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Factions Statloss
- Thread starter UODevTracker
- Start date
- Watchers 0
On the subject of statloss, it is something we plan to change. Currently on the Factions test center, it is 5 minutes.
There are currently several ideas on the table:
1> Straight up eliminate it, or reduce it to anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes. Or, make it incremental in strength and/or duration.
2> Make statloss shorter based on the number of towns your faction controls
3> Make it something you can buy off or partially reduce in duration and/or severity, with silver (e.g. a consumable you can purchase from the faction item / artifact vendor)
4> Shorten statloss, and eliminate it when the person who killed you dies
All of these ideas have merits and drawbacks, as well as different levels of time required to implement and test.
The purpose of statloss is to make it possible for one side in a Factions battle to create a definitive victory. It does this by weakening the losing side to the point where they have to just quit fighting for a while. The downside of it is it sucks to be weakened that much and for so long. The ability to gain control of territory comes at a cost of making players unable to enjoy their play.
So, the question to answer is, where is the balance?
On one side, UO PvP is fun while you’re fighting, but very un-fun when you lose. Insurance, item loss, having to get ressed and re-equip, etc., are all barriers that keep people from wanting to PvP. They also keep people from being able to learn PvP, without lots of support from other players. Factions adds statloss on top of all that.
Putting it another way, UO PvP is too hardcore. Those who have the know-how and the equipment just crush it. They kill a lot more often than they die, so it’s the un-skilled and underequipped who end up suffering the penalties more. With such harsh penalties, it is no wonder at all that people lose interest in playing Factions, or never seriously consider playing it in the first place.
One of the goals for this update to Factions is to make the system more appealing to more players. This doesn’t mean we want to make it into an easy game, or level the playing field, or make it so you can just respawn and run back in when you die. It does mean we want to look at various ways we can soften it up some so people can spent more time PvPing and less time dealing with downtime created by PvPing. We want to make it more fun, with larger and longer battles.
The other side of the balance issue is the need to be able to take enemies out of the fight in Factions. It just doesn’t work if you roll over a bunch of enemies and they just come in and roll you back in a couple minutes.
In addition to considering ideas about modifying statloss itself, I’d like to see some ideas of alternatives that achieve the needed effect but in some other way. For example, what if instead of statloss, you were simply not allowed to approach within a couple screens’ distance of the place where you died, for ten minutes?
Please discuss these things on this thread. Let’s talk about penalties for death, casual versus hardcore, and faction territory control.
There are currently several ideas on the table:
1> Straight up eliminate it, or reduce it to anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes. Or, make it incremental in strength and/or duration.
2> Make statloss shorter based on the number of towns your faction controls
3> Make it something you can buy off or partially reduce in duration and/or severity, with silver (e.g. a consumable you can purchase from the faction item / artifact vendor)
4> Shorten statloss, and eliminate it when the person who killed you dies
All of these ideas have merits and drawbacks, as well as different levels of time required to implement and test.
The purpose of statloss is to make it possible for one side in a Factions battle to create a definitive victory. It does this by weakening the losing side to the point where they have to just quit fighting for a while. The downside of it is it sucks to be weakened that much and for so long. The ability to gain control of territory comes at a cost of making players unable to enjoy their play.
So, the question to answer is, where is the balance?
On one side, UO PvP is fun while you’re fighting, but very un-fun when you lose. Insurance, item loss, having to get ressed and re-equip, etc., are all barriers that keep people from wanting to PvP. They also keep people from being able to learn PvP, without lots of support from other players. Factions adds statloss on top of all that.
Putting it another way, UO PvP is too hardcore. Those who have the know-how and the equipment just crush it. They kill a lot more often than they die, so it’s the un-skilled and underequipped who end up suffering the penalties more. With such harsh penalties, it is no wonder at all that people lose interest in playing Factions, or never seriously consider playing it in the first place.
One of the goals for this update to Factions is to make the system more appealing to more players. This doesn’t mean we want to make it into an easy game, or level the playing field, or make it so you can just respawn and run back in when you die. It does mean we want to look at various ways we can soften it up some so people can spent more time PvPing and less time dealing with downtime created by PvPing. We want to make it more fun, with larger and longer battles.
The other side of the balance issue is the need to be able to take enemies out of the fight in Factions. It just doesn’t work if you roll over a bunch of enemies and they just come in and roll you back in a couple minutes.
In addition to considering ideas about modifying statloss itself, I’d like to see some ideas of alternatives that achieve the needed effect but in some other way. For example, what if instead of statloss, you were simply not allowed to approach within a couple screens’ distance of the place where you died, for ten minutes?
Please discuss these things on this thread. Let’s talk about penalties for death, casual versus hardcore, and faction territory control.
So we were discussing a few Ideas and wanted to engage players for feedback:
Players in statloss can go to town controlled by their faction and pay to reduce the statloss duration for a set time.
Players will only be subjected to statloss while in the vicinity of a town sigil. (So only during capturing, defending, attacking or transporting activities would factioners be affected by statloss).
This would allow regular faction PvP to happen anywhere there wasn't a sigil, without risk of statloss.
Statloss Duration reduced to something closer to 10 minutes.
Exorcism would allow removal of ghosts who didnt have corpses in the vicinity of faction strongholds.
Players in statloss can go to town controlled by their faction and pay to reduce the statloss duration for a set time.
Players will only be subjected to statloss while in the vicinity of a town sigil. (So only during capturing, defending, attacking or transporting activities would factioners be affected by statloss).
This would allow regular faction PvP to happen anywhere there wasn't a sigil, without risk of statloss.
Statloss Duration reduced to something closer to 10 minutes.
Exorcism would allow removal of ghosts who didnt have corpses in the vicinity of faction strongholds.