Suggestions for changing the MPK systemFollow

In response to the idea:

"AoE damage should not affect players in other parties not engaged in the battle with the monster that initiated the AoE attack!"

This should also include: Players that are providing outside help (e.g. Curing) outside of the party who initiated the attack of the AoE. This way people cant have a healing group outside of the initiating party, and be immune to the AoE.

Yay for SE! Lets reduce any exploitation possible! <Good job!>

I know this may seem silly but allow PVP all over VD. Instances of heated arguements could ressolve themselves by players slugging it out on the spot. There's alot of tension on my server(asura), the gilsllers are running rampant and so is our economy, the tension is so thick you couldnt cut it with a jack hammer. MPK happens because of two reasons anger and gilsellers, eliminate both and MPK would less likely happen.

Make all of the charaters of a person who has been suspended for
MPK Targetable/Attackable by any other player not so flagged for
a period equal to 2 times the length of their suspension. This
would work similar to how charaters charmed by certain Bst class
NMs can be attacked but without allowing the perpetrator to
respond. A visual flag of some kind should mark those who are so
afflicted. Only time spent actually spent logged on in the game
and in areas where they can be targeted should count against
their sentence. They should also be automatically restricted to
using their highest level job during this period.

This would be a REAL deterent for the MPKers!

i've seen ninja use there 2 hour to leave a monster with in range of linking.
perhaps a monsters that has been claimed being unable to link or agro for a short period of time like 2 min; in the event the players are unable or choose not to defeat the monster it is unable to link a near by player.

as far as areas like crawler's nest where the zone can become effectivily closed when someone zones a crawler, perhaps the map itself could be changed so there is no way to return to the zone once you reach the first exp area. instead put 1 or 2 exit only points that would escape. this would prevent a closure of the entire location, it wont stop large trains.

mpk is not the most common use of trains. if a player has three or more monsters attacking them there should be no way for that group to attack anyother player unless directly attacked. maybe some sort of group behavior that would restrict the from agro/link untill some time has passed.

I think if the two examples you gave were implemented, it would be HUGE improvement. On top of of those two, I'd like to add:

Suggestion: harsher punishment for those who perform MPK. I'd like to see the punishment be character deletion without a chance of recovery. As long as it is obviously an intentional MPK, I think this should happen on the first offense.

A second suggestion that is only slightly off topic, but which I believe would still affect MPK rates:

A lot of players are also concerned with gilbuying and selling. I believe this practice would be greatly hindered if SE would consider making all NM and HNM drops EX. I haven't experienced MPK much, but most of the times I hear about it, people state that the incident involves people they suspect take part in Real Money Transfer. If you remove the ability to sell the items for gil, there is less incentive for them to MPK so that they can claim the target. Edit: another player suggestion increasing the pop rate, to make the items more common. That idea, in conjunction with my suggestion, would be the best solution (in my opinion).

I believe most purchased gil is used to purchase NM and HNM gained items and I also believe most gilbuyers gain their gil by selling such items. I have no hard statistics for this, but I have spoken to a number of people who have bought gil and NM or HNM items seem to be the most common reason they do so.

It's a vicious cycle. The gilseller gets an drop, then sells on AH for gil. Then they place the gil on the real money transfer market. A player then buys gil to buy the drop, giving gil back to gilbuyer to sell again....

Please at least pass this comment to someone for consideration, because I do feel it has merit. Please... I'm begging you....

Edit: Oh, btw, I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to get player input on this matter. Considering this is already up to 10 pages of posts by how I have the forum set, I wouldn't be surprised if you don't read all of it, but if you get this far, please know that I, for one, appreciate SE attempting to gather input from the players.

Edited, Fri Nov 4 17:38:46 2005 by Nemulus

Quote:Now if I got this right, the goblin which is being fought by the low level party would go off and link with the other one that is attacking the level 75 guy...
Wouldn't this make it really easy for some 75 in Valkurm to train gobs and lizzies behind them and basically run away with the mobs that parties are fighting with?

I see one big problem with this. Wouldnt this really make it easy for anyone that wants to power level a group. Gee, dont worrie the mob will try and hit me but since I am so much higher than the level of the mob, that it wont hit me. Thos, now you dont need magic for healing you just need a someone with high defense voke a mob then stand right next to the party to take their mobs hate. Now the party can just keep killing and pulling and not worry about resting because their mobs wont attack them, since it will link up with the LVL 75 or who ever is Power leveling's mob.

I like the idea about the mining points, except, when mining in Ifrit's Cauldron if you popped an NM there, even at lvl 65+, you would most likely die.. which would blow

I realize I'm probably duplicating existing suggestions. That is the point.

Suggestion: A claimed mob (purple name) should not arbitrarily aggro someone outside the claiming party just because the claiming party moved out of aggro range. (This would take care of the Bind problem.)

Suggestion: Limit the number of mob links.

Suggestion: Eliminate or greatly reduce the range of aggro for trained mobs returning to their "home" position.

Suggestion: Eliminate linking for trained mobs returning to their "home" position.

Suggestion: Eliminate or greatly reduce the AoE damage and status effects caused by mobs fighting other parties unless they are already on the mob's hate list.

I hope your ready for a long post cause I have a doozy for you.

I have a character on Caitsith, and have been playing for almost 2 years now. I have been mpk'd many many many times, and it is very frustrating. But I've noticed something about the mpk'ers on our server that frustrates me more. Everyone of them is a community known gilseller.

The simple solution for the problem then is to get rid of the gilsellers. you would probably alleviate 70-80% of mpk'ing.

I do not think that its fair to our community that the gameplay has to change because other people are using the game for their own personal benifit. Its disheartening that SE would consider something like that. Making mobs not aggro when they walk back, or after a BST pet leaves isn't realistic. In the Lord of the Rings if an Orc killed a man and didn't see the other men fighting around and just walked home, the book would be rather stupid. If a Goblin sees me it should aggro, thats the point of the game. People who mpk generally are doing it for fun or they are doing it to claim something that they want, or get rid of people that could claim something that they want. I'm glad to say I rarely see someone do it for fun.

I'm sure SE hates hearing about the gilsellers, but the veteran players are aggrivated that nothing seems to be done. Changing Items to rare/ex only made the gilsellers come up with clever ways of getting gil out of the Monsters, and calling a GM is pointless because by the time one can respond the mpk in question is done for 20-30 minutes ago, with hardly any proof.

I had an hour long conversation with a GM one time on the reasons why GM's don't do anything about gilsellers and he/she told me that they simply could not pin them in the act. Most GM's would love to rid us of these nuissances but they can't.

So here are my suggestions. I would be willing to wager money on the fact that this would drastically reduce mpk problems.

1. Hire more GM's. If you pay them I know I certainly wouldn't mind paying an extra couple of dollars on my account to keep these people active. Post Invisible GM's at all the gilselling and mpking hotspots in the game (On my server we all know where they are so I'm sure you do). And have the GM's take action. Ban handles, accounts, IP address, credit cards or whatever to keep these people from coming back, they always do.

2. Change your Rules of Conduct. Make them more strict against the gilselling policy and mpk policy and ENFORCE them. I follow the rules, I do what I'm supposed to, and yet I suffer with these problems daily by the same people over and over and over again.

3. Track the gilsellers better so you can ban them from the source. again I'm not apposed to a few extra dollars so that an investigation take place. Make an account on a server, buy gil, track the name that sends it to you, then track their handle and ban them.

4. This suggestion by far makes the most sense, and would be most profitable for you as well as clear up the problems. Why not sell gil yourself. undercut the online prices by half or less so that it becomes non profitable for them. You don't have to camp mobs or mpk people, you've created the game, you can just make gil and send it, or even use the gil spent on weddings or whatever. You'll make money off of it and the gilsellers will be forced out of business.

If you want to get rid of mpk's, do it a fair way, don't take away from the reality of my gameplay because some fool decided that he could make a living on the game. You won't get rid of mpk'ing altogether, you can't unless you take away from the game play, but if gm calls are reduced from 40 to 10 an hour then you can track those few people who do it for stupid reasons a lot easier and get rid of them quicker.

Thats my take on the situation, If you would like to respond to me feel free to email me at heypepper@aol.com, or send me a /tell on caitsith, name is Eldare.

thanks,

Eldare

Welcome to Allakhazam:

On MPK

1.) I think that trained mobs that are "not-killed" should return (at the speed they chase a player) back to their spawnpoint(s) after the aggro-ing player is either dead or zoned. While returning, the mob will NOT agrro until it has reached it's patrol area.

2.) AOE only effects those that are engauged with the specific mob.

3.) 10 seconds to actually "unclaim" a mob. There is much theft in the world of Vandiel, and it's not the THF's doing it. ^^

Wow, that is a lot of posts, and this has only been up around a day now. I will now throw in my couple ideas and opinions.

Bind/Shadowbind

I was in fact only vaguely aware of this aspect of the bind/shadowbind system before this thread. After reading it, it sounds like an accident in the coding of mob behavior that should be remedied.

Beastmaster Dismiss Command

I'm not a Beastmaster personally, so if this would cause a problem for them please inform me of it. My idea would be that released mobs would get a status upon being dismissed, something like "Wounded". A Wounded mob would become unclaimable (but charmable, though a failed charm would make the mob attack like normal) and non-aggressive. It would return to it's spawn point and rest until back to full status (I can see in my mind mandragoras sitting down like Tarutarus). Once it has fully recovered it would get up again and return to yellow (available) status.

Opinions

From what I've seen of MPK'ing, the issue in a blanket solution is that there is NMs and there is the rest of the game. What may be a solution for fixing MPKs around NMs may not be effective when applied to "the rest of the game".

Another opinion of mine is that the true problem of MPKs (mostly regarding intentional MPKs) is the enforcement. There are at least a few problems with MPKs that do not have anything to do with the actual mobs but with the game itself. Even though it is likely a matter of game mechanics, there is the issue of being unable to make a GM report after an MPK simply due to the fact that the Help Desk system (in addition to your entire menu) is unavailable while the player is dead. This causes delay in the reporting of the event. In addition, the lack of readily apparent evidence of GM response is more than a little frustrating to victims when reporting MPK or other breaches of the Terms of Service. I could continue with a rather vivid and disheartening description of my issues with the GM system, but it does not relate to MPKs so I will save it for another topic.

Since this thread is already 10 pages long as I'm beggining this post, I'm not going to read to see if this has been suggested or not. Also, I do not plan on coming back to see responces on this because I'm sure this will grow very steadily.

This post is a copy of my post from www.qcdn.org (Quetzalcoatl's Public forum), my handle on there is Javir should you want to contact me that way.

-The disscussion was going between how GMs should make a more visible stance vs the ability to adjust mob-behavior (which from my understanding can be adjusted between individual mob-type and each mob-type in each zone).

There was also concern about abuse in dynamis which I feel I cover quite bluntly.

I'd like to note I have no clue on how exactly monster behavior is programmed, but if my understanding as stated above is true, then I stick to my quoted suggestions.