Community Exploration: Soullight Penal System - Phase 1/5

[Divide]

The Soullight system is the last bastion of morality in a world where 'get ahead at all costs' is the motto of even those on the lowest rung. With warring factions, and personal vendettas, murder can come in any form - swift and business-like, slow with a twist of pleasure, or totally random and probably gruesome like that scene from Event Horizon where that person is cut from stem to sternum and spilled open for the world to see.

I digress.

The sl system is a critical component in a game with a truly persistent world where killing players can occur normally. The experience of death and killing is something that Neocron does extremely well-- in my mind, it is one of several key components that set this game apart from others. Death means something. Killing someone means something. Say that about WoW.


Why is it so good? The system imposes multiple types of risk and multiple types of reward. Attempting to kill someone has multiple risk factors - for argument's sake, we're talking friendly factions in PP1

All of these factors are at play from the moment combat begins.

-Loss of fight/peen (subjective/cascading risk factor)
-Loss of item (cascading risk factor)
-Death and associated timesink (subjective/cascading risk factor)
-Loss of sl (cascading risk factor)
-Loss of symp (cascading risk factor)
-Potential to gain new item (cascading reward factor)
-Victory/peen (subjective/cascading reward factor)

These are just the pen/paper factors that I can think of for the moment. As you can see there is complexity built into the fight beyond win/lose, try again. This is why fights feel so good in Neocron.




There are problems though, as we all know. The sl system is a bit heavy-handed at times while, counter-productively, allowing forms of dishonest/illegal actions it should really safeguard against. There is no arguing this statement, because this is the beginning of a five phase exploration event where the SL system will be torn apart constructively in order to allow solutions authored by the community to be presented to the VolCrew(tm) for their consideration.

The Five Phases are as follows -
1 - What is the problem?

-Literally, define the problem in simplest terms.

-Top 5 (by concurrence) issues selected for exploration

-Example: kuling pplz mk mez -100

2 - Why is that (that thing, from number 1) a problem?

-Filter out the white-noise/duplicate efforts and select 3 Key Issues

-Example: caz -1oO cnt gr

3 - What would the opposite of the problem be?

-If we can't imagine how a scenario would look if a problem wasn't in the way we've got a bigger problem.

-Example: i keil pepl nd gt cndy

4 - How can we get to number 3?

-If we don't know how to get there, there is no reason dreaming about 'there'

-Can we actually get there?

-Example: u chg sl no penlty; u send mony fr all cndy. ps im 500lbs

5 - Wrapped-up, community authored, hit list. That must, excruciatingly be reduced to 2 two too to suggested changes.

-Change is easy. Prediction is hard, and so is damage control. Any/all changes need to be lock & step to evaluate post-implementation impact.

-Example: CyCrOw-sTrIkE!1!11oneoneoneeleveneleven

This will be a 5 week event. New Phases will be posted as new threads by 11pm MST every Monday beginning tonight 10/13, concluding 11/17 with the results presented to the community and VolCrew(tm)





That said--
What is the problem with the Soullight system?

[Divide]

-The SL system has no clear owner/enforcer. Who keeps tabs on SL? Santa Claus?

-Stray damage (from plasma, which can rng anywhere) can flag your player and cause penalty.

-SL penalties questionable (too harsh/too lax)

-SL system doesn't care who started the fight

-SL system allows the top to feed on the bottom

-Negative SL gameplay is too restricted

[MayhemMichael]

-The SL system has no clear owner/enforcer. Who keeps tabs on SL? Santa Claus?

-Stray damage (from plasma, which can rng anywhere) can flag your player and cause penalty.

-SL penalties questionable (too harsh/too lax)

-SL system doesn't care who started the fight

-SL system allows the top to feed on the bottom

-Negative SL gameplay is too restricted

you wot m8?

[Drachenpaladin]

Death means something.

In a world where replicating a body and transferring a consciousness is a matter of seconds the opposite is actually true. Death is a minor nuisance, like a cold. We are granted eternal life basically, no matter what we do. Death rather lost all its meaning.
Speaking in a gameplay-wise matter, death only matters to the low and mid-level players. Most endgame players and PVPers life in a relative comfort - and they have to, otherwise spending all your time on inconsequential PVP encounters during endgame wouldn't be possible. And thats what most people do without much of an bigger OP-fight scene around...

-The SL system has no clear owner/enforcer. Who keeps tabs on SL? Santa Claus?

To put it with a wise man's words: Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos.
Its the natural order of things, cause and effect.
At any rate, its an arbitrary value to represent a complex condition, just like your health value. And it only represents your position towards the rest of society. Who keeps tabs? You yourself. How you interpret that arbitrary value or your deeds is up to you anyway.

-Stray damage (from plasma, which can rng anywhere) can flag your player and cause penalty.

-SL penalties questionable (too harsh/too lax)

-SL system doesn't care who started the fight

-SL system allows the top to feed on the bottom

-Negative SL gameplay is too restricted

I find that argument about stray plasma bullets highly over-exaggerated.
The chances of landing a killing shot on a critically wounded player via stray fire are MINIMAL. If that is a common problem then it only indicates the prevalence for flusterclucking nonsense.
But even if that was an issue, why do you get the kill steal and not the guy who did all the work for you? Thats rather the core issue to debate about.
The other points look valid, except for the last point, its rather arguable. It wouldn't work as a deterrent if it wasn't so punishing. And thats what negative SL is supposed to be.

[Torg]

...That said--
What is the problem with the Soullight system?

if you ask me: it's too easy to get back to positive/green SL once you wasted your standing with society. just buy a few cubes and you're good. we all know: negative/red SL is not caused by a stray bullet or even careless use of AoE in the wrong situation, but by repeated killing of allied/neutral chars in non-war-zones. i you insist on fighting in the city instead in and around OPs, you're out of luck.

you're lobbying for changes, so fighting would have less penalties, are you? so what about people not going for non-consentual but consentual PvP only?

that said, i would love to have clan-wars available, but i fear implementing this would be a problem for Neocrons ancient codebase.

[Drachenpaladin]

that said, i would love to have clan-wars available, but i fear implementing this would be a problem for Neocrons ancient codebase.

Isn't there soem KOS function in Clanadmin? Or is it kaput?

[Divide]

Torg nailed it at first and then rambled a bit.

This isn't a discussion, this is Q/A. If you care to participate, follow Torg's example. The first two sentences are all that is necessary for this stage.

it's too easy to get back to positive/green SL once you wasted your standing with society. just buy a few cubes and you're good.

To expand a bit here- since this effort is probably foreign to many, it is used as a way to fast-track a teardown and rebuild of a process by taking away effect->cause->solution thought patterns and decision making.

This exercise allows everyone to offer input from their own perspective to create collective truths (1), experiences (2), wishes (3), and THEN drives them through the planning/feasibility spectrum (4). Just because "it can't be done" doesn't mean we can't earnestly want it, and document that.

i would love to have clan-wars available, but i fear implementing this would be a problem for Neocrons ancient codebase.

Translation:
(1- What is the problem?) Clan wars declared in CityCom have no tangible impact on gameplay.
(4- Plan) The SL system would need to be re-coded to interface with clan war declarations to support the change at all. Ruleset would need to be authored. Would need input from devs to know if this is a relatively simple, or stupidly difficult.


Feel free to re-translate if you like, Torg. Remember... we're only on step 1.

[Speedball]

So.....

1) what is the problem with sl system?

I find the SL system generally quite good.

It's a good idea, good concept, and it feels quite natural, not hard to understand.

BUT

sometimes it feels little soft and not as hard as it should be. When you live outside of the law, you should feel that you are not welcome in civilized areas (plaza, Viarosso) and you should be "forced" to live in the suburbs, that are not safe (peper, outzone). Those zones were initially ment to fight in, OP are not the only fighting places...

The fact that you can find "outlaws" on the citycom is good, but it should be a little more rewarding, like creating a bounty system, being able to hack infos about appartement location/password and hack app door.

[Torg]

Remember... we're only on step 1.

i dont think anybody will care for you 5-step plan. dude, this is a gaming forum. on the internet. dont expect too much.

[I See Blue]

There are several negatives for me to the current SL system.

Being City Merc, there are precious few factions I can fight without severe penalties to my SL. 10 minutes of action in Pepper Park could land me below the -32 line, meaning a small forever of doing missions. So certain factions are impacted more heavily than others with the current system.

Another issue would be allied/neutral runners attack you and you killing them, basically SL-loss from non-consentual fighting. Spies or PEs can usually bypass this with stealth, a ppu wouldn´t be affected, etc, but for a tank or a apu you have the choice of dieing and dropping something, or defending yourself and losing SL. Which seems somewhat unfair. Sure you can try to run, but that fairly often ends up having the same results as option 1.

There is also, as Divide has said previously, the issue of certain weapons landing stray shots on characters you are not actually shooting at, and giving some nasty SL-loss when that char dies. I´ve only had this with a CS myself, but I am sure there are other weapons who have the same problem.

The negative SL gameplay is severely limited. For me the copbots shooting you in the controlled city sectors is fair enough, but the GR block is too heavyhanded, I´d like to see it reduced to being just city/faction hq GRs. It makes no sense in general that a negative SL character should be barred from using GRs, when proven terrorists and criminals(City admin view of TG, tsunami, BD) are allowed to use it.

There is also a lack of a criminal underworld, i.e. content for negative soullight. How much more interesting it would be to let it have it´s own set of missions, possibly some unlawful items you gain access to, illegal weapons mods, illegal/modified weapons. Another idea could be a sort of FSM access where the qualification is a certain negative soullight, or a negative soullight epic.

I´d also like to see more specific missions for regenerating Soullight and faction sympathy. Some sort of redeeming you could do to get on better terms with the police force or factions.

[Tino]

Im reading a lot of carebear responses to this so I figured I would chime in...THE ONLY GOOD PART OF NEOCRON IS THE PVP...iv literally seen people quit the game because their characters have become useless and no auto SL regain...i bet everyone who reads this has known someone that has DELETED a character because the character is -100 instead of doing missions...if you want to make the penalty for killing someone steeper than it is...i am actually all for that...BUT allow a faction aka Anarchy Breed that is red to all factions but maybe KOS by all the guards in the city (therefore if they want to fight in the city they better be careful to avoid the guards)...there are ways to meet on common ground...the game needs to do something to increase the population...if we keep letting all the carebear pve nerds run this game it will degrade to the point where the same 10 carebears on the forums will be the ones running around afraid to kill each other with the 1,000 4-5 slot weapons they have stored in their apartments. TRUE TALK HOMIE =)

[Tino]

Also Divide no matter how this ends...in my favor or not...i agree the SL system has to be addressed since its a HUGE part of the game and right now is not working...hope we get some good ideas that favor both sides <3 Tino

[MayhemMichael]

The term "don't hold your breathe" comes to mind when talking about any changes to neocron.

[Torg]

Being City Merc, there are precious few factions I can fight without severe penalties to my SL. 10 minutes of action in Pepper Park could land me below the -32 line, meaning a small forever of doing missions. So certain factions are impacted more heavily than others with the current system.

this is not a question of how SL works, but of faction relations. maybe you want to move to another faction? if you want to battle anyone regardless of faction, you may want to go to a warzone instead. if you still want to be a CM and fight anyone in the PP regardless of faction you're probably out of luck.

[I See Blue]

if you still want to be a CM and fight anyone in the PP regardless of faction you're probably out of luck.

See, I disagree with that. This is a warrior faction, which is basically allowed very few people to fight. Only DRE and BD really, with their massive followings..... The thing here is the way neutral factions still can give a SL loss. This isn´t just about Pepper park, but also when levling chars are getting attacked, or hunting chars. Here the system in which Neutral factions still give you a good bumpdown on your sl absolutely disfavours certain factions.

So yes, I definitely think this is part of the SL problem.