Zero Player Encounters - Bug or Feature?

[Martyr]

I registered my first character when there were 300 people online, and the towns were swarming with players.

Now 8 hours later, I realized that I have not encountered a single player outside of a town.

What gives?

[S.T.A.L.K.E.R]

Maybe everyone has outdoors and avoiding each other?

[Martyr]

Maybe everyone has outdoors and avoiding each other?

Never even been given the option to encounter or avoid another player, and I'm certain that if it was possible I'd have been PK'd by now.

No, don't think that's it.

[Desert Mutt]

Same here. Been playing since yesterday encountered 0 players, even tried to camp for people, no luck.
 WTF?
Encountering players and being PKed is a huge part of the FOnline, without this feature is see no difference between this and Hello Kitty. 

[S.T.A.L.K.E.R]

After playing for 2 days, he's right, I have not encountered any other player.

Only message says that someone is in your zone. But you never see him.

[Desert Mutt]

I wonder if that has something to do with 'hybrid' approach for PvE & PvP that was discussed in some other thread. 

Bring open PvP back into the wastelands. 

[apocalypseman]

I noticed this as well.

When resources are easily gathered and are abundant, I don't mind for some early pvp.

Unlike FOnline2, where collecting materials is a major pain in the ass and if you are killed it would set you back quite a bit of time.

[SporePlants]

Can we get an admin response on this?

[Martyr]

I talked to Kilgore on IRC about this earlier.

It seems there is a low-level encounter protection feature that is either bugged, not fully finished, or on it's own program and not playing nice.

He indicated that it would be fixed once the scripter who has been working with the Worldmap scripts is able to work on it.

Other than that, no other information was given.  I also didn't ask.

NOTE: The above is a representation of my personal recollection only, and should not be taken as 100% accurate or factual. 

[DocAN]

There is low lvl protection feature.

Pls describe at what lvl You are and in witch zones something happend.

[RedneckRage]

I'm lvl 11 and had no player encounter yet. On the other hand, some lower lvl friends had encounters already.

[Kilgore]

This will be adjusted today.

[Desert Mutt]

What is considered low level?
How does that protection work?
I'm level 19 and couldn't encounter anybody.

[Kilgore]

Now it should work fully.

[Desert Mutt]

How should it work? what is the mechanics of this feature?

IMHO it should be removed completely as it promotes ALTing.

It can be abused for creating:
- unencounterable miner alts
- unencounterable scavanger alt
- unencounterable taxi alt

Make 10 int skilled char, tag outdoorsmen get few levels and you have an alt for safe travel and so on.
That will make wasteland encounters more rare and only PvP that will be happening is TC if there wont be exodus of PvP oriented players from the server (due to this feature).