As everyone has had a chance to get acquainted with the Avenger Justice System, I'd like to hear how people are viewing PK in Lusternia. Too much? Too strict? Just right? Basically, my vision was that the Avenger would protect those on the prime material plane. He'd look the other way upon the first PK, giving the perpetrator the benefit of the doubt that it was for an RP reason. This would give you the choice to be protected by the Avenger for one month or to attack back (and thus losing the protection).

The xp loss of being killed by the avenger is much more than what was gained by killing someone, so we figured that'd be a disincentive to ignore the Avenger. But we've anecdotally heard reports that PK is so heavy in Lusternia that it is making life miserable for some. Whether these reports are exaggerated or not, we will endeavor to make Lusternia an enjoyable atmosphere for everyone.

Please share your thoughts, anecdotes, and solutions.

Group combat still does not work, in my opinion. I usually have to sit there and watch my allies die before I could hti the people attacking them, of course I know fixing that would be very complicated, but it is also frustrating.

It might have some slight technical bugs in it left, but the idea absolutely rocks. Please let's not get issues for PK into Lusternia, just upgrade the amount of exp you lose from dying to the Avenger greatly, everything but issues .

The Avenger system seems pretty broken as it is.

As Silvanus said, group combat still doesn't work. I will have to pretty much sit there during a village raid, until one of the enemies decides to attack me and get rid of the suspect statius, or I can just give them vengence for something that was entirely IC and warranted.

Also, as the system is set up, a person can enter a village, say Acknor, and kill its denizens all they want. As soon as someone comes to defend, all they have to do is step out of that village, and anyone who kills them will give them suspect. A possible solution to this is to make people have 5-10 minutes where anyone from the opposing city can kill them without fear of the avenger, if they have been in territory that they are enemied to and ran.

Another problem, as pointed out, was killing for roleplay reasons. Hypothetically, if someone is constantly insulting me over shouts for the whole world to hear, my character is probably going to want to do something about it. I kill them, and they start doing it again. Well that sucks for me; I either get to wait 30 IRL days (which I feel is way too long.), deal with them having a vengence on me, or let them sit and continue. None of those options are ideal, and it just encourages people to do stuff like that, since you can't really get back at them for it.

Finally, theres some offenses, that in some peoples opinion, warrant more than one death. An example: Person A gets a high position in a guild/city, withdraws 300,000 gold from the coffers, and quits whatever organization it is. One PK death doesn't even begin to make up for the offense against the organization, especially if the person doesn't repay what he stole. Now granted, that organization could rotate which people are killing him, but ideally, anyone from that organization should be able to kill him a few times for it.

Currently, 3 people have vengence on me. 16 people have me listed as a suspect. Every one of those kills has been from group combat during raids, or from chasing someone out of enemy territory.

Yeah, hope all that made sense.

(And I hope this post doesn't sound like I just want more fun ways to PK randomly, because I'm actually in favor of a system like Imperian has, where everything regarding PK is roleplay based.)

I think the problem arises when people in fact, do not care about the Avenger, or at the least do not fear him.

Example A: Visaeris comes in and kills a bout 15 Serenwilders.

Now if he had any fear of the Avenger, in my opinion, this would not be an option for him.

I think the Avenger should take double or even tripple the current amount of exp. it takes now. There should be avengers for each plane (however that do not take as much exp. as the one on the prime plane does). The avenger should also steal items from your corpse and mutilate your body to the point where it cannot be immolated, if it does not allready.

However, there should be counters.
Visaeris killed me 0 times
Silvanus killed me 0 times
Ethelon kill med 0 times.

Once it reaches Visaeris killed me 2 times - then I should be able to call the avenger, and not until then. There ARE RP reasons to do battle and kill after all.

There is far too much PK at the moment. It looks to me that some idiots think this is some pk-mud, just because there are no PK-rules. I hope they won't be necessary. During the early days of Imperian it was the same. It seems that is a necessary circle. It is extremely poor in my eyes that some people need to constantly pk just because they can or just because it is their fun. They just forget that most people don't want that. For example I have no clue on what ego-trip Visaeris is. He will surely say that Serenwilde pissed him off or something but this is nonsense. Maybe a few people attacked him but trying to piss of the commune by killing the guards and those poor souls who think it their duty to defend their home is just poor and certainly not fitting for someone who like him.

The Avenger system is a moderately good way of controlling non-necessary killing, but that's just it. Non-necessary. Avechna, being a program, can't tell the difference between a war and a rage fest. If it's a war, then sure, the killing should be allowed without penalty, because hell, that's what wars are about. Once the citizenship of Lusternia builds up enough and we actually start having wars, people will just run into cities committing suicide just so they can call upon the Avenger. That's broken.

In short, the Avenger's good, but it could use changes.

I hardly ever use it. I'm not really a PvP person. But I like it.

I wanted to mention two changes that are slated to go in:
* Avatars will snatch the bodies of those they slay so no ressing their victims. (Attack of the body snatchers!)
* It will be impossible to push people into enemy territory. This was allowed since if you were hanging out 1 room away from the city then you sort of deserve what you get if they shove you one room over, but people found a loophole by summoning targets 1 room away and then shoving them in.

Solving PK means addressing two conflicting sides: people who enjoy aggression and people who do not. When addressing the concerns for people who do not like being targets of PK, usually those that like PK lose something. I had an idea to try an alleviate to some extent that issue for the pro-PKers. It is not perfect, but maybe it is an improvement.

A group could be set up. For lack of a better term, call them the Braves. This would be for people who want to be aggressive in PK. Here is what would happen in combat:
* Non-Brave vs. Non-Brave - Avenger is enforcing.
* Brave vs. Non-Brave and vice versa - Avenger is enforcing.
* Brave vs. Brave - Avenger is *not* enforcing.

So PK would be 100% open at all times when two people fight each other that willingly chose this. If either side did not choose full open PK then avenger is like normal. The disadvantage for the Brave is other Braves can kill him whenever. The advantage if that he can kill all the other Braves whenever. To prevent abuse from entering for a free kill and leaving quickly to regain protection, quitting it would have an expensive XP loss attached to it or some other nasty cost.

Thoughts? Loopholes? Just what you wanted? A worthless piece of tripe?

My big issue with the avenger system is people who run into a village and raid, and then run out. I think after going in an enemy city/village they should still be open (for a certain amount of time) for people of that city to kill without having to worry about vengence.

I do love the concept of avenger, but it does have some kinks that need to be worked out.

I like the Braves idea.

The only downside I could think of is that Brave is the same same given to novice Serenguards, but i'm sure that can be worked around

To be honest, I don't really like the Brave idea, although kudos for being imaginative.

I just don't like the whole idea of seperating the world into two groups, people who want to PK and people who don't want to PK so much.

You can just imagine it being brought up in arguments on public, or on shouts, "Yeah well, I'm a Brave and you're just a non-PK coward. You little coward. Shattap!"

And how can you really seperate them, in an IC sense? Sure, Cronus doesn't like violence but he will if he has to. Does that mean all the Braves have to be "PK whores", who only play to kill other adventurers?

Are you smoking something?

I f'ing HATE the avenger. I keep pk careful on at all times. Exp loss is already godawfully high on Lusternia vs other IRE muds. Planar combat is fine. Stealing items from my corpse and mutilating my body? ....

The reason I take out 15 serenwilders with no fear of avenger is because I don't let them get vengeance on me. Know how I manage that? 1) Don't attack people who have suspect on me. 2) Only attack people who attack me back

I don't like this Brave idea because it will get too technical and will probably hurt the roleplay athmosphere and I just fear that there will be even more ways open for abuse. The Avenger is already very technical and more is not making it better. Though the idea itself is surely not bad.

I think the Avenger is near perfect, actually. It still seems to work odd in group combat, or I don't understand how it is supposed to work.
One way to improve it would be to allow forgiveness, but I'm not sure that's necessary.
Those complaining that the Avenger isn't enough of a deterrent don't understand what the Avenger does or what its purpose is. This isn't a restricted pk mud.
Those complaining that they can't attack someone in a war should stop waylaying people on the highway. This isn't a pure pk mud.

Still doesn't do much about people who do give you a valid reason to kill them but who don't want to be killed. Like people who go around shouting rude words at others.

Shouting rude words is not generally considered a valid PK reason. If we ever go to issues, I guaranty that 'insults' will not be classified as a valid PK category. It's absurd to even consider assigning an administrator the duty to arbitrate whether an insult is 'PK worthy' or not. (I've been an administrator in another realm and can tell you that arbitrating RP justifications for PK is a slippery slope and usually ends up with no one being happy, including the administrators. The bottom line solution is simply to disallow PK for insults--if you can't take insults, that's what snubbing is for.)

Frankly, 99% of those people who claim they should be able to PK because of an insult are those people who want any justification to PK. Allowing such frivolous reasons for PK usually degenerates to someone saying, oh I'm RPing a pathological killer so should be able to kill anyone because it's my RP justification. Well, no, we won't go down that road and will never encourage insults as a valid PK reason.

Please, -please- don't make the Avenger anymore punishing than he already is until the problems are worked out of the system. I think that vengeance can be given unjustly far too often right now, especially regarding group combat. Being killed twice simply because you killed someone in defense of an ally is already bad enough.

Here are some suggestions on various topics and problems regarding vengeance:

I'm sorry about the length. I broke it into sections so that it's less mind numbing to read:
1) Braves
2) Gaining vengeance (and the definition of an "attack")
3) Group combat
4) Summoning and Enemy territory
5) Uninfluenced villages


1) Braves
----------
The Brave idea is an interesting concept. It might solve some problems, but I'm not sure that it will solve all of them because, most likely, only those who enjoy PK for the sake of PK will become Brave. People who PK for RP reasons (e.g. defense of allies) but don't enjoy it normally probably won't become Brave (and this is all hypothetical).

An alternative might be to use an "aggression" system. If someone initiates an attack (when not in enemy territory), then they get an aggressor point. Anybody with 5(?) aggressor points will not be protected by suspect/vengeance until one of those points wears off.

Aggressor points wear off after some time (e.g. 3 RL hours).

Yes, this is similar to Infamy in Achaea.

What constitutes an "attack" is defined below..


2) Gaining vengeance
--------------------
Problem:
Right now, vengeance is often gained too easily. If I order an entity to be aggressive towards someone who has suspect (done often as a precaution), that gives them vengeance, even though I am nowhere near them and have done nothing yet to actually hurt them.

Suggestion:
If X is a suspect of A, then A only gains vengeance on X if X makes an aggressive attack that:
- causes damage to A
- afflicts A
- moves A (including forced follow)


3) Group combat
----------------
Problem:
A, B are fighting X, Y. X attacks A. Y attacks A. B kills Y. Y can now claim vengeance and kill B twice (unjustly). This detracts from the group combat that villages/etc. tend to encourage.

Suggestion:
One fix is to do this:
- If X attacks someone on your "side", then it is the same as an attack on you (for the purposes of suspect/vengeance).
- If Y aids X (e.g. heals, cures afflictions), then Y also becomes an attacker and will not gain suspect/vengeance if attacked.

Your "side" is defined as:
- Any member of the same city.
- Anybody on your personal allies list (excluding lusted people)
- Anybody in your group (via FOLLOW).

This assumes that:
- The ENEMY/ALLY commands can never be forced (Lust is easy to differentiate).
- Forced FOLLOW (e.g. Conjuctio) is treated differently from normal FOLLOW.
- The above is calculated at some predictable point, e.g. at the time of the attack. So changes in city membership or ally lists have predictable results.
- Loops are disregarded. If a member of the same city attacks you, they are still on your "side", and no suspect/vengeance is given.


4) Summoning and Enemy territory
--------------------------------
Problem:
The summoning shields right now seem like a stopgap and are fairly easily abused. However, summoning was overused previously to summon people out of their cities/etc. into enemy territory, thus avoiding vengeance.

Suggestion:
Summoning rules should depend on where the target was summoned -from-, not where they were summoned -to-.

If X is in enemy territory, then its protectors should be allowed to do anything that they can to remove X. People who raid know what they're getting into and should not be protected.

Therefore:
X may be summoned -from- enemy territory to anywhere (including another enemy territory/city). If X subsequently dies, then suspect/vengeance does not apply. This should not be abuse of the avenger system because X was in enemy territory to begin with.

This eliminates the need to disallow beckoning into a city. If X summons A to one room outside the city, then beckons him in, A still gets suspect/vengeance on X as long as he was NOT in enemy territory to begin with.

This also allows for more flexibility when defending villages. A city that is utterly outnumbered in terms of levels/number/strength should be able to use tactics like summoning into city/underwater/etc. to separate the raiders. Not everything is about toe-to-toe combat.

I agree with Kaelar that you should be considered "in enemy territory" for some period after you leave it (e.g. 5 minutes).


5) Uninfluenced villages
------------------------
Nobody has brought this up yet, but this was a problem during the last round of influencing.

Problem:
I was with a group of Celestians influencing in Southguard. A big Magnagoran group came and ran us over. As we were outnumbered, I began moving one room away, beckoning people out, and attacking them. I killed Brahm, who was healing (Puella) various Magnagoran fighters. Brahm gained Vengeance and had me killed twice.

Suggestion:
I think that attacks inside uninfluenced villaged should be considered the same as off-plane. That is, no suspect/vengeance should be given.

Why? Villages don't stay uninfluenced for very long. During this short period, the majority of (if not all) people in the village are there to gain the village for one city or another. In effect, the village is a battleground.

Choice #4 - The Avenger System doesn't work. We need PK rules.

This one makes me sad beyond all measure.