DramaQueen wrote:Knar wrote:
The funny part about Bobik's assessment of Darkfall is that he is 100% wrong about why the game died. People were lining up out the door for Darkfall, but the company was so inept and didn't fix core issues with their game.
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Im Agree. Also Bobik was never PVPer. This is just Bobik's opinion, this is not true.
Not only is Bobik correct about Darkfall, this has been the very same issue that has caused countless other "hardcore" games to fail.
While it's certainly true that lack of enjoyable PvP will kill any game (see UO Trammel) the opposite is even more true. Game design that rewards mindless zerging while punishing smaller groups of players always leads to failure.
For LiF to be successful, town claims need to be nearly 100% safe. When players put hundreds of hours into building a base, they are not going to continue to play that game if there is nothing they can do to prevent that base from being taken away from them.
Realm areas need to be far less safe. JH one hour a week is obviously too limited. However, we definitely don't need LiF to turn into Medieval Rust with most bases being destroyed via offline raiding.
One viable solution might be to structure the various sectors of the world map with different JH rules and time zones:
For example:
Sector 1-10:
- JH on Monday, Weds, Friday and 2 hours on Sunday.
- JH time UTC+ Sector number. (Sector 1 JH is UTC+1, Sector 2 is UTC+2)
Sector 11-20:
- Daily JH. 2 hour JH on Sat and Sun.
- Same JH timezone shifting system where each subsequent sector has JH start an hour later.
Sector 21-30:
- 2 hour JH each day. 4 hour JH on Sat and Sun.
Sector 31-40:
- 4 Hour JH each day. 6 hour JH on Sat and Sun.
IBs can still occur as they normally do, but they should require regional resources to launch. IBs should never be able to destroy a town area, but successful IBs should
drastically reduce a guild's realm area.
Maintaining a guild claim should require regional resources. If a town claim is going to always be safe, the design needs to make players leave their walls and gather the supplies needed to maintain control of that base.
They key to subjugation should be area denial. Aggressors should be encouraged to have smaller groups patrolling sectors to prevent enemies from obtaining needed resources. Those gathering resources should be encouraged to scout for threats. Balancing this properly will result in lots of smaller scale "incidental" pvp.
LiF can be successful with some minor modification to the current JH and IB systems. The issue is just trying to find the sweet spot that affords PvPers enough action to maintain their interest, while also allowing small guild/groups of players the ability to still play the game without fear of losing everything due to events out of their control.
Remember two key things:
- No risk no thrill. Listening too much to the "mass market" crowd that complains about the game being too harsh will kill the fun. Death needs to have a sting. Risk equals fun.
- Most of the highly vocal "pvpers" are not pvpers. While they claim they want PvP, what they really want is the opportunity to kill others without any risk to themselves. These are the folks that will always zerg up to put the odds in their favor and nothing can be done to keep them playing the game. They'll quit when they run out of defenseless sheep to murder and they'll quit even faster when forced into situations where they must pvp without a huge advantage.
