Meridian59/Meridian59 — pull request #19 by M59Gar (2013-01-02 22:13:17+00:00)
Title: Ghosts & Pens package

These 3 commits include:

- Instant penalties (no ghosts) for opt-in pvp, based on a 5 minute pvp flag. Halo war, soldier shield, and murderer/outlaw combat is affected, eliminating ghosts for those combatants. Innocents always retain ghosts. This creates a certain rebalancing between reds and whites, on purpose. PKs will have to enforce 10 minute ghosts, but will instantly pen if they themselves are logged. This is important because white characters can otherwise interfere and get reds back online without hunters being able to stop them. Basically, eliminating ghosts eliminates a huge array of abuses.

- Hometown penalties. Those who pen return to their hometown inn, so that they are not locked out of the game. Otherwise, a different character would be required to continue playing. This allows a person to play fully with just one character.

- Flat penalties. All penalties are 1 item, 2% spells, 2% skills for everyone. Murderers do not double pen. Penalties do not reduce soldier shield status. This change is necessary to eliminate the rising pen system, which gives X free pens a day, where X is the number of fresh characters someone owns. Under the current rising pen system, players with more characters directly have more freedom to avoid penalties. A flat penalty system with no free pens eliminates this and puts everyone on even footing.

With all of these changes combined, a player with 1 character becomes much closer in power to a player with 5 characters, bringing the game much closer to even balance. Also, with ghosts virtually eliminated from opt-in pvp, mule abuse and other antics are also reduced. This is a major nerf to the power of owning multiple characters.

Also, one of Meridian's major problems has always been the ghost system. The ghost system allows veterans to employ their entire guild power anywhere in the world, allowing them to undo a prior lost battle & reversing the results up to 10 minutes later. Instant penalties are a massive overhaul to that broken system. With these changes, we should expect to see an uproar from those that rely on broken mechanics, and a large power shift away from big guilds & toward individuals and smaller / more skilled groups.