Punish "Blood Moon" Avoiders

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Dabeeto

New member
For live servers (not private games), it's a problem that players will log out for the night. Players that log out should be punished. My suggestion (to keep things fair), is that if a player has had (daytime hours of 7 days without a blood moon) that not only is every night an attempted blood moon, but they should be inflicted with a debuff that can only be cleared by participating in a blood moon (being logged on for the full night). The debuff could be something thematic like "hunted" where difficult mobs (like feral) are spawned near the player that are already "agroed" and cannot easily be de-agroed. If the player runs from them like in a vehicle, they just despawn and respawn when the player isn't in a vehicle. These mobs should have a drop rate of 0% in order to insure people don't "want" the debuff (for looting purposes).

 
I always thought that blood moons should have higher rewards but I cannot agree that people ought to be punished for avoiding them. I would like to see the addition of unique or lore style items that can only be picked up by the person that killed the zombie that dropped it and cannot be traded to another player. A good option might be something like a book that you can read for a bonus 5 skill points, or have an attribute increased by a couple ranks.

There are plenty of ways to reward people for fighting the hordes rather than punishing them.

Besides, how does it really hurt you if they skip out on the horde? Not like their zombies get redirected to you making your horde harder....

 
While I agree with increasing challenge level on things which have become too easy (not challenging), I do NOT agree with punishing players for alternate play styles or choices, or choosing not to play. Yes, avoiding a fight, and thus the associated loot and xp, is a choice. Players should have more choices, not less. Forcing anyone to die over and over in a spawnkill loop is NEVER a fun experience (unless you're a sadist), but is 100% what can be expected when someone who is unprepared is forced to fight a blood moon horde, without being able to run, logout or otherwise avoid.

If you truly want to be FAIR (from a game design perspective), challenges should scale to the READINESS of the individual. Challenges should also offer a useful reward which scales to the DIFFICULTY of overcoming the challenge, as well as equal REIMBURSEMENT for materials spent. Yes, avoidance is one way of (temporarily) overcoming/bypassing/skipping a challenge, but deserves no additional reward.

Having stated my stance, I would say the best way to accomplish what you want is to create a Buff that all MP players start with, which lasts through death/respawn. Let's call it the "Blood Moon Plague", which turns you into a zombie after 8 days, if untreated. The treatment requires obtaining 20x "blood moon zombie bile" to craft a Cure, which are no-trade quest items obtained only by killing blood moon zombies...

 
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Having stated my stance, I would say the best way to accomplish what you want is to create a Buff that all MP players start with, which lasts through death/respawn. Let's call it the "Blood Moon Plague", which turns you into a zombie after 8 days, if untreated. The treatment requires obtaining 20x "blood moon zombie bile" to craft a Cure, which are no-trade quest items obtained only by killing blood moon zombies...
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That's a great idea.

Ok, so the point of the "punishment" is to promote fairness (and proper play) on servers where that matters. TBH, I'm not much of a pvper, but it's such a rampant behavior, the devs really need to do something about it. Also, in terms of "readiness" the idea is that it's keeping track of how many daylight hours the player has logged, and therefore they've had the same number of hours as everyone else...

 
If you ask me, Blood moon hordes are a single player / local save coop feature. In a dedicated multiplayer server, it is way to easy to avoid and/or miss it due to various factors.

With the exception of random Blood Moon frequency, those who play less will be more at a disadvantage (e.g. less time to prepare compared to others who play more)

Also, since game time (e.g. 60/90/120 minute days) doesnt sync with real time, it is challenging for players to coordinate when to all be on at the same time for a Blood Moon Horde.

Imagine a player who plays on day 1 and doesnt log back into the game until day 7 (default blood moon frequency). This player only has a few options to choose from in order to survive in which case it is not surprising that logging off is a popular choice.

With that said, it doesnt feel right that a punishment is deserved. Food for thought.

 
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If you ask me, Blood moon hordes are a single player / local save coop feature. In a dedicated multiplayer server, it is way to easy to avoid and/or miss it due to various factors.
With the exception of random Blood Moon frequency, those who play less will be more at a disadvantage (e.g. less time to prepare)

Also, since game time (e.g. 60/90/120 minute days) doesnt sync with real time, it is challenging for players to coordinate when to all be on at the same time for a Blood Moon Horde.

Imagine a player who plays on day 1 and doesnt log back into the game until day 7 (default blood moon frequency). This player only has a few options to choose from in order to survive in which case it is not surprising that logging off is a popular choice.

With that said, it doesnt feel right that a punishment is deserved. Food for thought.
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Well, Gamestage inherently balances the game against your progress and success. If you log out on day one after barely doing anything, and don't log in again till day 7, and get caught up in a horde with little time to prepare- Simply put, you have a wooden club, and the games basically going to throw a handful of zombies at you; 1-8 at most, because you didn't spend 7 days accruing game stage. You're on a tight timer, of course; But, you're getting a horde equivalent to less than 60 minutes worth of gamestage; Not one geared to a player who had been active for 7 days.

On the main topic of the thread... Simply put, I think avoiding the horde should be punished, somehow; Or more heavily incentivized to engage rather than avoid. I dont know what could be done or how it could be implemented that would be fair about it...but. There exists an option called 'Blood moon frequency' that can be set to 0; Disabling horde night entirely. This setting is the option for people who don't want to deal with horde nights; And more power to them.

But to play on a server with horde nights enabled means horde night is something you should be experiencing- And so cheesing your way out of it by logging out or whatever method is used is a bit ridiculous and should have some method of encouraging the player to actually Play the game with the mechanic as intended(Or to discourage the player from the abuse, as may be.) ; Or to play a server where the hordes are disabled.

 
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Instead of a punishment for missing the blood moon there should be an incentive to play more hours. It would have to an incentive that mostly benefits the player during the blood moon night otherwise it will just be exploited.

For example, the player receives a buff that increases in potency the longer they have played between blood moon hordes (e.g. increased damage and/or loot drops to/from blood moon zeds)

 
I do not think punishing the player for avoiding the blood moon is a good idea, because some folks just dont play often and log out for days and miss 3 or 4 blood moons, and they will be punished for that. I think we should reward players for completing the blood moon. This should be done that they stay in the blood moon day for at least a quarter of the time the event starts. If you die with the buff or during the buildup of the buff, your timer gets reset and you must wait another quarter of the time. After the 7th day they get some reward for the day after the moon. the buff should be called some that sounds like "filled with hope" or "survivor's inspiration."

For the entire next day people with the reward (blood moon buff) should have something like:

- double xp (early game this is nice, but later on i can see how useless it can be)

- crafting/repair cost less materials (or crafting anything costs less and repairing is free)

- much better loot rewards (searchable things are refreshed regardless of the refresh timer, and you get the chance for better loot)

this list is just an idea, hopefully someone likes it and can add to it?

 
I disagree, it is not fair punish a unprepared player for avoiding bloodmoon, how about that guy who have only 50 bullets? And the other who have wooden base? Npt fair.

 
For live servers (not private games), it's a problem that players will log out for the night. Players that log out should be punished. My suggestion (to keep things fair), is that if a player has had (daytime hours of 7 days without a blood moon) that not only is every night an attempted blood moon, but they should be inflicted with a debuff that can only be cleared by participating in a blood moon (being logged on for the full night). The debuff could be something thematic like "hunted" where difficult mobs (like feral) are spawned near the player that are already "agroed" and cannot easily be de-agroed. If the player runs from them like in a vehicle, they just despawn and respawn when the player isn't in a vehicle. These mobs should have a drop rate of 0% in order to insure people don't "want" the debuff (for looting purposes).
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Avoiding blood moons has its place. One is not always prepared and need hide.

I do agree online people abuse the limitations of code tho.

I personally just set a warning on my server telling people if they continuously log out right before a blood moon, ill ban them off the server. (Logs show what day it is when people log out so its not hard to find abusers)

Then ppl just dont play on that server.

In short- ALOT of children play this game and are super bad at it and die.... ALOT.

Itd be bad for newbies and pros alike.

If you dislike this abuse, make your own server and police it yourself. Otherwise, deal.

Its quite simple that the pimps cant really FORCE anyone to do what they want in the game without killing the fun some people have.

The main reason this game is so badass in my opinion are all the selectable options and ability to play the same game many, many differnt ways.

What you suggest is genuinely a great idea for a mod tho.

 
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I do not think punishing the player for avoiding the blood moon is a good idea, because some folks just dont play often and log out for days and miss 3 or 4 blood moons, and they will be punished for that. I think we should reward players for completing the blood moon. This should be done that they stay in the blood moon day for at least a quarter of the time the event starts. If you die with the buff or during the buildup of the buff, your timer gets reset and you must wait another quarter of the time. After the 7th day they get some reward for the day after the moon. the buff should be called some that sounds like "filled with hope" or "survivor's inspiration."
For the entire next day people with the reward (blood moon buff) should have something like:

- double xp (early game this is nice, but later on i can see how useless it can be)

- crafting/repair cost less materials (or crafting anything costs less and repairing is free)

- much better loot rewards (searchable things are refreshed regardless of the refresh timer, and you get the chance for better loot)

this list is just an idea, hopefully someone likes it and can add to it?
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I feel like the pimps are going to address many of these concerns in A19 based upon my snooping of news.

I think blood moons in general should afford SLIGHTLY more xp than the avg fight.

Traps and such should give scaling xp- Wood spikes 20% of kill, iron 30%, electric covered already via perks. (Dart traps should give 50% at all times- they are EXTREMELY hard to properly use.)

Blood moons in general should drop WAY more ammo/loot bags.

I dont think removing repair costs is healthy but I do think 1hit full repairs are.

This is basically gona give players incentive to participate in blood moons MUCH more offten.

I cannot tell you how many BM i have to bypass simply because my ammo stocks just cannot handle it. lol

 
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I'm sure they will fine tune blood moon hordes. They want to bring back Horde Mode at some point and it makes sense that when they do they do a beefy update to the Blood Moon horde event. I personally like the idea of obtaining a needed serum by participating in Blood Moon. That sounds interesting. But it should be a serum that can also be purchased or shared. Nobody should be forced to participate or even perform at a specific level of success or face losing. Participating in the Blood Moon event should be the main way to get the serum but if someone wants to log off and then come back the next day and purchase the serum or has a buddy who has enough to spare then that should be fine.

 
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I always thought that blood moons should have higher rewards but I cannot agree that people ought to be punished for avoiding them. I would like to see the addition of unique or lore style items that can only be picked up by the person that killed the zombie that dropped it and cannot be traded to another player. A good option might be something like a book that you can read for a bonus 5 skill points, or have an attribute increased by a couple ranks.
There are plenty of ways to reward people for fighting the hordes rather than punishing them.

Besides, how does it really hurt you if they skip out on the horde? Not like their zombies get redirected to you making your horde harder....
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I totally agree. Positive reinforcement is proven to be a better incentive, so increasing the rewards would be a great idea for making the blood moon more enticing. Maybe the supply drop plane could drop some goody bags after the horde ends or something like that.

 
i really like the positive reinforcement angle of this...

one of those things where you get a small buff for the next week, or a big buff for the

next day, while you are "riding the high" of successfully fending off the nasties..

 
12pack said:
i really like the positive reinforcement angle of this...

one of those things where you get a small buff for the next week, or a big buff for the

next day, while you are "riding the high" of successfully fending off the nasties..
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The two-ish perk points from the horde night leveling is a pretty substantial buff already, especially if you're averaging >1 level/day because levels after that net you twice as many perk points per gamestage.

 
Cernwn said:
Having stated my stance, I would say the best way to accomplish what you want is to create a Buff that all MP players start with, which lasts through death/respawn. Let's call it the "Blood Moon Plague", which turns you into a zombie after 8 days, if untreated.
Click to expand...
But the buff lasts 8 days of playtime for each player? Or ingame time?

Regulary bloodmoon every sunday is a game mechanic, that is completely incompatible with multiplayer on open servers. So assuming game time is always running, because there is at least one player online every time and the server is using standard 60min days, a bloodmoon will happen every 7 hours. So e.g. bloodmoon on one day will happen at 19pm and you come home from work and start playing at 18:30. What do you do if you have nothing prepared because you haven't had time to play since your last bloodmoon?

Next bloodmoon is at 2am, but you have to quit at 1am, because you have to go to work next day. Did you skip the bloodmoon intentionally and need to be punished for that?

Next bloodmoon happens at 9am. You just log on quickly at 8am before going to work, just to put stuff in your forge and workbench and log off again. Did you again skip the bloodmoon intentionally?

Next bloodmoon than happens at 16pm but you just come home from work at 17pm. You just missed bloodmoon...

So yeah, it's easy to intentionally avoid a bloodmoon that way, but there are various other reasons why you can't play a bloodmoon.

If you want to have "global events" that affect all players at the same time in a multiplayer game, you ALWAYS encounter the problem, that player simply log off if they are not interested in the event and nobody can force them to attend the event.

If you are introducing buffs for played bloodmoons like 2 attribute points, you are basically nerfing every player that doesn't have time to play 24/7. In the above setting you have ~3 BMs per day, that makes 6 missed attribute points for every player that can't play on day!

The "problem" also occurs on smaller servers and also is the reason why we stopped playing the game in larger groups (>4 players). Either you only play if every participant has time to play, which (for us) results in only being able to play 2-3h per week, or you continue playing without the full group which leads to players getting decoupled. Most times these people stop playing completely as the game progresses because it isn't really fun playing with people that are 30 levels ahead and with that massively pushing gamestage.

That is also the reason, why i am completely NOT interested in playing on larger public servers. I'd probably do if bloodmoon is turned off and difficulty increased in other ways.

 
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Dabeeto said:
For live servers (not private games), it's a problem that players will log out for the night. Players that log out should be punished. My suggestion (to keep things fair), is that if a player has had (daytime hours of 7 days without a blood moon) that not only is every night an attempted blood moon, but they should be inflicted with a debuff that can only be cleared by participating in a blood moon (being logged on for the full night). The debuff could be something thematic like "hunted" where difficult mobs (like feral) are spawned near the player that are already "agroed" and cannot easily be de-agroed. If the player runs from them like in a vehicle, they just despawn and respawn when the player isn't in a vehicle. These mobs should have a drop rate of 0% in order to insure people don't "want" the debuff (for looting purposes).
Click to expand...
How are players logging out a problem to you personally? This is as petty as me saying "I don't like chocolate/alcohol, therefore everyone should be punished for liking them", it lacks reasoning, acceptance, consciousness and the fact that players don't have to (or want to) play in a way that you personally enjoy.
It's actually an advantage for players who AREN'T PARTICIPATING in horde nights to log out so zombie server caps aren't wasted, this means more zombies spawning, much faster waves and lower server lag.

Multiple times I've logged out after finishing a horde night, only to log in again and it be horde night again and because recovering from horde nights can take IRL hours of work, I'll just log out. Other times I've joined a server only to find out it's horde night and I have 3-10 minutes to prepare and doing a horde night is impossible. Does your solution fix these problems? No, infact they make these real world situations far worse. 

Honestly, I find horde night boring at times (because at high level the challenge actually disppears with an established base or high level character), 7days is also more than just horde nights and sometimes players would rather focus on completing their build/quest in peace than dealing with hordes every single time.

 
Here's a solution.  Award skill points for killing blood moon zombies.  If that doesnt increase participation not sure what other incentive will work lol...




 
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