How To Fix The Reputation/Murder System

[Kaemik]

Step 1 - Delete Murder Counts

Murder counts are an overall bad mechanic. Reputation already penalizes for murder, but does so on a local level which is far preferable as that allows players to engage in PvP on certain parts of the map while having a safe base of operations elsewhere. Most veteran guilds will control a keep or may even set the rules in the towns they live in if town ownership makes it in. So really this is most beneficial to newby PvPers and small non-keep holding groups.

IF it gets left in for any reason though, the mechanic should be you lose one murder count every X hours for 1-2 days after your most recent login. That entirely kills the "AFK somewhere to lose murder counts" meta which is hot garbage.

Step 2 - 1 = 100

In the current system: Current Standing 5, Min standing -10, Max Standing 100
In the proposed system: Current standing 500, Min standing -1000, Max Standing 10,000

This is to allow actions to have smaller impacts than gaining or losing 1 standing currently does. Turning 1 into 100 allows say, a loss of 5 standing which is .05 in the current system.

Step 3

All values here reflect killing a player who belongs to the faction whose standing is negatively effected.

Murder = 100 Standing Loss

Murder is Last hit on target. This no longer has a timer because of this more precise definition and other changes that make no timer practical. As now you report a murder at a priest when you revive.

Assisted Murder = Up to 50 Standing Loss

Assisted Murder reflects using negative abilities such as damage or debuff on a player before they die or healing the murderer/other assistants to the murder. I say "Up to 50" as the number of times you do these actions increases this loss from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 50. Assisted murder actions only count if they were taken within 5 minutes of the player's death.

Assisted murder is reported to priests much as murder currently is now.

Assault = Up to 25 standing loss

Any hostile actions taken against another player or their pets, even if they survive. Like assisted murder the more times you hit them the higher the score goes, capping at 25. Assault can be reported to guards. Assault and assisted murder don't stack. Reporting one removes the ability to report the other.

Theft = 10 to 25

10 if you care caught snooping, 25 if you are caught stealing. Theft is reported to guards. Theft does not stack with murder or assisted murder. Reporting one removes the ability to report the other.

Pet Murder = Up to 100 Standing Loss

125 pet point pet is 100 Standing loss. For other pets it's calculated by what % of 125 they cost in pet points. So 100 would give a penalty of 66. Mounts always give a minimum of 50 except donkeys which give a minimum of 25.

Additional Note

You can only lose 100 rep based on your actions against a single player every 5 minutes. If you assault, murder, and kill the pets of the same guy.... 100 rep loss.

How is Faction Membership Determined

For the first 24 hours of playtime on an account (Notice I said account and not character. That's important.) players can be independent which means killing them gives rep penalty for every faction except Risars.

Guilds and players can join factions with which they have over a certain amount of reputation or collective reputation. Doing so costs a one time gold fee. If someone belongs to a particular faction then the loss (or gain) received upon killing them is based upon that faction's relation to their faction. You can see player's factions so it's not a mystery what is going to happen if you kill them. If you're raiding Khurite territory as a Tindremic loyalist and you run into other Tindremic loyalists, you'll know who they are and the penalties for killing them before you do so.

Players can have no faction. If they do, that means killing them gives standing loss in the territory you kill them in IF they are not hostile to the controlling faction of that region.

Players in a faction see red/blue/grey based on a players standing with their faction. Players with no faction see red/blue/grey based on a players standing with the faction of the territory they are in.

 

[Teknique]

Good post Kaemik

 

[KermyWormy]

I appreciate the thought that went into this, and I think on many points it looks better than what we have, and can close some of the loopholes and pain points of standard pvp most players will engage in on a daily basis.

On some points it is unnecessarily complicated in my eyes such as designating the penalty based on a pets level...just make it all the same, it's cleaner and easier for them to implement. Another part is differentiating the penalty between assisted murder and murder, killing blow shouldn't matter. If someone gets jumped by 3 guys and they kill him, or say I fight back against 2 of them while the 3rd heals their friends... they all deserve the same level of penalty whatever that penalty may be, the last hit is arbitrary, and just handing out the same penalty for all involved is again cleaner and simpler and more in line with what most would expect from any criminal justice system.

I think there should still be "wild" territories where criminal actions aren't reported and faction standing is not adjusted for such acts as there are many places it just doesn't make sense that such an act could be "proven" beyond hearsay or circumstantial evidence once the player resurrects in some foreign territory via using home priest, nearest priest, or running across the map back to civilization to resurrect and report the murder...like a what happens in vegas, stays in vegas kind of rule.

 

[Kaemik]

The pet thing is meant to close out other types of griefing. In particular, taming pigs and sticking them in doorways. Pigs are too low to the ground to be pushed out of the way and there are a great many of them readily available outside towns. Making it somewhat dependent on pet points makes it harder to use both this abuse, and every other abuse I'm sure griefers will find for low value pets if pet murder penalties are implemented.

Hopefully guild town ownership will help A LOT with every unforseen way griefers will still find to use the available mechanics to ruin the game for newbs. If players can recognize the abuse, griefers will get blacklisted from player owned towns. But the intent of a system like this is to make it as hard to abuse as possible, knowing that it can never be done perfectly, but coming as close to perfection as we can.

 

[Kaemik]

I'd add I'm in favor of going FULL sandbox on towns. Delete both murder and reputation. Every town is controllable with customizable blacklists or greenlists (depending on if auto stance for your guards is to let other players in or not) the guild that runs the town can set.

Then you make it so the guild who controls a town gets sizable revenues from allowing players to come in and use their vendors/broker so that 100% of the towns aren't alliance exclusive with a greenlist as typically happens in these games.

It's the most harsh system if players are dicks, but it's also the most perfect system if a guild intent on keeping griefers out of their area controls a town. For instance imagine what would happen in Meduli if @Kuthara could blacklist people and make the guards kill them. Our guild would do similar things in Morin Khur.

That being said, SV is intent on having a system like this so rather than fighting it, I'd just like to see it made as good as possible.

 

[Teknique]

Bump.

you should also probably apologize to hot garbage for comparing it to afk burning murderecounts.

 

[Bernfred]

you should lose all murdercounts when you dont make any shenanigans in a real life timespan of >48h AND you should turn red after 1 murdercount since there is a check box for not going criminal.

 

[Nefnate]

Step 1 - Delete Murder Counts

Murder counts are an overall bad mechanic. Reputation already penalizes for murder, but does so on a local level which is far preferable as that allows players to engage in PvP on certain parts of the map while having a safe base of operations elsewhere. Most veteran guilds will control a keep or may even set the rules in the towns they live in if town ownership makes it in. So really this is most beneficial to newby PvPers and small non-keep holding groups.

IF it gets left in for any reason though, the mechanic should be you lose one murder count every X hours for 1-2 days after your most recent login. That entirely kills the "AFK somewhere to lose murder counts" meta which is hot garbage.

Step 2 - 1 = 100

In the current system: Current Standing 5, Min standing -10, Max Standing 100
In the proposed system: Current standing 500, Min standing -1000, Max Standing 10,000

This is to allow actions to have smaller impacts than gaining or losing 1 standing currently does. Turning 1 into 100 allows say, a loss of 5 standing which is .05 in the current system.

Step 3

All values here reflect killing a player who belongs to the faction whose standing is negatively effected.

Murder = 100 Standing Loss

Murder is Last hit on target. This no longer has a timer because of this more precise definition and other changes that make no timer practical. As now you report a murder at a priest when you revive.

Assisted Murder = Up to 50 Standing Loss

Assisted Murder reflects using negative abilities such as damage or debuff on a player before they die or healing the murderer/other assistants to the murder. I say "Up to 50" as the number of times you do these actions increases this loss from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 50. Assisted murder actions only count if they were taken within 5 minutes of the player's death.

Assisted murder is reported to priests much as murder currently is now.

Assault = Up to 25 standing loss

Any hostile actions taken against another player or their pets, even if they survive. Like assisted murder the more times you hit them the higher the score goes, capping at 25. Assault can be reported to guards. Assault and assisted murder don't stack. Reporting one removes the ability to report the other.

Theft = 10 to 25

10 if you care caught snooping, 25 if you are caught stealing. Theft is reported to guards. Theft does not stack with murder or assisted murder. Reporting one removes the ability to report the other.

Pet Murder = Up to 100 Standing Loss

125 pet point pet is 100 Standing loss. For other pets it's calculated by what % of 125 they cost in pet points. So 100 would give a penalty of 66. Mounts always give a minimum of 50 except donkeys which give a minimum of 25.

Additional Note

You can only lose 100 rep based on your actions against a single player every 5 minutes. If you assault, murder, and kill the pets of the same guy.... 100 rep loss.

How is Faction Membership Determined

For the first 24 hours of playtime on an account (Notice I said account and not character. That's important.) players can be independent which means killing them gives rep penalty for every faction except Risars.

Guilds and players can join factions with which they have over a certain amount of reputation or collective reputation. Doing so costs a one time gold fee. If someone belongs to a particular faction then the loss (or gain) received upon killing them is based upon that faction's relation to their faction. You can see player's factions so it's not a mystery what is going to happen if you kill them. If you're raiding Khurite territory as a Tindremic loyalist and you run into other Tindremic loyalists, you'll know who they are and the penalties for killing them before you do so.

Players can have no faction. If they do, that means killing them gives standing loss in the territory you kill them in IF they are not hostile to the controlling faction of that region.

Players in a faction see red/blue/grey based on a players standing with their faction. Players with no faction see red/blue/grey based on a players standing with the faction of the territory they are in.

I like pretty much all of this. Nice work putting it together and sharing. I would say, I think the actual number values for a lot of the things mentioned should be discussed at length to ensure balance (I myself am rather ignorant of this).

Excellent post, thank you Kaemik.

 

[Dastardly]

Personally I think MC is fine. It's only 3 penalties.

1 your bag drops grey.
2 you can't spawn in town
3 you can't give murder count which is essentially losing the ability to give rep.

Not really sure why this would change much of how anyone plays other than having to run back from death.

In reality you shouldn't be killing people near your hometown that aren't' grey. it's just that simple. Why do they need to rebuild the whole system for this?

 

[Teknique]

Personally I think MC is fine. It's only 3 penalties.

1 your bag drops grey.
2 you can't spawn in town
3 you can't give murder count which is essentially losing the ability to give rep.

Not really sure why this would change much of how anyone plays other than having to run back from death.

In reality you shouldn't be killing people near your hometown that aren't' grey. it's just that simple. Why do they need to rebuild the whole system for this?

Murder counts are way nerfed no one denies that, but the mo community for the better of a decade has been saying how awful the 8 hour online burn time. It is just bad and I’d like to see it gone.

 

[Illuana]

This debate really comes down -in my opinion so don't kill me - it comes down to what do you want from this game? Do you wanna be in a MMO where you're a murderhobo? do you wanna be in MMO where you can socialize? etc... what do you want from this game is apparent by your stance on what MC is supposed to be like. The thing is... SV don't give 2 shits about what you want, MO and MO2 has always been what SV wants. Yea, they might take some suggestions for balance, but they also ignore just as many suggestions.

 

[Kaemik]

Personally, our guild is a non-RPK newb help group. I want the mechanics I want because I feel factional conflicts are healthy and in the end my stances will make it harder for groups like GUTs and WIGs to run new players out of the game. Tindremenes raiding Khurite towns is fun content that helps the game. People sniping donkeys from rooftops and staying blue isn't. Technique leads an RPK guild. He has very different desires for what he wants to achieve personally.

But I feel what I am proposing encourages healthy PvP while making it harder for rats to grief newbs in towns. That's good for everyone but rats. Which is probably why Technique and I are both for these changes.

 

[Tzone]

what ever system we have I dont think that there should be murder counts or criminal actions if you are not near a town.
Around the town to include out side of it for some distance there can be a law system but when you get far away from town its should stop.

The biggest issue I face with the current system is that the attacker has the advantage because the defender will be a criminal if he tried to get a head start on defending him self.

Just one situation is like MA is trying to kill you but hes missing. IDK if it was on purpose and he was trying to lure me into criminality but it I shot anyways and killed his horse. Now I am criminal for self defense. Its like if you know you are about to get jumped but can throw the first punch with out them running to the guard zone if you are near town or look like the bad guy if a third party. And if you are a archery you give up your biggest advantage by letting them get into range. Good thing murder counts arent even a hindrance besides having to respawn at red priest it really doesnt matter and you can kill who ever you want.

For towns there is the issue of being griefed by guards. Where people will hug guardzone and try to get you to turn gray first and run back to guard zone when they start to lose.

I again dont see how its really possible to get griefed in town. You stable your pets, bank your stuff before log off, dont let mages fulm you, dont AFK (10 sec logout), and stand in safe spots. I got greifed once, learned my lesson, haven't allowed my self to get griefed in town since. Guts aint in fab no more because people in fab figured out how not to get greifed. But with meduli the worst part is the water really. Every other lawfull town is fine pretty much.

 

[Speznat]

MO and MO2 has always been what SV wants. Yea, they might take some suggestions for balance, but they also ignore just as many suggestions.

I once spoke with henrik about this. They dont ingore suggestions.

I give you an example.
I complained about 8 years why we can't have insta ghosting. If im dead and i have no stuff on me. Than why do i can't insta ghost from town to town. There is no benefit for me beside time saving. And we would get rid of the time wasting ghosting shit that costs countless hours over the span of years.

They never implemented this because:
Henrik want people to be locals and that they really feel home to one major town and one region. and just makes adventures in the other regions. if you leave your home region its always an nice new adventure. But with insta ghosting its like:
Ok we have pvp in meduli, Ok insta ghost there take the stuff form the bank and pvp. Than put stuff into bank and insta ghost back. That is not how Mortal should be played. And after henrik epxlained this 5-10 minutes long. I understood what he ment.
It totally changed my mind.

Insta ghosting is real shit. (besides home priest) It was never ment for it. The game was never ment to be like that.

And thats often the case for many suggestions.
We all play here just a guessing game. Star vault reading a lot on the forums, but rarely answeering because everytime they answer they get people mad because there will always the people being butthurt or scared of changes. Thats why they never say good suggestion or nice idea.

For murdercounts its good the the penalty is hard.
It depends on the view point who you ask.

If you ask many pve,trader, crafter only players they will always say murdercount penalty is a joke, it should be harder.

And for many pvp players than you will always get the answer murdercounts are to hard, they should be easier to burn and less annoying.

I guess SV is thinking everyday if they made the right decisions but sometimes it not easy to find the correct balance.

 

[Kokolo]

Good post Kaemik. I agree with changes in this direction. More depth and realism is needed in the criminal and reputation systems.

I think I heard Viknuss saying something similar on one of his early Youtube streams (when I was still checking what MO2 is). He said something like "If I am exalted with the Khurites and some random dude shows up to my priest claiming murder, my priest shouldn't care." And I agree. Especially if the random dude has a negative reputation with the Khurites.

 

[Woody]

So If I farm to 10000 reputation, then I can just go on a no frills killing spree for 100 scalps with no "red" repercussions?

Murder counts are way nerfed no one denies that, but the mo community for the better of a decade has been saying how awful the 8 hour online burn time. It is just bad and I’d like to see it gone.

Yea I'd be all for this. Even at a bare minimum, keep it online but don't reset the timer on additional kill.

 

[Kokolo]

So If I farm to 10000 reputation, then I can just go on a no frills killing spree for 100 scalps with no "red" repercussions?

Not quite what I gathered from the post. The way I see it is:

1) If another player with good reputation reports you, then you lose reputation normally.
2) If a neutral player reports you, you lose less reputation (or nothing at all if you are at 10 000).
3) If a player with negative reputation with your faction reports you nothing happens.
4) If a player who is despised by your faction reports you, you gain reputation. (maybe? XD)

Basically it depends on the difference in reputation between the people who commited a crime, and people who are victims. And I use the word "crime" loosely here because killing someone who is at war with your guild isn't really a crime.

 

[Jatix]

I fully agree with ditching murder counts. Standing is all you need in the game. The systems dont need each other. If you have negative standing everywhere, you are pretty much red.

Along with this, they need to change how you can give negative standing. If you die outside bakti you shouldnt be able to ghost to meduli to give standing loss. It should be a standing loss box that comes up when you die based on your area you died in, asking if you want to give a standing loss in this area.

And then there can be lawless zones in between two or far from any cities that you cant give a standing loss because you arent in anyone's area.

 

[Teknique]

I fully agree with ditching murder counts. Standing is all you need in the game. The systems dont need each other. If you have negative standing everywhere, you are pretty much red.

Along with this, they need to change how you can give negative standing. If you die outside bakti you shouldnt be able to ghost to meduli to give standing loss. It should be a standing loss box that comes up when you die based on your area you died in, asking if you want to give a standing loss in this area.

And then there can be lawless zones in between two or far from any cities that you cant give a standing loss because you arent in anyone's area.

BuT mUrDeR iS iLleGgaL eVeRyWhErE

 

[Woody]

Not quite what I gathered from the post. The way I see it is:

1) If another player with good reputation reports you, then you lose reputation normally.
2) If a neutral player reports you, you lose less reputation (or nothing at all if you are at 10 000).
3) If a player with negative reputation with your faction reports you nothing happens.
4) If a player who is despised by your faction reports you, you gain reputation. (maybe? XD)

Basically it depends on the difference in reputation between the people who commited a crime, and people who are victims. And I use the word "crime" loosely here because killing someone who is at war with your guild isn't really a crime.

Values aside, this could happen as the only way someone turns red with a faction would be to drop below 0, no? Thus I grind to 10000 rep, and go on a killing spree while remaining apart of my faction until I hit 0. Am I missing something?