Playerkilling Statistics for July 2006

[Vhrael]

I've included the same explanation I posted in the April/May stats as to how the stats are being calculated now. That being said, I'll also reiterate that if you have any questions, ask them here so I can clarify. Keep in mind, these aren't COMPLETE PK records for the month for each character in question. Due to filtering out fights not involving 50's, some character's records may appear better or worse than their overall records truly are.

For Cabals:

- Total PK/death/efficiency record for the cabal is tallied based on members' PKs and deaths, as usual.
- The only "individual" records are the results of 50-vs-50 fights. This means that the individual records listed for each caballed member are not their overall record for the month. It is simply the result of kills and deaths based on the killer and victim both being at rank 50.
- Caballed members who have any record of "50-vs-50," even if it's only a single PK or death, will have their record for the month expanded to fit the "Overall" guidelines. The expanded record will be included and ranked in the "Overall" section.

For the Rest:

- Only PKs/deaths in which the killer, victim, or both were at 50 are included (i.e. 45 vs 50, 50 vs 50, etc.).
- At least one of the two (killer or victim) must be at 50, and the other must be at or above rank 45.

[_Clifton_]

[Davairus]

Haha Knights fed that pretty badly.

[Vertas]

Yeah, Legion owned...Thought I had more pks than that.

[Burzuk]

Looking at Khrath's record, it's clear to me that those claiming that the healing changes have "gimped" shamans are wrong. All you need is a reasonable amount space to fight in. And still there's more to come for shamans.

[m1co]

i actually gotta get pinnacle chars to get into pk records nowadays, now thats suckage

[Vhrael]

[Davairus]

Some ideas for that:
* Change the max pk range to 5 levels, if such pks are not considered fair or reasonable.
* Rework exp penalties, add legacies or whatever it takes, to make these pk's fair.
* Remove exp penalty DOWN so that 0 exp cost characters are only picked by newbs to avoid being many levels under an opponent, not by experienced player to ensure having many levels over an opponent. (Its currently a double penalty for exp cost, or a double bonus, depending on how you want to look at it.)

I'm not saying these are good ideas but I think they're better than confiscating pk's from level 50's due to level difference. Just my opinion though.

[Matthais]

I think racial legacies would be the best fix. It reinforces the idea that humans are standard and well- rounded, plus gives people incentives to pick other races.

Could always limit human stats to 20 across the board regardless of class. Make them the average of everything.

[Vhrael]

The current format was Burzuk's suggestion, based largely I assume on the fact that several characters were either getting abused by large exp/level gaps (such as rank 42 Knights having to try and take down rank 50 anathema), or were taking too much advantage of large level advantages (such as certain human shamans vulturing and multikilling rank 42 goods).

Personally I think that the "lower max PK range to 5 level difference" is a great idea. As much as I've heard "ranks don't make that big of a difference," I still have trouble believing that. If nothing else, the extra HP/MANA/MOVES makes a difference IMHO.

[_Clifton_]

Readjusting exps per class would be an awesome idea. Some classes from 49-50 are 24k, others (human shaman) are about 16-18k, that's just for one level.

[Mandor]

Id say increase the exp from higher level monsters. The 0 0 cost types may get to 50 faster, but so will those with exp penalties, and if youre sneaky and plan well, you could rank up fast while theyre not around or arent noticing or lack the manpower to take your grouop on, and get to 50 too.

[Davairus]

There's no such thing as a niche pk at 50 IMO. Those level differences are excessive enough to merit something done about it though.

[jaran]

In my opinion once you hit 50 then anyone is fair game - you've worked your way there for a reason and it's not your problem if that elf paladin 7 ranks down is having a hard time - maybe he should get to 50. For that reason I'd like to see the pk stats lose the 5 rank limit thing.

As for reworking the exp penalties, i do think that maybe now is a good time to do it, some of them seem excessive particularly with all the new changes, lagacies and so on.

I also like the idea that Dav mentioned: '* Remove exp penalty DOWN so that 0 exp cost characters are only picked by newbs to avoid being many levels under an opponent, not by experienced player to ensure having many levels over an opponent.'

[Phostan]

I think reworking XP costs is a good idea. But I think it should be maybe focused more on adjusting XP costs for classes as opposed to races. The idea that almost all the mage/cleric classes are Oxp, yet are some of the best at level 50, especially against lower levels because of spell effectiveness, makes that a definite cheese method. Where as I agree on the majority of race XP costs. Also tossing in more racial legacies would be good.

[trance_monkey]

I'd like to see this game be challenging, but to say that an elf paladin 8 ranks down SHOULD get raped just because you think in your own head that it's his fault for not yet being 50 does not make this game challenging, it makes it defeating.

I love the max 5 rank difference idea. I think, given moderate skill, most any race/class combo has a chance against any other race/class combo 5 ranks down. It's still a challenge, and given both fighters have the same level of skill, the one with the rank advantage will probably still win.

I'd like to play a game where both players have a chance to win or lose in any given situation, based on skill. Not a game where it's mostly up to shifts in power: i.e., goods raping evils for a month, then evils raping goods for a month, simply because of numbers or already established 50s on one side or another. This is also why I kinda wish there was some multi-opponent skill or something to help the lone guy on gangbangs. 2/3/4 vs. 1's should be at least *winnable* by sub-elite players.

Now I'm just ranting like a crazy n00b.

[Vhrael]

All I know is that a couple of months ago, when this new format first came out, I had to take out something like 15-20 PKs for Clawron because they were all against rank 42-43 goodies and Knights. Most of those were 3-5 PKs on the same target. In my opinion that doesn't show much (if any) skill anyway, and it shouldn't be rewarded on the PK listings each month. Whether you agree or not is your own opinion.

One of Burzuk's biggest praises of this new record-displaying format is that it places more emphasis on fighting at rank 50. Yes, the game has 49 other ranks (39 of which place you in potential PK situations), but the time, effort and dedication it takes to rank your character to 50 help make the PK atmosphere at rank 50 the most challenging and balanced arena in which to test your PK skills. Anybody can niche in the 20-35 range or wherever your particular race/class is best... but when it's 50 vs. 50, it's a lot harder to claim that someone had some "drastic advantage" which skewed the entire fight.

Also - the more fighting that occurs at the 50 vs. 50 level, the easier it is to spot general mismatches and race/class combo imbalances which need to be addressed to make the game more evenly dispersed. Think of it as a collective group effort to help improve game balance.

[Burzuk]

Population control. There'd be a ton more fire berserkers (for example) if PK ranges were more forgiving. We want the game to skew toward low-exp combinations, or else why even bother having the exp-based PK system?

There are two different issue here: PK gameplay and PK achievement. Large level-gap PKs serve gameplay purposes (to gank high exp combos so that high exp combos are properly penalized PK-wise, instead of simply with leveling time). Large level-gap PKs, however, don't serve much in terms of measuring achievement, which is what PK records aim to represent.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you want the best PK record, level up to 50 and focus on fighting other 50's. It's very, very simple. Of course AR is designed to be played at all levels, but meaningful achievements occur at level 50, where the competition is best and all classes are the most fully-developed. A PK is a PK, but all other things being equal, a 50-vs-50 PK is a lot more meaningful than other PKs from an achievement standpoint, and should be reflected in PK records and monthly/yearly summaries likewise if PK records are to be meaningful at all. Otherwise, would you really want to see some mid-30's niche multikller to represent the best PK achievement that AR has to offer?

[Davairus]

I'm glad to see interest in the issue, its clear to see there's no need to worry about people just "turning off" and not bothering to follow the stats anymore. I'd wondered about that since usually players nag for them to get posted and that didn't happen this month despite them being over a week late. Now, I'll just expand on my original post, and try not to get too long-winded.

I just don't see where anyone is disagreeing with the personal records being achievement-based. There's a poll in the forums about whether the stats should be kept or thrown out, and the support for it is in the majority by a huge margin. That particular issue has been discussed and agreed on. Countless people have bitched about "padding" with Warlords records over the mud's lifetime, because they were supposed to be duelling for achievement, and challenging themselves. Duels with levels on people was a major gripe, so was fighting with big eq difference, so was duelling obvious newbs and Heralds, staying lowbie to try to pad for stance/forms, and no gangbangs allowed. Its been - literally - done to death, and if you want to expand the penalties even more, we have all that experience to draw on. As far as "personal" records go, its obvious few people like them stuffed with easy wins. This is the same kind of sentiment that makes us prefer anti-padding graveyard data. Period. Its a closed topic that don't need to be defended anymore, we can just link.

That said, there is a historian's camp that wants to see the raw stats as the months go by, and could care less about the beauty in it, that aren't being catered to as well anymore. (Look up.) I think this was represented well in the monthly tallying until recently. Some of us would still love to know about Sazhar's "0 19" death rating, even though he hasn't deleted, or Yamal's "7 0" raping of Sazhar, even though it could easily be "0 0" after he eats some multikilling penalties. I'm sure we'd also like to know who the heck contributed 100+ kills to Knight deaths, but we can't, because the rest of Knight breakdown shows 45-50's only. Just like we can't see the dozens of Legion deaths. Or look at Justice, with 19 kills listed, and only 4 actually posted. I'd love to know who contributed those. We're not even talking about mid 30's niche multikillers here, we're talking about caballed characters.

So I think there is error, and some modification is necessary. I proposed some options that I thought are better than ignoring all 5 level difference from 50's, I also said I didn't think they were that good. What I intended was just to get the ball rolling, it has to start somewhere. Without a post of this kind of length, since I'm gonna look like I have no life now.

Moving on to the exp cost issue thing.

Since we dont want to have lots of fire berserkers.. we apparently need to encourage low exp characters to gank them, thereby doing the mud a service. But what lasting, meaningful recognition do low exp combos stand to gain if they win? None. What if they lose? A death on the record, and a sweet level 50 pkill for the lowbie. So.. it seems like the smart thing to do is just not bother with them. Worst case scenario, they get a win and a pile of level 50's eq to help them power-rank two or three levels at next surge. Zethrantia comes to mind here. Best case scenario? Instant gratification from pwning and full looting someone's untrained newb. Hmm, it'll please the Canadians, but its not what I play for. Anything else we can do?

Maybe the best solution would be some kind of permanent "pk experience" ladder that compares pk records against each other, with loss of experience for inactivity so dead characters fall off the list. Killing lowbies should obviously get you nowhere on it. But that's probably too complicated to get implemented any time soon, there'd be a lot of problems to iron out, the biggest being getting that information from the mud to a batch file in the web directory on the server for viewing here. I could have the mud show this in an easy to read format for someone to post up themselves monthly though, it'd be difficult to just make it available on request at the moment.

Another obvious (and much easier) thing to do would be to remove everything non-50 completely - if this is only intended to be 50 vs 50 pk stats, then that's all it should be.

Another thing to do is just move the threshold for pk records up to 45, and don't count kills/characters below 45. Instead of 36. Seems like the lowbies that delete are usually just forgotten inactives or rage deleted trash anyways. We might not get 4 new deletes a day that way too, since they're not recorded. I know I wouldn't mind starting from scratch at 45. It's probably really shitty for people with pk penalties from before then too. Every level before 45 has great niche potential, and I don't know about anyone else, but I think its cheap people can game the system get 100+ pks on their way up too (saw a post with sissuris bragging he knew how recently, doubt he'd brag so much if he only knew how to avoid penalties). You'd probably never get that at 50. Could still post their desc, stats, etc, just no pk record stuff.

A good start would just be to make sure it doesn't count for the lowbie if he wins either, so he doesn't stand to get any reward out of winning it. The words "penalty" and "reward" quite obviously contradict.

I'm not saying these are genius ideas - perhaps some people will love them, perhaps some people won't. Only that IMO they're better than what we're doing right now, which makes it look like (I'm not saying it is intended) we're nitpicking over game fairness issues instead of doing something about them, in addition to the usual social ones like gay low-level sitting, gay multikills, etc. Incase I wasn't clear enough, all of the suggestions I've made were to avoid giving that contradicting impression. This contradiction is why people screw up and end up suggesting to mess with pk ranges, and even agreeing thats a good idea. But I'd much rather we screw with the way stats are displayed here than the 7 year old pk ranges, so that's why my new suggestions tackle it that way. I like that we have stats and I'd like to improve the way we handle them if we can do that. I'm also hoping someone can think of something better than my ideas, so consider this an open challenge to do so.

p.s. I did think this was a good idea when it was affecting Clawron (career low level killer) but seeing it hit Cythlan, who frankly needs all the help he can get and should be playing a 0 xp combo, is what changed my mind about it.

[Jamus]

frick I'm glad my record wasn't on there. It would've been around 2-16 (with 5 of those being rage-mobdeaths).