[MUD-Dev] Striving for originality

[Matt Mihaly]

On Thu, 6 Jun 2002 szii at sziisoft.com wrote:
> From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>
 
>> *Gets annoyed* That's a load of crap.  Pulling up some stats, I
>> see that in the past month there have been 16679 PK deaths, for
>> an average of 555 a day (on Achaea). Given that we get about 1400
>> characters/day logging in, that's every character dying to PK
>> every 3 days, on average.
 
> Please note the "according to the few imms and players I chatted
> with."  Didn't mean to offend you, I was just stating my own
> personal experience.  I wonder why, if you're pulling ~555 pk
> deaths a day do people consider PvP dead there?  It was an open
> chat channel...maybe I just hit an off-peak lull in the
> playerbase.  Dunno about the imms though.  *shrug* Either way, I
> didn't mean to offend you.

Oh, I wasn't offended. Just annoyed that some of our players have
that perception.
 
>> The players who think "PK is dead" are inevitably the players who
>> are much more interested in bullying people than in using PK as a
>> roleplaying tool. They like to engage in that ridiculous age-old
>> MUD
 
> I disagree.  PK != bullying.  The best fights are against similar
> level/gear opponents.  Mind you, I left Sullon Zek (no rules PvP
> server) to get back into MUDs so I'm not a "bully" as you state.
> (At least, I don't consider myself so.)  If you'd like, I'd love
> to hear your thoughts on the Achaea PvP system and what you've run
> into via offlist emails.

I wasn't referring to players generally. I was referring to Achaea
players specifically. PK definitely is not the same thing as
bullying, but the people who want unlimited PK are bullies. I don't
see any way around it. They want to prey upon people who won't agree
to fight against them. If they were -purely- interested in PK,
what's the problem? Go find other people who are purely interested
in PK, and kill each other.

No, what they want is to hurt people who are weaker than them, not
PK. This is made pretty clear by taking away their PK
abilities. They immediately start trying to steal from people, grief
them in other ways, etc. (I'm referring here to the subset of PKers
who are in it for the bullying.)

> If I truly wanted to grief under your ruleset, as confirmed by the
> Imms, all I have to do is piss a bunch of people off via chat
> channels.  I can start a verbal war, just not a physical one.  I
> can verbally harass people, but not attack them in-game.  I can
> make someone mad enough that THEY contract a hit on ME and then
> I'm good to go.

I don't think you read rule #9 well enough. There are no
loopholes. We said so. Your strategy will work once or twice, but if
you're harrassing people via communication, you'll have your voice
removed.
 
>> What these rules have the net effect of doing is preventing
>> people from killing someone else for less than what we consider a
>> good reason. Well, it doesn't actually prevent people from doing
>> so, but it does discourage people from doing it.

> Actually, elsewhere in the rules it states that random attacks and
> such are punishable by ban/zappage.  Even should something happen
> I have the option of just reporting it and watching the fury of
> the Gods "make that person's life very difficult."

Yep. That's what I mean.
 
> So with all of that said, it's EXTREMELY difficult to start a
> fight and possibly why the players at that time felt that PvP was
> all but dead on Achaea.

It's not hard at all to start a fight, that's my point. It IS
extremely difficult to go out and kill someone with no good reason,
and escape punishment by the admins. I see no reason to tolerate
idiots who just want to randomly kill people. PK clearly isn't dead,
given the stats I quoted, but random bullying most certainly is
dead. (I should also point out that there are many other PvP
mechanisms besides PK. PK is a small subset of PvP.)

I mean, when insulting someone is a good enough reason to get you
killed, it's difficult to claim it's hard to start a fight. Further,
since stealing is legal, you can kill someone for stealing from
you. You can go after Champions and Assassins anytime you want, as
it's open season on them. You can find someone who WANTS to fight
you (what a concept that is to bullies). You can kill anyone, any
time, who is standing at a Landmark during Landmarking season. You
can kill someone who has attacked your husband while you're standing
there.

--matt

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