[PVP] LE Alternative: Damage Scaling based on Level Difference

While the LE does its job of preventing starting players from being ganked by higher level vets quite well, the bianary On/Off system of PvP means that either you are fully leveled and equiped for PvP, or you are ganked by the former. What if there was a system that isolated players of similar level so they didn't have to worry about players much higher than them?

This suggestion is relatively simple: as two players attempt to damage each other, detemine their level difference, and apply a percentage resitance if the difference exceeds a threshold. So, if a /59 gets into a fight with a /62, they will hit each other with full force, but if those /50s and /60s atttempt to fight /30s, all damage will be (for example) halved so that the /30 will be able to withstand and escape the gank. Exact values and level thresholds will need to be determined through playtesting, but the community should be able to suggest whether they want a more gradual scale (like a 2-5% damage reduction per level) or hard level cutoffs (no damage reduction if within +/- 10 level ranks, 50% + level difference reduction if > /10 difference). My preference would be on a system close to the latter (with a more graudual resistance buildup).

My hope is that this system would encourage a 'growing into' PvP by new players, as they'll have the opprotunity to test their skills, builds and tactics against other similar leveled players without having to worry loosing to playeres far beyond their means of combatting

Balance Notes:
- Level rank woulld have to be used; Battle rank is too easily manipulated to be a fair measurement
- Damage reduction would have to be both ways; If you can't hurt me because you're so much higher than me, I shouldn't be able to hurt you either. This should prevent "Death of 1000 noobs" situations

Open Questions:
- Hacking: How to deal with much lower leveled players hacking quickbelts and Outposts? Do they loose their resistance if hacking? Could this issue be addressed by just rebalancing hacking such that you would bring capped hackers (200+) into the PvP fights makning them vulnerable to everyone else around?

interesting idea. would require lots of extra coding work.

i can clearly see the benefits for non-LE-players: the pool of potential PvP-partners would explode, PvP would on all levels, not just between capped chars. heaps and mor heaps of fun.

now lets take a look at the benefits for LE-players. uhm. one extra brainslot. which you gain by pulling the LE anyway. plus: getting while hunting, trading roleplaying peacefully.

conclusion: since the majority of chars on Titan is LEd and the majority of those LEd chars will never PvP (i.e. pure hunters, traders, rp-ers) i dont see the slightest chance for this ambitious idea to come to (virtual) reality.

This sounds like a very exploitable system to me..,

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Originally Posted by Kame

This sounds like a very exploitable system to me..,

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Please explain yourself!


Someone had this idea back in the days. Therefore the LE users made less damage against NPCs as i know and there were higher restrictions to use a weapon (lower restrictions for non-LE-players).

Any character will eventually cap at some point, either it is a tradeskiller, PVE or PVP player. I like your idea, though there still must be the option to keep the LE for those who really do not want to PVP at all.

For my characters, except for one, i still have my law enforcers implanted. I am planning to create a clan for all my characters, so i do not have to pass an appartement key all over the place just to get some items. It's simply about the clan appartement which all of my characters may use.

I do not plan to do a lot of PVP, but sure will at some point. The highest gift of the LE still is that no belt drops if you die - so you may explore even the last corner of the world without worrying about loosing stuff that you might not get back.

Which brings me to the point, that there is not enough items and money around yet. Without a proper supply with items, most players are not willing to lose anything if they don't know when there will be a trader to provide those (for example rare weapons are still kinda rare at the moment). If those items will be more available those players will not mind about losing their doom beamer, winding argument or what ever, as long as there is enough supply to garanty a fast replacement.

We had this on the old servers Mercury and Terra (Mars not so much). As soon as the economy exploded, we went from 70 % LE players to 70 % non-LE-players in a few days. So enough supply --> less law enforcers.

The prices for unressed rare parts always were an reliable indicator where the economy was at the very moment. On Titan those prices hold themselves very stable between 50k and 60k, while on Mercury the prices were at 100k and on Terra at 120k. Although Terra had the highest prices on unressed techparts, Mercury was the most stable one (and also the one that very few people played on, because of the low supply of items and services).

I do not want Titan's economy to burst over 100k per part (only for L parts maybe, but that's another story). There is no restriction except the 20 (or 19?) million NC rule, which will not hold them players apart from deposition the money on their clan's money account. Therefore the day will come again, when all of the players (except for those new ones) are horrible wealthy and willing to pay a tonload of money, which became worthless by that point, for stuff that now costs very little. I saw one trader today that sold the RHINO v2 for 250k, which did cost around 1kk on Terrra (free trading).

But also the prices for higher slotted rares will shoot up, even higher than now, while the lower slotted (0 to 2 slots) will be sold for 200k to 400k. We've seen this already and it will happen again, if there is no real economy mechanism to toggle this.


And as we reached this point of no return, people will take out their law enforcers and use plaza 2 as a battleground.


So the question is:
If there will be an implementation of your idea - will it make sense after the economy exploded?
I don't think so. But if there will be an implementation, there also has to be a very restriction of the economy, wheter using taxes or some other kind of tool to keep your idea useful.

I say no.

Players who do not wish to participate in PvP keep their LE in.

This change would just create a new Neptune.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kame

This sounds like a very exploitable system to me..,

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That was my thought also. I doubt it would take much (in this old and very re-worked game) to be able to kill players much lower than yourself. Old bugs such as drones and PPU soul clusters killing LE'd runners spring to mind.

Other than that, I'm not a fan of the idea anyway. It seems like a lot of work to give something with minimal, if any, benefits.

Perhaps I choose too strong of a wording here... my intention is not to replace the LE system with the above, but provide a parallel system that will prevent or discourage ganking. Players that do not wish to perform PvP should keep their LE in, as always.

However, if I do want to PvP as I level up to the cap, right now there is nothing to prevent the higher levels from one-shotting me. If I create a new tank I want to be PvP centric as I am tired of tradeskilling in P1, when someone with a /62 decides they want to make my life miserable, I can do nothing to stop it. I will set foot into a dungeon, get one-shooted by them, have them sex over my corpse, hack my belt, and sell its contents to YO's just to spite me, and I will have no way of stopping them, save from putting back in my LE.

As for the system being exploitable, could you please elaborate on that? I'd like to see what exploits would be present in such a system and devise safeguards against them. I've already tried to think of some myself, but I don't know everything and would appreciate any feedback. One exploit that could be in the system I forgot to add when first posted, is that a /60 could shoot a /10 to level their CON quickly, since the /10 would have significant resist to the damage. This can be easily fixed by reducing the CON xp by the same percentage as the damage was reduced by... if you only take 1% of the normal damage, you only get 1% of the normal XP.

So, you don't want to be one shotted, but instead want to be 10 shotted as you limp to a GR and will die anyway?

I don't see how your system would work.

The system would be east to exploit and hard to fine tune. All these details to iron out for very little gain, if any at all.

No need to go over the possible exploits as i think the idea is shortlived.