and making many peoples lives a misery (result=rage quitters).
The Paladin system hopefully will aim to make the balance more even and bring about a server where people are rewarded for actually being decent and not for being a twat.
just to iterate, general Full loot Pkíng is still vital for the nature of the server and should never be discouraged to the extent that it’s not worth the hassle. It’s good to be bad and theres nothing wrong with roleplaying an evil bastard who likes to collect limbs and heads from their victims and display them in their towers. It’s just that if left unchecked, thats all everyone will be and the nice guys who donate gold to the yew orphanage and go on pilgrames to the shrines will be non-existent. IMO we need both for this to be a kick ass server.
The question to ask and be answered is what is the risk vs. reward for being Blue or Red.
-Reds: Want the PvP, your loot (regs, weapons, etc), and maybe your head.
-Blues: Want their gold, to PvE in peace, chop wood+mine+craft in peace, etc.
-Blues/Reds lose all their loot, clothes, regs, crafting junk, weapons, etc when they die (exactly the same loss)
So the only difference between Reds and Blues is the reason they play the game. Reds generally want to PvP exclusively so let them, but you have to give Blues a benefit which isn’t game breaking BUT beneficial to play a Blue. I think I read something about Azaroth saying,” Just give them blessed clothing”. Why wouldn’t that work? Blues could buy bless deeds (only usable to Blues) so if you have your favorite outfit on, which most people know what they wear in UO about now, they could always have it if they are Blue. A stipulation to prevent exploiting is to have a system like the Chaos/Order shields, where it will blow up if worn by a Red or if you go Red while wearing the blessed gear it blows up.
Fairly simple idea and it gives the blues their uniqueness and Reds the sheep to kill without the incentive to have their favorite outfit perma. Everyone knows that re-gearing sucks, but so does having a dead server. Reds vs. Blues are what makes UO the game we all played and have loved for this long. IPY was badass the first time around (even after the first wipe) and I believe it will be just as huge this time around.
Am I correct in thinking being a paladin is kind of a npc guild you join? Why not make it so if you’re killed as a paladin, you get booted from the guild for the rest of the day(x hours), and thus losing all benefits of being a paladin. It would make it incentives for the pks to actually fight back, an extra fuck you to sweeten the pot of loot.
Yea.. my point has always been that there needs to be a reason for reds to want to fight back against paladins. right now there’s no incentive for being red that outweighs the necessity of multiple characters to support being one.
Also it’s not like being booted from a paladin guild completely eliminates your ability to attack / fight / kill a red. It just makes it even.
I am avidly against giving incentives for people to pk. Reds generally are the best of the best with respect to pk who also carry with their play style the ability to drive away hundreds of potential players. Why would you want to hand over an entire server to them? I like the direction this server is going (philosophically , not so sure how it will pan out in reality) and i will PROTEST steps which make it a pk run server.
I think your Anti-PK system has a lot of potential. The problem that arises is what purpose would a red ever have sticking around to fight a Paladin? You could easily end up with a system similar to the SWG bounty hunter system (Replace Jedi with PK and it’s essentially the same idea) where a PK kills a few people, recalls back to his house, and afk’s for awhile before the Paladins roll in. If the majority of PKs did this, you would have a huge dropoff of Paladin population after the first month or so of the new system.
Now, there are ways to circumvent this sort of stuff from happening. Some more obvious than others, but most of the ones that would be vital to encourage (or force) PvP between Paladins and PKs would require some major changes to the source code. One thing that hit me right off the bat is that Paladins need some sort of snare/stam drain otherwise reds will just run away from them all day refusing the engage. The easiest way you could implement this is just to add some sort of skill that when cast on a PK, it overburdens their weight for 5-10 seconds or so. Or you could just give Paladins a speed buff, but that would be somewhat ridiculous in the grand scheme of things (and a hell of a challenge to code if you want to do it right so that Paladins can’t just sprint around the world all day).
You would also have to give the PKs a reason to actually fight Paladins as well. I could give you a few ideas, but you said you didn’t want PK’ing to be easy, so I’ll let you figure out a solution instead of rambling and ranting.
Just remember; Adding a system where Anti-PK’ing is the judicial system only works if the Anti-PK can actually get close enough to do anything to the PK. I’ve been a PK since 98 on Great Lakes and would love to see and/or try my hand at an Anti-PK system like this. However, since you didn’t delve to deep into the Paladin’s perks/bonuses/skills, it sounds like it will be next to impossible for Paladin’s to actually catch a PK even if they know where the PK is. Simple “strategy” isn’t going to catch a PK that full well knows a Paladin will eventually be coming for him.
Well, as i see it, it’s not a system to promote PK vs Paladin fight.. It’s rather a system to make PK’s unable to run around on killing sprees .. Sure, we will see ALOT of “Hot drops”, PKs charging in , killing, and then zooming away.
But it’s a good way to make it dangerous to be a PK , where they can’t just roam about griefing and nuking everything and everyone.
Although this system was introduced later than t2a thankfully this server isn’t sticking 100% to the t2a mold and is introducing new systems or things that came later that were good. I’d like to see some kind of flagging system so that a pk cant instant recall after killing some blues, same with a paladin. Maybe if you have been the agressive player in a fight (first to attack) you cant recall/gate for 2 minutes. Or a system where just PKs and Paladin status players cant recall within 2 minutes of battle reguardless to if they were the agressive player or not, that makes it so if you choose that path you cant just instant recall you have to fight to stay alive. Or lastly, similar to Hybrid, I dont want to turn this server into another hybrid but I dont mind their flagging system, if you have 0 counts you can recall in battle if you’re blue, but as soon as you take a count you have to wait 2 minutes if you’re in battle no matter who attacked, red/blue/grey untill you’re at 0 again.
Either of these systems would work I kinda like one of the first two more though. Or a combination of both. System two where pally/pk cant recall in battle with the addition that if blues attack a red first the blue cant recall when they start losing.
I don’t think you should ever take away the ability for blues to recall whenever they want to. As much as that may spoil PK’s entertainment, removing it is is the best way to put off any non PK/PvP players who may want to play IPY and rely on it as their self-defense mechanism. If you want to prevent a blue from recalling it should be through interruption of spellcasting etc
Reds on the other hand should be penalised and be unable to recall in dungeons…whether you put in a timer for after combat or killing a Blue as well is something that might be a good idea considering there won’t be any stat loss from normal PvP.
Sorry jay, just re-read your post. Didn’t read the Count at 0 bit. I agree, if a blue does get a PK count then perhaps a recall penalty is a good idea.
I’ve read most of the comments and its been hinted at but I’m just going to say… I play a red mostly, reading this system I have one thing in mind. You see a paladin, you run because he is the only one who can hurt you long term. You don’t fight the paladin in a fair fight and only when you have numbers on your side. The only reason you fight the paladin in a fair fight is because you know you can survive his dumps and you are slowly making your way to a spot where your friends have a rune marked and are hiding because they gated in from the house and hid inside and then clicked the gate. Then you proceed to kill the paladin and call him a n00b. I have seen very few red guilds that are red guilds because they want to PvP against other PvPer’s.
Paladins see this behavior and stop being paladins because it is a waste of time because recalls and ganks rock. Reds take over again as they always have with their only opposition being the O/C guilds that happen to be trying to find enemies in the dungeons or PvP hotspots.
Most reds are reds because they don’t enjoy PvE and enjoy making their money off of people who do enjoy PvE. Most reds aren’t reds to be PvPer’s. They take advantages when they see them and run the hell away when they don’t have them. You think being red attracts PvPer’s but I totally disagree. People into PvP go into O/C or set up duels or only log on for tournaments.
This system is based on a belief that PK’s are PK’s because the ability to kill anyone gives them the ability to fight anyone, but I think you need to reanalyze the PK mentality. The ability to kill anyone gives them the ability to select their kills from the largest pool of players in the game and get their loot. A smart PK minimizes his chances of dying in that fight. A smart PK will never fight a paladin 1v1, there is just no reason to. A smart PK will only fight a paladin 2+v1 with ventrilo and sync drops. How does blessed plate armor help that? You may get the occasional 2v2 which will actually be a good fight, but those small occurrences, and the small groups of reds who fight for that reason, aren’t enough to make an impact on the server.
I hate statloss and I think you’re right in trying to find an alternative, but I don’t think this is the right route. I know Divinity implemented a time based stat loss which was a really promising idea if they had made it last longer. That way you’re still out of the world for a while, but you at least don’t have to macro your character back up after you res. Make it scale in terms of length with the amount of short term murders or with the amount of people you’ve killed since you last died. This maybe doesn’t give less incentive to be red, but at least it gives less incentive to go on killing sprees in the Brit GY because risk vs reward isn’t good.
The bounty system still seems like the best reason to hunt reds if it can be made in a way that can’t be exploited. What better reason is there to kill some red other than getting large amounts of gold? Or maybe just ditch the paladin idea and lead to killing reds making you gain points that can be put towards other things, i.e., bless deeds, leet sandals, a ticket for two to Walt Disney Land, and other such things. People eat up pixel crack like its.. well.. crack. Give them a way to get their crack by killing reds and they’ll kill reds. Make reds unable to recall out of a dungeon and they’ll die. Hell make a system so if you kill x amount of reds you get a blessed backpack that works for a day only when you’re killed by a red. That way we don’t get our loot and the guy who just died with 10k on his body doesn’t cry.
And for christ’s sake, just give blues unlimited help options. I know the game isn’t supposed to be easy, but if you give them unlimited help options out then the newbies will at least not have to spend 50% of the game seeing things in grayscale and listening to creepy dead music while running the same route from the dungeon every time. The game isn’t fun while your dead, I played Darkfall for a free trial length, as a total newbie, and the thing I liked most was that when I died I respawned somewhere and didn’t have to run around as a ghost. Or put wandering healers wandering through dungeons or something. I hate seeing some guy in bone armor be killed in deceit with no way out, what incentive does that guy have to keep playing?
First half is very important because it shows the mindset and attitude of a player who is concerned with playing a PK and how paladins will impact a PKs playstyle. There are concerns about the paladin system, as we the community understand it, and some of the issues Jack just highlighted could be a bigger (or smaller) deal when the servers up and push comes to shove.
The second bit was put on the ledge a lil but I respect your ideas and concerns.
Holy shit I wrote a novel.
WALL OF TEXT!
Just sayin’ , I´ll read it too.