[quote name="luisspamer"]Prestige trading was made totally ineffective thereby making it obsolete.
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That's not true. As far as I know, you only need 1 point to achieve 1% increase in XP, so if you can obtain that one point by either trading hits with somebody or by hitting somebody and paying them enough FSP to get the XP back (about 2 FSP = 50 stam), the net effect for you is still about the same - you lose the XP from the one hit. If 1% of total XP is greater than this loss, it's worth for you to trade.
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Players that wanted to compensate, as you say, and pay or arrange for taking 1% of a level to achieve the 10 Prestige points with an agreement with others in their +/- 10 level range did not exist! The 3 day rule made it impossible, even if you had 100k max stam.
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No, it only made it impossible at high levels where there is not enough possible targets to make the agreement with - but since we're talking about RELATIVE competition anyway, if it's no longer feasible to get 10% for me, neither it is for anybody around me, and that's who I compete with, so it actually makes little difference. People still go for the 1% bonus because it's worth the effort - and if they had enough max stam and enough trading partners, they'd still go for 10%. And if it takes 50 hits at 1 hit per person per 6k stam (3 days), you need 6k max stam and 50 friends, 12k maxstam and 25 friends, 24k maxstam and 12.5 friends... So, people with high maxstam would naturally, rationally, form trading circles that would basically ensure for them to stay ahead of people with lower max stam.
[quote name="coyotik"][quote name="luisspamer"]I like the +3 day rule outside the BB on every attack to earn Prestige. It makes sense.[/quote]
No, it doesn't make any sense. Why should it be possible to steal gold and cause XP loss every hour, but get prestige only once in 3 days? There's no sense in it, it's just a bad attempt to restrict something that should never have cropped up in the first place.[/quote]
[quote] Now, players lose absolutely nothing when attacked from outside their +/- 10 range. In fact many simply trade Prestige hits(THE SUBJECT OF THIS THREAD!). [/quote]
Yes, I agree that the situation has been made worse, no doubt about it.
[quote]They almost never hit back authentic attacks.[/quote]
And why would they hit back? They have almost nothing to gain and a lot to lose by hitting back.
[quote]If you care about every single xp then you also care as much about the stam it takes to get that xp. First off, that is selfish play. Ok, some play like that and that is their prerogative. Only the fewest number of players ever reach EOC. It takes money donated/time/being good at something else to earn the dots to buy stam to get there. Calculating stam efficiency for leveling doesn't take a doctorate.
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But it's not trivial either. There's a lot of people who think they're doing it right and they don't

. And especially those who got there without having a FSP source, be it cash or trading or pots, may be quite sensitive about their XP. It applied to me as well some time ago, although these days I don't care much, having different priorities in my life, like family.
[quote]Trading free hits is nothing similar to cheating in the matter you mentioned, not as long as HCS allows it to happen.[/quote]
I didn't actually mean cheating. I think that even having friends who buff you for free is not different in principle from trading prestige - the only difference really is that prestige cannot happen within guild - but it's still the same principle, one person doing a favor to another person. This happens in the game in many forms... having a highlevel friend who will clear your bounties quickly is nothing else in principle, too.
[quote]Again, the subject of this thread pertains to the fact that trading should not be allowed.[/quote]
It's still fighting a symptom, not a cause. If all attacks take XP, Prestige trading will be reduced back to 1% bonus for most people, but it will still remain. I quite liked the suggestion that pvp rating should be reset to 1000 only for those who pvp actively - because I don't have any desire to get hit for my pvp rating in the first place - and if somebody is willing to take it away without causing any damage, I would welcome it... so I would actually have a bio quite similar to what you brought up - with no intention to "trade prestige" at all, simply as a protection mechanism.
[quote]I think we can both agree that accomplishments, however small or large, need to be EARNED! What kind of message do we send the youth here playing this game, that the result always justify the means by which you achieve it? It's a bad message.
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I don't really think that we should go into this discussion. If you want to worry about sending messages to youth, then the whole PvP is quite questinable as it sends the message that you don't have to earn by hard work, you can earn by robbing the weak ones

(yep, another cheap shot from me

)
[quote]Where we do disagree is that you don't believe Prestige trading was stopped when taking xp occurred to gain Prestige. [/quote]
It was quite restricted, but far from stopped, and the restriction was in fact imbalanced, favoring the rich. And if we get 1 hour of developer time, I would prefer it to be applied to the root cause (changing the bonus) than to changing the xp loss mechanics (because odds are that if anything changes in PvP again, it would again need revisiting).
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PS Coyotic, while we may not agree with many things I do respect your well written replies. You make me think about things and for that I thank you.

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Since you stopped accusing me of being on anti-pvp crusade and promoting selfish interests, I've gotten to respect your replies too, even if I disagree with them.
So, merry Christmas or whatever applicable - and let's hope that the devs come with something that will sort this issue out.