Regarding some posts about pkers being evil, and cocky:
I've started playing Legend in the fall of 95, having stumbled
upon it while i was trying mud clients for medievia (it was pueblo).
I stuck to this mud cuz there wasn't any classes, and mistakes seemed
rather easy to fix (boy was i wrong) in a class-less system, plus i
liked the rent idea instead of paying it in coins. I've clanned
my first character in the spring of 96, i think, and i sucked. bad.
with that character all i did was pretty much lose, while getting
extremely lucky at times to pull off one or two wins. At the same time,
my mobkillers were having a ball, lvlling quite easily.
It seemed odd to me that i was having success in mobkilling but not in
pk, so time and time again i'd try pk after learning a few tricks in
mobkilling. truth to tell, none of my newfound knowledge helped any, and
i can pretty much guarantee you that it isn't in what you know that helps
you become a successful pker.
The thing that's paramount in pk is the experience and the attitude that
comes with accepting you suck at something you know about. Not like being
a newbie, since you know the place and the system, but somehow they
fail to apply as neatly as they would in pk. All the intangibles that
only mattered slightly in mobkill -- the feel you have when you KNOW you
should flee, the feel of doing a certain amount of damage, controlling
your adrenaline while walking into an agg-area -- become paramount.
And as any pkers would tell you, pking is a whole lot different from
mobkilling for most players, because most ppl who mud avidly develop a
kinship with their chars that must be deadened as you dip in more pk.
Mobkillers don't understand how ppl could be so ruthless in jumping an
unprepared person -- the truth is, pkers don't quite remember the time
when they felt as bonded to their characters being an alternate ego --
most of us who have fun think of our pkers more as a different kind of
clothing. RP tends to go out the window since effort usually leads to
affection to your current char, something you can scarcely afford if you
want to keep a cool head over the things that can and will happen while
pking.
(cont'd)
From: Mo
Tuesday, January 12, 11:55PM
Then again, i could only be speaking about myself, and not the
majority of the pk community :p
Anyway, over time, pkers tend to separate themselves from the mobkill
crowd, because they don't share the same feel towards the area. It is
odd to hang out with folk who putter about at 1hp and sleeping at inns
while you are constantly checking the who list to see if you can afford
idling or should make preparations for a visit.
Since most mobkillers tend to be folk who are not currently pkilling, or
never have (successfully or actively), it isn't too odd to find that
most pkers will have an air of superiority -- which usually decays to
total indifference to unclanned opinions.
Ask any pker, and they'll tell you that you can only judge if you are
still active. not not-enabled or once-enabled, but currently enabled and
active. balances shift, and even ooc alliances change rather often (given
that you view matter in an RL time-frame, not online time-frame) -- i've
personally have had different allegiances over the past years.
Above all, pkers bond. Not all, but a good number of them that are 'mature
players.' Most of us have respect for each other even if we fight both
ooc and ic -- be it grudging or not. If we didn't, how else do you
think it is that the same crowd can keep making new chars? I mean,
gee, i see this guy i hate ooc making a pker who is lvl 40, and i'm
lvl 50... let's perma him -- as far as i can recall, none of us
really went that far as to actually say 'let's perma this guy before
he hits 50.' sure, we might not feel bad about jumping him every
now and then, but that happens to anyone.
So for me, all those ppl who whine about pk being cruel and
inhuman are simply ignorant. I've had chars that were detested
by other players on this mud (not excluding this one) and still
manage to reach 50. T-Bone, Zeus, Dusk, Stun.. they all have
had chars reach 50, with or without ppl hating them, be it
thru guile or industry. The point is, it is doable and obviously
pk is worth the effort.
(cont'd)
From: Mo
Wednesday, January 13, 12:06AM
But, that doesn't mean pkers are without their gripes.
Changes, small or big, influences pkers drastically. Be it an
influence in competition or interest, changes are felt, mostly
by pkers who happen to stand right on the change. Creating
pkers is an effort, mostly because we strive to find a point
where playability and originality are pretty balanced. You can
tell veteran pkers from newbie pkers -- their chars are, if
possible, more to the wackier side than the 'trend.' Some happen
to be playing a trendy char simply because they were building
the char before they were trendy -- or maybe thought to cast
originality aside for a bit in order to compensate for their
last miserable failure :p
So we voice our concerns whenever a change is made, more visibly
than others because we can't get the same enjoyment by simply
switching to an alt that incorporates the new change. Unlike having
a slew of characters archived and brought back whenever a change
makes them playable again, we have to resort to perma'ing our
char or recreating one, because the char that would have benefitted
was retired (thru permanent means) a while ago.
(cont'd -- muahahahah)
From: Mo
Wednesday, January 13, 12:14AM
The point system is being suggested because it allows pkers to
do what they WANTED to do while making it possible to retire
their old characters in order to test future changes. Also,
progress is not hindered by losses, which isn't the case when it's
tied to xp -- a week's progress won't be wiped out by being
adventurous or daring one day.
A combination of xp and points, in my opinion, would be rather
redundant. Calculate a scale down to 0 xp and points required,
and simply remove the rest of the xp reqs, leaving only the point
req -- having the incentive to accumulate xp instead/as well as
points would deter ppl from pking, and see pking as a hindrance
to 'progress'--something i'd rather avoid. Of course, you could
have points worth almost nothing in terms of xp, but then the
scale would be rather moot.
Even with points, changing pkers won't be a snap. What it will
be is it will allow pkers to pk actively while simultaneousl
moving closer to retirement. Any argument in points making
retiring easy is moot -- you simply have to set the required
amount of points high enough -- 300 pts (100 pk bouts -- that
is, if you win all the portions of it -- take a hell of a
long time, and certainly you won't get that before perma if
you multi yourself to get it).
As far as separating pk and nonpk -- imho, nothing can be done
to bring the two groups any closer as long as that distinction
is in place. It's simple, really. You can or cannot, and the
existence of codes that make sure that the two conditions don't
overlap. True that pk damage is less, pk deathloss is less,
etc, etc, but that's more because there is a problem in the
mobkill system. Why is it that mobs become so much harder
when they wield a decent weapon? Why is it that mobs are made
such that they are so inherently different from players that
it is rare to see them being closer to players? If mobs' stats
were adjusted such that they represent the players at thsoe
levels (giving them weapons, lowering their stats to take
into account that they now do more damage, etc) then pk
would not have to be coded that much separately. But since
that is a lot of work, we avoid it and create new work as
imms create mobs that play by their own rules.
Players have to do that much damage because mobs are coded
in a way that requires that much damage to be done to them
in order to kill them, and also because they in return
don't do that much damage when it's perceived as a solo mob.
(if you noticed, a mob 'meant to be solo'd by most' rarely
does anywhere near the damage a single player would. Why?
Cuz we deviated from the very basic rule that governs newbies,
"A perfect match" being 50% chance of one coming on top
of the other -- which only seems to hold true at lvl 1)
(cont'd -- -cackle-)
From: Mo
Wednesday, January 13, 12:30AM
So unless you propose, or have plan to, make it such that
mobs actually are more reflective of players, don't complain
about mobkill and pk code being separate. The mud somehow got
coded with the top button buttoned thru the second hole, and
over the years, no one did anything about it, while the
problem simply snowballed.
In essence, there are really 3 different standards here, one
that is applied when creating mobs, one when creating nonpk,
and one that is applied when creating pk. If the standard
of creating mobs followed the standard of creating nonpk,
or vice-versa, there'll always be code that has to take that
into account when coding pk. I mean, you are pitting two
sainglends at each other otherwise.
I think i've touched on (the power of understating) most of
the issues i wanted to touch on, so let me take a break here :p
(cont'd -- possibly... heh.)
From: Mo
Wednesday, January 13, 12:44AM
oh yeah, on "pk is so boring, yet there are other pkers in range
that are in conflict."
1 - they might have recently fought already -- fighting the same
person over and over is not really too much more interesting than
killing the same mob over and over...
2 - they might have fought each other to death too many times
already -- same as 1.
In essence, pk gets boring cuz the time it takes for a new pkchar
to come into the scene is too long compared to the amount of spark
they bring, mostly because the players remain relatively the same.
Also, there isn't much to fight over after a while.. duelling is
seriously only interesting when you or the other is trying their
char out, and a too-ooc engagement has the risk of simply
becoming trading of wolfpacks, which is really trying to have
fun while trading blows with sledgehammers.
For pk to be fun, there needs to be an atmosphere that is currently
only shared by some of the lvl 50 folk, the carefreeness, such
that there can be numerous random encounters with little risk
of it becoming into trading wolfpacks.
