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Comments
Santar was right a few pages back, when he said that people just don't want to lose. Opening up group PK requires a mentality shift in the playerbase as well. If more people played like Ashtan, with no regard for whether or not they'll lose, instead of issuing everything in sight or persisting in this ridiculous belief that they can't possibly compete with X because they're so outclassed, outskilled and outartied, so they might as well just sit around and do nothing, then more people would be involved in group PK.
Mhaldor in general has a quite healthy outlook on group PK, so it has a high involvement, even if they will sometimes stack the deck in their favour to ensure that they win. Ashtan is Ashtan. Rangor's outlook on PK is incredibly well-known: he'll happily throw himself and his group at an insurmountable object for as long as they're having fun, and he'll work to ensure that his side remain positive and upbeat despite the losses.
People in other cities, such as Hashan and Targossas, are much more negative from my observation. There are pretty much endless initiatives in Targossas to improve this, but nobody takes to them because people would rather do their own thing/nothing. From the looks of it, Hashan is in a similar boat, but its leaders seem more negative if you go by what you see on the forums.
That is the problem as far as lowering the barrier to group PK is concerned. Fix the attitude and you fix the problem.
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
I really don't think the way experience works is a cause for concern in regards to Achaea's playerbase.
If you want to look at 'barriers' for new players, then look no further than the enormous macro-transactions.
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
People keep suggesting these new little XP systems, but what's wrong with what we've got? Lose a bit of xp if you die. Gain a bit of xp for bashing/killing someone. If you play the game like a reasonable person, you'll go up over time. You can also play the game without constantly going up in XP. Gaining XP isn't a necessity to play. Plenty of people play around 80-90, including people who are involved in combat and other high-end functions. It's fine.
There's a lot of barrier to entry problems for Achaea, but experience isn't one of them. Anyone who puts in the basic amount of time to play the game can level up into the 70s or 80s even as a new player. It's easier now than it has ever been before.
Achaea has two major barriers. 1. It's a MUD. 2. It has an utterly preposterous pay to win model. If I were considering a new game to play right now and saw Achaea, I definitely wouldn't play it. There's pretty much 3 business models that gamers are willing to accept these days. 1. Free-to-play with micro transactions. 2. Monthly subscription. 3. Pay once, play forever. All three of those models are decent, and work under different conditions.
I'm aware that Achaea probably can't afford to switch business models for obvious reasons. It's pretty much a sinking ship. The fact remains though. It's one of the biggest reasons people don't stick around Achaea. Taking one look at the credit page would send most people running.
That's fine, and is a perfectly valid way to play Achaea. You have no interest in something, so you don't get involved in it.
The entitled whiners are the ones who want to get involved but only in a way where they cannot lose anything, because they're bashing to dragon.
Restores lost experience from your last death.
Syntax: WIPE TEARS
Taking the linen handkerchief in both hands, you dab the tears from your eyes.
Not sure how much something like this should cost. Seems pretty overpowered, so the obvious solution would probably be to offer it as a unique, one time only auction item before making it available to the rest of the population one month later for ~2500 credits.
Or we get this argument:
@Bluef said: Because really, what we all need to fix is our mindsets. Ignoring the silliness of saying that everyone should just decide to enjoy a part of the game that they dislike (and that even the producers have said is, and always will be, boring), this seems to highlight a rather absurd, unsupported claim that people who argue for the status quo repeatedly make. That is, that experience loss as it is now, particularly after a few previous changes, is low enough that no one should really mind it, or should easily be able to work past it with a little bit of willpower, but at the same time is high enough that it causes dragon to become a meaningful achievement. This is really just paradoxical, of course, since if everyone just changed their mindsets about experience and stopped caring/minding then it would have the same effects on dragon that they claim mechanically changing it would, but the allure of the status quo prevails.
And no, this isn't true either:
I am level 80. I used to be 81, but lost it and haven't bothered get back up to it. I don't care about dragon right now, and don't know if I ever will. This does not mean that it doesn't make sense to care about experience loss, however, and it's rather silly to suggest it does. Firstly because, as is noted in that exact post, gaining Logosian is an achievement, one that does take time and makes the game significantly less tedious (as was pointed by @Caladbolg, who seems to even have the mindset that's being advocated for), and one that is significantly more losable then dragon without regular hunting. But more importantly, this is a game where health quite directly is based on levels. A certain amount of health is needed to even begin to participate in combat, level 80 often being bandied about as a decent point where one can start to meaningfully participate. Not caring about dragon does not mean that I can realistically not worry about having to maintain my health pool, and that necessitates valuing experience.
And a lot of these arguments just seem to ignore the reality of the game. for instance, the claims similar to:
totally ignore how much combat, or participation in it, doesn't always happens in sanctioned raids. I can't sit in Mhaldor telling people that I'll defend when it becomes a raid when people are out skirmishing on the isle. And this isn't some minor happening, since three cities have areas that they tend to defend as if it was their city. Not to mention that shrine conflict is heavily pushed for in several cities, and small-scale skirmishing in a city might not cause a sanction. If all group pvp happened in sanctioned raids, no one would care about experience loss (and I'll point out again how claiming that something like the quoted is hugely significant massively undermines the claims about runaway hunters getting to dragon were a change made).
And I am still perplexed as to why so many people seem stuck only arguing against a single implementation (that is, all experience loss removed). Despite multiple people talking about it and suggesting variations on a system that would increase experience gain until someone caught up to where they were, no one has offered a single meaningful critique to it, choosing instead to pick the option that they can most easily argue against, it seems. After all, such a system wouldn't allow for all the doom and gloom about dragon, since if someone caught up to their previous experience in the fight there would be nothing to regain at a faster rate. I honestly am not sure why changing it so that, say, a single death only cost you fifteen minutes of bashing rather then thirty would be anything but an improvement under the current system, and even for people who wanted dragon it would only make pvp engagement slow you down less. (And in case anyone is going to argue "but then everyone will just ask for it to be even easier," I'm going to go ahead and suggest that such a debate would be far more productive after such a change would be tested, and is actually completely unresponsive to whether or not such a change would be an improvement). Seriously, at the very least argue against a solution other then total removal just to make this whole debate a little less repetitive.
If anyone actually has read this far, I apologize if this post is found to be overly snarky or rude or something of the sort. I happen to be rather tired of being told that these claims are
It is ridiculous to claim that it's 'entitled whininess' to dislike being forced to spend long hours on an aspect of the game that the admin have admitted is, and always will be boring, just for the privilege of getting to participate in the part of the game that they claim is what the focus of development is. Especially when conflict, especially in terms of combat, is only being increasingly encouraged. Two cities require participation in group combat, cities are more and more at each others throats, orders are more and more polarized. It's hardly whining to want to be able to participate in what is nay increasingly a huge segment of the game, as well as the rp of entire factions. After all, if I wanted to go spend hours grinding, as Serapis said in a different thread, I should really just go play a game that pours it's entire budget into it. At least then I get to press a few more buttons.
tl;dr: contradictory arguments are bad arguments. Arguing for the status quo in a shifting game landscape in which combat participation is increasingly necessary is probably not the best argument either. And please, if you want to argue for the status quo, at least argue against more then the solution that's easiest to predict apocalyptic consequences for.
May we appeal upon you to unleash your powers of reason on her other arguments or shall we simply talk past them?
The proper response to this would go find and quote forum discussions, house requirements, in-game discussions/wisdom, look at the health difference between 60 and 80, compare those numbers with the damage that some of the new knight specs can easily output, and maybe manage to phrase them all wittily. I'm really hoping that doing so isn't necessary, though.
The only recipe for bringing new people into PvP is changing the ratios of investment, risk, and reward. By making PvP more accessible to people that are not serious combatants, you will be alienating seasoned fighters for giving everyone else a free pass. The general mindset seems to be: I worked so fricken hard to learn combat, why shouldn't they? I personally think the best approach is to make PvP more accessible -- lower experience death on loss, reduce the gap between full artefacts and no artefacts, reduce the gap between omnitrans and tri-trans. At the same time, create new ways for top-tier fighters to distinguish themselves and add tangible rewards for participating in combat at any level. PvP-focused artefacts could be introduced, PvP racial traits could be unlocked, more health/mana/damage mitigation could be provided, PvP-tier credit rewards, essentially, in a mud, you can give a whole lot of useful perks/benefits to people that excel in a specific area and combat should not be an exception.
Regardless of all of that, I somehow doubt that dying in PvP is the main contributor in limiting people from achieving dragon. It may be for some of the more dedicated fighters, but not a huge segment of the playerbase dies in PvP 3-5 times per day.
This is true at the highest tiers of combat, but not so much at the entry level, and particularly so for group combat. Achaea could always take a page out of Aetolia's book by introducing trinkets that do not stack with artifacts (+1 stats, +sip, etcetera) if you want to reduce the gap between non-paying customers and paying customers. Overall, I think IRE as a whole has taken steps in the right direction (the 1,000 lesson packages were great). Anyway, I still think that artefact and lesson prices are not the prime concern here; a lot of people that are playing the game stay out of combat altogether even though they have artefacts or a lot of transed skills. It may be the main issue for some people, but definitely not all.
Personally, I generally preferred group combat over individual combat when I played muds. Raids against cities are stressful because you are obligated to participate and they sometimes stretch on for a very long time. Temporary objectives (Aetolia), or territorial skirmishes (Wheel of Time-mud), or even miniboss/capture the flag objectives can be a lot of fun. I have no idea how sanctioned raids work in Achaea, but I'll try to participate when I have the opportunity.
EDIT:
I JUST WON THE 100 COMMENTS BADGE! I AM INDOMITABLE! ^_^
Some awesome new things happened around here to help break down this PK barrier...
-Server Side Aliases complete with multiple commands and variables (so awesome)
-Server Side Queuing System (Freeing up lots of lag issues)
-Server Side Curing System (Less need for 3rd party scripts)
-Many bug fixes and adjustments
My thoughts on XP...
First, keep the Experience Ranking system as it is, make it only effected by denizens. If they kill you, you lose XP, if you kill them you gain XP.
Second add new XP bracket, for PK, we will call them "Notches"
- Reduces by one level every Achaean day if you had no Player kills, or if slain by another player.
- You gain 1 notch per player killed, 25 maximum points allowed per month.
- 1, 5, 10, 15 , 20, 25....6 cool perks.
(Just some ideas on how it could work...)
- 1 Notch - Infamy! with a Notch in your *belt. Opening you up to the Mark/Infamy scene.
- Each kill you get another notch...
- 5 Notches! More Infamy! with a Cooler Notch in your belt plus 5% XP gain for killing denizens, but suffer a 5% health loss due to your insane thirst for player blood!
- More notches...
- 10 Notches!- MORE INFAMY! With an even COOLER Notch...Little skull or something...BUT...Your inflated ego causes you to lose 10% of your mana pool, but you damage denizens with 4% critical bonus.
- Even more notches...(You are showing off your belt now, knowing if someone kills you, your ego is goooooone......
- 15 Notches!!! - MUCH MORE INFAMY!!! Awesome Notch added, 10% XP gain, 10% Health reduction...
- 20 Notches!!! - More Infamy...more pros and cons...20% mana loss... 2% extra critical...
- 25 Notches! - Major Infamy!! Bragging Rights! Fighting for your life to keep your notches +1 Strength etc. etc... (I would like at this point to add some cool Assassin/Hero Mark system, denizen assassins that show up and try to kill the player, they automatically have a Hire on them...things like that.)
Anyway, if a player kills you, you don't lose the XP you would gain or lose from hunting and killing denizens.
If you are actively PKing, you are winning and losing notches, that have perks or work in some fashion to reduce the winning player's vitals a bit but make them effectively better at hunting with critical bonuses and XP boosts.
Or something similar.
(*Belts sold separately...)
ETA: Assist XP would be fine, but it will snowball things the other way, as stated before, since the people who are winning now will be rewarded more for winning.
Further, if the preferable scenario here is that people just stick to sanctioned raids, then we should already be causing all the problems that are being associated with reduced experience loss. If it were really that easy, there would be no problem with encouraging other forms of pvp as well.
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
The problem is that I can't afford to lose the next or I'll lose what I spent a rather long time earning, and if I didn't regain that the health drop would start to become significant. This means that I can't just engage in group pvp without upkeep, this costing time.
Then again, responding to this is rather silly, since it's a textbook ad hominem attack. You literally just said that you shouldn't have to answer my argument because I'm too lazy for the rest of anything I said to matter. It's called a logical fallacy because who I am, or whether I'm lazy, or whatever doesn't change the rest of the arguments made. It is quite literally fallacious to suggest that your claim here is at all an answer to anything in my post.
And heck, at worst you're right, and I, and everyone else who doesn't like experience loss is lazy, but maybe that doesn't actually change the situation? Regardless if one's motivation to not wanting to hunt is time, lack of interest in that specific aspect of the game, or laziness, that still makes for a group of players who would otherwise like to participate in pvp and currently feel disincentivized to do so. If a reasonable solution can be found that gets these players involved without significantly reducing the work it takes to get to dragon, I still fail to see how it would be anything other then a benefit to the game.