I would like to suggest disabling dishonorable kills for killing civilian NPCs during world PvP, similar to how Turtle WoW handled it.
The current system makes organized PvP raids unnecessarily vulnerable to griefing. During a raid on an enemy town or capital, it only takes one player to deliberately kill a civilian NPC and potentially give the entire raid a dishonorable kill. This means a single person can sabotage dozens of players, whether intentionally or accidentally.
The main problems with the current system are:
- One player can punish an entire raid. Most raid members have no control over what every individual player attacks, especially in a large and chaotic PvP battle.
- It discourages organized world PvP. Players are less likely to participate in city raids if they risk damaging their PvP rank because of somebody else’s actions.
- It creates an easy griefing tool. A player can join a raid, kill a civilian on purpose, and negatively affect everyone involved.
- Civilians can be killed accidentally. Area-of-effect abilities, pets, tab-targeting, guards fighting nearby, and general combat chaos can make civilian kills happen without deliberate intent.
- The punishment does not target the responsible player properly. Even if only one person intentionally kills the civilian, the consequences can affect people who did nothing wrong.
- It works against the purpose of a PvP server. Large-scale attacks on enemy settlements should be encouraged as memorable PvP events, rather than discouraged by a mechanic that can be abused so easily.
Dishonorable kills may have originally been intended to prevent players from repeatedly killing harmless quest NPCs, but in practice the mechanic does more harm than good during organized PvP. There are already other ways to deal with players who excessively grief important NPCs, without risking the PvP progress of an entire raid.
Possible solutions could be:
- Completely disable dishonorable kills from civilian NPCs.
- Only apply the dishonorable kill to the player or group that actually damaged the civilian.
- Remove civilian status from NPCs inside major enemy cities during active PvP combat.
- Replace dishonorable kills with a temporary personal penalty that does not affect PvP ranking.
I believe completely disabling the system would be the simplest and most effective solution. It would encourage more city raids, reduce griefing, and allow players to enjoy large-scale world PvP without one person being able to ruin the event for everyone else.
I have just gotten 2 Dishonorable Kills because of other people and deranked to "dishonorable" ....