Reforming the scent summoning system

[stickman]

Reforming the scent summoning system:


Problem with the current system:
-Murder Alts
-Anyone can collect the scents (even if they are not involved)
-They expire and people who play casually will never get revenge (only elite level players play enough to use this and elite level players are most likely the ones doing the murdering/stealing)

My suggestion is to drop current the system for something like this:

-Scents are produced the same way as before.
-Scents decay like regular object, they dont disapear after a set amount of time.
-Scents can only be collected once. and only by the victim, his heir, or someone partied with the victim or his heir.
-To collect a scent you need a bottle. The Q of the scent collected is determined by the Q of the bottle and the difference in the perc/exploration and int/stealth of the criminal.
-When you track *explained below* (the point gets smaller with the higher the Q)
-A new list will be made. It will be a revenge list (simular to kin list).
-You can right click a scent and choose memorize, this will destroy the scent and add the person to your revenge list where you can assign a name to them. Their crime will also appear next to the name you assigned. Eg "anvil theif - Theft"
-This way you can sell the scent in bottle form to a bounty hunter. But only one person will have the scent and the ability to interact with it.
-If you have multiple scents for the same person but different crimes it will just add another indicator beside the persons name in your list. eg "anvil theif - theft - vandalism"
-You will not know if they are the same person until you memorize the scent, so you can give it to someone else to memorize or you can memorize it yourself.

on your revenge list there will be 2 types of poeple... people who are memorized and people who are tracked.
-if you run into someone who you have memorized you will see an indicator above their head
-if you track a memorized person it will point to their hearth not them. once you find their hearth you can "track them" this will make them tracked and will allow you to see if they are online or not and track them when they are.

Trespassing - this will be different in that you can memorize and find their hearth but you cannot transfer someone from your memorized list to your tracked list with a trespassing scent.

Making peace - a criminal can right click you and offer peace which will remove them from your revenge list. This way they can basically pay you off, or your bounty hunter off.

You will notice the lack of summoning... i think summoning while offline is kind of broken. You should be able to track and haunt your murderer till the end of his days but you should have to do it while he is online. I think this will lead to many more village battles and online fights.


any thoughts on this?

[Winterbrass]

I like the concept of the revenge list and the idea of identifying a single criminal who has committed multiple crimes, but it seems a little meta to me. Not any more meta than advertising on the forums that you want to trade crap with other players, however.

[Potjeh]

Dedicated theft alts will only be logged in when they're committing actual theft. Good luck catching them.

[Chakravanti]

The summoning system is just fine. I keep telling you guys the problem lies in the system (or rather lack thereof) of cost of character development depending upon purpose.

As many have noted elsewhere the current system already encourages classes. The new archery system encourages a new kind of combat class. Still, none of this reflects an intelligent design behind the cost of purpose specific toons.

I'm not insulting the devs intelligence I'm simply pointing out that this facet of the game has yet to receive dedicated attention to tuning how the cost of investment into a character affects the metagame PvP & GvG tendencies.

This fact once bothered me but as I consider it I find that it would be much more ideal to fix other aspects of the game and namely laying the foundation for the replacement of LP to examine how the costs of the replacement system will affect development and investment.

[stickman]

The summoning system is just fine. I keep telling you guys the problem lies in the system (or rather lack thereof) of cost of character development depending upon purpose.

As many have noted elsewhere the current system already encourages classes. The new archery system encourages a new kind of combat class. Still, none of this reflects an intelligent design behind the cost of purpose specific toons.

I'm not insulting the devs intelligence I'm simply pointing out that this facet of the game has yet to receive dedicated attention to tuning how the cost of investment into a character affects the metagame PvP & GvG tendencies.

This fact once bothered me but as I consider it I find that it would be much more ideal to fix other aspects of the game and namely laying the foundation for the replacement of LP to examine how the costs of the replacement system will affect development and investment.

If you take other games... most have requirements on using equipment... so you would never be able to put a thane ring on a noob in another game. Or as some games do it... you would only gain a small benifit from using the thane ... like 10% or something. However since there are no requirements on anything I doubt jorb/loftar want to go this route... however i think it probably would fix alot of things.

Right now... someone steals your stuff... you have to make a alt aswell to break their walls to kill them... it turns out they were a theif alt... they come back and kill your murder alt... there is no justice and you will most likely end up loosing out in the end anyway.

I dont think killing someone should be as easy as right clicking their hearth... it does not sit well with me.

In a game called astonia that I played... if you got dc'd your character would still fight and automatically use potions on himself until you reconnected. Althought I dont think thats really applicable.. but i dont like how you summon them and just take free shots at them whiel they stand there.


I also would like to see ALT's weakened significantly or require huge time sinks in order to create them.



Potjeh - About theft alts... I dont think they will be a huge factor on the next map... everyone will be out in the middle of the forest. and they do have the notification system now to inform you when something is happening to your property.

[Potjeh]

Your answer to the problem I pointed out isn't very compelling.

[stickman]

I have never seen a didicated theft alt... i have only seen people stealing things on mains...So i dont think its as common as you think. Even when WV stole from us they did it all on their mains. I dont see why you would think it should be so simple to catch good theif? Really you should have to catch them in the act if it was realistic.

How would you stop a theif right now? He breaks in steals your stuff... you track him back to some super village full of high level players... now what do you do? NOTHING because if you try to break in to kill him they will kill you.

On of the issues is the terrible linear forumla for damaging a wall... its something like (mod str-100)/10 if i remember. Which means that you can cut through walls like butter. This could be easily changed to make being a theif require significant str investment beyond giving him rings and bear cape.

[Potjeh]

You haven't been around for long, have you? If there is any risk at all, people will use an alt. WV just felt that they weren't risking anything when they went to raid.

[Jackard]

Dedicated theft alts will only be logged in when they're committing actual theft. Good luck catching them.

About theft alts... well I dunno. maybe they will go away

[stickman]

You haven't been around for long, have you? If there is any risk at all, people will use an alt. WV just felt that they weren't risking anything when they went to raid.

You obviously started before me but i am fairly confident ive probably put more ingame hours then you have seing how my stats are all 3x higher then yours now... assuming you have not gained much. I am not really worried about theifs... mostly because our village had people form west coast NA and from Europe so there was usually someone online... and we were only a 6-7 people village. If we had more people it would have to be a very sneaky people to break our wall get in and out without someone hearing them or seeing them.

But again... everyone will be so spread out I doubt there will be many issues with theft for awhile. and when it become an issues i doubt little one off people living in the foret will have to worry. it will be larger villages who should arrange their own defences.