Nice to see that you've put time into this matter! You seem to take a rather "player protective" stance, as if this would be the default perspective (?) but I'd like to argue for the opposite. First a quick note on young players. I wouldn't mind them being protected from traps. However, I assume young players can't be looted? If so, one might argue traps should trigger on youngs as well; they won't risk loosing their stuff after all, which is one of the arguments used against traps. I wouldn't press the issue though. Overall I think your ideas are just too strict. Why can't trappers "grief without consequence"? Traps are a passive way of fighting; it's up to the victim to open it. Your suggestions presume that trapping is the same as attacking a player with a sword or casting a spell, but is it? It seems to me that trapping is a passive way of fighting where you can't force damage upon others. Traditional fighting, on the other hand, is active in that you may actually force attacks on people. A trapper style of player should get rewarded in some areas for loosing abilities in others. Trapping is about surprise, it's not conventional warfare (speaking of terrorists ) to be balanced the same way as regular fighting. It's a different gamestyle and couldn't be balanced with a regular pvper, in front of which the trapper would probably die. If trappers get counts and eventually turn red they will be defenseless outside towns, whereas the regular PK wouldn't since this one invested in more l33tpvp skills. The stealth trapper in dungeons invests quite a bit of time in each trap kill, many times without anything happening. A regular fighter has quite a different experience. Yes, the trapper would have a one-shot-kill advantage, but considering the disadvantages I'm not sure there's a problem. Considering the invested time per kill and the passivness of the craft (victim's choice to d-click), I think it's fair to let trappers risk less consequences. I suppose there could be a compromise where your trapping ideas apply in town to prevent griefing, but not outside so the dungeon trapper can go about his business in the wild. But it'd be sad for all the lols. I really don't get why people thinks it's such a big deal with some mess in town. It's one of those things that makes UO so great. Perhaps I could even see a compromise in damage of 80-100 instead of 120. This reduces the trappers chance of a kill even further, but it wouldn't ruin the playstyle. P.S. I approve of the suggested guard whack statement. D.S.
Thanks for the response! With "trappers" I meant droppers. I meant to use the word as referring to those old-style trappers with racoon tails on their hats, setting up traps for wildlife. The advantage of placing a trap and bringing an alt is do-able I suppose, but would ppl consider it worthwhile? I mean, if you already got a pvp-char, why spend that much extra time in lowering the opponent's health? Most of the time a trap would even insta-kill the victim. Perhaps if there were two players and you'd want to kill off/almost kill one of them, and got 1v2. But again, I'm not concerned that most pvpers would go to such lengths. Are you? I don't think it'd cause any major imbalances etc. One of my points still apply I think. Even if there's an alt waiting there's no guarantee the victim takes the bait. So the whole operation depends on the victim in a way, the aggressor can't force the scenario onto the victim. Right? Deploying a trap dropper+PVP alt would be a kind of passive/active fighting style: you have that active ability to force damage onto a victim, but only after having passed the passive stage. On guardwhacking, stone wall, NPC LoS, etc, I think we may find a way forward there!
What about simply having the box in my pack and having a thief snoop and trigger it, thus dying. Would that still give me a count even if I didn't "drop it"? What if I simply want to use it as a means of protecting my goods while doing a heavy trade (selling 500k bandages, for example)? Or what if I set up a fake drop house where I have many trapped chests while I run around with a rune and key to that house to get PK's (or their alts) to die there? I don't think making the "dropper" a murderer is justified. At all.
I haven't read much of what's above, fair warning You can already do this with snooping. When I played I did this all the time. Craft a chest w/ key. Use a tinker to place a trap on the chest. Lock it so the trap is enabled. Stand 2+ tiles away and use magic unlock on it. Now you can pick it back up and store goods in it. You can enter it freely without any risk, but if someone snoops that container while it's in your bag then they will explode. The trap must be re-applied afterwords. Noone gets a count.
I think your notion of dropping is quite clear and helpfull. Just one question: if I drop a trap and someone picks it up and THEN triggers it, then I wouldn't count as the dropper. Correct? Or would you say that my dropping status stays with the trap until that other player drops it? If so they could pick my traps up and at a much later date blow themselves up and give me a count, make me criminal and get me guardwhacked. At whatever occassion they like. I wouldn't wanna see that! This affects dropping on corpses for example. I could see a compromise where 1) if victim d-click the trap on the corpse I count as a dropper, and 2) if victim picks trap up then my dropping status goes away.
What if you bought 180,000 feathers from me. I put them in a container for ease of transfer (transfer one box instead of 3 stacks), but trapped it to deter shennanigans. We meet at the bank, you can't carry, so I put it on the ground because I trust you, and a bystander opens it in that split second? Now, what makes it REAL interesting is that I had 4 murder counts. Likely, not. Possible, yes
Well, I'd say my reasons given above apply here, trap killers should have certain advantages that regular PKs don't. The consequences of killing people with traps shouldn't be the same as killing them with a sword. It's another playstyle where other rules apply. I think I could stretch myself to seeing your drop mechanics applied in towns but not outside, as this prevents griefing (even though we loose the lulz).
I think it would be a nightmare to code, and I have never been a fan of nitpicking. Sorry I don't support your cause, I think it should be as it was back in production servers.
how about just make it era accurate like they should be same with stealing or take out player killing by other players without consent (duel arenas, factions, and challenges only) Everyone add up the top player murderer counts, understand they have protected cys and blessed runebooks/ethys, they have leader boards, etc every other fel style play is nerfed, cub is going to give cy wipe options to clear runes, tinkers are nerfed, stealing is fucked up intentionally and things are made too heavy on purpose (can't steal them, but can kill and take the items) it's frustrating that people want a trammel server with the option to pk on pvp chars and to hell with thieves, tinker traps, house killing, etc (you know the stuff that used to make UO, UO) I'm starting to wish @Chris would make a new server with 1 account / 3 chars per person (1 house) and go with classic fel rules, no razor, and bans for anyone caught cheating (or modding)
No, uo with all of the correct mechanics in place and no razor, instances, 3 accounts, etc not era accurate to a fault, but in some instances such as tinker traps, stealing, and house killing, it would be nice. and ideally without this mindblast garbage, if stats affect skill timers and other things, then having to crap your timers up to keep from getting buried from a spammed level 5 spell is silly tinker traps aren't that big of a deal, it seems the solution to protecting dumb newbies is akin to putting foam on every corner in the world so no one runs into a sharp corner instead of letting them learn not to run into corners. You can't kill every eagle in the sky to protect one wounded rabbit.
