Fix mapowner kill stealing

Scenario: User unable to 1h kill enemy on map enters map, widdles down enemy, higher level user enters map, kill steals monster they were in the process of attacking by getting last hit, and gets mapowner then requests the user leave.

This can be done by higher level players stalking and following / griefing lower level players in an attempt to get them banned. I have directly seen and experienced this happening to me.

My suggestion would be to only allow a user to get mapowner of a monster if they were the first attacker on the monster who did damage, or assign mapowner to the first attacker of the monster in the event that they have attacked in the last 15s.

As it currently stands this is GM supported and enforced kill stealing / griefing.

 

Map of occurrence is irrelevant. This could happen on HHG1 with users griefing new players, or on 7f with trolls last hitting 200k+ hp monsters that a user widdled down to 10k, or as another user mentioned, a bishop kill stealing in in WS, a map where users at the level of the monster generally take 5+ hits to kill with good equips.

 

Another potential solution would be, when there is no owner, and a user attacks a monster and does damage, they're given a temporary reservation, e.g., 30s, and only they can get mapowner until they get a kill or the timer expires. If a different user kills a monster the reserved user attacked, the reserved user gets the ownership. When the user loses reservation from not killing, there's a cooldown of say 1m on reservations for the map, at which point it's a normal free for all.

In general, separate to the suggestion above, mapowner should also not be assigned based on last hit, it should be assigned based on whiting the monster, provided the one who whited the monster attacked the monster in the last 30s for example (e.g., so palis / fp mages can't afk and get mapownership when someone else attacks).

 

"Leech maps" are just maps with high mob density, and easy traversal, the same as a meta training map. There's a reason most meta training maps are also meta leech maps. It sounds like you're trying to excuse this kind of behavior by saying it's a leech map so it's ok.

 

Maps like mannies used to be the meta at around 55+. At the lower levels, it would take more than 10 seconds to kill an enemy, especially with bad luck with mob targeting. Additionally, maps like 7f or 5-6, unless you're pretty high level, can take more than 10 seconds to kill a monster unless you just go after the fish.

 

"But if you can't kill a monster fast enough, should you really be training at that map?"
I've described above, but meta maps for training generally require more than one hit. Third job especially the exp to hp ratio, and hp compared to potential damage is so out of sync compared to most of 2nd job that 2-3 hitting monsters is essentially a dream until you're at least 10-20 levels above the monster. E.g., wolfspiders have 27k hp if I recall correctly, and most jobs between 75-85 will take about 6-10 mob hits or 3-4 single target attack hits, presuming the user has good equips. This gets worse the higher level you get as monsters hp scales far past what your damage can output, until 4rd job where monsters hit a cap of ~220k hp in showlin. The only jobs that can output 200k fast enough early 4th job to quickly establish ownership are palidins (or mm), and even then, hammer has such a large delay after attacking and being able to follow up and knock out the remaining ~20k hp that a nefarious user could easily watch the user hammer the enemy and kill steal them on the last hit while they recover. What I'm essentially trying to say is, once you hit 3rd job + users have to train at significantly lower leveled areas, or against monsters that take 5-10 hits. A kill stealer can easily snipe last hit on a similar leveled character, or bring in a higher leveled character just to snipe the map.
While with 6 channels we are cramped, the issue is not that we need more channels, the issue is we need more meta viable maps. Sadly recent balance changes have done very little to improve training for 3rd job +, and just make more maps leech viable. Respawn rate changes to large maps that need at least 4+ characters to effectively control does very little other than make it more leech viable. Most users are unwilling to attempt to train in 4+ person parties as it requries too much organization etc., and just doesn't fit with the current mentality set by the mapowner system.