Movement confirm into crowds (attempt to prevent blundering into "death stacks")

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Squeak
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Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2023 6:26 am

Re: Movement confirm into crowds (attempt to prevent blundering into "death stacks")

Post by Squeak »

I'm torn on how I want to answer this.

Does it suck to go wandering around, minding your own business and get blasted like a dove on the first day of Open Season? Sure - it would suck even more if you were a Dying character. This happened to me within the first couple of hours playing, too.

But ... does it necessitate an "early warning" system that makes the interaction feel gamey? How do you roleplay it? "My spidey senses are telling me we shouldn't proceed." Doesn't seem like a good way to go about explaining why this party just suddenly stopped, middle of traveling.

What if, in lieu of this, there was a brief moment where all the parties are pacified - call it the "Oh shit" moment where everyone just stands around, not *quite* believing what just happened. Make it long enough for even screen readers to know what's going on, give characters a chance to CONSIDER the enemies and decide whether to flee or fight, followed by a message, "A liberi dooms day machine seems to collect his thoughts and musters his buddies to attack!" If a PC attacks during this period, enemies get an extra reroll (and anyways, who wants to attack first - like stealth attacks where the Attack of Opportunity is actually against you). In my opinion, this would be a little more realistic (Whooo, realism in a game), without feeling terribly gamey. It gives a low-level character a chance to get out of dodge and alert people and it gives a high-level character a chance to determine if it's worth getting steamrolled. Perhaps have it on a cool down, where the mobs won't be surprised again if you turn around and go back into the room, or someone else follows shortly behind you.

And have a warning as part of the Task, or part of the tutorial, stating - clearly - that the Lost Lands will eat you if it can when you venture out and about all by your lonesome.

Alternatively, have the mobs on a sliding scale depending on who they're attacking. Make everything challenging, yes, so it's an accomplishment at any level to defeat them but still gives some survivability for those moments of "Walk in and die".

I dunno if either of these are feasible - but I like the wandering mobs and think there should be more of them. It makes the Lost Lands really feel "lost" and worth fighting for. Buuuuut, I also get the frustration of being whacked into space faster than Elon Musk's SpaceX Program.

Edited to add: Or, yet another option, if the skill difference between the mob and the PC are too far apart, the PC auto-flees as a toggleable option.
Ronin
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Apr 15, 2023 4:15 am

Re: Movement confirm into crowds (attempt to prevent blundering into "death stacks")

Post by Ronin »

Squeak wrote: Tue Apr 18, 2023 2:15 am I'm torn on how I want to answer this.

Does it suck to go wandering around, minding your own business and get blasted like a dove on the first day of Open Season? Sure - it would suck even more if you were a Dying character. This happened to me within the first couple of hours playing, too.

But ... does it necessitate an "early warning" system that makes the interaction feel gamey? How do you roleplay it? "My spidey senses are telling me we shouldn't proceed." Doesn't seem like a good way to go about explaining why this party just suddenly stopped, middle of traveling.

What if, in lieu of this, there was a brief moment where all the parties are pacified - call it the "Oh shit" moment where everyone just stands around, not *quite* believing what just happened. Make it long enough for even screen readers to know what's going on, give characters a chance to CONSIDER the enemies and decide whether to flee or fight, followed by a message, "A liberi dooms day machine seems to collect his thoughts and musters his buddies to attack!" If a PC attacks during this period, enemies get an extra reroll (and anyways, who wants to attack first - like stealth attacks where the Attack of Opportunity is actually against you). In my opinion, this would be a little more realistic (Whooo, realism in a game), without feeling terribly gamey. It gives a low-level character a chance to get out of dodge and alert people and it gives a high-level character a chance to determine if it's worth getting steamrolled. Perhaps have it on a cool down, where the mobs won't be surprised again if you turn around and go back into the room, or someone else follows shortly behind you.

And have a warning as part of the Task, or part of the tutorial, stating - clearly - that the Lost Lands will eat you if it can when you venture out and about all by your lonesome.

Alternatively, have the mobs on a sliding scale depending on who they're attacking. Make everything challenging, yes, so it's an accomplishment at any level to defeat them but still gives some survivability for those moments of "Walk in and die".

I dunno if either of these are feasible - but I like the wandering mobs and think there should be more of them. It makes the Lost Lands really feel "lost" and worth fighting for. Buuuuut, I also get the frustration of being whacked into space faster than Elon Musk's SpaceX Program.
I've said before that I'm not against there being mobs in the pass. Even ones that are aggressive. What I am against is there being mobs so powerful that even high level and established players, in groups, have trouble with them, in what is essentially a newbie trafficked area.

As I've told other people, if you were a GM on World of Warcraft, and you could spawn mobs in for events, you wouldn't spawn Onyxia in Goldshire, just because you could. The sheer power of the mobs that were placed where they were was just a bad decision.

Does that mean that the pass shouldn't have teeth?

No. It just means that maybe it should have wolf teeth, instead of T-Rex teeth. Something that a low level character actually has a hope of surviving.
Spidercat
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Joined: Sat Nov 20, 2021 10:51 pm

Re: Movement confirm into crowds (attempt to prevent blundering into "death stacks")

Post by Spidercat »

that situation was not meant for a newbie, nor a high level character. It was meant to send out a message to the characters in some way. That could of taken the form of someone breaking away and warning people, or dying. That particular zone is not a combat zone, and is considered unsafe due to commonly having issues with security and safety, as it makes a prime ambush spot for bandits and the like to take on travelers or merchant wagons. No amount of balancing could be done to make a bandit outpost balanced for a single low level character. Your particular situation just adds to the story pile why everyone should be weary and look ahead in that zone.

Event combat situations are not balanced the same way as in areas. The intention is to attract the attention of multiple players to engage with the situation, which goes out the window if someone could handle the first encounter with a group of hostiles. As someone who's stumbled into many of these in this game and the prior game, your role when first bumping into them is to book it or die. If the Liberi were readying themselves to maul a patrol, they're totally ready for any lone person trying to charge at them.

this is why people really should take a step back and not be too upset when they manage to die. COGG's combat system doesn't really tend to make you unkillable. 100 levels and you still have your default hp values from lv 1. A few lucky hits can still down you even from a weaker opponent, let alone 4 who completely out skill you and were expecting a group of 5. Get rescued, get back up and roleplay. You'll be doing this a lot depending on how adventurous you are, and if you get involved with a lot of dangerous events or routes. Especially if you start metaphorically poking the Gm in the eye with a stick like I do when events happen.
Verel
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Joined: Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:35 am

Re: Movement confirm into crowds (attempt to prevent blundering into "death stacks")

Post by Verel »

I feel like it should be more passive.

Like, you feel a sense of danger or some sort of inner chill to indicate danger and it's up to you to keep going or not.

Like, there're people out there who don't care if they go out and face an insurmountable challenge. They're gonna do it anyway. Just a slight warning of the potential danger from 7 or so mobs will do just fine because you know there's gonna be that one person who doesn't care at all for the warning and then just blunders right in regardless.

At least, I'm coming from that view. Give too much of a warning with a confirmation and they'll rp their characters a certain way. Give a warning about the next room or so that tells people to perhaps look ahead before they proceed and that should be good enough. If you blunder in because you weren't paying attention, then that's a you problem.
Squeak
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Re: Movement confirm into crowds (attempt to prevent blundering into "death stacks")

Post by Squeak »

Instead of lamenting the fact that it happened and beating a dead horse with frustrations, lets take a step back and look at it.

It is not entirely a newbie-trafficked area. High level characters frequent the area *often* as there are some higher level areas out there for them to practice in. It really was just luck of the draw that a new player, hours or days into the game, stumbled onto Demi-God critters that were put there to advance a plot the GMs are hosting for us. It doesn't help that those critters are based out of an area not too terribly far from that village - and it shows they are expanding.

Lets constructively come up with something Rias and the Gang can implement that will help allay other new players from experiencing this same headache and possibly rage quitting, but appeals to the established characters, and still allows GMs to advance their storylines (for our entertainment) however they feel is necessary.

I, personally, don't like this approach which is why I've offered other suggestions. I've not encountered it yet, so it's just a knee-jerk reaction at the moment, though.
Gorth
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Location: Michigan

Re: Movement confirm into crowds (attempt to prevent blundering into "death stacks")

Post by Gorth »

Spidercat. as someone who often tells people to get over it, this is exceptionally blunt and unnecessary. regardless, your point is still valid.
Squeak wrote: Tue Apr 18, 2023 2:15 am I'm torn on how I want to answer this.

Does it suck to go wandering around, minding your own business and get blasted like a dove on the first day of Open Season? Sure - it would suck even more if you were a Dying character. This happened to me within the first couple of hours playing, too.

But ... does it necessitate an "early warning" system that makes the interaction feel gamey? How do you roleplay it? "My spidey senses are telling me we shouldn't proceed." Doesn't seem like a good way to go about explaining why this party just suddenly stopped, middle of traveling.

What if, in lieu of this, there was a brief moment where all the parties are pacified - call it the "Oh shit" moment where everyone just stands around, not *quite* believing what just happened. Make it long enough for even screen readers to know what's going on, give characters a chance to CONSIDER the enemies and decide whether to flee or fight, followed by a message, "A liberi dooms day machine seems to collect his thoughts and musters his buddies to attack!" If a PC attacks during this period, enemies get an extra reroll (and anyways, who wants to attack first - like stealth attacks where the Attack of Opportunity is actually against you). In my opinion, this would be a little more realistic (Whooo, realism in a game), without feeling terribly gamey. It gives a low-level character a chance to get out of dodge and alert people and it gives a high-level character a chance to determine if it's worth getting steamrolled. Perhaps have it on a cool down, where the mobs won't be surprised again if you turn around and go back into the room, or someone else follows shortly behind you.

And have a warning as part of the Task, or part of the tutorial, stating - clearly - that the Lost Lands will eat you if it can when you venture out and about all by your lonesome.

Alternatively, have the mobs on a sliding scale depending on who they're attacking. Make everything challenging, yes, so it's an accomplishment at any level to defeat them but still gives some survivability for those moments of "Walk in and die".

I dunno if either of these are feasible - but I like the wandering mobs and think there should be more of them. It makes the Lost Lands really feel "lost" and worth fighting for. Buuuuut, I also get the frustration of being whacked into space faster than Elon Musk's SpaceX Program.

Edited to add: Or, yet another option, if the skill difference between the mob and the PC are too far apart, the PC auto-flees as a toggleable option.
This. I like this even better. I've not experienced the new system yet, but I feel like this would certainly change things quite a bit. If mobs took a moment to think about attacking before they did, things would be a lot different. They already do, usually, at least in combat zones, but only around three seconds. Perhaps they should be enforced at least a second or two of think time and then start with something that is not an attack, like CIRCLE. Bards are a problem, of course, but you can't win them all.
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Lexx416
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Re: Movement confirm into crowds (attempt to prevent blundering into "death stacks")

Post by Lexx416 »

Having encountered this a couple of times, I think it's pretty good so far. The only thing I think I'd like to see changed (currently) would be if the message could change based on the environmental conditions.

Example, if it's raining too much to PEER, or if it's too foggy to PEER, if the messaging would change to be something like
Whoa! You think you spy a crowd through the [rain/fog/snow/etc.] ahead. It's a little too difficult to make out exactly who or what is there, so proceed with caution!
Just because I think for new folks, it might be a bit disjointing to get a message telling you to peer when the code won't let you!
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Gorth
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Re: Movement confirm into crowds (attempt to prevent blundering into "death stacks")

Post by Gorth »

Not to mention, of course, that you cannot peer into tree-cover.
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Squeak
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Re: Movement confirm into crowds (attempt to prevent blundering into "death stacks")

Post by Squeak »

Meant to post this yesterday when I encountered it. Can we have the Domion patrols flagged for ignore?

It was a pain following them from Mistral to the Fort and having to verify going a direction every couple of rooms.

Granted, there's only a few of them, but it was still pretty jarring.
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Rias
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Re: Movement confirm into crowds (attempt to prevent blundering into "death stacks")

Post by Rias »

Squeak wrote: Wed Apr 19, 2023 2:28 pm Meant to post this yesterday when I encountered it. Can we have the Domion patrols flagged for ignore?
Good call. Done, and let me know if any other exception situations come up!

While here, I wanted to say that I don't think the "mobs take a moment before acting" thing will work, as that will land us back where we were with combat engagement distance and the ability to just speedwalk past or away from any encounter before the mobs have a chance to do anything. It made areas intended to be dangerous decidedly not, since a character with 0 skill could casually walk around an area swarming with 700-skill mobs knowing they'd never get touched as long as they just kept moving, and that's not something I want to be a viable tactic or means of traversing deliberately-dangerous areas.

I also wanted to state that while we're working on these mechanical implementations to help avoid unfortunate situations, we know they aren't and never will be foolproof. In addition to these measures we as staff will also be more mindful of where and when to place dangerous mobs. That said, it's inevitable that at some point someone who had no intent to get involved in an out-of-the-ordinarily-placed invasion force or somesuch is going to bump into one and get killed. We want to these things to be the exception rather than the norm, and to be mindful of when these things happen for sure, but considering both the setting and the fact this is a game where death is both expected and also not much more than an inconvenience, I think it's understandable that this sort of thing happens from time to time. We're also working on adding a few more informative tutorial tasks about the dangers of going outside town and through ambush-ideal areas.

Please continue to give feedback and advise tweaks and propose additional anti-frustration implementations so we can find a good balance!
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