While true, there needs to be a check put in-place. Free PvP here means PK. If people want to indulge their PvP-ness, there are methods - Guild Wars, Order/Chaos or Factions. Under the idea of a PvP switch, those that want to PvP will. Sure, you'll loose the griefing aspect of it, but it's a win-win-lose situation.
PvP'rs win.
Non-PvP'rs win.
Griefers lose.
Ah, such a naieve point of view. You think that griefing is limited to an open PvP environment. Truth is, its not.
Griefers are any player whos goal is to cause grief. Well, lets see, the non PvP griefers are as follows:
Gold Farmer spammers
Kill stealers
people who some how manage to place 75,000 water barrles down all across your front steps. (Happened to me less than 5 years ago. Had to call a GM. Both he and I nearly browned his nickers when he saw how many barrels were there)
People who purposely talk foul towards you to antagonize you
Dungeon Hogs
Bot Dungeon Hogs
miner scripters
Scripters in general
did I mention gold farmers? Yeah, well, they're such a pain, they get mentioned twice.
All of these people can get away with being major league pains in the rear because you, the player, has no means to stop them.
Back in the old days, players thought twice about being a jerk towards other people because of the fact that they could kill them in retaliation.
PvP griefrs:
The guy who kills you and loots you...........well, is that part of the game?
Is that all? Wow, if people are so sensitive about that, how can you even propose PvP at all? Even in guild wars in the old days, after an enemy guild killed you, 9 times out of 10 they helped themselves to whatever was on your corpse.
Second, how do you know those PKs were there to grief you to begin with? They could just be there to, you know, kill you and loot you because thats their chosen profession. A killer. A murderer. They murder people, its what they do. If you take it personally, then youre the one griefing your self.
I mean, every time someone got killed in game, they would cry griefer. What proof did you have that the intent of the person who killed you was to griefing? It sounds more like you couldnt handle getting killed and took it personally. More likely than not, that person killed you because thats the role they have chosen to play, a killer, and you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Granted, there will be jerks who are going to stand there and try to be as such, but thats only if you stand there as your ghost and watch them. If you had any modicum of sense, youd leave. I mean, youre a ghost, what else can they do to you that you dont choose to remain there and bear witness to? The only thing to do is go back to town, rez, and re-gear....and maybe offer a bounty hunter some gold to go and bring back the head of the guy who killed you.
I mean, come one people, its like playing Call of Duty and thinking that the guy who gunned you down did it because they like being an ass. No, they did it because its part of the game.
Dont take it personally.
[QUTOE]I say griefing because under the old Britannia system, there was no escape. Players were forced into PvP.[/QUOTE]
Actually, there was a way to escape PvP, it was called recalling out. If a PK attacked you, you could try and get away and recall. Worked for me more times than I can count. If you didnt get away...oh well, you died and the other guy got your stuff.
And even then, you werent under constant PvP action. There were times when I went on with my miner and dug all day into the peak hours when everyone was on and didnt see one red. There were days when I went on with my warrior lumberjack and ran into 5 or 6 of them. It was all luck of the draw. And, yes, it made the game exciting. Was I happy when I got killed and looted? No, but I didnt call every Red who took me down a griefer. My philosiphy was "So? You killed me. Its not like I cant replace my gear and chop more wood, or dig more ore, or buy new magic weapons/armor. Ill just have to kill you next time our paths cross".
Seriously, if everyone would just take that attitude towards it (and mature a bit. It is just a game afterall), there would be no such thing as a griefer.
Of course, it was a PvP game. I mean, if you didnt want to PvP, why would you play a PvP game? Even if you focused solely on hunting monsters, you would eventually have to face another player who wanted to kill you. It simulated the time period in which the game was set, Medieval times. things like murderers and highwaymen and robbers were a threat. It added to the immersion of the game.
But from what I can tell, it seems most people are spooked by the tales of the big bad boogie man PKers who flew around on broom sticks and owned 400 players with one swipe of their sword or one energy bolt and spirited children away in the night and running rampant.......LOL
If you want the real 411 on what happened in the old days, please read on:
Back in the days of T2A, there were PKers. Did they kill other players and loot them? Yes. Was the PKing rampant? Not really. I mean, yeah, there were nights when they hit in force, but it didnt happen all the time. And when there was a problem, you had Anti's who would go and hunt them down and fight them.
The problem: People took the PKing too personally. A lot of people who lacked the emotional maturity to handle a game that dealt with character mortality. They believed that every time someone killed their character, it was some sort of sinister plot to hurt them personally. Truth is, it wasnt. That person who killed them was better at PvP than they were and they killed them.
I played UO back in Beta up till ML. I was PK'd dozens of times before trammel and after (I stayed behind in felucca). So were a lot of other players. The majority of us took it for what it was: We got killed. We didnt cry griefer, we didnt cry hax, and we didnt cry period.
We got beaten:
We got rezed:
We got stronger:
Then we got even:
Thats the way it worked. People who couldnt handle that cried griefer.
.....and look what it got us.
So to people who keep using griefers as an excuse against open PvP, I say you need to mature, realize that not everyone is out to hurt you personally, that the person who PK'd you did just that Player Killed you and nothing else, and either fight back or get over it but just quit the
.
Because, frankly, it doesnt lead anywhere good.
