I'm pretty sick of being murdered without warning or demand for a toll. Makes it pretty tough to gather resources when I'm repeatedly losing tools.
The theme seems to be "Find a dude, kill him, take his stuff and don't EVER rp EVER"
Really turning me off of the whole experience.
I know what the sorrowlands is, and I'm not whining about losing out when I take risks. What I'm trying to say is that what is happening out there now is not the classic banditry of what used to be
The O L D souther wilds with their band of bandits was, in my opinion, much better. As far as bandits go, they were fair, organized and RP'd like no-one else. I spent hours RPing as a victim of them, and thoroughly enjoyed it. They made it fun. It was an entirely different experience than having these lone-wolf type cutthroats. Some will demand a toll, then kill you anyways in the middle of an RP. Others just roam and pillage, making any attempt to enter the sorrowlands an exercise in futility.
/Home desperately needs a revamping. But so do the bandits. I know that 'fair banditry' sounds like an oxymoron, but that is how it was before, and I cannot say enough good things about it.
There are several different ways this can be done. A revamping of rules could be a start. The removal of /spawn and /home would be another. I enjoy the use of both of those commands, but it does seriously take away from the spirit of the game. The rules regarding banditry could use some work. I feel that the Sorrowlands should be forced RP. Bandits should behave like bandits. Running around killing everything means that no one will want to go to the Sorrows. They will buy what they need from people who forsaw exactly this and stockpiled.
The old SW was, for the most part and at it's prime, a paradigm of banditry.
You came into the SW spawn, a toll was demanded. If you payed, you were a free man. To mine and travel as you please. If you did not, it was a risk. You could try to run, you might make it, you might not. I ran a business supplying miners. At varying times, I either payed a flat toll or a percentage of my sales. And I had good RP EVERY day that they came along.
It seems though that killing, looting and resale is the only tactic in the Sorrows, will small, rare and fleeting exceptions. The "bandits" will refuse to RP; they obtain information OOC and use it ingame for gain. If they RPed, they'd then be guilty of metagaming. Hence my desire for forced RP. I was killed once in the sorrows after hiring a worker in OOC chat to help me carry supplies to my store in the Sorrows. I was ambushed and killed, with a cheeky remark about 'not advertising".
I was killed after paying off a bandit and having a decent RP about fencing stolen goods and revenge on another bandit. Stabbed me in the back as we were walking. If I have any interest left in RP and the sorrowlands, it's fading quickly because of the classlessness of this all.
I know this is controversial, but I think the AH needs to go too. It is the SINGLE greatest deterrent to RP. It in and of itself is a metagaming monstosity. I know I'm being somewhat hypocritical here, having used it, but I think player-stores and merchants are the way to go.
Long story short, we need a lot of feedback on rules, we need to stop the teleportation and for the love of gaming, RP just a little bit.
TL;DR: Bandits are terrible at their job, /home sucks and I hate almost everything.