PK Rule Changes, New Body Guard Profession, Invasion Mechanic Updates

[Daeron 1]

How's it going today everyone? I hope that it's going well for you all because I've been reading through the OOC section for a while and one big subject that everyone is controversial but very iffy is the matter of Player Killing and how it can be done. While some people believe that the site should be more canon, there are some who like it the way it is. Although there is nothing wrong with that, I've feel that I've brought up some valid points and ideas that could change the game as a whole and offer new features to the entire playerbase including Player Killers a minority of the website.

This post will be broken up into multiple parts so you can read each one individually even though they are all connected in one way or another.

 

PK Rule Changes

With the release of the 2.5 patch, the ability to kill a player anytime was introduced. With that being frowned upon, players have been working on alternatives to trying to balance this or to revert the change as a whole. While I believe that PK'ing should be possible, there should be a form of counterplay or even some sort of protection to lower leveled players. So to start things off it was introduced that there would be Level Protection. This would last you until X level, as that hasn't been confirmed what level it would keep you safe until, but it would allow you to stay safe from death due to another player's direct action up until a certain point in the game. This was brought up so players that come new to the site aren't guaranteed to be killed as soon as they start and to make some friends that would be willing to party up with them.

Some people also brought up the idea of removing party tags altogether, which would let anyone join in a thread whenever (Invasion Mechanic) without the need to be invited to the thread. However, just because a player can be in a thread doesn't mean that they should be able to slaughter everyone in there just because they may or may not be strong enough to do that. We as a community to make this site feel more cannon yet nobody is willing to say how we can do this. That's why I'm here today with you.

 

Thread Invasion Mechanic

Thread Invasion is the new mechanic being discussed with the upcoming patch that is to cover mostly PKing and changes to the party system. Invasion allowed a player to enter any thread they pleased with a Cooldown of 3 threads that must be logged in their journal. This means that anyone can show up in your thread and pose a threat to attacking you. That's where Level Protection kicks in effective until X levels, making it impossible for a player to invade their thread. However after this protection wears off, this would mean you're fair game right? While some people immediately don't think that allowing this is a good idea I have yet another idea to possibly fixing this.

Initially, the invading player could join and if they had enough posts in the thread they could still earn SP, but are restricted from earning Col in that thread with the exception that if the invader chose to attack a player it was RP combat only, meaning there were no dice and there wasn't any way to kill a player through this without permission. When a player is forced to ask another if they can kill them I'm willing to bet most players will deny the request or hands down ignore them. I ask you all this, when was the last time you RP'd with someone stronger than you and were worried they could attack you at any time? Most likely never, you were too focused on the monster that was you were outleveled by, this includes Player Killers. People never fear going on an adventure because there's nothing to fear if you're stronger than the floor unless you're doing a miniboss that you spawned for yourself or a group boss from a dungeon. 

If we remove the rewards period for invading, this makes it so that your only reason for joining a thread is to invade them and not getting SP where you can. Making it easily able to be abused to just join a thread early on and do enough posts for SP since you can't kill players. If anything this would only prolong the duration of some threads because an unexpected guest is now in the posting rotation. If we add in a new profession such as my idea of creating a Bodyguard profession could be avoided.

 

Bodyguard Profession

The Bodyguard profession is my method to try and fix this entire idea while still keeping the Thread Invasion mechanic alive and capable of being implemented without problems. Part of the cannon in SAO was that there were PK guilds and there were also Protection guilds, that would do nothing but protect lower leveled players for a fee of some sort. With the Thread Invasion, this lets PK guilds actually coordinate strikes on a player or a group of players. Upon a player choosing to be a Bodyguard, they are given a new skill that is exclusive to the profession called <<Invasion Defense>>.

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<<Invasion Defense>>

Upon a player invading a thread and targeting a player without this skill, a Bodyguard grants an effect for all players in his party that limits the amount of damage a player can take at once (based on a percentage of their current health) as well as bonuses to escape and resistance to movement impairing effects.

This does 3 things for players who have hired a bodyguard to join their party:

• Denies the attacker the ability to one-shot the player, even if they normally could for at least 3 turns their damage is limited.
• Gives the targets a chance to escape from the scene towards a Safe Zone or fight if they choose to.
• Limits an invader from stunning, freezing, paralyzing them for the duration of this thread.

This buff can only be applied to a person once per three threads, and if they were protected by a bodyguard both the bodyguard AND the players in his party must log it in their journals as (Protected). To make sure the lower leveled players or players being targeted aren't able to engage in combat with the buff on them, if they choose to retaliate by engaging in combat with the attacker, the buff immediately wears off and they are thus "consenting" the player that they wish to engage in combat.

To make it so Bodyguards can earn notoriety and actually become better for hire they also have a method of ranking up, as a result improving their <<Invasion Defense>> skill.

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• [0-39 EXP] Rank 1 - Beginner Bodyguard: Buff Duration 3 turns, Damage Cap 20% of Target's Current Health, +1 to LD when running away
• [40-159 EXP] Rank 2 -  Assistant Bodyguard: Buff Duration 3 turns, Damage Cap 15% of Target's Current Health, +1 to LD when running away
• [160-539 EXP] Rank 3 - Professional Bodyguard: Buff Duration 4 turns, Damage Cap 15% of Target's Current Health, +2 to LD when running away
• [640-2559 EXP] Rank 4 - High Mentor Bodyguard: Buff Duration 4 turns, Damage Cap 10% of Target's Current Health, +2 to LD when running away
• [2560+ EXP] Rank 5 - Master Bodyguard: Buff Duration 5 turns, Damage Cap 10% of Target's Current Health, +3 to LD when running away

This should also provide us with the ability to escape or run away now when you are invaded. Upon rolling your LD to run away as you are now in combat that you had not intended to be in, you need at least a 12 to successfully escape from the fight. Meanwhile, the Bodyguard may choose to stall out the attacker or if they are stronger than the PK'er may fight them and kill them without turning Orange as they are killing to protect the person they were hired to keep alive.

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Upon successfully protecting a player, the Bodyguard rolls the LD at the end of the Invasion to see how much experience they have earned, meaning they can earn anywhere from 1 to 20 experience per successful player protected in their party. For a player to count towards giving experience, they must have been attacked by the Invader and make it out alive. Each player applies a separate amount of experience earned for the bodyguard.

 

 

This amount of information was provided from the entire community and I simply thought of a way to put it all to use and possibly provide an alternative that could potentially please all players and playstyles, as well as adding in a new profession to choose from. I don't want to see PKing become obsolete, but I also don't want it to be too easy, so I felt like something could be done and thought of to improve the site and make it more like cannon while keeping in mind that we are a text based RP community.

I would absolutely love to read your feedback and I want to see what we could change or what we could do to make this happen. All credits given to the community because without you none of this would ever be possible.

Sincerely, your friendliest Player Killer.

- Daeron

[Itzal 0]

Reading over this they are very interesting ideas and I like a lot of what I see.  However at the same time, it's been decided by the majority of the community to avoid killing without OOC permission.  In fact it was nearly a landslide decision.  I honestly believe that to keep this method, we should insert two different tags:  One tag informs players that they are fine with their thread being invaded, but do not wish to be killed (or enter a battle to the death) without permission first.  This not only allows pkers to invade threads and 'scare' players for rp purposes, (there will be tokens players can use on their important threads, such as a personal quest, time off with a girlfriend/wife, etc.) but also allow players to invade a thread and rescue a player who bit off more than he/she could chew and assist them with finishing it, though I feel like if this happens, if a quest is invaded by a player assisting with the quest, the rewards are reduced by some amount.

Then there is the tag for players who enjoy a challenge, or the thrill of danger.  This tag informs players that they are fine with an invasion, and are fine with players entering a battle to the death with them.  Players should always have the freedom to choose whether or not they can be assaulted and killed.  That (as I've already mentioned) was already voted and decided upon.  Players who are fine with pk attempts can get the bodyguard option, making it difficult for players who attempt to attack out of surprise to have an edge.

I do feel like lower leveled players should be immune to invasions, such as levels 1-5 or 1-10. 

[Jomei 0]

I am still compiling a list of my own ideas to compromise between the two suggested Player Killing posts, however I will put out  suggestions for a replacement to the Bodyguard Profession. I love the idea, don't get me wrong.. but I can see it not being taken by newer players, thinking that they may have the risk of being killed as well.

And idea I had, which i feel has been mentioned before, is that once the player killer has entered the thread, the victim has an opportunity to call upon a savior (In the case that they are alone, or among other lower leveled players.) Once contacted, the Savior (who must be the next person to reply to the post, but has only 24 hours to do so before the PKer acts again) From there, the Savior must post 3 times before finding the player; one to accept/decline the responsibility of saving them, 2 to find the player. From here, the Player Killer can either call off the pursuit, or attack the Savior. This goes hand in hand with a lot of other ideas of mine, but this is one that i felt like sharing for now.

For example:

• Jomei posts.
• Daeron invades with intent to kill Jomei (Takes however many posts to actually catch him)
• [At this point, the player is aware they are being pursued, and may call upon a savior] Jomei messages (In character) Calrex, and tags him in the post.
• Calrex has 24 hours to be the next post in the thread, he accepts Jomei's request, and rushes out to find him.
• Daeron posts.
• Jomei posts
• Calrex posts (1/2 finding Jomei)
• Daeron posts
• Jomei posts
• Calrex posts (Finds Jomei.)
• Daeron posts, finds Jomei and Calrex. Daeron cannot attack Jomei until Calrex has been killed. 

 

 

[Endilix 0]

Okay, so I was mulling over this a lot today at work after reading the thread, and thinking about game design as a whole, for both MMOs and text based or pen and paper RPGs. The main conclusion I came to is that we need to find a way to make PVP real and interesting without forsaking player values. There's a few main points being bandied about:

On the side of the PKers

• SAO is not a nice game. It is a dangerous prison that had no rules. People could kill indiscriminately and get away with it unless a protection guild or jailers stopped them.
• Player killers don't exist or are dwindling. Nobody can properly play a villain storyline because doing so requires the permission to make it happen.
• 9/10 players will not say yes to letting you kill their character(s).
• SAO doesn't feel dangerous.

On the side of PK prevention

• SAO-RPG, as a text based game, cannot be exactly like SAO because of a few key factors:
  • Player retention
  • Reality factors inhibit gameplay (such as imprisonment)
  • Busy lives make playing the game already difficult for many people, without having to worry about added complications
  • Not everyone wants to RP with everyone (sad but true)
• Unfair deaths have basically ruined the idea of PKs in most people's minds. Meaning permissions are important.
• Ideas like tokens are too complicated or cumbersome to track and properly implement without staff and player headaches. Simplicity is the name of the game.

So I thought, and thought and thought. And it slowly started to come to me as I thought of EVE Online and the way they handle a fully functional PVP open world with semi-hardcore deaths. (For those who don't know, if you die in EVE, your character is resurrected, but you lose skill points and any ships and items you were flying with, some of which cost months of play.)

Yes, for those who are unaware of EVE or simply don't care (I don't blame you, for the record) it has a very fair and robust PVP system alongside its PVE content. Here's how it works:

EVE Online has what is called a "Security System".

In the image above, all the green and blue areas are "High Security." This is where the weakest PVE enemies are, and where much of the trading and low level gameplay happens. If you are attacked in High Security space, tons of guards come to your rescue and demolish the attacker within seconds, meaning that very few attacks happen in this space.

The orange areas above are "Low Security." This is where the intermediate PVE enemies are, more and rarer resources, and is basically your rural areas. If you are attacked here, a smaller group of guards show up, and they take longer to get there. Think of a comparison in our little world. If you're attacked right next to the city, five guards show up to defend you immediately. But if you're a few miles away in a forest, some guards might still show up, but maybe two, and it takes them a good two or three posts to reach you.

And then there's all the red space. "Null Security" or NullSec for short. The exact security level for each of those red dots is 0.0 on a scale of 0 to 1. If you are attacked, nobody shows up to save you. But, this is where the strongest and most rewarding PVE content is, and where the rarest and richest materials for crafting are. It creates a high risk, high reward situation.

Compare this to our modern day SAO-RPG. We live in a low risk, high reward situation. My character, as a level 16, can go to Floor 21 with some of the most dangerous monsters in the game and just gather T3 materials with nothing stopping me. No monsters will spawn unless I let them, no PKers will attack me unless I give them permission. I can just farm and never worry about danger. In a similar vein, a player never has to kill a single monster or leave the Town of Beginnings to level from one to infinity. You gain SP and Col (albeit at a slower rate) from doing nothing but writing. Which is fine! But it creates a scenario in which you never have to be in danger to win. Low risk, high reward.

So here's why I like EVE Online. It captures this idea of, "I don't ever have to put myself in danger to play the entire game." that we currently use in SAO-RPG to this day, but dangles nice rewards in the dangerous places to make you want to leave your comfort zone. So here's my proposal:

• Leave the core SAO-RPG experience as it is. Nothing is wrong with it as a whole. Aside from pushing the PKers out into the cold, SAO's ruleset and rewards system is okay. We don't need to be fixing what isn't broken. Basically, life in "High Security". You can play the whole game, for baseline rewards, with little to no risk or danger to you.
• Create a new tag called: [Lawless Territory] or [LT] for short. Here's what this does:
  • Allows for your characters to consentually enter a part of the game where you are no longer protected by the game. No longer protected by permission. All you have is your own wits, or those of your friends.
  • All LT threads are open. This is where Invasion Bodyguards would be important and would be probably necessary.
  • You decide on an LT "value" similar to a "Security Value" in EVE Online set on a scale of 0 to 10. 0 is the lowest. You want to make sure guards are on hand to help you? Set your LT Value to 8, and if you're attacked NPC guards will show up to help. Want the most danger but highest rewards? Set your LT value to 0. Guards will never help, but you can get some great rewards. This leads into the next point.
  • All LT threads have their rewards increased by a balanced value decided on by staff, based on the LT value. High risk, high reward. Arbitrarily, this could mean you get 20% extra Col for your thread for a value 8 thread. Or 20% extra Col per kill, etc. 100% extra bonuses if you do a 0 value LT.

And this is all just a thought, but it would create more compromise. The community doesn't want to be forced into allowing for their own death. But if you put a nice juicy steak at the end of some swinging blade traps, you'll get some that are tantalized enough to risk being PKed to get it. And it would give people who want this stuff, like @Daeron a place to play. To see the challenge they want realized. And if it's something where you place the players at the helm, and they decide that they want to enter the Lawless Territories on their own, then they don't feel so pressured or put off, and they have nobody to blame but themselves for the danger.

Long story short, I want to see SAO be SAO, but I understand that it isn't for everyone. Some people just want to write their nice romance stories in the Town of Beginnings. Which is great. I love these people as much as I love people like Daeron. And I want everyone to have a place to play. So I do hope you'll consider my idea and help refine it so that we can see the PVPers have a proper home here too.