The Ghost of Christmas Future, II

[LadyV]

@LadyV
My prestige has no bearing on morality merely a power and control measure. If you go around robbing people knocking them around destroying keeps and revenge never comes then your prestige goes up why you do these things doesn't even matter either you're some bandit group or some white knight organization stamping out a hive of villainy. Of course if you get your ass kicked as a result your prestige should get a hit.

Prestige has all the bearing on morality. Because you are ignoring infamy. Someone may want control by fear. Raiding, killing, roughing people up can create its own prestige. It is just not what you have mentioned but a darker version of it. Please dont mistake me i do think reputation is important but it becomes very difficult to encompass all the personal goals in a game like this without setting up a morality system and perks and flaws for each. If you want to be good, neutral, or evil each have traits and actions. You must encompass something for all player types else you lose a group.

[LadyV]

LadyV, they'd still be a necessity. They're already painfully expensive in terms of bricks, steel, and other resources. It'd just mean that there's a higher tax to play the game, and then we're just punishing players for the sake of punishing them.

Why make walls rare? What does that accomplish? If anything, it'd be better to just remove them entirely than to make them rare. At least then everyone is on an "even" playing field. Otherwise we're just exacerbating the issue that large factions of yoloswag#420 who are at the end game will just walk around desolating the world as they'll be the only ones living without consequences. Any attempts at even small amounts of retribution will just lead to your murder and the destruction of your property. That problem is bad enough as it is between brick walls and palisades, why make it worse?

Simply limiting their availability without tackling the underlying issues for why they're necessary only serves to generate a larger power gap between players and limit playability of the game for large numbers of people. It's very easy for us to say that it's good and necessary to stomp and kill every newbie who joins the game but, realistically, some kind of balance must be struck to ensure a healthy world. A healthy world being defined as one that is able to draw in roughly as many new players as old players who quit.

Walls are an issue, lack of walls causes more issues.

And sure, the best way to solve the issue of walls being everywhere is to solve the problems that walls are a band-aid for. When they are no longer a necessity, I promise you that players will not spend 100 man hours in front of a clay spot burning bricks for the fun of it. How do players protect their livelihood, property, and selves against internal and external threats though? That is the question we need to be answering.

Teck I don't think we are so far apart on thought. I believe I have presented some way to address what your saying as well as others. But in case I am missing some please spell out what underlying problems are in your mind. Maybe some have been missed int eh discussion.

[Avu]

I think you're just getting hung up on a word rather than the mechanic behind it. And you can't have a morality system EVER. Because there is no such thing as objective morality especially in a game. Is killing noobs evil? Yeah sometimes but what if those noobs are feeding raiding douchebags knowingly they aren't so innocent anymore. Killing them for it might be evil in return but what if the douchebags are actually genocidal maniacs destroying everything in their path maybe killing the so called noobs then is warranted. My point is you can't cater to morality because there is no objective morality. My system doesn't care call it power, kingdom e-peen, influence if prestige doesn't float your boat. I'm not hung up on names.

[jagolomba]

Houses have doors with keys. Make changes to the game with no walls available in mind.
Changes:

Trees have quality nodes, quality improvements are impossible as we know them now. Manual tree regrowth still exists and can be used to quicken the process of getting the same trees. Also rethink tree growth. Trees regrow and die by themselves. Tree quality is hard to raise currently and would not suit a wall free living, thus these changes can be made.

Some things will have to be placed outside, some inside. Water barrels are easy to make, probably should go outside? Or just make tons of houses to accommodate your things.

Ovens, smelters? Might just have to live with them being outside and usable by anyone. What would happen anyway? Some players improve themselves using the labor of others, lets say to make high quality weapon material. Change: stats matter more in combat.

Bot army destroying objects? Strength plays a role in destroying objects. New characters are barely able to break anything. Destroying stuff takes more time, but probably as much time as building them would. Some person goes around destroying everything in sight? I'm sure that person will get bored eventually, but keep in mind that such behaviour is possible.

Houses will have to be the new thing to ram and destroy instead of gates. Movement blocking by objects can be made impossible if it is desired by making object placement so that they can't be too close together.

Criminal summoning? Perhaps some automated combat system to make it more fair for the criminal who is not online. Scents can be used to start automated combat.

Changes solve issues and introduce new ones. No need to think too hard about them, make the game with new rules and play it. Get to experience the exact dynamics of the game. Then change stuff to get the desired experience. A lot needs to be changed to get wall free life, not sure if walls are that bad. Bottom up game dynamic change is better than top down, i prefer games with emergent properties.

[mvgulik]

there is no objective morality

I got to remember that one more often.

Google: there+is+no+objective+morality ... Hmm, interesting. Two conflicting TED's on the subject.

[LadyV]

I think you're just getting hung up on a word rather than the mechanic behind it. And you can't have a morality system EVER. Because there is no such thing as objective morality especially in a game. Is killing noobs evil? Yeah sometimes but what if those noobs are feeding raiding douchebags knowingly they aren't so innocent anymore. Killing them for it might be evil in return but what if the douchebags are actually genocidal maniacs destroying everything in their path maybe killing the so called noobs then is warranted. My point is you can't cater to morality because there is no objective morality. My system doesn't care call it power, kingdom e-peen, influence if prestige doesn't float your boat. I'm not hung up on names.

ok...Im not going to debate this. Ill just disagree.

[Jackard]

dunno why anyone advocates hardcoded systems for running villages when you could use permissions to leave them open and making their own rules

[VDZ]

I detest them but they're integral to the game as it's currently designed. What's a reasonable alternative?

For the record, I very much approve of this discussion. If there is a reasonable alternative to the ugly walled-in compounds of current Haven, I'd very much like to hear it.

Well its the only option as you said. For a game that is more set in the medieval period than anything else we are lacking medieval structures.

Then again, it's not as if every single peasant surrounded his land with a palisade, either.

If you imagine what kept people from doing in the past of our world what they do in HnH, you will end up with arguments touching society, culture, morals and the like though and not necessarily get hard solutions in terms of game mechanics.

But is that really the case? Over time, social and justice systems have grown more complicated, but it started out fairly simple: get caught committing a crime, and people will beat the shit out of you. I really like how this works in UnReal World; if you're in a village and attack someone or try to steal something, everyone in the village just starts attacking you, and you will die (have tried multiple times, but never managed to win that fight, only managed to run away). It's a simple and effective deterrent.

The reason people can steal and vandalize easily in H&H is because not enough people are around to do anything about it (usually, nobody is around at all - which makes no sense realistically, if you ask me). How about being able to create/recruit NPCs that are always in your village and will attack anybody caught committing criminal acts? It would significantly increase the risk (and hassle) involved with committing crimes (if people invested in protecting their turf). It doesn't have to be limited to NPCs, either; for example, we could have guard towers that automatically attack criminals in range like Age of Empires' towers do to enemies.

For that matter, the current functionality of walls makes no sense. People in earlier times didn't build walls just so enemies can't enter their village/town/castle unless they can knock the wall down leisurely (while the entire village just watches or is offline); walls were intended to slow down invaders so they could be killed before they could enter the village/town/castle. If we had guard towers (or archer NPCs or what have you), walls would be an optional measure forcing people to tank a significant amount of damage from the towers while wrecking the wall, disincentivizing invaders.

Also, I feel that people here are focusing too much on making certain things impossible. Trying to make things impossible never works. Instead, try to make crime more of a pain than it's worth - having to tank damage as described above may be enough to stop people from committing crimes they don't benefit enough from, for example, but you can take it even further; what if you get a temporary learning ability penalty for each crime you commit, or a similar inconvenience? When the cost:benefit ratio gets too high, people will refrain from committing crimes. (Note: 'Fun' also counts as a benefit. Killing random newbies and similar griefing is not something 'with no benefit'. The current situation is practically no cost for a small benefit.) This could even be tied back to defensive measures - what if, through investment and effort, you could make these inconveniences worse for the invaders? I've always found that 'not being worth the hassle' has been the best defense, better than any number of brick walls.

[Tonkyhonk]

dunno why anyone advocates hardcoded systems for running villages

this

[Avu]

dunno why anyone advocates hardcoded systems for running villages when you could use permissions to leave them open and making their own rules

I'm all for permissions and flexibility but in some way or another pro social behavior has to be mechanically encouraged otherwise you end up with the current playerbase.