Wednesday, September 23, 2009

PK, PPK, PK, PPK...

Player killing on Alter Aeon has always been limited to registration, and while we have various arenas and temporary PK, we also have permanent registration - known as PPK.

PK has never bothered me much, but it's never really interested me either. PPK on the other hand I've tried a couple of times. I could never get into it, and it also seemed like I could never get away from various instakill issues.

Instakill reared its ugly head again a few days ago, and after fixing the specific instakill bug, it occurred to me to simply cut all PK damage in half. That clearly reduces the instakill problem, yes? However, there are some problems.

The biggest of these is that the existing PPK population doesn't like it. There's a few of them that do, but largely the response has been negative. A number of them say that PPK has gone from a threatening, risky affair to an irritation they can easily and always run from and survive. Others note that the power to heal has been effectively doubled, giving casters with a lot of mana huge advantages. Both of these criticisms are good, and sufficient to convince me to revert the change.

However, the instakill problem still lives. The current consensus is that judicious limiting of various instakill mechanisms is the best way to go forward. Barring any major objections, we'll probably go that route.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You don't have to respond to this comment but in the change log you didn't differentiate between PK and PPK. Although i think things have all been sorted out, this has created an enormous amount of confusion in the past with reguards to the rules pages.

If we created a standard where permeant-PK is ALWAYS refered to as PPK and temporary-PK is ALWAYS refered to as PK, that would stop alot of potential confusion dead in its tracks.

Anonymous said...

With the exception of approximately 3 hard-to-run scrolls, instakilling already has been nerfed ever since the addition of lag-time associated with scrolls/staves/wands.
(and the new potion throwing dent)

Casting any of the high level offensive spells while in full clevel and hasted is just as nasty as any of the other alleged instakill methods currently
available.

Unknown said...

Instakilling will always be a problem unless other things are also changed.

It's not always about scrolls or potions.

One way to easily kill someone is to sneak up to a thief/warrior (or people in hit gear) while hes zerking, follow, then darken, and spamming spells. 9 times out of 10 that person dies.

The difference here is the darken spell, and the lack of getting out of zerk.

The amount of time it takes to drain MV while hitting takes very little time, especially if you are zerking and leaping (leaping also needs to be fixed but that's another matter) but you don't have time when a mage has dispeled all ur spells.

Add in a way for us to break zerk and a way for a thief/warrior to combat darken.

If that happens I think its fair to put the dmg back.

If you decide to remove the half damage then please also dent the various multi-spell scrolls (many hugely high level) the same as with potions.

Cu

Anonymous said...

I think limiting the effectiveness of disposables is indeed the way to go. This makes people depend more on their character and its innate abilities, rather than farming or buying scrolls/wands/potions. Scrolls and wands and potions still have very short lag times, especially if you are drinking potions rather than throwing them. My main point is that PPK should be more about your skills and creatively using your character, rather than buying or spending time collecting scrolls. Denting scrolls and wands is the way to go about achieving this.

Anonymous said...

"One way to easily kill someone is to sneak up to a thief/warrior (or people in hit gear) while hes zerking, follow, then darken, and spamming spells. 9 times out of 10 that person dies." Calina, that's called strategy.

There's nothing wrong with PPK the way it is now. A few high levels are just butthurt because they got killed by somebody with lower levels and their cry is "That's not fair!!" "I have more levels and better gear, I should always win! wah wah wah!"

Anonymous said...

Instakilling will always be a problem as long as there is somebody there to cry about it.

Unknown said...

I really don't call following someone and darkening a room 'strategy'.

Dennis Towne said...

Following someone and darkening a room is definitely strategy in my book. Hell, the Drow in the Forgotten Realms book series do it all the time - it's a generic default tactic.