This will include a re-hash-with-clarifications of my post in the last update's thread, as well as comments on this one, because it seems Loftar missed the central line of my argument.
Specifically: It's not that I think this makes permadeath too hard to achieve on a target - I suspect this, but I'm combat n00b so I don't actually have the authority to speak on that specific.
My point was more that my personal experience of H&H combat has never involved PvP permadeath. I've been knocked out and robbed blind three times, but never murdered (fully expected it to go that way as I was being chased, mind you). To the extent that Permadeath is the result of PvP combat, it is the result of players' choices. If you want to see more KOs and less black skulls floating in the air, aiming game changes at the calculus being made by a victorious combatant seems like a good way to go. Making subtle adjustments to the consequences that attach to certain kinds of murder (or all murder, if you want to hurt people seeking to avenge themselves just as much as aggressors) rather than simply trying to make achieving permadeath more of a chore is, I feel, a much stronger way to go. You preserve the "wild west lethality" feel of the game without adding grind.
BTW: 30 seconds to loot is a VERY small window if the fight is more than 1v1 AIUI that's basically one attack cooldown. I think a KO'd person using the HF option should leave their stuff in some kind of reasonably-persisting container marked as owned by them. Theft scents won't stop someone who wants your stuff and beat you down for it anyway. Otherwise you could escape with all your stuff while your attacker is fighting your buddy. That's a short stick for an attacker to hold.
There is a second consequence of HF-as-escape-from-death: defenders in a siege are risking WAY more than their attackers. In fact, attacking is now extremely low risk because when you lose, you're back home, behind your walls and your claim shield. As a defender, you're also back home, behind your broken walls and depleted claim shield, and now you're wounded to boot...
If by "we want more PvP" you're saying you want more sieges, you'll probably get them this way, but the risk-reward balance makes the defender's position extremely unattractive here. Attackers should have to ante up more. Being an aggressor should have good reward potential, but also come with commensurate risks. Breaking an aggressor's siege should come with more benefit than simply "I get to live another day until they try again."
loftar wrote:Nidbanes now disappear if they knock their target. Obviously, Nidbanes can still only gather skulls from targets that actually die.
This seems to remove the utility of nidbanes entirely. From what I understand from discussion of them, they are trivially easy to defeat as it is, and once they've been sent, you can't ever send another one for the same offense - and thus you basically get to deliver a minor nuisance in return for permadeath-murder. If that's the level of satisfaction you'd like to be available to victims then great, you're there. But the whole point of Hearthlaw, at least from this player's perspective is to provide a cost to violence. Consequences attach to the acts, and someone engaging in that as a lifestyle is living dangerously. Removing the risks that attach to permadeath, but making permadeath more of a chore, just adds a minor inconvenience for griefers - one they will swiftly optimize around to boot. Players are infinitely more ingenious than game devs, period. Always have been, always will be. This isn't a sleight against devs, it's just a matter of numbers: players have more brains to throw at the problem than devs do.
loftar wrote:We realize also that there were a fair amount of people skeptical to this change when we floated it in the last patch, and have a great deal of respect for that. This could be a bad move, but after discussing it through a million times we've felt that A) The consequences are not entirely predictable, so we have to try it out to find out what it actually implies, and B) The potential upside of this change is yuge -- potentially increasing both player retention and pvp -- while the downside of trying it is fairly limited, and under those circumstances we kind of feel that we have to try it.
Mad respect for this position, btw. I definitely support trying something out, seeing how it plays, and then reviewing further changes or reverting these away if the outcomes aren't what you like.
Also, this game is explicitly in alpha still, ain't it? I really don't get people complaining about changes being made to an alpha product. Welcome to alphas, yo.