Mutual Hostile, or Hostile Timer?

[Kasreyn]

EDIT: This was supposed to be in the poll title: suppose Blizzard will implement one and ONLY ONE of the above methods of controlling PKing in D2 with a patch. Which would you pick?

Our recent discussion about this has left me a little confused. Maybe I'm thickheaded, maybe I'm a hopeless dreamer, or maybe I'm just alone in wanting a mutual hostile button.

I'm just curious which you folks think is the better solution to PKing. Or, whether you don't think PKing requires a solution at all.

-Kasreyn

[FenrisWulf]

I have never agreed with a mutual hostile button, because for me, it seems to defeat the purpose of PKing.* Then again, some people feel that PKing has no purpose anyway, :D but that's a discussion for another day. In terms of this one, I think that a hostile timer is a good temporary solution to avoid the trigger hacks and other passive PK exploits (hydras, WP trapping) until Blizzard can fix up their code such that these aren't a problem.

*for reference, I have never PKed anyone, and I have been PKed. Not hack PKed, though.

EDIT: I didn't like the wording.

[Tal]

I'm honestly conflicted about this issue. I used to be very supportive of a mutual hostility button. Then I had a series of very informative debates about the subject with whereagles back at the old Diablo2.com and I can see why some would prefer PK'ing. At this point in time I lean more towards the hostility timer as it makes it a bit easier for me to get back to town when someone hostiles me. I can then take down my copy of T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and start typing in verses to the would be PK'er. ;) I figure if they're going to annoy me by going hostile on me I can retaliate with my own annoyance system. :P

[--Pete]

Hi,

PKing makes no sense in the story of D1 or D2. The game just doesn't have enough flexibility to let one really role play an evil character, and anything other than that attacking a good just doesn't make sense.

So, since PKing is stupid as far as the game story goes, I'd rather the option to eliminate it completely. And still allow people who wish to to duel.

As for grief players and other idiots -- I don't see how PKing them makes any difference at all. They are not screwing with your character's head, they are screwing with yours. And killing their characters means nothing. Now, if there were a way to track them down and beat the crap out of them. But, unless that ever gets to be the case, expect assholes online, Just like you do on the roads, and for the same reason.

--Pete

[kandrathe]

Too bad there wasn't also the "Not Friends" list... Or, maybe an alignment... If you have an excessive number of PK's (as opposed to duels) you are deeemed to be evil. When you join a game rather than annouce your enterance, it warns the "Good" players that an evil force has joined the game...

I sometimes end up adding PK'ers who disrupt my games to my friends list temporarily. Then I track them with a higher level char outfitted with all the nasty stuff for a while until they are vulnerable, and then... moo wha ha ha... :D

Usually I just play in private games, or quit when my ears get blown out by that hostile sound.

[Ignatz]

At the sight of that placid and bland physiognomy,
When he sits in the sun on the vicarage wall,
The Oldest Inhabitant croaks: "Well, of all...
Things...Can it be...really! ...No! ... Yes! ...
Ho! Hi!
Oh, my eye!
My sight may be failing, but yet I confess
I believe it is Old Deuteronomy!

Hey, how can you not dig it? If you really want to PKBB (by boredom, or more likely, bewielderment), you're better off with the pontificating Stephen Daedalus:

Ineluctable modality of the visible: At least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphame in. Why in? diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

But a warning: Joyce has a way of making even the most chipper little server want to die.

[Kasreyn]

Aha! Finally caught someone saying something I've been meaning to ask about for QUITE some time!

At this point in time I lean more towards the hostility timer as it makes it a bit easier for me to get back to town when someone hostiles me.

BUT, sir, if mutual hostile button clicking is required for pvp damage to occur, you don't NEED to go back to town. If the PK hostiles you and you don't hostile him, he can walk right up to you, cast 10 Frozen Orbs at you, and you won't feel a thing. He can stand next to you cussing and swinging his uber rare elite greatsword at your neck, and he's harmless as a blind puppy. Harmless! About all he can do to you is try to steal your drops, and he can do that without PKing anyway.

So why would you "need" time to go back to town? Under the mutual hostile setup, a person who has hostiled you, whom you have not hostiled in return, is functionally identical, in game terms, with a person who has not hostiled you at all!

This seems a clear choice between a.) needing 10 seconds to escape a PKer who will then either force a confrontation and drive you out of your own game, or b.) avoiding all the messiness by only having pvp confrontations when YOU feel like it. When I state it like that, which option looks more attractive to YOU?

I still completely fail to see why the timer is considered better by most. Someone mentioned certain exploits, maybe something with Hydra. Anyone care to enlighten me? Remember, my D2 'sploit knowledge is pretty dated (I play v1.03), so I don't know all the newest scum tactics for the loopholes Blizzard's incessant changes keep opening up. =P

-Kasreyn

[gekko]

The hydra trick is that when I sorceress tp's to town, her hydras remain active (same for 'sin traps). A sorc will lay down hydras in battle near her "teamates", then tp to town and hit the hostile button. Against unprepared and especially lower level characters, lvl 25+ hydra / mastery hurts. A lot.

It was also mentioned how the storyline simply doesn't fit a character being evil -- I have to nitpick here. The *storyline* supports it just fine (err, well, sort of... the D1 story did, anyways, and certain characters in D2 can fit in as evil as well). However, the way the game is structured doesn't (so I agree w/ you in principle, just not in definition). Blizz seems to think the game can pretend to be a MMORPG. It can't. As a D2 character, the ONLY way to advance is by killing monsters, or at the very least by being in a party with people killing monsters.

However, I'd never really thought about that. But now that you mention it, you're absolutely right. Blizzard has some crazy ideas about their game -- how they've designed it, how it's worked, and how it's going to work in the future. The PK issue is just one of many.

I'm expecting to turn off diablo for quite some time when (if) the patch is released. While I give blizzard credit for spending so much time and effort on a game that stopped being profitable to them several years ago, they need to understand that quality, not quantity, is what matters. While I don't want to open yet another debate about the patch here, in some ways it fits here as well -- no matter how long they spend defending the way they've handled the issue, they can't cover the garbage they put in by yet more garbage, not even if they lay it on us by the truckload.

gekko

[Taem]

While I love PK'ing, I believe it has its place and purpose, but not in the Diablo world. A ten-second timer is too long to PK someone, so you might as well have a mutual agreement hostile button for dueling purposes.

The way I honestly feel games should be made are more like Hellfire's THE DARK, where melee and missile shots will hurt your allies, so you have to work togeather as a team because in nightmare and hell difficulties, you WILL DIE without help. This of course is pointless with diablo 2 for numerous reasons, the top two being multishot-like abilities that will kill everyone in the area of effect and the fact that any character can blow through hell as easy as they could wash their hands.

One other point I'd like to make is that violence is "not allowed" in city limits, which is why the protective barriers around the city prevent "evil" monsters from entering it (except briefly in the 1.04 patch in act 2), so dosent it make sense that you COULD NOT declair hostility in town, but ONLY out of town from a role-playing perspective? I don't know, just thought of that now :D .

[Mikedok]

Hail Meat,

You are right that a 10 second timer will stop PK's, but there is still a good reason for a timer rather then a mutual hostile system.

A timer will allow a character to chase a drop stealer/leecher out of a game. While the person who went hostile may not actually catch the other player they still would have achivied their goal of chasing them away.

Personally, I don't care which they do. I don't hostile people. But they do need to do something. Just a few days ago I lost my first character to a PK. It was a level 67 character killed by trigger hack. :( If it wasn't for the hack, I would have gotten away. I'm always quick to tp back to town after a hostile. Taking into account the hacks, the game is unplayable on the realms unless you know everyone in the game. A timer will fix the hacks hence the game, so would mutual hostile. One of them needs to be implemented.

[Jedi Knight]

Hi,

PKing makes no sense in the story of D1 or D2. The game just doesn't have enough flexibility to let one really role play an evil character, and anything other than that attacking a good just doesn't make sense.

So, since PKing is stupid as far as the game story goes, I'd rather the option to eliminate it completely. And still allow people who wish to to duel.

Exactly. D2 feels more like an arcade game than a RPG, since you can't really roleplay. Even if you could, it would be messed up by all those 1337 h4x0rz ruining your game. Hostility has 3 uses :

1- Dueling
2- PKing with roleplay
3- PKing just to piss off others

Since #2 is not really possible because Diablo is NOT a RPG, and #3 is what we want to eliminate, mutual hostile is the way to go - since dueling means that both players want to fight. Blizzard doesn't want that because they like to think their game is roleplay - but is not.

[Grumpy]

I think hostility should be mutual in hardcore.

In softcore, I think they should go back to the system where you lose expereience from player kills, eliminate non-hostile in cows (or eliminate the cow level) and have no timer or mutual button.

[Kevin]

Feel free to ignore it as well, the discussion has been had a million times and this doesn't really add anything new. I simply couldn't restrain myself today so I typed it more for me, and posted it anyway because some people may care what my opinion is, I probably won't respond to any replies unless they bring up points I haven't already seen discussed a bunch.

Yeah, it wasn't a choice in the poll, and I know that it won't really stop grief players anyway. So you add a kick feature as well. The game creator can kick whoever they want, and no chars from that persons account can join that game. You could also do a vote system for the kick as well, but I don't like that. Leave it on the game creator. Yes, it can be abuse (something good drops and the creator boots everyone from the game so they can grab it). But nothing is perfect.

Yes, you could still have the people following and harassing you, but it is a lot easier to document and prove the harassment if it happens over several games/days and Blizzard is much more capable and likely of doing something about it in that case.

I don't think there is a solution to grief player problem, but I do think that having the choice of having hostility in your games or not, and simply fixing the bugs that allow people to do the cheap PK kill tricks (have the hydras pop like traps when the sorc goes through a TP or WP, etc) would make the best environment. There will still be other types of annoyance, but I think it would be a better environment for people who want to play with random people and not deal with as much crap. Leachers are fixed by the level reqs, so with out the hostile threat for those who don't want it, you are left with people who type annoying crap (squelch) or drop stealers (which could be fixed by a kick function). I think it solves more problems than it causes, but I'll admit I haven't given it a lot of thought lately because I have fled to the side of pretty much password only games most of the time with people I know, unless I am in a mood where I can deal with the idiocy.

As for the two options listed either works for me. My usual tact when I do get hostiled is to either stay where I am and keep going (if the person wasn't in the area with me), or to grab a random waypoint and continue on. I still can collect experience and maybe even move forward on a quest and the PK will usually leave. The game is big it can pretty darn hard to find people, even with some of the hacks (I don't think there is one that reveals your location on the players screen yet if you aren't partied could be wrong). It also gives me more reason to jump down into the pits and side areas at times. But this is because I rarely get hostiled by anyone who had been in my party at the time. But I would still like to have an environment where they simply can't hostile me at all if I don't want. The mutual is probably the next bet so that dueling could still happen.

[TaiDaishar]

I picked a 10 seconds timer.

Having a mutual hostile simply destroys the entire purpose of the button, I know most of you think about that game where an idiot started running rampage but imagine the same idiot instead of rampaging, talking, and talking and talking and talking, the option to beat the crap outta him should be available, even though most of those just stay in town like- yes you guessed it- idiots.

[TaMeOlta]

I selected the timer , but I would prefer that (for grief players only) that all the NPC's would become permanently hostile to the PK'er , and that throughout that characters entire career , that he would randomly be hunted down by packs of Cows , accompanied by Cow King PI/MSLE in any level that he is in :P

[Guest]

I understand that some people want that. (IMO its lame and sappy). But if it was mutual it would essentially remove hostilty from the game.

It would no longer be a factor in the actual game. It would simply be a side contest.

Maybe they could make a "easy" server for people who want that rule set.

I do the the 10 second(5 second might be better) timer would be fair, just to stop sucker punches.

[Kevin]

And making it a duel is the whole point....

Why the connotation that the not allowing PKing makes you less of a player by saying it should be on the "easy" server? How about just calling it a PvM only server. There are lots of people who simply don't like the PK or dueling aspect of the game at all. Since they can usually avoid it, they still play the game because the rest of the enjoyment outweighs that one problem (so don't give me that, play another game crap). There is not lesser about not wanting any PKing besides dueling in the game. Sure that isn't what Blizzard gave us, but since I see enough people who don't want it at all, and implementing a server or a game creation flag to remove it for the many that don't want it isn't a real problem and you still don't drive away the players who like the PK aspect. But I already said a lot of this earlier. I was just annoyed by the "easy" comment.

Fixing the bugs and other oddities will mostly remove the sucker punch problems, so you won't need a timer in an environment where PKing is freely allowed, if they fix the real problems and not put a bandaid solution on it. If they have to have the bandaid, a 5 second timer would be fine.

[Baajikiil]

Personally I don't really want a mutual button, or a kick button for the creator of a game, but I just figured I'd mention something:

Leave it on the game creator. Yes, it can be abuse (something good drops and the creator boots everyone from the game so they can grab it). But nothing is perfect.

Heh, put a timer on the kick feature. That should help to limit the drop stealing abuse. Of course I guess you could still kick someone after they get Diablo's(Baal/Meph) life down to 1/10th, and kill him alone for the drop...

[--Pete]

Hi,

But if it was mutual it would essentially remove hostilty from the game.

Naw. Idiot griefer joins my game and I get pretty hostile. Killing idiots would remove much of the hostility, as well as addressing the overpopulation problem. Unfortunately, most people are too soft to appreciate that solution. :P

Maybe they could make a "easy" server for people who want that rule set.

No, make all the servers that way. Except one, the "idiot" server, for people who are too stupid to see that the game is unbalanced for PKing. That way all the idiots in their PvP gear can go around comparing the length of their dicks, and the remainder of the population who don't need continual reassurance as to their self worth could enjoy a game.

--Pete

[Baajikiil]

Killing idiots would remove much of the hostility, as well as addressing the overpopulation problem. Unfortunately, most people are too soft to appreciate that solution.

Best suggestion I've heard yet :) Too bad it would eliminate much of Blizzard's fan base.