Naw b, every game I’ve experienced with open world PK just alienates new players even with penalties. As even serious penalties can be bypassed in a f2p game by people who are willing to put in the effort.People make twinks to pick off low level players and gain rank, higher level organized players bully people in low level zones or grief people by denying access to zones, it makes leveling stressful since your progress can be inhibited by some kid who was just having a bad day and decided to take it out on people lesser experienced players.
It didn’t matter if I personally persevered and leveled up and didn’t followsuit or only PK’d people in my own range,the problems just never ended and it only coddles really toxic, immature behavior between people. Duels, Arenas, Guild vs Guild, all of that I have zero problem with but the few bad apples can ruin it for everyone else with open PvP and with the vast amount of CC skills, traps etc it’d potentially just make it hellish for anyone. It also doesn’t take anymore skill than an organized PvP match, it just adds a wildcard to your experience. Even in games like Dark Souls to put it into MMO perspective you’re running a single instance that gives you a warning when someone invades, here someone just runs up from off screen and catches you with your pants down. Not to mention leveling seems to be focused on mobbing as well which can lead to a few “accidents” between players not in the same party. I’d be open to some alternatives like specified zones that only offered sidegrades rather than vastly superior drops and EXP for those who enjoy the risk and challenge or a separate channel or even server entirely but forced PK is just a mess to balance and police properly.
Also on the idea of hiring players? For what? Why would a newbie have to go out of their way to give their silver or items to a higher leveled player for “protection”? These aren’t benefits, they’re workarounds. We don’t even know how the game will progress at this point and if it’ll have any features that makes playing with lowbies worth it(personally I think FF XIV handles this well) so that low level areas won’t be deserted once people grind to level cap, which is a problem most MMO’s face.
