Infamy Balance Discussion

[Kaylovespie Lvl 2 LondonSkeletonPosts: 173]

To put together useful feedback for the dev I will be keeping infamy discussion here. I’ll be shutting down other threads relating to this for now. In order to stay on a constructive path, this thread will have a couple of rules:

-No personal attacks or arguing the same general ideas.
-Try to keep responses straight to the point without ranting.
-Give constructive suggestions (saying “just toss infamy system, i’m gonna quit/people have quit, this kills sandbox” doesn’t help anyone)

Infamy is not going anywhere, so let’s work together to make it as balanced as possible for all sides ^_^

How infamy currently works:
Attacking an innocent player grants 10s infamy capped at 30s.
Killing an innocent player grants from 1m up to 1hr infamy maximum depending on level difference. Capped at 8hrs total.
Lock looting grants 120s infamy.
Attacking another player’s structure under tower arrows grants 5s infamy capped at 300s.
Attacking or killing an infamous person doesn’t grant any penalty.
Dying removes 80% infamy. Altar donations remove 300s per gold piece (12 gold/hour).
Market Towers aim for infamous players only.
The infamy debuff grants a slow and some dodge reduction and extra tower damage.
The slow scales up to 50 speed for 1hr and 100 speed for 2hrs or more.
The 300s max infamy vs raiders only grants 1 extra damage currently.
Infamous players can be attacked in safe zones.
An icon to go besides infamous player’s names is being worked on which will help simplify things.

The above will be updated if anything changes. Thanks!

[GoblinPosts: 68]

Is it possible making an alter in market place?

Also can you please adjust the gold amount for alter maybe halve it as i find 98 gold for max infamy is a little high because how rare gold is. Maybe make gold rock spawns a little more common and in more areas other than desert ie. Galebrook grassy plains and snow plain. This way the steep price can stay if infamous people are willing to farm the gold.

Also what exactly are the numbers of infamy for level difference? so we know how much infamy to expect when killing lower levels.

[GoblinPosts: 95]

So someone who is simply rich can just pay off their crimes? How is this balanced towards lower levels?

I mean, sure it costs you to kill, and a lot, but its the same thing thats wrong with the real world justice system, giving people the option of bail.

That is if you make it long enough to find an Altar.

[Kaylovespie Lvl 2 LondonSkeletonPosts: 173]

@Tiggz, an altar in the marketplace is a possibility. For now there are two guaranteed altars in B3 that wont move for donations. You can also reroll objects in B4 to get one.

The altar cost was updated in today’s balance patch so it will need to be tested for a bit before it’s changed again.

The level difference calculation is a bit complicated but according to the dev you get around 1-2 minutes for killing someone about your level, and about 30 mins for a 20 level difference. Killing someone much lower will always give the hour penalty, or 12 gold. So you would have to do 8 extreme newbie murders to get that max gold cost 😛

Thanks for the suggestions!

[Kaylovespie Lvl 2 LondonSkeletonPosts: 173]

@BalthazarB, that is a valid concern! That’s one reason I think the admin wanted there to be a little work involved in finding an altar to pay the cost. A gold sink is probably good for the game, and when gold is used it gets put back into the mining rocks. If excessive newbie killing becomes a problem again then things will be adjusted 🙂

[GoblinPosts: 95]

I understand the game needs a gold sink, that is true. This infamy system could work well in the end, but we could just simplify it for now. Like @tux said, just give infamous players a red skull by the name and make them vournable to attacks in safe zones, and make them drop more things upon their death. (Let’s say you drop every item you stole if died while infamous)

Also, infamy could be taken to a whole new level and direction. A karma/allignment system.
Something like this:
Players that do “evil” things get negative karma/infamy, which makes their attack against players of “good” karma higher. While the “good” players gain a defense bonus against infamous players the higher their positive karma is. So two players with equal karma values but opposite alignments would have these buffs balance out. Neutral players could have neither benefits or weaknesses from both.

This way we would have a hiearchy among evil and good players. Someone could be a know crime lord and only stopped by several good players, or by one hero with high karma.

Just an idea.

[Kaylovespie Lvl 2 LondonSkeletonPosts: 173]

@BalthazarB, the dev mentioned in another thread that the icon next to the name (skull or whatever it will be) has been in the works. As it is now infamous players can be attacked in safe zones (sorry I forgot to add that to the top post!). Someone did suggest the death drop punishment which we will be talking about, though there are some important concerns with movement speed apparently. Thanks for the alignment idea and other suggestions!

[GoblinPosts: 95]

Perhaps the infamy system could be more advanced at a later point, and have different features. Such as witnesses. In a world such as Mystera is, nobody would know who stabbed you in corner of Galebrook. Perhaps you’d only gain infamy if someone saw you commit the crime. I always like to see some realism in games (or for role-playing purposes.)

[Kaylovespie Lvl 2 LondonSkeletonPosts: 173]

@Fappy, You no longer get hours of infamy per kill which is listed in the top post. The 100 damage maximum for arrow towers are for the worst criminals, and according to the dev that is before armor reduction and before hp percent reduction so it should be much less actual damage. It’s only 1 extra damage for maximum infamy you can get for raids.

@tux, I don’t believe you can order dogs to attack people unless the taming patch has come early 😀 The dev remembers someone was testing killing an alt of theirs once before but you have to purposely attack the dog first. I’ll pass on your idea of forcing perma login for infamous players!

Tux also mentioned there could be alternative consequences besides or replacing the current debuff. One idea that has been added already is higher drop rate on death. Feel free to think of other ones as well!

Going to remove posts with duplicate, outdated, or inaccurate info to avoid confusion. Thanks.

[Kaylovespie Lvl 2 LondonSkeletonPosts: 173]

@Battler, glad you like the system Battler 🙂 Trying to reduce the thread to new ideas, balance suggestions, or bugs. Thanks!

[GoblinPosts: 65]

I’m going to start by saying I understand the need for protection for new players. I guess the major concern amongst the majority of us complaining about infamy is punishment for partaking in am aspect of the game.

In a previous thread @BalthazarB had mentioned an investigation skill. It would be awesome if we could make infamy require some action on a players part, like investigating and reporting the “crime”.

I feel like this would allow players to deal with griefers as nobody would want to report the killer / raider, yet keep a system that could be used to assist innocent players.

[Polar BearPosts: 49]

Player level is the key ingredient of the infamy system, but it is a rather poor measure of player’s combat power. Player A can reach level 60 with their skills in 30-40s, and player B can stay at 60, but max their combat skills. When B kills A, he gets no infamy, but i doubt that A really stands a chance in such a fight. Another example, one can be a peaceful farmer with his level coming purely from non-combat skills, and another – a pure fighter of the same level.

A recent patch added blue stars of reincarnated players to the formula. Maybe also include all yellow stars from combat skills too? The only problem I see with this is that unlike blue stars, yellow ones are not visible to other players.

—-

Another suggestion is to make the system more transparent and predictable. Some kind of a popup icon that will show, maybe approximatelly, how much infamy am I going to get if I kill a particular player.

[Kaylovespie Lvl 2 LondonSkeletonPosts: 173]

@NobodySPC, That is a cool idea 🙂 I guess it could potentially be complicated to program though? It might give a fleeing criminal too much time or not work with in-progress raids so it would need a lot of extra balancing is all. I know some players want to keep the system as simple as possible. We’ll definitely think about it though!

@tirioll, I was wondering if it could somehow be based off combat level too.. maybe like compare their attack, defense, dodge, precision upgrades? I like the idea of simplifying or knowing how much infamy you will get too. I think the hour cap helps with this but maybe there could be some indicator like you say.

[Derick Lvl 148 USWestGoblinPosts: 90]

I’d just like to see the hunger requirement removed from the infamy debuff timer.

I’m not a rampaging murderer and I never raid anyone, but every once in a while I need to kill a noob. I had to kill 2 who were raiding my neighbor the other day, just to show them that raiding in my area has consequences. I had to kill a lvl 8 just today because I was trying to make a trade with someone and the lvl 8 was following us around, trying to push us with unarmed. Every single one of his hits missed, mind you, so he didnt have any anfamy when I hit back. I just wanted to trade safely and I got an hour’s debuff for it.

In my opinion, there are legitimate reasons to kill a noob from time to time. And I’m ok with there being deterents in place to prevent power abuse as well. But I really have to think twice about defending myself and my neighbors because I know I cant work that 1 hour debuff off in an hour. It might take me 3 or 4. I afk a lot and forget to keep up on my hunger. Empty hunger doesn’t really affect me at any time other than when I have infamy, so I dont keep a lot of food around and I don’t watch the bar.
I also dont see why infamy *should* be tied to hunger. That’s really my only complaint. I think the recent hotfix patched most of the other issues I had with the system.

Perhaps dmg from towers could be increased vs those with higher infamy as 1 dmg is pretty neglegible. And perhaps the infamy cap could scale infinitely, but logrithmically upward based on number of killings. Balancing isn’t really my strong point, tho, so I’ll leave that up to ya’ll.

Thanks for your time.

[Kaylovespie Lvl 2 LondonSkeletonPosts: 173]

Hey @derick, I’m glad to hear the recent patches fixed most of your concerns. Playing without eating is a unique playstyle 😛 I guess the worry is that people could go on a killing spree before bed then hold space in their base to clear their infamy overnight. Maybe we’ll be able to think of a better way though ^_^

JVH already added the daily patch notes in his thread but there was an extra patch in the evening that might have been missed. He made it so the speed debuff scales a lot smoother.. instead of hitting the 100 slow really quickly now you hit 50 at 1 hour of infamy and 100 at 2 or more hours. So you will barely notice slows unless you are really into newbie killing 😛 It shouldn’t be noticeable at all for raiding or other things. I updated the top post with the new change.

[Author]

Posts