Game Development: Death

[lachlaan]

Instate groups calculated by kin allegiance, town memberships, anything of the sort

I don't really see how this helps anything. If the point is that having alts makes your "mains" less powerful, then just don't include the alts in the party/town/whatever, no?

That was just me thinking out loud about how to not make it exploitable. Could be as simple as defaulting it to bunch up and average people targetting the same person, or the same pre-formed group, if all else fails. Or you guys can consider a solution for that part of it, but all in all would it not encourage progress over numbers?

[loftar]

Could be as simple as defaulting it to bunch up and average people targetting the same person

Seems I would simply bring a couple of alts with me on any journey, then, in order to bring down the average of anyone targeting me. :)

Trying to make the game mechanically identify "actual" groups seems extremely difficult.

[lachlaan]

Indeed, that was the issue with braziers being normalized as well people were building unfueled ones to bring down the average. It'd be tricky to get right that's for sure, but idk, perhaps worth looking into. And it might still be a big ol clusterfuck to have people trying to target any one of the alts with all the other alts in order to prevent someone from just systematically taking them all down.

[Kaios]

Trying to make the game mechanically identify "actual" groups seems extremely difficult.

I heard there's a party system looking for some love

[strpk0]

I'm just throwing stuff out there, but would only allowing 1 person at a time to attack the same character help with the alting thing in any way? Also perhaps increasing the advantage you get from having higher combat stats. Maybe like this the only way your alt is gonna be worth a damn against a proper "main" character is if it becomes your main character anyway.

Now I know the "no multi way combat" thing can be easily exploited, but there's ways to fix that too. Just food for thought.

[Ethan]

I would be interested to hear J-lo's thoughts on the 'End Game'.

When you have a decent hermitage or large village setup and running smoothly, is the end game to just keep grinding up Q?
Is it to use your high Q to wage war on those around you?
Expand into a very large thriving city?
Build creatively?

I think trying to be too 'sandbox' and trying to fit every aspect of play style is just making all of them more bland.

I think there needs to be a clear end game goal(s), something for a village/individual to actually strive towards. Then it might become more clear what type of game this is, and what mechanics should be introduced to balance the end game.
Right now there doesn't seem to much reason to grind Q, unless you want a competitive advantage over your rivals, which is then not that important with the current ram situation.

[loftar]

I'm just throwing stuff out there, but would only allowing 1 person at a time to attack the same character help with the alting thing in any way?

Seems like the opposite. If I wanted to not get attacked, I'd just have an alt follow me around in combat constantly.

[dvsmasta]

No permadeath = no reason for lots of alts. Such a simple and beautiful solution.

[dvsmasta]

I'm just throwing stuff out there, but would only allowing 1 person at a time to attack the same character help with the alting thing in any way?

Seems like the opposite. If I wanted to not get attacked, I'd just have an alt follow me around in combat constantly.

Agreed - that would be easily exploitable.

[strpk0]

I'm just throwing stuff out there, but would only allowing 1 person at a time to attack the same character help with the alting thing in any way?

Seems like the opposite. If I wanted to not get attacked, I'd just have an alt follow me around in combat constantly.

Yeah, that's what I mentioned could happen. But there's ways to avoid that too. Though in all honesty I can't really come up with any good ones. Maybe making the combat "lock" time out if no proper damage is dealt to the other person within X amount of time (perhaps even just damaging their armour)? That way, even if you have an alt following you around with a bot or something it would actually have to constantly do some damage to you to be of any use.