I’m looking to get an GS-Prime instance of the HARDCORE competition currently underway in Gemstone Platinum. Kithus/Brinret’s HARDCORE competition is ongoing, and I highly recommend you join in if you’re so inclined. The link to the competition can be found here: https://gswiki.play.net/Platinum_HARDCORE

The purpose of this thread is to see how many people are interested in participating, and ensuring the rules are seen as fair and fun for all those looking to be involved. I’m looking to start this competition on November 1st, 2017, so please DO NOT START YOUR HARDCORE CHARACTER BEFORE THIS DATE or he or she will NOT be eligible for the competition!

Depending upon the level of interest, I may cap the number of entries because I don’t want to go broke paying out rewards. I also reserve the right to refuse anyone entry into this competition for any reason, as well as the right to disqualify an existing competitor or cancel the competition at any point. I will do my absolute best NOT to do this, but if cheating becomes rampant or there are unforeseen conflicts which interfere in the enjoyment of the community at large I will have little choice.

Here are the rules I am proposing. You will find they are nearly identical to the Platinum instance of the competition:

All participants, upon creation, must be posted in the GemStone IV Prime HARDCORE thread. This includes name, race and profession. HARDCORE characters must be created on or after November 1st, 2017.

Upon death you should submit a post to the thread informing the community of the character’s death and immediately delete the character. Inventory may be transferred to a non-HARDCORE character prior to deletion.

HARDCORE characters must be self-spelled. This means no outside spells may be used. Spells the character can activate themselves from Magic Items or Scrolls are permitted.

HARDCORE characters are not to be hunted with non-HARDCORE characters. Further, while playing more than 1 HARDCORE character at a time is permitted, MAing HARDCORE characters for group hunting purposes or any other unforseen benefits is not permitted. (No HARDCORE MA armies, please!)

Items and silver may not be obtained from other characters. This means nothing may be received from another character or player shop. All silver and inventory must be earned by the HARDCORE character. NPC shop purchases are permitted. Items the HARDCORE character obtained from a merchant, including raffles and merchant services, are permitted.

Items from a grand auction, Premium monthly raffle, Duskruin, Delirium Manor or other “pay to play”, or “1 win per account” sources are not permitted. Items from Reim are permitted but only from your daily free Reim run.

No outside services from OTHER CHARACTERS are allowed. This includes:
** Armor skills
** Artisan Skills
** Blessing
** Enchanting/Ensorcelling/Elemental Resistance
** Healing
** Locksmithing
** Mass spells
** Society or Adventure Guild resources (Pelts, Gems, Herbs, etc)

Deaths resulting from PvP, direct GameMaster action, or GAME WIDE outage are exempt. Also any death that is a required part of a task that may or may not exist for a specific society is exempt.

GemStone IV Prime HARDCORE characters cannot use any item purchased with Simucoins. Similar items found normally are allowed.

GemStone IV Prime HARDCORE characters should toggle on the ability to view their level in their profiles.

And the Rewards:

Upon reaching level 20 a GemStone IV Prime HARDCORE character can show their Lord/Lady title to ** for a 1 million silver reward payable to a non-HARDCORE character of their choice. The first character to achieve this level will receive a reward of 2 million silver.

Upon reaching level 40 a GemStone IV Prime HARDCORE character can show their Great Lord/Lady title to ** for a 5 million silver reward payable to a non-HARDCORE character of their choice. The first character to achieve this level will receive a reward of 10 million silver.

Upon reaching level 70 a GemStone IV Prime HARDCORE character can show their High Lord/Lady title to ** for a 10 million silver reward payable to a non-HARDCORE character of their choice. The first character to achieve this level will receive a reward of 20 million silver.

Upon reaching level 100 a GemStone IV Prime HARDCORE character can show their Grand Lord/Lady title to ** for a 25 million silver reward payable to a non-HARDCORE character. The first character to achieve this level will receive a reward of 50 million silver and the adulation of his piers! Additionally the HARDCORE character is now exempt from deletion on death.

Please respond to this thread if you are interested in joining the competition and with any general questions/comments regarding its creation.

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

Yeah, I could be talked into this one, too.

I know many ways to kill a monk between levels 1 and 20, so you'd think I could be a contenda!

Like I offered to Keith - I'll do what I can to help defray the personal expenses as well, if asked, Evarin.

And as a participant in the Platinum instance, I can tell you it's fun, not for the feint of heart, and annoying when you have that 'aww shuckin's' moment.

Doug

I might be persuaded to pop into Prime just for this.

Keith/Brinret/Eronderl

Keith is correct

-Wyrom, APM

Keith is correct.

-GameMaster Estild

Shouldnt slamming be handled with the gaming mechanic that brings in an enraged monster when you log back in?

Appreciate the insight, Doug. I'll crosspost it in the other threads (PC and Elanthian Forums) for review and later discussion.

How are pawnshop purchases handled in the Plat version?

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

From the looks of the Platinum version, you can transfer the inventory to a non-hardcore character but the character itself is to be deleted. Obviously, this isn't enforceable, so if you wanted the keep the character I wouldn't ban you from starting a new one, but it's the spirit of the game to risk deletion upon death.

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

>>it's the spirit of the game to risk deletion upon death.

This. I know it is absolutely insane / backwards way to look at this game, but until you experience it, it truly will just be words.

At least up to level 20, so far. Ask me again after level 40, and I might change my tune. But 'death / delete' is a whole new way to experience this game - even after 25 years (rounding a bit).

Doug

Some interesting ideas about running the competition for specific timeframes. I'll jot that down and see if there's interest in doing that.

I will cap entries if there is enough interest so I don't go broke. Doug has offered to help with costs as well if it's needed, so it shouldn't be too bad. Staff can of course get as involved as they like, but I imagine that won't come until the ball is rolling and there is enough interest/participation to warrant an investment of their time.

I want to start putting together a list of changes and concerns and update the various threads across the message boards, but we still have quite a ways until November 1st. Stay tuned!

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

>>Not sure why you would want to allow raffle / merchant service wins? Why not just close this avenue down before it gets out the gate?

I'll take up the opposing view in the argument. (Ed note: This means I'm arguing a case, not necessarily that I insist it be this way.)

Specifically pay-to-obtain (as opposed to win) features are already disallowed. So no EG for the Hard of Core. No CCF, too! (bummed)

But - if a HoC (see what I did there?) character accumulates enough coinage (it's easy to get 2 mill by 20 trains, honestly), and if a raffle or service is announced to Prime (all players) - why shouldn't the HoC character participate if s/he wishes?

The key is the 'all players' - HoC is built on the premise that you will not take advantage of what other players offer, nor try to buy things that cannot be had outside the bounds of a subscription (paid events), but within the bounds of the subscription - it is fair game. Herbs, weapons, armor, FWI visits (including I suppose spending your points on item updates) all should be open to the HoC player's choice.

And - as a final thought - keeping this open likely will greatly improve the subscribed player involvement over the F2P player involvement. Simucoin purchases are verbotten - so it's a tough slog with F2P (and probably deserves its own goal / recognition, honestly!) But - if HoC involvement sustains or even helps improve subscription rates a bit - we should be all for that as a community!

Doug

We can never truly even the odds across the board. At any given point a player could find a strong piece of gear from a creature or box and be ahead of the curve. They could make a good buy at the pawnshop. They could be independently wealthy and play nearly all day every day. Also, who says all things must be equal? Some professions are stronger than others at different level ranges. Some professions are far better suited to be self-reliant than others. Remember, this isn't so much a race as it is a mode of playing. If you're after the silver prize for being the first to do something, that's all well and good but it's supposed to be a neat little incentive and not the sole reason for playing.

I'd like to try to keep things as straight-forward as possible. Premium offers an advantage over non-premium, but everyone is able to choose to upgrade to premium if they wish. Same with entering into GM/MHO/CHE competitions. They are available to all in the competition in some form or another. Forcing people to start a new standard account may discourage some from participating. I'd still like for HARDCORE characters to be able to enjoy events being run in game. We've already removed the ability to hunt with non-HARDCORE characters, which is harsh, but far too easily abused. Think about how much more substantial a raffle win from one of these events would mean to a HARDCORE character versus a standard player. As with all things, i'm open to debating it, so feel free to disagree and we can start whittling down truly unfair advantages and the like.

The game is able to be completed self-spelled from 0 to 100 with 4x gear. Supposedly, it has been balanced around doing so. I don't think getting 4x-6x gear will be a challenge to anyone playing for any measurable amount of time, even under the restrictions we've laid out in the competition.

I do think Playershop purchases should be banned, though, as that system can be gamed relatively easily and would introduce an endless stream of equipment/items to balance. Anyone disagree? I'm open to discussing it, but please do so if you really believe it would improve the competition by allowing it.

In other discussions, we've talked about guild skills. I feel we should allow them, even to the point of training with non-hardcore characters. Again, I argue this from a player enjoyment perspective. It would possibly preclude certain professions from moving forward into their training if they were limited to HARDCORE training partners only. I will say you cannot MA your own partner. It goes against the spirit of the competition. Does anyone know how Plat handled this?

I also think we should ban spending Premium Points on HARDCORE characters. That is an easily controlled variable, so it seems fine to eliminate it. I'm also leaning towards banning the 1x a day magical items from FWI. That is another easily controlled variable.

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

Hah! I wish I could ramble that clearly. . .

Doug

I suppose we can ban pawnshop purchases. The plat version allows purchases from NPC shops, so access to 4x gear isn't going to be all that difficult. Same with many magical items through various shops. I'll put it to a vote at some point soon.

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

The guidance is appreciated, K.

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

>What if one member of your hardcore duo team picks a bard (lol) or a cleric? Can they not sing their buff spells?! This seems super harsh. I don't want to be a bard anyway, but asking for the sake of clarification.

I'd be interested to hear how this is handled in Plat before I make a hard and fast ruling. To what extent can HARDCORE characters help each other in combat? Remember, it is against the rules to MA your characters for this competition.

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

I like the suggestion of one character per player at a time.

I also would prefer to be able to group up with other HC people, playing partners are best. It definitely gives an advantage to the people grouping though, agreed ahead of time.

~Amanda, player of Treeva

Alright. Leaning towards allowing passive spells for now. No 611, 419, 911, etc. Just spells you can't help but get if they're already cast by the player in question.

As for multiple HARDCORE characters, what makes sense to me is to say 1 character logged in at a time. Have as many as you want. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

Yes, what I am against is the MA army. Reading the replies in this thread, I can agree that I'm fine with someone having a character in Ta'Vaalor and one in Solhaven, playing concurrently. So whatever our overlord (Evarin) or the mass votes, I'm ok with it after hearing the rebuttal.

~Amanda, player of Treeva

I'm not exactly sure what mechanical advantage it might provide beyond what any 'group' would - again, if the player were playing in the spirit of HoC. Spells still aren't shared, healing still isn't done, etc. But, I hear ya.

>>If someone means to try to get 5 of these guys to level 20 and so on i'll need to know about it in advance.

With respect to this, and given the possibility all 535 players could want to become involved, I'd suggest that each award be granted to a non-HoC character of a player once. It doesn't matter how many characters the player has involved - each threshold is crossed once by that player and the recognition is for the player's accomplishment, not the character's. No farming for silvers from Evarin!

So, in addition to name, race and profession, you would want to track player's non-HoC award character (and this one should be the same one throughout the event).

Doug

I'm going to also ban the use of the OOG Premium Monthly submission contest prizes for HARDCORE characters. The monthly raffles are permitted, however. See if this makes sense.

* Items from a grand auction, Duskruin, Delirium Manor or other "pay to play", or "1 win per account" sources are not permitted. Items from Reim are permitted but only from your daily free Reim run. Prizes obtained from OOG competitions or rewards such as (but not limited to) the Premium Monthly Submission contest, Indiegogo campaigns, GM/Gamehost/Mentor rewards, and CHE/MHO Officer rewards are not permitted.

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

Alright. I'll allow 1 weapon type.

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"