Response to PvP & Death Deep Dive

My word I'm actually starting a post in the PvP area. hmm April 5th.. Anyway I just wanted to post my feedback on the deep dives on things that really stuck out to me and to hammer the particular nails that are of my particular interest.

So there were two things that stuck out to me and I've hammered these particular nails before but what the hell.. it's the PvP area. Beating dead horses is the order of the day in here.

Body part trophies and Ransom.

As much as I don't like either of these "current thinkings" I'm resigned to the fact that right now the devs are determined to push them into at least testing.

On the trophies I just wanted to reiterate that if we have this I'd rather names not be attached. I understand a lot of non-RPing PvPers don't care so much about it and in fact for some this is an incentive. For the RPer.. and here speaking as the sort of player they're trying to entice into PvP it's a potential turn off. More so with name attached.

What really struck me here though is that they didn't say anything about the potential consequences about taking body parts. It's not virtuous after all. I would have liked at least some heard some acknowledgment that maybe you'll take some kind of virtue hit for carving up corpses or displaying human body parts.

On the ransom side this was brought up as the mechanism to opt out of being carved up. It's kinda gamey but ok.. but as it's been brought up before.. ransom trivializes loot. If you don't want to loose something then make sure you have the cash before PvP.. no risk. Running low on money don't PvP. What if the looter doesn't want to accept ransom?

Imo it's better to not have loot at all than to have a forced ransom system that could easily become meaningless where all you risk is currency.

I would have liked to have heard more about death.. since it was supposedly part of the deep dive.

 

I just think its really weird. You could have 100 copies of someone's head around, because their head instantly regrows when they resurrect.

I don't really see why the name should be attached for public display if its not the head. How do people know its Bowen's ear? If its only labeled to the player who cut it off, that's a little different.

 

I'm not a fan of the body part thing either. It simply screams "toxic play" with no purpose or upside at all. I seem to recall some game [warhammer?] where your guild got some bonus for having a battle standard out and there was some bonus for capturing an opposing guild's battle standard. This would be a vastly better mechanism.

I think the looting players / ransom system is silly. Something like gw2 or warhammer with generated loot and possibly some token is fine. The focus should always be on some accomplishment, not slaughtering human players.

 

I actually had those same thoughts! It doesn't bother me if the name is only shown to the person who took the trophy.. but how would anyone else know? How would the majority even recognize the head even?

I had wondered what happens to the corpse about revival. How does anyone regrow a head? Avatar or not.. does an all new body make any more sense though? I'm not a fan of 'gamey' artificial stuff and other issues aside this is one of those no matter how death works.

 

Why stop at taking the parts? You should be able to eat them as well, gaining some of the defeated soul.

 

@rune,

What does it mean to gain some of the defeated soul if the person resurrects? Does his body have less a soul?

 

To a certain degree I think "just" currency can be balanced to be perfectly acceptable for PvPers to risk or gain on a regular basis. The risk aspect to the player's time and money depends heavily on how ransom amounts are calculated vs how inflated the currency will become.

Personally I didn't have any kind of preference towards body mutilation trophies, so I wasn't planning to pay much attention to those items, but if they can be used as components in some kind of crafting process and/or necromancy then I may have to reconsider that position.

I wonder if LB can explain how 2 identical body parts can exist in 2 places at once with the lore of the game?

 

I'm a little surprised that Richard was all for people pie yet Starr draws the line at cannibalism. Technically that is more immersive but that doesn't always mean it's a good thing. If you could cannibalize PCs that should be a major virtue hit but I think it can also lead to some very questionable scenarios.

What is to say.. prevent anyone from selling said pies to unsuspecting players? How is the game to know whether or not said player knows what they're eating? This in itself could be a form of griefing by getting otherwise innocent players to suffer a hit to their virtue because they don't know where that pie they just scoffed came from.

 

I'm not sure...I originally thought it a bit of a tongue in cheek...but really it would be interesting if you had a soul dept to someone.

 

I'm sure he can explain it, but it doesn't make it any less weird for gameplay purposes.

 

Pro-gore and macabre

May the clouds rain blood in New Britannia

 

Then it would get into the water, and everyone would have iron overload and could develop liver cancer.

 

How about if it was only a fingers?

Someone would have to take you out 10 times ... before earning a house decorative plaque with your fingers?

But body parts as trophies don't make sense ...

 

Actually, thinking about it, I find this very intriguing. With some more thought regarding "Soul debt" this could be quite an interesting twist to item ransom for both PvE and PvP. There's all kinds of subtleties and nuances to the game system that could come from this - Bounties, notoriety, enhancements/enchantments, etc. Must ponder on this further.

 

Funny how neat ideas can come out of nowhere. The more I think of it the more I like it too...and I'm not very pvp oriented

 

Remember the idea about the bingo book?

What if they could get a snapshot of you - and it would auto fill in your bingo book? No body parts

 

I think body part harvesting is a must for evil characters and necromancers. It should have a virtue hit for sure, but this can add a lot of flavor to those roles. In NWN there were servers that allowed you to scalp and burn your victims. These were exclusively done by the evil factions, but it was something you could do that felt evil. Of course in NWN it had some huge XP loss for the victim, which I would not expect here. There was also a way to mercy kill to decrease the loss for those of good alignment.

 

How can one hold a 'soul' to ransom? Its intangible. Perhaps it is within the power of a Lych or other incarnate being? But who knows...?

 

Let evil be evil I guess ... maybe they harvest your blood to make some PvP centric potion?

They would have to choose between harvesting a body part or harvesting blood ... and a glass vial would be required

 

They could harvest "nails" ... they grow back