Splinter Topic: Motivation - Opportunity vs Necessity

Azherae

Ok Intrepid I'll keep this short since it is broader reaching and either something that Steven doesn't 'get' or doesn't care about. At this point I'm seriously hoping it's the latter actually, because fixing the damage being done by him not 'getting' it is way worse than being able to double down.

An MMORPG is at best a simulation of a world not a world. Fantasy worlds do not have player serfs for a reason.

A human living their miserable life takes up arms and plans a revolt when there is a critical mass of people who will manage to revolt without dying or when their life is no longer worth it to them. An MMO player living their miserable ingame life leaves the game.

Necessity and suffering/constant frustration are not motivating factors for the majority of players. If you only desire the truly 'hardcore' for whom these are endless motivations, great, ignore the rest.

MMORPGs therefore tend to simulate a reality in which the player, at least, has agency and opportunity and is happy. This is a scale. PvP games automatically are toward the 'Necessity' part of that scale. Some balance this by adding more opportunity and reducing necessity through matchmaking. You don't have the second option.

You need to factor this for every aspect of your game. Either reduce Necessity or increase Opportunity. Not everyone needs to get everything, but they all need to feel like they get something. Here is where your Open PvP Oceans and 'Hard to Get Freeholds' fall short in the eyes of players, and where your Corruption system was always tenuous.

People look at those systems and see you creating Necessity but where their Opportunity is controlled by someone else. Reality had a whole war about this somewhere around 250 years ago. Opportunity won, I think.

I have no reason to go into this more because I don't have any reason to think it will matter, this is a 'just in case' post. For all I know it's already completely factored and this is definitely the way Steven wants it or believes it will work because of something we don't know about or just 'believes it will work'.

But every single point of Econ in MMOs is colored by this specific thing, it is the point where the parallels to reality break down the fastest and in my personal experience it is the place you have to know/learn what to do the fastest. It's so complex that I've considered writing a book on it more than once.

But since I haven't released a successful fantasy MMORPG, I don't feel I'm qualified yet.

For all of you who do the thing, that line above. Quote that one. It's there for you.

And then argue about the next line.

Steven hasn't either.

Azherae

CROW3 wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

land's ability to produce is the only real value and the societal structures built up around it that we take for granted. It would become politics.

Lockstep on both points.

Azherae wrote: »

I believe that the land speculation can be avoided while retaining (rather, by increasing) the limits, and that the price that will be paid is 'denial of this content to a very large portion of the playerbase' which is the thing I have the problem with.

And as you know, this is not a personal problem.

Yep. After a year, there will be an equilibrium reached based on Intrepid’s business goals & the capacity of their product (& customer base) to reach those goals. There will be a population of players that will tolerate the lack of accessibility balanced with the opportunity of accessibility. Even if it’s mostly illusory.

My problem with this is that an MMO isn't a chemical reaction, it's more like a nuclear reactor.

Without the required mass to keep the chain going, everything just dies down. And unlike most of their decisions, this one is borderline calculable. You can't have a goal of 'Freeholds not being for everyone' with an implementation that is so likely to lead to 'Actually Freeholds will be for everyone because everyone who doesn't have one will just leave' (obviously exaggeration, assume 'everyone who wants one').

I'm saying it's not a good goal. It's not even the right way to think about the goal. Choose a number of Freeholds that you want in the world and tune stuff until everyone who has one under the parameters you set actually wanted one, give or take.

There needs to be more 'gap' here. There should probably always be some number of Freehold plots that 'no one can be bothered with'. This is a demographics thing way more than anything else.

Which brings me back to:
Why did you make them BIGGER, Intrepid?

I guess you maybe received feedback from NDA spot testers that they would like them to be bigger? Cause I don't remember ever seeing anything else related to it.

On another note if this stays as is I hope we get planters/pots to grow things in our instanced housing.

I personally prefer Brass Flowerpots over Ceramic Flowerpots, but that's only because of the Gardening system actually caring which type of pot you use and it affecting yields, so if we're not getting yield effects by flowerpot I'll take just aesthetics I guess.

I don't think I'll feel fine doing Animal Husbandry in the Stables of the Node permanently though. I'll think about it, since that seems unrealistic for me given how much time I spend in the Chocobo Stables. It's not like I could have raised my Chocobo in my house.