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Post #1Might have been discussed elsewhere on these forums, but since Rust is in this genre I thought it was relevant to post in here.
FrankieonPCin1080p had some good commentary about this issue in the h1z1 video below. Skip to 7:52mark.
http://youtu.be/s96Hi-44Fp4?t=7m52s
The basic gist is survivor games by making every person have the same abilities, don't require people working together when in real life they would. Since death has no real cost, killing other people is the easiest thing to do versus working with another. This turns these games into combat only COD with survival/crafting elements. Hence why you have a portion of the audience who prefer legacy because it was limited to a deathmatch.
Some of his ideas are making classes where people have to work with one another in order to survive the environment. Versus a "Newman" who can craft most everything once a blueprint is required. There is nothing currently making the game (and what I see on the mindmap), that would make working with other players more beneficial than killing them and taking their stuff. (Maybe under "Better Co-Op play?)
Anyhow its worth a listen if nothing else even if you don't agree. No need to watch the video itself versus the audio. Probably the closest to what Frankie is thinking of is Life Is Feudal:Your Own.
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I don't have time to watch the video right now but I agree completely with the general idea of what you said. It should always be possible to kill people if you want to, of course, but there needs to be more reason NOT to always kill everyone.
I also just had a potentially good idea as well. I need to think about this...
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This is something I feel life is feudal has done better than most games. In life is feudal, individuals don't really have a ton of things to give someone who kills them, their benefit is mostly in what they have built(towns) and their skills they have achieved.
In rust, you kill someone, they could have 30,000 wood 200 bullets, and a bunch of metal in their pocket.
In life is feudal, you kill someone, they will probably have some stone tools, some dirt, a 12 sticks and a used condom in their pocket.
Basically life is feudal (at least in theory "no sieges implemented") sort of protects individuals by not letting their value be in their pockets, while allowing battles between civilizations for long term benefits(a gold mine for example). Along with that, their karma system acts as an extra buffer, causing higher skill loss from death for people who shoot unarmed fleeing enemies in their backs.
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I'm not sold on the skills idea, because it puts those that want to play solo at a disadvantage. I'd be more interested in something like psychological effects that are directly related to how many innocent players you've killed. Maybe if you've managed to kill 100 innocent players you've gone so crazy that you can't help but howl at the moon at night, signalling you as a threat and convincing other players that killing you is the "right" thing to do reducing or completely negating the psychological effects placed on whoever kills you.
I think the trick is to even the playing field. Make it known from a distance who the KoS'ers are and you take away their advantage. You don't want to restrict their ability to KoS because if that's the way they like to play then you just stopped the game from being fun. Taking away the advantage could lessen the amount of those who do so for safety concerns.
Of course putting a system like that in Rust would complicate raid defense and/or be bypassed entirely by suiciding or getting a buddy to kill you once in a safe place. So now you have to account for defending ones property and make death a harsher penalty and I'm fresh out of ideas.
Edit: In retrospect, my howling example would be a punishment and should be ignored. The idea is not to give away their position, just to know when you find them whether they are hostile or not.
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DayZ recently sorta introduced that with cannabilism. There is a 25% chance you catch a detrimental disease that will make your character start to cry or laugh for no reason.
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Yeah I was thinking of posting that video here 2 days ago. Frankie made some excellent points on why KoS is the easy and popular way of playing.
To be honest I think skill sets and developing skills is definitely something that should be thought about to implement in Rust. It's realistic to me at least, if you do something often you develop skill in it and become valuable to others other than your loot.
Of course you don't want to restrict people from KoS'ing or giving them a direct disadvantage or punishment for doing so but I don't feel like communities will be big/strong enough to be able to battle against the easy KoS style of playing. I'm not sure what but I feel like something more has to be done, indirectly probably, to discourage KoS'ing or rather encourage player interaction.
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I think the lack of player restrictions in some instances can hamper emergent gameplay vs welcome it. The devs have already encountered this with needing to create the artificial system of cupboards.
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Yeah that's the key, I remember posting here before saying something like games need to make the person potentially more valuable than what they might be carrying.
It's a fundamental thing that probably won't change without a major re-thinking in core concepts, and also requires taking the risk of possibly alienating large numbers of players. The more cooperation your game encourages, the more it will probably limit a solo player. As a mostly solo player I can sympathize. I might be turned off from a game if I can't make consistent reliable friends (same timezones etc etc) which then limits me, such as not being able to ever build a decent sized home. Yes that's realistic, but also kinda sucks :).
It's also a mechanical problem. You could limit movement speed to make trying to kill someone with a melee weapon far more dangerous, but that will make other things like travel frustrating. Since games cannot make movement and lethality/injury highly realistic without making the overall game annoying, trying to kill someone is less risky, so we get the typical combat that looks like it should be set to Benny Hill music :).
Speed both in movement and general time required to accomplish tasks is a huge barrier to coop play. In real life more people means accomplishing tasks faster, but to an extent that it might make virtually impossible things possible. If we simulate that more in a game, we encourage cooperation, but then those tasks will become far too frustrating for solo players or small groups.
Then of course we have the always present problem of death penalty. You can make the death penalty incredibly high to discourage taking such risks, but then it just won't fly with most players.
We also have our basic human behaviour. I think there are 2 major factors here. One is simply what many multiplayer gamers enjoy most, the feeling that they outsmarted/outplayed/defeated the other players. The other which plays into the first is the short term reward situation which is pretty standard in all games multiplayer or not. Kill-on-sight delivers rewards a lot sooner and easier than trying to team up.
So I look back over what I wrote and it's like all reasons why player cooperation will never work in these games :). That's now what I intended, it can be done, it's just going to require some new thinking and as I said some big risks.
Oh, realism, that's often used as the argument for a PvP focus, it certainly is with Rust. The problem there is people want realism in some ways and not in others. But yeah in the end it's all about having fun.
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I feel like cave-creatures that require more people to beat are examples of how to encourage teaming up rather than KoS'ing. Maybe a few very harsh biomes that are incredibly hard to survive alone.
Dunno, more challenges in PvE can really help discourage KoS'ing I think :\
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There are some very basic game mechanics that can be added to any game suffering from this problem, however Rust just got rid of one of the best reasons to team up they had.
Requiring the time for hammering to build your base was a reason to invite new players into your group. It will help you get done faster.
I remember watching a thing on Journey by Jenova Chen.
He explains in great detail why people are aggressive towards each other, and the things he tried to get people to work together.
Loneliness and Depression:
Like the comfort of a fire, the comfort of another person is a crucial part of the human psyche. If you watched the show survivor man, this is something that he talked about a lot. Making it so being in the presence of other players removes the loneliness trait.
Depression has physical symptoms. If the game were to reflect some sort of negative effect of being alone and depressed, it would encourage players to play together.
Edit
To discourage players from just standing by another player long enough to gain the comfort bonus, put in a mechanism to remove the comfort gained if they are killed while in the comfort zone.
This would also possible compel players to protect each other.
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If you want to KOS go play Call of Duty or some other generic FPS. Rust is focused on surviving, and cooperation is a key to surviving.
And if you play solo you're just gonna get raided anyway, good luck defending your house against a group of five.
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Try reading next time, it'll make that mass of characters mean something. I have honestly no idea how you got "I want to KoS" from a message specifically directed towards ways to take away the advantage of killing on sight. Do you not think groups of KoSers exist? Solo play isn't the advantage they have, shooting folks without any reason or regard is. If some KoSer is howling at the moon two hundred yards away friendly folks now enjoy the same advantage to take them out instead of waiting for them to fire first.
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No matter how many people think this or say this doesn't necessarily make it true.
Also, KOS and cooperating are not mutually exclusive. A lot of groups in Rust cooperate in KOS'ing.
Not dying from roving groups who like to KOS to get your stuff is a key component of survival in Rust's genre, at least, that's what the popular fiction in the genre has indicated.
There were lots of suggestions during legacy development to reduce KOS. My favorite is to provide an indication of what people are carrying or holding. Nakeds can be carrying a shotgun, waiting for you to turn your back before blowing your head off from behind. If I could tell that someone truly had nothing dangerous on them or had nothing of value, I'd be more likely to leave them alone.
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That is a very contrived approach. One thing garry has said he wants to avoid is systems that directly punish players for killing, or have the motive of signaling a player is a murderer. On top of that, you would have to define "innocent". What makes a player "innocent"?
If you look back at my post about gaining comfort from the presence of other players, you can see how to create a mechanism to make not killing someone a reward.
Think of mechanics like a forge that requires 2 people working the bellows. These sort of things that will require more and more people will drive the need and desire to play together.
If you reworked the cupboard system to link with other player's cupboards in the area, that gives some sort of bonus for having more cupboards from different players. You could encourage building townships.
This is explicitly against the direction of the game laid out by garry
It really comes down to making the mechanics in the game reward cooperative play. You can't worry about if it puts those that want to play solo at a disadvantage. Playing solo SHOULD be a disadvantage in certain areas.
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Hm, yea I bet you could make a forced teamwork kind of thing if you made it have a shit load of health and let players sort of stumble it with large amounts of simultaneous damage (a pipe shotgun for example) You would need a couple of players to kite and stumble it (if not stumbled, it moves a good deal faster than a player) and make it so it could kill a player in the time it takes them to reload if they were soloing it with a pipe shotgun.
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First off, if we're going to argue Garry's position on the game then encouraging groups is no less against it than encouraging friendliness. The whole point of this topic is to discourage KoS, even if you're trying to do so in a roundabout way that simply won't work. Groups already KoS! Not only that, now that my forge needs two people I can't even avoid players due to trust issues. I have to walk head first into death over and over until I find a nice person or I simply can't play. You don't need to encourage groups, they encourage themselves. 5vs1 is always good odds regardless of whether you're shooting at folks or trying to quickly build a secure base.
Edit: This is in response to utilitron. Sorry, I'm a slow typer. =P
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There is a really good case study on this for the game Ultima Online. They have bosses called champions
There are several facets to UO serves, the champ spawns on the pvp facet are regularly watched and raided. Players will wait to steal a champ spawn from other groups, and murder everyone in their way.
On the pve facets people just steal the champ.
The idea that a NPC will create cooperative play is really a fallacy. There needs to be a sense of risk vs reward. In order to compel players to kill a monster the rewards must be worth the risk. If there are rewards worth fighting for, players will just kill each other for them.
Creating a game mechanism that encourages not killing is not the same as discouraging killing.
The real question is why do they KOS? The mentality of KOS is misunderstood. Everyone blames the COD kids for this behavior, but if you watched the video he said in his game that's what they thought to, but then his co workers started doing it too. Its not about gaining in game rewards. it's about empowerment.
That's a bit of illogical argument. You certainly CAN play without the forge. You then become a trader and trade for what you need from a forge. The forge becomes bargaining power.
If you havn't watched the video I posted, i urge you to do so. It contains a lot of really good information on the subject.
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I would just wait until people killed the creature and then KOS them, get the creature's loot, AND steal their shit.
Real live human players are the ultimate enemy.
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You're not encouraging not killing, you're encouraging having a teammate (or rather discouraging playing alone). That already happens, plenty of people KoS with a team.
What are the CoD kids? That's a dumb thing to blame it on, I've played CoD and I don't need the fire flower power up in every Mario game to satisfy my interests. As far as empowerment goes, we generally call that grief. Just because his particular game didn't give any benefits doesn't mean he's singled out the lone reason for a lack of cooperation, power gamers that are evident in just about any other game don't just cease to exist. The safest and quickest route in Rust is to shoot anyone you don't already know.
Oh right, I should be a trader and that's totally not covered in the part where I said "walk head first into death over and over" before that "or" that you seem to have missed.
I'm not sure I'm going to gleam much from their research if their original idea was "lol CoD kids." I'm not sure anyone talking about this on the forum even watched Frankie's video as he touched on things like not letting anyone decide their skills, but most are discussing stuff he already directed us past. If your forge's requirement is just two people the only thing you have done is make the game more difficult for solo players by cutting game features away from them. If it requires two blacksmiths and you can't decide your skills then you've potentially saved lives until the group has found their blacksmiths assuming everything else goes to plan. If you want to encourage grouping encourage grouping, but know that it comes at the detriment of solo play and it will have minimal if any effect on KoS.
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The KOS problem, if you want to call it that, is two-fold:
1: Players offer little or no value to a stranger except in the form of the loot that they carry.
2: Abundant ammo combined with fast healing make fighting a nearly no-risk situation.
It's all reward and no risk. Why WOULDN'T you kill everyone? You get everything that they have and even if you are injured you can just heal back up and in 2 seconds you're ready to go again. Unless you flat out die there is no risk or consequence to fighting. In fact the only risk is NOT killing somebody and taking the chance as to whether or not they will return the favor.
I don't want to hijack this thread but this issue did insire me to come up with some ideas which might help with this situation. It can be found at http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1442267 for anyone who is interested.
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I think you're spot on in identifying the "problem," but I think your suggestions will probably feed into more of it. More penalty to death is more reason not to trust the other guy, and I don't see the point of the skills (interesting as your idea for them is) aside from being a bigger death penalty. The health thing is interesting too. I don't see it adding to the "problem," but I'm not sure how much it would help.
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I'm not sure how much my ideas would help either. I think the ammo and health change has potential.
The thought is that if bullets are extremely rare you are more likely to save them for defense, raiding, or emergencies. Fight using bows or hand weapons would be far more common and since these fights are slower and closer it greatly increases the chance of taking at least some damage. The slow health regen then forces you to deal with the consequences of that damage for a meaningful amount of time.
It's not really about the first fight but rather the unexpected fight or wolf attack 5 minutes later while you're still at an HP disadvantage. If you're just wandering the map fighting everybody you see it's eventually going to catch up to you.
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Specifically with the forge example, maybe, but the idea as a whole that being around other players and not killing them increases your comfort and prevents depression does encouraging not killing, and doesn't discouraging playing alone.
The fact of the matter is that being around other people in a survival situation will lift your spirits, and depression can have real physical effects.
That's not really what I said... or is in the video. Had you watched the video you would know that wasn't the point.
oXYnary's OP also talked about the COD play style and was part of the basis for why KOS is such a big thing.
So when you look at the way people play games, like they did for Journey, and realize that the same play style emerges even if there is no reward for killing the other player, then you need to look beyond the in game systems for the answer.
From the video, talking about adding physics so players could push each other to help them up over obstacles and such:
I did watch the video. You seem to be hung up on the forge example, but that wasn't really the point of my OP. If you read it again, It was way more about creating a positive effect from being near other players and turning them into a resource. In fact that is one of the things Frankie touch on when he brought up I am legend.
I think if you drop the work skills and replace it with blueprints, you change they way people will react to the idea.
RPG style "skills" have no place in rust. But if each player starts with a random set of blueprints and server blueprint drops are rare enough, it will make more sense to find people with the blueprints you need. And if every time you die your blueprints reset, it puts value on your life.
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I feel like making ammo/weapons ridiculously expensive helps to discourage people to go out and just kill everyone they see. I don't really know how this affects the end game where a lot of rich groups are on a server that have enough resources to just go out and do this anyway.
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You're still missing the point entirely. You're encouraging not killing one person that may be a benefit to you, in a game already dominated by teams of KoSers. They go on like nothing happens and solo players, whether KoSers or not, face the detriments of depression. When a toilet gets clogged you don't plunge the sink because it's nearby. If you want to add depression for realism fine, but it doesn't do anywhere near as much for anti KoS as it does for anti solo play. If you just added depression for everyone who had an odd numbered Steam ID you gets some KoSers as well.
Get real, that video is 40 minutes long. I wouldn't expect you to watch a Dwarf Fortress tutorial playlist that's ten hours long just so you can hear from the horses mouth that a player takes the path of least resistance. =P
He did not blame it on CoD if that's what you're trying to say. He talked about the CoD playstyle as a reference for what happens when the players find the path of least resistance in Rust. It's an after effect example, not a cause. There's no other viable option in CoD, killing is how you're supposed to play and failing to do so will punish you with less rewards after the match.
Yeah, it's called griefing in online games. I've been griefed by a buddy in Rust. It doesn't make him evil, but he was being mean in that moment. Lots of people have that type of relationship with friends, it's fun because someone suffers. You don't just classify these friends as mean and move on for the same reason nobody wants to ban KoSers, they're more fun to have around than not. If they're trying to trip you every step you take for a month though, then you might start rethinking that friendship.
I didn't care much for Frankie's point of view either, but it's like he hit a line drive to right field and a lot of people are excited he hit first base... on his way to third. =P
Your comfort example has the same problem unless you make it scale server wide, and then everyone gets depressed if one person decides to kill anyway or everyone sits in a love huddle until the end of time. Just because someone values one or two people doesn't make them value everyone, and having a couple teammates has never been detrimental in Rust and doesn't need to be encouraged.
This is encouraging KoS. If you lose more when you die, then you are less likely to be willing to die. There are players already that KoS simply because they don't want to risk dieing, and these are probably the only players we should be trying to convert. Those who enjoy battle just end up liking the game less if they have to do so at a disadvantage, but they currently have an advantage in that they can make a decision from any distance whether they want to shoot you or not (hint: they do want to shoot you =P ).
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I would almost 100% disagree. I'll address point by point.
First, "those that want to play solo". Now I understand there people who don't have IRL friends who play a game, being a "lone wolf"... but that isn't what we are talking about here. We are talking about people that CHOOSE to play solo... and If you truly wanted to play solo, with no intent on interacting with people... Go play one of the MANY survival/zombie single player games. What sets aside Rust (or DayZ, H1Z1) is the ability to group with people, to form bonds with people, to build bases with people, fight with people etc etc..
Its the same stuff I see on a MMO forum (and it irks me to no end) people get on and say stuff like "why isn't there more single player stuff" -_- .... You are playing a MMO! if you want single player, go play single player.
As far as the KOS bit, I don't really mind people KOS. I do think it would add more enjoyment to the game, if there were more mechanics to make us want to group.
Lets look at grouping up in Rust, risk vs. reward.
Risk:
They might kill you.
They might eat you.
They might troll you.
Rewards:
social interaction..
(You could also put "faster gathering resources"...but lets be honest, its not really that hard to gather stuff now)
And as far as the "KOS name tag" as a deterrent, either you are new to the internet, trolling me..or ignorant. A simple tag would not stop 99.5% of the people from KOS. I don't know how many times I've been shot, and the person volunteered the information "Schneezus123: HA DEWM I SNIPED YOU!".
But all in all, this conversation probably won't change anything in Rust. But I do wish something like a skill system would be implemented. I know alot of people (IRL) that play Rust, probably 6-7.. but the guys that I love gaming with the most 1 I met on League, the other on Rust.. and I've been gaming with both of them over a year now... So I love the opportunity to meet new people and develop relationships, that sometimes transfer to other games etc...
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Playing solo is not the same has having no intent on interacting with people.
I play solo a lot on Rust, but I wouldn't if my intent was to not interact with people. I kill people, I raid people, I temporarily align with people, I temporarily help people, etc. There is a huge difference between playing a lone wolf (whether by choice or by the lack of ability to develop trust when servers are wiped once a week and players come and go like the weather) and playing single player.
If you make it too hard to play solo, you will lose a big chunk of your player base, which will affect everyone playing. There's a difference between not trying to balance out natural disadvantages in playing solo and actively choosing mechanics that make solo difficult.
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i play solo. doesn't mean i don't interact with other players, just that i like to do my own thing. i make a little base the way i want it, make the stuff i want, and if i get bored, wander off without having to explain myself to anyone.
i have played with too many people who really are pretty dangerous to ally with. they talk smack in the global chat, they raid people who were otherwise peaceful trade partners, they walk around harvesting rad animals with an m4 in the middle of the day. they leave the door open, don't build ceilings, they demand the group does *this* now. one guy insisted we make a base on the other side of the mountains (in legacy) where it took literally 30minutes of running to get back to resources. and for what? we got raided anyway XD
end game bores the shit out of me, and i'd rather make a hidden base and wander around the map giving noobs stone hatchets, making new bases and (in legacy) rushing rad sites to get some interesting stuff. raiding doesn't interest me as much as interacting; but i like fighting people, so sometimes that is a way to initiate some awesome battles.
my point is, everyone gets what they want from the game. people work in groups for various reasons, and that provides an advantage. but so does playing solo. we don't need anything applied to make either style harder.
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I prefer the solo game as well. In Legacy I had a great base over in the rocks right above the Civ Two, Mountain Pass, or whatever you want to call it. No one really did an effective raid on it because 95% of my base was a decoy filled with dummy boxes of minuscule stacks of resources. My main storage area was 1 large chest crammed into a crevice behind a wall.
Anyway, I used to just sit up in the rocks above those two small buildings sniping people as they looked in the boxes I filled with granola bars and tuna to make them take longer. So much fun!
I love trying to build clever bases and ambush/trap areas for people. Other people always want to build 40 story box towers and charge through the hills screaming and shooting. Kind of boring to me. I like the slow, deliberate, and stealthy approach.
Agree x 6
Funny x 2
Disagree x 1
Artistic x 1
Informative x 1
Dumb x 2
