Goblin Squad Member
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| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
A subsection of the regular map, it would add an information overlay (heat colors with mouseover numbers?) of how many character deaths had occurred in each hex in the last hour.
If you want to avoid any type of pvp events, whether it be towers or feuds and wars later on, or a roaming squad of mean guys, or whatever, you can have a general idea of where to go or not go.
To keep it simple, only tallying each death event- the odd monster victory would be indistinguishable from an arbitrary gank, executed bounty contract, or really boring feud: 1 death.
But no one will have to feel helpless! It doesn't guarantee your safety so that principle of the game isn't violated, but players aren't walking around blind, or need a complex intelligence system to feel like they're doing something to preserve their own safety. If you see a hot red blob on the Map of Doom that is 27 deaths in the last hour (could be the same 12 characters dying over and over again during an outpost raid, too) you know to steer clear if you don't want to be bothered by everything that comes with it. You can do your thing over in that other part of the Map of Doom that is always ice cold. At the same time if you're keeping an eye out for activity near you and allies the Map of Doom assists with that too.
A tool to help every kind of player share the game.
DEVS: It doesn't seem like horribly complex coding or too resource intensive. Can you get behind the idea of it?
Players: Would this help you regain some self-agency about the recent hypothetical pvp run amok worries?
(Sure this could have gone into the IdeaClicky place but since I dislike registering for websites left and right I'm foregoing that for now until EE accounts are linked to the posting and voting so it's, you know, meaningful.)
This sounds pretty kickass, if it could be done. I wonder if people would try to write words on the map? ;D
"Do not fear, my friends. Nihimon's death was not in vain. Check out the kill map."
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Goblin Squad Member
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First question is how often the value updates. every minute or daily. Big difference on machine load, but both may be trivial at modern speeds.
Second should this have a decay: New Value = Previous total x decay factor + new deaths.
Decay factor is less than 1 and slow decreases effect of old deaths. it is determined by how long since the value was last computed and how fast the decay was wanted. .9 per day has taint washed out at 1 month. .99 has 3/4 of it still there.
How far back do you want this to go?
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Goblin Squad Member
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That sounded rather mathy and complicated.
Tales of Woe in a Terrible No Good Unfortunate hex. The server records husks created at:
11:17
11:19
11:22
11:37
If you look at that Hex in the Map of Doom at 12:07, it will say 4. If you look again at 12:30, it will say 1. That's how many deaths there were in the previous hour.
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Not to mention GW might be interested in accumulating the data on when and where characters are dying for their own reasons; and perchance if it was caused by other players, NPCs, falling, etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I feel like I'm being a stick in the mud, but I would prefer if players (or their characters) actually talked to one another to discover this information. Rangers wandering the wilderness could pass on valuable information (or misinformation) to caravans or fellow wanderers. Bandits could lay in wait to spring a trap on unsuspecting travelers heading the wrong way. Those looking to take advantage of the misery of war would actually have to use scouts or get intel about where and when to be somewhere.
I'm not saying players should not get a warning when entering a fully fledged war zone (at the settlement and tower level), but feuds and other small scale combat should just 'happen' without a global flag on a map notifying everyone.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I feel like I'm being a stick in the mud, but I would prefer if players (or their characters) actually talked to one another to discover this information. Rangers wandering the wilderness could pass on valuable information (or misinformation) to caravans or fellow wanderers. Bandits could lay in wait to spring a trap on unsuspecting travelers heading the wrong way. Those looking to take advantage of the misery of war would actually have to use scouts or get intel about where and when to be somewhere.
I'm not saying players should not get a warning when entering a fully fledged war zone (at the settlement and tower level), but feuds and other small scale combat should just 'happen' without a global flag on a map notifying everyone.
How about a historic heat map...may a couple of days old that would be very easy to generate based on the records stored in GWs databases. Say three days old all the activity could be shown. that was it wouldn't spoil the surprises of "now", but the data capture could be available to show what places have been dangerous, and trend analysis could show changes in activity, patterns, trade routes (uh oh!), and the cities that are having brisk trade, or little trade.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm fine with historical trending for actual deaths info; Jiminy makes a good point that it's not immersive and deprecates human interaction to have this sort of omniscience about every death on the map from the game system. However, we definitely need a realtime overlay showing which hexes are in an open PVP window. Ideally, I'd like that layer to show current open windows in red, and windows opening in less than 60 minutes in yellow.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe instead of a map showing a red hex, when you get within 100 game yards (or meters) the music changes to a known and recognizable war chant, or some sort of martial music. Otherwise the hex could play something more peaceful, and if the hex has a timer running down (like in your example of "within an hour") a different, cautionary tune could play, not peace, not war. That way we would be warned without breaking immersion.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A lot of games generally keep this sort of information for their own purposes. If nothing else, it helps to tell them if a certain area or encounter isn't tuned right.
In PFO, it's popcorn material for the devs. Because if it's too hard, then people can bring back their company/settlement/nation and beat that big bad encounter to tame the escalation cycle.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Maybe instead of a map showing a red hex, when you get within 100 game yards (or meters) the music changes to a known and recognizable war chant, or some sort of martial music. Otherwise the hex could play something more peaceful, and if the hex has a timer running down (like in your example of "within an hour") a different, cautionary tune could play, not peace, not war. That way we would be warned without breaking immersion.
Please remember that there are a number of reasons for people to play with sound down/off, or be otherwise unable to hear audio cues like that. It would need to be supplemented with something on-screen.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Jiminy makes a good point that it's not immersive and deprecates human interaction to have this sort of omniscience about every death on the map from the game system.To me, it's easy to hand-wave it as information you get from the Common Folk.
"Good morning, dearie. Where are you headed? ... Oh, that forest is haunted by undead, infested with goblins, and thick with orcs. Otherwise, it's lovely and I am not going to tell you to stay away from it nor will there be all sorts of talk and rumors about it being awful. Because everyone knows we local folk never get paranoid or superstitious or just avoid areas because they're known to be bad."
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Goblin Squad Member
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Jiminy makes a good point that it's not immersive and deprecates human interaction to have this sort of omniscience about every death on the map from the game system.To me, it's easy to hand-wave it as information you get from the Common Folk.
I know bad news is in the next town before good news has its shoes on, but there's no way the Common Folk have any idea that a half dozen adventurers just got killed 27 hexes away.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How about a historic heat map...may a couple of days old...
While that would be nifty for some reasons, it's useless in the current moment when you want to know what's going on right now (last hour) because you're doing things in the game right now. The primary function is to give you some clue what is happening around you in the very very recent past to guide predictions for the very short future.
As to the question of immersion, never open the Map of Doom and it will never break your immersion. Ignore it, pretend a teeny extra button on your computer-screen-immersive map isn't there, never click it. It won't interrupt your RP but can still be a very useful tool for the majority of people in the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How about a historic heat map...may a couple of days old that would be very easy to generate based on the records stored in GWs databases. Say three days old all the activity could be shown. that was it wouldn't spoil the surprises of "now", but the data capture could be available to show what places have been dangerous, and trend analysis could show changes in activity, patterns, trade routes (uh oh!), and the cities that are having brisk trade, or little trade.I feel like I'm being a stick in the mud, but I would prefer if players (or their characters) actually talked to one another to discover this information. Rangers wandering the wilderness could pass on valuable information (or misinformation) to caravans or fellow wanderers. Bandits could lay in wait to spring a trap on unsuspecting travelers heading the wrong way. Those looking to take advantage of the misery of war would actually have to use scouts or get intel about where and when to be somewhere.
I'm not saying players should not get a warning when entering a fully fledged war zone (at the settlement and tower level), but feuds and other small scale combat should just 'happen' without a global flag on a map notifying everyone.
This I think is a good idea. Maybe even 48 hours after the event...that gives a realistic measure of time for the bad guys to smash and grab or the good guys to set up their siege and kick off an assault. Rumors take a while to circulate, so the peasants get to spread their information (via the heat map) after the event - unless it is a protracted one.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like to point out Planetside2 has a "hotspot" thing somewhat like this. I don't think we should display number of deaths or small conflicts persay, but we should track the large scale conflicts on the map, Faction v Faction and Settlement/Kingdom v Settlement/Kingdom stuff. While it may seem immersion breaking you forget that the natural world has signs and ways of telling a person of those things that we just can't experience in game. The stillness of the air, the line of "NPCs" in refuge streaming from a region, the large dust clouds seen from tens of miles away, etc.
As I said, maybe not a death-count marking every little banditry spot, but a conflict of sufficient scale, or an area of sufficient activity should appear on the map, I agree. Set a limit that says if X number of militant units/deaths are here then put a red mark on the map.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This I think is a good idea. Maybe even 48 hours after the event
I'd like to point out Planetside2 has a "hotspot" thing somewhat like this. I don't think we should display number of deaths or small conflicts persay, but we should track the large scale conflicts on the map, Faction v Faction and Settlement/Kingdom v Settlement/Kingdom stuff.... maybe not a death-count marking every little banditry spot, but a conflict of sufficient scale, or an area of sufficient activity should appear on the map, I agree. Set a limit that says if X number of militant units/deaths are here then put a red mark on the map.
Again, that's not achieving it's narrow purpose of giving an individual player some agency over their immediate future right now so it seems particularly useless to me.
Also (rhetorical question), how is the code even supposed to know why somebody died?
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Goblin Squad Member
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How about a historic heat map...may a couple of days old...While that would be nifty for some reasons, it's useless in the current moment when you want to know what's going on right now (last hour) because you're doing things in the game right now.
Depends on what you are trying to do.
If you just want to move through a hex or maybe hit a few resource nodes then 'last hour' data would be most useful. However, if you are planning a large harvesting operation or other longer process it'd be more important to know that, while things may be quiet right now, the death rate in that hex spikes every day in about an hour (e.g. because that's when some player hunting company usually logs on).
That said, a 'last hour' type setup is probably easier to implement and has more 'in game logic' to it (i.e. 'ah, crows are flying in to the area and the other wildlife is unsettled... there has been bloodshed here recently').
I'd have to disagree.
Less godlike omniscience and MOAR EXPLORING.
I realize peeps In Real Life are use to having a GPS/Google Maps day at their fingertips, but there is no reason for a fantasy character to get a "ping" of an entire kingdom every time they step outside their hut. I would prefer that Rangers and other Scouts have a function and value for their services in the world as related to Wartime Reconnaissance Missions.