Alter Aeon Online Help

Keywords are:  'obsolete ppk intent'

(THIS HELP PAGE IS OBSOLETE AND PRESERVED FOR HISTORICAL PURPOSES ONLY)

Before some of you read about pk, or decide that it sucks or some other such
beast, please read the following.

It was never my intention to make a pk mud.  However, given the demand and
response to it when implemented, it appears that limited pk is probably a
Good Thing (tm).  But, understand that it is low priority and may now get
the attention some will expect.

Regardless of what people wanted, I wanted several things out of my pk system:

It must not allow endless, infinite killing of others.  I find this to be
retarded at best, and if pkilling is going to be done, I want there to be
consequences.  It is, after all, murder.  (There are exceptions to this, like
the arena and the temp pk flags, but permanent pk should be a way of life.)

Any penalties incurred should be relatively severe, as in a normal death.
None of this going pk to avoid exp loss - if you don't want to be looking
over your shoulder all the time, permanent pk is not for you.

On the other hand, pk death should not be much more nasty than mob death.  For
this reason, equipment and corpses should not be lootable by the killer.
This prevents Hidden Worlds syndrome, where pk looters would offload the
pkill equipment onto non-pk storage characters.

The bad effects of pkilling should be cumulative, and wear off somehow.  This
would allow the occasional firespat when fueds arise, but would require times
of laying low to get back into good graces with the rest of the world.

The rate at which pkills wear off should be affected by things the killer
does - but only to an extent.  Also, increasing the rate at which pkills wear
off should be expensive.  If players find a way to quickly reduce the bad
effects, it will be used and abused.  It was my intention to make the penalties
of pkilling something that were tolerable only to a point, beyond which the
character must wait for the effects to wear off.

I think what the above is saying is that I wanted pkilling here to be done
in a relatively role playing fashion, if at all possible.  People who kill a
lot are hounded murderers, and must wait for the world to forget about their
evil deeds.  For the most part pkilling will not be worthwhile, allowing pkers
a small amount of safety.

-dentin