Balance the game further towards items and infrastructure

[brohammed]

I understand it's pretty well accepted that permadeath isn't so bad, because you still have your buildings, territory, items and infrastructure remaining (unless they have been destroyed by raiders).

Does anyone have any ideas on how the game could be balanced further in favour of infrastructure, making the actual characters less important?

[bitza]

by removing the melee/UA attributes altogether, and making defense loss based off of strength, agility, armor quality, etc. alternately, a cap on melee/UA, say, 400-500 or so (previously suggested). additionally, dexterity could be factored into the combat equation as well making a productive farm even more important.

however, a solid argument could be made that the character development should be made more important, not less

[shotgunn902]

Id like to see a cap on combat stats.

[_Gunnar]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18358&p=212463&hilit=Kaios#p212463

combat caps based on the quality of your gear seems like a good idea to me, the kernel of the idea outlined by Kaios in this thread is pure genius imo.

[bmjclark]

however, a solid argument could be made that the character development should be made more important, not less

This. I really think it's dumb that in a permadeath game you can die and just not care at all because you'll be back where u were in like 2 weeks + have a good ancestor for einhar. I'd prefer to see dying actually being somewhat of a crushing blow rather then a small inconvenience.

I do like the idea of armor coming in to soft cap combat skills though. Because as it stands, you can wear q80 steel plate or q130 and it doesn't change the fact that ur going to get 1 shotted by a sting from a developed character. I'd like to see armor quality (and weapon quality for that matter) being more important rather then the current "just for bragging rights"

[_Gunnar]

however, a solid argument could be made that the character development should be made more important, not less

This. I really think it's dumb that in a permadeath game you can die and just not care at all because you'll be back where u were in like 2 weeks + have a good ancestor for einhar. I'd prefer to see dying actually being somewhat of a crushing blow rather then a small inconvenience.

Yeah, einherjar and inherit in general are pretty lame. combat caps and true permadeath can coexist if you put the combat caps at the right level, i guess.

[TeckXKnight]

The issue then is balancing out losses and discouragement to continue playing. I don't mean worrying about people who are going to quit the second that they die but if someone loses three months worth of development and has no prospect to being able to restore any of it, they have a high likelihood of just not playing anymore.

I will not argue that the current state of death and inheritance is worth keeping as I don't feel that it is. If you have any infrastructure you'll be back to where you were in a fraction of the time, as has been stated. Worse is that newbies who die and inherit often find themselves worse off than if they had made a brand new character. So you see a disproportionate amount of damage between new characters and well developed characters. Shouldn't well developed characters take a larger hit after death? Mind you this is still infinitely better than when Full Tradition gave 100% of your stats and LP back and there literally was no punishment for death.

I feel that death should be an absolute loss of a character without any form of inheritance and I feel that infrastructure needs to be weakened on the benefits it gives a well developed character. With that in mind, I feel that it needs to be made more difficult to destroy infrastructure, LP gains need to be reduced across the board, study wait times need to be removed entirely, and everything needs to a softcap linked in some way to objects that are hardcapped. By doing this, the hope is that in order for characters to keep pace with the increasing demands of their products they will need to invest disproportionately high amounts of food and lp into them.

As for combat, I feel it shouldn't be linked to any stats or skills and should be based on high variability in numbers as well as on player skill and equipment. Combat should be uncertain and dangerous for everyone at all times and it should be your confidence and experience in battle that bring you victory rather than an arbitrarily high number.

As for how I think to weaken infrastructure; create quality dependencies on products that do not raise rapidly and make them both degrade with use as well as be capable of being improved or restored. I'm not entirely sure how to prevent loss from being absolute in the event of a raid though.

tl;dr weaken infrastructure, reduce lp gain for everything, remove study times, softcaps on everything that are linked in some way to a hardcap, remove stat/skills that tie in to combat, and increase variance in combat numbers across the board.

[Patchouli_Knowledge]

Something to keep in mind is that another factor that is trivializing the permadeath feature of Haven and Hearth is the LP system, specifically curiosities. The way it is designed, it makes it easy to produce a large amount of characters. Even if LP is reduced and inheritance is removed from the game, the curiosity still gives those that make alt manufacturing factories an advantage as they will still gain (number of alt) times the net LP of a single character. If they should lose one of those character, they have (number of alts - 1) back-up characters and can resume where they left off unless they happen to lose all of them which would simply be the fault of the player anyhow.

[bitza]

As for combat, I feel it shouldn't be linked to any stats or skills and should be based on high variability in numbers as well as on player skill and equipment.

remove stat/skills that tie in to combat, and increase variance in combat numbers across the board.

great points all around Teck, but you lose me here. there's a very fine line between "high variability in combat" and "low investment fighting alts". the problems run much deeper than simply "guy with 1800 str and thanes vs. guy with a boar helmet and sling". in other words, if i don't need strength, agility or con to excel at fighting, why bother with running a farm or worrying about my FEP?

or in the example of your first quote, why couldn't i dress up my fresh alt in a dhelm thanes plate armor and a sword (assuming i have access to proper infrastructure) and just go apeshit? if now i didn't have to feed this character, this would make the problem of low-investment combat characters even worse, since my absolute worst-case scenario is losing a few bars of steel and a bit of gold and silver.

[TeckXKnight]

As for combat, I feel it shouldn't be linked to any stats or skills and should be based on high variability in numbers as well as on player skill and equipment.

remove stat/skills that tie in to combat, and increase variance in combat numbers across the board.

great points all around Teck, but you lose me here. there's a very fine line between "high variability in combat" and "low investment fighting alts". the problems run much deeper than simply "guy with 1800 str and thanes vs. guy with a boar helmet and sling". in other words, if i don't need strength, agility or con to excel at fighting, why bother with running a farm or worrying about my FEP?

or in the example of your first quote, why couldn't i dress up my fresh alt in a dhelm thanes plate armor and a sword (assuming i have access to proper infrastructure) and just go apeshit? if now i didn't have to feed this character, this would make the problem of low-investment combat characters even worse, since my absolute worst-case scenario is losing a few bars of steel and a bit of gold and silver.

Ha, you've got me entirely. It seems my thoughts are not nearly as well thought out as I'd like them to be. =)