PK in icesus.

[allanon]

I'm probably way out of my league answering this post, but I'm going to take my chances...

I honestly think that Shadowdancers should just suck it up.

Firstly, stop using the same tired old phrase. This is, what, the fifth incarnation now?

The point I thought of making was that not everyone likes to RP, and Icesus is definitely RP-optional MUD. The fact that epriests or dancers are "darker" and have more risks to take in getting to guild, doesn't mean that those people who choose the guild are choosing it for the "enjoyment of living dangerously". Actually, I can't think of anyone who's told me they wanna be a dancer because

I am so looking forward to getting killed on the way to spending my hard-earned level exp!

Afaik the scenario is either that a newbie starts out and aspires to be a dancer or epriest but doesn't have that 10M or so exp. Or, a midbie decides to reinc to dancer/epriest for a change. Or because yeah, they can be serious reapers of exp.

The fact that you need to work towards being a (good) dancer or earth priest is a significant point. It's not a guild that you can just up and start with, or one that you can master without significant investment of time (think dancer devotion). So, you could say that the priviledge of joining these guilds is the reward for those who work hard enough to achieve them.

True, 10M exp is a pretty small number for most of us. But that isn't really relevant...I see no reason why there shouldn't be some tightening of pk-fairness rules in/around the Graemor area. People who work to get into dancers or earth priests should be rewarded with a fun guild experience, not punished with constant threat of death in the middle of their own guilds!

Having an assassin guild (essentially, what the shadowdancers are) is hard enough w/o legal pk throughout...

Oh, and additionally. What's hard about having an "assassin" guild and little legal pk options? Has the novelty of backstabbing NPC-monsters worn off? I'd think that plunging a dagger into a city guard's back (think: orc guards in shantytown) and getting a one-hit kill counts as an assassination, no?

For those players with uncontrollable bloodlust / desire to harm others / testosterone etc., well, maybe you should go look for another, more pk-friendly MUD. Or stick to the arena and mindlessly slaughter your friends. It's hardly fair to change entire pk rules of Icesus just to appease a (minority, still) group of players.

On a side note...PK Flag is a good idea. Would be nice to have some sort of identification to tell who to steer clear from, and nicer still to stumble upon idle PK-flagged player who's not in a safe room...

[felgand]

I disagree with Allanon's ostrich approach to playerkilling. Preventing or greatly hindering pk altogether moves Icesus further towards a one-dimensional hack'n'slash game of player vs. mindless NPC that's both boring and monotonous. Instead, i suggest that we embrace the playerkilling aspect of Icesus and provide positive reinforcement for players who put their own exp on the line when they perform such acts...so that there is comparable danger on both sides to losing something significant. That follows with the spirit of pk...which is challenging your wits, skill, and luck with a real, thinking player instead of whacking monster A for X exp amount, Y cash, and Z df.

First of all, I believe that guilds should not be blocked without a reasonable chance of breaking in for anyone. However in the same hand, when a player kills a citizen in their own city, this should alert all the guards in the city and immediately make the city guards aggressive to the assilant (yes, and this is only if the victim dies).

To address the issue of pk in Graemor, I suggest a rewards system in addition to a bounty system (to be explained in detail in another post). In this system, we encourage players to take risks when they attempt to pk, effectively raising the stakes for the aggressor. For this, I suggest a 10% exp boost to the current exp they have on for each successful kill they get in Graemor minus a 100k exp penalty. If they don't have the exp necessary, it is taken either from their bank account in the equivalent amount of silver or df. With this system, the assailant would need to have at least 1m exp on at the time they commited the pk to break even, thus putting themselves at a reasonable amount of risk. The exp reward would only apply once every 12 hours from the time they killed their victim in Graemor...but the penalty is always active.

By applying a reward/cost scheme, we give players the chance for benefiting (sometimes substantially if they put themselves at high risk) from an occasional pk, but in the same sense limiting rampant Graemor pk (there is a bonus once every 12 hours, but an ongoing -100k exp cost per pk) and mobilizing the city guards to do their damned job already. I propose this as a compromise solution for the players that enjoy the challenge of playerkilling while addressing the legitimate concerns of players that are irked by attackers who have nothing to lose from dying.

[suron]

Abusable

Kill an unarmed/unarmored friend to get the exp bonus and leave.

Graemor was implemented in the first place to be a free pk zone, and generally if you wanted to play a 'cool' (evil) guild you had to accept the fact that there was also a downside to it.

[cezar]

I almost felt like I am talking to a wall here. So many (note quotation marks) "responses", and Felgand is the first one to actually address the point of equitable risk pk.

Thank you.

Honestly people, I already heard 50 different ways to rephrase ''shadowdancers are supposed to take risk". Lets talk about why assailants don't have to take a risk under present system, and that is still with the advantage of preparation/ambush.

[apex]

Me and aralus were talking.. what IF- player killing in itself was revamped... and when you are player killed, the values for exp on you, and your assailant are reversed... so you lose only the amount that your assailant would lose. Also, the assailant gains the amount of exp you lose.

basically: Me and Cezar have it out in graemor. I have 200k exp on, cezar has 2m. I kill cezar- Cezar loses only the amount he would have lost if he only had 200k on, and i GAIN that amount as well.

In a repeat incident, Cezar kills ME. I lose the amount of exp that cezar would have lost (possibly going into negatives, and effecting my total worth) and he gains it...

The idea would need some safeguards, but it does offer risk and reward to both parties..

[iluth]

Detect traps is not the answer, for starters none of Graemors guilds get to train the skill, also while it is learnable by doing you would need to spend a very long frustrating and ep consuming time (talking about a year or so) dedicated to getting it high enough to have a chance of avoiding a trap. (can magical traps even be avoided conventionally?)

Easiest solution to this would probably be making all streets in Graemor "roads", so noone could place traps on them. Or for dancers/epriests just start defending their town, as in alerting guildmembers that 'foo' is in graemor, time for manhunt event, and actually coming to graemor to deal with intruder despite exprate loss. Closing all city exits would also be neat, if it wasn't for chronomancers. One could also try to convince wizards to remove legalized pk completely.

None of those solutions are desirable, probably the best solution would be that this mud wasn't overpopulated by idiots myself etadan i don't understand your thinking, ok it might be funny to kill somebody and then trap the temple, ONCE but why keep going? you're just abusing a system and being a dickhead.

I wasn't going to even make this post until i saw the hypocritical rubbish on chat just now about you being a newbie helper, from what i heard the newbie you killed had no eq and was idling :/

[etadan]

Detect traps is not the answer, for starters none of Graemors guilds get to train the skill, also while it is learnable by doing you would need to spend a very long frustrating and ep consuming time (talking about a year or so) dedicated to getting it high enough to have a chance of avoiding a trap. (can magical traps even be avoided conventionally?)

Magical traps are fairly new feature, and thus are somewhat out of balance. There was some topic on forums suggesting adding 'detect traps' skill to dancers iirc. Alternatively 'move silently' could be modified to help avoiding traps more efficiently. Don't recall if it got any replyies from wizards, but seems that dancers still don't have it.
And btw, afaik, there was/is a plan about other guilds getting similar traps.

(skipped quote)
Changing all streets of graemor to roads(which is somewhat logical), would effectivly prevent placing traps, without affecting anything else, afaik(although i doubt that shops, bank and such could be changed into roads, which leaves them vulnerable). Or magical traps could be removed altogether, but that's not my place to decide.
As for your solution, any realistic suggestions on on how change that? And overpopulated is is exaggerated, unless of course even one is too many.

...on chat just now about you being a newbie helper, from what i heard the newbie you killed had no eq and was idling :/

If it was me saying that, i want log of it as a proof. If it was someone else, how's that hypocritical *shrug*?
Besides i dont' see how being what you think i am, is exclusive with helping people? I'm pure evil?

[felgand]

This issue with magical traps in Graemor is being exceptionally exaggerated as a problem. I was an earth priest for a reasonable amount of time (~4 months) while magical traps were already in the game and I can't recall any instance where I strolled into Graemor and was hit by a magical trap that 10% detect traps didn't allow me to avoid. Magical traps may need some small fine-tuning, but I don't believe there is any problem with their damage or utility.

[iluth]

This issue with magical traps in Graemor is being exceptionally exaggerated as a problem. I was an earth priest for a reasonable amount of time (~4 months) while magical traps were already in the game and I can't recall any instance where I strolled into Graemor and was hit by a magical trap that 10% detect traps didn't allow me to avoid. Magical traps may need some small fine-tuning, but I don't believe there is any problem with their damage or utility.

The problem with you felgand, is that you don't percieve something to be a problem worth fixing unless it has affected you personally or one of your regular partyfellows. All i ever see you do on these forums is make grand plans which you have no idea how to code, and inform everybody else that their complaints or ideas are useless.

I do agree though that there is no problem either with their damage or utility, the traps are well coded for use everywhere besides graemor; the combination of those traps + graemor rules can make somebodys life quite miserable with minimal effort. The reason they won't be changed is because they're MEANT specifically to be set anywhere, so they can trap players and wandering mobs. AFAIK they can't be used for hunting. Maybe somebody can correct me.

To any mages who want to cause all the graemorians some problems, go and set one of your traps outside their death temple right now. You can continue your exping, your trap will sit tight until a dancer/whatever wanders into it and you'll get a guaranteed kill (even with a crappy ice trap) If you're really lucky he might've died with a few million exp on for you to point and laugh about.

[apex]

Iluth, while I agree it is abusable (As most things are)- remember that magic traps don't last very long. Unlike spike traps, etc. etc. etc. They wear off soon after setting. So you would have to hang around and maintain them in order to do any REAL harm...

[felgand]

Would you expect me rather to complain about hypothetical problems that I have have never seen being proven to be an actual issue?

And while I believe there are many good ideas on this forum, by some unfortunate twist of fate...most of them tend to not come from you, Iluth.

[iluth]

Apex, argh. :S Well somebody could've pointed that out earlier, i remember when those traps were being tested and managed to find one left in the outworld, looks like the spell duration has been shortened since then.

Would you expect me rather to complain about hypothetical problems that I have have never seen being proven to be an actual issue?

If it had happened to you, you'd be on here whining about it ASAP to make sure it didn't happen again, the same as i'm doing. Except the difference between me and you, is that i'm whining for someobdy who isn't in my guild, so i'm not protecting my own interests, and isn't my friend either.

And while I believe there are many good ideas on this forum, by some unfortunate twist of fate...most of them tend to not come from you, Iluth.

Well felgand, i'm not really interested in whether you like my ideas or not, wizards listen to ideas and implement code, not players.