PvP - One Hour or More Ban from Zone OnDeath()

See, i hate annoying thiefes but timer solutions are bad in general. If you go through and remove every possible annoyance from the game you also remove a lot of possible fun from the game. Find an in-game solution yourself.

// Armar

 

Yeah, I'm all about integration with the game that also makes sense with the lore.

In the current environment a person could be back in a matter of minutes. If they "lived" close by to where they died or if they teleported to a friend. All of this would need adjusted (and does need adjusted) as overall travel is just too fast to begin with.

 

What could you have possibly been thinking this entire time?

 

Beeing killed shouldnt prevent someone from from re-entering a zone. IMO a very stupid idea which is easily to counter with a second character or second account anyway. He comes back, you kill him again or you move somewhere else. You shouldnt call upon the devs for every minor annoyance. This way you kill a game....

// Armar

 

My argument is that the winner of the fight dictates what they think is fun. If they think its fun to kill the same player over and over again then they can forgive the bounty through the Price of the Oracle. If they think its fun to restrict that player from the zone for an hour, they do not forgive the bounty.

 

One of the reasons thieves need timers is because they can script theft to automatically steal repeatedly. This is what happened in early UO, and Richard Garriott tells a great story about it here. What players often forget is that this IS a game, and to make it fun for everyone we have to think in terms of what is allowed and then also what is possible.

For example, you don't play a game of dodge ball and allow players to show up and throw baseballs as a substitute. It's possible that they could throw baseballs, but that would hurt and it would be harder to dodge and it would really stop being a fun game. The same thing happens with PVP and stealing. If you allow players to do whatever is possible then the "game" stops being fun for everyone. The problem with some of the people on these forums is that's what they want. They don't want the game to be fun, they want it to be horrible for other people. That's not actually pvp, it's griefing, bullying, being a jerk, essentially bringing a baseball to a dodgeball fight because you can.

While I agree with you that just slapping a timer on thieves isn't the best solution, it's better to have a timer than to not have a timer because you can't trust players to say "well I got caught so good one for that guy, he wins" nope, they're going to keep coming back over and over again because the risks and the rewards are not balanced and statistically speaking they really only have to win a fraction of the times more than they lose. That's where a timer would even the odds and make it more of a challenge. Not the most eloquent system and yes of course that's less fun for the thief, but it's also less stupid for the people being stolen from. (remember, balance)

 

There hadnt been any real problems with this in UO and neither in Shadowbane. You died, you could be back within 5 minutes depending on the exact loction. I cant remember anyone calling out to nerf this. Calling for a one hour zone ban is IMO ridiculous.

// Armar

 

Most casual players dislike severe death penalties, your not alone.

 

I didn't say that I agreed with a 1 hour zone ban.

The fact that you don't recall something happening in UO or Shadowbane is irrelevant. I agree that people pvping like it's an FPS are a problem in need of a solution. As someone that has a lot of experience playing a thief in multiplayer games, I can say that there's no good reason to be able to continuously annoy the same people over and over again. If you get caught you should be looking for a new target, not going back to the same person and being a pest. Do you understand the difference between a game and an online annoyance? Being a thief is kind of like playing cops and robbers. If you make it so the thieves are over powered and can't really be stopped, people won't want to play the cops anymore. You need balance.

 

There had been a bug allowing a thief to macro like 1000 steal attempts per second. Resulting in tons of ppl creating throw away thiefs because even a low level thief would succeed with a 1 in 1000 chance of stealing something if he can steal 1000 times per second. Thats hardly comparable to a thief returning to you.

A classic in-game counter would be a skill alerting you of incoming players allowing for detection and destruction of the thief.

Imagine a full server with zones full of PvP Players and PK Hords. You are a new PvP orientated player, you enter zone A and instantly get gangbanged => Zone A closed for you for one hour, ok, so you go to Zone B, same problem, Zone B is blocked now too. Sorry, thats utter BS.

And it would make it too way to easy for clans/Guilds to control zones and resources. Imagine a large guild putting up posts at the major spawn zones and killing everyone or most on entering. Oh, how will they whine....

And i really really hate thiefs......

// Armar

 

Now your talking. If a guild can dominate a zone or multiple zones, congratulations to that guild. This encourages other guilds to unite and fight them, whats that?
A REASON to pvp?
A REASON to make friends and team up?
A REASON to go to one zone rather than another?
Those are three things this game lacks and needs to make it fun imo. Your arguments against the idea of a one hour zone restriction on PvP death is part of my argument for it.

 

It's actually the exact same thing when you're the one being stolen from.

This gets us right back into the "it's a game" concept. If you design a game, you don't just make the game so one side can pummel the other side. The same logic needs to be applied to people that are being stolen from. It has to go both ways. Both sides need to have fun playing "cops and robbers" or it's not a good game. That's just a fact, and when something isn't a good game people don't play it.

Again, I didn't say that I agreed with a 1 hour zone ban so why are you telling me about this for the second time?

 

I PvP'ed for the first time, to kill a thief that would not leave me alone. Not a criticism of the player just not a great experience for me. I prefer to be left alone, after I catch the thief. Especially when the thief is no threat to the realm .... Now a Pig...

 

Like i said, thats a great idea if you want to make it easy for PK Hords or any guild to control spawn points. Lets see how you like your solution when you get insta killed on entry to your most favorite zone 5 times in row.

Besides this it seems to me that everyone, as soon as there is something slightly annoying in the game for him, calls out to the Devs for a nerf... It seems kind of rampant to me within this playerbase.

In my experience the MMO which had been most fun had been the one with the least restrictions. Solutions had been found by the players in-game, not by nerfing the game.

// Armar

 

Yes, make it hurt. Full loot for PvPers

// Armar

 

Armar, I wouldn't be killed five times in a row as I would have to go to another zone after the first death. If this happened every time I logged in, guess what? That wouldn't be my favorite zone any more. I would find a zone that has a better risk / reward and I would be striving to get my character to a level that I can no longer be bullied, or I would ensure that I had a decent size group with me before entering known pvp zones.

In regard to your whining to devs to nerf the game comment, this game is PRE-ALPHA as if I have to remind you, and that is the purpose of these forums, to give the devs feedback of our experience and suggestions of solutions if we have them.

In regard to your least restrictions comment, I agree with you, however this game does not have severe death penalties, If players were returned to their bind points upon death and there was no quick transportation through the over world map, I would have never started this post. This game is set up in a way that does not punish death with a relocation of player that requires a reasonable amount of time to return to their place of death. This lack of punishment results in players PvP'ing as though they were playing a FPS as Baron Drocis so elegantly put it.

 

I hated UO thiefs. Most annoying thing ever. But they only had been a problem as long as thieving had been unbalanced or bugged. You are mostly in a group. So if a thieve comes close, and you would usually know them by name anyway, the thief would get nuked before even able to come close because at least one person would have detected him. If you are soloing thieves can be an annoyance. If you cant handle this, move to a different spawn area or get a group. Thats it.

// Armar

 

That's an unreasonable expectation.

 

The annoyance is not with the thief, its with the thief returning within one minute to continue harassing the player(s) that just killed him.

 

Its an "unreasonable expectation" that the Devs "fix" every small annoyance for you.

// Armar