Development Headsup: K/O-mechanics, Archery Towers

[Tahlia]

Just reading back and a little of the history that may have prompted these changes. Seems people are tired of being significantly griefed by players that haven't bought rage... so they can't face permanent repercussions of their behavior.
Why not change it so that you can not steal, vandalize or murder without having the rage skill (make them purchasable after buying rage).

[flashshark]

You know how you have divided players in to groups based on the amount of quests they completed? Is it possible to do this with PVP activity?

No KO protection at all, just make death less severe. inherit 75% of stats instead of 45

How about setting some limit to inheriting stats back?
If the top world character dies, allow them to recover only 75% of their stats. If someone with significantly lesser stats (let's say 50% or less than the world's current best character) dies, allow them to recover 100% of their stats.
Anything inbetween those, perhaps between 80% to 90% stats recovery, idk.
If a character dies to PVP, and a new one inherits that ancestor, give them some PVP debuff, like getting 15% increased openings from other hearthlings (or some other PVP debuff).

If a newbie dies, let it be a lesson, not an extreme punishment.
This world was the first one in which I started playing "properly", and I didn't know much at the start.
Yes, I got Wretched Gore from a boar during the first weeks. Yes, I broke my entire armour while trying to engage cavelouse for the first time. Yes, I almost died to a bear after buying rage because I didn't know bears would continue striking after the K.O. because I had rage now. But that's how we learn. Punish me for not being careful, reward me for being careful. Give me a heart rush if the bear starts to overwhelm me even if I don't have rage. IT IS A BEAR, let him maul me to death.
But let me learn from my mistakes (if I'm a noob), and allow me to regain my stats if they're insignificant compared to the titans.

Eventually I learned, and during the time in which I was our group's only character with rage, I was told to be careful, and I did:
- I learned how to run away from bears in the forests when they aggro'd me;
- I ran in circles when everyone else got KO'd in the beaver dungeon, killing one white beaver at a time to help the others escape;
- I learned how to run/chase better in PVP, I managed to escape from people and to chase down people to their death.

But let's say I'm a decent player (not the best) and I'm part of a decent village from the very beginning, and I die in a PVP battle.

early world grinding attributes took AGES so dying and losing 55% of your stats has actually caused the winners to snowball and make everyone else quit

THIS!
What's the point in going to PVP if we'll just become halfay worse than we already were? There's no way I can catch up to the guys that killed me any more, especially if they had much better stats than I did in the first place.
This way, only the best fighters (with the most time on their hands to grind good stats) will even bother to pvp, and as they start losing fighters, the snowballing goes hard.

But if you give us this death immunity ability, I guess we'd only lose our gear. No "decent" player will use it to escape a bear, unless he gets stuck between a cliff and a tree while the bear is hitting him (and probably never in dungeons, because if you did, you probably are being K.O.'d by being surrounded by 6 white beavers and getting permanently stuck no matter how many times you managed to get up anyway).

While you do have 5 seconds to cast it, I've heard that people have fallen in less than 2 seconds by being cleaved for 700 damage (through the armor) by 5 dudes at once. Unless you can cast this thing while also running, people will just cast it before leaving their village.

There needs to be a give/take associated with this skill or nobody is going to ever die

losing a 20 gilded hermine is pretty fukin huge

How about making this skill more expensive, and changing it to perhaps "magically protect" one or a few items that you currently have equipped? Once your character dies, the protected item(s) get teleported to that character's hearth fire.
This way, the killer gets your skull and your unprotected items, and pushes your stats back (if your character is top tier), while you manage to recover some item(s), your faction does not lose a good fighter permanently, just temporarily, and your identity now gets erased from all enemies. If your character was close to being or was the best, you'd be pushed back, but you wouldn't be pushed beyond recovery: 75% stats recovery will allow you to still be able to catch up, while some pvp wounds will stop you from going straight back to fighting right away. If your character was of a lesser tier, let's say you get to recover 90% of your already bad stats, you still can perhaps continue to help your group's best fighters, and maybe eventually, if you work hard, become one of the stronger ones too.

TL;DR:
- Allow bears and similar stuff to kill us without rage.
- Lower the stats loss and use the "best character point of refference" mechanic added for quests for PVP as well (for ancestral stats recovery)
- Make Ancestral Warding protect one or more of your currently equipped items. So if you die, they get teleported to your HF.

[pawnchito]

Does this mean that, for example, getting knocked out from a cave-in would remove your Ancestral Ward? If so, that would be a huge source of annoyance for anyone that does mining, and further incentivize people to have mining alts.

Mind you, you don't have to go around with an ancestral ward constantly. Since casting it is uninterruptable, you can simply cast it on yourself when you feel that your life is actually in danger. You wouldn't need to have it active while mining.

So if you are afk or time it wrong you are still killable?

[MagicManICT]

Overall, I like the concept on paper. I'd have to play with it for a month or two before really judging it in the long term. As it sits, though, ancestral requests are way too random for casual players. I realize that's how it used to be, too, but that might need a look over to see if a better randomization system can be made. One of our players died from inattentiveness this world, and she quit because we couldn't get the body back for a funeral, and got frustrated at trying to get the numen points to do the ancestor restoration thing.

this is a great change. tho can we get like a weekly numen reset? i think that would be fair i guess.

Not sure about weekly, but the count should go down over time, definitely. I do pretty good with mining, but the number of times I've KO'd myself just because I keep going at it half-blind from lack of sleep or distracted by other things is probably a few too many. Let's not forget the number of times someone gets jumped by n+1 slimes or other underground surprises* (n being the number the person can successfully fend off while running for the ladder).

@jorb: The counter to this is I make 3 or 4 miners and just say screw the new system, or make a bare minimal use of it (say only a few points into KO protection before the cost of making a new specialized character is less than the cost of the numen points for KO protection... where that is will depend on how far into the world and how easy I can recover str vs just inheriting.

*edit: nearly all of which can kill you if one doesn't have KO protection.

[SnuggleSnail]

Seems like world 10 with extra steps, but I guess extra steps aren't necessarily bad.

I think if you do it this way, you should still increase HHP damage on weapons, and honestly specifically KITO HHP damage being higher would be very meaningful for killing(and wounding) specifically fighters. The reason behind HHP damage being lowered is that you could kill people 100% of the time if you know their HP, and are stronger by enough that you can hit specific numbers... Which seems like a moot point considering you can still technically do that with a cutblade, and there are other cheese methods to kill noobs that are very consistent.

Giving it a moderate cooldown (3-7 in game days) might make people want to fight without it during a siege or if they get cocky, which I think would be cool. In world 10 during a siege we KOed the same person six times during either a 24 or 48 hour period and they didn't die. This would frick over nabs that get KOed by silly stuff that wouldn't kill them(foxes, ants, caveins) a bit, but I think convoluting the system a bit by making it trigger on taking HHP damage while KOed, making you immune to that damage, and ending all combat relations when triggered would be fine. A lot of the confusion about having/not having it could be avoided by having a big bright buff icon, and maybe an experience event attached to being KOed the first time, or heck, every time if it costs numens.

Numens are kinda horrible to deal with, but it does come with the upside of attaching value to basically every piece of random nab garbage in the game.

IMO, the price should slowly go down over time. It would feel very unfortunate to get KOed a bunch the first 2 months of the world when your stats are like 400, then grind to 5k stats and still be paying for early mistakes over a year later. The scaling could be harsher to compensate, like, 0>1>2>4>8 numens.

[widelec_szatana]

Also keep combat moves at 1\5 after death coz its pain in the ass to get them back, even with papers.
And if jorb decices to increase inheritance % significantly then also inherit hunger level to prevent stat gain abuse or just remove hunger altogether.

[Enjoyment_2]

maybe this is enough?

[*] You get K/O protection by activating a new Rite called "Ancestral Ward".
AND
you cannot have Combat Relations with K/O-ed characters*.

*while Ward is on

[Ozzy123]

Actually quite true, I remember when some sprucehat who was trading with our village told us how he was murdered by Ozzy in a swamp. He was swimming across the river, and got shot by polish cavalery. Ended badly for him. So much for pvp immunity without rage.

That never happened, I never name my characters "Ozzy" and my presentation names when i kin randoms are like "asygysduh", if you get killed by someone saying "haha im ozzy" that's probably AD or Snail or some other scrub. Im still getting pm'd on discord by people saying "why did you kill me????" and last time I played was 10 months ago.

Other than that, I agree with everything from that comment, good points

[Ukhata]

as a casual farmer. i like this change in principle.
but it needs to be more expensive the more total LP/stats you have.
so that more advanced characters can no longer invoke it cheaply and weaker players CAN invoke it cheaper.
still raise the costs per use as wel, this should not be a frebie for the weaker players.

but it should be more costly the stonger you are imho.

[Raiga]

maybe this is enough?

[*] You get K/O protection by activating a new Rite called "Ancestral Ward".
AND
you cannot have Combat Relations with K/O-ed characters*.

*while Ward is on

Quite elegant, i'd say. So if you wanna kill people you have to go without a ward and risk your own life.
However, "remove ward" should be an option, i.e. another rite that you can only perform at your shrine with or without a change to total cost in numen points.