Tiered player killing

OK, how about something like: Pick player killer tier at birth.

I was thinking 2 tiers. Also I'm just making these options up on spur of moment, I'm sure some are dumb.

* Introductory
- Can only join cabals at a "student" tier, and it's a place where full members should be showing them the ropes of PK/all of AR. Formalise the student/mentor relationship, remove the "cabal is for elites only" tag from everywhere.

- Can only loot 2 items, and have 2 items looted

- Gets a longer ghost period, enough to let stuff reappear in pit, or to find their corpse in safety

- Can't hold ?? unique items ?? lvl 50 rares?? some certain number of rares/uniques? any rares?

- no ratings, no records, etc...

* Hardcore
- all the full looting, naked ghost killing, holy gangbanging fun we have today, that most of us love


Any tier vs Introductory PK:
- requires a "warning" to be issued - think deathmark if that's still a thing. like "I'm coming for you soon". However, code that PK is prevented until warning accepted, or ?5? minutes goes past. Give the person some warning that shit is about to go DOWN!


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Some of you will hate this. But ask yourself if you think it would "make more people enjoy themselves, and give players a supportive pathway to become Hardcore"

You could upgrade a char from introductory to hardcore, so you could progress in the Cabal and join the fun of E-I-E-I-O-Tenor

Wrap the "thieves annoy me" stuff into this ranking. Can only steal 2 pieces from any introductory player per ?real time day?week? idk...

Curious to see what others say. I'm still mulling it over myself. But I want to say right off the bat: you cannot upgrade from introductory to hardcore. If you pick introductory you are stuck there forever.
Choosing it early and getting an ezpz run to 50 and then hardcoring to turn the tables is too exploitable. You are locked in to whatever you pick at creation.

Let me correct the post for you

- all the full looting, naked ghost killing, holy gangbanging fun we have today, that most of us love, gone

because your idea will kill AR

in fact this idea is so devastating to AR that if that ever got implemented I would just pack it in and start a new mud with full looting. That's literally how I feel. Reading that was totally depressing, stephen2. Why would you pitch a dangerous idea that alienates the damn playerbase? This is a "full looting" game. Meaning freedom to loot up to and including everything you want. That doesnt mean you have to full loot everybody. It just means that you can. You're completely missing the point of playing here. That point being its YOUR CHOICE. if you just want to restrict your looting to two items then go right ahead and do that and change the culture, be the change you wish to see.

Thoughtless answer with no detailed explanation Dav. Your only argument is: "a dangerous idea that alienates the damn playerbase"

I see 1 response saying they'd mull it over. I don't see an alienated playerbase? where are they?

You give no arguments, except a fake one. Try again.

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My hypothesis:
* It allows more people to enjoy AR
* It formalises a "mentoring" path for newer players
* The invaluable and interesting newbies that Kalist got through via hard work on Reddit would have a way to stay, a path for them, that would increase engagement for us all

As it is, I believe, people come, see how important PK is to AR, see the huge learning curve between themselves and most other players and don't come back. There's no pathway, and there's a lot of ways people can shit on them.

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Look forward to hearing your actual explanation as to why it's a devastating idea, in detail please.

Hello kitty island here we come....

Dav did you misread his post somehow? With his idea all that stuff wouldn't be gone, you just wouldn't be able to do it on newbies. Also please remember that talking about AR does not mean implementing changes immediately into AR. I can't do that. Xerties can't do that. Stephen can't do that. Ham can't do that. Only you have the power to implement a casual thought immediately. People like to talk about AR because they are passionate about it. Please see that as a complement - not a personal attack on you. Just remember, nobody is calling your baby ugly.

I don't think the hard coded looting restrictions are worth talking about because it will never happen (and that's the one point out of the few stephen made that dav had the biggest issue with - I think). I don't think it's necessary either, I think people could just think more about how often they full loot. If you play AR because you love the thrill of typing "g all corpse" that's cool too. Just maybe don't do it on noobs?

What about the other ideas though? I think the "trainee" cabal thing is a cool idea. Cabals are great for RP and I would imagine a newbie could learn a lot from players like Rhoa, Dogran, Solmundi, Thoom, etc.

Likewise it would be cool to really help those newbies get reoriented after death. What if they wake up in the temple as a ghost with a yellow road to their corpse? It seems reasonable to let them still be a ghost for a bit beyond their items returning. Note that this applies to newbies - if you want to pk a naked Dogran by the pit, go for it.



What if instead of character specific, the NEW tag applied to all characters associated with a player account? NEW tags should last indefinitely too until an imm turns them off on a character manually. Just because you're 50 doesn't mean you are suddenly competent. Maybe after the account is a few years old the automatic NEW tag goes away upon character creation.

This allows for more self-policing from the community and more harsh responses from imms for people shitting on newbies. "I know you could see the NEW tag, yet you betrayed him and full looted him. Don't be a dick to newbies." Personally I don't full loot and I like to talk to people to try to figure out if they are new and what their goals are before attacking them. That's decreased the number of people I attack drastically but it's good for RP and it probably helps keep people engaged (vs just getting steamrolled by a geared retired elite).

Edit - someone just told me about the mentor thing. That's neat.

You fundamentally change the game by impacting the pk and looting system. Thats fine, if you want to play a different game. I'd be for offering protection to newbies via the new flag. But any player granted such protection shouldn't be allowed in a cabal, they should be steered to coteries. Maybe expand on coteries to have one that trains people. Also what is to stop the newbie from being a disrespectful little terror hiding behind protection so they cant be put in their place? Also, any newbie protection system you set up will of course be exploited by vets.

I didn't write a long detailed post because it doesnt need a long detailed post to just state its a rug pull.

I wouldn't play an AR that had the changes as suggested. It would take my fun away, because I want to go kill the big bad, or choose to be the big bad, or whatever. I don't want a required timer to allow you to quit out on me. I don't want to not punish you for having rares I need when you aren't going to competitively pk and thus shouldn't have them etc.

^ this

Also, every time you guys throw "newbies" into a debate, you're arguing with emotions instead of real reasoning. Imagine if you had hired a babysitter (really, its not that hard to imagine, its pretty much what the imms do here), and you treated him/her disrespectfully all the time, paid him/her beans, and on top of that your kids (so-called "reddit recruits") act entitled and bratty. Well what's going to happen is that babysitter quits. Then your response - "But what about the newbies?" That's not going to stop the door slamming is it? This example illustrates that this is an extremely weak way to make a case, for any proposal. Plus, every time you guys direct things into a newbies thing it leads to an ENDING of all rational debate because it displaces it with moral panic. Its emotional blackmail and it needs to stop.

Stephen2, look at the other thread - I put it all very clearly there for you. This is just a duplicate thread with the same idea that's been rejected already. I wrote in the other thread that it was clear from the overall them of the posts that the REAL ISSUE was that end game re-equipping had been made deliberately tedious and frustrating. We put in place some extra measures to address that, literally on the patch that was released last Friday. So this does not need re-posting especially this soon after it was rejected. But let me make it very clear for you what is fundamentally wrong with your suggestion. It adds too much grief and subtracts too much pleasure. The game's balance of risk vs reward is weighed upon optional full loots.

I read 5 minutes of this and was disgusted. How long have you been playing AR Stephen? I've been here for 15 plus years. This is my home and frankly I don't like the way you are taking a fucking shit on my couch. So please kindly 🙏 fuck off with that idea.

Dav, I agree with you that there are certain aspects of AR that are fundamental to the experience. However, I disagree with your assertion that being concerned about newbs is an argument from emotion or somehow misplaced. We absolutely should be thinking about the experience of the game as it relates to new players.

We need to face the hard fact that this game, which so many of us have played and loved for literal decades, is on life support. Player counts have plummeted in the last several years. If we want it to survive, we need to be thinking of ways to make the game more attractive to new players. That means examining pain points with an open mind, not shitting on people for trying to come up with brainstorming ideas to make the game more palatable to newbs.

Stephen's suggestion (and it should be stressed that this is a suggestion, not demand or anything like that) has merit. This game has an incredible learning curve. It takes players years to become even just competent. Which is exacerbated by the moratorium on OOC interaction. I'm not saying that's wrong or should be changed, but just think of another game you've tried to introduce to a friend and then had to say, "Oh yeah, by the way, I can't voice/text/video chat with you at all while you're learning to play, or even know who you're playing. Good luck!"

The student/mentor relationship is a great idea. Trouble is, we don't really have the player count to support it. It would be good to incentivize this for vets somehow. Maybe Mentoring should be factored into HoE discussions. Or you get a bonus to your rating if your student does well.

We could also reduce the number of deaths students get, to encourage them to move up to a new char.

So instead of just trotting out the "this is the way it's always been" argument, try and consider the actual pros and cons of the idea. Offer suggestions and criticisms to build on the concept, or reasons why it should be reconsidered or rejected. Just saying "I'd quit if we did this" isn't sufficient.

If we'd rather just play it how it is and ride it into the sunset, well, that's an option too I guess.

P.S. Many people here should educate themselves on the elements of debate. One very important concept is the Principle of Charity, which is like the opposite of the Strawman argument. Please apply this to forum discussions so we can have productive discourse.

I'm wondering do you know of, IRL a noob who suffers from these dilemmas? Or is this things that bother YOU about AR. Because I know from my experience learning these things... They were part and parcel what made AR more exciting. Losing all my shit made it so much more precious when I got it the second time. And yes, I have had so many absolutely distasteful shit happen to me, which is why i know even a fraction of what I know. Its because it was done to me first. I look at the only noob I know who plays right now and he doesn't seem to bothered by it. He keep showing up. If you asked me what a turn off of the game would be? To pick a random spot on any section of our forum or logboard and see the obvious strife we have here. Some of the shitty things we say to each other lol.

Rock: Dwindling Player-Base
Hard Place: Overcompensating by making the game too easy, hence gutting its appeal of risk vs reward.

I appreciate Stephen2's effort and thought into what would help this dilemma. But I do think his suggestions go too far towards the hard place. I would instead recommend shifting attention to reminding players what AR is at its best (e.g., Valour throw down a few months back)

I still consider myself a relatively new player, because only in the last year and a half or so have I really gotten into the game at such a depth that I've started to understand what it's all about. You know what makes me excited about AR and makes me wanna roll characters and eat the shit I'm going to endure? Seeing you badasses succeed. Groushtar and Thoom made me wanna roll giants. Dogran made me wanna roll a shaman. Illyiza made me wanna roll a necro. It's the success of the veterans that makes noobs look and go "Damn... I wanna be on that level."

I don't have a direct answer for how to promote this side of AR more other than livestreams, better event turnout, and posting more logs. But I think this is where we have to turn our attention to at the moment, not some in-game mechanic that hand-holds new players. I think it's more about a shift of culture, and promoting the best side of AR.

We're definitely not going to allow the game to get cucked just so a few extra players might log on, I don't know what else to tell you.. but suck on the following. If you want to convince me you actually have AR's best interests in mind then you need to stop trying to ruin it. You guys all have choices so make the right choices and you won't have to complain on the forums to try to get the looting removed from the game. Just because you do not want to accept this fact, does not make you correct. Your opinion is not fact, sorry to burst your bubble. Its my perception this thread, like many threads like it, was spawned by one individual who got carried away and did something that was pretty stupid. You don't punish everybody for that. You don't ruin the game with nonsense looting rules and nerfing a whole class because of one person's stupidity. So please vent your frustrations elsewhere and stop misleading the community that there is a huge problem. You do not have a valid point because you have equal opportunity to go do the same thing right back, and there is strength in numbers and those numbers are quite clearly in you guys favor (very much so) as evident from Legion being dead all year round.

Thats cause thorgoth wont let me in. His panties be to bunched up.

Thanks for the thoughts. Some of you understood where I'm coming from. Others ranged from:
- willfully ignoring that this would only be for some complete n00bs, and nobody here would use the option, your experience literally wouldn't change (unless you like curb-stomping brand new people??) TO
- thinking there's some grand conspiracy and telling my my motivation comes from something I don't even know WTF you talking about Dav xD

Motivation is very clear to me:
- I've seen 4-5 newbies go through AR in 2021 thanks to Kalist's hard work in Reddit
- I've seen them all leave (pretty sure, like people just aren't in Discord any more)
- It would be insanely nice to see some stay
- It is ludicrously hard to catchup on decades of knowledge, and I though an "on-ramp/ramp-up" option would have been cool

Ideal world, I guess we'd have exit interviews with each leaving newbie, and figure out what to change that would suit everyone.

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I think this sums it up: "We're definitely not going to allow the game to get cucked just so a few extra players might log on"

That's cool. Everyone is hardcore. I'll just enjoy what I've got, and do my little part to be nice to new people I see.

I like what we've got BTW, in case anyone was wondering, think it's incredibly deep and challenging, and fun.

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LOL at BladeFury 15 years, I love you BF, but 15 years around here probably makes you a youngster haha

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Thanks all

We are all coming from a good place. You are all good people.

What we really could use for newbie retention is an introductory rank in a Coterie that requires the Freelancer class, induction unto the Coterie, and requires the NEW player flag from creation.

Then you can allow restraints and forbid things from both directions. There should be a shelf life for this process, to urge graduation from the Freelancer class into the desired class. I see something like this falling into the hands of a Mystic, and then on honing your skills and learning the game, you can gain the approval of somebody (Cabal and/or Coterie players, noteworthy players, etc) to ascend into "adulthood", like a baby bird leaping from the tree to take it's first flight.

That would be my pitch to it all, and it's not perfect, but it is derived of what Stephen has suggested.

I see doing it something like this as a better means to monitor newbie behavior. You're not going to fool the gods or vets, and the rewards for a real newbie player graduating could be some real flare or ammo IC. For STORY DEVELOPMENT.

Ashlyn once said that it is incredibly easy to tell who plays who here. And that could not be further from the truth. All you have to do is let them talk, or read their description, whatever. It is actually quite hilarious how transparent we all are, myself included. But that doesn't really have anything to do with what we're talking about, I guess maybe a process like the above suggested would help growth in the roleplaying department for us all.

Yo, you didn't answer my question man. Is this problems someone new has been like, The full looting and power pking is a real turn off for this game?

I know Heralds and Mystics merged or something like that. I don't know how all that stuff works now so I'm going to just talk outdated. You will know what I mean.

But there use to be a way for a Mystic or a Herald or both to represent a Cabal. That could be a really cool thing to have a Newbie represent (maybe call it something else other than represent) at a certain point through their practice. That way the duties of teaching this Newbie doesn't fall on just that Coterie, but now a Cabal has a Newbie to teach and a possible future recruit.

However! We should all strive to teach and to learn. I firmly believe this is everyone's job here.

I will take this responsibility, and I will teach a fellow Thief Newbie everything I know, and then his final test will be to rob you blind and then kill you and take everything you own, and then delete.

Oh sorry, tayyah. My answer:

- It's not me hearing directly from any of the newbies that tried us.
- It's not for me, I wouldn't pick introductory for any characters.

It was literally just my best guess at "why would people not stay? this place is awesome..."

And my guess was "maybe they had a bad experience getting dunked by silent PK, or maybe they just sit there having NFI how to play and no way to feel like they're getting constantly mentored"


I reckon back in the day, when we were all stupid newbies, there was _always_ someone around to ask our dumb questions, teach us how to re-equip, rank us up to 20, kill us and start again, every single day

Nowadays, that cycle can take a long long time, and it can probably feel a bit lonely. So after struggling against that, I thought getting even a small setback like listed above might be enough to tip people over the edge.

You know, it's not the event itself, it's the loss of progress, and potentially daunting "Oh, that took me a week to finally find that fiery dagger, I don't wanna do another week to get a new one"


Anyway, enough rambling... I hope I explained clearly though where my thought pattern comes from :)

I have a hard time putting myself in the newbie's shoes. I have a very clear memory of the very beginning playing AR for the first time. First and only mud I've ever played. It took me a couple minutes to figure out that you just type 'n' to move. Then I remember asking people to get me mithril eq because I didn't know where it was even though I'd been shown before. lmao. So I was definitely a huge newb back in like '04 when I started.
But I have absolutely no recollection of what took place between those events and becoming 'competent.' I cannot remember how I survived the learning curve and began creating cabal leaders. But I think it just takes a certain amount of tenacity. Because I do know for certain there were 100s of rage deletes between those two events. Maybe you can make it take less tenacity with these ideas you have here. But in the end I think this game will only ever be playable by people who have it, so the fix will only be temporary and perhaps delay the inevitable at best.

I agree with Xenyar and to some degree, Bladefurry. I love AR and I think one of the main reasons is the learning curve. I have been playing a VERY long time and like the idea that the effort I put in learning is an advantage I have over someone new, but perhaps that is because I don't PK heavily, currently. To take away the looting in AR, IMO, would be extremely detrimental, and barely beneficial. IMO

Arunore, I think you meant to say that it is the truth.

Need one of you elite tier guys to stream AR on twitch, show your heavy breathing and speedy typing as you track someone down and display your evil cackle as you loot their shiny things. Thats a terrific idea.

If you are worrying about retention the main thing I see with it is tayyah's point which got lost in the flood. There's a very easy reason for people to leave. Its because its human nature, to be more likely to stay with a community of like-minded people, that they feel they have stuff in common with, people they can connect with, comfortable with. I think you can honestly just forget about newbies at this point. Assume no newbie who tries AR out is going to stick around. You dont have to be a newbie to conclude you don't fit in here. Example --- when someone doesnt follow the rename policy, and you're the only person who feels annoyed enough to experience immersion break due to it, its like, well guess I wont play here thats fine. -1 player right there, probably a vet even. But, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. We have had plenty of unnecessary losses just from those sort of trivial things. The most common thing I've heard people complain about (especially newbies) has been getting silent pk'ed.

Dav, it sounds like you don't WANT newbies here. It often seems like you don't even want vets here, with the way you attack anyone who dares to post something you don't agree with.

This looks like another thread to move to the wasteland so people don't see the type of crap the implementor is posting.

Don't forget about newbies. Newbies are the best. They should be cherished. Maybe you were being sarcastic or joking and it didn't translate well in text.

"Silent pk drives newbies away" wow that's great Dav, you identified something that doesn't attack specific people. Can we explore that more in another thread?

I guess the truth hurts. Maybe we should post-mortem Eowug again so you remember.

Sorry did Eowug quit because of a character name?

I wasn't being sarcastic - if there's something that drives newbies away it would be great to discuss in another thread.

cheaters and ooc gang bangers drive this game into the fucking ground like you kalist

this and other threads have already identified some pretty obvious turnoffs for anyone who is not used to this environment. everyone has their own reason for staying, and their own reason for leaving. all you can do is make the environment more amenable to staying if that's what you want to see. think about the kind of player you want to retain and who you actually are retaining and who you might if you tried different suggested approaches. and then think beyond the game. people choose to spend their limited time here. if they find out the negatives outweigh the good things they get from the experience, they will just do something else.

I haven't played in a while. I've tried a few times, but I can't seem to find it in me. Like so many older players, I still troll the forums, however.

I can't for the life of me figure out what the hell is so wrong with suggesting something. Free flow of ideas is never bad; just so long as they are in fact, only ideas.

Blasting someone over and over, with ridiculous emotional reactions, simply because you dislike an idea is ludicrous, unhelpful, and down right pathetic. If you already have the ENTIRE authority; what precisely is the issue? Ignore the thread, or respond with a casual, "Nah bro," or (heaven forfend) give an explanation which is succinct and lacks the emotional rot and vitriol.

You wanted to know what drives people away or stops people from starting this game. Read through this wasteland fodder with a neutral perspective. It's mind numbing.

PS: I don't agree with the idea in the original post. In anyway. That does not mean I am going to assume people don't have the best interest of the game in mind. I still have a massive amount of affection for this game. I gave twenty plus years to it, so it holds a special significance to me and I'd love to see it flourish for another twenty.

Who here is full lootings new players? I have a really hard time believing that someone is full looting someone that has random trash items and getting pked in about 10 seconds.

I can agree with Dav's sentiment because of the guise you are using because you don't want to get full looted which I find hilarious. If you don't want to get looted, stop looting people you kill. That legion berserker changed the game when he would curb stomp people and didn't loot. More and more people took that course of action.

Instead of focusing on equipment maybe give ideas as to how you can incentivize people to not delete their characters over full looting because that is what you really want. Maybe something like with each kill you get your over all dam roll goes up 1 point or maybe you get 10 hp for every lvl 50 kill

People definitely silent PK newbies. Wouldn't surprise me if they sometimes sac the trash too. But I'm making that up as much as you are. Real stats would be amazing, or exit interviews with leaving newbies.

Get this straight: I don't care about this stuff, I wouldn't pick introductory. This suggestion isn't for my benefit. Do people struggle to understand me suggesting something that isn't about me?

Very frustrating to read these responses. There is no "guise" here, ffs

Newbies will stay here when they match with us. THEY match with us. Not WE match with them. It's always been that way. We are not going to make fundemental changes to retain newbies whenthe goal posts will move all the time. Every MUD is its own niche. The newbie looking for our niche will stay. The ones that dont match will move on.

I think most of you forget Dav is the owner. He is pushed to reapond point by point to suggestions and thats where the impact is happening and paint is being transferred between fenders. Do you think Stryth, Virgil, Burzuk, Avindus or Odoacer would respond point by point? Hell no. They'd lol or snark everyone silly.

There are 3 IMPs. There is 1 owner who is also an IMP making it 4. Keep in mind, this IMP-Owner (Dav) is doing his best to keep to the vision of Burzuk/Stryth from way back. They are the OG and love em or hate em, their influence is still present. Dav is a traditionalist. Suggestions are fine. Suggestions that water things down are derisive and cause apoplexy at times. You are all better off with full out nerf suggestions.

Dav's reply dial is always set to 11. It just is. At least every owner AR has had has been consistent. (I'm a grammar geek and i dont even know if "has had has been" is appropriate lol).

If I sound frustrated its cuz you guys are reposting the same ideas, repacked into something which sucked just as much the first time. Why can't it ever be something cool, like I dunno, the queen of the oozes overlord could clone herself in combat so you end up fighting two of them. Oozes multiplying makes super sense and overlords are dope. Adding challenge like that is GREAT for newbies. What a great vehicle we have to teach, the goddamn overlords. Don't you think? See my recent addition to the dhampir that makes saves matter and lets players actually experience a deteriorate right before a blindness. You guys would not surprise me if you start a campaign to nerf that overlord IMO and in doing so remove the "newbie hint". However, it is obviously going to be the case that you'll get to level 50 knowing fuck all about pk'ing and sucking at survival if that's all it takes to get there.

And meanwhile you chuckleheads are posting to remove steal from the game and remove looting. How about this for a novel idea. Addition by addition, instead of addition by subtraction. It costs you nothing to tell a player who is level 30 that he needs saves on. That helps them. Tell a newbie to train defenses first, use a purple potion on the vicious talamaur instead of filing bug after bug its too hard. Its not and shielding newbies and making life easy does not help. Comfort only breeds weakness. Getting looted is a super-strong incentive to get better.

There have been tons of complaints about *vulturing* but I cant think of many people complaining about full loots off the top my head. But vulturing is a lot.

I've written stuff sometimes during the course of this discussion and then not bothered to write it here... Here's some summarized points.

1. Somebody mentioned having elite AR players stream their play. For the longest time, Heralds have been able to do this in-game already, though it requires consent from the person they want to watch. While this is not necessarily a bad idea in and of itself, being a Herald (or now, I guess, a Consortium member) is a great way to learn about AR.

2. I have not really noticed anything in the newbie guides here on the forums which goes into proper depth about the good sides and bad sides to potentially "good" combinations for a newbie to try when starting out (I am specifically looking at race/class as an example, though using alignment by extension may be helpful). I've been tempted to write pros and cons about some combinations I have considered newbie-friendly but never followed through with it... On a somewhat related note, the reason why my first major character of note was an elf thief was due to a discussion in the role-playing forum about the potential the combo had for RP.

3. However (and this is the major flip side to the coin), it does take time to learn AR, and when you have players who have been playing for YEARS if not a decade or more (last year I passed the decade mark myself, albeit with some significant breaks), it is easy to get frustrated or not know as much. For example, it took me a year before I even knew (because somebody told me!) that you want to quaff a purple potion for sanctuary immediately AFTER the tick to maximize its duration.

4. I do agree with Resatimm's point about people staying when they match with us instead of us matching with them. The fact that we have no graphics is already a major turnoff for most people (read: those who don't or won't play MUDs), and beyond that, RP and PK are both structural elements of the game. Part of why I like AR is because there's no "internet speak" except for on the newbie channel, which is due to the enforced RP environment. Likewise, the thrill of the fight makes PKing fun.