Reintroduce street faction presence

[Torg]

The streets of Neocron city are safe, to an extent nearing boredom. Some of you might remember this wasnt the case at all times in the past. There was a time when tensions even between city factions were pretty... well, tense. So about every faction had guards in the street, right in front of the HQ and other places of importance. If you were working for the "wrong" faction (in their eyes, at least) and tried to walk by, guards started shooting at you. I even remember city admin "security" (thugs) in front of the conference center in Plaza 1. Same would go for the job center in plaza 2 and other facilities of importance.

This is the headline in Neocron Evening Worldnews (N.E.W.): "Tensions between factions growing. Guards placed in the streets. Citizens be warned". And the newstext goes on: "Since the demise of our beloved president the government is lacking power. Neither the rule of democracy nor the rule of force are ready to back up the administration - even the faction councils are dysfunctional. No wonder faction leaders are getting nervous. Take extreme care travelling by the Biotech or Tangent HQ, Next or Protopharma, as these spots can be unsafe now for runners of un-allied factions. The Pepper Park got even more dangerous - young runners are advised not to idle in front of Tsunami, Black Dragon or Crahn HQ gates. Always carry a stamina booster and medipack with you when travelling unsafe streets."

OOC: This should spice up city life quite a bit. Guards in the vicinity of jones quest places have to be somewhat less enthusiastic in fulfilling their duties. I'd even have the guards react on fac symp valus of each toon, but that'd be additional coding, i suppose. To prevent easy fac symp levelling, gain of that stat has to be disabled. Additional ideas, anyone?

[Trivaldi]

This has been on our list for a while. Factions should matter. We just need to get the game world in the right direction first. It's already started with the presence outside City Administration and in the Wastelands around the Canyon Facility.

[William Antrim]

It would be nice to see factions having "territory" yes.

[BlueRobot]

Due to the outdated NPC AI those guards wont be able to make me feel any kind of danger/excitement.

In my opinion, if you want that you'd have to change the SL/symp system, but then again players might actually be in danger of dying in those sectors, and surely noone here really wants that ...

[Dropout]

I just miss faction guards getting into fights with the Copbots tbh

[Trivaldi]

I just miss faction guards getting into fights with the Copbots tbh

It's amazing how little things can add to the atmosphere and change the way you take in an area of the game world.

[Torg]

found this on an old harddisk: copbots fighting NEXT guards in front of HQ. i can haz?

[Doc Holliday]

my only fear is this waters down fighting inside the city even more. We the community campaigned for months for a decent zone to go and fight in for a quick pvp fix and finally got pepper parks copbots removed. It took a while. P2 was never the best spot for this and that was the resultant change back to pepper park fighting. I still try and stay away from the veronique safezone but some sad fucks just have to dual log a ppu in there for buffs and stuff (virus were the worst for it but they are no longer active).

adding back sector guards might end up making this untravellable for some factions and that would restrict the pvp in these zones. They could end up just like cop bots of old.

Please dont fuck this up a second time and make some dumb over powered guards take control of some of the better sectors of nc like pepper park which i personally really enjoy hanging around in.

[William Antrim]

Having them on the street and having them just say things like move along would be fine. Make them open fire if weapons are drawn for more than a minute or something or if directly attacked. If this is possible that is.


Yeah changing the AI is going to be a big thing. Making them static might be ok though?

My initial thought was this would be a good idea. But reading some of the comments below mine it seems like I didnt have enough forethought on this one.

I think this could be a bad idea for pvp. If people had guards to hide behind then they would do that. It would lead to all kinds of AI mishandling by ppus in certain zones - like they used to before the Copbots/guards got toned down/removed from areas. I had completely forgotten about that.

Torg the reason why Copbots used to fight NEXT guards in P4 was because PLAYERS exploited the AI.

Are you sure you want that kind of thing back?

[Torg]

yes, i want NPCs fighting each other for our entertainment. if i need to punch a copbot for it so theres no need for coding, i'm in.

apart from that, there would be areas without faction guards, like inner PP2 (near exit to PP1 and subway) or lower PP3 (near GR and exit to IND A1). or the IND A itself, which was probably designed with PvP in mind. and others.

[Trivaldi]

In my head it's just an outside faction HQ kind of thing. Hang around too long and you'll get your arse handed to you, keep on running and you shouldnt have any issues. Outside of "venues" is another issue though. One that would need separate thought.

Out in the wastes its more making you think where you're going, rather than denying access - its all about giving the world a bit of faction flavour. At the moment TG have guards around a couple of buildings to give a sense of occupancy but im yet to hear anyone being denied access to important 'neutral' parts (read: leveling/mission areas) of the gameworld. You should always be able to sneak past with a bit of thought, it mixes things up a bit. Think navigating the wastelands at the sweet spot in NC1, where there were enough DoY bots to keep you thinking but not enough to totally block you.

Yes, NExT vs CopBots was an AI flaw, one i'd rather not have abused again. While I agree its a lot of fun to watch NPCs have at each other (which is something i think gives the world life), this particular instance used to cause a lot of headaches. We'd often find a bunch of trapped or stuck NPCs as a result of this. Trapped/stuck NPCs makes the place look like a shambles and is a turn off to new players. This was part of my insistence in fixing the P2 pool and a few other tweaks to help the cops get home in that sector.

[William Antrim]

If faction guards are going to be introduced outside of HQs then there needs to be strict controls on what they do and do not do. I agree with Triv on that part.

If they are to reappear is there a way to make some more places into unsafe zones. Like if the guards get beefed up can we have faction HQs being raidable.

The BD secret entrance should be a non-safe zone too. I realise that many years ago we used to level off the guards in there but if there could be a way of making it so that the guards are killable but give reduced benefit other than RP then this might spice the game up a little. (basically a small amount of money/xp - like 30% of the XP from an equivalent mob for example).

The MB is currently a non-safe zone (well parts of it) but other factions have safe zones in them. Same with parts of TH. Some are safe, some are not.

HQ raids ought to be a big part of non-op fight nc but they are not like that currently. There is lots of untapped potential to cause some small scale fights there. To get people pvping in places they wouldnt otherwise use.

I know the first argument to this suggestion will be "What about the TRADESKILLERS!!" but with the new rules about apartment access these guys can list access to their friends only, or just not open the door. There is as ever, always P1 to go to for this too.

I know safezone HQs were a big thing when Plaza 1 wasnt safe. Back then it was needed clearly. If you turned P1 into a non-safezone now you would turn nc into a ghost town. I realise that. As much as I would love it, its not good for the game as a whole.

But yeah encouraging people somehow to raid another faction hq for some kind of incentive would be awesome in my mind. If you toned the guards correctly (more beefy than they currently are but less than insta-kill of old) literally one or two guys could defend their faction HQ from enemy raiders.

This in my mind would really liven up nc.

Imagine being a noob and walking into Tangent HQ for the first time to find some capped players from your faction duking it out with some Black Dragons right in front of your eyes. It would be mesmerising.

It would benefit the game tenfold. Giving an incentive means that players want to do it. Give them too much and they will want to go to enemy HQs to level up but give them too little and they wont want to bother.

Nobody wants to grind to WOC on someone elses HQ or anything but give the ppus a bit of intelligence xp might encourage them to drag their tank friends along for some free con xp.

[Veno]

I can understand you PvP guys like to fight everywhere. Be able to run down hole enemy HQ. Destroy the hole damn city whatever.

But for someone like me. As a trader, its an absolute nightmare. Not one place to hide. Then I have to trade in my Apartment and even there. Costumer can kill me.

If you make the hole place into an arena to kill each other. Me as an trader demand a way to mark myself as non PvP so I can stay out of it.

Now its ok. I have to run from time to time. Some douche tried to kill me in P2 not two days ago. One hit with his poison spell. I was half dead. An I am 65/59 right now. I can live with that. But not if you take away from me my last hiding places.

[Torg]

So again we have two faction in the playerbase: the "PvP is the pnly thing that counts" guys and "there are many different things to do" folk.

In fact there are plenty of areas where PvP is possible, so there is no need to neptune-ify NC again (by creating more unsafe zones). if you want to fight, taunt your enemies or attack their outposts. Its plainly false to assume that more opportunities eg places) for PvP will lead to more fighting and thus to more new players coming to the game. Nobody ever came to Neocron for the fights, everyone came here because its a great post-apocalyptic cyberpunk MMORPG with an unmatched atmosphere. Unfortunately the company making this outstanding game (Reakktor) got into economic problems and wasnt able to finish the development, so theres only a little end-game-content besides PvP. The latter being the only valuable endgame content, and therefor the single central element of this game, is a plain misunderstanding.

The OP (opening post) was meant to bring more life (content) into the game, the one thing attracting new people. have fun running in circles and shooting at each other for no reason, anyone else. youre welcome.

[Trivaldi]

The BD secret entrance should be a non-safe zone too. I realise that many years ago we used to level off the guards...

That safe zone is a means to an end, for now. Plus, it wasn't "many years ago".

I know the first argument to this suggestion will be "What about the TRADESKILLERS!!" but with the new rules about apartment access these guys can list access to their friends only, or just not open the door.

While we have made it easier to let people come and go to apartments, the moment we force people to use them for tradeskilling is the moment the game world dies. Apartments are a potentially infinite number of the same zone with a single person in them, spamming trade channels. Not only is that incredibly dull for those players, it also kills any feeling of population out in the world. I'd rather have the odd safe zone bustling with activity than a world entirely populated by tumble weed.

We're getting off topic though. Back to faction presence. If you have further ideas or discussion for safe zones, pvp locations or pvp in general please start a dedicated thread. This is not the place to bring up that debate. I'll remove any posts of that nature from this thread going forward.