Suggestion [General] - How to greatly improve Herocraft (personal observation)

[draconis99]

This is going to be a long post. There is no way around that. I will try to keep it as organized as I can to make reading easier on the eyes. There is simply too much information for a simple TLDR. I apologize in advance.

Herocraft will always have a special place in my heart, but now that I have finished becoming a Game Designer, it's time to do things right. Lets start out with some terminology to better explain why I am making these observations.

State of Play: That feeling players get when they are so immersed in a game that they forget almost everything else and "become one" with the moment. This happens with almost any activity or hobby and is not exclusive to video games. The state of Play falls inbetween monotonous boredom of how simple an act is and frustration over how difficult an act is. In video games, it is a Game Designer's job to try to make players fall between the two and enjoy a state of Play for as long as possible.

Negative Feedback: When talking about games, Negative Feedback is any sort of punishment system to prevent players who are doing well to continue to do well to the point of boredom with success. A great example of a game with a Negative Feedback Loop is Mario Kart. The person in the lead gets crappy items like bananas and green turtle shells while the person in the last place gets exclusive access to some of the most powerful items. The better you do in Mario Kart, the greater a point of disadvantage you are put in. While most players will proclaim that they hate Negative Feedback - dying and losing their items, needing to start over, things being "too difficult" - Negative Feedback is essential to the longevity and livelihood of a game, and making the game simpler due to people complaining of the fact normally leads to boredom and the death of gameplay. Most people don't know it, but they love to be punished (not a sexy kink thing at all, its just a fact that most do not accept).

Meaningful Choices: There are choices all around us, but meaningful choices are what make us happy. If you give a man a choice of either taking $3.00 or $5.00, it is a choice, but not meaningful. The better choice is obvious, and while the person just got a free $5.00, his joy does not come from the choice he made, but from the money - and that joy is just as short lived as $5.00 in today's economy. Meaningful choices are options presented to someone with different risks and outcomes. The important thing about meaningful choices is that sometimes a choice may seem to be the better choice, end out to be the worst choice possible, but the player still feels a glimpse of joy because he was able to make that choice and learn from it or even mold that bad choice into a good one.

Now that we have some fancy words out in the open, lets make a list of things that need fixing in Herocraft.

- Too Many Positive Feedback Loops
- Very Few Meaningful Choices
- Contradictory Fighting Gamestyles
- Very Little Reinforcing Progressive Feedback

Positive Feedback Loops
Dying and having all of your things is a core part of Minecraft gameplay. In fact, this negative feedback is one of the reasons the game is so successful. It encourages players to get back on their feet and either fight to get back what they lost or start over to rebuild again. There are many other negative feedback loops within Minecraft itself that have also been done away with, but with reason.
- Structures in towns are now protected from being destroyed so players need not fear the loss of their creations (good choice).
- Constant expenditure of food to keep one's stamina up in order to heal and accomplish menial tasks has been replaced by a resource bar for stamina skills (needs quite a bit of tweaking).

Dropping your loot when you die was one of the last negative feedbacks that Herocraft had to tout around and give to players, yet Herocraft has not only removed this core mechanic of Minecraft, but it has strapped explosives to it after shooting it in the head, drowning it in a river, and taking away it's lollipop. There are No-PVP zones, death chests, drop-box commands, and a get out of any questionably dangerous situation button called "/skill recall".

While several of these would not be as big of problems if combat were done right (more on that subject later), but they would only not be as big of a problem if they were the only problem instead of a group of them all contributing to the death of this staple mechanic. Unfortunately, having so many positive feedback loops to protect one's goods has utterly destroyed one of the only remaining negative feedback loops that SHOULD be still in the game with Herocraft's given gameplay.

- Know you're going to die? Drop-box the important stuff.
- Couldn't drop-box it in time? Keep grabbing your death chest and inch it closer to a safe zone until it's fine.
- Have too many valuable items after filling your drop-box with stuff and don't want to risk losing them? Just do away with a meaningful decision of how to get back to base safely by using /skill recall.

I would propose that Drop-box be removed entirely. Being a donor myself, I am willing to sacrifice the "convenience" for the longevity of the game. Meanwhile, I understand the marketing value of the mechanic, and as a Game Designer would settle with being unable to drop-transfer items either outside of comfort zones (towns, personal regions, etc), No-PVP zones, or during combat. Modifying when it can be used and allowing it to stay would be destroying many meaningful decisions for players because it is the outright best choice.

Herocraft has become a world with Herogates to quickly transport to far out reaches of the map, dungeons with limited space for the players to explore, special warps for members of towns to get to their town, and has a plethora of classes with many quick-travel techniques to get where one wishes to go. Not only is recall not needed because of the vast ways of transportation/map coordinated provided by the game and the approved modpack to go with the server, but it is being abused to ruin many more meaningful decisions and opportunities for the community to engage in activities and grow. If recall is to remain a skill, it should be either limited to a specific class or a reward obtained for mastering specific classes which would provide a sense of progression in a small way. If either of those options still remain, the skill should most definitely have the reagent cost of the spell increased greatly - to the point where using it is expensive enough to be a meaningful decision.

Death chests are not as bad if combat were fixed. Getting rid of auto-loot would be a start. The problem is fixing combat - it will not be quick nor easy.


Meaningful Choices
As the game stands, there are plenty of choices - in fact, there might be too many that it is getting on the border of confusion and complexity - but the problem is that almost none of these choices are meaningful. Let's separate the types of choices involved into groups and talk about how to improve them individually.

What to do?
In it's current form, when players log on, players have four choices on what to do:
- Go to dungeons to level their fighter class
- Go mining to level their crafter class
- Gather resources and build up towns
- Hunt for people to pvp with
Almost all of these choices in their current form are exclusive and limiting. Each is within its own zone/world with little-to-no crossover. There is almost no multi-tasking of the options unless another player is seeking out pvp in one of the areas. The only cross-over between these choices is dependent on the actions and desires of another player. These are indeed choices, but almost none of them meaningful, and worst of all is that all of these choices are almost completely separated. This breaks the immersion of the game and will instantly put a halt to anyone's state of Play. It also leaves a distaste from switching from one aspect to the other because of how completely separate and different each task is.

To remedy this, Herocraft needs ways to increase immersion, combine availability of working on these tasks in relatively same areas, goals with risks/rewards that promote working together, and weekly/daily race-type competitions with rewards (who can turn in # of X resource today for Y reward first?). Adding in an automatic bounty-type system would also generate a great meaningful decision mechanic for both the offender deciding if the kill is worth the bounty and the receiver for the bounty - bounty system would need to be thought through thoroughly to hinder or at least create more gameplay opportunities from abuse. Adding menial tasks to pass the down-time - like re-introducing the lottery.

- Adding interactive-dungeons to the real world with mobs spawning would be a great addition, yet I understand this takes work and planning. It would greatly help the state of the game, but I understand how difficult this may be. Simply stating what would help the server, whether simple fixes or not.

- Adding limited crafting quests every day for players to gain in crafting exp would also create a great opportunity. It would be even better if many of these quests required some drops from mobs from certain zones to accomplish such a task. This combines both crafting and PVE killing to get a task done.

- A good example of working together to achieve a goal was the mob-arena. While outdated and thoroughly abused, there are other ways to accomplish the same means. Holding off an invasion of spiders at Ruby Temple. Succeed and everyone gets a random drop who participated enough. Fail and nobody can claim the Ruby Temple that day.

- It's a guarantee that people will try to abuse the bounty system if it is automated. Off the top of my head after thinking about it for a whole two-minutes, I have come up with a probably very erroneous idea, but I'll let people speculate. If a player has a bounty on their head, other players can access a bounty board. The bounty board will allow the players to see who has bounties, for how much, and tell the bounty player's current location when activated if the player is officially hunting that player. From that board (and only from that board), they can also accept the duty to hunt down these bounties. Once a player accepts the duty to hunt down a bounty, it is declared on the server. Death will remove the quest to hunt down the player, as well as logging out. Once the player with the bounty has been slain by a bounty hunter, that player's head will drop and the quest is completed. The head will have on it one of the four randomly chosen herogate locations where they can turn the head in for the money. If the player uses any kind of warp such as recall or warpgate, etc, the head will disappear and the bounty hunt quest must be picked up again. If the player with the head dies or disconnects from the game, the head will disappear.

Meaningful Choices in Combat
This is going to be quite a big section. This is probably the most important fix to Herocraft, but it will take a LOT of work. Let's list what should have meaningful choices and then how to obtain them.

- What class to pick
- What abilities to use and when
- When/whether to run from a fight
- What armor to wear


There has been a blatant difference in what classes are the dominant class since I have returned to Herocraft. Classes that can come back from death with damaging abilities and disregard to equipment or need for items are very powerful compared to their weapon-clicking, armor-needing cousins. This shows great flaws in the need for items, how skills are handled, and the current state of combat resource management.

Minecraft's hunger bar is a great resource that I feel is not being used how it should be. Minecraft put that resource bar there for combat purposes on purpose, and changing it to the form it is now is not well in terms of meaningful decisions with risk/reward choices in combat. The only actual resource bar that matters in combat is mana. Once that mana is gone, there is only one option: run until you have more mana. The reason that is the only option is because there is no penalty for running. We need to tie in some of Minecraft's hunger mechanics in with our own stamina bar and include meaningful choice on how to handle them through types of armor.

I would propose that when taking hits from physical blows, it reduces one's stamina. The more damage done by the blow, the more stamina is lost. If a player is sprinting, regeneration of stamina is slowed. If stamina falls below 3 meat chunks, the player is unable to sprint. I would also propose that all offensive spells require stamina on top of their mana requirements to cast. Players may reduce the amount of stamina lost from blows by using armor.

Armor
Armor should change completely. What type of armor pieces the player is wearing compared to the class's strength will grant certain boons or curses. Spells or magic orient should be able to somewhat penetrate armor to do more damage than a physical blow, but still have the hit to stamina reduced.

-While wearing no armor, mana regeneration is increased.

-While wearing leather armor, mana regeneration is normal and damage is reduced based on the armor amount.

-While wearing chain armor, mana regeneration is reduced but lower damaging attacks do not drain as much stamina.

-While wearing plate armor (iron), mana regeneration is reduced, medium damaging attacks do not drain as much stamina, but if your class is not strong enough, the armor will either slow your movement speed or your stamina regeneration.

-While wearing diamond plate armor, mana regeneration is reduced, higher damaging abilities do not drain as much stamina, but if your class is not strong enough, the armor will either greatly slow your movement speed or your stamina regeneration.

-While wearing gold plate armor, mana regeneration is normal, lower damaging attacks do not drain as much stamina.

We can even change how armor is crafted to enable these buffs. All players can "craft" whatever piece of armor they wish, but only a blacksmith or an NPC in town can "fit" the armor for wearing. The NPC will come at a cost of the armor piece to be fitted as well as some kind of cost. A blacksmith player can do it for free, or charge a fee. Once "fitted" the armor can apply the buffs/debuffs and be worn.

Now players can choose a playstyle with a class type through armor. The choice in what armor you wear provides certain risks/rewards with resource management. Since spells and abilities cost stamina and the stamina bar now has value, fleeing characters can be slowed to prevent them from simply escaping as easily as they can now. Choosing when and how to use your abilities against certain opponents now has meaningful decisions. This also gives physical weapon users an advantage when they have a weapon and are within melee range, giving more meaningful choice as to being a caster that can simply just back into the fight after dying, but needing to hold back because people with weapons can make quick work of shutting him up and preventing escape. Death chests are now much more difficult to reclaim and escape with without help or coming back prepared with more armor/weapons as a risk/reward for both parties involved. It is important that sometimes players lose so that others can win. It is also important to know when to move on with the chances pitted against you.

Combat
Minecraft is an action combat game. I notice Herocraft trying to become that way through changing how many skills work, but the skills being changed are known as skill-shot skills, and are not considered action combat. Combat is too quickly paced for a melee/spell combat game. In a matter of seconds, most combat sessions can determine who the winning party is. It is then a question of whether the losing party can survive or not. This provides a feeling of frustration and hopelessness for one party, and a temporary feeling of success, but it only feeds the carnal pleasure of dominance instead of the fulfilling joy of a well-earned victory. The frustrated party will detest PVP while the dominant party will soon become bored and look for another victim to continue the temporary stint of pleasure.

As much as I commend the balance team for their hard work, it is obvious that their efforts of balancing are aimed toward "who can kill who in what way" instead of trying to create a well-balanced fight where killing each other does not come easy. Fighting does not always need to end in death. There's a difference between a battle and a slaughter.

It is not the balance team's fault. They are doing the best they can with the skills they have been given. Herocraft is also very old, and as you can see from the Shaman class, many of it's skills are based off old MMOs - which mainly had target clicking abilities and were not action combat games.

I am currently working on a small combat simulator to demonstrate what action combat and meaningful decision skills look/feel like. Herocraft's abilities are wonderful abilities for a target based skill clicking game, but as Minecraft just came out with a giant combat overhaul expansion that is directly shoving combat even more towards action combat, I feel Herocraft should embrace and magnify that style of combat instead of creating a mutant child with WoW skills.

Healing sucks. From a professional opinion, it sucks. I enjoy support classes of all types and of all games, except here. Slowing down combat by making sprint cost something, and allowing for healers to pick heavier armor to last longer is a start, but target heals with the amount of silences and shove abilities to remove those targets from range during casts is horrid. Healers can either heal themselves very well and are OP or can't manage to get any heals off during pvp and are garbage. Healers need more dynamic, action-oriented mechanics. I will try to add some examples of those in the simulator as well.

Meaningful Choices Towards Progression
Players need to feel as though their efforts meant something in order for their choices to feel as though they were meaningful. Currently, players are leveling a crafter class because it meshes well with their town's composition or it best suits their playstyle/class. Most players will only ever level one crafter class to max and stop. Combat classes are played until frustration kicks in and then abandoned because the balance team is changing something or the player feels they have found a class with OP skills. When a player gets to max level, the only reward they get other than the skill they were aiming for is the mysterious possibility that their class could get them to a legendary class. The randomness of this entire ordeal to achieve legendary class status is more of a frustration than a reward.

Giving players certain skills that they can obtain and tether to their soul - regardless of what class they are - after maxing out a class would be a great boon to strive for, and let the player feel as though they are progressing.
Level 2-3 caster classes to get Recall
Level 2-3 warrior classes to get Second Wind
Level 2-3 rogue classes to get Sneak
etc.
Those are just examples, but these are a great way to reward players along the way as they go above and beyond just leveling the latest OP class. This gives players something to strive for, as well as a reason to play classes that might be under-powered and create a more diverse community.


I had planned to go on further, but it is early in the morning and I am tired and making typing mistakes. I will always love Herocraft, regardless. I'm just trying to show some observations I have. Most people are blaming the numbers on abilities or the lack of pvp or players or the balance team. Unfortunately, the problem lies in the core of how the game has been built. If we decide we would like to make some meaningful changes, I would love to help - even if they aren't in sync with my suggestions.

 

[xexorian]

I agree with a lot of this, and I think the armor idea could easily be written using armor/toughness. Armor limiting mana regen, Toughness limiting stamina, while also making toughness limit increasing amounts of damage to stamina, and armor reducing damage to health.

Spoiler

I suppose that 1 Armor should equate to 1% DR, while Toughness equates to negating 1 point of "stamina-damage".

Assuming the balance team can get actual DPS/Burst numbers right, I would say something like around 80-100 DPS is to be expected.

So a high tier diamond armor would be something around 80 Armor and 32 Toughness. This would reduce mana regen by like 40%, and reduce stamina-damage by 32. Any damaging attack greater than 32 damage would begin to drain stamina at a rate of 0.5 damage to 1 stamina.

Assume a few scenarios here, like so.
(old classes here.)
Wizard vs Paladin.

The wizard is wearing high tier leather with 32 Armor and 8 Toughness. This would give the wizard about 84% mana regen, and knock off 8 stamina-damage from any paladin attacks. However, he is moving at 100% speed w/ 32% DR.

The paladin is wearing high tier diamond with 80 Armor and 32 toughness. This would give the paladin about 40% mana regen, and knock off about 32 "SD" from any wizard attacks. However, he is moving at (let's just say, something like 90%) speed, w/ 80% DR.

What's horrid about these mechanics here, is that the paladin will never catch a blinking fireballing wizard. He's just going to be a punching bag for him. However, at that high DR% the wizard would basically have to go out of mana several times to kill him, assuming he did 100 DPS (naked) and had 1000 mana, and that the paladin has 1000 health. Assume here for a second that at maximum potential the wizard can do about 800 damage before going out of mana. This means the paladin would take about 160 damage from his attacks and about (assuming each hit was 100 x 8 hits/spells) 544 stamina damage. Now, the question comes, what should the baseline of stamina be for a paladin vs a wizard. Obviously the wizard will have better stamina management because they're not shrugging off explosive blasts of ultimate doom in their shiny armor. However, if the paladin was balanced enough that it had a movement skill, to close a gap, and could land a few hits such as a stun combo, with the old school reckoning, they could easily chunk out 400-500 damage (in the older system from back in DG) and this would also cost him a lot of stamina and mana. This would leave them both worn down with one big difference. The paladin is low on mana, and stamina, but has a lot of health. The wizard is low on health and mana, but has some stamina and more importantly a 10% baseline speed difference. This means he could kite indefinitely, unless the wizard or the paladin can use any sort of skill based movement first and get in more hits.

The problem is how complex and messy this gets requires lots of balancing on both the skill composition, and design factor of how we calculate damages, and how we calculate armors. The worst change to Minecraft was the 1.9 changes because then it became less of a target-based skill-shot based game, and as you say, into a more action combat game. With one big difference. The only weapon with a default skill is a sword. The rest don't really do anything, and blocking with shields is pretty garbage.

We're not even taking into account all the balancing factors of armor/toughness/damage in this hypothetical scenario so I have to say it is a tall order to chew on while sounding simple at first, it can easily get into a jargled mess of just whoever's class balance is simple better, and less of 'who was more skilled' in a fight.

The only true fights that are balanced when talking with skills and classes are non-existant. The only ones that are without saying those things, are the default minecraft experience, and even that is jumbled what with beacon powers, potions of strength, and the logistics of fleeing/fighting in 3d terrain especially when it can be deadly, swapping to infinity flame bows, etc. I've done a lot of both, and the best balance that I enjoyed was the old DG experience when a lot of it was simpler before the attack speed changes.

We've tried to combat it with the 100% AS weapons but then we still have DG issues such as "Invulnerability Frames" and how to deal with those. IMO Those should be removed entirely. A player should be able to take as much damage as you dish at them from as many sources as possible, up to infinity. If you can do this, and somehow add a better balancing factor to both Armor and Toughness instead of this:

damage = damage * ( 1 - min( 20, max( defensePoints / 5, defensePoints - damage / ( 2 + toughness / 4 ) ) ) / 25 )

Stupid ass shit above, then that'd be great. But as it is, the only problem I can see with combat now is similar to what you've said but more specific.

1) We need to get rid of invuln frames from all combat in all scenarios.
2) We need to normalize arrow damage to be specifically what the crap we set it to regardless of velocity.
3) We need to normalize armor, but I would stray away from speed penalties.
4) We need better class-item restrictions, not partial pieces here and there to visually identify. That should be obvious based on what skills they use. All Spellcasters should be Leather or Chainmail. All Warriors should be iron/diamond. All rogues should be Leather/Chainmail/Iron. Either the complete set (and balanced accordingly, or just one set.) The reason is because we haven't gotten "item-class restrictions yet". Where we can make certain pieces only equippable by certain classes. If we do that, we don't need visual ambiguity.
5) We need to normalize melee damage with actual attack speed instead of just buffing every item type by 100%. Skill shots in melee need to remain a thing but need to be fast-paced. We need a way to get rid of auto-clickers. Clicking a thousand times/1sec shouldn't yield 1000 1damage hits. As with the 1.9 attack speed changes, you should be able to learn how to time your attacks with whatever weapon your class is balanced with. Axes should remain slower and considered 2handers. Swords should fill a role of a balanced weapon (say 3-4 attacks faster than vanilla 1.9+, to make it more akin to 1.8). Beyond that, Hoes should be more like a scythe or mace or even staff type weapon. This could be considered a 1h or a 2h depending on your class. For example, we could allow certain casters the use of a shield if we fixed BLOCKING as well. Someone with an axe should be able to hit someone with a sword for roughly the same damage, given a level playing field they should do the same DPS - both being fast - but accurate. This would come more down to player skill, and we should have some sort of punching bag at spawn so players can time their hits and see some sort of feedback as to how that hit should feel with better AS balancing it could go places with no I-frames. Lastly, mana. Mana should feel like the resource of the gods. It should feel magical, and when you have it, you should feel powerful. Every class should be using Mana with the way our system is setup. As well as stamina. Stamina should make you feel weak. When you run out of it. You shouldn't feel godly even with a lot of Mana. You should be saying Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.
6) Durability - if we decide to go the enhancement route, and have armor/weapons become more than just sticks and a pile of scrap to defend yourself with, we need to make these items permanent and not drop on death. EVERYTHING ELSE SHOULD.
7) We need to bring back the old school days with this, but we also need a Karma system. If you "PVP" a lot and kill a lot, your karma should go down. If your karma is low you should be able to drop your "gear" and if your karma is that low, you should go grind on some mobs to gain it back. This encourages you to stay in the field and meet more people or team up with people. If you're a bad cookie and you go pvping literally every second of everyday you should risk something for that as your negative feedback loop, and no I'm not talking about your 32 stack of bread or 5 arrows, or even spell reagents. You should lose your gear if you murder too many people with high karma.

EXP = Karma. Set player karma to around 30,000. If you kill someone, you lose, say, 1,000 karma. If you reach 10,000 karma. Your armor/weapons may lose durability, and you drop 1 of your gear items along with the rest of your stuff. If you reach 5,000 karma. This debuff makes you drop 2 items along with. If you get to 0 karma you should begin to start losing EXPerience everytime you die in a PVP death along with 3 items. If you get to -5,000 karma you should lose 3% of your level in exp, 4 of your 5-6 gear items, and all of your inventory. If you're above 29,999 Karma and haven't murdered anyone, you should retain your ability to spawn a deathchest (althought until we ever get around to fixing it, it should spawn with only random amounts of other items you held in your inventory.) If you kill a player with less than 10,001 karma you should lose only 750 karma. If you kill a player with less than 5,001 karma you should only lose 500 karma. If you kill a negative player you should lose 250 karma. In this way, even exacting justice still nets you some karma loss, but discourages long-term camping of these individuals since they will and thusly you will, have to earn your karma back by slaying the monsters of the world.

EXPerience gain should translate directly to karma in some fashion. Assuming my latest testing I would say something on the order of 3% (maybe more) of EXP gain = Karma. This means a T6 boss would give about ~75 karma back. If you're wiping out packs of mobs at a time, you'll be able to gain back 1,000 karma in no time. A normal T4 minion (think 1500hp, should be 2-3 shottable with good gear/stats/pve modifier) would give around ~6-7 karma. (I'm estimating ~140-150 mob kills per 1 pvp kill at T4 levels, ~66 mob kills at t6)

This may seem harsh but it would encourage others to play together and fight only so much before having to work it off/walk it off. Unless they don't mind losing their gear. This is why, we should also consider how armor works for casters, who can show up naked and just nuke people. They would be the new grief meta with this system, so you'd have to be careful, such as introducing reagent costs, or making it where they can only cast with a weapon held, and make that weapon not immediately accessible from /shop.

Anyway I definitely feel like I (at least) could go deeper into a meta design conversation here so I encourage others to maybe build upon or change up some of these ideas Draconis, or I, have tossed out there! Disclaimer: some of my ideas may not immediately be infallible to my understanding at first, in which case, I encourage others to expose weaknesses in them and enlighten me with your opinions. thanks!

 

[draconis99]

Some nice ideas there Xexo! Something that would also help in the fight against the mage and the paladin is that the mage is using stamina to cast spells under the resource management system. This means that in the right opportunity, the paladin can catch him off guard, and hit him just enough to reduce his stamina just below being able to run. That is a meaningful choice on both parts. Now that both classes can survive each other, it comes time to add skills that put both classes in a vulnerable position - resource wise - to possibly go for the kill. Whether the players succeed or fail is based on when or how they choose to use it. With paladin also being a strength based warrior class, we could get rid of the speed reduction as well, and since the mage is using spells, we could give a number of those spells armor penetration or spells that apply damaging debuffs to heavy armor - heat metal.

Shields tend to be somewhat of a problem in the current game, but that is only because players don't understand them. Shields are easily done away with by axes (once hit with an axe, they auto disarm with a timer), and we could also make shield blocking cost stamina. Sure you can block all day as long as your shield has durability, but once your stamina is gone, you can't sprint away, your turning speed is reduced by holding the shield out, and you don't have the stamina to cast spells.

I agree that each class-type should have a set level of what is the "best" type of armor for their playstyle, but I don't think that outright not allowing them to experiment with heavier armor takes away a lot of choices that they can use. Instead of saying that rogue classes can only equip leather and chain, why not have plate armors be extra heavy and limit their stamina regeneration and move speed? Even funnier, why not have plate armor be too heavy for certain mobility skills? When a rogue tries to backflip, they barely hop. When they use grapple, it craps out halfway of when it normally should. Rogues being unable to use their precious free-flow of stamina and be mobile in exchange for more protection is a whole different playstyle that might actually be interesting and fun.

As for the Karma system, we would need some kind of a criminal flag system so that not all killings give the player bad karma. Self-Defense, defending your town, rescuing a friend, etc. We would need a color code system for names to display this information.
Blue name - This character is in good standing. Attacking this character will turn yourself criminal and leave you open to attacks.
Grey name - This character has just committed a crime and for the next # of time will be attack-able without penalty to your karma. He can be attacked anytime and anywhere as long as his name remains grey.
Offenses include:
- being in someone else's base (does not generate crime points)
- subjecting yourself to a pvp area (taking over a castle)
- stealing someone's things from their death chest before the timer runs out (if that's possible)
- attacking a blue name
- healing a grey or red name
Each time the player becomes a criminal, it stacks up crime points. Crime points decay very slowly over played gametime. Once a player gathers enough crime points, their name becomes red. Dying with a grey name will not allow you a death chest.
Red name - This character has become a well known bad dude. He can be attacked anytime and anywhere without penalty to karma. Aiding him in any way will flag you as a criminal (grey name). Playing the game without racking up more criminal charges will eventually decay your criminal charges until you can become blue name again. Dying with a red name will not allow you a death chest.

 

[Kainzo]

This is going to be a long post. There is no way around that. I will try to keep it as organized as I can to make reading easier on the eyes. There is simply too much information for a simple TLDR. I apologize in advance.

Herocraft will always have a special place in my heart, but now that I have finished becoming a Game Designer, it's time to do things right. Lets start out with some terminology to better explain why I am making these observations.

State of Play: That feeling players get when they are so immersed in a game that they forget almost everything else and "become one" with the moment. This happens with almost any activity or hobby and is not exclusive to video games. The state of Play falls inbetween monotonous boredom of how simple an act is and frustration over how difficult an act is. In video games, it is a Game Designer's job to try to make players fall between the two and enjoy a state of Play for as long as possible.

Negative Feedback: When talking about games, Negative Feedback is any sort of punishment system to prevent players who are doing well to continue to do well to the point of boredom with success. A great example of a game with a Negative Feedback Loop is Mario Kart. The person in the lead gets crappy items like bananas and green turtle shells while the person in the last place gets exclusive access to some of the most powerful items. The better you do in Mario Kart, the greater a point of disadvantage you are put in. While most players will proclaim that they hate Negative Feedback - dying and losing their items, needing to start over, things being "too difficult" - Negative Feedback is essential to the longevity and livelihood of a game, and making the game simpler due to people complaining of the fact normally leads to boredom and the death of gameplay. Most people don't know it, but they love to be punished (not a sexy kink thing at all, its just a fact that most do not accept).

Meaningful Choices: There are choices all around us, but meaningful choices are what make us happy. If you give a man a choice of either taking $3.00 or $5.00, it is a choice, but not meaningful. The better choice is obvious, and while the person just got a free $5.00, his joy does not come from the choice he made, but from the money - and that joy is just as short lived as $5.00 in today's economy. Meaningful choices are options presented to someone with different risks and outcomes. The important thing about meaningful choices is that sometimes a choice may seem to be the better choice, end out to be the worst choice possible, but the player still feels a glimpse of joy because he was able to make that choice and learn from it or even mold that bad choice into a good one.

Now that we have some fancy words out in the open, lets make a list of things that need fixing in Herocraft.

- Too Many Positive Feedback Loops
- Very Few Meaningful Choices
- Contradictory Fighting Gamestyles
- Very Little Reinforcing Progressive Feedback

Positive Feedback Loops
Dying and having all of your things is a core part of Minecraft gameplay. In fact, this negative feedback is one of the reasons the game is so successful. It encourages players to get back on their feet and either fight to get back what they lost or start over to rebuild again. There are many other negative feedback loops within Minecraft itself that have also been done away with, but with reason.
- Structures in towns are now protected from being destroyed so players need not fear the loss of their creations (good choice).
- Constant expenditure of food to keep one's stamina up in order to heal and accomplish menial tasks has been replaced by a resource bar for stamina skills (needs quite a bit of tweaking).

Dropping your loot when you die was one of the last negative feedbacks that Herocraft had to tout around and give to players, yet Herocraft has not only removed this core mechanic of Minecraft, but it has strapped explosives to it after shooting it in the head, drowning it in a river, and taking away it's lollipop. There are No-PVP zones, death chests, drop-box commands, and a get out of any questionably dangerous situation button called "/skill recall".

While several of these would not be as big of problems if combat were done right (more on that subject later), but they would only not be as big of a problem if they were the only problem instead of a group of them all contributing to the death of this staple mechanic. Unfortunately, having so many positive feedback loops to protect one's goods has utterly destroyed one of the only remaining negative feedback loops that SHOULD be still in the game with Herocraft's given gameplay.

- Know you're going to die? Drop-box the important stuff.
- Couldn't drop-box it in time? Keep grabbing your death chest and inch it closer to a safe zone until it's fine.
- Have too many valuable items after filling your drop-box with stuff and don't want to risk losing them? Just do away with a meaningful decision of how to get back to base safely by using /skill recall.

I would propose that Drop-box be removed entirely. Being a donor myself, I am willing to sacrifice the "convenience" for the longevity of the game. Meanwhile, I understand the marketing value of the mechanic, and as a Game Designer would settle with being unable to drop-transfer items either outside of comfort zones (towns, personal regions, etc), No-PVP zones, or during combat. Modifying when it can be used and allowing it to stay would be destroying many meaningful decisions for players because it is the outright best choice.

Herocraft has become a world with Herogates to quickly transport to far out reaches of the map, dungeons with limited space for the players to explore, special warps for members of towns to get to their town, and has a plethora of classes with many quick-travel techniques to get where one wishes to go. Not only is recall not needed because of the vast ways of transportation/map coordinated provided by the game and the approved modpack to go with the server, but it is being abused to ruin many more meaningful decisions and opportunities for the community to engage in activities and grow. If recall is to remain a skill, it should be either limited to a specific class or a reward obtained for mastering specific classes which would provide a sense of progression in a small way. If either of those options still remain, the skill should most definitely have the reagent cost of the spell increased greatly - to the point where using it is expensive enough to be a meaningful decision.

Death chests are not as bad if combat were fixed. Getting rid of auto-loot would be a start. The problem is fixing combat - it will not be quick nor easy.


Meaningful Choices
As the game stands, there are plenty of choices - in fact, there might be too many that it is getting on the border of confusion and complexity - but the problem is that almost none of these choices are meaningful. Let's separate the types of choices involved into groups and talk about how to improve them individually.

What to do?
In it's current form, when players log on, players have four choices on what to do:
- Go to dungeons to level their fighter class
- Go mining to level their crafter class
- Gather resources and build up towns
- Hunt for people to pvp with
Almost all of these choices in their current form are exclusive and limiting. Each is within its own zone/world with little-to-no crossover. There is almost no multi-tasking of the options unless another player is seeking out pvp in one of the areas. The only cross-over between these choices is dependent on the actions and desires of another player. These are indeed choices, but almost none of them meaningful, and worst of all is that all of these choices are almost completely separated. This breaks the immersion of the game and will instantly put a halt to anyone's state of Play. It also leaves a distaste from switching from one aspect to the other because of how completely separate and different each task is.

To remedy this, Herocraft needs ways to increase immersion, combine availability of working on these tasks in relatively same areas, goals with risks/rewards that promote working together, and weekly/daily race-type competitions with rewards (who can turn in # of X resource today for Y reward first?). Adding in an automatic bounty-type system would also generate a great meaningful decision mechanic for both the offender deciding if the kill is worth the bounty and the receiver for the bounty - bounty system would need to be thought through thoroughly to hinder or at least create more gameplay opportunities from abuse. Adding menial tasks to pass the down-time - like re-introducing the lottery.

- Adding interactive-dungeons to the real world with mobs spawning would be a great addition, yet I understand this takes work and planning. It would greatly help the state of the game, but I understand how difficult this may be. Simply stating what would help the server, whether simple fixes or not.

- Adding limited crafting quests every day for players to gain in crafting exp would also create a great opportunity. It would be even better if many of these quests required some drops from mobs from certain zones to accomplish such a task. This combines both crafting and PVE killing to get a task done.

- A good example of working together to achieve a goal was the mob-arena. While outdated and thoroughly abused, there are other ways to accomplish the same means. Holding off an invasion of spiders at Ruby Temple. Succeed and everyone gets a random drop who participated enough. Fail and nobody can claim the Ruby Temple that day.

- It's a guarantee that people will try to abuse the bounty system if it is automated. Off the top of my head after thinking about it for a whole two-minutes, I have come up with a probably very erroneous idea, but I'll let people speculate. If a player has a bounty on their head, other players can access a bounty board. The bounty board will allow the players to see who has bounties, for how much, and tell the bounty player's current location when activated if the player is officially hunting that player. From that board (and only from that board), they can also accept the duty to hunt down these bounties. Once a player accepts the duty to hunt down a bounty, it is declared on the server. Death will remove the quest to hunt down the player, as well as logging out. Once the player with the bounty has been slain by a bounty hunter, that player's head will drop and the quest is completed. The head will have on it one of the four randomly chosen herogate locations where they can turn the head in for the money. If the player uses any kind of warp such as recall or warpgate, etc, the head will disappear and the bounty hunt quest must be picked up again. If the player with the head dies or disconnects from the game, the head will disappear.

Meaningful Choices in Combat
This is going to be quite a big section. This is probably the most important fix to Herocraft, but it will take a LOT of work. Let's list what should have meaningful choices and then how to obtain them.

- What class to pick
- What abilities to use and when
- When/whether to run from a fight
- What armor to wear


There has been a blatant difference in what classes are the dominant class since I have returned to Herocraft. Classes that can come back from death with damaging abilities and disregard to equipment or need for items are very powerful compared to their weapon-clicking, armor-needing cousins. This shows great flaws in the need for items, how skills are handled, and the current state of combat resource management.

Minecraft's hunger bar is a great resource that I feel is not being used how it should be. Minecraft put that resource bar there for combat purposes on purpose, and changing it to the form it is now is not well in terms of meaningful decisions with risk/reward choices in combat. The only actual resource bar that matters in combat is mana. Once that mana is gone, there is only one option: run until you have more mana. The reason that is the only option is because there is no penalty for running. We need to tie in some of Minecraft's hunger mechanics in with our own stamina bar and include meaningful choice on how to handle them through types of armor.

I would propose that when taking hits from physical blows, it reduces one's stamina. The more damage done by the blow, the more stamina is lost. If a player is sprinting, regeneration of stamina is slowed. If stamina falls below 3 meat chunks, the player is unable to sprint. I would also propose that all offensive spells require stamina on top of their mana requirements to cast. Players may reduce the amount of stamina lost from blows by using armor.

Armor
Armor should change completely. What type of armor pieces the player is wearing compared to the class's strength will grant certain boons or curses. Spells or magic orient should be able to somewhat penetrate armor to do more damage than a physical blow, but still have the hit to stamina reduced.

-While wearing no armor, mana regeneration is increased.

-While wearing leather armor, mana regeneration is normal and damage is reduced based on the armor amount.

-While wearing chain armor, mana regeneration is reduced but lower damaging attacks do not drain as much stamina.

-While wearing plate armor (iron), mana regeneration is reduced, medium damaging attacks do not drain as much stamina, but if your class is not strong enough, the armor will either slow your movement speed or your stamina regeneration.

-While wearing diamond plate armor, mana regeneration is reduced, higher damaging abilities do not drain as much stamina, but if your class is not strong enough, the armor will either greatly slow your movement speed or your stamina regeneration.

-While wearing gold plate armor, mana regeneration is normal, lower damaging attacks do not drain as much stamina.

We can even change how armor is crafted to enable these buffs. All players can "craft" whatever piece of armor they wish, but only a blacksmith or an NPC in town can "fit" the armor for wearing. The NPC will come at a cost of the armor piece to be fitted as well as some kind of cost. A blacksmith player can do it for free, or charge a fee. Once "fitted" the armor can apply the buffs/debuffs and be worn.

Now players can choose a playstyle with a class type through armor. The choice in what armor you wear provides certain risks/rewards with resource management. Since spells and abilities cost stamina and the stamina bar now has value, fleeing characters can be slowed to prevent them from simply escaping as easily as they can now. Choosing when and how to use your abilities against certain opponents now has meaningful decisions. This also gives physical weapon users an advantage when they have a weapon and are within melee range, giving more meaningful choice as to being a caster that can simply just back into the fight after dying, but needing to hold back because people with weapons can make quick work of shutting him up and preventing escape. Death chests are now much more difficult to reclaim and escape with without help or coming back prepared with more armor/weapons as a risk/reward for both parties involved. It is important that sometimes players lose so that others can win. It is also important to know when to move on with the chances pitted against you.

Combat
Minecraft is an action combat game. I notice Herocraft trying to become that way through changing how many skills work, but the skills being changed are known as skill-shot skills, and are not considered action combat. Combat is too quickly paced for a melee/spell combat game. In a matter of seconds, most combat sessions can determine who the winning party is. It is then a question of whether the losing party can survive or not. This provides a feeling of frustration and hopelessness for one party, and a temporary feeling of success, but it only feeds the carnal pleasure of dominance instead of the fulfilling joy of a well-earned victory. The frustrated party will detest PVP while the dominant party will soon become bored and look for another victim to continue the temporary stint of pleasure.

As much as I commend the balance team for their hard work, it is obvious that their efforts of balancing are aimed toward "who can kill who in what way" instead of trying to create a well-balanced fight where killing each other does not come easy. Fighting does not always need to end in death. There's a difference between a battle and a slaughter.

It is not the balance team's fault. They are doing the best they can with the skills they have been given. Herocraft is also very old, and as you can see from the Shaman class, many of it's skills are based off old MMOs - which mainly had target clicking abilities and were not action combat games.

I am currently working on a small combat simulator to demonstrate what action combat and meaningful decision skills look/feel like. Herocraft's abilities are wonderful abilities for a target based skill clicking game, but as Minecraft just came out with a giant combat overhaul expansion that is directly shoving combat even more towards action combat, I feel Herocraft should embrace and magnify that style of combat instead of creating a mutant child with WoW skills.

Healing sucks. From a professional opinion, it sucks. I enjoy support classes of all types and of all games, except here. Slowing down combat by making sprint cost something, and allowing for healers to pick heavier armor to last longer is a start, but target heals with the amount of silences and shove abilities to remove those targets from range during casts is horrid. Healers can either heal themselves very well and are OP or can't manage to get any heals off during pvp and are garbage. Healers need more dynamic, action-oriented mechanics. I will try to add some examples of those in the simulator as well.

Meaningful Choices Towards Progression
Players need to feel as though their efforts meant something in order for their choices to feel as though they were meaningful. Currently, players are leveling a crafter class because it meshes well with their town's composition or it best suits their playstyle/class. Most players will only ever level one crafter class to max and stop. Combat classes are played until frustration kicks in and then abandoned because the balance team is changing something or the player feels they have found a class with OP skills. When a player gets to max level, the only reward they get other than the skill they were aiming for is the mysterious possibility that their class could get them to a legendary class. The randomness of this entire ordeal to achieve legendary class status is more of a frustration than a reward.

Giving players certain skills that they can obtain and tether to their soul - regardless of what class they are - after maxing out a class would be a great boon to strive for, and let the player feel as though they are progressing.
Level 2-3 caster classes to get Recall
Level 2-3 warrior classes to get Second Wind
Level 2-3 rogue classes to get Sneak
etc.
Those are just examples, but these are a great way to reward players along the way as they go above and beyond just leveling the latest OP class. This gives players something to strive for, as well as a reason to play classes that might be under-powered and create a more diverse community.


I had planned to go on further, but it is early in the morning and I am tired and making typing mistakes. I will always love Herocraft, regardless. I'm just trying to show some observations I have. Most people are blaming the numbers on abilities or the lack of pvp or players or the balance team. Unfortunately, the problem lies in the core of how the game has been built. If we decide we would like to make some meaningful changes, I would love to help - even if they aren't in sync with my suggestions.

Really impressed by this write up... going to make time to dig into each part of it.

 

[Dewyn]

Most people don't know it, but they love to be punished (not a sexy kink thing at all, its just a fact that most do not accept).

senpai

Cringe aside, I'm gonna read this through as well. Your twelve-page report has been submitted.

 

[NobleAlexander]

Great post.

The death chest from my point of view is the main gameplay element that is significantly holding back the feeling of risk within PvP. If you were to ask me the best way to remedy this without sacrificing the idea of the security of one's items it would be to reduce the number of slots that the death chest will protect. Specifically, it will only protect the items within the hot bar. That's still a ridiculous amount of protected items for one player considering that they still have their ender chest, and all the lwc chests (and backpack if they have one). Not sure exactly how the code would look for this, but you could also try to make it where you mark certain items you want to keep on death... so that if they are in your inventory upon death they will be in the chest while everything else drops.

There is also always the option to put more emphasis on drops and their values. Basically, have monsters drop rare items which have strong effects when you hold them. Also, instead of making them rare you could have more common materials dropped which can be used to upgrade the item. If you use the latter you can then make an NPC sell these hold items, which can give specific strong buffs that have different playstyles in mind (similar to the armor idea you proposed). The idea is you combine this with the reduction to death chest slots in order to put more pain on the idea of death.

 

[cat8898]

In my personal opinion the reason why a majority of the people I've known and played with over the years have quit the server because of the person who owns it. Over the years it's just progressively gotten worse. Kainzo always goes on about how the server is community driven while for a long time I've been hearing that the balance team has a hard time getting anything done because kainzo would like his ideas to be heard and while some of them are good, most of the ones i've heard are rather silly. It's just a disconnection between the community and the person in power. I think the maps like bastion and previous were more popular because this disconnection wouldn't happen as often. For the people that I know who do still play don't take it very seriously and resort to trolling in chat because they've simply given up and just wanna be banned so they dont keep getting sucked back into coming back when the map restarts, and it's sad because I think we all really liked playing HC it was a great community and believe it or not it all was centering around PVP content. From those maps that were good we didnt have custom mobs or dungeons. We had a simple yet exciting town plug in. We had a simple yet exciting way of leveling. We had players with the motivation to build nice looking towns WITHOUT abusing admin powers and using auto build mods. We had a simple yet exciting way of player trade. The biggest one of all we had a community driven server. Now I dont feel like we have any of the above.

Those were just the thoughts in my head from over the years of playing, maybe useful? or maybe it just looks like i was bashing. either way it's w/e

 

[I_Love_Miners]

i disagree cat. they may have quit because of beef with kainzo or whatever, but they would have gotten over it and come back, but the sad reality is that the player base is aging faster than new players come in. and as fun a game as herocraft can be, people are just eventually going to get bored of the minecraft experience and either play other games, or just grew out of it,

 

[BeasttRecon]

Some nice ideas there Xexo! Something that would also help in the fight against the mage and the paladin is that the mage is using stamina to cast spells under the resource management system. This means that in the right opportunity, the paladin can catch him off guard, and hit him just enough to reduce his stamina just below being able to run. That is a meaningful choice on both parts. Now that both classes can survive each other, it comes time to add skills that put both classes in a vulnerable position - resource wise - to possibly go for the kill. Whether the players succeed or fail is based on when or how they choose to use it. With paladin also being a strength based warrior class, we could get rid of the speed reduction as well, and since the mage is using spells, we could give a number of those spells armor penetration or spells that apply damaging debuffs to heavy armor - heat metal.

Shields tend to be somewhat of a problem in the current game, but that is only because players don't understand them. Shields are easily done away with by axes (once hit with an axe, they auto disarm with a timer), and we could also make shield blocking cost stamina. Sure you can block all day as long as your shield has durability, but once your stamina is gone, you can't sprint away, your turning speed is reduced by holding the shield out, and you don't have the stamina to cast spells.

I agree that each class-type should have a set level of what is the "best" type of armor for their playstyle, but I don't think that outright not allowing them to experiment with heavier armor takes away a lot of choices that they can use. Instead of saying that rogue classes can only equip leather and chain, why not have plate armors be extra heavy and limit their stamina regeneration and move speed? Even funnier, why not have plate armor be too heavy for certain mobility skills? When a rogue tries to backflip, they barely hop. When they use grapple, it craps out halfway of when it normally should. Rogues being unable to use their precious free-flow of stamina and be mobile in exchange for more protection is a whole different playstyle that might actually be interesting and fun.

As for the Karma system, we would need some kind of a criminal flag system so that not all killings give the player bad karma. Self-Defense, defending your town, rescuing a friend, etc. We would need a color code system for names to display this information.
Blue name - This character is in good standing. Attacking this character will turn yourself criminal and leave you open to attacks.
Grey name - This character has just committed a crime and for the next # of time will be attack-able without penalty to your karma. He can be attacked anytime and anywhere as long as his name remains grey.
Offenses include:
- being in someone else's base (does not generate crime points)
- subjecting yourself to a pvp area (taking over a castle)
- stealing someone's things from their death chest before the timer runs out (if that's possible)
- attacking a blue name
- healing a grey or red name
Each time the player becomes a criminal, it stacks up crime points. Crime points decay very slowly over played gametime. Once a player gathers enough crime points, their name becomes red. Dying with a grey name will not allow you a death chest.
Red name - This character has become a well known bad dude. He can be attacked anytime and anywhere without penalty to karma. Aiding him in any way will flag you as a criminal (grey name). Playing the game without racking up more criminal charges will eventually decay your criminal charges until you can become blue name again. Dying with a red name will not allow you a death chest.

Karma system was envisioned a long time ago but nothing was ever implemented so gg

 

[xexorian]

Everyone stay on topic with the thread, please keep it constructive. @cat8898 I'm sorry that you feel that way.

 

[radicater11]

Karma system was envisioned a long time ago but nothing was ever implemented so gg

It actually was for one map, but all it did was give more reason to camp noobs for the negative karma title.

 

[cat8898]

Everyone stay on topic with the thread, please keep it constructive. @cat8898 I'm sorry that you feel that way.

Sorry bud that was very much on topic, this is a thread to help improve the game and i stated my opinion from many players sides of things.

 

[CrazySmokerDude]

Karma system was envisioned a long time ago but nothing was ever implemented so gg

karma system would make sense only if there wasn't death chests and u instantly drop everything on death, because u could simply get it by camping someone's chest and i dont think that make sense caz everyone want to try get someone's items.

 

[Kainzo]

Karma system was envisioned a long time ago but nothing was ever implemented so gg

Karma was implemented, we have the code base to improve it, it just wasnt good enough to keep alive and it encouraged terrible, toxic pvpers to kill newbies over and over again to get the elite titles.

I think it'd be cool to have karma affect what you drop on death (or the chance on death)

 

[werwew19]

Honestly while I feel the server can be greatly improved, I think a lot of people don't take the following into consideration. We've had a niche community for years with the same core towns and players making up most of the servers DAILY population and a lot of these players are starting to get older and their lives are starting to change etc. where they just simply don't have the time or willpower to play Minecraft anymore and have moved onto other chapters.

Edit: I'm tired of seeing that this server needs to cater to the old players that aren't coming back. It's not happening it's time to take new concepts and use old ones and rebuild from the start. I think this server could use a complete overhaul.

 

[Kainzo]

Honestly while I feel the server can be greatly improved, I think a lot of people don't take the following into consideration. We've had a niche community for years with the same core towns and players making up most of the servers DAILY population and a lot of these players are starting to get older and their lives are starting to change etc. where they just simply don't have the time or willpower to play Minecraft anymore and have moved onto other chapters.

Edit: I'm tired of seeing that this server needs to cater to the old players that aren't coming back. It's not happening it's time to take new concepts and use old ones and rebuild from the start. I think this server could use a complete overhaul.

That's good insight. I partially agree

 

[Danda]

Karma was implemented, we have the code base to improve it, it just wasnt good enough to keep alive and it encouraged terrible, toxic pvpers to kill newbies over and over again to get the elite titles.

I think it'd be cool to have karma affect what you drop on death (or the chance on death)

The problem then is what would they need to drop for it to be impactful without preventing item loss on death for other player removing the incentive to pvp in the first place.

It can't be coins because people just stored money in other places like last time we introduced this.
Maybe enable PvP for that player in no-pvp zones similarly to legendary classes?

 

[xexorian]

I just wrote a huge post and lost all of it. RIP!

Anyway, I think we should:

• Create a second dungeons portal to HeavensWatch inside of the spawn where u recall, with a huge sign saying DUNGEONS HERE!!!!.
• Eventually migrate dungeons one tier at a time into Survival World until complete.
• Create quests that focus around restoring karma / granting exp / rewards / money / tokens / symbols
• Implement a new bounty system that's hardcore and rewards the players for actually hunting down their foe, and turning in the bounty properly.
• Implement a better enhancement system for upgrading items and using currency to do so. Maybe requiring repairs using base items as part of the cost in coins.
• Implement a Karma system where players are limited in how many people they can murder before being flagged free for all. Also making it where enhanced items can drop on death (and are now bound to you (unless dropped intentionally) so long as your karma is good.) Karma can be reobtained over time (logged in only!), by completing random kill quests and such, and by grinding on mobs in the new system I'm working on. All of this to expand on the original intentions of it - and prevent longer-term ganking issues. People should also be able to murder anyone who flags themselves as a criminal without losing karma themselves. Basically, having a toggle for PVP, and making forced murder a thing. We could also expand this further and have FFA PVP areas like maybe a battle arena where people can earn tokens without losing gear, karma, etc. War Declaring by towns on other towns should flag their members for free karma-less PVP as well, but cost the town lots of currency to declare and subsequently hold wars. There should be a limit on wars a town can declare based on it's size.

And more..

 

[Danda]

I just wrote a huge post and lost all of it. RIP!

Anyway, I think we should:

• Create a second dungeons portal to HeavensWatch inside of the spawn where u recall, with a huge sign saying DUNGEONS HERE!!!!.
• Eventually migrate dungeons one tier at a time into Survival World until complete.
• Create quests that focus around restoring karma / granting exp / rewards / money / tokens / symbols
• Implement a new bounty system that's hardcore and rewards the players for actually hunting down their foe, and turning in the bounty properly.
• Implement a better enhancement system for upgrading items and using currency to do so. Maybe requiring repairs using base items as part of the cost in coins.
• Implement a Karma system where players are limited in how many people they can murder before being flagged free for all. Also making it where enhanced items can drop on death (and are now bound to you (unless dropped intentionally) so long as your karma is good.) Karma can be reobtained over time (logged in only!), by completing random kill quests and such, and by grinding on mobs in the new system I'm working on. All of this to expand on the original intentions of it - and prevent longer-term ganking issues. People should also be able to murder anyone who flags themselves as a criminal without losing karma themselves. Basically, having a toggle for PVP, and making forced murder a thing. We could also expand this further and have FFA PVP areas like maybe a battle arena where people can earn tokens without losing gear, karma, etc. War Declaring by towns on other towns should flag their members for free karma-less PVP as well, but cost the town lots of currency to declare and subsequently hold wars. There should be a limit on wars a town can declare based on it's size.

And more..

Our problem with the economy is that people don't need anything because they already have it in abundance. Introducing more ways to not lose items only serves to compound this issue. IMO we need to get rid of deathchests again and find a way to discourage killing newbies

 

[radicater11]

Our problem with the economy is that people don't need anything because they already have it in abundance. Introducing more ways to not lose items only serves to compound this issue. IMO we need to get rid of deathchests again and find a way to discourage killing newbies

A good idea would probably be to reinstate the old can't pvp players below level 10-20, and to combat the old exploit just make it so that profession is also accounted for, as well as any classes they may have switched from. If a vet still wants to stay level 1 in both crafter and combat to be exempt from pvp, then whatever, they'll be useless on all fronts anyways.