Hey, first of all: great job on making this game. I'm really enjoying my time here.
I'm not sure if this is the right place to drop this suggestion (but I'm unexperienced in testing early access games and dropping suggestions, so please forgive me any beginners mistakes ).
I know there have been a few questions (and answers) on what we can expect from pvp and as far as I understood, this is not the main focus of the game as it aims to be another type of experience and it requires resources to balance everything out. So, with that in mind, I wondered: "how to integrate a form of player combat interaction (I wouldn't call it pvp in the conventional way per se) that could be fun and fits in the experience?"
This is my suggestion:
- Let every player start with player combat off.
- As soon as you reach a combat skill (or a certain combination thereof: for example a maxed out combat skill and a another skill (e.g. called 'insanity')), allow to attack other players.
- You can only attack a limited number of players per day or per week, making it a rarer side activity (like e.g. playing some music).
- If you attacked another player, you get flagged. If you attacked the maximum amount of players, you get outlawed.
- Note that with 'attack' I do not mean 'kill' per se. Just showing aggression towards another player could be enough for the purpose of the suggested experience.
- If you are outlawed, you can get caught by other players during 2 hours of 'logged on' time. If they catch you (e.g. with some sort of lasso or by hitting you with a skill) the captor is rewarded and you are teleported to a cage in the town where other players and npc's can show you their disapproval for like 2-3 minutes). Perhaps an outlawed player can be visually flagged or they can be listed on a board in town (making the search a bit more interesting). During outlaw, you cannot go to instanced locations (so you are forced to run out in the open).
- If you defend a player that is attacked by another (flagged) player (by attacking him within a certain time limit after he attacked): you level a skill 'protection'.
- Allow a player to adjust their pvp damage intake or turn it off completely (e.g. x1 is a normal pvp situation). (x0.2 would take significantly more time to kill). Higher intakes offer higher rewards. Of course, you can only attack players that have the same or a lower damage intake than yourself.
- If you hit the same player for more than 40 times within a day, you get teleported somewhere random as a punishment and you are locked out of pvp for 24 hours. (to avoid spamming or annoying behavior)
- Ofc everything is adjustable by the player, if you would like people to be able to hit your as many times as they want you can turn it off.
- You cannot get any rewards from attacking players in your friends list or in the same guild.
Basically, I suggest player combat as an sandbox activity of 'player aggression' (not as competitive pvp) or 'player protection'. Therefore, there is less concern about balancing imo and it won't get out of hand.
This is just an idea, I'm fully aware that this might not be possible at all, ever. But then again, I thought the idea was worth sharing as I feel it is a different approach on pvp combat.
All be well!