Is Player Kill (PK) Equals Community Kill?

 Recently, I am playing RF Online, and having the same problem like JayChia with his Conquer Online in his article.  Someone suddenly enter a hunting (or some of you said: training) area, and he started to PK everybody in the map by saying, “I am powerleveling my friend, so get lost from here!”.  He didn’t even care about my answer, or to threaten me so that I can leave peacefully.  He just launch his skill and attack and my character was just like being ‘hasta la vista baby’ by him.  And what make everything worse is that in THAT level, THAT’s the best spot for hunting!  I tried to access the server again several hours after, BUT he’s still there.  Another hours AND he’s STILL there.  And I told myself, “Welcome to the jungle, baby” and went to sleep.  It was 2 A.M. and I have only several hours before I have to go to my office.  Now, I’m started to wonder about whether PK is good for the community or is it going to kill the community as well.

I am not a crybaby type player who quit the game just because I was PK-ed by other.  But getting PK-ed over and over again, while you are a complete stranger newbie in a game where you have a high hope to enjoy, would be very very disturbing.  Many of you will say that, it’s the way it is.  PK system exist because it will force you to have a community, to have friends to protect each other, to make you very carefull on your adventure journey, etc, etc.  NAAAAHHH, I don’t think so!  IF you rephrase that sentence by saying “A GOOD PK System”, then I will agree.  Just providing a PK system for me is just like providing a guilotine for your future community.

90% of my friend that getting PK-ed without knowing the reason and without knowing how to handle them, QUIT the game, just like JayChia.  Some of you may say that they need to look for the information about how to handle the problem.  Well, … they don’t care.  They have choices.  There are so many online game out there to be chosen, why should I bother to look for information where I can enjoy something else?  I know that this number doesn’t mean it represent the whole population and we have to make a scientific research about whether people like to have a PK system or not.  BUT in my opinion, it is time for developers to really think about GOOD PK system instead of just implementing them without any calculation about what’s going on to the community’s future.  Another thing that make me had that opinion is… a movie (well, I don’t really know if it’s an official movie or not)  of South Park called “Make Love, Not Warcraft”.  In that movie, there is someone who is really really powerfull because he has nothing to do in his life except playing World of Warcraft, started to kill other player mercilessly.  Started with Kenny (and the usual reply of his friends “You bastard, you killed Kenny!”)  Nobody can match him.  And at that point, the developers held a meeting, saying that if this is continued to happen, it will destroy the World of Warcraft.  So our 4 heroes of South Park, Kenny, Cartman, Kyle, n Stan comitted to dedicate their life to annihilate this threat.  They level up only by kiling boar, a low level monster, and grinding to reach a level where they can match the arrogant guy.  Because this PK specialist guy, is a threat to the WoW community.  Finally they succeed with the help of special item created by previous developer.  I was laughing at that extreme example, BUT later, I was thinking that this might be true.  If someone running on killing spree, he or she will gradually destroy the community.  If someone enter an MMORPG game, they want to enjoy the game, and nobody can enjoy it by being PK-ed over and over again.

It is very natural for someone who already has power, if he or she want to show it to other.  But as we already heard from the famous quotation, “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”.  So the ‘easiest’ way to show power in MMORPG with PK system is to PK others.  So it will come back to the developer to design the system.

PK in MMORPG nowadays just giving a conclusion about your playing time, except for 2D side scrolling MMORPG.  It never gives any conclusion about playing skill.  It is time for developer to design a FAIR system to accommodate this problem.  Let’s just say, I was being late knowing about a certain new online game, and enter the game about 3 months after it’s open beta.  Definitely there will be someone who’s already powerfull enough to pawn me.  But it doesn’t mean that he or she is better in playing game compare to me.  He or she is just playing the game longer than me and have the information better than me about the game!  It’s different from strategy game.  Where can we find the FAIRNESS when somebody who play everyday in 8 hours straight PK-ing someone like me who can only play 2 hours and it’s not everyday?  Come on, how can you expect 1 character of lv 40 winning againts a team of 2 character lv 90?  Not fair at all!

Player Kill

If any of you playing Magic The Gathering card game, we will notice that a rule is applied so that a high ranking player is not going to bully a newbie.  You will not get a great point by defeating a player with lower rank from you.  Moreover, if you got beaten by them, you will loose point and the player that beat you gain a great point from that.  This condition make the higher rank prefer to have a game with an even one.

While in some MMORPG, killing lower level player even give you his dropped equipment and money!  Usually, a high level player would already been rich and has better equipment.  And PK-ing lower level player would make the noobs getting poorer.  I start to wonder like Black Eyed Peas, where’s the love?

I like the idea of separating several server just for PK lover and whoever doesn’t mind to be PK-ed all the time.  But if the developer decide to have a PK system available at all of their server, I think it’s time for them to set a fair rule.

PVP

Some of MMORPG decide to give a special place for PVP.  Because PVP can accommodate the need of rivalry and competition.  I think it’s a cruicial feature for MMORPG like I said in my previous article.  However, this feature was limited only by killing each other.  Maybe it is time to give another try and change the way of PVP. 

I am currently playing Granado Espada (Sword of the New World), and there’s an item called Interchange Mission.  With this item, you can move to a place where you must do a mission that almost impossible to do it alone.  One that I’ve been tried is to defend somekind of a crystal in the centre of map while the monster keep spawning from the gate.  So I was thought that maybe we can compete using this sytem.  Or if we want to be creative, how about building castle competition.  The objective is to build the castle with material must be seek by slaying monster?  I know maybe that’s a ridicilous idea, but I just wanna give an example that PVP doesn’t mean we have to kill each other.

But it doesn’t mean that current PVP is bad.  PVP in team vs team mode will need a certain strategy and method to deploy.  An article by Gamh decribe it.

Skill vs Time Spent

As I have mentioned before, in most of MMORPG, your character is better than others because you spend more playing time too.  But in the strategy game or casual game, it is different.  If you beat me when playing Audition or Starcraft or Warcraft III, it DOES mean that you are better than me.  There’s a good mod game that I’ve played for 2 years until now.  It’s a mod from Warcraft III called Defence Of The Ancient (DOTA).  Although this mod is now in the state of very “not a newbie friendly”, however even if I have played for a long time, a new player can catch up with me in a relatively short time if he is really skillful.  How he denied his own creep, how he become the last hitter, how he pick the right items for the current situation, and how he support his team mate, determine the whole outcome of the game.  That’s what I called a better player than me.

If the MMORPG nowadays not relying the rivalry and competition system based ONLY on how much time a player has spent, but rather combined them with skill, it will be much more interesting.

Aside from the topic, I like DOTA very much.  Me and my friend have encountered many funny situation and we decide to bring them into 4 column comic.  And here’s some of them.  Enjoy ^^.

Trap

Rikimaru