Death lost the bet!

[Zestana]

As I'm waiting on a response at the moment that I deem fairly important since it will decide whether I continue to play or not. I log in once in the morning and once at night to check my mails. Since Gorboth uses a similar approach of screenshotting the population to give the numbers of activity compared to years before I'd say it is a more than accurate enough representation for me to know who has been active and who hasn't.

And your baby steps only have about a month left on them to grow into full-blown adult steps.

[Kiara]

So far it hasn't changed that much.

I would disagree with this. Champions are attacking Myths, moreover, Myth Morguls. A member of an un-recoded guild is attempting to start a mage-hunting event. People are actually seeking out gear with challenging Morguls in mind.

Thats not really true. I started the event BEFORE the change to death penalty. Without having any idea it was going to happen. Actually, I calculated the rewards for the event based on dying with penalty. Which now seems a little bit high since you dont lose anything. So... for me personally the change to death penalty made things less interesting. I think it is quite unfortunate that this experiment with death penalty happened right after I started the event. It kinda knocked the fun out of that even before it even had a chance to be exciting.

So dont say it would never have happened without the change to death penalty. Because thats exactly what it did. The change had the opposite effect on me, as spying on mages now feels less exciting. And if someone actually managed to kill one they would escape penalty too. Personally I have considered shutting down my event until this death experiment is over and danger is once again a part of the realms, as I dont really feel like paying out rewards to people when there is no real risk involved.

However if the mages are adapting a policy to wait to kill people after the experiment is over I guess danger is still there... so I'll keep it running and see if it leads to something interesting. And yes, there has been some interest to it. And no Ilrahil, I have been around even after the Scavanger Hunt ended. Not 24/7, but just as much as any "casual" player.

[Amorana]

Since Gorboth uses a similar approach of screenshotting the population to give the numbers of activity compared to years before I'd say it is a more than accurate enough representation for me to know who has been active and who hasn't.

Your once per day is different than a several snapshots at various points of the day. Having been in contact with Kiara and seen her online quite frequently since the event, I can say I don't agree with your assessment. But you'd have to be awake for longer than 30 seconds to see that.

And your baby steps only have about a month left on them to grow into full-blown adult steps.

Not sure what you still don't understand about the second half of my note, but to spell it out for you, let me break it down for you:

We're a small player base.

At best we have 30-35 players on, at worst we have 10-15.

You can't expect that overnight a playerbase as small as ours is going to go from a PVE-only minded population into a full pvp-driven population.

We are not WoW. When a change goes into effect, you don't have 50K people looking to go out and exploit/test it. Changes take time, and even a two month window isn't going to show effects that you would see a year or two down the road. You don't see immediate effects in a playerbase this small that are so astounding you will know that the change is 100% the right goal. You have to observe the small changes, the minute details and decide whether they are the spark of something bigger and better. Are these changes the changes that signify that? I don't know. But they're changes, and things that are well outside the realm of things that normally occur.

[Amorana]

That's not really true. I started the event BEFORE the change to death penalty. Without having any idea it was going to happen. Actually, I calculated the rewards for the event based on dying with penalty. Which now seems a little bit high since you don't lose anything. So... for me personally the change to death penalty made things less interesting. I think it is quite unfortunate that this experiment with death penalty happened right after I started the event. It kinda knocked the fun out of that even before it even had a chance to be exciting.

Fair enough. I was a little murky on the timeline. My point still stands that discussion of resistance items, how to defend against magic, champion mercs deciding to go off half cocked and attack a myth mage - these are things we were not seeing at ALL before Logg's death / the removal of the penalty. I'm happy to see PVP at all these days, even if it is simply to test our the potency of resistance. I just wish I could participate.

[Arcon]

I have poster before that I don't really like this change, I want there to be some kind of penealty when you die since I feel it takes away importance from death itself.
I decided to become a martyr in the war against the threat coming from Minas Morgul(I got tired of all the flaming and people shouting for the nerfbat without actually seing anyone try with some resistance first) and also I felt annoyed at that mage for slapping me before. It is very possible that I would have done this even without the change in death penalty it would definitely have made me think a bit more about it before doing it. I was counting on that they (or at least the mage in question) would keep a grudge.

Now it is up to everyone to consider if it was something positive for the game or not. Should people be able to do this? Run out and just attack someone without having to consider the consequences more then loosing their equipment? How can you defend something like this in a rp way(I already claimed martyrhood so you cant!)?

[Amorana]

Now it is up to everyone to consider if it was something positive for the game or not. Should people be able to do this? Run out and just attack someone without having to consider the consequences more then loosing their equipment? How can you defend something like this in a rp way(I already claimed martyrhood so you cant!)?

I have said before that as long as there is a penalty, that people will seek to avoid it. I still stand by that - however I can also agree with what Kiara said about striking a balance between the two. I think some penalty that doesn't take weeks to recover from is probably appropriate.

I had mentioned elsewhere (I don't recall if it was on these forums or in a conversation with someone else) the possibility of a system of reduced xp gain (similar to the wounding system you suggested Arcon, except that it doesn't affect the way you play the game, simply what rewards you reap from it.) I still think that could work, and it would have the positive / negative side effects that people want. My idea was to simply make the penalty a percentage reduction in the amount of XP one gains from combat for a period of combat time. This effect could stack (so that if a person severely offended a guild/person they could be killed multiple times.) Say the period is 12 hours or 24 hours. The penalty would be tracked by the amount of time that you spend in combat. If you are in combat, time ticks off. If you are out of combat, it doesn't. The effects of this are:

A) A player can't simply idle off their penalty. They have to be engaged in combat.

B) Further the effects are equal to botters and non-botters, essentially. Botters still have the advantage that they are playing straight through while watching t.v., but at least it lasts for the same time period - 24 hours of combat time. In the current (suspended) death penalty system, a casual player may take months to make up a penalty. A botter may take a week.

C) There is still risk and reward. You have the reward of knowing you have impeded your enemy's growth for a period of time. You have the risk of having all your killing be 1/2, 3/4, whatever the percentage, useless for a period of time. But the penalty isn't so great that it would deter someone from PVPing - you can still play and even grow slightly while penalized.

[Kiara]

That's not really true. I started the event BEFORE the change to death penalty. Without having any idea it was going to happen. Actually, I calculated the rewards for the event based on dying with penalty. Which now seems a little bit high since you don't lose anything. So... for me personally the change to death penalty made things less interesting. I think it is quite unfortunate that this experiment with death penalty happened right after I started the event. It kinda knocked the fun out of that even before it even had a chance to be exciting.

Fair enough. I was a little murky on the timeline. My point still stands that discussion of resistance items, how to defend against magic, champion mercs deciding to go off half cocked and attack a myth mage - these are things we were not seeing at ALL before Logg's death / the removal of the penalty. I'm happy to see PVP at all these days, even if it is simply to test our the potency of resistance. I just wish I could participate.

Oh its very possible the no death penalty experiment has made some people more interested to test things out, my little event or not. Just wanted to clarify the timeline, and that the idea was to run the event _with_ death penalty.

It'll be a little weird though if people who get attacked now decide to hold back and retaliate when death penalty is back. (if it comes back). But I guess thats a side effects of this. We cant assume people will "forget" whatever happens now as soon as the experiment is over.

[Manglor]

Log from Gorboth

Pretty f'd up, if you ask me. I haven't been involved with such behaviour, nor do I plan on it, but so what? Genesis is a pvp game. Just because we've grown soft doesn't mean that at its core it's not about conflict and killing. I know the log is 1.5 years old and not up for debate, but I don't see a reason why a punishment was due here.

[Kiara]

Log from Gorboth

Pretty f'd up, if you ask me. I haven't been involved with such behaviour, nor do I plan on it, but so what? Genesis is a pvp game. Just because we've grown soft doesn't mean that at its core it's not about conflict and killing. I know the log is 1.5 years old and not up for debate, but I don't see a reason why a punishment was due here.

Well, it seems like Zestana/Ilrahil was banned form the forum and the post removed.

I remember the event described in the log. That info was pretty new though...

[Manglor]

Log from Gorboth

Pretty f'd up, if you ask me. I haven't been involved with such behaviour, nor do I plan on it, but so what? Genesis is a pvp game. Just because we've grown soft doesn't mean that at its core it's not about conflict and killing. I know the log is 1.5 years old and not up for debate, but I don't see a reason why a punishment was due here.

Well, it seems like Zestana/Ilrahil was banned form the forum and the post removed.

I remember the event described in the log. That info was pretty new though...

Not surprised. There's private information, then there's a log from the Keeper himself. Some information just doesn't need to be publicly revealed.