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Dissenter
24-09-12, 01:29
Some thoughts, would be great to hear some opinions.


We're all very happy at the new population growth, however recently I've seen new players comment on how the rest of the city that isn't P1 can be a ghost town at times even during peak. This made me want to raise some interesting points for us all to discuss:

1. Does it make sense that P1 is secure, yet other Plaza and Viarosso zones are not? These zones are meant to be the inner sanctum of the city, and seeing lots of pvp is rare in most except for Plaza 2. Plaza 2 doesn't seem like a decent place for this to be happening either, when we all know Pepper Park is the sleazier and more lawless area where this has taken place both historically in an RP sense and in retrospect of NC1.

2. Assuming Plaza and Viarosso are possibly made safezones again, the huge bulk of people seem to congregate in P1. Although latley I've seen more people in faction HQ's too. It'd still be good to spread out population amongst other city zones. Could this be encouraged by having small skill bonuses to tradeskillers in different zones? for example a slight boost to Implant in P1 with there being a big medicare centre, and so on for other zones like +barter, +recycle etc. Yes these come from ops too, but some people are LE or unclanned, and not everyone wants to travel to an outpost. These could be made or varied depending on faction and hostility but would obviously need a great deal of balance.. Perhaps grant certain bonuses in PP too for non-LE characters, offering something good at a risk of being ganked (there's even a Construction area in PP3 and the Industrial sector adjacent).

3. Contrasting this. Could safezones been removed completely? Sure there are issues such as droners exploiting copbots etc, but it goes with saying if P2, P3 & P4 aren't safe then why is P1 any different?

4. Faction guards. Safezones or not, I do find it strange now that hostiles to city factions can easily stroll around their seats of power without any bother unless they enter the faction HQ. Even city factions seem to be safe from enemy guards now. (for example, as BT I can stand outside TT hq without a care in the world) - Could faction guards be put into play a little more so that the city is a little more dynamic and by extension TH, MB and TG? (I won't even mention TG starting in the city now....)



Discuss :P

p.s.
Before someone states the obvious, I know the team has a lot on their hands and changes like this might be a long way off, but doesn't hurt to speculate. Thanks again to the team, and the way things have been going I'm sure new exciting changes can be made soon as NC has gone from almost dead to alive and kicking in the past 2 months.

Forget_My_Name
24-09-12, 02:27
1) I feel that all Plaza and Viarosso zones should be safe zones. Pepper Park should be the lawless underbelly of the city where the player killers roam.

2) reaKKtor already tried to "force" players to play their way by spreading all the stores out amongst the city. Just today I heard a lazy player complain that he had to leave Plaza 1 to go to Viarosso 3 for high tech weapons. I say stop trying to force players to "spread out". It doesn't work. Let players play how they want. If everyone wants to live in plaza 1, let them.

Neocron servers could never hold many people. If the game had 100k people, then yes, the entire city would be full, but when you have 200 people across teh entire game, players will congregate so they aren't alone in an mmo. As long as the game has the population equal to virtually nothing when compared to other games, it is a good thing to group up in one or two places.

3) I hope we don't go down this road again like we did in NC1, which led to so many knee jerk changes. Neocron is not a 100% pvp game. It is an mmo that is a mix between BOTH pvp and pve. If a player takes out his LE chip, he needs to have some safe spots to relax around other people that isn't his apartment.

4) I agree. Faction Guards should shoot enemy factions on site.

Doc Holliday
24-09-12, 04:11
i like the idea of bonuses but not sure if they can be reasonably implemented without stuffing things up. Industrial could be a good one for all trade skills really as is medicare for implanting people with stuff.

The problem comes when you have runners who wish to implant bullets in other runners who just want to trade skill out in industrial. :) however yes you can hire protection etc even get mercs to help you. thats what they do right. pushes the Roleplay aspect a little. I intend to be hanging out in Pepper Park where possible when i get my clan together and we want to get an appartment there that we can open up as a bar of somekind or at least a club house where people can come and hang out and deal to each other etc. the blackmarket trading :) (being black dragon and all that) with the penalty of killing someone inside an appartment i hope it will dissuade people from doing so but i guess if it doesnt we handle business our own way.

Regards the faction HQs. Well guys. Interesting take on it but think of it like this. Each HQ is like a diplomatic embassy. It has some pretty serious firepower backed up inside should the embassy ever come under attack. What it does not do is go trying to "KOS" (i still love that term) everyone who is hostile who comes near. Remember just because someone is red doesnt mean they are a hostile enemy but merely an enemy just as anyone who is green is not an automatic ally.

Follow this rule and you cant go far wrong in this game.

As for plaza 1. keep it a safe zone. You dont want to know how retarded it was in the beginning of nc2 when people were ganking each other left and right in p1. it made it a very shitty game to play.

Strife
24-09-12, 04:19
2) reaKKtor already tried to "force" players to play their way by spreading all the stores out amongst the city. Just today I heard a lazy player complain that he had to leave Plaza 1 to go to Viarosso 3 for high tech weapons. I say stop trying to force players to "spread out". It doesn't work. Let players play how they want. If everyone wants to live in plaza 1, let them.For awhile I've always wanted to see VR more populated and bustling with players. I appreciate the attempt with moving stores around; however having to run through 3-4 zones to buy a gun and leave isn't really the same as finding a way to populate a zone. People are in and out.

My 2 cents. I loved how it was in the past. Plaza1 was always the 'main' hangout, for whatever reason. It never needed stores to attract players to it.

Plaza2 was where you went for weapons, aggie sewers, and was also a decently populated hangout. (back when the GR was in that little area into the left when you enter from p1)

Plaza3 Only local Crytons. If you wanted work done, you went to crytons in the upper level of P3. Also a great hangout because if you wanted a fight, you were in p3 near the pepper border.

William Antrim
24-09-12, 08:48
Industrial zone should give plus ten to all tradeskills. City zones should be safe.

Pepper park should not.

Trivaldi
24-09-12, 09:19
Moved to Brainport.

Shazam
24-09-12, 14:37
Industrial zone should give plus ten to all tradeskills. City zones should be safe.

Pepper park should not.

I agree.

I seem to remember back in the day plaza 2 was the main hangout when the GR was in the little room where the ramp is, and then people only moved to p1 when p2 was no longer a safe zone

Drachenpaladin
24-09-12, 14:37
Why fix something what ain't broke?

Dissenter
24-09-12, 16:04
It's merely opening a discussion, I'm not suggesting anything is broken, just addressing a few contrasting opinions and points I've heard recently.

I mostly agree with what William said, to me personally it would make more sense in an game world view that all Plaza and Via are safe like early NC1, but it's good to get these things in a forum as it only inflames peoples passion for the game.

CMaster
24-09-12, 18:20
PvP combat in the city congregates on safe/non safe zonelines. That's the way it is, and as long as said lines exist, PvPers will hug them (and I really mean this - when I used to go for a P2 scrap, I'd stand well into the sector, beyond the subway entrance. The idea being I'd draw my opponent away from the zoneline and we'd have some space to fight in. Most other people however, would run back and forth by the zoneline, waiting for somebody to appear and immediately engage them). At another point in NC2, PP1/Plz3 was that safezone line, and people hugged that too. Before that, when the cities were divided, people would rep in to plaza 3, then fight across the DRE HQ/P3 zoneline. I'm pretty sure that in NC2 we've had a whole mix of situations, from no city zones being safe (which made CA HQ the "meeting place" for the city, while TH was the neutral spot all around), to all "core" city being safe. None of these situations made everybody happy.
Honestly, making people traipse around just for the sake of it isn't much fun. People will go where they need, yes, but if they spend all their time travelling just to get some ammo and a poke, they'll soon give up the game for something else. No harm as is suggested elsewhere in this thread in giving Ind A some minor buffs, but in general I'd go with a "pull not push" approach to making people visit elsewhere - and whatever you do, there will always be one "congregation" place, where people gather to just talk shit and get pokes - it's the same in real cities even.
In general I'd like this. A while back when people were still split between the cities, I argued in support of no neutral safe zones - the cry went up "but where will we safely trade with enemies" - which I think said it all. However, I'd be concerned that as nice as this sounds conceptually, we'd see some unintended effects. Meetings for trade in apartments and obscure locations I like the idea of, but it will probably just increase the tendency for clans to maintain alts in all factions. On top of this, the game at the moment really does rely on being able to turn up to wherever the trade spot is and find a poker - what would happen if you couldn't I don't know - if the game was populated enough to rely on finding services in your (or a friendly) faction HQ, maybe it could work - but that's not going to happen.
To the best of my knowledge, MB, Canyon, etc guards to fire on faction enemies. So do faction guards in HQs. The one stood out the front may not- but well, that's not exactly good for business is it, to start constant street brawls. The government probably wouldn't look kindly on it either. Nevermind it would be annoying as hell from a gameplay perspective too - every time a angent player walks from their appartment to plaza, they'd get lit up going past BT HQ.

Linear
23-10-12, 14:04
While I do like that P1 is so crowded (makes you feel like you're really in a city :) ), I think it's a little sad that we have so much place unused. We have 4 plazas, 3 viarossos, Tech Haven, Military Base... Last two can have tradeposts nearby for sure, or even Tech Haven can be some kind of Jita, just make GR area a safezone. I mean, look - it's in the center of the world, have most NPC traders, there is ATG outside.

Dissenter
23-10-12, 15:16
Yeah, I think it's worth looking into more, in light of the zone-population bugs starting to appear in P1 - and in a Lore/RP sense.

Some people have previously complained about having to run through 1 or 2 zones that this would cause, but most are already doing that for psi/weapon vendors in PP3 - or use the GR and sink a little amount of credits :P

Oxygen
23-10-12, 18:04
4) I agree. Faction Guards should shoot enemy factions on site.

I don't agree, the faction guards are in an internal struggle with other factions but above the city is in control of the NCPD and no police in an authoritarian government would accept open firefights in their heart. Same with the SL solution at the moment it makes no sense to give players in plaza 2 +SL in the case they kill an enemy to their faction, player killing in viarosso or plaza should always give you -SL the city is not lawless the NCPD controls it.

dWintermut3
23-10-12, 23:09
4) I agree. Faction Guards should shoot enemy factions on site.

I don't agree, the faction guards are in an internal struggle with other factions but above the city is in control of the NCPD and no police in an authoritarian government would accept open firefights in their heart. Same with the SL solution at the moment it makes no sense to give players in plaza 2 +SL in the case they kill an enemy to their faction, player killing in viarosso or plaza should always give you -SL the city is not lawless the NCPD controls it.

Quoted for truth. ESPECIALLY in an authoritarian society I can't imagine they view vigilantism lightly. They want power in the hands of the CA and NCPD, not runners who decide to take the law into their own hands.


I also strongly agree about faction guards.

They did that in NC2.0. The end result was they needed another whole city for the anti-city factions. That split the population in two and did terrible things to the economy and playerbase.

Plus no faction is ENTIRELY hostile to all pro-city, and no city faction (except CA?) is neutral or allied to every city faction. Why should some poor law-abiding NEXT runner get blasted to component atoms just for walking into VR2 and getting a bit too close to Protopharma HQ?

Dissenter
23-10-12, 23:57
Good points, that does make a lot of sense - Kinda goes hand in hand with Plaza + Via being locked down by NCPD, I'd find it surprising that gun fights are perfectly ok right on the doorstep of CA HQ in P2 - PP on the other hand, that's different...

Mr. Kassad
24-10-12, 09:04
I remember P1 being NOT safezone but still not being a battleground. I think removing this safe-zone will a) getting the rest of NC more population because there is no "advantage" sitting in P1 and b) making NC more the open sandbox world it used to be.

BUT this would require for making the CopBots the badass freezin' (stunning) bastards they were in the past.

just my 5 cents, though

danmalone
24-10-12, 16:14
I remember P1 being NOT safezone but still not being a battleground. I think removing this safe-zone will a) getting the rest of NC more population because there is no "advantage" sitting in P1 and b) making NC more the open sandbox world it used to be.

BUT this would require for making the CopBots the badass freezin' (stunning) bastards they were in the past.

just my 5 cents, though

I miss being able to just sit and chill in Tech Haven whilst watching all the traders and people run past me going about their business.

Last time I was in Tech Haven, I didn't see a single person! :(

Kanedax
24-10-12, 17:41
All Plaza and Via zones should be safe. TH2 should be safe again as well. TH used to be a bustling area for trade.

Roc-a-fella
24-10-12, 20:17
But people will scream oh thats so carebear, safezone! Those are the people you find standing in p1 or in p2 running for the zone line. No matter what ideas u guys got there will always be cowards, no one is really gonna hangout any other place either. Population to low.

Dissenter
24-10-12, 21:00
Yeah, also true, just last night I was asking the zoniacs with their ppus to come to Neofrag instead, but nothing.

I think either make Plaza + via, TH safe so it's aligned more with the Lore - or remove all safezones including faction HQs and have more Cop-bots - I think the first option would be better as less open to any exploiting.