Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Malaky]

I propose alternative Alignment System that could work as follows:

Alignment would be composed of 2 stats
- hard alignment
- soft alignment

Hard alignment can reach values of
-50...0...50
and soft alignment can reach values of
hard alignment -50 ... hard alignment ... hard alignment +50.

Hard alignment would be point of balance for character and can be changed by specific actions (for example murder will give -1 point of hard alignment and -50 points of soft alignment).

To get positive alignment character would have to do some exceptionally good things or take participation in some special random event. For example if character prays a lot, god can test his faith and give him a quest to visit 3 shrines within certain time limit, or dont get his alignment drop beyond certain level for x days or keep his alignment above certain level for x hours.

Example quest given from god:
(characters hard alignment is 0)
Quest - keep your alignment above 5 for 4 real hours within next 3 real days and dont get your alignment drop below your hard alignment (0). If characters alignment drops below 0 quest is failed and god is dissapointed - luck penalty for x real hours (logged in time). If character fails by not reaching timer above 5 points - quest fails but no punishment (god gives chances to those who try). If character will reach timer above 5 points then he gets +1 hard alignment point.

Now the MMO part.

Lords on their controlled territory would be able to set levels of crimes and punishment for it. For example a lord can on his territory set that anybody with current alignment of -20 and below will be considered criminal and that criminal can be attacked (but not killed and not looted, in sense of killing or looting that criminal will be considered as regular crime, it still can be done tho). Caught criminal would have to be escorted to jail and would have to spend some time in there (again - time in jail set by lord).
Escorting prisoner - escort player would aquire card (like chicken or horse card that would prevent escort player reach higher speeds on horse (so max speed it can reach is player sprinting but no running out of stamina).

Lord can set a general bounty for escorting prisoners.
Escort character would also gain valour (I will describe valour idea in separate topic).

To inform other players in vicinity that someone is escorting prisoner, that escort player would get and appropriate icon above his head.
Every 5 minutes imprisoned character could get some random minigame with time limit and percentage chance to escape. For example if solved within 5 seconds then +5% to escape, with time running out less chance to escape with +0% when time runs out. Every 5 minutes also his escape chance will raise by 1pp that will be added to total percentage even if minigame was failure. Minigames could be random and based on specific stats (some on strength some on intelligence so higher stat prisoner have the more time he gets to solve it).

For example st start escape chance - 0%
prisoner gets mini-game and solves it barely before time runs out +1% and natural +1% so before next minigame system will check if he got lucky and managed in those 2% (luck modifier apply so if someone have luck mod 1.5 then he would have 3% accordingly).
Next round prisoner did not get lucky and again barely manages in time so +1 % and +1% natural growth so after 10 minutes prisoner have 4% chance to escape.

Same mechanic can be used in prisons but with longer periods between minigames.

If the escort player gets attacked and looses fight or yield, victor can either take prisoner by himself (prisoners escape minigames dont reset, it is just another opportunity to escape) or release him. So friends of prisoner can come to help.
When character in prison, unless full frontal attack - no chance to get someone out of prison by force. Friends of prisoner could bribe guards or also do some minigame to help prisoner raise his running away chance faster. Running away from prison (only prison, not from escort player) will take away some of your valour points.

So... what is this -20 of alignment?
It is current alignment, in other words it is hard alignment modified by soft alignment.
For example character with hard alignment +25 can do lots of bad things in short time that will lower soft alignment by 50 points. So character can for a short period of time reach -25 points and be considered as a criminal on lands of lord presented above.

After a period of doing nothing bad soft alignment would naturally drift towards level of hard alignment. So above character after doing something bad for sum of -50 points of soft alignment and then would hide and do nothing for some period of time - his alignment like stamina would "regenerate" (stamina regenerates to its maximum level, soft alignment regenerates to hard alignment level). Same goes to character that do something good - his soft alignment would drop after some time to hard alignment level as well if he does not keep it up.

Characters could do various activities or wear various items that would slow down drifting soft alignment back to its balance state (hard alignment level).

Example of mechanic:
combat of 2 characters, char A yield and character 2 continue combat, every hit would lower attackers soft alignment by some value. Character B then kills character A and gets -1 point to hard alignment and -50 to soft (so hard -50 would be -51 of soft alignment). If then character B hides and waits, its soft alignment would regenerate to -1 point and will stay there as that's the new point of balance.



Your opinions? Something you would change, something you would add?

[Malaky]

Lets develop this idea further.

Lord of the land could give away Iron Letters that would protect holder of such letter from any punishment and any hostile action against holder of Iron Letter would give immediate lower soft alignment by 50 points. Killing such person would give -5 to hard alignment instead of -1 and would notify landlord about it so landlord could set up a bounty on murderers head.

With bounty on ones head no matter what current alignment is (even 100, 50 hard +50 soft) - that person would be Wanted and anbody can kill that Wanted character without loss of alignment or valor and take his possesion freely. Also if Wanted person have some claims on landlords territory - that claims are off for time of being Wanted.

*Edit*********************************************
Giving away Iron Letter would lock point in authority.
So Character with 100 authority would give away 5 Iron Letters. That lords authority would lock itself at 95 points (and in game would act like that character would have 95 points of authority instead of 100).
When player returns Iron Letter or lord revoke it - it unlocks that point of authority.
So lord with 95+5locked authority would at the end of 7 day period after revoking iron letter would have 96+4 locked authority (so no need to earn that point again - it is just unlocked).
Iron Letter would be given for 7 days of rl time. If holder of Letter would not give it back or lord would not revoke it before timers runs to 0, timer will be reset for another 7 days.
So to prevent misuse.

For example I give character A Iron Letter, after 5 minutes I decide to revoke it and that player do not have it anymore, but my authority point is locked untill 7 days period have passed. If I now immedietly give that player A Iron letter again and revoke it after 5 minutes - I would have 2 points of authority locked, one for 7 days minus 5 minutes, and one for 7 days minus 10 minutes.

Lords with exceptional valour (either very high or very low) could give some free Iron Letters not impacting their authority and that Valour Iron Letters could be redistributed within few hours instead of 7 days.

[Jairone]

I'm not sure I like how it so severely limits the rate of decline in alignment. I like the idea of the system some, but it would make the game go right back to gankbox 101 with all the flaws of somebody just murdering away until their hard alignment is almost at the limits. The system as it is restricts this mentality much further.

I do like the idea of putting some alignment/reputation factors in the hands of the local authority (and/or higher authorities.)

I see the 'crime as the local lord sets it' thing being abused, and whole trade caravans arrested for doing nothing really wrong in exploitive fashion.

Prisons are a decent idea in real life, and maybe in really extreme cases in games... but they just don't really work out well. If the time must be online, it will either be required to be super short, or players will just roll an alt. If it is account bound, players will just leave the game. Where it works in non-persistent PvP games, it seems hard to balance and easy to abuse in a persistent MMO.

I think I would rather see a delay mechanic to alignment of sorts. Maybe have players able to do a couple more things to bring out their good name, and then make each and every point accumulated work as follows:
-Changes of <5 points: Each point takes 15 minutes to come into effect, but you get a buff that lowers damage taken from other players so long as you maintain peaceful status (for positive changes) and a debuff that sours any food you eat causing it to act at lower quality (for negative changes) while you wait. Tag can be 'cheerful/grumpy.'
-Changes of >5 points but <20 points: Very similar to above, but 4 points ticking every 10 minutes. Change tag to buff/debuff reading 'kindly/cruel', and give a small bonus to healing for positive and bonus (yes, a buff) to damage dealt to non-combatant players for negative.
-Changes of >20 points: The exact same as above, but 15 points every 5 minutes.
--Each of these tiers would be based on the total current number of points you have waiting. This would give a feeling of time passing before your deeds are known, while still punishing excessively bad behavior with swiftly increased infamy.

I do like the idea of bounties and charters (like your Iron Letter, but limited to negating a few points of penalty for very mild aggressive defense of things like trade caravans. *For example, two attacks on non-combatants, along with some moderately costly materials to craft and a temporary penalty to the issuing lord as you suggested.*)

[Malaky]

I'm not sure I like how it so severely limits the rate of decline in alignment. I like the idea of the system some, but it would make the game go right back to gankbox 101 with all the flaws of somebody just murdering away until their hard alignment is almost at the limits. The system as it is restricts this mentality much further.

Example was made to show mechanic, values could be adjusted to fit desired gang-factor.

I see the 'crime as the local lord sets it' thing being abused, and whole trade caravans arrested for doing nothing really wrong in exploitive fashion.

Then the caravans should adjust their routes.

Prisons are a decent idea in real life, and maybe in really extreme cases in games... but they just don't really work out well. If the time must be online, it will either be required to be super short, or players will just roll an alt. If it is account bound, players will just leave the game. Where it works in non-persistent PvP games, it seems hard to balance and easy to abuse in a persistent MMO.

Prison is not mandatory. Time and thresholds according to concept would be set up by lords, not hard-coded. Also Prisons should be managed (cost for upkeep, base plus per prisoner, also with limited space so the more prisoners the more it would cost, the lord would have to calculate; some lords would pay more to have safe territory and have more trade caravans thus more income from trade, and some lord would prefer otherwise, more mob-like management of their territory).

Also lack of proper punishment would bring feeling that game is broken, that would bring a avalanches of "balances" that would break it even further. Situation changes dramatically when the rules are made by community. Especially that it is sandbox so players would naturally migrate to terrains that would fit better their game-style. Those who would be tied to land would give a fight to make it more like they like it. That would bring very interesting result, wouldn't you agree ?

Broken punishment-jail system can be observe in one of the most anticipated and mostly disappointing game in recent mmo history - Archeage. What a failure... Imho.

I think I would rather see a delay mechanic to alignment of sorts. Maybe have players able to do a couple more things to bring out their good name, and then make each and every point accumulated work as follows:
-Changes of <5 points: Each point takes 15 minutes to come into effect, but you get a buff that lowers damage taken from other players so long as you maintain peaceful status (for positive changes) and a debuff that sours any food you eat causing it to act at lower quality (for negative changes) while you wait. Tag can be 'cheerful/grumpy.'
-Changes of >5 points but <20 points: Very similar to above, but 4 points ticking every 10 minutes. Change tag to buff/debuff reading 'kindly/cruel', and give a small bonus to healing for positive and bonus (yes, a buff) to damage dealt to non-combatant players for negative.
-Changes of >20 points: The exact same as above, but 15 points every 5 minutes.
--Each of these tiers would be based on the total current number of points you have waiting. This would give a feeling of time passing before your deeds are known, while still punishing excessively bad behaviour with swiftly increased infamy.

My proposition was just a scratch to show possibilities that lie in it. Your proposition is as good. I am glad it brought out your creativity. The more the better.

I do like the idea of bounties and charters (like your Iron Letter, but limited to negating a few points of penalty for very mild aggressive defense of things like trade caravans. *For example, two attacks on non-combatants, along with some moderately costly materials to craft and a temporary penalty to the issuing lord as you suggested.*)

Yeah, Iron Letter in my idea would be OP.