Influencers & Streamers in Ashes of Creation [Server Type Discussion]

Relevant context on servers and the Content Creator Program can be found on the Ashes of Creation Wiki

Edit 1: Since it was broad up multiple times I'll quickly emphasize my point about servers without streamers. I don't think it would be appropriate to "ban" all streamers from playing the game, that would be stupid from a marketing perspective alone. Please reread question 2 to 4 at the end of the post. Since Intrepid already has a software in development to track the use of third party DPS meters, it could also be possible to filter the use of streaming tools. On "private" servers - servers that do not allow streaming - registering one of these tools could lead to being simply logged out and returning to the character window. Again - I'm not hating on streamers, I'm not trying to shove them to the side, my question was: If there were niche servers on which streaming would not be possible - would anyone be interested in that?

Server population is everything for a social game

I think we can all agree that the experience we will have in Ashes is closely linked to who is populating the server we are playing on. The number of active players, their class choices, their gaming time, gaming attitude and so on will make the development of that server unique.

With that being said, of course there might be a few things to consider that could be deemed "undesirable" or exceptionally desireable, to players as well as the developers. And some of those things could be addressed by having server types. Now, since I linked to the Wiki, I also read that there will be no RP servers and that is not the kind of separate type I want to suggest. My personal concern is about

Influencers & community gameplay

I get it. It's a social game and a pre established community coming to join in on Ashes is not illegal and that's not what I am concerned about. I welcome social gameplay, but with the size of some of these communities and the reason for them coming to the game being quite different, I personally have 2 major concerns.

Huge communities - Some game streamers have very sizeable followers and them coming to this game on launch could result in servers being completely dominated by one particular fan community. This is not illegal but I think a lot of people would want to be aware of such a thing as it significantly alters their gaming experience. It's about informed choices and I would want to know whether the server I am playing on is one that is populated by streamers and their fans.
Farming clout - It is fairly obvious that being some sort of influencer means they are not there just to play the game. They are trying to earn money through entertainment which motivates them to participate but also trigger more change and since money is on the table, a good gaming experience of other players might go completely off the list of factors to consider.

As such I would like to relay a few questions to you, dear reader.

Do you feel concerned about playing on a server with a major portion of the player base being a streamer and their community?
Would you consider moving to a different server if you knew it had no streamers on it?
Would having servers that do not allow the use of streaming tools be something you would generally be against?
Do you think that Ashes of Creation would benefit from having possibly bigger (in max. player numbers) servers dedicated to streamers and their community from a marketing perspective?

Thanks for reading!

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Comments

Kilion

JamesSunderland wrote: »

Kilion wrote: »

Fair enough, thanks!

@JamesSunderland do you think the current server size in general is too little? I know that's a pretty difficult one to answer without having a direct feeling for map size and so on. But I'd be curious to know whether you have a suspicion what might be a "good" amount of active players and maximum players a server could/should hold.

I actually do believe the map to be a bit too big,
considering Lineage 2 map was ~400km² and servers could hold ~5k-6k players feeling a bit too crowded in hot spots(providing amazing conflicts for said spots) and Ashes is expected to be ~1200km² with servers that can hold ~8k-10k players. so i believe 12K would be fine and 15k-18k would be a bit too crowded in certain areas like in L2.

Unfortunately I wasn't around for L2. We might have to consider the percentage of landmass and open waters for both games to make the comparison. Ashes is currently said to have 480 km² landmass and 750km² of open waters. (source)

JamesSunderland

Kilion wrote: »

Unfortunately I wasn't around for L2. We might have to consider the percentage of landmass and open waters for both games to make the comparison. Ashes is currently said to have 480 km² landmass and 750km² of open waters. (source)

I considered the whole maps not distinguishing landmass/open waters, Lineage 2 had almost no water content, its maps is around over 70% landmass anyway.

Maybe Archeage would be a better comparison as it has water content, it's full map was ~600km² and its servers capacity varied alot throught the years in a downwards trend From around ~8k during the first launchs to around 2K nowadays i played during both "Eras" during it golden era the whole map was hella populated, nowadays its not even near crowded even in hot spots.

ArcheAge6.5Map.png

Ludullu

Kilion wrote: »

I'm asking for some servers without them

I guess I'm not getting my point across well enough. You can't have this unless Intrepid literally ban streamers from being on those servers or they constantly check your PC for streaming apps (but as I pointed out, that wouldn't even work in the cases that you care about).

And that is why I find this part of your questions silly. Having several "streamer servers" and giving streamers free pass through the queue would accomplish way more than banning people from streaming other servers. Redirect instead of turn away. A small 1-2k streamer would have way less impact on the server than any semi-coordinated guild. And with Ashes being all "hardcore" and pvp-centric (I fucking hope it stays that way) there's gonna be a ton of sweaty guilds that will impact the game's economy waaaaaay more than some random big streamer with a few fanbois running around him.

Depraved

guys, remember that map size and server capacity will be expanded in future updates. that happens in every mmorpg.

also, if 10k players go to the same spot to farm something, it doesn't matter if they are the streamer's followers or not. many servers will be full wether streamers play or not.

ashes is designed to distribute players over the map instead of focusing on a few spots. of course, there will be certain areas with more players than others.

Ludullu

Depraved wrote: »

also, if 10k players go to the same spot to farm something, it doesn't matter if they are the streamer's followers or not. many servers will be full wether streamers play or not

Yep. L2's 3 top lvl locations of FoG, LoA and IT were the source of most top lvl pvp, with overspill into weaker locations. Ashes will have twice the amount of people and we don't know how many top lvl locations it'll have. I'd assume it's gonna be at least 5, which would distribute the farming population quite nicely and would probably be on the L2's lvls of packed. Maybe even more than that if the pve ends up being on the easier side.

Depraved

NiKr wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

also, if 10k players go to the same spot to farm something, it doesn't matter if they are the streamer's followers or not. many servers will be full wether streamers play or not

Yep. L2's 3 top lvl locations of FoG, LoA and IT were the source of most top lvl pvp, with overspill into weaker locations. Ashes will have twice the amount of people and we don't know how many top lvl locations it'll have. I'd assume it's gonna be at least 5, which would distribute the farming population quite nicely and would probably be on the L2's lvls of packed. Maybe even more than that if the pve ends up being on the easier side.

forgot pagan, primaveral, monastery and varka. in older chronicles anyways xD

ashes promised low level material to be useful in higher level, so I suspect people will also be spread out farming those as well, maybe converging to a few spots for rare, limited spawn time materials, or bosses.

and we dont know how many parties can open world dungeons in ashes hold

Ludullu

Depraved wrote: »

forgot pagan, primaveral, monastery and varka. in older chronicles anyways xD

I consider those the weaker spots, cause in my experience and in the majority of pvp vids I've seen from the official servers of that time, only the 3 spots I mentioned were the hottest ones.

Abarat

I don't think it is a big priority for Intrepid Studios to remove conflict. in fact, I believe they are actively thinking of ways to create/promote in game conflict.

Kilion

NiKr wrote: »

Redirect instead of turn away

That's what I tried to cover with the fourth question. I guess that's where our takes meet.

NiKr wrote: »

And with Ashes being all "hardcore" and pvp-centric (I fucking hope it stays that way)

Not sure that's how I would describe it - or Intrepid for that matter. PvX sounds to me like this: PvP in this game becomes less relevant without PvE and the PvE becomes less relevant without PvP. They are depending and building on each other.

Abarat wrote: »

I don't think it is a big priority for Intrepid Studios to remove conflict. in fact, I believe they are actively thinking of ways to create/promote in game conflict.

Good point, I just wonder how ingame focused the conflict would stay with someone who has "external interests" (success of their streaming channel) potentially coming into serious conflict with the other players on that server.

It was interesting to me to learn that concern doesn't seem to be all that high surrounding this topic.

Solvryn

Kilion wrote: »

[Do you feel concerned about playing on a server with a major portion of the player base being a streamer and their community?

No, because most streamer guilds are going to be disorganized.

Kilion wrote: »

[Would you consider moving to a different server if you knew it had no streamers on it?

No, there are no reasons to run away from non-streamer guilds. If anything streaming guilds will go up in smoke unless they're highly organized.

Kilion wrote: »

Would having servers that do not allow the use of streaming tools be something you would generally be against?

Yes, I am against specialized treatment.

Kilion wrote: »

Do you think that Ashes of Creation would benefit from having possibly bigger (in max. player numbers) servers dedicated to streamers and their community from a marketing perspective?

I do not know yet, because Ashes is a big world, but at it's current population goals is still going to be small.

Ludullu

Kilion wrote: »

Not sure that's how I would describe it - or Intrepid for that matter. PvX sounds to me like this: PvP in this game becomes less relevant without PvE and the PvE becomes less relevant without PvP. They are depending and building on each other.

Ask any anti-pvp person on this forum (or anywhere else) and they'll tell you that having pvp in their pve is the same as, in the words of a great thinker of our times

, "a dick in their salad". This is where the hardcoreness and pvp-centrism comes from. I might love that, you might love that, but the majority of people are either used to the WoW's idea of "pvp", where you just slaughter the enemy w/o any repercussions, or they hate pvp outright. And so we instead get the guilds that are not only fine with that pvp, but thrive on it and can control it to their benefit. And that control has a much greater impact than something like Asmon's viewers who share his opinions on pvp, which are "I fucking hate it cause it's not fun for me".

Who do you think would win? A highly coordinated guild (not even necessarily a big one) that's great at pvp and wants to pvp (and might even be ready to PK often) or a bunch of anti-pvp spergs that only logged on because they thought they'd get to meet their favorite strimmer in the game?

Solvryn

NiKr wrote: »

Kilion wrote: »

Not sure that's how I would describe it - or Intrepid for that matter. PvX sounds to me like this: PvP in this game becomes less relevant without PvE and the PvE becomes less relevant without PvP. They are depending and building on each other.

Ask any anti-pvp person on this forum (or anywhere else) and they'll tell you that having pvp in their pve is the same as, in the words of a great thinker of our times , "a dick in their salad". This is where the hardcoreness and pvp-centrism comes from. I might love that, you might love that, but the majority of people are either used to the WoW's idea of "pvp", where you just slaughter the enemy w/o any repercussions, or they hate pvp outright. And so we instead get the guilds that are not only fine with that pvp, but thrive on it and can control it to their benefit. And that control has a much greater impact than something like Asmon's viewers who share his opinions on pvp, which are "I fucking hate it cause it's not fun for me".

Who do you think would win? A highly coordinated guild (not even necessarily a big one) that's great at pvp and wants to pvp (and might even be ready to PK often) or a bunch of anti-pvp spergs that only logged on because they thought they'd get to meet their favorite strimmer in the game?

They'll have to unlearn their puritan bullshit eventually.

Ludullu

Solvryn wrote: »

They'll have to unlearn their puritan bullshit eventually.

Will they though? Do you really think that a genre that's been rolling down a mountain of "pvp is bad, mkay" for over a decade now will suddenly start rolling back up just because an indie dev company releases a semi-interesting game (that is if it releases and if it's interesting)? NW was supposed to have owpvp - we all know how that ended. TL is the biggest and strongest contender for L2's legacy - it'll have timed owpvp within predetermined limited locations. Riot is allegedly promising to have pvp in it, but I'd put the chances of it being a true owpvp design at around 5%, if that.

Anyone who loved pvp have moved on to other genres that support equal power and don't require you to play the game for hundreds of hours to enjoy the pvp. I just hope that Intrepid manages to balance their corruption correctly and has enough players to sustain it for a decade or two, cause I'm damn sure that no other mmo will have owpvp in it.

Solvryn

NiKr wrote: »

Solvryn wrote: »

They'll have to unlearn their puritan bullshit eventually.

Will they though? Do you really think that a genre that's been rolling down a mountain of "pvp is bad, mkay" for over a decade now will suddenly start rolling back up just because an indie dev company releases a semi-interesting game (that is if it releases and if it's interesting)? NW was supposed to have owpvp - we all know how that ended. TL is the biggest and strongest contender for L2's legacy - it'll have timed owpvp within predetermined limited locations. Riot is allegedly promising to have pvp in it, but I'd put the chances of it being a true owpvp design at around 5%, if that.

Anyone who loved pvp have moved on to other genres that support equal power and don't require you to play the game for hundreds of hours to enjoy the pvp. I just hope that Intrepid manages to balance their corruption correctly and has enough players to sustain it for a decade or two, cause I'm damn sure that no other mmo will have owpvp in it.

Will anti-PvPers have to unlearn their puritan bullshit? To play Ashes they most certainly will. Or they're going to die.

That's their choice, by accepting that Ashes has pvp even if they are anti-pvp they accept the terms that they're going to die and get flagged on.

It's just like the combat debacle, people will have to unlearn their puritan bullshit and realize this game is truly going to be hybrid.

It's not going to be "too tab" or "too action", combat has many different nuances.

They can go to mobas all they want, it'll never overshadow the fun that is PVP in a MMORPG. They'll be back.

Ludullu

Solvryn wrote: »

Will anti-PvPers have to unlearn their puritan bullshit? To play Ashes they most certainly will. Or they're going to die.

Which is my point. The streamer viewing masses won't have a proper impact on economy or the game overall because they'll be dead most of the time or just concentrated in one place. And a group of people concentrated in one location is no different from a guild.

This is why I don't see streamers as that big of a problem. The only real problem related to them is the exodus of players and the impact of THAT on the game. But this will happen even w/o streamers so once again they're irrelevant.

Voxtrium

NiKr wrote: »

Kilion wrote: »

I'm asking whether people would be interested in having 1 or 2 servers - a minority of all servers - with a policy where active streaming tools would lead to a log out.

This sounds like the slipperiest of slopes out there. I want to limit the sniffing of my PC by Intrepid as much as possible. Pretty much to only bot-related programs, though even that should ideally be somehow done through in-game action tracking rather than looking at what apps I have on my PC.

Also, you'd have to constantly check if those streaming programs are running. Also, what about double PC setups, where your gaming PC doesn't have anything stream-related on it. And pretty much every big streamer runs a 2-PC setup, so you wouldn't even prevent the thing you want to prevent (that is huge streamers being limited to only particular servers).

All in all, this is a very silly and unnecessary idea.

Netflix doesn't allow streams on their platform, they could use the model, from a programming standpoint sniffing out a platform like twitch would be next to no effort.

Do you feel concerned about playing on a server with a major portion of the player base being a streamer and their community?
I will be doing some serious due diligence to ensure my guild avoids any of the servers major streamers plan to populate. Hopefully I am capable of avoiding them as I believe that the streamers population will lower the server pop count enough to potentially force a merge which I will try to avoid (ideally anyway)
Would you consider moving to a different server if you knew it had no streamers on it?
Yes
Would having servers that do not allow the use of streaming tools be something you would generally be against?
I would rather IS have a list of the top streamers for AOC and their respective servers
Do you think that Ashes of Creation would benefit from having possibly bigger (in max. player numbers) servers dedicated to streamers and their community from a marketing perspective?
This would require a rebalancing of resource spawns == more work and thus no. Although generally I prefer larger servers over smaller ones so 8k or 15k idc as long as its balanced appropriately.

Ludullu

Voxtrium wrote: »

Netflix doesn't allow streams on their platform, they could use the model, from a programming standpoint sniffing out a platform like twitch would be next to no effort.

I'm not sure I fully understood this. Are you suggesting banning streamer people if they're playing on a streaming-restricted server? Cause I'd imagine that parsing their character's name from their stream and then matching it to all the active characters on those servers would be a bit more difficult than just looking at who's streaming on twitch.

Also, if this was a known application of this ban, people would just cover up any potential visual of their name. Which would then probably lead to some people trying to find them in the game and then report them to Intrepid, which would waste GM time when instead those GMs coulda been addressing bot problems and literally any more pressing issue.

And the netflix approach of "black screen" (iirc) wouldn't work against 2-PC setups or phone streams or whichever other method people would definitely find if they wanted to.

Depraved

Voxtrium wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Kilion wrote: »

I'm asking whether people would be interested in having 1 or 2 servers - a minority of all servers - with a policy where active streaming tools would lead to a log out.

This sounds like the slipperiest of slopes out there. I want to limit the sniffing of my PC by Intrepid as much as possible. Pretty much to only bot-related programs, though even that should ideally be somehow done through in-game action tracking rather than looking at what apps I have on my PC.

Also, you'd have to constantly check if those streaming programs are running. Also, what about double PC setups, where your gaming PC doesn't have anything stream-related on it. And pretty much every big streamer runs a 2-PC setup, so you wouldn't even prevent the thing you want to prevent (that is huge streamers being limited to only particular servers).

All in all, this is a very silly and unnecessary idea.

Netflix doesn't allow streams on their platform, they could use the model, from a programming standpoint sniffing out a platform like twitch would be next to no effort.

Do you feel concerned about playing on a server with a major portion of the player base being a streamer and their community?
I will be doing some serious due diligence to ensure my guild avoids any of the servers major streamers plan to populate. Hopefully I am capable of avoiding them as I believe that the streamers population will lower the server pop count enough to potentially force a merge which I will try to avoid (ideally anyway)
Would you consider moving to a different server if you knew it had no streamers on it?
Yes
Would having servers that do not allow the use of streaming tools be something you would generally be against?
I would rather IS have a list of the top streamers for AOC and their respective servers
Do you think that Ashes of Creation would benefit from having possibly bigger (in max. player numbers) servers dedicated to streamers and their community from a marketing perspective?
This would require a rebalancing of resource spawns == more work and thus no. Although generally I prefer larger servers over smaller ones so 8k or 15k idc as long as its balanced appropriately.

netflix doesn't allow people to stream their content because then, people wouldn't subscribe to netflix and they would lose money.

a streamer brings players into the game, which means Is makes money and servers are populated.

not the same.

Solvryn

NiKr wrote: »

Solvryn wrote: »

Will anti-PvPers have to unlearn their puritan bullshit? To play Ashes they most certainly will. Or they're going to die.

Which is my point. The streamer viewing masses won't have a proper impact on economy or the game overall because they'll be dead most of the time or just concentrated in one place. And a group of people concentrated in one location is no different from a guild.

This is why I don't see streamers as that big of a problem. The only real problem related to them is the exodus of players and the impact of THAT on the game. But this will happen even w/o streamers so once again they're irrelevant.

Aye I have not disagreed with you. I just said hopefully they unlearn their puritan bullshit.

Ludullu

Solvryn wrote: »

Aye I have not disagreed with you. I just said hopefully they unlearn their puritan bullshit.

Yeah, my bad. Didn't notice the dialogue partner change

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