Aggro range or hearth timer needs to be increased

Thoughts on the further development of Haven & Hearth? Feel free to opine!

Re: Aggro range or hearth timer needs to be increased

Postby Sever » Sat Sep 26, 2015 11:38 pm

bmjclark wrote:And your anecdotal evidence is valid? :P

Getting aggro'd isn't a guaranteed death if you have any kind of experience, but i agree that new players will be vulnerable to it. The problem is always going to be that any advantage that you give to low level players will be abused by high level players. It's a hard balance to strike. Do my forager alts deserve 100% safety?

Actually, they are equally invalid apart, slightly valid together. It's called sample size, enough of them together and we start to get a picture. If you wanted to do actual population distribution science, you'd need a census team and nobody is going to do that. Your assertion was that if you go out far, you won't see anyone, but that's no guarantee.

You're right, nobody should be 100% safe, but auto-aggro is a guaranteed death if you were working, or out of water, or stuck outside your wall, or nowhere near a boat, or anything but ready to run. I've made my suggestions for this problem, and I agree that it's a problem, but you seem to want to weigh it against the victim in a way that makes this game not worth playing as a crafter.
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Re: Aggro range or hearth timer needs to be increased

Postby Tacheron » Sun Sep 27, 2015 8:32 am

The problem is the "auto" part of both the aggressors and the oppressed. Is there a way to disable the option for both sides? Is it related to when the character appears on the minimap display or ingame sight range? Cause if it's the former, make it so that you can't see people on the minimap unless they're in your kinlist or you've memorized them - make memorization harder by including the stealth/agility/dexterity vs perception roll. If it's the latter, add a "stealth" toggle, make it so the attacker remains invisible in the game (like a rare curio :P) if his stealth/agility/dexterity beats the perception of the target.
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Re: Aggro range or hearth timer needs to be increased

Postby rye130 » Sun Sep 27, 2015 8:38 am

This thread turned into a massive cluster fuck of unrelated posts that the moderators should please clean up and separate into a different topic please.

The topic at hand in this thread is the auto-hearth added in custom clients and how it affects the game, and how it can be fixed.

A few points I saw cropping up that need to be addressed:

Auto-hearth is non-aggressive players' counter to auto-aggro

There is currently no functional auto-aggro that does anything a player couldn't normally and realistically do. In previous generations, aggro range matched render distance and thus, instantly aggroing a character as soon as it got on your screen was a possibility. Now, with aggro having a limited range, a player in render distance can be aggroed just as quickly manually as any bot could do it since getting in range to issue the "Attack!" command is the limiting factor, not reaction times.

Getting aggroed means you are dead

While most ganks do end with the gankers being victorious over the player being ganked, it is not a pre-defined outcome. There is skill, communication, luck, and many other variables involved on both sides of the interaction that decide the outcome. While the balance of these encounters may not be in the direction that most players wish it to be in, this is not the thread to discuss that balance. The main problem that the people opposing auto-hearth have with the mechanic is it entirely removes the skill, communication, luck, and other variables from the equation. The outcome of the encounter is pre-defined. If you have auto-hearth then, poof, you are gone with no interaction. I strongly believe that most players against auto-hearth are, at least to some extent, in favor of increasing the chances of the player being ganked surviving as long as their chances are improved based on skill or preparation or some other player controlled mechanic rather than just making the outcome predefined by if they're using a custom client because it makes these encounters more enjoyable and interesting.

Attacking a target should somehow be related to the previous actions of that target

The biggest way to hurt an aggressive player who is looking to kill others isn't to kill their combat-character who has left scents and done all sorts of dirty things in the past (in most cases). Its to kill their foragers, farmers, miners, or any other character important to the character development of the their combat characters who you manage to catch out. Any nerf to being able to harm these scent-less characters isn't nearly as balancing of a thing as you may think it is. Combat characters will just be left in vaults till their scents are expired to reduce the effect of any sort of negative penalty to having these scents out.

In conclusion, please take your efforts to fix the balance of PvP to another thread, because this thread has very little to do with it. I can't understand how anyone can stand here and argue that auto-hearth is a healthy mechanic in this game when it is clearly can be just as abusive and annoying for either end of the player-spectrum...
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Re: Aggro range or hearth timer needs to be increased

Postby Jeff » Sun Sep 27, 2015 9:46 am

A thread where peaceful people can drink the tears of griefers? What a refreshing novelty.

Let's be serious, what we have here is people whining because they can't murder people for shits and giggles like they did so far.
Why do you think someone even thought to add such a tool? Because people are far too eager to kill random people. Mostly because there is no real consequence in doing so, so they do it anyway (no, scents aren't a meaningful consequence, don't make me laugh).
And you even want to talk about it being "abusive and annoying"? Not an "healthy mechanic"? Seriously? Because it helps people that don't want to pvp from being killed?
Oh, come on, don't make me laugh. We can say the same about the lack of real consequences for murdering people, and those have done far worse for the game.
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Re: Aggro range or hearth timer needs to be increased

Postby Bramson » Sun Sep 27, 2015 11:06 am

the problem with this whole agruement is.

The people using auto hearth - dont pvp - the people who want to gank these people are the griefers. People who fight back dont use the auto hearth - and this is less fun for the gankers because they might die themselves.

So pretty much the question is....

1. Let the griefers gank people who dont pvp and murder them, which in turn will most likely result in a cancle of subscription

2. Let the people who dont pvp escape - and let the griefers fight the pvpers.

also, auto hearth only works if you let it work. if you move while hearthing it screws up the hearth and u will die - also not sure if you ever tried to run away with auto hearth - but it pretty much makes u dead as u stop every second to hearth.
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Re: Aggro range or hearth timer needs to be increased

Postby rye130 » Sun Sep 27, 2015 5:56 pm

Jeff wrote:And you even want to talk about it being "abusive and annoying"? Not an "healthy mechanic"? Seriously? Because it helps people that don't want to pvp from being killed?
Oh, come on, don't make me laugh. We can say the same about the lack of real consequences for murdering people, and those have done far worse for the game.


Because it removes the entire interaction from the game. You morons are turning this into a "carebear" versus "griefer" argument when that's not what this is fucking about at all. Enjoy being murdered violently anyways, and then having me auto-hearth away as soon as you try to get some sort of revenge.
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Re: Aggro range or hearth timer needs to be increased

Postby Delamore » Sun Sep 27, 2015 6:05 pm

Once again the assumption that only people who "don't want to pvp" auto hearth.
When the truth is even pvpers auto hearth unless they're currently out to fight, why wouldn't you avoid a fight if you're not 100% prepared for it while the enemy might be?
Also consider that almost every pvper has multiple alts that aren't built for fighting that do other tasks such as gathering, why wouldn't they always have auto hearth on these characters?
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Re: Aggro range or hearth timer needs to be increased

Postby burgingham » Sun Sep 27, 2015 6:24 pm

rye130 wrote:
Jeff wrote:And you even want to talk about it being "abusive and annoying"? Not an "healthy mechanic"? Seriously? Because it helps people that don't want to pvp from being killed?
Oh, come on, don't make me laugh. We can say the same about the lack of real consequences for murdering people, and those have done far worse for the game.


Because it removes the entire interaction from the game. You morons are turning this into a "carebear" versus "griefer" argument when that's not what this is fucking about at all. Enjoy being murdered violently anyways, and then having me auto-hearth away as soon as you try to get some sort of revenge.


The question is wether you actually can treat the root of all evil here: scripting stuff. Of course none of them should exist, but is there a meaningful way to fix them?

Because if there is not then we need to treat symptoms and then yes it kind of becomes an argument about people who do not want to engage in PvP. It is better to have an auto hearth option than to have an auto aggro option for sure. Turns combat into more of a siege game, but I don't really see a problem with that.

rye130 wrote:
jorb wrote:
rye130 wrote:Hearthing isn't the way that escaping is a fun/interesting mechanic.


Is autoaggro into autodeath by gankers a fun/interesting mechanic? For a select clientele, I'm sure.


Autoaggro isn't autodeath. You can run away/outmaneuver them. If you think the attacker has too much power/advantage in the situation, make interesting defensive ways to escape combat and lose your attacker. Don't make the combat encounter never happen because a character magically poofs away.


You always assume everyone is or should be perfectly prepared for a gank at any given time and that is just not a good premise. People need to go outside for other things and those things might lead to them not being able to fully prepare. When they are mass hauling things for example they won't carry a lot of water.

As Jorb said auto-ganking is a much much less interesting mechanic than autohearthing, mainly because the one is a short time fun thing for a few, while the other means getting to keep playing the game instead of being dead...
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Re: Aggro range or hearth timer needs to be increased

Postby Sever » Sun Sep 27, 2015 6:51 pm

To actually solve the problem this way means trying to split a scalpel with a sword. How are you supposed to balance one perfect script versus another? If you pick too long a hearth timer or too large an aggro range, then the player always dies in script versus script, or player vs script. Go the other way and they always survive. A completely different kind of solution is required to even partially address it.

Is there anything wrong with allowing hearthing under aggro with a longer timer? If instead of a few seconds, it took ten seconds while aggroed, the attacker would have a chance, and an obligation if they want to keep them there, to make their move to cancel hearthing. And since it would take so long to do, it would be anywhere from a gamble to a strategy whether you could get away in time. If it was clear they could get to you quickly, you better run. If you did outrun them, or got somewhere safe, you could immediately start hearthing instead of waiting for an arbitrary cooldown. I'm sure there's something I'm not considering, but to me it seems like that would kill auto-hearthing as it would only work situationally, like if there are a lot of ridges or a wall/water/swamp, and it would cause you to deal with the aggressor, but allow you to escape for good if you already managed to get out of range.
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Re: Aggro range or hearth timer needs to be increased

Postby rye130 » Sun Sep 27, 2015 7:20 pm

burgingham wrote:The question is wether you actually can treat the root of all evil here: scripting stuff. Of course none of them should exist, but is there a meaningful way to fix them?

Because if there is not then we need to treat symptoms and then yes it kind of becomes an argument about people who do not want to engage in PvP. It is better to have an auto hearth option than to have an auto aggro option for sure. Turns combat into more of a siege game, but I don't really see a problem with that.


I disagree that auto hearth is better than auto aggro but that's probably just my bias, but it ultimately doesn't matter here. Because of the difference in distance between render range and aggro range, aggro speed is not nearly as much of a reaction-time based event (where the difference between a bot and a person is substantial) as auto-hearthing is. Auto-hearthing isn't countering auto-aggro because there is no auto-aggro or any need for it.

As for combat as a siege game, the problem is the same that its always been with the siege system. Either they ram check and they break your ram, or they don't and their entire base gets destroyed. There is no skill or any interesting mechanic at play here.

burgingham wrote:You always assume everyone is or should be perfectly prepared for a gank at any given time and that is just not a good premise. People need to go outside for other things and those things might lead to them not being able to fully prepare. When they are mass hauling things for example they won't carry a lot of water.

As Jorb said auto-ganking is a much much less interesting mechanic than autohearthing, mainly because the one is a short time fun thing for a few, while the other means getting to keep playing the game instead of being dead...


Water is easier than ever to carry and use now. A bucket of water on the hand and you won't need to stop to refill for a long time, more then enough time that it won't be the deciding factor of the exchange. I understand though that being prepared for combat is a MASSIVE advantage though and its a valid concern that should be addressed. My problem is that I don't think that its an issue that should be the deciding factor on if auto-hearthing remains in the game. Legitimate mechanics in the game that address this issue are needed and should be discussed, just not necessarily here.
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