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
Asuming the guild you are at war with wants to play soft.. Guilds that want more effect will not declare war, they will pk.. Pk`ing the right players at the right time has a way to influence decisions.
There is quite some angst in these forums. Neither of them have much bedside manner (them being Dark and Noaani), but at least one attempts discourse ehh?
So an example is that you and a friend own a freehold in Ashes, and you both need to refrain from harvesting resources on the freehold for a day. This is a tragedy of the commons situation, but because you and your friend have enough "social trust" between each other, you can probably avoid any problems of over-harvesting.
The problem is when that farm is instead a forest, and instead of you and your best friend having to coordinate, you need 300+ people to coordinate. And among those 300 people there are some strangers who are stopping by who aren't a part of your node. If everyone needs to refrain, it's unfortunate but as it turns out from experience we see that the incentive to do what's in your own self-interest is enough to make people overharvest.
It's not about having players "be community minded", it's just implausible for people to be able to work with strangers on that level.
This doesn't make sense to ME yet and I can explain why pretty quickly I think.
You have 300 players you need to coordinate. Let's assume ALL of them want to gather resources from some 'bucket' that all have the same negative effect.
You put up a message somewhere that says 'There was a lot of gathering over the weekend, please hold off on it a bit'.
If there WAS a lot of gathering, shouldn't the supply now go so far beyond demand that no one should have a good reason to WANT to just gather more? If you don't manage to make an economy that causes at LEAST that effect, I consider there to be larger problems.
Would we really expect that of these 300 people, ALL of them go 'no I'm gathering anyway' when the value of the item they are gathering will probably drop if they gather more anyway?
Sure, sometimes it would be random, but in MY mind it's not in their best interest to gather more in the first place. Some subset of them 'do something else', some subset don't, and it would work out, even if not every time.
The only way this sort of thing fails is with those crappy 'sell to NPC' Econ models, isn't it?
EDIT: Realized the possibility of getting caught up in your own arbitrary numbers. We DO get to assume that 300 people are all gathering, right? If not, you should probably give 'the number that are likely to influence the bucket' in your mind.
I unfortunately agree with the idea that if there is "stuff" to consume (by means of gathering) people will not cooperate. It's as simple as people will gather if they can gather and so I can't help but feel there is the prisoner's dilemma in how this system seems to be trending. I can tell my guild don't harvest today, and they will listen but lets say 30 people travel through my node and notice there is some items to be gathered and do so directly leading to a bad outcome for my guild who followed directions so we might as well harvest right?
Pair this with the idea that there will be scarcity and friction and it devolves into "harvest in my ZOI and we will kill on sight" which isn't what I believe they want, or they tune up how much you can gather and it slides into the New World problem of AFK farming. It's the idea that basically I don't foresee (someone keeps referencing the tragedy of the commons) any outcome other than a locust mentality of consumption, which can work if they are planning for that and the world might be more cutthroat than I was originally expecting but no one has made an argument in these forums this past month that has led me from this line of thinking.
It's all wash until A2 anyway but still is a bit worrisome that I am "hoping they get it right".
So far, I gave him a few nonsensical replies due to that being all I get from him when I ask question, followed by a full answer of his question.
He claimed he was discussing "on my level", but then when the discussion moved forward in the exact predicted manner, he found that he had no idea where it was he was trying to take it. He had no follow up.
All he demonstrated is that he doesnt actually understand "the level" I am on - asking questions in an attempt to further discussion. Not that this is a particularly high level, it just seems to be one he doesnt understand.
If you were playing Ashes, would your loyalty be to your node (where all of this needs to take place) or to your guild?
If you are working towards building a large warship for your guild, and your node asked you to stop harvesting wood for a few days, would you just do that, or just ignore them and continue to harvest that wood?
In order for the system to work, players not only need to place their personal best interest aside for that of an arbitrary group, but they also need to put the best interests of their social circle (guild) aside for the best interest of that same arbitrary group.
To me, the whole system is reliant on people putting node above guild, and I just dont think people will do that.
Unless each node can't support literally every citizen gathering at the same time (I'd hope that would be the upper limit for the management system, maaaybe just a bit below that) - the loyalty to both guild and node should, in theory, stay upkept.
And you'd not only upkeep that loyalty, but would also help your guildmates' nodes to remain undecayed. Hell, I could even see some guilds moving their members to different nodes, in order to help them stay alive, because that would be beneficial to the guild itself.
So it all still comes down to how Intrepid balances the management system and what will be its limits and triggers.
I definitely agree with @Noaani that this is a sticking point here, and I am biased because my experience with 'Nodes' comes from 1.5 games where the situation is the reverse.
The Guild is large, strong, and has a lot of peripherals/temporary supporters. In fact, INARA (the Elite Dangerous fansite) has an EXPLICIT function for 'marking yourself as the supporter of a Player Faction) while you are NOT part of their 'guild' (Squadron).
The main thing that matters that I DO see potentially paralleling to Ashes is simply that I REALLY REALLY don't expect Ashes to be made of 'individual nodes' at all. I expect it to be made of 'Nations' and those 'Nations' to be coalitions of Guilds and their supporters.
So within the entire 'ZOI of your nation' I would not expect a strong guild to have trouble finding a good place for everyone to become a citizen that suits their needs unless the Node system sucks, at which point I concede all points because if the Node system sucks, who cares?
The four 'Nations' near me in Elite have entire systems for this. Any given Node would automatically be secondary to the Guild Coalition Nation that would form. If Intrepid expects an outcome OTHER than this, I too, am concerned.
But I definitely see how most of the node mechanics will just be used by the guilds, and no matter how many times Steven says that nodes are not controlled by guilds - it won't change the fact that they effectively will be.
The devs spent all of their time implementing features for Landmark.
Rallying Calls were never implemented - so there was no way to actually determine they were not fun.
SOE/Daybreak got bought out and both Landmark and EQ Next were cancelled.
The devs were barely able to make mob combat work well with voxels in Landmark.
That's the part that was not fun.
I dunno about that NiKr, I asked for proof and he didn't provide it.
Where's the answer?
"Let me paraphrase parts of this thread down to just a few lines." (but not really)
DarkTides; Let's discuss solutions to preventing overgathering, not autisically just land management.
Noaani; tells Intrepid Studios Devs how bad they are at designing games and claims to have the best ideas, but are all garbage. Proceeds to engage in nonsensical quote wars with anyone possible.
DarkTides; EQN had a system called Rallying Calls, similar to Events in AOC. Goblin attack on a node was specifically mentioned to highlight it's potential use to deter overharvesting of the forest(We have pygmy goblins attacking a node on the wiki site)Similarities?? We have Intrepid Studio staff implying Dygz is onto something, when referring to triggered events as alternative solutions to preventing overharvesting.
Noaani; Claims EQN was cancelled due to Rallying Cries SPECIFICALLY making the game unfun: This system was one of the things in EQN that was deemed to be unfun (it is actually the only specific thing I have been able to get anyone that worked on EQN to specifically label as unfun). If it is in Ashes, it will be unfun.
Oh and let me quote the President of Daybreak games, Russ Shanks and make it look like DarkTides is saying exactly this so I can manipulate the conversation in a manner that which human excrement would.
"As we put together the pieces, we found that it wasn’t fun," writes Shanks. "In final review, we had to face the fact that EverQuest Next would not meet the expectations we — and all of you — have for the worlds of Norrath."
So, basically, you are saying that a game that had a system similar to this one that Ashes are looking at implementingwas cancelled because the game wasnt considered fun.
I wonder why they didnt consider it fun...
DarkTides; requests proof that rallying calls were the reason EQNext was deemed unfun.
Noaani; Gets upset for being asked to provide proof, pretends he had a friend making EQN that he spoke to once, gravitates towards more quotes of quoting quotes of quotes quotes of quotes playbook of nonsense, while still never answering the question.
DarkTides; Still waiting cupcake
Ding ding ding ding, thank you Dygz.
Still waiting @Noaani
There will have to be consequences that are dire enough to motivate gamers to stop.
We'll just have to see if the devs can come up with something that actually works.
You say you don't want to play Ashes because open seas change prevents you from exploring them (because auto-flag). Don't you think that this change might do the same for gatherers?
Those are not really the same, I would bet.
Trying to think of a half-decent analogy.
Gatherers stop other gatherers from being able to gather just by existing in sufficient numbers at the same times, right?
So while it IS different, we can't really say that a system that 'propagates this effect when people are not online RIGHT THEN' is ACTUALLY worse, just mostly imagined to be so. They're equally tweakable.
But as noted before, some people will gather just because 'it is the thing they do' even without it actually being profitable. It leads into complex and somewhat stupid territory, design wise, but the other options that make those types of people happy ruin the game in a different way.
Land management would be a decent way to make it not only unprofitable but 'unfun', and you'd question 'well why would I have anything in a game that isn't necessary that makes it unfun?'. Mostly because you're just 'hiding the unfun part in a place most players don't see at first' if you don't.
EDIT: tl;dr PART of the reason why New World's economy is jank is because gathering is 'too easy and fun' but actually making real relative progress due to doing it is therefore impossible.
If land management can reduce resource respawn after a huge gathering session, the gatherers that had that session wouldn't have to be online to influence the experience of players that come to gather in that location afterwards.
To me, that sounds much worse than "you get autoflagged in this location, but there's no real assurance that another player will come across you and kill you".
Mainly because the former has an effect even w/o other players present, while the latter requires other players to be present to have the effect.
And while Intrepid seem to have "tweaked" the open seas already (namely the area increase), the only tweak of the land management system I could see working out is the one that only triggers respawn reduction if there were more people gathering in one node than if all of that node's citizens were to start gathering at the same time.
And while such a tweak is possible, I dunno if Intrepid would go for it. Though even if they do, there's also the part of "if there's other gatherers around, I might not be able to do the thing I want to do", which only pushes gathering even further, in terms of "players preventing players from doing smth".
Though I guess it's just my pvp side speaking
I do not intend to speak for Dygz here, I am answering mostly from my understanding of a similar person (not main group, decided not to play until he knew it was gonna be good, probably won't now for similar reasons as Dygz).
The positive feedback loop an explorer's mind gets is not the same as the one a gatherer's mind gets, and the obstacles they are used to dealing with (or at least, used to be?) are not the same.
It's entirely possible that we have in fact reached the point where 'Intrepid! There are no resource spawns for me to gather when I log on because OTHER PEOPLE were gathering! Add more of them!' is a serious point that has to be addressed for an MMO player. It would explain a lot of things.
But overall my understanding is that an explorer's obstacles are their own ingenuity and time requirements, OCCASIONALLY mobs (but for example, Elite's explorers face no threats out there other than their own management of their ship and they stay out in the black for LITERALLY YEARS).
Gathering USED to be a more complex incentive system in games, maybe it no longer is though.
What if some gatherers actually want emergent systems rather than the same old just go press E on everything and anything at any time? What if some gatherers who think they don't want these emergent type systems, actually do but just don't know it yet because it's never been done before, or done well?
"Gatherers." "Innocent gatherers." I don't think they're a monolithic group. I mean, I'm a gatherer. I have gathered in many games. It has helped propel my characters' development and wealth across many games. I've done it in games where pvp was turned off, I've done it in games with pvp turned on.
You can sign me up for emergent systems that work. IF they work. If Intrepid can't get this land management system to work well, they'll scrap it. But it's refreshing that they're at least thinking about creating systems for gatherers who want a little more than just running around pressing E on things.
Edit: Not every "explorer" is Dygz either. I'm sure there are plenty "explorers" who are intrigued by a dangerous world, with some areas being more dangerous than others. It's the same principle. Not every explorer is just this monolith bot that just wants to press his buttons and explore locations mindlessly.
Some people want to say they explored an area by using diplomacy to get access or protection. Or using evasion to be able to say I avoided the hostile players in the area and explored it. Or using pvp to kill those who tried to stop me.
Not every "explorer" wants to say yep, got to the area, by the strategic pressing of W, A, S, and D, the area is now explored. Done. Next.
None of these groups are monoliths. There is a hunger in this genre for emergent systems.
hear hear
- abundance (no problem here i suppose) not to much friction over common resources
- diversity (more then just 3 different resources to gather
- must be rewarding and difficult or time consuming to master
What does the above MEAN, in terms of a gameplay loop a person could potentially be looking for? It could mean lots of things, but let's assume (baselessly) that the person does not want to just be a 'veg-out bot', mainly because games can't AFFORD to have scriptable gathering these days, for safety.
So they want to be able to find DIFFERENT things (let's presume novelty), enough things (let's ASSUME so that they don't have to run around as much without finding anything, whether that is due to wanting profit or just the reward reaction in the brain) and 'rewarding and difficult' (there's NEARLY no reason for this that doesn't fall under 'I want to feel like I'm progressing and that other people who are not like me are not progressing as much/as fast').
As much as I dislike agreeing with a certain recent poster on anything, there is a subset of players for whom the optimal gathering game is:
"One that they like, that is fairly easy, and gives them a constant stream of rewards, but also feels like it is rewarding outside of that, and that their numbers get to go up (money or just a skill number) while other people's numbers don't go up as much."
From a basic 'game psychology' perspective, the only way to achieve this is to tune it toward one specific type of mind and leave it there. If it is fun for everyone, they will all do it, and then the last part doesn't happen, OR the first part doesn't happen (or gathering is basically instanced).
I don't know if I'm making sense here, but if you give someone 'easy gathering where they can run around a big area and there is always enough for them to feel like they are progressing even with a bunch of other people doing the same thing', you either made it a bot fiesta or you took away ONE of the things they cared about. Either the materials are worthless because 'anyone who wanted them could just go have fun gathering them because they're abundant', or 'it's not difficult/rewarding', to prevent gatekeeping from 'whoever does it the most at first'.
"And when everyone is a Gatherer... No One will be." (yes this applies even within the subset of players who would actually choose to master Gathering if there is low chance of competition for spawns, and the competition for spawns is the thing I was referring to as the 'obstacle a gatherer is used to')
The Land Management system is already supposed to be designed so that resources can be depleted and Gatherers will have to move to a new location.
Consequences that trigger Events doesn't change that.
At no time does the game prevent Gatherers from doing what they wish to do. They may temporarily have to travel somewhere else.
And... the key word there is temporary vs permanent.
The Open Seas would be the same equivalent as it is for me.
Gatherers just want to go there to Gather resources, but they are auto-flagged for PvP and PK penaltes are half the normal death penalties - which encourages PKing, rather than deters PKing.
Also, Open Seas does not prevent me from exploring.
I'm just not willing to play a game where I have to auto-consent for PvP with no deterrent for PKing in order to explore an area - and that area is always auto-flag.
Explorer 87%; Socializer 73% ; Achiever 47%; Killer 0%.
Explorer 87%; Killer 73% ; Socializer 47%; Achiever 0% might be thrilled by auto-flag in the Open Seas.
Same for a KESA or an AEKS.
In Ashes, "now explored" is not really a thing because the world is dynamic, rather than static.
So, there are incentives to re-explore places prviously visited.
People who typically play MMORPGs on PvP servers will probably be OK using diplomacy or evasion if they wish to try to avoid PvP encounters.
People who love the (hardcore) thrill of adrenaline from PvP encounters (including successfully escaping) will be fine with being auto-flagged on the Open Seas.
It's unlikely that will be satisfactory for people who typically play on PvE-Only servers.
We'll just have to see how the numbers actually play out.
Should be fine with just the PvPers... similar to EvE Online, ArcheAge and Lineage II.
The idea I think some other people have proposed was having quests and other activities that would boost the score. I would be happy to do a quest or kill some mobs for the good of the land score from time to time, especially if they reward some xp and coin. But if the system ever boils down to "you cant gather today because land score", it's going to fail imo.
EQN was in development. Landmark was all players saw, but Landmark was EQN's version of Apocalypse. It was a testing platform - it was just more successful than SoE thought it would be.
You are right that the system in question didn't get fully developed, but only because it didn't need to be. It was deemed to be unfun on paper.
I know you are friends with some developers from EQN as well, so I'm fairly sure you know all of this.
I dont think anyone is saying gathering in games isn't up for some upheaval, just that you cant do it blindly. Assuming all gatherers want these systems is as bad as assuming none of them do.
The key is to make such systems opt in, rather than forced.
The thing here you claim I said, followed by you quoting verbatim where you thi k I said it,are not saying the same thing.
You claimed I said EQN was cancelled specifically because of rallying crys. All I said was it is the only specific thing I could get someone to admit was unfun.
Literally not the same things at all. Honestly not even close.
Yeah yeah yeah, blah blah, keep on tellin yourself that
So, for context and clarification, you think the statements "this is one member of this set that I am aware of, though I have no knowledge of how many members this set has" and "this is absolutely the only member of this set" are the same statement.
Because that is what I said - I commented on that being one member of the set in question. You have represented that I am saying it is the only member of that set, which I clearly did not say.
I mean you can see in what you quoted from me that I didn't say all, I said some. I also said, "None of these groups are monoliths." Which means I'm not assuming all gatherers would want the same systems.
I just take issue with Nikr's and many other's portrayal of "gatherers." I'm a gatherer, spent thousands of hours gathering over decades of mmo play. I'm very excited about dynamic resource spawn. Don't know why more games haven't done it. It solves so many problems. In New World I probably could have ran my static iron mining route blindfolded. That's great and all, kind of convenient, mined a ton of iron ez pz. But if I was offered something a little less braindead, I'd be down for it.
Dynamic resource spawn is less braindead. So I'm happy with that. This land management system is nothing but intriguing to me at this point. I'm still in the camp of Intrepid has to explain what it is exactly, what it's for and how impactful it's supposed to be. More than anything, it has to survive testing. This will be a challenging system for Intrepid to implement and at this point I'd give it no more than a 50/50 chance of ending up in the final game.
I don't think this is exactly a system you can make opt in. Maybe there's some kind of exotic way that could be thought up to where resources are over harvested for people that opted in, but full and abundant for people who hit the opt out button. I don't see how or why they'd do that though. I may be missing your point of what you mean by it being opt in.