Thoughts on The Black Arts.

[jorb]

This is being discussed everywhere, so, in the spirit of that, I'm making a completely new post on the topic instead of replying to a relevant thread. When in Rome. Here are some extended thoughts on Crime & Punishment in Haven & Hearth.

Currently held beliefs:

1) The last security update, walls, improved game balance. Thieves now have to build their character's strength in order to knock down walls, which requires them to expend a fairly sizable investment into their characters before being able to cause trouble, which, in turn, means that they actually stand to lose something when they commit crimes.

2) Implementing a (significant) fatigue effect (not talking about simple stamina fatigue, obviously) on scent producing activities would make thieves steal a few eggs instead of the entire hen house.

3) Trained alts are not a problem. If a thief player loses an alt with black skills + high str, he has lost a significant value, and things are as they should be. The entry bar for thievery could relatively easily be raised by requiring thieves to hold certain personal beliefs (Considering high "Night"), and/or by requiring certain stats before allowing the purchase of black skills (Say, 10 stealth for trespassing, 20 for theft, 35 for vandalism and 50 for murder).

4) Spam-alts are a problem. Alts engaging in behavior which is ugly, rather than criminal, are hard to get to. It requires very little energy to create a character that digs swastikas out of clay for lulz.

5) Spam-alts are not a problem for the established towns. The time spent trekking out to the settlements, in combination with the fact that digging/building/messing with/ claimed land requires investment in vandalism, means the lulz come with a high prize tag.

6) Spam-alt problems could be reduced by reducing reliance on the RoB as a central spawning point, as the high player concentration at the RoB, in combination with the easy access to it, is what makes the lulz seem "worth it" there and not, for example, in Bottleneck.

7) Player retribution by and large works fine. Players are not afraid to exact justice, they feel safe behind their walls, and are not afraid to leave murder scents outside of them. Leaving a murder scent is often something you get away with. Rangers go to work with some sense of personal security intact, and this sense is not illusory.

8) 7 does not mean that law abiding players lose developed characters left and right. It happens, there have been some unjustified murders, but by and large this is not a problem.

9) Thieves have no personal motivation to develop characters, because it is nigh on impossible to get away with theft without "cheating". Ranging is too easy. Thief scents must decay in inventories.

10) Players with high public/forum profiles get hit. Casual players are left alone 99 times out of a hundred. The thief problem is overstated due to the newsworthiness of thief incidents. Normal play time is severely underreported in the forums.

11) Alt stashing of valuables is a problem for thieves as well as for rangers.

12) All alt stashing could come to a quick halt if I decided that logged out goods suffer a high rate of decay.

13) It should be possible to keep indefinitely a small amount of goods that you cannot lose without consent.

14) Wall ins are no longer a significant problem.

15) Crime is not as big a deterrent from playing H&H as are: Poor UI, the (relatively) high system requirements for the game client, the relatively small amount of (especially late and early game) content, and the lack of proper introductions and tutorials.

16) High stakes and tough brakes, open PvP and permanent death, and the general ability to affect other people, for good or for bad, is what makes Haven & Hearth more interesting than Habbo Hotel. The prospect of death, more than anything else, makes your character seem alive and meaningful. No one really wants these aspects gone.

Feel free to opine. I am especially interested in hearing from people who actually try to engage in criminal activities. How hard is it? Is it profitable? How goes the alt farming? Etc. etc.

[Golbez]

I have an alt thief that I never really play on (I don't have Theft on it yet, for instance) and so far I have stayed far away from the large towns. Unclaimed camps are fair game, though, and I'm more often than not finding something stealworthy and on rare occassions even silk or steel. This alt has absolutely no communication with my main, as is in my own belief as it should be. Thievery is easy to get away with on it so far, but I believe that is subject to change as soon as I actually start engaging in (by game rules) criminal activities

[jorb]

Stealing from unclaimed cabins is something I've been doing myself on occasion. I don't think this is really a problem. If you can't be bothered to claim your stuff, don't cry when you lose it.

[Rugs]

Could you please just outline briefly your view on killing offline players? I've been whining about it like a baby for a while, and I'd appreciate if you could explain why you feel it works well in a high-risk PvP enviroment.

An online PvP death is meaningful like you said, as it creates a story. "Oh I ran from them for hours before I was finally cornered and killed!"

An offline death just feels cheap and unfair. "So I went to school and when I came back the character I had worked on for weeks was dead."

[jorb]

@ Rugs: The general problem that the scent/tracking system was meant to address was player accessibility. Before this system was introduced, players could cause harm -- to logged off players, for example -- and then be temporarily unavailable when the pendulum of harm started swinging the other way. You yourself suggested somewhere, I belive, a system in line with something you had seen in "EVE Online", where criminals were forced to stay logged in for a certain while after a crime has been committed: This is exactly what the summoning system does (It has some flaws at the moment, but those are purely implementational).

Found the quote:

It's simple and there are lots of ways to go about it. Use an EVE online system, if you commit a crime your character stays in game for a specific length of time, no more retarded summoning.

As stated, the end result is, as far as I understand the EVE system, exactly the same as with our system. Except Rangers have to do some leg work and what not.

[sabinati]

i'd love to see some kind of imprisonment option. like a new spawn point that would be the only available spawn for that character if they were tracked to their hearthfire.

[sami1337]

Should be noted also that the scents should have a lifetime, but they don't right now. So if that would make it into the game, it would act almost identical as it does in Eve.

[Rugs]

Yeah, that's fair enough.

What do you think about removing offline summoning entirely, and instead having scents decay based on time logged in?

THIEF 1 steals from FARMER 1

THIEF 1 logs off, he has committed a theft and so has 8 hours before the scent decays. That is 8 hours of played time, not RL time. THIEF 1 could log off for 6 months, but once he logs back on he would still be trackable for 8 played hours.

A murder would mean for a week's playtime (which is a huge amount), you would be trackable and would have to watch your back.

Of course the decay times could be changed.


In a PvP game I just can't see how offline summoning can be justified for longer than maybe an hour or two after log off.

Another example, that really shows it's flaws.

TOWN 1, a town of high leveled, well equipped players, raids TOWN 2, TOWN 2 are no match, they are lower skilled and badly equipped and take a number of losses.

TOWN 1 logs off for the night, happy with their victory.

TOWN 2 now track them, break through their walls with a high STR character and kill all of TOWN 1 while they are offline.

TOWN 2, in fair combat could never have beaten TOWN 1, but thanks to offline summoning it is not an issue, as player skill is completely negated.

[anaemic]

if there's no offline death system, then we still have the problems we have now - thieves logging in just long enough to commit a crime and transfer to an alt - but now those who have been robbed, have no way of getting any revenge, because the owner of the thief could not use it again for weeks.

In short doesn't accomplish anything other than making it easier for someone to abuse an alternate character, rather than the current system, where if you invest proper time and lps into your thiefs stats you wont get caught.


I figure it would work better if scents had a short lifetime, and individually, each scent was useable less times, but multiple scents from the same person stacked. So a thief taking one item would have more chance of escape, than a thief clearing out everything the came across.

also the direction radar is far too precise from a long distance away, maybe if it only narrowed to a direct line when you approached the right area, it would require more 'pings' to locate a hearthfire.

[Delamore]

Jorb, a discussion on IRC centered around the idea that scents should last for X logged in time and possibly even display that the user is online.
This means that if I kill you today and log off, either I can never login (Good as me being killed) or I can watch my back while online and hope you don't get to me.
It obviously needs polish but it is a good idea, also get on IRC if you want some actual back and forth discussion in real time