Game Development: Time Enough for Love

[FutureForJames]

Guess there isn't a good way to remove alt-vaulting anyway. Making so you drop your inventory kinda screw up early game and exploration.

Can be fixed by lowering the material requirements of baskets so that people who are about to logout can easily make baskets to store their items.

[JinxDevona]

As for your "storms" issue: using your argument you could argue that people with crime debuff shouldn't stay inside the game when they logout, because due to your "storms" you would be leep a large risk whenever you trespass. Point is: it is ridiculous to adjust the game to anomalities such as your situation.

My situation, hello do you watch the news. Power out across many states at once, several times in the past few months is not my situation. Don't be so damn condescending.

[Wournos]

Guess there isn't a good way to remove alt-vaulting anyway. Making so you drop your inventory kinda screw up early game and exploration.

Can be fixed by lowering the material requirements of baskets so that people who are about to logout can easily make baskets to store their items.

But that opens up for "theft" if someone happens to find this particular basket. The items will probably still be lost, just in a different way.

[Kandarim]

As for your "storms" issue: using your argument you could argue that people with crime debuff shouldn't stay inside the game when they logout, because due to your "storms" you would be leep a large risk whenever you trespass. Point is: it is ridiculous to adjust the game to anomalities such as your situation.

My situation, hello do you watch the news. Power out across many states at once, several times in the past few months is not my situation. Don't be so damn condescending.

This is something different: people committing crimes are (or should be) very aware of possible risks they run while they do so.
Please take into consideration not everyone has internet 24/7 (I myself experience blackouts several times a week).

[FutureForJames]

As for your "storms" issue: using your argument you could argue that people with crime debuff shouldn't stay inside the game when they logout, because due to your "storms" you would be leep a large risk whenever you trespass. Point is: it is ridiculous to adjust the game to anomalities such as your situation.

My situation, hello do you watch the news. Power out across many states at once, several times in the past few months is not my situation. Don't be so damn condescending.

This is something different: people committing crimes are (or should be) very aware of possible risks they run while they do so.
Please take into consideration not everyone has internet 24/7 (I myself experience blackouts several times a week).

Analogously, one could state that people transporting valuable items should be aware of possible risks.

Edit:
And before you state something akin to "but committing crimes is bad" and "transporting valuable items is not bad", please read following post from Jorb at H&H forums:

Extended Treatise on That Which Really Should Be Bloody Obvious to Anyone Above A Grade School Level of Mental Development

There exists a popular misconception that actions in the H&H game world can be neatly classified as being either "offensive" -- in the sense of doing harm to other players -- or "peaceful" -- in the sense of not doing harm to other players. On the basis of this misconception some people have suggested that players who exclusively perform actions pertaining to the latter category should be kept safe from actions sorting under the former. While this conclusion -- that peaceful players should not be subject to PvP -- does indeed follows from the premises -- and in this sense isn't a logical fallacy per se -- it nevertheless remains the case that one of the premises necessary to arrive at this conclusion is deeply and fundamentally flawed. Namely, as pointed out above, the false belief that there exists a clear and formalized divide between offensive and peaceful actions, so formalized and neat, in fact, that it can be reduced to computer code and determined mechanically. As an afterthought, the careful scribe is want to ask himself: Do these suggesters -- in their postings so full of self-righteous ire -- also propose do replace our real life court systems with punch-cards and calculators?

The H&H game world attempts -- to no small an extent -- to simulate events and processes of the real world in a digitalized form. In so doing, it would be an object of abject failure if, along with the beauties and wonders of real life, not also some of the difficulties associated with it were to be emulated. Some difficulties are, indeed, impossible to abstract away, simply because they follow from the very essence of that which we, admittedly, are trying to simulate. One such difficulty is crime.

Players in the H&H game world share the same "physical" space, and, also, the same theoretical potentials for affecting it. Some actions performed in order to affect the game world are, however, mutually exclusive with other such actions. For example: If I claim a piece of land, you can not also claim it. If I wish to see a tile plowed, it can not also, at the same time, per your wish, be planted with grass. Players in H&H have certain means at their disposal to deny other players the execution of certain actions. Such means include walls, claims, physical occupation, consuming, destruction, etc, but these actions in fact only compound to make the point infinitely more true: The land which I have claimed, you cannot claim. The basket that I am carrying, you can not carry. The apple that I have eaten, you can not eat.

To further develop on this point, let us make it painfully clear that this relation is so integrated in the very essence of H&H that it is impossible to even play the game without performing an action which is mutually exclusive, at least in time and place, with another action. If you are standing on the tile which I wish to plow, I cannot plow it. This means that the nub who has just created his first character and logged in, by the mere act of existing, is denying other players certain courses of action -- the most obvious one being interaction with that particular tile, but, as said nub starts to play, more and more actions will be denied other players by his act of simply playing. There is no shame in this, the number of potential actions is so great so as to approach the infinite, but, nevertheless: by acting in the H&H game world you are denying other players options that they would have had, had you not been playing the game.

When one adopts and understands this perspective, it becomes clear as sparkling morning dew on a well mowed lawn that there does not exist a clear divide between offensive and peaceful actions. Every action you do denies another player some potential action. In speaking with von Clausewitz, we can observe that combat, thus, is only the continuation of action denying by other means. If you stand on the tile I wish to plow, I can hurt you to make you go away. If, on the other hand, I can't attack you, then you have the means to permanently and irrevocably deny me particular courses of action for as long as you and your whims see fit. And, in this sense, every potential action is always offensive or, every potential action is always peaceful or the distinction is meaningless, whichever one you prefer.

As a child I often enjoyed and participated in a fun little game called "The Air is Free". Perhaps it was due to some particular gift in my childhood self, but I remember observing already at that young age that there was something very fishy about the often repeated commandment of the grown-ups that I must never hit another child. The game -- which is more an act of playful ***** than an actual game -- consists of doing every annoying thing in your power without actually touching the other child. You can invade his personal space, you can wave your hands back and forth around his face, but you aren't actually touching him, and, since the air is free, you can always maintain that you did nothing wrong. Only a very stupid child buys this, of course. A smart child hits you in the face, as he should, and, indeed, that is how the game usually ends.

I now ask you to conjure up the vilest demons of your most cruel, childish imaginations. If the air was, indeed, free. What is the worst you could do?

New players, I would also like to add, should be, and are, particularly easy to target. The amount of investment needed to create one is so small that affording them any means of special security is inviting for them to be used as grief-machines and if they die, not much has been lost. Imagine, if you will, what you could do if new players were untouchable for the first 12 hours of game time. Jeez-louise, that would not be a pretty sight.

Enjoy.

[Kaios]

I think it's interesting that some of you keep referring to the realism aspect of this game and how waste claims and the time factor don't make sense at all, but you're all seemingly ok with the "it can happen at any time" or "no one is safe" system of before. Yet you want more roles and different ways to enjoy the Salem experience. Immediately some of you write something off because it has a TIME portion that conflicts with the way YOU want to play! (I put emphasis on YOU to imply selfishness)

Can't have your cake and eat it too, people.

[darnokpl]

This makes a lot of sense mechanics wise (reaction window for defenders was sorely needed), but I don't like it fluff-wise. I think it could've been made a bit more organic with cannons and stuff, and more importantly the cost of assault could be made to scale with the amount of defences. We really need some proper resource sinks in raiding to balance things.

+100 from me


As for update, great thing for newbies and small camps, now they will be able to play and learn Salem.

For larger factions well that depends imho
- if you are carebear it is good for you, you can sleep, go to work and patrol your camp or town 2 times per day should be enough, but when it comes to defend you better run unless you know how to fight,
- large fighters groups are now buffed and can feel 99% safe,

Some thoughts about impenetrable HV (for largest and richest factions only!):
- build small 50x50 pclaim put there leantos for murder alts,
- build stone walls, plank and braziers around it,
- build 4 narrow pclaim 210+ tiles from HV-pclaim and wall it or even build signs

If I understand this mechanic correctly rading such HV we would need to:
- put FIRST waste-claim (400x400, 200 tile in one direction from stake?) and wait ~18h to destroy first noob-wall-layer
- then we have to put SECOND waste-claim behind narrow pclaim to reach HV-pclaim and again wait ~18h

Raid may be successful only if defenders won't rebuild first wall layer on narrow claims, if they do you will have to wait hours for crime-debuff gone and your fighters will be trapped?

[FutureForJames]

As for your "storms" issue: using your argument you could argue that people with crime debuff shouldn't stay inside the game when they logout, because due to your "storms" you would be leep a large risk whenever you trespass. Point is: it is ridiculous to adjust the game to anomalities such as your situation.

My situation, hello do you watch the news. Power out across many states at once, several times in the past few months is not my situation. Don't be so damn condescending.

Yes, such "small" domestic issues have low probabilty of being printed in the newspapers of other countries for more than one article. So ya, I assumed that your situation is an anomaly that affects less than 10% of the Salem population. If the problem affects more of the population, there is reason to start changing the crime debuff mechanic since in its current state is very punishing against people who disconnects.

[EnderWiggin]

You can't surround one claim with others not leaving a gap in them - now claims can't be placed adjacent to each other. Plus bigger waste claim covers 1K tiles, thus greatly increasing size of surrounding claims/walls

[Attelso]

As for your "storms" issue: using your argument you could argue that people with crime debuff shouldn't stay inside the game when they logout, because due to your "storms" you would be leep a large risk whenever you trespass. Point is: it is ridiculous to adjust the game to anomalities such as your situation.

My situation, hello do you watch the news. Power out across many states at once, several times in the past few months is not my situation. Don't be so damn condescending.

Yes, such "small" domestic issues have low probabilty of being printed in the newspapers of other countries for more than one article. So ya, I assumed that your situation is an anomaly that affects less than 10% of the Salem population. If the problem affects more of the population, there is reason to start changing the crime debuff mechanic since in its current state is very punishing against people who disconnects.

Lets remember to stay positive when we post guys.