PvP Insight/Heads UP

Announcements of major changes to Salem.

PvP Insight/Heads UP

Postby JohnCarver » Mon Dec 01, 2014 9:54 pm

Greetings Salemites,
The PVP system is changing quite a bit. Instead of detailing it in the patch notes, when everybody is excited to try all the other new content and might 'miss' or read 'too fast' about the changes. I figured we are close enough to done 'wrapping' up the system that I will post the details here early. This way you can ponder over exactly how this will effect your base, playstyle etc. This also will hopefully cut down on the 'size' of the next patch notes as I can post some pretty sweeping changes with a simple line and reference this post for those who want the full explanation. So without further ado here are some of the bigger changes.

--Arson System--
We do not like entire bases being destroyed down to nothing. Alternatively, we do not like telling players that they 'cannot' in fact do this. As such, we have labeled key infrastructure buildings in a special class of buildings. You already know which buildings they are, they are the ones that a few patches ago we nerf'ed from being buildable next to each other. This is because they are now in fact stronger than walls. These buildings now increase their SOAK the lower they get on hit points. Once reaching 25% health remaining their soak will become too strong for any CURRENT humors on the server. We will be monitoring this closely but it is the general idea that these buildings will never be fully destroyable by hand. At this point you will have the option to use an item akin to a Molotov cocktail and throw it into the building. This will require a hefty skill known as "Arson" and will then light the building on fire.

In the future, depending how these systems evolve, we may entertain adding the sulphur impurity to act as a general accelerant to speed how quickly the fire burns. Originally we are targeting a 2-4 day window where the building will 'burn' shaving off the remaining 25% life. At any point in time any player may douse a burning building with buckets of water to extinguish the fire. The building will not regenerate its lost health, however, and repairing buildings is much more costly than it was in the past. Essentially meaning that even a building that has not been destroyed will still be costly to repair, but the issue of 'total loss' even in a breach-able base is no longer viable for the player who at least checks every few days and puts out fires.

--'Inactive Raiding'--
We do not like the idea of 'scavenging'. We understand that there is entire class of gamers out there who want to 'steal stuff' that does not belong to you from players with inactive bases with the freedom of not leaving a scent. We don't like you and this change is intentionally meant to destroy everything you hold dear. The reason being that an inactive base could easily be a player taking a break, on vacation, or otherwise intending to return to Salem. If that player has invested thousands of hours making a tough base, just because they are gone for a month or two does not mean that you should have free reign to take all their stuff without scents. As such, claims now persist for the purpose of alerting braziers even when they are out of silver. The 'reason' to keep your claims paid is that another player, when gaining access to your base, may still destroy your bell/claimstone etc. if it is out of silver. So paying claims is still very much a thing. However, if your base is to expire on silver, this does not immediately mean you are a sitting duck. This should allow players to dabble in expeditions with a bit more flexibility, as well as take longer breaks from Salem with the promise that perhaps they might have something here when they come back. Of course nothing stops players from breaking in, raiding, and stealing from this base under normal raiding situations. It just won't be picked clean by the first player who stumbles upon it.

--Alt Vaulting--
This has been discussed at length. Everything in Salem, must remain in Salem for other Salemites to take, steal, enjoy, and covet. Leantos are much harder to destroy and do not decay. Players may right click 'lewt' from a leanto. The act of 'looking' triggers no crime and no scent, thus players do not have to worry about committing crimes to see if a player is in fact worth stealing from. Actually stealing from the player who is 'asleep'/loggedoff in their leanto will in fact trigger a scent. Players without leantos will persist in the world and cannot log off. Players who have their leantos destroyed when they are logged off will find their items will loot pinata on the ground. I have something special planned for the 'existing' alt-vaults that refuse to listen to my warnings to knock it off as well.

--Active Defense--
Actively defending a base is more of a thing. Repairing is slower, and also dynamic. Repairing gates is QUICK while repairing wall segments is SLOW. Thus making the choice of where the raider goes more interesting. Repairing also takes much more materials so even if a player is active and ready to defend, it will require a bit of an investment of planning to be sure you have a stockpile of materials available to you keep repairing the walls through a siege. Cornerposts have more HP and using an off-claim or otherwise 'offensive' splash to break into a base is no longer a thing. An active town defending their walls should in general have 'more to do' but if they know what they are doing should in no way 'crumble' to the raiders.

--Braziers--
Most of the game has changed around here. A single brazier now does 8 dmg. Stacking braziers is effective, but quickly loses that efficiency. Even if one were to 'spam' braziers in a tight cluster that had TEN firing, they would b e doing approx 25 dmg a volley. This is a drastic drastic nerf to Braziers IN THIS REGARD. In addition to this Braziers no longer deal permanent humor damage. Braziers now critical hit SIGNIFICANTLY more. Between 5%-10% of ALL shots will critical hit. There is no longer a 'shared' awareness of the Braziers towards crits. This means if you have 10 braziers firing on somebody. On average they will be getting Critical hit Every single volley. Critical hits have been re-designed so that they do "%" based damage of the REMAINING biles. This means a player can never die to a critical hit, but the more one receives the faster they will have to pull off. Critical hits will also do a smaller % dmg to Blood. Therefore, active defenders who are watching teh siege may be able to take advantage of a winning combat situation if they see their aggressors receive too many critical hits at once.

Braziers will now have 1000 Shots which you can right click the Braziers to view. This is SHOTS not activations. Meaning that running a player out of 'coal' is also a viable raiding strategy and a player must balance the benefit of spamming braziers against the negative upkeep that is keeping all those braziers full.

Braziers will no longer consider empty braziers for their calculations when computing damage. No more building empty braziers to reduce the efficiency of the town you are raiding.
Braziers will also no longer look to torchposts when determining damage. This means that a maximum base will have a torchpost network AND a brazier network. They will not be clustered the same as torchposts will still have the longer range.
Braziers can now have their purity increased by loading ammo with Unscathed Woods. If the brazier is already full ammo, the Unscathed wood will still be used to calculate the purity jump. Those who read this should buy unscathed woods from noobs who do not read the forums and then harvest their tears after the patch.

Braziers are now easily deactivated. The goal of raiding is no longer breaking into a base and then spending 20+ hours once inside. The breach of a base itself is much more time consuming and difficult, but once in, disabling the braziers and having your way with it is an easier thing (unless the defender is smart and has walled off the braziers then the raider is pretty screwed....which brings me to my next topic)

--FORTRESSES--
Spamming 30 braziers worth of coverage for every tile on your claim, along with having gates to open to gain access to your braziers to fill, along with having a brick wall, along with having high purity braziers DOES make a base that on the test server feels like a damn fortress that will never be broken. The reality is that a dedicated raider ALWAYS has the option to simply 'take the hits' until they run the braziers out of coal. But calculations have proven that some fortresses could take a single player months to do so. For Providence, this is intended. I generally find it acceptable that the players wishing to put in the tremendous amount of work and effort to be 'generally safe' can in fact do so. Just as the group of 20+ raiders who wish to push to 600+ humors also has the option to give such a 'fortress' a run for its money. The idea is that you can 'always' improve the safety of your base, just as a raider can always improve the chances he can get in.

--High-End Balancing--
Players now do a 'maximum' amount of damage to a building once their phlegm exceeds a certain threshold over the soak. This means that having crazy high humors are still important for the 'stamina' you have in a raid, but no longer does a 500 humor character shred through a splitrail faster than a 100 humor character (as an example). The advantage to biles is now limited to shots you can take, and duration you can deal your 'max damage'.

--CRIME--
Anybody who remembers the old system. The new system looks more like the old system than the current system. You cannot eat with crimes, crimes will last between 30 minutes and an hour regardless of how much damage you do to the base in that run. You can change leantos now while you have crimes. This means that the raiding scene will consist of players making a 'run' against a base for 1-10 minutes, followed by a 30 minute to 1 hour breather where they regenerate, stand guard, and recharge for their next 'assault'. Giving the defender time to try to mend the damage, and/or make a counter-offensive.

--Town Claims & Pclaims--
They have been balanced so that the 'unique' nature of a town rests more in the nature of the waste-claim necessity and not 'other' factors like the making of CRIME debuffs etc.

--Village Emptying--
It was common practice for players under a waste claim to empty their base and/or generally take a cowards approach to mitigating the spoils against their victor. No more. Waste claims disable porting. You cannot go to town to transfer goods when you are under waste. This means that towns can offensively grief each-other by 'locking' players down from porting out of the town. The counter to this simply means that you must 'leave' your town to run 'off' the waste claim if you wish to 'smuggle' your goods out of your town. While still viable, it gives the aggressor an opportunity to catch you attempting to 'smuggle' your goods to safety.

--Trial By Combat--
If you leave a scent. You have a very high probability of dying. This is very important. When you leave a crime in Salem, you are signing a 14 day implied contract with yourself that you will be hyper-actve, hyper-vigilant, and constantly scared of death. All scents will only last 14 days, regardless if they have been harvested from the ground and are in an inventory. This means if you find a scent 11 days into when it was left, that evidence will only persist approx 3 days. (times subject to change slightly but not much). This means that a raider is at risk for 14 days from their last crime.

Those 14 days are quite crucial as any player may build a "Trial By Combat" against any town/player/claim. This will project a Waste Claim-like shadow under the base. The difference is that this shadow will allow any criminal who now has found that his leanto is under this shadow, can be summoned to his Trial By Combat. Once this has happened, the player may not change his leanto. His options are to show himself to his trial, and fight the 'ranger' in a fight to the death (or mob of rangers). OR he can try to run away, in which the ranger must wait a set duration of time until the Trial is "over" at which point he can force summon the criminal to the trial. The duration of the trial depends on the crime scent that the ranger has in his inventory.

This means that "vaults" for the purpose of harboring criminals are no longer a thing, as any ranger may choose in any 1000+ tile direction where this 'fight' will take place.

--Stockades--
For those who cannot be bothered to TbC a criminal. Or perhaps who lost a character and do not have the ability to defeat the criminal in a TbC. They can opt to send the Criminal to the Stockades. This is a structure in town where all players may walk by and either throw food at the criminal or possibly 'whip' him. This mechanic is still in development but is the 'lesser' punishment for somebody who is unable to seek true justice through the TbC mechanic.


--Banking--
Players may bank their silver with the Banker for a fee and %.

--Ransom--
A player on the ground may offer a Ransom payment to the person who has knocked him out. This payment will be a % of his liquid funds in his bank. IF the player who has knocked him out accepts this ransom, then the player at his mercy will have the funds automatically withdrawn from his bank and given to his attacker and he will be 'sent home'.

--Pay2Grief & Bounty Hunters--

There is now a meaningful difference between murdering somebody who you have a scent to, and somebody who you do not. Murder will be purged and the 'new' murder can be summed up as the ability to slaughter in cold blood somebody who has no scents in the world. This is a very harsh responsibility and not a skill that we aim to be taken lightly. Any player who has this skill has the ability to possibly perma-delete hundreds of hours of work from an innocent player. As such, this skill will be a tremendous investment into Cloak & Dagger OR be purchased from the Store. Players who wish to 'murder' without having this skill have a few options. Either they only murder people with scents, OR they partake int he new "bounty" system. There will be a new "Currency" in the game, which when consumed, will give your account store credit. This store credit may be used to purchase ANYTHING that is for sale on the store. This currency will be obtained by turning in the scalps of murderer's. Everything on the store is now obtainable in-game through this new bounty-hunter/ranger profession. yes this means that somebody could spam murder alts, kill them, and get unlimited store credit, which is why this murder skill is 350+ C&D so that murdering a character with such an investment is hardly worth the store credit in the first place. Keep in mind those who have a more immediate need for chaos can support the "Pay2Grief" model by simply 'buying' their ability to murder. However, when justice is struck against this player the victim may have lost some pixels, but his revenge struck against the very bank account of his attacker. Something we feel is 'balanced'.

--Purity Attacks--

Fields, Pots, & Turkey Coops must be 0 purity before they are destroyed. They have their purity lowered by item sinks. Salt on fields no longer directly damages the field but instead will reduce the purity of the field by 5% per salt.


There is a bit more to this, mainly revolving around scents. And of course a ton of content in this patch that isn't related to PVP. But at least you can get a feel for how the world will start to look after the patch. I'll do my best to answer any questions about the incoming systems here. Theorycrafting about why x and x doesn't work or nonsense claims like "braziers are already too weak" will get your post deleted or your character dunce capped. There are so many moving parts to this system that it is impossible for any 'write-up' I do to give the full and clear picture of what is going on. So again, this thread is for general inquiries and 'concerns' that are worded in the most delicate way possible.


--Disclaimer--
You have already seen cannons in various teaser screenshots. There are also multiple layers of walls and several other 'systems' and mechanics that will NOT be dropped this patch. This is because this set of PVP changes is intended for the balance of Providence, which in general is a slower paced, less-chaotic, more stable land. Expeditions are the near opposite of this. So this PvP picture, while nearly complete for the future landscape of Providence PvP is largely inspired as something that can 'work' for the expeditions as well once we throw a few more mechanics into those to round things out and really spice things up.

Those who want complete chaos will find that expeditions are going to be more their play style. Those who want complete safety while leaving crimes will find they have no home in Salem anymore.
ceedat wrote:the overwhelming frustration of these forums and the unnecessarily over complicated game mechanics is what i enjoy about this game most.

Nsuidara wrote:it is a strange and difficult game in no positive way
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Re: PvP Insight/Heads UP

Postby Lord_Avu » Mon Dec 01, 2014 9:57 pm

How exactly will splash work if it's no longer possible to use it offensively?

How much bonus damage will purity braziers have? Or we'll need to test this on our own?
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Re: PvP Insight/Heads UP

Postby Lusewing » Mon Dec 01, 2014 9:59 pm

I have only read through the post once (and will need to again about 3 more times to make sure I have everything ingrained) but from first read everything looks really solid and intresting. Now I am not a raider, nore have I tested out much of the previous mecanics, but from an understanding aspect on how I can defend myself and seek justice, everything is really easy to understand. I know this cant have been an easy system to come up with and balance, well done - I cant wait to see all of this in action.

My one question is, due to having my homestead set on my claimstone, will I need to set up a leanto and transfer my homestead to that instead?
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Re: PvP Insight/Heads UP

Postby JohnCarver » Mon Dec 01, 2014 10:01 pm

Lord_Avu wrote:How exactly will splash work if it's no longer possible to use it offensively?

How much bonus damage will purity braziers have? Or we'll need to test this on our own?



Walls Mature. Freshly built walls don't splash. Older built walls will splash. So I suppose in this regard it is possible to use it offensively, if the defender is foolish enough to let a rogue cornerpost sit outisde his base for weeks.

Purity Braziers do a maximum of 2X dmg when at 100% purity.
ceedat wrote:the overwhelming frustration of these forums and the unnecessarily over complicated game mechanics is what i enjoy about this game most.

Nsuidara wrote:it is a strange and difficult game in no positive way
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Re: PvP Insight/Heads UP

Postby Hose » Mon Dec 01, 2014 10:03 pm

JohnCarver wrote:--Pay2Grief & Bounty Hunters--
There is now a meaningful difference between murdering somebody who you have a scent to, and somebody who you do not. Murder will be purged and the 'new' murder can be summed up as the ability to slaughter in cold blood somebody who has no scents in the world. This is a very harsh responsibility and not a skill that we aim to be taken lightly. Any player who has this skill has the ability to possibly perma-delete hundreds of hours of work from an innocent player. As such, this skill will be a tremendous investment into Cloak & Dagger OR be purchased from the Store. Players who wish to 'murder' without having this skill have a few options. Either they only murder people with scents, OR they partake int he new "bounty" system. There will be a new "Currency" in the game, which when consumed, will give your account store credit. This store credit may be used to purchase ANYTHING that is for sale on the store. This currency will be obtained by turning in the scalps of murderer's. Everything on the store is now obtainable in-game through this new bounty-hunter/ranger profession. yes this means that somebody could spam murder alts, kill them, and get unlimited store credit, which is why this murder skill is 350+ C&D so that murdering a character with such an investment is hardly worth the store credit in the first place. Keep in mind those who have a more immediate need for chaos can support the "Pay2Grief" model by simply 'buying' their ability to murder. However, when justice is struck against this player the victim may have lost some pixels, but his revenge struck against the very bank account of his attacker. Something we feel is 'balanced'.

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Re: PvP Insight/Heads UP

Postby JohnCarver » Mon Dec 01, 2014 10:03 pm

Lusewing wrote:
My one question is, due to having my homestead set on my claimstone, will I need to set up a leanto and transfer my homestead to that instead?


Ah no. Everywhere you read "leanto" you can also read "Claimstone".
ceedat wrote:the overwhelming frustration of these forums and the unnecessarily over complicated game mechanics is what i enjoy about this game most.

Nsuidara wrote:it is a strange and difficult game in no positive way
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Re: PvP Insight/Heads UP

Postby Potjeh » Mon Dec 01, 2014 10:04 pm

What are the approximate timeframes in Trial by Combat? I'm a bit concerned timezones might have too much influence on the outcome.
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Re: PvP Insight/Heads UP

Postby Lord_Avu » Mon Dec 01, 2014 10:08 pm

Any chance to change the system so walls don't splash all types of inferior walls when they go down? It kinda makes people only build walls from strongest to weakest in to out which is both unrealistic and annoying and does not allow for a natural expansion of security. If someone can break brick walls they can certainly break plank as well so it shouldn't be all that bad for the attackers. And yes I understand that the same argument can be used for pointing out that it doesn't matter if the plank wall will splash the hedge wall since they could break the hedge anyway so build them in whatever order you want but some people are a bit ocd about maximum efficiency. Is there any aspect of splash I'm missing that prevents the removal of this annoyance?
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Re: PvP Insight/Heads UP

Postby JohnCarver » Mon Dec 01, 2014 10:10 pm

Lord_Avu wrote:Any chance to change the system so walls don't splash all types of inferior walls when they go down? It kinda makes people only build walls from strongest to weakest in to out which is both unrealistic and annoying and does not allow for a natural expansion of security. If someone can break brick walls they can certainly break plank as well so it shouldn't be all that bad for the attackers. And yes I understand that the same argument can be used for pointing out that it doesn't matter if the plank wall will splash the hedge wall since they could break the hedge anyway so build them in whatever order you want but some people are a bit ocd about maximum efficiency. Is there any aspect of splash I'm missing that prevents the removal of this annoyance?


The need for this is that players would alternate walls under your scenario. Brick, plank, stone, brick, plank,stone with SOLID layers of walls that never splash against each other.

Potjeh wrote:What are the approximate timeframes in Trial by Combat? I'm a bit concerned timezones might have too much influence on the outcome.

The type of crime directly dictates the commitment required to 'checking' for Trial By Combat. Remember that by committing a crime you are creating an implied contract that you will be 'checking' your character at the following frequencies for the following 2 weeks:

A murderer must 'check' or have his 'town-mates' check every 4 hours.
A Waste/vandal must 'check' or have his 'town-mates' check every 8 hours.
A thief must 'check' or have his 'town-mates' check every 12 hours.
An aggravated assaulter/beat-face must 'check' or have his 'town-mates' check every 24 hours.

I respect some people think its too harsh, while others think it is BS that they have to wait 4 hours before they can summon a murderer they already spent 3+ hours tracking down. Regardless, if you are not prepared to 'check' for a Trial By Combat at those 'frequencies' then you simply cannot play the game committing those crimes without dying.
ceedat wrote:the overwhelming frustration of these forums and the unnecessarily over complicated game mechanics is what i enjoy about this game most.

Nsuidara wrote:it is a strange and difficult game in no positive way
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Re: PvP Insight/Heads UP

Postby Lord_Avu » Mon Dec 01, 2014 10:14 pm

Then what about an upgrade system, it would cost just as much as building it new but you can build a superior wall over an inferior one without having to destroy the old one.
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