The downfall of PKing

[hunterhunk]

I know it's been completely noticeable, but Era PKing has become almost extinct. I feel there are a few reasons as to why this is.

1. There is no competition or incentive to PK anymore. This is obvious in gangs, parties, even street pking in general. There is no reason for a lot of players to pk, because there is no reward in doing so. This new group of players has no desire to be good at pking. Era is a place not only to make money and buy guns, or run a business, but to kill people and enjoy it.

There is no easy fix for this problem, but the staff team has to encourage competition in some way to make the players PK. When people log on Era, aside from the occasional gang raid, there is not one person out on the streets pking others.

2. Re-introduce the importance of the Spar Complex. The Spar complex is basically a ghost town nowadays. I guess this sort of ties in with the competition argument as well. Still, players need to come here to improve their skills so they can enjoy pking.

What I recommend here is to have weekly or monthly spar tournaments here. Also, make the ranked spar a place where only uzis, aks, and handguns can be used. So that sparring itself in the ranked isn't about having the best weapon. There should also be an award aside from having an npc in the spar arena. Maybe some Event Coins, a rare gun (account locked), or something. I don't know, but anything to bring back sparring to Era.

3. Gangs need to have some kind of enforcement to defend their base when being raided. I have seen this so many times in the past year or so. Gang leader will tell their players to get off tag if being overwhelmed in a raid. Why? Because they don't want to lose some points. People care more about their point scores than defending their base.

A fix for this problem? Well, I would personally say remove the points system, or at least improve it. For example, if Black Holst is being raided by Blazian Bandits, BB overwhlems BH a few rounds and the member counts are close, and BH gives up. BH's points should be cut in half or something along those lines. The points system is flawed and it should be removed until improved.

These are just a few things I have noticed in the past year or 2. Something needs to be done about this. I feel it contributes to the dropping playercount. Era has always been known for its pking, and now it's known for playing some stupid instruments.

If you have any better ideas feel free to post them. I am just trying to help solve the problems.

[salesman]

Gang points should just be a meter for gang activity. You shouldn't be able to lose points because all that does is discourage defending.

I also agree with perks for being a top sparrer. I had actually planned to do this, but never got around to it

The problem is that there is just nothing to do in general. There's no point, and I don't think simply adding pking bonuses (like giving ECs or whatever) will really solve anything. I had the most fun back when parties would get together to try to defend the "money block". That, in my opinion, was real purpose for pking.

[hunterhunk]

Yeah, but I remember not too long ago tagging a bunch of random players to defend some staff block base on the beach, and winners would get a prize. Those kinds of things made Era fun.

I know not having a good playercount hurts PKing in general, but there is still a lot ways to improve the pking on era now.

[Lime_O_Matic]

Why don't they just give a small prize for pking. Imagine whatever party who holds EM the most for the current week get 5-10 EC per member. People would be pking in that house like crazy. I also like how Zone has every gun and a leaderboard for each gun. That will encourage people to use lower lame guns to pk and make it better in general.

Even if they don't listen to our ideas, this is the general area that must be improved. The only thing you didn't mention is that the economic problem also needs to be solved. A reset would not make people too many people quit. I think many players are looking foward to a reset. So let's get working Era Staff and RESET

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by salesman

Gang points should just be a meter for gang activity. You shouldn't be able to lose points because all that does is discourage defending.

In Jenn's street gang system you lost points for not defending.
(1 point every 30 seconds for each enemy gang member on tag in your base).

Basically, you had to defend, or counter-raid.

The biggest problem with Jenn's whole street gang system was that every base was a single level with a single entrance and they were all very similar.
AND she used serverside projectiles which made everyone hate her.

Foray Crew just door lamed, and was the strongest street gang for a long time.

[hunterhunk]

Originally Posted by Demisis_P2P

In Jenn's street gang system you lost points for not defending.
(1 point every 30 seconds for each enemy gang member on tag in your base).

Basically, you had to defend, or counter-raid.

There are flaws to this system though. For example, BH recruits people in different timezones and they can sit in BB's base and BB loses points even though there isn't a player online.

I think there should be a time every single day where a staff member turns the points system on. Say like 4pm EST-9pm EST, this will encourage players to log on and raid. This will maybe stimulate raiding a bit.

Also, I like how Jenn used a points system base on defending or counter-raiding. This will force players, or strongly encourage them to defend their base instead of running, getting off tag, or even logging off when they're about to die so they don't lose points.

[Donark]

I always see people on the gmap pking, or at Era Mafia. Also pking on gmap gets annoying cause of all the RPKing.

[FantasyX]

The problems with PKing have always existed. The only reason why PKing was successful was the playercount. Graal is a dying game because the older generations have quit for the most part by now and the new players have to pay monthly to play. There was nothing more fun than giant raids. The more people involved, the more fun it was. We can discuss potential fixes to make PKing more enjoyable, but at the end of the day nothing can fix it until Era has a feasible playercount.

..just my two cents.

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by hunterhunk

There are flaws to this system though. For example, BH recruits people in different timezones and they can sit in BB's base and BB loses points even though there isn't a player online.

I think there should be a time every single day where a staff member turns the points system on. Say like 4pm EST-9pm EST, this will encourage players to log on and raid. This will maybe stimulate raiding a bit.

That is how it was. The gang bases (and businesses) back then opened and closed automatically at certain times. If you were in a gang base or business when closing time ticked over you were automatically kicked out (there was a bug where you could log out before it ticked over and then log back in afterwards and still be in the base).
I remember being annoyed because the times were based on US times, and I was trying to get her to make it based on playercount (eg. close if less than 20 players are online and re-open when more than 20 are online).

[iRedemption]

i sure hope blazian bandits overwhelming black holst was just an example lolz

i think points should just be based off kills, no death penalty. there's nothing we can do to improve street pk, it's just based off the playercount. pking on era will be fighting in some base until graal is cheaper.

[zim5354]

PKing has been dieing on Era since Jenn, and there is no easy solution to solve this problem. Almost all the no-pk areas need to be removed, guns need to be rebalanced, and the list goes on. The main reason I pked in my time instead of mining is because the guns didn't matter much and pking was much more based on skill. The famas, ak, ms, and m16 all did around two damage, and not many more widely available guns did more than 2.5 damage. Even the lamest guns of the time (ap7s, and pl-9 when it was just introduced) weren't to overpowered compared to the regular guns. This would mean a cheap ak or ms would give you the same results as the expensive guns and you didn't have to waste your time pounding d.

But when the staff changed the pk system from client to server-side they also started to change the damage of the guns, also the addition of more quest and stats (strength & speed) then Chrisz intended was detrimental. This led to some players having overpowered weapons that cost a lot, and to remain competitive someone would have to work forever to afford one. The pkers slowly faded away because no one was fighting they were too busy working or doing retarded quest or pounding d trying to improve their strength and speed.

Era changed from being based on skill to being based on "stats" such as guns, health, strength, speed, armor etc. This change negated the skill that was required to PK. The implementation of other things (such as points for gangs) further eroded away at the PKers because now people were being rewarded for avoiding PKing. The original intention of Era was to PK, but now it seems to have changed. To what I don't know because I haven't actually played Era in ages, but the whole substance of the server seems to be gone.

[Supaman771]

Instrument fights are fun too!

[Dnegel]

Make the guns realistic, my opinion.

[Old_Days]

I think that the new "non-running" in a non pk zone needs a little tweaking. It should activate the 5 second timer only if you hit the person, not if they hit you, and you didnt hit them at all.

I most the time am just trying to pass through the pk zones to get into non-pk zones. Its a pain in the ass when your trying to get away, then someone shoots you, and your running around in the pk zone like a dumb ass trying to get away.

I dont believe its a fair system, it gives better players more advantage over noobs also, hell they already have good gun, what do they need to get even more kills or something? Damn..

[Dragon551]

My K/D has not moved for over a month. :[