Game Development: A Touch of Vengeance

[Kaios]

Does the quality of the fetter and dolman effect the ghost in any way?

[*] Nidbanes scale in power with their target, the quality of their fetter, and the severity of the crime. The Nidbane has the target's stats, times a factor per crime -- 0.3 for theft, 0.5 for vandalism, 0.6 for battery, and 1.2 for murder -- softcapped by the Fetter's qualities.

However there's no mention whether or not the Dolmen itself effects the quality of either the fetter or the ghost and I was just going to ask that.

[Smoopadoop]

Now that I think of it, if everyone's bitching about getting slammed for accidentally taking a branch from someone's property, how about this:
Murder gets Nidbanes. Multiple fetters = 1 stronger nidbane, not 20 weak ones.
Everything else gets a curse, which is still really bad, but won't fuck you to death. The curse starts off weak, but more fetters makes it stronger. (this way, one vand scent won't have you destroy your whole town accidentally)
Battery: Curse of the scarred. Randomly take injuries of varying damage, but can't die from it. Can't recieve bleeding injuries from this, no way to actually die, only able to get close to death. Can't take you below 15% maybe. Also, lowered stats.
Theft: Curse of the poor. Randomly drop items, have a chance to fail picking up an object, items fall out of containers you open, small chance to get hurt sometimes. Can't die from it. And lowered stats.
Vandalism: Curse of the Degraded. When using anything, have a chance to damage it. This can't destroy something unless the curse is 3 fetters strong, or more. Smaller chance to get hurt sometimes. Can't die from it.

In addition, have cursed players (and players followed by banes) to have an aura about them visible to all other players, so they know what they did.

Also perhaps you can change the curse of the poor to be something better than my idea. Perhaps lower luck with anything rng based? Less LP? who knows.

[bmjclark]

During the whole thing with brodgar, they surrounded a ram with 20-30 alts which i had to kill to break the ram. That means i would of had 40-60 ghosts (battery + murder) to deal with upon login. I can only see problems coming with this. I think it's a cool idea, but i just see myself using the rage alts more when i actually play again. And honestly, im not sure 40-60 ghosts wouldnt just crash my client

[flagmaster]

Dissapointed. Very much.
I agree that being criminal should not be risk-free. I'll come back to it in next post.

But this way it is absolute crap.

I'll try to explain why. It will be long, hope you'll read it.
In theory of game-making, in order to make a successfull game developer shoud make mechanics which are:
1) Interesting (as vague as this term is)
2) As little boring/tedious as possible (boring things make people get bored and quit)
3) Increasing playtime (more content. Contradicts with 2 since cheapest way to increase playtime is to add grinding)
4) Resistant to abuse/avoid by fact that this is a game.
5) Undamaging to other mechanics (otherwise you do zero work implementing things and then removing them)

In the same theory every game has (or at least should have) it's key selling points - things which are making the game unique and desired.

The main selling keypoint of Haven is (was) risk&reward in PVP, permadeath, full loot. This is the reason to spend months going through all chores and grinding. It is almost unique in modern MMO world. And it provides really long-lasting content in the endgame.
Additional keypoints are:
* crafting system (but it can be went through completely in 2-6 weeks. After that it's not new and therefore boring)
* curios system (I'd estimate in 2 weeks while you get used to it. 6 if you want to craft every single curio)
* Possibility to make your own shiny client (only for chosen ones).

If you remove these - modern MMORPGS like Black Desert become direct competitors to you. And win.

What you did with this update? Ghosts are
1) Interesting once. It's fun to send your first 10 ghosts and kill your first 10 ghosts. Then it gets boring. +10 hours of game content
2) Spamming ghosts and dealing with them will be just dumb grind with vague profit for senders and zero for receivers
3) Crime == tons of dull work with zero profit in most cases.
4) Easily abused by alts.
5) Raiding became zero profit with charter stones. Now its negative profit to criminals.
6) It introduces an absolute need to log in every 24h. This thing repels even hardcore players easily.

To summarize:
Economical reason to PVP is dead due to charter stones. And is decapitated by investment of playtime into handling alts and/or cleaning ghosts.
Fun reason to PVP also dead bcz for 10 min of fun player pays with loads of playtime.
Main game feature - risk of permadeath and robbery is crippled since nobody would want to commit crimes.

Without PVP/PK Haven can be went through it 1-2 month and quit since there is no more endgame content here and early/mid game lasts 1-2 month depending on playstyle.

Even players which are cheering up for ghosts now will later understand that without risk of being raided/killed game got a lot more boring
End of critics. Next post will be about proposals.

[Ethan]

Does the quality of the fetter and dolman effect the ghost in any way?

[*] Nidbanes scale in power with their target, the quality of their fetter, and the severity of the crime. The Nidbane has the target's stats, times a factor per crime -- 0.3 for theft, 0.5 for vandalism, 0.6 for battery, and 1.2 for murder -- softcapped by the Fetter's qualities.

However there's no mention whether or not the Dolmen itself effects the quality of either the fetter or the ghost and I was just going to ask that.

Cheers, I thought I read it, but couldn't find it again.

[venatorvenator]

Main game feature - risk of permadeath and robbery is crippled since nobody would want to commit crimes.

What are you talking about? Proper raiders have already said this won't change a thing for them, it just needs some more logistics.

Even players which are cheering up for ghosts now will later understand that without risk of being raided/killed game got a lot more boring

No, what makes the game boring is the fact that you can't reliably interact with strangers because crime is too unbalanced and you're forced to play alone for the sake of safety. And that if you do want to play this anyway, you have to either walk 10 hours or remain in the central supergrids and build 2-3 brickwalls, and only ever leave them with alts.

[flagmaster]

What are you talking about? Proper raiders have already said this won't change a thing for them, it just needs some more logistics.

Alt abusing is making things more dull and tedious. Same way you can make 1 battering ram costing 100 steel. It will not change a thing, just add a bit more time to grind shit. PVP should be interactive and interesting instead of just more shit to carry to raid place.

No, what makes the game boring is the fact that you can't reliably interact with strangers because crime is too unbalanced and you're forced to play alone for the sake of safety. And that if you do want to play this anyway, you have to either walk 10 hours or remain in the central supergrids and build 2-3 brickwalls, and only ever leave them with alts.

Like I said. Crime system should be improved. But not in a stupid way it's done by this patch. Also, you can interact with strangers in Venetia This is actually how history went - towns offered protection to people with laws & taxes on the other hand, while wilderness made them free and unsafe

[flagmaster]

Now proposals.

Crimes should be risky and rewarding. Not just risky. Not just risky and tedious to handle the consequences.

To do that first the rewarding part should be brought back.
Do something with charter stones to avoid complete evacuation or dozens people help incoming.
Proposal 1. Limit the number of teleports by charter stone per day.
or
Proposal 2. Invent big and complete siege mechanics which allows to put a village under siege and teleporting to/from sieged village should be impossible.

Crime responsibility should be weighted against it's heaviness.
Crime responsibility should be more of a risk than of dull work.
Crimes should not be able to be commited by cheap alts
Proposal 3. Criminal character development should be weighted against personal claim owner / village claim development. Some math should be done here to prevent it for abusing. So 1 UA characters should not be able to enter an avg 40 stat claim owner land
Proposal 4. After stealing an item victim gains a random chance of stealing 0-3 items from a criminal. But only after victim (or it's descendant). It's rather hard to identify programmatically an actual victim and items belonging to criminal but possible. I'll give some ideas here if devs consider this as possibility and ask me to
Proposal 5. Same mechanics as above with vandalising.
Proposal 6. Introduce something between knocked out and murdered. With less penalty to victim than death and less consequence for murderer. Like inflicting a lasting wound which gives stat penalty for some time.
Proposal 7.
For murder crime, ghost system remains but with some tweaks.
a) criminal or it's hearth should be tracked down. So it needs an effort from victim to send ghosts. Maybe a claim where criminal once had trespassing permission (as non-white group or as any depending on abuse scenarios) can also count as tracking.
b) Ghosts spawn randomly near character and aggro instantly when player is active. (Deal with logged-out/loading character. Give chance to fight back. Give chance to spawn at undesirable moment)
c) Ghosts are limited to 2-3 at a time (to make fight back possible and complexity random)
d) Ghosts linger forever until killed (kill being logged of for a while trick)
e) Other players cannot attack ghosts. Or can, but ghosts gain some buffs against them. (kill helping trick)
d) In case of more murders while previous ghosts active, ghosts get stat buff. (harden possiblity to have pk alt and increase chance to lose it)
f) Ghost speed and abilities to pass through obstacles are random with chances increasing with number of ghosts sent (more randomnsess, more tactics to deal with, more fun)
g) Ghosts get stronger in time if not given a chance to spawn and killed(character must be played to give a chance to spawn a ghost. Otherwise they cumulate and get angrier)
Proposal 8. Character with less than some degree of development should be murdered without consequences. (alt spam protection)
Proposal 9. Newly created character gains a 2-4 days protection from killing if he was non-inherited and did not use charter stone. (noob killing protection while still dealing with alts)
Proposal 10. Murdered character weakness plays role into punishment. Killing a char of equal strength should be ways less punished than killing noobs. Can be reflected in a number of ways.

Done for now.

And remember one thing. 10 players playing 10h a day will always, ALWAYS! be able to grief and abuse a solo infrequent player. Even in WoW, Aion, real world or whatever. Effort and level of abuse may vary but srong remain strong and weak remain weak. So going overprotective is a bad thing to do.
Providing a way to socialize more efficiently, is a way better approach. But how to implement it in game and improve the balance is another loong post

[gogtabi]

I believe there is some sort of glitch in rediscovering scents. I had a buddy make a new theft scent yet i still can't discover it. i have all of the skills.

[Jalpha]

10/10 thread. Drowning in tears and it's glorious.



Noobkilling and crime sprees on the way out doesn't seem like a bad thing to me.