Should Keepers exist?

In the current day of AR, what is the purpose of Keepers and do they add to the fun of AR or detract from it?

I have so much fun playing this game and I try to have experiences with other people that help them have fun too. Very rarely, since the inception of Keepers, have I ever had an experience with them that was fun.

I've been saying for quite a while now that keepers look like a 'troll' cabal because they are simply designed to detract from the fun of others.

Ultimately when Keepers were brought in, I think it was around the time that Warlords were removed. Some powers were juggled around and Keepers took the place of the 'neutral' cabal in their absence. I think Warlords fit the role of 'neutral' cabal way better than Keepers and Warlords are infinitely more fun to play, but more importantly, they are more fun to interact with.

I'm not saying we should burn the Keeper cabal down. I'm sure an immense amount of work has gone into building it and working on it over the years. Maybe we could shelf it for a little bit though, and let the warlord cabal fill the role of the 'neutral' cabal. I think this would improve the enjoyment of every person who is not a keeper.



Negatives of Keepers:

-Keepers are anti-fun to everybody except keepers. They are designed to sacrifice rares/uinques (that take time and effort to get - being full looted is not fun, especially when you don't have a chance to kill the guy for your things back).

-They absolutely neuter Knights. Oh you're a paladin/healer Knight that's doing well? Don't get too comfortable.. some neutral is going to come wipe the floor with you pretty soon.

-They don't have as much to risk as other cabal members. Sure there's a cabal ground but if you die and lose your gear, you just go keeper up some more. Cabal powers might help even the score here - can't get into any details.

-Players who make Keepers could have otherwise made a different cabal character. Is it better to have 5 small cabals or 4 bigger cabals, membership wise? I think 2v2, 2v3, 3v3, etc fights are a ton of fun. You're more likely to get these with fewer cabals that have more members.

-Keeper equipment can be better than rares and there is no minimum time requirement to keep it. Whip up a quick suit and jump into top 5 pk. (note there may be future changes to rare time requirements - thanks Davairus)

-What happens when keepers are the most dominant cabal? What happens when a keeper is the top pker? Does the rest of the cabal turn on them? Do they throw themselves off of a cliff to restore balance? Or do they just keep killing people, saccing rares and decreasing enjoyment of others? The only thing I know for sure that happens when keeper is the dominant cabal is that there are a ton of people having less fun...

-Going into a fight with a keeper is very disheartening when you know you are the one with everything to lose and nothing to gain. If the keeper kills me, I lose all my gear. If I kill the keeper, I cannot loot his gear. This is very anti-fun.



*Note - I don't have a character that recently got killed/looted by a keeper - this is just something I've been wanting to post for a while.

Facepalm.

edit: We were already talking about making it possible to sac keeper gear for cabal currencies.

-Keepers are anti-fun to everybody except keepers. They are designed to sacrifice rares/uinques (that take time and effort to get - being full looted is not fun, especially when you don't have a chance to kill the guy for your things back).


I have enjoyed fighting Keepers and winning fights as an extremely decked healer.


-They absolutely neuter Knights. Oh you're a paladin/healer Knight that's doing well? Don't get too comfortable.. some neutral is going to come wipe the floor with you pretty soon.

See above. I had no problem as a human healer. If you have enough eq to be a target to Keepers, you aren't some gimpy healer. I mean unless all your rares are hp or something.

-They don't have as much to risk as other cabal members. Sure there's a cabal ground but if you die and lose your gear, you just go keeper up some more. Cabal powers might help even the score here - can't get into any details.

Does their armor come free? If so they should have to work and put effort to get it. When I had Keepers, the armor was not free and the best armor was not easily obtainable.

-Players who make Keepers could have otherwise made a different cabal character. Is it better to have 5 small cabals or 4 bigger cabals, membership wise? I think 2v2, 2v3, 3v3, etc fights are a ton of fun. You're more likely to get these with fewer cabals that have more members.

Someone who makes a Keeper may do it specifically because they don't have to worry about rares. So removing this cabal doesn't guarantee these players will move onto other cabals.

-Keeper equipment can be better than rares and there is no minimum time requirement to keep it. Whip up a quick suit and jump into top 5 pk. (note there may be future changes to rare time requirements - thanks Davairus)

So if there is a cabal you can get rare quality or better items, with no time restraints this seems like the perfect cabal for people with time restraints and kinda seems like it mitigates the rare timer issue.

-What happens when keepers are the most dominant cabal? What happens when a keeper is the top pker? Does the rest of the cabal turn on them? Do they throw themselves off of a cliff to restore balance? Or do they just keep killing people, saccing rares and decreasing enjoyment of others? The only thing I know for sure that happens when keeper is the dominant cabal is that there are a ton of people having less fun...

These generalizations and extremes don't take into account the amount of people that can now have fun, because there will be items available to work together and collect. I'm glad Keepers exist.

-Going into a fight with a keeper is very disheartening when you know you are the one with everything to lose and nothing to gain. If the keeper kills me, I lose all my gear. If I kill the keeper, I cannot loot his gear. This is very anti-fun.

This does make sense, but is not a reason to close the cabal imo.

'-Going into a fight with a keeper is very disheartening when you know you are the one with everything to lose and nothing to gain. If the keeper kills me, I lose all my gear. If I kill the keeper, I cannot loot his gear. This is very anti-fun.

This does make sense, but is not a reason to close the cabal imo'

This is a massive issue and the core of what Kalist is talking about. I agree with him but i don't know what the answer is. There is an imbalance in risk/reward.

haha. I was laughing so hard when I read this post.

http://abandonedrealms.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12906

^^ read this post. Replace Thief with Keeper.

In summary, the keeper is "actually a folk hero" (replaced thief with keeper).

They full loot and sacrifice your gear. Kalist, you're the only one not having fun, the keepers are heroes, so don't be a sour grape and complain about keepers. Oh btw, another keeper just rolled up from your post. Man.... Continue crowing..

Bladefurry is laughing at you Kalist.

"I cant even tell you how many fucking times I had to regain the titanium earring because it was blackjacked and taken. Stfu bro go get the shit again and dunk they ass."

So.. If a keeper kills you, just stfu and go gain your full eq again as blade says. What's the issue bro? They are the folk hero LEGENDS doing it. They balance the realms of rares, the solution to high rating PK with pimp eq.

Exactly, was just thinking what I am gonna roll for my Keeper ; Keeper illusionist sounds super awesome. Not like youd have a point when complaining about killing me isnt worth it. Not gonna happen anyway. My killing streak would be LEGENDARY. Also, he's inadvertently promoting Keepers.

Keeper illusionist sucks, i will recommend you try something else. But I'm just crowing. You can go roll one and experience if for yourself. Who knows? You can become the folk hero everyone's talking about.

Indeed. LEGENDARY.

My bard will write a song about him.

KLM - Keepers Lives Matter

This is a poop idea I'm flinging at the wall to see if it sticks.

What if rares of a certain rarity tier (stuff you'd usually need to put a group together to get, like Sheundan drops, Xanthak, Order, chaos dragon + solace gear, etc, as well as uniques) couldn't be sacrificed at all? Rares are fun, let's have them stay in circulation, only poofing with purges.

Does the Keeper vault still exist? That could be a trove of everything keepers have sacrificed since the last purge, and you should get a way to access a few items from it either by invading or killing a keeper. Keepers should get zapped by items of this tier entirely, instead getting an ability to summon a little squire dude that takes some items (fewer than ten, for sure, and scaling with how much of a pimp suit someone had) to the vault.

As a softer alternative, maybe it should be possible to sacrifice these items, but with a long (1h-ish) player cooldown.

I realize there are probably a bunch of consequences here, like no-sac rares probably gravitating toward lowbie vultures when someone is trying to loot a corpse.

Lets call this rant what it really is. Should bitches be allowed to join cabals?

A lot of you here know each other and use that to your advantage. You don't join separate cabals, you make characters to help each other. Multiple people here have been called out for Obvious OOC. I won't name any names but in my time as a Keeper, I would full loot someone and boom they have all the same shit within 2 days. Do you know how long it took me to gamble my shit, 2 weeks lol.

If you want to see a use for keepers then stop ducking fights, stop guardian sitting, stop only playing with your OOC friends on the same side.

Keepers doesn't have a place because you guys don't want to fight someone who can't get titanium tenor or torements of hell by themselves. You want to hoard the rares and then sit pretty without someone able to take it from you.

If you are decked in winter gear how the fuck am I supposed to fight you in what living wood? This shit is a joke.


In my history as a keeper I have killed some of the top pkers on the leader board, did I steam roll them, fuck no. But why is it fair that you can call up 3 of your friends and clear winter, when I don't go ooc and use a cabal designed to combat that to spread rares to everyone since I can sacrifice them and keep the game fun for everyone not just you and you bitchass hunting party.

Ozaru I have done zero of the things you just listed (duck fights, ooc, know who other people play, clear winter etc). So, no, that is not "exactly what this is".

Who said I was talking about you? And if you haven't played a Keeper then you really don't know how hard it is to play one. So if you have done none of tthose things basically saying you don't get rares. Why are you talking about removing a cabal that has 0 impact on your play.

Some valid points Ozaru.

Sounds like you are talking about me since you are complaining about the original post and I'm the original poster.

So since I don't ooc or go to winter I'm not allowed or able to get rares? Some of us can get rares the old fashioned way - killing people and taking them.

I had a keeper a long time ago (char still alive). I quit playing it because a lot of the points I've listed above.

I think there needs to be more transparency with how the Keeper Vault works. Most of us know it exists but what's the deal with it?
Every rare a Keeper sac's goes to the Vault, NOT back in to circulation? If this is the case then Keepers are the ULTIMATE hoarders. They aren't preventing it, or moving items into circulation, they're literally doing the opposite of that.
You can go kill the vault keeper sure. But it isn't fast and easy. You piss off a cabal by doing it. And you get ONE random item at a time, which normally is some piece of shit swiftbird sword.

If I'm wrong here and when the sac rares they don't go to the vault, they go back to the original mob (after a reset or whatever that's fine) then that's okay, they're working as intended: moving rares into circulation. But what is the Vault for then?

There are a few more things involved here. Keeper kills you, sacs your items, they go to the vault. You kill keeper, loot them, and when they rekit their rekitting forces items out of the vault into circulation. Its a viscous cycle.

All that deleting Keepers will do is cause people to do what they wanted to do more passively via leveraging separate characters (e.g. roll a thief to rob from one side, an invoker to give enchanted water cubes to the other, and a shaman Justice to hoard).

Let's make a dead keeper spit out vault rares like a pinata. Everybody wins.

borderlands style, lootsplosion.

Erlwith I'm just curious, were you a human healer knight that could be summoned to fight at will? Did you have to fight any keepers who were great at PK? Were you able to pick and choose who you fought, when you fought them, and where? These are just questions - as I said before, I have no idea who plays whom.

I have not personally seen Keepers becoming a huge problem for Knights, they would end up getting anathema if they raid repeatedly (basically the same as being evil). It does not look that way to me.

Kalist is right that there isn't as much benefit to killing a Keeper, which is a problem that it looks like might be fixed soon.

But I have to agree more with Merlandox and say between thieves and keepers, thieves are WAY more anti-fun.

At least with Keepers you have to actually lose a fight for them to sac your shit. Not just get blackjacked by some annoying ass thief. It seems like their RP is always the same too: irritating. They get off on pissing people off. That's like the definition of anti-fun.

I think we have seen a bit of resurgence of thieves because I relieved the super frustrating adrenaline mechanics. So some of this is "culture shock" now. Beyond that, thieves would not be very much of an issue if the poison tea thing (i.e. counter to being blackjacked and backstabbed) wasn't removed from the game. There was also a counter to that, but most thieves didnt know it.

Are you sure that is accurate as far as anathema? For a while there, keepers were always taking knight item, and they never got anathema because of it. Something to look at.

i mean this is a pk mud right, not a rare hoarding mud. What is wrong with killing a keeper if he number 2 on the leader board.

Nadrin, the Knight anathema flag is placed manually by the leader of Knights, and it sounds like they're not making Keeper anathema. All I see Keepers doing is mostly just go get the Legion item back because Knights capped the item while no Legions were playing. That's by design, we Imms made sure the pendulum swings on purpose for item capping. Offline item capping is bullshit anyway.

storm giant healer knight and human healer kalist. i actually found neutrals to be more straight forward and easy to fight in general. You're not worrying about necros or shaman! It was more of a melee skirmish in those cases. basic, not many frills, no threat at all. at one point I think keepers had a mount that made them move super fast if I remember? that was tricky, but other than that i think the biggest neutral threat was stone* giant berserker who are easy to just calm because they don't often wear saves against healers. this was before druids tho.

A neutral is not going to steamroll a healer.

If anything Keepers need a buff. Although a gnome invoker could be OP.

Maybe instead of Keeper needs deleting, Legion needs subtle buffs, and then you wouldn't have OP keepers. Everyone knows about the abduct. That's actually cheesy and favors powerhouse classes a lot. I'm going to talk about a Legion power we had because its been removed. The best spell they ever had, in my opinion, having four Legions, was the one made you move quietly in any rooms with darkness (i.e. limited autosneak at night mostly) and when it did, it reduced mv costs. That meant not need to use fly scrolls non-stop. It did two things making it useful for every evil character, even avians. It was an interesting compliment to the Knight stallion shit, which obvious prevent sneaking completely. A sneaking fire berserker seemed super intimidating. That gave the cabals an appearance of countenance, a sort of beautiful "all planned" balance about them. Shadow blend. I believe it was called that. It was later changed into something retarded and then disappeared. Groq might remember. If we want to go all-in on art mimicking life, they'd get a straight-foward power that allows them to attack in the town anonymously and then fuck off again without being flagged.

I agree with most of all Kalist has said, sometimes it's even boring playing a keeper. I think there was pendulum swing changes so it's a bit more active. Having played a few Keepers they are the anti-fun cabal.

As Kalist has alluded to, I rather have 4 large cabals then 5 smaller ones. It's great when you get that perfect 1v1, where you and your opponent are equally skilled and the fight can last for hours or continue for days and weeks.

But the most fun I've had in AR are in big group fights, 3v3, 4v4 etc., having wars, that was the best. Group tactics just bring a whole new dimension to the fight and it's always some of the best PVP battles ever.

I also think the entire Keeper mentality is kinda flawed. So they are the ones that are suppose to take out the big bad boys when they get too powerful. What happens when the Keeper cabal is dominant? What happens when the Top 5 players are Keepers or one of them become KING/QUEEN. Do other keepers turn on them? Do they have to go suicide to keep the "balance" of the realms? Reminds me of that movie Wanted.

Group fighting is way more fun, you're right.

Even if it's still a bit lopsided, I'd rather fight at a 2v3 disadvantage than a 1v2.

But with that being said, we all have to appreciate that that is also a function of Keepers right now. If there are 2 Legions logged on and a poor Knight, then Keepers will jump in and even the odds. So in that sense the Keeper cabal actually exists to create group fights. So we've got to give the cabal credit for that.

Also, maybe this is just because I suck at this game so I haven't experienced it, but don't Keepers not really attack "powerful" people anymore? I mean maybe they attack the King/Queen but that is literally 1 person and they can probably handle the attention so...
I'm pretty sure they do not attack people for having "too many" rares like they used to, which was annoying af.

So mostly they are just around to even out team fights, which is a positive?
And they are around to move around cabal items after they've been offline capped, like Dav said. Which all that really does is make it kind of senseless for Knight or Legion to ever take the other's item (to a point) and prevent anyone from logging in to no item.

So I feel inclined to say that it isn't necessarily the function of Keepers that people are having issue with. It's the full looting that they have issue with (which any other cabal is perfectly capable of doing as well) and the lack of being able to loot anything back (unique to Keepers)

So the big fix? Lootsplosions.

If an item is removed from the vault for every rare item in the vault, maybe saccing the keeper item (or taking it somewhere for an exchange) could turn into that item. Sure some of it would be swiftbirds, but better than nothing? That might also offer incentive to keepers not to kit out fully in their equipment in case of full loot.

Didnt bother to read comments or who even posted this. You're wrong if you think keepers dont play a integral role to balance serin.