Shattered Kingdoms

I just wanted to take a note and state publicly that as a new player who has only been here 2 days I feel like I am being punished for being a new player by these insane and unrealistic, totally RP breaking logout thief rules that have recently been added.

I logged in today after logging out last night - my second night playing total - only to find that most of my stuff was gone. This included items that I got from the academy (I had bought them) and also included things I had been given but due to being tired - somehow in 2 days I had logged over 20 hours - had not equiped because I was not able to identify it and wanted to be sure it was safe, since I was told that it could be booby trapped.

I was never told I would lose my stuff. Being a new player, I had no in game announcement that this would happen so I had no way to get ready for it, and honestly if I had known I may have not started playing. The help files? Not at all helpful, as they explicitly state:



I have bolded part of that to better explain my case. Simply put as a new player who depends on the help files I was not only misled by the help files, I was actively lied to. This is harmful to me, and ultimately the game, as a new player is something most games want to have. Worse, it kills my RP.

Now this is really offensive to me as in my case this BREAKS RP and harms me as anew player by making me a bigger target for PK. That is right, I am not able to RP due to these changes and I am now a bigger target for PK.

I wanted to be a merchant mage. I invested attribute points into Dex and Str so that I could carry more items to make that happen. I build a character exactly to do the RP I wanted and these changes basically give me the finger and tell me that I can not RP as the merchant mage I wanted to be. I didn't want to hoard anything, If anything I wanted to help un-hoard things. These changes break and harm RP, in my case making my RP goals impossible and leaving me with a character that cant even use its stats because the dev and str are not usable due to these rules, and if I try and logout its forced communism and the stuff is gone anyway. No capitalist Mage RP for me.

And before this I had trust, I knew my stuff could be stolen in game but while logged out I had this expectation that what was mine was mine and I simply needed to take steps to curtail theft (keep invis, close bags, etc) when logged in. That trust is gone.

This does not make it easier for people like me who want to play and wanted to do deep rp; it actively gets in the way or makes it impossible; this game just became a lot less fun.

Worse if I try to wear nice stuff, people can see it.. so I become a bigger target as a weak new and inexperienced magic user player to PK. This is not a hypothetical; I was actually attacked in the sewers of Exile yesterday, I got lucky and had wimpy on and went invis fast. But it still happened. And now I don't trust people to go with them into the sewers because I don't know what will happen.

I cant wear nice stuff I am given as a new player because others may want it enough to pk me. Or worse, I could log out and lose it at random when it is my only backpack, etc. So since I have no stuff to protect me, at that point I am also a target for PK. Worse I ahve no way to know what I can lose to the logout thieves or how to mitigate that threat,

It should be noted that no merchant has EVER told me that stuff could be stolen, but stuff I bought still was stolen by the logout thieves.

i'm not sure why the hoarding thing was an issue, unless that as long as that stuff exists it cant be made for others. and if so that is the the bug not that people had stuff.

And as a software developer myself I look at all of this as sloppy. No doc updates, no warning to new players like me, no help files updated as proven by the above. No data driven statistics to see who the offenders are before treating EVERYBODY like a criminal, I had no idea any of this could happen. And even now as a player who clearly isn't cared about, I have no idea exactly what happened or why, or how to stop it from happening again. Now I know it doesn't matter how hard I work in the game, if the game thinks I have an arbitrary "too much" it will be stolen.. its like forced communism. ultimately why earn stuff if its gone as soon as I log out? Why even play if I dont get to have fun?

All I know is I logged 24 hours over the weekend on a new obsession I was passionate about and really enjoying and now I find myself wondering if I should even login anymore; and maybe that doesn't matter to you, maybe you don't want new players, maybe you have too many new players, but it matters to me. I thought I had finally found something I could enjoy.. and this violation of trust takes that away.

I was really enjoying this until this happened,

Honestly if the problem is the veteran people as was explained to me in game, then why not just deal with them directly instead of harming new players like me?

I know nobody cares about a character that has only been playing for 2 days, who tried to read all the help files, read the rules, graduated the academy by solving the puzzle, actually tried to help people, etc..but I had to say something I honestly consider this harmful to my desire to play, and without new players SK will die.

Hello, and welcome to Shattered Kingdoms. Unfortunately, not all of the information about equipment is contained in the single help file you quoted. You can find a lot of useful information at http://www.shatteredkingdoms.org/faq. One part of the FAQ addresses your issue specifically:




Don't let it get you down! There are a lot of places to explore and more equipment to find. Good luck!

Think the point is that he lost items from the newbie school. I think.

Exactly.

But also the other thing. This kills RP and harms new players. I'm against that.

ITs also important to note that in my case, I had checked the FAQ and the help files, they just flat out lied to me as I have proven from the above. And even if your telling me now after the fact items have levels, how the heck so I check the level of an item? I cant examine it to check, the identity spell doesn't tell you an item level is on the race chance it works, etc.

Thieves shouldn't be grabbing newbie school items, that is a bug.

While there's a need to protect Mentor+ items meant to be fought over, we might reconsider protecting Veteran-level items from low-level characters - or at least how we do it. This code was more tolerable back when an item's sale price was a sure guide to its level, and when prices were generally lower. If I bought a 7-platinum weapon using my newbie school savings, just to lose it at the next login, I'm not sure I'd stick around long enough to post.

Duane: As a side point, if you continue your current character, I suggest not investing further in strength/dexterity at the expense of more valuable mage attributes. Dexterity only affects the number of items you can hold at one time; you can carry as many as you want in your bags. Strength does let you carry more, but you have the "shrink"/"enlarge" spells which affect weight. Items can be shrunk all the way down to tiny.

The help file didnt lie to you. You assumed the meaning of the help file. The being said it would be nice if the help file was to include some minor information about the log out thieves and the hoarding ones as well.

You where able to use the items, you where not able to keep the items. There are a lot of games where you will just get told you are not a high enough level to use the item. If you bought anything that could be stolen from you. You should have gotten a shopkeeper warning about it. However again if it is in the newbie zone it shouldnt be level too high to be stolen so probably a mistake by a builder or perhaps someone sold something there which is probably another mistake by the builder (seeing as people shouldnt be there unless they are mentoring or leveling). The new newbie zone is actually very new sadly such things can be overlooked until someone falls victim to it.

It is possible you where victim of the hoarding code which is based on the number of good items you do not have equipped when you log out. A good rule of thumb most players are working on is dont have 6 non worn items of value. This does not count consumable items (different rules for those) only items that you can wear. This is only a guideline and not the 100% rule the rules will never be publicly announced to limit people gaming the system to hoard anyway.

As far as "RP breaking". Having thieves steal you stuff promotes RP, it just is not RP you like because no one likes bad things happening to their characters. If you dig your heels in and say it breaks RP to lose your items you are not going to enjoy any PvP interactions. Having dealings with PCs who attacked you that is something you can follow up in character and generate more RP from it. It is important to remember that RP is collective and you are playing a roll so you need to respond to how the world acts around you. Not everyone in SK will "support" your chosen path some will actively work against it creating conflict.

PS: If you have not already found the command the Mentor command is a godsend for anyone trying to learn things about the game and find allies.

Indeed, Duane was hit by the dehoarding code. Several PCs and an admin did speak to him to attempt to politely explain this, indicating what I feel is a clear concern for his plight as a new player.

The admin did then offer to see some sort of warning put into both the "help equipment/inventory" file and the newbie area so that it would be made clear to those truly new players who don't know about the degrading code. This didn't seem to assuage Duane, nor did the offer by his fellow players to replace everything for him.

I will readily and freely admit there is room for improvement in both the help file and the newbie area in this specific regard. However, this game is run by a volunteer staff. Sometimes, things are inadvertently overlooked, and we work to correct issues as they are reported. This is not a case of the staff actively setting out to lie to you or any other players; someone forgot to update the help fIle. The existing players have known and passed down this information consistently to the point where you are the first person to be completely blindsided by it in this admittedly shocking fashion.

I suggest making liberal use of the mentor command as you learn the game. Players will be happy to help you identify items, find training areas, and sometimes straight up buy or give you equipment and other useful items.

In addition to the other good ideas presented in this thread from players and IMMs, I'd advise not trying to go down the route of a "merchant" style mage for your first character for a couple of reasons. One is, as you've noted, the anti-hoarding code is in place to prevent people from keeping items they can't use, or don't need. While certainly an unfortunate side effect of this is that it's now much harder to be a merchant/hold a lot of items for other people, it does mean that a lot of items which otherwise would be hoarded are in active circulation.

Secondly, I'd really advise against that playstyle as a new character because in this game, PK is unrestricted if there is RP behind it, and that includes if someone is holding a powerful item that you want and you aren't willing to pay. If you're new to the game, I'd recommend against a playstyle that's geared towards holding powerful items to sell, because you'll likely be drawing a target on your back for PK that will not be fun as a character learning the game unless you really want to branch into PK early.

I'd suggest that if you want to be the "merchant" type in SK, you'd be much better off simply exploring the game, identifying all items that you find, and keeping a full list of them: That way, instead of having items on you that you can sell, you could sell "the trip" to get the item, go with them to do it, and then potentially enchant the item after retrieving it if possible.