Player Killing in GW PvE

The PVP/PK element in Lineage 2 is actually its forte. Albeit free, its also regulated somehow.
1- as opposed to GW, Lineage 2 has very few instances, and conflict over available resources, hunting places...etc. is the core of the game.
2- if you attack another player, your name turns purple rendering you a legitimate target for the defending player and other players as well. Anyone participating in the fight becomes purple or "flagged". You do not need to activate that it just happens. If you cease fighting your name returns to its normal colour within seconds, it starts flashing before it finally turns white to warn attackers.
3- if you attack and kill a player who refuses to fight back then your name turns red and you acquire Karma. Karma needs to be cleared either by hunting or by getting killed yourself. The higher your PK count the more Karma you acquire per kill and the harder it is to remove it. Having karma means also free for all [players and town guards], i.e. anyone who spots you can try to kill you without acquiring karma himself for killing you, even if you do not defend yourself.
4- the horror of karma is, at 5 pk counts and higher, if killed a person with karma can drop items. This includes inventory items and equipped armour and jewlery, which are usable by other players or sellable in the market, I might add.
5- usually players with karma normally need help from guild members in the form of help "safely exp" until karma drops to 0 or they kill him in a safe place and give him back his dropped items. Killing a player with karma is the fastest way to remove it. A high level healer can rez him with little exp loss due to death then. If karma is high enough, he may have to be killed several times.
6- there is a "sin eater" quest to reduce pk count and thereby reduce acquired karma upon pk. But the quest is a pain in the ass.
7- clan[guild]/alliance wars mean large scale fights everywhere. If you are in a clan thats at war. You will be the laughing stock of the server if you chicken out of fights.
As you can see, you kill players according to this system at your own risk. Often you stand to lose a lot more than the pk'ee.

Again non of this is applicable to GW because it waqs made from the ground up to avoid conflict. PVP in GW is a sport.

Are you kidding me? hell no. this game has PvE and PvP for a reason. I've quit numerous games because of getting ganked by higher levels for no reason. Higher levels may not be the situation here, but some a-hole could easily get a few buddies and just grief me all afternoon.

Go home.

Ragequit much?

But seriously, it shouldn't be like that.

PK, spawn camping etc. is for children and people with no life. GW's lack of all that is why I chose it.

It plays more like a single player rpg game than an MMO, thus the CORPG tag. Hopefully GW2 maintains this system, but I can see it not happening.

I'm thinking of maybe 2 opposing factions that have the ability to interfere with the opposing faction's quests, npcs, and have the ability to kill them in any "contested territory." Oh wait I think there is already a game that does this....

All I can say is WoW just plain WoW.

Mark, the problem L2 has is that all things drop loot upon death - unless they changed it since I played. This means that someone that does nothing wrong still drops things from their inventry - including any adana earned. This was what always frustrated me when I played on any character but what eventually became my main. Most players don't have too much on them but their adana. And if they had been out farming for a little while it could be a reasonable amount. So you get pk'ed 100 times by the same guy they could and would pick you dry.

The karma system didn't and doesn't work too well because a lot of the people who pk don't care. More to the point if you have a neat grind spot getting rid of it, while time consuming, is hardly impossible.

WoW tried a similar system very soon after release when players complained about the same thing. I'm not sure whether it is still in place, would need a WoW player to confirm this. But basically it was a failure precisely because the people ganking and pking didn't care about it. Their fun was in ruining the gaming experience of other players.

This is exactly the problem any game with worldwide pvp faces. Pking is not about testing skills, it's about griefing. And given the general immaturity of a large chunk of the mmo population it happens far too frequenly frustrating a lot of players.

"Pking is not about testing skills, it's about griefing."

Truth

QFT.

Nothing more to say.

I've played games with this kinda system in it, so let me describe to those that haven't what it's like.

High lvl people camping in low lvl areas killing people that have no chance in hell in ever being able to kill them or telling them to pay them money to let them live.

Some of these high lvl people will go out of their way to find the same low lvl & kill them over & over & over, making it impossible for the low lvl to actually play the game.

People will wait until a target will aggro a group of monsters, then attack the player to ensure an easy victory.

As was said, PK is nothing more then a griefing system, if GW2 has it, Anet can kiss many players good-bye.

YOU WIN THE PRIZE, QFT! /sarcasmon I just wish you could heal enemies/kill teammates...It'd make Alliance Battles all the more dynamic, hai you dissed me ok I r kill u gud and we lose lololol nub /sarcasmoff........Just NO!!!!

Gw is just Perfect now way it is

I really hope not - PK'ing and the things that go along with it were why I hated so many other MMO's. The ones that used a PK flag (and WoW isn;t, by far, the first to think of that) ended up generally OK - but a lot of that depended on how it was handled with a party. Since we will have persistent parts of the world it shouldn't be hard to make a safe area and a non-safe area - I just do not think many will be in the non-safe areas - if they really want to PvP then they will, well, play PvP.

It is rare that anyone other than a PK'er like PK'ing in general. Some will have nice memories of beating one but generally have many more not doing so.

Truthfully this was a big factor that made me decide to turn to GW. Both myself and a friend been PKed very unfairly in an MMO. My husband got PKed by a high level in another game. Either for the loot or for kicks.

There should be no penalty for the victim - or rather benefit for the PKer, or it will only encourage bullying. If a game could protect the victim, and his items, while penalizing the attacker through the L2 system mentioned by Mark, I would think that it might be worth to have.

As much as I would like them to offer this as an "optional" feature, I just don't think it would work that well with rigid skillbars.

Imagine Mr. Wammo goes out to PvE with his skillbar all set for, um... PvE! Do you think he will be dumb enough to accept a duel from a wandering pker who's skillbar is set for "pwning nubs"?

If you can change your skillbar out of town, then maybe...

I am sorry, but if you can't win in pvp, give up GW, don't think about pking in pve.

Lineage II has open PvP and it has over 17million subscribers, I wouldn't call that destroyed. It's only restricted in towns yet there is a penalty for killing someone but it doesn't stop people.

Eve-Online holds the record for more concurrent users on one servers (About 42k I believe) also has open PvP and it didn't ruin it. It's also not restricted you can shot anyone ANYWHERE you like, granted in a high security system you will also lose your ship but that doesn't stop people from doing it.

You only have a chance to drop your items when you die if you have a PK count of 5 or higher they changed it a while back.

Regarding Lineage II, the "Karma" system/murder flagging gives real disadvantages should you die. Ultima Online was much more open in this regard, L2 really makes you pay for it.

But you are right, it is probably the example for a MMO where PvP is an integral part, I like the castle siege stuff a lot. Unfortunately the game did never became too popular in the western world, but probably because of other issues, I think it was just too much grind for westerners.


Regarding EVE and PvP:

This is the biggest lie in the whole gaming industry. PvP is there, but I want to show you the numbers. It is 90% carebears vs 10% PvPers. Yet you get the impression all people are pvping in EVE.

90% or more stay in safe empire space - I will upload a pic, give me a moment.

Edit: Did not find the July 2007 pic, but I still have one, the situation did change a bit, since the introduction of jump drive ships:



Explanation: The "inner" areas of the galaxy are basically non-PvP, so called 0.5+ space. below 0.4, you can be attacked without police npcs interfering. In 0.0, it is free for all. 0.0 is the very outskirts of the galaxy.
Nowadays EVE has some 30k players (32k top iirc), but the graphic still looks like that!

Despite an update that shows lower densities of players more brightly, 0.0 is still mostly restricted to bigger companies. For most players the challenge is getting through the "gate camps" to 0.4 space and 0.0 and back. This might be intentional, some systems are real bottlenecks to huge areas. Once you are through, you are quite safe - nobody will be there to go for you.

so you're implying that players can kill each other?
whaw
so i can see alrdy guilds mobbing up to you to kill you right after you leave a city
i'm not willing to get shred to pieces by a mob of guilds
how about the new kids?
they won't have a chance

So because PK'ing comes in, ignore list is out? Wtf? You could also do as Bryant suggested - flag whether you want PK'ing enabled or not.

I personally like the idea as it keeps people on their toes. Think how RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing boringly easy PvE is - if someone could run at you at any minute, it becomes much more interesting.

Agreed.

GW was designed since the beginning to offer a game to those who wanted to get rid of such crap, which afflicted most of the other MMOs.

Now, after 3 years, someone comes to a GW forum, forgetting all the basic foundations of GW, and asks for this.

There are tons of PK, KS, KM games around.

GW is GW because such things are not allowed.