Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
As someone who plays this sort of thing in games as of now... this doesn't work.
All 'friction based' PvP interactions should be considered from the perspective that one has only about a 33% chance of winning.
Organized groups will repeatedly flatten 'upstarts' and force negotiation more often than not. Giving them more power to do this for the sake of 'Friction' will help no one.
Yeah, but you need it to be an even playing field.
For the most part, citizens of a node aren't going to give a shit if the resources just out side the city are all gone. Only the people that were harvesting those materials will care.
The node isnt going to mobilize of this. The gatherers arent going to have a means to fight back themselves. It's just an organized group of players fucking with a whole pile of solo players.
The only way anyone is going to war over this is if guild X and guild B in the above scenario (Vaknars scenario) are already rivals. They wont go to war over the resources, or for the sake of the gatherers, they will go to war over the disrespect shown.
The question with that is - why are you dragging innocent gatherers in to that shit?
As to your scenario, you need to look at the exact same scenario but where land management doesnt exist.
I come to your node, harvest all your materials, probably kill a few gatherers. This will elicit the exact same response from that node.
The question then becomes - what is the point of this whole system if not to just fuck people off.
If I chop down a tree, that land's value goes down. No bandits spawn, no predators spawn, no rabbits spawn. Pretty simple tragedy of the commons. Not only that, we know that enemy nodes can wage ecological warfare since the devs discussed that in the stream. So it's intended to be a system you have to manage, not just "one week we have rabbits in the node, then when we kill them all next week we have herbs".
I hope I am not coming off as saying that I agree with the idea that 'chopping down a tree' leads to Land Value depletion. I will also hope they come up with something more sensible than 'if you gather stuff you reduce the land value'.
Is that how we're interpreting it? Either we need more clarification or I need someone to point me at the section I need to rewatch, no sarc.
Why are we assuming that 'I chop down a tree, the land value goes down, no complementary effect happens'.
This is a really obvious system design wise to me, but not if we start from that presumption.
Management WOULD be rotating/dealing with the complementary forces, but if we are assuming that those aren't even a thing, then sure, the system is just silly.
That's a good start, but people still won't be disincentivized to gather in specific nodes because of the tragedy of the commons. If I don't gather, someone else will, so I might as well gather. And if I'm not a citizen of that node, then there's no negative for me at all.
Also, I still think people will want these events, because it's just content to break up the monotony. So I won't gather in my own node, but I'm incentivized to go to another node, gather everything with people, and then get to fight a cool world boss that can harm someone else's node.
I understand what you're saying with innocent gatherers, like I get it. But I would argue there are no "innocent" gatherers in the context of Ashes. I don't think many people want a cutthroat game where every single tree and bush matters, every individual mob, every everything. Tooth and nail fight over every last berry and flower. But we're expecting friction over resources in general, we've been told that's what we're getting, that that's one of the main drivers of the game.
So in that sense, there are no "innocent" gatherers. Everyone is a competitor for the resources of Verra, even if only loosely at certain times and over certain things.
I don't understand this system at all yet. We just don't have enough information about it. I think some of the concerns raised are valid, with what we know right now.
But the point of the system that I see, in the context of nodes and node wars, and defending one's node and it's resources, is to give meaning to that pvp. Node wars already would have meaning without land management. You could declare a node war because citizens from another node are in your node harvesting your resources. Or vice versa. But the land management system gives it more meaning. Not only are they harvesting your node's resources, but they could overharvest it and cause your node further problems.
So conceptually, I at least can see the point of it all. But yeah my question is basically...sooo how you gonna make this work Intrepid? How are you going to make it work well. Because I too see some of the potential pitfalls.
Ultimately what I think is going on here, all theory from me, is Intrepid is moving away from any relevance of the corruption system, and trying to implement more "objective" based reasons for pvp. And I think that's also at least partly why the open sea was made lawless, because Intrepid intends to neuter the corruption system into meaninglessness. So they felt the need for an open pvp area.
They're trying to do that thing. That thing where they please everyone. In my opinion. Could be completely wrong.
Friction is one thing - setting up a system where individual gatherers are going up against guilds is something entirely different.
Gathering is generally an activity that players do in their own time. They may perform that task for a larger entity, but they do it on their own time.
You may say that guilds can just get us and start being more active on gathering. I have no doubt that is what players will be thinking.
But think about what the game then becomes. The game is turning in to a game where players have to participate in sieges when they are told, transport goods when they are told, be at war with guilds and nodes when they are told, and now gather raw materials when they are told. I mean, if an activity needs a guild, then the guild tells its players what to do.
Basically, players will be logging in to Ashes just to do what they are told to do. Even worse, there wont be any activities left that players even could do by themselves if their guild wasnt telling them to do something.
Go through and list the activities players are able to do in Ashes when they have free time but their guild isnt online. In every other MMO, the activity at the top of that list is gathering.
I would wager that the reason Steven is all good with this is because he will be one of those people telling others what they have to do (that was him in Archeage). Perhaps he thinks that the bulk of players like just being told what to do, or perhaps he has never even thought about it.
In my experience though, people are generally accepting of about half of their play time being pre-determined activities, with the rest of the time being spent doing what they want to do.
See, this is the problem.
Decimating resources around a node is a negative for players more than the node.
If you want to make a system that adds weight to a node war (a concept I am all good with), then you make it so the node is the entity that suffers the penalty, not individual players (even if those players are citizens of a node).
Basically, dont use resources around a node as a means of adding weight to a node war, use node buildings - something the node as an entity has invested in, and that will cost the node as a whole if it is lost.
I mean, maybe, but in part because of this post of yours.
When Intrepid introduce a new stupid thing, this is what we do - rip it to shreds. If the new stupid thing is actually not that stupid, it will withstand this. If it is indeed actually a stupid thing, then it will not withstand it.
Generally, there are people on both sides making their arguments. If one side just gives in, then generally that is because they have no more valid arguments to make (even if they say things like " they cant be bothered any more" or what ever).
If the people on one side have no more valid arguments, then the other side of the argument is probably right.
This isnt the first time we - as a forum - have done this. I dont think it will be the last time, either.
Keep in mind, Intrepid have hundreds of years worth of MMO development experience (actually, I am not sure if they do any longer - I think everyone listed on the kickstarter page other than Steven and John are no longer with Intrepid - I'm sure Vaknar will correct me if I am wrong). However, no one at Intrepid is in a position to tell Steven his ideas are stupid, so his ideas get developer attention regardless of whether they are good ideas or not.
As much as I say a game developer should kot listen to me over one of their educated, experienced employees, it needs to be pointed out that I have literally the same amount of game development experience that Stevwm had when going in to Ashes. So, if there is no one at Intrepid in a position to whack him on the knuckles with a ruler while yelling "NO, THATS BAD GAME DESIGN" right to his face, it is kind of up to us to do that.
Personally, I'd rather not. I'd rather Steven listen to someome with Jeff's experience - but that isnt happening.
That being said, my main concern is simply this: Not enough players will care enough to get involved. You see the way most people live their lives on Earth? A lot of us are overworked, stressed out, and don't have the mental capacity to think that far out and make the extra effort to work around the inconvenience of self-control.
Will there be a decent number of players who are logged in for 3+ hours a day with the mental capacity to care about these things? I think so, yes, especially as it's a relatively niche design so far. But will that be the majority? No, I seriously doubt it. The majority of players will log in for a couple hours at a time 3-4 days of the work week, and then have a big binge session on the weekend, perhaps only on one day of it sometimes.
These players aren't going to care about medium/long-term shifts in ecology, because they won't be doing enough on their own to make a serious impact. If someone only plays for 6-8 hours over the course of a work-week, they aren't going to care about ecology. They're going to make the most of their time playing catch up with professions / making money and gathering whatever the hell they want. By themselves, they may not make much of an impact. But altogether, the impact reveals itself over time.
This will obviously come down to tuning, but even that becomes a highly complex problem to solve in and of itself. How much gathering is required for a noticeable decrease in land management score? How will these different trigger-levels affect different tiers of player-investment in different ways? How will this system pan out differently in different node-types where built-in motivators may encourage different proportions of PvE-centric gatherers and PvP-centric adventurers/warmongers? One node may have a drastically different proportion of gatherers to crafters or gatherers to processors, or drastically different proportions of artisan-devotees to hardcore PvPers who do relatively little profession work themselves.
Managing the way this land-score system affects each of these nodes differently will require a vast amount of player-driven community management. "Sorry, we can't have any more miners here. You need to be a lumberjack, an herbalist, or move somewhere else. Oh, and you can't be a metalsmith either, because the demand for metal in the city is already higher than the environment allows." So now I have to pursue a different avenue of gameplay if I want to stay in the same city that my friends or preferred guild likes because... there aren't enough rocks for me to mine? And if I stay, but decide to explore the world and mine somewhere else, that puts me at risk of attracting the ire of other players and giving my node or guild a bad reputation? Sounds highly restrictive to me in theory, and the people who have relatively little time to play will be the rocks in the engine that go wherever and do whatever they want. And I think there will be a lot of rocks. People who're hard to track and hard to enforce responsibility onto because they're online so infrequently, and who perhaps don't even have a guild.
Again, trying to imagine this system in action is difficult, and I'll wait until we see another showcase or see the system in action to get seriously concerned, but this is a major feat Intrepid is attempting to bring to life, one with many potential issues stemming not only from other game systems, but from the variability of the player base itself. That's a hard one to solve.
I'm in the same camp as you. With the information we currently have, I can't envision how this system is going to function. I can't even envision what the system actually is. What I currently know: there's going to be this land management system, people can overharvest your resources, this will make them spawn back slower, might have other negative effects for the node(?), and events might spawn or something because of all this. That's it, that's all I know, and some of that might even be wrong lol.
So this is all premature talk, there's not really much to debate about here other than concepts of how we think it's going to work. Guesses basically.
But I wouldn't really see this as guilds going up against individuals. Another guild or node force would have to organize to DO this against an opposing guild and node. An individual gatherer who just happens to be in the area gathering may get caught up and killed when all of this goes down. I guess? Thankfully, there's a respawn button.
We don't even know how a node is supposed to defend their resources other than corruption system killing, which is completely untenable as a defense. I guess they could declare war on the nodes or other guilds doing it to them. But how many wars can be active at a time? How much does it cost to declare wars? What about unguilded and un noded players harvesting resources?
You see? We know almost nothing about how this is all going to work. But at the end of the day, I just can't see this as a guild/node vs individuals type thing generally. It would be being done to them primarily by another guild or node, presumably at least.
As far as the forced play thing. If you are part of a guild that expects certain things of you, that's just the way it is. Find a less demanding guild if you don't like it.
As a member of a node, you will probably have a certain "responsibility" to help maintain and defend that node collective. Obviously defending it in sieges and wars. Helping to run off corrupted players, if those even end up existing at all. And defending your node from pve events. Some nodes will do better than others, primarily due to player quality and the willingness of the individual node citizens to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. That's just the way Ashes is, land management system or not.
I view it as a negative for both. And the players ARE the node essentially. Without the players, the node is just a collection of buildings and npcs. Not trying to sidestep your point. But again, we just don't know enough about how it will affect an individual node member, versus the node itself.
Edit: I like the idea of node buildings being involved. Presumably the building having a chance of being damaged or destroyed? It's kind of the same thing, a loss of materials for the node, but different gameplay implications. I like Intrepid's land management idea too though. With the caveat, if they can do it without it being overly aggravating or cheesy.
dude its like talking to a wall, it was obvious Vaknar was guiding you to events changing the amount of exp a node gets, literally a basic use of eco warfare would be to deplete a node resources, giving it an initial exp boon but because of events or just the plain ecology system the exp gains after may be reduced enough to outweigh that initial exp gain.
No more good arguments? more like unable to spell out the hundreds of easy fixes to your imaginary problems that are so basic it takes both 5 seconds to imagine and solve them.
Yeah, but that isn't really my concern. That is Intrepid changing how a thing works in order to put another thing in.
My concern is that this system is fucking over the player that just wants to log in to the game and do what they want to do, without needing to literally do what they are told to do. The way this game is going, you are not going to be free to ever do what you want to do, you will only ever be able to do what you are told to do - be it the game telling you to do something (a mob attacking your node), your guild telling you what to do (today we are all helping each other gather, because this is a guild activity now), or other guilds telling you what to do (sieges).
Some of this is fine. Too much of this and you are playing something even more restrictive than an outright themepark MMO.
The game needs less systems where players are forcing each other to do things, not more of them.
You say you are sick of finding easy fixes for things (you have yet to suggest anything that fixes a single issue), make a suggestion as to how this whole system is viable, yet isn't simply forcing players in to doing things when they would rather do something else.
You literally can't, because that is as good a definition of what this system actually is as anything else. It is a system by which players can force each other to do a thing when they want to do a different thing.
Yeah sure a terribly designed system would fuck over the players??? And a terribly designed game wouldn't be played. Its like... duh?
Disagree. We do know the conceptual goals and we have been given examples of how the system will operate. There is quite a bit of info to already criticize as far as I'm concerned.
It is based on the actions of the collective so we know it is going to be difficult for single players to make a dent in it. It is a system that perpetually observes gathering, so individual players may not at all be involved in changing the score but still deal with the consequences. We know there is a time-lag between over-harvesting and the consequences. At least half of the ways we are told you can interact with this system that layers on top of gathering involves either fighting the right mobs at the right time or not gathering, so players are just as likely to impact this gathering-related system without even gathering.
Another angle for resolving this is looking at why/how resources have value. With the change that more resources are available in the environment, we can expect overall high gathering yields (ignore land management for the moment). As long as the local demand for local resources is dwarfed by the supply, the game should be in good shape. We don't have details yet, but I suspect (or maybe hope and am projecting) that caravans will be responsible for providing value to gathered resources. I envision a war-effort style system where each week, every node will put out quests for randomized resources (not determined by the mayor), and if trade routes are available to said node you can deliver those resources for profit (game generates gold while providing a large resource sink). This way, the bottleneck will be caravans not the actual gathering and the randomization will cycle which resources are currently high value for the available trade routes.
This need not trivialize crafting either. As long as crafting medium tier and better gear also requires rarer resources not requested by node quests. Items that can be gathered off bosses or events for example are great candidates. These will provide high value items for player bartering/trading while the node quests + caravans provide a baseline value for normal (low tier?), highly available resources. Caravans just need to become the bottleneck instead of gathering and you've off-loaded the tragedy of commons from gathering onto caravans and non-player infinite demand.
Yeah I assumed some of that would be the case. I just don't understand what their intention with the system is yet. Is it to encourage pvp? Is it to throttle high population areas and force people to spread out? Is it to spawn events?
Do they intend it to be be something you, as a node, defend against at all? Or is it just some kind natural ecology thing that happens, to make the world feel more alive, and ever changing?
I'd be fine with any of that, as long as they can make it work without just...sucking. But referring to the video the OP posted about UO, they tried it, didn't work lol. I played UO back then, I didn't even know they had an ecology system like that. But I do kind of remember sometimes being like damn where the fk are the mobs?
Discussion of land management starts here in the video:
I agree with you that some actions can have beneficial effects on other gatherables' land value as discussed in the video. But that doesn't mean it's this 1-to-1 system or even beneficial to your local economy at all if it were a 1-to-1 system. If you live in the forest and everyone chops down all the trees, maybe the devs can make up some story of "Well the rocks spawn more when the forest is clear because you can see the stone more easily." Which doesn't make sense at all to me, but maybe that's what they'll end up doing. But if you're getting stone imported at a low cost and wood is your major export, or you need a ton of wood for an upcoming siege, it doesn't matter that you're now getting a lot of stone, you're screwed. Your entire economy can be ruined for your node for as long as the enemy gatherers over-gather wood, it's still a large negative externality that you can't just account for by gathering stone instead of wood.
Most people are going to be concerned with their inventory, their storage, their gold balance. They aren't going to give a shit about the nodes economy as a whole. It's only a handful of leaders that will even be thinking about this - and it seems to me to be that handful of people that this entire system is made for, to the detriment everyone else.
I think you misquoted me, but I agree that this system and the way the developer's discussed it in the livestream is too much of a "looking down" perspective. The average player just wants to do their daily chores, make a profit, progress their character, and call it a day. And if that means not caring about harming their land value score, they won't care much. But, I think as I discussed previously, there are ways you can try to make the system work on that micro-scale. While there are gatherers just stripping the woods, you can make people selfishly plant trees for skill augments, social org progression, node reputation progression, or just completing some easy quests. You can make people flag for gathering and have them think twice before taking that two minutes to run over to the next node and gather there. I think there are a lot of potential tools Intrepid has to interact on that micro level, but they just threw out this system that can be a nightmare and didn't elaborate enough on it. So I understand the fears surrounding the system in general.
Ok, agreed. I thought that was the intention.
That doesn't affect the individual player much though, so I don't quite 'see the problem'.
Also if you timestamp videos in the Forum YouTube player it doesn't go to the timestamp nor show it, for future reference. I saw it in the quote though.
Now as for addressing that. I pay more attention to what Devs say than what Steven says, at this point. So to quote that person, as I believe this is probably the most important line:
"It could be positive, it could be negative, it could be both at once."
And
"The Land Health value ties into the health of a specific ecosystem."
All given examples from the developer were of positive actions players can take that would also probably interest some people and very likely have decent rewards. Specific ones, too. Steven's words make it sound somewhat different. I don't doubt that there would also be negative effects, but I feel like we may be overfocusing on those, when there would be no need to design it that way.
Some posters here definitely have very strong and valid reasons why this would be able to cause frustration to other players, but I'm not sure it wouldn't be 'frustration through the node'. Their day-to-day wouldn't be more affected than just 'respawn timers lower than the demand for gatherables', which would happen either way. Being able to frustrate 'the node object' is possible far more easily than frustrating individual players anyway.
While I do believe that one of the goals of this system is to cause people to spread out, it can be built so that it's very targeted. Of course it 'screws over players' but there IS a case in which that is the best thing to happen, it's a countermeta/anti-strategy guide force.
Basically, I don't see an innate flaw in the system relative to their obvious goals, nor do I agree that most of the problems people have noted would happen based on developer statements. There are certainly some things that Steven desires which will frustrate some player types, and arguments in that vein, I probably have no comment on, but the system itself does not inherently contain certain issues unless we make assumptions about what exactly causes entirely negative effects.
I am sick of spelling out solutions to this imaginary problem you have concocted. My suggestions have been based on likely implementations of this system being designed. Like offsetting resource destruction with a separate resource spawn elsewhere. Or having a boss spawn during over farming, i've detailed why this system can work just fine without requiring significant management, I've detailed why this system is useful while still keeping the game fun to play and adding variability.
Let me do it again, this time in 1 post so you can track it.
This system should not be designed around the idea that harvesting a resource is bad, it should be designed around the idea that the gathering of any kind, should be offset with another reaction elsewhere.
Take a band of buddies chopping wood for 3 hours, they clear a small forest by node A. Well without the cover of trees now carnivores can flood the area, or without the roots blocking the growth of mineral nodes they can grow back faster, and this system should take place on the small scale over an hour or two. If done by a herd of players like around a metro it should take place across a day or two and offer more significant changes.
For example, the gatherers decimate the entire region around a metro (think what will likely happen after launch around the first metro), the reaction should be an event, like a boss who increases growth rate or spawns mobs to attack the players and metro, or a natural disaster like the nearby river flooding during spring and due to "erosion" its water floods the entire region creating lily flowers that are normally rare.
Now while natural decimation will likely happen occasionally on accident, most of the time this system ought to make that reaction significant enough to avoid an event needing to take place or a punishment placed upon the players.
This is all based on the logic that has been proven already by IS, they have a brain, they understand a player base doesn't want to log on and be unable to farm simply because. In each of these situations, there is another 1190 or so km^2 for players to farm as they wish, there should be almost no circumstance where a player is unable to logon, walk outside and be unable to to do task as they see fit for the duration of their 1 hour of play time. I am sure sometimes when players need 200k wood for the next node building this system will cause strife, or when a guild uses eco warfare during/before a siege, again strife.
That is the entire point though, all of their design philosophies are trying to push players together, give them avenues to cause strife and force interaction. 100 people aren't going to manage this system, 1,000 people are going to take advantage of it and the other 9,000 will just go about their lives without ever caring about the system.
You want to gather your massive well organized guild force them all into a single location and grind for an hour or two so that you can wage eco warfare? Congratulations, you have fulfilled the purpose of this system, now you have pissed off that metro, and the players within that metro have a choice, walk 2-3 minutes to the neighboring nodes and farm happily ever after, or join in whatever their node is doing in response.
Your punishment of the typical player through this system? Negated by walking 2-3 minutes to the next node to farm.
Forcing the player to do things instead of allowing the player to have choice? The players has choice in every way from every route of this entire situation.
Where can you punish that player who hops on once or twice a week for an hour or two?
They have so many choices regarding every aspect of this system, a system that can actually punish is the sieges forcing players out of their apts or freeholds, that is if you really want to argue that the player doesn't have choice regarding ecology.
TL;DR
IS won't build a system that is simply net negative for gathering
IS won't build a system that punishes the average player simply for existing without giving them a choice
IS has shown that they are competent, this system has plenty of avenues for success and has no inherent problems to solve yet
To add to this, we also probably should not be thinking about a player's activity or behaviour relative to a single Node, since while the Node system IS a big deal, it doesn't actually function even at that level.
A system that 'causes the residents of a Metro to walk a bit across to the Vassal Cities or further down' is a complete requirement for this to work. If you can just 'gather near a Metro with no effects that ever need to be managed', people will just always do that.
Lots of better gathering is probably going to be a group activity. There is no reason to build this system so that solo gatherers are particularly affected by it, and we've already had multiple design hints that would indicate a system where that does not happen anyway.
It's literally an array of spawners on the server side that someone throws through a statistical map/filter function every 'tick'. The code requirements to implement what is being discussed automatically include multiple methods of easily tweaking or controlling it.
Even if Steven came to a Dev and said 'I want people to notice when they cut down all the trees!' the implementation isn't guaranteed to be 'ok boss I'll make sure that cutting down trees is bad'.
My actions of gathering wood harms everyone else in the node because now we're stuck with a worthless resource like cheap stome, or a high land management value in a resource our node can't even really produce (are we going to spawn mass trees in the desert if stones are mined?). It affects all gatherers in that node because they can't gather materials they actually can make a profit off of in a regional-based economy. It would be like saying that if Saudi Arabia could no longer produce oil that it'd be ok because maybe they could divert capital to mine and sell more iron ore instead.[/quote]
Thank you
If I'm a master wood gatherer who works in the forest, the forest being stripped down and having stone nodes with faster respawn times in the area absolutely is felt by me on the individual level. I also just realized that this system promotes the resources with the highest demand to be the one's farmed, meaning that players are literally incentivized to gather all the most valuable type of resources the most. Undoubtedly will be a problem unless they provide positive externalities and let players actually defend their node.
Also, does is matter if it's felt most on a node management level? Mayors aren't just coming up with cool tournaments for players to do every week. Mayors are what determine whether their node is being sieged or if they have enough players in the node providing enough XP so the node doesn't atrophy. If mayor's can't manage their economies then that will eventually trickle down to the individual player's experience when their node gets destroyed or they lose access to content they wanted to keep.
It's a system that can easily fall to the tragedy of the commons, and it's incredibly worrisome in a sandbox game. I want to hear more about this system, because it isn't due to paranoia that people are scared this system will fail.
Thank you
If I'm a master wood gatherer who works in the forest, the forest being stripped down and having stone nodes with faster respawn times in the area absolutely is felt by me on the individual level. I also just realized that this system promotes the resources with the highest demand to be the one's farmed, meaning that players are literally incentivized to gather all the most valuable type of resources the most. Undoubtedly will be a problem unless they provide positive externalities and let players actually defend their node.
Also, does is matter if it's felt most on a node management level? Mayors aren't just coming up with cool tournaments for players to do every week. Mayors are what determine whether their node is being sieged or if they have enough players in the node providing enough XP so the node doesn't atrophy. If mayor's can't manage their economies then that will eventually trickle down to the individual player's experience when their node gets destroyed or they lose access to content they wanted to keep.
It's a system that can easily fall to the tragedy of the commons, and it's incredibly worrisome in a sandbox game. I want to hear more about this system, because it isn't due to paranoia that people are scared this system will fail.[/quote]
Then my only question to you is, assuming the respawn timers are somewhat slow.
Doesn't the same thing happen, almost WORSE, with no Management system?
Let's assume 40 spawns, you CAN gather all in 15 minutes alone.
Seven different master wood gatherers come to this node because it is known to have 40 spawns and they can make money. Nodes respawn... say every 20 minutes.
If everyone knows they can never lose out on this if they have the place to themselves, nothing will ever change, then they stick around.
You log on, there's nothing to gather because two other gatherers just split the 20 spawns and now there's nothing for you. It's pointless to try to join in and compete with them, and you don't want to kill your NodeMates.
Every time a new person 'learns that there are a static 40 respawns of this cool thing they want near this Node' they head here. Then they complain about how 'everyone else is always taking the spawns', but no one leaves because they feel 'well I just have to not flinch and I'll get them'.
The Land Management system is there to say 'no, screw ALL of you, you can't win by not flinching, LEAVE'.
Then my only question to you is, assuming the respawn timers are somewhat slow.
Doesn't the same thing happen, almost WORSE, with no Management system?
Let's assume 40 spawns, you CAN gather all in 15 minutes alone.
Seven different master wood gatherers come to this node because it is known to have 40 spawns and they can make money. Nodes respawn... say every 20 minutes.
If everyone knows they can never lose out on this if they have the place to themselves, nothing will ever change, then they stick around.
You log on, there's nothing to gather because two other gatherers just split the 40 spawns and now there's nothing for you. It's pointless to try to join in and compete with them, and you don't want to kill your NodeMates.
Every time a new person 'learns that there are a static 40 respawns of this cool thing they want near this Node' they head here. Then they complain about how 'everyone else is always taking the spawns', but no one leaves because they feel 'well I just have to not flinch and I'll get them'.
The Land Management system is there to say 'no, screw ALL of you, you can't win by not flinching, LEAVE'.