What if you were allowed to kill players that were a lot weaker than you. What if there were consequences for doing so. Introducing HATE. HATE is a mechanic that increases with every lowbie backstabbing, newbie fireballing sin you commit. The more HATE you acrew, the more dangerous the world becomes to you. Cities and towns become more hostile. *Certain* guards become aware of your deeds, meaning, visitng a town doesn't become impossible, but, it becomes dangerous. You'd have to avoid certain guards, maybe even, certain sections of the town. Merchants can become aware of your deeds and charge you a little extra for the same goods as someone else or even decline service. Bounties start to appear with your name and description on them, even where you were last seen, with the accuracy of within the half hour. Players can then attempt to hunt you down to unburden you of this hate. Killing a player who has a high hate level is rewarded in some manner not yet determined. Being killed by a player with a high hate level also has consequences not yet determined. The mechanic shouldn't help facilitate a market for killing lowbies, while still providing risk and reward to the players who decide to participate. How does one remove HATE? Your thoughts?
Interesting idea for a PvP game. Considering the limited amount of PvP Panethon is going to have I don't see this happening. I'm also not for any scenario in which a high level player can kill a low level player. That's not PvP imo, as they have no chance to defend themselves.
Many games have tried mechanisms like this where ...unsporting ...murders of other players were punished in similar ways. I can't remember any where it was both popular among the player base and successful in actually deterring the conduct it aimed to deter.
DAOC I believe had a ruleset at least for a time that if another player was too many levels lower than you he or she could not be attacked unless the player attacked you or healed someone you were fighting or the like.
I agree with EppE. If a game wants to prevent totally unsporting attacks on much lower level players just prohibit it rather than imposing penalties.
