Problem with punishing PKs extra is that they learn to play around it, or at the very least concentrate only finding fights they know they will win 100% certain, and run from everything else. Didn't stop PKs in UO, they only moved to prey on helpless noobs even more.
Reading the info at the link, I don't see a way around penalties for PKing. With the exception of time and not doing bad deeds.
Quoting the site:
"Alignment refers to the value representing how good, evil or in between a player is. Positive alignment indicates a righteous player, raised by performing everyday prayers. The amount of Alignment that a player can gain per day has a cap(limit) on it. Negative alignment indicates a villainous player, and alignment decreases by murdering, assaulting, robbing or knocking out other players."
"Alignment raises slowly but drops quickly, and you can not gain alignment from killing low alignment players. This creates a system of greater risk for greater reward: killing players will allow the attacker to loot the victims corpse, but if the attacker is killed their skill points receive much greater penalties because of low alignment."
It seems to me that if they are not allowing alignment increases for killing low aligned characters, then they are actually trying to make this work. as opposed to trying to build in "outs" for PKers while fooling the rest with false hope.
And the only way to raise alignment is through prayers, with a Cap per day. It looks like there's no way around it, if a player PKs regularly they will pay for their virtual sins.
UO, on the other hand, always had "outs" rigged into the system. As do all the other games I've seen that claim some sort of "justice system" that does nothing to stop PKing.
This has the problem that sovrath mentioned though.
If their alignment drops when killing characters AND being killed with a bad alignment gives you penalties, then they will just make sure that the people they are killing (the low ones) have no chance at fighting back. Ergo they will keep killing the lower ones because who cares if they take penalties when they die because the low ones can't kill them.
It will rely on someone else to come to the rescue which never really works. Somone coming to the rescue for or someone going on the revenge mission is IMO the exception while the rule is, just forget about it and move on.
btw the game does look intersting. I registered yesterday
edit - if they really wanted to make it fair and reduce pk. I say whoever initiates the attack (unless a consent duel type thing) gets stats/level/abilities dropped to be equal with the defender and if they lose they still have the alignment/buff penalty thing.
PKs died in UO all the time. Saying that PKs will just make sure they never die really is not a reasonable thing to assume. It's simple: by creating a penalty for PKing, it will reduce PKing.
A lower level player is probably going to yield less of a reward. What's the point of killing some noob and dropping your alignment by just as much as if you killed a higher level player and get more gold? This of course is based on the assumption that the game will be set up in a way that higher level players will have better loot on them.
But PK's did not die due to lower level players. and lower level players are killed all the time by higher level players.
They do it because they like to.
It doesn't matter if they died to lower level players. It's an open, seamless world. In UO the vast majority of blue (innocent) players would gang up on a PK if they saw one running through a dungeon chasing another blue player. And the vast majority of players were blue. So sure a PK isn't likely to die to 1 low level innocent player, but he could die to 5 - 10 innocent players quite easily.
And like I pointed out before, this is from a game that's 10+ years old where there was almost no incentive to hunt PKs and very little in the way of deterring PKs.
But PK's did not die due to lower level players. and lower level players are killed all the time by higher level players.
They do it because they like to.
It doesn't matter if they died to lower level players. It's an open, seamless world. In UO the vast majority of blue (innocent) players would gang up on a PK if they saw one running through a dungeon chasing another blue player. And the vast majority of players were blue. So sure a PK isn't likely to die to 1 low level innocent player, but he could die to 5 - 10 innocent players quite easily.
And like I pointed out before, this is from a game that's 10+ years old where there was almost no incentive to hunt PKs and very little in the way of deterring PKs.
The incentive to hunt PKs is the issue here. I did some reading at their site (not enough to be thorough really) and there are social aspects to the game. So I think if players belonging to a community keep getting PKed, there will be others of higher skills who will be interested in hunting down the PKers. Lost loot means lost community assets, and there's territorial control and warfare, sieges, etc. Reasons to protect your own.
I'm not totally convinced that all possible problems are solved, I'll have to get on their boards and do some interrogating of these scoundrels.
But let's be honest here, this is yet another shoestring budget developer promising the ultimate sandbox experience. History has shown that it's pretty hard to make stuff like seamless worlds, terraforming and massive sieges work in a live environment, especially if you're working with limited resources and experience. Others have tried, and failed hard.
The best of luck to these guys but I'm not holding my breath.
The game itself looks interesting enough. Although, I think attempting to make a ffa pvp realistic sandbox mmo is folly. If anything, release it as a stand alone game that supports individual servers (like Minecraft for instance), and allow the players to then play how they want. If a community wants to make a co-op server do it, if another community wants an all out war server, again do it.
I get the feeling these indie developers would fare much better if they followed more of a Minecraft formula for their sandbox games. Your potential audience is immediately larger, because they can choose how to play. Allow for the modding community to go nuts on their own servers (or single player games) and make major improvements for you, that you can later incorporate into the game. Additionally, you could release and sell alpha/beta/full versions more easily (and with a lot more forgiveness from the community as a whole) and make various levels of cash while working on the project.
Notch and the Mojang crew showed how well this type of model can work, I find it surprising more indie devs aren't following suit.
Notch and the Mojang crew showed how well this type of model can work, I find it surprising more indie devs aren't following suit.
I think something like 80% of small businesses fail, and game development is probably even higher. You cannot expect every single indie developer to follow sound business strategies. Some will get lucky and strike gold. Many will die a financial death and have to go find a job.
But PK's did not die due to lower level players. and lower level players are killed all the time by higher level players.
They do it because they like to.
It doesn't matter if they died to lower level players. It's an open, seamless world. In UO the vast majority of blue (innocent) players would gang up on a PK if they saw one running through a dungeon chasing another blue player. And the vast majority of players were blue. So sure a PK isn't likely to die to 1 low level innocent player, but he could die to 5 - 10 innocent players quite easily.
And like I pointed out before, this is from a game that's 10+ years old where there was almost no incentive to hunt PKs and very little in the way of deterring PKs.
The incentive to hunt PKs is the issue here. I did some reading at their site (not enough to be thorough really) and there are social aspects to the game. So I think if players belonging to a community keep getting PKed, there will be others of higher skills who will be interested in hunting down the PKers. Lost loot means lost community assets, and there's territorial control and warfare, sieges, etc. Reasons to protect your own.
I'm not totally convinced that all possible problems are solved, I'll have to get on their boards and do some interrogating of these scoundrels.
Yes. Even in a game like UO which gave very little incentive to hunt PKs the community involvement in such matters was pretty good. Add incentives like bounty hunting or, as you say, a desire to defend your community and what belongs to you and it could definitely work.
Problem with punishing PKs extra is that they learn to play around it, or at the very least concentrate only finding fights they know they will win 100% certain, and run from everything else. Didn't stop PKs in UO, they only moved to prey on helpless noobs even more.
Reading the info at the link, I don't see a way around penalties for PKing. With the exception of time and not doing bad deeds.
Quoting the site:
"Alignment refers to the value representing how good, evil or in between a player is. Positive alignment indicates a righteous player, raised by performing everyday prayers. The amount of Alignment that a player can gain per day has a cap(limit) on it. Negative alignment indicates a villainous player, and alignment decreases by murdering, assaulting, robbing or knocking out other players."
"Alignment raises slowly but drops quickly, and you can not gain alignment from killing low alignment players. This creates a system of greater risk for greater reward: killing players will allow the attacker to loot the victims corpse, but if the attacker is killed their skill points receive much greater penalties because of low alignment."
It seems to me that if they are not allowing alignment increases for killing low aligned characters, then they are actually trying to make this work. as opposed to trying to build in "outs" for PKers while fooling the rest with false hope.
And the only way to raise alignment is through prayers, with a Cap per day. It looks like there's no way around it, if a player PKs regularly they will pay for their virtual sins.
UO, on the other hand, always had "outs" rigged into the system. As do all the other games I've seen that claim some sort of "justice system" that does nothing to stop PKing.
The genre never had a chance to flesh out possible ways to deal with PKing in an interesting or organic way. Here we are still talking about how UO dealt with it 10+ years ago. If they hadn't rashly implemented Trammel, the genre could've evolved down a path of simulation and adding interesting mechanics to the game. In contrast to the path they took which is just turning stuff off that people don't like.
Yes, there has been a lot of lost time on dealing with sandboxes.
1. As you've statied the incentive to hunt Pk. I've never seen it done with any lasting effect. In my mind having people police game ends of in a significant lack of police.
2. The disinsentive to pk. There is very little telling them not to do this. IMO people are not scared of a possible threat from possible people that may hunt them donw (in a game of course, pixels are different than blood remember). That does not disincentivize (if thats a word) from killing that lowbie player. There has to be something in that moment, the moment of attack which would disincentivize the person from pk'ing.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
1. As you've statied the incentive to hunt Pk. I've never seen it done with any lasting effect. In my mind having people police game ends of in a significant lack of police.
2. The disinsentive to pk. There is very little telling them not to do this. IMO people are not scared of a possible threat from possible people that may hunt them donw (in a game of course, pixels are different than blood remember). That does not disincentivize (if thats a word) from killing that lowbie player. There has to be something in that moment, the moment of attack which would disincentivize the person from pk'ing.
But how often have these things been honestly tried? Sandbox games with ow pvp are so few and far between that the ones that do exist are often plagued by many other problems.
Also, your assessment of the psychology of PKers may be accurate for some and those people will simply never be able to stop themselves from PKing. That's ok! If the goal were to have PKing at 0 then you could literally just turn off pvp like many themeparks do. The benefit of a sandbox game with ow pvp would be to limit PKing so it's not just running rampant. There should be consequences to keep the PKing down, but it should be an option. There should be bad guys.
1. As you've statied the incentive to hunt Pk. I've never seen it done with any lasting effect. In my mind having people police game ends of in a significant lack of police.
2. The disinsentive to pk. There is very little telling them not to do this. IMO people are not scared of a possible threat from possible people that may hunt them donw (in a game of course, pixels are different than blood remember). That does not disincentivize (if thats a word) from killing that lowbie player. There has to be something in that moment, the moment of attack which would disincentivize the person from pk'ing.
You haven't played Wushu. 5hours online, in jail will make any pk'r think twice. 150 silver will have bounty hunters paying divinators to try and find you.
Ganking a lowbie for no reason just might cost you your friday night.
1. As you've statied the incentive to hunt Pk. I've never seen it done with any lasting effect. In my mind having people police game ends of in a significant lack of police.
2. The disinsentive to pk. There is very little telling them not to do this. IMO people are not scared of a possible threat from possible people that may hunt them donw (in a game of course, pixels are different than blood remember). That does not disincentivize (if thats a word) from killing that lowbie player. There has to be something in that moment, the moment of attack which would disincentivize the person from pk'ing.
You haven't played Wushu. 5hours online, in jail will make any pk'r think twice. 150 silver will have bounty hunters paying divinators to try and find you.
Ganking a lowbie for no reason just might cost you your friday night.
I can't disagree with your post. Although not entirely true. I've been playing Wushu since Sunday. Still figuring it out though. The whole experience to cultivation to meridian seems.... confusing, unnecessarily confusing actually but overall the game seems ok.
I agree 5 hours would make people think twice, that is a pretty strong incentive.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
1. As you've statied the incentive to hunt Pk. I've never seen it done with any lasting effect. In my mind having people police game ends of in a significant lack of police.
2. The disinsentive to pk. There is very little telling them not to do this. IMO people are not scared of a possible threat from possible people that may hunt them donw (in a game of course, pixels are different than blood remember). That does not disincentivize (if thats a word) from killing that lowbie player. There has to be something in that moment, the moment of attack which would disincentivize the person from pk'ing.
You haven't played Wushu. 5hours online, in jail will make any pk'r think twice. 150 silver will have bounty hunters paying divinators to try and find you.
Ganking a lowbie for no reason just might cost you your friday night.
Well now we are getting somewhere. A real penalty, as in not being able to play the game for quite a long period of time. Coupled with a bounty system that gives incentive to hunt the PK down. Coupled with methods of actually being able to find the PK.
I have to admit, my views of PK are heavily skewed by UO, where it was a real problem. It was far too easy for the PKs to run in, kill all the blues and begone before anyone could ever reach them. The so called penalties were of little use, as the PKs could macro them off quite easily. On top of that they mostly played naked mages so they had no loot to lose except a few reagents when they died.
It is true that UO did not really try to fix this problem. Instead they chose to split their game, which despite of all the crying of the PKs, was a big success for the PvE/Consent-only-PvP crowd.
And when we are talking about EVE, they also introduced a bounty system in last winter expansion, which also allowed the victims of PKs to sell their kill rights to bounty hunters. You could actually profit from being killed by a random PK, but even if you didn't, at least you could get your sweet revenge despite of not being able to do it yourself.
In any case, EVE has huge "safe" zones. If you are careful, you will practically never be killed in high-sec. I have not played DF:UW but I hear they also have larger safe zones than they did in the original DF.
Now have we really heard anything solid how much safe zones this game will have? Any solid plans on how they are going to discourage random "noob ganking" except that skill/stat loss that can be worked around? Any solid incentive to hunt down PKs? Bounty system? Any solid ways to actually find the PKs and kill them?
Just so you do not forget, this pretty much sounds like and looks almost like WURM - Survival mmo without the pvp. The features they offer sound exactly the same so why not take a look at www.wurmonline.com
What can I do in Wurm?
Explore huge, diverse landmasses extending over 512sq km in total!
Modify the terrain; dig, raise, flatten and sculpt the land around you!
Make your home on either the PvP or PvE server.
Craft and use thousands of unique items.
Wage war on other kingdoms, and lead yours to victory.
Discover and fight over religious artifacts on the PvP server.
Capture and breed animals from the environment.
Train 133 Skills, 10 Player Characteristics, and 3 Religion Characteristics.
Follow one of four unique deities and religions.
Hunt creatures such as the unique red dragon, forest giant, kyklops, troll king and others!
Become a priest or champion of your religion and learn powerful spells and enchantments.
Choose one of five meditation paths and take advantage of special meditation abilities.
Earn as many of our 200+ skill and achievement titles as you have time for!
Mount various creatures, from horses and carts to unicorns, bears and even dragons!
Construct, crew or even captain six different ship types with other players, from small rowing boats to impressive caravels.
Build a variety of structures, from guard towers to stone houses to fences and statues.
Found your own settlement wherever you desire; own land, build a farm, a castle, or perhaps an entire village!
Pave roads to connect settlements and plant signs to improve local infrastructure.
Live off the land by creating fields to farm a variety of crops including potatoes, garlic, cotton, wheat, strawberries, pumpkins and more!
Hmm... you definitively got my attention. :-) Looks very original and very complex. Just hope they will be able to deliver full game in normal time. I'm happy for those that will enjoy it. But no matter how great something looks I'm afraid this game will not be for me. Now for years I play only games where:
have 3D person view (this has)
can move avatar with mouse buttons and NOT that outdated, clumsy, .... WASD (and here I'm not sure as using mouse usually requires button bar)
no forced grouping
no forced PVP
...
From the rest of wish list there is also tab targeting.
I was wondering why a post promoting this game suddenly popped-up out of nowhere, lol.
It's not a surprise at all. I totally reject any game (or any other project for that matter) that relies on crowdsourcing, be it Indiegogo or Kickstarter. If you're not willing to invest your own money or you can't convince normal investors to back your project, then it's not something I'm interested in at all.
Comments
PKs died in UO all the time. Saying that PKs will just make sure they never die really is not a reasonable thing to assume. It's simple: by creating a penalty for PKing, it will reduce PKing.
A lower level player is probably going to yield less of a reward. What's the point of killing some noob and dropping your alignment by just as much as if you killed a higher level player and get more gold? This of course is based on the assumption that the game will be set up in a way that higher level players will have better loot on them.
But PK's did not die due to lower level players. and lower level players are killed all the time by higher level players.
They do it because they like to.
It doesn't matter if they died to lower level players. It's an open, seamless world. In UO the vast majority of blue (innocent) players would gang up on a PK if they saw one running through a dungeon chasing another blue player. And the vast majority of players were blue. So sure a PK isn't likely to die to 1 low level innocent player, but he could die to 5 - 10 innocent players quite easily.
And like I pointed out before, this is from a game that's 10+ years old where there was almost no incentive to hunt PKs and very little in the way of deterring PKs.
The incentive to hunt PKs is the issue here. I did some reading at their site (not enough to be thorough really) and there are social aspects to the game. So I think if players belonging to a community keep getting PKed, there will be others of higher skills who will be interested in hunting down the PKers. Lost loot means lost community assets, and there's territorial control and warfare, sieges, etc. Reasons to protect your own.
I'm not totally convinced that all possible problems are solved, I'll have to get on their boards and do some interrogating of these scoundrels.
Once upon a time....
Lots of interesting features, on paper...
But let's be honest here, this is yet another shoestring budget developer promising the ultimate sandbox experience. History has shown that it's pretty hard to make stuff like seamless worlds, terraforming and massive sieges work in a live environment, especially if you're working with limited resources and experience. Others have tried, and failed hard.
The best of luck to these guys but I'm not holding my breath.
The game itself looks interesting enough. Although, I think attempting to make a ffa pvp realistic sandbox mmo is folly. If anything, release it as a stand alone game that supports individual servers (like Minecraft for instance), and allow the players to then play how they want. If a community wants to make a co-op server do it, if another community wants an all out war server, again do it.
I get the feeling these indie developers would fare much better if they followed more of a Minecraft formula for their sandbox games. Your potential audience is immediately larger, because they can choose how to play. Allow for the modding community to go nuts on their own servers (or single player games) and make major improvements for you, that you can later incorporate into the game. Additionally, you could release and sell alpha/beta/full versions more easily (and with a lot more forgiveness from the community as a whole) and make various levels of cash while working on the project.
Notch and the Mojang crew showed how well this type of model can work, I find it surprising more indie devs aren't following suit.
I think something like 80% of small businesses fail, and game development is probably even higher. You cannot expect every single indie developer to follow sound business strategies. Some will get lucky and strike gold. Many will die a financial death and have to go find a job.
Yes. Even in a game like UO which gave very little incentive to hunt PKs the community involvement in such matters was pretty good. Add incentives like bounty hunting or, as you say, a desire to defend your community and what belongs to you and it could definitely work.
Yes, there has been a lot of lost time on dealing with sandboxes.
There are 2 issues.
1. As you've statied the incentive to hunt Pk. I've never seen it done with any lasting effect. In my mind having people police game ends of in a significant lack of police.
2. The disinsentive to pk. There is very little telling them not to do this. IMO people are not scared of a possible threat from possible people that may hunt them donw (in a game of course, pixels are different than blood remember). That does not disincentivize (if thats a word) from killing that lowbie player. There has to be something in that moment, the moment of attack which would disincentivize the person from pk'ing.
But how often have these things been honestly tried? Sandbox games with ow pvp are so few and far between that the ones that do exist are often plagued by many other problems.
Also, your assessment of the psychology of PKers may be accurate for some and those people will simply never be able to stop themselves from PKing. That's ok! If the goal were to have PKing at 0 then you could literally just turn off pvp like many themeparks do. The benefit of a sandbox game with ow pvp would be to limit PKing so it's not just running rampant. There should be consequences to keep the PKing down, but it should be an option. There should be bad guys.
You haven't played Wushu. 5hours online, in jail will make any pk'r think twice. 150 silver will have bounty hunters paying divinators to try and find you.
Ganking a lowbie for no reason just might cost you your friday night.
I can't disagree with your post. Although not entirely true. I've been playing Wushu since Sunday. Still figuring it out though. The whole experience to cultivation to meridian seems.... confusing, unnecessarily confusing actually but overall the game seems ok.
I agree 5 hours would make people think twice, that is a pretty strong incentive.
Full loot and free PvP
...annnnnd, that's where I stopped reading. F that.
Well now we are getting somewhere. A real penalty, as in not being able to play the game for quite a long period of time. Coupled with a bounty system that gives incentive to hunt the PK down. Coupled with methods of actually being able to find the PK.
I have to admit, my views of PK are heavily skewed by UO, where it was a real problem. It was far too easy for the PKs to run in, kill all the blues and begone before anyone could ever reach them. The so called penalties were of little use, as the PKs could macro them off quite easily. On top of that they mostly played naked mages so they had no loot to lose except a few reagents when they died.
It is true that UO did not really try to fix this problem. Instead they chose to split their game, which despite of all the crying of the PKs, was a big success for the PvE/Consent-only-PvP crowd.
And when we are talking about EVE, they also introduced a bounty system in last winter expansion, which also allowed the victims of PKs to sell their kill rights to bounty hunters. You could actually profit from being killed by a random PK, but even if you didn't, at least you could get your sweet revenge despite of not being able to do it yourself.
In any case, EVE has huge "safe" zones. If you are careful, you will practically never be killed in high-sec. I have not played DF:UW but I hear they also have larger safe zones than they did in the original DF.
Now have we really heard anything solid how much safe zones this game will have? Any solid plans on how they are going to discourage random "noob ganking" except that skill/stat loss that can be worked around? Any solid incentive to hunt down PKs? Bounty system? Any solid ways to actually find the PKs and kill them?
Just so you do not forget, this pretty much sounds like and looks almost like WURM - Survival mmo without the pvp. The features they offer sound exactly the same so why not take a look at www.wurmonline.com
What can I do in Wurm?
Hmm... you definitively got my attention. :-) Looks very original and very complex. Just hope they will be able to deliver full game in normal time. I'm happy for those that will enjoy it. But no matter how great something looks I'm afraid this game will not be for me. Now for years I play only games where:
Just FYI, they just published their Indiegogo campaign, so if you like the concept you have a way to contribute now.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/life-is-feudal
Executive Editor (Games) http://www.wccftech.com
What a coincidence !
I was wondering why a post promoting this game suddenly popped-up out of nowhere, lol.
It's not a surprise at all. I totally reject any game (or any other project for that matter) that relies on crowdsourcing, be it Indiegogo or Kickstarter. If you're not willing to invest your own money or you can't convince normal investors to back your project, then it's not something I'm interested in at all.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
a new interesting page on the website!
http://lifeisfeudal.com/Life-is-Feudal-like