Killing NPCs

[Minereoy]

Why kill them anyway? Have you not read my post. Why let people kill them and then ban or do something else to them. Just don\'t let people kill them and we won\'t have a problem!

[Cha0s]

People should be able to kill them. Harnquist should also hire 4 huge Kran guards to stand around his shop.

I also like the idea of letting the player be PvPed by everyone nearby. This should last for several in-game months (but only in cities where the guards are aware of the player\'s action), #1, and #2, whenever the player dies (within said cities for said duration), they should lose everything they have.

To those that say, \"That\'s too extreme\" I say, \"You shouldn\'t have murdered a friendly NPC and stolen all of his stuff.\" This makes crime pretty rare, I\'d say, as there is a low success rate and a high penalty. Hey, that\'s just like real life...

[Minereoy]

I wouldn\'t make sense to let people kill harnquist and then PvP them and make them lose everything. Why let them kill harquist in the first place then! Just don\'t allow it and people won\'t. Or are you suggesting we allow people to do illegal things and punish them for it? Just don\'t let them kill harnquist and everything will be fine!

[Cha0s]

Because in real life, I can go up to my next door neighbor with a shotgun and blow his head off. A good RPG should be as immersive as possible, and it\'s more realistic to let people kill NPCs. It\'s also very realistic to exact a harsh punishment for this sort of action. Players that do this OOC should probably receive a warning and temporary ban (of a few days) as well.

[DivineLight]

Well letting players kill mercheants is only good if these things are implemented:
Player\'s Alignment: Good -> Neutral -> Evil.
Like our player can choose at char creation to which side he is. Say he chooses good so he is 100% aligned to Goodnes at start. Then he kills a merchean and he get some (-7%) decrease in Goodness, and some (+7%) increase in evilness. etc. So if a player is really Evil the guards aligned towards  Goodness will evade him on first sigh.
On the other hand he\'ll be welcomed from Evil ones.

Pick Lock skill: Then when the mercheant has died, the player can attempt to pick lock his chest to get his wares, that\'ll require high skills even higher for good mercheants.

This will surely be a job of thieves or rouges, no paladin will risk his reputation.

[Nikodemus]

How can you know who is good and who is evil?
What is the meaning of these words btw.? You should know it is very relative thing and in eyes of different people someone will be bad and in someone else good. In each city lives this and this type of people and most of them are mixed  personalities. Where somethink is a good act for one, someone else maybe see it very different.

Guards work is not to keep who is good and who is evil, but do this what people in a given city want. If they dont want to be killed, the guards will keep this from happening. And so on.....

Also i think bans and other GM punishments are highly unrealistic and thus shouldn\'t be allowed when someone is e.g. killing merchants. It is work of guards and concerned players who want to have merchants ^^.

If someone will be punished by a ban from some city, it doesn\'t mean he can\'t enter it at all. He only isn\'t supposed to do this under the penalty of death.

[DivineLight]

Orignally posted by: Nikodemus
How can you know who is good and who is evil?
What is the meaning of these words btw.?

Well in case of NPCs, a NPC asking you to assisinate that sharven in the Laanx temple will surely be identified as evil and you\'ll know by completing this quest you\'ll get a little bit aligned towards evil.
OTOH, a guard at hydlaa north gate asking you to hunt some wolves that attack the travelers at night outside the city will surely be identified as somewhat good by you.

For more presise info we can add that the player\'s/monster\'s reputation is shown in it\'s description window.

And yeah banning from GMs would surely break the setting.

[Cha0s]

I only suggested banning if the original action was out of character. I obviously agree that banning for IC killing of NPCs is wrong. However, I am guessing that most instances will be OOC which is why I mentioned it. Sadly, I have a feeling that making NPCs killable is more likely to be abused than used for RP, though I still think it should be done.

[Kiva]

Originally posted by Cha0s
I only suggested banning if the original action was out of character. I obviously agree that banning for IC killing of NPCs is wrong. However, I am guessing that most instances will be OOC which is why I mentioned it. Sadly, I have a feeling that making NPCs killable is more likely to be abused than used for RP, though I still think it should be done.

And who would you want to monitor if every NPC killing is IC or OOC? The GMs? Don\'t you think they have enough reasons to ban people as it is?

[Verrliit]

A solution to this problem is simple.

If a player kills a merchant, (and that should be a feat that is by no means an easy task) just announce a reward for the player\'s head, and the other players have something new to hunt, requiring detective work with NPCs, and having a time limit, or the criminal gets away with it.

Surely in the comprehensive modeling that is planned, there are criminals?

Isn\'t that what stealth skills are for?  (which for this to work properly, would have to keep system info for the fight with the NPC, private to the killer, or killers.)

A quest to locate a new merchant to replace the dead one, would also be a new diversion, even if it were not a welcome one.  

The inconvenience of not having the merchant for some time, would certainly crystallize a community opinion of those who kill friendly NPCs.  This would be the only penalty that would be noticed by some of our more juvenile players.

Trainer type and level for the dead NPC might change for his successor also, requiring a new trainer be found elsewhere as well, and Evil players would finally have something Evil to do, besides talk trash.  

Looting the dead  NPC must be possible, if you can kill them.  There is a weight limit after all.  And it makes no sense for everything brought to the NPC by players to still be there, either.

I can think of no action that is without potential to improve the game.  It is only a matter of conceiving how to manage those actions.

In an openly developed game, anything you can think of to do, should be possible.  Focus on how to handle it, not on forbidding it.

Only a player who is actually disruptive to game play should be banned.

[Loiness]

I agree that shop owners and quest npc should be unkillable to all.

But the other villagers that have no perpose what so ever should be killable and they should have stats like the rats and drop some money when you kill them that way we get something out of it besides exp.

That way we have something else to train on besides rats that there are to few of.

[derwoodly]

Bad Bad bad idea.

Killable merchants serve no purpose at all. They should not attack or be attacked.  To those who say it is more realistic, I say, PS is not the \"matrix\"  you have to have some short cuts.  NPC merchants are one of those shortcuts.   Mugging a merchant does not let you loot 100,000 rat corpses and million tria.  Merchants are a sink for all of the junk to go into. They are garbage disposals.  When monsters spawn, items are created, when you sell them to merchants they are destroyed. If for some reason you did kill a merchant. You would find nothing but that black hole that they put items in and get items out of.

[Pestilence]

Ban a player for killing an NPC? Who is thinking of these things?

Personally I don\'t care if you can or not. I think it\'s probably best to just keep it so you can\'t till perhaps the rest of the game is finished.

BUT if you do implement something like that you can\'t ban people from the game. You didn\'t break any gamerules seeing the game allows it so it should have ingame disadavantages. Like if you are seen you are open for everyone to kill you. To be on the guards bountylist and perhaps the other merchants wont trade with you.

Just imagine how hard the game will be if trainers and merchants stop giving you their services.

[Nikodemus]

Originally posted by derwoodly
Bad Bad bad idea.

Killable merchants serve no purpose at all. They should not attack or be attacked.  To those who say it is more realistic, I say, PS is not the \"matrix\"  you have to have some short cuts.  NPC merchants are one of those shortcuts.   Mugging a merchant does not let you loot 100,000 rat corpses and million tria.  Merchants are a sink for all of the junk to go into. They are garbage disposals.  When monsters spawn, items are created, when you sell them to merchants they are destroyed. If for some reason you did kill a merchant. You would find nothing but that black hole that they put items in and get items out of.

With this kind of thinking same as Bad Bad bad idea is possibility to run, because it allows us to kill faster. This creates many more nonsenses.

Purposes of killing NPC:
- getting needed trias
- make people think what to do to prevent killing of merchants (in game, not at forums asking devs for invisible bariers) to whom they sell their goods
- having fun
- creating logically build world where birds don\'t fly backwards because somebody thought it would be good idea *sarcasm*

Matrix isn\'t realistic, so i really don\'t know why do you say about it as argument agains people who want PS to be realistic game.

NPC merchants aren\'t shortcuts if the system of killing them is done in the rigt way. Shortcut is forbidding to kill them as it isn\'t hard to set. What do you fear? Greater challange of setting everythink right and keeping it balanced?

About mugging merchant. it all depends what the merchang had in his shop an how much time the thief had before the guards arrived.  This also make us to think if the merchant should really buy everything what people sell to him? Try to look at this from the source, study the world and try to see how it works.

Say yes to changes and don\'t deny them as you fear this what you dont know. Pick up the challenge and try to do this what other failed by learning on their mistakes.

[frostwolf10]

ban a player for killing NPC\'s for no good reason other than to annoy others, make life harder for others, or some malicious non-rp reason. not because they killed an NPC, if they were banned for killing an NPC once, then there would be a lot fewer newbies playing. I didn\'t say ban them for killing one, i said for constantly killing them... if some of you were referring to my post. and the enemy flag would allow people to mob him and kill him, unless he was trained in getting away, and then people who abuse there skills get punished, maybe not through banning but maybe through having them in jail or something like that. afterwards, they could be released. that would serve as a temporary banning. if they kill too many villager npc\'s (those that do nothing) then they could be jailed for longer periods, and if they persist, get banned from the city. unless they sneak back in with assasin or magic skills or a disguise, or they do some thing good for the town or they bribe the guards, knock the guards out, etc. or the town leader is corrupt