A sincere discussion about Murder Counts, does it make sense

[tekai]

I solo pked' quite a bit today GK. I took about 9 counts by myself.

[Dagon]

You make the point that there are a lot of reds.. That is not really true. There have been mym pk Ganks, and Ace ganks, but there are still only probably a half dozen accual PK's, that PK to kill people for money instead of farming. This is a reasonable playstyle, and being that we dont have 1000+ people playing, represets a balanced play. People would get bored if they were able to farm off the hook and never get pked. People would not learn how to defend themselves and one day reach the PvP status thats required to compete in the group battles.

Disagree 100000%. 90% of the people logged into IRC at any given time are pks.. and there's no difference between a pk that pks for loot or just to ruin someone's time.. they are still a pk. There's no balanced play to speak of when you can't go anywhere or do anything without a pk showing up within 5 minutes.


People would get bored if they weren't getting pkd? Do you have official poll results to support that statement? I've never been asked if I would get bored not being pkd. I've been here for a few months now and still have not really done anything too adventurous, because I don't need the bother of dealing with you red morons ruining my time out. Maybe my goal in UO is not to be the best pvper here, but rather I'd like to venture into a dungeon and conquer every monster in there solo, without being bothered by some fag who's still raging about being the one that was always getting pkd 10 years ago. All of your e-ego's need some e-psychology if you have nothing better to do with your time than ruin someone elses.

And again, your assumption that anyone and everyone wants to "compete in the group battles" is self centered.

Sorry tekai/Olman/Bina but you are full of hypocrisy.. you love to go out and ruin everyone else's day pking them so they can't enjoy the game in the way they want to, but when it comes around to being on the receiving end of getting killed

[07:53] <OlmanRiver> i do, i rageloged when i died to the gank the second time on bina
[07:53] <OlmanRiver> but i came back a week later
[07:54] <OlmanRiver> I havent played nearly as much though, with so many PK ganks roaming its to risky to pull out my statloss reds

you rage quit.. just like felix did..

every pk here is only a pk because they fight players that aren't pvpers, there's no challenge in that. your "ability to overpower other players" is limited to non-pvpers that have no skill. if that's really what gets you excited about this game then i'm sorry for you all, seriously. if anyone actually gives a good fight it's Kal Ort Por for you (r-, lol).. or if you dont make it out of course its de-sync, lag, client crash, or any other excuse other than you just got got by someone that was better than you that time.

[tekai]

Pull up the PK list and give me a list of all the PKs that you think are everywhere then.

3 of them are me, 3 of them are luca, 3 of them are felix, 2 of them are Teph, 2 are conan, Theres Jesus Crist, the two new ones (stranger and hobo) then theres the "revenge" charecters that don't really go pking like Malice, most of Ace ect. This is not a huge list.

Yeah I agree that the large group ganks roaming are no fun at all, you quoted my own post and i mentioned it earlier in the thread. They are not pks in the same sence as most of the rest of us. They do not go out solo for fun, and when they do run they always have heals preped and only 2 of them do the accual fighting if there is any risk.

Also, I never said i was an "awesome pvper" I'm a PK, i kill you on your farming charecter, thats what I'm for and its a valuable part of the UO experience. I'm very sorry you do not agree, trammel is >

As for my PVP Experience, I'm sure everyone on the boards thats fought me one time or another will agree that i'm not terrable and i'm getting better by the day. A lot of getting better has to do with learning timing on spells and intrupts. I'm sorry but you dont learn that by fighting people better then you, youll just die. you get better by killing people that are trying to run, which is 90% of end game fighting.

[GuardianKnight]

And i think this is a good time to end this thread, as it has gone off track and proven that no one can fully agree therefore proving that this kind of decision would be best left out of player hands.

[poogoblin]

Why would anyone want to dilute murder counts?

Has something changed in the last 4 days where the server is hurting for murderers?

[Nayee]

I think this is a fantastic idea. The forums work like this.

Person makes a real effort to start a debate about something and posts some very strong points.

Forum responds with a gavel saying NO!! IT'S NOT ERA ACCURATE"

It's just like arguing with a christian.

[Kaivan]

Since the goal of the server is to be accurate to the era with game mechanics, the primary filter for suggestions involving changes in mechanics is going to be a question of whether they are accurate or not, and murder counts is probably one of the biggest issues with respect to era accuracy (and not just era accuracy for T2A, era accuracy for nearly all of UO until AoS).

But assuming that this particular issue was hypothetically up for discussion, murder counts are a very important part of T2A gameplay. Given that importance, allowing reds to decay timers while logged off is very counter productive to that end. By allowing players to simply log off of their reds and continue to work off counts, you allow that player to log on to another character on that same account and continue playing, quite possibly on another red. Given that fact, and the problematic (and really unsolvable) issue associated with multi-clienting, taking this course of action would give reds an unprecedented ability to circumvent stat loss.


Beyond that point, here are some comments on each of the original points:

-afk dead reds give misleading info/statistics on who/how many people are online.

Players did macro counts off on OSI by staying logged in to their characters (and no, there was no anti-idle code per-se except for the fact that you would time out and lose connection from the game if no network activity was sent between you and the server such as something that would trigger on your journal) and were also responsible for creating an inflated population on OSI servers. The same is reflected here, and even if we discount the fact that it happened on OSI, the fact of the matter is that most of our inflated numbers (and we don't really have badly inflated numbers) almost certainly comes from players multi-clienting for reasons other than macroing off murder counts.

-leaving the computer running all day to drop these counts is very uneconomical in various ways.

Arguing the uneconomical aspects of macroing off murder counts is mainly an issue that is dealt with by the players on an individual level and does not really effect the server in a significant way (one could argue that games themselves are uneconomical).

-I assume but could be wrong, but all the dead afk clients logged in are contributing to UO's arch nemisis: lag.

The server as a whole is actually quite smooth. Reducing the online player count a small amount will not really improve the latency between you and the server more than a very slight amount.

-People are less compelled to return to the game after leaving to revivie their stat loss reds/start a new character.

This is one of the very important aspects of murder counts as a whole. Those who murder must either be willing to accept the consequences of murdering and be willing to deal with those consequences, or they must give up on that character after being subjected to the consequences of their actions. Allowing reds to circumvent the punishment for their actions any more than they currently do is not an acceptable option.

In essence, giving murderers the ability to work off murder counts while logged off will give those who murder an unprecedented ability to circumvent the consequences while still reaping the reward of their actions. In fact, if we were to consider alternative options at all, we would almost certainly increase the time duration needed to work off a count in order to curb the multi-clienting ability of players. Of course, this action would hurt the player who chooses to use only one PK character, and would invariably cause more trouble than it would solve. Essentially, there is no way to handle murder counts that will solve all of the problems, but there are certainly methods that would cause more complications than other methods.