I think it was one of the Russians who posted that they thought it would be a good idea to remove kills stats from the pbf, and some of what I've seen in game recently has convinced me that this is worth serious consideration.

At the very least, I think there'd be some benefit from not counting kills on people who have died in the last hour, or people who were the last person you killed. (Similar, but slightly different to AP charges.) Alternatively, maybe only count people whose pk ratio is over 50% at the time of their death, or who have fewer than 5 deaths at the time (either of those gets them counted).

Why am I bothering to post about this? Well, partly it was prompted by Jeremicia's deletion. This guy got tooled repeatedly by an air-offense shifter who took advantage of his attempts to regear to do this. (At least, that's how Jeremicia saw it, based on what he said to me.)

I'd put this down as a bit of a one-off event, but then I see something similar happening to another character today. I doubt people would bother doing this kind of stuff if it didn't give them something to show off at the end of it.

So anyway, my vote would be either for the stats to be removed, or preferably, to exclude kills on recently dead folks, or people with really crap pk ratios.

For similar reasons, such kills shouldn't contribute to edges either, imho.

Roleplay is the culprit of all PK's. My reasoning for thinking this is because Carrion Fields is a roleplaying MUD. Think about the most prominent killers in Carrion Fields. They are all part of cabals with goals and enemies. All of which are generally strictly enforced with killing other players because they are enemies.

So what if people are motivated by PK in a PK oriented game?

The only thing I've seen as a problem lately are shapeshifters level sitting at level 43-44, killing off people with great ease in the 30's. By level 43, shapeshifters have access to a/b/s, stone skin, protection, and forms that are meant to compete against other hero level characters. Yet, a lot of these level sitting shapeshifters don't have any xp penalty and can't fight any hero level characters yet, until they distend from killing a bunch of lowbies/newbies.

Shapeshifters need an XP penalty. My alternate suggestion is that shapeshifters who pick air or offense as a major don't get their major form until level 45 or 46. These focuses are able to prey on people in a way that no one else can. Either by finding people almost at will. Or overwhelming people with 6 MANGLES in two rounds (or worse).

This is coming from someone who has recently played about a half dozen shapeshifters.

What if pks only gave you edge points and charges if they measured difficulty of the fight? As in a formula like:

= (base value)*(percent of your health remaining)

This might encourage people to take risks to earn those edges and points.


To develop this idea further:
Every item taken from the corpse (by anyone other than the victim's cabal or group) would diminish the edge/charge award, encouraging people not to full loot and prevent vulturing. I don't know how comfortable I am with this idea.

n/t

...and people complain, wanting raw numbers.

People get raw numbers, then complain they don't tell the whole story.

We are a fickle bunch, us CF playerbase.

Seriously, who cares?

>...and people complain, wanting raw numbers.
>
>People get raw numbers, then complain they don't tell the
>whole story.
>
>We are a fickle bunch, us CF playerbase.

Not really. People are just idiots. They want something but can't think of consequences before the change is already in place.
Now, the consequence is overall bad because it promotes PK ratio hungry players and corresponding behavior.

To be fair, the whole issue is complicated. If you just remove PK stats you will get endless flow of posts from people with high delusional factor claiming that they killed tons and never died. Publishing PK stats cures that but brings other problem: it feeds PK harvesters.
The right solution will be probably somewhere inbetween. Publish PK score (like AP charges) but not the raw pk number. Or something like that.

Now, it's clear that you haven't thought anything when you made your post, didn't analyze pros and cons, didn't recall the history, but I'm helpful anyway, so I explained it.

By the way, the history is:
- at first, we had no PK stats
- then at some point they were published (on forums).
- surprisely, they promoted the obvious behaviour we don't really like, so they were suspended again.
- and finally, they were published again in PBFs. Perhaps, people forgot about assorting issues or decided that they aren't issues anymore. However, I believe they are still issues and it looks like more people start to think that way.

It will happen regardless.

If you didn't get edge points, you aren't angry at the guy, you've already taken any gear you want, and you don't get a pk to add to your stats...

Well, unless you believe that none of the above have ever been the sole motive for a pk, you're going to see a reduction in multi-kills.

Take out edges, take out RP and interactions, take out gear, and take out PBF kill counts, check.

People are going to multi-kill no matter what you take away though.

Bet I know the shifter!

I disagree that kills should be removed as a PBF stat. Instead, I'd say you should report additional stats that give more info.

For instance, "number of unique characters killed".

Or you could use the standard AP charge formula, which already awards no charges for successive kills on the same character.

and the hurting will stop. Someone will be coerced into taking it damnit.

NT

Most characters are mechanically incapable of taking it, right?

I just assumed anyone could take it.

.

.

ntnt

I know how the ap charge formula works, and mentioned it in my original post. I think some minor modifications would still be beneficial though.

Also, number of unique characters killed doesn't work because it doesn't distinguish between. Kill A four times, then Kill B four times, vs Kill A, Kill B, Kill A, Kill B etc.

One thing that I think is a minor flaw with the AP code is that you don't get the charge even where the guy you are "multi-killing" attacks you with a group. Unless you kill one of the groupmates first, which is tricky when you are fighting for your life.

"Number of unique characters killed" would let you tell when someone's massive total kill count is made up of a lot of "repeat customers".

Like if I get 100 kills but only 50 of them are unique, then that's probably significant.

Let me also take this opportunity to plug my "alternate" gank-o-meter stat: percentage of total kills that were solo.

Accept that you are not getting a charge off him. If he attacks you in a group you can still kill him. Is that wrong? no. You just wont get the charge. The charge is a plus when you kill someone. Isn't it? Everyone else is PKing an not getting them.

I think in general it would be good idea to roll back ability of others to see how much charges AP got from kill. I think this info should be available ONLY for ap, because if they worth a lot it encourage people on quitting, deleting and avoiding fights(not always though but quite often).

In that case it also encourages people to not take suicide runs at the A-P. I think that's a good thing.

The other drawback of this change is that everybody asks you how many charges they were worth. To be honest, I don't mind answering that, but it is hardly the most ic of conversations.

Add titles to ragers (like tribunals/imperials).
People will see levelsitting ragers and it will encourage them to not take sucide runs against them.
This way, those ragers will not build amazing pk ratios and, thus, will not be worth many charges. In this case, they will not care much about feeding evil APs once they enter the hero range and the whole issue will disappear.

nt

Make everybody worth 1 charge.

Encourage that damned level sitting villager to die like a man or never rank up into range.

It was, wasn't it?

Multi-charges are the best thing that went into cf in a long time, imho.

And making a little fun of the idea that the strategy of building AP weapons by multikilling ragers would be significantly impacted by ragers having titles..

(Because putting a title on ragers wouldnt really matter much.)