Due to a recent conversation in discord it would seem the current intention of Star Vault is to keep mercy mode occurring 100% of the time.
First I will propose how I would implement mercy mode so those who are not interested in the reasoning do not need to read the whole thread to vote on the poll, then I will explain why I am suggesting this.
I propose to implement mercy mode in this way:
A player must be hit past a certain number of negative health to die instantly and bypass mercy mode.
Example:
The threshold is set to 20 negative health. (This chosen threshold is arbitrary and can be tweaked to find a good balance)
A player is on 20 health.
In this example he must be hit for at least 40 damage to be hit into 20 negative health, bypass mercy mode and die immediately.
If hit for any less he will be put into mercy mode.
This negative health threshold ensures that only strong hits on people who are already near death are capable of killing people instantly, whereas weaker hits will always put someone into mercy mode.
The reasoning:
I personally (and I know many others) feel that having mercy mode occur no matter what 100% of the time is not ideal for several reasons:
1. Having an opponent go into mercy mode every single time does not allow for the high impact feeling of suddenly killing someone during the heat of battle.
The death will always come after a moment of relief and when the adrenaline has subsided. Being able to kill someone outright with one strong hit when they are already near death is much more impactful than always having to hit them a second time.
2. It creates potential issues with game balance.
Imagine you're a mounted combat harassing a fleeing group on foot. You ride by and hit one player who is on 10 health already for 50 damage to the head.
Instead of dying, he simply goes into mercy mode and instantly gets healed to full health by his group's healers, and the rest of the group body block for him, so by the time you are turned around and ready to ride in and strike again he is either:
a) Already out of mercy mode and full health
b) Unable to be hit because his group is protecting him while he is still in mercy mode
Not to mention other scenarios such as shooting a naked player with a longbow from a far distance, and instead of killing him he simply goes into mercy mode and can hobble around a corner before you are able to deliver the killing blow.
The counter argument to this suggestion (provided by Sebastian on discord) is that having players go into mercy mode every time ensures that they can trigger an instant client side death for that player when you hit them.
For context, a high ping player such as myself sees a small delay between hitting a player and seeing their health update due to my latency to the server.
This would result in a short delay between hitting a player and him falling over dead, if mercy mode could be bypassed.
My response to this argument is that high ping players such as myself are used to this delay, and experience it 100% of the time while playing and fighting, so this is nothing out of the ordinary and it seems odd to make an exception specifically for killing people.
I would also say that lower ping players would not notice this delay as much and it seems strange to balance a component of combat as crucial as player death around the highest ping players, especially when some of us would prefer to bypass mercy mode anyway.
Others have raised the concern that being able to kill people outright is less convenient for duels or robbery when you don't want to kill someone.
My response to this is simply to look at their health and either do as we did in MO1 and stop just before you kill them, as the duel has usually been decided at that point, or see that they're low on health and don't hit them as hard to not meet the negative health threshold required to kill them instantly.
I believe that what is gained from being able to bypass mercy mode is far more valuable than what is lost in regards to the above mentioned points.
If you have any other concerns about this system please voice them below so we can discuss further.
Thank you for reading.
First I will propose how I would implement mercy mode so those who are not interested in the reasoning do not need to read the whole thread to vote on the poll, then I will explain why I am suggesting this.
I propose to implement mercy mode in this way:
A player must be hit past a certain number of negative health to die instantly and bypass mercy mode.
Example:
The threshold is set to 20 negative health. (This chosen threshold is arbitrary and can be tweaked to find a good balance)
A player is on 20 health.
In this example he must be hit for at least 40 damage to be hit into 20 negative health, bypass mercy mode and die immediately.
If hit for any less he will be put into mercy mode.
This negative health threshold ensures that only strong hits on people who are already near death are capable of killing people instantly, whereas weaker hits will always put someone into mercy mode.
The reasoning:
I personally (and I know many others) feel that having mercy mode occur no matter what 100% of the time is not ideal for several reasons:
1. Having an opponent go into mercy mode every single time does not allow for the high impact feeling of suddenly killing someone during the heat of battle.
The death will always come after a moment of relief and when the adrenaline has subsided. Being able to kill someone outright with one strong hit when they are already near death is much more impactful than always having to hit them a second time.
2. It creates potential issues with game balance.
Imagine you're a mounted combat harassing a fleeing group on foot. You ride by and hit one player who is on 10 health already for 50 damage to the head.
Instead of dying, he simply goes into mercy mode and instantly gets healed to full health by his group's healers, and the rest of the group body block for him, so by the time you are turned around and ready to ride in and strike again he is either:
a) Already out of mercy mode and full health
b) Unable to be hit because his group is protecting him while he is still in mercy mode
Not to mention other scenarios such as shooting a naked player with a longbow from a far distance, and instead of killing him he simply goes into mercy mode and can hobble around a corner before you are able to deliver the killing blow.
The counter argument to this suggestion (provided by Sebastian on discord) is that having players go into mercy mode every time ensures that they can trigger an instant client side death for that player when you hit them.
For context, a high ping player such as myself sees a small delay between hitting a player and seeing their health update due to my latency to the server.
This would result in a short delay between hitting a player and him falling over dead, if mercy mode could be bypassed.
My response to this argument is that high ping players such as myself are used to this delay, and experience it 100% of the time while playing and fighting, so this is nothing out of the ordinary and it seems odd to make an exception specifically for killing people.
I would also say that lower ping players would not notice this delay as much and it seems strange to balance a component of combat as crucial as player death around the highest ping players, especially when some of us would prefer to bypass mercy mode anyway.
Others have raised the concern that being able to kill people outright is less convenient for duels or robbery when you don't want to kill someone.
My response to this is simply to look at their health and either do as we did in MO1 and stop just before you kill them, as the duel has usually been decided at that point, or see that they're low on health and don't hit them as hard to not meet the negative health threshold required to kill them instantly.
I believe that what is gained from being able to bypass mercy mode is far more valuable than what is lost in regards to the above mentioned points.
If you have any other concerns about this system please voice them below so we can discuss further.
Thank you for reading.
