Okay, so we made http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/111625 and we think about friendly fire. We argue in the coliseum about 1v1s, etc. But what this needs is dueling to settle everything. Dueling , AKA fighting opponents in one on one combat to prove skill, worth, sometimes wealth, and ability to lead a group of other people has existed since the dawn of time, when cavemen tried to bash thier heads in with stones for that nice tasty dinosaur fritata.
So to summarize, dueling works like this.
It is available as an option when right clicking a knight in close proximity. When the knight accepts the duel invite, it brings up a 2-screen menu similar to the trade menu with a button for forfeiting, slots for bargained loot, (when one person wins he takes the other's), and a button for beginning a duel. In a duel, music will change to battle music, and a big button saying forfeit is displayed. In a forfeit before the duel starts, the person keeps his own loot. After it starts, the person loses it.
To mark that two people are dueling, sword-shaped icons appear on each person's feet, pointing towards each other.
Opinions? I think this is flawless.
Dueling, the perfect update.
1. yes yes and yes. the entire first paragraph works.
2. Randomly fighting anywhere. Training halls, Shadowlord vanaderp, the Core, your mom's place, etc. Knights are only as logical as the people controlling them. If not fighting in front of vanaderp then something else. For public fighting areas, a person can simply make a party spot and lock it with two people only, battle in front of crowds, or travel to seperate instances. Each duel is a sudden death type duel, you die, you lose. Courteous knights could duel several times for the same prize, though. Health pads and tools? Only in areas that have them, for example, The advanced training hall. Tier locks don't exist at all in dueling, whatever goes. Dueling would not be tracked because dueling is more similar to trading. I never mentioned random dueling though. Perhaps people could load into maps to fight there. King krogmo does not seem like a good choice at all, because knights would use dueling as a means of settling debate, and because dueling costs no crown entry fee, people would not want to play blast network / lockdown so much.
Yes
Why not make dueling only be something you can do while both of you have access to loadouts? This means that you can't have random duels in the clockworks, your loadout could be changed and edited up front (so you both know what you're up against), and you can't duel teammates in Lockdown. (The locker room doesn't give access to PvE loadouts)
This limits places you can duel to Haven, subtowns, clockwork terminals/party lobbies, unknown passages, the start of a clockworks level (you both need to be in the arsenal station, and it will not work on boss stages outside of the first depth), training halls, and guild halls.
This makes duels a bit more fair. If you want to do a friendly-fire mode in the clockworks, it'll only work in a 2 player scenario and you need to make a duel request at the arsenal station at the beginning of each level.
It's a neat idea, but I really don't like getting random trade/guild/friend/PvE invites, random duel invites would be so much worse and quite intolerable. SK would really need to invest in a player's privacy options - check/uncheck "accept BLAH invites from (check/uncheck) strangers/friends/guildies." I've always wanted this, but duel invites would make it a necessity. The person sending the invite would get a blue message "this player is not accepting X invites at this time," while the non-receiver would be blissfully unaware of the effort.
How would this work in most areas? Would you two load into an instance after agreeing to duel, a training hall-like area in which you fight it out, that can be spectated like other modes of PvP? Being able to fight anywhere via the interface doesn't make sense. Like oh, let's just randomly fight in front of Shadowlord Vanaderp, just cause we can. Hilarious but not logical for knights to do. Could you choose to make the fight area public for spectation, or keep it private while the two knights "settle their differences quietly"? Would you agree to a few rounds (around 3 probably), just one, or if lengthier, Sudden Death? Would this area have health pads or other tools to aid the fight? Would the duel force tier locks, or "whatever you're wearing goes it doesn't matter?" Would there be a global tracking of these fights, or not? I imagine not, as dueling tends to be a personal matter that can be made public if desired. After the duel, would you load back into Haven no matter where you started the duel from, potentially interrupting runs? Considering most gamederp scenarios, I'd say the option to duel could only be in the menu if the players are in an area of Haven. To make things less complicated, duel invites could be private and have nothing to do with the coliseum. A que for a random duel with anyone else who just wants to let off some steam could be sanctioned by Krogmo. These two modes could each have special fight areas, randomly selected much like other maps are. You could join the duel que much like you'd join LD or BN.
When starting a private duel, players could have the option to stick stuff in a "trade window-like interface" and the victor gets everything that was put into it. Additionally, being able to bribe Krogmo during this pre-fight stage of the duel would be fine (perhaps limited to que only), we need another way to get bombheads that doesn't require waiting for them to randomly show up on the FAH or several people to que for BN / LD.