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Post #1oXYnary posted this link (http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1441897) in which the host talks about why survival games are all KOS because the players themselves have no meaningful value to each other. This got me thinking and I came up with a few ideas...
Skills:
A skill system should be implemented that covers activities such as cooking, butchery, woodcutting, woodworking, carpentry, first aid, mining, smelting, fishing, tailoring, and so on. The more skilled you are at something the better, faster, or more efficiently you would perform the related actions. You might gather more resources per hit or craft items faster and at a lower cost, for example. Players would also have a menu (most likely only while dead) to adjust some sliders or allocate a fixed amount of skill points like you would in an RPG. This is common in many games but in order to keep things fair my system would have an important difference. The skill points you allocate would not change your skill level but would instead change the RATE at which you learn that skill.
All players would start with all skills at level 1 and then over time and/or with use those skills would slowly improve until eventually all players would have all skills at level 10. Everybody has all of the skills at all times and all of those skills start at level 1 and end at level 10. Nobody is ever restricted or limited from doing anything and nobody is ever at a permanent advantage or disadvantage. The difference is simply but significantly in how quickly your character improves their skills from level 1 to level 10.
The exact time scaling would have to be determined by testing but it would be slow enough that most of the players would rarely if ever reach level 10 for all of their skills. Most players would on average be at a mid-point in their progression where they might be good or great at some skills but bad or horrible at others. The difference in skill levels also does not need to be linear to equal for all actions or items. Gathering wood by hitting a tree with a rock is a fairly simple task and there probably wouldn't be a big difference between level 1 and level 10 woodcutting skill (or whatever skill is applicable). On the other hand crafting a machine gun is a complex process and the crafting time and resource requirements might have a significant curve. Lower skill levels might be slow and costly enough that it's usually not even worthwhile and there could be an increasingly large improvement even at the highest levels that really rewards players who focus on these skills and stay alive long enough to fully develop them.
The important thing in all of this is that although you don't NEED other players it would be beneficial to work together. What does it matter though if everyone will eventually get all their skills to level 10 anyways? That's where death comes in...
Death:
When you die you would lose some or possibly even all of your skill progression. It's a temporary setback but it's one that hurts. It takes time and/or effort to regain those skills and it's far better to stay alive and avoid the loss entirely. Yet at the same time if you do get killed (which has been known to happen in this game) it's not the end of the world. Things might be slower or less efficient for a while but you can still do everything.
It sounds like this could be abused but there is one other system that needs to be considered. Death is of course forever linked with life and health...
Health:
Taking damage would work the same way that it does now. Your HP is directly reduced and if it reaches 0 you die. One thing that would change in a significant way is that you would no longer be able to heal yourself (or anyone else) to recover HP. Players would ONLY be able to recover HP naturally over time. Getting wounded in a fight (even if you win) or mauled by a wolf is suddenly REALLY bad. You're that much closer to death and all you can do is wait. It might be a while too. The rate at which you recover your HP would be based on your general health status and it would be slow.
Your general health status would be another bar or indicator next to your HP bar. Your health status would range from Excellent all the way down to Dying. It represents how generally healthy and fit you are over a longer time period (as opposed to your HP which is your immediate life). This status would be adjusted by things already in the game such as Hunger, Thirst, Cold, Wet, Bleeding, Diseased, Poisoned, Radiation, Medicine, Wounds, and so on. These factors would retain their different intensities (Cold vs Very Cold, Hungry vs Starving) and could even amplify each other (Cold AND Wet or Hot AND Thirsty are much worse than any individual factor). They would also not just influence your general health status but could have immediate and direct effects on your HP. For example being very cold might quickly reduce your health status but would not directly effect your HP whereas if you are bleeding it might have a very minor effect on your general health status but a very immediate and direct effect on your HP.
The biggest impact is simply that the healthier you are the faster you recover HP. Alternatively for increasingly bad health you might lose HP until you eventually die.
Result:
So what's the point of it all?
To start with the health system makes it far more difficult to stay alive. The environment becomes your primary enemy. This is supposed to be a survival game after all. Maintaining good health will be difficult. If you don't maintain good health you don't heal. If you don't heal you die. If you die you lose your skill progression. If you lose your skill progression it becomes difficult all over again.
Staying alive and staying healthy become primary goals of the game. Working together is a good way to accomplish this. You always have all of the skills and abilities but most of the time you'll only be good at some of them. You can still solo but it will be slower and more difficult. Working with other players will speed things up and make it easier. Other players will have value to you. Not just for the loot that their carry but also for the things they can do for you.
Of course this is still Rust. Sometimes working together isn't the best way. You can still raid houses and take what you want. You can still kill anyone at any time for any reason. There is no penalty for doing so. Fighting other players will be more difficult because you can only heal naturally over time but if you're good enough you'll survive.
This would all have to be balanced of course but I think it could work. At least the health system if nothing else. I'm sure there are flaws in this system or additional improvements that could be there's bound to be something useful in here. What do you guys think?
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my greatest concern with skills always comes back to KOS and survivalism. in legacy, the players who dominated the server did so by killing literally anyone and everyone on sight, naked newspawn or another kev. this is likely to be the strongest path to "winning" in the new rust too.
skills that are lost on death become a liability to anyone competing with these people; while they are killed immediately, and never gain skill, the kev crews who are killing indiscriminately are able to quickly level their "gun" skills etc granting an even greater advantage over anyone else on the server and cementing their position of power. If the skill does not erase on death, the advantage moves to "older" players. this form is less concerning, as it kind of makes sense to be "better" if you have been around for longer.
health i like, but would simplify to the following; health regeneration depends on how much health you have, and whether there is any effect present. so >75% health with no status effect would be the fastest, less than 25% with a status effect the slowest. bandages etc would remove the status effects, effectively improving your healing, though not directly.
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I agree with the concern for sure. I think the best thing for the game (with or without my suggestions from this thread) is for gunpowder to be RARE.
What if 10 bullets was a LOT? You almost certainly wouldn't waste precious ammo on shooting naked guys or for minor issues. You'd save it for when you needed it, for defense or for raiding.
If everyone wasn't running around with unlimited ammo you'd have to use a bow, throw things, or fight hand to hand. Even if you are skilled and have good weapons and armor this is risky. Do you really want to risk losing some health, even just a little, on that naked guy who can provide you with nothing? Healing would be slow and who knows what is over the next hill. Get surprised by a wolf or startle another well equipped guy gathering resources and you could be in real trouble.
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RPG skills driven by a menu goes foursquare against garry's vision for Rust. Great idea for a mod, but not vanilla Rust.
I'd bet on zombies coming back before RPG-style skill progression were to be added.
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The idea is nice tough that will make a new type of "job" in most houses :D like a house wife a guy who wont go near any windows and outside the base and just gonna farm skills to help his buddies :D
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Would you stop being a broken record? Im sure Garry didnt want cabinets either.. Why dont you watch the video in this thread and post ideas to allow emergent gameplay that doesnt promote the easiest gamestyle. KOS.
http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1441897
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This looks worse to me for friendly players. Once you get on top it's easier to stay on top with that system, and the KoSer already has the advantage. I don't know why people turn to grouping to try to combat KoS, we already have groups of people that KoS. Let friendlies know at range that someone is a KoS'er and the advantage is gone.
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Now you'd be implementing some sort of karma system that punished killing though. Killing should not be punished. It's a legitimate strategy and should exist in the game. If somebody wants to KOS everybody they should be allowed to. If a group wants to organize and KOS everybody with even better results then they should be able to do this.
The problem right now is that KOS is really the ONLY strategy. You don't need anyone for anything and the only value another player has is the loot that they carry. Combine that with abundant ammo and you literally have no reason NOT to kill everyone you see.
KOS and killing should remain a viable strategy but it shouldn't be the ONLY strategy. I think my systems would accomplish.
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What's the punishment I'm proposing? That KoSers live in constant fear of being killed for no reason? That's how friendlies play all the time. All I'm suggesting is a way for their KoS nature to be pointed out with them, not a radar that only KoS people show up on. The advantage is that only friendlies have to bother trying to figure out if you're friendly or not, hostile players just shoot. If you're trying to encourage grouping to discourage KoSing, you're looking in the wrong direction. If you just want to encourage grouping fine, don't bother putting a coat of anti KoS paint on it.
Edit: I did propose an example in another thread that would probably give away position as opposed to letting someone know a player's intent soon <i>after</i> they were discovered. It was a quick example of an idea, not the idea itself. Sorry about that.
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This video is better: http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?...1#post46734859
He has done actual research in behavioral patterns and market research on emotions evoked in games.
It explains in the process that he went through when developing a game called Journey, in where the players were supposed to play cooperatively. However, the players testing the game didn't like or trust other players. They even had an issue where players began to murder each other, and there was no actual gain to doing that.
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"KOS'er" is a subjective description, like newbie. How are you going to identify who the "bad" people are, in order to saddle them with karmic penalties?
It can't be based on how many people you kill... PVP is the CORE gameplay mechanism. Additionally, the guard manning the wall around "FriendlyTown" could rack up tons of kills trying to drive off scavengers preying on new spawns.
It can't be based on how quickly you kill someone (kill on sight, etc.)... how does the game calculate that? Proximity bubble? Is it better to say "hi, you need any wolf meat?" and then shoot someone, than to shoot them on contact? If a player kills 10 guys while competing for a drop, should he get twice as penalized as the player who shoots 5 guys in the back while they're harvesting?
Arbitrary penalties for actions in game are bad by default, twice as bad when you're penalizing one of the few actions the game supports, ten times as bad when the game can't adequately assess when and why a penalty is applied. And there's no need to make "bad" people glow red once we've arbitrarily and ineffectively applied a "bad" label... because you can see a player's nametag at about the same distance where you'd be able to recognize their face.
I can see some benefits for limited benefits that might be referred to as "skills", as a means to add value or impact to death. But not as a means of making Rust into a low-level RPG, and not permanent (particularly with the possibility of character migrations to different servers in the future). Vanilla Rust has always stressed the fact that everyone starts the same... naked and disoriented.
The problem is... without involved and complicated subsystems or RPG-like skills, it's difficult to add value to working with others. This is particularly true given the fact that there is (and always will be) a hard cap in progress... you have essentially everything you need in a matter of days (perhaps a little longer), and then the only benefit to having friends to play with is the benefits of numbers in roving death squads. This means the only motivation to form and maintain an emergent community or system of player cooperation is either pure RP... or reactionary mutual defense (which is also temporary and dependent). At the end of day, unfortunately, players will quickly run out of things to do that don't involve the First Person Shooting that the game is built around. Even enemy AI doesn't guarantee player cooperation (see DayZ, Nether). The NPC opposition would need to be oppressively overwhelming, almost unfairly so, to inspire players to migrate away from KOS... and you'd need some way or reason and some specific benefit for player cooperation in order to penalize those players who continued to KOS by taking away that benefit. Ramble ramble ramble, tl;dr ... even AAA games don't get this right.
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Skill levels are great for some games, but not for Rust.
Case in point - I became well liked on a server because I helped people. I made a trading area where I could safely trade items or help new nakeds. I helped people build, gather, and defend, etc. I created value for myself, and when a new person jumped on the server and KOS'd me, all I had to do was type their name into chat and no one would trust them, people would KOS them, and people offered me items to restart.
You don't want to have to worry about KOS then create value for yourself.
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I don't see how KoS is subjective. Identifying "bad" people could certainly be troublesome though, at some point you'd have to draw a line for "bad." If you just go based off of kills (ideally, killing people marked "bad" would not make you "bad") then gunpoint robbery might become a thing, something that we could probably agree is bad. How do you police that? Pointing a gun at someone being a "bad" thing can be easily bypassed, and having guns out probably shouldn't be considered bad unless we want to constantly chase animals with spears.
I'm on board. This is why I'm not making these topics, just trying to inform folks that are trying to punish solo players on account of people who kill on sight and happen to be solo some times.
I don't get the point here. The idea of pointing out bad people is not for realism and would be completely pointless clutter if you had to be within a certain range anyway.
This is completely encouraging KoS. More people will kill anyone they see when the alternative is to become a bumbling toddler if the other guy decides to kill first.
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Just to clarify something. I don't think KOS is bad. I don't think killing other players is bad. I personally don't do these things and don't like players who do but that's part of what makes the game exciting. But as I just wrote in that other thread...
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.
Number 1 is very difficult to solve. I do my best with the skill rate idea but nobody knows if it would really help. Number 2 on the other hand can absolutely be changed and it would take minimal effort from the devs to do so. Just as an experiment I would like to see sulfur be 50-100x more rare than it is now and for players to only be able to heal naturally at 1 HP per minute. If you only had 4 bullets instead of 400 and it took tens of minutes or even hours to recover your HP you'd probably be a lot less likely to shoot people or get in a fight. There would still be plenty of killing but you'd have to be smarter and more selective about it. You probably wouldn't see very many people running around the map with full gear for the sole purpose of shooting everyone they see. You probably wouldn't see people camping the beach and killing new spawns.
(in fact if they just implemented the sulfur and health changes without any death penalty or progression then you'd probably not want to go anywhere near a beach that is full of fearless, dangerous, nothing-to-lose-and-everything-to-gain newmans)
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