>My examples basically boil down to: "If you're not going to
>even try to not just get killed again, then you forfeit
>the right to complain if you do."

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?

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.

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.

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


>In my mind gratuitous multikilling isn't great for the game,
>but the attitude that once someone kills you they can't do it
>again ever or you're going to tell a teacher is the worst kind
>of poison for the game. Culturally I think the game is a lot
>closer to the latter than the former at this point.

You are truly a text book example of a killer-type player.

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.

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.

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.

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.