I spent a lot of time looking for a right guild and all seemed to have the same goals: help eachother & have fun together.
Not right! Those are the guilds that usually seem to shine over others, which doesn't mean they are the only ones, let alone the right ones... Perhaps you should have seeked a little deeper :p
Sorry, I couldn't resist ^_^It isn't off topic, really. If you join a guild named The Warriors, and say that you trained swords to defend yourself, why are you complaining about being attacked? That's just not logical. In the tutorial it even said that it was a law to be able to protect yourself and your property anyway, and as far as I'm concerned, you should play along with being attacked. In real life you can't just tell a guy mugging you, "Come back later, I'm busy"...that's just not realistic.
It is off topic, and personal.
And this is not real life, it's a game and you have the right to decide who to play it with, don't you?
You don't play with powerlevers and decline duels because you don't think it's he right way to play it, she may think otherwise and you ought to accept it as well. As simple.
But back to topic:
The biggest problem I see with RP fights, (and here I have to agree with Anumesa, all these last events have made me pretty sick of it all) is that most roleplayers involved in such kind of fights are unable to step out of their characters and gather a general point of view towards the whole game and the rest of the players. It doesn't really matter if your character dies, if this other character dies, or if all run away and the next day they take some beers at Kada El's altogether. When we decide to RP-fight we are mostly saying: dueling mechanics are yet in a very early state of development and we want to have fun with a fight for we are DEALING a way to make it FUN. Methods are unimportant if you are going to fight against a player you know well and are aware that will be using common sense. Sadly this is not the case most often because some players don't realise that what really cares is that EVERYBODY should be having fun with it, not only the ones who play supernaturally powerful characters and that are always meant to win. When there is a set winner beforehand the fight itself has no sense, the loosing party could all /die and that would make it much smoother and probably avoid the ooc rantings and consequences some of these fights have been bringing as of late.
Why do I vote for dice rolls in an RP fight?
Well, it's quite true that considering the already big amount of ooc comments needed to take one of these fights to a pleasant outcome, dice rolls do usually increase such and make it uglier. However, as I mentioned above not everybody is the kind of player who would even take a scratch, or who is about to let you make a move, or is playing a balanced character who may have flaws and even (oh my!!) some weaknesses. Therefore, I'd rather find a previous agreement among the players who are going to partake (in group chat or elsewhere, occ) about what dice to roll and how in each situation. I personally like to support my RP with training but I'm totally aware that not everybody has the same amount of time I do/had to train a character so I try to give every character the relevance their backgrounds drive me to (not meaning you can create a character and come to me pretending it's godlike just because you made a fancy description -.-). For instance, if you play a character who is skilled in weapon fighting and you are facing a powerful mage, it would make sense to me that you are rolling a s15 die for weapon attacks while he rolls a s10 and viceversa, you'd roll a s10 for defending from his s15 magic rolls. And why are rolls necessary at all? To avoid stuff like
this, even though when you play a godlike character dice may not help either, as you'd be rolling always more sides than your opponent ;)
The reason why non-rolled RP fights become a mess most of the time is because the third time a player realises he kept taking attacks for the sake of balance but none of his hit the target because such has a surprisingly incredible skill in avoiding absolutely everything, that player tends to be driven to either let himself be killed to stop the madness or start acting godlike himself.
As long as not everybody realises that balance is critical for providing a pleasant experience for everybody this problem will remain.
Why am I not fond of pvp dueling anymore?
Luck.
Lag.
Powerleveling.
Mechanics' early development.
Lack of fun.
Lack of realism.
Luck,
lag and
powerleveling deserve no more comments.
Mechanics' early development: As it's already been pointed out before, magics have no place in nowadays' dueling, neither armors or weapons have a realistic effect on the wielder. Examples: Players with lvl 60 in heavy armor will just move as quick as a player with lvl 60 (max. at this point) in leather armor, but instead will take MUCH less damage. You can nail a plate armor with a dagger just as good if not better than with a claymore. Etc...
Lack of fun: I've been into dueling for long and I've as well seen how roleplayed pvp duels happen and end. Normally, you spend some time trying to evaluate the lag in whatever map you are, then try to time your attacks if you can figure where the other player really is, then at some point you may have enough luck to hit your opponent and with some more luck, double hit and get rid of him with only one strike (usually after some minutes of running around). When such thing is done, the winning player normally will not roleplay any sort of harm suffered but most likely outer some taunts and brag about how strong he is, not even considering the chance of having been hurt or even scratched (hey, their HP is at 100%!). In an RP-fight there is rarely an unwounded character and even winners usually are hurt, if not have lost a part of their body, or suffered changes that will affect the future of that specific character and its surroundings.
Lack of realism: Honestly, sorting any roleplay having two people run around and jump like mad (maybe aimlessly!) with a huge sword in each hand doesn't make any sense to the viewer or other roleplayers involved, and if that would happen in the real world both would probably be caught and shut in an asylum for life :p
A dueler may bring another point of view: Such situation may be as stupid-looking as two people facing eachother, doing apparently nothing but using a chat box to type in. however, here does join something that may have never been considered by them: Imagination ;)
As a sidenote: I must thank Duraza/Xeonart for making of every single RP-fight a very exciting (and fair!) time. Respect! \o/
