Goblin Squad Member
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So these two places are suppose to have the best loot and raw materials in the game. They are currently way to safe from the most dangerous things in the game, the players. Rep penalty for PvP in these hexes should be reduced or eliminated.
Lets see how this goes over.
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Goblin Squad Member
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About as well as the last time? (That one generated about 600 messages before playing out.)
Making up for the absence of a complete system with temporary add-ons has already proven problematic. There will be plenty of rep-consequence-free opportunities to fight in a few months, we don't need to add more to deal with impatience. When they are in place, if there isn't enough fighting, the devs can adjust as needed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's not about enough fighting. And it is not about just generating more PvP for me to go do.
These places are suppose to be deadly and have the best stuff. Right now there is zero added risk for way more reward. It puts the equation out of balance. To throw this phrase back at you guys who love to use it so much. There is zero meaningful choice to going in to these hexes. The best stuff at the same risk as any other hex? Sign me up.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes, but when we "spend" our rep, it takes MUCH longer to get it back. For instance, after one good pvp night at "Usties" I'm not able to participate in "unsactioned" pvp for pretty much the rest of the week. So you get the added danger once a week maybe 2-3 at most if other groups are involved. that's less then half the time of a raised danger level.
these two places are suppose to have the best loot and raw materials in the game
I believe the design intent is that this fact alone will drive players to that hex, specifically. These hexes are, in fact, more dangerous to go to specifically because these are the points at which bandits should be lying in wait.
If that's not currently true, then there is some other cause. Perhaps the monster hexes aren't special enough resource-wise, perhaps there aren't enough players in the game for the kind of bandit population we need, or perhaps there just aren't enough players looking to kill off/farm escalations.
It's a big map, and you could likely never see anyone at all if you stayed out of towns and monster hexes. As soon as you enter that monster hex, though, the chances of someone else finding you is increased significantly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yes, but when we "spend" our rep, it takes MUCH longer to get it back. For instance, after one good pvp night at "Usties" I'm not able to participate in "unsactioned" pvp for pretty much the rest of the week. So you get the added danger once a week maybe 2-3 at most if other groups are involved. that's less then half the time of a raised danger level.
But there are many possible attackers for any one group of targets. If it's possible for a single small group of attackers to continually harrass a hex all week, then that throws the risk:reward out the window when there's several groups looking to do the same.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's not about enough fighting. And it is not about just generating more PvP for me to go do.
These places are suppose to be deadly and have the best stuff. Right now there is zero added risk for way more reward. It puts the equation out of balance. To throw this phrase back at you guys who love to use it so much. There is zero meaningful choice to going in to these hexes. The best stuff at the same risk as any other hex? Sign me up.
agreed
It sounds to me like the best solution to your issue is the ability to declare feuds on opposing companies and on hexes in general. To me, this is the best way to solve the problem and make the game more enjoyable and meaningful.
Anything implemented in lieu of that system is just duct tape. I don't think the game needs any extra temporary work done to it when they can be working on permanent features.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really wan't to thank both of you for responding to my correction and not my typo. That means a lot to me. Eyraphel, I agree there shouldn't be more duct tap that takes dev time away from putting in the things we really want. But it doesn't seem to me that designating a few more hexes as rep free would take anything away from adding in the features we really want.
Tuoweit, if you want to hear more about what I have to say in regards to rep being meaningless against those who don't care about the game whisper me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think you need to make the places with the best resources/drops rep free. The trade off for bandits getting low rep by going in and killing off the players gathering mats and recipes is the loot they get off their corpses. If bandits want better loot from their targets they shouldn't just get it for free. That's where the rep cost comes in. I'll just say it a third time. Better loot from corpses = rep loss.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But what's "tanking" your character about rep loss? We're not far from the point where it'll take days to gain enough XP for significant character improvement purchases, so no significant loss in training having to wait a while. You may not be able to bank outside Rotter's Hole, but hey, that's part of the risk of engaging in PVP. We don't even have the bounty system in place yet. If I were interested in killing players to take their loot, stashing it at a secure vault in Rotter's Hole and having to stay out of town for a while doesn't seem like much of a deterrent, and makes much more sense to me IC. A known killer and thief can't just walk up to the bank.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The only thing keeping these hexes from being the highly dangerous places you want them to be is the players not wanting to take the rep hit. There is no mechanic keeping them from hunting other players in these areas. It's a "meaningful choice". Take the rep hit or don't. Is killing them and getting the loot worth it?
The single benefit for making these areas rep free would be to the bandits.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You can't balance the now against the future. Everyone keeps saying well eventually there will be all these mechanics for people to do rep free PvP. Well right now those mechanics arn't in the game. Why not just wait for those mechanics to emerge to nerf rep gain? The argument that some day we will have rep free pvp is pointless when right now the PvE crowd can run around with impunity because there is no way to engage them with out tanking out characters for a month at a time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you really just desire more PvP in the world and that's understandable but without the types of players who are into that, flipping around rep free zones won't really help. Look at all the rep free areas around open tower windows currently. How much PvP is really happening? It could easily, but it's not a ton.
I agree that raising the danger level in these hexes seems important and some of that can be done through mob placement and levels. For the players to add to that something has to be done about PvP as a whole. Your suggestion here just attacks a symptom and wouldn't do much to help create more enjoyable game play for anyone.
It's a decent launching point though for a general discussion on how to make these hexes more challenging/dangerous overall.
We don't know how difficult it would be to add those hexes as open PvP to begin with. That function may be embedded into the War of Towers code in a way that applying that kind of "hotfix" to PvP would take actual coding time.
As for balancing now vs future, I still maintain that the best solution to this issue is players declaring open PvP with other companies/settlements through feuds, etc. That doesn't mean I agree with the rep regen changes we've already gotten. Did it regenerate too quickly? Yes, but without a viable alternative, it kind of needed to.
@Ravenlute, the tower windows are only marginally comparable in my mind. The towers don't mean nearly as much to players currently, so monster hexes have far more players in them than tower hexes, in my experience.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You have far to much faith in GW coding ability.
It's c# isn't it..... If they cannot do it they can hire someone who can or fail most probably. Scout out the next John Carmack or Tim Sweeney for a miracle save of PFO. Maby hire whoever wins this thing http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/01/16/global-game-jam-2015/
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Goblin Squad Member
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People would fight over the high level escalation hexes if the game mechanics let them.
You keep saying that but the mechanics DO let them fight in those hexes. There is nothing that prevents a player from making an attack on another one in those hexes.
The only thing stopping you is yourself not wanting to take the rep hit. That's not a mechanics problem, that's a player decision. In this sense, reputation seems to be working as intended if you are not willing to be penalized for killing other players that have no interest in such actions. If you didn't care so much you would go in and try to slaughter them all.
You just said that you don't want to fight in Towers because there's no value in it. So what you are saying is that the only "justifiable" reason you want to kill someone is to take their stuff, not because you want to just enjoy the challenge of PvP. If you want to take their stuff so badly then suffer the rep loss and stop whining about it. You aren't going to get it for free.
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Goblin Squad Member
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GW could let us use reputation in bulk to enable settlement vs settlement PVP, a la feud/war mechanics.
X reputation deducted from all members of the 'aggressor' settlement enables a PVP window of Y days, with no reputation gain for the aggressors for the duration of the 'war', something along those lines could be worked out and experimented with rather quickly I believe.
It would serve as a good preview for the 'influence economics' to come, too.
ps
3k rep for a 36 hour window is where I'd start. Just enough to feud a couple settlements for a weekend, & then you'd need to bank rep. It'd cut down random acts, etc
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Otherwise, it's the same rep cost to attack, and higher rewards for winning.
Actually it is a higher reputation cost because one would have to attack more players thus resulting in further reputation loss, especially if a group was to refuse to red first (which is a viable strategy mind you). And its not like we can ignore the rest of the group once we have attacked a couple players you are not gazelles that scatter when a member of the herd is threatened.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So these two places are suppose to have the best loot and raw materials in the game. They are currently way to safe from the most dangerous things in the game, the players. Rep penalty for PvP in these hexes should be reduced or eliminated.
Lets see how this goes over.
While it likely would not work out well in my favour, I agree that these should be highly contestable zones. I would add that everyone entering the hex should gain the aggressor flag and have it persist until exiting hex, whereupon normal timer would commence for it to dissipate. Personally I would add the flag change to all open pvp window tower hexes, but that's a different topic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In the future we'll have territorial control and trespassing laws for those areas under long-term ownership. But for hexes like Monster Hexes that (as I understand it) will never be controlled in that fashion, how about a means of staking a temporary (until downtime?) claim, as a means of creating essentially a temporary PvP hex?
A settlement having a claim on a hex would make anyone else (not allied) automatically red to them within that hex, and vice versa - the claiming settlement would be red to anyone else. Multiple settlements could make claims to the same hex.
In the short term, allow a settlement a limited number of daily claim based on held towers. In the long term, staking a claim could cost a relatively small amount of DI/resources.
A "successful claim" should probably have some kind of benefit for the claiming settlement over time - whether that's an increase in gathering/drops within the hex for settlement members (but not allies) or - in the future - some kind of per-hour income to the settlement or something along those lines, so that if someone claims a hex and nobody shows up to contest it then you still get something out of it.
On the flipside there would need to be a way of contesting (through PvP) a claim and denying the claiming settlement those benefits - perhaps the claim is manifested by an in-game object that needs to be defended, e.g. a capture radius similar to a tower (but without the massive art asset needing to be placed carefully on the map). An existing competing claim by another settlement would block any settlement from gaining the benefits.
Key advantages:
* The number of (rep-free) aggressor settlements for the random player is limited to those settlements wishing to stake claims in a hex
* The risk-averse player gets fair warning that a given hex is claimed, and can choose to avoid that hex without being deterred from all monster hexes 23/7
* The claimant gets a benefit from their claim even if nobody shows up
* One settlement cannot threaten everywhere at once, they're restricted in the number of claims they can make
* A claiming settlement needs to place something at stake up front - making a claim that cannot be defended should be a net loss (at least in the long term, when a claim would cost something - in the short term, all that is lost is the daily claim "ticket")
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm all-for rep-free PvP in monster home/escalation hexes. There are few enough of these, they are easily identifiable, and they are rewarding enough that it makes sense to increase the player activity and danger there.
Make these dangerous places where only the most well-prepared, hardened characters venture, and MONSTERS rule the land according to their whims.
"Sure, travel far from town in search of riches, to the lands of Ogg and his followers. A nasty sort frequents that place; and then there's Ogg! Don't expect anybody to be concerned or surprised by what happens to you there. You've been warned."