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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Prevent Guilds and Individuals from Snowballing out of control
lemulet
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
How far should systems go to prevent snowballing? What systems should be in the game to prevent guilds or individuals from becoming so strong that they keep all the rewards for themselves?
Taking this into account :
How do you think Ashes should handle guilds/individual snowballing out of control in the open world PvX content where players interact with eachothers (ex: competing for raids/dungeons, PvP wars/sieges)? Do you think snowballing should be fully allowed, no punishing the winners, let them reap the rewards until they quit? Or should we have systems that make them struggle to keep that edge?
I think when guilds or individuals get stronger and make more money, it becomes easier for them to enter systems that allows them to get bigger rewards. But as you get bigger rewards, you should be confronted more risks. Without punishing success, I think it allows to create a progressive game loop where the stronger you become, the harder the game loop becomes, as if you reached a new league to compete in.
There was talks about horizontal progression and gear specialization which are money sinks that will give u edges in some instances but not other. So someone very rich will simply have more tools to adjust to situations, but in one particular situation, if caught offguard, they won't have an edge over other players that much.
And another concept that exist in every mmorpg is the diminishing return, where leveling from 49 to 50 doesnt give that much benefits yet takes a ton more time.
--- My suggestions ---
Blue shell
I like the concept of the blue shell in Mario Kart. I think the stronger you get, the more ahead you get, the bigger the target should be on your back. Creating a risk that makes you want to not get too far ahead, to properly strategize and pace yourself instead of simply getting better rewards and go further ahead. This makes everyone wants to race against the one ahead of them rather than bully the ones behind them too.
ex:
The bigger the guild assets, the better the rewards for guilds that declare wars against them. This should incite guilds to declare on a guild that monopolizes raids for exemple or one that has owned a castle for a long time.
Time limited benefits
Something new for individuals could be to have augments behind time/money investments where players compete for them, but they only get them for a limited amount of time. This would let them be the badass of the month, but the investment wouldnt be worth being the badass of the month for consecutive months. Having it be a time/money competition should ensure someone just doesn't keep getting it for cheap and instead they have to invest in that particular system to get its benefit rather than own every single benefits in the game cause they are the richest.
Social investments
Allowing players and guilds to invest into upgrading nodes, applying policies and progress POI can be a good sink for those who get ahead. This investment would be for intangible social gains like getting your names out there. Allowing for that kind of investment is pretty cool and the incentive for individuals and guilds to get their name out there is great in a game where cohesion with larger masses enables changes in the world.
Taking this into account :
- Not everyone gets a cake, you gotta work for things
- A core aspect of the game is Risk vs Reward, the bigger the rewards you want, the more you have to risk
- Ashes is a social game, building communities and working with others is a good thing
- There is no end game, you should have fun as you progress, not just at the end
How do you think Ashes should handle guilds/individual snowballing out of control in the open world PvX content where players interact with eachothers (ex: competing for raids/dungeons, PvP wars/sieges)? Do you think snowballing should be fully allowed, no punishing the winners, let them reap the rewards until they quit? Or should we have systems that make them struggle to keep that edge?
I think when guilds or individuals get stronger and make more money, it becomes easier for them to enter systems that allows them to get bigger rewards. But as you get bigger rewards, you should be confronted more risks. Without punishing success, I think it allows to create a progressive game loop where the stronger you become, the harder the game loop becomes, as if you reached a new league to compete in.
There was talks about horizontal progression and gear specialization which are money sinks that will give u edges in some instances but not other. So someone very rich will simply have more tools to adjust to situations, but in one particular situation, if caught offguard, they won't have an edge over other players that much.
And another concept that exist in every mmorpg is the diminishing return, where leveling from 49 to 50 doesnt give that much benefits yet takes a ton more time.
--- My suggestions ---
Blue shell
I like the concept of the blue shell in Mario Kart. I think the stronger you get, the more ahead you get, the bigger the target should be on your back. Creating a risk that makes you want to not get too far ahead, to properly strategize and pace yourself instead of simply getting better rewards and go further ahead. This makes everyone wants to race against the one ahead of them rather than bully the ones behind them too.
ex:
The bigger the guild assets, the better the rewards for guilds that declare wars against them. This should incite guilds to declare on a guild that monopolizes raids for exemple or one that has owned a castle for a long time.
Time limited benefits
Something new for individuals could be to have augments behind time/money investments where players compete for them, but they only get them for a limited amount of time. This would let them be the badass of the month, but the investment wouldnt be worth being the badass of the month for consecutive months. Having it be a time/money competition should ensure someone just doesn't keep getting it for cheap and instead they have to invest in that particular system to get its benefit rather than own every single benefits in the game cause they are the richest.
Social investments
Allowing players and guilds to invest into upgrading nodes, applying policies and progress POI can be a good sink for those who get ahead. This investment would be for intangible social gains like getting your names out there. Allowing for that kind of investment is pretty cool and the incentive for individuals and guilds to get their name out there is great in a game where cohesion with larger masses enables changes in the world.
10
Comments
I'm interested in seeing what IS is planning so I can provide feedback after seeing it in action.
As for large guilds in general I'm hoping they have some reason that guilds just don't do everything as a clump, every night.
Spreading out guild resources, to cover multiple areas at the same time.
sounds like a leftist progressive tax for the rich. im against it.
if you make an effort and you take all the raids, you shouldn't be punished for it. then what is your motivation to keep winning? just let someone else do the hard work then you trade or buy...but then no one will want to do the hard work because you get punished ?_?
not everybody will get to win at everything at the same time. you might not get a boss, but if there are enough activities in the game so that no one can do everything every day, then you dont have to win at everything. if you cant get something, you can do something else meanwhile and then trade. and that is more social than punishing someone for winning. ashes seems to be heading into that direction.
I agree with this.
Where I think the Blue Shell idea is interesting is that it doesn't straight up punishes you for winning. It just makes winning harder as you become richer.
It goes with the Risk vs Rewards. Yes once you win, you get a reward and worked hard for it. But once you've won, winning next time become easier because you are getting an edge. And that edge keeps growing as you keep winning. The risk of losing becomes smaller since you are stronger while you keep getting the best rewards in the game.
Having a system that gives incentive to compete is a way to increase that risks without taxing the rewards. I personnally also like the idea of having to fight more contender as you become the champion.
Now, your opinion is ok and there is no rules saying Risk vs Rewards should apply after you got a reward, it's just my interpretation of the intent.
Diversity and amount of content is a nice way to prevent the snowballing being an issue.
at the same time, other people might be winning somewhere else and also getting stronger and will be able to compete with you. there will always be those who win more because they are better, and thats fine, thats why having enough things to do is important. you cant win doing A because your enemies are too strong, but you can go and do B or C and then buy A. also, at some point everybody who keeps winning at A will have A and might decide to do B instead, then that's when you can go do A.
probably the only big op thing will be castles, and we dont know what rewards you get from those.
I think having a diverse range of content so it would be extremely hard even for large guilds to dominate in all aspects is a great way to minimize the huge guild power too.
We know however that the monarchs get a % of tax. Some of it for themselves, some for their castle and the 3 nodes linked to it. They have to rebuild those three nodes after sieges and then have to make sure the caravan with taxes come to the Castle.
So even tho they won the siege and gained the castle. They are now going through a new game loops with risks and reward. Do they invest to protect for next month? Or do they just pillage and run after the next siege?
That's one of the nice way I think Castles are not just about a guild that got strong simply getting stronger by sitting on their past glories. They have to maintain to keep getting rewards.
I think a Castle that is too profitable and hard to capture should have juicy caravans which incentivize raiding. Maybe have the military node linked give better rewards as their defenses go up. So yes, the guild wants defenses to keep getting the taxes, but it takes a lot of time and investment for them to maintain this which could be put into doing other things.
I mean we have massive social issues because the rich control 95% of the wealth that we generate, but lets not go into politics.
There should be a limitation on what bigger guilds can do and control. I totally agree that if they play more and conquer areas then it should be yours. But there needs to be a counter balance so that these mega guilds don't control any entire server due to sheer numbers. There needs to be incentives for small and medium sized guilds.
without the rich person, you wouldn't have anyone paying you to work to create goods or services that you and other people want, and you would have to go and hunt for your own food and build your own shelter.
if a mega guild is controlling many things, and we have to see if that will really happen since the expectation in ashes is to have more things that you can do in one day, and if the guild splits its forces to do many different things, other smaller numbers will be able to compete, players who aren't in such mega guild can ally themselves and fight back. but instead of doing that, they complain to daddy and expect the devs to give them stuff and punish the people who work hard and organized themselves.
at this point, they sound like lazy communists to me
Sounds to me like you've listened to someone that got rich off of other people's work try to justify their getting rich, and then believed it.
🤦🤦🤦
I mean, it's still false.
Happened all the time ion darkfall when somone started getting ahead of zerging it up.
This was my understanding of the system in place to deal with this.
A guild controlling a dungeon here and there is not an issue. Especially since it is open world and there are other places to go. But if a guild starts winning all wars and sieges, gets stronger because of it, reducing ability of other players to organize against it. That's a potential issue with the Risk & Reward pillar. But maybe as other mentionned before, Risk vs Rewards shouldnt apply to rich capitalist winners xD.
Corruption system is one way that prevents a guild from simply owning a dungeon and get all the rewards in there. Making guild wars costly for a strong guild vs weaker guild is another way to prevent them from declaring wars on everyone to keep their spots. If you can have multiple guilds fight them, that works too, but we need a war system that will reward the teaming up guilds according to the risk they are taking for fighting a giant.
Either way, the design decision is nuanced and can impact what other players can or cannot do to keep sharing content space. The main idea is to have a healthy server 2 years later, not preventing some healthy dominations.
This is what the sandbox part of the game entails. It's way too early to discuss anti-zerg mechanics until we know how the world of ashes will unfold.
This post is much more about Gear/Money power gap, than zerg. Especially when talking about individuals snowballing out of control by become litteral gods on battlefield.
It is early to discuss and we don't know if we will have godlike players or not (we kinda get that the intent is that there wont be with the 50% gear power influence, the no level scaling and the rock-paper-scissors class system)
Guild size limits wont stop this
Such guilds will simply use multiple in game guilds.
The thing holding most guilds together these days is Discord. Having multiple in game guilds under one banne ads a small amount of management, but not a whole lot if the guild is pre-existing.
Ifo ne guild is constantly winning start ganging up on them with other guilds, if there just rolling you constantly there more than likely doing the same to other guilds talk around and ally up with the other guilds that are sick of this guild and roll them back till they bugger off.
My smaller guild has derailed many large guild throughout games often the large guild zerg together because they want safety in numbers so alot of them leave once its not looking as safe for them in said guild.
If it pvp guild generaly they fk off when they start to constantly loose in an area alot of the time looking for easier ttargets (Generaly) diplomacy is your friend in these games and tend to fix most problems that can arise with powerful guilds.
Size of map- the larger the area the harder it is to control
Lack of flying mounts- takes longer to travel and control the whole map
Node progression- there has been mention that there will be in game scenarios that play out that makes it harder to defend your node. This could be npc attacking the city, a dragon, etc etc. This again will create extra hardships on guilds and powers that be...
Guild size- Limit the size of guilds and it becomes more difficult to achieve a zerg fest. Not that they can't or won't. But a lot of those guilds only have so much leadership.... will a guild of 500 really want to split into 5-100 man guilds? If so, can they lead them properly? Who will their new officers be? How do they minimize the chance of a coup. Etc.
In the end we also have to realize guilds get bored. People get bored. So some of these huge guilds will play ashes when it is all the craze... then a new game launches a few years later and now these guilds are no longer in game or not as focused on ashes. Meaning their hold begins to loosen. As they now again have to figure out who will lead while their leadership moves onto the new shiny game.
Welcome to gaming in 2023!
If one guild is winning and another is losing, why join up with the side that is losing?
A (smart) guild that is winning will know that they still need more and more allies, as they will be getting more and more enemies.
If a guild that is losing tries to convince you to join them, tell the guild that is winning that an alliance against them is forming, and suggest you'd rather be on their side.
But barely anyone talked about gear gaps and money domination by individuals who no life the game over a year and how they impact gameplay for masses who join the game later on. (and if those individuals were to band and form a guild)
I cant get on board with the punish success mentality.
There are avenues to help keep things in check, but a flat out hatred for those ahead of you isnt healthy for the game.
comes down to nodes, most guild will play around a single node thats there home node and try and build that up since there invested in that node, if guilds in one node get to strong a node next to it might want to team up with the other nodes surrounding the one getting ahead and beat it back down again.
lets takes nodes out of the equation and use guilds of a biome lets say there might be 3 bosses in a biome or dungeon or what ever that everyone want to kill now if everyone allied up with the dominate guild who most likly gonna get the spoils in that boss and if you team up with the guild they take claim on the loot cause why team up with your smaller less dominate guild if they can just do the boss alone and risk not getting the loot?
Either the major guild will lock down zones and have no reason to ally up cause there not threatened and they and if they allied somone all they be doing is reducing the loot they get or they be sure u can ally up buy we get all the loot and the non prodoment guild gets nnothing so there no reason for them to ally up unless the happy with scraps that fall off the major guild table?
Then you get an interesting dynamic if the non major guild ally up cause there sick of fighting for scraps left behind you now threaten the major guild so now they might have a reason to ally up with others but then you get 2 major faction fighting for power of the area instead of 1 major one bitch slapping everyone into submission and throwing them a piece of meat now and then to stop an uprising
If a guild can be protected by lenient siege timers that prevent them from being attacked except for once/twice a week then it becomes very easy to defend. Especially if these timers are staggered like New World/Crowfall.
Defending your holdings should be something you're always having to do. Owning a lot of territory should be something guilds willingly don't even bother doing because it's just too cumbersome and hard to pull off.
Oh hey Zybak
but yeah i agree if timer are locked to set times or days it makes it incredibly harder to break a strange hold of a dominate guild or zerg guild, often the way to crack the hold is to back to back seige them so you can wear down there supplies over time or hit them in a time period that is off peak time where they might not be able to pull all there members to defend. This is how many of the darkfall seiges went when it came to fighting zergs or strong factions you did one of the following
1 - make temporay alliance for a seige to get more numbers (out zerg the zerg)
2 - hit them in off peak times, where they cant pull as many members
3 - hit them back to back seiges as one ends declare another one right afterwards (darkfall you had 22 hr timer before seige went live so you limited the time they can restock supplies)
4- hit them with a muiltiseige so you target muiltipul of their cities so they had to split there force up or react to the attackers
and so on if seiges can only be every saturday at 8pm or something it only realy leaves one method to crack a strangle hold of a guild and thats just out zerg them. generaly attacks are already at a disadvantage due to attacking is general harder than defending so there need to be other options like off peak seiges or back to back seiging and all that otherwise you will get a situation where a node or castle will never be taken back or destroyed as they consolidate more and more power in the region
the defenders are not the only group of people affected by not having enough people during off peak times...
So there already is in my opinion a lot of risk baked into the success of larger organizations and I wouldn't advocate for more until the current system has been tested by us.
Edit: Obviously not everyone will find the degree of adversity, that comes with success, insufficient and therefore be dissatisfied with the servers situation. The only option I see for those people is either commit to create stronger balancing forces on the server or relocate to a server that is not dominated in that way. This ultimately taps into broad player psychology which is something a game can hardly control.
Essentially the game element is lost once a noticable amount of players end up having so much end game gear and money, then all it boils down to is a miserable game of catch up, which might be made even more miserable depending on rng elements and how the game is designed (for example, the players equipped with the best gear always obtain boss rights if any form of PvP contest is involved. Thus obtaining the gear to challenge them is hugely time and torture gated).
Without carrying on too much, there always needs to be elements of contest and potential loss, no matter how ahead of the curve a player or guild is, otherwise the game just devolves into a very sad state of fighting for control.
Additionally a developer should factor in the growth of the server and think much less on essentially over caring for its loyal playerbase, as all that leads to is only that loyal playerbase having priority and why on earth would they need priority when they're already ahead of the curve in a game that revolves around competetive conquest and competitive gear acquistion.