Game Development: Death

[jorb]

Even with 100% permadeath i've found myself less concerned about dying this world than in the past. Stats don't mean near as much considering the changes to combat mean i could probably be killed by 2 people with half my stats where as before maneuvers would of destroyed them. I just kind of fed a character till it was at 1.5-2 mil lp, 100 of all the stats than switched focus to a new character. If i wasn't so lazy i could of pumped a char out with those stats every 2.5-3 weeks easily because of the 300% bonus to feps, table bonuses and high quality metal curios.

Implement level caps, they suggest. It won't lead to alting, they assure me.

[Potjeh]

Not to more alting. The number of alts you need is proportionate to the time needed to build one. Think of it this way, if there was no character investment at all (ie you were at max strength right from spawning), how many concurrent characters would you make?

[jorb]

Not to more alting. The number of alts you need is proportionate to the time needed to build one. Think of it this way, if there was no character investment at all (ie you were at max strength right from spawning), how many concurrent characters would you make?

If I wanted to win? As many as I could spawn and control.

[burgingham]

Even with 100% permadeath i've found myself less concerned about dying this world than in the past. Stats don't mean near as much considering the changes to combat mean i could probably be killed by 2 people with half my stats where as before maneuvers would of destroyed them. I just kind of fed a character till it was at 1.5-2 mil lp, 100 of all the stats than switched focus to a new character. If i wasn't so lazy i could of pumped a char out with those stats every 2.5-3 weeks easily because of the 300% bonus to feps, table bonuses and high quality metal curios.

Implement level caps, they suggest. It won't lead to alting, they assure me.

You sure took our argument out of context there.

a) Alts are already everywhere because of uncapped skills. You don't want to put all your eggs into one basket because you would lose way too much then by having one character getting killed.

b) Going wide is preferable to going high. Not only has the game a relatively low player count because of people quitting, there are also no new players joining. That may have a number of reasons, but one is very likely the inability to ever catch up with someone who has played since the world started.

People will make combat alts, yes. But they can only ever pilot one (bots aside) at a time. This way if I am a newer player and have reached a stat cap I at least know I will be able to compete with anyone else in combat no matter how long they have been playing even if they maybe will just come back with another alt once I killed their first one. But if I am better at fighting than them so what? Let them come.

[lachlaan]

@Potjeh : Infinity. As many as they'd want to dispose of? I'm gonna do something taboo and give Darwoth as an example.

Player X knows that for some tasks there is a perceived soft cap past which furthering a character isn't of much benefit to said player X.

Player X then spams as many characters as he deems he might need for his raiding or otherwise nefarious efforts.

Now in this anecdote the player in question might not bot as much, but what's to stop players then from making more of the same full-strength fresh characters in order to ensure a) victory b) no consequences ?

As long as two players that are individually as strong as another player will, combined, have an advantage over said solo player, they will be a better choice than only having 1 char to throw at that player. So people will have alts lined up for logistic superiority, for numeric superiority, for combat botting purposes (dem swarm tactics). And rest assured they'll get combat bots working if that's the only way to be better.

[bmjclark]

how many concurrent characters would you make?

Quite a few.

[jorb]

(bots aside)

Yeah, about that...

[burgingham]

Well yeah what about that? Do you want to use that as an argument against any new mechanic now? Because news flash: People bot because of uncapped stats too! It is actually probably the major incentive to do it.

[CSPAN]

How to win haven?

Are there scrolling credits?

[Redlaw]

Ways ti deal with alts, is make having one character more worth a players time, daily log in bonuses, small things that if you are using one character seem to work better. Scaling states are fine as is, just trying to invoke the idea in players heads one character is better then a dozen. People will still do alting... but it make it harder on them.