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Hey Mic, this is an interesting suggestion. For the most part what you describe is actually how the current system works, which is similar to some other games too. I think some recent changes and bugfixes have confused people about this.
The main difference is that you suggest replacing the slow debuff with an item drop debuff, where they drop more items on death. I like it – It’s definitely worth thinking about. The only worry is that I have had some cases where mid level players couldn’t hope to catch a higher level infamous criminal to get justice. Sometimes they are the fastest player on the server which gives them near invincibility. Will talk about it with other testers, maybe there could be a compromise.
Fappy I appreciate your suggestion – it’s a simple and reasonable take on the direction I’m going.
I’m looking forward to when I can add an infamy icon next to people’s names and get the balance all sorted out. It’ll be fun 🙂
Here’s a good example of what I mean: 2 players on USEast just discovered a bug where in some instances a newbie could get hits off without getting infamy triggered.
It was reported to me very simply – I verified it and fixed it. I have just uploaded the patch and also cleared everyone’s infamy who is online or sleeping. I also upped the attacking cap to 30s from 10s, with a 10s gain per hit. This may be what happened to you Fappy.
Also these things won’t be discovered on my test server easily because I need a high population to recreate these scenarios. You guys are the best test servers 😀 I have fixed 3 extremely rare crashes in the last week for instance that have never been found on the test server over 2 years.
So please report things as plainly as possible so you will be heard – I can’t read all the really long posts I apologize.
Hey guys, I want you to know I think some of your points are very valid. I like to hear about the numbers, and the 15 gold cost for instance may be reduced in one of the future balance patches. The speed debuff may change, the cap for attacking as well. These things take time to get right. It’s still a beta and you guys are helping test.
The quickest way to get things changed, as my usual testers will tell you, is just explain plainly a situation where you think a number might be too low or high, or a bug occurred. Sensationalism or threats to leave the game makes it harder to take the post as serious and a valid complaint may not get as much traction.
The system was just released – Many systems in the past like myst, weight, dungeon generation etc took weeks to strike the right balance. I’ve been making changes every day to improve it but I just ask for a little patience as I gather data and consult with testers. I’ll be doing another daily balance patch today as usual. We’ll get it right in the end.
Thanks for your report Krill, I can see all the servers from a top down view and I see what you describe a little differently. That’s not to say there are still numbers that need adjusting – if you have noticed I have been testing patches every day. I work on changes during my free time after my normal job so I can only do so many tests and changes per day.
Let me use your examples and give you some numbers in the current state of things.
TrunksGT built a small house on the road that is not completely blocking but unsightly and cracked. Currently there is no penalty to reverse troll him and near instantly destroy his blocks within 5 minutes of being built.
If he managed to collect those resources and get an entire house built with no one using the main road in that time then he deserves a successful troll, and he stated that this is revenge for abuse – in a sandbox his play style and reasons are as valid as anyone elses. The end result of these types of trolls ends up bringing the community together, and I see the exact thing happening on EU now.
He is about level 20. Several people are online around his level so one of them can get the last hit which is basically penalty free. There are also a number of people level 40 or below on the server so lets take 20 level difference for calculating the penalty of killing him. That would be about 30 minutes or 15 gold to pay at maximum. That can easily be pooled or donated from higher levels, at even greater level differences.
Here’s another option – There are 2 altars in Deep Cave (B3) which wont move if you donate to them. You can build 2 sets of stairs from Galebrook down to one of those altars and establish an infamy reduction shrine there. Pool gold from the community and you have now invented your own bounty system for putting out hit jobs on annoying players. Since there is a cap on infamy you could fund a complete newbie genocide if needed. With a little innovation you can solve many problems, and that’s part of the fun of a sandbox game.
Now as for your trolling other servers to try to give infamy – people have done that for years, in the original game Mystera Legends it was always good for a laugh. Seeing as starmort16 is level 6 and you were level 6 it wouldn’t cause for much infamy but you still managed a kill. The noctis one is better at around 20 level difference, even if he justified the 30 minutes debuff.
As for the people complaining they can’t defend themselves against dreaded newbies that isn’t true. If you get attacked even once then they get infamy, and you can kill them for free. It’s even worse for them if they are around Market Square because of the towers. Killing their blocks doesn’t give infamy either.
From my top down perspective it seems like some people have had some legitimate complaints about numbers, which is fair as this balancing takes time. Some other people don’t understand they can pay off infamy at an altar or defend themselves after being attacked – that’s okay they will discover that. Then there are a group of people who were used to killing whoever they wanted for whatever reason they chose, and now that they have to think twice about it they want things changed. I hear that, but there are still a significant amount of voices on the other side, many of which don’t post publicly because they don’t want to be targeted. At the end of the day my experiments show that player retention goes up. I know not everyone will be happy, but I will keep balancing so the greatest number of people will be happy.
If you have specific concerns about the numbers, or a special scenario you think needs to be looked at then feel free to send me a pm or contact submission and it will reach me sooner than a forum post will.
Newest changes just made live on all servers:
-Heavy and Medium Armor slow penalty will now only apply when you have recently been in combat. So now you can explore or initiate at full speed with all armors. Only light armor users move at full speed during combat.
-Added the /roll command: This will show a dice roll in local chat. The default number of sides is 6 but you can specify a different number, for example: /roll 20
-You can now attack your own structures without drawing tower fire. You can also attack neighboring structures (like walls touching yours), freshly built structures, or dummies without drawing fire.
-Max tower damage bonus vs highly infamous people reduced from 120 to 100.
-Reincarnated people give less of an infamy penalty when killed. When calculating the penalty for the level difference it will add their blue stars multiplied by 2. So for example a veteran player who has reincarnated 10 times and is level 10 will actually count as level 30 when killed.
-When infamous players are PKed it will say ‘Executed’ rather than ‘Murdered’ in the death announcement.
More to come. Have fun!
Latest update regarding infamy (active 11/9 6:30am PST)
Raiding vs towers is viable again: Infamy damage for arrow towers is now capped at 300s so you wont gain anymore than that from towers alone. I had a plan to balance this against something else I’m working on for destruction, but I have to anticipate delays so this little change will restore some much needed balance. It allows you to tank arrows continually as the attacker once again. And as the defenders of the base if you catch barbarians at the gates you have a few minutes to try and kill them without penalty. I also slightly reduced the arrow damage bonus but its mostly noticeable at higher levels of infamy.
I’m planning to add a more clear indicator on infamous players soon, though it might have to wait until the next client update.
If you’re reading this and you or your friends have concerns about retaining the ‘sandbox’ elements of the game as much as possible – don’t worry I hear you loud and clear. I am the same as you, I made this from the ground up as an experiment to see how pure a sandbox I could make a game. I am continually balancing to enable multiple playstyles and get out of the way whenever possible. If you’ve been around for longer you know that this game had permadeath and permalogin and many more hardcore elements over the last 2 years. My experiments and data collection showed me a lot. There are reasons pure sandboxes don’t survive in reality – for example: people want an escape, people want casual most of the time even if they tell themselves otherwise, power consolidates at the top, and the newbies become abused and unheard.
A low population game isn’t as fun for anyone, and my experiments show a clear increase in player retention when I enforce certain checks and balances. There is a silent majority that has been sending me feedback in private regarding this and I’m happy to finally be able to deliver this infamy system for them – but know that I will continually monitor and balance it to allow for PKers and raiders because they are a very important part of the game and I will never let that die. Just need a little time for balance after every patch.
Here are previous changes I posted in a thread in case anyone missed it:
Attacking anyone sets a flat rate of 10 infamy (if they have less than 10 and the victim has no infamy). You wont get any infamy yourself for retaliating.
This way you have at least 10 seconds to kill them. If they keep attacking you then the infamy will keep resetting to 10 so you are free to fight to the death. It will now show a local notice ‘Infamous!’ on a player who just becomes vulnerable. Then it will say ‘Safe!’ when it wears off. Also fixed a bug with mobs related to this.
Market Towers can shoot over objects and only attack people with infamy. So you are safe to retaliate or hunt down infamous players. Market towers give no extra infamy.
Normal towers give no infamy if you are attacking an infamous player. Their penalty was reduced. Fixed a bug where they would shoot over obstacles at infamous players.
Will be monitoring the numbers and adjusting as necessary. Thanks for your patience.
The 10 second timer continually resets if they keep fighting, so you can fight to the death as long as you want and never gain infamy. It’s more for a person who hits you and runs away, that’s how long you have to kill them if you choose to.
Oh and as for spawning at crossroads while having infamy, that sounds like a bug. Not supposed to happen – so I’ll add it to my list of things to look at. Thanks
Changes uploaded recently:
Attacking anyone sets a flat rate of 10 infamy (if they have less than 10 and the victim has no infamy). You wont get any infamy yourself for retaliating.
This way you have at least 10 seconds to kill them. It will now show a local notice ‘Infamous!’ on a player who just becomes vulnerable. Then it will say ‘Safe!’ when it wears off. Also fixed a bug with mobs related to this.
Market Towers can shoot over objects and only attack people with infamy. So you are safe to retaliate or hunt down infamous players. Market towers give no extra infamy.
Normal towers give no infamy if you are attacking an infamous player. Their penalty was reduced. Fixed a bug where they would shoot over obstacles at infamous players.
Also remember to eat! Infamy wont drain if you have an empty hunger bar.
Thanks guys, fixes are definitely coming. There is always balancing following a patch, so expect everything to be smoothed out until all play styles are viable again. I had to get this whole patch out a bit early because of a couple exploits that were just discovered so please be patient as these changes take a little time.
I’m uploading patches now to reduce the debuff penalties and fix targeting for bystanders among other things. Wait for another patch later today or tomorrow and then we’ll go from there!
Latest updates:
First a Warning: It was reported to me that reincarnations might be giving too much dust since they don’t reset ‘time alive’. I’ll be capping the time alive value in the dust formula soon. Anyone who has a high ‘time alive’ (like a month or more) may want to take advantage of this in the next couple of days until I upload this change.
Server Stability: The lag spikes from USEast and others are mostly a thing of the past now. The new node.js version was released recently and I put it on USEast to test (I will update node on USWest & Europe soon). Things have been running pretty smooth since. There may have been one spike still, which was related to some memory limitations I believe. Those limits have been increased, though I will probably need to optimize some things related to infiniteness of the UW 🙂 There was also a newly discovered crash related to anvils that I patched.
The rare network crash may have been fixed in my latest ninja patch as well. I didn’t want to wait for a release from the websocket guys so I found a workaround. Hopefully I will see less demands for a server restart warning for these unexpected crashes on USWest 😀
Spawn locations: USWest and USEast have this new mechanic now. Europe stubbornly has over 80 hours uptime so it will probably be in the upcoming patch for them. The mechanic is that whenever you die and spawn (or use an escape lantern or mercy statue), you will spawn at the recall tile you chose, or crossroads if you don’t have a recall point set. If you die with less than 30 seconds time alive then your recall point will be cleared and you’ll go to crossroads. This is to prevent spawn camping issues.
High level griefers: The first version of the new infamy system will be in the upcoming server patch. It will be especially punishing for players who kill far below their own level. For instance, making it easier to kill them for a time. Zone switching wont protect them either. This will encourage people to pick fights closer to their own level when possible. The full details of how this works will be in the patch notes.
Play Store Payments: Still laying the groundwork for this although it has been pushed back some. I’ve been adding more logging tools and will soon be changing up the Paypal form a bit to match what the Play Store will offer.
You may have noticed I fixed the website avatar syncing between all servers and the website. I also display the last server used in the forum replies so everyone knows where people are coming from. A bug with the mobile nav menu was fixed too for anyone who struggled with that.
I’ve been working on some monitoring tools so I can launch new servers soon. I’m not positive when it will be, but the priority is Singapore and Texas most likely. I am also looking into a Brazilian server but that will be a little harder and more expensive to do.
This upcoming patch is more for balance and probably wont include the new items/areas, but those shouldn’t be too far off. I need to get out a new client patch as well to allow for the new servers, the play store payments, and a fix for people who listen to background music. Long days! Hopefully my family still recognizes me..
Updates:
Server Lag: Even though the node.js team haven’t released their fix yet I was able to find an older version that has solved the problem for us. USEast has been running smoothly for 12 hours with no issues so this is no longer high priority if not fixed completely. I will still switch back to the new node version when they are more stable for some small performance increases. Last night when I confirmed stability on USEast I started to wonder when the issue would appear on USWest.. I looked and was surprised to find the lag pattern had just started for them, going for about 2 hours. I changed the node version immediately and restarted after over 90 hours of uptime, they were noticeably surprised by the lag and the restart. They will never know USEast’s pain 🙂 As for Europe they will probably survive until the node patch but I will keep an eye out and downgrade them if necessary. I’m happy I don’t have to stress over this and monitor it anymore, so I can get back to other game issues. EDIT: After 15 hrs of uptime this version suddenly showed some lag issues on USEast. I can deal with restarting once or twice a day compared to every hour like before but I really hope node gets their release out soon (the fix is ready and approved, just not officially released).
Play Store Payments: This is my next high priority item and the most requested one. I hope to finish this within a week if time allows. I will also be finishing up my new population counting mechanism which will improve performance and increase player capacity.
Spawn location: We’ve been thinking of setting the default spawn to a recall tile in crossroads instead of a random spot in Galebrook. This would stop the confusion around people spawning in large unfloored bases. Quiet has already started a thread with this idea, and it may eventually help with Seryn/Apollo’s idea of a walled city though that has other problems that would need to be addressed. I also think it would be nice to spawn on your own recall tile after death. I can do this after putting in some protections for spawn camping.
High level griefing: I have received some feedback from various people frustrated with newbie PKing. I wont be able to implement anything major to deal with this since it would negatively impact the sandbox environment. However I do have an infamy system in the works that should reduce the problem, in addition to some special guard towers I made that can be put in market square.
The Websocket crash: Rare enough that I wont worry about it for a while, especially since it’s outside code like the server lag issue. I may switch to a different websocket library anyways, especially if they don’t post a fix in the near future.
Reconnect/Clone issues: This seems to be fixed for now. I have noticed some strange edge cases that might be related, though it could just be my logging not showing the whole picture. Haven’t received any reports on inventory/clone issues since last update so this is lower priority either way.
Irukandji (and Balthazar) added a page to the wiki with all the current costume options. I linked to it on the ‘become a supporter’ page.
I can almost start thinking about the Taming Patch again! Additionally it would be nice to implement some aesthetic improvements, like tools to decorate houses/farms better. Have been thinking of some new bosses too. Look forward to some fun patches in the future 🙂
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This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by
Admin.
The ‘structure maturation’ idea is something I proposed a while ago that has been tossed around and never quite made it into the game. The biggest argument against it was how much it opens up griefing towards new players settling down for the first time (from high level trolls especially). We want to minimize griefing towards new players where appropriate (will see more on this with the infamy system being developed).
I still like the idea if it can be balanced right. But for now blocking walls decay faster and are easier to destroy if built in the last minute (10 hits). That minute may be increased up to 10 minutes as needed, since they will be noticed quickly and taken down on common roads. I’m still testing all these solutions, so whatever works best will be implemented in the end. Might write more on this in my notes later on.
Some more updates for you guys:
Clone/Inventory/Reconnect bug: Since this bug only happens during particular lag spike conditions I can’t reproduce it on my local test server. Instead I’ve been testing code on USEast and EU to see the results. My first couple of tests didn’t fix the bug but they helped narrow it down. Now that my latest code has been uploaded I haven’t noticed this bug anymore. I’m not positive it’s solved completely but I will probably know after a few more days. As of today this code has been applied to all 3 servers.
Server Lag on USEast: This is my new high priority bug. I believe this has occurred on other servers but it’s a daily thing on USEast, requiring a restart to clear up. USWest can go days without issue. From the very limited profiling data I’ve been able to collect before the server crashes I’ve seen that the garbage collector is taking too long. I think what might help this is reworking the population counter which is run every 10 seconds. It makes sense that USEast has a lot of junk to count. This is one of the top 3 cpu intensive functions anyways so its time to optimize it, which should increase the player cap again. If smoothing out the memory allocation on this doesn’t solve the collection pauses I’ll move onto my next suspects.
Network error on USWest: I don’t know why I haven’t seen this on other servers yet. I thought it was gone as USWest was humming along with no issue for well over 60 hours. It showed up again this morning so I will have to look into this still, or see if the websocket guys have another patch.
Play Store payments: I started work on this and am about 20-25% done. I also fixed a caching issue with the perks/gift forms on the website – so it might be fixed for people who were having trouble. One person reported they had to use CTRL+F5 to refresh the form after the fix.
Altar spawns: Any new altar spawns as of yesterday should not persist through restarts, so clear out your dire wolves and rest a little easier tonight.
It sounds like our mapper is nearing completion on the new area. I have been reading all your suggestions and collecting notes on things I find interesting. It’ll be nice to add some content again, these high priority issues just make it difficult. Not to mention my job, which I should probably return to now..
Sure SirBadAx – I sent you a PM with the email.
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This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by
