Crime & Punishment: Holmgang

[vatas]

[...]

I feel a lot of the compromises like this one, while silly for other reasons, would not make the people disinterested in PVP happy.

Before you died every time you got KO,
then you rarely died when you got KOed,
then fast travel became x10 harder,
then raiding was removed,
then you only died when you got KOed if you fucked up badly (and still only rarely in that case),
then there was a funny reverted bit where you couldn't even loot people you KOed,
then siege was removed,
and now the hermits are asking for just one more thing again.

No matter how many of these inches are given the LARPers who still can't run in a straight line after 10 years are still going to get fucked and be asking for another inch. If some guy who quit because I murdered him could've shoved his key up his ass, or knew my stats were a bit lower would it really have changed anything on an emotional level for him? Get real.

Jorb, if you're reading this... instead of new "Convluted Mechanic(tm)", please invest the dev time in improving Valhalla in terms of learning PvP, specifically in terms of setting up a transparent starting position (in terms of stats, gear, and combat moves) for two teams. This way we could more or less scientifically test who is right, SmuggleSlug or a random hermit. (Give former 10 ua and the latter 1000 or something, watch the Mollusk escape without breaking a sweat or perhaps even outright KOing the latter - I wouldn't be too surprised. This isn't to mock people, but to highlight that PvP skill floor is kind of too high - but it's almost entirely from poorly explained or outright obtuse mechanics.)

[Mr_Bober]

My 2 cents on PvP and Crime.

TLDR· Rework PvP (fights rather than run), make Vandalism and Murder easier to avenge, consider using Realms or other systems to incentivise group PvP as well as crime prevention

About PvP
If the goal is to get more players into it, a big change is needed: don't make it all about running.
Right now your ability to run and drink (and the water you carry) is paramount, arguably more important than stats or gear or moves (to an extent). Because of this, PvP requires custom clients. Adding a client shouldn't be a requirement, but with PvP focused on running makes it one, as custom clients hide / highlight obstacles, make critters more visible or easier to click, show hitboxes and player trajectory, and so on.
This running meta keeps lots of players away from PvP, and the client issue also doesn't help to bring more new players in.
Some people think permadeath is the issue, but I don't think it is. People die anyway all the time, and KO protection makes it difficult to actually get killed.

About Crime
If the idea is not to have criminals run the show, then anyone needs a way to get revenge for Vandalism and Murder at least.
But let's look at crime as it is:
- Trespassing and Rummaging: nobody really cares about it. Trespassing shouldn't even leave scent, or rather not trackable scent, as it's more often used to see who goes by a river rather than anything else.
- Theft: It's already hard enough to get into someone place to steal stuff (they need to make a mistake, or you need to escalate to a siege), so it's mostly stealing from KO players. What I never liked about theft is the fact that items can't be tracked if transformed. So if I steal a bar of gold and make it into nuggets, it's gone. Considering most items in the game can be transformed one way or another, this isn't great. But not a big deal.
- Vandalism: the biggest issue for new players, also the one that most of the time is used to grief rather than achieve some goal. Sure sometimes top players will use it against other top players to make them lose progress, but that's way more rare (and part of a siege, which should be its own thing). People tend to understand the reason behind thefts, but getting all your stuff smashed by someone way ahead of you has no logic behind it other than griefing.
If the policy is "F* around and find out", the punishment for Vandalism should be something any sprucecap can impose on any vandal. The suggested system is only doable if you're already part of a PvP group: everyone else won't be able to defend the thing, making it pointless to do in the first place.
- Assault: fine as it is, mostly.
- Murder: KO protection makes it very unlikely to kill someone by mistake. Murder should not be a crime if done on your own personal or village claim (self defense - sort of). If done elsewhere, it should be something that marks you for a very long time (possibly forever?) and have dire consequences. For example Murderers should be identifiable and lose KO protection for a very long time. Killing someone marked as a Murderer shouldn't count as Murder itself. Bounties could even be set, to give an incentive to "Rangers" to hunt those people down.

Other considerations
Overall, I think right now we should look into the following things:
- Making Realms more important, and create a link between realms and villages. For example, if a Realm would get a penalty if its people are killed or its villages are sieged, it would be an incentive to protect those under you, not just your friends.
- Make Sieges a real thing. Villages should be put 'under siege', giving them buffs / debuffs which worsen over time. A siege should last several days, making it a group effort not something a nolifer can do with a couple of alts. This would incentivise people to at least learn that part of PvP, to defend their own place.
- Rangers / Bounty hunters are needed. A system to gain benefits from hunting down and killing criminals. Difficult to implement due to possible abuse, it would be worth looking into. As nothing will fix the issue of crime more than giving a reason to good players to hunt down those who misbehave. Again could be linked to realms as per point 1.

[SnuggleSnail]

please invest the dev time in improving Valhalla in terms of learning PvP

I'm not the target demographic, and IDK how normal people think about this so I'm PROBABLY wrong, but I feel valhalla is 'good enough' for anybody who wants to learn to be able to use it without much friction - other than maybe not being able to conveniently find good opponents, but I don't think that's rly solvable.

I really feel the way to improve the average skill level of the playerbase is to force PVP tutorials into every day mechanics. You want to make a palisade? Well you're gonna have to catch a bunny that takes speedbuffs, drinks pretty well, and is actually affected by terrain. Make goblin siege camps around starshards underground, with premade half dried catapullts. Set bear/moose speeds to be possible to run away from if you drink well/take speedbuffs, etc.

[Mr_Bober]

please invest the dev time in improving Valhalla in terms of learning PvP

As someone who doesn't do PvP, I don't think a better Valhalla wouldn't do anything to bring people like me into the PvP scene.

I really feel the way to improve the average skill level of the playerbase is to force PVP tutorials into every day mechanics. You want to make a palisade? Well you're gonna have to catch a bunny that takes speedbuffs, drinks pretty well, and is actually affected by terrain. Make goblin siege camps around starshards underground, with premade half dried catapullts. Set bear/moose speeds to be possible to run away from if you drink well/take speedbuffs, etc.

*Might* work on hermits, but won't work on anyone else. I wouldn't start doing PvP because of it. I'd just have my hunter take care of it.

If you want the perspective of the target demographic (aka players who don't do PvP), make a post asking them (not spammed by PvPers saying why they are wrong in their opinions).
Meanwhile I can give you my reasons to avoid PvP.

1. It looks boring as hell.
Every PvP video or live fight I've seen shows a bunch of people running for 95% of the time, until someone either gets ganked or messes up drinking/getting a speed buff. And even then, it's usually a couple hits and then back to running. Looks more like a game of tag than a combat.
Add the necessary removal of almost anything that makes the game 'pretty', and it looks even more boring.

2. It feels pointless
a. Nobody will siege my mid-level village. No reason to learn how to defend it.
b. I'll never be able to revenge kill you. Even with good stats, gear, and experience, my chances of killing an experienced PvPer are close to 0 thanks to KOp (assuming I could even KO you). So it boils down to 'not losing' rather than winning, not a great motivation considering...
c. KO protection makes 'losing' a fight not too big of a deal, since it's rare even for a pvp newbie like me to get murdered rather than KOed. It's less effort to replace my exploration gear than it is to learn PvP and attempt an escape every time.

3. I already dislike the combat system
I prefer every other part of the game to hunting/fighting, so the idea of spending more time learning combat (and even willingly look for it) is not interesting.

What would make me change my mind?
Not sure, but here's a few things that would make me at least think again about it (all major changes):
1. As stated before, don't make it all about running.
2. Against my better judgement, remove KO protection (after a certain stat threshold, to protect newbies), so I at least have a reason to learn to defend myself, and can hope to revenge kill someone who killed me in the past.
3. Against my better judgement, make Siege an actual risk. I remember getting sieged in the early days of Hafen, but since then Siege has become such a mess that nobody will waste their time and resources to attack my mid-level village. [IMO Siege should become a longer thing, with debuffs to people in the village, impossibility to leave the sieged claim, so that you're forced to deal with it over several days. Lowering the time it takes would only make it timezone dependant. Also Siege should be something done by large groups of players on both sides, not 3 guys taking 8 hours shifts to defend the ram).
4. Better yet, make Realms an early-game occurrance, with Villages being a way bigger part of them, to the point where everyone is incentivised to fight any war. Right now Realms are extremely disconnected from the average player, who just find themselves covered by one realm or the other, without any real interaction with it. A handful of fighters might join a challenge, but that's about it.
5. Lock some important mechanics behind bigger PvP events (eg. Level 9 minehole, or higher tier Credos, and such). The issue with this is how easy it is to cheat with alts or commerce (eg. if Meteor was needed for the minehole, I'd rather find someone to buy it from than fighting over it knowing I'll never win that fight anyway).


In all honesty, I think every time there's any change to PvP, the current PvPers complain so much that the Devs have become reluctant to try to fix it by introducing any big changes.

[Sephiron]

1. It looks boring as hell.
Every PvP video or live fight I've seen shows a bunch of people running for 95% of the time, until someone either gets ganked or messes up drinking/getting a speed buff. And even then, it's usually a couple hits and then back to running. Looks more like a game of tag than a combat.
Add the necessary removal of almost anything that makes the game 'pretty', and it looks even more boring.

2. It feels pointless
a. Nobody will siege my mid-level village. No reason to learn how to defend it.
b. I'll never be able to revenge kill you. Even with good stats, gear, and experience, my chances of killing an experienced PvPer are close to 0 thanks to KOp (assuming I could even KO you). So it boils down to 'not losing' rather than winning, not a great motivation considering...
c. KO protection makes 'losing' a fight not too big of a deal, since it's rare even for a pvp newbie like me to get murdered rather than KOed. It's less effort to replace my exploration gear than it is to learn PvP and attempt an escape every time.

3. I already dislike the combat system
I prefer every other part of the game to hunting/fighting, so the idea of spending more time learning combat (and even willingly look for it) is not interesting.

What would make me change my mind?
Not sure, but here's a few things that would make me at least think again about it (all major changes):
1. As stated before, don't make it all about running.
2. Against my better judgement, remove KO protection (after a certain stat threshold, to protect newbies), so I at least have a reason to learn to defend myself, and can hope to revenge kill someone who killed me in the past.
3. Against my better judgement, make Siege an actual risk. I remember getting sieged in the early days of Hafen, but since then Siege has become such a mess that nobody will waste their time and resources to attack my mid-level village. [IMO Siege should become a longer thing, with debuffs to people in the village, impossibility to leave the sieged claim, so that you're forced to deal with it over several days. Lowering the time it takes would only make it timezone dependant. Also Siege should be something done by large groups of players on both sides, not 3 guys taking 8 hours shifts to defend the ram).
4. Better yet, make Realms an early-game occurrance, with Villages being a way bigger part of them, to the point where everyone is incentivised to fight any war. Right now Realms are extremely disconnected from the average player, who just find themselves covered by one realm or the other, without any real interaction with it. A handful of fighters might join a challenge, but that's about it.
5. Lock some important mechanics behind bigger PvP events (eg. Level 9 minehole, or higher tier Credos, and such). The issue with this is how easy it is to cheat with alts or commerce (eg. if Meteor was needed for the minehole, I'd rather find someone to buy it from than fighting over it knowing I'll never win that fight anyway).

+1, except that I do find the combat system fun for PVE (hunting, dungeons etc), fuck PVP entirely. It's currently less of a hassle for me to inherit and start somewhere fresh than it is for me to tryhard enough to keep up with PVP in any reasonable fashion. I'm also retarded though, I probably am not qualified to contribute to the discussion but I will anyways as I always do. It doesn't seem right to me that you have to learn how to drink water and click rabbits, in order to run away, in order to win a fight- It just sounds stupid. I don't do this while hunting and I don't do this in a dungeon, so why would I do it in an actual fight? Why is that the meta? I think J&L need to sit down in front of a list of issues with PVP and really reconsider a lot of mechanics that cause this cacophony of garbage. Maybe really try to simplify it somehow (not punish but encourage PVP and make it accessible to normal human beings). I am really sick of playing with object info, object radius and hidden trees 24/7 but it's the most optimal way to play, I can't imagine how much worse it must be for people who play with flatworld and critter auras

[animary]

"...who still can't run in a straight line after 10 years..."

Because you cannot run in a straight line in this game. For ages I have implored, FIX THE DAMNED PATHING!!

Tell your character to go from point A to point B, if there is a grain of sand on the ground along the way he will stop and stand there. In the woods you must micromanage you character's walking nearly inch by inch because they are incapable of walking AROUND anything. Yet if you are being chased by an animal you'll notice they can run over, under, around, or through anything.

[wonder-ass]

no way this is the best thing you could come up with after multiple good sources for ideas????

[noindyfikator]

GIVE US HOLMGANG. CRIMINALS MUST DIE

[Kaios]

I really feel the way to improve the average skill level of the playerbase is to force PVP tutorials into every day mechanics. You want to make a palisade? Well you're gonna have to catch a bunny that takes speedbuffs, drinks pretty well, and is actually affected by terrain. Make goblin siege camps around starshards underground, with premade half dried catapullts. Set bear/moose speeds to be possible to run away from if you drink well/take speedbuffs, etc.

Lol. What happens when everyone that hates pvp now still hates it after they “learn to run.” What if running is not the issue and the majority of players still end up with the same result, KO or death, in pvp?

Associating palisade construction or anything else like that with drinking and running around is entirely asinine.

[SnuggleSnail]

Saying you don't want a hidden 5 minutes worth of running practice per day of /play time because you don't enjoy PVP and actively want to remain a helpless baby/complain forever is low autonomy mother had to beg you to get a driver's license type behavior

100% you should take this personally because it's sincere attack on your IRL character