daedroth wrote:anthriel wrote:I guess as a recent new player, my own experience/feeling was that there is literally NOTHING that someone can do to affect a 25er who is bullying them while they are leveling (hence probably why many cases result in damaging flame messages which further exacerbates more pking or counter productive bans happening) ...
Did you try talking to the pker?
Also I think you might be seeing being pkd as being bullied?
Or was the pker actually pk'ing you many times over a short period of time (as in breaking the ToS)?
Was the pker paging you with harrassment?
If you actually are being bullied, then report them.
I just wanted to clarify that i was not personally "harassed" by any PKers (as far as breaking ToS defines it). Hence i never bothered to talk to the pker.... my getting killed by a Pker so far does seem like a normal part of the game... But looking at past posts on this thread it does seem like there are some who do feel harassed by being followed from area to area and repeatedly targeted... and if their only recourse is to complain to staff - well isnt that the situation NH wants to avoid happening more?
What i was saying is that it is very easy for someone to FEEL harassed (apart from how ToS may define it) and stop playing the game we want them to be playing more of (either permanently if they have a bad experience when complaining to staff etc or temporarily while they wait until the PKers are no longer online) ---> because lets face it, most people are time-poor (have other uses of precious time) and most people dont really like leveling. I mean Adramelk and Jadefalcon's apparent dislike for having to potentially risk more leveling in order to engage in their favourite PKing past-time probably illustrates my case on this point. Most ppl play RPGs because they want a feeling of making progress, being social and because they want a character to be 'fulfilling' as to how they imagine it.... id hazard a guess that no new player imagines they want to play a character thats a total loser-gimp/bitch to someone else's 25er for the first 275-350m of grind.... even if they are to suck it up and accept being killed, they are going to want to have some reasonable/fair game mechanic that allows them the chance of striking back in some meaningful way.
If you want a new player to say "GG, nice kill" to their Pker and somewhat-joyfully suck-it-up that they now have to spend more time leveling, then you really need to have given them some chance (even a small one) that the outcome could have gone the other way also.... otherwise even copping one PK can start feeling like some "immortal gods" are picking on mere mortals... and such a feeling is probably conducive to a new player wanting to play less rather than more (ie counterproductive to growth of the game)I think as a community we are probably too blinded in perspective by our experience of ROK, that we've forgotten what a new player (who has never had the PK bastardisation initiation that Rok was) feels like. EO improves on ROK in one of its major flaws (i.e NH is far more active and open to suggestions than DM ever was) but it probably hasnt addressed the other major flaw (which is that the times have moved on, and hence why we cant even get back to ROK player numbers)... people today have far more alternative options for GMUD gaming... they are a far more instant-gratification culture... time is much more valuable as potential playerbase can be older with families/jobs/kids etc.... and therefore leaving a game mechanic the same as it was for ROK is nice for ex-ROK nostalgia players who are used to it, but is is at high risk of being out-of-touch with new players who have never played ROK. I'd be interested to see how many people who never played ROK or didnt have a friend dragging them through EO have actually stayed long enough to achieve having a 25er. My guess is quite few... and that might be saying something.
Basically EO right now can feel like a fish-farm with not enough fish. Existing/established players can assert their rights to fishing that farm as much as they enjoy but i doubt the new fish see it nearly as enjoyable (especially when there is no risk/penalty for the fisher). And un-like fish in the fish farm who have no choice but to be there, new players who realise that their only purpose in the game is to be someone else's victim can easily leave. At least if you introduce a mechanic where there is risk on both sides, the new player may feel its more like a boar hunt where they could potentially strike out with their tusks, rather than being a helpless fish at a fish farm.
Ultimately NH must make the game he sees fit. And both old and new players (consumers) must find the fulfillment they see fit (which may or may not be playing this one game). EO now is like an old nostalgia diner... it has a few regular patrons who make most of the suggestions and who's patronage keeps it going... and thats fine if thats what NH wants it to be. But if he actually wants it to grow into something of more scale like a global McDonalds business (which was my impression from threads about posting on Steam and advertising etc) then i think we existing patrons will need to expect that things cant just be ROK 2.0 but will need to change at some point for the betterment of the many potential new customers.