Melee Battlegrounds - New Gameplay concept!

[Jambi]

LiF has a pretty nice system for PvP. If you for example attack someone, and that person yields (emote :" No more! I yield!) too you.. you can take his items etc. If you harm him , or even worse kill him while he is yielding, you get a reputation hit.

Think Ultima online when regarding too LiF reputation.
Blue "named" players are honorable,
Grey named players are untrustworthy.. ( waylayers. bandits etc ) In LiF you could use non-lethal weapons (clubs etc) too knock someone out and loot them, less of a rep hit then straight up murdering someone.
And eventually when you have commited murder, you turn Red and everyone will know what your about.
Laying low, asking for forgiveness and praying at the church.. will deminish negative rep slowly. But can only be done X amounts of time a week.

Yes roleplaying a priest of ameno is alot of fun, especially if your friends build you a church

"I Yield is one of the hotbar abilities. Yielding puts all of your weapons away and renders you temporarily immobile."
Makes it so there's also no trickery or abusement


Dont get me wrong, im not trying too promote the game here. Trying too give you info on how other games managed a reputation system.
Realy reputation systems is a tough one, can easly make or break a game.

If you drop everything that can be used as a weapon from your inventory, you will run slightly faster than the fastest build possible "with a weapon attached."

This should make running away an option at all times, at the cost of loosing a tool or a weapon.

This is pretty much a feature in LiF, called "Sprint" drops all your equipped weapons into your inventory. Unable too equip anything for a while, and in return gain more movement speed.

[Paul]

• Size: Initially, one server with 225km², in the future, we will link multiple servers together.

Will it be a 15x15 square map(which the number implies) or a stretched rectangle to increase max distances?

[chadz]

I'll answer the other questions soonish, but it seems perma death is a hot topic:

I can't tell you exactly what game mechanics killing someone will have to prevent it. One idea is in fact that you can only kill people of certain power, so you are actively putting yourself in danger by seizing power.

Maybe it could be a possibility that the player has to open the permadeath perk by either reaching a certain political rank or participating in an enterprise with the known risk of permadeath.

possibly yes

So I imagine that participating in a battle and dying won't actually mean permadeath for your character, the way I read this permakilling is more of a political act. Seems like getting ambushed by highwaymen won't permakill you, unless they have a grander reason than your purse and are willing to take the costs of permakilling.

Definitely yes. If highwaymen kill you, I would expect every lord in the vicinity to hunt them down. you gain nothing from killing your victim, but you risk everything you built up.

What I can tell you is the idea behind it: It's not killing, it's murder. Murdering someones character should be one of the most horrible acts in the game you can commit. It's a powerful tool that can be used to weaken enemies, but will come at a great price. Once you murder someone, that character has crossed a line that will make the rest of his virtual life and his family different.

I think "randoming" someone is one of the worst possible game mechanics, and before that happens, I'll remove the feature of permadeath alltogether.

One idea in my mind is also that, to kill someone, you need to watch him for some time. So there will be a way to disguise your identity and then kill him. The one who is killed (his family or faction) doesn't know who it was. He does however know that it was one who was within his vicinity. It must be someone he interacted with. Murder weapons will not be disposable, but must be hidden for some time. When the murder weapon is found, or the killer, it will be possible to backtrace where his weapons or money came from, so you cant just make a pure throwaway killer account.

Those are just ideas to give you an idea about the permadeath feature. Murders will be rare, special events, and something that will always be investigated.

On the other hand though, a murder will hurt. A lot. It will be very disruptive, possibly destroying your economy or political agenda. I have a few ideas how to do that, but will also take a lot of testing.

You won't "live" only with the people you like. You live in cities, very public to some extent, and you will not like everyone within that city. There are people coming and going, traders, new immigrates, and lots of social tension.

As I said, that feature will take a lot of finetuning to get right. But I think when we get it right, it will be an interesting concept of the game, because some murders will be executed in a way where the murderer can't be found, and will cause distrust in communities. Possibly wars between families. Drama. Stories

[Nessaj]

The gameplay meant for MBG (KS) is also to be incorporated into this. There will be objective based battles to join etc (ranked arena), similar to just jumping into a Battle/Siege server where you can quickly get in and have some fun, play a few rounds and quit.

Also in regards to the overall gameplay don't think of it as an MMO, we're specifically trying to hit that middle-road where the focus is on fun gameplay and less any sort of tedious tasks.

[Lemon_]

Could you elaborate on civilian roles and their impact in the game, and what danger you'd be in not speccing into combat/training for fighting?

[Algarn]

This may seem completely idiotic, but what are you going to do with ranged ? Let me explain myself : imagine a ranged player, being a good archer/crossbowman/dagger thrower/whatever you can think of. Imagine this player being paid for killing one or several targets, or just being a bandit. I suppose there won't be kill notifications with names of anyone, so the ranged player can kill targets on the road, take all the stuff of the target/innocent traveler, and move to make this kind of stuff again. My point is ranged is stealthy, fast, and efficient. And this point causes several gameplay problems.

1) Will ranged be some kind of hard, even harder than backstabbing to avoid that ?
2) Will there be a permadeath protection for peasants, like being gravely wounded (1hp for 1 or 2 mins while on ground/until someone helps you out), or something like that ?

I don't want ranged being nerfed to ground, or being on the opposite too easy, but there should be a way to make this kind of actions rather hard, even for ranged players.


Third question, related to the development of the game in itself : will you add gamemodes (different than battle/siege) in the future which allow the player to use a persistent character ?

By different of battle/siege, I mean PvP/PvE competitive gamemodes like some kind of Conquest, or a survival in an arena/town where players must survive waves, or beat a time "record", with the difficulty becoming higher after each stage (similar to Survival in Insurgency; this game got interesting gamemodes to inspire actually, just giving out ideas).

[Maestro]

How long will be one round?

[AwesomeHail]

archey stuff

What could be cool is that there, if there is ranged, a higher skill level is needed, as you said, not too easy, the arrows can be traced to where it was bought etc, etc, someone has seen you buying those arrows and after 1 week you find out who the shooter is.

but having a sniper elite group would be really cool. like hiring a bunch of super skilled men so you can be more sure of victory and have more chance, like strat battles need some skilled archers.

the protection for starters is a REALLY good idea, I mean, when you first start a game you dont want to be killed by some random OP guy or patroll. The time spent on the game needs to be recorded, at 0-10 hhours of playing the game or levels, you get the 1 hp buffer where you wont be permakilled/killed, at 20 you get a damage reduction on you, and so on.

(click to show/hide)

I have no idea if this makes sense, kinda off this world atm
visitors can't see pics , please register or login

EDIT: spellign corrrectoot*

[lombardsoup]

Please not the permadeath.  Don't have nearly as much time to no life neckbeard stuff back if I lose it due to my lack of skill.  Not to mention earning it all back would be extremely repetitive.

Looking nice otherwise

[Gnjus]

Once you murder someone, that character has crossed a line that will make the rest of his virtual life and his family different.

 

One idea in my mind is also that, to kill someone, you need to watch him for some time. So there will be a way to disguise your identity and then kill him. The one who is killed (his family or faction) doesn't know who it was. He does however know that it was one who was within his vicinity. It must be someone he interacted with. Murder weapons will not be disposable, but must be hidden for some time. When the murder weapon is found, or the killer, it will be possible to backtrace where his weapons or money came from, so you cant just make a pure throwaway killer account.

Those are just ideas to give you an idea about the permadeath feature. Murders will be rare, special events, and something that will always be investigated.

Medieval Poirot ? Or Midsomereval Murders ? Will those with poor intelligence be able to hire more "able" men to find the killer ? Will I be able to role-play brother Cadfael ?

Murders will be rare, special events

With a risk of sounding too negative but.......we're talking about murders in Medieval Times here......I think you should consider changing their quality from "rare" to "uncommon" at least....... 

[Vovka]

Sooo what about multiaccounting? I have a big family and we all want to play, but for 10 people we only have 3 computers 

and what about NPC guards? good protection against trolls and sink moneyz

[Casimir]

Need learn share better comrade

[Grumbs]

This may seem completely idiotic, but what are you going to do with ranged ? Let me explain myself : imagine a ranged player, being a good archer/crossbowman/dagger thrower/whatever you can think of. Imagine this player being paid for killing one or several targets, or just being a bandit. I suppose there won't be kill notifications with names of anyone, so the ranged player can kill targets on the road, take all the stuff of the target/innocent traveler, and move to make this kind of stuff again. My point is ranged is stealthy, fast, and efficient. And this point causes several gameplay problems.

1) Will ranged be some kind of hard, even harder than backstabbing to avoid that ?
2) Will there be a permadeath protection for peasants, like being gravely wounded (1hp for 1 or 2 mins while on ground/until someone helps you out), or something like that ?

I don't want ranged being nerfed to ground, or being on the opposite too easy, but there should be a way to make this kind of actions rather hard, even for ranged players.


Third question, related to the development of the game in itself : will you add gamemodes (different than battle/siege) in the future which allow the player to use a persistent character ?

By different of battle/siege, I mean PvP/PvE competitive gamemodes like some kind of Conquest, or a survival in an arena/town where players must survive waves, or beat a time "record", with the difficulty becoming higher after each stage (similar to Survival in Insurgency; this game got interesting gamemodes to inspire actually, just giving out ideas).

I hope ranged gets similar amount of development time as melee, or it is nerfed pretty hard. The main gripe I get in cRPG is that we have a great melee combat sim mashed together with half hearted point and click FPS mechanics (comparatively). There is no finesse or deep combat mechanics with ranged - thats something I hope they eliminate with the next game or make sure they stick to melee as the main gameplay. Why should half the population leap frog over the meat of the gameplay and play it like any other fps game?

How to make ranged less shallow? Just some examples:

Weapon sway - it doesn't have a fixed point at the dead centre of the screen - the point of release moves constantly but it moves with a momentum you have some control over. As you draw you get more severe momentum that increases as your arms tire
"free aim" - you have to line up the front and back of the weapon from a perspective that means you have to judge the angle rather than point and click
Stamina affects sway
Running moves the weapon around (not just a wider crosshair..this is especially important for HA/HX)
Projectile physics - lots of arcing and leading
Realistic interaction with materials (projectiles glance at acute angles with plate etc).

[Beauchamp]

permadeath
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i love the concept of permadeath where you loose everything including your stats, items and name, that never can be used again - it actually makes you think twice before you kill someone, knowing that as a revenge you can get killed yourself. there just must be some mechanics how you will be able to track the murderer (aka in heaven and hearth) and the murderer can't really be absolutely safe even when he logs out.

also if you defeat somebody in the combat, you should first just knock him off so you're able to give him a nice full loot without killing him. one should be able to kill only somebody who is lying unconscious on the ground by some special move.

in HnH you even have to skill "quite expensive" skill of murder before you actually can kill somebody. it is not realistic, but as a game mechaics i'd say it works a little bit. it would work even better if there would be a skillcap to character and murder would be one of them.

multiaccounting
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i'd also strictly be against more characters per account. if there is a possibility to have more characters it in a way kills the aspect you need other people to play with to achieve something bigger (aka run working town). if somebody wants more characters, he should buy the game more times 

skillcaps
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by the way the best skillcap system i've ever seen in a game was in one ultima roleplaying server.

- there were just 750 skill points to spend
- there were about 40 skills to level up
- if you wanted to master one skill you had to invest 100 points into that (by long long long long long very long grind)
- the difference between 100 points and lets say 85 was very very noticable
- if you wanted 100+ points it was achievable only by items (and you couldn't really get more than 110)
- if you wanted to really specialize in something (smithing, cooking, fighting, casting - you usually had to level like 6 skills to 100 so you really could be great in one thing only)
- you could however play around with stats (dex, int, str) thuss affecting your fighting capabilities quite a lot (you could be good fighter against archers/mages, but bad against other fighters etc..)
- stat cap was 161 (and you could have 159 str, 1dex, 1 int if you wanted)
- the 750 skillcap was applied to all skills (including mining, hiding, fighting skills, fishing, whatever)
- so you couldn't be good smith (or mayor, or trader, or alchymist) and good fighter (or archer and mage) at the same time
- but you could be good fighter and good miner (as for stupid pickaxe you needed 1 skill only) - but then you were selling ore only and not ingots that smiths were able to create (still it was a good source of income)
- you also could be good hunter and archer (as for hunting you needed like 200 skills invested in skinning animals and tracking)
- it was also fun to play craftsman, because it was difficult. there were no public recipes for anything, you had to pass some quests to get to know how to make better weapons, or you had to go to library and read old books to find recipes, or you had to get an escort and go to the dungeon where you could learn recipes engraved in walls etc.. or you just had to experiment (and risking loosing ingredients) to create stuff. older smiths were able to help you, but only to some extent. the best ones never shared unique recipes for the best armor and weapons. now it would maybe be different, as everyone shares everything just via teamspeak. i don't know, but at that time there were only 2 smiths that were really capable to make the top stuff, everybody knew them and nobody dared to touch them, because he knew he'd just get hunted until he would have to delete his char (well except for the drows ). and there were not just smiths, there were people making carpentry, top quality food, wine... (and especially wine-making was the ultimate task, nobody ever learned more than like 50 percents of its possibilities  ^^)

these limitations were great, it was a game where everybody really was unique, everybody's character was different. crpg still has some variety in chars, but not really as big as this game had...

[Casimir]

What will happen to abandoned settlements or property of inactive accounts?

If someone builds a huge complex but goes afk how long before it can be removed / taken over?