Game Development: The Danger Zone

[Ethan]

You are doing a good job regardless of what people say. Developing isn't easy, especially an MMO. I don't think people realise how genuinely hard what you are doing actually is.

[loftar]

2) with the thief debuff, the thief is able to only steal items, and not vandalize or murder, and those items cannot go into his regular inventory.

Siege tower, instant build (maybe a few hour dry time) incredibly bloody slow to push and acts as a ladder to jump over walls and only designed that you can only take that which you can put into inventory.

We have discussed similar things ourselves (wall scaling and such), but one of the problems is that if you don't have the ability to destroy things once inside, people will just line their walls with piles of wood or whatever cheap thing you can't past without destroying it. Contrariwise, if you can destroy things, then obviously walls are just completely meaningless and anyone is liable to destruction at any time. The middle ground between these options is less than obvious.

[Longshanks87]

[hide]

One thought we've had is that it'd be nice if there were symmetry between attacker and defender in that: If you go on the offense, your production line is left vulnerable. However, this ambition is easily foiled by the creation of specific war villages, or the like, by which the symmetrical risk the attacker takes through attacking is partitioned away to a meaningless alt village without meaningful production lines.

The perhaps best realization we've had of this thought is that of a "Raid Moon". I.e. a server global time window -- eight hours once each week, say -- during which the game takes on more the character of a free for all; raiding is significantly easier. Under such conditions it is by definition true that the state of being able to attack someone is intrinsically linked to the state of being oneself possible to attack in return.

Under a "Raid Moon" system, however, it seems likely that PvP simply becomes a question of who can leverage more combat ready characters. Is this desirable?

Please discuss.

[hide]

Symmetry yes,
I agree that attacker and Defender need to have some common ground in which they can either gain access to loot or characters within a personal or village, Or destroy the means by which this is done/ Defend oneself.
However.> I am unsure if there needs to be such a thing as a means to attack someone back should they attack you.
this simply is not at all the best means to ensure vengance for crime.. the Nidbane implementation is fantastic

Say for example One is attacked by a small force of three.
successfully gaining entrance to your camp or village and perhaps slaughtering someone in the process, but not gaining keys or ability to re'enter after repair.
(quite a specific example I know but bare with me)
What is to say that if this village has even a hefty number of players that they would stand a chance to attack back or even would wish to risk such an adventure?
for example in the description of the idea put forward I understand it to be just as easy for the attackers as the next person or group.
So for arguments sake lets say that you could somehow program the scents left by players to give a sort of lockpick ability or some such, then what is to say that the attacking village/faction/ farmer has not prepared an ambush for just this type or retaliation?

I am of a peaceful village and have yet to be griefed of attacked in the open, let alone anywhere near the village

It therefore does not bode with me to include some sort of raiding mechanic that allows me easy entrance to another person/persons walled off area.

I believe in my honest opinion that it should be of its very nature extremely difficult to raid another player and cause hassle to his/her progress within the game.

Lets take my own village as an example..

If i really were down to be an asshole i could long ago have had the ability to bash people's palli walls and caused much harm to my neighbours.
I could have force fed many alts with specific roles to play such as one to steal one to raid one to fight etc etc
and left my main characters who feed all these alts back in the safety of a triple brick

Alas i do not care for ruining other peoples fun in trying to level their crops, animals, curios, metals etc.
But if it must be implemented then i believe it should be made that raiders and rams on other peoples claims are leveled down by some scale according to the extent at which they really must gain entry or murder someone..
the more scents left :- the worse they are at combat / easier they are to track / worse it becomes when the ghosts find you
the more time spent on a claim doing criminal things :- the slower they can move / worse they defend / longer time they have to spend before fast travelling
Somehting to this extent i believe would be a nice tally to deter the criminally insane
On the flip side of this defenders should also be given some sort of debuff according to something like how long an attacker has been on the claim or perhaps how many times the attacker has not been caught doing something.
Although this would likely be an impossibly long and arduous thing to program
how would one go about making such a code?

Example.
I attack you by destroying some things and felling some trees on your village or personal claim.
this in turn slows me down in combat or makes me easier to kill but only by the owner or village members
also in turn this makes your walls weaker to me and perhaps makes me able to leave a ram less time because of already existing scents
defender may attempt to fight on the claim for an assured victory but perhaps the attacker may try to lead defender off of the claim to regain his advantage in stats?
much discussion need i think.

But a raid moon?.> no.... should be more personal and less universal..

These are my thought on that sir..
cheers for the food for thought...
The Nidbane has now given the option to retaliate without ricking ones own neck which is fantastic and multiple nidbanes at high q could be the end of some higher teir players if they are not careful about who they raid.
This is very good.

[Stoli6]

Fair enough. The issue may be with those items then. Perhaps stockpiles shouldn't be free, and you have to declare them. Once declared they are always a wood (or whatever) stockpile and are a pain in the ass to move/remove. You can still use wheelbarrows to move items around from them, but the stockpile itself remains. This would make it so the village owner can't block things with stockpiles, because then they themselves have no or limited access to there stuff. My proposal for thieving by the way uses the gate entrance, not any part of the wall, and you wouldn't build a semi-permanent stockpile in front of your gate. Or alternatively (and in addition to), if there is an offending item in the way, the teleport in just bypasses it after a successful lockpick.

[Kaios]

[Ethan]

Nice.

The rocking chair has static coloring? not effected by the materials?

[Kaios]

The rocking chair has static coloring? not effected by the materials?

No, it is. I used whitebeam for the boards and willow for the blocks.

Edit: I lied actually the other screenshots look similar.

[jorb]

The rocking chair has static coloring? not effected by the materials?

Regular old problem with our present inability to combine id selection (animation on/off) with variable materials. Should be fixed, but there are siege updates to fail at.

[pheonix]

It soothes mi animals

[Shadow7168]

I think following something similar to EVE or atleast part of it would be a neat idea. For example,

A raider wants to attack a hermits pclaim, so he builds a ram nearby to start the siege. An e-mail alert is sent to the defender, and the ram is vulnerable for 4 hours. If not destroyed, another e-mail alert is sent out and the claim enters "reinforced" mode, preventing the destruction of anything while greatly increasing the LP consumption. The LP pool of the claim can't be topped off during this time. Once the LP reaches 25% or something, the claim becomes vulnerable for 4 hours. Rams first damage the remaining LP pool, and once it reaches 0, the damage starts hitting the walls themselves.

If the attackers are able to drain the claim and breach the walls, the claim is gone and allows people to loot and shit without leaving scents. Otherwise, the defenders are allowed to top off the claim with LP, and the attackers must wait 20 hours to repair all siege weapons. The process repeats until the attackers or defenders are defeated.

Obviously the times are just placeholders, but I think a system like this would be the best of both worlds; it still lets the raiders steal everything, kill everyone and cause total ruin if they win without worries of a endless army of spookies, while it gives the hermit time to react and possibly get help/GTFO the area. It could be possible to make it so either can't destroy anything under reinforced mode is over, to prevent the defenders from teleporting whatever they can carry out and destroying the rest before the attackers can do anything about it.

I'm still shooting in the dark, this idea could be dumb but I'm just offering some ideas. I just hope that pvp stays in such a way that hermits who live alone aren't 100% safe but still get a chance to do something about raiders, while still making it feasible to raid.