Spitballing an Idea (not Path related, but grid game related

[Charles Crafter]

Also seems like it would be less about PVP and more about a variety of survival skills. Expert pathfinder anyone?

Yeah, people probably wouldn't bother PVPing one another unless they were members of a rival nation / city / group in a town that's being attacked.

I think that, if you allow an option for PVP, you're going to have a faction that exists just to PVP/troll everyone else. It's inevitable in that sort of game, and you'd have to police it or let it go.

Frankly, I think you should set a hard cap on PVP to avoid much of the ugliness of other games. You can still have PVPesque options like picking pockets or wounding people, but I'm envisioning a trolling faction forming that exists to loot the countryside and burn down what everyone else has built.

That might be realistic, but I really think PVP is what has killed Path for me. Just my $0.02.

I wouldn't even start a game like this if it was going to have a PVP option, regardless of what claims or promises of policing it were given. Full stop.

I rather enjoy the pvp aspect to Path, and to Blood. However you may be right about the chance a place might do that. There is, however, a way to avoid having overly destructive pvp killings. Allow the killings, but make them temporary. For instance, in a few other games I play, deaths are only temporary, and you only lose just a portion of what you have on hand (not weapons, just things like cash) and of course if they fail, they lose their things to you. No death penalty, you still see that somebody killed you, they still get the reward, but the loss is rather small. So the worst they could do is spam your alerts and maybe take some cash (if you want to actually even apply that).

[Mooncalf]

I think that, if you allow an option for PVP, you're going to have a faction that exists just to PVP/troll everyone else. It's inevitable in that sort of game, and you'd have to police it or let it go.

Frankly, I think you should set a hard cap on PVP to avoid much of the ugliness of other games. You can still have PVPesque options like picking pockets or wounding people, but I'm envisioning a trolling faction forming that exists to loot the countryside and burn down what everyone else has built.

That might be realistic, but I really think PVP is what has killed Path for me. Just my $0.02.

I wouldn't even start a game like this if it was going to have a PVP option, regardless of what claims or promises of policing it were given. Full stop.

I agree with this in general actually.

I've tried to play games like Rust before, and people just kill you as a newbie just for the lols, and it becomes no fun. You're trying to collect some stuff to build a base and somebody just nukes the crap out of you, with a team sometimes too.

While there would be a few differences (you can't destroy things other people have built, for example), I do agree that PVP has to be limited somehow. Either to certain zones, faction VS faction, or in terms of impact.

Two things I'd need to be possible, even with all of the limitations in place:

• People raiding towns to loot stuff. Bandits, basically. Possible fixes:
  • The wider the gap between your own level, and the level of the people you kill, the less reward you get.
  • Killing people much weaker than yourself screws your luck rating, as you'll have 'bad karma' coming.
  • Offline players could be MUCH stronger, and guards could be tough as nails.
  • Certain low level zones could be off limits to raiding entirely, so if you want a safe town / house, build in a level 1-5 zone (the drawback being that you'd be further away from the good loot and enemies).
  Cities / nations fighting against one another. Possible fixes:
  • Having different tiers of faction, and make it so that factions can't attack groups not on their tier, because simply they aren't in competition with one another. Party (adventurers seeking good times together) > company (a group with a very small base) > militia (a group formed to defend their own village and strike at nearby militias / drive off bandits) > Battalion (small personal army usually formed around a city, but sometimes just to make up part of an overall nation's army) > Army (the army of a small nation) > Horde (the army of a big nation) > Empire (the army of an empire). Just for example.
  • Battle challenges can be turned down.
  • Some factions could be set to peaceful, and simply don't PVP as a group at all, so they can't attack other factions or be attacked. Might make up part of a nation in name only, but won't fight as part of that nation.

[Azraeth]

For city raiding, I like the idea of guards being very strong. I especially like the idea of it being very very difficult to raid another player's city if they have a number of defenses, like turrets, walls, barricades, sentry guards, etc.

I especially like it if there his decently high risk involved, as I think that the truth is there are just always going to be trolly players who like to attack newbs and weaker players just for their own amusement. Making it difficult to do this might serve as a good deterrent.

I love the ideas for nation versus nation pvp.

[Mooncalf]

(I'm mostly back and working on Path, but still spending a lot of time with the Wifey after getting married. But I've been toying with this idea more in my spare time and wanted to share the ideas.)

I've been in talks with somebody about doing all the artwork, and they came up with the idea of making the battle system more like Pokemon. After pondering that idea, I've decided I like it, and this is how I would likely approach it (ART IS TEMPORARY, just for testing):



So the basic idea is we have the pokemon style view, with avatars of enemies in front of you and a control bar thingy when it comes to your turn. But the twist I'm thinking would work quite well is if there's a mini grid view showing where on the surrounding battlefield the enemies are, where the local cover is, and where your allies are. This way you can spend a turn moving to a different location on the battlefield, within X squares.

NOTE: Offline player characters would automatically fight back with AI.

So with this, the one drawback I thought of was that you'd only be able to see in front of you. However, I was thinking that you could just click "turn around" to view the other half of the battlefield. Being surrounded by enemies would thus come into play and would have negative consequences, so it adds strategy for everyone on the field.

The other thing that adds strategy is seeing where the cover is, and attempting to fight over strategically useful locations such as these, and any bottlenecks you could use to prevent enemies from flanking you.

Another advantage is that people moving around on the grid would see everyone on the grid as they are on the battle view, and they'd have a little 'in battle' marker next to their name. Then, if you want to jump in on either team's side, you click on one of the enemies and attack them. Similarly, this lets allies jump into fights against monsters together for a good PVE experience on the fly.

This system also lets people flee if they are able to get away.

One thing I didn't show in this mockup was each name would also have "online" or "offline" (or maybe "NPC") next to them.

This all ties nicely into the idea of skills. You'd have some skills which could allow for better battlefield mobility, displacing enemies from defended locations, destroying cover, helping allies in certain ways, perhaps even creating cover. You get the idea. And then melee abilities also have a different kind of use to firearms.

What do people think of this concept? Of course, this is the BATTLE view only, this isn't the view when exploring. That would likely be top-down and simple.

[Charles Crafter]

Hmm, not what I was expecting but I definitely still like it. Especially the idea of combining the terrain into it all, since the only time that comes up in path is if somebody leaps over a wall or the river, or teleports and that's about it there. I really look forward to how that ends up going, seems a lot more high tech then I thought it would be.