Warning: This post contains common sense.
Hmm, an interesting issue. As others have observed, zero motivation duelling originated and spread during a time before NPC duelling came to be. At the time, the talk of the town was the opposite: that zero motivation would spread like wildfire and harm the game. That happened, to the extent that the current situaiton benefits no camps, but it would be unfair to examine this evidence in isolation. Several other important factors, such as moving duelling from the saloon to the map, the decline in overall player count, addition of new dueller class bonuses and more recently the creation of a high level cluster must be considered.
The decline in player numbers is easy to both over- and understate. Although the absolute drop in player numbers is a low hanging fruit for critics, the wide expanses of level one greenhorns prove are evidence enough that this drop does not equate to lower active players. We can only presume that internal statistics show a similar quota of players quit playing the game before reaching the duelling level range of the majority of the community. The real issue that must be examined is the shift from duelling to fort fighting. No doubt this has had a sizable impact, although I think few would argue if all level 120 specialised duellers were accessible, there would be enough variety of targets.
This does feed into the pressing issue of travel distance, however. Before Version 2.08, it was selfevident the effects of moving the duelling location and the decline in player count vastly outweighed the dueller ability to shave several minutes travel time off each duel. The introduction of a high level area does not appear to have had a sizable impact yet, although it is inevitable that with an aging community, over time activity will further condense in the middle of the map. Instead of visiting several towns to duel multiple targets, one can instead visit several high level job locations to duel multiple targets, as either an aggrevator or defender. The concept of a railroad, briefly introduced in the roadmap, is another light down the tunnel.
This positivity is not immediate, though. The seemingly accidental premature introduction of this change, although of noble intention, cannot be considered beneficial to the game. It is therefore understandable some people have misinterpreted the effects of this change, although there exists a few that ought to know better.
The fundamental assumption underpinning this debate is wrong. The issue need not be worker vs dueller, instead it must be experience dueller vs zero motivation dueller. A series of strange and irreversible circumstances have manifested this environment, in order: the flawed duel level system, shop items being valuable, the existance of the money-motivation quirk, the success of resistance duellers, removing duels from the saloon and finally the tripling of experience values. Punishing zero motivation duellers will not undo this trend when the current circumstances allow no genuine alternative, instead we must seek to address the root of the problem.
History indicates Inno, or INNO if you really must shout like a rampaging buffoon, prefer solutions with a small technical footprint but targeted effect. Therefore, I believe the solution is as clear as crystal:
- Duelling level must be capped at an arbitrary value, say three times the regular level cap (450). This reflects the reality that duelling level is a measure of past success, not current ability.
- Duelling experience must rise and fall, again at an arbitrary rate, say one third of the gain rate. This limits the extent to which past success can be a current punishment.
- Duelling rankings must continue to be based on overall duelling experience gained, sans losses from the recommendation above. This gives the ranking some meaning without negatively impacting current experience duellers.
Several other smaller tweaks could be made, but these are the paradigm shifts necessary to unravel the current mess of a situation. All other debate here is silly politiking worthy only of the Republican Party. Peace!
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