[Humerox]

although I am personally in favor of it. great RZ post by falstafe:

"Yes, making CCing less likely (people could still camp a PvE corpse just to grief somone), is a good thing, but not at the cost of devastating the unique ruleset of our server. Rallos wasn't just the "no team" server, it was the "Item loot" server, and that item loot rule is what dictated our gameplay and politics. No-drop items were actually desirable on our server, while every other server thought them a nuisance for the most part. The great thing about a no-drop item environment though, was the fact that people had to actually earn what they were wearing, or they risked losing it. We didn't have to worry about ebayed-plat or twinks that much, except at very low lvls. Most importantly, the item loot ruleset benefited the smart players, not just the richest. You had to do research to find the best gear for yourself, and then go and get it for yourself, not just sit around auctioning all day for a month. Players actually tradeskilled and quested, something that other servers usually only see at the end game. You could take pride in your gear, even if it was less that most people your lvl had, because it was yours.

I would compare easy to get no-drop item augments (or worse the SR spawning system), to the replacement of swords with rifles. It takes much less skill to kill somone with a rifle than with a sword. Yes, both are dangerous, but in sword-vs-sword combat the most skilled fighter wll almost always win. In rifle-vs-rifle combat, the only skill that matters is aim, even if it's nothing but a lucky shot; first one to pull the trigger and hit wins. And in sword-vs-rifle combat, the sword weilder may never know what hit him, and all the training he went through for his skill with that sword in suddenly for nought.

That is in essence what the elimination of item loot does to Rallos, it places power (items being the manifestation of that in EQ) into the hands of everyone who is willing to do nothing but farm cash, or worse ebay cash, to gear themselves. Knowledge of the game no longer matters, hard work put toward character development no longer matters, PvP skill with your class barely even matters anymore. "Uber" no longer aplies to the person sitting at the keyboard, just the character they have access to.

Anyone remember camping Guardian and Sentry for you main, or even the first time you got an aviak charm? By EQ item standards, they were basically crap, but you were happy to have them all the same, because those were Rallos items.

Yeah, the people who wore full BD/Diamond resist gear suits with a Regen BP technically had a PvP advantage, but that gear they bought in gfay was also more vulnerable than mine, and while I stood and fought to the last, they ran scared if they got below 50%, or pulled a HP ring, or only fought in groups. They were nothing but a carbon-copy ganker in my eyes, and I'de be willing to bet that's the way most people saw them. They were boring to fight, because they did anything imaginable to kill others without risk to themselves, and risk-free combat is not fun. I may not have been risking my no-drop gear, but I was risking the pride I had in my PvP ability, something the people on our server barely have at all anymore.

When the PvP items are put in, the people who bought their character's power, and use that power to kill only those weaker than themselves, will be rewarded with even more power, and risk-free combat will be the only type that is encouraged by the RZ PvP system. People who stand and fight on principal will be penalized for that ideal, and 6v1 gank squads, hacks, exploits, twinks, $tormhammer transfers, and zone-pluggers will run rampant.

Sorry for the rant, but this point system has me very despondent about the future of our server, this shouldn't be why we choose to PvP. Heck even the possibility of loot shouldn't be the reason we do it. Items loot was a balancing mechanism that helped ensure people only had the PvP prowess they deserved, or they risked losing some of that advantage every time they lost, and that kept the no-tallent people skulking in the shadows where they belonged.

The only way I can imagine a PvP point system working at all on RZ is if you lose ALL your points on any non-xp death, which are then all given to the last PC who dmged you. Then the people who do nothing but gank-farm points will actually be risking something."