Player Killing and Permadeath.

[Mast3rMind]

And that is the unfortunate mentality here now- everyone is trying to screw over everyone else.

[blister]

Originally posted by Mast3rMind
Another thing: I think if suddenly PKs were allowed with GM approval once more and the threat of mortality were suddenly thrown in the faces of everyone, peoples' first reaction would be to get to smacking the dummy/gull/fluvitur/rat/osecar/pod bettle as much as possible, to try and insulate themselves from any threat of immediate death.

Yes, but there's still one problem.. they're gonna die no matter how hard they try and train, most likely it'll happen while they train. There's always a bigger fish, or an entire school of little ones who can take out anyone. Then something marvelous happens, all that training the person who died performed, is gone. See, people want those with 2000+ ranks to dissapear, but without hurting anyone. Guess what? Not gonna happen.

[Mast3rMind]

This is true.

But I think the solution to powertraining would be a soft cap of sorts.

Increase the rate of diminishing returns once a person gets beyond rank 100 in a certain skill. That way you -could- go over rank 100... but what would be the point, really? You're not too much better off at rank 150 than someone at rank 100 is.

[blister]

Originally posted by Mast3rMind
And that is the unfortunate mentality here now- everyone is trying to screw over everyone else.

Always has been that way, at least the time I spent here. That's the other reason much more coding would need to be done to facilitate a much more realistic open-pk system. In Dartmud, anything you can buy, can be made. The equivalent of what is iron studded -everything- here, would be a suit of steel platemail there.

Thing is, you can't make your armor here, they can in Dartmud. The wanting to kill someone over their gear is all but eliminated. Doesn't stop pure griefplayers, but there's far fewer problems when 'loot' isn't such a pain in the ass. Just an example of a well done pk system and a poorly done one. When you just 'patch' together a pk system instead of building around it, it shows.

[Mast3rMind]

Metalworking is something being worked on by the GMs; how in-depth it is going to be I don't know. I for one know that I am (or so I've been told) particularly good at making up custom descriptions for weapons/armor/items in general. I'd love the ability to submit custom descriptions to the GMs and say maybe once or twice every RL month, some shopkeeper puts out some sort of custom item. I think that would help, if rare items are available to the general public for purchase and not only by spending rolepoints on them.

I forget, where you here before the move to skotos, blistasius(I like the nickname, pardon me)? I was here for about four or so months prior to the move, it seemed a friendlier, more cooperative place, not with this 'gimmegimmegimmegrabitall' attitude, or the kind of competitive place where everyone is trying to have the best, shiniest, newest, strongest stuff/person. I wish we could get it back to that attitude, but it appears that too many four(teen) year olds are playing the game.

[blister]

Originally posted by Mast3rMind
Increase the rate of diminishing returns once a person gets beyond rank 100 in a certain skill. That way you -could- go over rank 100... but what would be the point, really? You're not too much better off at rank 150 than someone at rank 100 is.

Uh.. that's so not true, there is a serious diminishing return already on high rank skills. Take a loot at any of the rank bonus lists.

That's why people train all-basics, which is the real demon. It's more fruitful just to train to 30 in each skill if you aren't loaded to shit with dependencies like knifers are, then put all the rest into just basics. Between a 100all and a 150 basics, 100 subs, there isn't much of a difference at all really, especially for the effectively harder to utilize weapons, like knives, cestus, and whip. Skill dependencies are a two edged sword though. The blessing in being a knifer is that your attacks start to crit like hellfire when you start maxing them. All-Basics training does blow ass though.

[blister]

Originally posted by Mast3rMind
I forget, where you here before the move to skotos, blistasius(I like the nickname, pardon me)? I was here for about four or so months prior to the move, it seemed a friendlier, more cooperative place, not with this 'gimmegimmegimmegrabitall' attitude, or the kind of competitive place where everyone is trying to have the best, shiniest, newest, strongest stuff/person. I wish we could get it back to that attitude, but it appears that too many four(teen) year olds are playing the game.

I don't know if the move had been made, but prior to 2001 I played for like two days, same name char as my first I made again in 2001. Can't say I'm a content specialist on that period though. ; )

People say a lot of things about the 'old days' though, and bad memories have tendency to be wiped from the slate. The old days will always be better, it's better that they're remembered that way too.

[Drage713]

Something I don't understand...

WTF is wrong with people that they get all pissy when someone spends their time training?! You earn your ranks, they're yours. People just wanna take em away.

Guess what!? If you are willing to spend the time to train hard, you will be good too! *gasp*

News Flash! If you are unable to be training 10 hours a day, well I'm sorry, but that isn't the problem of those who ARE able.

Just a few ramblings about my annoyances with people and their hate of powertraining. And if you try to call it bad RP to train, you're wrong. Training is Roleplaying. If you want to call Powertraining Bad RP, then your view of RP is very narrow. RP is ANYTHING WE DO INGAME, EXCEPT OOC TALK AND OOC REFERANCES.

Thank you. That is all.

BTW, I think PK should be just @request, GM looks at your story of whats been going on, and grants you a PK ticket on that person if you have enough reason. That's how it was wasn't it? Well that seems like it'd work to me.

[Mast3rMind]

Drage, powertraining is a problem because it upsets the balance of how the GMs worked out the combat system.

Players by and large are not supposed to be able to dismantle -every single NPC opponent- without some risk to them. The fact that characters that can have developed means things like Auto-5's and mob creep are implemented.

Furthermore, this is something to mirror reality- there -is- a point where your physical abilities go so far. I will equate the TEC combat system to the ranking in martial arts. A 3rd degree black belt versus a 6th degree black belt is not going to be a guaranteed asswhipping for the 3rd degree black belt. What it comes down to is the mentality/strategy of the two, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of their individual styles. That's how combat -should- be in TEC. Once you get to a certain point, you can't really get -too- much better. Your only advantages are the strengths/weaknesses of your weapon, your smarts (knowing your opponent and their strategy), as well as knowing how to exploit the weaknesses of your opponents weapon.

It's not the powertraining itself so much as the seemingly unlimited reward it gives.

[dunstvangeet]

The dimishing returns stop at Level 50, really...

This is the way that it works, as far as I know.

1-10 3 Bonus/Rank
11-30 2 Bonus/Rank
31-50 1 bonus/rank
50-?? 0.5 bonus/rank

If they were to do it so that they were more dimishing returns, such as

50-100 0.5 bonus/rank
101-200 0.1 bonus/rank
201-300 0.05 bonus/rank
301-??? 0.01 bonus/rank

It would do a lot to balance the combat system.

[Antonisus]

It's like I say Drage; People replace training with bitching and expect the same results.

However, I do agree with softcaps for just the reason Mast3rmind stated. Basics needs to be changed as well to something a little more realistic.

[Delirium]

My god, I agree with blister.

This is crazy.

Though, you really shouldn't knock permadeath and open PK until you've tried it. The way TEC is set up now, unfortunately, it can't support that kind of system. But there is NO better opportunity for realistic, get-into-your-character roleplay than a permadeath system.

Your actions have consequences, and unless you are very clever, your character will die. If you take stupid risks that your character probably wouldn't, guess what, they stand a good chance of suffering for that by dying.

People might say 'well what's so great about that'? What's so great about it is that the playerbase remains realistic and dynamic. You have new stories, new characters, new lives that are playing out all the time. You have a real feeling of danger when you get involved in something, you have a sense of 'would/should my character do this', you have IC consequences for your actions. You might miss a favorite character when they die, but on the up side, you have a whole new world of possibilities for your next one.

You have some characters that manage to stick around and become oldtimers, you have some that only manage to stay alive for a few weeks, you have those in between. And all are necessary to keep the gameworld from becoming stale.

Unfortunately, with the way TEC's combat (and entire skill) system is set up, this sort of environment is not feasible. Plus we have characters that have been around for ages and players that would likely throw absolute temper-tantrums over losing them. Also, GM supervision is simply not enough. Most MUDs have at LEAST thirteen GMs or so.. a few highlords, some overlords, and several storytellers, each with different levels of authority and clearly outlined duties. TEC doesn't have this (as far as I know) and thus the ability to keep up with and monitor the pbase suffers. As much as I would like to say the pbase should be able to monitor itself, the players shouldn't have to do everything to keep twinks, powergamers, and OOC idiots in line. GM means Game Master, which means they're supposed to be the ones overseeing and guiding the game along. Which means taking the responsibility of keeping it running as smoothly as possible and punishing abusive players, instead of giving them a slap on the wrist and letting them go free. Can't really blame the GMs for not having time as of now, though, because there simply aren't enough of them.

Not to mention, heck, TEC is running out of names for characters. In my not so humble opinion, TEC should do one of two things. A) go to a 'description' system where you choose keywords (from a long, long, long list, so that you have hundreds and hundreds of possibilities) for your person. For example, Shade (pulling this out of thin air) would be the 'diminutive, dark-skinned woman' or some sort. Or, B) Allow the same name to be used again if the original character that owned that name is dead. Could it be abused? Could it be confusing? Maybe. But then again, how realistic is it for NO ONE to be able to have the same name ever again?

Eh, I'm halfway drunk and rambling. But my basic point is, don't knock a decent permadeath system until you've tried it. It's wonderful for a game environment. Unfortunately a lot of things would have to change first. The sad fact is, what TEC needs most - a realistic PK system - just wouldn't work. The game's code is just too fundamentally screwed up as of now, and wouldn't be able to support it.

[Antonisus]

More GMs are needed, less if any need to come from the playerbase though.

[Drage713]

Thing about that though... If you go and exercise and work on your weaknesses IRL, you -can- overcome them.

[Antonisus]

Thats true, theres nothing stopping you from getting better but theres also only so far most people can humanly go. Anyway, thats better left for a discussion on real life. If I went on preaching what was humanly possible IG, people would say such things would give people and unfair advantage, unbalance mechanics and ruin the story and they would probably be right.

Soft caps are an excellent way of dealing with the problem because you still do get better, just at a reduced rate. And still, training your subskills to rank 500 instead of just your basics gives you a very nice advantage, it just takes time and a patience most people don't have for a game.