Now, I am one of those people who plays MMO/RPG's mostly to PK. Nodiatis seems to discourage it entirely, so far it seems to me it divides up like this:
Pro's:
- It enriches your gameplay, more for some then others.
- It can be a good way to make money.
- It becomes an exclusive community unto itself.
Con's:
As I said, Nodiatis seems to discourage this profession.
- You PK someone once, you're marked forever and made visible to others [flashing red avatar].
- If you PK a non-paying character, you can't loot the corpse.
- You can't interact with non-PK characters.
- If you are marked as a PK and get killed by a NPC [mob], you suffer permanent death as if you were killed by another player.
- When killed you lose all your gold, all your items, all your stats and levels. It's worse then making a new character.
- There are no level restrictions past the level 5 limitation.
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To sum things up, becoming a PK character is just simply not worth it. For some reason, becoming a PK is discouraged in every possible way. I have certain ideas and suggestions how to make it more feasible.
Suggestions:
1. Instead of marking people as a PK using the flashing avatar, simple add the option to see if a person is a PK.
Method: When hovering your mouse pointer over the avatar of a PK, large red letters saying "PK" will appear on his/her avatar. It is more subtle then an ever-flashing avatar but still serves it's purpose.
2. Performing a PK on non-paying accounts yields no loot. That is to prevent in-game money transactions. Every MMO/RPG has it's gold sellers/buyers, but by making it possible to loot non-paying accounts they also have to accept the risk of losing it all.
Method: When a non-paying account is killed by a PK, he loses all of his gold [that he's carrying] in addition to the items already being lootable [on paying accounts].
3. Performing a PKK on a PK account. Instead of losing everything, it is balanced out.
Method: The PK, when killed, loses not everything but instead loses the following:
- He loses all his gold [that he's carrying], everything in his inventory and all items except 1 armor item, 1 weapon item and 1 gem item. That way becoming a PK is discouraged but still made possible to enjoy. In addition to that, the PK loses 1 level in each stat category.
4. To make the PK lifestyle more bearable on their victims, implement level restrictions.
Method: People from level 5-10 can only kill those in their level range. The next category being level 11-20, then 21-30, 31-40, et cetera. This prevents much higher level'd people from preying on the lower levels.
5. There has been speculation as to if getting killed as a PK in combat with a NPC mob will cause "permadeath/permanent death". That is so. The reason for that being to prevent PK accounts from simple escaping from a fight, thenfind a mob, get killed and get to the next town safe and sound. This should be fixed.
Method: When a PK kills a non-PK, he'll enter a certain "PK state". If he is killed by a mob, he will respawn at Castille, always. In addition, he'll lose the same amount of items/stats as listen in suggestion number 3. This state will last for an hour after the FIRST battle with a non-PK, it won't be re-newed each time he attacks another non-PK. In addition, the PK will be attacked by a mob every single square he moves into during that hour.
This makes exploiting this as hard/impossible as possible.
6. I think PK accounts should be able to communicate with non-PK accounts, but not be able to auction/trade with them. PK-marked characters should have their own auction and only be allowed to trade amongst themselves.
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Summation:
This will allow players to enjoy the PK lifestyle, aswell as making it difficult enough to make sure PK accounts will always be a limited population.
As the title says, this is an open discussion and feel free to comment on the suggestions/ideas, be it changes or additions.
Your point of view is of course welcome aswell, but do everyone a favor and make sure your argument is sound and not just immature ranting.
Enjoy!