many thanks to our fast levi killer
unfortunately you are screwing up our reward
think about it
you lose everyone's fun and reward and you don't get anything yourself

 

I'd like to share okaybenji's wise words.

"I just want to reiterate, any way a player enjoys playing the game is fine, short of harassing other players. If someone has a problem with the way someone else is playing, that's on us as game designers, not on the other player.

So if you have a complaint about how folks are playing, tell us in the feedback forum what the behavior is and why it bothers you -- not who the players are, because that's irrelevant. We'll evaluate what we can do to fix the problem with the game design that encouraged the behavior or led to its negative impact.

And if someone is harassing you for the way you like to play the game, submit a support ticket and let us know. Harassment is never okay and we will deal with the player." -okaybenji (source)

Everything is about incentives. And some people don't understand that all forms of energy, including anger, will be incentives to someone. This is why people say that the more you hate something the stronger it gets. This is why the Streissand effect exists. This is why websites exist for the sole purpose of being offensive, because without these things there exists the absurdity of untapped energy, as negative as the untapped energy may be. If we want someone to behave differently, it does help to incentivize different behavior, but there is a limit to this. Disincentivizing trolling never works. It's counterproductive, which is clear if you understand this kind of behavior. If we want to prevent people from breaking parts of the leviathan in a different order than we want, we'll need to make it impossible or ineffective (not just inefficient) to do so.

Speaking of incentives, the current setup of leviathans creates an incentive, real or fake, for people to be mean to others who break the "wrong" parts, in hopes of getting more leviathan rewards as the indirect result of being mean. And I've seen a lot worse from some other people than MKR's polite request on this forum. I love the economies of exocraft, but an economy of intimidation is one that I'd rather not have.

I have 2 (or maybe 3) proposed solutions for this. The first is to simply make green parts a lot harder to destroy. At least 3 times harder, maybe more. This is an easy solution but it's not comprehensive. There would still be ways to annoy people by breaking certain parts.

A more comprehensive solution would be to add a game mechanic where only the leviathan spawner and their friends are able to attack the leviathan. Other players would see red diamonds instead of green ones. (You don't have to friend someone back to fight the leviathan they spawned as long as they friended you.) I don't know whether the bubbles should be excluded from this limitation. This nearly destroys the incentive for trolling because you can't make people angry more than once this way. Also it reverses the incentive to intimidate people "out of line" because unfriendly people tend to get unfriended. I bet the main objection to this issue will be the fear that new players with no friends yet will spawn a leviathan and it will get away. Sometimes that will happen. Though I'm sure "Add me as a friend and I'll help you fight it" would usually work. Another objection is, what if a new player friends someone who wants to destroy leviathans "the wrong way"? Then there would be a risk of that happening in 5% of cases, instead of a risk of that happening in 100% of cases. At the end of the day, everyone can still destroy their own leviathans in a way you don't like. You won't get everything to go your own way. And as I've said before, you can always spawn your own leviathans.

A more arcane but fun sounding solution would be to make the damage equal to the sum of [the spawner's damage] and [the dot product* of all others' damage with the spawner's normalized attack vector (pun not intended)]. In simple terms, your drones will do more damage if you put them on the same tile as the spawner's drones. This sounds like a great idea but I can imagine 2 people yelling at a new player telling them to do different things, which wouldn't be very fun. In fact that scenario seems more likely with this mechanic. Maybe someone has a solution for this. (*Edit: the dot product would give the total damage, but you'd need the element-wise product to give the damage to each part. Also by normalized in this situation I mean scaled so the sum of all elements is 1. But I still don't think this is the best idea.)

Let me know what you think. If people show support for a suggestion I'll add it to the feedback forum. Please devs, I hope you do something about this. I've been stressing about the incentives involved in the leviathan economy for months now. I just want to play with drones and have fun but leviathans have made that more difficult. Leviathans have wreaked havoc, not on the ships of those unlucky souls that cross its path, but on the culture and soul of exocraft itself.

@C92643 Yep, it's too easy now and people will just bruteforce their way to killing a levi. If we double or triple the health of a levi then that makes it harder. Then players can destroy the correct parts and get better rewards.

@C92643 @Superboy Yes, I totally agree with you guys. There must be a way to make sure that the Leviathan gets buffed, or player attacks on Leviathans get nerfed, etc. fairly, or else no one will fight the Leviathan anymore. It’s a very delicate but predictable topic for the devs as the Leviathans are very new, and it will be a major change for us if the Leviathan fights are tweaked in any way by the developers. I’m hoping they will listen to us, because since the Leviathan is fairly new(Released in 1.9.0, we are in 1.9.5 as of right now) they must be anticipating the need for some fixes and balancing changes in the future updates. I have not checked yet whether C92643 has posted the idea on the Feedback Forum but I’m hoping there will be a balance update on Leviathans soon.

@Hajimu Leviathans were released in Version 1.9.0. but you have to understand that was 1 year ago (May 29, 2019). Version 1.9.5. is the current version (May 12, 2020).1 year has passed and nothing has changed since that time. I still stand by my previous message. And just for reference, the fastest a leviathan was taken down was 8 seconds upon my arrival.

I appreciate the thoughtful responses here. A simple idea I had on this was just to set a minimum time it takes to destroy a Leviathan, so if someone does come in and do a massive amount of damage in a few seconds, other players can still come get hits in on it so they also get drops. Any thoughts on that?

Unfortunately I expressed myself a bit vaguely
my concern was the disintegration of the blue circles
although there are enough ships and time
picture is not mine
just copied

Make parts not like the parts on ships. You destroy one part of a levi and the whole back is gone. Need to address that.

@okaybenji This is an interesting idea. Would the parts be destroyed at normal rates and the center piece have the time limit, or would each part have a time at which it could be destroyed? If you mean the former, I can imagine there still being a lot of conflict over those who destroy inner parts first, unless there was more transparency about how rewards are distributed. If each part had it's own timer so that inner parts had a much higher minimum time to destroy, this might be the solution we need.

Regardless of which parts it affects, a minimum time limit is vague. Would the damage rate limited so that a part's health can't reach zero until a certain time? Or would the health reach zero quickly but stay at zero until a time limit was reached before breaking? If this is the case, would the part be able to heal if drones were removed, or would it truly be stuck at zero, just waiting for the time limit before it falls off? Or would there be a time limit before which no damage could be done? I don't need to know specific plans but it would be hard to give much feedback without more info. Later today when I have more time I'll give feedback about each possibility.

Should I make a post on the feedback forum saying "solve the leviathan problems as described in this thread", or should I wait until there's more consensus about a specific solution?

Edit: I'll have to do this tomorrow. This is important to me but today has been a super busy day.

@C92643 My thought was the leviathan would still take damage, but would not get destroyed until the timer was up. You're right that the healing aspect could make this more complicated, but perhaps we could show the part as "damaged beyond repair" (black or something) so that it no longer heals, it just doesn't fall off until the minimum time has been achieved.
I was thinking of just applying this to the part with the Leviathan Core, but perhaps it needs more thought. It could be applied to all parts, and that might not be much more complicated in terms of implementation.
If you want to create that post for brainstorming some solutions, I will be happy to look through them. I would say the simpler the solution the better. If it's easy to implement it's more likely we can get it done.

Here's a list of possible solutions and my thoughts on them. It is a long post, which I've let people review and give feedback on before posting here. Thank you for giving consideration to this issue.

1. Damage rate is limited. The damage from each player is measured without limit to determine rewards, but the part can only decrease health at a certain speed. Different parts could have different maximum damage rates based on their dependencies and/or whether they are neutral. More on different parameters for different parts later.

2. Benji's idea: parts can reach 0 health quickly, after which they are damaged beyond repair and can't heal. If this was applied only to the central part, people could still chop off large pieces of the leviathan, which might or might not give them an advantage, but would likely lead to more conflict and blame over the right way to do things, even if the disparity in rewards was less significant.

3. This is a modification to Benji's idea. You can damage any part beyond repair, but it doesn't break until all "prerequisite" parts outside of it break. Since you usually can't do damage as quickly to central parts, you would get less rewards for attacking them first, and others would still have time to destroy the outer parts. With this system, someone could eat the crust of the metaphorical pizza first, and the tastier part would be left for others. With the current system, someone can take a big bite out of the crust and the rest of the pizza explodes. Another benefit of this system is you can destroy a levi inside out just for variety or to cause a satisfying collapse without the fear of being wasteful, since all parts still need to be destroyed one by one.

4. Parts can repair back once they reach zero health. I think this would just lead to frustration and cause people to double down on efforts to break a difficult part (the sunk costs fallacy). Maybe that's a good thing in some ways to make people frustrated, so they care more about becoming stronger, though I prefer the "damaged beyond repair" idea.

5. Time limit before which no damage could be done. This sounds a bit tricky to implement, since exocraft isn't always good at updating whether or not you are allowed to attack something (especially during extreme lag). More about how you would determine time limits coming up next. This isn't terrible if it could work, but I dislike that it is somewhat forcing you to destroy parts in a certain order. It's still better to be forced by the game than to be forced by other players.

So how do we have different parameters for different parts? How do we tell whether prerequisite outer parts have been destroyed yet? The easiest way might be to have 2 standards, one for green (neutral) parts and another for elemental parts. But this can be a problem because depending on what parts you break, critical parts can become elemental. Another method would be to simulate the part breaking to see how many dependent parts would break. Code exists to find which parts break, but it would have to be reimplemented which might be tricky. Since we only have a dozen or so leviathan designs, it might be easier and less buggy to hardcode damage rate parameters, time limit parameters, or destruction prerequisites for each individual part. Keep in mind that sometimes a part is "central" and maybe ought to have prerequisites even though no parts are exclusively dependent on it.

My personal favorite idea so far is #3, my modification on Benji's idea. When a part with zero health receives damage, the game checks if there are any "prerequisite" parts remaining. If so, the part becomes "damaged beyond repair". Parts damaged beyond repair can still be attacked and additional damage to that part is included in calculation of levi rewards. If a part with zero health receives damage and all of its prerequisites have been destroyed, it will be destroyed. If the game keeps a record of destroyable parts, then this will be updated whenever a part is destroyed. Maybe it's easier to make parts break as soon as they have zero health instead of requiring more damage, but I think requiring more damage is aesthetically nicer, but not a big deal. You could still add a timer on the central part if you want, but it might not be necessary. I like the idea of making "damaged beyond repair" parts dark grey, maybe with no smoke or fire.

This is important: The total value of the levi rewards for everyone shouldn't depend on how the leviathan is destroyed, because this will create an incentive for people to try to control how others play. Even if destroying central parts is not a problem, maybe destroying the healing bubbles would be. I can imagine people yelling at players who destroy the healing bubbles (and even now I'm afraid to destroy them or ask whether it's a bad idea to do so). If the central part can't be destroyed until the last 30 seconds or so and the central part can remain elemental despite being damaged beyond repair, destroying bubbles might not be an issue, regardless of how rewards are calculated.

A friend of mine also pointed out that if leviathans are made more difficult, to the point of everyone present having to give 99% to successfully defeat one, this will lead to more blame and animosity towards people who target parts inefficiently, even if by mistake. So that's another variable to keep in mind.

I also made a post on the feedback forum requesting that more attention be given to this issue. Please take a look and consider voting on it. Link: https://feedback.goldfire.me/forums/203212-goldfire/suggestions/41432638-change-leviathan-mechanics-to-reduce-sabotage-and

@C92643 I think your ideas are very good, and I especially like your 3rd idea, a twist on okaybenji’s. What I(this is just MY idea) think the developers can do is to make all outer parts(parts that don’t destroy other parts when destroyed) elemental to be able to destroy them faster and the inner parts indestructible(or really buff their health) if there is a part that can fall off attached to it. This is the simplest solution I can think of, I hope there will be an update on Leviathans soon!

I just thought of an even simpler idea. No parts can be destroyed until the last 2 minutes or so, and until then, bringing any part to zero health would make it damaged beyond repair. There's still the possible issue of people fighting over whether it's evil to destroy the healing bubbles, but you don't have to worry about prerequisite parts and all that.

@C92643 Hmm. I’ve never seen healing bubbles do all that much, though. From my knowledge, they seem like a nuisance that constantly heals the Leviathan and attacks you so I don’t see destroying them as a problem. I don’t really get why people argue over healing bubbles, since you take damage and is one of the reasons(or so I’ve heard) that sometimes people destroy Leviathans in a way that other people might not want them to.

@Hajimu I haven't seen people argue about the bubbles yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did. If rewards are proportional to damage, some might argue that destroying the bubbles caused the leviathan to be defeated too quickly allowing less total damage. If parts (or at least some parts) could not be destroyed until the very end, and some parts took at least as much damage as elemental parts even after being damaged beyond repair, then there shouldn't be conflict about bubbles.

if anyone wants to be mad, im the mass murderer of the healing bubbles

I'll probably start fighting levis as much as I can next month, after mostly avoiding them this month, and I too plan to destroy the bubbles. If anyone has objections then please have the decency to post them here rather than messaging me in private (without witness). I will never "quarrel in private" or drastically change my playstyle according to private messages I receive.

@C92643 yes this is great!

don't forget to remove a few guards
when i sometimes see some of them standing in 9 groups and fighting the levi i could cry

@MKR052 yep, this is always a smart idea. I try to do this if I'm fighting the levi or watching the fight. Also if some don't know, it's also smart to leave the mines until after the fight so more guardian groups don't respawn.

Limit damage to 25% per open face.  If a part is at 0% health, make a check to see if it will drop off another part if killed (shouldn't).  If it does, the other part can be killed first, then drop both.  POSSIBILITY to allow for 1 additional piece to be knocked off at a time, maybe vs the whole chain.  It should force more players to target outer segments.  Give bonuses, perhaps, to those who hit the bubbles?

@Doskias I'm not sure what you mean by limit damage to 25% per open face, but I'm glad to hear you're brainstorming

@okaybenji please read this, too. There is a post on the Feedback Forum as well.