The Ghost of Christmas Future, II

[Redkat]

I have a very general ambition that it would be fun if one could -- in various ways -- reduce one's footprint in the world to a whisper, provided one is willing to live under perhaps somewhat humble circumstances.

Hidden trap doors that actually need to be detected, earth mounds that are hard to notice, trees providing some amount of hard stealth to things around them, not just players but objects and whatnot as well.

One could come up with lots of things.

wow That sounds like a great idea.

[LadyV]

I have a very general ambition that it would be fun if one could -- in various ways -- reduce one's footprint in the world to a whisper, provided one is willing to live under perhaps somewhat humble circumstances.

Hidden trap doors that actually need to be detected, earth mounds that are hard to notice, trees providing some amount of hard stealth to things around them, not just players but objects and whatnot as well.

One could come up with lots of things.

Yes please! I want a hobbit home, tree house, hovel carved out of a cliff or hill. Secret doors and camoflaged entrances. That would be immensely fun.

[Redkat]

I know that this is not your main point in that quote but, I do this all over my area and I know others who do it in theirs too, I've had a lot of new players settle since I've created room from removing old bases, re-planting and grassing over paved areas.

I have also made and up-kept a garden area below my base, unclaimed area, with crops and items for newer players, I also put my excess livestock there for players to take, kill, shear, w/e and to my utter amazement, no-one has ruined it and everyone has followed my runestone directions, lol, and also helped to keep it nice and stocked up, it has been there for months now, and my area is visited by end game players, mid game and newbs alike. It just goes to show that not all players are out to spoil it for everyone else.

I keep meaning to do more to it, it's only small atm, like planting higher q tree's and a bit of paving but time ...... there is never enough time.

Thumps up. I also tend to erase abandoned villages at least in the nearest neighbourhood and replant trees. lol wish for more time here too.

[Kaios]

[*]Equipment and combat abilities should work Rock/Scissor/Paper: one strength, equal against itself, one weakness

Care to elaborate a little? I have an idea of what you mean I think but I'm not certain.

[*]Geometry: Attacks from behind should be harder to counter

Further to that, elevation should play a role in this as well. Having the high ground is a clear advantage in most situations I would assume but I think it would be interesting to include the occasional scenario where having the low ground ends up being the advantage as well. Not sure what that would entail exactly, some form of explosive to blow up the hill/ridge/whatever that is being stood on?

Someone in heavy plate armor (or carrying a bathtub worth of water to replenish stamina, speaking of which: did someone ever tried to drink while running RL?) should not be able to catch up to someone fleeing unencumbered. So weight should factor into movement speed, with the option to drop of some to gain speed. This would give the option to flee with the penalty of leaving equipment behind.

I'm in agreement, it's also a nice alternative to the stun/slow that I hadn't thought about. While I still think the inclusion of globally based cooldowns on skills that would debuff your opponent in some manner are something interesting to think about, I like your solution better. Of course a combination of both would be what I'd prefer.

Civil discussion please.

Now watch as literally anybody who has cried that they are abandoning current Haven or that they think new Haven is going to be terrible because <insert lame reason here> refuses to add an actual opinion on the matter.

[NaoWhut]

Granger's talk of gear

I've always kinda kept the idea of gear
effecting your movespeed out of my
thoughts because it seems so limiting
and sticky, however if it were done
properly that may be a way to knock
out many problems we currently face.

Lets say the tank you propose that is
wearing plate and is like a knight. He
shrugs off arrows and light weaponry
for the most part, but a proper hammer
or piercing weapon brings him down.
This would mean 'Knights' have to work
with teamates and are rarely, if ever,
seen alone. Supposing they're the only
ones practically impervious to ranged
weaponry this would mean archers are
now not useless shit sticks.

Though i'm uncertain if Loftar would
consider weight and all that effecting
movespeed, i dunno his point of view
on that, always figured it was out of
the question

Granger's talk of Rock Paper Scissors

I don't entirely agree with this, mainly
because that makes it so you can look
at someone and know whether you
should fight them or run and would
largely limit combat in my opinion. If
you were to give them advantages but
not make it the end-all of

"Light beats Medium, Medium beats
Heavy, Heavy beats light"

or something like that. I like when
you can get an advantage, but the rock
paper scissors concept worries me. I'd
rather each end game combatant be
difficult to play and have strengths and
weaknesses rather than a set in stone
'this beats this'. (You probably didn't
mean it like that, but it's just worrisome
to think of runescape combat in HnH)

Granger's talk of Einher and General Einher debate

To be honest if you had to sacrifice
someone with sufficient stats every
time you wanted to do an einher, or
you were brought to near death, or
if the price was just high enough in
some manner that you REAAALLY
thought before hitting that einher
button... I wouldn't have a problem
with it. I never really used einher
though, my stats were never high
and i didn't die enough, so i couldn't
really give much on the Einher other
than theory. ( I fought vs Einher'ed
players a lot, but i never saw the
big difference when they could kill
me easily beforehand anyway. )


Please Loftorbjar, let me be a super sneaky
archer noob with hermit base

[Felkin]

Absolutely love the idea of weight affecting movement speed. It's a very common and realistic mechanic. Heavily armored people should always be much slower than light weighted ones. Agility is the main reason for leather armor in the first place.
This leads to the discussion about armor set classification, which I completely agree with. People should be able to choose between wearing heavy armor + 2h/ shield&sword and light armor + daggers/swords/bows and both choices should have distinct pros and cons.
The main concept of light armored classes in rpg style games "kiting" tanks, but getting instagibbed, if cought has always been widely successful and for good reasons : it's a fun, skillful way of approaching combat, which allows people of different tastes to get what they want. Obviously balancing a more class-centric combat system would be much more difficult than one, where everyone uses the same gear, but I'd say the pros would outweight the added design difficulty. Could see it tieing very well with Jorb's ideas on traps for added depth.

About combat stats :
When talking about this problem, first try to identify the EXACT, CORE issue here. It's not alts beating on a high level player, not unlimited progression making people achieve god-status amongs the general populace.
It's the time it takes to become combat ready.
The problem that haven suffered was the simple fact that for a new player it would take an extreme amount of time to get enough stats to be able to even poke holes at high-end players. Way too much time.
The solution here, in my opinion, is not a hard cap to combat stat progression, but rather heavily lowering the point in progression, where diminishing returns becoming extreme.
One of the best examples I could give right now is Darkfall : UW. Let's ignore all the fundamental flaws that game has and look just at the core combat progression. In Darkfall a player takes around 2-4 weeks of collecting prowess (think distributable stats/skill points) to become combat viable. By that I mean if said player were to get decent gear, which is extremely cheap to get in the game, he could go up against a player who has played for a year and be able to take him with at most 2x more attacks or something similar. The stats, once you pass that quick initial stage are no longer the "core" of pvp power, but rather a small BUFF, which makes combat easier. Like a handicap of being able to make more mistakes before losing.
These 2 changes are they key, I would say, to making for an enjoyable, newb friendly combat experience.
In summary : Make diminishing returns in combat stats hit much earlier and harder, making further progression after the said point as a means to get small buffs to give advantages in even skill playing fields.
The same should go for gear, make it small buffs, rather than multiplicatory character boons. This will lead to healthy combat for newer players and a competitive enviroment for "pros" for whom even a 1 extra move per minute buff could mean everything, whilst not so much if a player is greatly superior in skill.

Obviously the counter argument to this would be alts. Darkfall could avoid the problem, by having a payed sub/no need for alts to achieve everything/no permadeath. Haven has neither of the 3, thus alting is a huge problem to tackle. Basicaly we're boiling down to the core problem of haven discussed in nearly every topic :/

[venatorvenator]

[*]Equipment and combat abilities should work Rock/Scissor/Paper: one strength, equal against itself, one weakness

Care to elaborate a little? I have an idea of what you mean I think but I'm not certain.

If Granger is thinking about the same thing, it's a topos for designing combat systems. You create three base stats or three character templates and make A weak against B and strong against C. Kinda like pikemen/archers/horsemen: archers beat pikemen, pikemen beat horsemen, horsemen beat archers. Or fast/strong/smart templates. At the very least, one can make three sets of items that recreate those templates. I agree it would be cool if haven had those different options for developing fighter chars.

I don't think it would be a set-in-stone system as Nao fears because one advantage haven has in relation to some games is item quality. So in theory an archer could beat a horseman if his items and skills were high enough, and pikemen could beat archers as well, it would just be harder. Or, you know, you could use Occam's razor and work with a team.

There was already a talk of weight and speed here, lots of people posted how problematic that would be: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38039

And yeah, that druid thing sounds really interesting Jorb.

[jorb]

We will, under all circumstances, most likely be working with relative improvements from stat gains, i.e....

Up to N points worth of difference (in everything useful, per some metric) will cause improvements to your combat results relative a player who has less than yourself, but improving beyond N implies no further gain.

Under a regime like that there would still be every reason to grind infinitely to keep up with the joneses, but you will also never be more than N points better than a fresh n00b, and we can hopefully then work to balance N toward a number that seems reasonable.

Off the top of my hat I feel that a difference of N between two players of equal skill should imply perhaps a 70-80% win ratio for the better leveled character, ceteris paribus.

Even entirely new characters should then still have some potential use in combat, hopefully without causing too much problems on the alting side of things.

[Felkin]

Translating stats into raw power based on relative stat comparison between 2 players sounds like an excellect solution! It would tie much better with the quality system, indeed it would. I'm happy you are actually going with such an approach, in spite of the potential problem of alts. One possible solution I could imagine to solving the alt problem in combat, would be implementing a sort of mechanic, where becoming combat ready would involve an active activity, which would discourage passive character progression. Given the fact that all characters will spawn randomly, we can assume that alts won't be working on their combat skills from the moment they are made, so that could be the point to hit the hardest. Maybe simply make traveling unfeasable, until a decent amount of time has been invested in a character. This is going off-topic though and has already been discussed so I'll leave the thought at that. Thank you for sharing more of your ideas, plans and encouraging the discussions, Jorbtar

[andrikyuzva]

Alpha when ?