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Retaining player pop after total loss
Flokii
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
Scenario:
A player joins AoC for the first time and becomes a citizen of a large and stable city. Acquires land, gear and saves months worth of items/materials in their home.
3 months after playing, the city comes under siege and they lose their homeland and all of their belongings other than what they have in their inventory. They had no secondary home or alt character and their friends/connections scatter to different Nodes.
What systems or driving forces are going to be in place to motivate this person to keep playing the game?
Context: I have Alpha2 and I am hyped for AoC, asking as it's one of the very few things that concerns me most with AoC player retention.
I often look at how Albion has become a gankfest of PVP and is much less of an enjoyable mmo for many character progressive focused mmo players.
A player joins AoC for the first time and becomes a citizen of a large and stable city. Acquires land, gear and saves months worth of items/materials in their home.
3 months after playing, the city comes under siege and they lose their homeland and all of their belongings other than what they have in their inventory. They had no secondary home or alt character and their friends/connections scatter to different Nodes.
What systems or driving forces are going to be in place to motivate this person to keep playing the game?
Context: I have Alpha2 and I am hyped for AoC, asking as it's one of the very few things that concerns me most with AoC player retention.
I often look at how Albion has become a gankfest of PVP and is much less of an enjoyable mmo for many character progressive focused mmo players.
1
Comments
You don't lose everything, only a portion of your mats...maybe. After that you go and buy a house elsewhere and your furniture and trophies follow you.
Losing your stuff is supposed to act as the motivator to defend against a siege. If that risk isn't there then why fight?
Clarification on this would be handy.
Yes, I get that it's a motivator (a strong one at that). I look forward to the risks/rewards.
Yes, the Node is destroyed but only a portion of your stuff is looted. You still get mailed (possibly) a blueprint of your home's layout so you can attempt to restart in a new Node.
Same thing happens w/ Freeholds
Basically, you still have the vast majority of your stuff. You just have to move to a new location.
However, these are the same people who would have soon quit when their weapon was too much trouble to craft, or their big raid failed, or their caravan got ambushed. No great loss to the player community and I hope they prepaid for a 2 year sub for the game's sake.
Refugees and Quest:
An enemy attacking a node should and probably will have some form of preparation time for the defending players. During this preparation period it would be great if there were quests that spawned in surrounding nodes of npc's sympathetic to the situation. This could possibly spawn a quest to help fortify the area in some way. Upon victory, this would result in some form of 'increased confidence in alliance' between the two nodes. Upon defeat, this would result in the sympathetic party offering to take in the player as a refugee in some outskirts outside of town to temporarily store their stuff and possibly offer some form of limited temporary citizenship to give some access to vital utilities.
Why do this:
There are a few reasons why this makes for an effective game play loop.
Overall, I think this will really flesh out AoC's game play loop. Even in the real world we have refugees after catastrophic battles. Giving a way for players to have a tent outside a familiar enough area and some access to essentials for getting back on their feet is a great way to both make the world feel like a constantly changing and fleshed out place and mitigate some of the real player psychology challenges that arise from AoC's core gameplay. Not only that, but the quest writing and generation is quite easy to do without expending a lot of resources. Even just the quest itself without the refugee status will almost assuredly lead to a less negative and more immersive game play loop for some section of players.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
I like that a lot.
As much as I despize the game, I think there are lessons to learn from Clash of Clans here - their gameplay loop deals with this exact issue. Big difference: in clash of clans your buildings are not truly destroyed, they just go through a phase of regeneration.
I think you could implement a similar effect in Ashes by providing some sort of boost to recouperating a portion of lost resources (but need to make sure that the siege was still a resource sink overall), probably via refugee-only quests.
REVENGE!!!!!
Rule Exception! (I'm posting in this thread, that is)
The part JustVine 'forgot' from our discussion was related to the feelings for the attacker. She mostly directly answered the question, so this is just context.
Anything that makes the attacker feel like they wasted their time, or that the target 'got off easy', is likely to be annoying. Drama or sometimes even without drama, some people just want their enemies to suffer as much as possible.
Politics therefore becomes the main thing here, the attackers feel 'good' because their opponents really have lost the full amount, and they can even threaten the node that dares to act as their refuge, if they think that the players will regroup and strike back.
Alternately they can try to convert people who were defeated to their side, telling them to come live in their nodes and not have to face the wrath of the advancing army again, and some people will do this because they join the winning side if they have nothing left to lose.
You can even add an alternate quest in the attack origin node (or node run by the attacking guild) where they offer to integrate citizens similarly, for 'those people who didn't agree with fighting back', though it is likely that quite a few of those people technically defected to begin with, and just 'became unable to move their stuff' once the Siege was declared.
So you've got three different emotions to grab most involved. Attackers get to feel powerful or as if they inflicted whatever effect they wanted. Defenders can feel 'accepted into the powerful army and safe' or 'accepted into the friendly nearby node as refugees and plot'. Not to mention the double agents, the political posturing, and the fallout from any dungeons or points of interest that despawned when the Node fell.
It won't catch everyone, but it should probably be enough, especially if it's really clear.
However, the more and more I read and watch AoC's pre-launch content, the more I've come to accept that the majority of players will likely change nodes (willingly or un-willingly) probably 2 or 3 times/year.
It feels like going into the game with more of the latter expectation sets up a better mentality, for the game. You'll have tales and memories of the heights of your previous Nodes, and you'll be better equipped to both help the advancement of your new Node, and more capable of accepting the eventual loss of the one you're now in.
The game-world will change like real life changes, and for some people that'll be too much to handle. The game's not for everyone; Some people would prefer a static WoW-like world that never changes no matter what you do. HOWEVER, yours truly shares IS's vision that MMO players would prefer a more-dynamic world where the things you personally partake in that lead to those changes will stimulate your interest and keep you playing in the long-run.
Bet!!
e.g. if they have a Tutorial Mode in Sanctus,
Teach you to craft a chair, then have the player place the chair in the world - triggers a "bully" NPC to break your chair and then you learn combat by fighting the bully for revenge.
...?
I personally don't see the issue as being people leaving after a single node loss, but if you combine losing a few homes in a row, losing a few caravans and being blocked out of top end content by other guilds, all of that combined will see people leaving the game - without a doubt.
https://youtube.com/@TheHiddenDaggerInn
You know, once they get further along the development path, it might not be a bad idea to have IS put out a video on relocating and what that will look like, for a guild and for individual players.
It'll be interesting to see conglomerations of non-guilded players and the effects they'll have in seeking the well-established cities for more stability, versus the cities that will be supported by a few strong patron guilds. If you're an un-guilded player who sees three of his smaller cities and towns destroyed, it feels like that's a lot more encouragement to move to a strong Metropolis and throw your hat in, there.
It feels as though the guilds that support a Node are likely more to be the ones that stick around in the aftermath of a loss to rebuild and learn lessons and preventative measures that can be taken, to ensure their next iteration of a city in that Node will fare better than the last time. Individual, un-invested players will likely see less sense in sticking around in the same place to build anew, but even moving to a Metropolis feels as though it's inherent encouragement to then join a community and to become invested.
Yours truly has no complaints about the planned Node systems; It seems like it's a good way to encourage new growth, world change, and innovation in trying to hold on to your community's foothold, in the game.
The more crowded a city (node) gets, the more anonymous everyone becomes, and the less attachment you have to the location.
Depends how "city" a metropolis will feel I guess...
And we still have the same Node-Type goals to pursue - more than ever before.
Less attachment is more likely, for some, if the Node pops to an undesired race.
U.S. East
Actually you can't.
A "conquered" node is reduced to level 0, and a node needs to be level 3 in order to have citizens.
This isn't about being lazy or not, it is about the fact that one of the things that distinguishes MMORPG's from almost all other genres is the notion of a persistent world. The genre is all about progression, and many players are not willing to accept that level of loss in a persistent world.
As I said above in this thread, I don't think many people will leave the game over losing their home to a siege, but people will leave the game due to continued loss.
Loss (of progress in particular) is difficult in this regard. Minecraft, Darksouls, even Mario, recognize this issue. This is why they try to give you a second chance. If you succeed after the second chance, it makes you feel good, possibly even better than if you never fell in the hole or got stabbed by the hidden skeleton in the first place because you conqured the personal obstacle. Game companies are fielding focus testing and research into how to optimize the second chance and how to minimize the feeling of agency loss all the time. It is a pretty big deal if your game does it wrong as you lose a lot of players over time. It's just basic human psychology.
Mmos are far more difficult, because other players are acting against you and the other player is generally taking away your agency. This is the real reason why people hate being ganked. They feel a loss of agency. In a game with no 1v1 balance I can only imagine it being so much worse. Node wars can have this same feeling depending on their design, but amplified. I highly doubt node wars will always be even. Especially with many large guilds. In fact if Intrepid isn't accounting for it to be commonly uneven I would be surprised (because that is short sighted game design and they have shown themselves to not be so far.)
AoC pushes the limit of good game design just on its core design principles and systems. This is why I think they would benefit highly from my solution above. It still fits their design culture as far as I understand it, and adds more layers to the politics of the game as well. It gives you the opportunity for a comeback type feeling and helps mitigate your sense of loss a little bit while also giving you an outlet for some feeling of agency in the situation.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
Retaining everything from any and all interactions is a themepark principle. Sure, I expect people to find it jarring after having their homes consistently destroyed, but I guess that'd push them to align themselves with groups or guilds that aren't weak or easily oppressed, no? That's where the politics come into play. Now if they were smart, they'd avoid building a house altogether, then they wouldn't have to be concerned with losing it. It's also worth noting that this game will avoid the ArcheAge landrush issue too.
If you are in a guild that is always losing, that guild is likely to move on to the next game, or back to the last game. In PvP, there is always a side that loses, and the side that wins gets stronger, making them more likely to win next time, at which point they will get stronger, making them more likely to win next time.
This is an effect that is well known to game developers, and is the principle reason Crowfall is being developed the way it is. It is also why Civilization Online was such an attractive prospect to XLGames, as it was going to be a non-persistent PvP "MMO", and XL had seen the drastic effect of this loop in every version of Archeage (which is why the notion that pay to win killed that game is not really accurate - the game died in areas without it and also in areas where players were more open to it at exactly the same rate).
I'm not proposing any solutions to this, as since actual professionals in this field have not been able to come up with a solution for well over two decades (this effect is also seen in early L2), I am not arrogant enough to think that I would have the solution.
All I am doing is pointing out the problem to those that may not be aware of it.
Many players doesn t like persistent gear/items to, thats why i play Rust, Eve , Albion, mo, Valheim, I love the adrenaline of losing my things for real and believe or not thats create the real immersion in an mmorpg.
So what? They can lose that lazy people but can get much more from a Niche that is really weak right now in terms of MMORPGs
The majority PvE players Will leave anyway, back for ffx14,wow, Eso , Riot game, and the 1001 PvE MMORPG that Will Come. People Will Stay for Open world pvp, conquest, polítics, economy, crafting and pvx
Sure, Intrepid can take the position that these players can just leave and thats fine.
What that means is that Ashes is the next game in line from Lineage 2, Darkfall, Wildstar, Archeage, BDO and Albion. All of those games are in various stages of the same fate, and that is what Ashes will be.
What that means is that rather than Ashes being the game that takes that weak niche corner of the MMO scene and makes it popular, it will simply be another in the long line of weak games in that niche corner.
You can't do the same thing and expect a different outcome, after all.
If you want Ashes to be the game that finally makes it in that niche, then Ashes needs to find a way to keep those players that you are happy to see go.
I don't know why people would be saving months worth of mats - but you still only lose a portion of mats in Siege, it shouldn't feel too bad for most players.