by kobnach » Wed Aug 26, 2009 12:13 am ArPharazon wrote:kobnach wrote: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.
Regarding alliances in other games, from my experience what does it is that the moment you even begin to target someone, the game throws their alliance right in your face- you instantly know, from the start, that you're messing with some big guys. In HH, say I run across some guy in a forest, tension rises, I threaten to attack, he says (best case scenario, he might not say anything at all) he's from Gooncastle. Why would I even believe him? Anyone could say that. There's a similar problem with knowing who is in your town and who is not (although this is easier for players to solve on their own). Although there's something to be said for the value of being able to hide your membership, alliances or towns should at least be able to make their own signet rings or something like that, which are difficult or impossible to forge (but not to steal).
Second, in other games, alliances usually get their own page which shows attacks on that alliances, sometimes also its allies. In HH, I get robbed, I talk to other people from my stockade if and when they are online, then we talk to the town leader if and when he is online, then he calls the ranger if and when he is online, and then the thief is tracked down and the thief's superior is interrogated, if and when he is online... It's all quite a bit of a headache to orchestrate. Now I really liked how involved tracking down people was: It was almost impossibly realistic, first looking for clues, following them, finding suspects and weeding through the testimonies.
I think you are on to something here. In both Land of Destiny and Ikariam, one wears one's alliance on one's sleeve. Many people routinely avoid attacking any allied player in Ikariam, to the point that people create alliances of 1 member, just to make themselves look allied. Some raiders check the actual alliance strength before deciding on an attack - but that requires 2 or 3 extra clicks, so it's easier not to bother
It's also extremely easy to determine when a player has become inactive - or more correctly, when they've gone more than some set amount of time (about a week) since their last login. Unallied inactives are prime victims - they won't fight back, and they won't have allies who might protect, avenge, or telephone them to come protect themselves. Having one's hearth fire in a decayed slum ought logically to serve the same function in H&H - indicating you are neither active nor a member of a closely knit active community - but it does not seem to do so. Perhaps this is because of the clue mechanism - if I loot the guy I walk past daily, who has show no sign of harvesting his fields, repairing or completing his walls, etc. for at least 2 weeks - and built those walls inconveniently close to a road we built, using trees we planted - I'll leave clues for a third party to harvest, and use to permakill me for his own amusement. So the decaying inactive settlement is still there, inconveniently located, on land I'd rather like to absorb. Someone else has probably looted all his valuables in any case - which doesn't bug me, since I can make more and better myself - but I would really like to destroy his decaying ruins, and most importantly stop having to be careful about his claim grabbing my carts.
