"Civilized PvP system"

[RestInPieces]

I didn't read the whole topic but looking at the original post reminds me of the old Ultima Online PvP system which was really fun, with grey name criminals and red name murderers and how being a criminal or murderer changed your relationship with the world and the guarded cities, and also changed the way other players and npcs interacted with you to a certain degree.

 

These were the days!

 

Drops mike...

 

This a good post. I never took up modding in 7dtd as my time is limited nowadays in general, so I do not know their limits or how well some things can be implemented with them. Would it be possible to replicate most of the features I mention in the OP for example with mods?

 

To be honest, I also belong to the people who haven't pvp'ed much in this game. The reason I don't like pvp (at least in the servers I've tried it) at the moment is because I find it a bit unrealistic for the following reason: People kill without much thought and pvp is continuous. As a consequence zombies take the backseat when it comes to threats. In a more "realistic" setting, raids and human threats should be more sporadic and one oughts to give it a second thought before he turns hostile to someone he meets, or pulls that trigger to get his items - there is no "counterweight". Things may change a bit in pvp as well with the new attribute system and deaths. We will see.

 

Ya know... another method that would work for PvP are AI driven NPC's to meet out punishment if x/y/z criteria are met...

 

Just like the po-po in real life. Get caught? Do the time. Get caught but get away? Your profile was radio'd in, so you're no longer welcome at traders, there are npc's actively after you, etc...

 

True, I also mention it in the OP. The trigger-happy pvp'er is not that realistic, because even if killing doesn't weight on your conscience, you can't just kill tons of people in the area you live in, even if that is a post apocalyptic wasteland, without the risk of retribution and everyone behaving normally as nothing ever happened. TWD:

The Saviors were trigger-happy PvP'ers, see where that got them

 

[Brian9824]

Because dll modify results killing EAC.

...just a thought.

 

Password protected server >>>>>>> EAC

[KingSlayerGM]

How about this?

 

I think that simply a trader reputation decrease when killing players or destroying LCBs, chests, doors, would be a nice change. Such decrease should result in higher prices and less quests.. and, if protracted for very long, no trade and no quests at all. To regain reputation you would have to wait very long, or do some "redemption quests", like pay the guy you killed X tokens..

 

@GAZZ this would be fairly quick to implement, wouldn't it?

[Kurogo]

Why should traders get involved? It's the apocalypse, they shouldn't care who killed who, only that the caps roll in.

[KingSlayerGM]

Because they don't want troubles.

Because they are fairly nice guys.

Because they don't want to do business with murderers.

Because the heard bad things about a player, so they dont want him around.

Because they dont trust a player.

Because they were friends with the guy you killed.

 

Invent the story that best suits you!

[Katitof]

Why should traders get involved? It's the apocalypse, they shouldn't care who killed who, only that the caps roll in.

 

Because they are the only somewhat reliable source of ammunition that isn't exclusively shotgun shells?

[Brian9824]

I think that simply a trader reputation decrease when killing players or destroying LCBs, chests, doors, would be a nice change. Such decrease should result in higher prices and less quests.. and, if protracted for very long, no trade and no quests at all. To regain reputation you would have to wait very long, or do some "redemption quests", like pay the guy you killed X tokens..

 

@GAZZ this would be fairly quick to implement, wouldn't it?

 

Well biggest problem I've seen is that it's hard to tell what is self defense and what's legit. Then I also see the huge potential for griefing.

 

I find a player base and I ring it in LCB. Now juat clearing the LCB they get a huge penalty to traders and they can't access them and they did nothing wrong at all. Or just cover the cities in LCB in all the good buildings to grief people.

[KingSlayerGM]

Well biggest problem I've seen is that it's hard to tell what is self defense and what's legit. Then I also see the huge potential for griefing.

 

I find a player base and I ring it in LCB. Now juat clearing the LCB they get a huge penalty to traders and they can't access them and they did nothing wrong at all. Or just cover the cities in LCB in all the good buildings to grief people.

 

These are serious problems!

 

For the self defense, I see 2 choices:

1 nothing. There is no self defense. So if you kill a guy who tried to kill you, you are the murderer.

2 if you receive damage from a player, than you have X minutes of impunity towards that player.

 

For claiming:

this is one heck of a problem...

1 we dont get reputation decrese when destroying stuff

2 we get reputation decrease only when destroying stuff inside claimed areas and we make claims a LOT more expensive (I actually played in a server that had very expensive LCBs and it was good for gameplay, so people dont spam LCBs around just to annoy others)

[Brian9824]

These are serious problems!

 

For the self defense, I see 2 choices:

1 nothing. There is no self defense. So if you kill a guy who tried to kill you, you are the murderer.

2 if you receive damage from a player, than you have X minutes of impunity towards that player.

 

For claiming:

this is one heck of a problem...

1 we dont get reputation decrese when destroying stuff

2 we get reputation decrease only when destroying stuff inside claimed areas and we make claims a LOT more expensive (I actually played in a server that had very expensive LCBs and it was good for gameplay, so people dont spam LCBs around just to annoy others)

 

Yeah the biggest problem with PvP is always the player. I made a similar enhancement idea about an hour before you posted yours to have trader quests, tie inventory into a rep system with trader, etc. So the two go hand to hand.

 

However any system with rep needs a bandit version too. So there should be traders allied with bandits for those who are outlaws.

 

But the actual balance is difficult as people can find ways to abuse any mechanic you design.

[KingSlayerGM]

Yeah the biggest problem with PvP is always the player. I made a similar enhancement idea about an hour before you posted yours to have trader quests, tie inventory into a rep system with trader, etc. So the two go hand to hand.

 

However any system with rep needs a bandit version too. So there should be traders allied with bandits for those who are outlaws.

 

But the actual balance is difficult as people can find ways to abuse any mechanic you design.

 

 

Well you don't necessarily need traders for bandit players! It is the players' fault.. they took the decision consciously to be outlaws and now they can compensate by raiding and killing people, instead of trading.

[Brian9824]

Well you don't necessarily need traders for bandit players! It is the players' fault.. they took the decision consciously to be outlaws and now they can compensate by raiding and killing people, instead of trading.

 

Well their is a factions system coming with survivors and bandits so it should be possible for people to become friendly with bandits at the expense of becoming hostile with other survivors.

 

This way you can have regions controlled by either faction and it ties into both PvP and PvE

[Kurogo]

Because they don't want troubles.

Because they are fairly nice guys.

Because they don't want to do business with murderers.

Because the heard bad things about a player, so they dont want him around.

Because they dont trust a player.

Because they were friends with the guy you killed.

 

Invent the story that best suits you!

 

If most of them weren't swearing at me when I visit, 1&2 would be convincing, but they make it clear 5 &6 also don't apply along with 1&2. Which leads me to believe 4 also doesn't apply. Which leaves 3, but once bandit npcs are added, that wouldn't make sense either. So color me unconvinced by all off it. The story I've invented is that as long as they don't have to deal with it and the tokens keep flowing, they don't care who they do business with.

 

Because they are the only somewhat reliable source of ammunition that isn't exclusively shotgun shells?

 

Until a few points are spent and players are making ammo themselves. Seems like a fairly short lived justification.

[Katitof]

Until a few points are spent and players are making ammo themselves. Seems like a fairly short lived justification.

 

Yeaaahh, no.

 

That isn't going to spawn more brass in the world.

[eidobunny]

Brass is easy and lots of people don't know where to look for it and don't take it when they find it.

 

I constantly find brass in looted buildings or containers just sitting around everywhere, even on a high population server, and it's everywhere if you hit certain types of lamps and faucets and that sort of thing.

 

Still, I can see brass start to get really rare on a very advanced server, like if you're on day 500+ and still trucking, at that point pretty much your only option is going to be looting respawned containers

 

Might be a good idea to eventually add some ability to create the alloy with minerals (copper and zinc) in a forge. Just the fact that you have to collect specific (presumably rare) minerals should balance out the ability to mine for it. Although I've never had problems just finding enough of it in the wild.

[Kurogo]

Yeaaahh, no.

 

That isn't going to spawn more brass in the world.

 

RGW already does that for us, as well as zombies.

[Roland]

Well Roland, you see, you are part of the problem along with all the other anti pvp posters here because you dont play 7dtd pvp (and no a few hours before you got killed/raided and rage quit does not count, at all.

 

Heya Bloom. First of all I don't hate PvP. I just firmly believe that you can't have one game balanced to both PvE and PvP. One or the other will suffer as you seek to balance one or the other. I am all for a separate PvP mode completely separate from the main game. Also I've always been a good sport whenever I've played this game PvP or otherwise. Accusing me of bad sportsmanship does nothing for your argument...

 

Secondly, I played PvP for a good 500 hours of my 1400 hours playing the game and I had lots of fun with it-- that is until the game became more and more unbalanced for fair PvP play once xp and quality tiers were introduced (in my opinion) AND my Mom and my brother started playing and I discovered the awesome side of co-operative play.

 

As for the drop settings, I recognized early on that Drop all on Death (and Drop all on Quit by the way) was a critical setting for exactly the reasons you outlined and I only played on servers that enabled that setting. Part of it was that I enjoyed using a land claim block as a honeypot trap for greedy players who would literally leap down to get a chest they saw before carefully looking....

 

After almost 12k hours of 7dtd pvp I can educate you that I have seen many many well done pvp mods which offer pretty much all the features people want although they currently sit across different mods so no single mod gives you everything.

 

Well this was my question. Why are there bits of this and that spread across several different mods? If there are recognizable features that everyone wants where is the PvP overhaul mod that competes with the other big mods for staying on the front page of modding forum due to all the comments and activity? This isn't a blase statement. It is an honest question. Perhaps you are perfectly happy with the state of the game and feel it works great for PvP as is but there are others who want changes made to accommodate a better PvP experience....unless THEY also don't understand "true" Pvp...

 

Snip Lesson on Obvious Elements of PvP

 

These 2 elements, risk v reward and time, encapsulate a lot of what 7dtd pvp is about but without many many hundreds or thousands of hours playing, competing, fighting in this environment you simply dont have the knowledge of the metagame to be making silly blase comments as if you know all about it because neither you nor the other pvp haters on here do.

 

It's quite a bit less complicated and mysterious than you make it out to be. If it makes you feel better to assume I don't understand "true" PvP then by all means continue to believe as you do. I'm sure it's exciting to see those who disagree with you as "PvP muggles" who just can't access your magical world.

 

Its been said a million times but i will say it again, let the server owners pick their options as they please (as they do today) and if you dont like pvp then dont f******* play it, go pve.

 

If you want to 'fix' pvp then unnerf sound distance somewhat, it used to be silly that you could hear some things from way too far but now its gone too much the other way.

 

if you want to make some changes that are so simple any decent modder (even me) could do them in a couple of hours) and that work for pve too, then add more weapons, armour and legendary type items plus different level of tools.

 

Thats all you have to do, leave the community you hate (and yet who pay part of your bills..) alone, let people play how they want to and put in some cool thing that can be enjoyed by both communities.

 

Drops mike...

 

No comment in these forums is stopping anyone from playing PvP as they please. If server owners can adjust server settings as they wish like you say they can then what's with the aggression, anger, and attacking my intelligence and sportsmanship as part of your opinion piece here? Is this really the only way PvP players know how to post?

 

What if:

 

I have 100s of hours of PvP under my belt

I understand the intricacies of PvP just fine

I don't feel any hate or fear of PvP players or server owners

I do let people play how they wish

 

 

....and I still disagree with you?

[eidobunny]

The only thing really hurting PvP as it is in vanilla is the cheaters/hackers, and maybe sound radii being a tad too small. In general I think it's fine the way it is, that's why I play it so much.

 

I must say though I've encountered more than a fair share of people exploiting and straight-up hacking in order to gain an unfair advantage or just to cause everyone as much grief as possible and it's not fun. Some people even use more subtle cheating devices and tactics to appear legit when they are not. Anyone with a lot of PvP experience can pinpoint the use of unfair methods and I've had people lie to my face about their use of exploits and cheats. Things like tracking bedroll or LCB positions of other players, duplicating items, looking through walls to find bases, etc. Sometimes you get lucky but other times suspicious activity is far too consistently reliable to allow for a benefit of the doubt. In the worst cases you have hackers with god mode, teleportation, flying around with infinite dynamite hands blowing everything up, etc.

[RestInPieces]

...

 

Let me chime in. Even if I consider myself a PvE player (since I barely play any PvP games and have barely played in PvP servers in 7dtd) my "ultimate desire" is not to play PvP or PvE. For this game, it is to play in a "realistic" virtual post-apocalyptic world. And I believe that can happen with the harmonic combination of both. Now, whether that combination can happen - for that I am perfectly confident, since I've experienced it in past online games (particularly Ultima, Lineage, T4C and Shadowbane), which were unlike modern games boxing pvp/pve separately) and, mark my words, will make its return in the future. As to whether this combination can happen in 7dtd, I'd say it would be much easier than in those games, due to the server size.

 

Now about balance. I don't like making examples of what previous games did in the past, because I don't really think it is needed, but it's the only way to make a reference to what I want to convey. In these games, beyond the necessary balance that was needed among classes/races etc, there was no such thing as "balance between pvpers". Meaning that, unlike pvp in modern games that box you in an arena/battleground with the same levels, similar items etc, PvP was possible between newer and older players and much of the time it was not fair.

 

Now, this may sound "terrible" design at first glance, but these games used a different mechanic to "balance" PvP penalizing indiscriminate kills with a justice/karma system and various other "realistic" penalties and some limitations. What they achieved by this, was a much, much more realistic world without indiscriminate PvP. These worlds, devoid of boxes like instances/arenas etc, gave birth to RP and all kinds of interesting player interactions. For this to happen though, besides moderation, game mechanics that support it are needed.

 

And in the end, PvP already exists and it already isn't balanced at all. The idea of this thread is to "balance" it in the way these games did, not by putting everyone onto equal grounds, but with a more realistic approach, some PvP limitations and some penalties (most of which are mentioned in the OP). *If* that approach is followed, there is no need for anything PvE to be touched, so concerns about PvE being changed in favor of PvP are out of place, at least in this thread.

 

 

PS: This PvE/PvP debate reminds me of politics.

PS2: My wall of texts are better than yours.

[Roland]

@Rest: A reputation system is coming. There will be factions and certain traders and settlements will be loyal to either the Duke or to Noah and depending on your reputation with one or the other faction it will affect your interactions with trading, quests, and bandits who will be loyal to one faction or the other. Seems like it would be easy to re-purpose this reputation system into a PvP karma system to help police interactions between newer or older players once it is implemented. Might even be a major mod if anyone cares enough to create it...

[ravend]

The problem with civilized PvP, is that it involves human interaction. Last iv seen we don't have a good track record on or off line in conflicts. No matter what you do, ppl will game the system, that just how it is. Look at the division,arc,rust and ect. People will anything to win, civility be damned.

[Poojam]

Skills/xp are important in maintaining a "fair-ish" environment. Don't allow skills/xp to generate more than a 1.5x multiplier in dps. Don't allow skills/xp to generate more than +100% health/armor. Reduce magnitude of damage variation in a crappy gun vs good gun.

 

Also, improve the code to reduce teleporting when engaging players (characters models are very jumpy/blocky). It makes it very difficult to even hit people a lot of the time leading to a pretty unsatisfying environment.

 

There is a also a very serious problem that can't seem to be fixed by mods. Players can't find each other in the world. Make forges tink again and increase the sound distance for everything x5 or maybe x8. Or provide a server parameter for this. It's okay (and maybe good) if zombies will hear you too. I can see how that might provide a slightly different flavor of difficulty ramping other than just making them run at night/always run.

 

Remove loot level being tied to player xp. What's in a box is in a box. (I've written pages of posts on how dumb this is, even for PVE playstyles). Find some other gimmick. You already have loot classes & tied different ones to different rarity of containers and zombies. Use this mechanic more thoroughly to make the good loot harder to get unless you're geared well. More boss zombies. It can be rewarding for PVE while not making it ridiculously rare to get a gun that does any real damage unless you've leveled to 40 and got your scavenging up. This mechanic is completely artificial and cheapens even the PVE experience.

 

Give bandits and zombies guns and tools to use against you. Beatkidz already has Bandits with guns in the mod on his server. This is an awesome addition.

 

Need to build server tools so admins can take care of the exceptions to ensure a healthy environment. You can't fix the game against hackers completely, but you can make it so admins can enforce the rules. Need admin plugins that generate an alert to the admin/can kick/can ban after x number of violations for;

 

player can excecute a command that requires elevated priveledges

player has two identical quality items

player has a threshold amount of certain resources in their inventory

 

Need a plugin that;

logs everything a player adds or subtracts from their inventory (item id, quality, quantity)

is more user-friendly for restoring chunks

 

I like the safe® hubtown ideas I've seen executed on a lot of modded servers. I think it would work well for vanilla servers to have a hub city that is guarded by friendly NPC's/stronger land claim protection and/or combined with a reputation system.

 

Faction systems should be fun.

 

Beatkidz, Grandpa Minion and Dmustanger have some of these plugins (and more) in the mods on their servers. Someone from 7DTD staff should visit with these guys. They will probably give you the code base and provide valuable insight into what works/doesn't work well. I'm sure they are sick and tired of updating their stuff every alpha anyway.

 

I feel it's extremely important to remember;

A lot of the players that have been soured on PVP have taken their beating on many of the past Alphas where gross hacking, broken armor, broken grenades, wall glitching, ridiculous force multipliers (hello shotgun slugs A15), poorly configured recipes combined with bad server configurations (no drop or belt drop only so players could spam exploding bolts with only the cost of losing a crossbow if they died). I see a lot of the same faces still in this forum regurgitating the same bad experiences. I'm sure a lot of these things are still prevalent on vanilla servers. I wouldn't know, because I only play on modded servers where owners have reconciled most of them. These things aren't untrue, they just are not really all that relevant any longer in A16 if you can find an actively managed PVP server. What needs to happen is that these things get reconciled so all servers can take improve. If you really want to improve the game, then stop with these threads. They are echo chambers. Get 5-10 of these modded server owners/seasoned players on Discord and simply have a conversation. There is probably a fair amount of learning to go around.

 

Aside;

Recently learned that damaged water sources is a major problem for server stability.

[Brian9824]

 

Give bandits and zombies guns and tools to use against you. Beatkidz already has Bandits with guns in the mod on his server. This is an awesome addition.

 

 

I hate seeing the ignorance but you do know that all those people with bandits and stuff didn't actually create any code right? TFP did all the work and they just added them to the spawning list?

[KingSlayerGM]

@Rest: A reputation system is coming. There will be factions and certain traders and settlements will be loyal to either the Duke or to Noah and depending on your reputation with one or the other faction it will affect your interactions with trading, quests, and bandits who will be loyal to one faction or the other. Seems like it would be easy to re-purpose this reputation system into a PvP karma system to help police interactions between newer or older players once it is implemented. Might even be a major mod if anyone cares enough to create it...

 

I am very pumped for this! I am really looking forward to seeing how they actually implement it. It will be so cool! Is it going to be after or is it A17 material?

[Katitof]

I am very pumped for this! I am really looking forward to seeing how they actually implement it. It will be so cool! Is it going to be after or is it A17 material?

 

I'm not pumped for this, because I'm not sure I'll still be alive when it finally gets done and released

 

Time between new releases gets longer and longer patch to patch...

[bloom_meister]

I hate seeing the ignorance but you do know that all those people with bandits and stuff didn't actually create any code right? TFP did all the work and they just added them to the spawning list?

 

You have zero idea how Beatz has implemented fully working, bug free bandits of different types, with different actions and AI on his server and yet accuse others of ignorance.....irony much? you do know that you can modify pretty much anything with enough skill...right?