Legion Forums - Lineage 2 PvP

Ok I am going to detail lineage PvP a little here. And make it painfully clear how bad becoming red is. Hiro, Levi and myself had a little experiment today in which we basically PK`d a load of people. To be honest it didnt start as an experiment we were just being assholes the day before the wipe :p . But we do have some useful information which if nothing else makes me feel a whole lot better about the open PvP aspect of the game.

First I will explain how the flags work. If you attack another player your name becomes purple. This doesnt nessecarily say anything about your conduct since anyone who has engaged in PvP has a purple name for 30 seconds after the event. If the player you were attacking fights back then his name will also become purple. Attacking purple people entails no penalty other than becoming purple yourself for 30 seconds.

If the player defends himself thus making himself purple, upon his death no penalty on your part is incurred. You are purple for 30 seconds and your pvp record will rise by 1. If however the other player is for arguements sake afk and doesnt fight back then he will not turn purple. This means upon his death you will become red. Prior to his dieing of course you can always break off the attack and suffer no such penalty other than the afore mentioned purpleness.

Before I continue I would just like to point out that being red is BAD!! .

Being red has the following ramifications:-

1) You are free game for anyone to kill with no penalty other than turning purple. This means if you dont even hit back or are afk and they murder you while you are red... nothing happens to them.

2) Npc`s in Npc towns take offence to you. No more learning skills with your sp or buying equipment.

3) The chances of you dropping something from your inventory upon your death are greatly increased by approximately 10 times, which makes the chance of you dropping your armour or weapons around 50%. (Remember you cant buy more because you cant go to town).

4) When you kill someone in this manner you gain chaotic Karma. Your name will remain red as long as you have chaotic karma. The gain of karma from killing innocents is quite high and I believe once you have started down the chaotic path that wether people defend themselves or not if you kill them you will gain more bad karma. Even if they attack you first! (Remember you are free game).

There is however hope for the red player at the end of a very very very long tunnel. To restore your karma to neutral again the quickest way seems to be to die, not forgetting you will lose alot of items and as you probably know when you die you lose a % of your accrued exp. It is actually possible (and trust me if your red common) to de-level and start moving backwards down the level rankings. At first dieing will lose quite a chunk of your bad karma at the expense of your exp and equipment (you could bank it but... oops your red and npc`s hate you), but as you get closer and closer to neutral the amount of karma you lose gets smaller and smaller meaning the amount of deaths required to return to neutral grow exponentially the closer you get. This costs you levels and equipment you probably dont want to part with.

The other method of losing that bad karma is to kill monsters. This loses a very small amount of bad karma per kill and you will have to do it alone since being in a party does not let you alter your karma whatsoever if your red. Also you will be free game while you are hunting alone so you will have to do so in a quiet place where no one will find you.

So what does all this mean. This means that rampant PK is going to be very rare due to the high cost to your character and time. It does mean that consensual duels are fine because you will both be flagged as purple for only 30 seconds. You will not of course go red if you participate in guild wars etc as they will be flagged as enemies to you and not neutrals.

Having played around with this today has set my mind if no one elses at rest greatly regarding the open pvp system. The penalties far outweigh the... oh wait there are no real gains from being a pk.

So all in all you can expect to see pvp only in a productive or focussed way except for the occasional moron... who because of the penalties imposed wont be around for long anyway. Hope this sheds some light on it all and if we find anything more we will be sure to add it.

-Tanis