Boar's Head Inn Bonus

[brolewis]

I've heard through the grapevine that there is a new bonus for staying in the inn: your attacker loses defense points for the entire fight. I'm curious what other's think. I personally think that the bonus weighs too much in the favor of the resident of the inn. However, there are supposed to be perks to staying at the inn, so I'm curious what others think.

[Hammer]

I haven't heard anything about attackers losing defense points, though LadyPhoenix from Dragncat mention they might be working on the better bodyguard system, mention earlier in the "Feature Requests" forum. In a nutshell, it's basically just giving the people an option to buy better protection while staying in the inn.

Here's the link for the original idea: http://lotgd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16

[LadyPhoenix]

Yes, Hammer, the first part of it's in place now. Attacker loses some defense while defender gains some attack bonus. This means that now the money you spend to stay in the Inn means you actually are a little safer. Hopefully, people will enjoy the change and start using the Inn more. Some of those rooms are filled with cobwebs from disuse and the fields are covered in litter now from almost everyone sleeping out there. ;)

[brolewis]

the fields are covered in litter now from almost everyone sleeping out there. ;)
But I LIKE stepping over the litter to get to the forrest! :)

[mysticii]

i think the bodyguard feature at the moment is sufficient enough, when i pvp i usually get hit down to an inch of my life, the other times i get completly slaughtered :cry:

[neXus]

I'd say that feature needs some improvement - From the point of view of the attacker, they've just bribed their way inn, and there is a bodyguard. Why did they just spend bribe money if that bodyguard's gonna be there ? There are six options and really three levels of bribes. It should really be possible to bribe the bodyguard completely away by paying the highest bribe. Currently there is no reason to pay it - the second bribe always gives you a 100% chance of having your bribe accepted anyway. And as for the percentage of the bodyguard's buff, I would like to see it's effectiveness directly connected with it's initial price, based on the players DK and level. Farmer gets it cheap, gladiator does not, etc.

[Zombie]

Why did they just spend bribe money if that bodyguard's gonna be there ? There are six options and really three levels of bribes. It should really be possible to bribe the bodyguard completely away by paying the highest bribe. Currently there is no reason to pay it - the second bribe always gives you a 100% chance of having your bribe accepted anyway.

Nice idea. I agree there's no point in paying the highest bribe at the
moment.

[Sneakabout]

Or have some kind of extra option to bribe the bodyguard in gems...

[Talisman]

It's starting to sound to me as if all these suggested changes will make it nigh on impossible for a Farmie/Page/Squire or other low level player to win a PVP in the inn. An advanced player, with massive Attack/Defence and HP wouldn't be affected all that much. Almost a scenario of the rich keep getting richer....

[Sneakabout]

Except that at that level we need to attack Squires+ 2 levels higher than we are to gain enough experience to level... everything evens out.

[brolewis]

I understand the desire to make the Boar's Inn more desirable for people to stay at, but the bonus still favors the attacked too much. I just attacked someone 2 ranks below me and 1 level below me and I only did about 10 points of damage. Every single attack from then on out was double digit loss on my part. A large part of the fun of this game is PvP fights and this has taken away that fun. Also, if the system is still being programmed, return it to the old system until it is more functional to where you can choose the body guard or not. We are always talking about the need for balance and I think this buff throws it off too much.

[FanboyElric]

I'm with brolewis in that the current bodyguard buffs throws off the balance of the game on DragonCat right now... The shift in what is affected is a good idea in my opinion, but I think that the body guard could be moderately more subtle in their effects so that the balance isn't quite so drastic....

[mcdoodefred]

It effects all of us differently:

Lower level players have a tougher PVP time in the
inn. (0-5 dks more then 80% of the players)

Mid level players will just have to be a little more careful on who they pick. (5-15 dks around 18% of the players)

High level players are really not that affected (15+dks about 2% or the players) (I did not even notice it until yesterday).

Bare in mind that the percentages that I placed above were approximations and not the actual totals. So it does make the inn environment safer, against the majority of other players, for those staying there which is the purpose after all.

On a side note, I think that we should have a drastic change in PVP that would slow a lot of us down including me. There should only be 3 PVP allowed per game day. If you use two, die and then get resurrected, you should only have one PVP left

[Sneakabout]

Oh no! MCD has been taken over by the Pod People!

He actually meant to sy that the PvPs per day should be increased by an order o' magnitude, giving all of us 30 PvPs per day, making it fair fer us all!

(Phew, close one there)

[Booger]

I know the system is still under development but please consider the current bonus/penalty.

currently just about every player with under 10 DKs sleeps in the inn because of the bonuses and the cheap price. correct me if I'm wrong but currently the attacker gets a 10% penalty to his/her defense and the defender gets an attack bonus (don't know how much but I've assumed it's the same 10%) so that a defender has very good chanxes of succesfully defending against a same level opponent with about 5-6 DKs more.

these two things put together and the fact that the attacker loses 15% of his exp if he loses means that PVP is just not worth it to anyone who has 5 or less DKs (excluding the random timed ot farmboys on the fields).

oh and just so everyone knows the numbers:

there are currently 2203 chars on the server

105 of them have 5 or more DKs => 95,2% are lower level players

69 have 6-15 DKs => 3,1% are mid level players

36 have 16+ DKs => 1,6 % are high level players

[JCP]

Well, keeping in mind that the system is still under review...

So far most people have been assuming that PVP is essential to playing the game. And when PVP is easy for the attacker, it is essential. Players get killed so often that it is all but impossible to advance without winning PVP in ordet to make up the experience loss when you yourself are killed.

But PVP should not be essential. You're supposedly coming to the village to kill the dragon, not each other. And for role-playing reasons, players should not find it essential to kill other players. Very hard to pretend to be an upstanding member of society when you're constantly sneaking into people's rooms and killing them.

So, if players are not targetted as often, they won't feel forced to attack other players. Some people do not want to sneak into the inn, and get frustrated that they have to if they ever want to advance past level 13.

Yes, there are great rewards to PVP - you get far more experience than you do in a forest fight. But those great rewards should come at the expense of a greater risk.

And there needs to be a real difference between sleeping in the fields and in the inn. Not a "I'm going to be killed whereever I go, might as well save my money" sort of difference, either.

I know we still need to balance it, but the arguments that PVP is now changing so most people won't do it is not going to get things changed all that much. Sneaking into the inn should be something that is optional, and probably should not be something every player has to do 3 times a day.

[Sneakabout]

True - to my own thinking, PvP can be made optional by a rebalancing of things in favour of forest fights. The example which I'd look at would be the Alpha server, where the daily uses are more powerful and the mounts offer greater rewards.

On the central server the game is inclined towards the person with the most DKs, and so PvP becomes essential to the system.

[Booger]

I know it's still under review. I'm just pointing out things you might want to consider.

I know very well PVP isn't essential to advance. for the first few DKs I was very lucky to even find someone I could try to kill and even then the fights were even. however I knew I was getting more powerful and could attack more powerful opponents.

from time to time people ask for places to sleep where you couldn't be attacked. the answer is that PVP is a part of the game and such feature would make it obsolete. too big penalties for the attacker will do just the same. everyone except the top 5% can't participate in it. 2 or 3 failed attacks will cost you few days worth of forest fights experience.

PVP is not essential but it is a fun part of the game. I can't really say if I would have continued playing it as long if it would take me a few months to really participate in it. even now you can see farmcritters looking for someone to kill on the fields since everyone they could try are sleeping in the inn.

the difference between field and inn should not be "do I sleep in the inn and get killed or sleep on the field, get killed and save the money" but it should not be "do I get killed on the fields or should I pay 100 gold and take my chance of being picked by top 50 tonight" either. something like "do I take my chances in the fields and buy a better weapon tomorrow or should I pay some extra to be more safe" is where things should be going.

I also like sneak's idea of making forest fights more important so that PVP would not be considered a "must" to advance. maybe a bit more exp in the forest and smaller rewards and penalties for PVP. don't know how the gods who need 1500 exp for level 2 would like this tho...

[FanboyElric]

I understand the change, but I still don't like it as it is just too unbalancing... since the defender gains 10% to their attack and the attacker loses 10% of their defence, you're seeing a 22.2% bonus given to the differential between an attackers offence and the defenders defence, which can really not be overcome. Perhaps something less drastic like a 5% loss in attack and 10% loss in defence by the attacker might be a lot more balanced...

If the deal is that PVP is being changed so that forest fights are more important, then cool... but as long as I've played on Central the focus for the game there appears to be on PVP. You don't get enough forest fights to really advance at a reasonable pace without it... On the other hand, on DragonCat although I'm not a big fan of this change I don't mind it near as much because you get 20 turns a day there and the loss of a viable PVP isn't as important...

[Booger]

I would like to point out that the 10% attack bonus for the defender was a guess. I've heard there is a bonus but I'm not sure how big it is. I guessed 10% because that's what the def penalty for attacker is.

dragoncat and alpha have a lot less players and it is much more difficult to find anyone you could attack in teh fields or in the inn than on teh central server. the forest is much more importannt on those servers. on dragoncat you get lots of forest fights and lesser experience penalties for getting killed and on alpha there is the griffon...

[lonestrider]

I know the system is still under development but please consider the current bonus/penalty.

oh and just so everyone knows the numbers:

there are currently 2203 chars on the server

105 of them have 5 or more DKs => 95,2% are lower level players

69 have 6-15 DKs => 3,1% are mid level players

36 have 16+ DKs => 1,6 % are high level players

::offers a roguish grin as he buffs his nails::

Aye, and with 3 PKs each, the 105 higher level characters can only kill 315 Farmcreatures® a day. . . With two days each real day. . . hmm... 630 / 2203 can die in a 24 hour period. . . of course, unless we all rez and become really focused to turn it into a proper bloodfest.

thus creating
Farmcritter War III

Even then, your chances of being slaughtered each day by the top 5% of players are roughly 50/50.

Those rather outstanding odds are better than Vegas in both directions.
::offers a cunning smile::

[Pirotess]

Just some things to consider:

Booger:
>there are currently 2203 chars on the server
>105 of them have 5 or more DKs =>
>95,2% are lower level players

There are other servers, other ratios, and there are NEW games too. It would be unfortunate if game balance were shifted in a way that only made sense for games that had been running for six months or more.

JCP:
>And there needs to be a real difference between sleeping in
>the fields and in the inn. Not a "I'm going to be killed whereever
>I go, might as well save my money" sort of difference, either.

Well...if the cost of staying at the Inn were increased...there would be more people sleeping in the fields, so less people would be attacking people in the Inn...

Or maybe if you attack someone in the Inn, the Innkeeper won't let you rent a room there for a few days yourself...

Or...something I suggested elsewhere...how about allowing familiars to wake you up and give you a first strike advantage?

Or NPC players could be introduced...increasing the killable pool without increasing the killer pool...and make the NPC's advance in rank and equipment periodically so players don't know who is which. (Out of 2203 players, how many have you ever spoken to?)

Or how about putting in a time limit to PvP battles in the Inn? Say...the third floor of the Inn is cheapest, but when you scream, the guards are too far away to hear you...but if you pay a little more to get on the second floor, when you're attacked, the guards will come rushing to your rescue, but it takes them some number of rounds to get there to stop the fight, and if you're on the bottom floor (very expensive) then they get there very quickly. (Because of huge HP values of some players, this ratio would have to be negatively adjusted after each DK, or else they would effectively be unkillable.) When the 'guards' arrive...it could be that they chase off the attacker, thus ending the fight...or they could act as a small combatative buff.

Alternately, guards could simply be hired to help you in fights from round one. (Usurper comes to mind.)

What about allowing players an option when they initially create a character to forever remove them PvP fights? They can't attack...they can't be attacked.

Or a configurable option so that instead of N days until susceptible to PvP attacks...they are immune from the start, and stay that way until they do a one time permanant toggle that allows them to participate?

Or how about introducing an alignment system, and while 'evil' players who give out bribes and sneak into rooms are penalized in some way by receiving less beneficial results from random events? Seth/Violet won't marry evil players...fairies steal gems and leave instead of asking for one and giving rewards, etc.

...or how about an alignment system with role playing incentives? If you give out fancy titles, and change the text of special events and so forth, there would be people who would choose to play good even if it meant giving up an extra means of gaining experience.

Another thing to consider: I believe in the original LORD, after a certain number of DK's the game ENDED and needed to be respawned. Would PvP balance issues exist if players with 10+ DK's weren't mixing with new players?

Lady Pirotess

[JCP]

Well, some sort of DK cap has been discussed. The question is how to exactly do it to reward players for reaching the cap and still not unbalance the game.

And we take the vast number of players on the Central Server very seriously. There are some solutions that would only work when you have hundreds or thousands of players that will not work on a server that is just starting out.

As far as the inn bonus goes - would different levels of payment work?

If there are different levels of protection - would players use all of them or only the most powerful one?

If there are different levels of bribery that reduce the protection - would players use all of them or only the most powerful one?

If players are only going to buy the most expensive option, then there's no point in offering the lesser options.

Unless - and I have no idea if this is possible - there are only so many times each option can be used. Take the "floors of the inn" concept. Let's have an inn with 5 floors, each offering different levels of protection. But the inn only has room for 10% of the game population on each floor. If it fills up, it fills up and you cannot get a room on that floor (or in the inn at all) that day. But that brings problems with people logging in and out at different times. Or not logging in at all, staying in the inn while they don't play. And if you get killed in the inn, does that free the room up? If it does, what happens when you log back in and out that day?

There's a lot to consider - thankfully we have the forums so we can get your ideas and opinions

[Sneakabout]

That sounds much more workable - have an Inn with a set capacity which is much safer, but costs more! When combined with the multi-capability bodyguards that I see being tested on the Alpha, it would look to me like being a workable solution...

[neXus]

The DK cap has already been mentioned I see, I would like to add that at the discussion concerning that, a way of re-balancing experience bonus and rewards was discussed to go along with it, not punishing new servers with few players, but also not punishing servers like ours due to the cap. The cap is meant to prevent bunching up of players at certain DK levels, needing certain amounts of experience too tedious to be gotten through forest fights and forced to PvP. Thus, it will make PvP non-essential to all but a small amount of players which will then be inclined to attack those nearer to their own station due to the rebalanced experience gain of PvP.

I like the limited inn idea, but it would then be necessary for the inn to discharge a client after a game day to make for others, or automatically charge the user's bank account if he's survived the day. If it's a limited commodity, it's something you have to pay for. Another possibility should be the ability to book more than one day if the inn were to be reduced in capacity, with maybe a bit of discounting.

[Voratus]

Or how about introducing an alignment system, and while 'evil' players who give out bribes and sneak into rooms are penalized in some way by receiving less beneficial results from random events? Seth/Violet won't marry evil players...fairies steal gems and leave instead of asking for one and giving rewards, etc.

...or how about an alignment system with role playing incentives? If you give out fancy titles, and change the text of special events and so forth, there would be people who would choose to play good even if it meant giving up an extra means of gaining experience.
Lady Pirotess

I brought up the alignment thing a while ago on sourceforge, where it was pretty much knocked down.
I have just recently added it to my own server, though the custom titles were beyond me (and it would be a bit annoying having a title for reputation, a title for DK, and then the character name...too long).
I basically set it up so characters are good, evil, or neutral (which displays on the bio), and making various decisions in the game modify that to an extent.
I'm going to eventually flesh that out more, and have the alignment actually affect things beyond displaying on the character's bio.

Back on the subject of the inn, I do not like the idea of limited availability for the inn.
I do kind of like the idea about the different floors/protection level being limited, but if that were to happen, there should still be a "common room", where any number of people can stay, which is a step up from the fields, but not as good as the "upper" floors.

I can't help but think that to really combat this, if there shouldn't be some sort of experience penalty for fighting much lower DK ranks. There's an experience loss when you fight lower level characters, so why not when you fight lower DK characters as well? That might be a bit of overkill, though, considering high DK people need way more experience points to advance than lower DK peeps.
Perhaps if that was reduced, but the xp gain from fighting lower DK people was also reduced, so they still get proportionately the same amount of experience, just less actual points.

I need more coffee.

[neXus]

With all things adding complication to the game, you have to consider that Central has a large uses base and not all of these are very competitive players. The games complexity level is already beyond the point where a new player can learn most of it in a day. If basic things such as combat or events were to be affected by more variables, creating an effective playing strategy would take even more time, making establishing some balance between mid-time and new players quite difficult. As balance is considered a very important issue in this game, such ideas have to be pretty harshly judged... (Not to mention the time it takes to code such basic and all-pervasive changes)

The proposed way of regulating PvP between different DK levels right now involves the cap as mentioned before, and making gains/losses from pvp change with the difference between the DK of the people involved. Thus, farmboys will gain more experience from killing a page than another page would have gained. (considering that further adjustments according to their levels amounted to the same) The same farmboy will lose less experience if killed by a page and more experience if killed by a farmboy. Thus, losses and gains will reflect a similar structure to levels, however due to the more permanent nature of dragon kills, there will probably not be a range of DK within which one can attack as the number of players in such ranges tend to be very restricted at the upper levels. The cap was suggested for this exact reason, to prevent bunching up at various DK stages.

[LordWolfen]

basically set it up so characters are good, evil, or neutral (which displays on the bio), and making various decisions in the game modify that to an extent.
I'm going to eventually flesh that out more, and have the alignment actually affect things beyond displaying on the character's bio.


I changed the code on my server but not to display evilness, but rather used the 'charm' more like charisma.
I added to pvp the deduction of charm and likewise at the inn (double whammy). I further added charm as factor in several something specials to have a differant set of possible random results.
Am still working on other ways that charm counts,... like marrying other players and perhaps in future as condition of joining certain clans.

Most RPG's use charisma as a factor, why shouldnt we?