| How to fix pkill - very long |
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| How to fix pkill - very long |
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First, I disagree with the ida of clanning everyone. Too many people do not want anything to do with pkill with some or all of their character and the problems with multi and other arguments set out in previous posts are cogent reasons not to take this step.
Instead, consider the following:
1) Create Reputation - an attribute composed of your alignment and negative or positive reputation points assigned by some system based on actions, RP, achievements, and leadership skills. Pkill would always have a large negative effect on alignment (and thus reputation). but pkilling a character with a bad rep would give positive points, and pkilling a good rep characetr negative rep points. Thus, pkilling only those with a bad rep would at first basically not affect rep the align loss and rep gain would effectively cancel each other out. More involvement in pkill, however, would continue to decrease the characer's alignment eventually negating this.
Reputation could be enhanced by acts considered desirable on the mud rewarded. Achievements such as quests, winning games, holding office in a pkill or rp clan would be worth positive rep points. Leading a group would be worth positive rep points - the larger the groups and the bgger or more dangerous mobs killed, the higher the rep bonus. Reputation could be affected by rumors spread through newspapers, town gossips, etc. Helping newbies, retrieving corpses, and good RP could be rewarded with rep points. In this way an evil character who is a good leader or good RPer could still have a good reputation (could be infamous) and the rewards that go with it, while a character who does nothing butpkill and not contribute to mud life in other ways would have a bad reputation and trouble.
In game play, mobs would know your reputation, but not your align, and would act accordingly. Beefed up guards in good towns would attack, bar from entering, or defend against pc's with a bad rep. Shopkeepers would refuse business, innkeepers refuse to allow them more involvement in pkill, however, would continue to decrease the (ignore that last line) to rent. Innkeepers would be beefed up in strength (to about the Vlad's level) to allow them to keep order in their inns.
This would require changing (or adding) a few trans quests, increasing out of town resources so characters with a bad rep could buy supplies (traveling merchants, black market), and revamping the align system to take out most align quests, put more of an emphasis on alignment penalties for pkill and less on killing mobs.
This will then make towns in a sense safe zones where clan RP can actively take place, and marginal clanned characters who do not want to be attacked all the time can hide. A few towns can be evil (Romania, Tortuga, Zanzibar) and refuse entrance to characters with a good rep.
2) Increse true safe zones - make lots of safe zones where pkill cannot take place (say, all the churches, shrines, etc. and a few other area to be discovered) so that characters have somewhere to go if they don't want to be attacked instead of hiding in their clan hall. Inns would not be safe zones, but the innkeeper would defend against attacks making multis dangerous if not impossible in inns.
3) Create hireable guards - guards your level and below can be hired for _lots_ of gold (finally something to do with all that money) to provide protection or escort. Gives a good rp way to say retrieve your corpse in the wilderness after pkill when someone is planning to multi you without requiring that code be written against multis.
4) Put clan halls in the real world - no more out of time, inaccesible clanhalls - they will be in 1 spot guarded by an innkeeper strength mob and whatever aditional guards you wish to hire. Make items left in the clanhall rentable over crashes / reboots, etc. as a benefit of clanning and to encourage rp (sack your opponents clanhall) Make clan tokens usuable only for the clan channel and limit access to them to a mini-quest performed in the clan hall known to the clan members but not others who may gain entrance (although they could figure it out, given time).
5) Allow corpse looting only with steal skill, and only 1 item per death. Code a looted flag to prevent further looting, but let corpses decay so the itmes will be eventually abandoned if not retrieved in some reasonable period of time.
6) Allow clanning only between levels 10 - 15 to eliminate this power level to 35 when you have 35 attacks then clan syndrome, and make pkill an all levels phenomenon instead of only high-level as it is now.
7) Fix the XP scale so you can't level 10 times a night (would help with the above point by increasing the time you're clanned at low level) It's silly that I can kill a50th level mob at 18th level and advance at a rate of a level per mob. May require reducing the penalty for pkill death as it would be harder to recoup xp loss.
8) Assign a group of imms specific duties regarding clanned activities Have a PR imm to help with clan RP, an admin imm for admin stuff, and a coder / builder imm who does mostly coding for clan halls, etc so new clans can be created and established relatively easily and quickly. Put an emphasis on clanned activities and problem solving, rather than the current state of neglect / tolerance.
Create a structure for creation / removal of clans based on number of active participants and participation so that new clans are not only possible but encouraged, and mostly defunct clans are removed with the remaining members turning rogue or joining new clans. This will, of course, require active immort participation.
Again, these are just my opinions, I could be wrong.
Croaker
Number 5) Only looting by steal and only one object.
First of all not all players can steal (dex = 1 :)), so they would not have the oppertunity to get the evil enemies evil weapon and junk it...
Or what ever they do... Then steal should be a basic skill, so not all would be dex fighters, or what stats steal is based on.
Number 7) Fix of XP scale. It is true that you can speedlevel a char very fast, but you should also consider the new players who start here.
Most new players have a BIG problem getting XP and they die alot. If the XP scale was modified only to prevent speedlevelling, it would be =very hard to help newbies, who have died to get on track again. EX: A level 9 with poor combat skills is killed twice and have 80k xp to level -- she (hehe) can only kill like 200-500xp mobs thats alot of mobs
Well the solution to number 5 could be that you could take 1 item and then thats it. But with number 7 you will hurt some newbies.. Of course you could just say that it was their own problerm levelling...
Well rambling on again...
1) reputation stat
I strongly dislike the idea of immortals awarding reputation points.
However, the idea of players awarding reputation points for good
roleplay is something that I was discussing with several immortals
the other day. If, say, players accrued points to give away, and
the only source for reputation was each other, then it would take
many players choosing to aid one to give them a good reputation (yes,
reputation points would need to be scarce). Similarly, if it is
made a positive AND negative stat, where negative numbers reflect
infamy, then the characters whom people perceive as "bad" will acquire
high degrees of "bad" fame.
Then we rip out prestige and replace it with absolute reputation. :)
2) Safe zones
I tend to dislike 'em. They get used for taunting, which saps mud morale
and annoys people. They tend not to get used as refuges by those who
actually need them.
3) Hireable guards
This is something that sort of goes with ownership in skill trees. Once
you "own" a guard or pet, it can act in this way, hopefully (the spec
for owned creatures is rather incomplete right now).
4) Clan halls "in the world"
Well, this is basically what the idea of making them player houses does,
except that by adding in features only immortals can add, we open the
mud up to the exact same problems we have now of lack of GM control over
clans, the difficulties in forming one, and the difficulties in inactive
ones.
The aspects regarding saveable items in the halls are coming with the
ownership stuff.
5) Corpse looting
Something like this is already on the table for skill trees. And yes,
steal WILL be required to get anything from a player corpse. Yes, that
means that looters have to know steal. Do we consider that a major
issue? Not really... especially if we tie steal to an effect on your
reputation or alignment, as it then becomes an in-game issue.
6) Allow clanning only in a very tight range in the lower levels
This is something that Kaige has been pushing for for a very long time.
She suggested that at level 10--or better yet, when you MAKE the character
you specify that you wish to clan. No later. In the latter case, the
character is automatically clanned upon reaching level 10.
7) Change the Xp scale
This is happening anyway. Tables of the new XP scale are available on the
web site at http://mud.sig.net/xpscale.html for the curious. I think
they were also in the Legendary Times.
8) Assign Imms to do nothing but clanned activities
I strongly dislike this notion. I don't think that clanned should be
treated in such a separate fashion from the rest of the mud, as I think
it is a major source of problems with the current design. I also think
that devoting even one imm is likely to be too much manpower most of the
time. I also think that cries of favoritism would result. I also think
that we need to assume clanning should be fun for its own sake, and that
if we need to shore it up with activities, it's not being done right.
I also think that immortals are not really capable of getting clans to
rp. I doubt that promptness in removing old clans will help much, and
making it easy for new clans to be created but still requiring imm
intervention to do so will be crazy, with new clans forming weekly
and never sticking around (one of the advantages of the current long
delays is that only prospective clans with some staying power ever get
far enough into the process to actually get a clan).
-Ptah
It sounds like we agree on most of the other issues in the middle of the post, but..
I think there does need to be an emphasis on clanned activities from some sector of the immortal hierarchy. Whether this is specific imms with clan-related duties or just a redefining of certain roles to include working to improve clanned life and pkill issues, a definite immort presence is needed. This need not be favoritism as they would be working on issues involving all clans, not catering to a particular clan's needs. I think the idea of encouraging clan turnover is a good one. If requirements are stringent to prevent the sort of problems you envisage, it would be beneficial.
Growth is change, and empowering the players here to alter the pkill landscape by creating new clans if the old ones are unacceptable (voting with their feet) is a means of growth. We don't need a new clan every time 3 friends get together and want to try something new, but the system could be designed to at least facilitate such change if it is desired.
Croaker
a 5 level limit on pkill attacks
clans on the outside
guard shopkeeper and innkeeper attacks only if the character has been a bad boy pkill wise i.e. stolen too many times, multied, pkilled too many times in a certain a amount of time
have this NOT based on align (agg mobs)
understandable if they don't let you rent or buy things
most of these ideas sound good
there'd obviously be a blood bath initially if this was implemented but... I am sure things would die down
one thing to think about: what about chars like flyingfox that people of all groups wished to slaughter.
seems the crazy freaky types that we sometimes get on the mud would be mistreated by this sort of system.
-shrug-
I think there could be shops where evil mobs run the place in some areas, but it would be hidden and harder to get to
would it be like you can give so much points to each person, or just you h ave this much and you give as many as you ahve to anybody...?