Right, I never said they didn't lose anything. (I don't think) That would just be like the arena essentially. They would definitely lose xp and defs for dying and any supplies they used up. I think the same thing would prevent people from gaming the system as what prevents people from letting their friends kill them repeatedly for xp. Plus as Eldanien said, points earned by killing someone could be scaled based upon how good a gladiator they are. If you kill someone that has never managed to kill anyone. Well...you probably would get no points for that. If you kill the top ranked gladiator, you're going to get a lot more points from that. And your rank is based on how many kills you have as well as how hard those kills were.

I don't like the idea of arbitrarily restricting it to one on one at certain times and group vs. group at other times. I would like to see perhaps a few rooms that are set aside specifically for one on one challenges. Maybe the coliseum has several levels. One of those levels, only two people can actually be in a room at any given time. Another level would be for group fighting. You just stay on the level you want to participate in.

I think something like that would definitely give people a more interesting outlet for their killing needs. But again, the combat is only addressing one aspect of my original post. Though I suppose if people have something conflict related to do on their own it might not matter that at a certain point orgs run out of anything meaningful to do.

I do lke the outpost idea though I was thinking more obelisks of power. An org can spend a great deal of gold and power to erect an obelisk at pre-defined points of interest. You would have to do one of those things where you're feeding it a certain amount of essence to make it grow. Once it's full, then you get some kind of useful benefit out of it. Like your people automatically conglutinate on that plane/area. You can travel directly to it via gates (which can be distorted). If you activate it, using a great deal of power, citizens of your org get benefits while in that area like increased regen, increased xp gain, whatever.

You could potentially build an obelisk on every plane, every sphere, key points on prime. Each one drains power monthly though of course so...costly. Or tie it into nexus world things. You need spheres to even power these things as they can't tap into your nexus. Of course you can attack the obelisk to try to take it down whenever you like. I can see the *potential* for some kind of burnout in this scenario if an org went overboard with the number of obelisks it built and was trying to maintain but really, you can't always protect players from themselves.

Out of curiosity...and I hope this isn't a Naive question...

What purpose does XP Loss serve in this game when a player dies? It seems like an old MUD legacy requirement from the old D&D concept of "Raise Dead" where you came back weaker. I've heard newer games like WOW don't have this feature.

If you made PvP combat so that nobody lost XP from praying, what would happen? Would it improve the combat willingness because there would be no real downside to losing.

Yes, but people still have to defend, and they will still get tired of it when people can raid for hours because they never lose anything (especially if they think it's justified because the defenders won't lose any xp either.) I see where you're coming from, but it's also a limiter on how much people -can- raid.

There kind of has to be some incentive to not dying. Even in Wow, if you die, you have to run back to where you died to resurrect or you pay a cost in resurrection sickness and your items being hit for durability. In some games, it's more than this, in others it's less. In Tabula Rasa you take a bit of a hit on your equipment and you get regeneration sickness which lowers your stats for a bit and if you die again while you already have the sickness, it starts to stack.

In theory you could take out all xp loss on the planes, have people conglute back to their nexus when they die on planes, and institute a sickness type thing where their stats are decreased. So if they die and keep coming back they're only hurting themselves if they don't recover a bit first.

Like the Ascendant mechanic of paying XP to not wait for ages?

It creates and reinforces the value of life. People shouldn't (generally) ignore death, or see it as a minor inconvenience. There should be disincentive in some way to make you go out of your way to avoid dying, otherwise a very basic aspect of human (in this game, mortal) behavior - the survival instinct - goes away.

Yeah, something like that. I'm not sure I like the idea as Eldanien pointed out but it's an option. XP loss is so minimal anyway that I don't really think that it is the loss that is really bothering people. It's the dying. It's the "having" to fight. I mean most of the people that Celest kills have lich and vitae. They're only really losing xp if they want to. So I think if it was changed to the above suggestion, people would just start complaining about something else.

"You killed me and I had lowered stats for 5 minutes!!!" "So sacrifice some xp to get over that" "Then I lose xp!" "Er.." "How about you just do nothing that would ever inconvenience me in any way whatsoever. Thanks!"

My reply was meant for Phred's question about xp loss, just in case you, them, him, or I'm misunderstanding something. I'm not pushing for more or different disincentives.

XP loss = disincentive for dying. Game mechanic to help you realize "Hey, this is a bad thing."

The original question was:



The majority answer after 8 pages has been:

The admins should add more free-PK areas.

Catarin, do you feel like your question was addressed? Do you have the direction you wanted for what Celest should be doing?

While I'm reading the thread...

The Collegium SENDS them to these places as part of the planar quest. If it's meant to be a warzone, why are they being sent to free-PK areas on purpose (especially the ones that have to renounce innocence in order to do the hunting part of the Collegium)? (Apologies if someone else has already mentioned this, but still... when the Collegium itself is telling newbies that it's not only fine to go there, but they have to go there...)

Well, aren't they meant to be accompanied by an older, wiser person? I know when I would take Aqua novices up to Water to enter that archway, I'd always warn them along the way that the Plane of Water was often a combat zone and that whenever they returned they should be extra careful. It was part of the Novice lesson for the Guild to take them there, so it applies even if it's a slightly different situation. I haven't really had a chance to help out novices in Mag yet, but that would certainly be part of the lesson plan if I did.

Why are you letting them go alone? The fact that they're having to be guided and protected on this quest along with a verbal warning from whoever's taking them, should clue them in that it's a necessary but very dangerous place.

They don't have to be guided... EtherGate is something learned in Planar while learning rift, and most of them go into it on their own (I see them wandering around Faethorn, and if there's been a battle there I'll give them a warning that it's unsafe-- the most recent one replied, "I'm just trying to get a honeycake!"). Maybe it's different for cities where there isn't a direct link up for the little ones, but it's not quite the same for Communes in that regard.

That is adorable.

It's a good example of exactly what I was saying, too, mind.

It is!

But yeah, they can go alone, but wouldn't it be more fun if they were accompanied by an older, wiser person? Who could show them things and give them dire warnings and make the trip even more exciting and educational and cement the idea that the Plane is necessary but dangerous?

I'm still stuck on this image:



"Why can't I go through the gate? I just want some cake "

Ahaha. We used to have one of those for Dot when she was a puppy. She'd just wriggle through the bars though.

Yeah and I bet you kicked her when she did!

Assuming there's 1) Someone around who can.
2) Not a raid / engagement currently going on when they want to go (as was the case in the example I just gave).
3) The novice actually asking for help on the quest and not just going and doing it on their own (which is frequently the case-- once again, I refer to the last example).