[#SVC-3655] Owner-Side Damage Moderation and the Effective Implimentation of a Combat Sim

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Owner-Side Damage Moderation and the Effective Implimentation of a Combat Sim

Created: 14/Jan/09 02:51 AM Updated: 27/Apr/09 03:08 PM

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SVC-3377 Estate/Region/Parcel-Selectable "Death" option for Linden Damage System

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=A maximum damage/push cap: The underling fault with the present weapon system is that any person can set their weapon to push at such a great degree that one use of the weapon can kill a target. Therefor, an Owner can set a cap of how much damage is inflicted by setting a maximum possible amount that a person can be pushed by, causing any push weapon to exceed this level to reduce itself to the maximum, and thereby removing the potential for a one-hit kill.

=A Damage per Second ratio: With this, A person can only inflict so much damage in a given time, for example: 10% of push damage per 1 second. This means that the person must wait one second before he can inflict any more damage on the target. Say that the person inflicts a cap of 80%, even if he fires on the target with a weapon of any damage level it will have no effect until eight seconds have passed, thereby giving the target enough time to retaliate. Even with the first rule implemented, a person can still defeat a target simply by shooting it at the maximum cap many times over, which makes this necessary.

=Spawn points: Another underlying problem with the damage system is that, once a target is killed, they must respawn at their home, causing a serious break in gameplay flow. The most logical fix would be to allow the owner to set up a point in which a killed target will be relocated; a duration of temporary invulnerability would be put in place (How long being set by the owner) and the location could switch randomly between any number of pre-set locations.

While the social, creative, and financial elements of SL go strong, I'm afraid that the gameplay elements seem like an atrophied branch, all but completely forgotten and left to whither away. Certainly something like this could change that, and SL more attractive to a more casual, fun-loving segment of potential players.

Description

In the diverse array of activities SL has to provide, it's damage system is a particularly weak element, so much so that-to prevent abuse-owners must use a script-based health and damage system, but this comes at a cost to the player in regards to a lack of ability to use personalized weapons, and is usually native to only one particular sim, thereby requiring the purchase of proper materials for each and every experience. What I propose is some limitations and settings that an owner of a particular land can implement that would generally improve the experience. =A maximum damage/push cap: The underling fault with the present weapon system is that any person can set their weapon to push at such a great degree that one use of the weapon can kill a target. Therefor, an Owner can set a cap of how much damage is inflicted by setting a maximum possible amount that a person can be pushed by, causing any push weapon to exceed this level to reduce itself to the maximum, and thereby removing the potential for a one-hit kill. =A Damage per Second ratio: With this, A person can only inflict so much damage in a given time, for example: 10% of push damage per 1 second. This means that the person must wait one second before he can inflict any more damage on the target. Say that the person inflicts a cap of 80%, even if he fires on the target with a weapon of any damage level it will have no effect until eight seconds have passed, thereby giving the target enough time to retaliate. Even with the first rule implemented, a person can still defeat a target simply by shooting it at the maximum cap many times over, which makes this necessary. =Spawn points: Another underlying problem with the damage system is that, once a target is killed, they must respawn at their home, causing a serious break in gameplay flow. The most logical fix would be to allow the owner to set up a point in which a killed target will be relocated; a duration of temporary invulnerability would be put in place (How long being set by the owner) and the location could switch randomly between any number of pre-set locations. While the social, creative, and financial elements of SL go strong, I'm afraid that the gameplay elements seem like an atrophied branch, all but completely forgotten and left to whither away. Certainly something like this could change that, and SL more attractive to a more casual, fun-loving segment of potential players.

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Siobhan McCallen added a comment - 14/Jan/09 04:06 AM

I agree that the death system needs a great deal of work, and should get some new attention. I do think that a spawn point, or the ability to control what happens when someone is "killed" is critical, since one of the worst complaints against damage is that people rightly hate getting teleported home.

But I am not so sanguine about things that "nerf" attack capabilities in the fashion you describe, because they break down the essential verisimilitude of the environment we are trying to build. To me, nothing is more frustrating than to be in an exquisite reproduction of, say, WWII Europe, with perfect uniforms and weapons, and a gorgeous setting lovingly crafted, and your sniper sets up on the top of a mountain...takes aim at the enemy solder...gets his forehead in the sights...BLAM! And the sentry you shot points at you, because you gave him the equivalent of a paper cut.

In real life, an enemy soldier falls dead, the back of his head missing. In a damage sim, with a single-hit kill bullet – which a proper sniper rifle in that context should fire – kills the enemy. In an RP sim, using an RP hud that caps damage at 5 or 10% of total health, he looks up, sees the sniper, shouts, and a horde of soldiers falls on him and kills him...which is NOT realistic. The game balance is thrown off instead of being preserved.

This is not precisely a hypothetical. I have talked to people who have described this situation. Hand grenades should kill immediately because they DO if you are close enough to the blast. A handgun CAN kill with one shot if you hit the right place with the right ammo. This is what weapons really do. If anything is unfair, it is the real world which the death system more accurately models in that regard.

What isn't accurate is that bodies don't get whisked away to someplace hundreds of miles away instantly when they die. They fall down. Or get taken to a local morgue. OR a hospital. Let the parcel owner decide how to locally handle "deaths" or to keep the default if they want to.

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Siobhan McCallen added a comment - 14/Jan/09 04:06 AM I agree that the death system needs a great deal of work, and should get some new attention. I do think that a spawn point, or the ability to control what happens when someone is "killed" is critical, since one of the worst complaints against damage is that people rightly hate getting teleported home. But I am not so sanguine about things that "nerf" attack capabilities in the fashion you describe, because they break down the essential verisimilitude of the environment we are trying to build. To me, nothing is more frustrating than to be in an exquisite reproduction of, say, WWII Europe, with perfect uniforms and weapons, and a gorgeous setting lovingly crafted, and your sniper sets up on the top of a mountain...takes aim at the enemy solder...gets his forehead in the sights...BLAM! And the sentry you shot points at you, because you gave him the equivalent of a paper cut. In real life, an enemy soldier falls dead, the back of his head missing. In a damage sim, with a single-hit kill bullet – which a proper sniper rifle in that context should fire – kills the enemy. In an RP sim, using an RP hud that caps damage at 5 or 10% of total health, he looks up, sees the sniper, shouts, and a horde of soldiers falls on him and kills him...which is NOT realistic. The game balance is thrown off instead of being preserved. This is not precisely a hypothetical. I have talked to people who have described this situation. Hand grenades should kill immediately because they DO if you are close enough to the blast. A handgun CAN kill with one shot if you hit the right place with the right ammo. This is what weapons really do. If anything is unfair, it is the real world which the death system more accurately models in that regard. What isn't accurate is that bodies don't get whisked away to someplace hundreds of miles away instantly when they die. They fall down. Or get taken to a local morgue. OR a hospital. Let the parcel owner decide how to locally handle "deaths" or to keep the default if they want to.

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Jahar Aabye added a comment - 27/Apr/09 03:08 PM

Most of the stuff here is already implemented in resident-designed combat systems, including different damage amounts based on bullet type (such as sniper rifles), explosive blast radius, limits on how much damage each bullet can do, etc.

I do like the idea of giving an estate owner the option to set the maximum damage that a bullet can do. Thus the llSetDamage() function would act as a percentage, with llSetDamage(100); causing 100% of the allowable damage on an estate, while llSetDamage(50); would cause 50% of the allowable damage. I like this idea because it is simple to implement and gives greater control to the Estate Owner.

As for respawn points....resident-designed combat systems already do this. Similarly, there are regions in SL that have public homepoints where anyone who is a member of their open-enrollment group can set their homepoint. This acts as a respawn point when they are kiled, and where I have seen it used, this respawn point is located above combat in a non-damage area (which is similar to how it is usually implemented in resident-designed systems).

The main problem with the teleport upon death implementation, as it is currently designed, is that it can create a fairly high database load when it involves many avatars being teleported into, out of, and within a region over a short period of time. This is hideously inefficient, but unfortunately I fear that any changes to this system would likely have a similar problem. Most resident-designed combat systems that offer respawning either have the respawn occur at the death point, or else they rez a sittarget or warppos or similarly functioning teleport ball.

I do not believe that people will find that SL combat gameplay has been neglected or is "an atrophied branch." Far from it! Consensual combat gameplay in SL is a very strong and vibrant field encompassing hundreds of sims and dozens of distinct communities and cultures. Sure, the default SL Damage system has some serious flaws, but so does just about every bit of content that LL provides as default (no offense, Lindens). The Linden roads are laggy, but there are private racetracks. The default Linden popgun is a joke, but there are plenty of people who make very realistic and complex guns in SL. The LL-owned vehicle sandbox in Balance is kinda plain and bare, but there are plenty of other resident-designed sims for flying, sailing, driving, etc.

Like I said, I wouldn't mind having the ability for an Estate Owner to set a maximum damage value, but keep in mind that this ability, along with most of the others mentioned, are already available in resident-designed combat systems, so I wouldn't worry too greatly about the deficiencies of the default damage system.

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Jahar Aabye added a comment - 27/Apr/09 03:08 PM Most of the stuff here is already implemented in resident-designed combat systems, including different damage amounts based on bullet type (such as sniper rifles), explosive blast radius, limits on how much damage each bullet can do, etc. I do like the idea of giving an estate owner the option to set the maximum damage that a bullet can do. Thus the llSetDamage() function would act as a percentage, with llSetDamage(100); causing 100% of the allowable damage on an estate, while llSetDamage(50); would cause 50% of the allowable damage. I like this idea because it is simple to implement and gives greater control to the Estate Owner. As for respawn points....resident-designed combat systems already do this. Similarly, there are regions in SL that have public homepoints where anyone who is a member of their open-enrollment group can set their homepoint. This acts as a respawn point when they are kiled, and where I have seen it used, this respawn point is located above combat in a non-damage area (which is similar to how it is usually implemented in resident-designed systems). The main problem with the teleport upon death implementation, as it is currently designed, is that it can create a fairly high database load when it involves many avatars being teleported into, out of, and within a region over a short period of time. This is hideously inefficient, but unfortunately I fear that any changes to this system would likely have a similar problem. Most resident-designed combat systems that offer respawning either have the respawn occur at the death point, or else they rez a sittarget or warppos or similarly functioning teleport ball. I do not believe that people will find that SL combat gameplay has been neglected or is "an atrophied branch." Far from it! Consensual combat gameplay in SL is a very strong and vibrant field encompassing hundreds of sims and dozens of distinct communities and cultures. Sure, the default SL Damage system has some serious flaws, but so does just about every bit of content that LL provides as default (no offense, Lindens). The Linden roads are laggy, but there are private racetracks. The default Linden popgun is a joke, but there are plenty of people who make very realistic and complex guns in SL. The LL-owned vehicle sandbox in Balance is kinda plain and bare, but there are plenty of other resident-designed sims for flying, sailing, driving, etc. Like I said, I wouldn't mind having the ability for an Estate Owner to set a maximum damage value, but keep in mind that this ability, along with most of the others mentioned, are already available in resident-designed combat systems, so I wouldn't worry too greatly about the deficiencies of the default damage system.