Law of unintended concequences

[Silicor]

Law of unintended consequences

Many of us had fun in beta even with the half implemented systems. The great potential could be seen and we had fun figuring out how things work and building our little piece of the dream, however...

When large populations start settling in after the servers stabilize, I think we can expect to see griefing and abuse of all these half finished systems that will make us all rethink our vision of the game. I'm going to list a few here, but I'm not giving away any secrets. We all know they though of them and are ready to cause trouble.

For example

• teraforming - Have a nice junk pile by your camp you plan on using. What if a big griefing guild builds a bunch of homesteads on it and starts deleting it with teraforming? Nice big walls or pits built for no purpose other than to annoy you?
• village safe zones - I like the idea of having a safe home. However, in the hands of someone malicious, they can do things you don't like right next to your home and be totally safe in their safe zone too. Obviously the can teraform or build walls to limit your movement, but they could also use baskets (or any object) to put offensive words on the ground next to your camp and you won't be able to do anything about it.
• easy totem placement - With no requirements to place a totem and only a 6 hour reset. Homesteads can be placed, walls constructed or natural resources destroyed with transforming. Once they ruin your area, they can pack up go to bed and ruin another area after they wake up.

There can be things done about all of these, but it won't before we start playing. I'd consider the law of unintended consequences when you are making your demands on the forums because the best intentions sometimes lead to disastrous results.

[KeithStone]

you make some vaild points.

[orious13]

You should test if you can teraform junk piles...

I doubt it... just like you can't teraform rocks.

If someone messes with some terrain in a homestead/tribe and exits it to do it somewhere else, someone can set at tribe where theres was deleted and have control of all that they did.

It wouldn't take long to undo what they did. You can't forget how much that dirt weighs while you teraform.

If it gets out of hand, the guides will probable fix it if it's an exploit. I don't see a lot of this happening.

[Silicor]

It has been tested, you destroy junk by teraforming it. How heavy dirt is is no problem, just set down a basket and you can set it in there or just destroy it.

[Viper66]

Folks that are in this game to simply gank everyone will run players from the game unless players get protection somehow, its that simple,, If I personally cant play the game as intended because everytime I try to build up my craft or Tribe area some asshats come along with no better intent than to find exploits and screw with me , I and some of my friends will leave this game period!..I love PvP but not in this type of game,, I play BadCompany 2, and World War 2 on line its pure PvP and I get my fix,, Gankers cant play those type games to long as everyone is a ganker...lol.. no advantage over anyone other than experience in those type of games..its just me and my 2 cents worth nothing more..

I posted this in another thread .. but it applies here I think.. thanks all..

[Vandali]

Adding in that a trash heap has to be depleted before that area can be terraformed wouldn't be a bad idea.

It's a guarantee that this will be abused.

[Silicor]

I'm sure things can and will be better with time. But if your going to let some griefers run you off easily, I suggest not playing at launch. This game is going to be raw and rough for a while.

[bruisie159]

im starting to think people are just going a bit mad now, worrying about extremes. Look, the devs and guides are pretty sensible and helpful here, if someone is harrasing you through use of an exploit or just purposfully trying to force you out of the game for no good reason then im sure you will be able to turn to a guide for help.

Come on people lets keep things in perspective a little, everytime i check these forums these days we seem to be discussing some scare story or another.

[SOFWarrior]

Min-maxers and power-gamers will take advantage of every loophole and exploit possible. That's why games like these need to have the most airtight, well-considered rulesets as possible from the outset.

Honestly, needing guides to interfere all the time is an indicator of a badly constructed set of sandbox rules, in that it infringes on the "freedom" that is a supposed hallmark of such games.

[darg75]

I'm detecting a "people are bad, apart from me" mindset here. Just because it could be done, does it mean that it will? If it is done, why do you think it would be done on a large scale? Would you do it to someone else?

I believe that people are generally good. It's a possibility that there will be a few out there that get kicks out of being annoying - will theyfollow you around Xyson hassling you at every step - I personally doubt it.

I think it's more likely that if (or if you prefer - when) bad behaviour like this occurs it won't be on a scale to ruin the game. If it does get out of hand the player base will deal with it. If they can't and it's impacting the game for a large group of people, the developers will deal with it.