Maybe a bit devisive, but I just don’t like how Renown is from a casual perspective. To invest into climbing renown as it is can lock you off from participating in a lot of the other games content. You have to be ready- at any time, to be attacked by one or usually more people. Whether you are sailing to meet a friend or fishing or boss farming, anyone can come in to interrupt you.
Now on the balance doc we have this so far:
Several changes to the Renown system to make it more polished and fair. These will be setup for future changes for Renown that will be done for the Nimbus Sea update.
- ▲ Reduce renown tax on hunting/killing: -30% ➔ -10%
- Makes hunting generally more rewarding, and getting revenge much less lossy.
- ▲ Remove reduced renown gain from NPC hunts when you have 500k-1m Renown.
- Radial combat tags can still apply in this range, keeping the risk of being hunted.
- ► Upon succeeding/failing a hunt, the player that was hunted is unhuntable for 5 minutes
- You can still take another player’s poster during this cooldown.
- Lets the player who was hunted have a grace period to prepare for their next hunter if a different player decides to hunt them.
- ► Remove all posters of the player from inventories after that player is successfully hunted, Helps make the above change work properly.
- ► Posters should be unable to be swapped in-combat
- ► Radial Combat Timer from hunting should not apply to players that have recently joined
- Gives the player time to load in and see if the server is right for them before proceeding, rather than being trapped in an unfavorable position.
- ► Non-hunt player kills should no longer reward/penalize Renown
- This will not affect kills from players in the Grand Navy or Assassin Syndicate.
These changes are great, for the most part, some of them I even suggested myself on the balance-cord before I left. Still, I think this doesn’t go far enough to counter some of the toxic elements of hunting:
If I were to break down to a science, why renown may lead to heavy toxicity, I would say there are two key factors. One, bounty hunting is the chief and only way to get renown through pvp as of now, and it is at its core a toxic system. It encourages ambushing people while they are doing something else. Two, group hunting is incredibly common, as having even one extra person against a solo player basically guarantees your victory.
This group hunting thing I focus on a lot when arguing against certain aspects of renown.
Right now, the change that removes all posters of the player from inventories is GOOD, I asked for it personally, and I’m sure many others had as well. It helps make sure that you cannot essentially be farmed at Ravenna. The problem is, this doesn’t particularly dissuade group hunting. I made a suggestion on diminishing returns before, but it never really got popular, and it died rather fast. The balance discord was also so bloated last I saw that I have zero hope as an average community member to get my voice heard there.
So chiefly, here are the things I would add/go harder on for the renown changes
- Introduce a system of Diminishing Returns for group bounty hunting. The more players attack a single player, the less of the bounty in renown will be paid out. Starting at half rewards for two people, and halving again for each additional person.
- Alternatively, have the payout for renown depend on damage dealt before death. This is a far less efficient solution, but it also allows renown players to participate in boss farming/ship farming with far less worry of hunters capitalizing on their low health after the fact.
- Assassin Syndicate/Gravy Players should also have their auto-hunts subject to the 5 minute cooldown on hunting a particular player.
- If someone is hunting you, give the ‘Hunter Nearby warning’ even if not within the threshold to enable the Radial Combat Tag. This lets both high renown and low renown players know someone is after them, even if that someone isn’t at the proper threshold to engage the radial tag.
- Introduce a system where if a player kills someone more than 10% below the level cap (So 112 and lower) , they lose renown regardless of reputation (Fame or Bounty). This helps dissuade niche cases of low levels being bullied at places like Sailors Lodge by bored high levels with nothing better to do. Obviously not a perfect fix, but I have heard some anecdotes about players quitting the game due to struggling to deal with high level players who got bored, and have personally had a friend quit around cirrius for the same reason.
- Expand on the suggestion to prevent radial combat on people who just logged in. Now, everyone who joins a server has a two minute grace period before anyone can claim their poster. This lets them get away from Ravenna, and potential hunters who are lying in wait there.
- Diminishing Returns on Repeat Hunts. This one is probably going to be the least liked of all of them, but I think it stops two cases. One, where a player of less skill is being essentially farmed, and two, cases where people ‘exchange’ renown with one another. These both stop someone from making radical growth off of hunting the same person, regardless of whether or not it was intentional.
A lot of you are probably gonna see this masterpost and skim over most of it, and that’s fine. I didn’t put this in suggestions because this is more a discussion on where any of these ideas would fit into renown, and if the discussion can reach a consensus, maybe some of the changes can grace the ears of those responsible for renown balancing on the balance team.