Does anyone get it???

[Ragnar-GD]

Dear derwoodly,

Originally posted by derwoodly
Ionas,
First off let me say it is good to have one more pro pvp player.

Count me three... in a way...

Second, I did not think you were taking credit for the Mob-for-a-day idea.

The idea is very old, I\'ve seen it at least ten years ago on MUD-dev. I really like the \"MOB-for-a-day\"-idea, how you call it, it would be a good gamedisigners tool to allow non-griefing PvP. In former days, it has been called \"play-the-monster\", or \"Player-NPCs\", or \"GM-assistants\", and many more.

And Thirdly let me say the bounty hunter thing has been beaten to death, well actually all of the issues have been beaten to death, but they just keep respawning.  The problem with the bounty hunter idea is that it does not stop the PKer from griefing.  Sure they now have a tag on their head, but most serious pkers actually want a bad rep.  So the roleplayers will leave the game and you will just have the old Pker vs Anti-pker game.  In addition the players who hunt the \"bad guys\"  would get tagged as bad guys themselves if they happen to kill a pker that just did not have a tag on his head that day.

You have resumed all the important agruments within one paragraph, which others aren\'t able to in their whole life... :-)

The goal is to make the game as griefless as a carebear server.  I am not sure I will enjoy this type of game, but if I understand Paxx correctly that is the goal.

...but what do we - including Paxx - know intuitively? Something is seriously missing.
My thesis for PS is: The game is NOT griefer-resistant, it just avoids PvP. Griefing can be arranged in so many ways, that PKing will appear as a light from the better days of the past.
What is important, is to separate two things:
- PvP
- griefing behaviour
The first adds content to the game, the second subtracts players from a games community. So what PS needs (and then could add much more PvP, including thieving), is a griefer-resistant design, which is something completely different from a non-PvP-design.
I think the major problem is, that many people - and this includes Paxx unfortunately, despite this bright intellect - view and treat game-rules as one monolithic block, instead of separating the layers, as gamedesign-theory suggests:
- rules of simulation (lowest layer, defines the game)
- gameplay-rules (mid-layer, defines how players can adjust their level of fun)
- participation-rules (highest layer, defines who can or must not play, and how to enforce this, and/or how to motivate appropriate and discourage unappropriate behaviour)
Disallowing PvP, flagging \"you may kill me if you want\", etc. is on the gameplay-layer. But this does not discourage griefing, it just makes griefers more creative.
But if you affect griefers on the highest level - participation - you can really strike back. Griefers must be caught, expelled, and coming back from exile must *hurt*. If a griefers account is publicly deleted, and if there were anything, that made coming back a bad idea, *that* would make those people leave, and stop their actions.
The knack against griefing is, how to make griefing unattractive by gamedesign, and that means: Serious punishment.
PS does not have such, and so, griefers will be a fact of life. And as long as this is so, forbidding PvP won\'t help roleplayers in any way, it will just make the game less interesting.

[waa]

I get it Paxx.........


and I must say, very nice post, upon reading  it, it makes things more clear for the future of this game.........


and it sounds fun

[Frank]

[
 and so, griefers will be a fact of life. And as long as this is so, forbidding PvP won\'t help roleplayers in any way, it will just make the game less interesting.

I agree with you and i dont  really like they way paxx has discride the way the game is heading wiht PvP almost left out of the game.

I have posted how i think pk might work but by the looks of it i guess many people dont like my idea in the citys safe haven or something thread

[Frank]

wow paxx was right i just saw the new threads in the past couple of days and they dont even stray at attemting to come  up with new idea or explain the one they do post. there has even been post not realated to pvp or thieing.  I guess i havent been around long enough to see this sub fourm is worhtless

[Karii_Winterwalker]

I originally posted this on the \"PKing is essential.\" thread, but as this seems the best, most \"official\" thread on the topic, I will put it here.

Originally posted by Karii_Winterwalker

Originally posted by dying_inside
ummm... i would have to strongly disagree.  pking, yes itis fun but noits not essential.  if you just want to pk then you might as well play an action game rather than an rpg....

Perhaps you\'re right, if the \"role\" that you are playing is that of a person living in a world that defies the laws of nature (not physics; that is another thing entirely, and obviously, this is fantasy). How can one be an assassin if the best one can accomplish is to walk about asking targets \"Will you let me try to kill you?\" It is, quite simply, laughable. Currently, there is no dauntingly powerful town guard to apprehend criminals who are caught, so obviously this may pose something of a problem, and more obviously, players would whine to no end if they could be killed by a player they had not decided to duel, and could do nothing about it. To say that PKing is not a valid part of an RPG, however, is as devoid of common sense as saying the same of powerleveling. The essence is in the roleplaying, and so long as that requirement is met, everything else becomes not only acceptable, but appropriate, indeed an \"essential\" part of the game world, as those roles do indeed naturally exist, whether discouraged, tolerated, or encouraged.

I would actually be rather put out if I never needed to deal with an unsought attack or other unexpcted danger or situation, and it became clear that it was never intended that I would. What role is so sheltered that one does and has done to them only exactly what they choose, and who would honestly enjoy playing such a role? To be blunt, that would be pathetically boring, and I would be inclined to spend a large ammount of my time in Yliakum using it as a chat room, as I do now (and also as a testing grounds for the project, and it is currently exactly that). That is the current situation, but hardly a goal worthy of Talad\'s vision.

The game as it is, as has been stated many a time, is still in the very early stages of developement, and many things one might expect of a finished game are nowhere to be seen, and most of these are rather distant prospects. There is no organized society in Planeshift, no vast cities, no living politics, no wars and treaties, no NPC-run guilds with their own agendas, no schools, no houses, no live and shifting economy, no black market, no thieves, no assassins, no law enforcement, no laws...in short, none of the thrilling sense of a real, other world that is implied by the goals set for Planeshift as it has been described. It is a tech demo, and cannot yet support such things; but to say that they should never be included is...*shakes her head* I haven\'t the word for it. Depressingly cynical and bland, perhaps.