A Plea for Decay (Character)

[Granger]

This is no longer a discussion with you.

As your style of argument is ad hominem instead of logical arguments: Stop posting in my topic then?
Or, preferably: stop making uneducated and false guesses about my motivations and intentions - and instead resort to a rational argument, please.

say someone starts 6 months later when they can buy q250 tools and food

Sounds like pay2win to me. Not really a popular approach in the userbase, last time I checked (which would be constantly the last 2.5 years, where I read basically everything that had been posted on this forum). Having to head here to wield your card in exchange for some crates of tokens and heading out to a market dosn't sound like a fun approach to me.

Now you complain that at later stages of the game we'll never catch up to them even eating efficiently, but currently tables and setups have created a warped view for everyone because it gives such a stupid multiplier to foods where it should be eating a few things to gain 1-2 feps when up at the 400-500 levels.

I don't complain, I point out the flaws. I agree with feasting being broken, I just don't agree with the rest of your conclusions as the math in them dosn't work out.

We need to have the system designed around the idea that when you hit a softcap the food requirement for gaining levels becomes steeper so a new player can get up to 100-300 stats behind someone

As long as it's possible to endlessly push the numbers it'll be done, characters with >10k stats prove that.

but never surpass because no one deserves to get further because they started later in a race.

Why not, should they run faster?

I'd like to see a balanced world at some point, with PvE that remains meaningful, and PvP all can aspire to have an impact in.

This.

stat regression

I have thought about this (easier to regain stuff that has been lost through the mechanic), but I couldn't come up with a formula that makes sure that one can't push the number endlessly (which imho is a main problem for the various reasons stated in this topic).

It could be a reasonable middle ground though, should the numbers work. Thus: how could it be structured for them to do?

[Fierce_Deity]

I think that the stat regression would work fine under a decay formula like you came up with: (Level-SAFE)*(DECAY/100)^(DAYS*78.96)+SAFE
And a recovery bonus on the FEPs to reach an attribute, and a discount on abilities. Wouldn't need a very complicated formula for either I think. Something like this for FEPs: (Percent-Missing+1)*(FEP), so if you are at half of your previous amount in strength, any strength FEP is increased by 50%. This way the recovery benefit is marginal at higher stats for recovering small amounts of loss. Formula would apply to attributes individually, obviously. Could do more like 1.25 to set a higher base recovery bonus too.
Discount on abilities would just be something along the lines of (Cost)/(Percent-Missing+1). Same as before, can do a value of more like 1.25 for a larger base discount on things. Maybe a credo to increase ability to regain old stats?

Not very exciting formulas, but its not like this needs to be made complicated. The farther you drop from whatever max you've hit, the easier it will be to maintain a lower point. Which I guess could be seen as a flaw, if a person gorged to a high stat to make it easier to maintain it at a lower level, but that's more of a strategy than anything else to me. With reworked food and feasting it, i'd hope that wouldn't be much an issue.

[skltnk]

All you want is to punish.

It would more punish.

punishes

double punishes

punishing mechanics

Ouch!

So to sum this up word "punish" was the main and only argument AGAINST character decay mechanics.

Even though it had to be an argument FOR it ...

Actual punishment comes not from decay. It comes from an unlimited progression.
You make your own possible punishment HARDER when grinding for months to get insanely high stats.
No wonder it feels like a lot of time wasted in case you're dead.
Most likely you will stop playing and say: "See ya'll in the world #+1"
But how do you do that in case the world is eternal?
You will see people with 100k stats. Let's suppose your 10 k char got killed by one of them.
Would you start over? Give me a break!
And what retard could possible join such world as a new player?

Decay is able to protect your fragile psyche by soft-caping your stats.
Because pain is proportional to the loss.

Besides i don't know why do you even call this game punishing.
Really..It's not punishing at all. It's just unbalanced.



P.S. Look, what you've already done, you filthy casual crybabies! -> dungeons, keys made out of wood blocks, e.t.c

[Granger]

A bump for this, as it came up in todays stream. Possibly it'll be noticed by people who prior missed it and can give new insights or improved ideas on how this could made both to work and be palatable to the players.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

In reply to OP:
As I often do, I find myself absolutely agreeing with Granger. It must be the the similarity of our portraits.

Decay with an effective soft cap (logarithmic progression) is the right way to proceed. These aren't mutually exclusive, and can both be less extreme if implemented together. I understand the initial reluctance to embrace decay as a "not fun" mechanic, but strongly believe the benefits of implementation will outweigh the downsides. Balancing PvE/Nature content, reducing the gap between new and established players, and maintaining the need for character maintenance (which you lose with a hard cap) are Haven's largest core game loop issues currently. The punishment of stat decay is no greater than not playing Haven for a few weeks and all your crops/animals/character stats falling behind, nor more boring than playing catch-up now.

I've seen similar pushback from players in other games to mechanics that are necessary for health of the game world. In Darkfall: Unholy Wars, the "full loot" MMO, for example: The idea of items "breaking" on death was opposed by a significant portion of the player base, because there was a desire to take "full loot" from the guy you just killed. It was necessary, however, to provide a sink in the economy... Otherwise items would accumulate forever. After implementation, which only occurred well after it was desperately needed, it became acknowledged by virtually all as an acceptable change that helped the game's economy stay in balance.

This is exactly how EvE Online's economy works. You make items. Those items break. You make new items to replace the broken ones. You can get bigger and better items, but replacing those when they break is an even larger expense, so you settle with reasonable ones.

It would also be nice to see endgame PvE content drop extremely high powered gildings at a low drop %. These gildings should also be time limited and automatically decay. Perhaps best saved for another thread on how to expand the current endgame, however.

[pppp]

I am plugging into this thread since similar idea was suggested by loftar.

In one of posts above

Even so, however, I can present at least one alternative mechanic which would in many ways fulfill the same purpose, but wouldn't be "decay" per se, and as such disprove the uniqueness of decay as a mechanic. To wit:
Character aging and death is a commonly proposed mechanic. As an alternative to that, one might consider a character's "levling ability" to grow worse with time, asymptotically reaching zero. His stats would never decay, and he would never reach a point where it's impossible to level further up, but it would become easier and easier for younger characters to overtake him. At some point, it would make more sense to die and inherit, to level further up from there.
I'm aware, of course, that you could argue that inheritance is actually just explicitly triggered "stat loss" and thus decay in different clothes, but even so it wouldn't be decay per se. If anything, I myself like it more than decay just from an aesthetic perspective.

Motto: We do not know more because we grew older, we grew older because of what we learned.

Introduce a variant of character aging. Consumed FEPs, LPs and possibly acquired wounds and played time would together contribute to character life fatigue. That fatigue would not manifest itself for a long time but after a certain point it will start adding permanent wounds, possibly exceeding CON gains at some far away point. Permanent means impssible to heal even with ancient root.

That will effectively place a flexible softcap on character progress with an option to tradeoff some stats for others. It will be possible to progress further by inheriting, so the hardcap will be approximately twice as high.

Edit, Note to mods: As I wrote, I am plugging into existing thread since the a lot of discussion above also applies and similar idea was floated in the discussion. However this a different and competing idea and I am fine if this post is split into a separate thread.

[Sarge]

@OP: I recommend you put some pictures (graphs) together which illustrate the difference between the current and the alternative system. At this point I don't even want to say the word because exactly what you have highlighted in bold in your OP edit.

I see so many replies to your post where it is blatantly apparent that the majority is both incapable of visualising the real effects in comparison to each other and moreover unwilling to even attempt to do so at the mere sight of the proposal. Especially in some of the rough 'math' I saw from some it is clear those don't even grasp the true difference.

Instead of assuming everyone gets it or try to explain in words, rather show it.

[Hrenli]

Scenario: A hermit who plays casually (I know quite a few of them). Does decay mean that if such a hermit is ok stats-wise to fight let's say bears or to mine on 3rd level (just barely but doable for him) takes a proper vacation off the grid with his/her friends/family he is screwed and basically has to start over after vacation? Would it be fun experience for him?

I think OP misses one crucial point. Not logging in right now doesn't put you behind relatively to mobs and the world. Stat decay would. And quite a chunk of HnH population doesn't give a damn about how behind of top factions they are. I might be missing something, but decay sounds like enforcing daily logins into the game. Which is not fun at all.

[Fierce_Deity]

See above for my recovery mechanic. There should be bonus gains to recovering lost stats. Been awhile since I read Grangers post too, but I don't think any character can decay to zero anyways.

[Sarge]

There's also no reason why the decay shouldn't diminish over time of inactivity/gains with a limit either.

To just summarily knee jerk to a "no" when just seeing the word, skipping right passed any other considerations is not conducive to ever discovering great ideas/solutions.

I'm not even for or against this suggestion at this point in time, but I would at least like to see its potential before just dismissing it.