Or we could just wait until we test out the mechanics, to see how it all really plays out. If it does need to be changed, then it will.

Unless I have missed it somewhere, we don't even know how long this spirit walking will take. Basically until we have all the details down, it's really hard to say what is a bad idea and what we should change it to.

"Bloodlust is bad" added to the list of things we're always going to fight about. Should I list it after "PvP is griefing" or after " Waerd's mechanics enable stealing"?

The Devs have said that there is an “increasing respawn timer and other balancing Astral Plane mechanics to prevent perpetual battles.” Doesn’t that address your concern?

Let's wait and see what they do before requesting a wholesale sell-off of the concept. Right now all we have to go with are design write-ups.

No, because if you can use a number of NPCs/OPCs to camp someone's body and kill a downed opponent, no amount of time on the respawn will matter.

My objection isn't the amount of time for battles, the objection is that it either screws up strategic incentives, or it simply takes a longer, more tedious, and less enjoyable path to get to the same place. Either you get camped til you permadie anyway, or big groups get an outsized advantage over competitors due to spirit-walking.

This isn't a complaint about bloodlust, bloodlust is incidental to the real issue. The real issue is that NPCs, while being a huge part of the proposed game ecosystem (for lack of a better word), have permadeath, but players don't. It doesn't take extensive mechanics testing to realize this doesn't even work in theory.

Posted By Deftly at 02:00 AM - Tue Mar 19 2019

"Bloodlust is bad" added to the list of things we're always going to fight about. Should I list it after "PvP is griefing" or after " Waerd's mechanics enable stealing"?

Between “Waerd are communists” and “Ships are floating permadeath coffins”.

Posted By Julius Foederatus at 08:37 AM - Tue Mar 19 2019

No, because if you can use a number of NPCs/OPCs to camp someone's body and kill a downed opponent, no amount of time on the respawn will matter.

My objection isn't the amount of time for battles, the objection is that it either screws up strategic incentives, or it simply takes a longer, more tedious, and less enjoyable path to get to the same place. Either you get camped til you permadie anyway, or big groups get an outsized advantage over competitors due to spirit-walking.

This isn't a complaint about bloodlust, bloodlust is incidental to the real issue. The real issue is that NPCs, while being a huge part of the proposed game ecosystem (for lack of a better word), have permadeath, but players don't. It doesn't take extensive mechanics testing to realize this doesn't even work in theory.

So you want NPCs to not have permadeath, but to spirit walk like PCs? I see a bigger problem with that. That allows someone to essentially buy massive army of unkillable NPCs. If the rare case of a massive player army is a problem -- the case of a massive NPC army is a worse one.

Having NPCs be fragile makes using an NPC army very tricky and difficult. Your soldiers can actually die -- and replacing those losses could be a serious logistical problem. That seems like a feature, not a bug.

If there is a bug, it is that PCs don't die -- but I think that issue is handled by respawn delay and the spirit walk. I see corpse camping could be a problem, but there are solutions to it short of completely revamping the entire proposed game mechanics.

...No I want the opposite. For players to die like NPCs without spiritwalking.

Posted By Julius Foederatus at 09:33 AM - Tue Mar 19 2019

...No I want the opposite. For players to die like NPCs without spiritwalking.

OK -- but if there is a long enough death timer, how is that not accomplished as a practical matter. I think very few people could afford a $25 spark every time they die in a game. Granted, having that would make people very cautious and very reluctant to fight with each other -- but I don't think most people who play games like that want that game experience.

When you walk back to your body, from what has been said, you don't just "get up" from where you were laying all corpsified. You get back to the area and then either have some sort of view to see what the situation is around your body, or spawn a bit of a distance away, or some similar mechanic.

If someone is just sitting there camping your corpse then they aren't contributing to the battle anymore, and won't know when that person is coming back. Plus if the person that was killed decided to they could log off for a while to preserve their spiritwalk timer and therefore keep the other side guessing if the person they are camping is coming back any time soon.

All this should be fine tuned during Alpha and Beta, and until we see it in action we won't have a great idea how it will all play out. Would you want to be put on "corpse patrol" in a pitched battle? Another question would be, will an NPC want to be put on it? You don't get full control of your NPC's they are going to have some minds of their own.

You wouldn't have to. You could just write a script for your OPC and log off. People will have alts for exactly this purpose if this iteration of mechanics goes through.

Edit: I played EVE for about 10 years. People would camp systems for weeks (literally) in the hopes of getting a supercapital kill. Do not doubt for a second that people would willingly camp your corpse for as long as it gives them an advantage.

I'm confused why there is any mention of corpse camping, did I hallucinate when we were told many times you don't respawn at the place where you died?

Posted By Julius Foederatus at 09:55 AM - Tue Mar 19 2019

You wouldn't have to. You could just write a script for your OPC and log off. People will have alts for exactly this purpose if this iteration of mechanics goes through.

Edit: I played EVE for about 10 years. People would camp systems for weeks (literally) in the hopes of getting a supercapital kill. Do not doubt for a second that people would willingly camp your corpse for as long as it gives them an advantage.

OK -- best have friends you can communicate with offline, so you can ask them to "come and clear the OPC camp." Further, that kind of thing sounds like it could and should be specifically addressed in local law. A law against "desecrating a corpse" for instance.

With regard to the "respawn is not at the exact spot so there can be no corpse camping" -- I'm not sure we can say that. An OPC script might allow for an attack range large enough to include any nearby respawn area. Even if not, a team could spread out in an overlapping grid to cover the entire possible respawn area. However, all this means is that is concern is premature because it really get in the weed of how gameplay will work -- and we just don't know any of that in any detail.

Posted By Julius Foederatus at 09:55 AM - Tue Mar 19 2019

You wouldn't have to. You could just write a script for your OPC and log off. People will have alts for exactly this purpose if this iteration of mechanics goes through.

Edit: I played EVE for about 10 years. People would camp systems for weeks (literally) in the hopes of getting a supercapital kill. Do not doubt for a second that people would willingly camp your corpse for as long as it gives them an advantage.

From the last I heard, you don't even respawn precisely where your body dropped specifically for this issue. As I understand it, you respawn some as-yet unspecified distance away (maybe a quarter mile for all we know).

Furthermore, you don't lose more spirit for dying multiple times in a row. There is a timer involved before more spirit loss is involved.

Corpse camping just doesn't sound as feasible in this game from what I have read. Then again, information changes and its not all in one place to read...

Posted By Julius Foederatus at 03:33 AM - Wed Mar 20 2019

...No I want the opposite. For players to die like NPCs without spiritwalking.

What? Instant perma death? Again.. what? CoE is already planning to be somewhat hardcore survival game. But this would go next level insane. I didn't even think the people that play games with this setting on, is even very high. Want to make the game even more niche?

Maybe this is the wrong game for you, if you want that level of hardcore mode.