What times of the day are better-without MCs?

[Rhahr]

Likely just a consequence of a smaller playerbase, so if there are a 2-3 murderers/dfs on they take that much more space than previously when we had a 30-50 ls who list daily. I remember when I was known I'd often have groups of a 4-5 chasing me around, so my "harassing" of players was often swiftly responded to, which was a lot of fun. I have to say for the people saying it is tedious and whatnot, that being a Known darkfriend was probably my most enjoyable experience on the mud so far. There would be slow days, but usually there was enough fodder around that I didn't have to kill the same player over and over during the week. So I had a lot of fun, I died a bunch, but that didn't matter since finding players to kill wasn't as difficult as it is now, with the lower numbers, so the qp loss from dying wasn't a big deal.
It will probably correct itself as being a Known with a playerbase consisting of a few statters and some semi afkish high level players isn't much fun either, probably more enjoyable to either alt and try to kill the other Known who is online or go smob/pk up north. As Kilgore mentioned, likely just people enjoying their new toy for a bit and then you'll probably see a decline in activity, as having no one to kill isn't much fun.

[Ominas]

Likely just a consequence of a smaller playerbase, so if there are a 2-3 murderers/dfs on they take that much more space than previously when we had a 30-50 ls who list daily. I remember when I was known I'd often have groups of a 4-5 chasing me around, so my "harassing" of players was often swiftly responded to, which was a lot of fun. I have to say for the people saying it is tedious and whatnot, that being a Known darkfriend was probably my most enjoyable experience on the mud so far. There would be slow days, but usually there was enough fodder around that I didn't have to kill the same player over and over during the week. So I had a lot of fun, I died a bunch, but that didn't matter since finding players to kill wasn't as difficult as it is now, with the lower numbers, so the qp loss from dying wasn't a big deal.
It will probably correct itself as being a Known with a playerbase consisting of a few statters and some semi afkish high level players isn't much fun either, probably more enjoyable to either alt and try to kill the other Known who is online or go smob/pk up north. As Kilgore mentioned, likely just people enjoying their new toy for a bit and then you'll probably see a decline in activity, as having no one to kill isn't much fun.

You actually enjoyed the raken long walk man. You aren’t allowed to discuss tedium. Crazy

I think the biggest issue is what you said though. Just not having a player base to support this many. I hope the imms look into incentivizing them like I posted. In whatever way.

[Atkins]

The combination of the no-quit, their ability to find and follow with where(and locate, and see in the dark) very easily, added to the extreme difficulty of defeating a channeler 1v1 makes the df channeling version of darkfriends awful. The stabbing/slashing/charging ones are still super annoying for cross-race pk but that isn't a big deal.
I'm not quite sure why a darkfriend should be getting taint protection. That doesn't really make sense to me, they are the lowest of the low rp wise right so why do they get the dark lords blessing? Get rid of that and this all gets a lot smoother. Df's can earn their evil channie powers via the df process and it is suddenly a much more enjoyable game.

[Torag]

The combination of the no-quit, their ability to find and follow with where(and locate, and see in the dark) very easily, added to the extreme difficulty of defeating a channeler 1v1 makes the df channeling version of darkfriends awful. The stabbing/slashing/charging ones are still super annoying for cross-race pk but that isn't a big deal.
I'm not quite sure why a darkfriend should be getting taint protection. That doesn't really make sense to me, they are the lowest of the low rp wise right so why do they get the dark lords blessing? Get rid of that and this all gets a lot smoother. Df's can earn their evil channie powers via the df process and it is suddenly a much more enjoyable game.

Do this, youll have them with only half a pool of sps and force them into even worse setups like sleep stab/charge or incinerate just to avoid tainting themselves to hell and runining the 1000+ aqps grind theyve completed before they even get the pk portion of the process done.

Understand that theres a lot of them right now and that it is an issue for a small playerbase, especially considering 3+ play in and around my timeslot, but its not exactly their fault its the way they have to progress and now the only path to a darkside channeler.

[Xephiroth]

They seem to hang out near lugard. Xephiroth will tail off because they are pretty brutal at pk and you can’t smob/quest your way to remort from the known flag.
Just learn your spams. Check where. Don’t engage if you aren’t interested.

Xephiroth will tail off because of work and family. I hope to get 5 scalps to reach 1k alt qp before i am proper inactive until xmas. My only alt who I play 99% of the time is a northen pker; and except for a brief period, I've only learned to farm due to Xephiroth. 10ish years ago, I spent a few years playing murdering MCs as my only alternative to my (usually abs) borderguard master - fun times pking a lot against Lara, Petra and Via. I hope I haven't forgotten too much.

Really unlucky that the known dfs all seem to be on european playtimes - normally they would be largely on US time zones.

Why so many recently? I think one reason is the new system which no longer relies on Chosen. I stalled at 800ish qp for a long time because I don't have the time nor the connections (i only ever pked, never socialised) to get the last set of qp to get to 1k via social interactions with other players. With this barrier gone, the people without chosen connections were incentivised to invest in their DFs and get the 1k qp to reach Known Status (or get outed as Known in the process).

One thing I noticed and won't tolerate (not related to the original poster): IC hatred of DFs is great. Sometimes this leaks into OOC hatred of the player including lots of ooc assumptions about the player. I consider this a form of online bullying/trolling. And while it doesn't effect me personally, it might more vulnerable people. I will always call this out and if the individual persists after warnings - report. We should have a zero tolerance policy but also educate people when they cross the IC/OOC line - they might not realise: Again, always consider putting yourself in the shoes of someone more vulnerable. The reason I bring this up is that you get a lot of this kind of behaviour when you pay more nefarious characters and we should all be constantly emphasising the difference between a game and real life.

[erulak]

I think one reason is the new system which no longer relies on Chosen. I stalled at 800ish qp for a long time because I don't have the time nor the connections (i only ever pked, never socialised) to get the last set of qp to get to 1k via social interactions with other players. With this barrier gone, the people without chosen connections were incentivised to invest in their DFs and get the 1k qp to reach Known Status (or get outed as Known in the process).

I feel like Darkfriend is uniquely one of those things in the game that I have zero issues based entirely around relying on other players' effort -- but it asks experienced players who choose to engage in the system to not spam reward friends and when that happened, instead of coming down hard on those players or telling the people they spam-rewarded to firetruck off, we just made the system harder for subsequent people and then made it grindier-yet-easier to get to known.

I'm sure it'll taper off, but it's a shame to see getting to Known DF go the single-player mode way of smobbing for master, where it relies on less external factors.

[Vannor]

I think one reason is the new system which no longer relies on Chosen. I stalled at 800ish qp for a long time because I don't have the time nor the connections (i only ever pked, never socialised) to get the last set of qp to get to 1k via social interactions with other players. With this barrier gone, the people without chosen connections were incentivised to invest in their DFs and get the 1k qp to reach Known Status (or get outed as Known in the process).

I feel like Darkfriend is uniquely one of those things in the game that I have zero issues based entirely around relying on other players' effort -- but it asks experienced players who choose to engage in the system to not spam reward friends and when that happened, instead of coming down hard on those players or telling the people they spam-rewarded to firetruck off, we just made the system harder for subsequent people and then made it grindier-yet-easier to get to known.

I'm sure it'll taper off, but it's a shame to see getting to Known DF go the single-player mode way of smobbing for master, where it relies on less external factors.

Less reliance on external factors is a better thing, and I argued hard for it. After three months of trying to get help ICly and OOCly for IC PC interactions, the total number of awards from PCs contributed to 4% of my final total. Its great in theory, it works like ajqps in application.

[Torag]

I think one reason is the new system which no longer relies on Chosen. I stalled at 800ish qp for a long time because I don't have the time nor the connections (i only ever pked, never socialised) to get the last set of qp to get to 1k via social interactions with other players. With this barrier gone, the people without chosen connections were incentivised to invest in their DFs and get the 1k qp to reach Known Status (or get outed as Known in the process).

I feel like Darkfriend is uniquely one of those things in the game that I have zero issues based entirely around relying on other players' effort -- but it asks experienced players who choose to engage in the system to not spam reward friends and when that happened, instead of coming down hard on those players or telling the people they spam-rewarded to firetruck off, we just made the system harder for subsequent people and then made it grindier-yet-easier to get to known.

I'm sure it'll taper off, but it's a shame to see getting to Known DF go the single-player mode way of smobbing for master, where it relies on less external factors.

Less reliance on external factors is a better thing, and I argued hard for it. After three months of trying to get help ICly and OOCly for IC PC interactions, the total number of awards from PCs contributed to 4% of my final total. Its great in theory, it works like ajqps in application.

You may find that change now with remorts being awarded for their work. Apparently 2005 onwards is being backdated so theres plenty of incentive for players to help out now where there wasnt before.

[Vannor]

I feel like Darkfriend is uniquely one of those things in the game that I have zero issues based entirely around relying on other players' effort -- but it asks experienced players who choose to engage in the system to not spam reward friends and when that happened, instead of coming down hard on those players or telling the people they spam-rewarded to firetruck off, we just made the system harder for subsequent people and then made it grindier-yet-easier to get to known.

I'm sure it'll taper off, but it's a shame to see getting to Known DF go the single-player mode way of smobbing for master, where it relies on less external factors.

Less reliance on external factors is a better thing, and I argued hard for it. After three months of trying to get help ICly and OOCly for IC PC interactions, the total number of awards from PCs contributed to 4% of my final total. Its great in theory, it works like ajqps in application.

You may find that change now with remorts being awarded for their work. Apparently 2005 onwards is being backdated so theres plenty of incentive for players to help out now where there wasnt before.

Yes this is good, and if PC interaction picks up, can probably readjust some of the other reward paths

[Eol]

(1) Known killer MCs is unfortunately sort of what we asked for. There was frustration in the past with people gliding in from unknown to DL for various reasons.

(2) Anyone with 4 friends could do this. 5 MCs could just as easily be 5 damane.

(3) This whole thing is exacerbated by the fact that channelers remain too strong. We're never going to address weaves damage, but we can address channeler physicality through removing WVD and Armor. I'm going to keep harping on that because it doesn't require coding. The bash calculator really tore open the broken nature of bashing verse weaving. An adequately equipped channeler really shouldn't lose. Additionally, we need to go after spells in which players don't use them by consensus except when it suits them.

(4) But hell, they'd all be rogues if they weren't channelers. Props to the Imms for adding the additional targetting tags and for making DFs be hit by kill dark.

(5) Players are going to continue to pursue pathways with outsize rewards and apparently this pathway is quite rewarding without even hitting dreadlord. I wish there were more pathways like this that were beneficial for the human race. I'm the worst - I'd completely shred the nature of Kin, Wolfbrothers, and Blademasters personally but I don't have all the infinity stones yet.

(6) We continue to treat humanity as a piece of meat to be devoured.

(7) And as stated already - you all are going to ultimately be very unhappy once you dreadlord and ultimately quit the characters. You think no one likes fighting you now? Just wait.