You don't want PKing because you haven't REALLY experienced it.

Let me tell you a tale...

I was a lone miner / blacksmith / swordsman with a small shack outside to the North West of Britannia. It was a hard life, balancing attempting to find good mining spots without much protection, but it was a challenge that I loved. One day while crafting some plate armor, two suspicious individuals rode up to my doorstep. One mage on horse proclaimed that I shall come out and face him in a fight, while his friend, an armored infantryman holding a halberd, would merely watch our duel. Me being conscious of the clear nonsense coming from this man's mouth, I quickly grasped the fact that I would be double teamed and murdered if I opened the door. However, I had a name to uphold and my pride was too big to let these guys harass me in the comfort of my hard earned shack.

I made the mage on the horse swear that his friend would not attack me during our duel, and he agreed. I still doubted their honor of our agreement, but proceeded to quickly exit my house with a lone broadsword and a heater shield in hand. The infantryman told us to begin, and the mage started to cast spells. I took the opportunity to rush up to him, hit him, and fizzle his spell. He began to panic but ran into stumps in the forest haltering his escape. I chased him down and murdered him, defending my honor. Upset by the unpredicted outcome of the fight, the infantryman now charged me full on. I hit, fell back, hit, fell back, he couldn't get a swing off on me, my timing was perfect. He turned a fled with only 15% HP, and I pursued. I chased him for 10 minutes across the map to the west. Finally I finished him, looted both of their gear, and retreated to my shack to store my winnings.

From that day on I never feared nor protested PKing in games, and without the addition of full loot in this, I will not play it. People need to experience the good of PK and full loot before they dismiss it. I am 27 years old, I have seen what makes a great game, and it saddens me that nobody will give it a chance, at least without insurance, or "pvp only guilds" as they have outlined here.

Please tell your own tales of PK or anti-PK glory so we can convince them to give us what we need.

 

What you described is pvp, pk is a fully armed against naked newbie with a dagger & no exp.
I don't like pvp because I'm no good at it. My son who is almost your age has given me pointers but I can't seem to react that fast. I have in the past 30 years of gaming never killed another player 1v1 successfully , I've become a Legendary runner, I also don't swallow swords well. I have REALLY experienced it, the pvp, not the sword tasting.

 

@Isycle, a lame PK is one who takes out newbs. Otherwise, a PK is one who murderers a player unprovoked. There were PKs in UO I respected, and PKs who deserved no respect whatsoever.

 

@Isycle Not true, with only 60 skill in my swords and shield, vs two PK's in the high 80's - 100, I was a target to be pk'd. I was a crafter / fighter hybrid, someone who should have stood no chance, but I killed and looted them both against all odds.

Let's examine this scenario in the current process of this game.

They approach me and say they want to fight and that I am weak etc. I say "lol no" and walk out of my house, and they stand there unable to do anything. If I agree, we have to go to a "zone" or be part of a "guild" at which case we fight and nothing comes from it except maybe some gold or honor. I get no items for my deed, they lose none. That completely ruins what happened in my story and turns it into a meaningless fight in an arena with no risk.

I'll add that as that crafter hybrid I knew to avoid fights and obvious PK zones. You learn these things over time and you adapt. Just as you wouldn't walk down Watts at midnight with a busting wallet on you. You know your limits and you stick to them, there is risk and excitement around every corner, why do people insist to live in a dreamland?

 

"They approach me and say they want to fight and that I am weak etc. I say ?lol no? and walk out of my house, and they stand there unable to do anything."

This presumes they will even ever see you. If you are not flagged for PvP and they are, they probably won't see you. If they are a higher skill level than you, they probably will never see you.

I don't see how people that you never see can ruin anything.

 

I have no issue with there being pvp, I'll probably try it from time to time. Just sharing my pvp experience from the other side.
I'm into the game for the exploration & crafting.

 

Owain, the only thing that this ruins is the idea of being truly evil. Taking an NPC's wedding ring for payment to kill wolves may not be noble...maybe you steal from local merchants etc. You can do an "evil" questline, but really, nothing compares to the situation that UO had where the PK'ers that preyed on the weak were really evil. Killing them felt more noble and honorable than killing the other side in a 5v5 arena match.

The problem is that in order to have that evilness, you need a large population of victims. And no one wants to be a victim repeatedly. Couple that with PK'ing being one the most lucrative activities in the game, and you had a severely unbalanced amount of evil PK'ers compared to a normal society.

Turn down the full loot (destroy it) incentive, and maybe put in a limit on the number of PK'ers (create an NPC faction that lets you flag random PK, but it only accepts 500 people at a time. Once you die, you lose membership, have to complete initiations again, and wait for a slot to open up). But even that...I don't think would work in today's world. Let's observer Darkfall over the next few months and see how the newest full loot open world pvp game shakes out.

 

@marthos. "You can do an ?evil? questline, but really, nothing compares to the situation that UO had where the PK?ers that preyed on the weak were really evil."

You presume that non combatants will not flag themselves for PvP, but I have seen many people in the forums state that although they never fought other players intentionally, nevertheless, they enjoyed the challenge of UO prior to the split to Trammel and Felucia, and many also emigrated to Siege Perilous, and became non combatant merchants there a well.

There is a long time between now and release, and we have the Alpha and Beta tests in between for the both the devs and the community to see how things work. I wouldn't despair just yet.

 

@Isycle
Perhaps, if our adventures cross you can join my group of competent fighters by being a sturdy heal. There is much that we can do, and there much that many fighters can do together.

 

My fist kill was the second day I played. Luckily it was another newb. It scared the crap out of me but I fought back and was astonished at the end of it all. Then five minutes later the same guy drew on me in town with a red macro that said he was attacking. Only he really wasn't so I got guard whacked and he took all my stuff and ran. I was hooked...pissed...but hooked.

 

RG created Ultima Online, actively played the game, and likely knows more stories of players just giving up on the game after experiencing PK than you can even imagine. He did say that PK was the #1 reason for players leaving the early UO. You are not going to convince him, or his team, with a few anecdotal recounts of events and a handful of players telling how much they like PK.

As for me, granted, I never played UO (exactly because of the PK and full looting), but I did play enough games with non-consensual PvP, and even with full player looting, to know that I really dislike that, to the point I'm unwilling to ever again play a game that combines any kind of harsh death penalties with non-consensual PvP; I can handle one or the other, but never both at the same time, the combination makes the game unfun and frustrating for me.

(I handle non-consensual PvP with light death penalties by suiciding whenever attacked when not in the mood for PvP, BTW )

 

RG also said in a recent dev chat that he supports PvP, agrees that the PK/Anti-PK wars fought in UO were exactly the kind of emergent behavior he wants to see in SotA, and that under conditions that are story driven and purely consensual, he wants to give players the opportunity to become evil in game.

It is fortunate that he is providing a game that offers the kind of flexibility to permit that, and yet also permit players to have nothing to do with that.

 

That kind of PvP is more fun when you have infinite time to play. You just outgrow it. Once you have limited hours in your day and want to unwind from a day at work, your patience for someone trying to ruin a day diminishes.

I realize that at 27, the OP wasn't even alive when Ultima IV came out. But it was a response to earlier games (including Ultima III) where you just senselessly killed whoever was weakest as the shortest path to success. This game will have a more interesting and reasons for PvP instead of just the randomness.

 

<i>"You presume that non combatants will not flag themselves for PvP, but I have seen many people in the forums state that although they never fought other players intentionally, nevertheless, they enjoyed the challenge of UO prior to the split to Trammel and Felucia, and many also emigrated to Siege Perilous, and became non combatant merchants there a well." </i>

Well yeah, if you flag yourself for PvP, you're pretty much a combatant. What I'm getting at is that in UO, there were many players who did not want to experience PvP, but PK'ers forced that experience on them. This created the good vs evil mechanic. With a flag system, if someone complains loudly that he's tired of being consistently ganked, he's going to be told "turn your flag off dummy." It's not going to create that noble group of anti-PKs that goes out and clears the mining area of PK'ers. The flag system creates consentual victims which works from a strictly roleplaying perspective, but fails to live up to the experience that was unique to UO.

It's hard to be a hero when those you are protecting can replace your heroics with the click of their pvp flag.

But I am curious as to how they will tempt players to participate in PvP. It's probably the toughest part of any game design, and I'm expecting some out of the box thinking here.

 

@Marthos: In other words you basically defend that players that don't want, or even don't like, PvP should be forced to participate, even if only as potential targets, just to make the game fun for other players.

I don't think this will ever happen in this game. RG and Chris have been quite emphatic that PvP will be consensual, and with good reason; they know first hand how much harm non-consensual PvP can do to a game. They have seen how likely players are to just give up on the game when PvP is forced upon them against their wishes.

 

@placebo: Let me tell you a tale. This is not my tale and it is not from UO but the experience is shared by many a person in many an MMO.

You get home, exhausted from a day of hard work. You feed your family, walk the dog. At a time when others have already been on for hours, you log in. You don't have a lot of time, in fact you probably shouldn't be spending this time since you have to wake up and go to work in the morning, but you are a gamer and you refuse to give up your gamer title even if life makes it hard for you.

You log in. You feel like relaxing and doing a few quests. The next quest you have to do to complete the story-line takes you into a cave. So you gear up, check out and head to the cave. Once there you look around and don't see anyone so you start to head into the cave. Suddenly from around you a dozen combatants, they leap out and easily dispatch you. They then call you a noob and verbally berate you.

You can't get a group together because you are already 10 minutes into your hour of playtime and everyone else in the guild who have been there for hours are in the middle of things already. You can't get random strangers to help because the last time you tried that they waited till you were vulnerable, killed you and looted your corpse. You sneak back hoping they have left but they wait there the whole hour killing random people. You try to group up with others going in there but lets be honest, two or three low levels can't compete. They have this down to a science.

This happens to you again and again and again, not just once, not just that day but day after day. Eventually you just get fed up and complain about it on the forums. You get people berating you for being a casual, a baddie, someone not worth their time. You paid for this game too but finally you just give up. You are a gamer but you can never game again, because you have family, because you have obligations, because people feel they know better than you what you have experienced and how you should play your game.

THAT is what it is like for a large number of the people that people in threads like this call casuals go through. THAT is why I am glad (even though I plan on PvPing) that RG has decided to make PvP optional and not force it down the throats of others under the guise of knowing better than them what kind of game should be fun for them.

 

My reason for wanting to play SotA with out PK'ing , is because I have REALLY experienced it in recent games.

And when the game fails, everyone blames the developers, even though the pvp'ers were given almost every bit of freedom they asked for.

 

The most fun I've ever had PvPing was actually in Darkfall. A Mahirim (wolf) character was crouched down sneaking around a fallen log to kill a Mirdain (elven) rock miner. I was crouched down behind the wolf following him as he was sneaking. I felt like a little kid getting ready to jump out of the closet and scare the hell out of someone. The game provided countless scenarios like this but didn't have the complex UO world that I enjoy so much.

Games have evolved since UO and PvP is a lot more fair in 1st person with a limited range of view. There is a lot more cat and mouse type tactics these days and pure gank fests are becoming fewer. A little more fine tuning and I think we will be seeing some better open PvP games.

I hope old fears don't keep people from enjoying it. Cheers!

 

I just plain disagree. I had plenty of experience with Open PvP game. I played UO when it first went live. I most certainly did not enjoy it. I have even been on the end of killing a PKer, and it still is not worth it. Fact is sometimes when I play, I just want to be left alone to do my thing. Forcing me to PvP is forcing me to do YOUR thing. Hence, I REALLY have experienced it, and I don't want it.

 

I guess the best solution would be to have 2 worlds, one full loot open PVP, one selective PVP no loot.

When you sign up for the full loot open PVP world, it forces you to have ALL characters on that server, thus your crafter and merchant alts would be subject to PKing, but you take that risk so you yourself can pk or hunt pkers. Also non-pk merchants would enjoy the world because prices would be higher due to all of the stashing of loot and PVP gear wear.

This seems to be the best solution, and hopefully they take it on board.