LiF: YO Limitations & Server Inquiries

[Sern]

First of all I've found it hard to find a lot of this sort of information. If it exists elsewhere feel free to link it and I'll read it to save you the trouble of an explanation.

Server Inquiries:

1.) On the same link as below for inquiry #2 it says, "Numerous private dedicated servers that can be hosted on player’s PCs"

What about server OS's? Does the private server software work on Windows OS and variants of Linux server like Debian?

2.) It's been mentioned here[lifeisfeudal.com] in the comparison between YO and MMO version, "No guilds, no battles and no sieges."

I would like some specifics on what that means. No guilds, therefore no land claiming or protection right? "No battles." What does that mean? A friend of mine owns the game and saw battles taking place in private servers. Does it mean no battle formation bonuses or something else? And "no sieges." What effect does this have? Is that because "no guilds?" I don't even know the siege specific mechanics. What does a siege allow for through game mechanics?

First of all these limitations make me nervous, especially as to their intent. I understand wanting to provide motivations to play on the MMO version. However, I don't understand intentionally removing core game mechanics to do that. In the end I don't care about the removed features as long as they don't interfere with the karma system. Just because there's no guilds and therefore no official capacity to declare war on another faction shouldn't mean fighting them destroys my karma.

And why no sieges? Are the mechanics in place so that some circumstances are simply unavailable for it or what? How many people do you need for a siege? I hope not more than 32, half the capacity of the private servers.

We want to operate LiF:YO on our private server and set it up as a roleplay environment. We want to be able to moderate it so that we can make sure quality roleplay is taking place, things run smoothly, and make sense.

We have a community of people willing to purchase this game and get involved. We plan to play the MMO version when it's ready but we also want to maintain a presence on our private roleplay server.

If there are going to be significant artificial limitations put into place to divert traffic to the MMO version then a lot of our interest has flown out the window.

We'd like to know more about this sort of thing before we all drop 40 USD on this game that's incomplete. Many of us have been burned before on early access purchases whether through Steam or elsewhere. We're more careful now about what game we spend our money on when it's not completed and especially when we don't yet know the full direction the devs intend to go. I feel like the devs for LiF don't even completely know the direction they want to take with this game regarding things like the business model.

So could I get some clarification on these unknowns? The game looks amazing regarding its mechanics, stat setup, karma system, etc. But in the end there's too many questions and not enough answers for my purchase.

[Quiiliitiila]

I'm the friend Sern had mentioned as already owning the game. I'd like to clarify that I've seen people fighting and killing each other as well as wolves attacking and killing players. Whether or not this counted as "battles" is where our confusion stems.

As Sern said, we are very interested in bringing the rest of our community to this game, but currently there are still too many questions that need to be answered. So if anyone more knowledgeable on the subject could help us to understand the LIF:YO limitations and whether or not they are set in stone, it would be greatly appreciated!

-Quiiliitiila

[Doug]

Great questions, would love to hear from a dev about this stuff before making a decision to purchase.

[Ludolf]

I think many more people are interested in getting to know the answers to these questions. It'd be nice if there were easier ways to find more information about this game because it does look promising.

[Quiiliitiila]

Originally posted by Ludolf:

I think many more people are interested in getting to know the answers to these questions. It'd be nice if there were easier ways to find more information about this game because it does look promising.

The lack of solid information is one of our largest concerns. I already bought the game in order to scout it's potential, and it has a LOT of potential. I'd just like some solid answers on the questions we have raised (Sern's post above).

It just seems odd that they'd keep core components of a game away from private servers. It's almost like they're punishing people who want to run a dedicated server that caters to different tastes. As Sern said; we want to run a dedicated RP server, so why should we be punished for that? Did we not pay $40 for the game? If LIF:YO will be missing components of the final game, it should NOT cost $40.

-Q

[Excellion]

I'll be trying to give you a few answers based on the few hours i spend in the game and from the other answers i gathered from poking around the server component and posts on the forums.

1. From what i gather the server software is Windows only for the moment. According to another forum post a native linux server version may happen but is not a high priority. I did manage to setup and play on a dedicated server i created on my Windows 7 laptop. Its not exactly a one-click-done type of setup though, so leep that in mind if you want to run a server.

2. Guilds, Battles and Sieges are pretty much a set of systems that can be used to manage a conflict between a large amount of players. I have to base my answers on what i read for obvious reasons, but here is what i managed to find:

Guilds are high level organisations that can claim a large area of the map. Unlike the smaller claims such as town claims a guild cannot "protect" buildings and objects in a zone, but it does allow the guild the de-own structured in its area of influence. Effectively it can be seen as an area that a group claims influence in but does not directly control.

Battles and sieges are two forms of planned warfare during a conflict between two larger entities. Both battles and sieges are pre-planned (The attacker challenges the defender, and the defender sets a time at which the conflict will be fought). Battles and sieges vary insofar that a Battle will remove player structures (Eg: You get an "open field" type of fight where there are no home advantages) whereas a siege will leave stuff around. Both are fought in order to control a certain area of the map, winner takes all.

And what about the limitations?
LiF:YO certainly has combat, it simply lacks the top-level systems described above. From what i experienced so far it isn't to much of a loss since 64 player servers don't need truely need an overlapping system to manage warfare. Still, some basic "Charge and capture the building" would be nice; I am affraid i have little to mention on that aspect though as i have mainly been building and practicing combat with a few friends.

As for killing eachother: It is pretty much possible to set up two or more towns and divide people into groups - if you have a group of people you know it shouldn't be to difficult to set up. Killing people does result in karma loss, and low karma means that you lose more stat points when you die. This may sound harsh but it should serve as a deterrent for people to go beserk and just kill everything. Also, you may be happy to know that a server admin can set a skill gain multiplier on the server ranging from 0.1 to 100x gain speed. If you prefer a more combat oriented server you can increase the speed in order to offset the karma based losses i suppose.

[Quiiliitiila]

Originally posted by Excellion:

I'll be trying to give you a few answers based on the few hours i spend in the game and from the other answers i gathered from poking around the server component and posts on the forums.

1. From what i gather the server software is Windows only for the moment. According to another forum post a native linux server version may happen but is not a high priority. I did manage to setup and play on a dedicated server i created on my Windows 7 laptop. Its not exactly a one-click-done type of setup though, so leep that in mind if you want to run a server.

2. Guilds, Battles and Sieges are pretty much a set of systems that can be used to manage a conflict between a large amount of players. I have to base my answers on what i read for obvious reasons, but here is what i managed to find:

Guilds are high level organisations that can claim a large area of the map. Unlike the smaller claims such as town claims a guild cannot "protect" buildings and objects in a zone, but it does allow the guild the de-own structured in its area of influence. Effectively it can be seen as an area that a group claims influence in but does not directly control.

Battles and sieges are two forms of planned warfare during a conflict between two larger entities. Both battles and sieges are pre-planned (The attacker challenges the defender, and the defender sets a time at which the conflict will be fought). Battles and sieges vary insofar that a Battle will remove player structures (Eg: You get an "open field" type of fight where there are no home advantages) whereas a siege will leave stuff around. Both are fought in order to control a certain area of the map, winner takes all.

And what about the limitations?
LiF:YO certainly has combat, it simply lacks the top-level systems described above. From what i experienced so far it isn't to much of a loss since 64 player servers don't need truely need an overlapping system to manage warfare.

As for killing eachother: It is pretty much possible to set up two or more towns and divide people into groups - if you have a group of people you know it shouldn't be to difficult to set up. Killing people does result in karma loss, and low karma means that you lose more stat points when you die. This may sound harsh but it should serve as a deterrent for people to go beserk and just kill everything. Also, you may be happy to know that a server admin can set a skill gain multiplier on the server ranging from 0.1 to 100x gain speed. If you prefer a more combat oriented server you can increase the speed in order to offset the karma based losses i suppose.

That was very informative, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.

This game looks amazing already and I have no doubt it'll just get better. I'm still a little miffed by the LIF:YO limitations, but I suppose that can't be helped.

Perhaps I'll see you in game some day! Cheers!
-Q

[Sern]

@Excellion

Thanks for the reply. I saw that some people might have had success running the server software on a Linux based dedicated server running Wine. Our dedicated server uses Debian so if we could get a confirmation on that, great. We don't have a Windows Server OS option.

I see how we can live without guilds but my question about how to engage in combat without affecting karma negatively remains. If my town decides to fight another town how does the game know or understand our grouping? Will the game treat our fight between two towns as murder and therefore damage all our karma even though it may have been declared? As long as there is some way for two entities, obviously not guilds since it's not possible, to declare themselves as enemies and fight without karma loss I'm happy.

As we'll be operating a quality roleplay server and moderating it I don't forsee any issues with griefers and random PKs without a proper motivation.

Thanks again for your input!

[Excellion]

Originally posted by Sern:

@Excellion
I see how we can live without guilds but my question about how to engage in combat without affecting karma negatively remains. If my town decides to fight another town how does the game know or understand our grouping? Will the game treat our fight between two towns as murder and therefore damage all our karma even though it may have been declared? As long as there is some way for two entities, obviously not guilds since it's not possible, to declare themselves as enemies and fight without karma loss I'm happy.

As far as i am aware there is no system in-game that allows you to divide people into groups. While you can definately play together i believe there is no way to form two groups and declare war on eachother without the related alignment loss. In other words: I believe there is no way to evade the alignment hit from murdering someone.

If i read the various pages correctly i think there is a bit of a limiter availible if you intend t run a dedicated server. The skill loss from 0 alignment should be 5-6, while the skill loss from -50 alignment is -11. Having -1000 alignment on the other hand would cause a -636 skill loss which is massive.

There are two sidenotes to this:
- According to the wiki, killing someone with -50 or more alignment will not cause any alignment drop. Effectively -50 should be the cap if that assumption is right.
- The database for the game itself runs on a MySQL (MariaDB) instance and from what i gathered it can be freely accessed. I would have to look into it but i believe karma is just stored in the database itself, and if it is indeed accesible like any other database (I suspect it is) you could simply alter it to void karma entirely. And if it is truely accesible i have a hunch that some custom database scripting could set up a system where people can be divided into different sides with karma loss only affecting other side members.

I am definately not sure on the second suggestion but seeing i noticed the devs mentioned they don't mind tinkering around i doubt the database itself is walled off in some way. Even the games dedicated server console just displays the executed querys in plain text which suggests that at least a hard karma reset is possible (Though it might even support some more interesting setups).

[Sern]

Thanks again for your reply. Based on what you've said I feel comfortable about the fact we can just tweak karma as needed. I like their karma system and don't see a need to nullify it but I was just worried about how non-guild combat would affect it.

My new concern, based upon some topics I've read in these forums, is related to the combat. I've heard it's completely broken and everything in between. Since it's a large part of the game, I feel like we should wait a bit longer until some of these issues have been fixed and it's polished. I'm pretty patient when it comes to early access games. I say give the devs as much time as possible to make it the best it can be. Good things in life take time to mature.

Are you able to weigh in on combat? Have you tried it out much yet? I heard some people crashed while entering combat, had desync problems, or just problems with hitbox detection.

[Reaganomicon]

The devs stated that LIFYO will be moddable. Given that it's written in Torque and all of the fun bits are in Torquescript, their permission is more or less a convenience.

The combat in the current build is horribly janky, but it varies from build to build. Overall, it's getting better.

[Sern]

Cool, thanks for that. I heard it was moddable which is why I was a bit confused about the restrictions put into place for private servers. I figured, why put in restrictions if those restrictions can just be circumvented with mods?

Combat is still important to us but honestly our community is going to maintain a larger focus on town building, character building, relationships between characters, and minor power struggles between guilds (even though the game won't recognize them at the moment).

Our other issue is getting the server-side software to run on our Debian OS dedicated server. It's got the specs to run everything we need with max players connected but since the game was only made to work with Windows OS servers it'll require some tweaking.

We're going to give Wine a try and hope that does the trick. If not, I'm afraid we'll all have to wait for the MMO version and hope that there's a dedicated MMO server for those who want to roleplay and that RP can somehow be enforced to some extent. That's part of the reason we'd like a private server. This is a small dev team so I don't see how they could possibly moderate such large numbers of players effectively. We already have a community and team of mods capable of doing just that.

But we're not willing to purchase a separate server just so we can run Windows OS. So let's hope Wine fits the bill.