Powergaming vs Community/Roleplaying

[Aspir]

Im curious as to how you will limit powergaming and promote Community and Roleplaying, would there be benefits for players hunting in groups, events which will require the community to come together to overcome, for instance I believe raids have been mentioned as well as improved monster AI which could add an interesting game play element if some spawn locations weren't static but if monsters which are regularly hunted may possibly migrate or alter their tactics in order to preserve their own species, however I am drifting from the topic.

One thing which was a good feature but a large aspect of tibia's downfall was a characters potential for limitless progression, great for the people who get strong fast, but kills the fun for anyone who joins late in the game. Personally I think that a variable level limit (credit where credit is due, this was lovingly adopted from the Tibia Proposal board) will keep things fair and fun, with a maximum level being based on the average level of the players in Dristin, for example if the Average level was 40, then the maximum level was 1.5 times the average, one can achieve a level of 60, by doing this power-gaming will not be a problem and there will be no character whom can take control through level alone, compared to the current state of tibia in which level 300+ characters exist. Because of this people will be forced to work together to complete harder quests and kill stronger monsters. This system would need obviously need tweaking depending on monster strength v exp given, experience needed per level etc.

[Abscess]

Powergaming is something you cannot stop, nor do we wish to. There are people that only enjoy lvling in games and we don't want to take that away from them either. There will be systems in place (I won't go into detail on those right now, as we don't have it completely worked out) to discourage the so called Power Abuse. But we feel PVP is very important and don't plan on stopping that either, you will just think twice before just going and killing alot of people. As for team work, most high end monster/quests will take a team to defeat. Team work is important to keep the community friendly. If you don't play nice, nobody will want to help you and you'll miss out.

[Aspir]

I can understand your reasons for not wishing to limit powergaming as most likely it will be the desired option for the majority of Dristins userbase. Regarding PvP, that is one thing which should remain in full without limitation as I hope those players who pose a threat to the community will be dealt with by the community.

I am intrigued as to what those systems to discourage power abuse are, but that can wait until you have those ideas fleshed out completely.

[Relic]

To clear up a bit, our focus is not on providing a powergamers game. You could certainly play this way if you like, but we want a rounded experience with many quests, events, places to explore, in addition to simply killing monsters.

As far as so called 'power abuse' it is more about defining the line between freedom and griefing. You obviously want players to be able to mind their own business and not have to deal with random people coming along giving them a hard time. But also, you want to allow someone who wants to role play an evil character, do to so.

The trick is to find where being a 'bad guy' ends and where griefing begins (griefing is basically playing for the sole purpose of ruining other peoples fun, and damaging the game...causing 'grief'). The goal is to tune the game in a way that allows people the freedom to be bad, while making it unattractive to get carried away with being bad. Also clearly defining the few things that would be out of bounds and dealing with it appropriatly. Cheating also comes into this, but i'll save that for another conversation.

It's certainly a a subject we feel is extremly important, as a game like this looses alot of its fun when freedom suffers.

[Reevez]

could you seriously give us a view of what its gonna be like and just compare it to tibia so we can all understand it. we all played and understand tibia so itl be way easier to understand. who cares, we know you wanna branch it as far away from tibia as you can but yeh.. it just makes sense and that way we can be keen and epic and datura

[Keeper of death]

i know this is late... lol but if in tibia there was a level cap in the for that you said, think of all the level 8's there are lol. characters that people made for fun but just dont level... "pk" char.'s i know i have one lol he is only level 19 i think. there are to many low levels... well there would be except you know who (dont wanna say the name) kinda consumed the server... but usually there would be to many lower levels.
also there will be nabs that join and quit cause they are trash or... just plain nabs lol. build character a few levels then quit. this will also restrain the level limit.

[Aspir]

That is a good point, and could be worked around by setting a threshold level so to speak, for instance say the level cap is calculated using the average level of all players level 40 and above so all those junk characters that get made and never used won't drag down the server average, however no system is perfect.

[Bringer]

The skull system killed Tibia for me. But there should be repercussions for mass-random (serial) killers. There should definitely be a "Declare War" function between two guilds in which case neither guild will ever get any grief for killing who they're at war with.

As far as dealing with serial killers, think of real life... there were loose laws back then depending on where you're talking about. I.e. In rome if you killed a low class person, no one gave a fuck. But if you killed a senator or magistrate, and caught, you'd be hanged by the authorities (npcs?). Maybe make it like the wild west where killing wasn't allowed, but it was super hard to catch someone. Solution? If you randomly PK someone you have a (?)%*(their level) chance of being discovered by the law, and you'd be attacked by mid-level guards in town every time you went. Now, a lvl 100 Knight wouldn't sweat against being surrounded by 8 lvl 30 guards in Tibia land, but you could make being surrounded as being devastating. Who can defend against 4 people swinging swords at you from all directions at once? Maybe your armor will prevent most of the damage, but you're going to be using some type of drug/pot/consumable to stay alive for the amount of time it takes you to kill them all...

Ok, so, how gay would it be to be griefed, and stolen from for hours, then to kill the guy and get that 1% chance of being tagged as a murderer against you? Shitty, right? Solution? Pay off the guards/law... pay a penalty in gold. If you're a real playing player who is hunting and gathering gold, you should be able to cover the costs (maybe over a year a total of 5% of your gains will be lost dealing with getting tagged from capping griefers). If you're a serial killer though, you're going to get tagged and pegged over and over by guards and the law, and if it's all you do, you will eventually run out of funds.

Just a thought...