The problem is people get to run around on pks with no actual risk of loss. They die and lose some regs and armor, not unlike an innocent character. I feel that people who want to consistently play reds should have to feel the pain that is supposed to be in place to deter reds in the first place. The entire purpose of stat loss is to add incentive to killing reds all while creating risk for those who engage in killing innocents, but here the vast majority of pks don't allow themselves to fall into stat. I guarantee you if counts are lengthened many people will think twice before running out and killing someone on their blue.
It is manipulative, deceptive and renders the metric useless as a measure of activity. I'd rather UOR have the most clients logged in because it has the most active player hours without the synthol, but hey, whatever works, right? What happens when the padding gets competitive? (links omitted since I do not want to promote other shards - though I'm not certain and don't care which was first)
True. This is why I stopped short of worse adjectives. At one time it was a pretty useful metric for shard growth, but then we got 3 accounts followed by welfare. ------ If nothing else, I can agree with you that I don't think either of these proposed changes (count timer / platinum) would do a whole lot. I think it might discourage less established players from trying to become PKs, but I don't think that is a good thing for a variety of reasons.
I'd rather put a pk down for 24hr than 5min. The only people I can see being opposed to this is those who lIke to be able to take counts without real repercussions.
600+ online and only 20 to 30 regular PKs? If that is remotely accurate, I'd say there's absolutely no problem with the number of PKs on this shard, if anything, we could use a few more regulars.
Stat loss is an awful mechanic in general. For PKs, pets, for anyone... Your progress in UO is determined by your stats. Equipment and material things will come, go, and be stolen, but your character template should be untouchable no matter what your playstyle is. Pork Fried Rice's suggestions are all awesome, but I would replace stat loss with some form of "righteous vengeance" defense penalty for killers. Like, if a red kills you while you are Blue, then for 2 hours the PK will receive a penalty to resistances from your attacks (straight damage bonuses could be fended off with high end armor/spells). This penalty would stack and the timer would reset each time the same player is killed, so if a PK was killing a single player over and over in a short period, the victim would eventually have an enormous advantage, as the PK's resistances against the victim would drop to 0. The penalty could also be ended sooner if the victim claims vengeance on the PK. This would obviously be disabled in actual PvP environments like CTF, Factions, Tournies, etc. and would DEFINITELY not apply to pets but would serve as a decent deterrent for constant overworld PKing. A good PK would then have to 'spread out' kills instead of griefing one particular person, and even then if enough victims banded up they could take him down (if they find/catch him, of course). Hunting in groups and triple-boxing might mitigate this a bit (Kill blue, switch to other char, kill blue again, or let your teammates get the deathblow), but that at least encourages team play/grouping up, and triple-boxing already mitigates like 90% of the game so I'd consider it UO-accurate. I hope it doesn't sound super Trammel-y, but everyone's problem is that PKs face no risk of death, right? With this mechanic almost any player could potentially be a threat if picked on enough. It'd encourage PKs to eventually "buzz off" somewhere else and find someone else to kill, instead of banishing them to the A F of K.
There ain't no way I'm sitting on a freaking island for 280+ days because I got one shotted by a semi AFK f-ing tamer. If you think that's a solution to the murder system, you're looking to play a game that isn't called Ultima Online.
I like PFR's and Mes's direction. I agree. Anyone who has played UO for any amount of time on any other populated server knows the game by now. Any new player who took mortal offense to it would quickly find they didn't have many available alternatives. I feel that it would create a gut check. Players would have a serious decision before them, would have to stop and think "Do I want to do this?" because of meaningful consequences. Would some people come to the conclusion in for a penny, in for a pound? Sure. Would it be a majority? I highly doubt it. There's only one way to find out for sure though. I don't think "all the current folks" was proper. I think you'd see a split, just like you do with almost any other change. Some who would stop logging in due to losing their gravy train, others who would accept the consequences for various reasons. If nothing else though, staff could come up with a way to compensate for those already in a screwed position pending a change like this. Unrelated, but every time I ever said that over the years, I'd get "You have no clue what you're talking about. I run around with 300k worth of gear on my red at all times. Bs, bs, bs." I love how almost everyone seems to have agreed to drop the rhetoric while I was gone.
I think gideon thinks he's not a total douche, but he seems to really be fighting for mechanics that make griefing easy...weird...
This is a legitimate fix for a system that is obviously being abused as it is. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it wrong. But since you have ulterior motives, you don't want to see this particular change implemented because it would mean you'd actually have to pony up for every time you want to kill someone. Those of us who actively kill other players don't mind doing so with the risk of stat loss, so what's your excuse? I haven't once heard you give a VALID reason for why you don't think this is worth implemented, instead you'd rather say "oh he's attacking me" because I don't work on the same flawed logic that your argument seems to be based on.
Just a random thought. Maybe instead of people trying to make PKing more difficult, they should treat it like any other gameplay style of Ultima Online (for this UOR) and think about how we can enrich PKing. Look at all the custom content on this shard tailored to PvPers (faction/guild adjustments, CTFs, tournaments, etc), or content tailored to PVM (instanced based Trammel-zones, boss monsters, Champ spawns), or to crafters (new craftables, BODs, etc), or RPers (guild house add-ons, war regions, etc) How come thievery and murder have been left out of content expansion? Is there even anything in the pipeline for people who dare to play the other side? These are core parts of UO for the era we claim to be living in.
