ID:154569
 
My idea on player killing is this. You have a newbie island, where everyone starts the game. You cannot kill any one there, PK is OFF. Then, once you reach a certain level and/or goal, you get to leave the island, and go to a land called MAIN. In main, you an do whatever you want, such as kill people, but it is recorded to your karma. and you can check peoples karma by right clicking on them from a distance. Now if i could just figure out how to get all that to work, it would be great :)

On 5/1/01 1:10 pm FIREking wrote:
My idea on player killing is this. You have a newbie island, where everyone starts the game. You cannot kill any one there, PK is OFF. Then, once you reach a certain level and/or goal, you get to leave the island, and go to a land called MAIN. In main, you an do whatever you want, such as kill people, but it is recorded to your karma. and you can check peoples karma by right clicking on them from a distance. Now if i could just figure out how to get all that to work, it would be great :)

ok here is what has worked for me.... it is something called IC witch means you cant PK for no reason (In Charicter). i think games where you just mindlessly kill are stupid.... if you make it so you are sopposed to kill all mobs it is not an RPG becase there is no roleplay... you should be ABLE to kill anything but it should not be the point of the game... the entire point of IC and RP is to have PK or compitition...

im rambleing...

what i mean is there should not be newbie areas... if there are it should only be to explain the game, not to gain levels...

what makes an RPG a great is: how interactive it is; the enviroment it is placed in; the storyline; point of the game; and amount of compition... so the best games are where you lead an entirely differant life. games where you can do almost anything and kill everything..(but that is not to be the point of the game..)

one of the best ideas i have come across in an RPG is players in power over players.. ok....say there is a land called dorshigon, and in this land there is a king, a poice force, a few gangs,a cult, and a few guilds...(all are players or grups of players) if a player kills a mob in town and someone sees him or he leaves a clue he gets a wanted tag on him... so now all the police want to capture him and put him in jail... if the king pisses off the majority of the players then he will be over thrown and a new ruler will be appointed... if the cult see a star the kill themselves...Duh... the point is that games are much more fun when they are complex in the way they work(but not complex to play)and offer players a chance to control someone else.... it is much better RP than heading out into a field to kill sheep and monsters...
In response to jobe
My take on the ideal player-killing handling would be something of a combination between these two things. One of the projects that I've had on the shelf for quite a while now and ocassionally pull off and do a little work on (which might even concievably get made eventually, possibly even in BYOND, but don't bet on either) would entail having only a few major cities in the game- one to start with, others added if the player base ever got large enough, but still mostly just the one. These few population centers would be well patrolled and have a large standing guard force who would police the streets, and if you got caught killing someone, hoooo boy, would you be in trouble. A master assassin with the right connections could get away with murder on a fairly routine basis, but he'd be in a risky position and as such it would be very unlikely for him to ever give in to the urge to just sit there picking off newbies. But of course, out in the wilderness, in other dimensions, and in many other fun places to adventure, players would be away from the watchful eyes of the city guard and free to slaughter each other to their hearts' content (as long as they didn't leave witnesses.)
In response to Leftley
I did not mean Newbie island. I mean like a town, like if you are a warrior, you live on a town full of warriors, and you fight to get good enought to leave that town, kind of like a town to get the hang of the game. Then, you go to Main Land, where everything is optional. If you choose to kill, that is your choice, some players against it could ban you, or just kill you, whatever, even lock you in jail, (which is under development, and almost finished =)...) so anyways, maybe my ideal of an RPG is different than yours, but i expect my game to have as much success as dragon ball has had....
On 5/1/01 1:10 pm FIREking wrote:
My idea on player killing is this. You have a newbie island, where everyone starts the game. You cannot kill any one there, PK is OFF. Then, once you reach a certain level and/or goal, you get to leave the island, and go to a land called MAIN. In main, you an do whatever you want, such as kill people, but it is recorded to your karma. and you can check peoples karma by right clicking on them from a distance. Now if i could just figure out how to get all that to work, it would be great :)

I guess it is better to have a player regulated environment. You can have a bounty hunter service, or a police service.
Anyone can place a bounty on others. The bounty hunter will go after the hunted and claim the reward. (I saw a U.S. tv series about that.)
Or have a police station where the players can go to report their killers. Then anyone can register with the police to hunt that PK'er down.
Of course Karma is a good idea, but you need to have a light Vs Darkness path. Players who choose to play the dark side should not be punished by the GM if PK'ing is allowed.
In response to sunzoner
I guess it is better to have a player regulated environment. You can have a bounty hunter service, or a police service.
Anyone can place a bounty on others. The bounty hunter will go after the hunted and claim the reward. (I saw a U.S. tv series about that.)
Or have a police station where the players can go to report their killers. Then anyone can register with the police to hunt that PK'er down.

Both good ideas.

Of course Karma is a good idea, but you need to have a light Vs Darkness path. Players who choose to play the dark side should not be punished by the GM if PK'ing is allowed.

This, however, is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Let's look at this from a game-balance standpoint: In a karma-driven alignment system, it would be reasonable to assume that PK--and other PvP interactions such as stealing--would be by and large evil. Hence, the three major alignment brackets (note that for simplicity I'm focusing on PvP; presumably other things would affect this but they'd follow the same basic idea):

Good people would be people who played nice and wouldn't take any PvP actions.

Neutral people would be basically OK people who would fudge a bit but who still wouldn't make a habit of regular, aggressive PvP.

Evil people would be free to do as much PvP as they want.

Now, if the three alignments have no inherent power differences other than the moral standards they require, then clearly evil players have massive, massive advantages. Since it's pretty much unimaginable to create a game in which PvP does not represent a handy outlet for power gain, in restricting themselves from using this outlet good players are taking a handicap. Similarly, in indulging in it whenever they feel like it, evil players get an advantage. Hence, to offset the sacrifices good players take in restricting their actions, there should be considerable benefits to being of good alignment. Conversely, having an evil alignment should SUCK. In fact, this system is somewhat implied by the label "karma." The idea here is thus: Although it depends on your game, most games are designed with the idea that the players are basically heroes of the realm. While of course it's much more interesting if you throw in a few antiheroes and even outright villains, the vast majority of your player population should be non-evil. If you had good/evil/neutral perfectly distributed, you'd have 33% evil players, but I think 20 or 25% would be more on key. As it is, if you simply give evil free reign, you can end up with 40 or 50% or more. If playerkilling made you evil and being evil had some heavy penalties attached, you end up with less playerkilling. And while I'm all for playerkilling, most RPGs simply have ridiculous levels of PK.
In response to Leftley
Since it's pretty much unimaginable to create a game in which PvP does not represent a handy outlet for power gain, in restricting themselves from using this outlet good players are taking a handicap.

Ah, I forgot to mention one other little thing about my plans: I don't intend to grant much experience for killing things. Also, killed players will only be partially lootable (maybe they drop 10% of their cash when killed). Whether it'll make for a fun game remains to be seen...
In response to Gughunter
On 5/4/01 5:57 am Gughunter wrote:
Since it's pretty much unimaginable to create a game in which PvP does not represent a handy outlet for power gain, in restricting themselves from using this outlet good players are taking a handicap.

Ah, I forgot to mention one other little thing about my plans: I don't intend to grant much experience for killing things. Also, killed players will only be partially lootable (maybe they drop 10% of their cash when killed). Whether it'll make for a fun game remains to be seen...

It'll certainly make for an arbitrary game, and I don't like arbitrary. I'd rather have a game in which you can freely loot everything from a kill but only get away with it 10% of the time than a game where you can freely kill but only get 10% of the loot. Not that your game would necessarily be freely kill, but I think you see my point, even if you don't agree with it.
In response to Leftley
On 5/4/01 5:15 pm Leftley wrote:
On 5/4/01 5:57 am Gughunter wrote:
Since it's pretty much unimaginable to create a game in which PvP does not represent a handy outlet for power gain, in restricting themselves from using this outlet good players are taking a handicap.

Ah, I forgot to mention one other little thing about my plans: I don't intend to grant much experience for killing things. Also, killed players will only be partially lootable (maybe they drop 10% of their cash when killed). Whether it'll make for a fun game remains to be seen...

It'll certainly make for an arbitrary game, and I don't like arbitrary. I'd rather have a game in which you can freely loot everything from a kill but only get away with it 10% of the time than a game where you can freely kill but only get 10% of the loot. Not that your game would necessarily be freely kill, but I think you see my point, even if you don't agree with it.

Well, Hiawathaland is a frontier game based on teamwork and exploration, as far as I see it. Thus, penalising PKing would probably be beneficial to that game.

http://www.hiawathaland.com
In response to Spuzzum
It'll certainly make for an arbitrary game, and I don't like arbitrary. I'd rather have a game in which you can freely loot everything from a kill but only get away with it 10% of the time than a game where you can freely kill but only get 10% of the loot. Not that your game would necessarily be freely kill, but I think you see my point, even if you don't agree with it.

Hmm... yes, it does sound arbitrary. I'll think about it some more. I'd hate to see players lose rare or unique items just because b0z0hax0r decided to plug a random victim; but on the other hand it would certainly add some realism. Well, there's time to ponder it more while I work on other aspects of the game!


Well, Hiawathaland is a frontier game based on teamwork and exploration, as far as I see it. Thus, penalising PKing would probably be beneficial to that game.

Exploration, definitely (though by necessity I will have thoroughly "explored" the whole game world during development, which will put a certain size limit on it). Teamwork will be beneficial, of course, but I hope to balance the game in such a way that it won't be a strict requirement... that's another "we'll see" item.

In response to Gughunter
Hmm... yes, it does sound arbitrary. I'll think about it some more. I'd hate to see players lose rare or unique items just because b0z0hax0r decided to plug a random victim; but on the other hand it would certainly add some realism. Well, there's time to ponder it more while I work on other aspects of the game!

My concept of a good PK system is that b0z0hax0rz should be entirely able to knife someone in the back and make off with their loot--then have a very tough-to-beat in-game justice system which would hunt them down, catch them, strip them of all their stuff and generally rip 'em a new one (yes, their victims would be reimbursed somewhere along the line in this.)

Unfortunately, I dunno how much this would work in a game based around the American frontier in the 1800's.