Why do you think AR is fun?

[divsky]

So I was in the chatroom today and I got in an argument with, well, pretty much everyone there when they told me that the reason why AR is fun is because it's fun to piss people off. They told me that things like getting other people to delete is the ultimate form of satisfaction, that there would be no point in killing other people if you couldn't full loot/full sac them, rubbing it in their face, and so on. I was pretty suprised that pretty much everyone there feels that way.

My opinion is that if you kill someone, the fact that you beat them should be satisfaction enough, that looting should just be for taking what you can use, not a tool for pissing other people off, and that PKing should be about competition, not getting other people to delete. Nobody else seems to feel that way and told me that sportsmanship is a fine ideal but it gets killed in the face of reality (I came back by saying AR is a game, not reality).

Anyways, my question here is.. is that really what AR is about to everyone here? Satisfaction by knowing you caused RL grief to others? Or do you think it's just a competitive, fast-paced PK game where the thrill of victory should be thrill enough? Or is it something else?

[Accident-Prone]

For myself it is more than just PKing. It is the Roleplaying and the escape from reality. Though do not get me wrong, the few times I have come out the victor, it was sweet. Full looting and sacrificing all your opponents possesions in spite is quite unnecassary. And I find that disturbing that the majority of us find pleasure in that.

And please ignore the mispellings, I am far too lazy and tired to spellcheck.

[Amdorin]

I just like the combat that brings the kill. Looting I don't care as much.

And another thing for the newbs, ..don't go to that Irc chat room if you haven't played a while ...it'll just dull your experience otherwise. I'm glad I played a few years before ever stepping foot in that room.. Talking about stuff other than AR is cool there, but when you start talking about the game and stuff its like...."Oh so that person isn't just logging on outta nowhere, ...he's logging on because someone told him (or he figured) I'm on and he just wants to gank me with his ooc friends", then the rage deletions from getting gank'd and full looted, and stuff like that....kinda sux. Also not a good place to be if you wanna keep your char secret as they will observe anything obvious...*like being in chat and noticing a certain char logged on each time* and stuff like that. Just some advice for the newer AR peeps out there.

While at the same time...some experienced players just wanna own other peeps and have a place to talk about it, and the chat is cool for that.

[Louis]

i gotta say divsky, your post is pretty skewed to make your side of the discussion look a lot better..

but when it comes down to it, yeah i'm here for the pk first, rp second.. and if i want to play an evil bastard, i'll play an evil bastard. if i'm playing a honor-bound warlord, i'll play an honor-bound warlord. it just so happens that i play more evil bastards than honor-bound warlords.. full loots/sacs are just part of the package.

divsky and i referred to back when we'd play fighting games the arcades. whereas div said he would always try to play handicapped and give the other guy an easy second round, and he would have fun when he knew his opponent had fun, i had a different experience. i used to love definitively defeating my opponent and watching him and the rest of the people line up their quarters and wait to play me, only to be beaten again. i savored that moment a lot more because before i got good, i was that guy who was lining up the quarters and waiting his turn to be beat. same kind of thinking goes here, i sometimes have absolutely no remorse for ruining someone else's day because i went through it myself and got more addicted to AR because of that. some people may get put off if they consistently lose and lose bad, and yet many other people are like me and will stick through it if they like the game enough to do so.

it isn't surprising to me that some players are satisfied when other players are displeased with how they are treated. the very fact that we even have a standard of rp and a base of rp yuppies who can survive here because the pkers are expected (and sometimes told) to circumvent them demonstrates our commitment to those players who do not want to feel the full force of unrestricted pk.

to limit/ban looting, particularly at 50 (we already have slow-looting at low levels which doesn't even make sense rp wise but its there) would be a major blow to our PK scene indeed.

[Phostan]

How to offer my opinion on this one...Well. I'm of split minds.
For example, I had my gnome Herald, Dabilor, and he was about Roleplaying. I mean, I fought with him, usually in self defense mind, but I hardly made the character with pk'ing in mind. At the same time I had a Warlord named Kanata, and he was about killing people, or at least fighting people. I don't think you can have a solid RP char without having a pk character to use to vent some steam now and then. Or if you can, you're more stoic then I am. I think it's possible to do strict pk'ing for a while, but after a few years, hopefully, you'll grow bored and branch out into RP too. As far as full looting goes, at 50, it's expected, and I dont sweat it when I get full looted. Just refer to Legion vs. Everyone else logs on invokation to see good examples of that. But under 50, I think a partial looting is more appropriate, unless someone full loots you first, or has a full suit of rares. I'd take it all, screw being nice. But I mean, non-rares? Only if they're better then mine.

[_Clifton_]

So the first thought that comes to mind is that it's amazing how slanted the manner in which the discussion is being presentated is.

You kill, you loot. Sometimes you full loot, sometimes you don't. Sometimes, when you don't full loot, you run the risk of getting ganked. Like this, http://www.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=1406. And then you walk around naked, even though you've killed the guy and he should be the one naked. So it's like this, would you rather be naked or would you rather have your opponent be naked? Do you really want to run the risk because if you die somewhere with vultures, you'll be out a weeks worth of equipment.

For the ideal of sportsmanship, lets go back to the Arcade game. As an player, I would like to think that I deserve to the full experience of combat from my opponent, regardless of whether they are 5 times worse or 200 times better than I am. This allows me to understand where I am versus that other person, and thus I know where and how I need to improve. To handicap oneself in order to even the fight is to say "ha, you're a gimp and you suck too much to even give me a challenge". I'd view that as a slap in the face instead of making the experience more fun. If I should lose, then at least I will have lost properly.

In AR, equipment is part of the game, losing it is also part of the unique style. If I wanted to play something where there was no risk, no challenge, no purpose, I'd go play WoW and just level up. Throw a punch of time into a risk-free character. "Oh, look I'm level 60, I rock and have a full set of items that I can't possibly lose. Eh, now what am I gonna do?"

[divsky]

I'm a little confused as to how I can present your side of the argument without making it look skewed.

[Davairus]

[trance_monkey]

I used to be all about the other side, Divsky. Long before I came to AR, when I was 13.

Played Gemstone III, text based, was a rogue (name of thief/ninja class), and would just pick on people all day. Steal things, give them back, steal again, kill'm, hide and follow them hidden for a while mocking them that they can't do shit about it, etc. The game was massive, like 1-2000 people at a time, and I repeatedly had had the immortals, the 4 or 5 online at a time of them, come down 'cos of complaints against me. I always won the immortals over, which made it even more thrilling. Then, one day, I just stopped wanting to be a dick. And the game became less interesting.

I really enjoy the competitive atmosphere of AR and the balance. But, I still get that thing in my gut where if I totally own a guy, I can't loot anything at all, except gold of course. If he actually wounded me and I have less than 20% health left, maybe I'll take something, maybe not. I went real easy on this one berserker, killed him 3 times over the span of a week, and of them all I only took his spiked gauntlets once, not even a rare. He then catches me off guard fighting air ruler, I'm already at 50% health, kills me and full loots/sac (not before I got him to awful). Still, though, I don't plan on doing the same to him. Though I may start sac'n his weapons, I DO NOT WANT HIM TO DELETE.

I want people to have fun when they fight me; either I was a challenge to kill, or I kill them and they still have most their equipment so they can rematch soon if they want.

Game's about fun. I'd hate to escape reality into a place that pisses me off even more.

[Esivole]

in my opinion, the game shouldn't be to the point where half your time is spent re-equiping. yes I know, Avoid dying. Duh, though everyone dies sometime. and even now you have Outfit. yay. grand, right? maybe, maybe not. This is a senerio that happened to me a while back, I waws like mid twenties or something, If I recall correctly, Had a couple rares. Someone kills me and a level fifty full loots my corpse. no mercy at all, not get *rare* corpse,... get all corpse. bluntly fifty full loot twenty five. thats it. I reported it and (I assume) nothing happened. Now.... if the 50 had gotten a rare or two, I wouldn't have cared. But getting damn teeth necklaces and opal rings is just fucking retarded.

FUll looting/sacing is, in my opinion, a major problem. It literally makes me want to delete every character I ever had and quit AR. No one has a reason to full loot. Half loot... maybe... but it is even worse to see this...

west
remove all
drop all
east
get all corpse
west
west
drop all
east
get all
wear all
west
sac 1.
sac 1.
......

retarded.

[jaran]

In some ways I agree, I hate to see a full loot - but I realised years ago that this is part of the game and that it has to be to make the consequences of a death all the more devastating. This is key to a lot of AR's appeal. I dont full loot myself unless i'm in a Cabal war or if the opponent has done it to me in the past.

I accept that if I die, there is a strong chance I will lose my equipment. Now you can deal with this in several ways, you can full loot everyone you kill because most likely they would do it to you, you can not worry about it and carry on your normal game but use gambling eq and maybe the odd rare so that if you die you can maybe deal with it easier, you can play a non-eq dependant class, or you can make sure you are damned difficult to kill and try not to die.

With the introduction of gambled eq in particular, the need for rares is not as strong as it once was. My suggestion is to accept the fact you will die and accept you will lose your eq, its part of the game so dont let it spoil it for you.

[Flying Hampster of Doom]

[divsky]

In all honesty it was me bitching about looting that got this whole thing started.

However, it was comments like "Getting someone to delete is the ultimate satisfaction" that kept it going. The conversation I had was clearly not about just looting. I was rather disgusted that so many people got such glee out of other peoples misfortune and comments about how it's so much more enjoyable when you know the player is pissed off in real life. And then of course, the blanket statements about how this is what AR is all about.

[jaran]

I agree that AR is only a game and as such is there to be enjoyed by all who play it (otherwise nobody would play). I disagree with the people who get pleasure from making others delete, to be honest Ive seen a few people delete after I've killed them (as hard to believe as that sounds ) and all it did was make my feel like a bastard.

Personally I enjoy the challenge of the battles and the thrill of a victory, thats it. If I die and get looted well so be it, I shouldnt have died. If I kill somebody then cool, thats a thrill but I dont think it's a good mentality to have to actually want somebody to delete.

We want AR to be fun and we want lots of people playing it so that it becomes even more fun, multi-killing people and aiming to make people delete is not the way to do that.

Having said that, nobody should be getting too worked up about getting full looted, like I said it's part of the game.

[Sebryn]

[Jamus]

[First-fantasy]

A.R is fun to me on a whole. Granted I'm not a big fan of equipment gathering. But that's just because I still don't know where a lot of it is...whoops. But getting ganked is ussually fun. Expecially when I last more than two rounds. Pking is just a part of it that I've grown to not completely hate. But rp is splendid. Arguing with a Knight while you are a semi-sarcastic drow? Priceless.

Then again, I'm easily amused, so my opinion doesn't really count.

[Davairus]

flying hampster doesnt post in 6 months and feels compelled to post just to disagree with whatever I said. That's why I love him so much.. he makes me feel truly special.

Eh.. Seems to me we got some dedicated players who need and ENJOY the looting and pandemonium of rares going around (they have high level chars, and cabal chars). And then we have some fair weather players who just cannot hack it. That's about all I can see here. I think the cause of it is boredom, and looting rules arent going to change that. I think dedicated players will quit because the game is changed so they CAN'T full loot, and they'll be a lot harder to replace than the casual players who're just poking about in 30s. Anyway.. it seems like its a source of excitement for vets, as opposed to the usual boredom of ranking/training etc.

[Nero]

[Burzuk]

AR is fun because it's competitive. As a player, my level 50's had ruthlessly looted anyone who deserves it: caballed chars, hoarders (especially hoarders), fellow die-hard PKers, people with OOC connections (were I playing a mort today, all you IRC people would fall into this category), former niche killers who made it into my PK, gankers who had a history of looting other people's corpses, people who talk smack after being killed, and so on. Otherwise, I killed them and left their pitiful red dragon or whatever alone. How is it remotely competitive to piss on their corpse after they already got thrashed? I don't need to resort to playground bully tactics to prove what a badass my character was, unless the victim clearly had it coming to them.

Note though that a lot of people fell into the categories I listed above, so I probably wound up full looting more than half my kills, I'd estimate. And every single one of them had it coming to them. And the ones who didn't get full looted didn't.

Plus, if you leave someone's eq behind and then they do something stupid to make you kill them again, afterward they can't complain that you killed them naked and you also won't look like a trash PKer for teaching them to shut their traps. The more insecure you are about your PK skills, the more you'll treat someone who really isn't a threat as an actual threat. A good PKer exercises good PKing judgement.

Now as an Imm, I view competitiveness as being a lot like capitalism: you need checks into the system so that power doesn't become unbreakably consolidated in the hands of a few, like the trusts and robber barons were back in the early 20th century's Gilded Age. In other words, when PKers begin to employ what are analogous to monopolistic practices, we Imms intervene with rules to keep the game competitive. Ultimately, it's a system that requires constant attention and fine-tuning, just like managing a nation's economy.

I'll also say that being an Imm instantly drains the fun from going out of my way to screw players over, piss them off, make them delete, etc. Why do that using a mort PKer when I can just flat out slay and deny them?

There are always some PKers who wind up looking like small-time banana republic dictators, and other who turn out being remembered as a Caesar or an Alexander the Great. It's not just how many bodies you kill but also has quite a bit with how you go about doing it, and it's pretty obvious in retrospect why certain PKers are thought of as "trash" and how others are thought of as "badass" or "elite". How said PKer chooses his targets and how he loots them are just a couple of the factors involved.

And on the lowbie issue: everyone has to learn to deal with a full loot sooner or later. Would you prefer that they learn it at 15 or at 35? We've made full loots come at higher levels because it's easier to recover from it then, but either way, full looting is part of the game. Even if it means some people will "out" themselves as trashy PKers by overusing it -- that's their perogative to make themselves look like petty playground bullies rather than competitive sportsmen. You just have to recognize it and treat them accordingly, whether IC or OOC.