Greetings, glorious adventurers! If you're joining in our Alpha One spot testing, please follow the steps here to see all the latest test info on our forums and Discord!
Options
Land management: 4x game mechanic, not for MMOs
neuroguy
Member
Sometimes on the forums, people will have cool ideas for AoC that require a top down perspective of the world with the nodes behaving like individuals for it to work. These ideas often don't take into account that individuals in the MMO will have no way of meaningfully engaging with these systems as they require the organization of entire node populations in a hive-mind manner where they all know what everyone else is doing and behave not necessarily in their personal best interest, but in the best interest of the node. The land management system is one of these systems and is better fit for a 4x game.
Edit: adding to the TLDR based on the conversation in the thread
TLDR:
There is no level of individual player engagement that is meaningful with this system. What I mean by that, is the choices of you as an individual player are not real choices as they do not reliably lead to the outcome you'd expect. First of all, engaging with this system requires you to have knowledge of what other players are doing. You need to know how much resources are being gathered at all times, their exact identity (exact resources available are not supposed to be always known like what rocks contain what minerals) and with this information you need to compute the re-spawn rates vs consumption rate which means we either lose the mystery of the re-spawn rates or it will never even be possible to predict this system with all reasonable information available. Now, predictability is important here because if you are meant to interact with this system to reach a desired outcome, you need to know what actions to take in order to achieve said outcome.
This leads us into problem number 2: there is no way for an individual player to organize the actions of other players en masse in order to manipulate the outcome. Simply put, the choices of you as an individual is likely insufficient to change the outcome of this system. You could argue the mayor can put out a quest to manipulate this somehow, and assuming the mayor has sufficient knowledge required to do this (which as described above would not be good for that much information to be available), it still requires adherence from the playerbase. This point cannot be over-emphasized, I think many many players will simply not be able to play the game enough to give too many shits about the mayor as their few hours online will be committed to what they want to do for their personal growth, I know I will be one of these 'fuck the king' players, I will do what I want not what the mayor tells me to do. Players are also going to move around and explore and can't be bothered to understand the local eco-system of every part of the world they pass through. So to expect adherence from a passerby is ridiculous and just like how yes there can be cool situations where players from one node go to a neighboring one to deplete their resources incentivizing friction and OWPvP, you will also have times where you get killed for picking up a flower on your journey because you're in the wrong neighborhood without having any freaking idea why.
Lastly, the consequences of this system may go unnoticed, or worse, may not make sense and be punishing independent of your actions. The reward for great land management is ... nothing, no change, the maintenance of the status quo. Your ability to organize large player numbers and fend off other hypothetical organized groups is to maintain your resources. This on its own is not exciting and requires interaction with the economy or other things to be at all rewarding. Now, if there is a drastic change in the resources, let's say something is depleted despite your best efforts, you will feel punished and any positive change may be unpredictable and will have you scrambling on the hamster wheel to exploit it first. But generally speaking, for a player who is not omnipresent in one part of the world, observing all the gathering and collective decisions of the players in that region (like you know, a 4x game), these changes will go unnoticed and will feel like they are randomly changing. With all of the other agents of change in the world (e.g. seasons), layering the land management system on top seems to be pushing things more towards chaos than actions -> consequences.
You may reasonably argue that the destruction of a node also has the problem of maybe feeling punishing as a consequence of actions that you may or may not have been a part of, despite your best efforts. Yes, but with the major difference that node sieges and other game altering processes are temporally predictable. A node siege is scheduled, the changing of the seasons is scheduled, the land management system observes the actions of all players at ALL TIMES.
This brings me to my proposed change in the implementation of the land management system that could salvage it without having to scrap it. Make at least the consequences of this system, occur simultaneously with all of the changes of seasonal change. We already know seasons change resource availabilities and locations with migrations, seasonal resources etc. Players should and will be ready for shifts in the supply chain during seasonal change. If you over-forest in the spring, then have lower tree spawn rates in the summer. If the wolf+rabbit population was kept in check in one season, prevent the migration of the wolves or something. If a node was never mined during winter, give it bonus respawn times or something in spring. This way, resource exploitation vs preservation will be computed over a season (so short term exploits for wood in preparation for a siege for example won't screw people) and won't blindside players of a node, while any consequences will be met with a prepared player-base that will need to adapt to the changing season anyways.
Edit: adding to the TLDR based on the conversation in the thread
TLDR:
- For players to engage with the land management system, they require too much information about what everyone is always doing in the area
- The decisions of individual players does not matter here and requires some hive-mind organized behavior to push the outcome in the desired direction
- Most players are not going to be online enough to see or interact with this system because it is ALWAYS 'on' and observing to determine the consequence (as opposed to for example a single siege event that is scheduled in advance)
- It may be best to exploit resources aggressively and early to cause land-management issues for the resources that you have hoarded locally and can then sell at a premium.
- good land management needs to be rewarding for both the node (xp) and individual players with rewards as impactful as the consequences (e.g. resource depletion). Over-gathering provides node with a burst of xp that good land management forgoes on, and makes eco-warfare strange since you provide the target node with a big burst of xp to prevent long term xp potential
- individual players should have their contribution to land management somehow tracked for better reward or more severe consequences (if individuals don't have an incentive for land management, it will be mostly ignored I believe) to close some of the exploitation loop holes and provide a better sense of actions -> consequences
- it could have its consequences enacted in the next season during the season transition where resource availabilities and locations are expected to change by the player-base already
There is no level of individual player engagement that is meaningful with this system. What I mean by that, is the choices of you as an individual player are not real choices as they do not reliably lead to the outcome you'd expect. First of all, engaging with this system requires you to have knowledge of what other players are doing. You need to know how much resources are being gathered at all times, their exact identity (exact resources available are not supposed to be always known like what rocks contain what minerals) and with this information you need to compute the re-spawn rates vs consumption rate which means we either lose the mystery of the re-spawn rates or it will never even be possible to predict this system with all reasonable information available. Now, predictability is important here because if you are meant to interact with this system to reach a desired outcome, you need to know what actions to take in order to achieve said outcome.
This leads us into problem number 2: there is no way for an individual player to organize the actions of other players en masse in order to manipulate the outcome. Simply put, the choices of you as an individual is likely insufficient to change the outcome of this system. You could argue the mayor can put out a quest to manipulate this somehow, and assuming the mayor has sufficient knowledge required to do this (which as described above would not be good for that much information to be available), it still requires adherence from the playerbase. This point cannot be over-emphasized, I think many many players will simply not be able to play the game enough to give too many shits about the mayor as their few hours online will be committed to what they want to do for their personal growth, I know I will be one of these 'fuck the king' players, I will do what I want not what the mayor tells me to do. Players are also going to move around and explore and can't be bothered to understand the local eco-system of every part of the world they pass through. So to expect adherence from a passerby is ridiculous and just like how yes there can be cool situations where players from one node go to a neighboring one to deplete their resources incentivizing friction and OWPvP, you will also have times where you get killed for picking up a flower on your journey because you're in the wrong neighborhood without having any freaking idea why.
Lastly, the consequences of this system may go unnoticed, or worse, may not make sense and be punishing independent of your actions. The reward for great land management is ... nothing, no change, the maintenance of the status quo. Your ability to organize large player numbers and fend off other hypothetical organized groups is to maintain your resources. This on its own is not exciting and requires interaction with the economy or other things to be at all rewarding. Now, if there is a drastic change in the resources, let's say something is depleted despite your best efforts, you will feel punished and any positive change may be unpredictable and will have you scrambling on the hamster wheel to exploit it first. But generally speaking, for a player who is not omnipresent in one part of the world, observing all the gathering and collective decisions of the players in that region (like you know, a 4x game), these changes will go unnoticed and will feel like they are randomly changing. With all of the other agents of change in the world (e.g. seasons), layering the land management system on top seems to be pushing things more towards chaos than actions -> consequences.
You may reasonably argue that the destruction of a node also has the problem of maybe feeling punishing as a consequence of actions that you may or may not have been a part of, despite your best efforts. Yes, but with the major difference that node sieges and other game altering processes are temporally predictable. A node siege is scheduled, the changing of the seasons is scheduled, the land management system observes the actions of all players at ALL TIMES.
This brings me to my proposed change in the implementation of the land management system that could salvage it without having to scrap it. Make at least the consequences of this system, occur simultaneously with all of the changes of seasonal change. We already know seasons change resource availabilities and locations with migrations, seasonal resources etc. Players should and will be ready for shifts in the supply chain during seasonal change. If you over-forest in the spring, then have lower tree spawn rates in the summer. If the wolf+rabbit population was kept in check in one season, prevent the migration of the wolves or something. If a node was never mined during winter, give it bonus respawn times or something in spring. This way, resource exploitation vs preservation will be computed over a season (so short term exploits for wood in preparation for a siege for example won't screw people) and won't blindside players of a node, while any consequences will be met with a prepared player-base that will need to adapt to the changing season anyways.
3
Comments
Sure, there must usually be 'a point of change' or 'a roll-over' for the ordinary person to 'get it'.
Making it seasonal seems unnecessary, particularly since I wouldn't like shorter seasons.
Also - Gatherers should have their own node channel, cause a lot of it comes down to - *GASP* - SOCIAL INTERACTION --- *GASP* - aka Communication.
go be a individual greedy fuck and fuck up your land... or --- *GASP* - all of you guys can start working together as a community & start blacklisting / enemy of the state / kicking out bad faith gatherers...
because you know...REPUTIATION MATTERS.
using the examples given by steven, you can rotate your own crops. you dont need other players rotating your crops for you. and if they dont rotate your own crops, they might "ruin" a piece of land for a while, not the whole area or map. so a lot of individuals rotating their own crops, managing their own little piece of land, will keep an entire map "healthy". if you just farm one thing and ruin your own land, that wont affect people near you rotating their own crops.
if you are killing too many rabbits (how many is too many? people will figure it out) you can affect the rabbit and wolves population in an (possibly not too big) area. just manage yourself, dont kill just rabbits in one spot. if other players do the same and manage themselves, there wont be issues.
the only issue is when outsiders come to take everything you have
jokes aside I will read it
I would love long seasons too. I read the link you sent, I am not sure I extracted what you intended me to though. The system described there seems vastly different to the proposed land management system on many levels. I will only highlight one: with land management, not doing anything (not collecting more resources) is a valid 'action' to achieve a desirable outcome (preventing the depletion of resources)... Ok one more: the link you provided clearly outlines information about what the consequence of each action is in a quantifiable manner, nothing that was said during the livestream suggests we will have all of this information. If we do have access to this information though, we would need, as @novercalis suggests, an entire GUI to provide us with the information in a digestable manner.
@novercalis & @Goalid
So you are saying we need an entire new GUI and social support system just to be able to engage with a convoluted and obscure system, which requires players to constantly be engaged with it to know what's going on? How is someone a 'bad faith gatherer' if they log in 3 times a week without recognizing that all of a sudden, they shouldn't pick up flowers in their own node anymore because the mayor of the node in their absence has decided so.
I do think the idea of the mayor deciding that certain actions will lead to flagging is interesting, but I think (at least my initial reaction is) it's too much. But to play along, you need players to be made aware of this new flagging restriction when they log in. Does every player need to read a new article on the new mayor edicts every time they log in just to make sure they don't randomly gain corruption for picking up a flower they picked up last time they were online? The constant nature of this system makes it impractical for individual players to keep up with, it moves things away from action -> consequences because things will constantly be changing in the world without your input in a system that is supposed to change based on your decisions.
Ok so you are correct with those examples but the crop rotation system has long been proposed and is just being grouped into land management but does not need to be. All information about farming that I am aware of suggests you do it on your freehold which does not impact other players. The local area killing can be as you describe but the issue then becomes balancing it between having individual players be able to impact it vs being hyper volatile. If a single player can impact the population of wolves and rabbits in a day or two, then everything in the game will be constantly changing and again, be more chaotic than anything.
Usually when I do that sort of thing I'm just giving Intrepid data. Mostly because I don't really want nor expect you to go through all of that, so I just tell 'them' that I disagree and move on.
A point you might consider important though is.
Players always work out the values, and Elite doesn't give you that much data, to the point where there is STILL confusion about how some parts work, and specialists can use this confusion to their advantage. Basically, even the values given there are 'wrong' under certain conditions, groups all have their own personal tried and tested ways of affecting the Simulation that differ from those values.
Since I am used to players enjoying that sort of thing, I would not expect it to be a problem in Ashes and would welcome it. I don't need the GUI, but I can see how many would.
@Azherae do you have any insights into how EVE helps ease new players into the game? I haven't played it myself.
Or does anyone know how rogues operate in EVE?
Afaik EVE does not care about new players.
It is not necessary.
I don't think Ashes needs to either, other than clarifying outright 'you don't HAVE to participate in this, go find somewhere lower population and get used to it there'.
Which makes perfect sense with the designs we have seen proposed. I would not expect low level players to be hanging around Metropolis Nodes once they get their feet. I would expect strong high level players to escort them to outer nodes and lower level areas once they join a guild or just meet someone nice.
"Welcome to Verra, would you like to specialize in anything in particular?"
"Uh I like gathering herbs... but also hunting crabs!"
"Sure, my friend will be on in 30m and she'll escort you to the Northern Coast. Make sure to check in with Mayor Herba Crabasher, you two will get along."
"Thanks!"
Solved.
Such as what social controls exist, From mayor edicts to mark poachers as combatants. Or perhaps people could pay for permits to hunt or gather X amount, under threat of being marked combatants if they exceed their legal allocation.
If surveying of the given skill reveals rough info like "the soil here is looking dry and depleted" that could help players make informed choices.
It could be the case that the depleted or lush states could be the difference of +/- 10% respawn rate, so maybe not so detrimental if players fail to manage, but rewarding to those nodes that do.
As to your proposed improvement of tying land managmet state changes to the seasons, not sure I like it just on the basis players will be discovering what differences the seasons themselves bring, as they reveal themselves. In your proposal players would need to disentangle which was a seasonal or a land management change. Unless the information was stated in a dry direct way that I think I personally wouldn't enjoy.
The land management system sucess will be dependent on specifics, how it is tied into the other systems like PvP and surveying. I think you concerns and assumptions op are important things for the devs to consider.
If you are engaged with the Node System...you are engaged with the Land management systems too.
Players that are not interested or concerned will likely go about game play non the wiser.
If an individual decides to over harvest/gather then their actions will be implicated into the assumed only "hive" mentality. Thereby having an impact.
Conflict of resource management is a massive long term societal motivator...This is huge for the viable longevity of the game.
How land management integrates with Node system management and what powers leaders of Nodes can impart on surrounding lands regarding land resource management are yet to be seen, but we can safely assume there will be elements/abilities of land control metrics that will take some of the 'offline player' concerns.
Seasonal soft or hard landscape refreshes* might be a thing...speculative. But such things may impart just as many problems to Node development and land conflicts then the proposed "solution" element.
Basically I am so delighted the environment and resources are now part of the conflict metric and wholeheartedly disagree that 4x systems don't belong in MMOs.
Great points. I do worry about the mayor dictating play-style a bit too much in the name of this land management system though. It feels like instead of adding fun to gathering and providing decision points to consider, it just becomes extra hoops to jump through in order to gather with a lot more opportunity for friction (which can be achieved in less convoluted ways). Again, for a player that is not omnipresent in-game, it just sucks to have to adhere to guidelines you do not quite understand but have to keep up with due to binding mayoral edicts. And for what? If it's just a +/- 10% change then it REALLY feels irrelevant and unrewarding to pull off anyways. I don't think IS will take this soft consequence approach for an entire system they need to build, or rather why would they? It might as well not exist as individual players are not likely to feel 10% change.
I admit I do not fully understand the proposed survey system but as you say, it does seem like a good avenue for this information to be provided if they go that route. Regarding the seasons, well that's kind of my point, they shouldn't necessarily be disentangled from seasonal changes. To be clear, I think the game does not need the land management system. I only proposed lumping its consequences in with seasonal change as a way of salvaging the process if that was the desire. If it gets lumped in with seasonal change, for the exact reason you describe, it becomes more of a passive consequence to how players play the game than consequences you can identify the reason behind. But again, this clear action -> consequence relationship is absent for individual players who can't be online at all times in the land management system as I understand it anyways. This way, on the plus side, seasonal changes remain more mysterious and variable (in-game) year to year, and the natural world of Verra itself will be responding to player behavior passively (fitting for a system that is ALWAYS observing everyone's actions). Plus you could just do the thing you mentioned with surveying to give you information like 'due to heavy de-forestation in the past, the trees seem to grow more slowly' or 'minerals here are rich due to the lack of mining in recent times'.
This does not have to be the case. But yes, and it is not necessarily good. One of the ways you gain xp for your node is to exploit resources and get artisan xp. However, the more you take part in this type of activity, the more harm you do to the node. This is not the case for killing monsters (ignore the wolves + rabbit thing as that is more about hunting than killing tough monsters). So the land management system skews players to be more combat heavy for the sake of the node as there is consequences for heavy gathering but not for heavy farming. It simply, prevents players from taking part in one part of the game as much as they want.
If the consequences are easily ignored, why have the system in the first place? This goes against actions have consequences or risk vs reward.
Sure it has an impact, but it will seldom feel appropriate for any single player. Let me give you an example. If in one node on average, a single player cuts down 50 trees in a week, and a hard-core wood cutter cuts down 200 trees a day, what is a good number of tree cutting that leads to consequences for over-harvesting? If over-harvesting is cutting down 1000 trees a day for a week, well all of the non-hardcore players are punished with less trees/slower tree growth when they barely touched the forests, to them their actions do not feel matched to the consequence. The hard-core wood chopper on the other hand has all of this wood to sell and exploit in this now over-forested area (sounds like a reward to me, not a consequence) and deals with the same 'consequences' as everyone else. Sure each average player impacted the over-harvesting by cutting down a couple of trees, but can you really tell the average player who was only online 3 days this week that they contributed to heavy de-forestation in the last week by cutting down 50 trees? Should they not have? Now they are punished while the guy who cut down 200 a day has all this wood to sell.
100% correct. Conflict around resource management absolutely does not rely on the proposed land management system. The location of resources + caravan transport. Spawning of mines or group gathering events causing 'gold-rush' like behavior. These are just 2 examples you could do this without the land management system.
It's not that they do not 'belong' per se, but that the experience of an individual player in an MMO is too far removed from the omnipresent & omniscient 4x player in an often single-player game. 4x games have players manage towns/settlements/planets. They make all of the choices of what gets exploited and are always the major if not the only contributor of this exploitation in their lands. Any consequences for over-exploitation in a 4x game is easy to swallow as you did all of the exploiting. But in an MMO when one woodcutting chad can exclusively chop trees and have all of that wood while the average player only chops as they need, it seems like bad game design to subject them both to equal punishment for over-exploitation when they didn't benefit from or contribute to the exploiting equally.
Do you need to be able to tell, as an individual? This isn't normally how I experience this content type.
The guild leader/logistics leader finds out what everyone likes doing, then sets up some supply/activity chains so that most people are happy. They log on, do what they like, pick up the items/product from someone else in the line, place down their own output for someone down the line.
The Logistics leader is 'playing 4x', and probably has the skill type for it. The average player is 'logging in to do what they enjoy, trusting the Logistics leader to make the Node effective and make them rich'.
That's directly what a Mayor's job is. Either that or they have an advisor for it and they are a figurehead who handles diplomacy (since the two skill types are often not related).
This sort of thing is naturally emergent from the TYPE of game Ashes is planning to be. In Elite, I know 'the Praetors of the 9th Legion' indirectly through our Diplomatic Liaison, and their internal structure is quite specific.
The average 'chopper of trees' is unlikely to affect much unless they choose to specialize, but that's already baked into the system. If you don't specialize in Lumbering, why are you cutting down ENOUGH trees for this to matter, regularly?
And if you really like chopping trees and your node doesn't have a lot of trees, SOMEONE like you is going to move to a node with more trees. It resolves itself except for the unspecialized player who 'just wants to do a little of everything and enjoy the game' with no Logistician. Since Ashes seems to WANT the type of gameplay described, and those people don't actually suffer that much, there's no reason to downplay it.
What you describe requires players to hyper-specialize into the provided roles based on the mayor's design. I don't really think most MMO players would sign up to have their play sessions dictated for some mayor's grand design. Players should be able to play the game how they'd like from session to session.
I do think that if the mayor is given sweeping powers to dictate what players can or cannot do, that this would in fact be emergent gameplay but I do not think this is the type of game ashes is planning to be nor do I think it would be a fun game to play. I think the mayor should have some passive background role in sessions to session play experience. If I log into the game, and have to look up what the mayor wants me to do today and choose from options A through D, I would absolutely not play that game. I want freedom to log in and decide I am farming today, or running a dungeon or gathering flowers. If the game sacrifices personal freedom in the name of mayoral powers, I think it would be a grave misstep.
Now, you could always move to a different node as you say but what do you gain by having this system in the first place? There isn't even interesting decisions to make here. The decision is, do you chop down more trees or not. You may really want to chop down more, but you shouldn't because... well otherwise there will be less trees to chop down in the future. Like what? How is that a compelling gameplay decision? Having a mayor be able to force you to to stop chopping down trees doesn't make it any more interesting.
I am not saying that this is a probable enjoyment for everyone.
But I hope you can understand that you're sort of taking things to the extreme here. Firstly, lots of people ARE exactly like that. Maybe not even 'half of humanity' but there's certainly ENOUGH.
Secondly, it's not usually 'do exactly this, specialize exactly this way'. That would be a POOR Logistician. It is 'You don't need to do this thing, someone else will handle it, focus on the things you enjoy, update me if they change'.
So it REALLY isn't 'check what the Mayor wants me to do today'. It is the Mayor's job to know what you like to do IN GENERAL and build their node economy systems around that.
Your personal freedom is the limiter on the MAYOR, not the other way around, because a 'control freak' who doesn't work like this quickly finds themselves voted out.
I don't know how to explain it to you any differently, perhaps you're just one of those minds that absolutely values their own complete freedom over everything else? Or just randomly enjoy different things and therefore your actions on login on any given day are ENTIRELY unpredictable? Those people get integrated too, they just often don't progress as easily.
I hope this gets through to you, if not, just lmk and I'll disengage.
Right, sorry I am combining your argument with another from what other people have commented about the mayor's powers including making the collection of certain resources illegal (also in another thread which I was just reading lol). I absolutely agree with the role of the mayor you describe here. Players can willingly decide to contribute to this vision or not and they limit the mayor, not the other way around (very well articulated btw).
My issue though, which I hope you'd agree with, is regarding how much sway the mayor has (based on the land management system) on what can and cannot be 'legally' collected. This is, I admit, one of the best ways for players to actually engage with the land management system meaningfully as it can organize the node's citizens with hive-mind like control. But I just don't see what is gained by having this system being worth the mayor-dictated restrictions on individual player freedom. If someone logs in and requires wood for something they want to craft, it doesn't matter if they have never touched a tree before or not, they may need to leave the node to 'legally' collect some wood. Ultimately, I think the decisions individual players are faced with because of this system are not fun or interesting.
I agree that the Mayor should not be able to say 'it is illegal for node citizens to harvest X'. That would lead to all the problems you describe.
I just feel that there is still value in the system because a 'well managed node' is still a possibillity, particularly as Citizenship changes, and I would strongly expect that this is part of the type of friction Ashes intends to embody.
Quick example:
Let's assume the Mayor of my Node enacts a 'Node Economy Policy' that integrates all 20-ish citizens at the village level, the village becomes prosperous, more citizens arrive, who just want money and ruin the Node. The Mayor tries to do their job and expand the Economy Policy but they are ignored.
The Node loses cohesion, relevance, and wealth, and then stagnates and falls back to Village level. This is one of the things I have a big question for Intrepid for the FUTURE in.
"Do the original citizens get to automatically retain their citizenship?"
Based on the way housing works, it seems quite LIKELY to me that they will. But it isn't guaranteed, you could just 'hard reset' them so that people have a chance to completely change everything.
Management and logistics is not a common skill in MMOs, but it doesn't need to be common. That's why we have Guild Leaders and Mayors, I would hope.
tl;dr I'd be more concerned about that one asshole citizen that refuses to follow the rules that you have to literally hire outsiders to harass. That might get rough.
EDIT: Forgot to add, I would absolutely be down for 'Mayoral Referendum' on a bunch of stuff. Then it isn't the Mayor making harvesting illegal, they propose that it should be and the citizens vote. There's already a voting system, might as well use it for more than that. That would also help solve some of the issues with those nodes where the Mayor is not even elected.
A well managed node but for who's benefit? Gatherers in the node are required to curb their harvesting in order for those same players to gain a benefit... the ability to continue harvesting locally. The example you give is far too abstract. My main issue here is that I can't think of many players who would enjoy the session to session experience this system promotes. Like if you could point to a decision tree or sequence of a player's decisions in-game to support this system, I could possibly change my mind but nobody has.
You log in and decide you want to harvest 50 trees to upgrade your freehold. You go up to a tree, recognize through some UI element that this tree is being over-harvested. You then decide, that you don't want to scrap your plan for harvesting trees today (who knows how long these trees will be tagged as 'over-harvested' and you want your upgrade), so you go off to a nearby node and take on greater risk for the same gain. While you are going to this nearby node, you see Bob, your fellow node citizen, chopping down trees. What are the consequences? Does there need to be enforcement? Is Bob a bad person for chopping down trees? Is he greedily hoarding resources knowing it hurts you and the node? Or does Bob just need 5 extra trees to finish his boat and was ganked in the nearby node too much and thinks this is the safest place to wrap up those 5 trees? How about yourself? Can the node handle the 50 trees you need? Do you really have to travel that far for the 50 trees that will require several trips due to carry capacity limits and lack of fast travel? You could always buy the trees, but because of the 'over-harvesting' trees are expensive right now and you kind of like gathering anyways. Sigh, what to do, what to do...
This is the gameplay this system promotes. In a single session, it just doesn't provide a fun gameplay layer or interesting decision points. And across sessions, its reward is not very tangible for reasons I described in the OP. Feel free to follow such an example template.
I am completely confident that no example I give will change your mind, but I want to express it without insulting/drawing conclusions about you, so gimme a bit to talk way too much again.
I don't know anyone that would be bothered by the above fully, because they are 'node Minded'. They are a community who want to achieve group goals, not specific individual ones.
In my gaming communities, not just my group, none of that NORMALLY happens.
1. I want to upgrade my freehold, my Mayor will know.
2. I need 50 trees to upgrade my freehold, my Mayor will know and will have told others about this.
3. I therefore don't log in with that plan. For me to LOG IN with 'the plan of upgrading my freehold' someone would have to know OR I would 'accept that because I told no one, I don't necessarily have that freedom'. (the same thing would happen if all the trees simply hadn't respawned yet, kinda)
4. If the above did happen and others knew, I would ask Bob 'hey are you cutting down trees for a specific purpose?' and then have a discussion with Bob to... find out if Bob is acting in good faith or not.
5. If the node is consistently over-harvested relative to its Tree density EITHER Intrepid needs to tweak something, or someone needs to change their flow.
So I perceive that this gameplay is promoted by this system FOR players who are very individualistic and for whom none of the above applies.
I just also perceive that Steven is trying to make a game where it works closer to what I'm used to. Communication, teamwork, and resolution of friction based on that.
I like that loop.
I like 'that I need to tell the rest of the Node that I need a ton of trees to upgrade my Freehold and that we will decide who harvests them (or I can tell them that I plan to log in and harvest them myself so could everyone else just not do that for a bit).
I like 'that the story doesn't allow me to just log in with my own plans having consulted with no one'.
I like that I have to talk to Bob to figure out what's up with his harvesting. If we don't want the world to be full of NPCs, in my OPINION we should accept 'this sort of thing as a replacement', otherwise the game becomes just another 'single player push-for-my-stuff game'. Even many 'social' games are much more 'I'll interact with people when it helps me get what I want'. Whereas this is 'I'll interact with people so we can coordinate relative to each other's goals'.
I get that this isn't necessarily the MMO experience everyone wants, and I'll leave it to you to confirm if it is what you want or not, but to me, this is a positive to the point of being a draw to play more, not a concern at all.
I might want Wood for my Freehold or for a friend's Freehold or for my Node or for someone else's Node.
Depends on my mood for that specific play session, but...
Regardless of my motvation, I would need to feel that Corruption will sufficiently deter non-consensual PvP wherever I choose to Gather.
Land management would mostly be moot unless I am, for some reason, chopping trees in some foreign Node that is close to depletion.
Yeah, I'm open to testing it but Steven asked for feedback based on the information provided and so I am
I promise, I am very open to changing my mind, and I am happy to test this system in A2.
I do think our disagreement comes from a more fundamental understanding of player behavior though. Like for example I simply can't imagine a mayor of a node of even 50 players (where the mayor plays the game too and is not simply just dedicated to their role as mayor) will just 'know' what all members want or will remember, this to me would be a very exceptional mayor especially when only scientific nodes will vote them in. A player who spends enough time getting good at the game in the other ways to become mayor will also surely not be just a logistics guy who only focuses on being mayor. Similarly, I can't imagine that if the mayor told the other 49 citizens what one player plans or wants that they'd care or adjust their play-style. This is also not considering the node in a world of many other nodes where players can travel freely. I am not saying this will never happen, but to expect this to be even 25% of nodes is just not even possible in my mind.
I think for us to see eye to eye, one of us would need to change this understanding of player behavior and personally from my side, I have seen no evidence in any MMO that anywhere close to a majority of players will behave this way so it is a tough ask to convince me. I also respect your experience enough to not try to convince you either so I guess we will see how IS implements this system if they do and what design they go for as you say.
Not quite. I don't think you should change your mind. If you believe that such a game would not be good/successful, then you should hold that stance and give feedback based on it.
From my perspective though, it's a bunch of stuff about incentivized behaviour.
1. If the players/Nodes that DON'T do this FAIL, whoever succeeds will become the Metro Mayors (this is what happens in Elite Dangerous)
2. If Steven WISHES that style of world and gameplay, there is no point in changing the incentive system, especially since early-game will be a mess either way.
3. If the game incentivizes this type of play AND there are enough players out there, some 'silent number' who don't play other games due to the LACK of this, then Ashes WILL truly capture the Niche of those who want Node-based community gameplay.
So if there isn't actually a market for that type of game, then Ashes will teach us this.
My experience is for a very different game, obviously. A 'space trading simulator' that added all its combat and 'progression' mechanics later probably draws in that player type more. Or perhaps all the ones who failed at it quit because of it, leaving only the ones that succeed at it and those that don't care. It also doesn't have the same TYPE of thing.
But from merely the perspective of 'This is how a Node Based game should work', I don't think Land Management is a negative to that goal. It could be a negative to 'players who have a specific style' and definitely a possible negative to 'number of players willing to play'. But every game has its negative points to someone. The only question from the Director's side is 'are people who consider these features to be pain points supposed to be playing the game'?
I think without land management I would consider Ashes to be BDO-lite and worse than the aggregate of things I play, but I think I don't often have 'popular' wishes for design.
So my reframed question to you is this. Would YOU dislike a game like this? If 'social agreements and following your Node's policies' were a requirement of success, and nodes that didn't succeed at this would fall?
After all, it literally only requires 5% of nodes/Mayors to be good enough at this. Those ARE the ones that would rise.
If people disagree with my analysis and feedback, they can provide their rationale for why I am wrong or that the system is fine as we understand it. Based on that rationale I may change my mind, I don't think I'm doing anything wrong here. Testing will allow everyone to refine their opinions based on their experience but we could also refine our opinion without hands on experience, I trust everyone is capable of this.
I'll be open. I've been living at the same place for 12 years and I wouldn't recognize my neighbours if I saw them anywhere but their backyard, if even there...
In all the MMOs I've played, I've never bothered with guilds as far as playing with others. Meaning, I've never logged in and asked what people were doing. If someone needed help with something and I could provide assistance I would, but I've never asked for help. I would be as likely to help a random Joe asking for it than a guildmate. Grouping has always been a temporary alliance. I log in and do what I feel like doing, others are not part of that equation.
Although I find the concept of node very interesting, being attached to one is not really attractive. If I have to follow the edicts/will of the citizenry even less so. That's a soloer's mindset, I admit it, but I don't expect the more casual players to have a significant different experience from sessions to sessions than I, even if they care about those things: they will experience the effects but never really feel implicated.
Usual disclaimer about how I don't mean this badly, etc...
Why do you want to play Ashes SPECIFICALLY then?
Its whole 'selling point' is the social/Node aspect, when COMPARED to other upcoming MMORPGs. For some it's simpler things like no P2W, but I don't think that's what Steven should target really.
That's kind of what I meant when I said I would just consider it BDO-lite.
I agree that the Land Management system has a chance to 'be a pain-point for a solo minded player'. I just think that Ashes wouldn't be Ashes if it took out Node-Social supporting SYSTEMS in order to reduce pain-points for such players.
But as noted, it could be that Intrepid just 'hasn't learned why people don't make this game type'. Fortunately it'd be easy to scrap.
For those of you who don't actually know the history of it, another part of the reason I made that 'BDO-lite' statement is that ORIGINALLY, that game was a LOT closer both in goals and mechanics to Ashes than it is now. And slowly, it got ground down more and more into what it is today. It's still being ground down, I'm watching it happen in real time.
It's easy to 'grind down' the Ambitious into the Commonly Acceptable, but it's not easy to go the other way, so I prefer Intrepid aims high first.
Who said you need to change your mind right now?