Deterring murderers

[sabinati]

my alt got stolen from and i just tracked the scent and broke and stole all their shit because they didn't have it claimed! lol.

[Potjeh]

When was the last time anyone defended anyone else? Game mechanics simply don't work that way, all you can do is take revenge, which doesn't do shit when the people you're killing actually want to be killed.

[Haba]

I think the reason nobody did anything against WV is quite simple... Simple, and elegant.

It was essentially all because of WV's image. The whole map WV kept on getting a reputation of someone you never want to fuck with, because they were so effective at destruction. WV had to have uber chars because how else would they be so effective at it? WV had to grind 24/7, because nobody could have stats like that otherwise! The one attack on WV did no real damage, and was recovered from swifty...

Wrong.

A large majority of players simply is no interested in PVP. It has nothing to offer to them. They like the excitement of it, but they don't actually participate.

Average player plays a couple hours per day. That doesn't leave space for developing more than one character.

So if they get raided, they have the option of taking their mains and tearing down their attackers walls and... dying. In the process of dying they probably have the chance to wreck some shit and maybe summon and kill the perpetrators. But they'd still die.

Average player plays a few hours, plays with full change char and builds shit. Puts his points in crafting skills. So called "PVPer" plays with full tradition, has put most of his points into fighting skills and has nothing to lose. Another death, another powerful ancestor.

See the problem there? WV didn't remain untouched because they were so much better in "winning the game", or the masquerade of PR that they maintained. They remained untouched because they essentially were forcing an alien playing style on others. The only way to get back to them was to abandon the playing style you actually enjoyed.

[Avu]

I think the reason nobody did anything against WV is quite simple... Simple, and elegant.

It was essentially all because of WV's image. The whole map WV kept on getting a reputation of someone you never want to fuck with, because they were so effective at destruction. WV had to have uber chars because how else would they be so effective at it? WV had to grind 24/7, because nobody could have stats like that otherwise! The one attack on WV did no real damage, and was recovered from swifty...

Wrong.

A large majority of players simply is no interested in PVP. It has nothing to offer to them. They like the excitement of it, but they don't actually participate.

Average player plays a couple hours per day. That doesn't leave space for developing more than one character.

So if they get raided, they have the option of taking their mains and tearing down their attackers walls and... dying. In the process of dying they probably have the chance to wreck some shit and maybe summon and kill the perpetrators. But they'd still die.

Average player plays a few hours, plays with full change char and builds shit. Puts his points in crafting skills. So called "PVPer" plays with full tradition, has put most of his points into fighting skills and has nothing to lose. Another death, another powerful ancestor.

See the problem there? WV didn't remain untouched because they were so much better in "winning the game", or the masquerade of PR that they maintained. They remained untouched because they essentially were forcing an alien playing style on others. The only way to get back to them was to abandon the playing style you actually enjoyed.

This!

[minck1]

J&L set out to make a great PvP game. They have a great crafting game. Do they want to force it to be a pvp game or enhance the crafting game?

[Cookie]

Many people were attacked daily by smaller people... The only reason you didn't hear about them is because 2 main reasons...

1) you did hear about it, but you either forgot or was blamed on WV by a runestone, or something similarly silly. I cant remember how many topics I have seen of people getting stolen from, or in the IRC of people asking for help tracking.
2) they knew there wasnt squat they could do because they could not pay a tracker to exact justice. I wouldnt trust a random tracker anyways, because there is nothing stopping him from taking your payment and walking, laughing the whole time.

Oh, I know there were plenty of griefers and thieves wandering through. I didn't hear about any organized war where a whole town was hit, smashed around and lost any characters who were logged on other than when Cher, WV or Xan did it. Can you name any towns that were destroyed other than by those factions?

And it was absolutely true about not being able to pay a tracker to exact justice. Can you find anyone who says they paid a tracker and got robbed by the tracker? I think I would have seen indignant forum posts stating that RobinHood stole from me if that is what had happened. I think what happened is not that there were no trustworthy trackers, it's that the trackers wouldn't do it, period. My experience with trackers is that like crafters they had a big investment in their characters. Either they died when they left a murder scent from summoning a criminal, or they simply refused to do anything because they wouldn't risk leaving a scent and being tracked themself.

There was this whole thread about thieves shouldn't have to die for petty theft and nothing else deters them, but the root of that I'm guessing was that rangers shouldn't have to die for punishing petty theft, nicely mingled with people who wanted this to be a stealing game finding something in common to agree about.

I got a reasonably high level tracker to track a thief once. She tracked him and scolded him. Under threat of her possibly killing him he brought me four chests of poor q fibre which was obviously stolen goods from somewhere else. Presumably his storage alt still has my metal and cave bulbs in it. I'm going from my own experience here, but I'm still guessing that if every episode of CSI ended with a new and greener group of detectives being shot to death while at home in bed, the show would not have lasted a full season.


Given my one and only long ago discourse with the devs, my understanding is that they want plenty of peaceful farmers who don't get hit by criminals, so the emphasis on the crafting elements in this game are deliberate, but they also want to see how those peaceful farmers react to Attila the Hun or the Carker Family destroying their neighbourhood.

Quite honestly I think rather than debating how the game should go and could go, the only practical thing to do is to turn to the gods themselves (burning some sweet cedar wood and killing the highest q animal we can lure to the rock in order to add some more game play) and ask them outright: Are you two happy with the balance in the game at this time? If not where is the balance skewed? Are you happy that trackers don't track to prevent crime, but only to prevent justice? Are you happy that there is no pvp, only killer vs. victim? Anything you guys want to see more of? Anything you guys want to see less of?

But this is not what I am hearing. I am hearing I am frustrated: do this for me. You are full of shit! we don't need that! No, we need this! We're like a pack of kids in the back seat of a car squabbling over whether to go to the park and play soccer, or go to the rink and chase a puck around when we don't know if the adults in the front seat are actually on the way to the mall to buy us all new school shoes instead.

Okay, I get carried away with my illustrative images. My apologies. Hope it's not too confusing.

[Chakravanti]

Yeah it had very little to do with the 'WV reputation' and everything to do with the fact that making siege toons is just more than people gave a shit to bother with.

[Onionfighter]

I think the reason nobody did anything against WV is . . .

Your assumption is wrong and could have easily been corrected by looking at past forum posts.