size vs. mkills

[Mase]

I recently became aware of a situation that I'd like someone to explain.

I'm not going to identify the player in question, because I don't want to cause any misunderstanding, but typically a player's status, size, age and mkills follow some sort of identifiable pattern. There are those who shun bashing and remain at a small size and small status even though they're several hundred years old. There are those who also bash a minimal amount but pk very aggressively and hold a high status despite being small. Then you've got those players who bash and pk fairly evenly, building to an average size through each status, and finally the players who pk very little until they can squash every opponent in their status, and are thus much larger.

The constant throughout these stereotypes is the ratio between mkills and size (besides lastaris, of course). While the ratio varies a bit due to how long players bash certain areas, typically if you've got twice as many mkills as the next person, you're bigger than them.

There's a player (to whom I've lost status) who is fairly young and whose age is congruous with his/her mkills. They are, however, well quested and I assumed their high status was due to that and pk savvy rather than size. As it turns out, I learned exactly what size they are, and it changed my perspective entirely.

I created a new player and determined exactly how much experience they needed to reach their size, and divided that by their league mkills. The average experience per mob that this player would have needed to reach their size is over 26k. Now maybe there's some special bashing spot I don't know about that gives 30k experience per mob, but even that couldn't support the period from 100 across to whatever size you could start hitting drow. It's statistically impossible.

Sometimes the league messes up, so I did a little more math. Let's presume the mkill figure is wrong. Pretend their experience per kill is something a little more reasonable, something like 20k. I divided their total experience needed by 20k, which works out to x total mkills (replacing the possibly incorrect league number), then divided that by the player's logged hours. Even if the league is wrong, this player would have needed the equivalent of a 20k mkill every 35 seconds for their entire existence.

I'm not accusing this player of cheating, but when I bust my *** for hundreds more hours and tens of thousands more mkills than someone else only to see them bigger than me, it pisses me off. I work for my size, and I expect others to do the same. If there IS a legitimate way gain experience that quickly and efficiently, it should be at least be common knowledge, otherwise it unbalances the mud and drives away players. I have no problem losing status to younger, smaller, skilled players, because I know I'm good enough to win the next time. I have no problem losing my head to a bigger player who is around my age or older, because my chances to win are reduced and I make mistakes like anyone else. When I realize I've lost heads because a much younger and better quested player grew bigger than me in what's clearly a secret and unconventional way, that's when problems start.

So... On the surface what I'd like is for someone to explain to me what I haven't known for hundreds of hours of my life when I've been bored to death bashing, or for admin to address the issue (in a transparent way) if it's actually a problem, so players like me know we're not wasting our time here.

Deep down, I just really want my 4 ******* status back from this *******, cheater or not.

[Lesk]

Which player is this?

If his creation date is a few years old... then here is the explanation that I can provide you with:

Once upon a time, an area was uploaded. (It was that area with the spiders... and more spiders. You know... eh... poisonous spiders, used to be no recall, somewhat of a maze?) well when the area was first uploaded, there was a mistake in the assigning of exp given per mkill. You could get like 30k xp for killing the EASIEST mobs ever. So like some players, sadly not me ... took advantage of this and went from like 5k to 10k in a day, literally... or maybe that's a lil too exaggerated... perhaps 5k to 8k.

The admins caught it, fixed the area... and now no one probably ever even thinks about bashing there.

btw, i love the scientific style of your post... however, in saving time for others... it can be summed up as "this guy is younger, has fewer mkills than me, but is bigger than me"

[Azazel]

Email me with a name. I will look into it immediately.

I'm checking some things out and I have found some things that need to be addressed.

This may well be another thing.

azazel@mudder.net

I'm gonna lock this so it won't get ugly - but I won't delete this. When I resolve this, I'll post an update.

Azazel

[Azazel]

I *think* this has been addressed in the announcement forums.

Feeding the various alts down may be something I do. I won't make any promises.

Az