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KO Mechanic


Kurock

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Before we can start with the KO mechanic, here is a quick recap of the current death mechanic in Dual Universe

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What happens when you die, what do you lose?
 
When you die, you respawn at the nearest resurrection node, which is by default the Arkship. See our devblog about resurrection nodes to learn more. Now, when that happens, you loose all the content of your inventory, because things don't teleport themselves in Dual Universe. Your inventory becomes a virtual container at the place where you died, so you can try to get back there and recollect it, if nobody else has taken it!

As death penalties go, financial loss, full body looting and location displacement are only beaten in harshness by perma-death (which thankfully, DU does not have).

Other MMOs have death prevention mechanics. For example, Guild Wars 2 has a weakened downed state where the player character can crawl back from the brink of death or get a last shot in before collapsing.  Albion Online and the future Chronicles of Elyria both have (sometimes) knock out states where the player character is incapacitated rather that outright dying.

 

Potential DU knock-out game mechanic

For massive damage, like from a ships gigantic cannon, or face-planting into a planet at 200+km/h, a instant trip to the resurrection node makes sense. In other cases e.g. small arms fire and not too far falls, instead the players avatar could be knocked out instead. 

While KO'd

  • The player cannot act or move. Potentially even looking around would be limited.
  • The player always has the option to force a respawn. 
  • The amount of time spent in a KO state could depend on many factors, such as damage taken, armor, skills, time since last KO etc. 
  • The players avatar can be looted for a smaller subset of items they are carrying e.g. weapons held in hand.
  • Potentially limited bloodshot vision. This aids in deciding whether to hit that respawn button or not.
  • After the time is up (could be a 20 seconds to minutes) the avatar can get up again with minimal health and potentially a limited time debuff.

 

Why a KO mechanic?

Incapacitation gives more options:  

  • A pirate boarding party that just wants goods, can incapacitate, take their pick and leave the tree to bear fruit for them again later.
  • There is also a chance that friends may be near enough to protect the KO'd avatar and get them back on their feet.
  • The player stays in the action a little longer (even if it is just to accept a coup de grâce from the enemy)
  • Penalties (be it RP or with a reputation system) could be heavier for killing rather than incapacitating.

 

Would you like to see a KO mechanic in DU? Do you have suggestions on how you would prefer it to work?  Comment below. :)

 

Edit: This thread also has some interesting suggestions for incapacitation:  

 

 

Further watching/reading:

DU Kickstarter Ask Me Anything (Part 3): https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/10215-kickstarter-ama-event-third-last-part/
DU Devblog Ressurrection Node Mechanics: https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2014/10/10/resurrection-node-mechanics/
Albion Online KO/Death penalty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xk2VfcWvN8
Exploring MMO death mechanics: https://www.engadget.com/2014/01/15/mmo-mechanics-exploring-death-mechanics/
MMO Death Penalties: https://www.engadget.com/2011/03/24/the-perfect-ten-death-penalties/ and http://massivelyop.com/2016/03/05/massively-ops-guide-to-death-penalties/

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All the points you made under "Why a KO mechanic?" are not valuable reasons:

1)There's no reason to leave them alive.

2)They can protect their friends even when they're alive, you don't need a KO mechanic for that.

3)You can just give them some more health

4)That's just something that you add to justify the KO mechanic, but that it's not needed by itself. 

 

 

I'm not against a KO mechanic though, so here's my "Why a KO mechanic?":

1) It's a new combat element that adds complexity and interactions. The gameplay changes for you when you're downed (different skills, can't move, ...), for your enemies that will have to decide if it's better to go for the kill or to ignore you and focus on your friends, for your teammates what will have to decide if it's better to risk their lives to save you or to use you as a bait. 

2) Social interaction (pretty important in DU I'd say). You can't talk with a dead body right? 

3) It's more immersive

4) It's good for roleplay

 

How I think that should work:

1)You get downed when your life reach zero and you get a new healthbar. Your opponent can either kill you faster with an animation or by damaging your new healthbar (like GW2)

2)Your life doesn't decay over time (unlike GW2) so that you have time to have a conversation with the guy that killed you.

3)You can't deal damage, that would kill any social interaction.

4)You can heal yourself up to 80% over a certain amount of time, so that it's easier to save you if your opponent decided not to kill you and is taking you hostage (like Dead by Daylight)

5)You can slowly crawl away from your opponent, so that he has to costantly keep an eye on you, if he decided not to kill you. (like Dead by Daylight)

6)I'm not sure about this point, but it could be interesting if your opponent has the option to move you, to have some control when you're trying to crawl away but ofc while transporting you he's vulnerable and waste time. (like Dead by Daylight)

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Hmm, personally I'm not a big fan of the KO mechanic. In normal situations a KO mechanic would not be a huge game changer. However, in a big war the KO mechanic would be incredibly annoying, if someone receives fatal damage, they should die. I am not against adding weapons that are made to incapacitate the enemy instead of killing them, but an overall KO system is not to my liking.

Now I say it's not to my liking though I'm not against the idea of having it, but the version I would recommend is the timed KO state. If someone gets KO'd, they would fall down, and a timer would start ticking before they "bleed out" and die, if they receive damage in this state the timer would move faster. If a person is "revived" in time, they would get back up on their feet but with a massive debuff that would require a med-kit of sorts to rectify. Even after the med-kit, they would still maintain some of the debuffs. People who go down the medical skill tree would be able to lessen the effect of the debuffs, as an added mechanic. Some might call this a bit "extreme" though this is the system I would like to see if KO gets added.

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I'm familiar with KO mechanics, in-general I'm a fan of them. Something to keep in mind though...

 

In similar games that have a KO mechanic, you drop literally everything on death. When you are KO'ed, attackers tan loot your body, take your weapons, etc. The KO mechanic allows you to disable someone instead of killing them by confiscating anything that can deal damage.

 

The problem is that "full lootable" KO only makes sense in a game where you drop everything on death. So far, its slated that you will lose *some* of your items, but not all if your character dies. This would mean that robbers would KO people, rob them, and then probably kill them anyways (or not to avoid breaking laws and acquiring bounties).

 

Having "full lootable" KO here just doesn't make sense. "but I want the ability to disable them, i should at least be able to take their weapon" yeah if anything that would be the way to go, KO would allow you to take weapons from a downed player, and then by-default if you die, you drop any weapons you were carrying plus some of your resorces. Instead of making weapons lootable by default though, *ammunition* could be lootable by default, or give attackers a "disarm" option that sets a nice fat long cooldown timer on a down'ed players weapons.

 

Another thing to consider here too is that there would need to be "outright kill" situations where there is simply no KO step, and this would probably come from a CVC weapon hitting a player, or a PVC weapon hitting a player. Missiles, very high calibur guns, high intensity lasers, there is a host of things that should go right on ahead and skip the KO step.

 

Allowing a character to force respawn from a KO is also a must, otherwise repeatedly KO-ing a player would become exploitable as a form of griefing. Also, no handcuffs. 90% of the players that want a handcuff style mechanic want to use it to capture and torment innocent players, not to capture criminals alive.

 

 

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43 minutes ago, Dxeo said:

...However, in a big war the KO mechanic would be incredibly annoying, if someone receives fatal damage, they should die...


If you want to ensure someone stays down after being dropped/KO'd... we call that the "double tap".  Can't deliver it?  Then I would say that person is not truly defeated.

 

I purposefully didn't go into limited time stacking KO/death debuffs.  But they are definitely viable here.

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22 minutes ago, Kurock said:

If you want to ensure someone stays down after being dropped/KO'd... we call that the "double tap".  Can't deliver it?  Then I would say that person is not truly defeated.

 

I purposefully didn't go into limited time stacking KO/death debuffs.  But they are definitely viable here.

A person hit by a ship missile or a discintegration cannon should not need to be double-tapped.

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1 minute ago, wizardoftrash said:

A person hit by a ship missile or a discintegration cannon should not need to be double-tapped.

Allow me to quote myself:

1 hour ago, Kurock said:

 

Potential DU knock-out game mechanic

For massive damage, like from a ships gigantic cannon, or face-planting into a planet at 200+km/h, a instant trip to the resurrection node makes sense. In other cases e.g. small arms fire and not too far falls, instead the players avatar could be knocked out instead. 

 

 

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I don't like "gamey" systems like special KO mechanics and "downed-states" that allow all kinds of game play to continue. Dead is Dead !

 

My version of KO would be a realistic version of being "knocked-out": if your health bar drops below a certain %, you lose consciousness and drop on the spot. So no vision, speech, movement or taking actions, and your inventory and equipped items is fully lootable.

After a certain time, you "regain consciousness" and can stand up and function as normal, but with the very low health that caused you to fall down in the first place.

 

And KO should not be some magical damage absorption mechanic. If you have 25 HP left and the KO threshold is 15, you die outright if you take 25 or more damage in 1 hit.

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4 minutes ago, NanoDot said:

and your inventory and equipped items is fully lootable.

 

Yeah, except you don't actually drop all of your items on death, you lose a percentage of your inventory, determined somewhat at random, and it might not even be lootable.

 

DU =/= Rust

 

You can't introduce a "loot all" mechanic in a typical mmo like WOW, that kind of mechanic is built for murder-hobo style sanbox games. "re-build civilization together" wouldn't happen if you could take everything from anybody just by shooting them.

 

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20 minutes ago, wizardoftrash said:

Yeah, except you don't actually drop all of your items on death, you lose a percentage of your inventory, determined somewhat at random, and it might not even be lootable.

 

DU =/= Rust

 

You can't introduce a "loot all" mechanic in a typical mmo like WOW, that kind of mechanic is built for murder-hobo style sanbox games. "re-build civilization together" wouldn't happen if you could take everything from anybody just by shooting them.

 

AFAIK, in DU you drop your entire inventory and all equipped items on death. Only your body is resurrected at the Rez node, your items don't "teleport" with you.

 

Read the last paragraph in this devbloghttps://devblog.dualthegame.com/2014/07/06/quantum-immortality/

 

However, part of what you drop is randomly destroyed, and the rest is lootable. The % of items not destroyed at death remain in a virtual container wherever you died. DU works exactly like EVE in this regard.

 

But the "gamey" systems that would be needed to deal with "downed states" is the reason why I don't like them in the first place.

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As someone else put it...

 

I know, way ahead of the curve as always.

 

A perfect thread, by the undisputed forum posts champion xD

 

Bottomline, have people being knocked out needing a person to trasnfer energy to them to "kickstart" their cyborg body.

This also mans there can be weapons that can bypass things like Armor, by directly draining a person's energy, with the mitigation being the person being draiend having backup batteries on them (as batteries can't be draiend on an "imminent danger" way, only capacitors can be drained that fast), simialr to how EVE does it, with batteires giving bonus energy capacity but also giving resistance to energy drain / neutralisation.

This can give birth to "energy vampires", that do not fight by directly beating their opponent, as well as having a "knocked out" state where the palyer is susceptible toa Kill and a Revive. It's what makes EVE an unconventional game in PvP, you can be a super-tank ship, if a frigging ship named after a demon vampire - the Bhaalgorn - shows up, you are dead, your energy is gonna go down, you will die - unless you kill it fast.

See, this kind of mechanic is the how actual, honest to god "threat" is being gfenerated by tanks in PvP in EVE, and I hope NQ adapts that mechanic, cause there is nothing more terrifying than a vampire that will beat you by draining your energy.

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