Posts Tagged ‘PvP’

Putting More “War” in Gang Warfare

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Put in a fairly significant Gang Warfare update today, which I’ll try to explain below. Short version is that defending in Gang Warfare now involves actual fighting and less staring at non-combats.

How It Worked
Once you beat down the previous defenders in an area, you’d gain control through non-combats (which prepare fights for future challengers). Then, after a while, it stops queueing fights and you just get the delicious, delicious benefits.

The Change
Now, when someone is challenging control of your area by defeating your defenders, you need to actually beat them back down instead of just having another non-combat to repair the damage. Assuming you’re successful, you repair the damage just like the old non-combat would.

These new sort of queued fights also can transition over into Control when you take out the old controllers, so you might be able to skip the “gaining control” non-combats entirely.

Why
So defenders in Gang Warfare get to actually fight people rather than hitting a bunch of non-combats. And so that there’s a little more symmetry between attacking and defending. Previously, there was nothing an attacker could do that the defenders couldn’t undo with a non-combat, where now, both sides win or lose in actual PvP.

Other updates for today:

  • There were some SQL connection errors which have apparently been resolved by our hosts, but if you run into any more of those, give me a holler. Thanks to Thrillhouse and JTN2002 for reporting these.
  • Resolved the PHP errors related to last night’s account preferences rollout. Thanks to Borkman, Lord Finisher, and Hastur the Unspeakable for isolating these.
  • Recipes that you cannot complete due to missing components will now have their radio buttons greyed out. Good suggestion, Al and xKiv!
  • And also thanks to Jick and Pyren for taking care of some typos for us.

Cheers!
Kinak

Today’s Updates

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

As you can imagine, most of today’s updates involve Gang Warfare. If you haven’t gotten into that yet, there is one update of note:

  • The Techniques page now orders by Chain number then alphabetically. This is purely a usability change, so if you feel this makes your life harder or easier, I’d love to hear feedback. Thanks to PaidPiedPiperPal for the push here.

On to the gang and gang warfare updates:

  • You should now receive mail messages when you win or lose defending an area. Love it? Hate it?
  • It now displays in the Gang Warfare screen within the Gangs options what areas your gang currently has a hold in. An item has appeared on the scene that also helps give this feedback.
  • There will now be a Gang link on the top pane for gang members. Thanks to PaidPiedPiperPal for pointing this one out.
  • Like profiles, gang pages now show a Previous, Random, and Next at the bottom. Should make looking for stuff a bit easier. Thanks to MoreUmlaut for the suggestion.
  • Your credits total in the character pane will now immediately update on creating a gang. Cheers to PaidPiedPiperPal for the bug report.
  • Performing gang actions (like whitelisting and blacklisting) from the profile screen will no longer temporarily make the target look like they’re part of your gang. Thanks to both MoreUmlaut and PaidPiedPiperPal for bringing this one to my attention.

Keep up the great work everybody! Keep the bug reports rolling in and have fun beating each other up a bit.

Cheers!
Kinak

Gang Warfare

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Gang Warfare (aka PvP) is in. I’m expecting a huge share of issues to crop up, so please keep an eye out. There’s enough to it that I’d like to explain a bit in advance.

Short version, if you don’t like long explanations: play it, try it out, see if you like it, give lots of feedback.

Gangs
To participate in Gang Warfare (or if you just want to form a group of likeminded characters), you need a Gang. Gangs can be created from a link in your character sheet (character link at the top of the page). Alternately, you can search for an existing gang. Creating a gang does cost some credits.

The gang leader (or leaders, you can name more than one) can elevate members to recruiter or beancounter. Recruiters can approve requests to join the gang, whitelist people (automatically let them join anytime), or blacklist people (permanently ignore them). Beancounters have to deal with the Gang Stash.

The Gang Stash
Once you join a gang, you can add items to the gang stash. These are packaged for sale by the gang’s beancounters. So any item you put in the gang stash is gone for good. Actual quest items (there aren’t that many) shouldn’t show up.

Shipments of items from the gang stash can be sold from the aptly “Gang Stash” link in the gang page. Only leaders and beancounters can do this. Normal members and recruiters can only add to the Gang Stash, which is done through a new link in the inventory page.

You can use those profits to buy hideouts in various areas (not Southside until you can move your house and not Inside the Slags because that’d be weird in game). These hideouts can be stocked with all sorts of stuff. For the most part these help while resting for the time being. More of these enhancements, like furniture, will be rolled out. Got some good juju here.

So… Warfare
Once you’ve joined a gang, there’s a Gang Warfare link at the top of the gang page. You can mark yourself as active in gang warfare here. It will take a few combats (note: not encounters, specifically combats) to start getting PvP encounters.

Four areas in Metroplex are active for PvP: Southside Park, The Docks, Dockside Sewers, and the Quad. As you adventure normally in those areas, you’ll run into PvP events. If another gang has a hold on the area, you’ll fight their members like a normal enemy. If you’ve eliminated all comers, your gang will start to build control.

When you build control, the game is basically copying your character for other people to fight. You don’t have to be online and it works like normal combat. Wounds are applied to this simulacrum, for example, not your actual hit points. The copy can be worn down over multiple combats, though, to prevent one strong player from gumming up the works.

Awards
Aside from the obvious satisfaction of beating up on other players and spreading your gang’s control over Metroplex? Actually quite a bit.

When you have enough control in an area, you will get special benefits related to that area. For example, controlling Southside Park unlocks the backroom of Little Eddie’s with a selection of interesting items.

Gang leaders can also set agendas for each area. These are listed on the Gang Warfare screen where you activate yourself for PvP. Once you have enough control, you’ll start getting adventures related to the agenda rather than the normal PvP encounters.

Here’s a quick overview:

  • Drive Demand – Increases the profits you get selling shipments from the gang stash.
  • Scavenge – Like dumpster diving on a cosmic gang-wide scale. Get lots of items from the area you’re lording over.
  • Security – Increases the number of combats you can queue in an area, making it harder to take back, to a certain limit. You can switch from this without losing the queued combats.
  • Shakedown – Shake down local businesses for credits
  • Vigilante Justice – Mete out justice on various more challenging opponents (often in groups). There’s a lot of potential for neat content here, but only one encounter for each area now.

There are also specific rewards for breaking into controlled areas, so don’t feel left out either way. A good back and forth should result in goodies for everyone.

Avatars
You can choose an Avatar in the Gang Warfare screen, basically so other people have an image when they’re trying to beat on you. There are two avatars that are available right away and rumors of more you can unlock. Rumors that I’m starting right now… because they’re true.

Other Stuff
If you have other questions, ask me in game or in the comments section here and I’ll add the answers to this post if they don’t make it unwieldy.

Cheers!
Kinak

Character Sheet Upgrade

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Made quite a few changes today, some are function and others are cosmetic changes that I want in place before the PvP rollout.

  • The left hand pane should load less often. This should help with some of the ‘flickering’. If you catch it not reloading when it has new information to display, let me know.
  • Striking with an empty Chain now gives you a new hand of five Techniques. I think this might give open up some interesting options, but give feedback if you have an opinion either way. Consider it an experiment.
  • The character sheet (the screen accessed from the Character link in the top pane) got an overhaul. Notably, Equipment has been moved solely to the Inventory page to make room for the Gang/PvP information.
  • You can now change the capitalization of your character’s name. No more all-lower-case for you! Click on your name in the character sheet to make any changes.
  • Moved gender into the character sheet from the initial sign-up form. If you care what gender your character is, you can set that in your character sheet as well. This is mostly for avatars and pronouns in descriptions for the upcoming PvP stuff.

Cheers!
Kinak

Combat Revamp

Friday, December 19th, 2008

I’m currently in the middle of revamping the combat code to pave the way for PvP. Once I’m done, as a pleasant side effect, we’ll have the more options to tweak enemies. For example, the living oil slick you might encounter outside the Slags will take more damage from fire.

Edit: The data revamps on enemies are done. You should now see the effects above. As another pleasant side effect, Defense against various types of Techniques should now be more effective.

As always, send in any problems I manage to cause or general commentary as Bug Reports or comments on this thread.

Cheers!
Kinak