1v1 Combat and "unkillable" characters

Rather than derail that thread, I'm making this one.

From my perspective, I strongly believe that the harder we make it for any one character to predictably and single handedly vat any other character, the better off the community will be in the long run.

I'm going to make this about me because I do not want anyone else to feel attacked or called out.

For most of my gaming career, especially the PvP portions of it, I have been extremely anti-social. The power fantasy of being able to enforce my will over another person / character and defeat them was an outlet for a lot of RL angst, anger and other unresolved emotions. And in my case, being able to overpower other people with violence held me back from developing key life skills like team work, and cooperation, and conflict meditation, and negotiation, and so many other things that help people co-exist with each other.

When I read comments that imply it's unreasonable to create game mechanics that make it difficult or impossible for one character to vat another character, I think that's a good thing. It's a good thing because it requires people to work together. It makes for community. It drives RP by virtue of having to work together.

And, it helps moderate extreme behaviors. Speaking for myself, I appreciate the reality check of other people. I appreciate it when someone says something like, "Yeah Hek, that other person IS annoying. But, maybe just take a deep breath. You're the only person who seems to be irked enough to want to murder them."

I always try to consider the other side of whatever position I'm taking or putting out there. So, the "down side" I could see of making it difficult for one character to dispatch another one predictably, is that an antagonistic personality can entrench themselves to the point where it becomes near impossible to build a collation against them. And, hypothetically, such a character could breed toxicity and have other malignant impacts on the community as a whole. That said, I trust the staff to adjudicate such situations if they occur.

The other potential downfall is the murder hobo aspect. The ceramic katana / wooden bokken wielding power house who picks fights with anyone and everyone, and then resorts to red texting them because they're on the kid of perpetual power trip that draws anti-social 13 year olds to RP games (not that I know anything about that….).

Again though, I trust the staff to deal with those players if they truly get to the point of being toxic and detrimental to the community.

Is this is a decent topic discussion?

Does anyone have any opinions on the 1v1 subject and whether it's an essential "balance issue" that needs to be maintained for the health of the game as a whole?

Is that a problem? That's pretty much how firearms work.

It's what lets 95 lb domestic violence victims fight off 250 lb abusers.

It's what lets revolutionaries rise up and overthrow governments.

Firearms kind of are the final word in settling disputes when the talking stops.

Unless we're collectively deciding that we want to play a game where characters are doing matrix style, slicing bullets in half with monowhips or whatever. Which would be cool, in it's own, different kind of way.

A shooter who stakes someone out, as Aida already brought up, can send their target to Genetek with haste if they're better as parry will not come into play. Whereas someone who has to contend with parry can both be better and the person who attacked, and end up at a disadvantage because of that.

As long as it works that way you're always gonna need someone with a gun for those parry reliant, defensive characters and all it does is reduce the number of people I can feasibly go after on my own. Not because our builds are far apart, but because they'll parry me for ages until I give up and leave.

You're talking about end game, Max UE combat?

If melee is involved, the min-maxed parry twink is always going come out ahead of any other non-firearms users?

if that's what your saying, I can see how that's a problem from a game balance perspective. I think… I have to think some more on that.

I've never seen a problem with it from the combats I have seen even with sword users, but haven't witnessed max ue combat apart from UMC replays.

By Slither

I haven't had time to catch any of the people claiming this is the case online and not idle, to test it against NPCs of various skill levels yet. I still plan to do that when I have time and helpers. I'd rather it be the people saying it is an issue so they can show me exactly what they are seeing and what the problem is, otherwise I'd just test it on my own.

If you email me a day/time range you want to test, I can make myself available.