I've posted in more detail about this in the past, but here's a quick summary:
We don't want to implement TLC. Creating artificial limitations like that just isn't where we want to go if at all avoidable. We continue to talk about this very real issue and appreciate this thread and others.
I want to believe there are ways to address this issue without something as draconian as the TLC I put into the FV server way back in the day.
But that doesn't mean that we don't need to do something to deal with the problem of bottom feeding, of higher level players ruining the fun of lower level players who are in an area designed for their level range.
So we continue to think and listen and take the issue seriously. TLC in it's original form would be a last resort -- I think we can all do better, devs and community.
Riply said:CanadinaXegony said:A lot of us can't dedicate the time we used to..like back in 1999, just the way things work, doesn't diminish our game knowledge or capabilities. Doesn't mean that those who can spend 24/7 camped somewhere are more skilled or knowledgeable than the rest of us either. I want a challenging game with a learning curve. What I don't want when it comes to epic quests (mentioned before) is that other players can dictate to me what and what I can't do. This happened on Xegony...epic quest spawns sat on by one particular "uber" guild for up to a year. I spent that year trying to find a way to get an invite...got the invite for Venril Sathir..and one of their members ninjaed the drop I needed. So again, I will be paying my subscription and if others can finish their epic weapon quest..so should I. I helped on every epic spawn I could, for clerics, and every other class. I think trying for a whole year...should count for effort. I don't think anyone should be entitled to block you because they can. That doesn't mean they are better than anyone else...they had the guild that could sit on these spawns day in and day out......nobody should have to go begging hat in hand only to get disappointed anyways. Put yourself in those shoes and walk in them for a bit. And before someone comes out with the word whine....eat it :P
You gotta be kidding me, based on your comment "Put yourself in those shoes and walk in them for a bit. "....somehow you imply that others, including myself have never had to deal with dissapointment in an MMO? You do realize we played the same game right?
As for this comment "So again, I will be paying my subscription and if others can finish their epic weapon quest..so should I."....Sorry, you pay for the right to play the game, you dont pay for the right to win or experience all of the content available.
I really don't see how your comments about your epic and how much it sucked to get in on the "Venril Sathir" kill have anything to do with Over Leveled Farmers? Were they gearing up their own clerics? If so, then they have the right to be there just as much as you did. Were they selling the rights to takes out Venril Sathir? If that is the case, then it is something that GMs should of gotten involved with. I do realize that EQ GMs, exspecially later on, were not the greatest at preventing guilds from menopolizing some content, but thats not the point. The point is that the issue you were talking about is a player issue, not a mechanical. In this situation, how would preventing a higher level from taking out Venril Sathir really helped and at what level do we consider a player as being to high for his loot? Last I knew clerics were still getting their epics, are we going to say they no longer get the rights to do so because of some TLC? Somehow I think you would be just as upset if you outleveled the content and still couldent get what you wanted because of the TLC.
I am all for an active Guide/GM system that prevents players from being a$$hats, but you cannot always code out bad behavior without destroying other aspects of the game. What I am against is mechanics that are broad sweeping such as TLC, which are nothing more then preventing you from "whining" (Sorry I had you, you asked for it in your last post, let me add a =P, to make it all better) about someone getting the mob, or loot that you are somehow entitled to. There is a fine line thou between preventing people from perma-camping your epic mob and setting it up so that everyone gets the participation prize.
Wow...that particular comment was made in reference to the constant comments about "entitlement" and how some seem to think that lower classes/levels shouldn't be able to access content that is level appropriate. I was talking about people..large guilds in particular that put road blocks in the way of most others on that server..for pretty much a year ..go back and read the whole thing to get the gist. Cherry picking this or that won't help for comprehension. And this is supposed to be a thread on Over Leveled Farmers and how that tends to get in the way of lower levels accomplishing what they want to accomplish. And in a way that "uber" guild...Was a "farmer" if you will..they sat on that and many other epic spawns for at least a year. Which in the end if others can't get near those things, then they give up eventually. After a year, I gave up and left the game. That's what that was all about. Let's get back on topic thanks :)
I'm just gonna throw out a couple ideas here.
-Heavily magical items are no trade/soulbound. I'm talking items with clickies and just really powerful unique items (for their level range) are soulbound. I see no problem with this. There can be plenty of great items with stats and what-not that can be tradeable and used to twink your lower levels but the really magical stuff could be non tradeable.
-Multiple mobs can drop the same magical items. Why not have 3 mobs located in 3 very different locations around the world drop a FBSS or similar sought after item? As long as the world is big enough, this could help spread out the potential farmers. This could also help alleviate any issue with having most items tradeable, even really powerful items.
-Have an exchange merchant/vendor NPC for mats. Have an NPC that higher level players can take their high level mats to and exchange them for lower tiered mats. This way a level 50 doesn't have to spend time farming tier 1 leather and tier 1 iron, potentially taking over an area where low level players might play at. The high level player can farm mats around their level and for example take a tier 5 material like obsidian and exchange it at a vendor to get 50 tier 1 iron ores.
-Have a robust mentor system where players can receive good benefit from mentoring lower level players. Rather than just having a mentor program so that higher level players can play with lower level friends, actually have it as a prominent feature where a high level player would want to spend a considerable amount of time mentoring even strangers. Maybe link AAs to mentoring or other types of rewards for doing so.
-Mobs have behavioral AI that causes them to react accordingly to dire situations such as a level 10 mob being attacked by a level 50 player and knowing there is no hope of winning.
I had more ideas but I'm starting to get a headache so I'm gonna call it quits here. But the idea is to create a system where there are multiple options for EVERYBODY. As well as some risk vs reward for even the high level farming trivialized content.
To the people who are asking for the means to prohibit higher level players from farming lower level stuff, you are concerned that a higher level player is going to stop you from experiencing content. Don't forget what you are asking for, you are asking the devs to do exactly that to the higher level player. Instead of one side trying to hinder/prohibit the other from experiencing content let's try to figure out a way everybody can parTAE! YEAH BABY YEAH!!!
I'd like to add one more thing though. It's something somebody else mentioned already which is that this topic is sort of an odd paradox. PRF's tenets is that it is a group based game which has been toted as having no real solo play before. PRF will be focused on challenging gameplay. These two tenets alone kind of contradict a high level player soloing low level content which would surely not be of any challenge to that player. Just found this tidbit interesting. :)
corpserunner said:Kilsin said:
Preempt Over Levelled* Farmers.*added an L for correct spelling
Please don't ban me...hehehe
"Over Leveled" is correct.
Sorry, my grammar and spelling nazi couldn't help itself.
Right, that's it! Where did I put that ban hammer? hahaha
That may be the US way of spelling it but the British/Australian/New Zealand way is Levelled and being an Aussie and a fellow grammar/spelling nazi it bugs me seeing the differences in spelling between countries so I am constantly correcting my posts lol :D
Kilsin, if we're going to have a civil dialog, then you should avoid putting us on the defense, else you'll just be fueling the fire. Ugh, my Canadian heritage hurts after saying that.
Noobie: Having multiple mobs/camps for the same item, robust mentoring, and AI responding to overwhelming odds are all options that I can get on board with. The rest I'm not so fond of, but that's just my opinion.
It seems to me that adding risk for higher level farmers should be something that introduces mechanics that a high level player can fail at and then penalize them for failing. However, in order to develop sound mechanics one must first address the goals of said mechanic. I am presenting the following two mechanics that would seek to combat AFK/bot farming and hogging of whole areas/zones.
If these two mechanics were used together, then they could allow for reasonable limitations to high level farming, while not preventing it by any means. An attentive high level farmer could kill the runners before they call for aid and avoid the roamers too. A high level farmer would still be relatively safe, but would have to be at least somewhat aware. Using audible-only signals for the runners would make it tough to program bots.
Feyshtey said:Morr said:OK, solve the whole issue by down-leveling. If a group of level 50s go in to fight a level 30 boss, the group is down-leveled to level 30. It's an even fight always (except for groups lower than level 30- they can try if they wish, best of luck).
NO.
No more gimmicky crap.
No more artificial BS.
No more invisible walls.
No more roads to hell paved with good intentions.
By your definition, every game without FFA PvP where anyone can kill anyone else at any time is 'artifical BS' and 'invisible walls'.
What a strange way to think.
Morr said:Feyshtey said:Morr said:OK, solve the whole issue by down-leveling. If a group of level 50s go in to fight a level 30 boss, the group is down-leveled to level 30. It's an even fight always (except for groups lower than level 30- they can try if they wish, best of luck).
NO.
No more gimmicky crap.
No more artificial BS.
No more invisible walls.
No more roads to hell paved with good intentions.By your definition, every game without FFA PvP where anyone can kill anyone else at any time is 'artifical BS' and 'invisible walls'.
What a strange way to think.
Buzzwords and absolutes in lieu of actual discussion. Feelsbadman.
Aradune said:I've posted in more detail about this in the past, but here's a quick summary:
We don't want to implement TLC. Creating artificial limitations like that just isn't where we want to go if at all avoidable. We continue to talk about this very real issue and appreciate this thread and others.
I want to believe there are ways to address this issue without something as draconian as the TLC I put into the FV server way back in the day.
But that doesn't mean that we don't need to do something to deal with the problem of bottom feeding, of higher level players ruining the fun of lower level players who are in an area designed for their level range.
So we continue to think and listen and take the issue seriously. TLC in it's original form would be a last resort -- I think we can all do better, devs and community.
So glad to see this post, ty Aradune
I'm starting to lean in the direction of the idea that someone had of perhaps putting a soft cap/limit on notable items as being a viable solution. Nothing "draconian" of course.
For example, anyone can go farm whatever item they want, whenever they like, but that (and i think this is how it was put) lvl 60 necromancer cannot go farm 10 fungi tunics in a short period of time, they would be limited and only able to get a VR determined amount of said item over a to-be-determined period of time. How limited the number items and how long a period of time etc, that's up to VR
People still compete for camps, have every right to any camp they choose at any level and for any reason be it main, alt or just to sell the item etc, whatever they want.
Side benefit of this? Would be very easy to implement vs some of the other ideas andcost effective to the dev team, and would not be difficult or costly to code in?
Ainadak said:Kilsin, if we're going to have a civil dialog, then you should avoid putting us on the defense, else you'll just be fueling the fire. Ugh, my Canadian heritage hurts after saying that.
Noobie: Having multiple mobs/camps for the same item, robust mentoring, and AI responding to overwhelming odds are all options that I can get on board with. The rest I'm not so fond of, but that's just my opinion.
It seems to me that adding risk for higher level farmers should be something that introduces mechanics that a high level player can fail at and then penalize them for failing. However, in order to develop sound mechanics one must first address the goals of said mechanic. I am presenting the following two mechanics that would seek to combat AFK/bot farming and hogging of whole areas/zones.
- Poor play: Insufficient kill speed, not paying attention to mob types, and not adequately controlling active enemies. Having enemies simply run after a short period of time would be a simple way to enact this mechanic. However, I think it would be interesting to have a certain mob type (fitting in with the "disposition" system that VR has already touted) that would run immediately and call for aid. Perhaps this mob type would make some audible noise as they run away to a set distance or until out of LOS, then begin an audible call, which would summon a level-appropriate monster. This would allow an attentive high level farmer to keep control of their camps, but would mitigate afk camping.
- Excessive greed: Exceeding a threshold total kill count or percentage of spawns within a set period of time. If a certain mob type or dungeon area is being killed by or with the help of high level players to an excessive degree, then perhaps a subset of the roamers in that area could be replaced by high level enemies. The downside of this is that level-appropriate players would be subjected to content that they would have to avoid, but danger is good, right?
If these two mechanics were used together, then they could allow for reasonable limitations to high level farming, while not preventing it by any means. An attentive high level farmer could kill the runners before they call for aid and avoid the roamers too. A high level farmer would still be relatively safe, but would have to be at least somewhat aware. Using audible-only signals for the runners would make it tough to program bots.
Unfortunately, it is my job to moderate the forums and when the rules/guidelines are broken I need to step in, other companies just close derailed topics without even giving reasons in a lot of cases, I at least give everyone a chance to turn it around because I believe in freedom of speech and love reading the discussions from the community but I still need to post warnings and messages here and there to enforce the rules, I don't like doing it, but it must be done if we want to have a nice place to visit here.
I am not sure what you mean by putting you on the defensive? I posted a small warning on page 6 to bring it back on topic after multiple people were arguing and discussing off topic items.
P.S. You can find the guidelines here for reference https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1595/pantheon-developer-forum-guidelines
Kilsin, it was all in jest and intended simply to be a sentence filled with words that America and the rest spell differently than one another. I should have put a smiley or JK. My b.
I sincerely appreciate your work in moderating these forums and keeping the good vibes.
Ainadak said:Kilsin, it was all in jest and intended simply to be a sentence filled with words that America and the rest spell differently than one another. I should have put a smiley or JK. My b.
I sincerely appreciate your work in moderating these forums and keeping the good vibes.
ahh, sorry Ainadak, it has been a really long day on very little sleep and I just read it as a statement, my bad. Thank you for the kind words :)
Kilsin said:Ainadak said:Kilsin, it was all in jest and intended simply to be a sentence filled with words that America and the rest spell differently than one another. I should have put a smiley or JK. My b.
I sincerely appreciate your work in moderating these forums and keeping the good vibes.
ahh, sorry Ainadak, it has been a really long day on very little sleep and I just read it as a statement, my bad. Thank you for the kind words :)
For whatever it's worth, I also read it as a statement. Sarcasm via text is always risky. Either way, you do a good job Kilsin.
Anyway, I think I'm gonna steer clear of this particular discussion as I don't see anything more to add - my preferences seem to be in line with the direction VR is already going.
Bazgrim said:Kilsin said:Ainadak said:Kilsin, it was all in jest and intended simply to be a sentence filled with words that America and the rest spell differently than one another. I should have put a smiley or JK. My b.
I sincerely appreciate your work in moderating these forums and keeping the good vibes.
ahh, sorry Ainadak, it has been a really long day on very little sleep and I just read it as a statement, my bad. Thank you for the kind words :)
For whatever it's worth, I also read it as a statement. Sarcasm via text is always risky. Either way, you do a good job Kilsin.
Anyway, I think I'm gonna steer clear of this particular discussion as I don't see anything more to add - my preferences seem to be in line with the direction VR is already going.
Thank you, friend :)
I always thought it was difficult to solo camp in EQ. Even with a class with lots of tools the low level dungeons can be dangerous. As I said I died a lot of times and lost a level trying to camp for the fungi tunic. I suppose It all depends on how artificially difficult they make the mobs and how many wandering mobs there are that can cause lots of adds. It also depends on how powerful your high level equipment is. Statless items don't help a caster much.
Here's the thing, I assumed that with something like a TLC, the higher levels could farm for trdeskill items, just the quest/lore piece would not drop.
This means the higher level would be inadvertently facilitatinf a rare - lower level named spawn to occur. By constantly killing all the spiderlings in the zone, the higher level player is becoming an agent for the rare mob spawn tables. Ideally, once the named spiderling spawns the higher level would leave it alone knowing that she would never get the lore quest piece.
I had an experience like this, where a higher level was killing everything in beholders maze for clay for crafting. We wanted to try the other entrance to runnyeye (we made the run the other way ,through Kith during the day, heh we waited, and found a bonus port along the way.
We were heading in unmolested and questioning our relaive safety. We just started clearing the few goblins, the higher level came by and said "Qlei, is up". We could not believe our luck. He watched while we made the attempt, we would have lost if he hadnt kept the wanderers at bay, and rooted qlei once for us.
Morr said:Feyshtey said:Morr said:OK, solve the whole issue by down-leveling. If a group of level 50s go in to fight a level 30 boss, the group is down-leveled to level 30. It's an even fight always (except for groups lower than level 30- they can try if they wish, best of luck).
NO.
No more gimmicky crap.
No more artificial BS.
No more invisible walls.
No more roads to hell paved with good intentions.
By your definition, every game without FFA PvP where anyone can kill anyone else at any time is 'artifical BS' and 'invisible walls'.
What a strange way to think.
For the second time in this thread in response to you specifically, Pantheon is not a FFA PvP game. It's primarily a PvE game that will have one (or possibly more) PvP oriented servers at release. Even with that said, we dont know the ruleset that would be applied and cant say even that shard (or strong minority of shards) will be FFA.
I dont play FFA PvP games, I have no desire to, no knowledge of them, no intent or history of commenting on them, and they are wholly irrelevent to this discussion.
[Edit} Ok one comment...
The lack of mechanics to hinder players or curb any specific play is inherently the polar opposite of a game with invisible walls. A FFA PvP game where anyone can attack anyone, anywhere, any time is a perfect example of the LACK of invisible walls, and gimmicky systems. If I wanted to play a game focused on PvP, I'd be all in for that exact kind of design.
Aradune said:I've posted in more detail about this in the past, but here's a quick summary:
We don't want to implement TLC. Creating artificial limitations like that just isn't where we want to go if at all avoidable. We continue to talk about this very real issue and appreciate this thread and others.
I want to believe there are ways to address this issue without something as draconian as the TLC I put into the FV server way back in the day.
But that doesn't mean that we don't need to do something to deal with the problem of bottom feeding, of higher level players ruining the fun of lower level players who are in an area designed for their level range.
So we continue to think and listen and take the issue seriously. TLC in it's original form would be a last resort -- I think we can all do better, devs and community.
It seems to me that the simplest, most logical, and obvious solution is to have a design that grants a lesser reward for a higher level player in doing lower level content. And I dont suggest that anything scale dynamically at any point. I simply note that a guy that owns a mining company would be an idiot to spend his time alone in a river panning for gold while his company sits idle.
As a character increases in power, their ability to attain things should scale accordingly. If I can get a group and get a trove of items with a net worth of 100,000gold, why would I sit alone in a lower level dungeon to get a trove of items worth 100g over the same period? If I can get a group and kill 50 orc warlords over the course of 2 hours and gain 100,000 faction, why would I sit alone for perhaps days to kill 50,000 orc grunts for the same 100,000 faction? Or better yet, why would killing any number of orc grunts ever raise my reputation to a degree that I am regarded as an equal to someone that killed 50 orc warlords?
If a higher level player wants to go get a specific item for his alt, or for a guildmember or friend, or simply because it's something he never did before, fine. Go for it. But he and everyone else knows its a waste of his time to go sit there and farm 10 of that item. So farming the item is the exception, not the norm. In fact it's quite possible that it's entirely pointless and higher levels wouldnt ever bother to farm it at all because there's no profit for them in it. No notable cash, no notable faction (or a cap on reputation from low level content), ....nothing.
Obviously there needs to be a balance, Monty Haul and mudflation being things to keep in mind. Also the inflation of numbers to the point that you're seeing 10's of 1000's of points of damage per swing or the like. But a Harvard professor doesnt audit 9th grade English classes, and defensive linemen in the NFL dont hire the guy at Fitness Plus to be their trainor. It's because there's nothing in it for them.
Anyone remember and/or play on Sullon Zek?
EQ1's no rules whatsoever server. For the most part other than rules and EULA exploitation, there was no GM intervention. Personally, I found the survival kinda fun and the people were pretty cool, but the server itself failed really hard, ended up being a ghost town due to the griefing outweighing the fun for the majority of the interested players. Similar to Red99 in a way. Only the true hardcore pvp players remained near the end.
It is debatable, but it could be said that without some form of limitations to what a player or players can do to bring about or cause a negative experience in the gameplay of another, population is likely to slowly but steadily decrease to an unfavorable number. Players are here for fun even though they have some very different definitions of what is "fun", and the goal of the devs is to maximize fun and minimize frustration for everyone, not just for one or two types of players or playstyles.
So, my bets are this:
In the release of Pantheon, players will see soft limitations and soft mechanics in place to prevent people from causing said negative experience through repetitive "bottom feeding" or toxic behavior and will continue for the entire life of Pantheon to see these limitations fine tuned and altered as needed or new ones implemented as needed. Will they be draconian methods? Clearly, as the team has stated many times over, the answer to this is emphatically no. Soft solutions are the devs targets, not drastic reactionary ones. Will people be able to get away with some of the things they have in EQ1 and other MMO's that were really toxic? I highly doubt that they will be able to to the degree they used to. Betting there will still be the opportunity for bottom feeding behavior to a degree though, because we do need some negative experiences in the game or it's not fun. I could just as easily be wrong in my assumptions of course, only time will tell.
P.S. off-topic, but really hoping to see a Vallon/Tallon type teams/racewars server, I miss those servers a lot. We had so much fun on them
@Feyshtey
I think his point is probably more that his extreme statement is every bit over the top as yours. I know some people are afraid of a slippery slope and what not, but I just think it doesnt have to be all or nothing on many topics we discuss. And while I dont agree with Morr's soulution, I do think your statement in reaction to it is overly simplifying and painting it too black and white.
For example I am not neccesarily in favor of Instances, but if there were a few I dont think it would completely destroy the social element nor would the game instantly become WoW in my mind. FFXI had some instances and remained very social and reputation did matter even if there were more "artificial" restraints. These "artificial" restraints didnt completely prevent all bad behavior nor did they serve as a way for casuals to just get handouts or "welfare epics". I think FFXI did a great job of balancing many of the old school tenets that Pantheon will have while having some resonable dev implements to certain problems. So from my point of view I hope you can understand if I think your statements dont sound completely fair minded. Most everything in life usualy doesnt have to be one extreme or another.
Just for reference. FFXI didnt address this issue for many years. When they did, they took many of the more highly contested lower level items and put a buyable/tradable version in Instances but kept the non buy/trade version in the open world. The instanced version of the challenge was harder and had lower drop rate. The open world version was easier to defeat had a slightly better drop rate (but I could never tell lol). This had the effect of making the open world version only get camped by those that needed the item, which was still quite a few at any given time. But peole interested in making money or wanted to ensure they could sell it later would do the instanced version. And I dont know about other servers, but on Garuda it was bragging rights to have the open world version. People were more impressed with those than something someone might have bought and it would be mentally filtered into your player rep by others. But yes this solution would not work for Pantheon, due to no instances. However that doesnt mean something cant be done. Nor does it mean it has to put up invisible walls.
Edit: Must have been writing this before your last post. I think its still relevant to the general discusions on these forums. But I like the direction you take in your last post Feshtey.
@Amsai
What is extreme about anything I said in either post?
That when I said to Morr that this isnt a FFA PvP game? That if it were trully FFA PvP , and I wanted to play in PvP that's what I would prefer?
[Edit] @Amsai, Disregard this line, your ps covered it :)
Or do you mean my post to Brad, where I suggested that the rewards are the controls to prevent incessent bottom feeding rather than game mechanics that prevent it?
Feyshtey said:@Amsai
What is extreme about anything I said in either post?
That when I said to Morr that this isnt a FFA PvP game? That if it were trully FFA PvP , and I wanted to play in PvP that's what I would prefer?
[Edit] @Amsai, Disregard this line, your ps covered it :)
Or do you mean my post to Brad, where I suggested that the rewards are the controls to prevent incessent bottom feeding rather than game mechanics that prevent it?
I probably should have quoted for clarity, sorry I sometimes post fast and forget to reference for better clarity.
As for what was extreme even if you didnt intend it that way:
NO.
No more gimmicky crap.
No more artificial BS.
No more invisible walls.
No more roads to hell paved with good intentions.
But Yes it was your response to Brad that I liked and caused me to edit. But in truth I too worry about your list of NOs above to a degree as well It just seemed too black and white as I said. But not all together wrong either if you know what I mean. However your reply to Brad eliminated my concern that you werent open to any solutions. And in fact I think its a very good idea and it makes sense. What really drove it home were your examples in that last paragraph.
Obviously there needs to be a balance, Monty Haul and mudflation being things to keep in mind. Also the inflation of numbers to the point that you're seeing 10's of 1000's of points of damage per swing or the like. But a Harvard professor doesnt audit 9th grade English classes, and defensive linemen in the NFL dont hire the guy at Fitness Plus to be their trainor. It's because there's nothing in it for them.
It just makes too much sense.
Amsai said:Feyshtey said:@Amsai
What is extreme about anything I said in either post?
That when I said to Morr that this isnt a FFA PvP game? That if it were trully FFA PvP , and I wanted to play in PvP that's what I would prefer?
[Edit] @Amsai, Disregard this line, your ps covered it :)
Or do you mean my post to Brad, where I suggested that the rewards are the controls to prevent incessent bottom feeding rather than game mechanics that prevent it?
I probably should have quoted for clarity, sorry I sometimes post fast and forget to reference for better clarity.
As for what was extreme even if you didnt intend it that way:
NO.
No more gimmicky crap.
No more artificial BS.
No more invisible walls.
No more roads to hell paved with good intentions.
Ok, yeah, that one was a bit extreme. Chalk it up to not having finished my morning coffee. There always has to be systems that are meant to control the environment. Always. It can't be total chaos. But what I was really refering to were systems that jar your senses by changing the rules on you based on your level. Being deleveled because I'm attacking something weak, or suddenly having a level 32 cave spider I kicked the crap out of when I was level 37 suddenly beating the snot out of me because I dinged 50... That kind of thing is just irritating as hell to me, and frankly seems lazy from a development perspective. It completely collapses my belief in the game world.
Thanks for the compliments on the other post :)