A request here. I know everyone is deathly afraid of trash chars making a come back, and that the game should be de-balled because of it, however when reading over suf's, 90% of all the logs in this wipe involving a pk, are basicly basicly 3-10 man groups jumping a player or someone catching the other while he was asleep. So basicly pk goes like this now...
Your joe a level 30 mage
Your Charlie a level 30 basher
Your Andy a level Thief
Joe focus's harshly on Charlie
Your magic fails
Charlie Crashes into you
Charlie hits you for 2 rounds
Charlie attempts to the bash and falls down
Joe recites a scroll of recall
Repeat this 30 times till either a hold lands, or you land a sit bash preventing him from recalling
Andy thrusts his dagger into joe
Joe recalls
Andy thrusts his dagger into charlie
Charlie tries to bash him with superb bash, and still miss's because joes a thief and charlie doesnt have 28 dex.
Andy flee's and stabs charlie again
Charlie recalls because joe can't do shit
Then they run all around town for 5 minutes trying to let teh guards attack. and hopefully land a bash on andy, or they crawl into a no track zone, or a no relo or no clair zone and wait out flags, then recall and rent.
This point blank is fucking retarded. There use to be ways around this, such as stealing recalls, or using hold wands, or loading prep, but all of this has been dumbed down. Pk in arctic has been primarily based on holds and bash and backstabs since day 1. Now stab has been dumbed down so that its damn near impossible to 2 stab a 30 mage even with elite gear. It's also WAY WAY WAY to easy to hit 30. Holds don't land worth a crap any more either, and bash has been dumbed down so much that without 28 dex an 30 +bash your chances of landing a sit bash are slim to none. So everyone gets a chance to basicly recall, unless they get attacked with overwhelming numbers.
So here is the real issue with that. Arctic has been always a pk mud. Now take a look at the who list, everyone on there has a 30 alt. Running ama atm, it's plainly obvious that someone can come into arctic with 0 knowledge, and get 30 before knowing how to get from palanthas to kalaman. Since the charmies cant use wands, and how a level 15 superior bash mob still only lands a bash on a 30 1/3 of the time, you pretty much guarentee that every player on a one on one situation will be able to escape from the most elite solo pkers. So the only exception to this is to zerg them. That is the only stratagy left in arctic. A fucking 3 on 1. If you got a beef against someone else, and they got more guys, forget it. Reguardless of how skilled you are, you have game mechanics standing in the way, which dumb down what your doing to a low% chance of luck to get the kill, or a paticularly ingenuis ambush, which now resorts to what... summoning them into an agro good mob room? I think a skilled pker should get the kill one on one atleast 75% of the time, if he spends time preparing it. that chance is lower then 10% now. The only options really avalible are rank 14 mages with 2 spell power.
It's not fun to pk anymore. Because to pk solo in arctic now, you basicly play a flag abuse game, because the first strike wont land the kill. You spend all the time preping, you do better planning on failing the attack, and waiting till flags are up, and hope to get them trapped on switch flags, or hoping there afk. Thats not fun.
Now i aint going to bitch without suggestions, though it seems people are so hard up against trash pking returning to arctic, i doubt anyone will take them seriously. But my idea's are to give recalls a chance to be interupted in battle, or increase the chance to land a hold or bash when it counts. I heard bread bombing is illegal now as well. Let prep items and wands actually work like they use to. Increase the expierence level to level, and lower the requirements to learning the skills. People will still have nice characters, and try to rank them. The muds old enough where most of the big secrets are out of the bag. I love all the new class changes and everything, but what always attracted me to arctic was the skill involved. knowledge use to be power, now it's kinda like every other game, where if you have more people you win, and no matter how good you are solo, your basicly fucked.
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I agree somewhat, though not
I agree somewhat, though not fully. There has to be a careful balance where skilled pkillers can solo pkill but at the same time you don't want 3 man groups of level 25 trash characters easily killing anyone they want.
Here is my outlandish suggestion:
Bash Changes
Step 1- Bash no longer gives lag to the target every time it hits, only in certain situations. Instead it gives a no-casting no-scrolls effect for the same duration. Could be done basically the same way as silence, but as a different flag.
Step 2- Add 1 rounds of lag to the victim *if* he was standing when the bash hit him, and 2 rounds of "you can't stand up!". Being bashed while already in the sitting position would not cause these effects.
Step 3- Remove the penalty for bashing sitting players.
Ta-da. Bash can be used to prevent players from escaping again.
__________________________mighty Drakantus!
Arctic PK has always been
Arctic PK has always been about landing bashes/holds. While before a single hold + frags would have been enough, hitpoints have gone up dramatically in comparison to damage output, so you need to bring 2-4 people to ensure a kill. You can do some pretty neat things with daze though, which is my main reason for playing druid. Daze/silence/weariness combo works for solo pk unless he has a wor potion or someone to hit him, also I theorycrafted a daze/summon a thief/stab 3 times in summon lag but the thief wasn't quite ready the one time I tried it and the guy got away.