Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Burne109]

I think the protected tiny personal claims will help sell the game to PVE'rs who dont want to be part of a large guild just to play.

[Karabas]

You have almost convinced me ... almost.
I'll consider some kind of opportunity to remove/damage private claim with SIGNIFICANT efforts of a large number of players in case if that private claim is used in a Guild vs Guild warfare.

they are already used actually... we didnt see real sieges so far - so we can only imagine how IMBA they really are.... anyways - they are already in use.

[Bobik]

Also, I want to add something that everyone within our super hardcore core players community must understand in my opinion. Of course, it is just my opinion.

Back in early times of Darkfall release, there were a LOT of players. They were all different, but most of them were rather "casual" for a hardcore game as Darkfall was. They were looking for PvE, rather than PvP, preferred safe NPC cities to underdeveloped player owned cities that lacked walls and towers at early stages of games so it was dangerous and hard to live there. And so on and so forth.

Since alignment system was not working almost at all, those PvE players were slaughtered A LOT. PvP players were making ambushes even diving into safe zones or making suicide ganks JUST to kill just for fun, without even looting the corpses. Well, there was nothing much you could loot from a PvE player that is ganked 24/7.

Needless to say, that after few month there were significantly fewer players and after some time epic sieges of 300sh people turned into "epic" 15 vs 22 fights for some towns...

Simply because aggressive PvP "wolves" were not restricted and "ate" all the "sheep". And ended up that only those who have left were those packs of "wolves" turning MMO game into some kind of quake arena from the skill and "massiveness" perspective.

I've been there for a long time, I've witnessed all of it with my own eyes. I must confess that I was one of those "wolves". But the result was not fun neither for me nor for most of other "wolves". We wanted MMO, but not some "epic" 15 vs 23 fights.

And the funniest part, that almost all of that time, the aggressive "wolves" minority (yes, they were minor to the massive "carebears" population back in release times) were the most vocal and most aggressive during "Forumfall" battles. "Sheep" were not really vocal from the start, and those that were vocal were humiliated and mocked by "wolves". "Learn how to play, noob!", "Do you even PvP?" etc.

All that ended up with the fact, that the game died. Of course, there were dozens of other reasons why game was not that successful as it supposed to be, but that one was one of the main reasons in my opinion:
"Wolves" were not restricted, "sheep" got slaughtered and silenced, eventually the have left the game, leaving the "wolves" minority to be only players, turning M(assive)MO into just MO.

And even I myself a PvPer and was a PvPer all my time, I do want to preserve "sheep" flock. Not just for the sake of more population=more profit, but also for the sake more population = more fun for BOTH "wolves" and "sheep". Even if "wolves" does not realize it.
Actually, THAT is the TRUE reason why we have such a logo for our game - the symbiosis of peaceful/PvE/RP players (Sickle) with aggressive/PvP/political players (Sword).

And that is why I don't want to FORCE every living soul in our game to play PvP guild vs guild warfare type of the game. Where Private claims are observed ONLY from the perspective of GvG warfare.

Indeed, exploits are not good at all and current solution needs to be revised in order to eliminate such possible exploits. But I strongly object to any changes that make peaceful players more vulnerable and less safe, even if you ask me to.

Bobik is out

[Rikkarth]

@Bobik
@Dev Team

When you implement something to protect the new player you also need to think how will the hardcore player use that for his advantage.
Private Claims are being used to:

• secure mines without upkeep or prejudice to the owner;
• prepare sieges without upkeep or prejudice to the owner;
• spam the map without reason without upkeep or prejudice to the owner;
• forward harassing positions;

Hardcore/Veteran/Experienced players are using private claims more often than the new players or lone wolfs.

I'm sure you will figure out a way to follow a fair system that protects new players and lone wolfs without making it a tool to be abused by the experienced player.

My two cents:

Maybe NPCs might help into securing areas for the new players, just like Concord in E.V.E.

Or maybe make server 25 (and eventually other surrounding servers), into trust positions, where a player cannot deal damage to another but can build and interact with the world, thus creating some kind of 'High-Sec' just like in E.V.E.

[Ishamael]

I agree with you Bobik. The guild I'm in (Vinterskorn) realized something similar to that and have taken a more relaxed approach as to create a more inviting atmosphere for crafters to join us.

I'm sure that there is a system that can accomplish what you're aiming for while at the same time allowing the pvp / kingdom warfare.

I don't expect this to happen overnight and that it will take some trial and error. I think the most import thing is communication. As long as there is open communication with the PVP community and we're not just shut-down and our input rejected I think we can keep working towards a good compromise.

I would expect the pvp wolves here would agree that compared to role-players or brand new players, we are pretty much gods. A single one of our mid-tier pvp guys can literally wipe out a guild of 8 to 10 new players by themselves without too much trouble.

Because of this I think it should be obvious we should work with Bobik in some fashion to come up with a good compromise to keep the game populated.

I think I'm one of the few PvPers here that has literally "killed everyone on the MMO". There were 2 guys on... I found them and killed them back when the map showed where people were. After they were dead I was alone in the mmo. It felt very ominous. I don't want that to happen on a larger scale.

[Karabas]

TRAMMEL (c) UO on 25 serevr (or even +24.26.32.18).......
or even different level of security zones as in EVE....... may help to keep sheeps alive.....

here we all are sheeps when we starting =) terraforming, farming, so on =)

[Sharana]

...

Bobik,
thank you very much for having a look at the topic and replying to us.

I honestly doubt anyone will disagree with what you just said (your motives behind such decision), yet that was not the core of the issue. Let's face it - so many of us have multiple chars already and will probably buy more in the future. Each big guilds already has few monuments they can place and share permissions to function as a single guild. If there is Bob and Joe who paid for big personal claims, and made themself small village by combining their claims they are not protected. One of those "free" monuments (as it requires only 10 characters, not accounts) can be used to take over that village and loot it/destroy it just for the lolz. That's griefing and that's allowed - that will be a situation where I will really feel sorry for the poor Bob and Joe that were griefed just for the lolz. This is possible and will happen in the currently planned mechanics.

The real problem starts when we (big communities) see those protected claims as weapons and come with creative ideas how to use them and how to protect from them. Isn't claiming resources for the lolz near your enemy in the beginning not griefing if they can't remove those personal claims? And everything else that was mentioned already. Guilds need to defend themself as well.

I honestly don't see easy solution. For example griefing solo players by placing fake guild monuments on their developed claims is still griefing that is allowed and if it's the only way to harass "RPers" there will be people who will do it sadly.

From such perspective do you think having server 25 (the entire server, not just the capital area) no PvP zone (damage disabled) and then the continental parts of 24, 26 and 18, 17, 18 disabled for guild monuments where only personal claims can be placed and they can't be revoked will work? That will be the safer area where PvP is possible, but no property destruction (can't place fake guild monuments to remove the personal claim) with server 25 completely safe (no PvP). Then rest of the world is wild west where personal claims can be removed by performing that ritual like 2 times a week (JH kind of) and if you want protection you will either live in the middle of no where (no one will bother) or deal with guilds to settle on their lands. They will be vulnerable only during war and most guild won't be at war all the time

[Ishamael]

What if there was a "dead zone" around guild claims that you could not place personal claims in. However you can place personal claims INSIDE guild claims.

Then, if you place a personal claim inside a guild claim it works as normal. If you place a personal claim outside a guild claim in the "wild" it acts just like a tier 1 guild claim but on a smaller scale... let's call it a "Tier 0 claim".

You could then not place a tier 1 guild claim on top of a personal claims that are placed in the "wild".

Your options would be to use a new "personal guild claim battle totem" that would be cheaper than a "guild claim battle totem". You could place it on their personal claim and they would have 2 options... 2) fight in a small-scale siege battle and try to rally their friends to help defend their personal claim or 2) allow the enemy guild to place a guild monument on top of their personal claim.

You could then maybe prevent personal claims from placing "guild battle totems" but allow them to place "personal claim battle totems" so then you have personal claims able to go to fight each other.

Also, you could create a "newbie zone" around the main city where people could place 100% protected personal claims and just prevent guild claims from ever placing monuments there.

I can't think of a better compromise than this. Essentially, for the solo player that wishes to adventure into the wild... let them experience what the other guilds experience. Same risk / reward just on a smaller scale.

I could see solo players getting other local players to help defend or even hiring a merc guild to help defend. While the players that stay near the starting city have a much more peaceful existence. Essentially separate your solo players that want a peaceful life from the solo players that want to have some risky adventure but don't want to join a guild.

[Grimmblut]

No-PVP-Zones are hard to implement.

Disable combat mode? Trolls will ram other players with their horse and kill them with the damage resulting from being tossed against an object or from falling down a slope. No one could stop these trolls because you can't kill them with weapons in the No-PVP-Zone.

Make all players invulnerable? Trolls will climb over walls and block doorways, thus maybe even imprison other players.

In the end there must be some GM's that can be contacted when someone exploits the prejudice no-pvp mechanic. But that's costly.

[Jakkus07]

It may sound as another "wolf" speaking, however its weird for me to to accept that random "solo" player would have some godly protection against other people etc.

For me its what realm claims are for - to have farms and private claims on. It creates typical conditions that farms and other claims should be around main monument. This creates "city" like conditions.

Its only logical for lone player to struggle if found in wilds.
So again it should be normal that lone players seek protectorate.

What i would suggest is to add function in standings on private claims that do not belong to guild and are claiming land outside guild realm claim. "Seek protectorate" i would like to call it to sent proposition to some minor or major guilds.

In short if private claim is without protectorate should have dark ritual available as well. (30 mins turning of private claim or something). Then raiders are able to loot and destroy. What should be normal is for the raiders to have some minor or major alignment loss and quite a long criminal status timer. Yes alignment loss - what are you expecting. That you are destroying some lone poor farmers life burning his farm and raping his wife and still have good alignment?

If private claim that is under guild protectorate should have similar thing(alignment loss, criminal status), but raiders would have message like - "this land is under protection of "this and this guild" you may risk their wrath". If raiders ignore warning, dark ritual starts and guild that is defending priv. claim should have notification that raiders are attacking one of their priv. claims.

Another idea would be to add option to "seek protectorate under the crown". Basically it ability to build claim around main city and make THOSE claims 100% untouchable.

[Karabas]

nooby zones or different security zones can be easyly implemented (as i guess)

just add a "security multiplier" to the damage formula

for example -
25 = *0.1
32,24,26,18 = *0.5
31,33,17,19 = *0.8
all rest = 1.0 - normal damage in every damaging case:
PvP hit, horse bash, falling(???), wild animal agression(???)

but this can have a result in huge FUN battles in arcada style on 25 =) with no risk to die =)

or just add a KARMA multiplier - if karma is below 0 - you recieve full damage. if KARMA is "+" positive - you have lowered damage incoming to you.

And about PK - i dont see any ways exept to set different price for set and upkeep PKs on different servers/zones. lets say 25 = price*2, 32,24,26,18 = price*1.5 for example. and replace the fixed upkeep - make it % of storage (what is % >= fixed upkeep every charge). so will be no forgotten personal claims standing for real years and just blocking areas - as it was in UO on Trammel. Most safe zones should be self-clearing faster.

lets be honest - total noob or PvE/RP maniac with no experience even in YO SHOULD NOT SETTLE NEAR BIG GUILD, especially during WAR time.
if you settle nearby - you are only 2 options - friend or enemy. in both options you should not cry if the war touches you

and the KARMA - during all tests passed so far - we havent really experienced the real price of karma... we dont understand how it will work.... 10 characters on account = unlimited karma.
1-2 chars = very expensive karma. nobody will lose it for no reason.

we need a way to set WAR to PK if we cant remove it - so we at least will not lose karma killing enemy spy on his PK near our walls.

[Taablarna]

As a "sheep" I must comment, even if it may result me being skinned and made a coat. My humble vision is somewhat in line with poster Jakkus07.

Not only that it would dimish many of the concerns pointed out in this topic, but it would also migrate those new players into community and would also look nice to have settlements around big castles.

However, I can think of few problems here - first weeks of the game when many of the "sheep" pour into game and guilds dont have reasonable kingdoms yet? Maybe give non-guild players option to live in safe capital city for first month?

Second, and most dangerous thing in any sandbox; playerbase. Why would guilds/kingdoms allow these "sheep" to live near their precious PVP fortresses? Out of sheer love to your neighbour? Maybe not... To try to tax them to death so that they woudlnt have to grind recources themselfes for pvp gear? Maybe... Can we even point them piece of land so far that it wouldnt allow attacking enemy to use "sheeps" buildings as their advantage when sieging castle?

I completely understand and agree with Bobik's concerns, but current path we are taking is just plain wrong - please reconsider. Please dont give us broken mechanic to start steam beta with.

Sorry for bad english, hope someone understood.

[Azzerhoden]

I don't have a complete answer for this, but I will say that the difficulty in taking down a personal claim should be relational to the development of the personal claim.

If a guild wants to control the land around them, then they need to be active in that endeavor. If a player has enough time to be able to setup a personal claim, build a hut, a kiln, a heater, forge and or other buildings, then it should be much harder to kick them out, regardless of how close a guild monument is.

On the other hand, if a players drops a personal claim, and I kill him before he gets anything setup, then it should be much easier to destroy the claim.

This way there is a natural balance established between a guilds activity in an area, and the activity of the player with a personal claim. Plus, a guild is more likely to negotiate with someone who is a serious solo player versus one who just wants to grief, and the level of development of a personal claim would show this.

[Lazzie_Puca]

Depends on what is defined as the wilderness. Somewhere out in the middle of nowhere is fine by me. But posting up shop near a big guild shouldn't be safe. Incorporating a sphere of influence that a guild exerts from their central monolith and proxies would make for an interesting compromise.

[Javichuu]

have a small idea:

First, make a clan of NPC in which interacting with a npc invite you to that clan. That clan will have a claim around the starting city in which players can have a personal claim without fear of being destroyed, will have a limitation of expansion of claim the personal claim and will not have permission administration, will be totally staff.

To avoid that the clans are approved, it can be added that it is a clan by account, in which all the personages are of a claim, this will help that the clans do not approve and have it more complicated.

You can in the start city do 2 types of zones,
1-crop zones, the personal claim will be larger but will have a reduced cost and you will not be able to plant buildings or objects
2-livestock areas and others, where you can plant crops and livestock and only this.

Then you will have a trading area where you can put your resources to sell in a trader post, everyone can trade there, pvp is banned in these areas. Also, the cost of increasing the storage will be reduced in this trading post for the people of the NPC clan.

To avoid abuse of clans with second characters, I would change the clans so that the account can only be in a clan, and its characters will be in the clan.

Any staff claim outside of these zones could be destroyed, I would propose something similar to the instance battle, put a totem, more expensive than usual to avoid abuse, that destroys the claim within 2 real days to give the player time to Get your things

[Davis105]

Unread post by Bobik » Today, 00:55

You have almost convinced me ... almost.
I'll consider some kind of opportunity to remove/damage private claim with SIGNIFICANT efforts of a large number of players in case if that private claim is used in a Guild vs Guild warfare.

I'm not going to pretend like I have the answer to this system at all but I'd like to say something in regards to your post.

I don't think you should even need convincing to see this system is completely flawed. If you made personal claims 100% invincible I'll tell you exactly how me as a guild leader would exploit that.

1. I'd make sure everyone in a leadership position in my guild all put personal claims down and evenly spaced them from each other.

2. In each of those claims we'd store everything of value off of our guild claim.

3. Anytime we would get gear from wars and sieges, we'd store it here so the other guilds have no chance of ever acquiring our loot.

Bobik, I hope you read this and understand this system is fundamentally flawed and will destroy the core mechanics of your game. Nothing in any video game, especially an MMO, should ever be 100% safe/invincible.

This is a team game, not a solo player game. If people choose to be solo they need to get creative in ways to survive. People will naturally do it or they'll give up and join a guild/start one just like it was in medieval times.

Bottom line, this needs to be changed because this system is enough for me to consider not even playing because of how unfair and unrealistic it will make the game world.

[carranah]

Maybe following could be done to maintain acceptable sheep/casual/carebear protection vs. abuse by pro guilds:
1) maintain cost directly related to buildings on the claim (ideally also other valuables) => higher cost to maintain as a "safe guild cache"; a carebear that wants elaborate mini-village with valuable resources should not complain that it takes more gods favour/monument maintenance to keep it safe
2) make personal claims "hostile" to any other player, only the owner can move/build etc. on the claim => would be more problematic for guilds to make these raid points, still doable, but more hassle... and after all it is a personal claim so a carebear should not complain that only one person can use it; if you want a siege workshop near another guild, you will need skilled char to set it on its own and do all on its own... and meantime move all resources back and forth for remaining raid team
3) personal claims cannot be set on clay/ore/granite/silver/gold mines => no stupid resource blocks by singe character, a guild should understand that it takes more to maintain resource lock, while carebears should not assume that can make a safe personal claims on such spots (alternatively again it can be higher monument maintenance cost)
4) one can still expect tricky ways to abuse points 1-3, so maybe a personal claim should still be raidable; so if a guild really wants to raid a personal claim it should be able to do so... but it had to be costly enough to avoid insta stoneageing personal claims every day/week; it can be done by:
4.1) only guild can raid personal claims and has a cap of active raids per monument level => avoid 1-2 players raids (pity, but less ganking), guilds cannot wipe to many claims at a time, which means they need to strategically pick their choices
4.2) make very small window for personal claim raids, with 24h notice, which is triggered by costly and noisy ritual (I like the idea that personal claims set their own JH window) => this way a guild can get rid of a given personal claim if wants it really badly (due to resource lock, hostile raid camp, safe guild bank etc.), but at cost that is high enough to make it economically unsustainable for raiding undeveloped carebear personal claims (it is different with bling bling carebear personal claims, which should know the price of their actions); I hope that this would safe 90% of casual/sheep carebear from insta slaughtering over and over again
4.3) while raid/JH time for given personal claim, allow only selected 1-5 people to join each side of the siege; standard naphtha/siege damage rules applies, but it can be considered to make a standing damage modificator (was described by other post in this thread), so depending on server and "quality" of personal claim damage modifier should make it easier/harder to stoneage it

[Trance67]

I have to admit the immediate problem I saw this come up with is that a guild could just make personal claims touching all the way around their main guild claim, build walls on them, and then they have an invincible set of walls around their claim which much be climbed over before any serious assault can begin. That could be a bit of a problem.

I have no problem with them being very difficult to remove, because there should be some solo players or very small groups of communities out in the world, but definitely not indestructible.

[Frang]

@Bobik

I understand what you want to do with protecting "the sheep" But my fear is not the sheep having some claim in the wild. But rather the wolfs exploiting it. so I was chatting the other night and came up with some possible preventions for the exploits.


1) is if you're in a guild that you can only place a personal claim on the guilds land.

2) that if you're not in a guild you cant place one within a certain distance of a monument like a guild monument .

3) make them some what expensive to maintain ( coin from the shop gold silver ect)

4) make it so it take a few in game days to build ( maybe 3 or 4) or to grow.

5) limit the size

6) prevent placing them on anything that may be griefing like clay for example ( I know it doesn't belong to a guild but talking about griefing)

and make them so if a guild claim reaches it that they can be removed.

these are just some ideas. I really do understand protecting the sheep. But we wolfs need protection as well sometimes =0

[Warlord]

well it would be better to let those ppl join up instead of playing solo..
so i guess not 100% protected would be the best

[Azzerhoden]

If a guild wants to control the land around them, then they need to be active in that endeavor. If a player has enough time to be able to setup a personal claim, build a hut, a kiln, a heater, forge and or other buildings, then it should be much harder to kick them out, regardless of how close a guild monument is.

Building on this a bit, before a personal claim could be taken down, there should be a requirement that all the other structures be taken down, and that this could only occur through a siege. This way the player could rely on their allies (or hire mercs) to help defend them, and it would take a focused effort on the part of the attacker to remove the personal claim, rather than some random wolf running by looking to grief someone.

[Uno]

Let me say there are too many uninformed and uncircumstantial opinions in this thread, starting from the OP. The major flaw of this thread is that the OP pretends to have explained both point of views on the matter of safe or not totally safe personal claims, however it does not. There is no clear explanation as to what personal claims are intended to be and the purpouse they should serve in the game, and why they should be safe from other players. The wiki also does not help in this regard. Without having this clear how can we have any informed opinion on the matter?

I will give my opinion on how I envision personal claims should be, starting from the only certainty I have about them, which is their name. Their purpouse in the game would be to let the lone player have a safe harbour to store their beloginings, since it is obvious that a lone player would not be able to defend them in any other way. However, in my opinion a lone player in this game would only be a player excellent at role playing or a player that does not yet know what they are doing and that would soon either quit the game or join their efforts in a community. But I digress... keeping in mind the above, I would have the personal claim work like this:

1- yes, they would be 100% safe during their existance. This is because a lone player stands no chance against organized groups, and no matter how hard and long and boring you make destructing a personal claim, if this was the case then they would be completely pointless. You could as well petition for their removal. But they could (but need not) be removed by a guild leader should they come to fall in the land radius of a guild claim.
2- a personal claim would be just that: personal. This means no management of accesses or "diplomacy" is possible, only the owner can do anything in it.
3- a character owning a personal claim cannot join a guild, order, or whatever player organization that is concerned with land ownership. They can live in the lands of a guild with their claim, if allowed to, but not be fully part of it. This is to prevent the exploits that have already been covered in the thread, plus all the others that have not because we could not even imagine them.
4- the maintenance would not be costly, however the radius should be fixed, and reasonably small, something like 10 of radius. A single character could barely make use even of that few land, anyways.
5- regardless of its maintenance level, the claim would be destroyed by the system in a maintenance cycle if there is no update in the maintenance status for over 30 RL days, or another reasonable amount of time that would define a player as active in the game or not. This is necessary because if the maintenance cost is low it would be too easy to pay maintenance for one year and quit the game for whatever reason (for example because playing this game solo is a bad choice) a week later, leaving some land claim that none can remove without a guild claim covering it.

Alternatively you could make it costly to maintain, but this would again be against the purpouse of a personal claim. In my opinion it should be something easy to create and maintain for the single player, but that gives no advantages beyond the character itself. If personal claims could be removed by player organizations beyond their claimed land, if they would be hard to maintain, then what would be their purpouse? Why feature a game element that could be potentially exploited and that on the other hand does not give the proper tools to the honest players to play with?
When you think up a feature you must start from its purpouse and convenience, and then find the means to prevent it can be exploited. It is my opinion that save some exceptions, in this thread only the former has been done and that is because, I believe, pretty much none that posted has any intention to play their characters solo, myself included. However we must still maintain a neutral perspective when it comes to discuss play styles.


I am also of the firm opinion that a player or a player organization should only claim (with words, a.k.a. role play) to own what they in fact own. No childish BS like "this clay pit is ours because our claim is in the vicinity". We have enough of this BS in games that don't feature land ownership. This game features it, which means anyone should only own what they truly own, period. Arguments like "I should be able to control the land I own and also its surroundings if my sword is big enough" are pretty moot. Personal claims cannot pose a threat to resource claims for guilds, because a guild whose land expands over such a claim can remove it. If your guild cannot manage to include that particular piece of land in their claim, it is YOUR GUILD's problem, and it must not become John the Hermit's problem only because you are a couple dozeen well armed bullys.
Likewise, the guild claim that is near your guild and is hindering your expansion dreams, cannot be removed simply with your own expansion, it will require either diplomacy or war. This is a system that is fair for everyone as it does not stop anyone to obtain what they aim for, if they work for it.

[Azzerhoden]

And how, in your self-proclaimed 'informed' opinion, will you stop players in guilds, using an alt or some other account/character not in a guild, use personal claims in abusive ways? As in so many other areas of LIF, it is the players who must serve as the final checks and balances. Not a GM, not game mechanics.

Further, at the end of the day, I should be able to eliminate ANY personal claim that I see as a threat. I don't want someone occasionally raiding/killing/looting my players and then retreating to some place where they are safe from retribution.

[Jakkus07]

As in so many other areas of LIF, it is the players who must serve as the final checks and balances. Not a GM, not game mechanics.

Further, at the end of the day, I should be able to eliminate ANY personal claim that I see as a threat. I don't want someone occasionally raiding/killing/looting my players and then retreating to some place where they are safe from retribution.

I do agree 100%!

However we should give owners of personal claims some sort of chance.

Proposition nr.1

The less fair for private owners

As someone suggested instanced battle. My suggestion is to simply give option to raid personal claims.

1. The raiders come
2. They initiate ritual (lets call it that for now)
3. The owner have time of 1 to 2 days (real time) before claim will turn off for 1 hour (dunno how long 30 mins? random number).
4. Owner have time to prepare\write to other guilds for help.
5. Combat initiates attackers have ability to destroy or at least damage monument or simply raid farm. To make it more fair perhaps farm needs to be raided few times before its gone.
6. After claim is gone Owner cant set monument(priv.c) for at least 1-2 days

To avoid griefing from single attackers or random raiding - guilds that are too far 3 - 2 servers away or guildless characters cant initiate raiding.

Proposition nr.2

More fair for private owners

Owner should be able to defend its claim - therefore small instanced battle 1vs1 or 2vs2. Numbers cant be too great if owner have friend he can help but if owner is alone he will fight just one raider.
1. If owner wins nothing changes.
2. If owner loses claim is turned off for 1 hour or 30 etc. (like before)
3. Repeat point 5 to 6 from previous proposition.

[carranah]

Proposition nr.2

More fair for private owners

Owner should be able to defend its claim - therefore small instanced battle 1vs1 or 2vs2. Numbers cant be too great if owner have friend he can help but if owner is alone he will fight just one raider.
1. If owner wins nothing changes.
2. If owner loses claim is turned off for 1 hour or 30 etc. (like before)
3. Repeat point 5 to 6 from previous proposition.

Although I would like to see such option well balanced, I am concerned that it will be very hard to make it good enough for wolves and sheep at the same time. You can imagine that PvP players will have special chars for such gank jobs and typical PvE/carebear won't stand a chance against even semi-advanced PvP character (even, if a carebear had a PvP character on their own). A good example is EVE, imagine pairing typical sunday pilot from high-sec with a PvP player.

Of course, the defender can get the benefit of high ground + walls... but not sure if this would be balanced again. And still, for gankers it may not be hard to find a fast way to get through the fence. As long as loot will be bigger that effort or they will have enough supply from other activities... which PvP players do. Especially those from bigger bands/guilds - they simply know better than casual sheep how to make cheap ganks all the time.

So with "Proposition nr.2" I fear we would be back to square one quire fast.

[carranah]

TRIBUTE SYSTEM FOR PERSONAL CLAIMS

Another proposal:

• Implement tribute system - every personal claim can put their resources to special tribute container that would work as offline warehouse which attacker can check before raiding and decide to take items from there instead of attacking
  
  • You will see in the next points that there are limited occasions to take stuff from there (aka collect tribute), so it is not permanent JH time or free for all warehouse
  • The sheep (personal claim owner) puts items that is willing to give away for free in order to avoid the raid by the attackers
    • Those can be expensive goods, which may satisfy attacker.... or encourage to raid
    • Could be average or low value items that may discourage from attacking poor sheep or encourage to assume that the real treasure is hidden inside
  • The wolves (attacker) may feel completely satisfied with small tribute rather than lengthy (and risky?) attacking
    
    • As you will see in the following pints raiding takes time, so even small tribute may be satisfactory to the attacker to take it and leave the seep alone... at least for a while
    • Every payment of tribute is counted as PCIB (explained below), so you may just keep paying weekly fee to your foes and get by without fight - which was the case in the feudal times probably
    • I don't think it makes sense to build extra building for tribute system. I would just make special window in personal monument building to manage it. It should not be used as personal storage, so it should be small... or not allowing to take items back, only to destroy (it is not a garbage container, so size constrain is needed). The size of it as well as how much attacker can take per attack should be adjustable by owner of the personal claim, and available size values should grow as the claim's size grows.
    • Such technique could be used as a bluff (both sides) & buff (rather sheep)... but life is feudal and who has sword is usually right
• Allow for PCIB (Personal Claim IB), allow small size bands only (like previously mentioned 1vs1, 2vs2 etc.)
  
  • Even though it is possible, armies do not send tens of soldiers to raid a single peasants hut.
• Set PCIB cap per week, which would depend on size of player's personal claim (e.g. 20sqm = 1 PCIB/week; 40sqm = 2 PCIB/week; 60sqm = 3 PCIB/week etc.)
  
  • Should work great with the tribute system
  • Number of PCIB per claim is limited, so sheep is not constantly flooded with PCIB and raids of any other sorts. On the other hand, it has to be more than few to avoid exploit attacking yourself with an alt and keeping PCIB cap full all the time (that is the tricky part as big guilds could exploit it still)
• Put limit per char on PCIB (cannot attack same personal claim more than x per month, cannot be signed to more than y active PCIB, naturally cannot attack PC from the same account)
  
  • Should work great with the tribute system
  • This would limit ganking effect, as people would have to use their PCIB cap wisely. Also, PCIB cap should depend on some statistic (eg. going higher with PvP skills, but being lowered with drop in alignment etc.)
  • PCIB cap limit could be extended for guild members who are located close to a given personal claim.
• Once PCIB is won by attacker, allow for JH on given personal claim, but keep loot cap and/or building damage cap. And assume that attacker can enter personal claim only once in JH mode, once the player goes off the personal claim the JH is over.
  
  • During JH the defender can do his actions as well ofc.
• Give personal claim owner the right to set time window for PCIB and JH as he wishes. Can be set only once per week, only before the week with new setting starts.
  
  • PCIB and JH time window depends on size of the claim (ideally also some security modificator/level of server, goods/resources on claim or personal claim owner's alignment)
  • We give sheep opportunity to set best time for them to defend. It will also discourage attackers from random attacks, as they will have to be motivated to raid given personal claim.
  • Standard rules, like not showing up by defender means forfeit. Also "no-show" by attacker needs to be penalized (alignment loss => PCIB cap loss; or longer "cooldown" time before he can attack given personal claim)
  • Successful defense should lead to longer "cooldown" for given attacker to attack given personal claim again.

The general rule is that if you really want to, you can raid and grief other.s But it should be discouraging to do it as long as there is no bigger purpose in it. This is exactly how it worked in the real life. Big armies did not bother with raiding peasants all day long. It was not fun nor made any sense. You have training dummies and guild mates to train instead, just like in the old days. Still if you are a lawless band or have a good reason to raid someone, nothing stops you. Same for sheep, they should not get slaughtered several times per day as every passerby wants to pillage and rob them from their apples, dung and bark boxes. But just because people don't do it, does not mean that they cannot... so sheep in a wild should feel scared with every passerby. Anyone has a choice to either team-up, live in a city or become a hermit in the woods. Whatever their choice is, one thing should remain constant, which is... LIFE IS FEUDAL!

PS. I still hope that the capitol, npc villages or other safe zones will be good enough to keep high sheep population. Anyone knows when will we be able to test capitol's mechanics?

[Azzerhoden]

Using the terms "Wolf" and "Sheep", while an OK analogy, is still an over-simplification of the issue. It takes absolutely nothing to create a personal claim at the moment. So having someone run near a guilds location and drop a personal monument is a threat. For large guilds, some will normally be on all the time to deal with hostile raiders, but it only takes 10 people to drop a monument.

So often, the previously mentioned 'Wolves and sheep' relationship will be completely reversed, with the wolf living on the personal claim and his targeted herd trying to enjoy the game semi-hassle free.

I am all in favor of personal claims, but not to the point that they become an easily exploitable feature for griefers. There is a reason that only players who drop monuments can set standings with other guilds. This is because by setting up a monument those guilds have put some 'skin in the game'. In the rush to improve new player experiences, let's not open up exploits for those too cowardly to fight those players who can fight back.

[Cian]

Let me say there are too many uninformed and uncircumstantial opinions in this thread, starting from the OP. The major flaw of this thread is that the OP pretends to have explained both point of views on the matter of safe or not totally safe personal claims, however it does not.

I cannot be the only person here that sees the monumental irony of a non-beta participant calling Sharana and a whole host of other Alpha/beta players uninformed.

Uno, the OP didn't explain because the vast majority of the people in this forum know how personal claims work currently and don't particularly like the large loopholes they see in the current setup.

You then went on to proclaim your own ignorance on the matter of how they work in actuality and grace us with your generous vision of how you think they should work despite your utter lack of personal experience with these claims....

There are three issues at hand right now.

1. How the claims currently work.

2. Statements from Bobik about how he originally envisioned them to work.

3. All the ways that players can currently make alts to screw over guild claims and guilds with abusive risk averse gameplay.

There is currently no known time-frame where Bobik's vision becomes reality. Until then, we've got a shoddy system that is utterly rife with opportunities for abuse.

[carranah]

Using the terms "Wolf" and "Sheep", while an OK analogy, is still an over-simplification of the issue [...]

So often, the previously mentioned 'Wolves and sheep' relationship will be completely reversed, with the wolf living on the personal claim and his targeted herd trying to enjoy the game semi-hassle free.

I am all in favor of personal claims, but not to the point that they become an easily exploitable feature for griefers. [...], let's not open up exploits for those too cowardly to fight those players who can fight back.

I think majority if not all who comment in this thread agree on it (avoiding exploits though personal claims). It is just that current implementation of personal claims is already one big exploit (assuming JH is replaced by guilds-only IB). We all know what standard JH for personal claims means... it will be usable only by the strongest and anyone else will be soon moving to other games (just like in ARK afaik this was not the intent).

90% of posts discuss alternatives/adjustments for current already exploitable personal claims mechanism. Common motto is how to make personal claim raidable, but make the cost/effort of each raid high enough to avoid mass/random raids at a large scale (we won't set it down to zero).

I will use EVE as an example of keeping PvE/carebears playing the game while PvP and pro community is not considering it as a major exploit - and both sides benefit of this situation keeping player-base relatively high.

• Safe "bays" for all players (NPC stations + "safe" player owned stations/structures), the less safe place is the less such conveniences is (as you move to wild zones in low/null/WH systems, there are less and less "safe bays" and less and less casual players). Naturally you cannot make too much in "safe" zone, at leas not enough to exploit the game or break economy (trading aside).
  
  • In LiF, NPC capitol/villages and guild's ground are equivalent of it. I am waiting to see how it will be implemented.
• Players can store goods in safe stations and there is virtually no risk of loosing them. You still need to get to the safe place with given item/goods. Again it is not considered as an exploit in EVE. But allows PvE and casual players to store their treasures in a safe place.
  
  • Without unraidable personal claim, there is no such place in LiF as of now (for non-guilders ofc). Although, it may change with the NPC cities mechanism.
• Traveling through open world is always risky, but the risk level depends on potential reward. You may attack and kill other players in 99% of the time. However, if you are not good in PVP and have a proper ship, you will be killed either by other players or NPC before you kill anyone. And a viable PK ship costs enough to make you grind for it.
  
  • In LiF you can attack anyone same way like in EVE. But nothing discourages you from killing peasants all day long. Alignment is just not enough as some people just don't care about it (and that is fine as long as "don't care" is reasonably small group of people). If some royal NPC force or wrath of gods would punish them in a reasonable way then everyone would think twice before doing random killing spree. Again, it should not be 100% certain that attacker will be punished (that would be an exploit). It is like with the law, if there was no enforcement, many would ignore it, but just because there is a high enough risk of being caught and penalized majority of society obeys it.
• Risk levels are enforced by NPC - you have NPC police (CONCORD), which is OP enough to discourage people from random/gank attacks... in most cases. Lone or very well coordinated gankers still exist even in the safest places, but it is more a costly lifestyle rather that has to be funded by other activities (or stupidity of other players).
  
  • In LiF, NPC capitol/villages and guild's ground should be equivalent of it... but they may not. Thus, I am waiting to see how it will be implemented. This is already tricky topic for LiF (unraidable cities, owned by NPC etc.). Seems like these will be completely non-PvP zones, which opens pandora box (how many players will be able to live there? how new/casual players will be able to have a place there and get enough fund of the game to continue playing, how guilds will exploit it, how chars of players who stopped playing will affect available space in the city). On top there is the NPC part (NPC warriors, citizens etc.). We don't have NPC warriors in the game due to the spirit of LiF. Even if there were NPC warriors, it would take long time before balancing them and avoiding exploits. In other words, it is fine that we don't see such measures in LiF, but how we can fill the gap that is done by this? The gap that as of now may discourage PvE and casual players for good.
• Level of NPC OP and intervention into PvP activities varies from place to place. There are extremely safe zones with high response time of OPed NPC, while in other places NPCs are more lazy and weaker. In the end there are places where there are no NPC interventions. It is an exploit for PvE players, but not biased enough to be considered so by EVE player-base. BTW. There were multiple times that NPC had to be adjusted as even aggressive players could exploit it. But in general it works good enough to keep the balance between being able to attack and attacking others.
  
  • There is no such preventive method in LiF. But that is the beauty of the game. Question is how we can address issues that arose due to lack of it.
• A single casual player cannot efficiently defend his own structure/station in the space. Players can build equivalent of Personal Claim in EVE universe, but it is near to impossible to defend such structure on your own. The only valid way for a single player to keep his structure "safe" long term is to pay tribute to another guild.
  
  • Personal claim is nothing else like such equivalent. And mechanics is exactly the same. However, in EVE you can do pretty much 95% of stuff and have 110% fun of the game without owning a station or other large in-space structure. While in LiF a PVE player who cannot build, grind and stock goods is pretty much done with the game.

[carranah]

There are three issues at hand right now.

1. How the claims currently work.

2. Statements from Bobik about how he originally envisioned them to work.

3. All the ways that players can currently make alts to screw over guild claims and guilds with abusive risk averse gameplay.

There is currently no known time-frame where Bobik's vision becomes reality. Until then, we've got a shoddy system that is utterly rife with opportunities for abuse.

5 pages of posts summarized in few sentences.

I could not agree more with Cian's comment.