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powa

Member

Registered: 2018-03-11

Posts: 58

Suggestion: Murdering requires vulnerable victims

Here's another possible solution to the murder-griefing problem.  It has been posted to the suggestions subreddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OneLifeSuggest … e_victims/.

I'm interested to hear what you think.

The Problem:
It is very easy for someone with a knife or bow and arrow to kill massive amounts of people, even if the people are all well-aware of the continuing onslaught. All that is required is that the aggressor click on a person (and grab the arrow if using a bow) and move on to the next victim. Finding a weapon is becoming easier with time and is easiest in settlements where the potential damage is most catastrophic. The damage can be extraordinary and easily destroy a city's community. This amount of power in one person for so little effort is peculiar. Lacking a decent ability to defend a town from a sole aggressor is very unrealistic.

Suggested Solution:
In order to successfully stab or shoot someone with with a bow, the victim has to have the status of "vulnerable". This status could be caused by one of the following "vulnerabilities".

Possible "Vulnerabilities":
- Holding a crafting item -- simulates being preoccupied with an activity, e.g. using tongs to prepare a kiln, watering farms, or threshing wheat
- Being a baby, child or elder -- too weak to defend oneself
- Holding a baby -- makes the person preoccupied
- Having too recently set down a preoccupying item -- it should take time to gather oneself
- Surviving an attempted attack within the last several seconds -- it should take time to regather one's strength and dexterity after an attack

Discussion:
Besides solving many of the worst case problems with murders, this automatically adds a very interesting dynamic. If a murder occurs in a village, the residents will be alerted, stop what they are doing, and prepare by ridding their vulnerability. By the same token, if someone wants to murder several people, they will have to be sneaky and try to kill only when others won't notice, or when they are all especially susceptible.

TrustyWay

Member

Registered: 2018-03-12

Posts: 570

Re: Suggestion: Murdering requires vulnerable victims

I rather that health is the hunger bar, if someone's hurt he will be able to run and defend himself

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powa

Member

Registered: 2018-03-11

Posts: 58

Re: Suggestion: Murdering requires vulnerable victims

Using the hunger bar as your health is a simple way to handle the problem with minimal new coding or complication.  There are a couple of problems though.

Since that suggestion is like adding an HP system and mashing health and hunger together, I'll first give my take on why HP isn't the solution here:

Weapons should be able to kill a person in one hit, even if they were fully "healthy".  This is currently a feature of the game and is great.  But it should be possible for the player to prepare for an attack and thus be able to mitigate it.  While a typical HP system could implement the latter, it would also remove the former phenomenon (if it did fix the latter).

The problem is that a typical HP system simulates injury, which is really a separate issue.  That is, usually HP either restores very slowly or increases when applying some healing method, not quickly increasing or decreasing depending on the immediate situation.  I would be happy with an injury system, but that is not the problem we are facing.  Yes, injuries probably should impact one's ability to prepare for an incoming attack, but this is an extra feature.  The core problem is that even without any injuries people should be able to be killed instantly.  But they should also be able to mitigate the attack if prepared.  Typical HP systems aren't designed to handle this.

In contrast, the vulnerability system described above retains the ability for instant kills (again, a good feature that shouldn't be removed).  But it also allows people to prepare for attacks, solving the original problem without trampling other features.

As for using the hunger bar as a health bar:
- As with all video games, it's awkward to mashup health with hunger.  Eating instantly restores health?  Strange.  Most survival games (eventually) separate the hunger bar from health bar for good reason.
- A hungry person should not be more vulnerable to violence (unless, perhaps, they're starving).  Besides also being an oddity, this incentivizes overeating, which could be a big problem in this game.