One of these days you're going to have to ask yourself these questions J&L.
Do you want this game to grow? Do you want players to not resolve issues diplomatically and instead to just run around killing everything and anything they see? Do you want to continue to allow PKers free reign to do literally anything, unimpeded, with impunity?
Right now, how the game works is like this. PKers go out and they simply slaughter anybody they come across. They can do this because there is no threat to them. None. None whatsoever. They know that most people have 0 chance against them, combat is too complex that players who don't have a vet teaching them how to play won't even have a clue how outmatched they are vs people who do know what they're doing.
So, it falls to you guys to make what will be an 'unpopular' decision amongst the PK loving audience that this game has, of which most of this forums most frequent posters are those very people. Same with discord too, they're the most vocal there, so however you look at this it's going to be met with them doing everything they can to stop any of these changes from happening.
I like PvP. I like PKing too. But I also like diplomacy, and I don't believe you made this game with the intention of PKers just running around and slaughtering everybody.
It's time to put into place some deterrents. Do you know the number 1 reason why the civilized world isn't filled with murderers? You'd be naive to think that it's because people are all just good hearted. No, the number 1 reason why murder is rare is because it really fucking sucks to get caught murdering. Like really badly.
Murder in H&H should be a last resort or something that you'd be willing to do to get rid of somebody who is really worth the downsides of going through with it.
So let's discuss some ways to make murder not so common.
Here's some examples I came up with. Bear in mind if your first thought is "Wow those sound like they really suck!" well obviously, that's the point of a deterrent.
1. In the case of Murder, instead of giving somebody the usual Red Handed debuff you give them a Murderer debuff (Could call it 'On the run') that forbids them from using their hearth teleporting for the ENTIRE duration that it takes for a Murder scent to disappear.
What does this accomplish? Well for one it just really fucking sucks to have. Everybody uses their hearth teleporting quite liberally but also, it'll keep these guys on edge when they do decide to leave their walls as they can be tracked down and will have fewer options of escape. Also, after they've committed the murder there's no simple 'wait 20 minutes, hearth home to safety' shit, they're traveling home manually which runs the risk of them running into other hostiles and they can't just simply hearth out to escape.
The more I think of this the more I like it as a solid deterrent.
2. For the love of God do something with Nidbanes. Want an idea? Sure, why the fuck not, I'll give you an idea (keep in mind that this suggestion, nay entire post, is centralized around MURDER, though at some point I would like to see even running around and KOing people have some sort of actual effective negative associated with it too because that's an issue too, albeit a smaller one).
Nidbanes were created to give noobs some way to enact justice against players who, let's face it, they will never in a million years be able to best. PKers said it wasn't fair if these are too strong because - "m-muh character shouldn't get fucked by some shitter finding a mandrake and a bit of wax". I say if you're running around murdering everybody without thought or reason you should be punished for such actions. How do we balance it though? Because I agree a single murder shouldn't be punishable by death, that's retarded and Murder may as well be removed in that case. Murder serves a purpose in this game. Killing an enemy faction who you don't like should remain a thing. Killing them and putting them behind is one of the many reasons why Murder should remain, we don't want to kill the brutal nature of the game after all, we merely want to put some brakes on the wanton destruction of mindlessly killing everybody you see without any intention of interacting with them in some other way.
Here's the proposal...
Every time somebody murders, if they murder again within the 10 days of their murder scent being a thing, they gain another stack of some debuff. Perhaps the same debuff I mentioned in point number 1 that stops you from hearthing home. For each of these stacks they have another nidbane will be summoned when usually one would. All for the same cost btw. So if somebody has killed 4 people within those 10 days they'll have 4 stacks and so if somebody picks their scent up and Nidbanes them, then 4 Nidbanes will spawn and head over to the murderer instead of the usual 1. 1 Nidbane ain't shit. Getting multiple waves of these spooky ghouls sent your way, however? Better hope you have some good solid help otherwise you're fucked.
If even this proves too easy to handle for big groups, maybe big groups that spam AoE attacks, then just fuck them over by making them immune to AoE or some shit, the worlds your oyster here.
>B-b-but that sounds too unfair!
I think that if you want to go around killing people who have literally no chance against you, for no benefit of your own (because they were never a threat to you and they won't have any gear you want) then you should be willing to face the consequences. This change ONLY fucks over serial killers. Some guy who kills one person every now and then to defend himself isn't going to get screwed over by this. He won't even be affected by this change at all actually. This is aimed at people using their characters to run around and kill everybody indiscriminately for no fucking reason other than to kill them.
There you go. Two ideas. Let the tears flow. I'm going to pat myself on the back and take a page out of audiosmurfs book tbqhwy by +1ing my own post because by God I think it's a fucking excellent idea if I do say so myself.