Marosia

[Wolfsong]

On FTO, you can duplicate any resource object in the game in seconds, resulting in hundreds (or thousands, if you like clicking) of resources of the same type. Because resources are not given unique IDs, you can gather 1 water, then spend 24 hours making 24 water healing objects. That's 1 RL day for 24 healing objects, plus an hour for the single resource you'd need to duplicate to start the process. As I said, it's poorly coded and is very, very easy to cheese.

Edit: Additionally, rot doesn't occur when something is held in a container. So you can gather/craft from about age 5 or so, which means if you spend each day making fresh water, or whatever it's called, you can have a LOT of it kicking around by the time you're 10 and able to murder your parents/entire family.

[SumBum]

Wow, I had no idea. I'm not talking ways to hack the system, though. FTO has a lot of issues, from its UI to its code, that keep me from playing it. The principles behind it, if coded properly to prevent hacking, are what I was discussing.

[Wolfsong]

Even assuming the principles were sound, it would still only take a RL week's worth of marginal effort to have enough healing objects to be able to kill anyone in the game regardless of their stats or skills. In a game where your starting investment in a character is quite steep, and in a game with permadeath, that's still not a very good result.

I suppose combat is tricky because, again, of how these sorts of games work - you have turn-based games that flick over to instant combat. Combat isn't tied to anything else about the game - not turns, hours, etc. - it exists wholly apart from all that. Other games are either entirely turn-based (where combat is also turn-based, and slow) or instant, as in MUDs (everything occurs in real time or the game approximation.)

Just brainstorming here, but combat can exist in a couple of different ways - let's say either it's tied into the same system of time that exists for everything else, or it's separate but has its weird idiosyncrasies explained by IC mythology. That doesn't mean it needs to be turn-based if you use the former idea... or strictly turn-based, I guess. Take a page from the book of mobile gaming and give everyone a limited number of actions that replenish slowly, accruing again every turn or something.

(to be continued)

Edit: I've realized that, having gotten home now, my give-a-shit meter has hit zero and I'm going to spend the rest of the evening not thinking. I'll try to remember where I was going with this tomorrow at work again.

[Tiamo]

... Take a page from the book of mobile gaming and give everyone a limited number of actions that replenish slowly, accruing again every turn or something...

Please DON'T use this system. It only leads to short sprints of (asynchronous) activity, without a chance to roleplay. It's an immersion roleplay killer.

In my opinion combat should be an activity like any other: it takes some time to complete, uses tools, engages both the attacker(s) and the defender(s), and leads to a specific result (many outcomes are possible, from inflicting damage to knocking down, pinning down, dragging, disarming, fleeing or even cutting a Z in the clothes of your opponent).
The only special part is both sides should have their say in the action, either by choice or by preset default if the defender isn't online before the action is resolved.

[Wolfsong]

... Take a page from the book of mobile gaming and give everyone a limited number of actions that replenish slowly, accruing again every turn or something...

Please DON'T use this system. It only leads to short sprints of (asynchronous) activity, without a chance to roleplay. It's an immersion roleplay killer.

In my opinion combat should be an activity like any other: it takes some time to complete, uses tools, engages both the attacker(s) and the defender(s), and leads to a specific result (many outcomes are possible, from inflicting damage to knocking down, pinning down, dragging, disarming, fleeing or even cutting a Z in the clothes of your opponent).
The only special part is both sides should have their say in the action, either by choice or by preset default if the defender isn't online before the action is resolved.

You can say Cantr already uses that system, though, with every character allocated one "action" each turn. I'll continue my earlier post now that I'm home now, but I want to break down the turn further.

[Tiamo]

Ok, but without the accumulating part, and being executed simultaneously, not at the players' chosen time. Unfortunately combat is one of the exceptions.

[Rebma]

Example #1:

In FTO, if you stockpile enough healing food, you can kill someone within 5-10 RL minutes, even if they're of a much higher strength/skill level. You just attack them until you are injured, then flee and use healing food until you're at full health again, then rinse and repeat.

I see you've never encountered fto's present-since-the-beginning pvp bug where 1/3 of the time it bugs out and you can't flee and you die.

[Wolfsong]

Example #1:

In FTO, if you stockpile enough healing food, you can kill someone within 5-10 RL minutes, even if they're of a much higher strength/skill level. You just attack them until you are injured, then flee and use healing food until you're at full health again, then rinse and repeat.

I see you've never encountered fto's present-since-the-beginning pvp bug where 1/3 of the time it bugs out and you can't flee and you die.

Not yet. Most of the time I killed on FTO, while I played it, it was very unbalanced in favor of my character who had awesome stats, awesome skills, and the best gear in the game. I only had to use my shitty little tricks a couple times, and never ran into that bug.

Favorite PK was traveling through a forest region and spotting a faery. Threw out an emote 'So and so accidentally crushes the tiny bug-person underfoot as she stomps along.' - then attacked the faery. Killed it in one hit. Kept traveling.

[SumBum]

Example #1:

In FTO, if you stockpile enough healing food, you can kill someone within 5-10 RL minutes, even if they're of a much higher strength/skill level. You just attack them until you are injured, then flee and use healing food until you're at full health again, then rinse and repeat.

I see you've never encountered fto's present-since-the-beginning pvp bug where 1/3 of the time it bugs out and you can't flee and you die.

Maybe that bug should be a feature. Toss in some % chance of not being able to escape your victim if they overpower you. It may or may not make people more careful about engaging in violence.

Favorite PK was traveling through a forest region and spotting a faery. Threw out an emote 'So and so accidentally crushes the tiny bug-person underfoot as she stomps along.' - then attacked the faery. Killed it in one hit. Kept traveling.

That's evil but hilarious.



The only thing I can come up with to force a slow-down on combat is to limit it so that a char can only have one attack initiated against them per day. But, again, that does not guarantee the victim a chance of RP, retaliation, escape, etc. If dragging is an option, the attackers will just toss the victim behind a locked door for safekeeping until they can initiate another attack. I simply like FTO's combat/hunting system because it at least allows the victim/animal to fight back automatically, unlike Cantr. So, there's at least a little risk and harm done to the attacker. (unless you're a giant stomping bugs. lol)

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with any MUDs. The one I tried was a very long time ago and I never got my char to a point that it could attempt an attack on another player. But I think most MUDs are set up in a way that chars don't "appear" in the game world unless the player is online? That would totally cut out a lot of the RP available within Cantr where chars just soak in all the activity and the player can catch up when they log in.

[computaertist]

Is it really difficult to conceive of combat as a project, like any other project in the game, so it's not a jarring leap from one form of play to the other?

Or are there glaringly obvious downsides to such a system keeping everyone from mentioning it that haven't crossed my mind for some reason?

[Wolfsong]

Slowing down combat by making it a project, off the top of my head, favors the defenders so heavily that I think it would kill any attempt at PvP in the game. If someone ambushed a town and attacked someone, and then was stuck in a 6 hour limbo waiting for their project to complete, they would be immediately swarmed by every wakeful member of that town, who would pile on before the turn tick and murder them.

[computaertist]

Slowing down combat by making it a project, off the top of my head, favors the defenders so heavily that I think it would kill any attempt at PvP in the game. If someone ambushed a town and attacked someone, and then was stuck in a 6 hour limbo waiting for their project to complete, they would be immediately swarmed by every wakeful member of that town, who would pile on before the turn tick and murder them.

Maybe limit the number of people who can be in combat with each other at once? So dog-piling can only be at worse three on one? Oh, but make the limit a proportional thing, so it can be thirty on ten, 60 on 20, etc etc, so wars can still happen if enough people play. And balance the combat so three on one doesn't guarantee a one tick victory for the three person side unless maybe they're close to all the best stats verses all the worst.

[Wolfsong]

Just brainstorming here, but combat can exist in a couple of different ways - let's say either it's tied into the same system of time that exists for everything else, or it's separate but has its weird idiosyncrasies explained by IC mythology. That doesn't mean it needs to be turn-based if you use the former idea... or strictly turn-based, I guess. Take a page from the book of mobile gaming and give everyone a limited number of actions that replenish slowly, accruing again every turn or something.

(to be continued)

Since I am literally just throwing out ideas on the fly, I'm going to try and talk my way through this to see if it would even be viable. It's something I've thought about in the abstract plenty of times, but haven't designed anything concrete for.

So let's say you have turns every 4 hours or so. These are fixed, happening at a certain time each day. In addition to having these ticks, each character has 10 "action points." Obviously, the amount of "action points" and the length of turns are completely made up and aren't balanced, but here's what I'm thinking, roughly - everything: crafting, fighting, travelling, etc., takes action points. Certain actions could even take multiple points. Incredibly difficult actions (long-term crafting or building, perhaps) take more action points than a character has in their pool. So let's say you're trying to build a house, and that takes 15 action points. You use your stored 10 immediately, and accrue 1 action point per turn. You can either continue working on this task (putting a point into it automatically each turn when it replenishes) or stop to work on other tasks in the mean time, occasionally spending points on your building or whatever. Once 15 have gone in, the task is completed. Let's say dragging and attacking also cost points. Being particularly skilled might even lower the action point cost, though never reduce it to 0 - though maybe high skill levels have a *small* chance of immediately replenishing an action point on use in a relevant skill? Brainstorming. Poorly skilled people could increase the amount of action points it takes to complete a task, as well as reducing the overall quality of the item produced.

Now, attacking takes an action point - that's similar to Cantr without the one a day limit, meaning you can attack multiple times, drag, and still put the defender at a very unfair disadvantage. But what if, if the defender had remaining points in their action point pool, they could automatically retaliate against attacks? Additionally, what if there were options to dictate how a defender retaliated against an attack? (Such as: attacking back, not attacking back but getting a boost to defense instead, etc.) That would level the playing field a bit.

Obviously vehicles would have to have their own variation on the system, since I don't foresee ships and cars having action points, but it could at least tie crafting and combat together more closely than they are currently meshed in FTO/Cantr.

[LegendOFCantr]

Looks nice, cant wait to try it.

[rd1988]

I think it turned into Vaporware right now.