Friendly fire.

I have no issues with FF in PvP mode, be it instant or delayed as long as any and every instances of FF are considered a player attack with all that expected consequences. That way, while it may be a hardship on AFK folks, it does have repercussions on the player that initiated the FF.

This applies not only to spells, but to any FF, be it via swords, or ranged.

Some will try to get the players tagged by "accidentally" running into harms way. However if the negative points are only assigned on death, it should be a minimum bother.

 

Yea sounds good, if you jump in front of someone shooting an arrow, you should be hit.
And if hit then of course you can turn around and attack they guy who shot the arrow.

Battletoads was a blast, we would play for hours on the first level cause we kept turning on each other for getting hit by the other player.

This is about how it went.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3jQzAA8aL4

 

@Alain, "However if the negative points are only assigned on death, it should be a minimum bother."

In UO, people would frequently try to use a tactic like this to get flagged by an Anti-PK, and then suicide before the flag expired, giving the Anti a 'count', so depending on what reputation system SotA uses, this may be a bigger problem than you might think.

 

It seems self evident to me that people not playing in PvP mode would not be harmed by AoE spells cast by other players. If this were the case you would have every resource node/area monopolized by PvPers who just have to put up fire fields around non-PvPers to keep them from moving lest they take damage and potentially die. That pretty much defeats the point of separating PvP driven players from non-PvP driven players giving a clear advantage to the former.

Granted one would expect that the limited number of people you can interact with at any given time could cut down on that a lot, it's still a huge open door to griefing and PvP-driven environments. I don't think it's unreasonable for people who don't want to deal with griefing or don't want to interact in PvP-driven environments to have a way to avoid them. While I agree that it takes away from the game to have people who can run through a fire field with no harm done, the consequences of AoE abilities doing harm between players regardless of their PvP status look much worse.

I think FF could be included (and should be included as much as possible) for PvE purposes through 'parties.' So the two melee fighters in the mix have to take shelter or get out before the mage in the back rains down a hail of ice shards or lightning or poison gas. But none of the three has to be in PvP mode in order to enjoy the effects of FF.

As for AoE healing or beneficial abilities, I don't see that hitting everyone in the target area regardless of them being friend or foe. It could depend on what the ability is though.

 

Friendly fire makes sense in open PvP or in PvP zones or maybe even amongst guilds or whatever.

But this thread is hilarious. A number of people in this thread are clearly only calling for friendly fire to get open PvP in through the back door. Ie: if they can't directly attack those non PvPers, then by god, we'll lobby for a system that'll let us kill those trammie carebears in other ways! And to hell with the logical arguments against it outside of open PvP or PvP zones!

 

They aren't going to code for a one shoe fits all on the first release at least. FF only for PvP is too much to code for, they aren't going to code a specific type of gameplay for specific type of player.

No FF = no AoE effect spells, as if you had AoE and it didn't hurt others then the game is broken.

 

why not make the AOE FF penalize the caster rather then the 'allies' to promote proper use ?
For instance a ManaBurn/Stam Penalty, or addition to Cool down ? Kinda like "Ricochet" modes
in FPS' ... where if you shoot an ally YOU take the damage.

 

Good point but I'm still against ff

 

Andimal's suggestion is more workable but still seems weird.

The thing is I am for friendly fire in principle. And I agree that it teaches casters to be careful. So I am for it in an intraguild environment for example.

Someone brought up Magicka earlier in the thread. Magicka had a hilarious friendly fire system with all sorts of mechanics and quirks. But Magicka is a closed game - When you play it is alone or it is you and up to three other friends. It is never in a large scale multiplayer environment with strangers

If SotA IS NOT open PvP, then you can't have friendly fire, because "friendly fire" allows Open PvP just with very limited attack options. You have to drop an AoE spell on your victim rather than using a direct damage spell. Some people have suggested it flags you, but so what? If you're trying to kill someone like some random PvEer, and you "flag" to them, well if they attack you back and formally initiate combat, you're probably ready to kill them anyway.

And what is to stop a band of four or five people just all dropping an AoE on someone at once? If that isn't enough to kill them then AoE spells are probably worthless for general anti-monster use anyway.

So you see the problem outside of Open PvP zones/situations?

 

@Ashlynn

There's 3 ways to handle PvP (and FF):
1) Team / Faction - Similar to FPS. You can have friendly fire. It hurts your team. The issue here is someone who's bad / trolling hurting your team. The issue is it's just not noob / PUG friendly.
2) Free for all - Technically there's no friends. So it's all friendly fire or whatever.
3) Weird hybrid flagging system with PK/negative karma like UO (or Lineage) - Hundreds of opportunities for abuse on all sides.

 

Friendly fire is a great option and I think the solution could be quite fun. Trials!

It wouldn't be hard to implement a simple jail / court system. If someone is "guilty" of PVP without a dual or willingness to compete in combat simply have a trial and it will create another realistic layer to the game.

If someone doesn't show up after making a kill slap them with an outlaw title and have a bounty system to allow the community to take care of the riff raff!

Cheers!

 

Accept for realism in a what will be a fantasy realm, what's the point? So I'm a genius for not using AE in PvE accept for the rare occurrence when I can?

In PvP it makes a difference. in PvE (FPO), who cares. Either you can AE in the particular situation or you can't. FF would just increase the percentage of battles where you can't.

 

Oh man that would be funny! I remember one day in D&D land i had a wild mage with a deck of many things! lol that would be fun we could all run away from lower level mages that try casting in fear a firebll may blow us all up! i like it!