The current state of PK on the mud

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Rikus
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The current state of PK on the mud

Post by Rikus »

Any old player could tell you that today's PK does not hold a candle to what it used to be, on a mud-wide scale. I would like to outline some issues with certain aspects of the game that I believe are to blame for this problem(there are many) and welcome feedback, suggestions, etc to the conversation. I will begin with a small bit on character development(due to it being more indirectly related), and then address the issues of alts, disciplines, fight mechanics and finally the playerbase as a whole.

Character Development:

Our playerbase is far from what it once was. This issue has been brought up in other threads, and as such I have only chosen to focus on character development as a possible deterrent to new players. New characters are coddled. Many more successful muds(including this one a half dozen years ago) are not nearly as newbie friendly. Easing new players into the learning curve of the mud is a good thing, handing them everything on a platter is not. Soul pills in the newbie zone, for instance, as well as the entire suit of quite decent newbie gear are two examples of something that may push a newbie away. Some of the fun of learning a mud comes from acquiring new gear, which a newbie will likely NEVER do until clanned. In addition, the fairy zone and other easily accessible, easily bashed areas by players with no stats is an issue. Fairy Fields can be bashed from 100 across till 2500 across without fear of death(unless you get careless with the leprechauns) and with similar exp gains per kill. We may as well post a giant sign at the end of mud school that reads "Welcome! Please proceed to the newbie zone where you will be handed a full set of eq and teleported to a zone in which you can afk bash for the next 20 hours!" While this eases the shock of realizing that's all you're going to do for the next 24900 across(with minor changes to scenery), it is not conducive to retaining players. There needs to be more emphasis on the "You will be mortally wounded, gagged, staked, etc for possibly no reason at any time" bit in the rules as well - Newbies have far too much protection along those lines, with some people in an uproar over a vagabond being attacked for ANY REASON WHATSOEVER. This is a PK mud. Let's keep it that way.

Alts:

Alts are a huge detriment to our status system. As there are no races or classes on the mud, there is no real reason to desire an additional character beyond obtaining information about another clan or impacting status on the mud. There are two ways in which alts do this, the first(as it is the most annoying) is perpetrated by the 'feeder alt' who only exists to add status to the mud and inflate the number of rogues running around in hopes of a trickle up effect to the player's main character. This type of alt is completely inappropriate and should be denied on sight, with further repercussions for the larger player. The other type of alt is the occasional fighter+ running around with status ON them, infiltrating other clans and creating a discrepancy between the apparent number of active characters and the actual players behind them. I don't want to have to wonder if this newbie I'm biting into Nos is really just Bair on one of his eleventy-one alts, for instance. As I said above, there is no reason at all to desire a second character, gameplay-wise. A solution to both of these problems would be to require character registration and attachment to an IP address and email address before one could train avatar.

More to come after I kill some time.
bair
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by bair »

There's definitely a reason to have an alt gameplay wise. At lower statuses you can pretty much always find a status fight. I literally went an entire month straight without seeing a destroyer (which is why I hounded you to pk, and sorry mase for not fighting you a couple months back, pretty douchey of me); pretty fuckin boring for a pk mud. I mean you have to expect the conquerers to either stop playing or make an alt especially if they're 25k, hell I'm quitting when I hit 20k. That being said, I'm all for the one character rule and would gladly delete any alt I may have if everybody else had to do the same. I agree that alts are a detriment to the mud, mainly because it is extremely difficult to keep characters separate in your head. There are pros and cons, but you can't just stop future creation, you have to delete the current ones too. They should all be deleted, right now.

On a side note, the effectiveness of save vs spells has single-handedly destroyed our PK system.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by Askim »

I think you are all wrong on most if not all of this. The Rogues below are being harassed for no reason. Alts? Please, if you say you don't have a single alt you are either lying to us, yourself, or both. I've found your problem to a lesser extent at Advent. I've been at status 11 forever. YEARS because either I only get pk from fighters who come up too early, or Fighters who go straight through Advent to Champ and above (**coughTalcough**). There is a huge size discrepancy between fighters and advents here. So, the only way I can get any PK practice is to create an alt. Nothing wrong whatsoever with that in my humble opinion. What? You want me to delete when I get to Advent or above so I don't get as stale as I am in PK? Screw that. Newbies are coddled a bit here, but that's because there's so many of you that chase them off in the first place that we need to coddle them to even have a chance to keep them. The only ones I see recently that stay are alts. BTW, how does creating an alt take away from status when it adds status to the pile? Granted it's at the bottom of the pile, but it does trickle up. Many of the higher status don't PK much if at all EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE STATUS ON TO PK...
I know a few chars who don't PK anyone in their status bracket because of this or that. That's BS, if you're going to ***** about lowbies attitude to PK, you should be PKing whenever you can.

Just my 2 cents.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by blart »

Askim wrote:I think you are all wrong on most if not all of this. The Rogues below are being harassed for no reason. Alts? Please, if you say you don't have a single alt you are either lying to us, yourself, or both. I've found your problem to a lesser extent at Advent. I've been at status 11 forever. YEARS because either I only get pk from fighters who come up too early, or Fighters who go straight through Advent to Champ and above (**coughTalcough**). There is a huge size discrepancy between fighters and advents here. So, the only way I can get any PK practice is to create an alt. Nothing wrong whatsoever with that in my humble opinion. What? You want me to delete when I get to Advent or above so I don't get as stale as I am in PK? Screw that. Newbies are coddled a bit here, but that's because there's so many of you that chase them off in the first place that we need to coddle them to even have a chance to keep them. The only ones I see recently that stay are alts. BTW, how does creating an alt take away from status when it adds status to the pile? Granted it's at the bottom of the pile, but it does trickle up. Many of the higher status don't PK much if at all EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE STATUS ON TO PK...
I know a few chars who don't PK anyone in their status bracket because of this or that. That's BS, if you're going to ***** about lowbies attitude to PK, you should be PKing whenever you can.

Just my 2 cents.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by Rikus »

Askim wrote:I think you are all wrong on most if not all of this. The Rogues below are being harassed for no reason. Alts? Please, if you say you don't have a single alt you are either lying to us, yourself, or both. I've found your problem to a lesser extent at Advent. I've been at status 11 forever. YEARS because either I only get pk from fighters who come up too early, or Fighters who go straight through Advent to Champ and above (**coughTalcough**). There is a huge size discrepancy between fighters and advents here. So, the only way I can get any PK practice is to create an alt. Nothing wrong whatsoever with that in my humble opinion. What? You want me to delete when I get to Advent or above so I don't get as stale as I am in PK? Screw that. Newbies are coddled a bit here, but that's because there's so many of you that chase them off in the first place that we need to coddle them to even have a chance to keep them. The only ones I see recently that stay are alts. BTW, how does creating an alt take away from status when it adds status to the pile? Granted it's at the bottom of the pile, but it does trickle up. Many of the higher status don't PK much if at all EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE STATUS ON TO PK...
I know a few chars who don't PK anyone in their status bracket because of this or that. That's BS, if you're going to ***** about lowbies attitude to PK, you should be PKing whenever you can.

Just my 2 cents.
If the status is not around on the mud, then your position on the mud is your position on the mud. The only area that requires status is NOD, so under these conditions you will be unable to acquire that discipline. It is NOT in the benefit of the mud as a whole to inflate everybody's status by creating a lowbie to get decapped 40 or 50 times. Ridiculous. Go jump a champion if you want to gain status and advents aren't around.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by Askim »

And get torsoed and fed down to vaga? No thank you.
In case you forgot, Up capping TAKES STATUS OUT OF THE LOOP.
You all whine about there never being status and then tell me to up cap someone... That's a GREAT answer.
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Rikus
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by Rikus »

Askim wrote:And get torsoed and fed down to vaga? No thank you.
In case you forgot, Up capping TAKES STATUS OUT OF THE LOOP.
You all whine about there never being status and then tell me to up cap someone... That's a GREAT answer.
I hardly think you would get fed at all, let alone down to Vagabond. Last I checked to appropriate response to a failed upcap was a stake, maybe a torso.

In addition, upcapping does NOT 'take status out of the loop.' It moves it to a different bracket. This is an important distinction - this status is only wasted when the upcapper is an alt that escape caps higher status players and then logs off. There is no such thing as status loss provided both players continue playing. The worst an upcap can do is move someone of one status bracket into a bracket lower, which is countered when players cap up into a new bracket.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by Askim »

No offense, but are you ignorant/not able to see the truth? Are you serious?
Upcaping ALWAYS ends with someone getting torsoed/staked/usually fed down. Maybe not to vaga, but fed down. You'd be the only one not to participate.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by bair »

Mainly to confirm what Askim just said and just for personal input, if I get upcapped or if my clannie gets upcapped, I will never forgive you, and I will literally hunt that person for the rest of my life. Talwolf escape upcapped me, therefore, I will never stop stake/torso/feeding gangrels for the rest of my life. If you're in gangrel, you might as well log off or leave the clan. I will not stop until you quit. If I'm not allowed to do this, then I will quit, who gives a ****. If it was dlok escape capping me (same status), I would not make any action whatsoever to anybody, I wouldn't even stake the person who escape capped me assuming we were the same status. Apparently he does not feel the same way as he got talwolf to escape cap me, which all that does is **** dlok over because thats one less status he can get from me, considering I would gladly arena him in a second. Basically dlok just gave his status to talwolf, someone who fed himself to Eilistraee (rofl), which makes absolutely no sense. Therefore I'm not even upset because the gratification I get from someone being so stupid is far greater than the impact from me losing 1 status. Upcapping DOES take status out of the loop, dlok got upcapped twice by some stupid *** vagabond, those points will take MONTHS to come back up. Talwolf upcapped me, there's another ******* month. 3 months for what? What the **** did ponthar and talwolf gain? You couldn't just cap a vagabond or an advent? Status means absolutely nothing to either one of you idiots, so what did you gain? I sure hope it wasn't revenge, because I did nothing to talwolf, and dlok did nothing to ponthar, and neither of us give a **** about our own status, it is about the general status of the mud, and you just wasted everyone's time who has been moving status for the past 3 months. My time, dlok's time, tyron's time, sonja's time, guthrie's time, makaveli's time, mase's time, and plenty of others as well. If you want revenge, stake our nod. There should be a restriction built in to the game to protect from this ****. Anyone who really knows me or is in toreador knows that I'm not spewing this for my own benefit, I'm trying to better the mud.
Rikus
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by Rikus »

As I said, the status is only wasted when its some vagabond/rogue fuckwit who escape caps someone huge. That said, those huge someones should not escape if they don't want to be capped. Also, as you yourself stated, in this case the status wasn't even lost. Granted it will waste a lot of peoples' time to get it back to where it was, the status itself remained in the loop because ponthar was decapped to vagabond.

How about if you escape, expect to lose status? Maybe don't do **** that forces you to escape? You can bet your *** I don't escape half as often as Bair has and I play just as much, if not more lately.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by bair »

I don't escape either, I just happened to be doing a quest maze while my clannie was healing at exec. I did not expect talwolf to cap me considering I have helped him on several occasions and have never spoken an unkind word to him. Once again you seem to be focusing on the fact that I am being personally hurt. This is a blow to every high status player. Escaping does not instantly warrant an escape upcap, I didn't force him to do that, I'm not the one wasting people's time. If it was dlok or mase capping me, I would not give two shits. You seem to be missing the bigger picture. As far as I'm concerned, an advent is not much different than a vagabond/rogue fuckwit. I got a brand new character to advent in 4 days without cheap capping anybody. Your factoring in that the status returns to the loop way too heavily, tons of time is still wasted. For every status level lower the upcapper is, the more time thats wasted. Adventurer ain't ****. If you had been around for the past few months, then you'd know what I'm talking about. Every single slayer except one is in the same clan, and the one who isn't in brujah is in my clan. Status does not move to destroyer, ever. That status point is going to take months. If your response to all that time being wasted is "oh well," then you're being self-centered considering none of your time has been wasted. You just came back, you haven't been a part of this status drought, you haven't been affected by this whatsoever. I don't even know why you made this thread, your current state of pk is nonexistent.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by Rikus »

I don't think I am missing the bigger picture as much as I just have a different idea of what that picture is. You talk about status and PK as if it were required that everybody move in, generally, the up direction. To me, status is more than that - your size/status is determined by the mud population, for the most part. If we had a pwipe today, and enough players were around, someone could be conqueror by the time they were 5k. Just because you feel like you should be moving up the chain does not necessarily mean you should. Embrace every upcap and moving you one step closer to Slayer, where you will have more opportunities for PK, instead of one step further from Hero.

Our system only works correctly when we have a large enough playerbase. Adding new status brackets while players were leaving the game was... probably not ideal. What if you had the opportunity to fight every slayer, destroyer, hero and conqueror, Bair? I was going to write something up on that, but I'll just touch on it here - Adding new clans/brackets while the playerbase was dwindling was so obviously a bad idea that I have no idea why it was implemented. We end up with clans with three active members and brackets like Destroyer where Bair has to QQ about no pk opportunities. The Sabbat/Camarilla idea was good, though I don't know how many players would be on board with a 2-sided system rather than the clans that we have now. As for status brackets... well status is pretty fucked right now thanks to dipshits like Ponthar and Bair's alts and stuff, so after implementing the registration prior to training avatar, a pwipe or at least status wipe could be effective.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by bair »

If you could explain to me in private how my alts have fucked up the status, I would love to hear it. As far as I know, they have been extremely beneficial, albeit one particular instance, which was rectified rather quickly by my own doing. A couple people who have figured out on their own who my other characters may be have given me nothing but the highest praises. Everyone wants to be higher status, that is the point of this game. And for the record, I only have two alts, and they are entirely separate entities who do not act on each other's grudges. If I do something on one character out of spite, it is entirely and solely because that person offended that character. They both bash, quest, and pk as they should. Hopefully the admins don't think I'm giving out too much information, but I think its important to the debate.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by ghnat »

ok one of your major points was that alts are useless. i went 1.5 yrs with not 1 pk fight. if i didnt have alts i would of quit the mud countless times. i find pk at the rogue-advent level so enjoyable that i quite often dont bash outside of that range with my alts. at the same time i spend a lot of time on them and bettering them so that im able to have more fun for pk. they are twink alts made for specific purposes. i have friends who can help me pimp them right out or if i want to stay within a certain bracket i only gear to a certain point to stay in that bracket so that i can have even more fun. whenever i start a new mud i always enjoy seeing other people of same status because it means i have a chance to grow and its not just all maxxed chars out there that would instakill me. i dont mind being killed by someone as long as they are able to do it themselves without ganging me. as far as escape capping is concerned it is annoying when someone of the same status does it to me, irritating when its someone close to my status but downright insult when someone as far down as advent does it. when you have to wait 1.5yrs for a pk fight you might understand what i mean. and any comment about chasing pk is null and void. if people dont want to fight you, they have a 100% chance of getting away.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by Sonja »

I'm sort of confused in regards to the point you're getting at.. mostly because this thread is in the 'Helpdesk' forum. It pretty much just looks like you're all stating your playing preferences and discussing player's alts, which it has been made quite clear we are not supposed to do. If you have a relevant suggestion on this topic, I think it makes most sense to e-mail support to discuss your ideas with an admin online. If it really becomes an issue, it will be dealt with, but my guess is that this is not an issue for the admin because it really isn't an issue on the mud (it's all really harmless stuff really, even though you may not like people having alts, you can't stop them). If you feel people aren't seperating their alts, bring it up to an admin. Otherwise yeah, this thread is going to be a continual arguement that is going nowhere but circles. Though ultimately, I REALLY agree with some of your suggestions regarding newbies, and everybody needs to make more of an effort.

Sonja
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by blart »

Rikus wrote:As I said, the status is only wasted when its some vagabond/rogue fuckwit who escape caps someone huge. That said, those huge someones should not escape if they don't want to be capped. Also, as you yourself stated, in this case the status wasn't even lost. Granted it will waste a lot of peoples' time to get it back to where it was, the status itself remained in the loop because ponthar was decapped to vagabond.

How about if you escape, expect to lose status? Maybe don't do **** that forces you to escape? You can bet your *** I don't escape half as often as Bair has and I play just as much, if not more lately.

You want to talk about escape capping lol.
I know you are a walking talking act of discrepancy and are a piece of bigotry trash i have ever seen herd or thus talked in and out of the mud.
Now the upcapping thing like bair said. I agree with. no one who is huge as you say should ever be upcapped from someone who is lower in size ie. hero being decaped by a champ or some **** like that but if you ever tell me you have not made an alt or tell me you dont escape cap. I personally believe that your a lieing piece of crap. Thank you for your time.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by Rikus »

blart wrote: You want to talk about escape capping lol.
The only person I have escape-capped recently is you, Blart. And with good reason. Speak to some of the older players(Ghnat, Sonja, Damien, Sidius if he pops on again, Nommy, etc) and the ones that remember playing with me when I was active will attest to the fact that, while I am quite possibly an *******, I also play pretty fair. Of my 60 PK's on this character, I estimate only 3 or 4 are escape caps.
I know you are a walking talking act of discrepancy and are a piece of bigotry trash i have ever seen herd or thus talked in and out of the mud.
Blart, we have had contact for what? A month, if that? You know nothing of me, are prone to over reacting and, based on the quoted line above, borderline illiterate.
Now the upcapping thing like bair said. I agree with. no one who is huge as you say should ever be upcapped from someone who is lower in size ie. hero being decaped by a champ or some **** like that
I disagree entirely. Part of the risk of escaping is that you are rendered defenseless in an easily accessible position. This works in other Godwars muds, so why feel the need to be carebear about it here? If you escape, EXPECT to be decapitated. This is said in multiple areas around the mud, including(iirc) the entrance to the deep. What I took offense to was Vagabond/Rogue alts that upcap someone who is high enough status to have difficulty finding someone to PK(Dlok, most recently - I'd be irritated as hell in his position). Seeing as there are several Warriors floating around, you are in no position to complain.
but if you ever tell me you have not made an alt or tell me you dont escape cap. I personally believe that your a lieing piece of crap. Thank you for your time.
Of course I have made alts, as most of us have from time to time when endless bashing grows old. Again, if you can manage to dig up someone that was active when I was, they will tell you that I grew slowly because I hated bashing, but made up for it by not being terrible at other aspects of the game. As far as the escape capping, once again I do not do it to everyone who escapes, only those who deserve it. Threatening my vagabond clannie with repeated stakings and torsos because you suck at hunting me is going to get you escape capped. Every time. Expect it. Also, again with the illiteracy thing. You spend how many hours a day playing a text-based game without even a rudimentary grasp of the English language?
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by Azazel »

*Moving this, since it has devolved into something less than helpful...not sure how helpful it ever was*.

Az
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by blart »

As you see you didn't say you haven't made an alt and escape capped with them. Didn't deny nor agreed. But i know you i was around when ghnat nommy sonja and other old players. 1. you do not know me. I have been around for many years. I make people mad i try sometimes to really piss them off and make them come at me and mess up where i get the upper hand. all you have done is escape cap which gets not only the person you escape capped after you but others because of the fact you escape capped. Now if you would like to add to the fantasy that your better than everyone by adding these quotes and nit pick what i have said. Go for it. But nothing and I mean NOTHING will stop me from staking feeding your sorry butt from here till doomsday with the exception of you just owning up to the stuff and receive the punishment instead of making an alt and doing the same thing. Yes I know who you are i knew who you were and personally i didn't like you then and i don't like you now. Me and dlok took you on nod run and then you turn on me which is funny if ya ask me it only caused you more pain than me. Yes i escape and yes i got decapped by you. But the one thing you didn't count on is I am smarter than you think and you have no idea what i know nor who i know. and who all will take you out for the dumb actions your trying to justify doing.
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Re: The current state of PK on the mud

Post by ghnat »

i will say crunk has staked people in the arena before. thats something i look down upon because the idea is to encourage people to arena because then there will definitely be a winner. so takes some balls to go in vs someone who may be stronger than you. thats the only thing i remember about him being cheap or whatnot
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