Game Development: Beavertopia

[loftar]

One of the things that draws me to H&H is just how extremely, brutally, unforgivingly lethal PvP is.

I agree, and that's why I don't like to think of this change is "removing permadeath". There should very much be ways of dying. If you'd like to argue that the proposed change makes it too difficult to die, then that's a fine argument, but again, I don't think death should be the only possible outcome of PvP.

It should also be noted, of course, that with enough wounds, a character might still be "as good as dead" for quite a while after a fight.

The way of death I suggested here could be a start for a plan:

) On death the character respawns 15 minutes later naked and without LP at the HF - but with Kin list, map, discoveries, skills, attributes & abilities it had when dying. Also with a wound that gives a 100% debuff to the latter two and will take a relevant time (like 4 ingame weeks / ~9-10 RL days) to heal (so the debuff reduces with time), no remedy available and windblown leafs won't work on it. The only difference to teleporting to HF is the added wound, unspent LP and stomach contents be gone, and a corpse left behind now holding all the gear and inventory the character had. Skulls only contain the LP gathered since last respawn, Burying the corpse might reduce the wound

I have to admit I'm not terribly fond of that idea, though. I think experiencing death should be harrowing, when it happens. If anything, I might be open to other character states "between knock-out and death", but that probably makes it a bit of a different question altogether. Such states could very well be effected by means of certain kinds of wounds.

[Shadow7168]

Regardless of what you do with the permadeath system, inheriting your old characters kinlist would be great.

[dafels]

skills, attributes & abilities it had when dying. Also with a wound that gives a 100% debuff to the latter two and will take a relevant time (like 4 ingame weeks / ~9-10 RL days) to heal (so the debuff reduces with time), no remedy available and windblown leafs won't work on it.

It would just force you to quit the game for a few days until you regain stats, especially, if your character is an allrounded character which after this update should become way more popular. I think that kind of stuff that forces you not to play the game for some time is a bad idea, there should be always a gameplay alternative to speed up the process to timegated things.

[DDDsDD999]

One of the things that draws me to H&H is just how extremely, brutally, unforgivingly lethal PvP is.

I agree, and that's why I don't like to think of this change is "removing permadeath". There should very much be ways of dying. If you'd like to argue that the proposed change makes it too difficult to die, then that's a fine argument, but again, I don't think death should be the only possible outcome of PvP.

It should also be noted, of course, that with enough wounds, a character might still be "as good as dead" for quite a while after a fight.

One of the main issues I have with this proposed system is that I feel there would be a whole "meta" for combat with trying to maximize HHP damage so as to guarantee kills, instead of being focused on actually "winning." Every faction's combat deck would just built around making sure characters don't live through KO's. If you have someone's memo and know their HP levels, you could try to calculate how much you can whittle someones HP until they're about to KO and cleave for as much HHP damage as you can get. Kinda like how ants will hit you for 1 SHP and 1 HHP. Just seems like it would take some of the "fun" out of PvP.

The wound system needs to be more robust and balanced, so surviving with 1 HHP isn't just as bad as surviving with 100 or 500 HHP. This could be done through trade and time constraints. Wound healing could definitely be a form of end-game economy tailored to the big factions that have fights where people lose hundreds upon hundreds of hard-hit points. My main fear is that you guys fail to really balance grievous damage, wound healing, and consequences of death so the only thing that matters in PvP is not dying when you get KO'd.

[dafels]

One of the things that draws me to H&H is just how extremely, brutally, unforgivingly lethal PvP is.

I agree, and that's why I don't like to think of this change is "removing permadeath". There should very much be ways of dying. If you'd like to argue that the proposed change makes it too difficult to die, then that's a fine argument, but again, I don't think death should be the only possible outcome of PvP.

It should also be noted, of course, that with enough wounds, a character might still be "as good as dead" for quite a while after a fight.

One of the main issues I have with this proposed system is that I feel there would be a whole "meta" for combat with trying to maximize HHP damage so as to guarantee kills, instead of being focused on actually "winning." Every faction's combat deck would just built around making sure characters don't live through KO's. If you have someone's memo and know their HP levels, you could try to calculate how much you can whittle someones HP until they're about to KO and cleave for as much HHP damage as you can get. Kinda like how ants will hit you for 1 SHP and 1 HHP. Just seems like it would take some of the "fun" out of PvP.

yeah, slowly chipping away one's HHP in fight and then trying deal a massive last blow that would bring one's HHP to 0 would definatly become the new meta.

[loftar]

One of the main issues I have with this proposed system is that I feel there would be a whole "meta" for combat with trying to maximize HHP damage so as to guarantee kills, instead of being focused on actually "winning."

Is that actually a bad thing, though? Having the way you fight influence the outcome of the fight in a meaningful way sounds like an improvement to me.

[NOOBY93]

yeah, slowly chipping away one's HHP in fight and then trying deal a massive last blow that would bring one's HHP to 0 would definatly become the new meta.

Ehh that could be changed by making those small wounds (punch sore, nicks & knacks, etc.) be "phantom damage" that, while it reduces how high your SHP can get, still exists as quasi-HHP so that if you have 100 max health, 10 punch sores and 90 wretched gore, you actually have 10 HHP left, but your SHP can only stay at 1 until you heal some of those wounds.

One of the main issues I have with this proposed system is that I feel there would be a whole "meta" for combat with trying to maximize HHP damage so as to guarantee kills, instead of being focused on actually "winning."

Is that actually a bad thing, though? Having the way you fight influence the outcome of the fight in a meaningful way sounds like an improvement to me.

It would be completely stupid because nobody would ever fight to do KO's, everyone would just chip each other's health down slowly as much as possible. This is boring.

[jorb]

One of the main issues I have with this proposed system is that I feel there would be a whole "meta" for combat with trying to maximize HHP damage so as to guarantee kills, instead of being focused on actually "winning." Every faction's combat deck would just built around making sure characters don't live through KO's. If you have someone's memo and know their HP levels, you could try to calculate how much you can whittle someones HP until they're about to KO and cleave for as much HHP damage as you can get. Kinda like how ants will hit you for 1 SHP and 1 HHP. Just seems like it would take some of the "fun" out of PvP.

The wound system needs to be more robust and balanced, so surviving with 1 HHP isn't just as bad as surviving with 100 or 500 HHP. This could be done through trade and time constraints. Wound healing could definitely be a form of end-game economy tailored to the big factions that have fights where people lose hundreds upon hundreds of hard-hit points. My main fear is that you guys fail to really balance grievous damage, wound healing, and consequences of death so the only thing that matters in PvP is not dying when you get KO'd.

If it's any consolation those are my concerns as well. We've discussed the points in the first paragraph a fair bit, and I agree with the second paragraph.

[dafels]

One of the main issues I have with this proposed system is that I feel there would be a whole "meta" for combat with trying to maximize HHP damage so as to guarantee kills, instead of being focused on actually "winning."

Is that actually a bad thing, though?

yeah man, this shit would nullify your update.

[NOOBY93]

One of the main issues I have with this proposed system is that I feel there would be a whole "meta" for combat with trying to maximize HHP damage so as to guarantee kills, instead of being focused on actually "winning." Every faction's combat deck would just built around making sure characters don't live through KO's. If you have someone's memo and know their HP levels, you could try to calculate how much you can whittle someones HP until they're about to KO and cleave for as much HHP damage as you can get. Kinda like how ants will hit you for 1 SHP and 1 HHP. Just seems like it would take some of the "fun" out of PvP.

The wound system needs to be more robust and balanced, so surviving with 1 HHP isn't just as bad as surviving with 100 or 500 HHP. This could be done through trade and time constraints. Wound healing could definitely be a form of end-game economy tailored to the big factions that have fights where people lose hundreds upon hundreds of hard-hit points. My main fear is that you guys fail to really balance grievous damage, wound healing, and consequences of death so the only thing that matters in PvP is not dying when you get KO'd.

If it's any consolation those are my concerns as well. We've discussed the points in the first paragraph a fair bit, and I agree with the second paragraph.

The first problem could be fixed by making the wounds that heal themselves not actually count toward killing you. Only after having non-auto-heal wounds that add up equal to your max health, do you actually die. The self-healable wounds would just reduce how much SHP you can have. This turns them into sort of "slower healing SHP" that you can speed up using medicaments, while the big wounds are the serious ones. It's silly to die from many nicks & knacks or punch sores, or worse yet, many Nasty Warts. Although I'd argue if you'll go this route you might as well not let health go below 1 HHP. Permadeath is overrated, and while it may seem exciting to someone who doesn't do combat, people who do combat know that it makes fights very rare. Just embrace the wound system and get rid of permadeath tbh

The wound healing being a form of end-game economy, that will definitely happen. Surviving big cleaves rarely happens, but when it does (and it happened 2 times to me just this world) there's some trading happening to get as many Ancient Roots as you can, they can't be mass produced so trading or taking over the localized resources is a must. If being teleported to HF after getting KO'd was a thing ancient roots would be have a very good worth.