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It is annoying logging into a town that you are a citizen of and then getting instantly killed. Why are the guards not attacking the enemy players that declared war on the node? It would be nice if they would have to fight the guards first instead of being allowed to just walk into the node and kill people.

Ludullu wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

This isn't good game design. It literally makes for a game where no one is challenging themselves.

The weak don't - yes. The strong persevere.

It isn't often you are objectively wrong, so I'm assuming this is a misunderstanding.

People (not gamers, every one) will naturally limit the amount of risk they put themselves under. Some people will allow more risk than others, but everyone has their limit.

This is the basis of gameshows like Deal or No Deal. This is the basis for poker. This is the basis for blackjack. Needless to say, this is known and understood.

If you put someone in a situation where they can risk $5 for a 10% chance of winning $100, most people would take those odds. If you increase the amount of money people have to risk from that initial $5 up to $10, many people will opt out. Increase it up to $15, and almost everyone will opt out.

This translates to MMO's just fine too. EVE's mantra of "don't fly what you can't afford to lose" is literally the same concept - people self regulating risk by simply not putting themselves in a situation where they are likely to lose more than they want to lose.

In a game like Ashes, that shows up as people taking more people than the content itself dictates, or taking on easier content even if the reward isn't as good.

Now, you may want to say something along the lines of " but some people will still take risks", which is why I think you are misunderstanding. Yes, people will still take some risks, because everyone has their own level of risk acceptance.

However, even the people that would qualify as "the strong" in your post above are subject to this. They may be taking risks that others aren't, but there is still a point where they would stop and rethink. They would have to, because they stand to lose too much if they don't constantly consider the risk.

These people aren't going to walk up solo to a raid boss thst is 30 levels above them and just have a go. There is a line somewhere between that extreme and putting themselves at zero risk for everyone, even these people. However, the greater the penalty, the lower that line will be - self preservation has to be a consideration for everyone

This is something that EQ2 is a great example of. The game launched with a reasonably death penalty. Not too harsh, but enough for people to be risk averse. People would only run groups with close to an optimal mix of classes, and with gear that was basically on par with what the content offered. Raids at the time were quite simple by design, as they needed to be.

The developers removed the bulk of that death penalty half way through the initial content cycle (ie, before the first expansion). Their argument at the time was basically "if a gamer doesn't feel a sense of failure for dying, a death penalty isn't going to make the feel that sense of failure".

All of a sudden, people were not just running that same content with sub-optimal groups, they were attempting it with less than full groups. Sometimes it worked, but sometimes it didn't - in a spectacular fashion.

The content was exactly the same, the player characters were exactly the same, but due to less of a penalty, players were able to take risks trying things out, not stressing if it didn't work.

This massively increased the amount of fun players could have. It is a big part of the reason the game has (or had, I can't speak to it now) such an incredibly low level of toxicity.

Now, you could then go on to say "but that isn't what Ashes is, Ashes is a game about risk, and that risk is coming from its death penalty". As a statement, this is something I completely agree with. My initial point wasn't that Ashes needed to change, it was that it is bad game design - and it IS bad game design.

The thing is, Ashes is being built on a foundation of bad game design.

Azherae wrote: »

I guess you can lmk if you just don't put any stock in the observations of behaviours of competitive players from other genres, but if you do, we now have literal decades of data about it. MMORPGs were the genre 'most lacking' that data because they 'played it safe' for a decade.

I'm not fully sure if the competitive players from other genres behave the same way the mmo ones do. Both on the good side of behavior and the bad.

Mainly exactly for the reason that all the players who might've been competitive in the mmos in the past (or others with similar mentality) have left for other games, which then created their own behavioral patterns and cultures.

Azherae wrote: »

No matter what you remember from the good days, remember that this is not L2, the suffering involved in being weaker is definitively greater.

And this is why I've always tried suggesting middlegrounds for systems. The "BHs should be returning the victim's loot to them", "event-based pvp should remain as promised, with minimal penalties, while also highly accounting for the possibility that the strong ones will always try to bully the weak ones", "proper hardcore pve should be instanced and with limited-to-no penalties on death" - are a few of those suggestions.

In other words, I'm a professional fence-sitter, trying to have and eat all my cake on my fence.

RonDog98 wrote: »

My main issues with XP debit is all of you would still play and love the game if it were gone, but there are an unknown number of potential players who won’t play the game because of it.

This game needs to attract a healthy full player base, and XP offers nothing positive and only negative.

It is an objective negative for this game to implement it.

Sure, but I also play Throne and Liberty as my main game now, and therefore I'm not as hardcore as the people who want to play Ashes.

But that's kind of the point. It's not necessarily a negative, because people who really don't want exp Debt have an objectively better (using your logic) game to play already, considering their main playstyle profiles.

Why should AoC strive to compete with a game for an audience that is better suited for that game already? It makes no sense as even a business plan.