PKing: Let's Talk About the State of It

[MeTekillot]

Am I wrong?

[Brokkr]

I had made a request a month or two back for a change in the poisoning skill that might address some of this.  Will have to follow up on that!

[Synthesis]

You're wrong about everything except them being expensive-ish.

Still sort of wrong about that, because two of the best "practice poisons" are free to scavenge--you just have to know where to look.

[Nao]

Peraine has been nerfed at some point in the past. I'm not sure if this is new, but there is a defense against heramide. Stealth PKs have just been nerfed since you won't be able to have master backstab and master stealth on the same character anymore. We still have to see the effects of this, since the subclasses haven't been overhauled and legacy assasins are probably still around. Can we wait and see how all this turns out before we make it even harder to kill long-lived combat characters than it already is?

I haven't found heramide easy to get when I tried, some time ago this year. If it is everywhere now, that's probably because of a small number of characters farming it, and will become less common again once these characters are gone. I assume it's completely temporary.

[tapas]

Nevermind.

[Greve]

I think one part of the problem is the fact that killing someone the "normal" way can be nearly impossible. If you're not a mul/giant or someone with unbelievably high strength and a Club of Lucky Headshots +5, killing with conventional combat is barely an option unless there's a locked door involved. Walking up to someone in the open and typing 'kill man' will result in death 0% of the time.

Namino touched upon the combat delays some pages back. I think it's something that deserves to be revised. It's a part of the game that has probably been untouched since the days when it wasn't even an RPI. Why does attacking somebody leave you unable to act again for like ten seconds? If you initiate combat, they can flee at minimal risk and difficulty, and run halfway across Allanak or the Red Desert before you can begin to give chase.

This leads players to seek out other ways to kill, and these ways tend to be a lot less palatable. The one-shot backstab, the heramide arrow, the apartment tango, the hopeless execution in a jail cell. People know that this is how you actually land a kill, so they plan with that in mind and even make race, class and role choices that accomodate it. A disproportinate number of murders are carried out in one of these few repetitive ways.

It would be a lot more interesting to lose a character in a hard-fought battle to the death where you actually have time to emote, and perhaps to understand the reason, than just getting the old "someone stabs you, your vision goes black. Mantishead." It's a souring experience and something that gets overused, because if you're making a character that you think might have reasons to PK, you're compelled to make it a character that can do something like that. And then once you've finally got that character with master backstab or whatever, it's tempting to look for ways to use it, sometimes a little too frivolously.

Various other MUDs have had no such instakill trump cards, instead it took time to flee. I've had a lot of great fights in games running the RPI Codebase where there's no such thing as backstab or poisons or nonsensical stun damage with clubs. There were plenty of deaths but they usually involved an actual fight, and I think it made for a better and more dynamic PvP environment. It creates a less all-or-nothing scale of character deadliness. On Armageddon, it's too often a binary question of "have you got heramide/backstab/god-strength or are you not dangerous?"

There are certainly times when a quick and dirty kill has its place and I'm not advocating for the removal of those abilities, but I think it's unhealthy when it becomes the go-to method. The fight to the death is underused on Armageddon because it isn't very viable, and I think it could be made viable with a revision of combat delays and the instant nature of flee. Fleeing is just too easy.

[tapas]

I've been banging this drum for years. But nobody's listening. Players are too attached to their cheap kills. And staff are not interested in policing them.

[X-D]

While I agree with Greve on the magicks thread, I do not agree here...least I mostly don't agree. I do agree that one problem is that straight combat killings are indeed nearly impossible unless DRASTICALLY overmatched. I do not agree with the solution. I have played the muds that have the much harder to flee and the 10, 15, 20, 30 minute combat scenes, which in itself is horrible, but though PK does happen, it is VERY rare and the conclusion is always, and I do mean, always forgone. Either one is DRASTICALLY over matched or they both live. Most those muds even have limits to how many can be attacking one opponent and often even size limits....everything in those muds is actually weighted towards survival when it comes to PK...same as here. The difference being, in those muds you time sink 30 minutes into nobody dying and in arm it is decided often in moments...far more realistic at least. In SOI when I played and mordor was still open, I actually saw and was involved in fights that took so long that we actually went OOC "Hey, I need to go to work in an hour, can we pick this back up tomorrow at this time? Other person, Sure, I have a baby to feed. Come back next day, get back to fighting, finally one person manages to disengage and runs off....Honestly a 2 hour mudsex session is more worthwhile.

[Greve]

Those games have completely different combat systems. Adding a run-up to flee doesn't mean fights suddenly take thirty minutes. It'll be every bit as fast as it always was, you just can't type 'flee' and vanish from the room in a literal instant. Not sure where you connect that idea with thirty minute fights.

[X-D]

Because, Arm combat is pretty quick and dirty, mobs/npcs can kill in moments, And used to have no delay to entering combat, movement etc. So changing flee in any way has far reaching effects that would cause many other changes need be done.

Now...What I could get behind is the engage combat delay to be gotten rid of except for one thing.

Currently, you engage combat, for whatever reason you are delayed, for a rather long time from using any other action, be they combat skills (which makes no sense) Spells (also makes no sense) or flee...this does make sense from a playability standpoint.

I vote we get rid of that delay OTHER THEN for flee.

I attack amos, amos instaflees, I should be able to rather easily stay right on his tail...after all, I was inside sword range to start.

Also, Sorry Greve, part of my reply here was also referring to your post in the elf str thread on accident...had it in my head at the same time.


Have to keep the delay on fleeing after engaging attack though, just because people would abuse that.

[number13]

A chase command that hitches you on to a mobile, and swings swords at them as they move. Like an aggressive shadow command. It could be based on the threaten skill.

[X-D]

I do not like it being coded, you want to chase, use your fingers.

[lostinspace]

Chase is literally already a command to aggressively follow someone.

edit:
To add on, there have been lots of new skills, class combos, and interesting mechanics added in the last few years. Most seemed to have ignored them in favor of locked doors and poisoned daggers, falling back on what they know works. There are more ways than ever to facilitate a murder, especially while making it easier to RP while doing so.

[number13]

Chase is literally already a command to aggressively follow someone.

Oh shit. Yeah, I knew that. I've literally never used it.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Have we considered having a check of the attacker's agility+flee skill against the fleeing party's agility+flee skill? If the fleeing party's rolls is equal to or less than the attacker's roll, the fleeing party can't flee.

I know that currently, you can fail to flee, but I don't know the dynamics behind that sort of fail. I thought that in the past, I saw messages along the lines of "Your foe keeps you from fleeing", but I'm not absolutely certain about that.

[Heade]

Have we considered having a check of the attacker's agility+flee skill against the fleeing party's agility+flee skill? If the fleeing party's rolls is equal to or less than the attacker's roll, the fleeing party can't flee.

I know that currently, you can fail to flee, but I don't know the dynamics behind that sort of fail. I thought that in the past, I saw messages along the lines of "Your foe keeps you from fleeing", but I'm not absolutely certain about that.

I'd have to run the math on something like this, but I'm fairly sure the odds of fleeing when you get swarmed by virtually anything would likely drop close to zero if something like this was implemented. Having to beat 3+ things in a random roll, even with high skill might be rather difficult. At low skill, the odds are very bad. Lots more noobs being killed by swarms of chalton could be the result. Or being killed in the street by rats, even. When both have low or no flee skill, it'd come down to a random dice roll, so we'd have noobs only having a 50% chance to flee from a rat.

And forget things like carru that give chase and re-engage. Getting away from them would be virtually impossible. Those instances where people have close calls, where they had to flee from something 2-3 times as it chased and re-engaged in multiple rooms would cease to be a thing. In at least ONE of those instances, they're going to fail to flee and die instead.

[Hauwke]

I kind of like it as an idea, people should not be traveling the world on their own in my mind anyway, you have creatures as big as a house that can eat you in one bite, but no one shows any real fear about that fact. If you knew that you could have potential  to die just because you got into combat with them, I feel like people would respect the critters a little more. Besides, fleeing works too fast anyway. You are going to run from a car sized moose on a car sized beetle down a road where the moose clearly has every advantage of movement?

[Heade]

I kind of like it as an idea, people should not be traveling the world on their own in my mind anyway, you have creatures as big as a house that can eat you in one bite, but no one shows any real fear about that fact. If you knew that you could have potential  to die just because you got into combat with them, I feel like people would respect the critters a little more. Besides, fleeing works too fast anyway. You are going to run from a car sized moose on a car sized beetle down a road where the moose clearly has every advantage of movement?

I don't agree with your assessment of who has the advantage of movement, and neither does the code. Most mounts are faster than carru.

[Hauwke]

Because the carru are coded to walk, not say, run, like most people do.

Edit to add: They also path TO YOU, not path where you are going to, they only appear to move slower than we do because they are a program following another with a delay to actually figure out which way to go, like we do sure, but we just spam walk away until the program cannot keep up since it is walking and we are running.

[Heade]

Because the carru are coded to walk, not say, run, like most people do.

Edit to add: They also path TO YOU, not path where you are going to, they only appear to move slower than we do because they are a program following another with a delay to actually figure out which way to go, like we do sure, but we just spam walk away until the program cannot keep up since it is walking and we are running.

I wasn't talking about running. Just spam walking away is often enough to get away from them if they don't attack the moment they enter the room with you.

[X-D]

Hauwke mentions the animals big as a house, Yes, and I should be able to see that from MILES away, but because of code limits that house can be right next to me but diagonal...so...SURPRISE!.

So, I am still good with being able to flee essentially instantly if you are under no other delay. I am also good with the attacker only having a  delay on when he can flee.

I attack, you flee, I can move or do other things...right now. I attack and find out you are way over powered compared to my PC, too bad, I have to wait out the normal delay before I can flee.

I attack then I use say, disarm then you flee, too bad for me, I have to wait out the disarm delay.

[Cind]

More ways to be killed by people would be kind of awesome. I'm not talking about just more poisons. If lynching at a coded 'lynch platform' could physically kill you and there was one in Allanak, maybe part of the behavior towards gemmers would be corrected. Or at least, the part that includes the gemmers' reactions to being treated more normally.

Elaborate torture devices owned by the Houses, including Kurac, who due to their trade goods may have the most elaborate devices of all, if we want to imitate impressions of real-life culture. Kurac's devices would be considered the most brutal and torturous. These devices would actually drain your hp, movement, mana, or stun, depending on the device, encouraging movement between devices, like in olden times. And you know the playerbase of a harsh desert world--- if the devices didn't do anything, they're not going to crack unless they were planning to before they got put in. As your points started getting lower, people would start being more liekly to give up information in an effort to save their character.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Oh fuck yeah! Stocks. Crosses. Pikes. Lynching. Stake-burning. Hell yes. Throw these coded mechanisms into the game.

Also, blindfolds and handcuffs that the attacker can put on a subdued victim.

Code Select Expand


>put elf pike
You slam the grey elf on a wicked bone pike, despite his struggles.

>put dwarf stocks
You clamp the red-toned dwarf's wrists and head in a set of ivory-enscrolled stocks.

>bind man stake
You bind the tall man to a thick, mekillot-bone stake.

>burn man stake
Using a rag-wrapped bone torch, you light a fire under the tall man.

>use blindfold mul
You force a sandcloth blindfold over the angry mul's eyes, as the hulking half-giant holds him still.

>use shackles mul
You shackle the angry mul with a set of sturdy, worn bone manacles, as the hulking half-giant holds him still.

[azuriolinist]

...

...

All of this!

[Vex]

Not really possible, due to the rules, about requiring ooc approval for tortures.

Tbh, this sort of thing wouldn't ever work, unless used by a Templar. How often does the current public torture medium, even get used? If you want to get your jollies on torture, and have someone who, for whatever reason, is down for that, you can always use emotes. Anyone who isn't into it, will opt out oocly, and render your fancy coded toys, kind of moot anyway.