Encourage PvP: Remove LP

[Chakravanti]

*sigh*

I make valid arguments trying to explain what I propose so that you can understand it better and all you have done is insult my use inherently vague terminology (despite the fact that I offered an entire alternative explanation without using that word).

Furthermore, I speak from experiencing PvP in this game. AFAIK, you do not. Your participation in this thread is relegated to well spoken attacks on my arguments while failing to addres and of the logic of the issues I have proposed. You fail to put forth any logic substantiating the current system and why you believe it works despite my experience. Were you to do so it would involve you telling me why I am playing the game wrong and how I could achieve a reasonable means of self defense within the current system. I fail to see any such critique of my arguments which have been excessively detailed.

You sir, are a troll. Good day.

[Potjeh]

I never said that the current system works well.

[Potjeh]

OK, had a 15h workday yesterday, so I posted some things just to vent out a bit. Sorry, man.

Anyway, I still don't completely agree with what you're suggesting. Not because it's not on the right track, but because it's not far enough along that track.

What I'd like to see is an almost complete removal of character development. It should only amount to acquirement of item recipes and skills like ranging. Everything else should be based solely on the items you have on you. What this means is that a target can get significantly wealthier if enough thieves fail when they try to steal from him, because their corpses will be loaded with valuable loot.

In essence, H&H should look to Ogame for inspiration on PvP balance. There, you can make yourself impossible to attack profitably, but the price for it is a significant decrease in the speed of your progress (sure, a big enough fleet can always smash you without losses, but it'll spend more fuel getting to you than your loot is worth). Obviously, some stuff just doesn't apply, because you can't do fleet saves in H&H and your production facilities in H&H can be destroyed (though it's somewhat circumventable with a decentralized production system). But the general principles found there can be applied to H&H.

[jorb]

As we envision the replacement system for LP, it will be heavily tied to resources.

[Neruz]

The main issue i see with PvP atm is that of the differing power level of characters.

One character can become effectively immortal; unable to even be harmed by almost every other character in the game. If the person who owns this character decides to grief, there's nothing anyone can do about it. If you impliment means by which players can defend themselves from this player, then no-one can raid, as such defenses would be even more effective against anyone else.


I fear ths problem will continue to crop up so long as vastly disproportionate power levels exist. Other online games throughout the years have run into the same issue throughout the years; any game that involves some sort of levelling or increasing in power levels runs into this problem, even when the levelling is capped at some arbitrary value.

The only solutions i've seen to this are to make engaging lower level characters not worthwhile; this can be done numerous ways, but the usual way is to add powerful NPC 'guards' to public locations and to ensure that higher level characters get nothing for killing lower level characters. Unfortunately in HnH, unlike in most other online games, it's possible to lose months, even years of work to someone wrecking your shit, even if they don't kill you, which means that griefers continue to kill people if only to piss them off.

The only other solutions i can think of is to either reduce the scaling of power substantially so that even a fully decked out character with maximum possible everything can still be taken down by half a dozen 'noobs' (this is how the real word works), or to make it impossible to higher level characters to engage lower level ones.


I cannot think of any other way to solve the combat problems. This is particulary engrarious in HnH due to the permanent death mechanics; people are usually unwilling to get into PvP combat because they'll lose their toon and far too much work (i hear members of towns often log off during raids to avoid dying). So even if you balance combat perfectly, you're never really going to 'encourage' PvP, because most people have too much to lose.


I have no idea how one would solve that issue and retain the permanent death system. But there's my 2 cents.

--EDIT--

Hmm, i went a little off-track there. Oh well.