Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Developing a Solution for the Faction Base Issue
I agree that a 5-minute TEF seems short. There should be some element of "sticking your neck out" when getting involved in PvP.
As for the problem being addressed, I have not personally seen this tactic.
So Thunderheart...
Do all overt players have an automatic, permanentTEF?
Will this change keep allovert players out of all private houses because of that permanent TEF?
If overts do not have a permanent TEF, do overt players actually gain a TEF when they attack a player of the opposite faction (if not, this change would fix nothing)?
These questions need to be answered before any further discussion is had...
Now continuing to address the player city clone issue, I do suppose it possible that devs implement these cloning centers such that you have to be neutral or of similar alliance in order to clone there but in this case, doesn't this give a huge advantage to the defending team when as it stands they should already have the advantage of defending turrets and npcs. Granted taking over a faction base should indeed be a big deal, they should not be invincible considering the fact they at most cost 60k fps. Now I'm not saying 60k is chump change and I recognize you have to have spent some fps in order to attain a rank high enough in order to even obtain fps. BUT now that faction can be donated any large pa could have each member spending an hour a day doing faction missions and be able to afford said 60k base within a week easily(yes I'm taking into account the exchange rate). Now given that a pa can pump out a faction base a week, is it fair or even understandable that they should be nearly indistructable by the above mentioned 'possibilities'.
Losing a base is not the end of the world. Under the system prior /delegatefaction, I can understand all the complaints concerning the loss of a base as one person spent numerous hours by themselves obtaining fps only to watch it be dropped a few days or even weeks later. But now? Comeon. As it stands if this is still the case where only one person if spending the time to obtain the fps, then the problem lies more in the pa who is unwilling to help their fellow man than the people who use a tactic in order to take it out.
Thunderheart wrote:
Just so you folks know the latest is that we are going to try and get the graphic TEFflag, but thats not going to be a quick change. That requires art assets and some integrations with other systems, but its in the mix
In the meantime you couldn't just use the existing incap timer as the TEF timer? On our end we know that if we can move its TEF, if we can't we're incapped. You would need some new code and might run into an integration problem (I don't know how you guys coded the incap timer), but all the art would be available. I offer this as a stop-gap until it can be fixed right using my Jury-rig +10 skill ranks.
Well TH, time to put in my two cents, and I HAVE run across this as well as tried it out myself *with friends; not as an exploit* to see what I could figure out on it. So I'll start with what I've run across and then my ideas *sorry if someone already had the idea, couldn't read it all*
What I have run across:
Every time this has been used, it ruins the PvP aspect of the game, since PvE enemies can get inside it doesn't do anything there. The players using it, I have run across, use it outside any major Rebel locations; and then run back to the house being chased. Usually a Doctor and Combat Medic are inside to Rez and heal without any chance of a penalty. Also CH's tend to have you as a target and send pets from inside, then call them to the datapad and then pop them back out, heal and send them back out.
Anyone attacking this group esentially has no chance of stopping them, especially whith a Medic around, because even if you incap a player they drag them inside. Now I do have a few ideas to help stop this whole thing from happening.
Ideas to stop:
1.) If a player is targeted by another, and being attacked, this prevents this player from enetering any Private structure. Obviously if it's public we can chace them inside, so not a problem, and if they try to run inside and change it to private they get ejected so this stops this from happening.
2.) No incapaciated players may be dragged inside a structure. So even if a combat medic tries to get them to safety, they're stuck on the porch, and if they get killed; well any doctor that ends up with a TEF can get targeted and then will no longer be safe, so ejected. I'd also suggest a timer, set to a couple of minutes before cloning occurs automatically. This way a Doctor cannot sit and wait for a TEF to wear off and then pull inside without being targeted and stopped.
3.) No pets may be called from inside any player structures. This will put an end to the call, send, pull back, call, send, manuver. So now CH's can be in the field and shot dead, so their pet's will no longer attack any more targets. *This is something I saw about the pet's but I'd also love to see if a CH dies, the pet's "berserk" and go nuts. Instead of sitting there they may attack the teammates as well as enemies for a time. So this would make pet's VERY dangerous without someone there to control them. Also add a timer for recall after cloning for around a minute or two, so that a person cannot clone and call back easily.*
This should cover what mainly occurs, without the problem of the TEF abuse, or being stuck outside your own home. I don't know how implimentable this would be, but from all my testing, this if implimented should cover the problems I have seen. Obviously more could crop up, but for now, it seems like a solution that would stop this problem.
Well I've seen some good ideas and some ideas I don't really care for.
But barring someone from their house because of a combat flag is not the total answer. And I'll relate something that happened to me one day.
I had just logged on for the day, walked out of my house and there was two Overt Imperial Players attacking a single Overt Rebel Player (or maybe he had a TEF from a mission I'm not sure exactly).Now I'm in Covert status so I didn't pay much attention much attention at first, but then all of a sudden they are able to target and fire on me. Even though I had just recently logged on and should not had any TEF nor had I done anything to get a TEF. So being only 200 meters from my house I burst run back to it, (I didn't even have a weapon equiped at the time). Now granted my housewas alreadyset to "Private" so they wasn't able to enter. But they proceeded to stay in the front of my houseshouting taunts and curses at me. So after a few minutes of that, I equiped my Flame Thrower stepped out and proceeded to lay a Flame DOT on themand step back in.
Now granted some people may see that as a cheap move, but at the time for me it was a valid combat tactic. It was a 2v1 situation, andI used the best tactic I could think if at that time. Plus it avoided me having to clone and heal at the very start of my game time. But if some of these ideas were present at that time I would have bad start to my game for that day and most likely I would have logged out and done something else because I would have been quite angry at that point. So really there are times
But one thing I do fear, is if someone is barred from entering their private house while they are in combat, either by PvP or PvE, but namely PvP. Then I believe this could lead to a new form of griefing. Think about it, 5 or 6 people could possibly keep a single person in combat for along time withoutincapping them. All they would have to do is come into weapons range just long enough to make a shot and then pull backoustide of weapons range and just stay in close enough to keep that person in combat mode.
But I would suggest instead of locking someone out of their house for just being in combat that the following be looked at:
1. Faction Bases should be automatically equiped with Covert Action scanners, the covert scanner would work out to 150 meters. At 200 meters a opposing faction member would recieve a warning that they are entering the outer perimeter of a enemy base, this would workfairly much like the minefieldswhere you get the warning message. And if they get into the faction scanners range then they are open to attack by opposing faction NPC's and PC's.
2. That anystructure (house, harvester) placed by a opposing faction player within 500 meters of a Faction Base would be TEF'd and be attackable, but only by the members of the PA who own the Faction Base. This would only apply to opposing faction structures placed after the faction base is set in place.
3. The practice of someone fromone faction placing a house near an area of opposing faction for the express purpose of griefing people running faction missions.I believe will slow down once player cities and city militias are in place. Now possibly one thing to do is give the city militia the ability to target /warned and /banned players within a specific distance from the city. For example if the city area is 1k in diameter, then the city militia would be able to handle things upto1.5k diameter.Once the player has been warned they have 10 minutes to leave the city area, which is plenty of time to get outside the 1.5k range.
4. The TEF system neeeds to be reviewed and checked. There have been several times I have been TEF'd when I have done nothing that is posted to give me a TEF. And that is Trading, Healing, Faction Mission or grouped with a Overt. And the thing now is since the Revenge TEF has been removed, the Group TEF has taken its place. It seems now as long there is one person from the group still alive, then the other members can clone and come back right into the fight. And can target people and shoot before the person targeted know they have a TEF from the Group,mainly this applies toalot of people just performing basic combat healing actions.
And the thing is you always are going to have people who just love to grief others. Thats just a fact of life, the only way to handle it is to report them, or try to beat them without becoming like them.
Issue w/ proposed solution:
What about people who are already in private structures who gain TEFs. "Blue healers" in private buildings dragging and rezzing their allies are the main source of this exploitation.
Solution to the issue: eject players from private structures when they get a TEF
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1. The TEF solution will effect PRIVATE structures. So instead, I make my house "Public" andI put a Million Dollar entrance fee on my house, I can go inside, no problem. I shoot your base, run to my house, pay the fee (which goes back into my account)and thenI get the money back, but you, who are chasing me, can't chase me insideunless you have a million credits.
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This fee for access has caused more issues ... just get rid of it ... place the fee for usage on the vendors themselves...as in almost all cases...anyone who would want to charge for entrance into a house is someone running vendors. This then would remove the access to building (i.e.: private/public necessity) and clear your design of this issue.