| Redesign clans? |
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| Redesign clans? |
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Why Redesign Pkill?
Quite aside from the issue of social problems surrounding pkill, there are a lot of mechanical issues that cause difficulty. The current setup of clan halls is practically impregnable until the password gets out. Then it is thoroughly vulnerable. It is extremely difficult to change passwords. There is no wa for a clan to setup increased defenses via expenditure. Clan membership management is extremely difficult. Guildmasters do not have any way to punish their memebers, kick them out themselves, or clan folks themselves. There's a large immortal workload as a result of all the above, and the clans themselves chafe at the problems. Inactive clans linger on, because accurate rosters aren't available to make it clear that they need to be removed. There's no reward to active clans.
Why this Post is Utter Speculation
Because it's going to suggest a pretty radical revision of pkill in general that may well not suit. :) That's why it's just for talking about--not even being considered for implementation.
Basic Principles:
Clans need to have ongoing commitment from members, else they automatically lose clan privilege.
A guildmaster should have control of his roster.
Clans need to have much greater control over their defenses in their hall.
The division between pkill and unclanned needs to go away (controversial, I know).
There need to be real, serious, in-game consequences for pkilling.
Some ideas as to how.
The clanned/unclanned issue:
Clan everyone at level 10. Use the current level restrictions for in-game
restrictions--say, killing outside the ten level limit causes a major loss
of align for the aggressor, plus also costs experience. If experience is
lost by this mthod, it CAN reduce levels earned. (Obviously, this would
have to be only under skill trees, where hp/ma/mv do not gain by level).
Make those with low align unwelcome in cities. At extreme low ranges, guards attack them, innkeepers and shopkeepers refuse them service, etc. They are outlaws and must live as such. Guard would even post the names of suspected criminals on local boards so that player bounty hunters could come after them, and even claim cash rewards.
Attacks by good aligned characters against evil-aligned characters might not result in penalties. Most every method of changing alignment in the game, or of checks saying "you are too evil to do that" or whatever changes to become something that changes your align based on intrinsic behavior. EG, if you use poison, backstab, whatever, you are a sneaky guy and your align drops simply because you use tactics like that.
Halls: they go away. Instead, player housing is used to have a hall--or multiple halls. You'd be able to tame animals that are persistent over reboot and also hire guards that are persistent over reboots, and define a friends list for them. Then you simply set them to guard the room. The GM is responsible for collecting the money. Stuff stored in a clan hall's player-made chest woul dbe persistent over reboot as well. You could pay a premium to get gardens to root in, etc. People on the friends list can add other folks to the friends list, thus giving the actual clanmembers control over who can ge into their clan hall. If the fees for the hall are not paid due to lack of organization, the hall goes poof just like any other player house--and the 'clan' dissolves. There are no formal clanhalls as such--no formal clans as such either, really. Merely associations. Benefits: perhaps the ability to recruit or maintain shops in some fashion, proceeds to go to the clan--if you can recruit a shopkeeper, you could get a discount for all members on that shop's wares, maybe. The ability to customize your clan hall to a fair extent, of course. The ability to control your own roster.
Problems: people would, of course, have multiple clanned, increasing the odds of crossplay a lot. It'd get hard to play an evil character. We might be abel to get around that by splitting align into align and reputation. Everyone woul dbe vulnerable, of course, so the penalties for being a jerk would need to be substantial. No more instant hall access from inns, of course. no more clan channels, not that folks use them anyway.
Sorry this was disjointed. Any comments? Again, this is off the top of my head, just idly thinking. :) NOT a plan anyone is looking at seriously.
-Ptah
People come to this mud as a mud that isn't ENTIRELY pkill, if it were changed as you suggested, this becomes little more than a solid pkill mud and reduces a lot of the fun of killing mobs.
I like the idea of increased clan security, but definetly do NOT like the idea of clanning EVERYBODY at level 10.
However, we do perhaps need commands as gms to kick out members, get new members, and check on rosters and stuff
But the idea of clanning all people who hit level 10 in my opinion is not a very good idea, and will only get people to leave the mud.
Morph
$.02
Yes, everyone would be clanned, but those who are nasty about it would definitely have unhappy lives.
-Ptah
The reputation would be very interesting to see and people getting squashed by guards when they walk into a town would keep me laughing for a long time.
Anyways, I don't see too much wrong with it, I haven't played a clanned character since I perma'd myself because of the pkill 'society' we have now.
Just words from somebody who's missing quite a few marbles,
-Tyche
Toranthaz the Wizard
GuildMaster of the Hermetic Order
Don't worry, I'm sure if towns are made a kind of safe haven there'll ooky also be a safe way to travel between towns.. like a yellow submarine!
Its become the case that players have the choice only between no involvement in pkill at all, or making a character just for pkill. Its considered foolish to clan your only character or your best role-play character.
A minority of aggressive characters who regard pkill only as ruthless competition are able to dominate pkill because people who don't like this type of attitude or behavior can stop playing a clanned character.
The fact that people voluntarily accept the risks of clanning is also used as an excuse for taking no responsibility for pkill behavior.
Anybody who objects to anything is told they should not have clanned, leading to players having to choose between not playing a clanned character at all or giving up playing their character the way they wanted to.
Clanning all characters would not necessarily make the problem worse if it led to people being able to play their clanned characters in a variety of different ways, with little risk of having a style of pkill which doesn't suit them infli
But though it sounds good in theory I personally think the cross-play if people had multiple clanned characters would be a major problem.
I don't know how many people would play different characters with different loyalties (ie not all having the same associations) considering that keeping characters secret is so difficult and confusion of ic and ooc issues is so common.
What would happen if one character loses a fight and the player then brings on another character to get revenge? Would this be illegal? What would stop people changing characters during a fight? (ie your character is attacked by somebody ten levels above you and you rush to rent and get your character ten levels higher than them). Cross-play is bad enough now, unless there is a major change in attitude I don't see how it would wo ...hmm forget the rest of that line :P
Bleah...I wanted to comment on the rest too but its 2.30 am where I live, I'll save it :P
Ishtar
I think the best thing to do for Pkill/Clans is to redesigned the system for RP..
To explain let me give examples of what I think were some good pkill/rp situations and some Imm characters that help in the goal
Kiera vs. The Order of the Scroll: This was fun, and there was a reason for a pkill rampage
OTS vs. Secretives Everything that happened was 1)agreed upon and 2) Mutually enjoyed.
Dark Lord: Always a good character for RP, we ealways enjoy this because someone
always finds a way to have fun and distort how things work with the "guppy"
Now how to make it better...
I would like to see a Imm character as kind of a mascot for each clan, to
announce the joining of new characters, etc.
Knights: I thought something like an Avatar or other "holy" character to reward
them for service done for the good of LEgend, etc...
OTS: Not sure what to do here, maybe just a librarian or something along those
lines
Grendels:No clue, tough to say since the idea behind the Grendels was that they
don't care (ennui)...
As for the others take an idea that the whole clan values as a major theme, and help them design a character that can be made to be their respective icon...
Just my thoughts though all, after all I gave up on pkill since I can't fight level 20 mobs without getting clobbered.
Morwynn
My sole question: how does the above change anything at all? Do the immort mascots get to playerdelete clanmembers who don't do what they consider to be proper behavior, or what? :P Adding a mascot doesn't change human nature nor does it serve to integrate pkill with the mud more. Nor does it even necessarily encourage rp...
-Ptah
Then everyone's gonna be a possible victim to people like Kahn and Daavya. I wouldn't like to play a gam where I have to worry about getting killed all the time, that's why I quit pkill in the first place.
I think pkill's broke in a mjor way, but I would sooner see it pulled completely than clan everyone. You'd loose fewer players that way.
Tank
Its difficult to say since each of the clans has a different atitude on what consists of "service" to the clan.
OTS believe that aiding others and learning about Legend is service...
Mercs:??? More jobs done maybe???
Grendels: Hmmm maybe the more ennui they inspire?
Knights: Serving Legend
What I mean to say is that the system now in my opinion doesn't work not because everyone wants to pkill, but because the reasons FOR pkill are non-existant.
I know a lot of people that have left pkill becauser they didn't like the system now where people just get killed off for being on Legend, they might want to come back if they were allowed to try pkill for RP reasons
Rp reasons for Pkill could be a clan/family member was killed in cold blood(Clans Mcd and Maclaren), someone stole an artifact from someone else(OTS/Mercs).
I'm not the best at describing things like this on the fly, if I had more time to think and write some things down I could probably spam the eniter board with a message regarding ways to make Pkill better from my viewpoint
Morwynn again
-Ptah
For those that don't clan, they lose the ability to know that they have people to rely on if something untoward happens to them, but it also lets them explore Legend making contacts with people from many groups and possibly becoming a bri
Hmmm anyway non-clanned characters can be useful as well since they can allow clans to talk with a mediator without fear of biases...least that would be my dream
Now I turn the discussion back over to Ptah
Morwynn
One reason why I said that the ideas would not work without clanning everyone is that the clanned/unclanned barrioer is one of the most troublesome aspects of the current system, causing as many problems as any other part of the system... in order for things like reputation to work, they have to work across the board.
-Ptah
Whee, rambling on.
Threshold.
First of all, the guards attacking evil characters bit. Something would have to be done with the guards that would make this an actual threat :P London has no guards, cept maybe the bobby, and the combined guards of tara and lima and such aren't likely to make your average level 50 sweat. On the other hand, if they were upped enough to make them a challenge to most level 50s, then any low level who happened to be evil would most likely not last a round or two against them.
As for the clanning everyone, this seems to be a complete break from the past in terms of allowing more than one clanned per person, and I'm not sure most of the people here would be able to resist the temptation to crossply (no offense)
Umm, i think that's all i have to say right now, but i'm sure i'll think of more.
Point
Otherwise people would simply randomly kill everyone without regard to align, then spend 5 minutes going good again so they could rent.
Point
suppose that you could enter the town even if you have a evil align, but if you show that you do anything bad, maybe attack another player, casting evil magics, or whatever level 50 guards would come rushing at you
they should be made slow, maybe move about 1 room per sec or 2 secs so that they person has a chance to escape the town
maybe the person is level 50 also and successfully kills the guards, he will be beat up pretty badly. and the person who he attacked (level 40+) due to the 10 level pkill thing can come back and fight the person again
so due to this reason, even if everyone were clanned, if they stayed within the town they would be pretty safe and can continue to kill rats or whatever
mid-low levels would never even consider attacking a person within a town, and would only pkill outside of the walls...
the guard doesn't nessesarily have to 50...maybe 40 or so
oh yeah, and if you ever want to duel you should probably make it so that if you announce it the person cannot call on the guards just because you attacked first :)
Leth
It'd might also attract more people to clan their chars for such a purpose. This RP encouragment would require work from the PR imms, but it'd be well worth while, and they could also design tiny plots etc for the clanned people, rather than just for the non-clanned. This would give people a reason to roleplay within pkill..
- Pegasus
Most of what I wanted to say is in that append.
Second, I would like to say that I personally dont find the pkill situation so bad -- Ok I have only been a pkiller for a short while, but I have been around for some time. And I have hardly never seen a totally unprovocated pkill, multi and loot -- And I think that its up to the 'good' clans who do nothing like that to stop it if someone does it. We should just stick topgether and kill whoever kills unprovocated. It is naive to think that you can make a perfect world by making tough rules. Some people will always ruin something for other people -- but if we just helped each other killing these nogood people who ruined everythink for others there w
So basically I think the system now is good, but even better with the additions from Pegasus. And that about you cant kill people so much with the system proposed by Ptah dont hold -- It is easy to speedlevel a char to level 50 -- esp if you get a whole clan to help doing it -- then clans could just speedlevel alot of level 50 pla
.. Argh line too long again...
then clans could just speedlevel alot of chars and kill with these -- even if you gave like -200 alignment for every pkill then would still be able to kill 5-6 people or more.
Then you could just quit them and speedlevel some new... (Or buy a +alignment :))
So I think we should keep this system, add the thinks in Pegasus append, and stick together against pkillers who ruin it for us 'nice' pkillers.
secondly...i think the idea of clanning everybody is a good one, but not with current level restrictions. I think they will need to changed from 10 levels to lets say 5 levels in order to be in range..this would make the fight be more fair.
also, nobody has still said anything about muliting/looting. its a major issue in my book.
you should be working on finding away to keep this from happening. I pkill on alot of other muds and i always get my eq back _if i die_ because they have away of saving my eq. I am wondering why this mud has never had a feature like this...
And another thing, we should do away with the clans or at least clanhalls. they are nothing more then just a place to hide.
my 2 cents!
Mad-Max _former GM of Knight of Legend_ _former player of
Legendmud_
PS. if your wondering why i should care if i dont play here anymore, I'll tell you.
this is still the best mud i have ever played on, as well as my first mud. I've learned alot here and have met and made friends with some of the best people i have ever known
I may return with the instation of the skill trees..but only time will tell..
But until then, i will remain lurking in the comfort of the shadows i call the internet. laters! --Max
I also like Croaker's ideas about more safe-havens (post 45).
I think maybe a whole area (like abbey) maybe in each era should be a safe haven in which newbies/characters may play without fear of pkill. (level/etc) I think there should be evil towns and good towns.
I agree with everyone clanning at level 10. I remember the fun of April fool's Day when virtually everyone was clanned. The only downside was that the level restrictions were backwards, but that is easily fixed.
I don't know how much I agree with guards rushing to attack, I think maybe in some towns this is okay, but in every town and city? I think alignment should be thrown out the window completely and switched with an idea more like reputation. Hmm, it seems like I had a lot more thoughts about these posts but now I dont remember them all :P Well when I think of them later I'll post them here.
-riptide
Morph
In addition, gone would be the worries of non-clanned interference in pkill
Some might say that all hell would break loose if such a thing were to come about. In my opinion, nothing of the sort would happen. The majority of people conduct themselves in a polite and hospitable manner and this would not change. And say someone did decide to go on a killing spree; well, that's life, and it's up to the rabble to do somethin about it.
Then again, I suppose one might want to set in some sort of justice system
That's another can of worms though...
Anyways, just food for thought.
-Strider