I may be old school, but what happened to the joy of looting a puke staff and showing it off as a war trophy, giving it to Grinder or corrupting it? And feel proud about doing it?

It is clearly not in the spirit of the game to leave behind artifacts of the enemy for easy retrieval. Several people claim they act on roleplaying motivations when they leave it behind because it's clearly not an item you can use yourself. I dont understand that reasoning; roleplaying a darkie has to be about serving the master, whos major interest in staves is their destruction! Not a selfish motivation to consider whether items are of use to you or not.

Finally, leaving behind items to help the enemy recover from death faster, to allow you fight him sooner, is clearly not permissible by either mume rules or Tolkien's universe.

Comments?

It depends solely on who it is and how the killing of him was.

In my opinion, the staff is an item to give a newbie a chance when fighting a more experienced player. Thus it's low morale of an experienced puke player to use a staff and it should be looted. For the same reason, I leave the staves after killing newbies.

After an overkill, I prefer leaving the staff as I feel bad after overkilling. To make it short - if the dead enemy was entitled to the advantage of a staff, i.e. he being a much worse player than I, I leave it. Otherwise I loot it.

Your reply does not surprise me. It is a clear indication that the game is governed not by roleplaying motivations, but by the players sense of rules of engagement.

What makes this so hard to grasp for me is that I've found much more enjoyment myself in acting (maybe not entirely, but for the greater part) by roleplaying motivations. I must be so old school that I can't understand why anyone will accept anything less.

It would appear that the game is not played inside the game as much as it is played outside the game on various discussion forums.

I challenge you to enter your character and forget about your personal reputation :)

Yes - played outside in the way that we all have a responsibility to make the game fun for all participants. I always ask myself "Would the game be better without me? Would more people enjoy playing it if I wasn't here?". The answer in my case is of course no, but with some others I think the game clearly would be more enjoyable if they quit it.

Sorry Björn, but that didn´t make any sense at all.

After making 3 new staffs on one day, and all getting looted (even though the pukes have no use for them) I sworn to revenge it. So I do. Unless I think the player was fair and kind or played brave (however you do that with a staff when meeting a bn). I belong, just as you Scad, to the old school staff looting. Pukes loots my staffs, I loot their staffs.

I meant your first comment Björn.

And something to add to my own: No, I don´t act the way I do only for revenge. I also do it as a part of roleplaying, as Scad already explained.

Yes, my point exactly. There is currently a discrepancy between the way the game was intended to be played, and the way players chose to play it. These things have a tendency to provoke a reaction from management; if players wont take care of staves, maybe we will.

I would so much more have enjoyed if players would handle it themselves. In that sense I'm rather naive :)

I spam loot every corpse every time. Just as you all spam loot mine. Staff or no staff has nothing to do with it. I take the equip and sell for gold and give to the poor orcs in our tribe. Don't bother calling ppl to recover your corpse, or your scalp both will be gone.

Do you think a Tolkien Orc, Troll or BN would really feel pity upon one of the Free People? Do you think Saruman felt pity for Gandalf and returned his staff to him?

Why should people do so in MUME? Whether RP'ing or not, it does not sound correct to do so.

I don't think so. 8/

The best reason to leave the staff IMO is the weight. Those extra 10 lb or whatever it is could mean much for a thief, cleric or mageplayer.

Another note:

If a puke is going to whine and cry about not recovering his or her staff after death, why bother playing a character that requires one? If people do not like spending the time to make one, why use or depend on one? It is not the darkies fault (if they take that precious staff) if you wasted your pathetic time sailing to the western lands to even bother with one!

Thats an excuse! If you don't want the staff, don't spam loot the corpse? If you don't want to carry the extra weight, give it to a mount, hide it, pass it off to someone who wants it, etc.!

Well the not staff looting thing, and all the other aspects of 'fair play' comes from people like Bjorn on the websites like mume.net and ER.

There's probably only 1 or 2 people who _don't_ whine about fair fights/lamers.

If there were more P(Snarps/Rastas/Lerians) in the game and less Bjorns/Baggers/Edvards it'd be much more to Scar's liking, since Snarp and Rasta are two guys who don't seem to care about playing fair.

It'd also make the game extremely boring.

"If players won't take care of the staffs, maybe we will."

This sounds like "forced roleplay" and I am sure that would be one funny sight. ;)

Looting staff always depends on the situation. If in a hurry, i'll jus gac and sort later. If i have time, i sometimes take what i need. If i know i'll have time to corrupt / get pick upgrade later or something, i'll loot the staff.

Also, if the current sitution is that packs of 5-10 whities are roaming arda and 1-2 of them dies, the foci items will be gone for sure. On the other hand, if there is darkie dominance atm, i'm more willing to leave staff. They are weight after all, and it's not always that important to weaken the enemy side.

Also i leave most of stuff (incl. staves) from 1vs1 fights and 'brave' charges, but it's more because i 'm bound to be low myself and don't want to risk carrying extra eq.

Though Rasta really is a fair player too, otherwise I agree Unknown :)

You can crow about role-playing all you want, but at the end of the day it's a game, and more important than any sense of role-playing or tolkienism is how fun the game is to play. If you leave a staff after a fair fight where your opponent was brave and honourable, I for one don't think there's anything wrong with that. Forced role-playing at the expense of people's enjoyment of the game is something I don't agree with. Role-playing should be there to enhance the fun of the game, not to detract from it.

On the other hand, if your staff is looted, you've nothing to complain about: you're dead, the stuff in your corpse isn't yours. For puke casters especially, it's not like you're not powerful enough as it is.

Personally, I've never killed anyone with a staff, nor had a staff, so it's never been an issue to me! I think I'd probably leave it, unless it was an overkill group or someone who played lame or someone I didn't particularly like, in which case the staff would go to a BN/Thragkhash/Grinder/Frozen North.

Scar wrote:
I challenge you to enter your character and forget about your personal reputation :)

How about you enter your character? That is if you actually play the game nowadays, and are not just someone who sits on the side-lines complaining about how the people who actually play aren't doing it the way he wants them to. Of course, playing today would mean having to be amongst us non-elite, non-"old school" newbies who favour fun over strict tolkienism.

I am someone who sits at the side-line complaining. I dont play anymore for a number of reasons which you've all heard before I'm sure. That doesn't mean I dont care for the game anymore. In fact I care greatly for the game, but not so much for the kind of players I'm whining about here.

I'm just having a serious problem coming to terms with the fact that players seem to take little interest in character development. If you're an Orc, you're an Orc, no Joe Smuck on ER or mume.net holding up a reputation as the 'honorable' Joe; he is nice guy on mume, must be a nice guy in rl (?). To me at least that's a load of bull.

Well, I don't think people are going to start 'developing the character' of the characters they play just to please someone who doesn't play anyway and wouldn't even notice. Even if you did play, I still doubt anyone would care.

The problem is that staves seems to have become a "required" part of the whitie casters. They should not be. They are supposed to give an edge, if you are willing to spend the time and effort to get one.

If the staff is so powerful that most players feel that this "edge" is indeed required, then maybe the staff is to powerful.

Bah, forgot to log, missing that star-thingie.

The problem is not so much about how powerful staff is, rather about the fact that to have a decent chance in pk, you could really use it. It's pretty similar to real life. Lets take sports for example. See how records in athletics get better and better? That's called development. And with bigger and bigger competition you need every *edge* you can get to have a better chance to win. After all, why would you like to compete at all, if you don't want to do everything to win (?). This has happened in MUME too. At "old school time" you needed less to be competive while now you need more. And staff is one of those things you can make to get that *edge* you need. Darwin would call this evolution. ;)

PS. I don't know if Scar included me under than "whiners" here or not, but I sure was not whining above. I just found the term "forced RP" slightly obnoxious. And not because I'm some anti-RP player. I'm actually an active promoter of RP and semi-active RPer myself.

Actually, Darwin would call this insanity or complete waste of time.

Hmmm...you need a powerful extra edge against opponents who are way less powerful than you are anyway?

You're wrong Androg! A staff is not getting an edge. The edge is achieved by improving your skills. In pk, in the hands of a clueful player, the use of a staff is like using the staff from pole vault in a high jump contest.

Why the hell i leave a tank or machinegun in its nest after retreating the ground. Ofcourse if i cannot carry it il destroy it.

To prevent the enemy to USE IT AGAINST ME.

And when i destroy that tank or machinegun it is not YOURS it is MINE.

it goes 2 ways with alot of people. but ill just say this:

if you got a staff, im taking it.
if i got a staff, i expect to see it missing when i die.

This thread makes me want to burn all corpses. If your worried about your staff or anything else just don't die to me. If I kill you I will strip your dead body of everything and burn your naked corpse.

Beran, unless you can point out a difference between evolution, insanity and waste of time, I'll presume you agreed with me. :P

Don't you think, Scar, that so much whining and possibly also revenge on the side of certain overpowered lab-players would make many people act, or pretend they act, in ways such as not to become a target?

I think we'd all be surprised at how much more eager people would become to carry around this dead weight that can get them killed, and how most arguments for not looting it would evaporate if people actually got something very useful for a staff, because then staff-looters would actually be provided with an argument for staff-looting that people like Bjorn might be willing to accept!

How about trying it and seeing if it works?

I don't need to take their staves to make myself renowned. A tale among the pukes, a bloody trail and the picture of a face full of hatred puts fear in the most courageous of hearts.

Killing newbies around bree for a year works wonders for one's reputation, just look at Drengist... Most of the players who remembered him were like mega in awe of him until he started playing again, because he'd destroyed them when they were newbies.

If you wanna be a big scary orc, play a bree-newbie killer for a year or two, then you'll have a reputation.

These topics will cease to exist when people realize that once you see a death message, you own nothing. I destroy every power item I cannot use when I loot an enemy, with some exceptions, like the rare bej tstaves that haven't been focused yet(saw a snaga shaman with a bej for a weapon once, very funny), or sameside eq that was lost, those I return, or give to fellow darkies/pukes.

Staves give pick upgrades, or xp, all other foci give xp, good-only items give xp, puke artifacts get random rewards from sage. Pukes can get miruvor, xp, whatever for giving evil items to a mob aswell. That's reason enough to loot the item if I can handle the extra weight. When I kill someone, it's my call on what happens to the corpse and anything inside it. Consider ita blessing to find your good items, if that. Afterall, I'd rather see your mails/metals/whatever on a fellow orc/puke than an enemy. ;)