Actually punish PKs when they die

The murder count decay mechanic is a pretty dumb way to making pking risky or encourage playing on this server. I would make lots of changes to make pking less of a problem (i.e., nerf tracking, disallow recalling in certain places, bring back heat of battle to stop criminal from going through gates, and a number of other things). I would much prefer a system where reds would have to actively play in order to reduce their counts and pk-hunting content to encourage people to team up to kill pks. We could tie it into the virtue system which gives bonuses to hunting pks (e.g., cast an effect which stops pks from recalling).

Currently, catching and killing pks is a very hard and time-consuming thing to do because of how easy it is to hit-and-run with large numbers of people. It is very easy and takes little time or effort to make the rounds, track at every spot, and zerg pk, and gate out before anyone could possibly mobilize to hunt you. Dying doesn't matter because short decay timers are so short. As a stop-gap measure until content can be made to make pking feel real, be risky, and take time and effort, I would immediately increase short decay timers to 40 hours and longs to 168 hours (to address the rampant blue pking which goes on).

Dungeons and hunting spots are mostly empty and I think that is a problem for the server which should be addressed. It can be addressed in such a way to encourage active play and make the downsides of pking more accurate to the downsides in era without reducing the felucca nature of the shard. Unfortunately, it seems pretty clear to me that we as a community are unable to have serious discussions about these topics. Even the first reply to this post is an instant flame post.

Furthermore staff seems to be totally uninterested in making any pvp changes, even fundamental errors in game mechanics (e.g., a zero hp stun punch). This server has seen tons of pvm content which simply remove people from the felucca part of the game (i.e., instances events) and no changes whatsoever to pvp except for a terrible change to the way healing and dex interact.

But, this thread will be the same as all others. There will be lots of flaming and bickering, anyone opposed will hyperbolize and refuse to have any sort of reasonable discourse, lots of time will be wasted, and nothing will change. I really do hope staff would sit down and have a serious discussion about the direly needed changes to pvp and ideas for pvp content for this server (many people are willing to help in the effort to produce that content, myself included!).

Make Murdering Great Again!

I can fix every issue with the PK system and I promise 80% of the population would like it (Subtracted 10% as an automatic hater disapproval vote).

However, Telamon has a lot on his plate. Fixing a PK system that really isnt THAT broken isnt a priority, and it shouldnt be. I do hope that when the time comes, he does seek my opinion. The issue is group PKing, always has been always will be. That and trammies, some of you cry way too much.

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The problems with pking become very obvious with group pking, but the problems still exist, just to a lesser degree, with solo pking. I agree Telamon has a lot on his plate and something which isn't that broken should be a low priority. The system isn't perfected, it could be much better, these threads and types of complaints are not rare and they're not all just whining too much. A number of small changes could go a long way to ameliorate many of the problems with the system which 80% of players would like.

If it was simply a matter of the lack of available time, it could be addressed in a time-frame shorter than multiple years by asking well-known members with lots of experience for input/help to make those changes. It seems to be lack of interest and I wish that would change.

Normally, other players can be a check in sandbox games like this. But because of how easy and little effort it takes to mobilize large groups to go through all hunting spots on the server in 10 minutes and which can immediately gate out and house hide, it is totally infeasible to hunt reds here. And even when you catch and kill them, their deaths really don't matter. The balance struck in era doesn't work well anymore because because heat of battle doesn't work the same way, everyone here has at least three accounts, and everyone has always on internet which can keep players online without any effort for weeks.

We should try to get back to that era balance, where counts meant something and dying on a red meant something. Sitting online afk in a house to shed murder counts has always been an incredibly lame and boring system. We can change that!

Also, pkers in era were actually murderers. People didn't generally use pks for team fights because dying actually meant something and group fighters didn't murder much. On UOR, people use pks as a sort of perma-grey group fighting char in addition to using them to occasionally slaughter solo innocents. Murderers should not be perma-greys, making murderers be actual murderers instead of a hybrid group fighter/murderer would also go a long way to invigorating order/chaos or factions (the systems built to actually have this group combat).

As for the large task of creating pvp content (in addition to the stop-gap measures to immediately address the issues/abuses now), I would be willing to put in the time and effort to do it and I know a lot of other players who would be willing to as well. This server is great, it's better than any others, and I think perfecting pvping would be a huge draw for players to come and stay here! Don't forget that many players who start in pvm want to get into pvp, but they are totally unimpressed and stop being interested or quit altogether. Anyway, until the next time.

@Iago I actually agree with everything you say but instead of the increased timers how about giving pks motivation to go in stat and stay in stat. Could be simple things like cloth and sandals. either than that I agree about heat of battle and the nerfing of tracking

@scuba

I agree, maybe my proposed changes are too negative. @Gideon Jura once told me positive aspect changes are better and much easier to implement than negative aspect changes. I think you and him are correct in that.

There are problems and maybe my solutions aren't optimal or trying to do too much (I'm also trying to address the rampant blue pking and people using murderers more as group fighters for group fights). I don't think only positives would address the problem with big groups of pks clearing out all hunting spots in 10minutes, but I think it would convince some people to stay in stat or have/use real pks the way they were meant to be used.

I really think we could all come up with changes which are far more fun and which address the problems most of us see with the murder count decay system, but big changes take lots of effort and testing. Changes like increasing decay timers or getting rid of shorts and only have longs would be easy things which could be in place in 20 minutes.

Well to start it should be harder for reds to clear landscape I mean you said it large groups can clear everything within 10-20minutes and that is a huge problem. Also after reds kill there should be a delay when they can gate out.
also I did think genocides idea about stacking counts on group murders was a good one. If Chris made it so it was a little harder to gate out or leave the scene of the crime giving a people a chance to tell people in IRC where the fights were that would increase pvp ten fold and it would give a chance for the blue to get some type of revenge.

I think we can have a civil discussion about this for the better of the server. So please let's discuss

Dungeons are very finite places with strict borders/walls. Perhaps just disabling tracking in dungeons entirely, would be a good thing to test out.

I'm all for disabling Recall/Gates into dungeons personally but still allow for Recall/Gate out.

*shrugs*
Honestly don't even care much for this topic anymore but would love to see some positive improvements to the system for many of the valid reasons stated here.

At least this time it was civil. Last post was trashed by knuckleheads.

No rez in stat, higher timers

This whole issue of pking could be resolved immediately if only the Trammelites would quit and go play Runescape, where they belong. It's simple, really...

There is a large group of us that feels this mechanic needs to be tweaked. Instead of joining the conversation constructively you'd rather we just quit the server and go away? LoL

yeah, I feel this is the way the conversation goes.

This info graphic displays my perspective of the general population of UO. It is unfortunately the outliers who cry the loudest who tend to paint us all.

Notice, the similarities between the "Trammelites" and the "Fecculites"? In both cases, their primary solution is "F'Off" and in all cases, the end result is fewer and fewer of us remain.

Honestly, how long-term of a solution is it to just tell somebody to 'F'off' and go somewhere else? If we truly follow that line of thinking all the way eventually we're all playing on a solo UO server... with NOBODY to either PK or interact with.

Comeon, let's stay civil.

f off jupiter

No, I'd prefer everyone stay and just stop complaining about pks. They are simply part of the dynamic of the game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This isn't Candyland...it's UO!

We all want to be free to play as we please, and that includes pks. No one player or group is superior to the next. We're all in this together. The real "balance" that is needed on this server is that people mind their own business and let others do their own thing. Some people dislike pks, others dislike tamers, still other dislike thieves. To each his own!

I've offered civil, constructive comments throughout these kinds of discussions. I've given options. But if you want to turn this shard into something it's not, then I can't help but recommend you expand your horizons elsewhere. If I'd said it once, I've said it a thousand times: this is UO Renaissance. Pks were rife in 2000, and so they should be here as well.

I wish I saw half as many post about people being happy that we can play here at all, as opposed to endless nagging and whining about how unfair pking is. Come to think of it, if pking were really half as bad as some make it out to be, they would've already left.

Recognizing and brain storming solutions to minor imbalances are part of this server. I'm not against pks or pking, but I do see how the way the current mechanic works makes the red system just about pointless. There are many ways the current system could be tweaked to give being red actual meaning with out destroying pking and that's what threads like this are for.

That's not what I've read from many other commentators here...

The only meaning of being a red is murder. Make it more difficult for murderers to murder and you've changed the entire game. It will cease to be the UO we all knew and loved. There is a ripple effect behind virtually all mechanics tweaks, but few people look ahead to that. They simply want whatever they dislike to be stopped now.

oh mes oh mys this made me cackle.

for those not in the know, mes has been given exclusive rights to bid me f'off. I'm not sure how he attained this privilege, but it his his all the same now.

let's go hunt gazers again sometime!

The way I look at the current system being red could be swapped with being perma grey and it wouldn't change a thing for 99 percent of the "pks" because almost none of them will run or rez in stat. So what's the point then of being a big mean red pk if you avoid any risk?