PVP Conference

[AshNC]

The first part of this post is an overview of the PvP system as is. the second part is an overview of current issues that have been, and still are, part of the community discussion.

Part 1: Overview

Lineage II is an open Player VS. Player (PvP) game. This means that anyone may attack any other player at any time. There are some exceptions to this rule; they are noted below. Consensual fighting is referred to as PvP. Fighting and killing another player who does not wish to fight is called Player-Killing (PK).

Your level of participation in PvP/PK activity will affect the way others are allowed to interact with you. As you engage in different kinds of PvP/PK activity, your name color will change. This is called Flagging (see below). If you kill a player who does not retaliate, you will gain Karma (see below).

The PvP system is a fundamental feature of the game. As a result, many issues overlap. The primary issues will be addressed in turn.


Flagging

When players engage in PvP activity, their names will change color to reflect their participation status.

White hits White == Purple 40 seconds.
White hits Purple == Purple 20 seconds.
White hits Red == White remains White.
Purple hits White == Purple remains Purple.
Purple hits Purple == Purple remains Purple.
Purple hits Red == Countdown to White status unaffected.
Red hits White == Red remains Red.
Red hits Purple == Red remains Red.
Red hits Red == Red remains Red.

White kills White == White becomes Red (one-hit kills).
White kills Purple == White turns Purple (one-hit kills).
White kills Red == White remains White.
Purple kills White == Purple becomes Red.
Purple kills Purple == Purple counts down to White.
Purple kills Red == Countdown to White status unaffected.
Red kills White == Red remains Red, gains more karma.
Red kills Purple == Red remains Red, karma unaffected.
Red kills Red == Red remains Red, karma unaffected.

There are other rules of flagging involving healing/buffing, and whether you are in a party or clan with your target. As these systems are subject to change in Chronicle 2, I'm not going to address them at this time.


Karma

Having Karma increases the chances that you will drop items when you die. While you have Karma, your name will be flagged Red. The amount of Karma you gain per PK is not static. You gain an increasing amount of Karma per PK. When you have karma, the official term for your character is “Chaotic.” Other players will not flag if they initiate combat against a Chaotic character. If a Chaotic character kills more white players, he will gain more karma (see Flagging section).

Certain NPCs, such as town guards, Treants and Pixies will agro and attack Chaotic players.

There are only two ways to lose karma.

<ul type="square"> Killing mobs of equal or greater level than your own
Dying[/list]
If you die to lose karma, you will experiences the standard consequences for dying.


The Use of Special Skills in PvP

Certain skills may only be used against players flagged a certain color. Some skills can not be used on White players. The purpose of this is to provide a balance to the PvP system. (More on this below)


Death Penalties

When you die under normal circumstances, you will lose XP. You may also drop items. This can happen under any circumstance – white, purple, or red. Chaotic players have a higher probability of dropping items than other players.


Peace Zones

Players in a Peace Zone cannot initiate an attack against another player. If a player is targeted for an attack that requires charge-time while outside a Peace Zone, the attack will still register damage even if the target player has entered a Peace Zone at the time the attack commences.

<ul type="square"> Player A targets Player B. They are not in a Peace Zone. The attack charges.
Player B runs into a Peace Zone.
Player A’s attack commences, registering damage to Player B, even though Player B is in a Peace Zone.
[/list]
PvP Arenas

PvP Arenas are specially designated enclosures where the standard rules of PvP do not apply. Dying entails no risk of XP or item loss. Chaotic players cannot reduce their karma by dying in the PvP arena. If a player is targeted for an attack that requires charge-time while inside an arena, the attack will still register damage even if the target player has entered a Peace Zone at the time the attack commences. If the player has passed outside the border of the arena and dies as a result of such an attack, the target player will experience standard death penalties.


PvP/PK Exploits

Using the Luck Skill in combination with higher level skills and equipment for PK/harassment purposes can result in a permanent account suspension for the first offense.


Part 2: Player Concerns with the Current PvP System

Below is a list of issues as stated by players, condensed for summarization purposes. Although there are only three bullet points listed, notice how the first point actually encompasses many overlapping issues.

<ul type="square">

Current PvP system undermines self-regulation of community

Player A harasses Player B. This could mean kill-stealing, trade-scamming, mob-training, etc. None of these are punishable offenses. It is left to the player community to resolve these situations.

If Player B attacks Player A in response to harassment, Player B is now flagged Purple, and anyone may attempt to kill him without consequence. Often this means Player A will attempt to kill Player B.

Player A may even intentionally manipulate his own stats to ensure that he will die if hit even once. If Player B hits Player A, Player A will die and Player B will turn Chaotic. Often, this results in Player A logging onto a high level character, or enlisting the aid of high level friends, to ambush and kill the player who has turned red – in the hopes of profiting from whatever the Chaotic character drops.

Further, player B is now unable to defend himself against anyone who wishes to attack him without accruing more Karma.

In Lineage II, simply taking a beating is not a disincentive of any kind. In order to experience any real losses, one must die. Furthermore, any aggressor will immediately flag Purple. Hence, Player A has everything to gain and little to lose by griefing, while Player B has little to gain and very much to lose by attempting to self-regulate the situation.

The application of certain special skills/spells

Many players have expressed frustration over what skills are (or aren’t) available for use against White players. The most recent prominent example is the skill Sting, which can be used against White players. This skill can effectively reduce a player’s HP to a minimal level with a single hit, making it very easy for someone to hit, run, and trust that nearby mobs will finish the job.

Permanent Skill Retention

All special skills remain active once they are purchased, even if the character delevels below the minimum level necessary to acquire the skill. This enables lower level characters to ignore community standards without fear of retribution from higher level characters, as they are able to defend themselves using their higher level skills.
[/list]

Player Proposals &amp; Suggestions

The following represents summaries of the most in-depth suggestions the community has offered for the purpose of improving the current PvP System.

<ul type="square"> Conditional Skill Retention

If a player drops beneath the minimum level required to purchase a skill, that skill is no longer available for use. Numerous variants of this proposal have been offered on the forums. Some have proposed that the skill be permanently removed and the SP refunded. Others have proposed that the skill de-activate only until the player re-gains the minimum necessary level.

Luck Skill Removal

There are two primary suggestions to put an end to Griefing via the Luck Exploit: A) Simply remove the skill from the game, or B) permanently disable the skill the first time a character reaches level 5.

XP Debt &amp; the Removal of Deleveling

Many have suggested that penalties for dying in PvP/turning chaotic differ from standard penalties. Some have suggested that instead of losing real XP when you die, you go into XP Debt. You neither gain nor lose real XP during this period. To work off this debt, you must gain a certain amount of XP. The penalty then becomes lost time, as opposed to lost XP.

Re-balance special skill application

There are too many various suggestions to name. Most suggestions have not met with uniform agreement. However, there seems to be a general feeling that there is room for improvement.

Reduce death penalties

Various suggestions for making death less risky have never been in short supply. Like the re-balancing of skills, there are too many various suggestions to name. They range from removing item drops altogether, to complex systems combining the total number of items one can drop, whether or not they are equipped or not, what color a player is when they are killed, and whether they are killed by mob, consensual PvP, or PK. Needless to say, the possible combinations of all these factors are virtually limitless. [/list]

NC’s current stance on player suggestions

The following is a summary of paraphrased questions I’ve seen from the community over time and the simplest, most direct response I can give.

<ul type="square"> Are we players just spinning our wheels?

No.

Is the community going to get everything it asks for?

No.

Is NC’s relative reluctance to speak on this issue a sign that they aren’t interested in suggestions?

No.

Are changes probably going to take longer than many would like?

Yes.

Is it possible that, after some time, nothing will come of these suggestions?

Yes. It’s possible.

Is it possible that, after some time, changes will be made based on suggestions?

Yes. It’s possible.
[/list]
If we weren't open to community feedback as a catalyst for improving the PvP system, we’d say so. We are eager to hear the community’s general feelings on the PvP system. We are very interested in pursuing some of these suggestions further.

However, PvP is not a peripheral element of Lineage II. It is a key feature. As such, any changes must be carefully weighed. It is difficult to predict the long-term effect that modifying even one skill might have. The difficulty in making multiple changes also increases exponentially. Changing two elements isn’t twice as difficult as changing one element – it's ten times as difficult. Apart from establishing reasonable certainty that all the long-term effects of a change will be positive, and side effects will be minimal, there is always the issue of technical feasibility. Also, there isn’t even uniform agreement among the community. Some people think the PvP system is too harsh. Others think it’s too lax. Some like it the way it is.

Lastly, feedback on this issue is going to remain lower than other topics. This is not in spite of the fact that it is an important issue, but because it is important. We are fully aware of how seriously the community takes this issue, so we’re not about to make casual remarks about things that “might” “possibly” happen in the “distant future” as long as everything goes “perfectly.”

Please continue to gather your suggestions, and debate the merits and flaws of proposed changes. You can use this thread if you like, but you can also start your own if you’d like to address specific sub-categories of this topic.

Whew! I had fun putting this together. If I left anything out, it wasn't intentional. Feel free to fill in any gaps, or ask for clarification.

- Ash

[Pixie_]

The current Karma system works fine the way it is. Its more of a matter on how the current PvP system works, then the Karma system.

One of the biggest complaints is the potential loss of ones weapon on death. My thought would be to allow for some way to cause a double on weapon drop, either through positive karma or a item. Positive Karma would have to be a rather large number 10,000+ and you only get +1 karma for killing a mob that is cons white or higher. All positive karma is lost on a pk. The item would be gotten through a quest and must be used at the completion of the quest, it work like an enchant weapon scroll and greatly reduce the chance of the weapon dropping on death by changing the drop rate or causing a it to fail a second drop check. The caveat being that it also renders the weapon non-transferable, so you can't drop it on the ground, sell, warehouse or trade it (It's like Cybellin's dagger in that regard). You can only destroy it. So while you can protect your weapon, it carries a high cost.


Luck skill - Is very useful for new players just starting out, so it should stay.

A way to prevent it from being abused by deleveled high level players, at level 10 it gets removed or you get a free skill that disables it.


Deleveling - is a valid part of the game, be it intentional or due to PvE. There are reasons to delevel other than taking advantage of higher level skills, some items only drop from a single mob so you delevel to keep the drop chances reasonable. deleveling is also an option if you loose your weapon and/or armor.

One way to prevent deleveling from being abused is to set break points below which skills cease to work. Starting at level 10 (which breaks level 20 skills), 20 (30 skills), 30 (40 skills), 35, 40, 45, 50, . . . or some other scale.


Usable skills in PvP should be rebalanced, currently some stuns work others don't, this gives some classes an advantage over others. With the changes to stun and sleep (C2 Dots will wake a pc up), these skills should be usable on anyone. Same goes for any other skills with similar effects.

While this may cause problems, it may not. It does level the PvP playing field a bit, and gives every a way to deal with greifers by stunning or sleeping them and walking away, a no damage stun/sleep is one way to deal with those low health griefers.
This is suppose to be a PvP game after all.

[FoxxieIce]

Sorry to get a little picky with your post Ash, but here are my thoughts on things

[ QUOTE ]

PvP/PK Exploits

Using the Luck Skill in combination with higher level skills and equipment for PK/harassment purposes can result in a permanent account suspension for the first offense.


[/ QUOTE ]

Most Pro-Farmers do this, as how else can a level 19-ish light elf, by the name of "Workgroup" on Lionna have doubble shot (a Silver Ranger skill) to one-shot kill people that have gone red on a farmer?

[ QUOTE ]

Part 2: Player Concerns with the Current PvP System

Below is a list of issues as stated by players, condensed for summarization purposes. Although there are only three bullet points listed, notice how the first point actually encompasses many overlapping issues.

<ul type="square">

Current PvP system undermines self-regulation of community

Player A harasses Player B. This could mean kill-stealing, trade-scamming, mob-training, etc. None of these are punishable offenses. It is left to the player community to resolve these situations.


[/ QUOTE ]

But some of them should be, how is a level 12-39 character going to level in some spots where there can be found de-leveled Pro Farmers with there 40+ skills doing just that to players, and then being forced to deal with it ourselves?

[ QUOTE ]

If Player B attacks Player A in response to harassment, Player B is now flagged Purple, and anyone may attempt to kill him without consequence. Often this means Player A will attempt to kill Player B.

Player A may even intentionally manipulate his own stats to ensure that he will die if hit even once. If Player B hits Player A, Player A will die and Player B will turn Chaotic. Often, this results in Player A logging onto a high level character, or enlisting the aid of high level friends, to ambush and kill the player who has turned red – in the hopes of profiting from whatever the Chaotic character drops.

Further, player B is now unable to defend himself against anyone who wishes to attack him without accruing more Karma.

In Lineage II, simply taking a beating is not a disincentive of any kind. In order to experience any real losses, one must die. Furthermore, any aggressor will immediately flag Purple. Hence, Player A has everything to gain and little to lose by griefing, while Player B has little to gain and very much to lose by attempting to self-regulate the situation.

The application of certain special skills/spells

Many players have expressed frustration over what skills are (or aren’t) available for use against White players. The most recent prominent example is the skill Sting, which can be used against White players. This skill can effectively reduce a player’s HP to a minimal level with a single hit, making it very easy for someone to hit, run, and trust that nearby mobs will finish the job.


[/ QUOTE ]

Those are about DoT's and things like root, Sting is the best example of this, since one cannot use bleed to do the same thing, since it does no damage right away, thus no chance of killing out right, to make this more "fair" Sting should be treated like all other DoT's or all other DoT's should be treated like Sting.

[ QUOTE ]

Permanent Skill Retention

All special skills remain active once they are purchased, even if the character delevels below the minimum level necessary to acquire the skill. This enables lower level characters to ignore community standards without fear of retribution from higher level characters, as they are able to defend themselves using their higher level skills.
[/list]

Player Proposals &amp; Suggestions

The following represents summaries of the most in-depth suggestions the community has offered for the purpose of improving the current PvP System.

[LIST] Conditional Skill Retention

If a player drops beneath the minimum level required to purchase a skill, that skill is no longer available for use. Numerous variants of this proposal have been offered on the forums. Some have proposed that the skill be permanently removed and the SP refunded. Others have proposed that the skill de-activate only until the player re-gains the minimum necessary level.


[/ QUOTE ]

I am of the camp that thinks the skill should just be made inactive, say a Scout get's to 40, the get Doubble Shot, then die and drop to 39, well the should not have Doubble Shot, till they reach 40 again, at such time, it will become useable again.

[ QUOTE ]


Luck Skill Removal

There are two primary suggestions to put an end to Griefing via the Luck Exploit: A) Simply remove the skill from the game, or B) permanently disable the skill the first time a character reaches level 5.


[/ QUOTE ]

Lucky just has to go, no level 4 character has anything worth wile anyways, since they will more then likely reach level 5 by the time they get to town.

[ QUOTE ]

XP Debt &amp; the Removal of Deleveling

Many have suggested that penalties for dying in PvP/turning chaotic differ from standard penalties. Some have suggested that instead of losing real XP when you die, you go into XP Debt. You neither gain nor lose real XP during this period. To work off this debt, you must gain a certain amount of XP. The penalty then becomes lost time, as opposed to lost XP.


[/ QUOTE ]

XP Debt was the one thing EA did right, with Earth and Beyond, you could never de-level. and like L2 it was a very item driven game, as well as skill levels, but they didn't make the weapons cost more then a player could make with a little effort, nore was crafting out the window.

[Darkmotion]

Greetings,

[ QUOTE ]

White hits Red == White remains White.
Purple hits Red == Countdown to White status unaffected.


[/ QUOTE ]

Sweet Ash, nice post.

What i quoted you on is my greif.

You see, these are examples of aggression where the aggressor has no penalty for beeing aggressive, while the victim has everything to lose from this aggression.

I figure chaotic players have enough greif, they could surely do without the constant ganking by EVERYBODY (since there is no penalty).

I also undersand from your post that anything can happen.

Can anything happen ? Yes.

Will it happen ? No.

That's the scam insurance companies count on to take your money.

Have Fun ! ™

BoardPK
Official Board PK

[Ar0b]

Nice post Ash.

Flagging:
The PvP rules are fine. I think people get a little too personal about PvP, I have an FPS online game background where it is 100% PvP. Obviously you need a system to prevent people going on mass killing sprees and that is in place and works.

The Use of Special Skills in PvP:
This aint right yet and will take some time to sort out, especiallly with changes to chances of some skills landing. I do think however that certain skills have been designed for mobs, but are completely unbalanced when used against players. For example stun comes off your con, whereas entangle off mdef. Both these are almost balanced for mobs who tend to have lower mdef and higher cons, but against players with highish mdef and lowish con, stun nearly always lands and entangle almost never lands. Maybe if the mob stats more closely matched player stats it will be easier to balance these skills in PvP. Well anyway, skills still require balancing, but I understand this is a very complicated thing and simply changing the skill is only one way of achieving balance.

Death Penalties:
I was of the understanding that Players would never drop items in PvP death, unless they are red. The use of trains makes dropping items a little unfair, but fake death will no longer be certain in C2, which I think kinda sorts that out. That does however still leave open the fact that i can be stunned/stung while fighting mobs and then die.

PvP/PK Exploits:
You have to allow delevel, a level 75 character would have no fear from dieing a lot. The idea of just freezing the skills if they do not have the level for them seems very sensible.

Griefing, KSing, Scamming. If they can hurt you then you can hurt them. Grief, KS and Scam them back. You might need friends to help you and you may get the PvP you want.

For Mages:
A lot of people I know have rerolled their mage characters. There used to be loads in the game, now there are so few. Clearly this is for a reason. I think they are good 1v1 PvP, but outside of that they are pretty gimped. They can kill quick, sure, but once they are purple they are dead very quick. As for XPing, they run out of MP too quickly. In optimized groups that require no down time, they just have to turn battle mage a lot of the time and they do very little damage with their staffs. Well the stats must speak for themselves, too many mages reroll because people don't want them in optimized XP groups. Archer and Dagger classes are much more useful, especially when the archer swaps to dagger when they run out of mana and still deal out a lot of damage.

[Lord Chaos]

Great post Ash!

I will add my opinions to the mesh:

1. The karma system as it is, is great.
2. Weapons should have extremely low chance of dropping, if not 0% chance total.

Permanent Skill Retention

[ QUOTE ]
All special skills remain active once they are purchased, even if the character delevels below the minimum level necessary to acquire the skill. This enables lower level characters to ignore community standards without fear of retribution from higher level characters, as they are able to defend themselves using their higher level skills.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the main point of it all, skills should simply not be avaliable if you didn't have enough level.

Example, a character levels to 40, buys 12.13.14 of bluntmasterskill and some sword skill.

Now, he delevels to 39...now only has 11 skill in bluntmastery and your swordmastery is gone

[ QUOTE ]
For Mages:
A lot of people I know have rerolled their mage characters. There used to be loads in the game, now there are so few. Clearly this is for a reason. I think they are good 1v1 PvP, but outside of that they are pretty gimped. They can kill quick, sure, but once they are purple they are dead very quick. As for XPing, they run out of MP too quickly. In optimized groups that require no down time, they just have to turn battle mage a lot of the time and they do very little damage with their staffs. Well the stats must speak for themselves, too many mages reroll because people don't want them in optimized XP groups. Archer and Dagger classes are much more useful, especially when the archer swaps to dagger when they run out of mana and still deal out a lot of damage.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mages need some attention, as outlined. They're too weak.

They need to have added:
1. More staying power in grindgroups.
2. More hp or some form of magical protection, like "deflect arrow" or "Deflect Sword", anything that takes us beyond the 1 hit kill on mages.

[numbr1]

I don't mind how things are now with the PvP system. My only complaint is with a clan war and the ability to yeild from a clan war while fighting and causing the person who deals the death blow on the person who yeilds goes red. About 7-8 members of my clan had gone red on this tactic. And somehow the clan we were at war with, their members that had already yielded from the war, were somehow back at war with us the next day. The clan we were warring against I believed surrendered whether forced by gms for the exploit used to get back into the war after yeilding or for temp. purposes while they were resolving whether or not there was an exploit or if they just got tired of us killing them. Sorry to make the post long but the point is you shouldn't be able to yield out of a clan war while in combat.

[Calden]

I have a quick idea that may help out in a few instances where players are exploiting the color changes of names when they attack another player. Why not not only have a name go purple for certain people involved in the situation. I'll explain...

When player X attacks player Y, the name of player X should turn purple to only player Y. The only exceptions I can think of would be anyone that was in a group with the player, other clan mates, and alliance members, but only if they were there when player Y was attacked by player X.

I am thinking this would limit the ability of other players jumping into fights that they have no need or reason to be involved in, other than to take advantage of a situation for drops or exploit. Just an idea.

[soltyspl]

In old pvp conference threads there were handful ideas about purple trigger/reset rules. They were good ones, imo, so:

In current pvp system there're potential problems with, for example fights, like mage vs. melee, stun vs. stun, with running away, and other encounters - especially in many vs. many fights.

The problem is - player must successfully hit someone. If he doesn't, he stays white and makes enemy (which for example landed successful attack stun first and have decent DD at his side to aid in fight) nervous. Proposed solution:

- triggering purple color is not dependent on landing successful damaging attack first, but on issuing forced (ctrl or under alt-ctrl lock) attack or any potentially damaging skill/spell. Similary any form of helping to already fighting people (healing, buffing, etc.) turns person purple.

Now when we have that in place, let's see timer reset rules. Currently it's simple - you don't hit opponent(s) too long - your timer is ticking, then you start flashing, then turn white. It's not really that difficult to break from pvp fight - run around a little, hit UD if you have one, then laugh at your enemies as soons as you start flashing. You can find more examples. So proposed solution:

- every purple person in some pvp fight is part of this pvp group. now if any person in said group issues any action (including walking, drinking potions - just anything, with sole exception of using chat), purple timer for every person in the group is reset. The exception are if someone manages to really run away (for example further than behind rendering range) or manages to get to non-pvp zone like town. In those two cases, purple timier will tick happily.

Above suggestion solves two things a) when there's pvp fight, there's pvp fight. Either untill it ends or every single person agrees not to fight b) noone cares anymore about potential white problem during fight.

-----
besides that, if anything from this thread actually gets to developers, let it at least be:

- remove or turn off forever bloody useless lucky skill
- auto turn on/off skills during leveling/deleveling

[Darraess]

Flagging, leaving out the changes that come with C2 practically leaves me only with the White attacks Red part.

Practically i believe that no matter who you are you must allways have the chance to defend yourslef, having said that i would prefer if he turned purple in general but as i understand that goes to far, at what the intention of the system is, i would accept it if he would effectively flag purple to the red, everyone else would still see him white and even players that helped him would remain white, for the red though he will be purple for all purposes.

The Karma system is ok, if at some point PK'ng would be something encouraged more, a progressive Karma system wouldn't be a bad idea, also a positive Karma effect may be interesting but that would be a very large topic in it's self.

If any skill that does not have the chance of killing the victim can be use against whites it will be a tool used for griefing more than all the other uses, while this is fine with me it would probably be more accepted if damage was added to the skills along with the special effect, obviously this is very hard to do as the skill must be remade from the begining, even the level aquired, SP cost, skill power would probably have to change.

But i think working towards a system where no skill would be forbiden to be used against a white is more in the spirit of L2 then restricting even more of them.

Death penalties, are fine as they are, it is also good to know that at this moment the system is simple dying purple or white from mob or player has the same % to drop something and all items have the same % to drop.

Two things that would not hurt PvP if implemented are if in a PvP situation the % to drop your weapon would be significantly reduced but add a good % to drop an amount of Adena, and the second is to rduce the % of droping an item even further depending on the level diference, starting from a 10 level diference and on, it should never be 0 though.

I will expand on peace zones and say that they should expand around starting towns a bit, not much but up to a point where someone can get his very first levels (maybe 4 or 5) and be absolutely safe, this would reduce the feeling new players have of hoplessness and allow them to learn playing easier, and it would also add a feeling of uneasiness and excitment to leave the protected area.

PvP arenas are nice, they allow people to "train" and get a feeling about PvP without fearing the consequences of dyuing, special care should me made though for them not to become more special or desired then the open PvP fights, basicaly when a person feels he is confident about PvP'ng he should not really have any desire or gain from arena PvP.

The luck skill should be turned off as long as someone is red.

Deleveling should remain as is, there is no reason to change it.

Loss of skill that are not withing your lavels range i feel should not go as it is a very viable tool for many circumstances, the idea that i dont forget how to use a skill because of level is fine as loss of level still reduces my efficiency in fighting and stats, and i actually earned the skill by reaching it's level, what should be reviewd though is that an item level requirement should be place at skill levels, doing a 200hp sting with the starting weapon should change, if i get a skill or a skill advancement when i hit 20 for example it should need a d-grade weapon to be used etc. this would add even further to the idea of the grade use skill loss.

[Vajshiir]

Wow, I didn't know much about the system other than the basics until i read this. Nice post, Ash. =D

Anyway, my two cents on these issues are as follow. I happen to be of the train of thought that item drop percentages should be lower when dying to mobs, hence cancelling attempts of mob training with hopes of drops, especially true if you're in Cruma 2 and have guys training Death Knights and Dark Lords on your party (I know of the change to Fake Death, but I get the eerie feeling they'll get around that somehow...). I remember someone suggesting the law system from Lineage 1 (good Karma that reduced chances of dropping equip and Bad karma that increased them), but you'd probably have to redesign that aspect of the game from scratch.

[Skyler]

I guess it's time I proposed my nicely designed simply XP/PVP solution. I've designed ideas for other mmorpgs and they have mostly been implemented and done very well and I know that devs don't always want you to just say "remove this add that bye". Devs want compromise.. they want to alter the existing system subtly so as not to alienate players, yet fixing any problems there are.

My solution is a two edged sword and it should both solve the lack of willingness to hit others and the general annoyance that is losing XP and having to kill more mobs to regain it and thus not having fun fighting. It will also making it more advantageous for lower level players to win fights against higher level players.. it wont introduce many griefing tactics... certainly no more than occur already and will promote more fighting between clans.

Anyway onto the idea, I hope I can explain this correctly so everyone can understand it.

What currently happens in PvP when you die is you lose XP, the only way you can get this back is killing mobs. Each player loses a different set numerical value of XP based on his level. eg. a level 70 player may lose 250k actual XP in one death which may be 1% of his level... and a level 20 may lose 20k XP in one death which may be 10% of his level. I'm not sure of the exact scale but I know that higher levels lose more physical XP, just it seems like less when you go by %.

Anyway, what I propose is when you die in PvP, the person who landed the killing blow gets the numerical value of XP you just lost for the death. This means the XP that is 'lost' is still lost, as the game devs intended it and they obviously had their reasons. However, it rewards the person that killed you with a tiny bit of XP.. it also now means that instead of getting up and going to kill more mobs to gain that XP back.. you can get ressed and find the player that killed you and kill him back and try to regain it. The main point behind this idea is that the XP that anyone has earnt, is never 'lost' from the system in pvp.. it's just lost to another player.. an enemy.

I'm sure a lot of you can already realise how lower players would benefit from sucessfully killing a higher level player under this system, I will try to explain what will happen anyway.

Say a level 70 player and a level 60 player are having a duel. The level 70 loses approx 1% per death which we can say is 250k XP. The level 60 loses approx 2% per death which we can say is 200k XP.

If the level 70 wins, the level 60 will lose 2% XP (200k actual XP).. instead of this being lost it immediately goes to the level 70.. this means the level 70 gains roughly 0.80% for killing the level 60. If the level 60 wins the level 70 will lose 1% XP (250k actual XP).. this will go to the level 60 and he will gain 2.5% for killing the level 70.. Because of the way death XP loss and XP needed to level scales in the way it does in this game this system rewards the level 60 a lot more % wise than it suggest in physical XP... this means those who are lower, with less skills/hp may stand to gain more from actually fighting a level 70.. and that level 70's wont gain a whole lot for killing people below them... which is good imo.

Generally speaking this idea sounds good no?

Instead of a clan running away from a fight cause of high levels, or running away out of fear for XP loss there is more incentive for them to actually fight and win as they gain something.

However judging by the lameness of the players on my server and on others people would probably just zerg everyone over and over again to level... so perhaps this idea needs a better playerbase before it's implemented..

Anyway I thought I'd shove it on the table as it may be at least a bit better than a standard request for xp loss to be removed, which I don't believe the devs would ever do :)

[Darraess]

It's a good idea, the only part that isn't good is that it is extremely succesible to beeing used as a PL tool, if measure be taken to avoid this it is a fine idea.

[WraithMithoron]

IMO, the only thing that really needs to be changed is the status of reds...they should be more like purples. I don't mind the drop rates being increased on a red; however, if a white attacks a red, they should turn purple. They are actively participating in the PK world at that point and should be fair game. If they don't want to participate, then they don't need to attack.

Defense against a red attacking them should allow them to retain white status though...it all depends on the aggressor IMO. Whites are those who are not wishing to partake in PK at that time...if they do nothing, somebody attacking them should turn red; however, if they DO do something, the should turn purple...

[Stummpy]

ummm didnt you alread do a post like this i seem to remember it was like 50 - 60 pages long and you just ignored it all and said you where not going to change a thing ?

or is it that WOW and EQ2 are going to stomp out this game and its mostly coz of the crapy karma system ?

[Linaeager]

Dont even try to discuss PVP cause as soon as EQ2(Non-pvp) comes out everyone will just drop there accounts and L2 will be out of business. It happened When Ultima Online got its behind-whupped by EQ the first time and it will happen again.

PvP sVcks, only a few small men with really small cucumbers do it. Most people consider it very annoying and or irritating, most of us if given the alternative will dump this game in favor of a real one.

[Stummpy]

[ QUOTE ]
PvP sVcks, only a few small men with really small cucumbers do it. Most people consider it very annoying and or irritating, most of us if given the alternative will dump this game in favor of a real one.

[/ QUOTE ]

ummm i remember that the PvP servers on EQ had the most players online at anyone time
and why did you buy a game that is ment to be PvP in the first place if you hate it that much ??

[Lord Chaos]

[ QUOTE ]
Loss of skill that are not withing your lavels range i feel should not go as it is a very viable tool for many circumstances, the idea that i dont forget how to use a skill because of level is fine as loss of level still reduces my efficiency in fighting and stats, and i actually earned the skill by reaching it's level, what should be reviewd though is that an item level requirement should be place at skill levels, doing a 200hp sting with the starting weapon should change, if i get a skill or a skill advancement when i hit 20 for example it should need a d-grade weapon to be used etc. this would add even further to the idea of the grade use skill loss.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't see how this should be a viable tool. If you delevel, then you can fight at the strength you were at that level. Now this would be somewhat ok if there were no cheats or profarmers, but there are, and they make this system more of a grief system than anything else.

The whole point of the PvP system is player empowerment, if we don't like farmers in CT1, we fight them...but them having the massive advantage of bottet toons thats deleved makes it extremely hard to do.

We don't *NEED* to keep skills, its a nice to have for some, but seriously, it should be taken out.

[Lord Chaos]

I don't agree with you on that one. If a white attacks a red, he should go red TO THE RED, not everyone else. Last thing we need is everyone being afraid of reds simply because everyone around would attack you.

[Lord Chaos]

erhm right, you are aware that UO is still going strong 7 years later with 250.000 subscribers. EQ have more subscribers, but looking around the netcafes at the 12-15 year olds playing all day long, severely turns me off to that game.

Anyway, this is off topic, back to the PvP topic.

[haahaaa]

What i think (ya i know, evvvverybodys gotta have an opinion eh?) is that there needs to be some form of control for red players that is fair to all. As it is now certain people have no problems going red because when they see a danger coming they can just run from it. But many other people in game such as dwarves and wizards may as well drop their items on the ground then suicide to the nearest monster when they see someone coming who can kick their butt.

I know theres many ways to do this, instant escapes, an expensive pot that lets your char move at top capped speed for a limited time, let reds cast their debilitating spells on everyone, etc etc. But something does need to be done in that area.

There is a reason that almost all the pks you see (well the ones i see anyway) are dark elves.

[Kordesh]

I think that this being a pvp game is fine.

The problem is when you get killed from a player, then there is a chance of an item drop.
Even this would not even be an issue if all of the weapons/armor was not so outrageously expensive.

Dropping a weapon/armor from getting killed by a player will take alot of people months to farm enough money to buy that item again.

You should not drop anything if you got killed by a player, you should only loose exp.

The only time you should be able to drop is death by a mob.

Also if this change were to be implemented, then the GM's should also consider training a mob onto a player in hopes that they die and drop to fall under the catagory of Harrassment, and lead to a ban for that player.

[haahaaa]

i think thats why some reason for escape is so necessary. Give people the option to get away from a fight so they can give their stuff to storage or a friend.

Just remember, losing experience only isnt much of a deal to many people. I know for me experience is almost meaningless once i get all the skills i want (basically lvl 48). Even at lvl 40 i was hunting along and could care less if i died, i kept trying stupid things and died occasionaly, and didnt really care.

There needs to be something of going red that everyone is scared of.

However i do think that your weapon should not drop easily. For many people the weapon is worth about 3x or more any piece of armor they have. I think it would be nice if there was something people could do in game to "secure" one item of their choice, however this would be undone if someone went red or got rid of anything else of value in their inventory.

[Linaeager]

&lt;i&gt;ummm i remember that the PvP servers on EQ had the most players online at anyone time
and why did you buy a game that is ment to be PvP in the first place if you hate it that much ?? &lt;/i&gt;

I bought this game not knowing that it was PVP. And I intend to cancle my account the second EQ 2 comes out, maby sooner.

Having a few PvP servers is fine but to the average paying customer we would perfer having an option of having non pvp servers. And if EQ was all PVP Servers it wouldnt have 1/10th the number of players

P.S. EQs PvP servers only became popular way way way after they were first released. With the originial 3 pvp servers in EQ they were incredibly unpopular. About 95% of the customer base played on the blue servers. PVP only became popular after people had already played through the whole regular game ten times. It was a bunch of guys that had 30 65th level charachters on the other servers so they all tried PvP. And it was a well balanced PvP system, this one isnt.

P.P.S. If you think of MMORPGs as a vactation from real life.... Imagine if you just forked out the money for your plane ticket and after you land in tropical paradised you get ganked by some farming ***** bastard. Would you want your money back? I do!

[Wardancer]

The problem with the current PvP/PK system is that being Chaotic is a penalty only if that individual player considers it so. If they don't, it's more of a help to high-level RPKs than it is a hindrance.

As evidenced on Lionna and elsewhere, once a high-level goes red, all they need to do is bank their good stuff and use the newbie gear to grief lowlevel players and 3v1 (or worse) lone high-level whites that they come across.

No matter how many times one kills these individuals, they've lost nothing but time, and can always come back for another round. In fact, if the Chaotic was killed by someone lower level (like a 43rd Red killed by a 35th White), chances are the Red will be in better shape to win Round 2 than the White is. The Red, carrying nothing, risks nothing, while the White risks everything to defend herself, or someone else, from the Red. Once the White drops something of real value, she loses. The Red can die 1000 times before that happens... and still, they win.

As it is, right now, "Red" is more a tool for griefers than it is a protection for low-level characters or players who want to just travel from Point A to B unmolested.

A fix? Remove drops from PvP altogether, reduce the XP penalty to that of a seige. Add in a "trophy" system, that, for Reds or Whites or whatever, keeps a roster of the names of their victims and dogtags or ears or something. Keep the Karma system, perhaps have a series of tiered quests, based on total Karma, that a Red would need to perform to redeem themselves. People that want to RPK are free to do so, their victims are only moderately inconvenienced, and those that want to do Red v. White PvP are still perfectly able to. Change the drop modifications to affect PvE encounters only, since 95% of Reds arent carrying anything anyway.

[Foobie]

Mmmm, the conference thread is back! I'm going to throw out random suggestions so don't be surprised if I contradict myself later :D

This has actually been mentioned as a possible bug in other threads, but it would be kind of a neat feature: No item drops for characters flagged purple

Since the majority of the time people are reluctant to take part in PvP because they don't want to lose gear, remove item drops for purple players. If you're taking part in PvP, you should be rewarded (or rather, your punishment should be removed). This would also allow white characters attacking reds to turn purple, and for reds to defend themselves without racking up more karma debt.

[haahaaa]

how about instead of letting people not use skills when they delevel, make it so they have the chance of losing an entire skill when they die red. That way low deleveled pks will quickly lose their efficiency, and high lvl pks who want to put nothing on can quickly lose a lot of the skills they love so much. Remember, a red still needs to get back to white to relearn these skills as well

[Varaya]

[ QUOTE ]
I guess it's time I proposed my nicely designed simply XP/PVP solution. I've designed ideas for other mmorpgs and they have mostly been implemented and done very well and I know that devs don't always want you to just say "remove this add that bye". Devs want compromise.. they want to alter the existing system subtly so as not to alienate players, yet fixing any problems there are.

My solution is a two edged sword and it should both solve the lack of willingness to hit others and the general annoyance that is losing XP and having to kill more mobs to regain it and thus not having fun fighting. It will also making it more advantageous for lower level players to win fights against higher level players.. it wont introduce many griefing tactics... certainly no more than occur already and will promote more fighting between clans.

Anyway onto the idea, I hope I can explain this correctly so everyone can understand it.

What currently happens in PvP when you die is you lose XP, the only way you can get this back is killing mobs. Each player loses a different set numerical value of XP based on his level. eg. a level 70 player may lose 250k actual XP in one death which may be 1% of his level... and a level 20 may lose 20k XP in one death which may be 10% of his level. I'm not sure of the exact scale but I know that higher levels lose more physical XP, just it seems like less when you go by %.

Anyway, what I propose is when you die in PvP, the person who landed the killing blow gets the numerical value of XP you just lost for the death. This means the XP that is 'lost' is still lost, as the game devs intended it and they obviously had their reasons. However, it rewards the person that killed you with a tiny bit of XP.. it also now means that instead of getting up and going to kill more mobs to gain that XP back.. you can get ressed and find the player that killed you and kill him back and try to regain it. The main point behind this idea is that the XP that anyone has earnt, is never 'lost' from the system in pvp.. it's just lost to another player.. an enemy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not a good idea. Too easy to exploit. Instead of delevelling on town guards, Chinese farmers would let themselves be killed by toons they themselves created and then sell those toons on ebay when they're around lvl 30-40. Farm adena to sell and powerlevel characters for RL money. Paradise.

Also, it would make lower lvl (20-30) characters even more attractive for higher lvl (40-50) PKs. Not only do the victims sometimes drop an item or two, now they also give exp in addition to that.

And if somebody gets tired of one of his characters, instead of deleting it he will offer the char as a "victim" to a friend/clanmate: "just kill me twenty times, it will give you twenty % exp, the same as two/three hours of gaming".

[Wardancer]

[ QUOTE ]
I bought this game not knowing that it was PVP. And I intend to cancle my account the second EQ 2 comes out, maby sooner.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, that's really no one's fault but your own. The draw of this game for many is that it *is* PvP capable. After 4+ years of EQ, as an epic'd 65th level cleric, and guildleader, I got really sick and tired of the playerbase that felt that it was my responsibility to buff them, heal them, rez them, give them money, armor, weapons, etc. etc. etc.

Now, I have the option to kill them. I like that.

If you want to go to EQ2, more power to you. If you think L2 is bad about bugs and design flaws, just remember that EQ has been around 5 or 6 years now (rather than 6 months to a year) and *still* hasn't fixed some issues since it went retail.

[Odinshad]

My only beef is the red system.

Why is the murder status even in the game? It's not a feasible path for any characater short of a TI griefer (usually someone quitting the game) to do. There are many reasons for this.

1) You can no longer train while red. This HAS to be fixed as if a player chooses the EXTREMELY dangerous red path, they can no longer advance their characater.

2) A red player cannot defend his/her self without getting more Karma. If a red player is not the aggressor I feel they should be able to at least defend themselves against the aggressor.

The thing is this. 90% of the time someone is red, is due to this thing called "player enforcement/policing" NCsoft loves to tell us to do. However, the penalties are too great for anyone to want to police at any time. Basically, if you wish to stop a griefer, you will suffer at the same time. What is the point of sacrificing your experience/gear (I say experience becuase most of the time a red will just die to remove karma) to kill (in most cases) a farmer that cares nothing about their experience loss. Farmers in general are fearless of player policing because it does not hinder them it only helps them since they now can target you for their gear/$$$. Which forces us to be more creative to deal with them, usually leading into wasting a TON of time and accomplishing little if not nothing.

If the red flag is meant to be a feasible path for a player to pursue, allow it to be. Proposed fixes are this:

1) Allow training/shopping/warehouse in Floran. Yes, more reds will be around Floran, but people will know to stay away from there :). Or choose in C2 a further remote town, even an island if need be.

2) If someone attacks a red first, allow the red to kill that player without getting anymore Karma. If the red is the aggressor in the fight, then the red should gain more karma.

3) The chance of dropping equipment should vary as a red, it shouldn't be all or nothing. If you have very little Karma (5-10 kills), your equipment drop rate should be minimal. Like 20% chance. Which is still quite high. It should get progressively worse based on your Karma value.

The thing is, most players are afraid of changes to the red system due to a lot of griefers coming out of the woodwork... most of these same players obviously have not been to the newbie grounds. The common red player generally just hunts newbies (detering new players from this game). My proposed changes would not make that any worse or better for those type of players as they normally accumulate massive amounts of karma. What my changes would allow is a little spice to this game, because you would see red clans. It's a more difficult way to play the game, but would also allow players to have a way of policing people hiding behind the currently flawed pvp system. The risk is still great, as dropping gear is... incredibly painful. If a red clan did form, chances are they wouldn't spend their time targeting everyone they saw so much as defending themselves. The reason? Because if the game mechanics allowed them to take the path as their actual main characater, they would also keep gear on and try to level just like every other player in the game. The only difference would be, is if a farmer was griefing them, they would have absolutely no problem with killing said farmer.

I honestly believe the red path would mainly be for hardcore players that don't mind a little more risk in order to not have to lay down to the griefers in this game. With each kill they do, they are further increasing the risks to their gear. Which would most likely keep them from burying themselves too deep in Karma as the risk would be too great. They would try to keep their Karma at a steady level by xping as it gets too high.

The most a red player or clan can accomplish is causing a normal player some XP loss, i've yet to see a red player kill a white player and the white player drop gear. This wouldn't be mindless killing of whites of all levels, as the risks would still be so great. The TI griefers and such will always be around regardless of the changes, but at least the higher level reds in the game will have gear to drop (thus adding risk to their ways).

Just my OPINIONS.

[Wardancer]

[ QUOTE ]
Allow training/shopping/warehouse in Floran.

[/ QUOTE ]
Except for the training bit (and dwarves can train from the Warehouseman) Reds can use these services in Floran without penalty. I haven't tested it, but I am pretty sure that this holds true in other cities. I will make an alt and find out.

The path of the Red is not as dangerous as it seems, as most of them move around with relative impunity. As long as they avoid the areas where high-levels congregate, they avoid most of the beatings they so richly deserve.

[ QUOTE ]
The chance of dropping equipment should vary as a red, it shouldn't be all or nothing. If you have very little Karma (5-10 kills), your equipment drop rate should be minimal. Like 20% chance. Which is still quite high. It should get progressively worse based on your Karma value.


[/ QUOTE ]
I can definitely tell you that it's not an all-or-nothing thing. I've killed dozens and dozens of reds,including those obviously carrying items/wearing armor, who've not dropped a single thing when dying, or only drop a map, or some SS, or sometimes 4 or 5 things. It is as random as they say it is.

[ QUOTE ]
. If a red clan did form, chances are they wouldn't spend their time targeting everyone they saw so much as defending themselves.

[/ QUOTE ]
We have one on Lionna. Go read our boards, then come back and say that. =)

They're as bad as they come as far as gankers and griefers go, excepting that they're (supposedly) 40+ (hard to tell when they have no armor, they die pretty fast), carry no significant gear, and avoid groups of higher level players like the plague and kill newbies near Dion and EG, using Floran as a base of operations. In short, they're as bad as any other red griefer you've ever met, except they have better skills to do it with.

Oh, and then they whine and cry about it when Whites do show up to kill them. I just don't see how minor changes to the Karma/PvP/PK system will resolve the issue that Chaotics are actually rather protected by the system, once they learn how it works.

[ QUOTE ]
The most a red player or clan can accomplish is causing a normal player some XP loss, i've yet to see a red player kill a white player and the white player drop gear.

[/ QUOTE ]
I have seen this happen a lot, personally. One of the aforementioned reds MB'd an oracle (white) and killed her in 2, maybe 3 hits. She dropped a bunch of SS and a map, if I remember, which I grabbed, so nothing big, but it *could* have been.

[Ts117]

[ QUOTE ]
The thing is this. 90% of the time someone is red, is due to this thing called "player enforcement/policing" NCsoft loves to tell us to do. However, the penalties are too great for anyone to want to police at any time. Basically, if you wish to stop a griefer, you will suffer at the same time

[/ QUOTE ]
I dont think the problem lie solely in the karma system. The problem is that player killing is the only option available to stop harrassment and griefing from other players. There needs to be a way to deal with griefers without gaining karma.
In my opinion, I think there should also be some sort of level restriction on player killing to keep Reds from griefing someone 20+ levels below them. I dont see any reason for someone killing another player 20 levels below them, outside of a siege, as anything but griefing.

[haahaaa]

on the other hand, if someone is tormenting the lower lvls in your clan they should still be able to help them, despite a level restriction.

I think the problem really is the karma system, people need to be scared of going red, yet at the same time still be willing to go red when things come down to it.

But right now most people are just scared to death of going red, so they usually give up or resort to griefing in game. And griefing shouldnt be the answer to these things as most of the time it involves some form of abuse of the game system.

[Inoxe]

I am only 34th, but a loyal player on Lionna since open beta started, and leader of a modest clan that sponsors a weekly event we recently moved to minimize problems with red players. It was that experience that opened my eyes to the true depth and dimension of the nearly-naked red problem.

I know this is a PvP game, and have accepted a fair level of risk because of it. I've been killed more than once, and have killed a few as well. There are a few bugs in the white-purple-red system, and a few dubious tactics allowed in certain circumstances, but in general it works with one glaring exception.

This exception is the “nearly nude red” who was originally in their 40s or 50s. These folks usually have a warehouse full of cheap weapons, supplied by a white alt or friend. Individually or in small groups, these juvenile delinquents delight in one-shot killing people in their 20s or below. They have been known to sweep through a region and kill absolutely everyone there, then move on.

IF a higher level kill-team can be assembled (remember, they'll get nothing substantive for killing the reds, since they're nearly nude), the reds either run or log off, or both. They play alts/mains for a few hours, then come back to grief some more. As a result, little or nothing can be done about these “red terrorists” who are absolutely ruining the game for anyone under 30. The players who haven’t quit in disgust are trying to find little-used hunting grounds in distant spots, while older players are largely ignoring the issue because they get nothing out of killing nearly-nude reds, and hunting them would take away time from their normal hunting.

This same nearly-nude-red problem is also of epidemic proportions in newbie areas, especially Talking Head Island.

Frankly, this is driving away players in droves. The attitude of the reds reminds me of **** brownshirts and other historic scum with NO regard for other people whatsoever. Currently, the game mechanics greatly favor these nude reds over all others, and I'm sure it's contributing to falling subscriptions, as well as general unhappiness.

There are many other problems in Lineage, but all are bearable in one way or another. I and others are willing to suffer along with them, adjusting our tactics and techniques to compensate as much as possible. Howeer, the problem caused by high-powered nearly-nude reds is of a different order entirely.

The only indication I’ve seen that NCsoft is working on this is the announcement that it will be marginally easier for reds to get back to white. This won’t solve it. These reds ENJOY tormenting others and ruining the game for them. Many of them are such scum that they were probably ignored and ostracized by their peers, and turned to griefing as the only remaining way to get attention. Unlike Korea, where peer pressure in the PC Bang restricts such behavior, here in American any mean-spirited 12-year-old can hide behind their computer screen at home and chortle over the misery they’re causing. It is slightly encouraging that the Lineage community leadership is concerned – as rightly they should be! If NCsoft doesn’t do anything about this, the game will die because the nearly-naked reds are driving out players left and right, especially the new players who might otherwise become the loyal subscribers of tomorrow. As subscription numbers plumet, staff layoffs are not far behind.

If NCsoft had announced changes in the works, and asked our forbearance until they arrive, it would be one thing. However, NCsoft hasn’t announced anything, or even admitted there is a problem. Because of this completely unsympathetic attitude, I expect I’ll be canceling my subscription shortly. I can’t possibly see why I should continue to pay money to a company that encourages the worst human behavior I’ve seen in a long, long time.

- Inoxe
Shillen Oracle, clan Darkfyre

[Darraess]

I need to add some generic feelings at the thread, don't take my reply to you Inoxe seriously i just clicked on you because it was the last post, although some of what i say apply to you to.

Now these things i say i understand are really really hard to follow but the most everyone can do it, the better it will be.

The PvP system in a PvP game is for everyone, no one can stand aside and say i don't want PvP so i should not have it, if your view of games of this type is negative and feel it will never change stop playing now, still if you want to give it a try and want to contribute ideas accept that PvP is here to stay for everyone first.

I am tired of all the good suggestions people have are dissmised because pro-farmers will use it this way or another, frankly although i understand that the reasons are very valid i also understand that the game should not change in order to deal with them, i joined a PvP game to play not to antagonize some individuals working in it, it is very hard to seperate these things even for me but some effort should be taken to think of the changes and how real players want them and how it will make the game nore enjoyable.
I believe that in a year from now pro-farmers will not be even a shadow of the probelm they are now, any idea proposed here will be live probably in a year from now anyway, so if it against them it has no hope of getting in.

We must all accept that PvP meens different things to different people, the honorable duel is PvP, but the masacre of new players is PvP also, in a Player versus Player situation both parties should not have equal oportunities to win, im sorry that is how i see it and after 10 years of gaming it is not a view im changing easily, in the end of the day if L2 stops beeing an open PvP game as i understand it i will play one of the other restricted PvP games which were designed the way they are from the begining.

All in all our suggestions should allways be ones that we feel will improve the game and not ones that only objective is to hurt a group of players we dislike, yes Inoxe this is more for you, you dislike a group of players so much and you probably want measure to be taken so to make their playstyle obsolete, this is wrong think about how to protect the new players i agree make it harder for the noob pk's to operate i agree, but do it wothout dissallowing the playstyle of any group of players, by game or rule mechanics.

[Khrysyl]

I do not believe that Inoxe's idea is to hurt any group of players, but I agree with her that nearly nude reds have a tremendous advantage in this game against the average player. I think she is saying that the game is far to unbalanced in favor of of one group of players over others, and that something needs to be done to restore that balance.

Khrysyl

[haahaaa]

i was wondering about that for a long time, and i came up with a partial solution...see what you guys think

Assign level values to each of the weapons. This isnt to stop people from using the weapons, instead it hurts them if they choose to use them.

When i was a pker back in beta i noticed something, my wizard had better matk without a weapon than he did with a newbie weapon. So how about Nc takes that even farther?

If a player is lvl 40 and just went red, then suddenly any weapons with a level value of 25 or less will cause them to do almost no damage, or miss almost every attack (including specials) when they fight.

Another possible solution would be to only apply these level restrictions to higher levels of special attacks. This one would actually even make sense, to do a higher level of damage with a certain skill you'll need a weapon fit to the task.

I'm not much for putting level restrictions on things in game, but when it comes to evening out the pk system i am all for it. Things like sting and stun and mortal blow are majorly abused by pkers using newbie weapons.

[Choch]

OK Ash I don't mean to tear this apart, but I'm only doing so in order to make you see the logical reasons to do what I suggest:

[ QUOTE ]
Consensual fighting is referred to as PvP. Fighting and killing another player who does not wish to fight is called Player-Killing (PK).

Your level of participation in PvP/PK activity will affect the way others are allowed to interact with you....This is called Flagging (see below). If you kill a player who does not retaliate, you will gain Karma (see below).

[/ QUOTE ]
If this is all true and the overal goal of L2's PvP/PK system, then why do players not flag for initiating PvP against a red player? Why do you not turn red for killing a red who doesn't retaliate? Isn't that PKing? If a red player does not attack someone attacking them doesn't mean that red player just got PKed?

So my questions are really about NC's stance on previous player suggestions/proposals that you left out in your opening post:
Is there any chance you will test a change (any change) to the PvP/PK system, whether it be turning purple for hitting a red, the old PKS, or ANYTHING else?

Is there a chance you will open up a special ruleset "PvP" server that has this change after its been tested?

Nothing you posted suggested any hint of a change that would address the most important issue you raised, which is that the Current PvP system undermines self-regulation of community.

[Aulric]

get rid of flagging if you want to have more PVP. it ruins people's opinions, because no one wants to go red really... on devianne sat night, about 15 of us found 8 chinese farmers camping out RoA. needless to say the cavalry got called in, but everyone sat around for over 3 hours waiting for one of the farmers to go purple or w/e...


GET RID OF THE FLAGGING SYSTEM AND WE'LL ALL BE HAPPY. That or remove penalties for dying red. it just doesnt make the game worth it.

[SerindaArnimane]

[ QUOTE ]
If this is all true and the overal goal of L2's PvP/PK system, then why do players not flag for initiating PvP against a red player? Why do you not turn red for killing a red who doesn't retaliate? Isn't that PKing? If a red player does not attack someone attacking them doesn't mean that red player just got PKed?

[/ QUOTE ]

Karma:
1 often capitalized : the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence

Ehtical consequences.

You forced yourself upon someone who did not want to fight or die and killed them.

Now, you must face the ethical consequence of having people forcing themselves upon you and killing you when you do not want to die. Yin/Yang.

Red is not a solution under the present system, it is a punishment. Making it where people must go purple to attack you is in effect negating the punishment.

You become a purple with a higher drop rate. People want this to lessen the sting of red and by extension to be able to meet out "justice."

Of course course one man's justice is another man's ganking. So one should be exceedingly careful what one asks for.

As the very farmer you want to kill, just might use this system preemptively to protect their farming spot.

[Choch]

Serinda-
Dropping items is not punishment enough? IMO it is. But regardless, those questions were meant to be somewhat rhetorical leading up to my main questions about player suggestions that ash left out of his post. Why?

Because there are MANY things they can do to promote PvP. The current system does NOT promote PvP, it hinders PvP. That is my point.

I would like to know if NC is even considering testing changes to the PvP/PK system AND if they are considering opening up a "PvP server."

[SerindaArnimane]

[ QUOTE ]
Dropping items is not punishment enough?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, it's not. It's worthless without the need to fear for your life. If people must go purple to attack you, then you are empowered, and if your would be attackers aren't of sufficient level (or class) to defeat you, then you have nothing to fear.

Why propose said change otherwise? :) You are proposing the need for whites to go purple to attacks reds and saying it would generate PK and allow for retribution.

If it's going to help generate PK and allow for retribution, then obviously the change is enough of a punishment reduction that those who wants this change would use it.

And while you call it justice, the moment I get killed by some farmer using it, I'm gonna call it ganking. And at that point this change to the system has failed.

On another note, I support a special rules server that has some variation of the Karma system on it, including no Karma system.

I do not want to see the original worlds changed though.

[Darraess]

All L2 servers are supposed to be 100% hardcore open PvP, (i said suppoesed), no need for a more PvP server from the rest of the game, just a few very much needed changes and it will be improved.

No one should be allowed to be the agressor unpanished, no one.

And everyone should be allowed to protect themselves allways.

Having said these i strongly feel that a white that attacks a red should flag purple at least for the red, allow others to help him without consequences but as far as the red is conserned he will be purple for all accounts.

[WaRpZnEwt]

declared duels on field with &lt; 1% xp loss or item drop would be quite wonderful. I think purple should be removed, i think it would help instead of people trying to play off the purple timers you should just go red flat for killing anyone outside duel/siege/war

But there needs to be an incentive to be red. You should have a higher chance to drop items red but you should also be able to kill people for drops and maybe even XP.

-add in combat you should only drop inventory items never equiped things.

[SerindaArnimane]

[ QUOTE ]
All L2 servers are supposed to be 100% hardcore open PvP

[/ QUOTE ]

Are they? Many people say Lineage II is a PvP Game, but I'd say it's a PvP Enabled game.

The Karma system was designed specifically to prevent 100% pure open hardcore PvP. Otherwise why have it? All it does is get in the way obviously - we wouldn't be having this discussion if it didn't.

The Karma system pushes people in the direction that NCKorea wants. Fighting in the arena, in castle sieges, in guild warfare, group PvP in the colisuem (C2), battling in Nurka's PvP zone, etc...

There are a variety of places where PvP combat can occur and the penalty is either reduced or removed. Yet we see in the open world that PvP combat has very strict rules and punishments. I don't think that was an accident on NCKorea's part.

I know there is a subset of the population who wants 100% hardcore open PvP though and I think you should get it on a special rules server. I'm 100% behind that.

[Darraess]

PK'ng is a part of PvP, rules to prevent it from becoming the main PvP element should be in place, the system in general is fine, it only needs some tweeks to be improved.

As long as you can attack anyone anywhere it is a PvP game, games where PvP is allowed under specific conditions are the restrickted PvP games and L2 is not one of them, remember to not confuse the fact that people are not encouraged to PvP with restricted PvP, some tweeks into manipulating the desire to actually PvP, some issues of fairness and a tweek to discourage noob pk a bit more are needed.

[Foobie]

I think a separate PvP server is a bad idea, and I'm also pretty sure NCSoft wouldn't go for it. PvP is supposed to be what makes L2 unique from the rest, so if the glitches in the system can be worked out then I think that's the best solution.

As far as the purple timer being abused, a simple solution would be to not have the timer start until the character sits down. If they stand up before returning to white, the timer will cancel. That way someone can't hit and just run until they turn white again.

[Wardancer]

[ QUOTE ]
The PvP system in a PvP game is for everyone, no one can stand aside and say i don't want PvP so i should not have it, if your view of games of this type is negative and feel it will never change stop playing now, still if you want to give it a try and want to contribute ideas accept that PvP is here to stay for everyone first.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the issue is that the PvP system, as it is right now, *isn't* for everyone. As it stands right now, it heavily favors griefing tactics, seriously one-sided fights, and all-risk/no-reward for those non-reds that *do* want to PvP.

[ QUOTE ]
I am tired of all the good suggestions people have are dissmised because pro-farmers will use it this way or another, frankly although i understand that the reasons are very valid i also understand that the game should not change in order to deal with them, i joined a PvP game to play not to antagonize some individuals working in it, it is very hard to seperate these things even for me but some effort should be taken to think of the changes and how real players want them and how it will make the game nore enjoyable.

[/ QUOTE ]
I think that's the overall point here. Balancing the need of having a viable open PvP system that is at the same time enjoyable to those who participate willingly, and less of a hassle to those who don't and that the game, overall, remains a viable entity on the market. As is apparant from reports on all servers about the "Red Menace" on TI, the RPK griefing is costing a lot of people a lot of headaches, and pushing them to other games. It makes good business sense to therefore make changes that keep players playing (and paying) while also attracting new players; both issues seem to be a difficulty right now.

[ QUOTE ]
I believe that in a year from now pro-farmers will not be even a shadow of the probelm they are now, any idea proposed here will be live probably in a year from now anyway, so if it against them it has no hope of getting in.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're right there. If things don't change for the better, soon, there won't be an NA L2 in a year for them to farm in. If there's no one to sell to, there's no reason for them to be around.

[ QUOTE ]
We must all accept that PvP meens different things to different people, the honorable duel is PvP, but the masacre of new players is PvP also, in a Player versus Player situation both parties should not have equal oportunities to win, im sorry that is how i see it and after 10 years of gaming it is not a view im changing easily, in the end of the day if L2 stops beeing an open PvP game as i understand it i will play one of the other restricted PvP games which were designed the way they are from the begining.

[/ QUOTE ]
Often, the needs and wants of the many outweigh the needs and wants of the few. It's my opinion that it is the desires of the many that there be a rebalancing of the PvP system within L2 that make it both fun and exciting, yet also limits the griefing tactics commonly employed by the bored and the departing on new and low-level players.

There is also a strong desire for better balance, as far as PvP is concerned, between the classes. For instance, as it stands, in purple PvP, the healer classes (an all but defenseless class) stay white for healing their groupmates, but turn purple when taking hostile action. In PvP against reds, it doesn't matter to the red who they kill, so the healers are the first to die, and there is very little the fighters can do about it. With C2, this will change, rendering the healing classes unviable in group PvP encounters. They don't have the skills or the stats to enter toe-to-toe combat, which group v. group PvP becomes. Most people don't want to end PvP completely, but they want a level playing field. No one race or class should dominate that arena in every situation, and, likewise, no one class or race should be all but helpless in it.

[ QUOTE ]
All in all our suggestions should allways be ones that we feel will improve the game and not ones that only objective is to hurt a group of players we dislike, yes Inoxe this is more for you, you dislike a group of players so much and you probably want measure to be taken so to make their playstyle obsolete, this is wrong think about how to protect the new players i agree make it harder for the noob pk's to operate i agree, but do it wothout dissallowing the playstyle of any group of players, by game or rule mechanics.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree with you here. There are certain aspects of PvP (noob-ganking, for one) that really should be removed. It serves no real purpose other than to drive new players away from the game, and give the ganker a juvenile sense of superiority. Again, the needs/wants of the many outweigh the needs/wants of the few. Further, as the actions of those Inoxe mentioned demonstrated, someone who willingly plays a high-level red has everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by engaging in near-naked PvP. If they die... so what. If they win, they have a chance to score a drop, far more damaging to the white they engaged than the dozen deaths the red suffered in getting that victory. This, IMO, is indicative of a broken system.

Overall, I think the reason that anyone contributes to this topic in any manner is because, at heart, they enjoy the game and see a vast wealth of potential in it. I know I do. This game has the looks, the back-story and the area to be one of the greatest MMORPGs that NA has ever seen. The potential is there... hopefully, the content and the design fixes will be, too.

[SpiritK9]

I disagree with the entire premise that the PvP/PK feature of the game is KEY to playing Lineage 2 in the first place. There is a rich potential for character development that goes far beyond serving the social misfit need to kill other players without consent to battle.

When a PvP situation occurs, meaning both parties basically agree to fight by simply doing just that, the system should treat them as it does now, nothing wrong with that.

When a PK kills someone NOT interested in feeding the deviant PK's desire to destroy someone elses efforts at character development, I do NOT think the "victim" should have to pay with ANY EXP, SP, or ITEM loss whatsoever, and the PK should accrue more bad karma. If the "victim" does lose ANY exp at all, it should NEVER cause them to drop items or DE-level.

- This discourages people from bothering the players that want to play to develop characters. If a PK does do them in, the only irritation they should suffer is being sent back to town. That's bad enough when you have to walk for ten minutes to get to a good hunting spot anyway....grrrrr.

Maybe I'm a bit too civilized, but I don't understand the joy PKers get out of causing grief to players wanting to simply enjoy the game and build a character(s). Why would a software company build such a magnificent environment then promote the bottom of the barrel social misfit scumbags into doing what they do best; being misfit scumbags! Is this a training ground for the kind of morons that walk into schools and play shoot the kiddies? Seems like it.

It's enough that we lose exp when killed by a bad *** monster and get sent back to town, sometimes less an item or more. Rewarding scumbag chaotics through the irritation of non PvP players is just dumb.

There's nothing stopping the PK idiots from finding other PK idiots to play with, there's plenty of them. Leave the rest alone, and adjust the system to eliminate the rewards for the sick, demented, socially maladjusted cretins that so enjoy causing grief for others. I think we see too much of that in real life, why add it to a **** game?

[BKMiller]

[ QUOTE ]
The first part of this post is an overview of the PvP system as is. the second part is an overview of current issues that have been, and still are, part of the community discussion.

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't read the thread yet, just the initial post. I will be reading it, though.

In the meantime, thank-you Ash, for this lengthy, detailed and highly informative post! Thank-you for tacking it to the top of the forum where new players will see it easily! I, and many others, are thrilled with the ongoing improvements in Customer Service. Feedback like this is the most valuable tool in the CS inventory.

Very nice work!

[Varaya]

The main problems with the current PvP system are, IMHO, that reds are not discouraged (not prevented - discouraged) from fighting against players WAY lower than their own level, while at the same time fighting against characters of their own level IS severely discouraged (when you have a 50:50 chance of dying, would you want to use your C/B-grade equipment as a red?).

Solution:

a.) fix delevelling. Necessary so that people of equal level are comparable in PvP. People of equal level should have equal skills. Else this whole thing won't work due to low lvls with high lvl skills.

b.) penalize killing people of far lower level than your own. Rework karma system so that you gain FAR more karma for killing a player far lower level than you than for a player of about your own level.

Just an example to illustrate:

First PK:

For a player of your own level, gain 1 karma
For a player 1 level lower, gain 10 karma
For a player 2 level lower, gain 30 karma
...
For a player 9 levels lower, gain 170 karma
For a player 10 levels lower, gain 200 karma
For a player 11 levels lower, gain 250 karma
For a player 12 levels lower, gain 300 karma

etc., with more and more karma the higher the difference.

The usual "karma progression" would still be in place, so that if you keep killing people, you would get the standard "x * karma" per kill - just that the "x" would differ, according to who you just killed.

Since a PK who just kills people around his own level would not get that much karma (and would be able to pretty easily work it off), it would be possible to make the penalties for high karma quite severe. Only real jerks will have high karma, so give them hell. Karma should directly influence the drop chances on death, and maybe also the amount of exp lost per death. Low karma = pretty much like a white. Extremely (!!!) high karma = drop everything, lose up to a complete level of exp.

Thoughts?

[BKMiller]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If this is all true and the overal goal of L2's PvP/PK system, then why do players not flag for initiating PvP against a red player? Why do you not turn red for killing a red who doesn't retaliate? Isn't that PKing? If a red player does not attack someone attacking them doesn't mean that red player just got PKed?

[/ QUOTE ]

Karma:
1 often capitalized : the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence

Ehtical consequences.

You forced yourself upon someone who did not want to fight or die and killed them.

Now, you must face the ethical consequence of having people forcing themselves upon you and killing you when you do not want to die. Yin/Yang.

...

As the very farmer you want to kill, just might use this system preemptively to protect their farming spot.

[/ QUOTE ]

An excellent post! The karma system works the way it does because this is a Korean game. Choice of the word, "karma", was not accidental, and the programming perfectly reflects the basic concept of cause and effect style justice.

Personally, I like the PvP just the way it is, but at the same time I do acknowledge that "naked reds" are a serious issue that needs to be addressed. My suggestion is simple: forcibly delete any character with more than 10,000 karma points. If that account creates another 10,000 karma character, ban them.

Sanctioned PvP in castle seiges, arenas, and clan wars does not generate karma points, so this change would have no effect on the core PvP design concept of the game. Killing a griefer will not generate 10,000 karma points. However, killing many of them will. Vigilantism thus becomes possible, but extreme forms of it are avoided.

Of course, this is not necessarily the best solution from the point of view of people who are very proud of the 99,999 karma points, but I suspect most of us would not be sorry to see those players gone for good.

[BKMiller]

[ QUOTE ]
All L2 servers are supposed to be 100% hardcore open PvP, (i said suppoesed), ...

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a major misconception that I really wish would fade into the distant past. Lineage II is designed to support open PvP while at the same time discouraging hardcore PvP. The designers never intended to have people running around killing anyone and everyone. They obviously intended to have open warfare be both possible and attractive. They also appear to have intended player justice to be possible, but unattractive. That does not translate into "open, hardcore PvP". This is a misinterpretation that, quite frankly, the NA staff has done little or nothing to dissuade. Americans are the only culture in the industrialized world that would prefer unrestricted PvP, which is why games like Counter-Strike and Diablo sell so well in the US and so poorly everywhere else. In this issue, I tend to favor the opinion of the rest of the world.

[WraithMithoron]

[ QUOTE ]
b.) penalize killing people of far lower level than your own. Rework karma system so that you gain FAR more karma for killing a player far lower level than you than for a player of about your own level.

[/ QUOTE ]


Hehehe, I just get a mental image of a zerg of level 1 dwarven females attacking a high level area just so people will kill them to get karma...LOL

[Foobie]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
b.) penalize killing people of far lower level than your own. Rework karma system so that you gain FAR more karma for killing a player far lower level than you than for a player of about your own level.

[/ QUOTE ]


Hehehe, I just get a mental image of a zerg of level 1 dwarven females attacking a high level area just so people will kill them to get karma...LOL

[/ QUOTE ]
And I just got a mental image of them all making the little goblin "yaagh! yaagh!" sound as the swarm around.

hehehehehehe!

[SpiritK9]

[ QUOTE ]
The main problems with the current PvP system are, IMHO, that reds are not discouraged (not prevented - discouraged) from fighting against players WAY lower than their own level, while at the same time fighting against characters of their own level IS severely discouraged (when you have a 50:50 chance of dying, would you want to use your C/B-grade equipment as a red?).

Solution:

a.) fix delevelling. Necessary so that people of equal level are comparable in PvP. People of equal level should have equal skills. Else this whole thing won't work due to low lvls with high lvl skills.

b.) penalize killing people of far lower level than your own. Rework karma system so that you gain FAR more karma for killing a player far lower level than you than for a player of about your own level.

Just an example to illustrate:

First PK:

For a player of your own level, gain 1 karma
For a player 1 level lower, gain 10 karma
For a player 2 level lower, gain 30 karma
...
For a player 9 levels lower, gain 170 karma
For a player 10 levels lower, gain 200 karma
For a player 11 levels lower, gain 250 karma
For a player 12 levels lower, gain 300 karma

etc., with more and more karma the higher the difference.

The usual "karma progression" would still be in place, so that if you keep killing people, you would get the standard "x * karma" per kill - just that the "x" would differ, according to who you just killed.

Since a PK who just kills people around his own level would not get that much karma (and would be able to pretty easily work it off), it would be possible to make the penalties for high karma quite severe. Only real jerks will have high karma, so give them hell. Karma should directly influence the drop chances on death, and maybe also the amount of exp lost per death. Low karma = pretty much like a white. Extremely (!!!) high karma = drop everything, lose up to a complete level of exp.

Thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]


The problem there is that reds LOVE their high karma and work like demented fools to keep it as high as possible. Griefers also work the same way.

Longbert quit the game, a character in the Hindemith server. As he worked on his last few days of playing the game, he decided to PK every bot he saw. Nice, but he was mistaken quite a few times....heh. Anyway, the point is he was trying to get his karma to 99,999 before he left.

Both of these situations are unacceptable. A GOOD way to fix this is add a checkbox in the system settings of the game console that when checked, leaves you open to PvP and Pk attacks. Un-check the box and another player may NOT attack you, or their attacks have no effect.

This would leave the players that want a PvP war to have their fun as well as players that like to risk PK play having their fun too, while the more SANE people who are in it for the character building can be left the hell alone.

[Darraess]

People are still too hooked up by their logic that if they don't like something or aprove of it it must leave.

No one can claim that his playstyle is better or more civilized then another ones, it is nothing more than a game you canot make any RL comparisons and not lose perspective of things.

The noob PK views the game in a vastly diferent way then you, this way is usually a much more lighthearted way than you also, believe me when i say that if there was a way to actually measure the grief you really feel and in a scale of 1 to 10 give it a 10, and the grief the noob pk thinks he causses you will be extremely surpised it is measured at 1.

I can accept the fact that someone treats this game more than just a game, i can't understand it but i accept it, can you accept that the fact that i don't understand it means i can't feel what you feel?

The times were games are changed the way the most vocal people want must end, they did this in UO and the game got worse with every change they did, understandable at that time though, as the options for a online gamer where very limited, this is not the case today.

Imagine joining Planetside and then whine because everyone is shooting at you, it is exactly the same here.

Anyway just to give an example of the way i operate.

facts.
- Noob PK'ng should be a part of an open PvP game.
- Noob PK's must have the right to do their thing in an open PvP game.
- Noobs should potentially benefit from Noob PK's as much as they do from them.
- Noob PK's benefit by beeing free to play the way they like.
- Noobs are penalized by beeing forced to play in a way they don't like.

So here is an idea that works by considering the above facts.

Skill should get an item "level" requirement on them, does a PK want to use that level 15 powershot to one shot noobs, he must do it with a top class weapon, does he want to benefit from his highest trained armor proficiency he should use the apropriate armor, etc etc.

So now Noob PK's can't be equiped with NG crap armor or be naked and be as effective, sure their levels will be extremely important, but a 40 lvl PK with a forest bow will do as much damage as the noob does with his, this means that against a poorly equiped PK the noobs will have a much better oportunity to gang him, and help from mid level players gets extremely better.

Now if that PK doesn't want to be killed by the first couple of 30 levels that come in his path he must get much better equipment, much better equipment means that people of his level will not lose the oportunity to, cutting his reign short.

And if a noob gets lucky enough to pick up that Gastra bow he is fixed for the rest of his gaming.

Now this does not solve every aspect of the problem, and under carefull observation it may be proven not to be a good idea afterall, but at least it wasn't just another "i hate noob PK's i wish they die IRL" crap.

[Inoxe]

I assume that when Darraess refers to the “Noob PK” he’s referring to players who deliberately kill low-level players because they enjoy it, and willingly ignore the amount of unhappiness and discouragement it causes in their victims.

For those who enjoy PvP play so much they wishes L2 were more like Planetside, I recommend they go there instead. I spent a couple months there myself. I rather enjoyed my “tour of duty,” but decided not to make it a career. I also recommend they go to places like Warbirds or Aces High, where player skill is everything – those are PvP games that truly separate “the men from the boys.” There are other PvP enabled games coming up, such as Guild Wars. Personally, I believe that the thing which attracts hardcore PvP/PKers to MMORPGs, rather than those other games, is the potential for exploiting and griefing. In other words, they’re here because they want to become high level and abuse others in whatever way the game system permits. Naturally, all suggestions about how to curb such abuses meet with howls of protest. One could speculate about what RL factors lead them to this desire, but that’s another rant altogether.

As for UO, the rampant PKing in the early days came close to killing the game. The peak tie values (EA-speak for maximum players online per day) was in freefall, and subscription numbers were dropping rapidly right behind them. This is a situation not unlike L2, whose NA sales numbers haven’t even passed 100k (which DAoC and CoH accomplished in their first month!). If you’ve been in the game since the start, it’s pretty easy to tell that the population on servers isn’t getting any larger, and may well be getting smaller, aside from a few heavily hunted spots (such as CT).

EA is run by businessmen and they decided UO needed fixing. They brought in a new producer. They gave him carte blanch to figure out the problem and fix it. He made a lot of changes whose overall effect was to eliminate almost all the PK problems. Some say he eliminated most of the PvP too. But EA didn’t mind. Players online stabilized and started to climb. Subscription numbers rose. International business started booming. Even EverQuest didn’t catch UO’s subscription levels until the end of its second year of nose-to-nose competition.

I’m not saying eliminate PvP from L2. In the highly competitive MMORPG marketplace, one of L2’s major distinguishing features is full PvP enablement. However, for the long term health of the game, Wardancer has the right of it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Fixing the “nearly naked reds” problem is critical if L2 wishes to survive. Otherwise, the game will slowly contract to a bunch of juvenile delinquents with no regard for the feelings of others, and a small batch of adena farmers who do the tiresome money-gathering chores for them.

The fact that Ash has opened up this forum, and is obviously lobbying NCsoft’s Korean developers to pay attention to PvP issues, means that there is still hope for L2. Some really good ideas are emerging in this thread (such as Varaya’s sliding scale concept). The beauty of that concept, or the temporarily disablement of skills above your level, is that they “should” require very minor coding changes.

I do believe that if NCsoft doesn’t make some key changes in the PvP system for C2, when C3 comes around there may not be enough North American subscribers left to make the translation worthwhile.

- Inoxe

[Lord Chaos]

Its not a bad idea actually, because it would also give people more incentive to fight PK's, which is the whole point of the dynamics...PK's are there, you deal with them, but right now the de-leveling/keep skills and hardness/uselessness of going to newbie/remote places are just putting this philosophy out of wack.

I mean like when I hear a newbie sidemember to the clan is getting pk'ed on TI, I am not thinking "Ok, time to go kick some PK butt and fight the good fight"...I am thinking "Oh &lt;censored&gt;, here I have to waste a fortune to go to TI to fight some deleveled naked twinked pk, who won't lose a thing on death".

[Darraess]

[ QUOTE ]
Otherwise, the game will slowly contract to a bunch of juvenile delinquents with no regard for the feelings of others, and a small batch of adena farmers who do the tiresome money-gathering chores for them.


[/ QUOTE ]

Unless you find the strength not to attack the group of players you dont like with personal IRL insults, anything you propose will allways be tainted by it, get over it accept their part in the game and try to think about ways to make them a feature, and this goes for everyone.

UO was irrevocably destroyed as a game by the new Dev team, the only reason it survived was because along with EQ they were the only good choises in the market, today things are diferent the market doesn't need amother UO or EQ or DAoC it allready has them and they are old enough to be impossible for a new game to compete with them, new games must get alot more specialized in their consept and alot diferent also.

[BKMiller]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Otherwise, the game will slowly contract to a bunch of juvenile delinquents with no regard for the feelings of others, and a small batch of adena farmers who do the tiresome money-gathering chores for them.


[/ QUOTE ]
Unless you find the strength not to attack the group of players you dont like with personal IRL insults, anything you propose will allways be tainted by it, get over it accept their part in the game and try to think about ways to make them a feature, and this goes for everyone.


[/ QUOTE ]

I think you've missed her point, Darraess, or perhaps chosen to ignore it. Naked reds hide behind a game feature to sadistically attack weaker players. This is exactly the kind of behavior the karma system was designed to limit. For whatever reason, the system is not working. Inoxe labels these players "juvenile delinquents" in an effort to highlight two salient features the members of this group tend to possess: youth and a sociopathic attitude. Believe it or not, in this case it is not a personal attack at all, it is, rather, a sadly appropriate label.

Lineage II is designed to facilitate and encourage large-scale player conflict, not individual attacks on fellow players. Naked reds, deleveled reds, extreme value karma seeking reds are an aberration, not a design element. I agree with Inoxe, this aberration needs to be removed before it irreversibly destroys the morale of the player base (as some contend it already has).

Now, do you have a concrete suggestion for either encouraging or eliminating this aberration? Because so far, all of your direct rebuttals have been personal attacks on people who wish to see this aberration removed, not suggestions as to why it should stay. If you prefer either increasing the amount of free-roaming PK players or even just maintaining the current environment, that's okay, but that is still no reason to attack those who do not.

If you like, you can label as a whole the group opposed to free-roaming PK players "carebears", "peaceniks", or even "pansies", and find ways to support that label, but attacking any one individual who displays those attitudes does not make for good debate.

[Darraess]

BKMiller, i did make a suggestion in my previous post i also made it a few posts before that, the fact that the suggestion as an idea was ignored just so Inoxe would still support her hate towards a specific group of players shows that she only cares about it and does not really care to solve the problem.

She only wants to hurt them as players, and chose to bring her cause on the boards, people with this attitude will not be happy untill they feel they have beeten the others, they don't care about real fixes.

Also i have nowhere use the term carebear, pansies or whatever other labels you are trying to put in my mouth, i have the outmost respect for players that dont enjoy PvP, i will ofcourse try to protect the elements i like in a game from changing but that does not mean i will throw personal attacks at people.

Anyone trying to put labels on another group and does it with his personal code of ethics is the wrong part.

The noob or naked PK's with their actions hurt you in a game, you chose to try and hurt them IRL by labeling them in a negative way, you are taking it outside the game and, in my eyes, that makes you a much worse person than them, but that is my personal oppinion and i won't try to enforce it on others.

[Calden]

Another idea to fix some of the deleveling that farmrs do. Make people who attack guards of towns turn red (gain karma). That would make farmers think twice about deleveling :)

[haahaaa]

na it wouldnt, it may slow them down, but they would just unequip all their gear, run outside, then attack a monster

[Foobie]

Please let's all try to keep things constructive and positive. I'd hate to have Ash decide this thread isn't worth it because of some bickering. Let's just focus on the flaws in the PvP system and ways to improve things.

[Khrysyl]

[ QUOTE ]
BKMiller, i did make a suggestion in my previous post i also made it a few posts before that, the fact that the suggestion as an idea was ignored just so Inoxe would still support her hate towards a specific group of players shows that she only cares about it and does not really care to solve the problem.

She only wants to hurt them as players, and chose to bring her cause on the boards, people with this attitude will not be happy untill they feel they have beeten the others, they don't care about real fixes.

...

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm, I can understand why you would not like it when others try to put words in your mouth, but it seems here you are doing the same, or worse, in the case of Inoxe. Obviously, you cannot know what motivates another person, so perhaps it is best to not post as if you do. Agreed?

As one who has had run-ins with naked PKers myself, and having tried to do something about the problem ingame and finding that, practically, there is little or nothing that can be done, I have come to a conclusion similar to Inoxe and others. There are three alternatives really, learn to live with the problem which I am not willing to do, leave the game for another one, and there are many choices out there, or petition to have something done so that, and this is important, players who do not like what is being done by the naked PKers will have an avenue by which they can reasonably do something about the problem. That is all I ask, give the average player a means of dealing with the problem that does not involve 100% risk to them and no risk whatsoever to the PKer. That would be balanced, and balance is what is sadly lacking in the current implementation, imo.

Khrysyl

[Wardancer]

[ QUOTE ]
facts.
- Noob PK'ng should be a part of an open PvP game.
- Noob PK's must have the right to do their thing in an open PvP game.
- Noobs should potentially benefit from Noob PK's as much as they do from them.
- Noob PK's benefit by beeing free to play the way they like.
- Noobs are penalized by beeing forced to play in a way they don't like.


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, not quite. Most of those are your opinions (some of which I happen to agree with), but let's not kid ourselves by calling them "facts".

In the first, I don't think that it is, or should be, any player's "right" to grief any other player. This is not to say that I think that PvP should be eliminated, but I think most of us quite clearly understand the difference between PvP and griefing. I disagree with your stance on Noob PKs having the right to do whatever they want. As evidenced, it's not beneficial to the game, overall. To illustrate, one of EQ's PvP systems prevents anyone under level 6 from engaging in, or suffering from, PvP encounters. This allows the newbie to gain a few levels, get a little gear, get a few skills... and then come out swinging.

I agree with you on your latter two points, even if they are opinions rather than facts. Noob PKs benefit (questionably) from doing what they do, while non-PK noobs suffer. Their victims get nothing but frustration, lost time and, possibly, lost resources.

[ QUOTE ]
Unless you find the strength not to attack the group of players you dont like with personal IRL insults, anything you propose will allways be tainted by it, get over it accept their part in the game and try to think about ways to make them a feature, and this goes for everyone.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would add here that being a condescending jerk to everyone you reply to also taints any point one might have thereby. It's fair play to call a spade a spade and, like it or not, the vast majority of griefer-style PKs (as opposed to those who engage in or desire "balanced" and "fair" PvP) exhibit both juvenile and delinquent behaviour.

[ QUOTE ]
UO was irrevocably destroyed as a game by the new Dev team, the only reason it survived was because along with EQ they were the only good choises in the market, today things are diferent the market doesn't need amother UO or EQ or DAoC it allready has them and they are old enough to be impossible for a new game to compete with them, new games must get alot more specialized in their consept and alot diferent also.

[/ QUOTE ]

I wouldn't say that UO was "irrevocably destroyed" by the alterations in their PvP system. The game is still a viable economic model, it continues to both retain players and attract new ones (several people I knew in beta either returned to UO, or gave up L2 after beta and started UO for the first time). The difference being, from what I am told, is that UO has a more balanced PvP system and the loss of equipment is nowhere near as harsh a loss as it is here. Both of which are factors to consider for improving L2's gameplay.

Furthermore, just because there are these 2 giants, that does not mean that there is not room on the market for another content-rich, PvP-enabled, fantasy-setting RPG. As many of us argue, the *potential* that we see in L2 makes such discussions as these relevant and important. Right now, I think the feeling is that L2 is, at best, a mediocre game that *could* be something great... if certain design changes were implemented to suit the Western market.

I like your idea of tying skills to weapon grades. I would not go so far as to say that a character requires a top-Grade weapon to use the skill in question for the level range, but a better weapon should most certainly give the wielder better effects. As it stands, for example, I can Powerstrike with a short sword for as much damage as my SoR. Perhaps there should be a scale, from Pitiful to Excellent, depending on the stats and grade of the weapon being used for the skill, and level thereof, in question.

[Darraess]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyway just to give an example of the way i operate.

facts.
- Noob PK'ng should be a part of an open PvP game.
- Noob PK's must have the right to do their thing in an open PvP game.
- Noobs should potentially benefit from Noob PK's as much as they do from them.
- Noob PK's benefit by beeing free to play the way they like.
- Noobs are penalized by beeing forced to play in a way they don't like.


[/ QUOTE ]

What i meant was that before i come up with an idea about a problem i first check the facts which the idea must be worked around of, obviously these facts are subjective but in this particular idea these were taken into consideration.

I amazes me how people just can't refrain from personal attacks and name calling no matter how many times it is pointed that they just de value their oppinions by doing it.

You just need to do it don't you? maybe because you feel that your oppinions will be stronger if the reason behind it is against some antisocial juvenile delinquents, and not just people that treat an online game diferently then you.

[Odinshad]

This will most likely be my last addition to this thread, as it's de ja vu (we've done this before, and it will most likely just sit here with no action).

The fact is, as i've previously stated, the current red system is 99% of the time ONLY for risking yourself to kill someone at very little cost to themselves and much risk to yourself, or moreso for players to gank lower lvls while not being equipped causing them xp loss, and detering newbies fromt he game. Even if you kill one of these TI griefers, you'll get nothing in return, but a guarantee they'll be back coming at you.

My thoughts? Remove red from the game. If a a purple kills a white, just remove XP loss, Karma, and item Drops from that the white player that got ganked. If a purple attacks a white, and the white takes back thus flagging purple, same rules as it currently stands (xp loss etc.). Pvp will increase 10 fold, as this is a pvp game afterall.

This will allow players to remove others from an area that you want (generally farmers), and will give them the opporutunity to fight back. The most the normal player will suffer, is walking back. I don't see a problem with this anymore serious than the current issues. The risk is still there because if the other person decides to fight back, normal xp/drop penalties are there.

Drawbacks on this system: Higher level players with good equipment will most likely gank people in TI still. Good news is, those lower lvl players won't suffer any penalties short of fighting a new place to hunt, rather than losing time spent on XP.

Well there is one MAJOR problem that just occurred to me, but i'm sure one of you can come up with a add on to this to prevent it. There will most likely be people that will continously attack people fighting creatures... which could in turn cause xp/item drop easier. However, I feel the trade offs are worth it. Perhaps make it so most damage done is the killer. So if a person attacks you while fighting a mob, does more damage to you than the mob, regardless of last hit, you will suffer the normal white death listed above, not mob vs white death (which sucks).

I find this change in the system will allow players to police, increase pvp by 10 fold, and just add a little bit more thrill to the game.
The risks are still there, you go purple and are free reign to anyone to cause you can suffer XP loss if they fight you back, but player enforcement is now allowed.

Thoughts?

[Topor]

Hi guys,

I only want to say that in my opinion, games without pvp systems or with a bad one are bored if you are making everyday same things like kill mobs, quest (more kill mobs) , etc
PVP is the way to have activities for players tired to do the same everyday and give them incentives for play everyday or every moment they can. PVP has to be ruled, (I know a few about pvp games, I have played 2 years UO and 1 year SWG) and my suggestions are the following:
* Delete lucky skill
* Create newbies areas near to starting cities where pking is not allowed, and where only the chars until lvl X (ex: lvl 20) can use it
* Use positive and negative karma. Why? Beacuse you can only kill mobs and make quest and kill reds, and this actually don't give nothing in karma but if this actions give you positive karma (with a maximium) can allow to kill a farmer, a kser or self protecting for others guys trying to steal your room for example without risk to be a red (obviously if you kill you loss karma) Negative karma is the same but doing pking.
* Do PVP tournaments without drops, and exp loss (1vs1, 2vs2, ...)
* If NC wants incentivate PVP, the key thing is adena and price stuff, if plp have more adena and cheap items, plp will make more pvp because they can recover the items or the adena to buy the items easily.

Think in this, If you have a char maximized, what you can do know? Wait to C2? Play only for chat with your friends? Make another char to make the same again?

Well this is my opinion and I think we have to think about this, everybody knows plp leaving because they are tired or bored because they are doing the same everyday or trying another games... and PVP is away to incentivate them/us

[Foobie]

If you remove XP loss and item drops from white players, no-one will fight back.

While I agree that, in theory, people who aren't willing to partake in PvP shouldn't be penalised for being killed, I don't think that'll work out...

[Kordesh]

Whites who get killed by a red should have a 0% chance of any item drop.....only loose exp.

NCSoft says this is a pvp game, but nobody in their right mind is going to try to kill another player at the risk of loosing
their gear that cost them 6M or better.

I will not risk attacking anyone as long as i have a chance of loosing gear. I will defend myself if need be but that is all.

If ncsoft still keeps the chance of item loss in the game but wants more pvp, then they better make it so all of the weapons/armor is not so expensive, or make the mobs have much better drop rates.

[bastyan15]

SERIOUSLY!

I just payed 49$ for game download and account, and 14 for a month, after reaching lvl 9 i was pked... de lvled, then lvled back up.... then pked again.... de lvled and re lvled, pked again.... just decided to log...

PLEASE make it so players cant attack another player 10 lvles lower.. or make a huge punishment for killing any one lower lvl than you (you lose half your money and lose half your lvl) ie: lvl 20 (100k adena) kills lvl 8, then the lvl 20 becomes lvl 10 and loses 50k adena and lvl change would be permanent until you lvl back up by PVE

[bastyan15]

Heres a nice idea(not quite the same but similar idea) that worked well in Neocron, have a pvp option that takes 10 minutes to enable/disable so u cant simply switch to non-pvp while pvping, fighting pve or pvp would disable the switch to/from pvp for 5 mins. having pvp disabled would mean you cant attack or be attacked by players, having pvp enabled would mean you could fight any other player with pvp enabled

[Kordesh]

[ QUOTE ]
Heres a nice idea(not quite the same but similar idea) that worked well in Neocron, have a pvp option that takes 10 minutes to enable/disable so u cant simply switch to non-pvp while pvping, fighting pve or pvp would disable the switch to/from pvp for 5 mins. having pvp disabled would mean you cant attack or be attacked by players, having pvp enabled would mean you could fight any other player with pvp enabled

[/ QUOTE ]

All I have to say is:

NCSOFT, do this now!!!!

[Lord Chaos]

omg no...not a PvP switch. If you're getting PK'ed over and over again, try getting involved in the community, talk with people and clans, gather allies etc. you would be surprised how well this works in most cases.

[SpiritK9]

ABSOLUTELY a PvP switch! Yes! I want to exclude myself from the silly PK hits and I'm not interested in PvP -=for now=-. Maybe later I will be, who can say. However, in the meanwhile I want to keep my stuff and exp thank you very much.

I rather disliked dropping my newly purchased mithril tunic today. Lucky for me my BIGGER friend killed the PK that stole it and not only did the PK drop that, but everything else he had LOLOLOLOL! Served the creep right.

There's far more to the game than this PK business, PvP is FINE FOR THOSE THAT CHOOSE TO DO SO, but leave the rest of us the HELL ALONE!

[Darraess]

[ QUOTE ]
Heres a nice idea(not quite the same but similar idea) that worked well in Neocron, have a pvp option that takes 10 minutes to enable/disable so u cant simply switch to non-pvp while pvping, fighting pve or pvp would disable the switch to/from pvp for 5 mins. having pvp disabled would mean you cant attack or be attacked by players, having pvp enabled would mean you could fight any other player with pvp enabled

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess you also know that in Neocron when you are in no PvP state you get a massive XP hit from killing mobs, but you chose to forget to mention it.

L2 was designed to be open PvP from the start, do you want to propose changes? realistical changes have that in mind allways, if you can't handle it leave.

[bastyan15]

ACTUALLY! i siad kind of like neocron in that u can choose to be in or out of pvp and you cant simply turn on and off, there are temporary downsides to turning on and off

[SpiritK9]

I think there is an important distinction to make clear here between open PvP and the PK stupidity.

Open PvP is where two characters AGREE to fight (or two or more clans, etc) and the winner gets bragging rights, prize, etc, such as it is in the siege system where winner gets the castle.

PKs are just a bunch of idiots that kill for the sake of killing and causing discomfort, irritation, and dismay in other players.

I think the PvP part should remain as it is. A switch would allow a user like myself who wants to play the GAME not play this idiotic PK baloney. The switch would preclude the PKer from robbing me and other players from the enjoyment of the game, while still choosing at some point to play the PvP game if so desired.

I think if the switch was there, about 75% of the users would most likely use it after getting PK'ed once and losing valuable equipment. 50% of those would probably elect to play PvP later on when THEY CHOSE TO, not when they are FORCED to.

I don't like the PKs, and I'm not leaving. What I'll do is build my character to a monsterous level, then kill all you Pk idiots. Maybe. My choice ain't it. Don't like that? Then YOU leave.

[Foobie]

The equipment drop is (IMHO) the biggest reason not to take part in PvP. Even the newbie PKers wouldn't be such a big deal if you didn't drop anything (although yes, they would still be annoying).

Ash, in the previous forums, Dhevrin said that the Korean dev team had no intention of ever removing item drops because they wanted there to be an incentive not to die. Do you know if that's still true? Honestly, if ONLY that ever got changed the PvP would be much more user friendly, even with the existing griefing tactics intact.

[Odinshad]

[ QUOTE ]
I think there is an important distinction to make clear here between open PvP and the PK stupidity.

Open PvP is where two characters AGREE to fight (or two or more clans, etc) and the winner gets bragging rights, prize, etc, such as it is in the siege system where winner gets the castle.

PKs are just a bunch of idiots that kill for the sake of killing and causing discomfort, irritation, and dismay in other players.

I think the PvP part should remain as it is. A switch would allow a user like myself who wants to play the GAME not play this idiotic PK baloney. The switch would preclude the PKer from robbing me and other players from the enjoyment of the game, while still choosing at some point to play the PvP game if so desired.

I think if the switch was there, about 75% of the users would most likely use it after getting PK'ed once and losing valuable equipment. 50% of those would probably elect to play PvP later on when THEY CHOSE TO, not when they are FORCED to.

I don't like the PKs, and I'm not leaving. What I'll do is build my character to a monsterous level, then kill all you Pk idiots. Maybe. My choice ain't it. Don't like that? Then YOU leave.

[/ QUOTE ]


And this would remove the last line of defense against farmers.

Think they're bad now? Imagine if they could FD train, KS, etc without any reprecaution whatsoever... well that's basically how it already is heh.

Pking is only an issue under lvl 30, as Pk's generally are too chicken (can't blame them) to have gear on required to take down a higher level.

A PvP game is not as you are describing it. What you are describing is EQ and the /duel system. Under your reasoning EQ (non-zeks) was a pvp game. Even on the zek's, with the exception of the level restriction (excellent idea), it was free reign to gank each other. Just no/slight penalties, which made it a BLAST, because the penalty was having to run back to get your body lol. Corpse camping was fun on both sides, whether you being the one camped or not so much. As if you were getting camped, you had to gather friends. You could however loot money off people, which added a little risk.

I say remove all penalties except XP loss, drop it down to ~1% (which still hurts), and let us have at it!

[MoodyDoody]

How badly would it affect castle sieges to put a maximum per-hour or per-day kills quota, a fairly high one, like 15. At least you wouldn't have people continously doing the 2-person scam where A stands at the red-death-revive spot outside the nearest town while the other B one provokes people to go red by being incredibly annoying/ks/verbally provoking/etc. Player C gets mad, kills B, pops at village where A is standing, A kills C and takes his stuff. I think people are getting rich doing that.

Or maybe the quota is in effect as long as you aren't involved in a castle siege, otherwise there's no quota.

[SpiritK9]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think there is an important distinction to make clear here between open PvP and the PK stupidity.

Open PvP is where two characters AGREE to fight (or two or more clans, etc) and the winner gets bragging rights, prize, etc, such as it is in the siege system where winner gets the castle.

PKs are just a bunch of idiots that kill for the sake of killing and causing discomfort, irritation, and dismay in other players.

I think the PvP part should remain as it is. A switch would allow a user like myself who wants to play the GAME not play this idiotic PK baloney. The switch would preclude the PKer from robbing me and other players from the enjoyment of the game, while still choosing at some point to play the PvP game if so desired.

I think if the switch was there, about 75% of the users would most likely use it after getting PK'ed once and losing valuable equipment. 50% of those would probably elect to play PvP later on when THEY CHOSE TO, not when they are FORCED to.

I don't like the PKs, and I'm not leaving. What I'll do is build my character to a monsterous level, then kill all you Pk idiots. Maybe. My choice ain't it. Don't like that? Then YOU leave.

[/ QUOTE ]


And this would remove the last line of defense against farmers.

Think they're bad now? Imagine if they could FD train, KS, etc without any reprecaution whatsoever... well that's basically how it already is heh.

Pking is only an issue under lvl 30, as Pk's generally are too chicken (can't blame them) to have gear on required to take down a higher level.

A PvP game is not as you are describing it. What you are describing is EQ and the /duel system. Under your reasoning EQ (non-zeks) was a pvp game. Even on the zek's, with the exception of the level restriction (excellent idea), it was free reign to gank each other. Just no/slight penalties, which made it a BLAST, because the penalty was having to run back to get your body lol. Corpse camping was fun on both sides, whether you being the one camped or not so much. As if you were getting camped, you had to gather friends. You could however loot money off people, which added a little risk.

I say remove all penalties except XP loss, drop it down to ~1% (which still hurts), and let us have at it!

[/ QUOTE ]


Well, if one is going to not use the switch, then I'd say do this;
- Remove EXP penalty for dying by the hand of another player
- Remove drop items on death at hand of another player
(being sent back to town is bad enough IMO)
- Remove ALL ability to DE-level. This will basically kill off the farming trade, or at the least make it much, much more difficult if not unprofitable.

One or the other, the above, or the switch. In fact, either way you look at it, removing the DE-leveling capability would take care of a lot of the farming problem, even though I really don't care about farmers to begin with. I ignore them, they ignore me. IMO, this is NC's problem. Farming and EBAYing go hand in hand, if NC sees it as a profit loss problem they certainly have the tools to stop it.

Of course, as mentioned somewhere above, if DE-leveling is kept then if one DE-levels they should not be able to access a skill they aquired because they DID level. This would put a quick end to a lot of griefers and the everloving naked red idiot PK.

[haahaaa]

I havent paid a lot of attention to this thread...soo much reading on every post.

But i would like to say this. People should stop suggesting major changes that involve drastically changing the face of the game. Many people love the game the way it is, they just want something small that will solve the problems with the current system. Suggesting to completely get rid of going red, or deleveling, or limited consent pvp, etc is a drastic change to the game.

Why not work with what is here, instead of trying to completely redesign it?

For instance, instead of getting rid of something, think about something that could be added.

[Malloria]

All of yall make good points, for all sides of this argument, but NC Soft isn't going to want to change things as long as doing so would tick off the majority. What I was wondering is this: they have several servers, why don't they just set each server with differing levels of pvp. Personally, I love Lineage 2. The system can be kinda clumsy at times, but I think that pvp can be fun, as long as I don't delevel and waste the hours of hunting that it took to make that level. The equipment loss is the real killer though. In anycase, they are not going to be able to please everybody with the same pvp system. The real challange to this idea that I can think of is that players aren't going to want to have to create new characters to move. Is there anyway for NCSoft to transfer characters from server to server?

[Sumiflow]

I like the idea of incurring an xp debt and removing deleveling. This also solves the problem of skill retention upon deleveling since there would be none. As for the luck skill I would change it so that players under level 5 could not be attacked by any other player and that they themselves could not attack anyone else. In other words players under 5 couldnt pvp.

IMO reds should be able to defend themselves without penalty but should not be able to start an attack without penalty. This could be easily done by making players who attack reds turn purple. That way a red can defend against an agressor and have his karma unchanged but if he kills a white his karma increases more. To prevent chaotic players from profiting a great amount by getting drops from killing non-chaotic players, I would make it so that all non-chaotic players could not drop any equipped items as a result from dying by another player. They would still be able to drop items from regular inventory.

[Nej]

there's clearly somethin' wrong with the pvp system when practically 90% of the players who go red are NOT the griefers.

if we, the playerbase, are asked to police ourselves, we need the tools to do so. as is, no one bothers to PK a griefer -- the risks of going red are simply too high and too time-consuming.

now i realize some of you, especially those who've never played a pvp game before (daoc, shadowbane, ultima, etc.), might find this suggestion goin' too far, but i'll try to convince you nonetheless:

White hits Pink == Purple
White hits Red == White remains White

unlike the current system, the above allows you to protect yourself and be protected once you work off a portion of your karma. for those with several PKs under their belt, this change would hardly help them. and for those who fear more players will grief newbs with such a simple change, realize that a) the more newbs you grief, the more karma you receive with each PK, and consequently the longer it'll take you to get to pink, and b) drop rates are still significantly high as a pink, and that alone is a large deterrent for most players.

***

then there're the nude reds with 40+ skills, thinkin they've gone all hardcore cause they're red, but lack the balls to put on their equipment. but nude reds, no matter what lvl skills they have, should not be able to land 1k damage with backstab and deadly blow. change these skills (as well as mortal blow) so that one's patk affects damage output and suddenly all these 'hardcore' reds will return to their main toons. there's a reason all the nude reds are dagger-users.

[Mizwisfist]

Sebastian's Post on Progressive Karma was by far, better than actualm one. I'm surprised Ash don't mention it in users proposal regarding the quality of the work being done by seb.

If someone finds it please send me a tell and post it here.

(to make short progressive karma was a deep and complete system allowing players to pvp and resolve grieffing probs - a main feature was if you kill somebody who is white you become sticky purple and gain karma that you need to work off.
With all disadvantages of being purple.
But if you gain 1 more karma point you become red.
And if you think you could work-off and repeat you're wrong cos at second killing of a white you become sticky purple with twice more karma.
Great work, NC shud read... But with all the stuff NC shud read you prolly could fill the National Library...

[Foobie]

I have to disagree. While the PKS was an interesting idea, I don't think it was a good overall solution. It didn't seem to actually solve anything. That being said, if someone has a copy of the original it's worth posting again since this thread is for airing ideas.

[WickedWoman]

My objection to the game is the fact that entire areas of the world have been taken over by apparently non-English speaking players. This is true at least on Erica. Anyone spending a week grouping in Cruma Tower level 1, or attempting to, will acquire an intimate understanding of this situation. I first encountered this situation in the School of Dark Arts in the Dark Elf homeland and in the Elvin Fortress in the light elf lands back in Beta. If I was playing in a game hosted in and for non-English speaking players, I guess I wouldn’t bring any of this up. But they are supposed to be the North American servers.

These players help each other, even when not in the same groups or even friends, to drive out any competition from the English-speaking players. They refuse to engage in any measure of what (most of) the English-speaking players seem to regard as basic common courtesy. They killsteal as a matter of course and band together to take over entire rooms from the people in it originally. If you try and fight them, the other non-English speaking people come running from all directions to execute anyone who failed to submit to the bullies. Sometimes they do it just to murder people for their gear, mostly they do it for the exp/loot and adena from the mobs.

The problem with this is that it drives players from the game. No one likes to be pushed around as a matter of course and the dungeons have some of the best content in the game. NCSoft allowing a particular culture to dominate these areas, keeping everyone else out makes it hard for the North American players to enjoy the game.

I’m really not sure what the solution is, only I’m quickly becoming reluctant to recommend this game to my friends. The situation is completely out of hand. All the game developers need to do is try hunting for a week in SoDA, EF, or in any of the newbie areas to see how frustrating it can be for English speaking players.

These are supposed to be the North American servers, right? Why are entire parts of the world systematically, viciously and nearly completely dominated by non-North American players?


- Shannon


P.S. Making it possible for de-leveled, twinked out reds to spend entire days grief-ing, bullying and murdering new players in newbie lands is ridiculous. It is so obviously an exploit and I am baffled why it is allowed to continue. Reds are not supposed to be able to murder without consequence, without fear of losing gear. This situation is bad for the game, bad for your business. Is it a wonder these areas have become ghost towns from the bustling cities they used to be? Have you noticed the obvious lack of genuinely new blood coming into the game?

Fixes for this are easy and have been mentioned on this board. De-leveling is fine, but you shouldn’t be able to use ANY spells, attributes or skills that are not appropriate for your level, ever. I don’t feel you should lose gear at all at any level, but if you must after level 4, making that passive skill vanish after you attain level 9 would eliminate this situation.


.

[Darraess]

[ QUOTE ]
These are supposed to be the North American servers, right? Why are entire parts of the world systematically, viciously and nearly completely dominated by non-North American players?


[/ QUOTE ]

They have repeatedly stated that although the servers are located in NA they are considered their universal servers, hence they sold the game to people from all over the world.

But what am i saying, i should know better than point the obvious to someone that his problem is what language someone speaks.

[Lord Chaos]

Then go play everquest, there's no point in a PvP game if people can just turn it on and off at will. This *is* a PvP game, its like playing football and standing in the middle of the field saying "Football is fine for those that chose to do so, but leave the rest of us the hell alone!"...that makes sense to you?

[WickedWoman]

?

Well, no matter if these are universal servers or not, allowing an entire culture of player to dominate large areas of content is a bad thing for the game and a bad thing for their business if it drives players off.

As for the language, it is the most readily identifiable characteristic of this culture and I did note it “seemed” to be non-English speaking. Another, less reliable feature of this culture are the character names. Lovekiss001, 002, etc., BOSSchj, etc. While not 100%, the patterns are there and it is relatively easy to identify this population. You can go to SoDA or EF or Cruma right now and see them. Stay a short time and watch as they bully other players out of rooms, KillSteal and so on.

What the characteristics of the players of this on-line culture is, I’m not sure. Some might immediately say it’s obviously Chinese players from Asia. I’m not necessarily convinced of this and feel that succumbing to this suspiciously racist viewpoint is too easy and leads to too many of the wrong (read: unethical) directions for solutions. It certainly does appear to be nearly entirely the same group of people and again, that group of toons is easily identifiable in the game, the most obvious characteristic is that they don’t speak English.

While it wasn’t mentioned, I want to point out that to deny that there is an accepted etiquette in MMORG’s is also not accurate. Most of the players don’t KS or grief others. Having an entire culture of players who do not follow this etiquette or at least don’t follow it when interacting with anyone outside their culture creates issues no different than in real life people ignoring the rules and running around shooting people. And this isn't unique to this game. You can certainly cheat at, lets say monopoly and say it’s only a game. But many people don’t like playing with others who bend and ignore the rules. I’m one of them - especially when that activity is organized, systematic and appears specifically designed to drive away any players not of a specific culture. Oh, and it's working.

Finally, I like Lineage. But I think it can be better especially from a PVP/hunting/exploiting standpoint. This thread was started in that spirit and I responded to that call.


.

[Lord Chaos]

[ QUOTE ]
allowing an entire culture of player to dominate large areas of content is a bad thing for the game and a bad thing for their business if it drives players off.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, those **** bad americans...they dominate alliances, castles, spawn areas etc. Yes, it is truly a bad thing...BAN AMERICAN IPs!

[ QUOTE ]
As for the language, it is the most readily identifiable characteristic of this culture and I did note it “seemed” to be non-English speaking. Another, less reliable feature of this culture are the character names. Lovekiss001, 002, etc., BOSSchj, etc. While not 100%, the patterns are there and it is relatively easy to identify this population. You can go to SoDA or EF or Cruma right now and see them. Stay a short time and watch as they bully other players out of rooms, KillSteal and so on.

[/ QUOTE ]

Unlike the really cool names like CAPTAINCOOL, tisjkgd, kewldewd2, xXxGawDxXx. You're right, they're really cool!, and those americans that take over whole sections of cruma and either kill you or try to sell back the room at an outragious price.

Be very careful when playing Animal Farm, dude.

[Darraess]

Although you are right about the Etiquete in mmorpgs in the case pf L2 this etiquete is not considered rules or is enforced on players, everyone is free to choose how he treats others, whithin the boundaries of the game.

This is the essense of an open PvP game.

I am not forced to be good, polite, loving, caring or whatever, in the opposite i am allowed to try and make your toons life a misery, i am allowed to try and advance my toon by stealing scamming your toon, i a allowed to try and trick you into doing something stupid in order to benefit from it.

PvP does not start and and at fighting, but a good PvP system must be very well tweeked to encourage some actions more than others.

Consensual PvP, Player Justice are examples of what must be encouraged more, rampant PK'ng, griefing are examples of things that should be dicouraged.

But in the and everyhting should be allowed.

[WickedWoman]

To deny that there is a real problem in Lineage that is related to culture is inaccurate and probably even contrary to your own in-game experience.

Banning IP’s from a specific geographical location would seem to me to be racist or nationalist in origin. I am speaking of an on-line culture for which language is only part of the characteristics of that culture. Therefore the solution really needs to be implemented in-game.

Not everyone who plays MMORGs is a “dude.”

Finally, “Animal Farm”? You mean we can’t have a discussion about culture or race without someone crying “racism”? We don’t live in a homogenous world, but one made up of distinctly different cultures, races, socio-economomic groups and nationalities. You can have civil, intelligent discussions about the characteristics of those groups. Honest.


.

[WickedWoman]

I agree that everything should be allowed. I agree that we need to...heck I agree with most of your post.


.

[Lord Chaos]

dude is used as a generic term, I don't give a flip about gender.

I see the point went way over your head. Animal Farm and what it later represented wasn't about racism.

You were bringing up there were bad points to a culture, I brought up that those very same charactaristica could be put back in force on american players as well...and heck, sometimes they can be as hard to communicate with as any chinese.

The problem truly lies in that certain playstyles and acts "break" the concept of the game...like deleveling and keeping skills does, as well as exploits and minor flaws in the flagging system. But none of these are culture specific, though some problems can be more pronounced in certain cultures.

[WickedWoman]

[ QUOTE ]
dude is used as a generic term, I don't give a flip about gender.

[/ QUOTE ]

Np girlfiend.

[ QUOTE ]
I see the point went way over your head.

[/ QUOTE ]

Goodness you are abrasive and harsh.


.

[Inoxe]

WickedWomen, your posts about an alien MMORPG culture causing distress to North American players is well taken. Curiously, the reputed antics of such "farmers" is often the original excuse for many red PKers who shortly thereafter became such a plague on the Lionna server.

I agree that there is a dominant culture in MMORPGs, and Lineage's ostensibly English-language version (this version, after all it IS in English) does not to cater to the expectations or traditions of English-language gamers.

Curiously enough, on Lionna the farmer population has migrated upward to Cruma Tower and beyond, leaving SoDA, EF, dwarven mines, etc., largely empty. In addition, many of the professional farmers have learned to get along, share, and team up with English-speakers, rather than try to chase them off. The #2 person in my clan just last week spent an entire day with a farmer, and had a pretty good time, as well as gaining some interesting insights.

As for Lineage's fate, WW, I entirely agree with your thoughts and reasoning. Based on past experience, it seems unlikely that NCsoft has the will or the reaction speed to deal with the accelerating "death spiral" of declining useage and subscriptions.

Finally, as you've probably observed, there are a few people who post here quite frequently using an extremely argumentation and abrasive style. They are almost invariably the most rabid fans of the most extreme forms of PvP and PK enablement in MMORPGs. If nothing else, it tells you a lot about one kind of person attracted to this type of game, but not to other types of MMORPGs. There are times that I think it best to leave games like Lineage to them, as they so commonly advocate.

[Karashanna]

[ QUOTE ]
This *is* a PvP game, its like playing football and standing in the middle of the field saying "Football is fine for those that chose to do so, but leave the rest of us the hell alone!"...that makes sense to you?

[/ QUOTE ]

*giggles* :D

[Lord Chaos]

Which just shows how easy it is to stereotype. I don't PK, I don't support PK'ing and I don't PvP unless I can't avoid it. One of my places I have much fun is in Trammel UO. Just because I am not of the same opinion and believe yours or others to be flawed, doesn't mean I am a rabid PK supporter.

The point is very valid, you both act as if the NA population is somehow a "prime population" where its irrelevant what they do to anyone else, but horrible if anyone does anything to them.

[Nataniela]

White (first) hits Red = White turns Purple
Red (first) hits White == Red remains Red , White remains White

[Skyler]

[ QUOTE ]
White (first) hits Red = White turns Purple
Red (first) hits White == Red remains Red , White remains White

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

Whites cannot turn Purple for attacking Reds. Reds are criminals and deserve to be attacked without penalty. However, Whites who attack Reds should go Purple.. to the Red player only. So that only the Red player may be able to attack back freely.

[Nataniela]

Reds are criminals and deserve to be attacked without penalty.

LOL. Why? Red player should be protected without increase karma. Only PROTECTED.

[haahaaa]

[ QUOTE ]
Reds are criminals and deserve to be attacked without penalty.

[/ QUOTE ]


have you ever fully experienced the karma system? This is the major difference I noticed from lin 1, here you are hunted down the second peopel see you if you're red. There people leave you alone for the most part because they realize you probably had a good reason to go red.

Once you get to high levels, very few people go killing just because they're bored.

[Foobie]

Turning Red (chaotic) is intended to be a punishment, hence no recourse for the reds. From what I understand, legit PvP shouldn't result in anyone turning chaotic (at least, the way the Korean dev team envisioned it). However, outside of Korea that isn't the case because the mindset in the USA is different. I think that chaotic characters should suffer because of it, but it should be made a) harder to turn chaotic, and b) easier to lose chaotic status after a minor infraction

[Khrysyl]

I am well aware of the fact that most players could care less about another "I'm Leaving" post, but somehow I think the devs may have a different perspective, and since the reasons are the subject of this thread I thought I would post here.

The biggest problem with PvP as I see it is that high level naked reds have the ability to do pretty much anything they please in this game, causing major grief to a large percentage of white players, and those same white players, if they are to do anything at all risk everything! Everything including the huge investment in time to acquire the weapons and armor they carry. Yet, the red player risks NOTHING!

I will leave the argument to others but the simple fact is that this problem along with other problems related to PvP imbalance has resulted in at least 2 players leaving, one the leader of a clan, the breakup of that clan, and, in all likelyhood, and this is only speculation but still, it happens all the time when clans disolve, many of the former clan members will drift away from the game over the coming weeks or months.

I hope that this message will help the devs to realize the urgency of the problem and to see that something constructive is done to rescue what is, in so many ways a very compelling game.

Okay, that's it, now it's time for 20-30 posts of, "If you're gonna leave, leave! We don't wanna hear your whinin', ya baby!" Who will be first?

Khrys (Orc Shamaness of Lionna, retired)

[WindiaN]

It has probably been posted already but I think a huge issue that needs to be fixed is people being purple bugged. Its quite a pain to go red in the middle of an 70 person pvp becuase the game showed one guy out of many as purple. The gms will not remove karma, nor will they (understandably) give back any items, but people should not lose items becuase of a flaw in the game.

[SpiritK9]

I keep reading about this increased karma for reds as being some sort of penalty....as if it were a punishment. Get it through your thick heads children; the reds LOVE high karma, else they'd stop and work it off, get it?

Obviously if PK idiocy and griefing is to be discouraged, another solution n eeds to be implemented. As it stands things are really going from bad to worse with these stupid *** PKers. Where is the penalty for murder?

Sigh....it won't be fixed, I'm not under any illusion of anything like that happening. The devs are either lazy as hell or just don't give a ****, so maybe I'll be the next to migrate to the next mmorpg and leave this one to rot.

[Foobie]

[ QUOTE ]
I keep reading about this increased karma for reds as being some sort of penalty....as if it were a punishment. Get it through your thick heads children; the reds LOVE high karma, else they'd stop and work it off, get it?

[/ QUOTE ]
*sigh*

Now seems as good a time as any to bring this up. In the old boards, Pecos posted a thread outlining a system where certain Karma thresholds would apply debuffs to the red character. Now, I don't remember the numbers or the proposed debuffs, but it went something like this:

@ 1000 karma, player suffers from Slow
@ 2000 karma, player cannot use SS/SpS
@ 3000 karma, player's carrying weight is reduced
@ 4000 karma, etc ...

That would probably have a deterrent effect on the perma-reds.


Additioanlly, I suggest that when a red character dies, they cannot respawn immediately but have to wait a certain time based on their current karma. Someone who PKs once and turns red may have a 10-20 second delay between respawns but someone who has 10,000 karma could find themselves waiting four or five minutes before they can respawn.

[MiceWithIce]

[ QUOTE ]

Now seems as good a time as any to bring this up. In the old boards, Pecos posted a thread outlining a system where certain Karma thresholds would apply debuffs to the red character. Now, I don't remember the numbers or the proposed debuffs, but it went something like this:

@ 1000 karma, player suffers from Slow
@ 2000 karma, player cannot use SS/SpS
@ 3000 karma, player's carrying weight is reduced
@ 4000 karma, etc ...

[/ QUOTE ]
why would they do that? perma-red's are perfectly legal, and are not dicouraged in any way. Being red is a part of the game. And the price for being red is great enough. The only thing I might add, is maybe allow karma to add up :)

edit1: Karma add up, as in store karma negativly, so after 10,000 monster kills, you can pk a stupid farmer, for no penalty.

[Foobie]

[ QUOTE ]
why would they do that? perma-red's are perfectly legal, and are not dicouraged in any way. Being red is a part of the game. And the price for being red is great enough.

[/ QUOTE ]
You're quite right, on all counts. Perma-reds are a legal in-game choice. This change wouldn't stop people from turning red. Turning red is also not discouraged - and that's the problem. Turning red should be discouraged and consentual PvP should be encouraged.

Now, I'm not against a PvP game but the idea behind turning red isn't really well defined. Red should not mean that you killed someone. Red should mean that you violated the consentual PvP aspect of the game. Killing one or two players and flagging red should be relatively easy to overcome. Repeatedly doing so should incur a hefty penalty because you're clearly out for random killing. The thing to bear in mind is that consential PvP (where both players turn purple, or during a siege, or a clan war, etc) doesn't make you turn Chaotic.

[Wardancer]

[ QUOTE ]
perma-red's are perfectly legal, and are not dicouraged in any way

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, they're "legal"... for being murderers. IMO, there are so many varied ways to kill farmers (the #1 excuse I hear for being Chaotic) that going red means you have either no talent or no creativity. Very few reds I have ever met stopped at farmers though. Those that did asked me to hold their stuff and kill them a few times to lower their karma, which I did, and returned their items at the end.

The fact that there is nothing to discourage people from going red (despite your own counter-argument in a following sentence) is a "feature" that, I think, was not anticipated nor expected by the designers of the game. Who knew that people would level to 50+ just to go red?

[ QUOTE ]
And the price for being red is great enough.

[/ QUOTE ]

Once again returning to the myth that a high-level permared is somehow penalized for her red name. Not so. As happened on Lionna, the perma-red clan suffered nothing, as players, for their status. Their gear was banked or sold and new mains rolled and leveled to 40+ to be played when they weren't out griefing newbies and randomly ganging up 3, 4,5,6,8, 12v. 1, 2, or 3. Given the current mechanics of the game, three 40 50+ naked dagger-classes with the cheapest butterknives they can get their hands on are more than a match for a trio of 30s-level toons.

As has been mentioned more than once, the Red has nothing to lose and everything to gain by these tactics. If she dies, no big deal. If she wins, her white opponent stands a very good chance of losing days, weeks, even months of work by dropping gear... probably to someone equipped with an 800a shortbow. When this happens, the world of Aden most likely loses another subscriber. Very few people are willing to return to that grind with whatever inferior equipment they can afford at the time.

I can beat keltir to death with my bare hands and collect 800a. Supporting such a character is a no-brainer with the Freight system and another main to support the murderous habit. Perhaps the *only* thing the red suffers is when a very large number of whites arrive and put the smack-down on them, en masse. Even then, the whites suffer more, as the reds have to cry about how unfair the fight was.

*shrug*

People.
Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em all.

[Darraess]

Personaly i don't care if someone makes a perma red because he kills farmers or new toons, the result when considering game mechanics is the same.

They are heavily penalized, this game is very much item dependant, without good items your toon does not operate at it's full potential.

Saying that developers didnt anticipate how people will find ways to PK is wrong, they knew perfectly well that people will go perma red and that they will do it in ways to avoid or make less the penalty of droping items so it is safe to say that their presence in game was anticipated and desired.

Still i will repeat my idea as it seems that i must do it every few days.

If skills and spells require a certain "level" of weapons to be used then a red who is totaly naked or very underequiped will be even further weakened, if they choose to have better equiment than good for them as they are prepared to face the extremely high possibility of losing something of value.

The murderer is an important element of the game and perfectly legit, no penalties that make them totaly unplayable should ever be considered, if they are lets just make a new land where PvP is not allowed hmmmm oh wait that doesn't work either.....

[Foobie]

[ QUOTE ]
If skills and spells require a certain "level" of weapons to be used then a red who is totaly naked or very underequiped will be even further weakened, if they choose to have better equiment than good for them as they are prepared to face the extremely high possibility of losing something of value.

[/ QUOTE ]
The problem is that if a "normal" player drops their x-million adena weapon and has to pick up an 800a sword, their skills and spells will also be useless. Re-farm adena to replace their lost weapon using skills that were obsolete 25 levels ago? mmm, no thanks.

[Darraess]

Three big categories for each grade is sufficient, i believe that if it was to be enforced to the higher weapon as to the lower weapons it would discourage people from using a 1.5m weapon at lvl20, and give some real value to the mid level weapons and armor which seem to have become reduntant and the only value they have is for dwarfs to make SS's.

Anyway im not saying that you couldn't use a better weapon im just saying that you couldn't use it and also use you top skills with it, saying that if someone loses his weapon he must go back to using a 800a weapon is a flawed argument in its self, as using that item would be useless anyway and beeing able to use a skill or two wouldn't help afterall.

What im taling about here is that in D-grade levels if you use a 400k weapon instead of a 1.5m one you will lose the level of skill bought at 32+ not a big deal in PvE but quite important in PvP if the Red is using a 62k weapon were he would lose all skill from 20+.

[Khrysyl]

You've got an interesting idea there Daraess, but I see at least one problem with it. Consider a mid-20s character who owns a 600k adena weapon and has just upgraded armor so she is very short on cash. Bad enough if she has to buy a mediocre NG weapon and farm below her level to get money for a better weapon, but if she loses all of her lvl 25 and 20 skills as well, UGGGGHHH! That would make the grind back intolerable in my opinion.

[Darraess]

Yes it would make some senarios harder to deal with, but there are allways many ways to deal with a problem, in the senario you describe the 25lvl toon has the option of selling her upgraded armor and buying a top NG weapon with lower NG armor, she can also delevel a bit and still use the 20 level skills.

Anyway with the imense amount of skills out there it is not that easy to implement as it sounds, the general idea is what i suggest, some important PvE skill and spells can be excluded for example.

As this system is here to stop the 40+lvl red using a hunting bow for the damage of 40+ skills it can be tweeked to do that and still not to cost to much to the rest of the players.

[Galrahn]

I think you make the red drop rate the same as purple drop rate and you hit red characters XP loss at 4x the normal amount for a death.

You fix the exploitation of the current system by removing the drop rate (I am the expert on this btw, ask around). You also give players the option of spending their XP on regulating griefers. Example.

Level 60 group of 9 goes red on another Level 60 group of 9. Red guy 1 dies and loses 40% XP (example). High level healer there has a 30% recovery res, so after res the net loss to the guy who went red is now 28%. The guy who went red has gone red before, due to karma bonuses for repeat offenders he has to kill himself 3 more times to go white, each for an additional 28% XP hit. The guy went red, but deleveled. Luckily under the new system though the guy did not lose any of his B grade equiptment so is in a position to gain back the XP lost at level 60, which is basically the equivilent to a 10 day set back for this powergamer.

Most importantly to average players, it removes the tactics that people like me use to force others to go red, which puts them in a high % chance of losing their gear. To farm money, I farm red people, and usually find a way to make the person go red first when I can so I can get that expensive drop. Its a lot easier than waiting for that 1/200,000 chance of a high end drop farming mobs.

Think about it.

[Skyler]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Reds are criminals and deserve to be attacked without penalty.

[/ QUOTE ]


have you ever fully experienced the karma system? This is the major difference I noticed from lin 1, here you are hunted down the second peopel see you if you're red. There people leave you alone for the most part because they realize you probably had a good reason to go red.

Once you get to high levels, very few people go killing just because they're bored.

[/ QUOTE ]

To you and all those others who quoted me in my post... please try to understand it before commenting on it.

I am not anti red, I come from UO which has the best criminal/pvp system in any MMORPG to date. It's the most fair and the most well done. I will not explain it all here for you but UO worked right.

I was merely saying white players should not be turned publicly purple for hitting reds. Otherwise what's the difference between red/purple aside from a little drop rate.

I know plenty of people want reds to be able to defend themselves if someone starts attacking them, I agree completely.

Which is why I said if a white player hits a red the white will go purple to the red only, everyone else will see him white. The red will see him purple and thus can fight back without risk of gaining more karma.

Simple and effective. Doesn't punish people for hitting reds and allows reds to fight back... perfect solution.

[WickedWoman]

[ QUOTE ]
You're quite right, on all counts. Perma-reds are a legal in-game choice. This change wouldn't stop people from turning red. Turning red is also not discouraged - and that's the problem. Turning red should be discouraged and consentual PvP should be encouraged.

Now, I'm not against a PvP game but the idea behind turning red isn't really well defined. Red should not mean that you killed someone. Red should mean that you violated the consentual PvP aspect of the game. Killing one or two players and flagging red should be relatively easy to overcome. Repeatedly doing so should incur a hefty penalty because you're clearly out for random killing. The thing to bear in mind is that consential PvP (where both players turn purple, or during a siege, or a clan war, etc) doesn't make you turn Chaotic.

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent post. I agree with everything you said.

I want more honorable, consensual fighting with no chance of gear loss on death and less mugging, griefing, murdering and bullying. I like the idea of reds taking a while to re-spawn, I like the idea of additional karma making you slow, unable to use spirit shots, etc. I too liked the UO system of Karma and I think it would work well here. I want people be able to lock in one on one fights if both consent where outside interference by players is impossible. The same with groups and group leaders. Set up game mechanics to encourage and support honorable dueling, rather than the game mechanics making it not only possible, but profitable to murder for money. And finally for goodness sake, get the murdering muggers out of the newbie lands. These new players are being driven out of the game.


.

[Galrahn]

I just want to agree with everyone that UO has by far the best pvp karma system ever implemented in a mmorpg, but I don't know how well it would work in L2.

Keep in mind that in UO, there is almost nothing that prevents people from going red, and a lot of people in UO play exclusively red characters. But there are also no newer characters and rarely any less developed characters the red players have contact with, because the lands the red players play is typically the high end land areas of that game.

In L2, a red player of any level can kill a white player of any level, and that is the main reason why you cannot allow a system where players can freely play red character, otherwise you basically make it impossible for new characters, because no matter what people say, there won't be a mass migration of high level players to protect new players.

The two most important aspects of any L2 character is items and XP, the loss of both are the major deterrents for going red in L2. If you remove the loss of one, you better drastically increase the loss of the other, otherwise you do not have any deterrent for players to go red and run around killing people at will.

[Darraess]

UO had the best Karma system before Trammel, today its a joke.

[SpiritK9]

Again, I have to toss this in.....

It seems every time it's mentioned some pro Pk player manages to get everyone to ignore this. PKs being red and having high karma is not an issue to them, it's a GOAL. No way is it a punishment. These guys cry about karma and redness but do nothing to fix their situation because they like it. They want MORE PRO-PK features not balance.

PK is -== NOT ==- PvP.

For a couple days I've been hunting aroud the orc barracks, a lot of folks do it seems. Usually there are 20 to 30 people out there hunting their butts off, and there is never any problem until a PKer/griefer such as Xaarin shows up.

He never dies this guy, either he's a 50+ red (naked by the way) or he WAS 50+ and deleveled and kept the skills. He seems immune no matter how many attack him, those who don't run end up dying...even some that run die.

This isn't right. Not only is it not right it's frigging STUPID.

The moment I lose my tarbar or a piece of my overly expensive armor, I'm outta here along with 30+ game aquaintences of mine also on the verge of going due to their disgust at the developers lack of interest in fixing this mess. ((EDIT: some left just today for this reason))

We'll all eventually go anyway I believe, the grind gets too boring, nobody wants to have to repeat it because of a [censored] PKer whos only purpose is to give people grief.

This isn't PvP. This just SUCKS.

[Darraess]

Wrong, PK'ng, Griefing, Scamming, Stealing, Trash Talking, Baiting, Training, are as much PvP as Fighting is, at least that is how it is on an open PvP game, in restricted PvP games they prefer consentrating only on the fighting part of PvP good thats how they were designed, L2 and UO pre trammel are open PvP games which means anything goes.

You seem to think that that 50+ toon went up there for free, he worked his way up to 50 the same way you do so what if he decides to go mental and become a mass murderer.

The issue here is not about an individual here and there, the issue is how do you encourage the "honorable" PvP acts and discourage the "dishonorable" and at the same time continue beeing an Open PvP game.

Have in mind that discouraging does not mean preventing, there will allways be those that will chose the mass murderer path and its a good thing that they do.

[SpiritK9]

[ QUOTE ]
The first part of this post is an overview of the PvP system as is. the second part is an overview of current issues that have been, and still are, part of the community discussion.

Part 1: Overview

Lineage II is an open Player VS. Player (PvP) game. This means that anyone may attack any other player at any time. There are some exceptions to this rule; they are noted below. Consensual fighting is referred to as PvP. Fighting and killing another player who does not wish to fight is called Player-Killing (PK).

- Ash

[/ QUOTE ]

PvP is NOT PK.

[Darraess]

We can go in as many arguments as you want but it is.

Player vs Player

is about negative actions a player can take against other players, even Ash may disagree that does not make him right.

[SpiritK9]

Player killing was incorporated for a purpose, which was not griefing and free for all random murdering.

Anyway, there's a simple solution to this AND the character transfer problem, but it may end up being such a huge rewrite it may not be worth the man hours since this game is obviously going to shoot the tubes relatively soon anyway.

What they COULD have done, or can still do, is make it so that you log in then select the server you want to play on at the time. This would mean all characters can play all servers.

This would balance server load, and provide a way for them to allow a non PK (NOT NON PVP, NON PK) server. Although I suspect that they would find as in another game I have in mind, 60% of the users would utilize the NON PK servers 90% of the time.

No need to transfer characters around servers, people that like PvP can play on any server, and people that don't want to waste their time REDOING LEVELS and farming for enough money to replace the overly expensive weapon they lost to a PK can still play.

Simple. It'll NEVER happen though, since the mentality of the developers is such that any idea not thought of by them cannot be a good idea.

----====== FLUSH ======--------
************blub***************

[Tasraith]

I don't have the tenacity to go thru all zillion posts on this topic, but for those who have, I figured I would post my opinion.

I think a large problem with this game is that it takes very very few kills (relatively speaking) to become basically perma-red.

By the time you kill 20 people (this is EASY to do if you are in a battle against botters/farmers) it's basically too late.

Once you obtain a certain amount of karma, it either requires so much exp gained thru hunting (not possible when every white around wants a piece of you and you get more karma if you defend yourself - Remember, you have to kill white mobs or better) OR so much experience loss thru dieing that *most* decide to KEEP their red character and just roll a new white to play. Why on earth would I delevel down to lvl 1 just so I could start my grind up again?


In other words, if it was EASIER to go back white from red, I think the game would be more fun AND there would be many fewer perma-reds.

[mcmelons]

THIS IS THE SOLUTION TO ALL THE PROBLEMS PRESENT IN THE PVP SYSTEM:

WHEN A WHITE ATTACKS A RED, MAKE THE WHITE TURN PURPLE, AND THEN JUST LET ALL THE CURRENT RULES OF PVP STAY THE SAME.

[LurkerElf]

[ QUOTE ]

PvP/PK Exploits

Using the Luck Skill in combination with higher level skills and equipment for PK/harassment purposes can result in a permanent account suspension for the first offense.


[/ QUOTE ]

sigh.. :p

This doesn't cover all herassement exploits..

it seems NC isn't realizing the value of new commers to the game, each noob means a new challenger enters this world, I see them as the life line of the game. How would I be able to convince friends to get in the game if they would quite so quickly because lvl +4X Players that are camping outside the noob villages doing their last round of pking b4 quiting the game? the game also needs the noobs to make up for the people quiting the game, and reduce the reason of quiting, not "oh let it be it will turn out fine"

Ok you say there is "LUCK"... well it's till lvl 5 and I believe there isn't a player that would be stasified with reaching lvl 5 and want's her/his limt to be the sky, PvP should have its limits; players with great difference, and am speaking like +20 lvl difference were an army of lower lvl would surely lose agianst the big bad bully, should not be able to PvP outside of Arenas, Seige and wars.

the reasons are simple:

-At an early lvl of a character's life they aren't ready for PvP agianst high lvl mobs/players, not a lot of skills, armor nor their weapons can use Nss, rarely a strong mob would appear near a noobs town and get killed by them only due to carelessiness but PK by a high lvl can be unavoidable at these conditions.

-it's not likely you see a noob that would take on someone 30 or 40 lvl higher, and if they try to go find a high lvl player which are most likely to be at high lvl area, they'll most likely die from mobs on the way.

-A high lvl won't have much of a profit from a noobs drop, won't gain exp and surely karma means penalties not rewards, so one reason is left for a super high lvl to pick a fight with a low lvl which is pure herrassement and pvp/pk abuse.

-Noobs can't afford Teleporting to go to towns without high lvl pkers.

-To catch someone abusing PvP/PK you need to get a numerouse GM calls then the "invisble" GM has to go there to check on the fact, by that time the greifer had made a stasifing amount of victums and the noob is starting to hate the game, pvp with great lvl difference should not exist because it's a certian win for the high lvl while it's a lost cause for the noob.

-I am ****** about this because it took me a lot to convince 2 of my friends to get in the game and they shortly quited for the same reason, no good high lvl pkers camping at the noob villages to the point some players couldn't leave town, I tried killing them, but they don't give a **** because they are quiting, I escort them to villages and far away spots, but agian it happens, then I went into babysting-mode, ignore lvling and playing to guard my friends from pkers, but that didn't helped either because by the time i try to stop a pker, they would have killed my friends within 1-3 hits per kill.

[Darraess]

What game are you playing? it sounds fun

[LurkerElf]

now now....

new NCsoft rules "no addies", don't want to get banned for advertisizing.. :p

[Lord Chaos]

Ok, you got your friends involved in the game and you didn't help them?...sounds like the fault lies with you/your clan, not just the game.

[LurkerElf]

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, you got your friends involved in the game and you didn't help them?...sounds like the fault lies with you/your clan, not just the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

... what do you want me to say to you? :P

read carefully next time...

I said that I tried different ways to solve the porblem, but didn't work due to two reason: 1- some of those pkers do not mind dying so they just keep comming back, 2- some of them are high enough in lvl to kill my friends within 1 to 2 hits(tell me what are you going to do agianst a bow user or a PK party while guarding 2?) . &amp; am not in a clan ATM, but even so, never heard of a clan that went off to the noob village to rid of some bullies, actually there are more PK clans these days than helpers.. lol

[relou]

My concern is about the one hit = kill in pvp

I think this is ridiculous, its in no mean pvp because there are no interaction possible, this is only action resulting in death. It only encourage lame pking means pk hunt in very low level. Thus it permit pking without consequences (you don't turn red).

I have a proposition which won't help a lot, but i really think something should be done even if the leveling structure of this game make it almost impossible.

If the first hit is a certain kill (whatever formula is choosen to determine this) it should have a high chance to be avoid, with a clear message as " you avoid a certain death from ***" to the one who is hit, and "you miss giving a certain death to *** " to the one attacking, resulting in a swich off war mode; and the red rule for the attacker if he still go for a kill in a short period of time.

Of course this won't occure in clan war and else.

[Tr0LL]

High level pvp (55-70).

My clan and I have been fighting a group of clanned farmers the past five days. And I've never been so concerned about this pvp system as I am now.

It started with just some griefing on both sides from my friend and from the farmers. It grew into fighting. We faught them and murder them everytime. In one fight one of us goes red on someone using body to mind and loses his full plate armor. GG. We say we just want to Xp, we're sick of killing them. But they don't care about XP cause they are clanned farmers. They use dwarfs to train on us cause they can't win and they never flag. So we stunn the dwarfs the dwarfs die (got lucky). The rest of the farmers won't flag they just try to grief so we go red killing them. Like 4 of them. We work off the karma. Some of us dying it off.

We are outnumbered outside of Giran and they refuse to flag. So we chase them and one of us has to stripped down naked to kill them, go red and lose XP. Fine fine. So the the orc uses fists of fury and my friend one hits him and goes red. He logs out and his bodies camped for 20 hours.

We kill their clan leader and members(care about xp) at the portal in the caves going red. Slaughter their whole group. I mean really prison styled them. Killing them to distract them from where my red friend is logged out(when we come to the spot the come to help the farmers). While they work their way back to the portal to xp rez a few. We kill off karma, losing xp. Then we port out and go red killing all of them at the log out place and my friend escapes.

So last night a few of us are in a mixed group and bam two of the farmer dwarfs with a million mobs trains on us (no time to stunn) around a corner. Fake death. Now I'm standing beside this dwarf who just got up from among us with all these mobs around us. I stand still right beside her, and the mobs aggro me. As I run she follows beside me waiting to see if I drop. One of our group drops his Blue wolf light. GG.


From this sopposed pvp system, all we accomplished by pvping face to cowards is raise our PK count. Meaning every pk is more karma, loseing more xp if we need to kill it off. If we go after their clan, the people who care about xp, they don't flag. Forcing us to go red. What have they gained from doing nothing and hiding behind a pvp system and exploiting their skills?

20 million in armor. And they are all just safe. Their accounts are on 24 hours a day. They don't care about the xp we took from them. We lost XP, we only have 4 hours to play a weekday.

One thing I want to see is;

-Over-time your pk count goes down. Every week 2 or pk's are removed from you. So less karma each kill again.

-I remember in Open Beta a "Sticky purple Progressive Karma" system was proposed. In short it proposes that for killing someone you don't go red right away. Instead you remain purple for anyone to attack while you work karma off. If someone attacks someone who is sticky purple, the person becomes purple. If the sticky purple kills anyone that is white he then becomes red and has the unreal and totally absurd penalty of losing his b grade armor and weapon that he scrounged and saved for or ebayed in two minutes with his hard earned cash (whichever).

-Why for is there an added penalty of dropping items when dying to an NPC? isn't the penalty of XP and time more than enough? You take away a person xp from dying to a mob thats sometimes 3 hours of ones life. If you make him drop his weapon or armor thats sometimes months of his life. For one measly death.

Most of the pvp system allows griefing. The penalty from going red is just to great. Heres how most battles go;

A lower person is killed he calls his friends. His friends show up and start flagging on the person who killed who won't flag back (going red ain't worth this loser). He calls his friends now the odds are in his favour and they don't flag purple. So this goes on for two to three hours with maybe two pvp dead. Other then that its just girly tea party of both sides shouting "I R TEH UBER" "NO I R TEH UBERER". Cause guess what, once you go red you can't do anything but pray that you don't drop a huge item. So then someone strips off his gear and kills a person. Losing twice as much xp as the person he killed. Lovely 3 hour PvP but its not done yet. We still have one more guest. A farmer dwarf runs into the room with twenty pytans and fakes death. Then proceeds to walk and be one with the pytans as she picks up all your millions of B grade.

Your only recourse is to weigh the dwarf down so much with your b grade armor, that she can't move from the wieght penalty. Like the greedy monkey who reaches into a jar for and apple and can't get his hand out.

Please fix the pvp system for high level. For the love of everything b grade you must. For the love of actual pvp you must.

[SerindaArnimane]

[ QUOTE ]
It started with just some griefing on both sides from my friend and from the farmers. It grew into fighting. We faught them and murder them everytime.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Most of the pvp system allows griefing. The penalty from going red is just to great.

[/ QUOTE ]

Does anyone else find extreme irony in the fact he was griefing farmers and when the farmers griefed back and made life tough on his transgressions he comes here and cries that the PvP system needs fixing?

You play with fire, you get burned.

[Tr0LL]

Please listen. Thats not what I said. They were griefing eachother (as in the farmers against my one alone friend). As in a one time event. They ks his mob, he ks's the other. Then it escalated. Then they trained.

You're absurd and your attempt at using the english concept you just learned in grade 9 english class called irony failed miserably.

You play with fire you get burned? How trite. As I stated we kicked their ***. Killing them every encounter. Every fight we won but lost cause of the pvp system now implemented.

Jesus... You think this pvp is not what I just described?

Please get past level 20. Thanks.

[Darraess]

Rules are the same for everyone, the only thing diferent is player mentality and yes in that some have the upper hand.

[SerindaArnimane]

I saw that both sides were engaging in the griefing, but who was the first side to decide that going red was the solution?

As that sort of brings us back to the crux of this conference. Should red be a SOLUTION for conflict? The present system punishes you.

And see if we really want to muddy the waters we could have a discussion on who exactly owns the mobiles. Kill steal the mobile? Who said you owned it to begin with? Better yet, who says that the mob doesn't belong to the stronger party? Whoever deals the most damage wins. Some basic Darwinism there.

I see farmers bandied about in this discussion as seemingly the primary reason to make red a solution instead of a punishment. I also see the fact that this change will put non-farmers at risk glossed over.

If it's enough of a punishment reduction to grief the farmers (which apparently people think they have a right to do), then I don't suppose it's a stretch for people to use it to grief anybody who rubs them the wrong way.

With the recent notoriety of all red clans and players like Evilseed, I'm not even entirely sure why we're having this discussion. It seems some people have already figured out how to work the karma system.

[Tr0LL]

Serinda you are the epitomy of why the phrase "children should be seen and not heard" was coined.

As stated before, we were not griefing farmers. They griefed him and he griefed back by ksing a couple mobs.

This game is pvp. Yet when you engage in it, you the pvper are penalized greatly. And/or it's a stare down contest for hours. With no side pvping eachother. Abuse of skills is more common then pvp right now.

[SerindaArnimane]

[ QUOTE ]
epitomy

[/ QUOTE ]

That's epitome. While we're in English class today, let me introduce you to the word ad hominem (http://www.merriamwebster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&amp;va=ad+hominem).

As for a PvP game. That too is debatable. I'd say this is a PvP enabled game. If you want an anarchy rule set of PvP, might I suggest Darktide servers within the Asheron's Call series.

[Tr0LL]

Please play the game. I'm not talking about an anarchy setting. I"m not talking about pking. I'm talking about pvping. But this current system doesn't allow it. It allows one side to hit on another acting tough when odds are favourable without actually pvping. The otherside won't flag And when the otherside has favourable do the same thing. All the while there is no pvp.

A progressive penalty system would benefit the pvp. Instead of just instantaneous "omg I dropped my weapon i'm quiting after one pk" system. While still detering meaningless killings of noobs and killing sprees.

The game as it is now, also rewards people that don't pvp and abuse skills.

I have to wonder why I bother responding to a person who has the calibre to spell lame? It was a inattention. Get over it.

Ofcourse I'm addressing you instead of contending your points. You're not listening and you don't have any because you're not understanding what i'm talking about. Maybe its cause you haven't played enough. I spent two posts trying to explain my friend wasn't going out of his way to grief but was simply responding to grief thrown at him. I simply don't have the time to repeat myself over and over again to you because you seem to want to make a point out of a dull block.

I'm done here.

[Dalewis858]

After playing Lineage 2 for a total of 2 weeks i must weigh issue now i think. I have had a chance to experience this PvP in Lineage and the idea is a good one in theory... HOWEVER there appears to be one flaw that will drive me and people like me back to other games like Everquest without a second thought, or so I believe. It is my opinion with some in game support of other people who are active Lineage 2 that there needs to be a level cap on this PvP action. There is no reason that a level 5 should be subject to prosecution by a bored level 30 or higher at any time, for any reason. If the point of the game is a PvP based culture then should PvP be so embraced that it overrides any other concern, such as allowing player to enjoy the actual game content? Many times in these two weeks i have played that level 40+ characters have parked at the new character areas and hunted the lower levels. If there is a point to intentionally allowing such mismatches to take place then i fail to see what it is. I have even reread this message that i am replying to about why PvP is the focus of the game but it does not allow for any addressing of this issue. If a level 20 were to be killed by a level 30 or 35 then does the level 20 stand a chance? well maybe, and then maybe they can round up a few of their hunting partners and extract revenge, but at what price can you expect that a sub level 20 be able to defend themselves against any higer level when they are trying for the most part to concentrate on gaining the levels neccessary to pursue worthy skills and equipment to be able to PvP. Well that is my opinion, and to me if some form of correction is not instituted then i can not see how i should be able to expect to find any enjoyment in the higher levels when i can not reach them due to PC's (player characters) prosecuting those who they can whenever they want by simply choosing low enough level PC's to kill.

[MadDwarf]

PvP in this game is a joke.

The following examples are of solo types, Clan and Seige combat is a totally difrent apple.

1. Someone copies a Nick and scams peaple out of millions.

2. The only actual solo combat PvP charactors are Archers, who PK anyone down to and including n00b Dwarfs, becouse they have outrageously unbalanced skills, and nobody can catch them anyway. So to them being red just means they can't go into Peace Zones.

3. The train n fake death trick.

[Foobie]

Are you sure that they're high-levels parked there PKing? Are they red, or just griefing? You realise that if you put a level cap on PvP, you can't have your 40+ friend come and help you because a level 4 is PKing you. Just some things to think about.

[MadDwarf]

n00b area griefing is easely fixed. Put about 500 more Pixies r wutever in those areas. Make em move at light speed an make em hit for 10000 damage. Goodbye 40+Archer punk.

[Wardancer]

[ QUOTE ]
Are you sure that they're high-levels parked there PKing? Are they red, or just griefing? You realise that if you put a level cap on PvP, you can't have your 40+ friend come and help you because a level 4 is PKing you. Just some things to think about.

[/ QUOTE ]

True, but a level 7 white can take on a level 4 PK.

If the Level 4 PK is deleveled from, say, 20, he can be banned for Luck exploit.

See, it balances out.

[Alanthaleous_Elf]

[ QUOTE ]

ummm i remember that the PvP servers on EQ had the most players online at anyone time
and why did you buy a game that is ment to be PvP in the first place if you hate it that much ??

[/ QUOTE ]
I assume you mean the rallos zek server... you can not compare EQ PVP to L2 griefing... Yes RZ did have its exploits as all games do... but... when a low lvl is killed by a high lvl, the only thing that happens is the low lvl respawns and he goes and retrives his corpse (assuming his 10+) no big deal... In L2 you lose a heap of exp time and possible a very expensive item... To top it off, in L2 a greifer can Ebay a lvl 70 account with all those nice skills... and delvl to 4 and exploit noobs... /cough i3luefire, kain... but really... you have some balls to compare the pvp/grief system L2 spots to a great pvp server like rallos zek...

[Siana]

I think the pvp system works, with the exception of the perma reds, who quite frankly exhibit all the symptoms of being clinical sociopaths. Monsters like Booya, Icemaniax/Piratess, Neldtha, Akinos etc dont play for fun, they play to hurt and endulge their sadistic need to inflict pain on others. Lets face it their behavior screams "im 13 , male and get thrown in trash cans at school". I think L2 like any community should police itself to some extent and i have a solution which might fix the problem rather easily for everyone. Keep the pvp system intact, except make the respawn point for individuals with over a certain amount of Karma (i.e. perma reds only) the Lair of Anathras, bottom level right next to the Malruk lords. No matter how many times they die, they should always spawn there. They disspear forever and all us can get back to enjoying life without them, thank you very much have a nice day.

[Vajshiir]

Well, this is irrelevant to the current discussion undergoing, but as far as PvP goes I would like to see the Hate skill get some use. I know it's designed as a PvE skill instead of PvP, but as it is tanks are pretty much useless in PvP due to our low damage output. The fact that most "PvP'ers" play dagger and bow classes devalues us even more (I'm a Shillien Knight). I personally dislike their playing style, so there's just no way in hell I'm going to start a dagger or bow character just to PvP.

Anyway, my idea is that tanks could use Hate in PvP to force a change of target. I suggest this from experience, since it is obvious everyone is going to go for the healer when you're fighting other groups. I can see a tank using Hate to force a dagger character rushing towards one of the healers to automatically target the tank instead. As it is, there's just too much of a reliance on intercepting people going for the healers, and not all tanks are fast enough. Combine this with the fact that unless you're playing a human tank (Paladin or DA), you can't stun anyone as a way of intercepting. I think this would give tanks at least some value in PvP (panther from what I've seen isn't all it's cracked up to be, and don't even get me started on the cubics...).

[Foobie]

I have a couple of thoughts on the karma system. I think I need to work out a coherent post and throw it up here to see what other people think...

[shine123]

without a doubt, a lvl 30 should not be pking a starter lvl char out of boredom. thats just a given fact. and yet its still done by some people for the hell of it. i understand that people are looking for some way to protect low lvlers and some pk restrictions, but that wont be the Lineage way! Lineage gives you the power to kill or protect whoever you want. no restrictions (unless ur lvl 4 and ur trying to kill lvl 40.. gl). in gradeschool or kindergarden, theres always bullies that pick on young ones. yes they are punished but are not locked up in jail or is kicked out of the school (being a little drastic). if you see or hear low lvls getting pk-ed, just do somethign about it and try to help them with your chars. its not like they die by a pk every hour, it just happens quite randomly, i think. ive never gotten pk-ed yet. dont find me just to pk :p (cuz im low lvl too)

[Eckrose]

You know PVP is the back bone to every great mmorpg. It's what make a game like Lineage 2 successful. It's only when a few people who take it to the extreme when it becomes out of hand. Player Killers who's only purpose for paying $14/month is to run around servers preying on lower level characters, ruin the experience for most gamers. What I am suggesting is that a level limit is placed into the PVP system. Like for example: A player who is lvl 40 cannot attack a player who is lvl 20. There should be a level range where you can engage another person in PVP; Level 1-10, 11-15, 16-20 etc. I can't tell you how annoying it is when I first started and all I wanted to do was level up, but guys who are level 40+ are running around PKing gamers in starting towns. Another suggestion is a Challenge system to add to the game. Instead of finding the nearest arenas, a player can challenge another player anywhere in the aden world without going purple. There's NO hitting involved to challenge; just click on the other player and challenge, like you would if you wanted to party with them. If the other player accepts, you then engage each other untill one is defeated. There should be an invisible boundary surrounding the duelers preventing one from running. That's all the suggestions for now. REPLY BACK with what you guys think.

[Gaogan]

The problem with the current PvP system is that it in fact, discourages legitamate PvP. If someone is annoying the hell out of you but refuses to go purple, you can not kill him ( even slapping him around a bit is risking that you will kill him since you can't see his hp ) for fear of going red.

Yes, there should be some consequence to killing another player, but it can't be so high that it's not worth doing ever. If you go red, you have a good chance to not just be screwed over, but ROYALLY screwed over. Being red is a giant kill me sign to EVERYONE around, and even if you have friends with you, they can not protect you because people who attack you do not go purple, so your friends will go red if they kill someone who attacks you.

I had that very thing happen to me the other night when my clan got into a fight with some chinese farmers who tried to musscle in on the room we had been hunting in cruma for an hour.

They kept KSing and calling us names, so we slapped them a few times and told them to get out. They kept hitting us a few times then running away ( fast DE dagger users ) so we couldn't kill them before they went white again. Finally my clan mate didn't care or didn't see, and got the killing blow in just as they went back to white, so he went red. Immediately someone else comes running in to attack him. I of course tried to defend my clan mate the only way I could; by beating the crap out of the guy and trying to stun him. But he remained white even when he killed my red clan mate, and immediately after that, my next hit killed him. Turning me red.

Now fortunately, I soed to floran and waited for my clan healer to come kill me and rez me to work off the karma with only minimal xp losses. However, I could have been ganked and dropped my weapon and been scerwed, all because we got into one fight with some jerks who deserved to die. And in the end, look at what the results were:

I lost some xp
My clan mate lost some xp
Both of us COULD have lost our weapon or other expensive stuff
We all lost our hunting spot and so ceased to xp for the night

The chinese farmers lost a bit of XP, but that's doing them a favor so they don't have to go delevel on the guards.

The chinese farmers got rid of us and took over our room

The really annoying thing is that even though I almost feel it was worth it, if this happens a few more times, I'll get more karma for 1 kill than 1 death will work off, and as I get to higher levels, 1 death of xp is a lot of grind time.

There really needs to be more than one level of red to differentiate between the people who run around killing everyone in sight all the time, and someone who just killed one jerk who deserved it.


I still think the sickest thing about the current system is that once you go red for killing one guy, you just get more and more karma for defending yourself from all of the other idiots who come and try to kill you.

You REALLY should go purple for attacking a red. At least that way you and your friends can defend you without gaining ( more ) karma.

[LickNMeLollypop]

I agree with you on the people attacking the red should go purple, sucks when your trying to defend your red clanmate that went red killing a ks farmer.

[Darraess]

Turning purple for the red you attack is the only thing that needs to change for now.

Anything that would make it easier to kill other players will only result into increased PK'ing and not increased PvP, although im fine with it it is not the designers intention for this game.

[LickNMeLollypop]

[ QUOTE ]
Turning purple for the red you attack is the only thing that needs to change for now.

Anything that would make it easier to kill other players will only result into increased PK'ing and not increased PvP, although im fine with it it is not the designers intention for this game.

[/ QUOTE ]

agree totally

[Gaogan]

[ QUOTE ]
Turning purple for the red you attack is the only thing that needs to change for now.

Anything that would make it easier to kill other players will only result into increased PK'ing and not increased PvP, although im fine with it it is not the designers intention for this game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Would it really increase the true pking if there simply was an intermediate pink state where you have SOME karma, just not much, so people can attack you and kill you anot gain karma, but you don't drop your stuff?

I mean those who truely pk have very high karma, those who only kill a farmer once in a while have little.

As a further note, last night my clan was hunting in cruma again and a level 50ish TH in c grade who didn't speak much english came in and started KSing us. He ended up taunting us and trying to get us to fight him so he could kill us. Well, he did manage to kill one or two of us once or twice but we gave him a sound thrashing several times and he kept running away and eventually came back with a friend. In the end, he annoyed us for maybe a half an hour and we killed his friend, but couldn't kill him. I think it was a test of wills and we won, he finally gave up and left, probably to find some other people he could drive out of a room with less difficulty.

We had our losses, but I feel we won that encouter with the farmers.

[MistressRaven]

The only thought I have on this is .. Why didnt NC implement the same pvp and karma system for Lineage II that they had on Lineage I ? It seemed to work very well, I really liked the ability to reach a safe level of LAWFUL Karma points and not be concerned with dropping items,(unless I attacked someone and turned Chaotic).
For those who are not familiar with Lineage I the system worked this way... After accumulating 32762 Karma points a players name would be dark blue and indicated that they could not drop items on death. A person began with a white name (neutral karma) that SLOWLY turned blue with hunting (each mob had a diffrent karma level) HOWEVER if a blue person killed someone they became chaotic RED . In Lineage 1 regaining Karma to Lawful from a state of Chaotic was VERY difficult compared to Lineage II. In Lineage II a person can go chaotic and then die once or twice and be totally neutral again, however in Lineage I it took many weeks of hunting to regain that lost lawful Karma and go from Red to White to Blue. People who Pk'ed paid a larger price and it kept greifing to a minimum. Also .. Red people dropped 2x as much as a white. Experience was still lost upon death as it is on Lineage II and gaurds were aggro towards any RED that was around.
Just my opinion but I think NC should consider taking Lineage II to the same karma system as Lineage I.

[Darraess]

Yes it would, now don't get me wrong im not saying that suddenly everyone would be PK'ng right and left, well if you totaly get rid of the karma system they would, but if it becomes a more progressive system it will increase PK'ng, how much? well it depends how much progressive it is.

I believe that any system and all rules are fair as long as they apply for everyone, thats why i really don't care if it changes, if it makes it easier for me to PK it will also be easier for others to PK me, for anyone without a good and strong clan for backup it would be harder to deal with.

Lets assume for a minute that by some system i may kill with less risk, two toons before i become red the way it is today, for players that are generaly solo or with only a few friends in game this means that although they can now kill risk free two toons, they can be the victim of ten others, two times for each, it means he will be killed 20 times without his hunters risking anything.

I despise from the my heart any change that has its roots in the "how to deal with farmers" mentality, farmers are there they are troublesome, but any change that will help you fight them will give tools to anyone to use against me, farmer or not, but if you really think about a change as something that would benefit the players in all situations then i am extremely happy to discuss it with you.

I have had very litle trouble in game from players or farmers but i can definately say that i have had the same amount from both groups, and although i am prepared to defend myself when needed i am not agressive enough to start the fight or drive others from where they hunt.

With your progressive karma system what is to stop a group of two or more players to come where i hunt and right out kill me to take my spot, without any warning of their intentions, personaly i will adjust my gameplay accordingly and find a way to deal with it but i assure you others will only come here and whine until their fingers bleed, why? because it will become a suystem where numbers will be more important than individuals.

[Inoxe]

It has been a while since I’ve weighed in here on the Darraess vs The World thread, and this will be my last statement here on the subject. I recommend the following simple changes to the PvP system to reduce the amount of griefing and new-player-discouragement happening in the game. I won’t give my rationales, since I did earlier, and many others have since. I give these in order of priority.

(1) When a character loses levels, if they are now below a level at which a skill could be learned, they lose the use of that skill until they regain that level. In other words, if you drop below the level needed for a skill, you need to regain the level to regain use of the skill. Skills “disabled by deleveling” should be grayed out until they are regained by leveling up.

(2) Elimnate the luck skill from the game. If some big cheese in Korea is so in love with this skill that it can’t be removed, then cause the skill to stop working forever once a character reaches a significantly higher level, say level 20. In other words, once a character hits 20, luck will never turn on again, even if they de-level back to 4 once more.

(3) The amount of karma a character loses when killing a white varies with the difference in levels (see Varaya’s post). If you killa white below your level, you lose more karma. The karma loss increases with the difference between levels. Because the level of an opponent is technically unknowable (althought equipment can be a cluse), I suggest that the sliding scale be more modest than Varaya’s original suggestion. My scale would be:

Karma Lost:
1 pt.....Killing a white 4 or more levels above yours
2 pts....Killing a white between 3 leves above and 3 levels below yours
3 pts....Killing a white 3-4 levels below you
4 pts....Killing a white 5-6 levels below you
5 pts....Killing a white 7-8 levels below you
6 pts....Killing a white 9-10 levels below you
7 pts....Killing a white 11-12 levels below you
...etc...

Since roughly equal PvP generates 2 points now, Karma recovery amounts must be adjusted accordingly.

C2 will bring other karma system changes as well, so I am loathe to recommend any more changes than these for the time being.

[Wraithsilver]

Incentives to PvP, outside of seiges/wars, could be a good way to increase the amount of PvP-- how about giving xp/sp for purple vs purple?

[JaquesDeMorlay]

having only started playing lineage 2 the worse bit so far is bieng pked when your a low level, personaly i cant see the point of people killing low level charectors we usualy dont have anything of value and surely the pker dosent get much experiance. i think luck should also be removed for exactly the same reason.

[DomiMorgan]

Well ... took me a while to embark on this. Call it laziness or "oh oops, gotta do this first" perpetual syndrome.

- The Karma system works fine except for one major missing element: Anyone healing or casting a beneficial spell on someone who is purple should go purple ... like it or not, you the healer have become involved in pvp and should suffer the consequences of being a major target. Too many times have I pvped against someone impossible to kill because a white healer was hovering a few paces away constantly healing him and remaining white making him an impossible target to take out. In fact, it has become a defacto farmer griefing method.

- Also, if one has very little Karma, he should have very little chance of dropping an equiped item, and especially not a weapon. Another major griefing tactic is to trick someone into going red through a variety of known or unknown exploits or tricks within the system to cause an enemy to go red and **** him of all his gear. While there should be a risk of losing items when red, killing one or two people from being white should not make you lose something that cost you a month of grinding to acquire, especially given the exceedingly harsh economy of this game, and also given we don't know precisely what happened to cause that person to go red. After all, losing everything in this game makes people either quit that character or run to ebay for refurbishment ... ever try killing a Harit Lizardman with newbie gear? :) At least in the real world, we have this thing called Insurance ;) I've noticed in the Korean c2 notes that this very change may come about in some form or another shortly, so hopefully this will cease being an issue.

- Usage of certain skills: OOoooooohhh ... here's one of my personal beefs. Currently, any status/stat change skill or DoT cannot be used on a white player unless it causes initial damage, in which case it's free reign. This has bloody got to change. Either make none of these skills work on whites, or make all of them work. Reason is simple ... the majority of said skills inflict too little initial damage to even potentially kill a character unless said character was an unarmored newbie or already very low on HP ... which means these skills can be used purely for either griefing or legitimate pvp. That being said, as harsh as it sounds, if one should have the ability to grief, so should another. And in terms of legitimate pvp, why should one be able to get the critical first strike and not another.

Here is an easy enough example: I play a Necro. Now say for example I was fighting off a couple of hard mobs, a tough fight, but doable. I then see KingCreep008 (example), a known griefing Phantom Ranger, charging straight at me. From personal experience, I know his intention is to get within range to let loose a stun arrow and both he and I know one stun arrow will not kill me, but being stunned will certainly get me killed by these two giant mobs running towards me. Given I cannot sleep him so I can get a chance to deal with these two mobs first, I know that in about 15 seconds, I will be in some nearby town, bereft of 5% of my xp and possibly some equiped piece of armor or something.

Now in open pvp, if I really feel like dealing with the consequences of going red by killing a foe, I should be able to. Now any class or virtually any class can win in pvp as long as you approach a situation intelligently. Say I wanted revenge against KingCreep008 ... I'm certainly not going to just shoot him with an attack spell as he can certainly win such a standard encounter. No, I'm a Necro ... I'd sleep, then Gloom, then Anchor (let's pretend for the sake of argument that it actually lands). Under the current system, neither of those three would work unless he attacked me first ... and if he attacked me first, I'm so very dead.

You boast that Lineage is an open pvp game, but given the above restrictions, it most certainly is not. And while I understand you wish to remove the ability of people to use griefing skills without consequence, please understand that the skills that do land inflict so very little damage as to be meaningless against those target levels you are griefing. So either make them all work, or remove the ability to land ANY such status/statistic or DoT spells on whites. In other words, even the playing field and make it fair for everyone.

PVP arenas: I think a few simple changes can make everything work smoothly in here. Very simply, no one inside the inner ring can do anything (negative or beneficial) to anyone outside, and no one outside can do anything (negative or beneficial) to anyone inside the inner ring. This would resolve going accidently red killing someone who was running full kilter out of the arena when you were readying a shot and would also prevent people who are not inside that ring from interfering with combatants. Also ... when someone dies within the ring, they should be allowed to simply respawn in the buffer zone seperating the inner ring from the outside. It's just no fun to have to run from town for a few minutes every 20 seconds or so ... why would anyone want to hit the pvp ring with some friends if you spend more time in between fights than you do fighting? And no, an afternoon burning through rez scrolls is not an acceptable alternative ;)

- In terms of that whole self regulation issue, the game would have to be able to determine when someone is griefing by training mobs or engaging in other borderline legal activities in this game. I won't comment on this, as I believe it would take much too long to implement anything that will not be inherently flawed in its programming.

- Permanent skill retention: ... this is my second biggie. While this does have legitimate usage, such as a deleveling clan leader who wishes to rapidly catch up to his previous level having sacrificed hoards of SP, it is unfortunately far far faaaaaar more abused than otherwise, especially by adena farmers. If you are a 20th level toon trying to level in any random newbie dungeon swarming with farmers and one griefs you ... if it comes down to a fight between you and your 20th level skills and the farmer with his 45th level skills, guess what ... you lose, utterly, rapidly, painfully, inevitably. If farmers wish to inhabit our dungeons, then let them face the same trials that we do and ensure they are using the same skills that we are. In other words, once someone drops below the level where a skill is required, that skill or skill level is locked out ... not lost, just inaccessible until he regains that lost level. At 20th level, I'd rather deal with a DE with sting level 5 than sting level 25 :p

- Luck skill ... if there was a way to automatically lose it when you hit, say, 10th level, please do so.

- Deleveling: There are indeed legitimate reasons to delevel and I believe deleveling should be allowed as long as permanent skill retention is not included in that package. Again, if Joe Farmer wants to permanently stay at level 20, let him ... as long as he fights like a 20th level toon.

- Death penalties: Frankly, the chances of you dropping an equiped item when fighting a mob should be termite tiny, and you should never ever EVER lose an equiped weapon fighting a mob or going purple or even one or two kills into chaotic. Again, the cost of living in this game makes England look like India ... losing your weapon could easily cost your character his career and even earning the money anew for a lost piece of armor or jewelry can be a major hassle.

[Regulator]

Long story short the pvp in this game is as good as its gonna get with its lvl and item drop/craft design. Its never gonna be good like UO in that way. The only pvp in this game is in castle sieges and pvp/arenas no where else.

[kane02127]

ok i think the pvp system is ******ed i went red on my glad for killing bots seeing gms wouldnt do nothing now i just delvd 20 lvls to get 150k karma off and got 600k more to go so lame also the fact that a healer can heal someone in pvp and not go purple for healing a purple that so protects farmers who have all the time to powerlvl there healers and buffers so lame, also going red only helps farmers I never seen it actually benefit the player cus a farmer will never go red unless by accident, also when i player decides to go red they should at least get some reward for throwing there necks out there - like maybe u can trade in ur pvp points to buy items etc, also when u kill someone no matter there color they should have a chance to drop - since when ur red u drop no matter what - at least giving pkers something to pk about - cus i know no highlvl is going to gried anyone for some bronze armor... seeing when and if u go red if killed u drop so much why not give the red a deal like a small precent chance of when pking someone that they can drop.... i think thats just fair so when i get frustrated with a farmer and kill him i can at least get lucky thats my only comment for now thanks

[Ulfen]

Well. have been looking in to this thread myself from time to time, definitelly not read everything, and I mostly agree with DomiMorgan here.

In addition I would like to say however, that personally my definition of PvP does not only encompass Going Red. That is unfortunently a large trend that people have develloped in the first generation MMORPG's, such as UO.

For all its glory and all its possibilities, flexibility in system (Skill Based System rather than Level Based System), and after having played UO for 6 years myself, design wise, it had a major flaw, althought not a great flaw given the fact that it was the first major MMORPG out there.

And that flaw, was, that the design permited people to play /amongst/ other people and not /with/ other people.

Meaning that a player did not necessarilly have to interact with other people in order to evolve in the Virtual World, one could have alt chars, Warrior and Crafters and eventually become a Castle owner all by themselves, without even having to say "hello" to anyone simply interacting with NPC's.

Since then many other designs have tried to eliminate that flaw, and different aproaches have been used.

I beleive (since my guess is good as anyone of you and we do not have any direct commentary from L2 Devs on this issue), that Lineage2, tries to eliminate the flaw, by simply making it very Tough, by design for a single individual to suceed. Hence Prices are very High, the Crafting is Excuciatigly tough, and as a consequence, the Lone Justicar, the Lone Punisher, the Lone Avenger, is also tough to do.

This is a design that /expects/ people to play together, to work together and to siceed together, even if many of us prefer to do things alone and reap the glory and fame from our accomplishments ...alone.

And so, if there is a cancer in this game, that is the Proffessional Virtual Property Gatherers (Selling adena in Ebay - IGE etc). It is an advese effect of the Good intentions of the Devs in my opinion, the Toughness of the Design becomes a Catalist when it comes to Individual Aspirations.

And as such, it also affects this small part of PVP that is to be Chaotic.

And I say small part because it is intended to be a very small part. This design is about Teams of Players Fighting in Guild/Clan Wars, or Taking Castles, or Bringing Down terrifying Boss Mobs. These are the Accomplishments that we are suposed to /Share/ with eachother.

Living a life as a "Chaotic" (RED) like in UO, is not meant to be, by design, and it will never be, and if that is why some people play Lineage 2, I think you made a bad game choice to show your individual PvP savy and Skills.

You can still do so, but as part of a Groop, a Team, a Clan, sharing the Glory and the Adrenaline Rush.

And if someone really gets to you, well guess what? The Design permits you to Show who is the Boss anyways by becoming a Chaotic, and then with the help of your friends lower your Karma and continue from there.

But remaining chaotic in a self serving mission of Justice (remaining and prospering as a Chaotic) is really not meant to be.

And please do not bring up the argument of Farmers, I have been griefed by Farmers all over the place, but never fell in to their Trappings, and never yelded my ground either, the bottom line is that my time in game does not cost anything, and the farmer's time does because they have quotas to meet, so eventually they always end up leaving one alone to continue their game, because they have to get back to work ;)

Making a Red Char to quel the farmers is a noteworthy action, however, this should not be used as a justification to change a system to encourage the role of the Chaotic in the PVP premises of this Game.

Becoming purple for attacking a Red will only encourage more griefing as the Red could have a Bunch of White Friends standing around waiting for the Fish to bite the Bait.

The only way that this could be feasible would be to eliminate Item Drops all together (and really this will not be a bad thing), but even Item Drop plays a role in stimulating the Game Economy and giving reason to being to Dorfs. Since if none ever lost anything eventually the Economy would be saturated, and even if not Saturated, the Economy could cause the Dorf roles to diminish in importance, and dorfs are less suited for combat because they play this role in the economy, it is the "Balance", once more.

Going Chaotic (red) is not meant as a profession and definitelly not meant to be a Money maker on top of it. Quite the opposite from UO.

In Conclusion, I like how the System is now, and when I really want to PVP I either go to an arena, participate in a Siege or a Clan War. Soon, we will even have the Coliseum, where complete Clans will be able to PVP together.

What else could we really ask for in terms of PVP? Well, we could ask for Complete PVP Freedom like Shadowbane, but then again it is very easy to make money and have good gear in Shadowbane compared to L2.

Economy and PVP must be balanced hand in hand, the alternative is an empty Game, or a Trammel solution.

[Redpit]

:eek: :cool:

[AshNC]

A couple of changes to the current karma system will be implemented in Chronicle 2. They've been discussed previously, but I think it's good to make them known here.

Per-Kill Karma Cap: At the moment, every time you PK someone, you get an increased amount of karma per kill. In Chronicle 2, after a certain number of PKs, you will earn karma at a static rate.

PK Count Reduction Quest: There will be a quest where players can reduce their total PK count. This, in turn, reduces the amount of karma acquired per kill.

There are a couple more significant changes we're currently looking into as far as minimizing repetative PKs around starter towns is concerned. I'll post more on these changes as soon as I can.


- Ash

[theDon]

awesome update ash! news i liek to hear

[KeynesAlley]

Also with C2, we'll have roaming guards in all the starter towns. This will help cut the amount of Pking in newb towns.

Currently only Elves and DEs have any protection from PKing in the newb towns with the pixies and treants.

[DravynX]

Make people attacking reds turn purple. Keep the death penalty for red's in place. Simplistic change to the pvp system that would make it sooo much better, would better allow the common players to defend themselves and to police in game against farmers and griefers.

[Booya00]

[ QUOTE ]
I think the pvp system works, with the exception of the perma reds, who quite frankly exhibit all the symptoms of being clinical sociopaths. Monsters like Booya, Icemaniax/Piratess, Neldtha, Akinos etc dont play for fun, they play to hurt and endulge their sadistic need to inflict pain on others. Lets face it their behavior screams "im 13 , male and get thrown in trash cans at school". I think L2 like any community should police itself to some extent and i have a solution which might fix the problem rather easily for everyone. Keep the pvp system intact, except make the respawn point for individuals with over a certain amount of Karma (i.e. perma reds only) the Lair of Anathras, bottom level right next to the Malruk lords. No matter how many times they die, they should always spawn there. They disspear forever and all us can get back to enjoying life without them, thank you very much have a nice day.

[/ QUOTE ]

RAWR!

[RandStar]

LOL send the PKers to the depths of hell! There should definately be some sort of consequence for becomeing a profetional PKer, espetially if they are farmer protectors who hold down certant places just so they can sell adena on the internet or ebay. I hate farmers and I hate PKers there has got to be a way to deal with this issue. PvP all skills should work, this some do work some dont is crap it neads to be an equal playing field for all players involved. Healers that heal a purple nead to go purple and then red if there friend or party PK's. The whole luck issue is rediculuse get rid of luck entirely!

[Harmonix]

i pity everyone who believes that pks are any different from u and me in real life.
i PKd on UO for 4 Years, I didnt do it for any other reason than to experience open pvp and rule less pvp.
On Lineage 2 there is no 'open' pvp rather than caln warfare which is an area i will hopefully be getting involved with soon. If Lineage2 allowed it for a character to 'choose' his alignment as to being chaotic/lawful then it would give the game a whole new meaning.
I would be red with in seconds if being red still allowed you to play the game asit should be played. At the moment, there is no reason for someone to go red apart from to kill 1 person then to go white again.
Either give reds a lifestyle or just dont bother having them in this game.

[Diaskos]

The above post is exactly what I think on the pker issue. What is the point of going red other than to kill people!!?? They cant go into town, and when they do manage to get in (ex: hole in Gludin wall) they cant even interact with the npc's.

The game must have something for these chaotic players to do other than kill people. Otherwise this game is basically saying "well we just have red characters to delevel everyone they kill." because that's the only purpose they serve.

And the whole karma system is crap because for one kill you gain like 200 karma and when you die you lose around 100 at the most. So a character that has killed a large number of people will have to spend weeks deleveling if they want to return to white after only one day as a chaotic character.

[Ehran]

I disagree with your post on a couple levels, Harmonix. First off, you say that you pity people who believe that PKers are different from you and me in real life...well...I can't speak for everyone, but I can tell you that I would not take any pleasure in spoiling another person's fun (which is exactly what PKing does). Second, there IS open PvP on Lineage 2, there just isn't open PKing. It seems to me that the intention of the designers is to punish players for PKing by denying them access to parts of the game. I am not against PvP, in fact I think it's a great idea...matching your skills against another human player can be fun and challenging, but there is no challenge, no point and no fun involved when you're a level 10 whatever and some PKer umpteen levels above you sneaks up behind you and kills you with one shot. PKers SHOULD be punished...they take away from the fun of this game. Oh and a quick note to the PKers; If all you want to do is fight other human players, there are plenty of online FPS's out there...go find one.

[Darraess]

The majority of Pk'ers, are perfectly normal people, just like the majority of any kind of players, it is just easy to paint in bad colors those we want to hate, it is like that if we have a reason to hate it is ok to do so.

PK'ers detest the players that hang on their virual lifes and properties that much that feel real life anxiety when something bad happens to them, they are a vital part of any online gaming community because they constantly remind everyone that what they play is nothing more than a game, and the more apset you get when PK'ed the more they enjoy the fact that they are causing it, but if you were to meet a pker in RL you would probably see a lighthearted person that doesn't take seriously anything that isn't serious, and a game isn't.

And as for the challenge part, believe me it is very challenging to level in an enviroment that allows PK'ing, i played in UO in a time when rampant PK'ng was the normal, in comparison with how L2 is now imagine 1 out of five players encountered to be red, and it was the best times i ever had in a game, PK'ers offer a universe of things to a game but it is nessesary to have a particular mindset to understand it and appreciate it, and the most important is not to be weak and constantly feel like a victim, something that fits very few people.

Because of the need to provide a "safe" gaming enviroment the games where designed with that in mind, having said that it is understandable that rampant PK'ing would not fit L2 because it is designed in a way that would make such a thing disastrous, it is crucial for the game that PK'r are on a very short leash and actively discouraged to PK, by further penalizing the new player PK'ers in C2 they encourage them to move into a bit higher level grounds which is good.

All in all in L2 the one change that is important to happen is to give the right to PK'ers to defend themselves, and a true red town although not crucial would be nice, for the rest i think things are extremely well balanced.

[Lord Chaos]

[ QUOTE ]
PK'ers detest the players that hang on their virual lifes and properties that much that feel real life anxiety when something bad happens to them,

[/ QUOTE ]

And thats why PKs are the first to whine about dropping items as red?, why the vast majority are naked or otherwise protecting themselves against dropping?

Seems like the reds are the ones worrying more about bad things happening to them really, so I don't at all agree with you on how pk's are.

[Darraess]

Don't be silly with the rules in this game, they couldn't be anything else but naked, all it takes are a few deaths, what they are whining about is not the loss of their valuable items but the total innability to own anything anyway.

And in the end they also show to you that someone has the power to play the game as he wants even if he needs to be naked, all he needs to do is be open minded and perspective.

[GaladronsBoy]

Darraes,
Insightful as always.
To PK, or not to PK, that is the question.
Or maybe it's choice? Oh no, does that mean I'm pro-choice?? Noooooo!! :p

[SirKull]

I have read alot of posts on this thread and feel that there have been alot of great ideas. For that reason I have decided to speak my thoughts. 2 Main changes that I think will improve the game play and player retention are: a) positive karma b)No weapon drops

a) Positive Karma - By Ash's post we are supposed to be self policing in this game and thus we should have the ability to do that without looking like we are the bad guy. A large percentage of high level reds in this game (40+) are red because they decided to police something by taking out grievers or farmers. As a result they have put there main into a situation where they either lose a large amount of xp to get out or hunt it off in areas where they are likely to be hunted down. If they fight back they just gain more karma. Since they are already red its not hard to just keep on killing.
Thats where positive karma comes in. A player slowly gains positive karma (less than or equal to 1 karma a kill) by killing mobs that are white or better (not greens or less). Once reach a certain level (say 1000+) they get 1 free pk. At that time Karma goes to 0 no matter if they had 10000 positive karma. If they pk less than 1000 then they turn red but have alot less negative karma to work off. This will allow players to police without being victims themselves. I guarantee more people will be dealing with situations in game if they get a "get out of jail free" card to use in those situations. On top of the initial bonus it would also reduce the scams that make people turn red. Where grievers put themselves in conditions that one hit will kill them when they grieve.

b) Weapon Loss - If you lose your main weapon you basically have a useless character. many have experienced this and as a result have quit the game. We need to build retention in this game and encourage new players to break the level 40 mark. So lets protect the main means of getting adena and levels so they do stay. Make weapon drops none existant in white or purple conditions. Reds should be able to lose weapon as with a free pk from above, reds would again be the guys killing other players for sport rather than retribution. This will again improve policing. People will be willing to fight with reds and others because the one thing that they need will be safe. The rest is replaceable to some extent with a little work.

Those are my thoughts that alone would change the face of pvp in the game. People would be willing to police the situations that need policing and plus would be more willing to engage in PvP outside the arena because they know unless they are red the weapon is safe.

[Darraess]

ahhhh your a) and b) points, reminded me of a suggestion made by Foobie....

.....hmmmm now lets see.....if searching a bit.......

....ahhh here it is......Favour (http://boards.lineage2.com/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Number=65697&amp;page=&amp;view=&amp;sb=5&amp;o= &amp;fpart=1&amp;vc=1)

[Praelia]

Okay, I have searched through the forum via the search function. I have scanned and used the find tool to look for a similar subject as to this one, but I have not. Please forgive me I am repeating this.

Am I the only one who has had a problem with this exploit? I am usually a nice player. I like to help other people, so I play a healer. I will rez people for free (but donations are nice!) I do not like to PvP myself. That's mainly cause I stink at it. I am not good at fighting. I am not afraid to admit that, but I do not mind the PvP system. It has good points and bad points. There are things I would like to see change, but I am content if they are not. Sorry, usually I am an accepting person. However, I came across what I think is an exploit in the system. I will heal and buff people for free. Usually, I ignore the people shouting "hp++++++++!" Though I do not believe I will heal anyone outside of my group/clan after today. I was healing someone with a white name, and he hit me while I was healing him, so that he would go purple after I started to heal. That made me purple. I do not like to PvP at all, so I avoid going purple unless it is to rez someone I like alot. Then the guy killed me in two hits when I was at full health. This guy was obviously high level. What happens to this guy? He just stays purple. He does not go red. I never attacked him! I never helped anyone attacking or perform any action that would bring harm to him indirectly. Thinking this was some sort of common exploit, I petitioned a gm, but I was told that it is policy to let the players handle this themselves. I was told we were to work this out ourselves. This does not seem fair to me. I am not going threatening to quit playing or call NCSoft people bad names. This is a great game, and a lot people put a lot of hard work into it. It's unfortunate that a few bad apples (those players) lessen the experience for the rest of us.

Personally, I believe that PvP should be entered into voluntarily. Sure, you could accidently hit someone. I do not know if I think that is quite fair, but I would not mind it so much. However, healing the aforementioned party who is non-chaotic should never make you purple. I don't mind the pk system so much. I really did not get that upset when some high level character decided he wanted to kill me as a newbie. It was irritating, but I did not get angry and call them names. The whole red/chaotic system seems essential to respond to people who are griefing you. If someone is harrasing you, you should be able to respond somehow. I would not kill another player, but that is my personal ideology, and I would not force it on someone else.

Does anyone else feel that this is an exploit to avoid going red? I think from now on I will have to be a much more wary player, and I regret that greater. I like being helpful, but if I can't be protected in part by the pvp/pk system, then I will probably lookout for my hard earned xp instead of helping a stranger. Like I said before, I am not good at fighting, so I stink at getting xp too. I have been playing since beta, and I haven't gotten to 30th level yet. LOL.

On another note, getting other people to help defend you against pk's like that doesn't really work, because they have to come all the way from where ever they are leveling to come kill this other guy who is probably just going to leave and come back later or doesn't care about his xp. It really doesn't work. Fortunately, I have people who care enough about me to come, but it still takes a long time for them to get there (no fault of their own.)

[Darraess]

Well the idea is that if you heal a purple player you are in your own way taking part into a PvP situation, it was very common before C2 to have healers help in PvP and stay white, objectively it is correct to have someone healing a purple or red player go purple himslef.

On the other hand this tactic of hiting the player healing had a variation before C2 also, it was not done when healing but it was done when buffing, in this sense it is not actually a new tactic.

It is a very low tactic to use, because it takes advantage of the other players will to help you through buffing or healing, but at the same time it is a legit tactic, so here are two fast solutions to this problem.

1) Never heal, buff or generaly help anyone you don't know, this ofcourse has a problem in the sense that it kind of allienates you from others and results into meeting fewer people.

2) Have them sit down before you buff, heal them, they do not have enough time to stand up and hit you before the spell finishes or you can cancel it, it may sound akward to ask this from them but they are the ones requesting your help, if they don't like the way you want to give it to them then it's their problem not yours.

[Praelia]

Thank you for your suggestion. I will try it in the future.

[Jeszebel]

Nothing is as fundamental to this system as having great penalties for being red. Changing it would completely change the karma system.

The idea behind red is to advertise a character that has deliberately and pre-emptively killed another. The harsh penalties for drops as a red means that only those legitimate characters who have the strength, either in themselves or in a group, will risk it.

It has been the idea all along that if you or your team has sufficient strength, they can do whatever they wish within the physics of the game world. The karma system is designed to allow the most powerful to kill with impunity, as they can work it off with ease.

There has been another poster that has shed light on the reason it is called a karma system, that is, it is punishment for actions committed. Part of that punishment is having to kill more to protect yourself, thus sending yourself deeper into the situation you have created. There is a way to work around karma such that if you limit your kills you will never sink too deep before you work it off, but there is also the possiblity that you can earn more karma than you expect. Such is the price of crime, it can be vicious cycle and is reflected well in the karma system.

Newbie killers terrorizing towns is something I believe the devs didn't quite expect, however I do not think the devs saw it as a problem in itself, just that they realised it can get out of hand if too many do it, and thus have limited but not abolished the ability to be a noob killer.

I agree with the poster that wrote the going red is not a viable means to play, it is meant to be a transitory phase that makes you vulnerable for a time, but ultimately it is not encouraged at all to be permanently red. You are supposed to get rid of karma.

Accidental reds are a bit of an anomaly, I guess you just have to be careful not to keep attacking someone who's purple is wearing off. It helps to be alert when pvping.

All in all, I do not see the karma system as a problem that needs changing at all. At this point in time it does quite well, especially with C2 changes I can see it doing what the designers intended.

[RogerBuck]

I think this overall game is totally messed up for PvP.

PROS:
1. Normally players aren't jerks
2. One doesn't gain exp. by killing other players
3. PvP chars are scared you may have a higher level char
4. You don't loose exp below lvl 4
5. Most Highlvl players aren't around starting towns.

CONS:
1. The system allows jerks to PvP people constantly over and over to delevel you ....

2. The NPC are worthless I was killed by RED next to a guard lots of times and he never was killed or even risked being killed...

3. The higher lvl guy can kill newbies laugh at them then call them Carebears and PK until you finally log off then do it the next day.

4. You talk about colors as a good system NO!! that's worthless they can kill you run turn purple or red... then back to white in a few mins come back do it again, even when they are totally red they can just do the other stuff.

5. You claim that they are punished ? what punishment? turning your player red for a few mins? who care's ...

6. You give them prizes for killing in Drops.. they can even take part of your experence of the monster you where fighting.

7. There's not a thing a newbie can do about it.... except run out of town fast as one can...

8. You claim that GM don't tolorate abuse yet it happens everyday on the server....

9. People get tired of this game it's not as fun as DOAC so
they reroll and attack players...

ALL THE CONS is the REASON I AM QUITING THIS GAME going
back to another GAME worth something....

DARK AGE OF CAMELOT!!
Why their PVP is fair unlike yours.
CONS:
You can not go in the other races main towns / PvE just the outlying FORTRESSES / CASTLES ... they call that the FRONTIER PvP ... In other words ELVES/Dwarfs can not go in the HUMANS or ORCs area... But only their FRONTIER area which is quite large 1/2 the total mass but if you try to go to the other RACES LAND the wall and NPCs kill you faster then you can see...
You may have more Humans then ELVES hence they win more..
develepers then in turn make other race just a wee bit better...
You can't talk to ENEMIES in Battle ...
You have massive attacks at same locations say 6000 people attacking one zone... gets confusing...
PROS:

You don't Loose exp being killed by another PLAYER only by monsters!!!

You don't DROP anything you HAD!!!

You can't even FIGHT other players in safety ZONES they are totally safe from PvP this is like 1/2 the map!

You can't fight or be killed in PvP or enter zones of PvP until your LVL 15 only challenge people to duels...

You can't kill another PERSON of YOUR RACE!!!!!

Clans actually mean something as well as RolePlaying..

You have clear PvP areas and PvE !!!!

You can still challenge people of your RACE but you can
decline !!!

You can't kill players outside your LVL +/- 5 lvls of your own
unless they are IN the MAIN !!! that is the MAIN 40+ chars can only PvP there no where else!!

Players not of your race don't call you NAMES or CHAT!!! WHY because you can't understand your ENEMY, no name calling or text messaging fighting!!!

NPCs kill other RACES who try to enter it, NPCs 50 lvl actually
kill !! Actually move within the zone!! Respawn, guard, and fight MONSTERS and INVADERS that enter the town...

Players get EXP in PvP envirement mostly by taking FORTRESSES Not By Killing players...

You gain more expereince in GROUPS and even MORE in BATTLEGROUPS that is GROUPS within GROUPS.. CAMPAIGNS
that actually need 25 people when your epic battles...

At the SAME time they have smaller FORTS which they allow
only lower lvl players lvl 15-20,21-25,ext... in so they can PvP take FORTs without being killed by lvl 50s .... All the PvP areas have nothing to do with PvE areas they are totally seperate like a zone with mountains or walls clearly seperated area...

THERE are 3 types of SERVERS on Dark Age of Camelot
1. ALL PvP
2. Normal Limits you can't kill anyone of your race
plus all the other things I mentioned
3. ALL PvE

I tell you the number 2. is most popular 14 servers full 2000 players on each server easy...
They only have 1 PvP server !!!! Why? because no one wants
to be killed at lvl 1 when they just open their box..

OBVIOUSLY:
This game was hoping people wouldn't play that way but only one person can cause one to hate this game.

I know these designers can not do this stuff nor would they.
but I think they could do some of this stuff without major
design changes or even change the feel of this evil PvP game
for their base scribers...

1. They could have some criteria for PvP
LEVEL, AREA, or ONLY BE able to PvP if a Player is in a CLAN War or in any CLAN in first place, this would stop about 95% of people who are CAREBEARS or NEWBIES from being killed until lvl 10 or HIGHER!!! Just have those CLAN penitialies those are valid to stop people from quiting clans and rejoining.

Here I help you program it:
If (CLAN &lt;&gt; NULL) THEN
PVP = 'YES'
ELSE
PvP = 'NO' /* DO NOW! */
END IF
javascript:void(0)
:eek:

[Faur]

I only played the beta up to level ~25 so my opinion might be moot, anyway..

I generally like the pvp system, I love the open pvp above all. That's the main reason I got lin2 again.

But what I really dislike about it is the "self regulation" policy. If someone is scamming and you petition it, chances are you're gonna get the usual long winded "aden is a scary type sorta place with mean people (...)" (Translate: Deal with it) response.

But how am I supposed to deal with this guy sitting in town? Say mean things to him while he's afk?

Similarly I think the "Deal with it" philosophy is flawed on white griefers. By killing them for justifyable reasons (they were kill stealing, being abusive, training mobs on you, etc) you go red. By defending yourself, you become the loser.

This exact thing happened to me in beta, some guy was following me around stealing my kills deliberately to p*ss me off (apparently I stole his kill earlier, "U STEAL MY KILL I STEAL URS K?"). He didn't do anything unless I attacked, just stuck around waiting. I even tp'ed back to town, so did he.
I petitioned to a gm and got the "deal with it yourself" response, so I did.
I went red and lost my gaiters and half a level to him and his friend, man that wasn't fun.. It feels like a lose/lose situation for me and a win/win for the griefers.

But on a lighter note this doesn't happen that often, and the current pvp system is usually more fun and working properly than not.

[Darraess]

Well RogerBuck you just described most of the main diferences between an Open PvP game which is L2, and a restricted PvP game which is DAoC.

Next time you see a game advertised as 100% Open Hardcore PvP you will know to stay away from it.

[Darraess]

[ QUOTE ]
t feels like a lose/lose situation for me and a win/win for the griefers.


[/ QUOTE ]

It allways is like this no matter what the situation, but the only, one, thing that must also be true is that you allow yourself to be griefed.

There are a multitude of ways to deal with it you chose the one and most obvious which also happens to be an even more serious offend than KS'ng and that was PK'ng, you dealt as you knew how and you payed the consequences actually both of you payed what you should.

He lost XP for KS'ng and you lost XP and Items for PK'ng, a very fair deal in my mind.

[Faur]

[ QUOTE ]
He lost XP for KS'ng and you lost XP and Items for PK'ng, a very fair deal in my mind.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think it's fair that losing a third of a level and items is a fair deal for defending yourself against griefers. I didn't RPK this guy out of hate or grief, I did so because he was griefing me and it was the only option I could think of after more than an hour of him following me around.
What other options did I have, other than logging off? I don't like how my options are to either not earn xp or lose xp.

I'm not saying there should be no penalty for killing this guy, but being open to attack to everyone and completely unable to defend yourself (even from a level 1) is a little harsh.

[Darraess]

There is this concept that killing someone is more serious then KS"ing him, or even scamming him.

There are many negative actions you can perform in game, but do you really find it fair that if someone is stealing a few xp from you you should be free to kill him?

What makes your reason to be a PK better then his reason to be kS'er, for you it is diferent you will allways consider your reasons superior and good or justified, but for me you both got involved into an ugly situation and i find how things turned uot fair.

Anyway, the system is there and no one is forcing you to use it, much more forcing you to use it wrongly or carelessly.

If you have someone harrasing you and you get the feeling he will not stop, measure things up, hit him once or twice carfully see if he responds, if he doesn't and he will just stay there beeing murdered and you also figure he has no intentions of leaving you alone, instead of wasting an hour on him and turn red and lose xp and items you should just log out go make yourself a coffee and 10 minutes later log back in, i promise you he would have left.

And even if that didnt work or hurts your ego then there are other things to do, but you can either be creative or you can't.

All in all in my eyes he is a KS'er and you are a PK'er.

There is one thing i must point out once more though and agree with you on it, everyone has the right to choose the way he playes and many do mistakes occasionaly, but if you turn red no matter what reason you have, you should be able to defend yourself if attacked by others.

Beeing the agressor should have consequences no matter who it is you attack or what color he is.

[Ketone]

I am interested in being able to increase either a nukers, HP or P.Def. so that we can PVP. As it stand us nukers drop ridiculously fast... Archers are also soft targets like nukers however they can get jewelry that negates a nukers M.Att. which renders us useless. And there is nothing we can do to defend against an archers( or dagger now ) attack. Of Course if you want to say.. But you can get a shield to deflcet archer...that is true if we want to give up our staff and M.Att. so we hit back even less than before... Or does NCsoft just want nukers to be easy targets... there just isnt enough PVE content to keep nukers interested since PVP has been taken away from us.. and yes the sleep/decay was the best chance for pvp before C2. thats all we had.. remember we can also only cast those spells after someone has already usually attacked us.

[drakon]

From what i remeber u can just go out and attck random people.. i think you should make a range of like 5 levels.. and like a duel features with who ever u challenge u can accept or decline.. Just a personal thought it would be pretty cool.. Oh and u dont lose karma from duels also if u were to add that feature any 1 agree?

[GordonGreedstein]

[ QUOTE ]
duel features

[/ QUOTE ]
NOOOOOOOOOOOO

If you want a wussy game go play EQ.

[Hephaestus1]

[ QUOTE ]
I am interested in being able to increase either a nukers, HP or P.Def. so that we can PVP. As it stand us nukers drop ridiculously fast... Archers are also soft targets like nukers however they can get jewelry that negates a nukers M.Att. which renders us useless. And there is nothing we can do to defend against an archers( or dagger now ) attack. Of Course if you want to say.. But you can get a shield to deflcet archer...that is true if we want to give up our staff and M.Att. so we hit back even less than before... Or does NCsoft just want nukers to be easy targets... there just isnt enough PVE content to keep nukers interested since PVP has been taken away from us.. and yes the sleep/decay was the best chance for pvp before C2. thats all we had.. remember we can also only cast those spells after someone has already usually attacked us.

[/ QUOTE ]
ROFL is the only answer i can think of to this post.

[GrensealO]

Personally, I view this game as an open PvP game where the idea is to band with other players to wage war on a large scale instead of focusing on one-on-one duels, but if that's just me...
Anyway, I will be general with my suggestion to avoid any "my class is better than your class" breakdown in discussion. I think the strengths and weaknesses for each class need to be more defined and apparent in actually gameplay. For example, there are a lot of mages who wield dual-swords out of a perceived necessity that they would be at a severe disadvantage if equiped with anything else. It is not even a matter of play style, in many ways this game promotes use of dual-swords and penalizes characters armed differently. The root of the problem is class balance. However, the problem is not with how the class fares against another class, but how it functions against the environment.

[RogueAssassin]

Here's the main problem with the classes having specialties and such: Players will prioritize their attacks. They'll attack the most important targets first, and ignore the rest. Classes such as tanks really have no place in a field battle because everyone will just run or shoot around them. Since the Hate and Confuse abilities don't work against players (so far as I know), there's no way to 'pull aggro,' if you will, and protect those other characters. Oh, and there should be a way to intercept arrows. It makes no sense to me that 8 Knight-class characters could completely surround another person, shields facing outward, and the person in the middle could STILL be hit by ranged attacks. That is so dumb.

Don't get me wrong.. I'm all for specialties, but the game doesn't really allow for good use of it.

[GrensealO]

I agree with your example of the arrow by-passing the circle of shields, such a thing would make sense; the arrow should the first thing it comes in contact with. However, I think combat in MMOG are approximations of battle. In real combat, I doubt the people or creatures would take turns trading blows. Combat in this game is based on the RPG method of calculations. So, although a mage is surrounded by eight knights holding shields, the system assumes the archer aims their shot at their intended target instead of the first thing the arrow can hit. However, I think it reasonable if the game was designed so that obstacles would lower accuracy, since a mage surrounded by knights would be a harder target than one out in the open.

[Harmonix]

i hate it when a playerbase searches for the eternal balance, it cant work irl and it cant work here

Bazooka &gt; Spoon

DONT PICK THE SPOON

[GrensealO]

but you can't eat cereal with a bazooka :D

[Falinor]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I am interested in being able to increase either a nukers, HP or P.Def. so that we can PVP. As it stand us nukers drop ridiculously fast... Archers are also soft targets like nukers however they can get jewelry that negates a nukers M.Att. which renders us useless. And there is nothing we can do to defend against an archers( or dagger now ) attack. Of Course if you want to say.. But you can get a shield to deflcet archer...that is true if we want to give up our staff and M.Att. so we hit back even less than before... Or does NCsoft just want nukers to be easy targets... there just isnt enough PVE content to keep nukers interested since PVP has been taken away from us.. and yes the sleep/decay was the best chance for pvp before C2. thats all we had.. remember we can also only cast those spells after someone has already usually attacked us.

[/ QUOTE ]
ROFL is the only answer i can think of to this post.

[/ QUOTE ]
lol I agree, thats the name of the game if you're a nuker. Having trouble PVPing? Reroll to a TH.

Some tips for nukers bad at pvp:
1) NEVER flag first
2) Sleep the archers
3) Slow/frost bolt daggers
4) Dont let yourself get stunned, sleep if you see an archer doing stun shot, dont let tanks or dorfs get near you
5) Dont worry about sleeping in mass pvp, just nuke your heart out
6) Look for players who look like noobs, or are poor. Chances are they dont have good jewels. Helloooooo 3k damage :)


I do, however, like the thought of the extra hp bar coming in c3, should be very interesting

[Xanthus_]

The xp loss system doesn't need much tweaking...that's fine.

But if you lose xp, you should lose SP too...

Maybe make players lose SP...and if they don't have the SP to lose, they lose Skills...and get the difference in Sp back...

My problem was that I died a few times while leveling, ended up with MASSIVE sp. So every time I got new skills, I'd buy out really quick...caused me lots of boredom if skills are too easy to get (i.e.: I have too much sp) skills are no fun to get.

Also, the xp(and possible sp) penalties for death aren't what deters most ppl from pk/pvp. It's the gear loss.

Losing gear hampers one's play MUCH more than losing xp, you lose a lvl or tow, big deal, you can still play at that level.

You lose your weapon, or you shirt? You're screwed! You have to find someone to re-equip you, unless you've got adena squirreled away, or you have to kill mobs so Blue to you you can kill them naked...and spend massive time getting new adena and not making any of your lost xp back...until you can regear and THEN maybe you can regain your lost xp.

I agree there should be SOME penalty for pk/pvp. Item drop is often times a bit too severe of a penlty though. And in fact item drop is what causes a lot of the pk greifing on many servers, as pks hope their targets will drop gear, maknig them quick cash.

Item drop needs to be carefully re-balanced or removed, and sp loss SHOULD be instituted.

[Aenorin]

[ QUOTE ]
6) Look for players who look like noobs, or are poor. Chances are they dont have good jewels. Helloooooo 3k damage

[/ QUOTE ]

LMAO! so cruel, but so true :D

-Ae

[Nogreb]

Here are my suggestions for PvP:

Make (nearly) all skills useful in PvP. For example a tank is usually feeling pretty helpless and is, besides shield stun of the human tanks, not needed in a pvp grp. So what to change exactly ?

- First make the hate- type skills available in pvp. A tank may hate a flagged (when all skills are allowed, i.e. red, purple, cw, arena,...) and change the target of the hated character to him. This effect should last for 1 or 2 seconds and actually allows the tank to fullfill its role in pvp too.

- Make other skills like switch or fake death (with the failrate) have an effect too.

- Rest of chamaeleon for example should work too. A player that is not in combat mode should be able to use this and then cant be attacked by the other players (or not be targetable anymore, if the engine allows that. Players that targeted him before could still attack but the rest cant target and so cant attack with direct skills).

- Fear should work too. A short duration is enough to give an advantage. The feared player runs away from the player casting fear on him, but not very far since the duration is short.

This would totally change to grp pvp at it is now. Hate may sound overpowered, but the hated can still attack the tank and take him down first and the tank cant attack while recasting hate over and over. I think it would be very interesting to fight then and the classes can do what they were meant for, not only in PvE. Tactics will have a much greater effect since its not only the who can do the most dmg/sec, but who to hate when, fear em, protect the healer or the dd, gives time to use root and sleep, time to heal (a hate aura at the right time f.e. can allow a bsps grp heal and change the whole fight, sacrificing the tank for the rest if no ud used)...

Edit: I started a poll on [censored] i you want to see the replies there:
http://www.[censored].com/forum/index.php?act=ST&amp;f=4&amp;t=99461

[FinalCut]

Some suggestions:
Cancel should be changed so it can be used on white targets. of course this will turn the caster purple.
after some level to be determined PvP xp loss should be adjusted.
I can happily lose 20% on a big fight or in a siege at lvl 5x and get the xp back in no time. At level 6x or 7x 20% is a lot. I guess that the xp loss was tought as a "4% is just fine and 1% at sieges is ok" but they forgot that you never die once in a big fight and if you have big fights let's say... twice everyweek plus sieges you can easily lose like 40-60%. After lvl 6x you just cant afford losing that much. The point is to have a penalty when you die but at the same time encourage PvP so no penalty is bad but a high penalty is also bad.

[Amborix]

Good idea only one problem I see. Dark Avengers have the panther.

[ QUOTE ]
- First make the hate- type skills available in pvp. A tank may hate a flagged (when all skills are allowed, i.e. red, purple, cw, arena,...) and change the target of the hated character to him. This effect should last for 1 or 2 seconds and actually allows the tank to fullfill its role in pvp too

[/ QUOTE ]


They could force you to attack them with there uber p.def while there panther with the uber p.att kills you.

Basicly it would be like giving DA's one of the highest p.def and highest p.atts in the game.

ATM you can kill the panther fast then work on the DA. At least we stand a chance. With that system they would become the next L337 clas.

[Dawnknight]

Some suggestions on modifying the way drops work.

First, make the number of items that drop from a stack random. Even though in most cases, a stack of items is trivial to an item drop, there are some cases where a stack of items can be of enormous value.

The two major items on a character are weapons and armor. Losing one of these is devastating and debilitates your character. I would suggest instead replacing the chance of a drop with having the item degrade upon death. A degraded item has half effectiveness. You would need to get it repaired, which takes a substantial amount of materials. The cost of these materials should be 1/4 to 1/3 of the item cost.

You could require armor or weapon parts to fix the item. You could also have the parts drop on death. (So you can fix the item if the person returns the parts to you.)

Note that the chance of this should still be rare. It would be quite troublesome to have to repair your item constantly while grinding.

[Kilynel]

I didnt take the time to read all the post in this topic so far.. so excuse this if it's already been suggested.
Also, I didnt play any in C2, I quit at the realease of C2 and just recently resubbed to check out C3.

What if you only droped items on death based on Karma.
EI: 1,000 Karma == Items can drop out of your inventory on death

1,500 Karma == Boots can drop
2,000 Karma == Rings can drop (and boots, and inventroy)
ectectect..

Of course these numbers wuold need to be tweaked, but this is just an example. This way if you go red trying to self-police a situation, then it wont hurt you other then lowering your karma and possible exp loss. If you go on a straight PK spree, then obviously you would get more Karma and your items would drop accordingly.

Also, just amek the luck skill not apply to chaotic characters, that would stop perma reds from abusing luck.

[Oranj2]

Correct me if im wrong but, NC US is subset of NCSoft, _they_ design the game, NC US gets it 4-6 months later, so how can NC US influence it if they get it 4-6 months later?
Provide us with 1 example of US/EU customers influencing anything about Lineage 2...

[CinnamonToast]

Disclaimer: I appologize if this is a repeat of any previous post, but I haven't the time to read through 20+ thread pages, 1000 pardons.

Okay, i've had issues with the PVP system and chaotic players for quite some time now, I think it's time to bring up some issues.
To quote where I'm coming from:

[ QUOTE ]
White hits Red == White remains White .
----------
Red kills White == Red remains Red , gains more karma.
Red kills Purple == Red remains Red , karma unaffected.
Red kills Red == Red remains Red , karma unaffected.

[/ QUOTE ]

Isn't the point of a person being flagged as a red punishment for killing someone? The red has to deal with the fact that they may drop items upon death, and most of the towns refuse to service/trade with chaotic players, so why is it that they also can't defend their position while chaotic?

Just because someone is red doesn't necessarily mean they're out to kill everybody. 80% of all the reds I come into contact with have either killed suspected bots, or ended a griefing session by use of force. These reds I know have no intesion of causing any harm to an innocent player (one that isn't an obvious bot or griefing newbies). In my opinion, reds like these are important to the balance and social strength of the LineageII community.

I also understand that mistakes can be made, and that more people probably encounter more reds that are mean than I do; for this I agree with the current drop rate/karma penalties. However, I don't agree with the fact that whites are allowed to hit reds all they want w/o consiquence. Countless whites will flock for hours just to grief a red, kill a red, loot a red, and all they get is encouragement. In my opinion, stalking somebody because of their name color is discrimination. Chances are, the whites know nothing about the history of the chaotic player, so why is it everybody's right to try and kill w/o consiquence?

I feel the system should be changed to help protect reds from an already dire situation:

White hits Red == White turns Purple (if white initializes pvp)
Red hits White == White remains White (if red initializes pvp)

This way, if the Red is attacked FIRST, they have a chance to defend themself in an open pvp combat with a purple. If the white (now Purple) sucessfuly kills the red, that player is awarded 1 PvP point. If the Red kills the Purple, no PvP point is awarded, as the red is still being punished for being chaotic. The red does not aquire any additional karma.

This still means that if a red attacks a white first, the white will remain white. If the white attacks back in defense, the white remains white.

Please PM me if you find any major flaw in this system. I feel it fixes an already major exsisting flaw (red unable to defend itself).

[FinalCut]

red is not able to defend itself? Red is absolutely able to defend itself.
You fail to see that from the game's justice system point of view red is a criminal. PERIOD.
If you dont want to deal with the consequences of being red... just dont turn red. Nobody is forcing you (or someone else) to become red. Becoming red is a CHOICE.
Becoming red is not a way to fight botters. so is not important if "80%" (yeah yeah) of the reds you came into are either bot killers or poor newbies griefed. Bot killing is a choice. And to become red by being griefed you have to choose to hit someone.

[CinnamonToast]

A red is not able to defend itself w/o having to worry about gaining additional karma. There are severe penalties to defending yourself while red. I consider this an unfair situation. Not all red cases are true to what you seem to think, and it's people with a closed off attitude like you that make griefers that much more successful in this game. It seems quite clear that you've failed to completly read my post...

[ QUOTE ]

chaotic

adj 1: lacking a visible order or organization [syn: helter-skelter]
2: completely unordered and unpredictable and confusing [syn: disorderly]
3: of or relating to a sensitive dependence on initial conditions


[/ QUOTE ]
Is completely different from...

[ QUOTE ]

crim·i·nal Audio pronunciation of "criminal" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (krm-nl)
adj.

1. Of, involving, or having the nature of crime: criminal abuse.
2. Relating to the administration of penal law.
3.
1. Guilty of crime.
2. Characteristic of a criminal.
4. Shameful; disgraceful: a criminal waste of talent.


n.

One that has committed or been legally convicted of a crime.


[/ QUOTE ]
Being red is labled as chaotic, not a criminal.

Yes, this is a choice, let me reiterate! The reds i'm talking about Do Not grief newbies. They KILL the newbie griefers, thus enabling the new players to have a more enjoyable experience. This is what I consider a good deed. Bots are another form of grief to players. Countless times I have seen newbies feel crowed out of hunting areas because of overpopulation when the only population hunting at those particular spots are BOTS!! Where's the justice there?

A change in this manner can only help, it can not harm. If your choice is to be an evil red, the same old rules still apply. I just want a fair chance given to those chaotic players that cleans the community of evil and filth.

------------
--- edit ---
------------

A couple great points in support of this amendment were brought up on a fresh thread I created HERE (http://boards.lineage2.com/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Number=274646&amp;page=&amp;view=&amp;sb=5&amp;o =&amp;fpart=&amp;vc=1).

To Quote:
[ QUOTE ]

Originally Posted By: Silviera

I agree with this, except for one minor and very important point.

When the white character strikes first against a red they should turn purple, but only to that exact red. Otherwise it opens for the door for reds leading gank squads, and just whites taking a big risk in general whenever they try to exact justice.

The five free pks was a step in the right direction, since with that and the Sin Eater you can murder those who really deserve it without too much pain. If this change was implemented it would finally give reds a chance to defend themselves, particular those just trying to survive after they've taken down one real griefer.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]

Originally Posted By: Terance
right,

ive said forever,

they need to copy the flaging system of ultima online,

in ultima online
blue is innocent, like whites in L2
grey is criminal, sort of like purple in L2 (but there was other stuff you could do to be grey like stealing or looting another person's kill)
red was murderer, just like L2

basically it worked like your idea

blue hits blue &gt; grey
blue hits grey &gt; grey
blue hits red &gt; grey to that red

any one who killed a blue got a PK count and became red


this system allows for a red to defend himself against attackers, without becoming more red,
but, the red cannot PK someone who has not attacked them without gaining more karma,

(note - if a red attacks you and you fight back, you will remain blue/white)

[/ QUOTE ]

[Chinook]

thread has now been oficially resurrected.
go flame.

[Spudnik]

thread has now been oficially resurrected.
go flame.

how about dont rez old threads

[Layle]

wow serious? 2005?

meh, never mind I shouldent be surprised with the groups of people that have been joining since the 23rd

[Chinook]

how about dont rez old threads
access denied

[Aconyte]

Thread starter:

AshNC
Banned


looks quite epic. :o

[Yukio]

Yeah, they banned their own CM <.< Awesome.

[Spudnik]

he's not the only one.

[Zhakka_]

:eek:

[Elrohir]

Yeah, they banned their own CM <.< Awesome.

Good, he was a jerk.

Ressing dead threads makes you a bad person and you should feel bad. You make baby ***** cry.

[Elrohir]

Good, he was a jerk.

Ressing dead threads makes you a bad person and you should feel bad. You make baby ***** cry.

lol, wow! It censors the name of my gardener!

[Sethonan]

ah this brings back memories.

But should evidence the permanent discussion over what constitutes PvP and what is rampant PK.

Anybody remembers when Shield Stun was unbreakable and chainable, and possible to perform on whites?

LOADS OF FUN.

ok, a /sarcasm is in order before anybody starts ranting.

Or the fact you could heal mobs without flagging

[Chinook]

Good, he was a jerk.

Ressing dead threads makes you a bad person and you should feel bad. You make baby ***** cry.
Moderator 1: I don't care.