Genesis Forums

I got to ask:

what exactly do those chars to you, that you accuse of having botted themselves up to unreasonable sizes?

They can offer you plenty of fun:
None of them will complain about being slain (again) as far as I know - almost free targets.
Most of them offer help to their guild-members and/or other people when approached.
Some of them help spread the eq around. Eq that you would not be able to get yourself even with a larger team.

The only PvP I know about recently was among myths. Some of them pretty funny ones (like fearing own teammember). I'm quite confident wizzies could post anonimized statistics of attacks/deaths among players for the last months, which include size of the attacker and target.

Obviously you can continue to whine and complain. Not playing actively at all or not investing even 1/10 of the time in your chars as others do (like Celephias, for example) does not give your statements (whining, complaining or theoretizing about the game) more creditibility.

As I wrote in my first note - "Gues this will however not solve the issue some people here have with Irk or Phantom ;p". Should maybe add Pasha to that list.
Or are you people whining about someone else too? Let's hear names instead of just whining in general?

Zhar wrote:I believe that everything was a bit easier when everyone was smaller and people didn't care about death all that much as you could easily recover in a day or two. There also wasn't such pressure on questing as you didn't need to do so many of them to have reasonable brute at reasonable mortal level.

You could recover in a day or two back with the old death?

Cherek wrote:

Zhar wrote:I believe that everything was a bit easier when everyone was smaller and people didn't care about death all that much as you could easily recover in a day or two. There also wasn't such pressure on questing as you didn't need to do so many of them to have reasonable brute at reasonable mortal level.

You could recover in a day or two back with the old death?

Yes. Old champion was pretty much equivalent to the new veteran. If you're dedicated enough (and has cash to spare) you can reach veteran with new character in 2-3 days or so running solo. To recover death at this level you only need to go to clean up one of the premier grinding spots with a team twice or thrice, which can be done in hours, not days. I have assumed a more realistic scenario with someone being around hero size and doing everything solo, shouldn't take more than a couple of days to get you back where you were after death.

Zhar wrote:I have assumed a more realistic scenario with someone being around hero size and doing everything solo, shouldn't take more than a couple of days to get you back where you were after death.

Assumptions based on assumptions. You have convinced me as usual. I am again convinced that you are talking out of you ... well, not experience.

Zhar: As a veteran now with death recovery and grinding places with great XP, yes, then you can recover in a day or less.

A champion back then however had no death recovery and harsher death penalty, no great grinding spots, and much more competition for places like LoD/Flotsam/Bicorns etc. Also, most people played from schools or at home with modems, so running on scripts for days just didnt happen... so no way you could recover in a day or two.

Either I've forgotten completely, but as I remember from back then recovery took a long time. several weeks, maybe months. Or more for some. So I dont agree that recovery was easier back then, the opposite actually.

Anyway,
After giving this idea some more thought, I do like the idea of give you other types of death penalties, but unfortunately I think huge amounts of money maybe isnt the way to do it? Like has been said already, it's great for those who are already huge and have huge bank accounts, and it also promotes botting, especially forge-botting, which probably is the easiest way to become rich these days. And, the whole issue of guild XP needs to be solved as well... if paying doesnt give guild XP, then you might as well grind your way back and get guild XP? Since thats the positive side of death. But maybe death recovery should not provide guild XP at all? But is that fair? That would make people much more hesitant to switch guilds.. which I dont think is a good idea?

So yes, making people less scared of dying is one aspect of getting more PVP, which I definitely want as well, but the idea needs some tweaking and some problem needs to be solved. My main concerns are the ones I mentioned above. If that can be figured out, than I am all for it.

However I dont think people will start fighting because of this. It gives us a foundation to introduce PVP again, but just changing this wont do anything on its own I think. We would need to introduce some PVP tools, so that it's actually possible to kill someone again. The best idea I have ever heard about this is Targun's idea of adjusting how super speedwalking works. If I remember correctly the idea was that it should depend on how tired you are, and if you're in a fight, and stuff, so that you just cant press a button and escape. Anyway, that's another topic so I wont go into detail about it here. I am sure Targun can explain it again, or find where he wrote it originally if we want to talk about PVP somewhere.

But yeah, if we do introduce tools for PVP, then we need to adjust death penalty first I think. So I voted "yes with tweaking".

Cherek wrote:Zhar: As a veteran now with death recovery and grinding places with great XP, yes, then you can recover in a day or less.

A champion back then however had no death recovery and harsher death penalty, no great grinding spots, and much more competition for places like LoD/Flotsam/Bicorns etc. Also, most people played from schools or at home with modems, so running on scripts for days just didnt happen... so no way you could recover in a day or two.

Either I've forgotten completely, but as I remember from back then recovery took a long time. several weeks, maybe months. Or more for some. So I dont agree that recovery was easier back then, the opposite actually.

Laurel raced Soote for quickest progress per hour in those times. Soote doing his usual Kabal rounds, Laurel doing infidels and Holm. As BDA/BM with JBS/runed (pretty much more offense with old double-slash than it delivers now) it was 1 old prog level per 15 min for Laurel and Soote said he kept a similar pace.
12*4 = 48 progress levels per day at a computer lab ... IF:
1. I would eat at the computer
2. there would be infidels/bicorns/trolobies enough
3. gear didn't wear out - I fail to remember even a single no-dulling sword we could lay hands on back then

I'm quite confident 100 progress levels did NOT make up a full recovery, even less the usual 4-5 fantas I made per day at best - I did make breaks, eq broke, hunting grounds were cleaned.

But what do I know anyway.

I agree that changing the death penalty is a prerequisite to creating better PvP tools. If we ever want to make PvP seem like a fun "option" or "thing to do" with the game, and create easier ways to succeed in a kill, we first need to make death more palatable.

G.

Right, just dont make it something without consequence.

amberlee wrote:Right, just dont make it something without consequence.

Well there should definitely be something, but just not the heartbreaking "I wanna stop playing" feeling if you're big and do happen to get killed now. I think money could definitely work... but there are some things that need to be fixed. Like the whole guild XP thing...

Now I never been rich in the game, but isnt 20k alot? Celephias says he's 16th on rich mens list with around 40k. That means there's not that many myths that actually could afford more than one death? So if we at some point do get a game with active PVP, when people die fairly regularly, not many will be able to afford to use this feature...?

The idea is to get people to interact and fight other people, but I think this could mean that not only do you have to be myth to have a chance in PVP, which currently is the case, now you also need to have a big bank account before you "dare" participate. Unless people actually have like 50k'ish, so they can take two deaths, they probably wont be interested. And people who dont have that kind of money, which is the majority I would guess, will suffer, and be bullied, and then they'll feel they also need to gather money. And gathering money isnt something you usually do while interacting with other people. Its either looting areas with lots of EQ and small foes, like LoD, Gont, Orcs, or it means forge-scripting. Basically, I think we could end up with a "requirement for PVP", which says "Be myth AND have at least 100k plats, or it wont be fun at all."

Yeah I know, this is worst case scenario, but I could definitely see it happen and its something to consider.

Cherek wrote:Well there should definitely be something, but just not the heartbreaking "I wanna stop playing" feeling if you're big and do happen to get killed now.

While they are related, I would think that feelings of loss from character death are actually different and distinct from a rational accounting of actual loss (stats or plats) from the same.

If death was more prevalent, it would likely be much less traumatic.