why do NPC's always act so scared to get PKed?

[SeaGoblin]

why is it a big deal to NPC's? its a game they can just respawn. its bugging the heck out of me that you can find people wetting their pants cuz there could be a PKer coming for them.... like so what? ITS A GAME. they are literally in a game makes no sense.

dying by tri-edge i can understand since he sets your level back to 1 and you have to restart the game. but literally anyone else you just respawn. there is no death in the game so why are people in their world just so scared of it

[Ryulightorb]

Oprindeligt skrevet af SeaGoblin:

why is it a big deal to NPC's? its a game they can just respawn. its bugging the heck out of me that you can find people wetting their pants cuz there could be a PKer coming for them.... like so what? ITS A GAME. they are literally in a game makes no sense.

dying by tri-edge i can understand since he sets your level back to 1 and you have to restart the game. but literally anyone else you just respawn. there is no death in the game so why are people in their world just so scared of it

In sign it's mentioned you save at save points so you lose all your items and EXP from the point of your last save if PKED.
It's a huge inconvenience.

Also due to the nature of it being vr it's pretty chilling iirc they have all their senses and pain etc.

As someone on reddit put it "There is a lore reason for this. Due to the nature of the game's mysterious designs by Harold Hoerwick, the game looks super realistic to players, and it actually unknowingly heightens emotions. In the original games the waves were created to analyze human emotions and feelings and heightening them was a good way to collect that data.

So like, the over the top reactions are because the players are far more immersed than normal. "

People are scared of losing their items and the emotional impact it has due to the game feeling so real.
That and it's super annoying.

[Syuvial]

the screaming and constant overreacting were very popular low effort anime tropes in the era. No need to write a coherent narrative if your characters just FEEL VERY LOUDLY

EDIT: jester if you want, these games have truly wretched writing.

[Magnadeus]

Also the world is just one big pvp server (except in the hub world obviously). Just like in the beginning of rebirth some PK'ers were being nice to Haseo just so they could PK him which is messed up by default since the game allows that to happen to someone that just booted up the game for the first time. Imagine just starting the game and doing dungeons with your buds when suddenly a bunch of high lvl players just jump in and kill you.

[Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical]

Oprindeligt skrevet af SeaGoblin:

dying by tri-edge

You don't DIE at the start, you get Data Drained; that's not something that's going to happen to a normal player.

[Riftweaver]

tell me you've never played on an open pvp mmo, without telling me you've played on an open pvp mmo. and no i dont mean the crap that world of warcraft did. i mean like old school rallos zek servers for eq1, where other people could not only kill you at any time (even in towns, if they were brave with the guards) but cause you to lose xp, and potentially loot everything on your corpse.

[THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CREEP]

Good evening.
This is just an "old man" waxing prose.
In the year that .hack//G.U. Vol.1 first released - 2006 - MMORPGs were generally much less forgiving than they are now, even in ~future year of 2017~ where the game takes place. I remember playing Final Fantasy XI a lot back then (a game heavily inspired by EverQuest, which was also very difficult) and getting killed was a massive pain in the butt not only because you would lose a TON of EXP (even "Leveling Down") but gaining that EXP back was massively inconvenient and could take days of grinding. Not only that, efficient solo-leveling was next to impossible unless you had the patience of a Buddhist monk or were a true masochist willing to take the risk of dying for a higher reward, which would send your EXP levels crashing down even moreso from any minor mess-up. You had to team up with people and with any social situation that absolutely required communication, stress over possible fights breaking out is a valid factor. MMORPGs were for dedicated grind-loving hobbyists back in the day, and the dreams of Sci-Fi writers thinking of what MMOs in the future would be like makes .hack//G.U.'s "overly" emotional reactions to it make absolute sense even without the additional Sci-Fi immersion headset stuff. I don't think a lot of us back then expected games to be as accessible as they are now. It's a good thing that MMORPGs aren't so punishing, but I still sometimes miss when failure felt so high-stakes. It made winning anything in those old games feel all the more beautiful.

Anywho, though I never played an MMORPG that had open-world PVP, I can absolutely imagine why someone would be upset to get PK'd. It sucks far enough already to get killed and lose your EXP/progress/items, but to get killed by a fellow player just because they felt like being a butthead makes it hurt all the harder. It's really interesting to me how Square-Enix evolved to make both FFXI and FFXIV cooperative games to avoid this exact issue. I love the writing in .hack//G.U. in exploring how these fictional players wish PVP was eradicated entirely, while others argue that it makes the game more fun.

[Magnadeus]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical:

Oprindeligt skrevet af SeaGoblin:

dying by tri-edge

You don't DIE at the start, you get Data Drained; that's not something that's going to happen to a normal player.

Don't normal players end up in a coma after being data drained? it's not death, but a coma is as close to death as you can get.

[Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Grey:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical:

You don't DIE at the start, you get Data Drained; that's not something that's going to happen to a normal player.

Don't normal players end up in a coma after being data drained? it's not death, but a coma is as close to death as you can get.

I mean, that's what happened to Sora.

If you know, you know.

[jbkilroy]

Remember that everyone is seemingly wearing VR headsets. Depending on the feedback settings, it could be pretty intense.

[it's a gabe]

Your question has been answered exhaustively by now, but you should have a look at full-loot PVP online games to understand how stressful it can be for someone who just wants to enjoy the game by itself...

Which raises other questions regarding how The World was designed. I didn't play the first .hack// series nor did I finish Sign, but from my understanding R:2 always had PVP, which makes it a PVP game. Why PVErs would play a game designed with open PVP in mind and then go on to complain about the PVP is beyond me, but alas. Perhaps this is an early 2000s mentality that carried over from Ultima Online, Tibia, and, to some extent, WOW and its faction-based PVP, none of which I played to understand why someone would play an MMO designed with PVP in mind only to complain about said PVP.

But uh... Just ignoring how the VR headsets function in this universe, I can only imagine why anyone would make a big deal of dying to another player if it means losing experience and loot, especially if you can level down as in FFXI, for example.

[Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical]

Oprindeligt skrevet af it's a gabe:

Why PVErs would play a game designed with open PVP in mind and then go on to complain about the PVP is beyond me

Except that it's not actual PvP that gets complained about, it's ganking; in games like WoW ganking can be considered a matter of course if you're doing open-world questing, but in something like The World it'd be a lot harder to randomly find someone half your level in an area unless you INTENDED to go ruin their experience. If anything, CCCorp would be under a lot more fire IRL for having what seems to be zero policy for harassment of other players via making it impossible for them to progress by constantly killing them when they're trying to enjoy themselves.

If they wanted a challenge, that's what the Arena's for; as is stated directly in the game, ganking is their only goal if they're doing it in Areas.

[it's a gabe]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical:

Oprindeligt skrevet af it's a gabe:

Why PVErs would play a game designed with open PVP in mind and then go on to complain about the PVP is beyond me

Except that it's not actual PvP that gets complained about, it's ganking; in games like WoW ganking can be considered a matter of course if you're doing open-world questing, but in something like The World it'd be a lot harder to randomly find someone half your level in an area unless you INTENDED to go ruin their experience. If anything, CCCorp would be under a lot more fire IRL for having what seems to be zero policy for harassment of other players via making it impossible for them to progress by constantly killing them when they're trying to enjoy themselves.

If they wanted a challenge, that's what the Arena's for; as is stated directly in the game, ganking is their only goal if they're doing it in Areas.

Oh, that's right. I've been there in Lineage 2 a lifetime ago. It's rather frustrating and made me not want to play the game back then.

[bucktail0117]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Grey:

Don't normal players end up in a coma after being data drained? it's not death, but a coma is as close to death as you can get.

I mean, that's what happened to Sora.

If you know, you know. :lunar2019grinningpig::jawawink:

twice even >.> only the second time he didnt go comatose for some reason

[Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical]

Oprindeligt skrevet af bucktail0117:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical:

I mean, that's what happened to Sora.

If you know, you know.

twice even >.> only the second time he didnt go comatose for some reason

My assumption is because it was from the defenders of the system's stability instead of what was causing the instability in the first place...that and since he wasn't the intended target of said defender.

[Razor]

I watch this anime decades ago, I don't remember anything! i try to remind but all i see in my mind are pieces of that new mmo anime Sword Art, what a massive confusion, it's very hard to keep track of stories. I only remember I liked hack, had good things like world building but also wasnt the best anime compared to others back then.