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I still don't know where I stand on the whole PK debate....but I'm leaning towards wanting to keep PK and even enhance it to promote terror in this game about the Lord of Terror.
See, I'm someone who believes in realism in video games which, IMO, always adds to the immersion. So in real life, there is no such thing as "mutual/consentual hostility" which is basically what you'd get with designating PvM or PvP on game creation or splitting the communities into PvM and PvP. In real life, you can't tell the bank robber, "Nah, I don't feel like fighting with you right now. Go find a bank where they permit robbery." In real life, the robber points the gun at you and you either fight him or be forced to put your plans on hold (submission, equivalent to hiding in town or leaving the game).
Thus, in the diabloverse, It would be more real if anyone can hostile you just like in real life. I'd like to see it even more realistic where someone can be in your party, set up right behind you about to do a raid on Andariel's chamber, and then WHAM, they go hostile on you right there and start dishing out damage to you! That would be real.
At the same time, a lot of players don't want this sort of experience to slow down their "fast paced" progress, which it certainly would. So I can see how PKing is a very bad experience for some...
Then again, real life is full of pain and tragedy...and treachery. I don't want d3 to be so easy and breezy. I want only the STRONG to survive. Also, being able to PK and backstab your party would help (force) players develop more serious, intimate friendships with players they can trust instead of BEGGING strangers to help them like complete weaklings. Hmm...I'm liking this PK idea more and more...No begging, better relationships with friends...nice. I think beggers and lazy players deserve to get PKed for not putting in the time to accomplish things in the game.
Now, many people simply argue, "It's fantasy, it's not supposed to be real." Well, that is just plain wrong sometimes. For example, would you want to see 2 "fantasy" square shapes fighting on a black screen, or would you want to see richly detailed characters fighting in a realistic looking environment? Obviously more realism leads to better immersion.
But how do we make everyone happy? Well, here are a few ideas:
-make PK damage cut down even further, let's say to 1/10th. I think everyone getting killed in one attack is not much fun for anyone, even the PKer. It would be more thrilling for everyone if the PKer had to do bit more work.
-make the game world HUGE so it is harder for the PKer to find the party. Party members tp's in town can be invisible to anyone not in the party.
-all party members have to be within 5 levels of each other to join the party. Otherwise, the more overpowered person will be killing mostly everything and this will lead to rushing. Pertaining to PKing, the playing field will be more level for hunter and prey. A lev 90 chr can't join the lev 20 party and surprise kill everyone. He would have to hostile them and go looking for them.
-most importantly, every chr should have a PK record accessable to everyone. So when someone joins the game, you can clearly see if he's killed any heros. This will help with the next point...
-There should be a boot button for the game maker. Now, this part is VERY important: you can only boot someone out AFTER they have gone hostile on someone AND the person you boot has to be HIGHER than 5 levels above you. This would prevent you from booting out the whole party just before you kill a boss, etc.
-the boot button in this case is only for solving the overpowered lev 90 bully PK problem; it is unable to boot out people talking trash, spamming, being mean, etc. Perhaps a language filter (filled with words you can add yourself and save as the game maker, like "noob" and "nub") can do this automatically.
So, in a d3 scenareo: a level 90 jerk enters the game and hostiles everyone in the game who are pretty low level. The maker simply boots him out and he can't rejoin. Thus, there is no overpowered PK bullying.
Next scenario: someone joins your game, he is within 5 levels of your party and he wants to join your party. You look at his record. He's killed 15 players. No one lets him join. He hostiles the whole party. You can't boot him out because he is not higher than 5 levels above you. The good news is, you have your whole party versus this one PKer and you are all within 5 levels of each other. So unless the PKer is really expert and tweaked, you'll fight him off.
Another scenario: someone joins your party and goes hostile right when your life is low from a boss fight and kills you during the boss fight. Well, that's what you get for not looking at his record. If his record was clean, you now have the satisfaction of knowing your death has made it unclean. Plus, you weren't well equiped enough to survive a PKer who must have been within 5 levels of you, you let your life get too low around a stranger, your party wasn't watching your back ready to retaliate, etc.
As for my argument on realsim, the boot button can be explained as a magic ability Tyreal gives everyone, but it is limited to only work on players 5 levels higher than you who are hostile.
So PKers can still enjoy their hunting, but they have to be within 5 levels of their intended victims to make it fair. One scenario that still kind of sucks for some people is an expert PKer can join a game with only one other player, and he can hostile and chase that one person. The boot button won't work in this situation if they are within 5 levels of each other. The victim has no party to help fight off the PKer. Well, you can't have it all. Remember, the PKer also loses (wastes) time if the victim simply saves and exits.
Anyway, does all that seem reasonable? It's basically the implementation of the boot button made unexploitable combined with the non-rushing 5 level rule which Blizzard should use anyway.
The main problem with trying to make a video game realistic is that in a video game there are rarely any consequences for your actions and if there are consequences they are rarely worth worrying about. Also it's all fine and dandy to say you only want the strong to survive but are you prepared to accept the consequences if you're not strong enough?
As Tai pointed out in another thread, giving players the power to boot others out of the game is just asking for trouble. Expecting people to act responsibly when given power is not being very realistic, especially on B.net. Your solutions sound overly elaborate to me, plus a system where a player can turn hostile and kill you AT ANY SECOND is just beyond stupid and I don't think I should have to explain why.
My main issue is with the ability to hostile anywhere. Yes, it adds an extra level of realism, but I believe it would be vastly overshadowed by paranoia and end up destroying coop party gaming.
Your modifications to the boot button would seem to preclude most forms of abuse that I can think of, though I tend to err on the side of wariness. Giving additional power over your character to other gamers seems like a dangerous precedent. That said, I can't see any direct flaw in your host "boot button" at this time.
Good to see people thinking about how we can make this stuff work, as opposed to why it won't work. Even those like me who (by default) align themselves on the PK side of the argument are looking for a game that is truly enjoyable. Your version sounds like something I would definitely play.
Am I the only one who questions the "realism" of split-second hostility? I mean, where do you live that it's commonplace to be chilling with some friends when suddenly one pulls out a gun and blows the rest of you away? That would actually hinder the realism in my eyes. Plus, as Jarath said, in real life if that happened, your "friend" that killed everyone would be locked up for life or given the death penalty. In the game, what are the consequences going to be? Anything?
And of course as iraiam said, this is essentially a moot point now anyway.
Am I the only one who questions the "realism" of split-second hostility? I mean, where do you live that it's commonplace to be chilling with some friends when suddenly one pulls out a gun and blows the rest of you away? That would actually hinder the realism in my eyes. Plus, as Jarath said, in real life if that happened, your "friend" that killed everyone would be locked up for life or given the death penalty. In the game, what are the consequences going to be? Anything?
And of course as iraiam said, this is essentially a moot point now anyway.
The hostility option is indeed gone...now we know.
But in my old idea, as stated in the thread, there WOULD be a consequence to PKing your buddies. Your chr doesn't go to jail or anything, but he has a record much like a "criminal record". Everyone can clearly see the number of PK's you've commited when you join a game. So partying up with some stranger who shows up in your game with a record of even one PK is bad idea. The PK record can be seen by anyone and it could be designed to show which PK's were commited against a former party memeber, which PK's were from mutual hostility in duels, etc.
I like it. Actually, I vote for even more realism. Instead of hostility, all attacks should be able to hit friend and foe alike. Similar to D1. Gotta watch out where you're firing those fireballs! Did anyone else love using chain lighting when there was a whole screen of monsters, and inadvertently killing everyone in their party (remember chain lightning was slightly different in D1...it just sent a bolt of lighting out to every monster on screen at the same time, so if there were 10 monsters on screen, it would send 10 bolts of lighting out at once. And you could just cast it repeatedly to completely fill up the screen with lightning). Furthermore, I like the idea of keeping track of PKs. But to make it even more realistic, only hardcore mode allowed, no softcore option. Furthermore, once you get your first PK and get a dirty "record", blizzard sends out a team of their own lvl 99s to track you down and kill you...they would randomly show up in a certain number of games you join. As your record of PKs increase, the frequency with which blizzard's 99s show up increases. Its would be kinda like the FBI or SWAT team. And no matter how many of those lvl 99s you manage to kill, blizzard basically has an unlimited number of guys, so they just keep sending them after you in bigger packs. Oh, and you only get 1 guy per CD key. If your guy dies, you have have to go out and rebuy the game.
I'm sure you're being sarcastic, but belive it or not, I like a lot of those ideas. Certainly not the last part about 1 chr per CD and having to rebuy!!
As for killing your party by accident since you can't stand in fire and fire burns everyone, this would add a nice party skill set because archers would have to move such that they shoot monsters from the side and not 'through' the backs of their friend tank players. Mages have to handle their own little group of bad guys so they don't nuke their party. You know, CHALENGING strategic stuff like that instead of just a big click fest in baalrape games.
But no, that is too much work for many of you. Most palyers are cry babies and want to stand in fire, you want arrows to just pass through you, and so on. I'm not an advocate of dumbing the game down, but that's just my opinion.
Jarath, sure the PKers would flaunt their PK record as an achievement, but it won't stop the maker of co-op games from booting these PKers out when they see the record and get hostiled. It would be hard to get this "achievement" in the first place since they'd be getting booted out of serious games AND they can only PK players who are within 5 levels of themselves.
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