Bugfixes: Banners & Familiars

[LadyV]

MagicManICT has hit the biggest issue of permadeath. It is a noble concept to attempt to employ in a game except the creation and maintainence of a horde of alts diminishes a loss to some as a mere inconvenience. Alts or not as long as people will create ways to preserve their work and time investment.

A revamping of the combat or siege system may fix some issues but it does not solve the underlying problems of all that comes with permadeath. The second major issue is the belief system although a nice system has further unbalanced this situation by favoring combat much more greatly than peace and civilization.

As I mentioned before the systems in themselves are fine but they must be balanced to create equality to the choices.

[MagicManICT]

Well, if one were to do a historical analysis of being peaceful and civilized vs war-like and barbaric, the latter wins almost every time. (Probably safe to say every time, but hate to use an absolute here and be proved wrong. )

I do like the belief system, but yes, it needs to be balanced back out.

[TeckXKnight]

You'll never be able to discourage alts in a permadeath game. The very nature of it encourages players to diversify and develop a stable of characters that can be used for various functions so that if one dies, you don't lose your whole progress. The question is whether this can be done, leave a satisfactory game experience in place, and discourage botting and other forms of "soft" cheating.

I'd argue that it is possible but we have to abandon the conventional thinking that we're locked into. Nearly every single idea that comes out is simply to tweak the current systems slightly when that is not a solution and is open to, as we've seen time and time again, generating more problems. What we don't need is more of the same.

[MagicManICT]

I'd love to hear these non-conventional systems if anyone has thought of one. One could certainly come up with game mechanics that make it hard to develop more than one character at a time without multi-accounting, though. Even then, with the right mechanics, one would have a very hard time because of the level of interaction needed.

[Potjeh]

Replace character grind with gear grind. Presto, botters are just making loot for legit players, who'll tend to be better at combat due to having more experience.

[jordancoles]

Replace character grind with gear grind. Presto, botters are just making loot for legit players, who'll tend to be better at combat due to having more experience.

I wouldn't say that. For the longest time the hardest botters ARE the experienced players who have just gotten sick and tired after 3 years of farming, log collecting and foraging for themselves

[Slaya15]

Doing away with curios and LP wouldn't be "that" hard. Just make it so that as you use a skill, it goes up. Of course this is still bot and exploitable, but let's face it. What isn't? I've heard stories about the bucket grinders from previous worlds, and that is the first thing that came to mind, but at the same time, if you only give UA / MC / MM from actually doing damage, or at least shooting, you limit people bloating their combat skills from day 1 on server. Mix that with after earning so many skill ups, you either select a skill to buy, like... I kill enough rabbits to get like 10 UA, and it unlocks a skill, or I get to pick a skill from the list like we do currently, but once I lock in my selection, it takes away all the other skills from that 'tree'. It would be a total pain in the ass for devs to figure out what action triggers what xp, but since the topic is on abusing curios / bots, that kinda sorta but not helps. As with bucket grinders, leveling any trade profession wouldn't be hard, so maybe implement some manner of diminishing return if you make the same item too many times in a row, or even in an hour / day.

[TeckXKnight]

Doing away with curios and LP wouldn't be "that" hard. Just make it so that as you use a skill, it goes up. Of course this is still bot and exploitable, but let's face it. What isn't?

There's a reason why no one did this after UO (Which isn't quite true, there have been a number of very unsuccessful mmos that have attempted this since then while trying to be successors to UO). There's 'possible to bot' and then there is 'designed for bots to play and not players.'

[MagicManICT]

There's a few successful ones, too, that have used the skill for action. I will note that by "successful," I mean still in business and not closed doors after a few months.

[Lman8786]

MagicManICT has hit the biggest issue of permadeath. It is a noble concept to attempt to employ in a game except the creation and maintainence of a horde of alts diminishes a loss to some as a mere inconvenience. Alts or not as long as people will create ways to preserve their work and time investment.

A revamping of the combat or siege system may fix some issues but it does not solve the underlying problems of all that comes with permadeath. The second major issue is the belief system although a nice system has further unbalanced this situation by favoring combat much more greatly than peace and civilization.

As I mentioned before the systems in themselves are fine but they must be balanced to create equality to the choices.

That's completely wrong. Civilization is much more favored then PvP. One can sit inside his/hers Brick wall for the whole world, by simply ram checking everyday and they would never be able to be raided..