It’s mine and you can’t have it
I decided to begin this article with the basic definition of the MMO problem it will be addressing.
Kill Stealing
I can almost hear the carebears yelling at their monitor and running to the message boards to flame me. “Kill stealing is wrong, this guy is an idiot, blah blah”. Well, when you finish feel free to come back and read the rest of the article and I will explain it for you.
The reason why kill stealing simply is not possible is because there is nothing to steal. This relates to the same reason I used in my You’re not allowed to play that way article. Everyone pays the same $14.95 a month. Everyone is equally entitled to all the content of the game. No one player can ever claim ownership of a mob, dungeon or zone. There is an exception to this. In a FFA world you can claim ownership but only if you have the skill and numbers to defend it. If you don’t then it won’t be yours for very long.
No player’s monthly payment is worth any more than the next guy. Just because you started attacking it first is irrelevant. The way XP and loot is rewarded is that each player gets out exactly what they put in. If you do 80% of the damage you will get 80% of the XP, they other guy who only did 20% will get 20% of the XP. He didn’t steal anything he did his percentage of the damage and was rewarded correctly by the game for it. Who ever does the most damage will get the loot. If you want 100% of the XP then you need to kill it faster.
Now it could be argued that the second guy stole the 20% of the XP. Well how do you figure that? He did his attacks and got his portion. The first player doesn’t own the mob. He has no right to claim it. Once again how is his $14.95 any better than the second guy’s $14.95. Now if you want to have mobs that only you can attack then you can go into an Instanced area. Since no one can get into that area the mobs are yours by technicality.
Most MMOs don’t acknowledge kill stealing but they do acknowledge harassment. They can be confused but are definitely 2 different animals. I think EQ does have a policy but since SOE is by far the worst MMO related company in existence, I’m going to ignore them. In fact if you try to make a kill stealing complaint in CoH, this is what you will get.
Thank you for contacting the City of Heroes support team. We understand that kill stealing can be a very frustrating issue. Our design team has worked very hard to come up with a resolution to reduce the effect of kill stealing as much as possible and will continue to monitor the effects of kills being shared between players.
In City of Heroes, the act of "Kill Stealing" is if a player of a significant higher level than your hero continues to follow you defeating mobs preventing you from gaining any XP or Influence for an extended period of time.
In City of Heroes, Heroes do not "own" any mobs. If you are attacking a mob, and another Hero jumps in to help, this is not kill stealing as they are receiving a small share of XP for helping in the defeat as you are gaining XP as well.
Here is how our XP/Influence system works:
If you are soloing, XP is handled by your current level, the type of mob you are fighting (minion, LT, boss, etc), mob level, and how much Damage you inflict upon this mob.
So if you do about 3/4th damage on a mob, and someone comes by and gets the defeat on a mob, you will get more XP than the person who dealt the final blow.
Also, if the person who deals the defeating blow is a higher level than the mob you are fighting, chances are they will receive no XP at all.
If you think someone is trying to "Kill Steal" from your Hero, try to do an indoor mission to allow the other player time to go to a different location or you can take a Tram to a different zone. However, if you find that a player is intentionally following you from zone to zone to harass you, please let us know. The COH support team will take the necessary actions to resolve the incident.
Please let us know if you have any further issues.
CoH considers a single incident of kill stealing a non-issue. Repeated acts are treated as if it is harassment (although they call it kill stealing). That only happens if someone follows you around for a prolonged period of time and continually kills mobs you are trying to hunt. At that point they aren’t doing it strictly for the XP reward from the mob they are doing it to intentionally harass the other player.
That means that if someone runs by and fires a few shots at the group of mobs you are fighting, its not kill stealing. If they see you and fire off a few shots then follow you around attacking the same mobs as you for the next 10 minutes, they still aren’t kill stealing because the other player doesn’t own the mobs. What they are doing is harassing the other player. I personally would never make a harassment complaint about someone in game. To me it just seems like a weak thing to do.
Intermission
Part 2
Well what about the human factor on the effects of kill stealing? Even though no player owns any mob and everyone is equally entitled, people still have this notion that it is bad to attack a mob someone else is already fighting. Sometimes the player is a nice person and thinks he is legitimately trying to help another player is distress. This is actually a common occurrence.
Blaster Bob runs by and sees Controller Charlie with a very low amount of health with 2 mobs beating on him. Bob tries to be helpful and launches a fireball killing the 2 mobs. Sometimes Charlie will be thankful but more often than not he will berate Bob for kill stealing. Bob was trying to be the Good Samaritan and got insults for it. He will be less likely to help someone else in the future, all because Charlie plays by scrub rules. Another point to make is that even if Defender Dan had run over to heal Charlie or use a non damage debuff to the mobs, Charlie might still have accused Dan of kill stealing.
A scrub is a player that creates and applies additional unnecessary rules to the inherent rules of a game. Anyone who breaks this additional rule is labeled cheap. Easiest example is in Street Fighter. You can throw someone to do damage, throwing someone once is ok. Throwing them 5 times in a row is considered cheap, a scrub rule. For more information and a more accurate explanation of scrub mentality. I strongly recommend reading this article Playing to Win by Sirlin.
Kill stealing is a scrub rule by definition. It is an additional rule created by gamers that is not validated by game policy. Players are willfully hindering their performance by adhering to these ridiculous rules.
Here is a perfect example. I am running by an area. I see the Mega-Xp Monster but someone is already fighting it. Now these Mega-XP Monsters are incredibly rare. I might not see another for a week or a month. It gives a mega amount of XP even if I only do a fraction of the damage. By scrub mentality I shouldn’t fight it because someone else already is even though I am equally entitled to attack that mob as much as the guy already fighting it.
Now lets say I attack it and get my damage equivalent portion of the XP. Then I leave the area. I’m not following the guy around so its not harassment. I saw an opportunity and took it.
Instead of a large amount of XP maybe it drops a rare item. Everyone is equally entitled to the reward, if I can do the most damage I get it. If not the other guy does. Since he got the head start he has a better chance than me. Should I somehow get it he has no right to complain. I did more damage and got the reward, it was completely fair. Does it matter if he was waiting 2 hours for the mob to spawn? No, it doesn’t.
Some people will actually wait in lines to kill a static spawn mob that drops a quest item. The respawn time could be 30 seconds, 1 minute or even 15 minutes plus. These scrubs will waste hours and hours waiting in line to get the item. There is no way in hell I am going to sit in a virtual line for hours to get that item. I am going to jump to the front of the line and hit the mob will everything I have. You might laugh at the idea of people waiting in long lines like that but it happens a lot.
Worst thing you can say is I’m a line jumper or just plain rude and inconsiderate. Last I checked those things were not against the rules. If I continually do it, I might get black listed and not allowed in certain guilds or teams, but that is something I can deal with. I don’t care about making friends in an MMO. I have my real life friends that play the game with me. I’m not even going to start on the whole “honor” thing. I will leave that for another article. Doesn’t matter to me what other players in a game think about me, if it does matter to you then you might have some issues. Keep playing by the scrub rules if you want but don’t complain about someone stealing something that was never yours in the first place.
Shut Up And Fight
Kill Stealing
- Attacking or killing
- a mob already engaged by another player
- a mob when it spawns that another player was waiting for
- any mobs in an area where another player has claimed ownership
- a mob already engaged by another player
I can almost hear the carebears yelling at their monitor and running to the message boards to flame me. “Kill stealing is wrong, this guy is an idiot, blah blah”. Well, when you finish feel free to come back and read the rest of the article and I will explain it for you.
The reason why kill stealing simply is not possible is because there is nothing to steal. This relates to the same reason I used in my You’re not allowed to play that way article. Everyone pays the same $14.95 a month. Everyone is equally entitled to all the content of the game. No one player can ever claim ownership of a mob, dungeon or zone. There is an exception to this. In a FFA world you can claim ownership but only if you have the skill and numbers to defend it. If you don’t then it won’t be yours for very long.
No player’s monthly payment is worth any more than the next guy. Just because you started attacking it first is irrelevant. The way XP and loot is rewarded is that each player gets out exactly what they put in. If you do 80% of the damage you will get 80% of the XP, they other guy who only did 20% will get 20% of the XP. He didn’t steal anything he did his percentage of the damage and was rewarded correctly by the game for it. Who ever does the most damage will get the loot. If you want 100% of the XP then you need to kill it faster.
Now it could be argued that the second guy stole the 20% of the XP. Well how do you figure that? He did his attacks and got his portion. The first player doesn’t own the mob. He has no right to claim it. Once again how is his $14.95 any better than the second guy’s $14.95. Now if you want to have mobs that only you can attack then you can go into an Instanced area. Since no one can get into that area the mobs are yours by technicality.
Most MMOs don’t acknowledge kill stealing but they do acknowledge harassment. They can be confused but are definitely 2 different animals. I think EQ does have a policy but since SOE is by far the worst MMO related company in existence, I’m going to ignore them. In fact if you try to make a kill stealing complaint in CoH, this is what you will get.
Thank you for contacting the City of Heroes support team. We understand that kill stealing can be a very frustrating issue. Our design team has worked very hard to come up with a resolution to reduce the effect of kill stealing as much as possible and will continue to monitor the effects of kills being shared between players.
In City of Heroes, the act of "Kill Stealing" is if a player of a significant higher level than your hero continues to follow you defeating mobs preventing you from gaining any XP or Influence for an extended period of time.
In City of Heroes, Heroes do not "own" any mobs. If you are attacking a mob, and another Hero jumps in to help, this is not kill stealing as they are receiving a small share of XP for helping in the defeat as you are gaining XP as well.
Here is how our XP/Influence system works:
If you are soloing, XP is handled by your current level, the type of mob you are fighting (minion, LT, boss, etc), mob level, and how much Damage you inflict upon this mob.
So if you do about 3/4th damage on a mob, and someone comes by and gets the defeat on a mob, you will get more XP than the person who dealt the final blow.
Also, if the person who deals the defeating blow is a higher level than the mob you are fighting, chances are they will receive no XP at all.
If you think someone is trying to "Kill Steal" from your Hero, try to do an indoor mission to allow the other player time to go to a different location or you can take a Tram to a different zone. However, if you find that a player is intentionally following you from zone to zone to harass you, please let us know. The COH support team will take the necessary actions to resolve the incident.
Please let us know if you have any further issues.
CoH considers a single incident of kill stealing a non-issue. Repeated acts are treated as if it is harassment (although they call it kill stealing). That only happens if someone follows you around for a prolonged period of time and continually kills mobs you are trying to hunt. At that point they aren’t doing it strictly for the XP reward from the mob they are doing it to intentionally harass the other player.
That means that if someone runs by and fires a few shots at the group of mobs you are fighting, its not kill stealing. If they see you and fire off a few shots then follow you around attacking the same mobs as you for the next 10 minutes, they still aren’t kill stealing because the other player doesn’t own the mobs. What they are doing is harassing the other player. I personally would never make a harassment complaint about someone in game. To me it just seems like a weak thing to do.
Intermission
Part 2
Well what about the human factor on the effects of kill stealing? Even though no player owns any mob and everyone is equally entitled, people still have this notion that it is bad to attack a mob someone else is already fighting. Sometimes the player is a nice person and thinks he is legitimately trying to help another player is distress. This is actually a common occurrence.
Blaster Bob runs by and sees Controller Charlie with a very low amount of health with 2 mobs beating on him. Bob tries to be helpful and launches a fireball killing the 2 mobs. Sometimes Charlie will be thankful but more often than not he will berate Bob for kill stealing. Bob was trying to be the Good Samaritan and got insults for it. He will be less likely to help someone else in the future, all because Charlie plays by scrub rules. Another point to make is that even if Defender Dan had run over to heal Charlie or use a non damage debuff to the mobs, Charlie might still have accused Dan of kill stealing.
A scrub is a player that creates and applies additional unnecessary rules to the inherent rules of a game. Anyone who breaks this additional rule is labeled cheap. Easiest example is in Street Fighter. You can throw someone to do damage, throwing someone once is ok. Throwing them 5 times in a row is considered cheap, a scrub rule. For more information and a more accurate explanation of scrub mentality. I strongly recommend reading this article Playing to Win by Sirlin.
Kill stealing is a scrub rule by definition. It is an additional rule created by gamers that is not validated by game policy. Players are willfully hindering their performance by adhering to these ridiculous rules.
Here is a perfect example. I am running by an area. I see the Mega-Xp Monster but someone is already fighting it. Now these Mega-XP Monsters are incredibly rare. I might not see another for a week or a month. It gives a mega amount of XP even if I only do a fraction of the damage. By scrub mentality I shouldn’t fight it because someone else already is even though I am equally entitled to attack that mob as much as the guy already fighting it.
Now lets say I attack it and get my damage equivalent portion of the XP. Then I leave the area. I’m not following the guy around so its not harassment. I saw an opportunity and took it.
Instead of a large amount of XP maybe it drops a rare item. Everyone is equally entitled to the reward, if I can do the most damage I get it. If not the other guy does. Since he got the head start he has a better chance than me. Should I somehow get it he has no right to complain. I did more damage and got the reward, it was completely fair. Does it matter if he was waiting 2 hours for the mob to spawn? No, it doesn’t.
Some people will actually wait in lines to kill a static spawn mob that drops a quest item. The respawn time could be 30 seconds, 1 minute or even 15 minutes plus. These scrubs will waste hours and hours waiting in line to get the item. There is no way in hell I am going to sit in a virtual line for hours to get that item. I am going to jump to the front of the line and hit the mob will everything I have. You might laugh at the idea of people waiting in long lines like that but it happens a lot.
Worst thing you can say is I’m a line jumper or just plain rude and inconsiderate. Last I checked those things were not against the rules. If I continually do it, I might get black listed and not allowed in certain guilds or teams, but that is something I can deal with. I don’t care about making friends in an MMO. I have my real life friends that play the game with me. I’m not even going to start on the whole “honor” thing. I will leave that for another article. Doesn’t matter to me what other players in a game think about me, if it does matter to you then you might have some issues. Keep playing by the scrub rules if you want but don’t complain about someone stealing something that was never yours in the first place.
Shut Up And Fight
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