I'd like to thank Ren for stimulating the idea of the PK Arena and bringing it to the forums in this thread. I was excited to see that other players are wanting to get more use out of the PK Arena, so I've put together my vision of the PK Arena that I've been telling people about for a while:
I absolutely love PK Arena. Back in 2006, I used to hop on ET tag, have the PK Arena warp open all night, and I'd make calls every time the arena started to die down. We're talking 6-9 hours of straight PK Arena. We didn't have rewards, because we were satisfied with the joy of PKing. (Granted, we had a much more competitive game than they have now, but that's a whole other conversation) iEra players tend to be more "goal-driven"-- for the most part, this playerbase won't be satisfied with PKing in the same arena for more than four hours unless they had some kind of reward in mind.
A couple of rules should be put in play:
- When players die, they're warped back to the lobby. This is already in play in PK Arena- don't change it.
- Disable Healing items. This includes those obnoxious healing melees.
- Disable gas shells.
- Force tags off. People will still team, but they'll have to dodge each other's bullets.
I've been recently nudging people about giving the PK Arena a scoreboard. The score should be (Kills - Deaths = Score). I don't believe in rewarding kamikaze pilots. Any idiot can go in with a PBP shotgun gain kills, but it takes tact to get kills without gaining deaths. We could make it an automated event kind of like iZone's Showdown. Every 15 minutes, players who opted to receive PK Arena announcements will receive one. As long as they're not in the spar complex or in a base, they can click to join it.
We could also have multiple arenas to accommodate all preferences(Outdoors, a 'base-like' GMAP, an open 'spar-type' arena, etc.). They could either be selected at random or players can vote on the arena that will be used in the next round. Obviously if this makes PK-Arena overtly popular, then we'll need a larger arena than a 3x1 GMAP.
In regard for the "teaming" concern: generally speaking, people join PKing events and work together. It's no different from any other activity-- it's more enjoyable to do with friends. A tangible reward isn't even necessary for people to team; for example, my brother and I used to love when we were on opposing teams in Capture The Flag, because we would kill off each other's team, then leave the event so nobody would win. The amusement of seeing the message, "Noone won the event!" followed by a dumfounded ET warping back to unstick, and a bunch of confused players was more valuable to us than some event coin.
If more than one reward is out there (1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place), people will work together to make sure the rewards are spread amongst themselves - that's just the nature of playing together. We can minimize it, however, if everybody is after the same goal-- 1st place. Even the best of friends would fight each other if prize cannot be divided. Unless the 2nd and 3rd place prizes are significantly lower than the 1st place prize, I would advise against having them if "teaming" is a concern.
I personally am not concerned for "teaming", because I see this same scenario in a light that would stimulate competition: three groups of "teamers" go in there and they would have to compete against each other for the rewards. Competition is where the fun is at.
As for cash rewards, I'm all for it. However, it should be dependent on the number of participants. Somebody who wins 1st place against 10 people shouldn't be rewarded the same amount as somebody who wins against 100.
My proposal would be:
- It costs 1g to join. This 1g gets put into a pot that will be distributed amongst the top 3. This way the reward money isn't being generated from the sky. It costs money to make money.
- First place gets 50% of the winnings.
- Second place gets 30% of the winnings.
- Third place gets 20% of the winnings.
For visual aid,
Again- none of this is set in stone and is open to suggestion. This is just my vision.
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Originally Posted by Ricky
