Encourage PvP: Remove LP

[Chakravanti]

Tl;dr - Skip to the last two paragraphs 'Quintessentially/Core Rationale'.


Grindfactor

It seems to me that XP, gold, and accumulation of hard resources are the factors that gives every game it's grind factor. We have eliminated gold and I think it would embody the spirit of what makes H&H to do do away with LP as well making the entire game completely based on the accumulation, processing and expenditure of resources.

Now there are varying definitions of what 'grind' is so I'll clarify what I mean here:

The 'Grindfactor' of a game is that part of the MMO that you must do, despite the fact that it is repetitive and boring, before you can do something worthwhile and enjoyable. The Grindfactor is determined by two subfactors: Repetiion & Duration. Multiply those two factor together to recieve: The Bore factor. Multiply The Bore factor by the Incentive to receive the 'grindfactor.' The incentive is the payoff for completing the grindwork.

Right now, the current system uses the grindfactor to stave off the altpocolypse. Any free MMO game that does not want to police its player base has two choices. Make alts expensive (Grindfactor alert!) or somehow make them an intrinsic and integral part of the game itself.

How an LPless H&H would be different & the problems it would solve:

A focus on resources: Character development would be %100 about resource acquisition & consumption. You would kill shit simply for the resources. PvE for Food, and other items not yet in the game. Most notably the FEPs. Players for their accumulated wealth and claimed hard resources. Much as skills now affect item QLs so then would stats only affect.

Hard Skills: Replace purchases with fetch quests or make them automatic but make them limited to specific credos.

New players: We are all too familiar with the daunting tasks new players face when you explain to them that they have to grind for three months (if they play every day all day) to be deployable PvP and that they have to start over again if/when they die. Also, New players are not indecisive. They are all about changing into ANYTHING other than a fucking newbie. Side suggestion: New players should start at full change.

Trad/Change: Simple, Affects FEP bar instead of LP system. This would accelerate character development. The %33/%300 offset is probably excessive Making the FEP bar %50 & %200 (Change & Trad, respectively) of the highest FEP would make charecter development much cheaper and more focused.

In addition, buff/debuff ingested FEP's based on a specific credo. For example; Rangers would get Perception & dex buffs and small con nerf and large PSY debuff, scouts and thieves would get dex buffs & con nerf, etc. I don't mean buff/debuff to the stat specifically but food ingested would multiply/reduce the FEP's gain from what was ingested based on the type of FEP & credo

Combat - Based on Stats. Obviously, The combat system needs to be diversified while avoiding too heavy of a 'rock paper scissors' effect by making too heavy weaknesses/debuffs. Different credos would use different weapons and armor that would use different stats for to-hit & damage that would be reflected by the buffs/debuffs that class receives to FEP consumption.

Regardless of stats there should always be a %10 chance to-hit and a max %90. Even %30/%70 hard or soft cap would be balanced.

What this means is that Combat would be more intense because EVERYONE is risking something because no one could become so goddamn uber no one can hit them. Risking a Well-developed charecter should reflect a weeks worth of heavy gameplay (3-4hrs/day) though a fully developed charecter could reflect up to a month's worth of consumed resources. Character investment into insanely high LP amounts would not a basis for just logging off and letting the enemy raid your village (EVEN WV DID THIS WHEN CUTLASS RAIDED) because you haven't gone full trad and aren't ready to suicide.

Not having to invest Millions of LP into a character to even make it deployable to the battlefield (and thus risk MONTHS of work) means we can make several different alts into which we can invest Varying FEPs to develop into vary credos of combat types. Adopting Credos would make Certain FEPs easier or harder to accumulate (% nerf/buff of an eaten item) among other things like making certain weapons/armor usable and more.

Crafting - Crafting characters should be separate classes of characters that get combat nerfs but gain a slight buff to all FEP's gained to keep balanced stats. These are Credo: "Peasant"

Alts & Multiboxing: It happens. Let it happen. Let us multibox off the same account. Make our alts kin as an automatically.

Trading Trade, as always, involves trust and will be become even MORE epic through this development.

Quintessentially: Reduce the investment required for a character to become combat worthy by removing the necessity for gaining a whole extra tier of character development and make FEPs cheaper to consume via specialization with credos. Encourage PvP. Make PvP Dynamic. Make people fight over resources. Double softcap FEPs by giving diminishing returns on higher stats. Stop making the game so goddamn hard to develop a character to a combat deployable state and allowing single players with no life to develop to uber states. Such players should, however, be able to develop multiple chars to have multiple play-styles available to them so they don't get too bored.

Core rational:You CANNOT have a balanced sandbox game that discourages PvP. It's just an asinine paradox. What makes this game unique is not its PK anywhere sandbox style. That's been done before and that's what I'm going back to ShadowBane for when SBEmu goes live in a month or so: their character development is short lived, hard-capped RPS Specialization that encourages Teamwork. The game is a Sandbox PK anywhere that acknowledges PK. It is rather that the game revolves entirely around consumption and production of resources. Ousting hard cash flow from this game is something that is new what created this style and makes H&H unique (That and no NPCs). LP is just XP renamed. It is the same damn thing and it is what is causing (next to lack of development) the two major problems in this game: Combat Imba & Newbie Suicide rate.

Obviously, when/if this is done the entire game will be just as asinine as it is now if there is no reasonable method to conquering villages and establishing kingdoms that can annex other villages. SUB OR DIE! Like it or leave it hate me or flame me; I could give a fuck less now that I've found out SBEmu will be going live very shortly!

[Alamarian]

If you aim to remove grinding LP, why leave FEP? That is much slower to gain and less interactive than LP.

[Chakravanti]

The aim is NOT in fact to remove grind at all. It is change how grind affects gameplay. Reduce the excessive amount that is currently needed to create a playable charecter. And focus the development on acquisition, processing and consumption of resources.

You cannot remove grind. You can only lessen the amount needed to become PvP viable in order to encourage PvP and make it more balanced.

Also, you do not understand what it is like a mid-high level charecter development. Acquisition and processing of resources for FEp's becomes much more rapid when you deal with 90+ foods as standard. Removing LP would allow all players with access to the right resources this convenience.

[DeadlyPencil]

i also want the LP system gone. however i dont really like all of your ideas so ill just say what i think should be changed other than your stuff.

I dont like ALTS, especially how easy it is to make one with 50 ranged. With your FEP system, it would become even easier. so I think a system should be brought in place that makes items less effective if the person doesn't have the stats to make it themselves. So if you have a main and you make an brand new alt, and you give him a uber bow, that bow on that character would be reduced in "quality" such that it would only be marginally better than a bow he could create himself. you may have to do that with food as well, or else you can just feed someone really good food have him stand near water and plow the same spot of land over and over till they use it all up super quickly.

i would also like to see stats having much less an effect on combat, concentration should just be removed and replaced with something else, like wisdom. Everyones health should be practically the same. someone having 10x the hp as someone else is not realistic.

For combat, i think everyone should generally be equal while naked, people with really high stats could still have a benifit though. You could make it so you need a certain minmum stat to be able to use a certain combat skill or maybe your stats affect your special combat skills. however your normal attack is not affected by them. so everyones normal base attacks would all be the same. however people with higher stats would have access to different combat skills that can make it easier to win fights.

[Yolan]

I like the general gist of your suggestions, while I think it can be done in a variety of ways. Certainly, though, the LP system is a major reason why I don't play here anymore, and won't be coming back until it is changed. Obviously, people who put in more effort should be and are the people who have better chars. But the way it works at the moment is just too skewered towards people who spend their lives online. If you only want to play a few hours a week to relax, like myself, its just not worth it.

[warrri]

I dont like ALTS, especially how easy it is to make one with 50 ranged. With your FEP system, it would become even easier. so I think a system should be brought in place that makes items less effective if the person doesn't have the stats to make it themselves. So if you have a main and you make an brand new alt, and you give him a uber bow, that bow on that character would be reduced in "quality" such that it would only be marginally better than a bow he could create himself. you may have to do that with food as well, or else you can just feed someone really good food have him stand near water and plow the same spot of land over and over till they use it all up super quickly.

Hi, lets kill trade.

i would also like to see stats having much less an effect on combat, concentration should just be removed and replaced with something else, like wisdom. Everyones health should be practically the same. someone having 10x the hp as someone else is not realistic.

Hi i like to kill everyone with my char that i play 1 hour a week.

And whats with that double-standard. On the one side you complain how imba people are that grind with their char to high heavens, on the other side you complain how easy it is to make an alt combatready. Decide please.

[Potjeh]

You CANNOT have a balanced sandbox game that discourages PvP. It's just an asinine paradox.

Why is it a paradox? Because you say so?

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.

[Neruz]

PvP doesn't neccessarily have to be raiding other people's claims. You can apply mechanics that make raiding other claims prohibitively expensive for a single player, but actual combat with players still possible.

In theory that would also lead to a more 'natural' state of affairs where major city states have the power and resources to attack other city states, but individuals lack the ability to do so.

[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.

2nd point. you would not be able to kill anyone with a 1 week old character easily. everyone does the same base damage (5 damage for example), however now everything will be dependant on resource aquisition, so now items will be the determining factor. a 1 week old character wont have any good items, so he will probably do close to base damage. so yes he can hit you in a naked fight and you only do 5 damage as well, but iam assuming you aren't running around naked and will have a sword which does much more than 5 damage. 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. The point of that suggestion was so that people with essentially the same quality would be equal. if a person had really really high stats, he might have access to a better combat skill or you could make it so stats increase combat skills so it is more effective or has a better chance of hitting. but base "naked" damage would be the same on anyone. so pumping str isn't gonna make you 1 hit someone you would have to have a very high quality item, and use a good combat skill with your high str to do that. you have probably never played a game called guild wars, but a 1 minute old character can beat a 1 month old character. combat is based on combat skill selection and their skill as a player along with team coordination.

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.

[Potjeh]

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.