PVP & Death: Current Thinking Megapost

Ravenclaw,

I like a lot of what you put in there but from what I can tell this is basically what UOs notoriety system was for much of the pre-AoS period. While I think it could work the bounty system always had issues because when someone's bounty got too high they would just have a friend kill them and collect the bounty. I'd be fine with a system similar to this but since there won't be full loot I don't see it going in. I never had any issues with the system in UO since you had to risk being openly attacked to be an aggressor. Groups of anti-PKs(noto-PKs) would hang around hot spots looking for anyone to be the aggressor then crush them.

 

I guess the idea in this case is to base it on past experiences and see if there is a way to circumvent the loopholes that were exploited. if we know what went wrong before, let's fix it.
If someone is familiar with the issues, can we get a list?

fantalio mentioned having a friend kill you to get the reward.
Ravenwing mentioned farming new players.

 

I can add to the list the 'stay of execution'.

Each of your characters could kill 4 other players and would only go PK(red) after the fifth. Initially after killing 4 players if you behaved yourself the original count of 4 would reduce to zero and you could go again. Over time a player could have half a dozen combat ready characters (6 x 4 = 24 free gratis murders). In practice if you saw a crafter chopping wood people would just switch to a character with a low murder count, kill the crafter and steal his wood.

The biggest single example of bad programming was the fact that a group of normal 'Blue' players were able to group with one PK(red) to heal the red player while he 'farmed'. One combatant plus 2 to 10 healers in tow. Amazingly this took a couple of years to fix.

The penalty for red players not being allowed into towns was totally negated by the fact they had other 'blue' characters on their account who could peddle their ill gotten gains. One red, all red?

House fighters:

Because of the understandable mechanism that allowed you to ban players from your house. Nuisances, possible thieves...etc This gave all players a totally safe hiding place, houses placed in good 'ambush areas' commanded huge prices. Players could rush out of their houses kill passers by and if things went badly for them they just needed to get back into the door; ban their assailants and they were safe.

 

[Related to this post]

Ok so lets put this together and see what we have so far that would need to be addressed. Tagged at start where the items of note were initially observed. (Example: 'UO:')

Notoriety System Related:

• UO: 'Red' players would have a friend kill them in order to collect a reward.
  • Possible solution, have reward tied to notoriety/legend points. Character or Player Account with notoriety points cannot use bounty rewards.
• UO: 'Stay of Execution' (Only becoming 'notorious' after 5th kill), players would switch between characters to keep notoriety low.
  • Possible solution, tie notoriety point absolution to active time spent in-game. (AFK time does not count) Notoriety takes effect immediately after first aggressor kill.
• UO: The penalty for red players not being allowed into towns was totally negated by the fact they had other 'blue' characters on their account who could peddle their ill gotten gains.
  • ... (Suggested, if one character is notorious then all characters on that account should be notorious?) <-- Could be circumvented by going through friend or second account.
• UO: Players would attack passers by from the safety of their home or run back to their homes if in danger.
  • Possible solution, do not allows players to enter non-public areas if they have the suggested aggressor tag on them or to be more fair, simply while in combat so that neither party can escape this way.

PvP In General: (Not directly related to notoriety system, could happen anyway but should make note of it.)

• UO: Stronger players would farm younger players.
• UO: A group of normal 'Blue' players could group with one PK(red) to heal the red player while he 'farmed'.

 

I am purposefully staying distant from this thread because I feel it needs such a huge fermentation proses, but I generally follow the same reasoning's as Sir "Ravenclaw"...
~Time Lord~

 

btw i tested gloria victis and the loot system is impressive

when you die u are 30 sec dead after u spawn in your hometown
everything what not have been looted in this time will be in your bagpack

when you die to pve or disconnect to a mob you will have still have all things left in your corpse when nobody loot it or guard it for 30 sec
when u die in pvp there should be full loot but a murder should be punished
(maybe add soft hp like in life is feudal) that you not get a murdercount when you hit someone ko. u may only loot one item when he is ko.
now you can decide kill him take all loot for a mudercount or let him alife and he stands up in the next minute with his loot.
some murder just wanna have a fight and win not all want to loot the crap stuff from a new player.

with this system also noobs not get so much punished when they get murdered which pk want to have crap armor and noob weapon they might let the noob his stuff and he will spawn in town with his whole gear maybe except resorces he gathered

 

Judging by the dev-provided description on its forums it's almost identical to the time-limited looting that was proposed in this thread (though I can't remember where, and I'm not going to scour over a hundred pages of posts looking for it).

Incidentally, Gloria Victis is a game I would never play, and the combination of open PvP with that looting mechanic is the reason.

 

118 pages! So apologies if I'm covering old ground.

What if a looted item from a PvP encounter becomes ten times the weight whilst the victim is a ghost?
One on one PvP should allow the victor to take their prize, but slow their escape if they are camping a spot and have multiple "trophies".
It allows for organised groups to have sacrificial members to act as bait.
The higher the value of the looted "trophy", the higher the weight multiplication factor.
PvP guilds can be highly successful through being organised with what they can all carry, but lone PvP'ers have to dump or bank.
Or wait until the victim is no longer a ghost.

 

Why have it like this when your dead, your spirit is stuck in limbo and you need head back to area where your body lies but there is a monster that chases ya through limbo and if that monster finds ya its permanent death...

That should scare some player from trying pvp...

Or you could make it where all the npcs hates your guts and they try to catch ya put ya in jail until pvp penalty fades out but it gives ya a option to escape though...

 

I read most of this thread and there are some good ideas in here, and some bad ones...

Hopefully the Devs can tweak the system to work a bit better than initially described.

My thought is we need more loot dropping, it takes away from the immersion of the game. I wouldn't worry about PVE Gear and progression in the PvE story when it comes to loot drops in PvP, because from the sounds of it, the hardest PvE encounters from the story won't be in PvP areas, and if you aren't prepared to PvP everywhere (ie: Guild War or Oracle Quest) don't put yourself in that situation.

The Death Penalty should be similar for PvP and PvE which it sounds like is being worked on... I just hope you guys can put your heads together and come up with a way to not break immersion as much as this 1 item drop system does. How would you even handle Multiple attackers killing 1 person, who gets the drop? How about Group Fights, who determines who gets what and how? People will avoid using their BEST gear in PvP if they don't want to lose it, no matter what.... so don't make gear as important for PvP, or how about balance it by adding the "dropability" stat to items, that way anything that isn't dropped stays attached to your body until your spirit reconnects.

Dieing in UO, Rust, EQ, any other Full Loot game didn't make me want to quit the game.. it made me want to NOT DIE

 

I don't want death to be some piece of cake, I want to fear death and I want everyone else to fear death and not just because of some lost "stuff". Death should have very heavy penalties, yet be able to recover quickly to your former strength.

I want some parental controls placed in, "like a perma death parental control option" so that some kid doesn't loose their self esteem which could hurt their grades in school. Kids in school need to learn the real way and not some grief way which could harm them for the rest of their real lives though missing the education in school that effects their ability to earn a living later in their lives. our Ultima as in any gaming world need to have options for parents to limit whatever their child is playing. Every kid is not the same and this should be reflected within our parental controls in a step by step manner during character creation.

I want our murderers to suffer more in death because in real life we can eradicate them, yet also I wish this because I like murderer characters to be a higher risk game than just PvP. Many speak of "balance here" and that line of thinking adds no different levels of difficulty nor more challenging aspects to our game. I want murderers to be more well respected because of more harsh penalties that they face and not just because they can rez, die, rez just like any other character.
I want a game more thrilling than just a trip to visit a healer.
"I want death to be the death of something"!
All else seems weak in my opinion...
~Time Lord~
X

 

Oh Yes !

 

Why not have the On/Off PvP system? If you turn it on you have like a 5 minute wait time until you are non pvp?

 

And be different, you die you lose all your loot, there is barley mmos with that anymore.

 

I can not wait to kill someone.

 

I find those two to be mutually exclusively, sincerely. But then, I measure how harsh death is exclusively by how long it takes to get back to my former strength (perhaps with some adjustment if I'm doing some unrelated progression on the side while recovering from death), plus the time lost in the failed attempt.

So, for me, quickly recover to the player's former strength automatically means shallow death penalty; and a heavy death penalty automatically means a longer time before recovering.

This also relates to how many deaths per unit of time are acceptable. If it takes an hour to recover to the player's former strength, then a death every hour, or anything more common than that, would make the game unplayable (which means that, due to their usual kill or be killed nature, PvP encounters just can't happen more often than once per 30 minutes on average, otherwise the game would also be rendered unplayable). And that is the upper limit that makes the game not just unfun but unplayable; Ideally the number of deaths per unit of time has to be far smaller than that, or else the player will feel like he is stuck.

This is why I prefer the death penalty to be nearly non-existent, BTW; I prefer to play games where, even when I'm playing to the best of my skill, death is still a very real possibility, which means that death must occur commonly (because, let's be honest, if I can avoid death through careful play every single time, it was never a risk in the first place). Harsh death penalties basically force the devs to tune down the risk of death.

 

I Still Think PvP Server Its A MUST.

 

Yea from the sounds of it.. the only way to really satisfy allparties is add a selective multiplayer option of Multiplayer PvE and Multiplayer OPEN (full loot, PvP anywhere except towns guarded by... guards..., or whatever else you want to do with it)

 

Silent Strider Said;

I find those two to be mutually exclusively, sincerely. But then, I measure how harsh death is exclusively by how long it takes to get back to my former strength (perhaps with some adjustment if I'm doing some unrelated progression on the side while recovering from death), plus the time lost in the failed attempt.
So, for me, quickly recover to the player's former strength automatically means shallow death penalty; and a heavy death penalty automatically means a longer time before recovering.
This also relates to how many deaths per unit of time are acceptable. If it takes an hour to recover to the player's former strength, then a death every hour, or anything more common than that, would make the game unplayable (which means that, due to their usual kill or be killed nature, PvP encounters just can't happen more often than once per 30 minutes on average, otherwise the game would also be rendered unplayable). And that is the upper limit that makes the game not just unfun but unplayable; Ideally the number of deaths per unit of time has to be far smaller than that, or else the player will feel like he is stuck.
This is why I prefer the death penalty to be nearly non-existent, BTW; I prefer to play games where, even when I'm playing to the best of my skill, death is still a very real possibility, which means that death must occur commonly (because, let's be honest, if I can avoid death through careful play every single time, it was never a risk in the first place). Harsh death penalties basically force the devs to tune down the risk of death.
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~TL~
The way I describe games that have many easy deaths incurred by the player is sort of a "Machinegun Death Syndrome". I have enjoyed such games, but I never feared death there.
Planet Side was one of my favorite games of this type where it had a score board style of I got you and you got me killing. I was addicted at an early age to explosives so I enjoy that bang and boom of it all in modern warfare styles.
The problem I have with such games as those I described and applies to many others is that, "It leads to a more simple set of combat strategies" where there is no real strategy at all, only a repetitive few choices of procedures. Those procedures can be fun to fall in love with, yet loose their flavor for me in any long term fun through deeper strategy. I find that online games suffer from their simplicity to win, where it becomes a matter of only "who can keep more people logged on and in the battle, wins the battle, no matter what if any strategy is employed".
The term I used to describe "easy recovery" may or may not be easy for some. When I think of an easy recovery (of skills/stats/whatever) is that it should take about 168 gaming hours of play to recover from (a week), or, 1/2 to 2/3 the time it took to gain such skills. In the mean time, they will have to dedicate themselves to training back up, or further risk even more of the same penalties continuing on in a battle. This leads to a sense of commitment by the individual as well as adds to the concerns of the leader to protect such injured characters, thus adjusting the strategy of his employments.
"I don't want a game that doesn't scare me"
You've always held a good line of game thinking Silent Strider even when I've disagreed with some of your lines of thinking, "they are good well held lines"

I'm very excited to see the new "selective instancing" that will become a part of our world in action. To my understanding it much like software used on dating web sites, which can help us all stay far away from those we don't want to play with, yet very close to those we do wish to play with and fit our "style of play".
~Time Lord~

 

Two words:

SIEGE PERILOUS

It satisfies the folks who hates multiple character slots and also satisfies the folks who want hardcore open butt kicking.