Gotta register my opinion on killshooter once again:
I HATE IT as it stands currently. It is a complete over-reaction to a very minimal problem, and has created much larger and even more annoying problems. It needs to be modified.
The purpose of killshooter is to keep grief players from hosing lotsa friendlies. No question, it accomplishes this mission by making it utter suicide even to attempt fragging. However, it is so heavy-handed that it causes serious problems for legitimate players. These problems, IMHO, out-weigh any good killshooter does. Furthermore, killshooter actively fosters the spread of another type of grief player: the kill-stealer.
Granted, there needs to be something in place to keep griefing down to an acceptable level. However, killshooter is directly responsible for an unacceptable level of griefing by kill-stealers. Knowing they're completely safe from friendly bullets, they habitually cut in front of the guy whose done all the work, steal his kill, and make him shoot himself down. Plus they retain their own E because they didn't have to do any work, so they can do this over and over. What fun!
Don't tell me you don't see this happening 24/7. Killshooter is the ONLY reason for the conga lines of 5-6 guys chasing 1 low nme, as each guy desperately tries to cut in front of all the others. You know they're more interested in stealing the kill and robbing each other than with playing the game, because engaging in such chases is obviously tactically and stretegically disadvantageous.
Therefore, killshooter should be replaced immediately with a PNG system similar to, but not quite exactly, what DOS AW had. The AW system worked very well, but had 2 problems HT has objected to in previous killshooter discussions: 1) it didn't go into effect until the end of your sortie, so you could cause mucho grief before then; and 2) you could then switch countries and do it again.
To avoid these problems and those of the present killshooter, I propose the following system:
- Your bullets normally work just fine on friendlies. If some kill-stealing dweeb cuts in front of you, he dies.
- However, if you kill 2 friendlies within some short time interval (a couple hours or so), you become PNG immediately.
- When you become PNG, killshooter turns on for you. For the rest of your sortie, any hits on friendlies do damage to you like they do now.
- At the end of the sortie in which you go PNG, you cannot fly at again for 24 hours. This ban is in effect for all countries, so you can't switch sides and keep fragging.
I believe this system accomplishes all the goals of a) preventing grief fragging, b) preventing grief kill-stealing, c) making pilots be more careful when they shoot, and d) preventing idiotic conga lines.
In my system, killshooter's only purpose is to bring fragging sprees to an instant end. After that, PNG keeps the fragger grounded. Neither should normally encumber the legitimate pilot who accidentally blows away a couple of kill thieves over the course of an evening, at least after the community adapts to the new system.
Sure, it's possible to go PNG completely by accident if you kill too many kill-stealers. This can suck, but it's VERY rare. In my experience with such a system in DOS AW, I went PNG this way maybe once every 6 months. I fragged a kill-stealer maybe once every couple of weeks, but hardly ever did I get 2 of them in the same evening. Simple reason for that: there weren't many kill-stealers in the arena because everybody knew cutting in front was suicide.
So don't base assumptions on how often you'd go PNG on the frequency of your deaths to today's killshooter. Simply because killshooter exists, people cut in front of you ALL THE TIME. Once they learn they'll die doing that, they won't cut in front any more.
Anyway, bottom line: Killshooter is effective at it's job, but is such over-kill that it has created a set of new problems both more common and more annoying than the occasional grief fragger ever was. It needs to be changed. Having everybody able to kill 1 friendly ever few hours poses a serious deterent to kill-stealers without the heavy-handedness of killstealer. No more grief kill-stealing, no more conga lines. It also gives legit players some cushion so that they are unlikely to go PNG just in the normal course of business. At the same time, however, this system keeps grief fragging down to an acceptable level. Once you wax 2 guys, you're done for the day. 2 guys in an arena of 400+ isn't even noticeable except to the 2 guys involved. Especially when the true grief fragger is a very rare visiter to the arena.
