"No one wants to be full looted."

[myrek]

I saw a comment and it's been stuck in my head. (Started a new thread to avoid derailing the original thread more than it already has been.)

The comment: 

I don't want to be full looted BUT

• it's better than being such a non-existent threat that I don't need to be full looted.
• it's not fair for someone to spend a lot of time and expendables only to leave me unscathed.
• it's better than having to go back to fighting the 3 guys who just killed me because they have my cabal item and I don't have an excuse to not fight.
• leaving it for me is completely OOC.

What problem does this solve? Does it solve more problems than it creates?

I forget who originally said it, but if you were killed you probably need new gear whether or not there's anything in your corpse.

And the 2nd bit, "It isn'tworth losing a player over."

But it is. You can't be all things to all people. It is infinitely better to be really, really attractive to a specific group even at the expense of others.

When I quit playing, I was told that they would happily lose me if the changes they made brought in 2 new players. They weren't wrong (as far as that bit of theory goes at least).

I strongly recommend creating some public goals and working towards them. They can help the pbase give better feedback / ideas. It can help streamline any decision-making.

Example (to use a cliche): If the game starts at 50, why does PKing start at 10? Why not start at 40? (This is just an example.)

 

[Kyzarius]

I think full looting should remain, and is a fundamental part of our pvp. 

1. it adds risk
   1. The heart thumping nature of FL pvp doesn't exist without risk.  
   2. Losing lives does not suplement this
      1. This can be challenged if you are hardcore, but still not really. 
2. It adds reprisal
   1. Revenge is great and all, but pointless if you cant weaken your foe.
3. It gives you a chance to come back or gear to begin with
   1. I die, outfit and full-loot to regear sometimes.
   2. A lot of classes cannot solo a lot of the key areas, looting helps work around that.  Think, warriors gather, mages gank, As an example. 
4. supplemental gear.
   1. There is so much supplemental gear.
      1. Cabal outfit is actually not bad, jumps you to average stats immediatly.
      2. Cabal items are competitive and sometimes best in slot.
      3. gear can be made owner only as long as you're not trying to owner unique things that are intended to be limited ie, robes of the prophet. 

 

What should go away though!  Looting and Saccing.  This is just mean spirited, and really always used as a childish threat.  People lose, you loot like two freaking things, and they flip out and then threaten to sac all your stuff.  This part I hate. 

 

The expectation used to be if you die, you lose it all.  If you get back and its all still there then WOOT! you win. 

 

I also do not loot people whom I just roll over, they usually don't have anything I want anyways.  Though I will on my evils hunt a kill on someone who is weaker, in order to get a few rares so I can climb the PK ladder.  This is mostly right after I hit 50, or after I get full looted.  Pay it forward lol. 

 

 

[Rygothran]

20 minutes ago, myrek said:

I don't want to be full looted BUT

• it's better than being such a non-existent threat that I don't need to be full looted.
• it's not fair for someone to spend a lot of time and expendables only to leave me unscathed.
• it's better than having to go back to fighting the 3 guys who just killed me because they have my cabal item and I don't have an excuse to not fight.
• leaving it for me is completely OOC.

You would want to be full looted to feel as if you were a threat? I would rather retain my equipment and kill the person who killed me.

No one said they could not loot what they needed. If they truly needed all your items then sure but odds are they don't. 

It is better to be full looted so you don't have to face the odds? Facing the odds is when this game is the most fun becauee if you DO win it feels 100 times better... for ME.

Leaving your eq is completely OOC? So is knowing where to purchase a barral of milk without being told, knowing every quest, knowing all the best equipment. It is still a game and while you should always be in character, there is ALWAYS OOC knowledge involved.

 

Let me be clear, it is not against the rules to full loot. I would call it cheesy unless you absolutely needed the equipment but that is my personal opinion as a player. When I PK players I rarely even loot gold or items unless I need it. I want you to come back and fight me becauee in my mind I am that good. (I am not, not even close haha)

You are correct @Kyzarius, but that very expectation is one of the many reasons we are low on players. I am of the opinion that we walk a fine line because every player is different and wants different things. We cannot cater to everyone but we can try our best.

This is my opinion.

[myrek]

Maybe I'm confused. It's hard catching up on changes and keeping track of the changes that have multiple changes.

Full looting might be allowed. But full looting is impossible unless the corpse is hardcore and the looter is hardcore. Right?

"I would rather retain my equipment and kill the person who killed me." Me too. But that is a pretty dumb thing to do tactically. And if you're going against multiple foes / against the odds, the ability to attrit your opponents is pretty important.

Overcoming the odds is an awesome feeling. But it is also very frustrating trying to overcome impossible odds. I've been on all sides of these equations. Everyone is different. I'm more likely to delete when expected to do the impossible than when I lose some baubles.

About the OOC, there's a post somewhere on here that says we're expected to play as if death is real and permanent. I was just trying to follow the rules.

[Kyzarius]

Just now, myrek said:

 

About the OOC, there's a post somewhere on here that says we're expected to play as if death is real and permanent. I was just trying to follow the rules.

most forgotten thing in all of FL. Death isnt real or permanent.  Being looted is. 

[myrek]

I may have misremembered the rule. I found references to "death is to be avoided" but can't find the actual mandate.

[Magick]

3 minutes ago, myrek said:

I may have misremembered the rule. I found references to "death is to be avoided" but can't find the actual mandate.

 

[egreir]

Myrek.  So glad you're here.  

[myrek]

Thanks for finding that, @Magick

The point wasn't that looting is good or bad. The point is that there are a bunch of perspectives on every topic and you can't make everyone happy and that's a good thing.

But it should be done deliberately and in accordance with whatever goals exist.

[Rygothran]

I get the benefit of watching players PK. It is fun to watch. However, with that also comes seeing the reaction to people dying. Some people die and they absolutely go berserk. They lose their minds. Before they even get back to their corpse.

No equipment gone yet they are still pissed off. Imagine if they came back to 5 or 6 great items gone. Meltdown.

Is that their problem? Of course. If they quit because of that perhaps this game just isn't for them. Right?

I used to full loot all the time before things changed (which there must have been a reason for the change?) but I got older and now I feel like a dick if I do. I personally don't want to be the cause of someone quiting.

If avoiding heavy looting on someone is OOC so they don't quit I am fine with that.

 

[Unknown Criminal]

Getting killed and getting looted are two different marriages where if you get cheaped out and killed you are going to go berserk, a good fight and a good death don't bring out the same emotions. Now add in looting on top of both of those, a cheap kill and looting makes people quit where the good fight and eq loss is the way the cookie crumbles. 

Spells you can't save against, unpreventable lag, unblockable skills are three ways to kill a player and make him go berserk, loot that guy too and he just might leave. Nobody wants to be an eq mule for someone who has a leg up.

[Rygothran]

10 minutes ago, Unknown Criminal said:

Getting killed and getting looted are two different marriages where if you get cheaped out and killed you are going to go berserk, a good fight and a good death don't bring out the same emotions. Now add in looting on top of both of those, a cheap kill and looting makes people quit where the good fight and eq loss is the way the cookie crumbles. 

Spells you can't save against, unpreventable lag, unblockable skills are three ways to kill a player and make him go berserk, loot that guy too and he just might leave. Nobody wants to be an eq mule for someone who has a leg up.

That may be your perspective but even "good" deaths piss people off. Some people can never accept their death was their own fault or "good" as you see it.

They will blame whoever or whatever they have to rather than face the fact they died because of what they did or did not do. 

I see it all the time. That's not to say it happens every time. There are cheap kills for sure.

It is a competitive game and killing someone is a win. Dying to someone is a loss. No one likes to lose do they?

[Pieman]

Maybe it's because I stopped playing and came back again but while I like that full loots are so uncommon now (I like, really like it) I still mentally don't feel like they are. Every death I take to an enemy caballed character I still expect everything I have is gone and it'll take hours of play time to get back to that point...which brings me to my next point.

We're all old now. We're not the high school or college kids we used to be when we played 10-15ish years ago. We're now adults, we have responsibilities, families, jobs, kids, all of it. What does that mean we don't have? Time. 2-3 hours or more to get dressed well enough to be viable in the base gear economy. For that I love that full loots are now rare.

 

Sorry...weird nearly off track old man rant over.

[Unknown Criminal]

I love to lose... losing means I learn something from the fight, that's why I log all losses. It's also why I'll throw myself at the same opponent multiple times (not expecting to die, but to try new things). Frustration only comes in when you can't prevent what the opponent is doing to you and it's all they do because you can't  prevent it, add lag onto that thing you can't prevent and there is full reason to lose your mind. 

 

[myrek]

1 more try to make my point.

• Everyone sees things differently.
• Thus you can't make everyone happy.
• Thus you're better off targeting 1 group

Who are you trying to make happy? Do you know?

Making that decision can go a long way. Then you can answer questions like:

• How much time does your ideal player play per week? 
• How many hours should it take someone to rank to 40? To 50? Or is it better measured in real time weeks?
• How many hours should it take a naked, pinned character to re-equip?

And then the game mechanics can be adjusted to meet intended goals. (Those are overly simple examples. )

If you're catering to people in the same situation as MasterOfPie, then those numbers need to be shorter.

Maybe they only play 5 hours / week. If that's the number, then FL needs to be optimized for those people. You can't optimize the experience for everyone or there would be undead nazis in there too.

As to your comment @Rygothran:

"...even "good" deaths piss people off. Some people can never accept their death was their own fault or "good" as you see it.

They will blame whoever or whatever they have to rather than face the fact they died because of what they did or did not do. "

Are those the people FL is meant to serve? If it is, fix the game to make them happy. If it isn't, ignore them. Trying to adjust a combat MUD to meet the needs of people who can't accept death or equipment lose makes as much sense as marketing tampons to men.

"No one likes to lose do they?" But a close loss to a powerful opponent is more gratifying that an easy win.

[Lexi]

I have died so much since coming back. I would have struggled to remain motivated to continue logging in if I was full looted every time.

[f0xx]

This might be a bit off-topic, but I will leave it here.

 

12 hours ago, Unknown Criminal said:

Spells you can't save against, unpreventable lag, unblockable skills are three ways to kill a player

Mya and Cel have talked about this before, but there are 3 main ways to kill a character:

1) Lag

2) Attrition

3) Burst damage

 

Everything else is player mistake.

Technically, even most of those are player mistake too, considering they can be avoided by smart play.

[Aidon]

Since returning after being gone 2 years, I am basically going to exclusively play moderates now. If I were to get full looted, I would almost certainly stop playing. I view all the time I've spent suiting as an investment in fun to come. I expect that investment to pay off...right now my ledger is negative, but I have faith.

Given how much really good non-rare EQ there is...-5 mal or mental items everywhere? -25 ac? 15-20 raw armor? Yeah, with all that stuff it should be able to suit most classes pretty decently with the 8 rares they are allowed to have. Some classes are alot harder than others. The trick seems to be item swapping your non-rares every fight...but you never, ever, ever lose those non-rares, so its worth collecting 4-5 different sets of them. Same for consumables. Knowing you can go collect 100 nymph hearts and even if you die...still can use them for your next pk is awesome.

I'm really glad when I was gone they changed the no E/L rule for moderates. That was what stopped me before...not that I often got that high, but if felt like a crappy RP barrier. I also do really like the changes around looting. I mean if there had been a command sacallbeass that auto-sac'd people's eq and then danced on their corpse and auto followed them til unghost, mercied them, and then danced again, and the imms removed that command, people would complain about how it was an important part of the game. The new solution is perfectly reasonable and how it should have been from day one. 

I used to play carriers who were perma-decked...I had a char who had both rings of abyss and both rings of hakeashar and swapped them. Getting decked is just about not dying for as long as possible then finally dying and crashing and fucking hating yourself for the hundreds of hours you could've spent doing something that makes your life better.