Encourage PvP: Remove LP

[Neruz]

The combat system in general needs a serious overhaul. But exactly what kind of overhaul depends on what goal the devs are trying to achieve with the combat system.

[Chakravanti]

First of all. Thank you both for your valuable contributions to my thread. I appreciate you taking the time to carefully read and consider the proposal and make an intelligent reply. This is, after all, no small suggestion.

@Potjeh

I can claim with equal credibility that you can't have a balanced sandbox game that encourages PVP. It makes raider play style superior to all others, especially if everything relies on items like you suggest. Due to overabundance of raiders, being a producer is a losing prospect, so nobody wants to do it and as a consequence you get a complete collapse of the economy.

WIthout PvP a sandbox isn't a sandbox anymore. It's within the definition of the game. Even Jorb has said as much elsewhere.

Now, I don't see how why what you predict for my proposal has not already come to pass. Perhaps because you have not been involved in PvP you haven't seen this.

When in fact what I propose will actually encourage people to play either style because without productive peasant characters Raiders will kill each other off. Raiding will stop until someone starts producing again. PvP characters are dependent on peasant characters for production and character development. Likewise, peasants are dependent on PvP characters for defense.

As it stands, Barbie doesn't need any character development. He's nigh invincible so he receives no combat attrition. Increasing PvP will Increase attrition and thus increase the need for peasant types to start making food for character development.

Well, I was more demonstrating how easy it is to pull stuff out of one's ass than making a serious argument. But now that you mention it, there do need to be better defences for one's property. And it needs to come as a part of any combat rebalance package, as it's an integral part of it. More specifically, overcoming defences must always be more expensive than making them, because the would-be raider also gets loot on success whereas the defender doesn't get anything on success.

I am not pulling this out of my ass. This is based on my experience in real sandbox games. Their successes at creating enjoyable farming & PvP environments and their major failings at poorly implemented attempts to fix balance issues. It is also based on my experience with RTS & TB strategy & diplomacy games.

Also, This is a must.

@DeadlyPencil

warri... actually quality items would be worth more than than ever with my suggestion as they are the only thing that affect damage. So lets say you had 200 dex and you made a 200 quality item, the item is still quality 200, however on that newbie character, who can only make quality 10 items, it might be equivalant to quality 30 because its being reduced, every stat increase he gets, he would be able to use it better until he can use it as a quality 200 item. In this game quality constantly cascades and affects what it touches. well just cascade it one more time based on the persons stats using it, and you can no longer give a newbie a good bow and have him kill people.

Both true and false. As you will see when I counter your second point all that will need to be done to allow this newbie to use a bow is feed him enough of the proper stat. You could theoretically create this character and have him deployable within a few hours. However To do so would represent that charecter consuming the resources produced by a week-or-so's worth of work. The guy wielding a bow now needs to be fed dex instead of training marksman. Quality is still a factor but rather, the aim here is to make all classes as easy to develop as the current bow murder alt. The bow murder alt would just have a different place on the combat field (behind tanks) because of this.

everyone does the same base damage (5 damage for example),

This is NOT true. Credos will allow a charecter to focus into becoming a certain 'class' of character. DPS will still be dependant on STR, or another stat (Dex for Dagger, bows, AGI for swords, etc.) and a character's Credo will determine how easy or difficult it is to feed that character an appropriate amount of food to gain the stats that most benefit his class.

however now everything will be dependant on resource aquisition, so now items will be the determining factor.

This is partly true, resources will be important but so will properly developing a diverse set of characters. Thus production of food will become even more important than it is now.

iam hoping they change it so you cant have 10x the hp as someone else so almost everyone would have the same hp, an increase in damage from a person having a quality 40 sword vs a quality 160 would be quite alot.

I am not proposing a change to the Quality development system. It works fine. HP would be dependent on con and, what perhaps should be a to much lesser extant than it currently is, STR. But as I mentioned, double softcapping would effectively mean that even tank types (Heavy armor, high con) would have a 'max MHP range.'

The point of that suggestion was so that people with essentially the same quality would be equal.

No. The point is to make charecter development less difficult so that permadeth is not a crippling aversion to PvP, but rather something that doesn't just let you 'summon and be back to the bane in less than a minute' to quote someone in a debate on evacing in SB.

combat is based on combat skill selection and their skill as a player along with team coordination.

This. Especially the latter. It is about effective developing a diverse set of credos that can work together on the battlefield to thwart invaders/invade.

if you want to get rid of grind, you have to have characters essentially equal. if they are not equal ,then you will have to "grind" to catch up to other people. By doing this method, the "grind" will be high quality item/food aquisition.

The grind is about production of resources (Which include food btw). This suggestion has no direct impact on how much damage a character does beyond double softcapping FEP development. It DOES mean that no one becomes such an unarmed ninja in Heavy armor that no one can hit them by simply investing months of grind.

[Potjeh]

Well, if you want to redefine sandbox as it suits your argument, than sure. But IMHO encouraging PvP is equivalent to adding cement into the sandbox, as it's done at the expense of all other playstyles. It's unique to the PvP playstyle - overabundance of farmers doesn't make other professions any less feasible. Overabundance of raiders makes it pointless to engage in any productive activity. There'll always be more than enough PvP oriented players, there's no need to encourage them.

That being said, I fully agree that combat needs rebalancing and that numbers should play a bigger role than individual skill. I can also certainly get behind the idea of making character development more like ancestor worship, because I think that's a wonderful system that needs to be copied in different parts of the game.

But the real problem with making characters less expensive effort-wise is that it breaks theft. A thief's investment in overcoming his target's defenses needs to be bigger than the cost of those defenses. And the cost of defenses needs to be infinitely raisable, to accommodate infinitely raisable value of the target's possessions. Only so can one make himself an unprofitable target (at the cost of a significant percentage of his production). If making a thief character has a more or less finite cost, there comes a point where it's impossible to further raise the cost of looting one's property. One alternative is to require risking multiple characters in a theft attempt, but that's really not what theft is all about. The other is to introduce material costs into the process of breaking in, and IIRC you suggested that before. IMHO, the second option would work perfectly.

But the main point here is that this all needs to come in one big package. Take any of the elements out, and the whole system becomes unbalanced.

[Chakravanti]

I completely agree that the investment into defense should outweigh a thieves' investment. What I do NOT agree with is that these investment should correspond to a timeline of character activity. I do NOT propose that it should be at all cheap to make a viable thief. Merely that if one has all the resources immediately available to oneself, one can eat all the food in a manner of perhaps half an hour at most as one takes the time to feed one's character the appropriate foodstuffs.

The consumption of these foodstuff fully represents the time invested into the development of the character.

As to the definition of sandbox. I put to you the task of showing me any game considered 'Sandbox' by any reputable review that does not contains some form of PvP. Refusing to acknowledge that PvP is an intrinsic factor of sandbox is to deny what a sandbox is. The devs have decided upon PK anywhere. Given that I would beseech you to take particular notice of my initial observation of the duality between creating high levels of character investment time factor that require an individual to be so attached to the character itself and the time invested that their possessed and acquired resources become less valuable than their investment. I say that that they should be equivalent or players will always simply log off when being raided because investment is so much more valuable that the actual resources which can be replaced far more quickly. PvP becomes a simple matter of destroying other peoples accumulated wealth when you have managed to work for months to achieve a character that is invincible.

The current ancestral system, while novel in concept simply serves to further this imba of character development in its current implementation.

If Character development is equivalent to the resources contained then I would be more than happy to log in to defend my territory, items and claim. If I die, then my character gains an ancestor and I can spend resources to build him back up because in dying, I and my comrades preserved, or at least attempted to preserve, the resources with which we could rebuild our characters.

I can certainly understand the peasant's fear that Should he choose to play peacefully that thieves and raiders would take away all his productivity. I say to this peasant, "Who is your Lord and Liege, why have your productive efforts not benefited him and his army enough that he did not deem it worthwhile to defend you and your wealth"

And yes, as I said, through traps and other ways of increasing defensive measure. Players should be able to have a 'defensive advantage'. But the whole point of this is that battle attrition should be equal, whether you log in to defend your claim and resources or log off and let them destroy your village. Then we would log in to defend! Because at least then we can cause attrition to the enemy as well rather than allowing them to ransack our village free of charge. Nay they should pay in attrition that in the future they will balance the cost of war versus the spoils of potential victory.

In all of this, What inevitably occurs through making battle attrition prolific is that peasants and their work have a renewable demand of their produced goods. As I stated before. Through this system of encouraged PvP by making character investment less difficult, and thus increased battle attrition by proxy, the role of the peasant becomes increased and anything but discouraged.

Eventually, should people decide that production is not worthwhile because those warmongers have dominated the land. Those people will attrition themselves out of an ability to play because no one is renewing their resources for character development. Eventually, they will be force to turn their swords to plowshares because no one is left capable of wielding a sword. Peasants will be safe for a time due to the sheer lack of deployable violent characters.

Quintessentially:If the term 'sandbox' is too disputable for you then I will adjust my terminology to be more concrete. If you wish to have a PK anywhere game you cannot play a peaceful character without some form of subservience and taxation toward a violent authority willing to defend your pacifist personal ideals because someone will kill you and steal your shit unless you man the fuck up and defend your claim.

[Chakravanti]

It occurs to me that there is another way of adjusting credos' benefit within the FEP system.

Instead of making some stats cheaper and others more expensive to raise, you could adjust the double softcap so that rogue types get dimishing returns on con sooner and tank types get dimishing returns later. For example, a tank type could benefit more from having 200 con than a rogue type.

The difference is that in the former a rogue and a tank could feasably both get the same HP but that it would be much more expensive for the rogue to do so. In the later depending on the actual algorithms the double softcap would mean the rogue would have to have 400 con to get the same HP as a tank type at 200. Essentially they can both cost more or less the same amount of resources but I do think the former might be more intuitive and involve less hidden formulas.

As a third option. FEPs could in fact be TRIPLE softcapped by implementing both. Again this can be both equal to or greater than either individually but it comes down to how complex (and thus, create potential for further variation) you want to make the system.

The core point is not the proposed mechanics here but the gameplay factor of making it cheaper to make a thief/scout with low con easier to produce than one with high con. The benefit of investing the con is that when a thief fails a trap check or two he has a higher survivability rate and the resource investment to making a second thief should be comparable to investing the necessary con for a single thief to survive twice the amount of failed traps.

[Jackard]

*looks over the thread*

Why would you remove LP but not skill values?

[Chakravanti]

This would remove all numerically valued skills from the game. Resources would be processed based on their Stat+Ql formula versus Stat, skill, & QL formula. You are indeed correct, not removing skills with LP would be asinine, LOL. I figured it would be intuitive.

Also, Acquisition of single purchase skills would come from the proposed fetch quests. It should be significantly more difficult for a non-peasant type to acquire productive skills though. And relatively easy for peasant types as they will be combat nerfed and have low mordor survivability. Although it could be that mordorish fetch quests would be essential to peasants and thus requiring them to have the aid of a developed hunter/ranger combat type.

[Jackard]

i cannot comprehend that post right now

but it seems to me that large, solid bonuses to crafts provided by feats/talents* and/or synergies** might be an improvement over the current system of directly buying points in a craft

*Green Thumb: +XX to farming
**Swordsmanship skill: +XX to smithing swords

[Chakravanti]

Well I do look forward to hearing your opinion when you've had the time, and coffee, to be able to digest it all.

[Jackard]

yea i need something to concentrate so i can filter out the bullshit first