We do take these sorts of concerns seriously. Thanks to Zulghinlour Industries, Inc., we have ways to track this sort of thing, and ask "Are APs getting screwed?" in a scientific way rather than an anecdotal one. I fished in the data, and threw roughly three months of AP kills into a spreadsheet. The results:

Given the toughness of opponents, the expected number of charges handed out over this time period would have been 543.66. The actual number of charges handed out was 539, which is within 1% of the expected value. Given the size of the data set, this is within statistical noise.

Ancrhuljin (whose entire career is inside the above data set) should have expected 101.98 charges over his lifetime, given who he killed. He collected 99. A little low, but also within statistical noise, given the smaller data set.

The slight discrepancy is even in the direction you'd expect. If an AP player convinces himself to delete after his first real bad streak, you'd expect a slight lowering of the observed average. (Random variation with a guaranteed negative streak at the end will result in a slightly low average.)

In other words, stop blaming the random number generator. It's doing its job.

Valguarnera, Number Cruncher
valguarnera@carrionfields.com

How many charges would he have received had the "new improvement" to charges not gone in?

Is that a good thing? I think it is bad if an ap benefits too much from multi-killing or killing people who unghost or naked people.

Under this new system, people like this get a bit of a break because they become worthless to an ap's axe, pretty much.

How many charges would he have received had the "new improvement" to charges not gone in?

Under the new system, he would have expected 101.98 charges as previously mentioned (and got 99 by chance). Under the old system, he would have gotten 104. So he was down 2% for his career.

Now, if you pick a person without regard for how tough they are and they become your victim, you'd expect roughly 1.1 charges/kill. For Ancruhljin, 114 charges expected under the new system. So, he was killing somewhat weaker-than-average victims, and drove his expected average down to 102.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

It would be cool if an AP could sense how powerful his target was, in a similar manner to how detect magic displays mana left. I could ellaborate, but I think what I'm saying speaks for itself. Thoughs, Valginator?

>It would be cool if an AP could sense how powerful his target was

I'd like that, it would keep APs from killing my peace minded characters.

I'd have concerns about people using that information in ways contrary to what you're thinking. On other words, checking to make sure someone is weak.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Ok, how about making a spell that works sort of like vampiric touch. It does damage directly related to the amount of power they have, give it decent lag (a risky spell to use) but it would be a means of noticing these sorts of things. I think half the problem is that no one knows what specifically constitutes someone being weak. What they view as a skilled foe may in fact not kill that often. The guessing game is harder when you're not sure how to figure out who you are exactly supposed to be hunting. Another option is to make it sensable from blood splatters similar to how rangers can time things, it'd be neat to work in a way to "taste" the blood and discern info from that. Likes, likes?

I'm not sure if you'll answer this, but how is a character judged weak? Is is based solely on pk % or based on pk total or time since last death? I'm curious because then an ap would have a better idea of who to go after.

>I'd have concerns about people using that information in ways
>contrary to what you're thinking. On other words, checking to
>make sure someone is weak.

Not that I'm in love with the idea, but you could easily raise
the minimum bar on this spell (or modified consider) to trigger
when the person is worth more than 3x* the MRCA (most recently
calculated average). Basically it becomes sort of a screen for
the top 10%, not a way to single out the lower 65%. It would
also rise and fall based on the playerbase's ability so when
someone tough dies a few remaining people seem a little more
buff than before and the reverse if someone starts to shine.
If they've hit 5.2x* the MRCA, change the echo, etc.

* You control the horizontal and the vertical. Pick a number
randomly to the tenth of a decimal on reboot for all I care.

Well if thats the case, they won't be getting very powerful, IE killing the weak per Druc's little AP experiment here, you will gather fewer charges. I'm not worried about the assholes who do that.