Looting mechanics

Dava brought up possible change in looting mechanics, nothing set in stone.

'RISK TOLERANCE'
Syntax: tolerance <1-3>

Set your personal risk tolerance to determine how severe the consequences
can be from dying in a real fight. The default is tier 3.

1: Ultra-conservative. No loot, and not even gold. But no rares and no
ore may be carried - at all.
2: Careful explorer. You may use and loot rares. Only 3 can be looted,
either by you or your killer. 1/3 of medals and
relics automatically transfer to the victor.
3: Adventurer. You embrace danger. All rares are available for the
taking, and your rare are available for the taking and you may loot similar thrill-seekers freely. medals and relics are retained".

Dogran brought up risk should be set permanently at the beginning - I agree with that proposal.

Only thing about the ultra-conservative I can see being a bit of a problem is allowing these characters to pk. Can become quite trashy, you can still be somewhat competitive with a full set of gambled armor and non-rare weapons.

Discuss respectfully.

I really don't like this idea. I think it should be open season on any and everybody. That's the risk of entering the abandoned realms. Win, reap the rewards. Lose, and feel the pain. If I die, I expect to be full looted/probably should be full looted.

Not to mention regaining new equipment is easier than ever. You can be back in a very competitive suit in minimal time.

I'm not trying to be rude, but this idea is soft af.

If this is going to be implemented, all cabal chars and cabal applicants should be exempt from a choice and automatically be level 3.
If you reach top 3-5 on the pk list, you automatically get moved to level 3, if you aren't there already.

The problem with this is that it's still too easy for it to be abused.

I killed Mardakar with a ranger who had a basic set without rares and a ranger bow at one point, and if I had been in category #1 (and that had been a thing at the time), I could've kept griefing him if I had wanted to.

#1 in general makes griefing with trash characters too easy. If I know I'm not going to lose anything, I am more likely to be super aggressive since I don't care if I die! Also, it makes troll characters that much more annoying, because there's practically no point to killing them aside from temporarily shutting them down.

#2 makes it too easy to hoard items. We already have issues with hoarding - being only able to take away three rares from an individual means they still generally have a solid amount of equipment, and if they have rares in every slot, it would become very difficult to disarm them.

#2 also gives good PKers a way to minimize risk to themselves for PKing, and I don't think that's a good thing since it could be abused. As one example of how this could be abused, the Fire with Fire set can easily have five forged items which are easily replaced, so a paladin could take this option and practically never have to worry about being out of the action since they can keep original items in their sack.

I don't need to say more about #3 since that's the current situation. But to put it in simple terms, these options I aee are too easy to abuse and are open to being abused.

Yea but what about Justice apprehension looting and judging?

What about Keepers in omegagambled gear in risk 0?

What would be the delay in changing mode? Run away and set risk 0? Do you drop loot when you are in tenor and swap to risk 1 or 2? Hide loot somewhere and swap to risk 0 - die - go pick up loot with risk 3?

Or chill around with 10mil gold high roller poker player with no threats of thugs breaking into the bar and taking your stash? Kinda ruins the whole plundering thing and thieving thing...

Mico - did you even read this:

Dogran brought up risk should be set permanently at the beginning - I agree with that proposal.

And upon further reflection, I really don't like this idea because of the way it could be abused with multiple characters. Mico's point about Justice also lends itself perfect points or analogies to add.

Suppose two people pick "1" and decide to gank/grief somebody by singling them out. That player can be griefed as much as they like unless the Immortals get involved. And if these people get involved in group PKing, sure they're not taking anything, but they're contributing towards the action and they should not have "Get out of Jail Free" cards.

Also - does picking "1" allow the character (if lawful) to hire constables or (if a Valourian Noble) summon Knights?

Come to think of it, should a character who selects "1" become in general a PITA in PK (opening/closing doors, summoning people, generally doing anything that would count as able to be flagged under Justice's fourth law, etc.), should they be relegated to "3" status?

As I implied earlier, "1" basically makes grieving easier, and "2" makes hoarding a potentially bigger problem. There have been discussions of an explore or "No-PK" mode in the past but from what I recall, they've always been decided against because it's too easy for griefers to abuse such things.

Playing devil's advocate here.

There has been talks previously and recently about having a "PVE" only mode or integration to AR. There has been new players that have asked this on newbie chat and on discord if there was such an option very recently.

The learning curve to become a competent AR player in terms of not even pking but just surviving is a hard and long curve. It always has been, and once you do reach over the curve the game does unlock and keeps you entertained for decades as some of us are still here. I think of course this does put off some people from reaching that milestone though.

Having a PVE only mode would drive more playerbase and I am all for that. Having more people in the realms is good for everyone, even if they aren't interested in the PK side of things and I'd like to think eventually those PVE only people, after learning the realms more, might start dabbling in the true nature of AR.

Back to this discussion.

I still like the idea of the risks being set on creation and permanent to minimize any potential for abuse. The niche situations of cabal members/justice guards/constables etc. can be looked at separately but we can just make all cabal hopefuls set at 3 if you want to join if that's a problem but I don't think it has to be that way.

I think option 1 should be the PVE mode. They shouldn't be allowed to PK or be PKed. This stops the potential for trash pking. You can still get a very nice set of gambled armor, some non-rare weapons and PVE to your hearts content. I want to even extend that they cannot assist at all in PK and their spells/skills are useless to any player with any type of pk adrenaline (kind of like how you can't use monster pots for awhile after any pk adrenaline). This is to minimize any abuse.

I think option 2 is great. I don't agree with the sentiment of disabling your opponent or having to full loot them. I would hardly full loot anyone anymore, probably the only time would be if I just got full looted by the same group/person and will loot them to get my armor back or regain equipment quickly. Isn't the whole fun in PK when you fight someone with some comparable equipment? The pking always ends when the other person gets full looted - as they'll just quit out or worse yet delete over it and you are back twiddling your own thumbs with your vorpal sword. And this really doesn't even "disable" them for long. BW brought up the Fire and Fire set and how quickly someone can re-gain their powers if they died, but isn't that what you want or does everyone like the one fight and done. The Fire and fire set is not even needed, Knights can easily get back in the fray and lionize an entire set that is just as good, if not better than fire on fire with about 10k gold and some royals if they get full looted right now.

I would argue this may incentivize more hoarders to fight or stay in a fight knowing they may not lose their uber set right away but you can still take their top 3 BiS items which will benefit you and also weaken them a bit.

I also don't agree how option 2 makes hoarding easier...hoarding already exists. You already have people sitting in random places for hours that you have a tiny chance of killing, so how does that change anything?

There is alot of niche examples like special guards etc etc. This can be looked at in a case by case view with exceptions to this tolerance for those cases.

Throwing in my two cents here as well,

I think people will always find a way to abuse whatever system is in place. Abuse happens with the current system - I was full looted regularly even a couple of years ago when I started playing the game again. And to a noob, trust me, that feels like abuse. Someone on the other end is getting their rocks off at your expense. So personally, I'm a fan of this proposal, with room for tweaks of course to see how things play out. Tolerance 2 is my general practice, except for certain cases against caballed folks for obvious reasons.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but I don't really see a problem with tolerance 1 PKers... if they kill you, so what? Prestige points let you buy back constitution now. And you can play during surges where deaths don't matter. On the flip side, tolerance 1 PK is a great way for noobs to learn the ropes. Right now, the only space we allow for people to learn the basics of PK is through duels... which isn't really fair, because there are so many more factors at play outside of the arena. I think if this becomes a thing, you will see surges get flooded with tolerance 1 PKers duking it out all across Serin.. which I'm 100% behind.

The only real problem I see with tolerance 1 PK is something that already exists... and that's if you have an experienced player who rolls up a toon optimized for low level PK. These players become basically unstoppable as they can get a basic set with a race/class combo that has no XP penalty and is non-gear reliant. Then they just sit and make other people's lives hell for as long as they like. But these are edge cases and can be addressed as they arise.

#2 changes hoarding by making it that much easier for our hoarders to hang onto their "precious" items. And I don't like that since it's annoying enough dealing with hoarders who avoid threats and at best bottom-feed. Allowing them to limit what they lose increases the toxicity in this game in my opinion.

I suppose there is also the fact that I take a similar philosophy to that of at least one other elite player (not naming who) where I anticipate my opponent to loot as much as they can before I can get back to my corpse (assume they'll full loot if possible), but to consider it a pleasant surprise if the majority of my possessions have not been taken away.

What's up with everyone being so upset about the potential loss of possessions anyway? You can get back in the fight quickly these days, and most people don't multikill in the same session unless you decide to be a PITA. It's just the nature of the game that losses happen.

Just change the way loot is being lootable, change the looting itself:

Delayed looting, harder pieces are harder to remove, like breastplate.
Rings and stuff are quicker to snatch off.
No more nonsensical "get all corpse".

So just pointing out #2 clearly stated that it would transfer 1/3 of medals/relics which is currently completely off-limits. Its not unusual for a level 50 player of some worth to have saved up 6000+ relics and 2500+ medals from all the bloodshed farming on bosses and levelling assistance to reduce the hours needed to keep rares. 30 spins on smuggler and a load of potential ore. That could be pretty lucrative, especially when you are killing fresh 50s who have no eq you actually care about, but will have medals to take. It could potentially open up more opportunity to use enchant armor on forged and gambled gear since at some point you acquire a similar item and can splooge sovereigns trying to enchant.
That isnt a soft option at all in my opinion, its something new to chase besides just gold for eq hogs

I would also like to point out that when we discussed this, cabal members would be locked into number 3.

"If this is going to be implemented, all cabal chars and cabal applicants should be exempt from a choice and automatically be level 3.
If you reach top 3-5 on the pk list, you automatically get moved to level 3, if you aren't there already."

We do need to do something about full looting. We've already done something about it. charmies were stopped from full looting, and chars under level 30 cannot "get all". what we've done so far is simply prevent abuse. But this idea isnt about preventing abuse. Its instead about adding sophistication and depth. that means having some choices to make for your game experience. Also it doesnt have to be just about eq and gold. The more conservative levels could also get exp loss on getting pkilled like as if they had died to mobs, while the full looter path could get an exp bonus for quicker levelling to encourage going ham. The goal isnt to actually remove full looting from aggressive characters, and there would be some onus on the player to respect the level they picked and do not play aggressively if they did not pick an aggressive option. Cabals, may or may not count as aggressive, depending which ones you join. Some people are going to try to hoard regardless so, I dont think this bears particulary on this system, but it *could* be the case that picking a conservative setting also reduces the amount of rares that player is allowed to use

I think if we make changes and hate it all that's lost is time. The nice thing about this is you don't have to appease shareholders and no one is going to ask for their money back.