Wow this is a long post.


>Fair enough. Basically the reason I was killed so much in the
>past and had my pies stolen was because I didn't try hard
>enough not to get killed by the same people over and over. You
>are certainly right, eventually i found that I could just
>stand still and not loose camo in the tree if I logged on and
>found we lost the fetish. I understand you can't do that
>anymore though. Still equally those newbies Mendos is talking
>about might not be trying hard enough to survive. At the very
>least they should know that hiding out in their guilds should
>keep them alive. That's fun right?

This is an issue of game knowledge largely. It is something that can be remedied, but (as Daev was saying below I believe), dumbing down the PK environment early on or extending PK protection doesn't help this too much. If you are getting abused a level 11, you are going to be even more abused at level 25.

We can remedy the game knowledge issue in part with greater learning and informational tools. At some point though, it is going to fall on the newbie to try things out themselves and make full use of whatever tools are provided.

>
>Now I know you aren't really saying this in that way but I can
>just imagine someone who is feeling really frustrated at
>continuously getting killed, sometimes to the same person
>reading your comments. It does really sound like you are
>saying it is their fault. And its true, to a point. However
>end of the day if someone with your knowledge wanted to kill
>someone with my knowledge as many times as they wanted, what
>could i possibly do other then to hide out my guild, my cabal
>and later some really remote location and hope you get bored
>and log off? It doesn't sound very fun for me, but again you
>know the game, and you know its audience.

I understand this frustration. There are a handful of things to do as a solo player. I tend to play a lot of the time as a solo player. Exploration, RP, and quests (some which are large) are all in the game to this regard. Once again though, this is an issue of game knowledge.

>
>Unfortunately though while you might think the situation is a
>perfect time to have some fun and rise to the occasion, for a
>lot of people its just a frustrating experience. This is
>sometimes made worse by how difficult it is to find groups to
>rank these days. You'll be lucky if they do anything other
>then close their client. If the game made some good impression
>on them, perhaps they'll take the time to post complaint or
>rant on your boards. In my case, I just said some short
>goodbyes and went to do other things after getting about two
>characters to hero and playing just one of them for any
>significant amount of time.

You're right, low numbers can impact new players. Which is why we are trying hard to get more than a handful of new players at once. We are having some limited success in this regard.


>But hey, just four or five short years later I'm back to roll
>something new. :)
>

Cool. Thanks for giving us a second shot. I hope you enjoy this run around more ;)

>While its true that culturally things are much more mellow and
>forgiving, from my point of view this game is still a
>potential haven for trolls. I mean if I'm the type of person
>that gets a hard-on by griefing people, there is nothing
>stopping me from rolling something, hunting relentless,
>killing and full looting people over and over. Even if the
>character's pk range increases to the point it becomes too
>challenging to grief, its just a simple task to reroll and
>repeat. Sure, I -might- not receive any rewards later on for
>this behavior like a title or lastname and I might receive a
>snarky comment on their pdf, but ultimately who gives a damn
>about that stuff when the tears of others are all the reward I
>would want or need. Luckily for them, this game will still
>reward them for driving people away automatically.

See: Valg's point below regarding players. Unfortunately this has been an issue within CF for years, which is partly why it is important to learn to survive early on. We try to catch and police extreme circumstances of bad sportsmanship. Things are not as bad as they once were, by any stretch. But this is not black and white either and different players and staff have different opinions on what constitutes as griefing, or multi-killing (as Daev also pointed out above.)

>
>You understand that multikilling isn't great for the game yet
>this game is currently encouraging multi-killing through its
>rp and coded systems. Evil chaotic sees someone, kill
>him(fine), sees them again, kill them, and again and again. Of
>course as stated above the person should have learned his
>lesson and stayed holed up and bored in his guildhall. Still
>this doesn't seem very fun, the game could have some RP
>reasons why after killing someone their soul or life might not
>be worthy of your time for a while at least. Let us not forget
>that currently its not that uncommon to log on and find
>absolutely no one to group with which will only add to
>frustrations when attempting something. On top of that, this
>game has a lovely (and outdated but that's another thread) xp
>penalty when dying to mobs. It really does limit the places
>you might be able to go on your own if you want to learn.
>Depending on the class you play without some advanced
>knowledge at the very least least. It might not totally be
>someone fault that they happen to be in the same place, it
>might just be either attempt that or log out.

Our XP penalty system has been toned down a lot over the years. Really. You also neglect to mention that there are regular intermittent XP bonuses, and one sliding scale XP bonus for low numbers. If anything leveling up is easier than it has ever been historically when in a group. Outside of a group it is still tricky, but this is a numbers issue.

>
>You mentioned sportmanship, but even in your case if you don't
>feel like someone has made enough effort in avoiding you (you
>with your vast knowledge) they deserve to die, repeatedly at
>that. I'm sure other people have other concept of
>sportsmanship, and then again there are people out there with
>absolutely none. At the end though they are subjective
>opinions which doesn't really help define what is and what
>isn't allowed in the game, rules to ensure it remains fun and
>competitive. On top of all that though, as stated repeatedly
>killing someone is still very much rewarded by the edge system
>in this game. Total pk count goes up, and as a bonus you get
>pk count for that range, very nice incentives to go multi-kill
>the only person I can touch in my range.

Rewards skew fairly heavily to the role/roleplay and explore side. Edges is one of the few areas where PK is really rewarded in entirety.

>
>Again, luckily (for me) things are much more mellow and before
>Mendos' post here I didn't think there was stuff going on
>remotely close to what he is describing. I mean other then
>never getting my questions answered on this board, my
>experiences so far have been awesome, even when I do get
>killed. Just classy people all around. However, as I said
>before regardless of if things actually happen, just the
>potential for things to happen is often just as bad. My
>original idea might be too extreme towards my side of the camp
>for this mud but how about some middle ground. You should only
>get PK rewards for killing a person once per log in session.
>You can still kill them repeatedly, full loot them, make them
>lose con, and force them to hide until they log out bored out
>of their minds, but the system will not reward you again
>pk-wise until they decide to log out or a certain grace period
>has passed (30 mins to 1 hour). Maybe both parties get a
>message when that timer is up? This way you don't have any
>incentive to hunt that particular person down again without
>good reason. The exception would be if they enter your cabal
>after ghost period or if they attack you first. If you are
>worried about dying and losing con/ loot to them then by all
>means attack them first when you see them, that is more then
>enough incentive/reward after the first kill.
>
>While it might mean less to do right now after you've killed
>someone once and you don't see anyone else on your range to
>hunt, it might mean more people to hunt in the future. Not to
>mention pk count needed for edge point can be changed to
>reflect the new challenges of finding people to hunt. Just a
>suggestion though, again I haven't encountered anything like
>what Mendos describes since I've returned at least.

I was discussing this kind of thing with another Immortal the other day. The issue with any kind of physical PK-protection is that it is extremely open to abuse. In fact, much of the griefing behavior could indeed be exacerbated by use of timers and so on. This is really far more complicated than it seems. There is also the issue of fundamentally changing the game at its core, or dumbing it down to the point of a no-risk and totally boring environment.

I will personally be attempting to get some stuff set up to further remedy the steep learning curve in the future. Some will be compiled from existing sources, other stuff will be new. It is -very high- on my priority list after my area is complete, because I have been dragging my feet on that to handle the marketing side.

I hope you can at least appreciate that we are making efforts here. I don't think I have the time, or space to reel off all of the "newbie friendly" changes that have been made in the last decade, but believe me that things were much worse 10 years ago, and 20 years ago CF was a free-for-all.