folks getting upset over dying in survival MMO

[BanditWarBoss]

This game is hardcore. And also has hardcore PVP. It’s almost like people have never played a survival PVP based MMO before, such as Ark and Rust. There will be griefing, and PVP and toxicity.

Ppl need to realize what this genre is about. It’s about choosing your play style, and growing strong as a team, and progressing through the crafting/building to dominate the server.

There are many ways to avoid griefing and even consistent PvP in most cases. Move out of the starting biome. Don’t let people continue to camp your base. The farther north the better just like every other survival game. Get out of noob areas. Hide your character inside of your base so people can’t see names while your offline (if your base is large enough). There are many ways to avoid constant griefing.
Fortify your stuff. Don’t use wood, go straight for Iron.

This game is shallow with toxicity/griefing compared to most survival games on the Market.

But Alas, PVE servers coming soon.

[ai_enabled]

Thanks, guys! Yes, we're aware of ARK's approach. We don't like that when you're playing in a team the game will discourage team members from logging into the game when most other members are offline (to prevent making the base vulnerable). And this approach has several well-known exploits (such as using alt-characters to trouble other players in various ways or to get unfair defense options). Several discussions about such exploits can found on ARK forums https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/424224-official-orp-servers-exploits/
If anyone puts a land claim near your base and logout, this land claim will switch into ORP mode after 15 minutes and it will be impossible to get rid off (creating major trouble when you will need to expand the base). Without serious rework of the land claims system (and, probably, doors access), it's not viable to implement a system like this.
We're open to discussion and I welcome everyone on our Official Discord server to provide the ideas and discuss them in detail. Maybe we can figure out a better solution—if not for all servers, but at least for a moderated community server like CryoSmall (for solo/duo gameplay only), where abuse of ORP would be obvious and punishable.


I wish there was a reliable non-abuseable solution for offline raiding protection. We've spent several weeks researching this and considering solutions but there is none. Multiple ownership of a land claim/base is a serious obstacle.
Also, it's important to note, that being raided while offline is certainly not fun, but on the other hand, being able to raid a stronger opponent while it's offline is sometimes essential, especially if you're outnumbered. For example, in Rust developers are totally against any kind of offline protection and many players are actually supporting this.
For example https://www.reddit.com/r/playrust/comments/87u3wr/rust_offline_raid_protection_rorp/

If this system got put in place, people that are unable to defend an online raid (either not skilled enough or too badly outnumbered) are forced to decide, should I risk logging in right now?

https://www.reddit.com/r/playrust/comments/9cyl06/add_offline_raid_protection_option_for_servers/

And even if you made it so there were no offline raids, this seems extremely easy to abuse.
If there was only online raids, why wouldn't I just get the biggest group possible, and just go raid all the smallest bases possible, further killing solos and small groups? They wouldn't fight back, they would quit, and likely not play for the rest of the wipe.

So our current idea is to provide new defense options—such as turrets, traps, probably landmines. These are obviously must-have options for proper defense even if we decide to add any kind of ORP in the future.

Regards!

[Cik]

"So our current idea is to provide new defense options—such as turrets, traps, probably landmines. These are obviously must-have options for proper defense even if we decide to add any kind of ORP in the future."

Then, as a follower, that ^^ completes misses the point.

[Scourge012]

You can craft this game the way you want. It's a great game, and I'll play it regardless of what raid protection you place in. So having that said and out of the way:

You should live in the world you create. You should play your game every afternoon in your spare time, and then wake up in a few days to your base wiped and everything stolen with no effective way of getting it back. Then come to the forums and say that's okay and that you enjoyed yourself--if that's true.

If you're honest about that then we can all live with that. Like I said, I'll still play your game. It's moddable, the servers are hostable, and I can make rules for my server full of like-minded players. That's why I love your game--I love the universe and systems you've created with it too, but its customizable nature is a big draw...because I find your PvP system (and that of Rust) to be deeply flawed.

7 Days to Die, ARK, Conan Exiles...just a few big survival games with PvP elements and focuses all have different ways to make PvP fair. Are they exploitable? Sure. But any of them are better than anarchy.

For now, you've gone with a PvP timer I can customize--and that's quite frankly all I require for my private server and the players who play on it. But when you are thinking "default settings" I think you really need to play it yourself and feel the emotions yourself. "Anything is better than nothing" is probably how you'll feel.

Power gamers will smurf multiple accounts when the game is on sale...fine. You can push that back a little bit and make it so that each IP address has its own account. There's several games (ArmA 3 and DayZ) where I can set it up to do that. I'm sure some power gamer will buy multiple copies and run a VPN, you'll say. Fine. But the barrier to entry for chicanery and jackbuttery is higher.

It's like saying "I'm not gonna lock my door at night because a determined burglar will just smash the lock." Which is true...but most people aren't determined burlgars. They're just teens testing doorknobs to see if they are open and they jack your stuff quietly while you sleep because opening the door is quiet. It doesn't matter that there's a way to defeat it--make them go through the expense and effort. Lock your doors.

Edit: Regarding your comment about land claims and ORP and that in ARK. People do place foundations next to your base to limit your build area. But the game detects it's not attached to an actual structure and removes it within a resonable time frame. This forces players to build an actual base around your base to wall you in. Which is a huge time and resource sink. While this is definitely "offline PvP" behavior the fact that a wall around a land claim size area is gonna cost exponentially more than the base it surrounds balances that out. Again, I'm not pushing an ARK style system specifically. But I am saying that anything is better than nothing. The offline defender should have some sort of advantage. It doesn't really matter what that advantage is...whether it's truly hidden traps and turrets or a hard-coded no damage system. But something is better than nothing.

[ai_enabled]

Hello guys,
we've worked on the idea for offline raiding protection and proposing adding an energy shield to make the base invincible when going offline. Here are the details and discussion http://forums.atomictorch.com/index.php?topic=1449.msg7975
We're looking for your feedback!
If the idea is solid and we don't find severe exploits, we will consider including it into A26 update (to release in March or later).

[Scourge012]

I think it's a good idea. I don't have an account on your other forum...I really should be getting one, lol.

But many games have a similar system like ARK and Conan and it works and fits with the each game's theme. I think it would well here too. Even RUST, king of offline raiding has enough booby traps and autonomous turrets to protect a base. CryoFall really needs SOMETHING for offline protection.

[Kai]

Originally posted by ai_enabled:

Hello guys,
we've worked on the idea for offline raiding protection and proposing adding an energy shield to make the base invincible when going offline. Here are the details and discussion http://forums.atomictorch.com/index.php?topic=1449.msg7975
We're looking for your feedback!
If the idea is solid and we don't find severe exploits, we will consider including it into A26 update (to release in March or later).

Why not use Fallout 1's style of overworld as a means to make the game bigger, and travelling riskier but also harder to exploit, by creating a meta server that matchmake a player's region with other regions?

The map size is finite for a server and stability reasons, and there is a mod for Fallout 4 to basically simulate Fallout 1 already, which means the concept is very much usable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iuqh_uMjY0

What you can do is have a 1000 x 1000 overworld map, and then in each grid have randomly generated biomes and map layout tiles that fits in this huge world, each player owns their own instance, meaning it's single player but always online session.

When a player builds a base, he chooses a coordinate to put it in on the world map. His stealth skill determines how often another player detects and finds his 'base location' but will have to actually find the physical base on the map once they enter his 'map'.

You can make it so the map borders have a large area where you cannot build and upon running there, will exit said map.

What this all essentially is, is simulating a large game world within smaller instances of a existing game concept, Fallout 1 and 2 did this already with their overworld and random encounters.

There is a MMO called FOnline that uses Fallout 1-2's system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07hoghZKIC8

[ai_enabled]

@Kai, thanks for the suggestion. We're working on a bit different problem (as we see it) and have specific constraints. What you're suggesting is totally different concept...while it might work for some cases (by ensuring players could be far away from each other so there is a place to hide a base)...it's not viable to change the game in such way now for multiple reasons (it should have been done years ago when we've prototyped the game).

[Kai]

Originally posted by ai_enabled:

@Kai, thanks for the suggestion. We're working on a bit different problem (as we see it) and have specific constraints. What you're suggesting is totally different concept...while it might work for some cases (by ensuring players could be far away from each other so there is a place to hide a base)...it's not viable to change the game in such way now for multiple reasons (it should have been done years ago when we've prototyped the game).

Basically the concept of Stealth and Perception as a skill to detect and hide a player owned base is viable means of offline protection from them, if they can't see said base, then they can't do as they wish with said base.

A refresh period of 1 hour can be used so that a group of players cannot raid 1 player's map as it will appear and disappear from time to time, in a RNG simulated fashion, but there can be ways to track down bases in some of other forms used in RPG fashion, like warfare between 'officially' created clans or groups of players which makes the base visible to each team.

It's actually still viable to make it work with the current system. The only issue is working another layer into the client to connect which is sorta like a server browser layer. And resource and time.

Because currently a Player connects to a lobby which shows choices of servers, with the servers themselves saving the data and progress of said players that logs in.

Player's Client -> Lobby Server -> Game Server

That and currently, a 'session' is persistent, meaning the game world always remain the same and cannot dynamically change with the player progress leaving it's mark there all the time.

Because the only alternative you have now without redoing game servers structures and such, would be expanding the map so players have to travel further, but that applies more resource and pressure on said client and server.

[Kai]

I also don't see turrets and traps as viable long term deterrent, because think about it, if they busted down a wall to get into your base, if they die in the process they can come back within less than a hour to reclaim their stuff and then try again. LOL.

And raids are often usually done in groups meaning someone else can pick up the team's stuff and continue onward.

[Kai]

Foxhole has a way to handle traversal to make it less cheesy and exploitive with maps and that's using multiple large maps and linking them. But that game is more of a large scale warfare between two factions involving hundreds to thousands of players.

[BlueFenixR]

With some proper balancing of all tools required in a raid (And the addition of a few more), i would love to see a "Death Counter/Timer" during raids, meaning you can only die so much during a raid before you can't do it anymore until the raid its over and the base enters a "protection" period in which it can't be raided. Also when you die you don't "respawn" immediately but must wait a short time before being able, this gets longer and longer the more you die.

With the upcoming "Factions" systems, making something to prevent players from opposing factions to build too close to each other so they can't just prepare a small outpost near them where they can use to respawn and re-equip themselves too.

[ai_enabled]

Also when you die you don't "respawn" immediately but must wait a short time before being able, this gets longer and longer the more you die.

It's already implemented regarding the respawn on the bedroll/bed. Players can respawn in the world immediately but the respawn location could be far away from the death location.

We have a lot of ideas for the "Factions" system...such as announced raids so players from one faction cannot strike another faction immediately.

[BlueFenixR]

i see, since in the few raid picks and videos i saw there were usually a lot of bedrolls nearby which made me think they used it to respawn nearby after dying in one.