"The PvP Update"
How would the game have to be balanced to make PVP viable?
Broad strokes.
I'm no PVP player so while I can see the balance issues in the abstract, I am more of a neutral observer here. =)
Sound
As mentioned
here recently it's really hard to sneak up on someone if your food level drops below 50% or so and your character has an orgasm that can be heard from half a kilometer away.
Hiding yourself or your base is equally hard for the same reason.
Keep in mind that the notion of hiding being the
only defense can not be the base for everything. It is
one aspect!
If it can be made sufficiently hard to break into bases, hiding would not be the only viable solution.
Offline raiding / griefing vs PVP
PVP in theory:
2-5 players have an exciting time of hide and seek or assaulting someone's base.
PVP in practice:
You log in and your base has been reduced to rubble.
Every. Single. Day.
Ark has turrets and NPC (dinosaurs) and 99% of the PVP in that game looks like... you log in and your base has been reduced to rubble (and all your dinos killed).
Can NPC and turrets defend a base while the player is offline or will
having turrets and NPC only increase the impact of griefing on the victim because he
also has to rebuild turrets and find/hire NPC again?
I talked to MM about this and he does not consider a separate (and working) offline claim protection a necessity. Is that so?
(previous claim stone topic:
here)
On the 4 or 5 PVP servers were I asked no one even knew if "offline claim protection" actually
worked. (as in having a higher x than when online)
Loss and recovering from it
Okay, so you got raided and you respawn around the central hub in your undies.
Spawn spots are static so on an "established" PVP server with an "alpha tribe" you now log into the steel cages built around all the newbie spawn spots and would have to knock down the wall with your fists.
With only 2 layers you have to destroy 4 blocks for a total of 13 RL hours of punching.
You would of course starve to death and respawn in a different cage several times before you had a chance to get out of one such spot.
Oh, and before you laugh it off as a "no one would ever do that"... I logged into a PVP server, looked up, and saw this:
Land claimed, naturally. I am not making this up...
But let's say you are dedicated enough to this particular server to not quit but instead invest a few RL days to get back out of the starter cages and that the alpha tribe is terribly neglect about maintaining their cages.
Ideally you have caches of gear hidden away but let's say they were found as well.
On a PVE server where people build awesome bases
instead of trying to cave each other's heads in the resource balance works well enough.
On a PVP server... should you harvest resources faster?
I'm not talking about digging faster - but instead of getting 25 rocks and 2 iron from a stone block you might get 100 rocks and 8 iron from the same block.
If fighting players is supposed to be a substantial part of the game, base building / repair and resource harvesting needs to adjust.
Explosives / Rockets
On a PVE server, some players use TNT for mining / excavating which is no problem whatsoever.
I tried asking around on a few PVP servers today but that was a complete waste of time. No one knows ♥♥♥♥. I got a few guesses and opinions and zero usable data.
On a PVP server... how well do rockets and dynamite work?
How
many of each do you need to get through an iron / vault door or open a chest?
Does it matter which block (upper/lower/before) of a door you target?
Time management
How long in RL units should it take to knock down a steel block or door?
Right now tools and skills are really powerful.
Near 400 DPS for a steel pick so with a x8 modifier, a steel block lasts 5 minutes, a vault door 8 minutes.
Does
anyone actually do that or does everyone use explosives? (see above)
Blocks like "stone" have a
<property name="LPHardnessScale" value="2" />
If it works as designed (did not test it myself) then a stone block only has a 2x claim modifier instead of whatever the server setting is.
With a steel pick that's two hits tops so the most obvious way to attack someone's base would be to undermine it and let it collapse instead of going through the much harder front door.
Or am I missing something?
Naturally that doesn't count bedrock bases but should it be a
requirement to build at bedrock to avoid this cheesy tactic?
