Balancing Nidbanes

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

Balancing Nidbanes

Postby Procne » Tue Jun 09, 2020 10:46 am

It's common knowledge that currently Nidbanes are useless, since they are so easy to dispose of. At the same time we don't want a situation where they are too powerful and a lackluster way to kill an enemy.
In my opinion large part of the issue comes from the fact that they can be fought, as PVE combat in haven can be easily cheesed. So I would propose the following:

1. Nidbanes cannot be fought
2. They will chase their target, slowly increasing their speed, until they deal set amount of damage, after which they disappear,
3. Damage would be dealt over time, only when nidbane touches the target, at a rate of 1 damage per minute.
4. Total damage would depend on the scent. For example theft / battery scent will make nidbane deal 30 damage in total. Vandalism: 50 Murder: 120 (numbers to be tweaked, should they scale with quality?)
5. Damage from nidbane would inflict a slowly healing wound, which would also debuff skills like UA / UC / stealth and stats like int / agi / str / con. The con debuff would only scale with wound size, not total con, which would make it easier to kill crime alts, to a point where a single theft nidbane could kill 10 con alt.
6. Current behaviour of Nidbanes reaching offline character would remain.

So every Nidbane would come with a guarantee of dealing some damage to the target, and with enough Nidbanes it might be possible to kill it. The target might be forced to run away and manage taking Nidbane damage over time so that they don't stack high enough to kill it. Although if the target left a lot of scents, and his enemies were dedicated Nidbane summoners then he wouldn't have much chance.
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Re: Balancing Nidbanes

Postby Headchef » Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:01 am

Procne wrote: Although if the target left a lot of scents, and his enemies were dedicated Nidbane summoners then he wouldn't have much chance.



Read:

absolute shitters who deserve no place in the pvp scene get to kill actual fighters just because they craft spooky ghost several times :roll:

garbage idea

if you do this people will just play around this, fighting from fighter and having another alt to do vandalism/stealing since thats where you would normally get most scents from.
so this would have no actual effect aside of annoyance.
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Re: Balancing Nidbanes

Postby Procne » Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:13 am

Headchef wrote:absolute shitters who deserve no place in the pvp scene get to kill actual fighters just because they craft spooky ghost several times :roll:

No, because absolute shitters probably wouldn't get enough scents and wouldnt have enough mats to make enough nidbanes in short time.
And also, as you said:
having another alt to do vandalism/stealing since thats where you would normally get most scents from.
so this would have no actual effect aside of annoyance.

And annoyance is the goal here. Annoyance might be enough to stop strong players from harassing noobs. And if they do, they may get a slap on hand
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Re: Balancing Nidbanes

Postby Hasta » Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:19 am

Headchef wrote:absolute shitters who deserve no place in the pvp scene


Please elaborate on why an "actual fighter" gets to decide whether an absolute shitter is involved in PvP?

Right now the "pvp scene" that you refer to seems pretty one-sided, "actual fighters" get to do whatever they please to "absolute shitters" and the only law being "the right of strength". Nidbanes are supposed to resemble an expensive, hard-to-obtain way for "absolute shitters" (peaceful, inexperienced and not interested in pvp players) not even to stand their ground but merely to try and avenge their losses. As stated in the OP, nidbanes don't serve their intended purpose (or any purpose, for that matter). While I agree that the suggested changes are as much flawed as the current system, the premise of the OP is valid.
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Re: Balancing Nidbanes

Postby Headchef » Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:24 am

Ok premise, shit execution.

Good luck thinking of something like this that serve actual purpose for noobs while not being able to be heavily exploited by rival realm.

It's just dumb when you have a fight between two groups and the next fight a horde of ghosts are summoned to influence the next fight.

You can say ''expensive'' but if you wish to make it reachable by noobs then it means proper villages can easily mass produce.

If you have a good idea about this then feel free to share but everything that is unbalanced can go in the trash.

Oh and the reason obviously being you shouldn't be able to take out someone with 40 times your playtime and build up work into a character just because he destroyed your boat and you managed to find some mandrakes.
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Re: Balancing Nidbanes

Postby Procne » Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:42 am

Headchef wrote:Oh and the reason obviously being you shouldn't be able to take out someone with 40 times your playtime and build up work into a character just because he destroyed your boat and you managed to find some mandrakes.

And you're not.

First, if someone just destroyed your boat then it's 1 scent, thus 1 nidbane.

Second, if the boat was destroyed as a random act of boredom by strong player who happened to find it unprotected on a claim - then this is the kind of situation we are trying to avoid.

Third, numbers can be tweaked if you believe 50 points wound is too harsh for destroying the boat. But then, it's hard to balance, since the same vandalism scent is left by destroying a boat and destroying a house. And as stated above - maybe 50 hp wound would be too much to destroy a random boat, so the established players would think twice about leaving scents, and calculate whether it's worth it or not.
Last edited by Procne on Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:56 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Balancing Nidbanes

Postby Headchef » Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:49 am

Procne wrote:
Headchef wrote:Oh and the reason obviously being you shouldn't be able to take out someone with 40 times your playtime and build up work into a character just because he destroyed your boat and you managed to find some mandrakes.

And you're not.

First, if someone just destroyed your boat then it's 1 scent, thus 1 nidbane.

Second, if the boat was destroyed as a random act of boredom by strong player who happened to find it unprotected on a claim - then this is the kind of situation we are trying to avoid.

Third, numbers can be tweaked if you believe 50 points wound is too harsh for destroying the boat. But then, it's hard to balance, since the same vandalism scent is left by destroying a boat and destroying a house. And as stated above - maybe 50 hp wound would be too much to destroy a random boat, so the established players would think twice about leaving scents, and calculate whether it's worth it or not.


it's matter of example, in different cases different number of criminal acts are ''required''.

but I don't believe annoynace should be a goal in general like this.
you could make this dmg scale with the perpetrators hp but still what will it accomplish.

only bigger version of haven & alt, warrior travelling with alts to commit the crimes.

aggro someone, knock him out, alt quickly steals everything since can easily be 40+ theft scents and then perpetrator just pick them up.

try to think of something meaningful rather than just add something tedious because you feel ''things are unfair''.

Also bothering noobs is frowned upon now that realms are a thing so if you live in a realm where this happens to you, can try to ask those realm owners to defend you and if not move elsewhere where they do try to provide your safety.
these kind of things are part of game too I find...
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Re: Balancing Nidbanes

Postby Hasta » Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:55 am

Headchef wrote:Good luck thinking of something like this that serve actual purpose for noobs while not being able to be heavily exploited by rival realm


Once upon a time a man found a magic lamp. A genie popped out and presented the man with 3 wishes. "But be careful, - the genie said, - everything that you ask for - your rival will get twofold."
"For my first wish I want a golden palace", - the man begun.
"Granted. And your rival has two"
"For my second wish, I want a beautiful harem"
"Granted. And your rival now has two beautiful harems"
"And for my third wish... poke one of my eyes out!"


Off the top of my head, I'd say the correct approach to NBs should be somewhat similar.

Summoning a NB should be:
1) personal (as in, only avaliable for claim owner/assaulted character/next in kin - ability is inherited from a murdered character);
2) effective (as in, buff the nidbanes so they are much harder to cheese/avoid and they pose an actual threat to an actual fighter);
3) most importantly, summoning a fcking demon ghost should put a heavy toll on the summoner, not material-wise but character-wise. All kinds of slowly-healed otherworldly wounds, curses, debuffs -- basically, partial and/or temporary loss of progress.

Say, a NB is summoned by a freshly inherited player who had his ancestor character Murdered. He summons a NB, which puts a wound on the summoner "-60% of all your base stats and skills for a RL week". To compensate for "playtime difference" (or, you know, developement) the Nidbane power is scaled (non-linear) with the amount of base stats/skills that are "locked down" with this wound, so a developed character could "lend" more of his playtime, developement and LP acquired to the nidbane (while temporarily losing his progress). As an added bonus, characters that are developing multi-skilled would be better in summoning nidbanes than fighter/vandalism/crime/any other form of alt with only two or three stats raised.

Ofcourse, I'm making all this up as I write it, so the actual changes, on the off-chance they are considered, would take a lot more thought and balancing. But I believe the 3 core principles should be the aforementioned - personalized, dangerous to their target and quite literally poking one of your eyes out when summoned Nidbanes.
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Re: Balancing Nidbanes

Postby Procne » Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:59 am

It's just dumb when you have a fight between two groups and the next fight a horde of ghosts are summoned to influence the next fight.

You can say ''expensive'' but if you wish to make it reachable by noobs then it means proper villages can easily mass produce.


True, but I think you need to change perspective a bit. It seems you are judging this from perspective "if that was used in the fights we have currently", rather than "how would fights change with this mechanic".
I can imagine 3 kinds of fights:
1. random skirmishes where players only fight - thus KOs and possible murders, without theft or vandalism. In this case there will be a few scents, possibly spread between different characters. Thus not that big damage to the winning side. And the winning side already got the advantage be defeating some enemy characters
2. realm sieges. And here I think there should be no Nidbanes at all. If factions fight each other then siege mechanics should take over, and scents should not be left in sieged area
3. raiding random villages / camps. Those should leave scents and here's where Nidbanes would be strongest, due to large amount of left scents. So every raid like this should be a calculation - whether it's worth the potential Nidbane retaliation. Whether big factions will grab the scents and make Nidbanes. Is the risk too big? IMO it's better situation than "I'm stronk, I raid everything for giggles"

Headchef wrote:only bigger version of haven & alt, warrior travelling with alts to commit the crimes.

aggro someone, knock him out, alt quickly steals everything since can easily be 40+ theft scents and then perpetrator just pick them up.

And that already makes it harder to roam the world and attack random noobs. Because you have to keep those alts following you.
And then Nidbanes may destroy those alts, and you will have to replace them. And the warrior will also suffer some wound and have its stats reduced for a short time.
In general alts are a problem in all parts of the game, one that is hard to deal with. And the annoyance imo is the only goal we can have, because anything stronger will be "too strong"
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Re: Balancing Nidbanes

Postby SnuggleSnail » Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:35 pm

Have you considered raising your stats and learning to fight to get revenge on whoever fricked you up?
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