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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
"Mis-Land Management" - Solutions to preventing Extinction level events
DarkTides
Member
Someone already posted War Stories - How Gamers Killed Ultima Online's Virtual Ecology
Here it is again for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE
We have our gathering system discussion going on, where Land management is part of that.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/54301/feedback-request-gathering-system-update-shown-in-october-livestream#latest
What other solutions, other than what was mentioned on stream, does everyone have to preventing players from ruining AoC's ecology?
Here it is again for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleEWe have our gathering system discussion going on, where Land management is part of that.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/54301/feedback-request-gathering-system-update-shown-in-october-livestream#latest
What other solutions, other than what was mentioned on stream, does everyone have to preventing players from ruining AoC's ecology?
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Comments
And the region or entire server has to band to together to rectify that catastrophe.
Agreed. This is how Elite Dangerous handles it, though I can't easily 'prove' this because the mechanics are very difficult to confirm.
If you do too much of something, it causes a change that becomes very storyline based, locking off one activity type and automatically triggering a different one.
A hostile force can still affect you, but usually, the 'negative' status is actually one that makes it much harder for them to keep having their effect, even if it causes your 'Node' to lose some profitability or something until you resolve it.
I think having limited capacity for transportation of many materials inside a player inventory or even in their mule would be a way to slow down excessive gathering. Could have also weight limitation and being slowed down when carrying too much. But it is a very unpopular opinion.
How much context of how Elite does it do you want?
It's kinda hard to explain without quite a bit of context.
Short version is that instead of having ALL the stuff spawn ALL the time, there's a bunch of stuff that only spawns under certain conditions and Node Statuses.
Basically, if you take decent care of the place, eventually you get to a POSITIVE status with EXTRA spawns, that you SHOULD completely deplete, it's intentional. Then you fight off (or welcome) people who come to take them. But depleting those extra 'reward' spawns does NOT cause a negative effect.
So it's a reward for gathering responsibly.
Give those players some rewards. Players love rewards.
I think this would help as well.
I do believe triggered events for depletion would be fun and provide a nudge in the right direction.
Any ideas similar to what Manueljf mentioned, where gathering is altered or something is added to the process along the way?
If Elite Dangerous demonstrates this as well, I apologize for my ignorance, I am not familiar with the game.
To give another example, I'd say that having to cut down a tree and then proceed to cut the branches off, which give you a different sizes of wood.
Different sizes of wood could then be added to the crafting system.
Physically haul the, now very large, log back to town, or cut it down into smaller segments for transportation ease.
Unlocks additional methods of crafting for transportation of goods.
Increases overall time from tree cutting to final product = Less tree dust
If I am planning on sieging a castle, decimating their ecology in order to hamper their defense will be a basic function of planning for a siege.
If I want to wage economic war on someone, again, decimating their ecology will be my first consideration.
If perhaps some crafters are gearing up my PvP rivals, I'll retaliate against them by again - decimating the ecology where they get their raw materials from.
The thing with doing this is that I don't actually care about the materials. I'll just destroy them. Any attempts to prevent this kind of thing via making it hard to take the materials away is going to be ineffective (though this will work for non-coordinated individuals that are harvesting for themselves rather than as an attack).
I don't see a way to implement this in to the game at all in a way where it won't be the easiest way to disable a rival node.
Ya any system that relies on players behaving a certain way will probably break immediately.
As it is now, the corruption is supposed to protect some players against others, usually the ones being protected seen as "peaceful" and "innocents" while the other side "murderers".
But the context has changed and the corruption has to include "thieves" in the system.
The game should track who is a thief because players will not stay online day and night to observe their territory. Policies hint that this will happen. And could be combined with the (previously mentioned by Steven) negative reputation which bandits who attack caravans will get.
So the question is how the corruption mechanic will be altered.
It makes no sense to let the mayor chose some policies which just declare intentions but citizens to still risk losing experience and gear when they want to reinforce those policies.
I share in the 'unpopular opinion' of @Manueljf, that inventory should be somewhat limited (I support materials stacks only being able to go up to 10, 12 or 20 for many things).
I don't believe that mismanagement can be stopped by adding anything to the process if we're talking about RIVALS, but for citizens, I think it helps because it changes things from 'might as well gather all the time' to 'well, is this even profitable'?
The other aspect I would strongly expect to be a thing is HOW and WHERE to gather, being important. I don't know how they would do this for trees effectively BUT there were a lot of good 'hills and small mountains' in Alpha-1 already.
Fortunately, many creatures rely on trees and you could justify having very powerful creatures around relatively normal trees that are quite aggressive. This would increase the challenge of gathering without having to change the mechanics of it. I can tell you what I am used to from Final Fantasy 11.
"Good spawns are deep in dungeons, randomized spawn locations (within a set) that move around, strong enemies often near them, your stealth must be disabled to gather."
If a group is doing the dungeon, and you are friendly, you follow them around and gather, or rely on them to 'save you' if you get aggro when you don't expect it.
This 'buffers' the Land Management because many people won't actually overfarm the WHOLE area, just the part that is easy to do for low effort. When people need to be fully geared, leveled, carrying pots and food every time they mess up a timing, and get into a fight with a mob, possibly one that has 'allies' that 'link' nearby, incentive structure for doing these actions 'whenever' shifts.
In Ashes they have the chance to make this quite useful because it can be 'you gathered a lot of the easy stuff so the node leveled up and you got a new dungeon but since that's harder to gather, it buffers the effect and even if more people come to the node and gather more at the first place, now that first place is 'only half of the total Land Management Asset space'.
The sort of person who just 'wants to quietly gather for a while' is, in my EXPERIENCE, different from the 'I'm getting my friends together and getting fully geared in a half-hour process just to even go deep enough into this dungeon to actually hit the rocks' person.
I've heard it said that FFXI is too hardcore, though, and definitely the change to 'you can gather every tree you see' is going to shift this dynamic (I disagree with it partially for that reason, but I realize this is just bias, there's nothing that prevents a good system where 'areas with lots of trees are also fairly dangerous', I just feel it is unlikely).
The whole idea of depleting resources as a form of warfare against nodes is messy because the other game systems were not designed with it in mind. If gathering in a node provides that node xp, how is it a good idea for a RIVAL node to send hoards of gatherers to the node to give it a huge boost in xp while reducing their own xp gain? This would only work if both nodes were already locked into whatever node level they are already at, at which point, they should be looking at sieges and not resource wars.
For land management to be fun, the game needs to make it highly rewarding to do right with very little down sides in my opinion. Do not punish nodes by depleting their resources, give them reasons to manage their resources well for success. Unfortunately, we have been provided with very little examples of how to engage with the land management system through gathering itself. Most intuitive examples require killing mobs (poachers or wolves or something) with the exceptions being crop rotation which is unique to farming on your own personal freehold and gathering invasive plants. We need more ways, through gathering itself, to improve the land management score and be well rewarded for those choices and effort. With the limited information we have, it currently sounds like gathering is going to be just as likely to be impacted by what mobs players farm as any gathering decisions they make. Some personal accountability wouldn't hurt here either, if players make more of an effort, they should be recognized and rewarded for it imo.
Instead of letting people fuck with each other, give them incentive to make good organized decisions for their own benefit.
Correct me if I am wrong but I vaguely remember Steven in the livestream referencing some sort of "good behavior" benefit. I could be coo-coo or pulling this from a non-IS source or something but I thought he said that if the land was taken care of there would be good reason to do that.
I do agree though, this is the first thing in a long time that had me scratching my head as people will be people and if they don't get the respawn rates/system down correctly its just going to be no resources anywhere as we consume everything or they respawn so fast it is NW all over again and farming doesn't matter.
But if you tell them to reduce the amount of time they spend gathering by 50%, in order to get 4 x more, they would rather want these 4 x more resources to be distributed and available continuously without this resource depletion mechanic.
With this mechanic, the game gives them time to find something else to do. They might log out until the resources are allowed to be harvested again. But more likely they will stay around and watch them, possibly doing a bit of PvP, to protect the resources. Or be grateful if some PvP-ers would do that. This would be a good relationship between the gatherers and PvP-ers of a node, which otherwise would not happen.
I think the experience will not go to a node the moment you cut the tree or harvest the ore.
The experience toward the node makes sense when you do activities which help the node.
For example the node would be grateful for you harvesting the resources and bringing them into the node, which would allow caravans to take place and also defenses to be built. And this should work for all, citizens and non-citizens (unless the mayor gets policies to favor the citizens/allies only)
High level nodes can fall because attrition. They need more experience to maintain themselves.
Forcefully leveling them up as pillagers and also taking their resources with mules directly back to your node (not with caravans from said node to yours) would make them collapse as soon as the resources vanish, which would happen anyway because their shortage is part of the game. Or if they would not collapse, would be like a soap bubble which can fall with a light siege.
Typically we say the resource is depleted when is not visible anymore.
The way how it is now, is that the resource is still visible as a temptation and reason for conflict. At least when we talk about trees. How this can work with ores I have no idea. Maybe ores will have some other lore associated with their respawn.
Anyway, the whole game is build around conflict and fight for resources, the caravans being the arteries, cities being the big defended storage locations and the place where you gather them are also open for conflict.
If everybody can harvest them safely, then bots will be the most efficient.
If there are not enough resources, then players will fight and defend them against anyone who harvest more than makes sense.
I agree when you say:
Instead of letting people fuck with each other, give them incentive to make good organized decisions for their own benefit.
So I am curious how the policies will be implemented.
Maybe so but a well designed game economy is a thing of wonder to behold, with most players doing exactly what suits them at any given time because the system handles itself.
We don't see it these days for three reasons, and 'it is hard' isn't necessarily one of them.
Main reasons for no more good economies outside of like, EVE and Albion-kinda:
Ashes won't have P2W, is a PvX game, and we don't have any specific indicators that the benefits of being high level in Artisanship will be 'hey, just profit more than low level people!' instead of 'hey, you can do something differently and get better choices presented to you'.
So I don't think it would result in 'no resources anywhere', if the Economy Designer does some basic stuff, because the underlying design of Ashes already helps a lot.
It's possible I didn't get my point across well, I was more speaking to the fact that many people who only have 1-2 hours a day or whatever may not really care about "Eco-Health" and will just chop trees or whatever. I was making the point that a big part of this economy being healthy is to not copy the playbook of New World as it was just common to chop trees as you ran through stuff. What that could lead to if the respawn rate of the trees/rocks/etc. is too low is that most resources will just be gone as there are too many people farming.
I have very high hope that all of the work Intrepid is doing will lead to a good play experience with good economy especially since they are opening up A2 to a large segment of people which I believe will iron out a lot of "nothing survives first contact with MMO players". But mostly was just commenting on the Ultima Online problem side of this argument.
Ah I understand you now.
Yeah, I don't think that's a problem, there's 'too many ways' to solve that.
Unless you mean it would be a problem for THOSE players? Because there's a big difference to me between 'I want to cut trees near the Node but they're always cut down' and 'All the Trees in this ZoI, even the ones up the mountain, are cut down!'
The thing that comes to mind is BDO's fishing system, which DOES keep track of how much fish there are in an area. The starter area is always depleted, but you could move like... 2 minutes over and find a fully abundant space.
I don't feel 'sorry' for the people who don't profit much from fishing near the starter town. If a node is like 5 minutes in 'diameter' and has Points of Interest with possible gathering spots, it's PROBABLY fine for everyone who actually goes further?
Correct, but the only example I recall is having higher spawn rates of resource nodes that may be more likely to give higher rarity materials. We were also told that the negative consequences would occur if we failed to 'give back to the land' which was not really explained. Again, it sounds like killing certain mobs is just as impactful on the land management score as [not] gathering. So then you are at the mercy of all players and what they gather at all times AND what they kill at all times in terms of the local land score which is even worse and makes individual player's decisions even less meaningful.
Except that would be a lie to tell them. The truth is, if you and all other players who may gather here COLLECTIVELY gather less at all hours of the day, you have a chance of being able to gather more here if you are online. And this is not true just for you or those who gathered less, but even those who didn't gather, gathered more, or only came by at the right time will also reap the same benefits (more or less depending on how much they are online at the right time). So you can actually gather more than you normally would without necessarily impacting the outcome of the land. Your individual contribution is tiny relative to the collective so do you really have a choice? Especially since you will reap the same reward or consequence as anyone else who gathered more or less than you?
You can call it 'gives you something else to do', but the perspective of many will be that they are discouraged from doing what they wanted.
Objectively false, watch the nodes part 1 video again.
In terms of attrition, that is conjecture on the actual tuning of numbers and the ability of the rival node to organize. Also, people would rather chop down trees saying 'anyyyy minute now' waiting for their rival node to disappear instead of initiating and fighting in a freaking node siege? I don't understand why option 1 exists when option 2 is more engaging, gives people more meaningful choices, was already planned from the start and sounds like a ton of fun. Plus you'd have to balance these two methods to avoid one cannibalizing the other in terms of a game mechanic.
Not sure exactly what you are saying here, maybe give a time stamp? We are explicitly told that spawn rates will be impacted. So a depleted resource would be a resource that is not spawning or is spawning slowly.
Conflict for resources is not contingent on the land management system. It was true before it was revealed. As for bots, I'd wager there are more elegant solutions.
I actually have a question based on your perspective so I can frame what I'm thinking about correctly...
How many players do you feel are likely to interact meaningfully with a Village Node in a 24h period?
I realized that I'm doing this comparison based on what I experience in Elite which might not be the same.
For clarity, that's something like:
In Ashes this would work out to about 2000 players per Metro-zone per day which matches their numbers somewhat.
I have no intention nor wish to 'crunch numbers to prove any points', I'm just trying to remove one of my own biases.
I honestly have no idea. It depends on quite a few variables like how inclined are players to stay in one spot due to the various node mechanics. I think there are too many assumptions my brain would need to make for me to throw numbers out there. Gun to my head though, with 50k registered accounts, ~10k concurrent players, 50+ non freehold housing per stage3+ node (all based on wiki) I'd say 100-200 per village and ~2k per metro for a full server.
I think that's the wrong question though. For discussion around land management, it depends on the size of the patch that the land score is calculated for which may or may not be 1:1 node ZOI. It also is not clear how vassal node land scores will be calculated. If the patch is too small, going out of that patch is easy and meaningless and each patch is far too volatile. If the patch is too large, individual player decisions don't matter and the further removed your personal action are from the consequences. Having patches that are just the right size is also difficult due to changing player densities given node lvls and other variables. It is just such a nightmare thinking about what balancing it would entail I really don't envy the developers.
Thank you for your help. Biases removed, I believe.
Or
You overharvest an area to depletion, this causes the corruption mechanic to spawn mobs that grow in intensity, these mobs can drop the same resources that are in that area when corruption isn't there (Think a corrupted tree ent or corrupted golem). These mobs could also gather and act similarly to destroy nearby civilization if left unchecked.
In terms of waging war on someone through a siege and using eco warfare to hurt them, I believe this is absolutely the intent of this design so all IS needs to ensure is that this is something that can be responded with PVP, without going corrupted. IE a metro could flag guilds as enemies and any players of those guilds who walk into its territory (not its ZOI but the area that spans between each node) are auto flagged combatant.
Your ideas are cool man!
Carebears hate dying to a player a couple times, but they love dying to mobs countless times, it's what makes their boat going!
Since there will be religions in AoC, maybe there will be deities too, so to me makes sense that the mayor makes offerings to this or that deity so things happens like you said... mobs spawn, enraged ents show up, nature spirits, etc.
Then it would be player driven content, people could vote for such policy that is the mayor being allowed to do this or that offering for this or that thing.
Your first suggestion here would turn trees in to a byproduct of spawning content, rather than being the goal of the activity.
Your second suggestion seems a little more valid. As long as there is no specific reason to want to spawn these tree ents, it could work. It also makes eco-warfare almost impossible, as it is only the method by which materials are gained that changes.
The issue with your idea in regards to ensuring PvP is a viable way to stop eco-warfare is that at least in regards to a metropolis sized node, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to have people move in to that node and potentially even become citizens - with the express intent of committing eco-warfare from inside. If I am planning to siege a metropolis sized node, you had better believe I will have at least a few people inside months before the siege takes place - this would just be an extension of that.
I don't know how will this be balanced and who will be favored when we observe individual players.
It can indeed happen that a citizen will chose not to harvest because node policy would mark him as a thief.
Then later the policy is lifted and another player, maybe even from another node, will come, harvest, transport the resources to the node and help leveling it up.
And finally when the citizen logs in, maybe the policy is active again.
If such things happen at a scale of hours, then I would say is a bad dynamic. This resource fluctuation I see it spanning over a few days.
And I agree that "the perspective of many will be that they are discouraged from doing what they wanted".
That would happen anyway in the context that resources are scarce. Resource scarcity and environment destruction were mentioned on wiki also before this stream. Now were only reinforced.
With resource scarcity, players would not be able to do what they want (harvesting) anyway. Searching yes but finding the resources would be less likely given that the entire map might do this.
I was not aware of that video. I didn't made my research properly.
The way things are presented makes Steven feel like a dungeon master.
I think he imagined this system on a very big map were the time to travel is high.
But it turns out that the map was not big enough and the number of nodes had to be reduced to give them more space.
The attrition as a concept is mentioned in the wiki
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Node_sieges#Node_atrophy_.28deleveling.29
Nodes accumulate an experience deficit each day based on the node's level. The deficit is subtracted from any experience earned that day. If any deficit remains, then this is subtracted from the node’s experience pool.[2]
And I made assumptions.
The missing information for me is:
- I do not understand why players would use caravans rather than using mules.
- and were does the node/mayor get the resources to build the city defenses from?
I assumed
- some taxes are applied to the resources being brought into the city
- the game will somehow force the players to bring resources to the node
- mules will somehow be less safe compared to caravans
Two months ago I called this "griefing" Steven validated it as a valid game mechanic but also said that policies could be enacted to protect to a certain degree:
https://youtu.be/d_P7AK22_18?t=4551
Then somebody asked about griefing
https://youtu.be/d_P7AK22_18?t=5035
Regarding the part I left out... I got confused by discussions on the forum.
It seems that in AoC cutting young trees will be unlocked for experienced gatherers and also let them get more resources
https://youtu.be/d_P7AK22_18?t=4636
To me would make sense samplings to give fewer resources and harvesting them later when the tree is mature would overall yield more wood.
So maybe some realism to the inventory capacity would help. Add weight factor in the items. And make it so you don't just cut a tree in five seconds and inmediatly have the wood in inventory, run to next tree a repeat all day until you have five hundred pieces of wood in your pocket. Players should have limited inventory capacity , mules also could carry little more but not too much and they should be slow moving animals.
But again, as I have said. The common silly mindset for playing video games makes most people hate this idea . Everyone feels that running around spamming buttons and grabbing a whole mountain's worth of material in fifteen minutes is okay "because it's a game". I am not saying the other extreme of excessive realism should be the case but definitely a balance needs to be found if we are supposed to have an Ecology in place. You can't have ecology and have people running around with magical bagpacks with more capacity than a cargo train.
Well if when you chop down too many trees and that riverlands god that spawns also destroys a few freeholds, mitigates caravan capabilities for the nearby castle and creates a required PVE activity that if not completed will result in the destruction of in node structures that require resources to repair then I would disagree, that is a pretty quick way to instill self governance among gathering in Verra.
Eco warfare is still completely valid as my 2nd idea would encourage people to destroy another nodes economy so that the things listed above happen furthering the affect and value of eco warfare, not decreasing it.
Yes you could move some citizens into a node and have them sabotage from within and that would probably need to be addressed, but overall a simple fix is the auto combatants within that nodes area, with enemies of the state dictated by the mayor to fix the saboteurs. Also I indicated flagging guilds as enemies so a player would need to both lose their citizenship and their membership to a guild. The number of players willing to be saboteurs will be low.
No, they wont be left to self govern. They will be controlled.
I mean, if the idea of the system is that eco-warfare is a thing, if rivals are supposed to be able to absolutely decimate areas, then all is well.
This is what I have an issue with though. This is large guilds and alliances having an impact on what is essentially a solo activity. The people that will be most impacted by this eco-warfare (gatherers) are in no position to fight back at all.
To me, this is bad game design. Organized attacks should only have an impact on organized activities.
Almost every player I know logs on to their MMO of choice for an hour or two several times a week. This is in addition to the guild activities they participate in(activities such as decimating other nodes ecologies), and they generally spend this time just farming what ever content they have set themselves up to farm.
For many (most) of these people, that is some form of gathering.
If they start playing Ashes, and set themselves up as a gatherer as their primary income, if they log in for an hour long farming session and find that due to stupid game design they literally just cant, then that is a massive red mark against the game.
If the idea is to use this as a form of warfare, it is literally just a built in mechanic for organized groups of players to fuck other people over.
That isnt good game design.
Now, admittedly, Steven has said he is making this game for himself. As someone that hasnt had to work all that much in his life (real estate investment) and has no kids, he has a lot of free time. If he logged in and found he couldn't harvest, he wouldn't have an issue dedicating the next 5 or 6 hours to that situation.
That isnt most players though. Most players would see that situation and log off to play something else in the limited time they have.
Again, it's just bad game design.
I personally believe that limiting resources via time investment, through flavorful methods, unique to the type of resource you are gathering, would add enjoyment.
One additional side effect would include areas remaining aesthetically appealing, due to those areas not so easily becoming barren landscapes within a few hours, from intently focused-blinders on individuals.
So I feel the focus of depletion of neighbouring nodes is to entice players to engage in PVP warfare. The game has always been about node wars, IMO anyways, and mechanisms to push players in that direction, by allowing other players to mess with each other in various ways, would help accomplish this. On the other hand, players of neighbouring nodes may work together in a more friendly capacity and ultimately not mess with one another.
They have also mentioned they want people moving around, not remaining static, with resource depletion as one way to do this, and land management another.
Not everything has been revealed, and they are probably siphoning ideas from everyone, if something good comes up that fits in well with what they wish to achieve. It's entirely possible that you must be a citizen of a node or ally of the node to progress the xp of the node with gathering. It's also possible that won't be the case, and that's a decision that players will have to make when attempting to deplete a neighbouring node of it's resources. The xp gained may very well be completely worthless if there's no means for that node to advance, without bringing resources in from elsewhere, which means caravans are required = more PvP options.
Aside from outright war, they could add policies, that when enacted, allow non-citizen players to be killed within a node territory which results in no corruption penalty.
I think someone said there are benefits to managing the land well.
Exactly, you will have extremely active guilds that do the managing so that when someone logs on randomly they are safe to farm or know where they can farm. Take Mortal Online, Full loot hardcore mmo, players formed guilds that focus on preventing pking. If you make the system punish complete resource depletion like I stated the same kind of player management will take place.
It really shouldn't be that easy to decimate the ecology, the only areas where the land mangement score should be low are directly around t5 or t6 nodes. The land should be resilient enough that without directly focusing on the destruction of ecology it should not happen.
Again it should be nearly impossible to decimate the ecology accidentally, it is highly likely the ecology system will be designed to be extremely resistant and without focused pressure will not become depleted.
Your entire post assumes that they can't design this thing using their brains. A simple solution to the problem "Most players will never have the chance too appreciate or understand ecology and will instead suffer due to it" is to simply make the land management rather natural, and unless focus farmed for the intent of harm nearly impossible to deplete.
Logically it should look like this, a node has a score between 0-100 for the 4 groups of resources, plants-herbivores-carnivores-enemies
At 100 everything grows at x speed, if any resource drops below (100 as it should once farmed) the compensation should come from one of the other paths, ie over farm herbivores the trees and grass spawn rate increase by x%. Like a rock paper scissors class balance it should be nearly impossible to deplete all 3. Even in areas of high player density like around a player metro, the natural state of land management should naturally stay above the area that would trigger significant events. You can easily increase certain mobs and such in areas with low score but nothing intense so you avoid punishing less active players.
Now if a group decides to deplete the resources in a given area the resource respawn rates should all drop significantly until a dynamically spawned threat has been dealt with at which point the respawn rates would all return to a buffered state.