Leveling the playing field in instanced PvP

Blindside

Noaani wrote: »

Yeah, WoW and GW2 required players to play the game. Your suggestion does not.

The only thing you needed to do in GW2 was complete character creation. Afterwards, you could hop right into PvP.

Noaani wrote: »

The thing is, as I said earlier, sponsors are shying away from putting money in to esport. They are also wary of any esport that doesn't at least attempt to prevent this sort of interruption - and have been for many years.

I mean, esport is prone to attacks on the client side. That is bad enough, Sponsors are not likely to be willing to put money in to an esport (remember, sponsors are shying away from this in general) that is actually actively ADDING a client side vulnerability as well.

I mean, if you were a sponsor, would you put money in to a game that needlessly added an additional attack vector in to what is already a massive issue for esport? Or would you put your money in to a game that is doing all it can to prevent this sort of thing?

Are you assuming Intrepid wouldn't work to prevent their servers from being attacked? That's an issue regardless of whether the game has esports, it is not an issue specific to it.

If the sponsors provided reasons as to why they are not as willing to invest, then addressing those concerns will make it easier for them to put their money into the game.

Noaani wrote: »

There is literally no reason at all for an esport like you are talking about to be a part of the MMO servers. The only reason for an esport to be a part of an MMO server is if it is required that people play the MMO in order to compete in the esport (ie, having to play the MMO to get gear). Remove the need for people to play the MMO in order to play the esport, and you are removing the need for the esport to be a part of the MMO. As such, you should be removing the esport from the MMO in order to prevent that attack vector.

This is all basic stuff. With what you claim your job is, you should have seen this a mile off. There is literally no reason at all to have your suggestion tied to the MMO directly, and tying it will absolutely cause issues for both the MMO and the esport. Removing that connection resolves those issues - thus, remove that connection.

Again, esports are a type of competition. MMOs can have esports. Any genre of game with a competitive scene, could have esports. MMOs are not an exception. There is no need to 'remove' the connection between MMO and esports because both can and do co-exist.

JamesSunderland

The complete disregard of the players meaningful gear progression just doesn't seems reasonable for me in a MMORPG. I honestly expect Ashes arenas to be non-equalized.

Lineage 2 amazing arenas(Olympiads) had no equalization.

Archeage originally only had a non-equalized arena(Gladiator arena)
and eventually added a equalized arena (Sparring Arena).

I remember this being extremely negative for the Archeage Arena scenario, it made queue times twice as long, the proliferation of gearless alts created only with the intent of farming sparring arenas and it diminished the value of the rewards provided by the arena.

I would only consider a equalized arena reasonable in Ashes in a PTS, with the sole purpose of Testing things out.

Settite

If an e sport arose from ashes in any way, shape or form then so be it as long as it doesn't take away from the "mmo" aspect of the game.

I don't care for the idea of having a training arena where you can try out the full suite of abilities present in any class or multiclass. I believe that would cause a "meta" to be born in record time and metas make games alot for stale. I'd rather not have everyone be cookie cutters. If someone really must know what a class can generally do then I would suggest looking at the wiki or beta footage once it's out. Going into a game with too much info would lessen the mystery but that's just a personal take.

I'd rather the arenas not be equalized but instead just have brackets for every 10 lvls. I.e lvl 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 matchmaking. It's simple and everyone has access to all the tools they earned in the game. Since it's an mmo (especially a pvx mmo) it should all be interconnected.

Just my 21 cents

Dolyem

Azherae wrote: »

Blindside wrote: »

@Azherae

Yes, my suggestion of having training areas require purchasable time tokens would act as a dampener on the access players have to it. Unless I am misunderstanding your concern with training areas, I thought your issues with a training area were:

1. You don't want free access to the training areas because people could spend all of their time there instead of playing the rest of the game. So, I suggested to make them require purchasable time tokens.
2. But you consider the options of purchasing time tokens with both in-game currency and real life currency to be pay to win. So, I suggested to make them only purchasable with in-game currency.

I don't care about purchasing of Tokens with Real Life currency. For that you'd have to talk to someone else. I can talk to my team to see if any of them care enough, but they generally leave design economics to me, so it may not be worth it today.

Maybe Dolyem has an opinion that would be relevant.

The situation here relative to ME is that I generally consider this entire flow to be a negative for what Ashes is based on the games I've designed and the way their communities played out. If it were up to me, I would simply have cut you off awhile back and offered nothing whatsoever, again, based on prior experience. I would be unwilling to take the risk of repeating the same sorts of experiences I've had before, particularly in a genre that is much more sensitive to it.

I've spent far too much time in the past 'trying to get players to actually engage with the community instead of just training against each other in hopes of becoming unbeatable' to not view 'Training Area in an MMO where you can test stuff freely' as a big red flag.

EDIT: Realized that you might have been using the 'general you' here in point #2, so clarifying differently.

I 'speak for' 7 people currently relative to feedback for this game in non-official threads that become serious discussion (they are generally requested to give their own feedback in those), and none of those people generally participate in those threads. Anyone else who happens to agree with me should still be addressed entirely separately. Sometimes I'll give aggregate data from my archives/parses, but that's just trends to inform what might come up if you continue, it generally isn't related to anyone I 'represent'.

Personally, I think anything that can be considered a mechanic that allows one an advantage in the game to be purchased with RMTs is P2W.
Being able to purchase time to hone ones skills more efficiently is P2W. So thus is directly in conflict with AoCs promises and design goals
It'd be a shitshow for Intrepid. And they'd lose most of their credibility.

I've also already stated that even a completely open access training area is negative for the game because it fast tracks deconstructing the mechanics of the game. Which is bad.

Noaani

Blindside wrote: »

Are you assuming Intrepid wouldn't work to prevent their servers from being attacked? That's an issue regardless of whether the game has esports, it is not an issue specific to it.

I mean, literally every MMO has issues by which a player can crash the server.

My only assumption in regards to what Intrepid would do is that they would not be able to do a better job than multi-billion dollar companies.

If you are assuming that Intrepid - essentially a small start up computer game company - can do a better job of this than Microsoft, Blizzard, Amazon (or even Apple, Google and basically every Government department if you are willing to go outside of the gaming sphere), then, umm, yeah.

It isn't a case of Intrepid being unwilling, it is a case of literally no one on the planet being able to produce anything that is online, public facing and secure. More to the point, it is a matter of not one single MMO (generally considered to be the most complex pieces of software produced for entertainment purposes) essentially being guaranteed to have flaws that can be exploited to cause server crashes.

Again, literally every MMO I have ever played has had built in means to crash the servers, if you know how to find them.

Again, esports are a type of competition. MMOs can have esports. Any genre of game with a competitive scene, could have esports. MMOs are not an exception.

So far, I agree completely.

My issue is in how you are suggesting it should work, and how that method interacts with game systems that are specific to Ashes.

SirChancelot

Dolyem wrote: »

SirChancelot wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

SirChancelot wrote: »

Oh
I didn't take it that way
I pictured it being exactly like GW2
In this instance you get gear that only works in this instance.

That's my point though. People that only care about arena pvp wouldn't have to play the game at all, because they'd be given the gear to participate in the arena pvp. To me that's bullshit. Obviously GW has a different design, but that whole game's design is different from what Ashes is trying to do, which is why I don't think that this kind of arena mechanic would work (or even should work).

I get your point.
But why is it bullshit in one direction but not the other? I have no interest in arenas, and I can completely ignore the whole system. I don't really miss out on anything.
People in general will just gravitate to the part of the game they enjoy the most, and dislike being forced to do other activities they find less interesting.

Imagine grinding and getting materials to craft something but then there being a requirement that I have to play 50 arena matches before I can craft it so I equally pvp and PvE... That just sounds horrible.

How about... ask Intrepid for a completely separate game completely focused on arenas with MMORPG style classes when they have time after Ashes is completed and released? Instead of putting a game inside of another game that goes against its dynamic world design and PVX goal?

I could see that. Or as something added down the line after launch. Again I don't think it fits with ashes current design either, just saying it's an interesting idea.

Azherae wrote: »

SirChancelot wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

SirChancelot wrote: »

Oh
I didn't take it that way
I pictured it being exactly like GW2
In this instance you get gear that only works in this instance.

That's my point though. People that only care about arena pvp wouldn't have to play the game at all, because they'd be given the gear to participate in the arena pvp. To me that's bullshit. Obviously GW has a different design, but that whole game's design is different from what Ashes is trying to do, which is why I don't think that this kind of arena mechanic would work (or even should work).

I get your point.
But why is it bullshit in one direction but not the other? I have no interest in arenas, and I can completely ignore the whole system. I don't really miss out on anything.
People in general will just gravitate to the part of the game they enjoy the most, and dislike being forced to do other activities they find less interesting.

Imagine grinding and getting materials to craft something but then there being a requirement that I have to play 50 arena matches before I can craft it so I equally pvp and PvE... That just sounds horrible.

Mostly it's because Ashes doesn't require Arenas at all.

This is a level of design semantics that I personally feel can't possibly end in anything good unless people make a serious effort to come to the same understanding of what the game is 'for' without their own preferences (not even biases) involved.

Ashes is a persistent open world MMORPG that does not need an Arena to even function.

It does, however, need owPvP to function (as described). To the point where we tell people consistently 'no, you can't take it out'.

You could take Arenas out.

Yeah, you're right... But I could also say that about other things too. The game could completely function with out naval combat, they could take that out and still keep the feel of the game. But some people love the idea and really want that type of content in the game... You could probably say the same of arena's.

Again I don't care, I don't like arenas. Just making conversation.

Ludullu

SirChancelot wrote: »

Yeah, you're right... But I could also say that about other things too. The game could completely function with out naval combat, they could take that out and still keep the feel of the game. But some people love the idea and really want that type of content in the game... You could probably say the same of arena's.

You can transfer resources on ships and a lot of Ashes' design relies on resource transfers being contested. So naval combat is a requirement.

Right now we don't know what the arena ladder rewards will be, but unless those rewards will be one of a kind and only acquirable through arenas - removal of arenas wouldn't influence anything in the game. While removing the whole damn ocean and/or rivers would impact the entire world of the game and several potential content designs.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

SirChancelot wrote: »

Yeah, you're right... But I could also say that about other things too. The game could completely function with out naval combat, they could take that out and still keep the feel of the game. But some people love the idea and really want that type of content in the game... You could probably say the same of arena's.

You can transfer resources on ships and a lot of Ashes' design relies on resource transfers being contested. So naval combat is a requirement.

Right now we don't know what the arena ladder rewards will be, but unless those rewards will be one of a kind and only acquirable through arenas - removal of arenas wouldn't influence anything in the game. While removing the whole damn ocean and/or rivers would impact the entire world of the game and several potential content designs.

At the same time, SirChancelot is right (and so are you, which is the 'issue'). Naval combat was always a stretch goal that they happened to hit.

If it had been up to me, I would have cut the concept of an Arena Ladder from the start.

Because I suspect it goes against Ashes' systems/goals/long term success. But it's just a suspicion.

It's true that there's lots of things Ashes doesn't NEED, but when I say that, I say it only toward the understanding of the game as given thus far.

I didn't mention that whole 'Steven is a salesman' anecdote lightly. That possibility shifts so much of the context of what we discuss on this forum, that there end up being some topics where we can't even give proper feedback because we don't know whether it's appropriate or how 'far to go'.

Does Steven like Arenas, or just think other people like Arenas and hasn't developed any irritations toward them?

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

I didn't mention that whole 'Steven is a salesman' anecdote lightly. That possibility shifts so much of the context of what we discuss on this forum, that there end up being some topics where we can't even give proper feedback because we don't know whether it's appropriate or how 'far to go'.

Does Steven like Arenas, or just think other people like Arenas and hasn't developed any irritations toward them?

Yeah, Steven's broad strokes of design can definitely be an issue for the game in the long run. There's a chance that Steven liked arenas from L2 and AA and, while I don't know what AA arenas had for rewards, L2's arenas gave veeeery strong rewards, which was both a justification of their design and an issue of what those rewards resulted in.

So I think that AoC arenas' value and reason for existing will mainly depend on what they'll provide to the players. And imo they can be designed in such a way where they're not a detriment to the overall mmo experience, but as you said it's very difficult to propose any kinds of changes or give any kind of feedback due to the absolute lack of information on 90% of the game's systems.

Ezk1

Equalized pvp would go against "Risk vs Reward" core design pillar.
/discussion