The Ghost of Christmas Future, II

[dongodson081294]

hey lofter and jorb, will it have the same issues as salem for smoke bug, since it does look like salem graphics, but is it different graphics mod or not?

[Khaos]

This person gets it. I especially like the NPC idea.

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.

[TeckXKnight]

We run into a few problems with VDZ's ideas that we've already seen in Salem.
1) Static damage on an automated defense means that they'll only meaningfully stop enemies to a certain point and after that criminals don't have to worry about them. This is just a buy-in tax to commit crimes. Percentile damage just punishes you for using more experienced characters to commit crimes.
2) Just like walls, people will stack towers until they are effectively impenetrable. If you can build one, what's to stop you from building 10? 100? 1,000? If it's just about loading up ammo then it's a game of walking alts into the line of fire to eat damage until the path is clear. We end up with situations like this: http://i.imgur.com/2gkAEJb.jpg (The black metal things being, effectively, guard towers) as well as really inelegant band-aids on the system. Either way we're back to square one.
3) I don't actually know what's wrong with crime debuffs. They always just seemed annoying, but what do I know.

Lets say a guard tower shoots players for 300 damage per shot. That just means you need to make q40 steel plates before you ignore towers and break things freely. Sure, you can scale the damage on them so high that they'll break even q160 steel plates but at that point they're doing so much damage that crime isn't even an option anymore. The reality is that they just don't work in the current system of the game and to work them in in a meaningful way would be completely redesigning equipment, combat, and crime.

NPCs run into the same issue. Random bots in towns will just be sniped for shits and giggles. What are they going to do, chase you? Walk away from the town that they're supposed to be guarding? What will the buy-in be to ignore them entirely? 200 UAC or a q40 bronze plate?

These ideas don't address the issue of walls, they just attempt to trade one evil for another.

[Potjeh]

You forgot armor penetration, Teck. Just because ranged weapons don't have it now doesn't mean they never will (and IMO they should).

[VDZ]

1) Static damage on an automated defense means that they'll only meaningfully stop enemies to a certain point and after that criminals don't have to worry about them. This is just a buy-in tax to commit crimes. Percentile damage just punishes you for using more experienced characters to commit crimes.

Lets say a guard tower shoots players for 300 damage per shot. That just means you need to make q40 steel plates before you ignore towers and break things freely.

You're assuming all damage can be soaked. If you get X HHP damage per Y seconds per tower or something like that, it's not going to kill a decent character but it is annoying as fuck and a reason not to commit crimes unless you think you can benefit from it.

2) Just like walls, people will stack towers until they are effectively impenetrable. If you can build one, what's to stop you from building 10? 100? 1,000?

Is it a problem that people can defend themselves? The way I saw the problem was that everybody has the ultimate defense (brickwalls) which work in an unfun way (entirely stopping crime rather than discouraging, up to a certain point from which it does nothing to stop it) because any other attempt at defense is completely useless. My solution would still allow people to build fortresses if they want, but it doesn't force people to, so only the people who expect dedicated invaders will bother with actual fortresses (serious criminals and large villages).

NPCs run into the same issue. Random bots in towns will just be sniped for shits and giggles. What are they going to do, chase you?

Use ranged attacks on you (considering you're in range to attack them)? Give you temporary debuffs for committing crimes?

These ideas don't address the issue of walls, they just attempt to trade one evil for another.

I think we disagree on what 'the issue of walls' is. If we're talking about the issue that walls are unfun and everybody is forced to have them, these ideas do address these issues.

[SynthAura]

How about having walls that take a long time to break, but the attacker has to stay online to break them? This would give time for the defenders to come online and defend. Rams could be instant, but required to destroy palisades and bwalls, and your strength determines how long it takes to destroy the wall. This would open the attacker up to an actual confrontation instead of an offline tracking escapade that will inevitably end up at their bwall which can be defended by simply destroying any drying rams in the vicinity built by the victim. This idea would force a confrontation by the attacker and the defender unless the defender is simply inactive.

[txtrung0]

As much as I like braziers, Tech is right. They are unfun and bad. Nobody want those things around but we have to build them.
When the system is based upon them, you can't say that only big town and ones who expect dedicated invaders to build them. EVERY one with a brain will mass building these to protect the empty base they have (cause they spend all of it buying them)

[Bob_the_Cat]

Lets say a guard tower shoots players for 300 damage per shot. That just means you need to make q40 steel plates before you ignore towers and break things freely.

What will the buy-in be to ignore them entirely? 200 UAC or a q40 bronze plate?
.

This is the problem. You shouldnt be able to have armor that just perfect blocks things and stuff. Although having % protection would create its own issues.

Lets say you have 70% protection armor, and you got attacked by a bunch of lower stat players. And lets just say that you are some botter that just sucks at fighting. They can get your bars down and start damaging you at least decently fast, and kill you. With the current system, they can punch you for about 5 damage, thats it. You can just run forever until you find a boat to escape in.

Now the problems with % protection would be things like if you can get 99% protection, you also need 100x as strong weapons. It would need some balancing, but in the end if it capped at around the 70% area things like towers and nubs could still do some damage, which would at least make it so you arent invincible. This goes with the attempt to close the gap between random hermits and big villages and botters and stuff.

[WaitingforHaven2]

As much as I like braziers, Tech is right. They are unfun and bad. Nobody want those things around but we have to build them.
When the system is based upon them, you can't say that only big town and ones who expect dedicated invaders to build them. EVERY one with a brain will mass building these to protect the empty base they have (cause they spend all of it buying them)

It does not really matter but I feel like pointing out that this is not true anymore for quite a while now already. Last time I checked braziers dealt damage depending on how close other braziers were. If their attack ranges overlapped both only dealt half their normal damage. This still wasn't a perfect solution though. Placement was quite a pain in the ass amongst other things.

I'm also not sure why anyone would ever like braziers / towers. They make little sense (why do my braziers shoot fireballs at nasty people) and therefore never felt right to me. But it was great that I didn't have to constantly log in to check for rams at the most inconvenient times (yep, I never had a nice bot script to do that for me).

[txtrung0]

You are right but things changed. Even though they still don't really stack, having more braziers is a better idea now, hence evryone have tons of them lying around.