Your input on: "zone line whoring"

[Britney]

Remove: Underground lock, safezones. Add one safezone that isn't connected to anything pvp-able.

[xanu]

Mess with the best, Die like the rest.

[Neallys]

I have read a bit of the answers but are we discussing Safe zones or zone whoring? To me zone whoring only means that once low HP the player will sync continuously back and forth to prevent being killed. You can put guards into safezones but I doubt this is going to fix everything, a "further" spawn point away from zoneline would be an answer, but I'm guessing that's out of the equation.


Regarding Safezones, one of the only times I have seen it not happening was when there were 2 communities hubs PRO/ANTI-NC. As someone said to me a few months ago, we don't have the right player base to fix this. But perhaps if we focus on balancing and then advertise like it is planned it would be possible? That if we would actually go back to that system, which doesn't make much sense RP-wise and kind of breaks the point of the whole faction system we have had for years.


Also, people feel like they need to be around safezones because they need to farm endless hours to get things from PvE. Make PvE easier, and then you will have a bunch of people willing to risk it. I don't know, I'm just throwing ideas out there.

[Dribble Joy]

The real issue is non-safe to safe zone whoring. A la P1/2 or MB1/MB entrance back in the day.

For non-safe to non-safe I don't have a huge issue with. Non-safe to Safe I do. As I said before, an 'aggression' flag after firing a weapon preventing zoning to a safe zone seems best.

A cool down after zoning will not stop people leaving a fight. If anything they will seek to get the optimum abilities before zoning to a non-safe zone, which will only make their reliance on PPUs on the other side greater.

[William Antrim]

The biggest variable is the community. They have to accept it across the board, not just the handful of people discussing it here.

[Trivaldi]

The biggest variable is the community. They have to accept it across the board, not just the handful of people discussing it here.

Like all other changes this will of course first land on our Public Test Server Vedeena, before heading to Titan.

I've added a news story regarding this discussion on the Neocron Launcher (as well as on our Social Media presence), in order to ensure everyone gets their say. Obviously we cannot implement everything discussed here but we really want to ensure we can consider as many options as possible. That way we can find the best way to deal with this issue. If you're talking to people in game about this, direct them here so their thoughts can be captured.

[Agent L]

The below is my personal opinion and only intended to further the discussion, it's not a indication of intent by the team as a whole.


I've cropped this quote right down to highlight this specific point. To me this seems like a reasonably strong solution. In my mind moving to another zone in order to escape is not a huge problem, that bit makes perfect sense in any combat situation. Assuming its a one way trip it's the same as running around a corner in a single zone, just with a moment of loading thrown in.

The problem, as we all know, arises when there is a CONSTANT back and forth over a single zone line.
The above is my personal opinion and only intended to further the discussion, it's not a indication of intent by the team as a whole.

To further discourage back-and forth zoning, this mallus should stack. Maybe even in geometric rate (eg: 2 seconds + what you already had when zoning*2 ). This way most players will hardly notice the 2 seconds while zonewhores will build up massive penalty quickly.

I think this is both simple and non-disruptive enough to give it a try alone.

[Trivaldi]

The below is my personal opinion and only intended to further the discussion, it's not a indication of intent by the team as a whole.

To further discourage back-and forth zoning, this mallus should stack. Maybe even in geometric rate (eg: 2 seconds + what you already had when zoning*2 ). This way most players will hardly notice the 2 seconds while zonewhores will build up massive penalty quickly.

I think this is both simple and non-disruptive enough to give it a try alone.

If the player is unable to zone due to the cool down, how would they zone in order to increase the length of that cool down?

The above is my personal opinion and only intended to further the discussion, it's not a indication of intent by the team as a whole.

[Agent L]

I think I misunderstood the concept you were talking about.

I thought about tackling the problem from entirely opposite side: instead of preventing zoning after using a weapon, something like prevent using a weapon after zoning.

I know that it takes the fight-or-flight decision away from players, but as already stated here trapping ppl in a zone is easily exploitable by a team of gankers. So it's less damaging to leave the flight option always open.

That's why I talked about it being low-profile solution, aimed at taking the fun away from whores by making them powerless rather than forcing them to fight to death.

[Cursed Shadow]

I think I misunderstood the concept you were talking about.

I thought about tackling the problem from entirely opposite side: instead of preventing zoning after using a weapon, something like prevent using a weapon after zoning.

I know that it takes the fight-or-flight decision away from players, but as already stated here trapping ppl in a zone is easily exploitable by a team of gankers. So it's less damaging to leave the flight option always open.

That's why I talked about it being low-profile solution, aimed at taking the fun away from whores by making them powerless rather than forcing them to fight to death.

No, so far the most popular discussions were:

- If you shoot/perform hostile action on another character, you gain a status/flag which means you're IN PVP
- If you zone whilst under the status/flag IN PVP, then you receive a mallus preventing you from zoning into another zone for a certain cooldown (perhaps 10 seconds).

Other suggestions which are kind of in discussion, but have been debated to a lesser extent are:

- If you go from a PVP sector to a Safe sector, should armed guards such as copbots attack the IN PVP flagged characters, in addition to their cooldown which prevents them from zoning or using the GR.
- If they zone from a PVP sector into their own Faction HQ, would any additional mallus as above be applied, or just the cooldown.
- If a player has the PVP flag and escapes to a PVE area such as a Sewer, and they are followed and killed, will the SL and Symp loss of the sector apply, or a reduced penalty because it is a continuation of a fight that begun elsewhere.
- Placing doors/zones/protection status after zoning into a sector (However this was discouraged as an option by the Dev team, and for quite valid reasons.)


On a separate note, and to further Dribble Joy's discussion:

A cool down after zoning will not stop people leaving a fight. If anything they will seek to get the optimum abilities before zoning to a non-safe zone, which will only make their reliance on PPUs on the other side greater.

What if we made it so that if a PPU cast third party buffs onto a player who had the IN PVP flag, then they also gained that flag by proxy. This would discourage multiboxers/PPUs from intervening.

If this is going to be viable, Copbots need to have their damage improved, and their aim should be made accurate and to pass through other characters, otherwise this again could be exploited to kill runners in safe zones by using the Copbot's aggro as a tool.

[Chuck Norris]

after attacking someone, the player who damaged someone receives a debuff.

If you zone while this debuff is on you it will give you another stackable debuff that works like a "stackable DoT with a count down timer".

So if someone is continually Synching after they were the aggressor they could gain SI for each time they synched/had a stacked "dot debuff".
The SI would make them all around weaker and could not pk as indiscriminately, it would cause griefers to min max for lower tier'd weaponry In order to chase someone down (who is not returning fire and running for their life) through multiple synchs, just to gun them down for no good game reason, other then their own immature entertainment

every time they'd have to chase someone down who doesnt fight back they'd gain for example 15-25 % SI as lng as they have the intial debuf

So after attacking someone they get "attacker debuff" that does nothing in itself

[William Antrim]

What if we made it so that if a PPU cast third party buffs onto a player who had the IN PVP flag, then they also gained that flag by proxy. This would discourage multiboxers/PPUs from intervening.

How would that work if the PPU is logged afk (or on the other client) in the safe zone? He would get the flag and then what? Be insta-gibbed by the guards in said Safezone? Or would you use some other punishment?

What do Copbots have to do with zonelaming? I thought that their job was only to enforce the law on negative SL or do you mean faction guards or others "defending" the turf in some safezones.

The lines of discussion are blurring a little for me now with the 2 or 3 subdiscussions that have cropped up. I am not having a dig here, just seeking clarification.

[Cursed Shadow]

How would that work if the PPU is logged afk (or on the other client) in the safe zone? He would get the flag and then what? Be insta-gibbed by the guards in said Safezone? Or would you use some other punishment?

What do Copbots have to do with zonelaming? I thought that their job was only to enforce the law on negative SL or do you mean faction guards or others "defending" the turf in some safezones.

The lines of discussion are blurring a little for me now with the 2 or 3 subdiscussions that have cropped up. I am not having a dig here, just seeking clarification.

No, I am simply repeating and expanding on what was said by Trivaldi:

The below is my personal opinion and only intended to further the discussion, it's not a indication of intent by the team as a whole.

The second problem though, which the above alone wouldn't solve, is zone whoring with safe zones. Both combatants zone into a neighboring safe zone, then instead of heading straight back to a normal zone they'd have to sit around and share small talk for those X seconds.

My personal proposal for this would be to add additional behavior to guards, in conjunction with a zone entry cool down.

PvP (specifically not including PvE) should activate a flag on your character, which has a cool down period of Y seconds. If you zone into a safe zone (specifically a safe zone) guards in the zone should react to that PvP flag and shoot you. If you zone into any other zone type, only the zone entry cool down would be in play, allowing the fighting to continue as normal. This should discourage fights from hugging safe zone zone lines, but does not stop those safe zones being a starting point for inner city PvP. I'm aware being able to hop into the action is a very important issue we must consider for inner city PvP.

From a RP perspective - if you will excuse such bad language - this makes a lot of sense. If the zone line simply weren't there, any guards in none safe zones would hear you coming and keep their noses out of it (since they're only there to fight enemies and not prevent any scuffles, especially since we removed the CopBots from PP). Whereas if the zone line didn't exist as you moved into a safe zone (these things are supposed to be super secure, none violent areas not just magic no weapon zones), the guards would be doing their job and ensuring the area remains violence free by putting the combatants down.

The above is my personal opinion and only intended to further the discussion, it's not a indication of intent by the team as a whole.

Copbots protect the city sectors, and this should include protecting the city from runners who are actively fighting one another.

My point about PPU's casting third party buffs on runners with an *In PVP* flag would mean that they would be shot by Copbots, however they would only receive the PVP flag, they would not have the cooldown (because they have not yet zoned with a PVP flag) which prevents them from zoning. They would however, be trapped in the next zone for X seconds, if they zone to escape the Copbot fire.

[ulx]

I plead for 10-30-s Countdown timer after entering a Zone b4 able to join the next, but it shouldnt affect normal playing, so smaller zones will Need a smaller countdown.
Spies shouldnt be able to Zone stealthed, and there should be a 10s wear-off after using stealth b4 able to synch.
This would also fix a few grinding exploits (like running past the small Mobs at a cave entry to get to the very last room in Caves to drone the bossmobs and would make it nearly impossible to get to Doy Tunnels lvl 3 by stealthing!)
NO wiping of any Buffs, because aoeing UG will take even more fun out of OPing and will always benefit the Group with the most ppus!

There should be one exception for Rejoining Sectors.

Runners should be able to rejoin the Zone they came from if the Zone he/she is currently in is a safezone. After entering the pvp Zone he has to stay there until the timer runs out again.

edit: Besides, since Opfighting Teams have to Stay like 30 seconds outside of the UG, times between hacking layers should be either set to 90s or 120s. I think that will also allow more and faster show-ups of the attacked Groups since the op isnt already gone b4 theyre set up. Maybe there will even be less ninjaing...

[Duran]

inside city sectors is a cooldown ok, i think 20 secs be enough