It's beta, fix town griefing

[Xexorian]

First and foremost, I'm not gonna list the thousand of reasons and situations explaining why I suggest this simple change. Instead I will try to keep it to a brief discussion regarding game mechanics, proposed changes, and then a brief explanation of my personal experiences and how I feel about it.

Star Vault should strongly consider the following changes for player retention;

Changes; (which are discussed further below in detail)
-disable pvp in towns. +fixes griefing problems
-disable pet collision in towns once the owner's pvp is disabled. +less server load/lag (server/client won't check for collision)
-disable player collision in towns once the owner's pvp is disabled. +less server load/lag (server/client won't check for collision)
-disable players pushing other players in towns once they are pvp off. +fixes griefing problems

Instead introduce these new mechanics;

The 10-Second Rule
When you leave town, you should flag for PVP after 10 seconds with a crossed swords debuff (icon).
When you enter town, as a blue player, you should disable PVP after 10 seconds.

2 Minute Combat Timer
When you enter town, as a murderer, you should disable PVP after 2 minutes.

Additionally, If you're hit BY A PLAYER, or A PLAYER'S PET, before entering town, you should be flagged for PVP for 2 minutes, whether you are innocent, criminal, or murderer. This gives hostile and innocent players a chance to engage in combat outside towns without strictly being in town griefing only. For example you're chasing someone and they run in to town, as long as you can hit them you can keep them in combat, even if you're blue, or they're blue. Giving you a chance to finish the job, even if that means dealing with guards as they are & will not nullify the standing loss mechanics as they are.

Future Proofing;
5 Minute Thievery Timer
If you just stole something, you should become a hidden criminal and collision should be re-enabled. If someone pushes you, or hits you, you should then go grey and become a criminal and guards should react like normal. This longer timer would also encourage thieves to bail and go try to store their loot at a thieves hideout or thieves den. If you have the thievery timer, you should not be able to use a regular banker like innocent players do until the hidden criminal flag wears out. The bankers should recognize it as stolen goods, even gold, until the timer is worn out.

Addressing the Guards functionality and Ideas on /emote functions
I would like to see SV bring back being able to call guards on thieves when implemented, but it's not necessarily needed. Much more importantly, we need a button in our skills window that does this, so it can be bound to a key on your action bar due to the nature of trying to type and then aim at someone sprinting away with all your hard earned belongings. It would be nice if players were able to catch thieves in a reasonable manner like this; I would also like to see more buttons like our social interactions such as /emote wave, or /emote squat being able to be bound to a key press without typing. If we had some proper handsigns we could also use it for squad gameplay where you can make a physical motion to your friend to move forward, halt, or look in a direction using emotes instead of talking. This would be super immersive to gameplay in general.

How big of a safe zone;
Consider expanding this region of PVP zone to the town and it's immediate town and it's essential areas; So, the stables, crusher, grinder, pig area, (whatever makes the most sense at each town) and about 100~ feet around or outside the town. This should be implemented intelligently based on the layout of each town. Also; note that player made towns will be a thing and will not have safe zones in exchange for the convenience they add to the area they are placed, by providing butcher tables or private banks, for example.

As it is; the current system promotes ~1% of the population being able to ruin the game for the ~99% by simply pushing afk players outside of guards, attacking players where guards can't aggro, shooting arrows into town, etc. There are dozens of various ways to grief and it's supported/nurtured by the few toxic people and by Star Vault's "stance" on the game being "immersive" and "hardcore".. if it was really that hardcore I'm pretty sure my horse would kick someone in the face and their head would explode and cave in the moment someone tried to attack it. I'm pretty sure there's a thousand more ways to be -more- "realistic" "immersive" and "hardcore" than simply this broken half-implementation of MO1's old systems which is what we currently have.

I will open a poll to discuss this change and gather feedback, the poll will close on or before January 25th, when the game launches officially as of right now.

 

[Keraehl]

The system isn't perfect, but I disagree with most if not all of this. And this comes from someone who played an Anti-RPK guild from MO1.

The game needs to be representative of the gameplay we will see afterpersistence. If new players in the beta get used to a system where towns are 100% safe and that gets turned off because persistence, that's almost as bad as how MO1 handled Steam launch; you'll lose a lot of upset people. I don't know the solution, but I don't feel that this is it.

As for calling guards, you could do that with the macro system MO1 had. MO2 doesn't have even half the features implemented yet, but they are coming. However, I would much rather SV focus on tangible gameplay elements than QoL things. If persistence hits and we don't have a plethora of flora/fauna, keep and territory control, and enough things to DO, there won't be anyone to even keep playing to ask for these QoL things down the line.

 

[Xexorian]

I had discussed the differences from MO1 going into MO2 but I lost it all on the post / editing . I wasn't suggesting this as a temporary measure to be honest; but even if it was I still think they should change the system to support less griefing in towns, guard AI will never be good enough. I don't consider thievery as griefing, there were deep mechanics to it that I enjoyed in MO1. That's also why I put the blurb at the top about not discussing it all thoroughly because I lost the original content of the post I was trying to do. I see how the title can make this seem like a *temporary* suggestion, however I was saying it because it's in beta, we should make these changes now, not after persistence.

That said, I don't think adding these mechanics would be a major strain on the development team, and should only take a single day or two to do.

 

[For Sure]

There honestly should be a safe place to rest your head at night. Sometimes people want to netflix and chill. There will not be a way to retain new players until towns are safe TBH.

 

[Speznat]

There should never be a 100% safe place in Mortal. Because than its not Mortal.
Pet griefing is shit. But they will also give more standing loss. SO i guess less griefing than.
But towns as a completly safe place is a not so good idea. I mean what is than with thieves and stuff? or do you mena just the murderers?

What is with aliances enemies or guild war people.

Im not sure about all this. But henrik said evne the arena will not be a 100% safe from interuption. I mean thats the spirit of mortal all the events that got crashed sometimes in MO1 and evne some in MO2 thats the fun. The randomness and the risk even in towns.

The only thing that is not good is just pet killing and random killing without penalty. but because of the 1char policy its much less than it was in MO1. Because most people dont act like assholes anymore. because they have to live the next 10 years with the consequences. Instead of just switching char.

I mean if you are a town griefer your reputation is ruined forever. So basicly they destroy themselves.

 

[For Sure]

There should never be a 100% safe place in Mortal. Because than its not Mortal.
Pet griefing is shit. But they will also give more standing loss. SO i guess less griefing than.
But towns as a completly safe place is a not so good idea. I mean what is than with thieves and stuff? or do you mena just the murderers?

What is with aliances enemies or guild war people.

Im not sure about all this. But henrik said evne the arena will not be a 100% safe from interuption. I mean thats the spirit of mortal all the events that got crashed sometimes in MO1 and evne some in MO2 thats the fun. The randomness and the risk even in towns.

The only thing that is not good is just pet killing and random killing without penalty. but because of the 1char policy its much less than it was in MO1. Because most people dont act like assholes anymore. because they have to live the next 10 years with the consequences. Instead of just switching char.

I mean if you are a town griefer your reputation is ruined forever. So basicly they destroy themselves.

Reputation means utterly nothing. The reason why we would run into fab would be to get fights. Some see it as grief, and others see it as pvp.
I had a terrible reputation people traded me.


Keep trying to push mortal ways, and come back with the same result from mo1. Given people played for 34234 years already and know how to extract the end game quickly. You'll have even less time than original mo1.

Let's go ahead and leave this open to new players thoughts rather than how I feel.

What makes the game, "fun." We should be aiming for fun. Everybody has their own way of having fun in a game.

 

[Komodor]

Safe zones are planned. Henrik said that in taverns you will have to hand over weapons in order to enter. Offensive actions will be forbidden and you would have to take off your helmet.

 

[Speznat]

Reputation means utterly nothing. The reason why we would run into fab would be to get fights. Some see it as grief, and others see it as pvp.
I had a terrible reputation people traded me.


Keep trying to push mortal ways, and come back with the same result from mo1. Given people played for 34234 years already and know how to extract the end game quickly. You'll have even less time than original mo1.

Let's go ahead and leave this open to new players thoughts rather than how I feel.

What makes the game, "fun." We should be aiming for fun. Everybody has their own way of having fun in a game.

Safe zones are planned. Henrik said that in taverns you will have to hand over weapons in order to enter. Offensive actions will be forbidden and you would have to take off your helmet.

That could be a middle ground. In the end henrik and the company decides. Griefing is shit but aliance and guild wars are different. I dont know maybe its a good option to make a safezone maybe not. I would say it depends.

 

[For Sure]

People really shouldn't be having guild wars in a non pvp city now should they

 

[Maxiumus]

Alot of the griefing issues will be sorted out when guilds can own towns and blacklist. There is no place in the game that should be 100% safe. However, with the horse griefing issues they should provide some further penalty.

Why not have a temporary blacklist for those who kill pets or players in town unprovoked? like a cooldown timer, that way if someone does grief they have to deal with an hour stuck outside of town while the guards "are looking for them".

 

[For Sure]

Yes, unsafe towns, because getting nuked by 5 mages is healthy game play. If you wanted pvp you would go to kranesh xd. Yet, here we are people stating no safe zones hardcore game. Yet, nobody goes lawless areas haha.

 

[finegamingconnoisseur]

Safe zones are planned. Henrik said that in taverns you will have to hand over weapons in order to enter. Offensive actions will be forbidden and you would have to take off your helmet.

Now that I can live with. But any form of arbitrarily enforced Trammel-like safe zones is a big no-no in my books.

MO2 may have gained mainstream attention, but it isn't going to be another mainstream title and it never intended to be.

 

[LordMega]

SV has consistently catered to the PvP-averse among us who seek shelter in town like little children. I'm sure that it was at one time difficult for players when the PKers could literally ride into town and kill people before the guards caught up to them, but now we have teleporting Lictors that will 1-2 shot anyone in the game. We have Elite Guards that will shoot you for 140 damage even if you're wearing Ironbone Mercenary Plate. We have an intense rep loss system where if you are PvP flagged and a guard even sees you flagged, you lose reputation for that faction. All these things make it incredibly difficult for someone to get a kill in guard range. In fact, if someone manages to kill you in town right now, they deserve that kill because they worked very hard for it and sacrificed a good bit to get it.

This world of Nave is not safe. It will never be safe, that's why the hardcore playerbase loves Nave. Some of us actually quite dislike the fact that guards are so strong. There will never be a player who can fight a Lictor. Nobody will be able to gun down an Elite Guard without a big group and some decent losses. It's not worth it.

If you think it's rough in town now, you would have uninstalled this game 6 months ago when you could get priest camped in town. Some of us prefer it to be dangerous and intense, where death waits around every corner. We didn't get our way, though, and StarVault already catered to the player who would prefer a more relaxed experience in town.

Now, I honestly, truly hope you're trolling about turning PvP off. To be frank, I am disgusted at the idea. If you want a game like that, I hear one launched recently, go have fun playing it. It should be obvious from the poll you're in the extreme minority holding this opinion.

 

[Xexorian]

Many of you don't consider
1) we still can't build anything so the town bank is the only way to store stuff which leads to 2) griefing in the banks constantly

There is no solution as of yet, like I said we players don't have a way to just kill them when we see them without the guards then 2 shotting us, we have to stop what we're doing, go naked, and do the *same shit* back to them. That's not fun, it's just promoting everyone to learn griefing tactics because griefing griefers is the only way to stop them. I'm not trying to play the god damn fucking game to be a griefer, I wanna go have my adventures and pvp out in the wild. MO2 is boiling down to town griefing pvp and THATS IT! Occasionally I will get some good open world PVP from you all, but back to the topic the guards are stupid and you can simply reroll, talk to the magic tutor, cast 100 spurts on a target dummy, kill a pig, butcher, vendor that pig, then grab mats for fulminate and mental projectile and zap DONE repeat it 5 times, assuming you even get standing loss, some of them were avoiding guard aggro somehow so they weren't even getting standing loss and can grief more than 5 times. Then reroll and do it again, 2-3 guys doing this means you're under constant harrassment, do they do this 24/7 literally? no. But they do it throughout the day consistently and it's friggen annoying. As someone living out of Bakti for the past month and before that Meduli and even visiting Fab and Tindrem its the same everywhere.

Everyone's excuse is the same, what about guild wars, what about mechanics we don't have yet, what about mo1 this, mo1 that... etc
1. this is MO2, not MO1 as is clearly evident in the NEW things that we already have that were never in MO1.
2. this isn't a remaster or remake of MO1. This is MO2.
3. this isn't intended solely for the vets from MO1 to keep playing.
4. They want new players and fresh population but they will never get it as long as toxic vets keep doing toxic shit in MO2, and it'll only be exacerbated by the larger return of vets and griefing when release happens, plus the new kids on the block will learn all this shit in days and do the same thing even if it takes longer to do. Sure the slow down in skill gain will damper how often but if you got just a decent size group you can still harrass an entire town with just your group without ever leaving the town or its surrounding vicinity.

2) they have said we will not have Territory Control Towers which means we will probably not own towns, they haven't given us an overview of the features or changes we will be getting all we have are what henrik manages to answer on his streams, which to be honest, there has been zero thorough efforts put in to categorizing all of the things he's talked about and trying to organize it.

3) Temporary blacklist things still rely on guards 'looking for you' it is a waste of development time to try and make even smarter AI, that is a complicated topic in game dev and with such a small team I felt the best solution for time investment is the inclusion of a simple buff icon and timer that disables and enables pvp, with a pvp flag similar to the criminal flag that allows pvp. This pvp flag would enable for theives and such when they steal but would be hidden such that they have to get pushed or you see them and call guards, just like it was in MO1. I was suggesting no changes to the thievery system and I was also not suggesting that towns are 100% PVP off. They would just be PVP/Collision off if you're applicable to that. That doesn't mean you can't be stolen from, and then try to go fight the guy who stole your stuff. It would protect thieves until they steal, but that was the exact same as MO1. They were blue and guards would get called on you the moment you hit them, with this, you couldn't just try to kill them immediately you had to wait and watch them, but that's not really so different than MO1 anyway.

4) as For Sure said, the NPC towns are static and won't change, why would you try to have a guild war where new players are flushed into? Do you have to be such a bully and pvp hungry to win that you pick on noobs? (post release), I get that it's the only spot we have to bank at right now,so its both noobs and vets, but that will change, and I proposed this specifically during beta so that people would just become used to the fact that the NPC towns that are 'safe' wouldactually be safe to afk in and give more casual players a place to chill out. This will also keep them in the game, and thus improve the economy, etc. many benefits on the flip side no one will discuss but I'm sure you all understand, you're just stuck in your MO1 vet ways. Because you're used to dealing with MO1 behaviors. This is why I don't think it would be a big deal for guild warfare, when guilds will have their own towns and economy and keeps. Duh.

5) As speznat said, let's leave this mostly up to the newer players, but those same people also don't use these forums most likely. I have a hard time getting anyone to even look up things themselves, much less getting anyone to try and use the forums. It's antiquated, and I know that mostly vets would be here sharing their thoughts against this. In the end, like speznat said, it's up to henrik and the rest of SV to decide. I hope they do something along the lines of the tavern idea but maybe it's not enough. I still foresee people earthquaking from the other side of the walls, or some quote "unforeseen" circumstances cause they'll just toss some mechanic in without thinking it through.

back to my original point; the SIMPLEST and fairest and easiest solution is to simply disable pvp going into town and enable it leaving town, and if you're hit you stay in pvp combat for 2 mins, and if you're a thief and steal shit you get a 5 min hidden criminal timer.

I disagree with the whole their reputation is ruined. Rerolling will always be a thing. Skilling up in MO1 isn't really that hard, and those determined will just get enough to grief. Also; I feel indifferent to it all, as someone who has went down the griefing path themselves, reputation be damned, if someone stops killing horses I'll do business with them if they start behaving and have gold to buy my shit. It's not like you guys are coming from Tindrem or Meduli to buy my stuff off the Bakti broker, or putting in requests. It all gets recycled when we do eventually kill them and take their kits. And vice versa. This idea behind player reputation is nice, but it's impractical and doesn't make 100% sense. Standings make waaaay more sense.

which brings me to;

6) Standings should be account-wide. Even if you delete your character and remake, your standings should be the same with the towns. This would force griefers to go out and farm standing to get back in to town safely. If they did that, then maybe keeping the system as it is would also work. With a couple caveats - 1) when you remake your char, your standings above 5 are reset down to 5, and 2) those below 5 are kept unless they exceed the negative amount of your new race, so maybe cap it to -25 or -10 standing when remaking. This is a middle-ground solution though.

 

[Tzone]

SV has consistently catered to the PvP-averse among us who seek shelter in town like little children. I'm sure that it was at one time difficult for players when the PKers could literally ride into town and kill people before the guards caught up to them, but now we have teleporting Lictors that will 1-2 shot anyone in the game. We have Elite Guards that will shoot you for 140 damage even if you're wearing Ironbone Mercenary Plate. We have an intense rep loss system where if you are PvP flagged and a guard even sees you flagged, you lose reputation for that faction. All these things make it incredibly difficult for someone to get a kill in guard range. In fact, if someone manages to kill you in town right now, they deserve that kill because they worked very hard for it and sacrificed a good bit to get it.

This world of Nave is not safe. It will never be safe, that's why the hardcore playerbase loves Nave. Some of us actually quite dislike the fact that guards are so strong. There will never be a player who can fight a Lictor. Nobody will be able to gun down an Elite Guard without a big group and some decent losses. It's not worth it.

If you think it's rough in town now, you would have uninstalled this game 6 months ago when you could get priest camped in town. Some of us prefer it to be dangerous and intense, where death waits around every corner. We didn't get our way, though, and StarVault already catered to the player who would prefer a more relaxed experience in town.

Now, I honestly, truly hope you're trolling about turning PvP off. To be frank, I am disgusted at the idea. If you want a game like that, I hear one launched recently, go have fun playing it. It should be obvious from the poll you're in the extreme minority holding this opinion.

All of those things they did, did not stop people complaining about griefing. All it did was annoy PvPers who were trying to find fights the only place that has people in numbers to fight.

Even if they made towns safe people will then say stop "griefing" outside of town.

 

[Anabolic Man]

There honestly should be a safe place to rest your head at night. Sometimes people want to netflix and chill. There will not be a way to retain new players until towns are safe TBH.

Only the tavern should be a saveplace and only in the blue towns. You should not be able to enter it with reagents, a shield and with weapons. The guards should take those away till you leave the tavern. We will get those gambel games, and the roleplayern need a place to play cubepoker, cardgames, boardgames or whatever we get.

 

[Amadman]

Voted for change needed but PVP should not be disabled in towns. Though I don't agree with the ever part as taverns and such could have you check your weapons at the door.

You put people together and things like Theft, assault ,murder and asshatery are going to naturally happen. This should also be expected to increase as more people come together. Like in a city.

Sure there needs to be deterrents and punishments. But totally removing it takes away two things in the game. The ability to do such things and the experience of such things happening to you in the game.

Good and bad, these types of experiences are part of living in this game/world.

 

[Rudakov]

Go play New World . Its Mortal Online , ther is no save places . Thats why we love and play this game for so many years .

 

[Jatix]

Is this in the spirit of MO? Absolutely not. But none of the standing changes have been. MO townlife was hardcore with violence around every corner. Pets getting killed in town. Jumping the griefer and killing their ass when they arent too close to the guards, probobly running from the guards and going blue. Probobly shit talking them at the bank later lmao. Etc. You cant do any of this in MO2. Town life sucks. They cant grief you because standing. You cant get them back because you also lose standing. MO1 mc system as long as you didnt get too many could still stay blue and not have to do much about it. Meaning you could actually do stuff.

Technically speaking this change is better than the standing garbage we have now. They already took all the fun out of town life so I'd rather its just turned off at this point. Would I play the game? Most likely not. But at this point I probobly wont anyway because the games a boredom simulator compared to mo1.

 

[ArcaneConsular]

I agree there should be more done to stop grieving in towns. Sadly some players, usually hardcore ones that play all day and use this forum will probably disagree. I like the game and will play regardless, but I've tried to get many friends into the game who have quit after being griefed in their first few hours of playing. Even though a lot of mortal players are super duper nice there's a sad underbelly of toxic losers who only enjoy the game because they can harass and grief new players with impunity. I hope the community realizes that getting a nice population of casual players is more important than appeasing the hardcore griefers that play all day just in the hopes of making someone mad. There will still be a place for them in lawless cities and highway robbery, but just griefing players in town with no consequences just for the lolz really needs to be addressed. The main problem is probably fulminate. Adding guards that can dispell it would be a start. Moving red priests further. Increasing crime timer. Increasing guard patrol range around city. Etc