PVP Factions

[loftar]

Well, to begin with, unless the fight is specially flagged, HHP damage would still be dealt by many attacks. Furthermore, the player defeated in the spar would be knocked out cold for a minute, and would need to spend a lot of food and time to heal up his SHP damage. I think sparring would be useful precisely because it can be done many successive times, in order to try out maneuvers and combos and what not.

[Delamore]

I cannot even sum up how bad of an idea this is, the whole game has been up to now designed around the idea of being free to do what you want.
Factions just screws up everything and is terrible.

[loftar]

I cannot even sum up how bad of an idea this is, the whole game has been up to now designed around the idea of being free to do what you want.
Factions just screws up everything and is terrible.

Certainly, I think every reasonable man would agree. I mean, honestly, I don't even see how "factionalized" PvP would be possible to even define in Haven. Not going to happen.

Don't misinterpret me -- the political relations I was talking about would be related to village workings in various ways, it would not affect the PvP system in the slightest.

[Ford]

Very much so, and we plan to extend the village system with something like that later on. Not only allying, of course, but also, for instance, making it possible to form, say, a "kingdom" consisting of a couple of villages under a common ruler. A village or kingdom should also be able to subjugate and annex other villages, making them serfdoms, so there will be a couple of different kind of relations between various political entities. Likewise, we'd like to add a few other systems of government, such as, say, a "town" (which would probably require a village with quite a few members to be converted into a town; and then it would have more useful administrative features and so on), a "confederation", a "republic", and so on. More advanced political entities should also be able to enact various national ideas (similar to the beliefs I described in the "Credo" thread), which would affect all their members in various ways.

That sounds pretty cool. Have you thought about how these political entities attacking each other will play out? For example will there be a system in place so if one town wants to attack another they get advanced warning in order to muster their strength, for a fair battle, or will there be no rules at all- the town fights with whoever it has at the moment and anyone they can bring in on xfire/msn/irc?

I cannot even sum up how bad of an idea this is, the whole game has been up to now designed around the idea of being free to do what you want.
Factions just screws up everything and is terrible.

Certainly, I think every reasonable man would agree. I mean, honestly, I don't even see how "factionalized" PvP would be possible to even define in Haven. Not going to happen.

Don't misinterpret me -- the political relations I was talking about would be related to village workings in various ways, it would not affect the PvP system in the slightest.

I guess I didn't make it very clear but my point was having factions for people in WOW or WAR makes it so PVP is always meaningful and not just a ffa grief fuckfest, I never said it had to be limited to 2 factions like in those games. I was thinking that an alliance would be a faction or a town would be a faction, or any allied group no matter the size- and there would be a pvp mechanic in place to identify friendlies and prevent you from attacking them. If you look at games like UO and AC how often did people stop and check your guild to see if you were allied with theirs before attacking you? Never. That's why I think factions or something equivalent are required- in order to enforce political decisions.

[Delamore]

Very much so, and we plan to extend the village system with something like that later on. Not only allying, of course, but also, for instance, making it possible to form, say, a "kingdom" consisting of a couple of villages under a common ruler. A village or kingdom should also be able to subjugate and annex other villages, making them serfdoms, so there will be a couple of different kind of relations between various political entities. Likewise, we'd like to add a few other systems of government, such as, say, a "town" (which would probably require a village with quite a few members to be converted into a town; and then it would have more useful administrative features and so on), a "confederation", a "republic", and so on. More advanced political entities should also be able to enact various national ideas (similar to the beliefs I described in the "Credo" thread), which would affect all their members in various ways.

That sounds pretty cool. Have you thought about how these political entities attacking each other will play out? For example will there be a system in place so if one town wants to attack another they get advanced warning in order to muster their strength, for a fair battle, or will there be no rules at all- the town fights with whoever it has at the moment and anyone they can bring in on xfire/msn/irc?

So if all combat is to be fair, Goonheim cannot declare war on any town as we'll have more and stronger people than them? Should our side get a debuff so it is fair?

[Rift]

of course.
Experienced players have a advantage over inexperienced ones, so logically we should keep it fair by having you start strong, but get weaker the longer you play.

[loftar]

That sounds pretty cool. Have you thought about how these political entities attacking each other will play out? For example will there be a system in place so if one town wants to attack another they get advanced warning in order to muster their strength, for a fair battle, or will there be no rules at all- the town fights with whoever it has at the moment and anyone they can bring in on xfire/msn/irc?

Our current model is that a village (or more generalized political entities, but let's speak of villages) can declare war on another village, which would take effect, indeed, in 24 real hours or so. What a declaration of war would mean is that the villages at war with each other can destroy each others authority objects (which would, obviously, lessen the authority of the village whose authority objects are being destroyed) and then, having enough authority advantage over the other, declare oneself the victor, and subject the defeated village to a more or less one-sided peace treaty -- be it annexation, complete destruction, an agreement to hand over a certain amount of wealth or something else.

Annexation would probably mean that the victors "have permission" to the annexed village's land, and thus don't leave clues whatever they choose to do to it.

Being at war would probably also mean that the warring parties would be able to attack each other without requiring the black skills. It would most likely still leave clues, though.

there would be a pvp mechanic in place to identify friendlies and prevent you from attacking them.

Oh, was that all you intended? I didn't manage to read that from your first post. In that case, it may be reasonable, depending on what you mean by "prevent". I wouldn't want to make it impossible to attack friendlies, but as I've discussed elsewhere, I would like to add some kind of identification system (though, as I've described elsewhere, it is far less than obvious just how it would manifest itself), and tying that into villages and war declarations may, at least, not be entirely unreasonable. We haven't discussed those details yet, though.

[kobnach]

Very much so, and we plan to extend the village system with something like that later on. Not only allying, of course, but also, for instance, making it possible to form, say, a "kingdom" consisting of a couple of villages under a common ruler. A village or kingdom should also be able to subjugate and annex other villages, making them serfdoms, so there will be a couple of different kind of relations between various political entities. Likewise, we'd like to add a few other systems of government, such as, say, a "town" (which would probably require a village with quite a few members to be converted into a town; and then it would have more useful administrative features and so on), a "confederation", a "republic", and so on. More advanced political entities should also be able to enact various national ideas (similar to the beliefs I described in the "Credo" thread), which would affect all their members in various ways.

I guess I didn't make it very clear but my point was having factions for people in WOW or WAR makes it so PVP is always meaningful and not just a ffa grief fuckfest, I never said it had to be limited to 2 factions like in those games. I was thinking that an alliance would be a faction or a town would be a faction, or any allied group no matter the size- and there would be a pvp mechanic in place to identify friendlies and prevent you from attacking them. If you look at games like UO and AC how often did people stop and check your guild to see if you were allied with theirs before attacking you? Never. That's why I think factions or something equivalent are required- in order to enforce political decisions.

It's not meaningful for players who don't want to participate in wars, serfdom, etc.

*sigh* This game has so much potential. It's a malleable, explorable world. But most of the vocal people don't care about that - all they see is a game board on which they can attack each other - and anyone else they happen to encounter.

OK, Getting beyond my usual complaint - it seems to me that of all the pvp-capable games I've played recently, H&H is the one most prone to 2 things - serious damage to non-participants, and overall nastiness and "blame the victim" attitudes in forums.

Land of Destiny is pretty much a pure PvP game, but what I saw there was a lot of preying on inactives, some amount of raiding of small to midsize players, and detente among the big alliances. Once you were big enough to get into a decent alliance, you were safe - and one notable player made it very high on the scoreboard without ever training any combat skills, playing purely as a merchant. Below that magic level, one had to pay a hefty sum for protection (50% of one's production - not as bad as being full tradition I guess - plus inability to raid inactives) or count on being raided constantly. That wasn't fun, but being reasonably sociable would get you out of that box, and an influx of newbs arriving together might not have had that problem at all. Moreover, whenever someone complained of being attacked/farmed/looted, the immediate response was to explain how to protect themselves in future, not to mock them for not already knowing, call them a whiner (etc.), or explain that "this is what PvP is about".

Ikariam is primarily PvP, but the game mechanics allow one to shrug off the costs of being "farmed" unless the farmer is unusually enthusiastic - and once again, alliance membership tends to keep one unraided, except during wars. I have encountered some of the attack dog social mentality there that I've seen on H&H, but most of the folks acting that way back down fast when one stands up to them. There's also enough censorship to keep the comments minimally polite - Jackard's sig would have gotten him a 1-3 day suspension from play.

RuneScape has had voluntary PvP as long as I've played there. Certain areas/worlds are Pvp-enabled, but they can be avoided - at some cost to one's opportunities. (I used to venture into them carrying nothing I cared about losing, and laugh at PKers who wasted valuable runes, potions, etc. killing me and receiving nothing. Obviously death didn't cost stats in that game, just items worn or carried.) It also has serious censorship, which accounts for the absence of much of the nastiness we see in H&H's forums; Jackard's sig might well have gotten him banned there, or at least silenced.

Why is it that detente isn't breaking out in H&H? And why so much on-forum nastiness? Perhaps the nastiness is the cost of a complete lack of censorship. But that doesn't account for the rest of it.

[Ford]

Very much so, and we plan to extend the village system with something like that later on. Not only allying, of course, but also, for instance, making it possible to form, say, a "kingdom" consisting of a couple of villages under a common ruler. A village or kingdom should also be able to subjugate and annex other villages, making them serfdoms, so there will be a couple of different kind of relations between various political entities. Likewise, we'd like to add a few other systems of government, such as, say, a "town" (which would probably require a village with quite a few members to be converted into a town; and then it would have more useful administrative features and so on), a "confederation", a "republic", and so on. More advanced political entities should also be able to enact various national ideas (similar to the beliefs I described in the "Credo" thread), which would affect all their members in various ways.

That sounds pretty cool. Have you thought about how these political entities attacking each other will play out? For example will there be a system in place so if one town wants to attack another they get advanced warning in order to muster their strength, for a fair battle, or will there be no rules at all- the town fights with whoever it has at the moment and anyone they can bring in on xfire/msn/irc?

So if all combat is to be fair, Goonheim cannot declare war on any town as we'll have more and stronger people than them? Should our side get a debuff so it is fair?

If Goonheim declares war on a town they will get 24 hours notice like Loftar says above, with options to surrender, give tribute, etc. To make the option of fighting fair for the defenders there would have to be a short window, say 3-4 hours at the end of the 24 period, when the fighting could occur. If there was just 'war' indefinitely the defenders would have to keep watch all the time, which is impractical for people who have a job or attend college/school. They might even want to go as far as making the 'window' occur in the evening, as most people wouldn't be able to attend in the daytime because of said job/school. Where would the fun be if each town spent hundreds of combined hours crafting only to go to war and wreck each other's stuff when they aren't there? That would just be griefing back and forth, not pvp. It would be just as lame for one town to force another to surrender and tribute/annex rather than being destroyed just because they had more commitments in real life than the attackers.

[Erik_the_Blue]

They might even want to go as far as making the 'window' occur in the evening, as most people wouldn't be able to attend in the daytime because of said job/school.

Evening where? This game's players are spread all over the world, last I checked.