Don't mess with trolls: A cautionary tale

[Boas]

These are things I knew beforehand and should have taken into consideration. I didn't prepare, and I paid the price.

No, this is bad game design. A game with permadeath should not force you to make throwaway helper characters. That defeats the whole point of permadeath in the first place. The game should just give you a decent chance at survival if you make the right decisions, and trolls apparently not despawning nowadays is just bullshit. In World 7 (back when trolls still despawned), I once mined out a troll right inside my cave home. What was I supposed to do if the troll hadn't despawned after I had logged out for a couple hours? Should I have just abandoned everything I had without even attempting to recover anything (as death in such a scenario would mean an infinite loop of deaths as I my successor would spawn too close to the troll)? I had a cave home in early w9 as well; I guess I should consider myself lucky I didn't get stuck in a situation that made by game unplayable by sheer chance.

Well, we can have a discussion about whether it's good or bad game design, but the fact of the matter is that this is how the game works now. Players just have to deal with it, and I didn't deal with it properly.

Don't get be wrong, there's a lot about the whole situation that makes me say "that's a bunch of BULLSHIT." I'd say my root cause of frustration in this game is that you're forced to dump so much effort into a character for the sake of advancement, but that effort doesn't necessarily translate to survivability. 5 months played since my last death and 4.7 million LP didn't mean shit when I was getting reamed out by that fat knobby troll dick.

Compounding the issue is the knowledge that a different playstyle -- joining a village and having access to resources one might not otherwise have -- gives other players a tremendous advantage and allows them to recover a loss much more quickly. As a casual player without alts or powerful friends, just leaving your palisades is a Damoclean ordeal, being a hair's breadth from losing it all.

[sMartins]

Yeah i see what you are talking about but i also think that without the risk of losing everything this game would not be the same....it would just be another MMO, like many other.

[AriZona]

... do you still want to mine ?

[Boas]

... do you still want to mine ?

Yeah, I like mining. It's relaxing to me.

Until, you know...

[VDZ]

Compounding the issue is the knowledge that a different playstyle -- joining a village and having access to resources one might not otherwise have -- gives other players a tremendous advantage and allows them to recover a loss much more quickly.

You can recover from a death as a hermit just fine. Sure, not as easily as if you would in a village, but you keep all your possessions other than the ones you were carrying.

As a casual player without alts or powerful friends, just leaving your palisades is a Damoclean ordeal, being a hair's breadth from losing it all.

And that's fine and it's how it's supposed to be, as long as death can be avoided by playing well. The only problem with trolls is that they can kill you even without any mistakes made on your part, and this whole thing is solely based on chance.

Yeah i see what you are talking about but i also think that without the risk of losing everything this game would not be the same....it would just be another MMO, like many other.

Trolls and other stuff that encourages alt use just reduce the impact of death, as when you die you'll only lose an alt rather than a genuine character you spent serious effort on.

[AriZona]

I like mining and exploring too. But thought about trolls never let me while down there...
...

[DaniAngione]

Trolls are such a broken thing, with their stupid strength and low quality, lol. That's why I mine with an alt.

And I've never used a horse to mine, good to know that I shouldn't either

[AriZona]

Silly question: what is 'alt' ?
thx

[eXmart]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=alt

alt = Alternative characters . In this case, another character created purely for mining purposes.

[AriZona]

Thx.