Why Full Looting Is Not Used Frequently.

That is my point. There are ALOT of people like this around, and just imagine if he would acually GET something from all those kills, What would happen?

More people would do it, and more people ( Victims ) would quit the game.

 

That sounds like 'pay to play' within a 'pay to play' game. Should there be popup windows for each time a person goes up against an opponent that would read: "You must have 1000 gp or .50 USD to fight this player. Click this link if you wish to proceed to your SoTA account".

Sorry, I know that sounds snarky, but it seems weird to put money on the table before getting into a fight. It's like a player is pretty much betting on oneself. That would just be too jarring especially if the possibility of a win is tied to what's in your coin purse.

 

It's not snarky, I hope they find a way to balance it without anyone really taking notice....that would be great. They need a rock solid set of rules though or players WILL figure out a way to cheat the system.

I'm not a big fan of punishments, but an alternate would be to throw the losing party in debtor's prison and let them grind until they could pay the ransom to the winner. What ever they decide to do it needs to be fair. Everyone needs to be invested.

 

I think through natural selection a lot of the people who are not winning will end up playing the PvE part of the game. The PvP players who are left will not consider themselves victims. I think the great thing about SotA is you don't necessarily have to be a winner all the time to enjoy the game. There should be an abundance of things to do. Personally, if I find that I'm not winning as much as I would like...I will go fishing and reflect on what I could have done differently to be a winner.

 

Hmmmm now this really opened my eyes. I guess ive been a bit of a "gear hog" myself. I never realized how having all this "top of the line" gear thats worth like 500 real US dollars can ruin a game where a player can "choose to be either good or evil". I remember installing UO and it asked questions like , "where will you go? who will you be?" and I instantly grew devil horns. Problem is, the year was 2000 and trammel had already kicked in so if you wanted to be "evil" you either had to kill wandering healers all day(if you wanted to be a PvE evildoer) or go to the giant dueling arena called felucca.
The gear system was still the same though, which was nice and simple. It was perfect, you could treasure hunt all day pick up all the neat vanq and power weapons and have a blast. The only thing you really needed for "bragging rights" was more gold, or a larger pile of the exact same old vanq and power weapons. Your "uniqeness" was how well you played the game, and how good you were at acquiring large amounts of treasure. It wasnt because you got the godly 10 thousand damage sword and full plate set of invincibility.
Trammel didn't ruin the game as much as all this gobbledygook gear did. At least the game was still virtually the same thing when trammel came. I mean they started throwing in ninja and samurai stuff. You had these goofy looking swords that is similar to the lightsaber that the sith lord or whatever guy uses(the guy on the newer star wars shows that has the red devil face... i never watched the new ones yet) I always called it a "banana blade" where you got your hand on the handle and a blade comes out each side of your hand... which is completely ridiculous. In reality if you built a sword that way your probably more likely to cut your own leg or arm off in battle(not that sticking with "reality" is important in a fictional game anyway). All the gear had all these really really complex stats on them, and to get powerful you had to pretty study for hours to pick the correct gear combination. That just totally ruins the game for me, I just want to pick the best gear and be on my way, I dont want to have to become a scientist to choose my gear. Ill stick to a purely trammel based game with the old school UO gear system where not even consensual pvp is allowed over a game thats full loot PvP with the really super complex "gear rules the land" based game.
I can see how now that obsession with gear has likely contributed to destroying any chance at having a game with full loot PvP like old UO did.. Nobody wants to play a game where they can lose gear that took them a month to get.

 

the obsession with loot and leveling has not only destroyed open looting, open pvp games but mmos in general. 90% of MMORPGS list the level you need to be to fight the creature. You could blame some of it on D&D, especially 3rd edition (4th edition came after the fact). There were always creatures "designated for a level", and there was always the +whatever sword. So it was more like an "theme park" where you level and move on. You should have +1 equipment by level 4, +2 equipment by level 10, +3 equipment by level 18 and maybe you'll get something +4 by level 20. And there's other things, often meant for specific classes, like your holy avenger swords for paladins and your mage robes.

But open up your 3.5/pathfinder monster building rules. It's all carefully constructed for specific levels and specific threats. To a lesser extent AD&D and Basic D&D uses hit dice for a more amorphous shorthand of what level you're supposed to be to kill the duck snake or whatever it is you're fighting. You get experience for kills and traps in the RAW and that's it. It even lines out (atleast in pathfinder) how much treasure they're supposed to get. And if you take one thing out, like the treasure building, you might as well build all the monsters by your own rules because the monsters are built to the treasure increments as well. Actually that would be a good pathfinder book, a bestiary not built around specific treasure increments or monster rules.