Bucket Grinding

[rye130]

I'm against tasked based grinding aswell, don't want to play Runescape. I'm definitely for a significant change to character development *cough* curiousities *cough* though.

[dra6o0n]

they should add in repetitive stress disorder, and make it fatal

*Points to happiness meter*

[Serpensio]

It's not an improvement at all, since people who want to increase something like carpentry will now macro treechopping and buckets to get the increases.

Exactly ONLY the approximately 5-10% of the player base which desires to be a master carpenter would be Tree grinding, not the remaining 95% as is the current situation.

Here is an established village who's cook has stopped playing, now they need a new cook, unfortunately for them their new cook has cooking 1 to start with, so he's going to be ruining their q100 foodstuff for quite a while until he stops detracting from it so much. This is a Bad Thing to implement on it's own.

Then who pray tell WOULD be cooking the food without ruining it if none of them have any cooking skill? Seriously these are the most incoherent counter arguments imaginable.

Bring in task-based grinding, sure. Carpenters macro treecutting/buckets, unarmed macro sparring with an alt inside a house where nobody can hurt you for afking (since everyone needs UA, expect plenty of people to macro this while sleeping/working/etc), marksman would be the most tedious thing to start, then get stupid amounts faster the higher your skill gets, cooks macroing giant amounts of flour that the farmers are macroing. Smiths, those poor bastards, will probably macro nuggets into bars and back. Are you seeing the flaws of this? Encouraging macroing is a fucking stupid way to fix people macroing.

The system of 'grind this shit til you want to stop playing or just give in and macro' is quite possibly the worst system ever designed. Darkfall's swimmers, Oblivion/Morrowinds run against walls/crouchwalk at walls, they all have the flaw that they're so tedious you just don't do it yourself. At least with the LP/XP system people can do things that interest them and still bring up the relevant skills without wanting to quit because they don't want to make 500 buckets so they no longer softcap q10 logs.

Macroers macro regardless of the system being task based or not, changing the system does not "promote" macroing.
Requiring a huge investment in time to become "effective" or "master" at what they wish to do, and making macroing/mindless grinding the single most effective/easiest way to get there, is what encourages macroing.

I'm all for making learning skills tasked based, which would be much more interesting and fun, IMO. However, doing so will not change macroing, only fix clear-cut bucket grinding. The problem with macroing is different.

The problem with macroing lies not with the tasks, but with the whole skill leveling system:

Doing one task over and over gives you LP to use for any stat or skill. This is a bad thing because it allows a player to use any task, usualy the one which gives the most LP for the least effort, and put that effort towards anything they wish. As said above, changing skills to be task based will help curb this, but not prevent it completely.

Stat gain and the most important skills cost an astronomically high amount of LP/exp. Rage, Trespassing and Vandalism cost upwards of 30000 LP, and seem to be the most likely skills a macroer would go for. And cost of leveling stats scales, quite literally, exponentially, while gains per task, do not. Getting 50 in any stat will cost a total of 5000! LP, or, 5000 + 4900 + 4800 + 4700 + ... + 300 + 200 LP. I don't even want to calculate that. Nobody playing casually will ever reach those levels for quite some time, but macroers, can reach it quickly and painlessly. The fact that these high levels are so expensive for a regular, non-macroing player, only further unbalances this, and encourages players to macro.

Teired Levels. One thing I've always hated about level based games, is that no matter what, the highest level player always wins, barring stupidity, and given a >5 level/item range. While H&H doesn't have levels of those kind, stat levels accomplish pretty much the same thing. Those who play the longest, will always have a hardcoded advantage, which in many cases can completely negate the other player's actual "player skill". Perma-death helps this some (one person can be ganged up on to some degree of effectiveness), but if a macroer can macro huge stats and uses very high quality items, they will have very little to worry about in simple PVP, a greater chance of survival in wars, and very little setback if killed (just macro back up again). This is the biggest encourager for Macroing/botting there is, and the hardest to take care of too. Whereever time is required to become better then the next guy, sacrifices are made to put in more time then everyone else. When you have a system (be it a macro, real money transfer for items, or powerleveling service) that can take that time for you, while you do other things, you've hit jackpot.

Client Security. The fact that the client can't prevent simple macros from being used (third party programs/hacks will always be a problem, though possible to be lessened), and the game can not identify/interrupt macroing itself, while it does not encourage macroing by itself, it in no way discourages it. I'd suggest doing like Runescape does, and add random events that can interrupt macros.



Put simply, the conventional "Linear Leveling" model many games use, or base from, is flawed (from the player's pespective, it's great for money-grabbing though). It promotes grinding your life away to become competitive with those who started before you, forces newbs to near useless status, and encourages finding ways to maximize your returns for the least amount of time and effort, of which can include: powerleveling, macroing, and botting.

H&H's system isn't much different, unfortunately, and only a complete re-design could fully eliminate macroing. Anything else would only be a patch to curb the effects (such as clear-cutting forests for bucket grinding), or limit the number of those who macro (hunting down and banning macroers, and improving the client and game to prevent simple macros from being executed in game, and interrupt macros, making macro programmers' lives hell trying to write workarounds.)

[dra6o0n]

Blame all the murders and such on macroers. It makes sense, because they want your bloody LP, which stands for LIFE POINTS.

[LimaZulu]

Blame all the murders and such on macroers. It makes sense, because they want your bloody LP, which stands for LIFE POINTS.

Dude, you should get lp for helping out kin, and they'd be love points.

[Jackard]

Welcome to the tragedy of the commons. The answer is staring us in the face. X action correlates to X points in skill X. If I chop trees all day my lumberjacking skill goes up, and my strength goes up. If all I do is swim, my swimming skill goes up (perhaps I can swim in stronger currents or deeper water?) and my stamina goes up. If all I do is melee chickens then my melee skill goes up, etc. It doesn't have the flexibility of the current system but it eliminates people grinding buckets so they can, for example, fight bears later on, or grinding ore so they can become an archer, or some ridiculous example of that nature. Granted people will STILL grind, but at the very least it will be more meaningful, and realistic (a word I am somewhat loathe to use)

In some other 3d sandbox game character development is task-based. u getting better in something what you actually do. skills rising from improving (less material cost) from repairing and from actually doing something. I playing here for almost month (8 month played in mentioned game) and i want to say - task based development more interesting. At first i was confused - why doing something like choping tree give me other then lumberjacking skill..

I'm all for making learning skills tasked based, which would be much more interesting and fun, IMO.

Not this bullshit again...

[Punkk]

Nerfed, issue solved.

[LimaZulu]

Welcome to the tragedy of the commons. The answer is staring us in the face. X action correlates to X points in skill X. If I chop trees all day my lumberjacking skill goes up, and my strength goes up. If all I do is swim, my swimming skill goes up (perhaps I can swim in stronger currents or deeper water?) and my stamina goes up. If all I do is melee chickens then my melee skill goes up, etc. It doesn't have the flexibility of the current system but it eliminates people grinding buckets so they can, for example, fight bears later on, or grinding ore so they can become an archer, or some ridiculous example of that nature. Granted people will STILL grind, but at the very least it will be more meaningful, and realistic (a word I am somewhat loathe to use)

Not this bullshit again...

They do raise a great point that the current set up is a great example of the Tragedy of the Commons, and that their method would fix it. It'd also completely necessitate group work and pure specialization of characters. It'd also be pretty boring and tedious. I CAN'T GET BETTER AT FARMING UNTIL I WAIT 24 HOURS FOR MY TOBACCO TO GROW SO I CAN HARVEST FFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

24 hours later

WOOOO 18 FARMING LP

[Jackard]

It runs counter to the dev philosophy, it is never ever happening, people should stop suggesting it.

[Thijssnl]

It runs counter to the dev philosophy, it is never ever happening, people should stop suggesting it.

Sorry, but what specifically does?