Kingdoms as safe zones

[Sevenless]

We had stat caps, and then they got removed I guess the main reason is that there isn't much of an endgame beyond grinding stats, so people had nothing to do when they hit the cap. I'm hoping my idea could create a more favorable climate for return of the caps. Fighting over borders would be a fairly fun endgame, and losing capped characters would create the food & curio drain for large factions which is needed to drive the game's economy.

Agreed, endgame is effectively all grind which is rather at odds with how permadeath works. The best cases for permadeath involve rather short lived characters as seen in roguelikes (<10 hours typically).

Unfortunately I can't give a meaningful suggestion that's cheap on dev time. Other games such as darkfall solved this by having PvP capture locations that would spawn and have pvp contests to see who would capture the resources. But this is only really feasible when there isn't permadeath, or the events have to be incredibly rare less one group dominate by wiping the competition out.

[ricky]

Also, not directly related to the thread, but on the general topic of permadeath, I would like to emphasize that it has always been a goal (though not a particularly well-explored one ) to make Haven more about playing a "bloodline" than about getting attached to a particular character. Inheritance should be more of a part of the game rather than a consolation, and I would particularly like it if the pain of dying was accompanied by a feeling of "oh well, at least I can make a new descendant now".

So i was meditating on this idea a little bit and reached this conclusion:

what if characters could only earn a limited amount of skills/attributes/abilities, which can then be inherited and passed on to your descendants?

Lets say Ricky I is a fresh hearthling with base 10 attributes, he can only earn a maximum of, lets say, 100 total attribute points across the board.
Then, through death, or perhaps sacrifice, Ricky I departs from the mortal realm.
Along comes Ricky II, who inherets X% of his ancestor's attributes, and can add another 100 attributes to the character.

the results would be an incentivized PVP system with consequences and benefits.

this could reasonably stop the botters from gaining 1000+ attribute characters early on, if time limits were put on death. (perhaps percentage of skills/attributes/abilities kept upon death could scale with how old the character is)

[Rance-sama]

Also, not directly related to the thread, but on the general topic of permadeath, I would like to emphasize that it has always been a goal (though not a particularly well-explored one ) to make Haven more about playing a "bloodline" than about getting attached to a particular character. Inheritance should be more of a part of the game rather than a consolation, and I would particularly like it if the pain of dying was accompanied by a feeling of "oh well, at least I can make a new descendant now".

So i was meditating on this idea a little bit and reached this conclusion:

what if characters could only earn a limited amount of skills/attributes/abilities, which can then be inherited and passed on to your descendants?

Lets say Ricky I is a fresh hearthling with base 10 attributes, he can only earn a maximum of, lets say, 100 total attribute points across the board.
Then, through death, or perhaps sacrifice, Ricky I departs from the mortal realm.
Along comes Ricky II, who inherets X% of his ancestor's attributes, and can add another 100 attributes to the character.

the results would be an incentivized PVP system with consequences and benefits.

this could reasonably stop the botters from gaining 1000+ attribute characters early on, if time limits were put on death. (perhaps percentage of skills/attributes/abilities kept upon death could scale with how old the character is)

I don't think that would change much, people would just kill themselves in a safe location once they hit the cap.

[Avu]

Seems like a good idea.

[Granger]

With permadeath we'll never see uprising of the general local population against some oppressors (as futile as it may be), as they won't risk months of playtime sunk into their characters.

[Kaios]

One of the major issues I see with this suggestion that somewhat negates its purpose entirely is by the time any kingdoms are setup, many of those new/returning players that might have benefited from the protection may possibly quit the game due to getting killed or raided before that time. In my opinion, having players go through the early game process normally just to get to a point where they setup protection for newer and less developed players later on seems a little strange to me, the entire game concept just changes in the middle of a world?

Also I'm confused about the general idea. Players can be attacked and die but don't lose any LP on death? What happens to the body and is there any reason for the attacker to take it or for the victim to bother trying to get it back?

[joojoo1975]

Everybody is talking about permadeath permadeath permadeath

I am in the group that says permadeath is good and should have steps to keep it PermaDeath.

you are never going to have that as long as there are ways to make throwaway combat alts.

you are never going to have that as long as you have Botting to the extent as automated foragers

Is the problem with the perception of permadeath or is it the perception of permadeath with the stains of botting and exploitation involved.



Honestly, I don't think Permadeath is the problem, the problems is there is permadeath for new players and players not familiar with "alt abuse" tactics as well as botting.

until botting and "alt abuse" can be handeled/eradicated, you are never going to have a fair shake for all hearthlings. All these "alternate" concepts to ease the problem, is attacking the problem askew.

Either make the playing field the same for all(looking at the default client thread here folks from JC) but in that case you will truly have a world of Warcraft battlegrounds game(in the fact there will be tons of people fighting and whatnot cause they don't care if they lose this char as they got 4 in the back on standby) Or you once and forall take the Extreme steps to kill botting and alt abuse(which means if you need to take steps to change the entire game mechanics so be it) You have allowed botting and what not go on far too long. Do I have the one shot kill suggestion to fix all this, no! but I bet the community has enough people that we All could brainstorm and you find the solution!

[Potjeh]

Yeah, it doesn't really do anything for the early world, but it's oriented more towards late world anyway. Haven needs more social gameplay to break up the monotony of base maintenance. But the current situation heavily discourages interactions with strangers, because it's just not worth it weighed against the risk of losing your character. So people just sit their mains inside their walls forever. Lessening the risk could make it worthwhile to go out and about and run into other people doing the same, especially if there's stuff like kingdom events or special buildings that could only be built in the capital.

As for death, you don't actually die, so no body left. You just drop everything (inventory, gear and mentory) and are ported to hearth with a wound.

Regarding botting, I couldn't agree more, but there's no reasonable solution to it, so we have to think laterally. Similarly, the idea of the threat of revenge discouraging griefing is problematic. Nilfbanes are more of a miss than a hit against a reasonably competent fighter. Since this kind of stuff is usually done on combat alts they'll likely be sitting in a vault for the duration of the scents, so you'll have to break in to get that revenge. And siege has proven to be a difficult problem to tackle, so relying on revenge isn't looking so good any time soon. Besides, it doesn't really do that much for the victim to know that he's been avenged.

Anyhow, my main argument for this suggestion is that it should be relatively easy to implement but could have massive impact on the meta.

[Redkat]

And to be honest, I don't think people are dying left and right, or if they are, they should really post on the forums more becouse it is so hard to find any murder scents

To be fair, though, to the extent that there's "too little PvP" (which sounds like what you're saying), then surely at least part of the reason for that is that people don't dare go out of their palisades, and that some form of implied protection could encourage such excursions more. Generally speaking, I'd like it if there were more PvP where the outcome isn't by necessity death.

I am one of those hiding inside - especially since I prefer to be a crafter/farmer and I dont really feel like having several toons. So I dont go out these days - at all - due to death. I dont mind the death but i would be stupid not to protect my crafting toon.