Shattered Kingdoms

I don't think you're reading Pongsom's response right in this case. For one, it's 100% not the case that Pongsom's gear is better or harder to get than Taran's gear. Taran is extremely well kit out and Taran would "lose" a lot more from dying than Pongsom would. More than likely, Pongsom meant A) That he doesn't have as much time to spend on SK, so re-gearing for him is harder, or B) that he was the only Peacekeeper who was able to pardon people, and there wasn't anyone online to resurrect him so if he died then Taslamar's bad guys would have free reign until he got a rez.

Either way, Pongsom wasn't from that log unwilling to fight: He was just unwilling to go on the aggressive. You seem to see a problem with that, whereas I don't. You know what I didn't see in that log? Jomino or Taran going into Exile and trying to pick a fight. Not every character is obligated to fight constantly. Not everyone's interested in that.

You know why they couldn't hunt? Because bounty NPCs.
And now thinking about it, probably same reason that lighties didn't attCk either. I don't think all of them are wanted. But some might be and that would draw bounty hunters for everyone.
Bounty hunters are what is crippling pk, isn't it? That's tough.

Yeah trust me, I've been down that path for quite a long time. I liked tribunal PK -so- much better before bounty NPCs, and I was primarily defending when they were introduced.

That said, I think removing bounty NPCs without making inns safer by removing gate targets near inns would be a bad move.

I think this nails it and it is really that simple. But I do not know how to address it without breaking a core trait of SK.

Back in the early days, there were not nearly as many games but a lot of the ones that existed were at least as hard core as SK. Now there are so many ways to waste your time on games that give you lots of razzle dazzle without really asking you to take any risks.

To the point where SK is probably incomprehensible to anyone born after it started.

I don't think people care as much about the loot as the time they have to put in to become competitive. If it were easier to get decent loot, get it enchanted, get healing potions, get decent staves, people wouldn't care half as much. As it stands, with player counts, the availability/rarity of loot, and necessary amount of chars to acquire things, you could be losing weeks of planning/luck with the loss of your stuff. People rage delete because a full loot basically renders your character useless, for quite some time IRL. Let people create their own inventory flagged loot. Sure that'd be a process, but at least it'd be YOUR'S for the life of your char. If I had gear that only I could get, I'd put in the time and effort to make it. If I could kit up a competitive bag of potions, wands, and staves I'd jump right back into PK after a loss.

I dont think this is totally true. People dont want to lose their loot because of the "time" it costs to get it back. When you consider a long PK hunt lasts for at most 30 min to an hour. Then compare that to recovering from a death. Its probably 30 min to get all the items then you have to enchant/consecrate them another 30 min give or take. If an item blows up you either need to wait for it to re spawn or wait for another 30 min trip to go out and get it. Then you need to get consumables thats probably 30 min of a priest or sorcerors time The cost benefit doesnt add up. So for every hour of PK there is at least double that spent recovering.

When it comes to PK I dont enjoy it because its not my thing. I dont think I will ever enjoy SK PK but from observing it I have thoughts about flaws in the system.

The risk/reward is out of balance. Consider a 2 v 2 PK situation it takes 30 min of "excitement" at most. More likely 2 people get 30 min of stalking and the other two people get about 5 min of combat. Lets take that in the most positive light that is 2 man hours of excitement (which plays out across 30 min). Now 2 people need to recover from death most likely that is 4 man hours of recovery time (which plays out over 4 hours because only one enchanter set of items in a given area). Then there is the 4 hours of potentially accumulated jail time. The reward for winning is putting the losers through 4 hours of not wanting to play SK. So the risk is high the event is ranging from good-bad-ugly and the reward is meh.

When you consider that Vets win (or dont lose) PKs at at least 75% better rate than newbies how much time needs to be invested to learn the game as a new player. As a side note there will always be "vets" regardless of how many vets move on.

Two things that could be changed to enhance PvP experience for newer players. Open some of the rule books. The way GS and how it interacts with trained stats vs modded stats is a prime example of an edge that is there for those who know and a risky pitfall for those who dont. Weapon speed and specialization is another make or break choice that is next to impossible for a newbie to get right alone. These "assumed" knowledge from other gaming systems can no longer be counted on as something anyone even knows is a place to go look not to mention that many of them are slightly different but similar enough to make people think they know the right answer.
The second thing Id look at is add rewards for getting involved in PvP. These could be contributing towards the mentor stat point for getting involved in PvP. The assault tribunal system I posted balanced the field by warning your foes and added a reward to make it worth their while. Its not enforced but its a choice someone can make.

As for the final point anything in SK that is designed to "waste your time" should be questioned. The average SK player back in the day was 16-24ish years old now they are 30-40ish. These people went from a lot of free time to not much. This means that their game needs to reflect this. As a side note areas that become more difficult the more people you take are "stupid" and goes against rule one of RP being inclusive. Taking more people should save you time not cost you time. Its not about how "hard" a game is its about how consistent it feels take Dark souls as an example it is punishingly hard but everything is telegraphed once you look for the signs like boss swing wind ups etc.

The concept of tribunal wars is entertaining. The limited playerbase, and the scattered times people play I believe makes much unfeasible. However, within the constraints of planned type events where there is some coordination going on, I would be in favor of. There was a lot to learn from the Ayamao/Empire conflict. It was not a fully bad experience.

It is awful to be a more 'casual' player/not someone who has time to sink over ten hours a week into the game, come into a heavier conflicting thing, loose your things, and take a couple weeks to recover - because you spent most of your time during the conflict, doing the thing, and then it just took extra time to find people to put your kit back together. This keeps the casual player more disinterested from the investment of getting so involved in the PVP part of the game, unless perhaps they are more experienced with the environment itself - and can get by to the point they get enough gear so the game is playable without frustration.

I wouldn't go heavy with any kind of automation. But perhaps if there are some events that happen IC, or you have two sides of a conflict willing to invest into what parameters would exist for such things, there would be toggles both sides' leaders would have to switch (agree on) to enable them.

All said and done, in addition to any potential changes to bring a territory enhancement into the game, the best experience I had with PK had more to do with the RP loss of a situation, itself. Having to literally hit up most leaders of organizations in the game, after getting some internal agreement on direction/rebuild. I see a lot of players give up on a loss. Or, players giving up when the losing side packs it saying 'boring, moving on.' If there was some way to enhance this aspect of the game somehow, I'd be game. You can't change players, obviously, but if there was some way to retain characters after a larger scale thing/have them invest more in the story, that'd be a discussion I'd be interested in engaging. Some bonuses to winners, and some concessions to losers, once their treasury is in a 'good enough' state perhaps. I'd really have to think on it.

On the subject of territories - perhaps if you have leaders agreeing/toggling an agreement to such changes prior to some conflict, and some RP turned in at the end of some function when leaders agree/concede to some changes, there could be a more manual type change staff would make to the landscape. I could see coding done to perhaps automate that, as others have said, I can think of other game enhancements that would go a lot way further toward bettering the game.

Not that we want to really talk about the white elephant that is the CRS, as it's been beaten all over in the forums, but entertaining ways to make that fun and functional I'd see as a higher priority. I still question though if the imbalance is more to do with where the veteran/skilled PKers lie in organizations, the sheer number of individuals active in the game in an organization, or the tactics involved with the thing that affect the system most. We can whine about the system all we want, but the players themselves are part of the system. While I understand the difference between tribunals and cabals, I see a parallel here, in terms of effort to put into a new combat/reward system vs. what we all (players and staff) get out of it.

If you have any idea what you're doing - and a priest or sorc available - it takes about 3 hours to get suited up. When I started this character it took me under 3 hours to hit 80 mr and under a week after that to hit 100. Recently I helped a guy make the switch from normal gear to reflex and it took under 3 hours to kit him out, an entire hour of which was spent in one tangly area.

It's not about gear being hard to get. It's about people being overly attached to their stuff and hating losing fights and the implication that may have on their char who's been role played as a bad [REDACTED]. Then they get emotionally wounded and look to place the blame elsewhere than themselves so they come up with stories like gear being hard to get.

I think you're under-representing the IRL time that it -normally- takes to go from a full loot back to decent saves, especially when you consider the fact that priests and sorcs aren't always available. Sure, it only took 10 hours to get a full suit of MR, because you happened to have a sorc on hand to provide all of that. However, for a non-enchanter who wants a mix of reflex, fortitude, willpower, and that on good gear which requires 2-3 people at least to get, you're going to spend somewhere around 20-30 man hours easily getting those good enchantments, and that's assuming that you magically happen to log on at the same time as a friendly priest or sorc.

Rall, for example, went for months IRL without having a friendly sorc to enchant for him. It was extremely common to log on with 2-3 allies that wanted to gather/enchant gear, yet not even have someone on the who list who would gate for us.