Reset characters upon death a is good idea.
What I don't like on 1/1 is friendly fire. But you can counter it by lowering aoe dmg, I guess.
Do you like friendly fire on or off? I don't intend to make a "team 1 vs team 2" server. As for AoE damage I like the idea that many servers already use, which reduces damage based on how many players you hit – you can enter a crowd with your friend and UE combo, but it won't be a full damage UE on everyone.
A positive thing is having multiple spawn points. It makes more parts of the map being used.
I also thought about this. I really dislike when the "meta" is to run out from depot, jump down into server and ue – rinse (die) and repeat. Randomized spawns would be cool, but I think it would be even cooler with an intelligent respawn system where your respawn location is based on the activity on the map – respawning right next to where you died is bad, but so is respawning on the opposite corner of the map where nobody is fighting. This could also be coupled with some revenge incentives (e.g when you re-log you are presented with "Fights going on far to the south-east" or "Thin Small Fist is to the north-west. Go revenge your death!").
Something I'd like to see personally, is faster sd's. Or at least a quick double. But it's disliked by some.
What a war ot should have is all the old school features. UH trap included.
I'm definitely open to customized and re-balanced formulas. I'm aiming for something that is neither complete default CIP settings, nor ultra-custom with 8 new vocations and re-made spell system.
Ready characters 1/1 cool, but backpacks should be ready when logged in , style 36.hopto.org old times it's my favorite server.
Ready backpacks allow you to use other items in pvp like mighty rings, ring of healing, stealth ring, ssa etc.
If you give people option completing bp in npc then people buy to much good rings , amulets etc it's no good option to war server.
The option with ready-made backpacks in the style of 36.hopto.org server is the best.
Humans can then pass on some of the items from the other characters, but during combat they will not have the time to complete their inventory and will have to collect them from the bodies of the killed victims.
I agree with you that while creating your personal backpacks can be cool it's pretty tedious. My current goal is to make a standard backpack of runes and rings/amulets and balance everything around cap. That would mean you have to loot bodies on the battlefield to keep up your supplies.
I'm thinking that the rpg system of bp inside bp inside bp would be a little annoying so the idea is to balance rune charges around 1 backpack of each rune. Let's say a mage normally has 1 bp UH, 3 bp SD, 5 bp mana fluid on a certain level – that could be 1 bp UH (1x), 1 bp SD (3x) and 5 bp mana fluid (5x) and everything with the same weight as if you capped that many normal bps of runes.
As for SSA and other rings/amulets they could be balanced around weight too. If you change the weight of SSA from 5 oz to 50 oz, they would remain a "rare" item but there would be no point in relogging 50 times to get two backpacks of SSA like you could do on 36.hopto.org – you would simply be unable to cap them.
What I would do if I would still be interested in creating a new war server is putting more focus on the development of the players character. I think players would enjoy having a goal more over than just killing other players, even though the essence is just that...
And hopefully players would think twice before cheating if there is a 'set back' when banned. If you look at RW for example you don't really need anything to play, which means a ban means next to nothing.
I'm torn between having 1/1 as optional for new players or only private accounts, but it will most likely be a custom client so maybe it's pointless anyway? People would still have to enter the website to download the client. 1/1 characters also brings problems like whether they should count equally towards frags too. I mostly brought it up to talk about other benefits from that style of server.
As for development of the server I'm thinking there should be different ways to progress your character but without the "play2win" where new players are weaker than old players. In my mind it should be more about bragging rights. However I want to avoid the trap of players only counting total frags or "charlove" their way to a sick KD ratio.
This could be things like:
- Frag streak (since last death)
- K/D/KD the last 24 hr/7day/30 day (with emphasis on the most recent stats to avoid the "play2win" factor)
- Different skulls for brag-rights. Maybe the golden/silver (party) shield for the top 1 and top 2 best player in the server?
- Revenge stats (display who you fraged/died by solo)
Another part of the progression could be equipment, which probably shouldn't give unfair defensive stats, but could very well give a capacity advantage. Also it feels better to play with a demon set rather than a plate set even if it doesn't block 30 more dmg from every ue (or w/e it is).
Edit: Also try be more creative than I was with the name of your server... a shorter name is probably for the best.
I'm thinking Tiltia.
Without a doubt the best war server I ever played was real-war.cz.atx (?). 8.0 sprites with manual aim. I remember Nandur bought the server but we couldnt get it to work.
Basicly you had a private account, supplies were finite; you could loot supplies from people you killed and you would start with a custom set when you respawned (1 bp sd/uh/1 ssa etc). You leveled up so there was a mixture of "char loving" and basicly not caring to much cause it was still a war server in the end. Adding quests or hunt spots would be awesome aswell. Also no donations ofc but you could buy houses with ingame frags. There was also cap so you had to organise your supplies wisely. The map was I BELIEVE Edron and Thais.
I played this server too and I agree with you. Eventually I will probably create more tilted city maps (already working on tilted cyclopolis – it looks so refreshing!) And I definitely agree on houses [which would also be another way to progress your character/account
@ond]. It also solves the issue with city maps – either houses are useless; or stairhop heaven; or noob trap hell.
An idea for that is to make a difference between solo kills, shared kills (2 players), 3 player kills and 4 or more player kills.
To give stat points for shared kills, bonus points for solo kills, no points for 3 player kills and bad points (- points) for 4 or more player kills.
Rewarding a player for fair game instead of finishing off other players, compared to a simple frag system.
These points can further develop a character's lvl, determine exp rate, % deathloss and give temporary boosts or loss in armor, speed (, magic, skills)...
It's definitely an interesting idea to have a more sophisticated frag/highscore system. The pvp-enfo formula already works like that naturally for experience but there must be a better way than just counting every frag as 1. I'll be cautious with benefits that are critical to PvP. Giving someone +speed or +health is huge even if it's just a small number. That's why I'm considering to reset levels upon each death.
One idea also had around this is to give moderate experience for killing players but also making new players login with a level based on an average from the current online list. So you could login and get some levels fairly quickly, but you couldn't camp the server for a whole day and become invincible.
Statistics doesn't mean a lot if they can be "faked" by killing your friend over and over again, but as you say it's easy to use it to bend other factors and apply other elements to the game. Maybe it would be better to hide the stats from the players and use them to evolve the player in a more general sense, almost as a secondary level-system but instead of experience the level is determined on things like you wrote above.
Hopefully I'm able to find a way to prevent the most simple ways to cheat (kill your MC chars, or kill a friends' chars multiple times). If someone at that point spammed accounts using proxy – for a very small benefit – it probably wouldn't too much work to ban them.
I think the 1/1 account should be the starting place for people to login and have an anonymous character to enjoy and test the war server with.
If you get a killing streak (let's say 15 kills without dying) you can then access an area to create an account. (of course if you die before getting to this location you'll have to get a killing streak again.)
At this point the player is invested in the server, and can now start developing their character to give them a slight edge over other players.
Do quests / missions / explore / pvp / bosses / et cetera to gain stuff.
Mounts / Addons / Depot Access / Depot Item Limit / Upgrade Starting Items / House
Extra damage (0.025% per quest? (max 5-10%)) (or maybe just increased base skills)
Create the war server however you want, but I agree that character development is definitely something you want to have players work towards, while still being able to be a war server.
The current plan is to make characters progress in other ways than PvP power. I'm definitely excited to make some custom quests and non-PvP content. For example I'm working on a "Mulf" boss who throws rare items as his attack.
You can also mix 1/1 account with personal accounts.
^ This. Just make ~50 standard accounts with 1/1 and the ability to make your own personal account aswell. Getting x number of kills to make an account isnt achieving anything since you can just kill your friend over and over again as mentioned above.
I wouldn't totally reset chars to the start level at death, then the entire private account system doesn't really make sence, its also fun to kill highlevels since they drop more exp.
I've heard both suggestions (as well as some other) regarding 1/1 accounts and I haven't decided yet. In a sense it's another goal for players to achieve if they have to play on 1/1 accounts to earn a private account; in another sense it delays your progression until you are able to get your own account. It also an incentive to cheat your frag score – you can take precautions to combat this but the easiest way is to remove the incentive to cheat in the first place.
As a final note; thanks for all your suggestions and feedback! I just want to mention that I've worked with servers in the past but I am in no way a professional developer – I don't want people to expect this project to just flow perfectly and open mid December or something. Also I want to thank everyone who offered me help in private messages.
Cya,
Baby Worr
Edit: I think it would be pretty simple to make mana fluids with more than the usual 1x charge.
