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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.
Splinter Topic: Micro-Competition vs Macro-Competition
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
People misunderstand forced-PvP-averse vs owPvP-enjoyer in MMORPGs because of some stuff. Here's some of that stuff. If you poke me, I'll add more stuff or expand on this stuff.
1. A PvE-enjoyer (let's use a fisher), enters the game with the idea of getting good at fishing, building up knowledge, skill level, understanding of systems (plz donot assume they 'don't care about PvP'). That person is in micro-competition with every other fisher. When another person shows up at their fishing spot in a game with no forced PvP, their 'competition' is in 'who understands the fishing mechanics better and who honed their skills more'. In a game with forced PvP, their 'competition' can instantly become 'who is better at PvP'.
2. A PvP-enjoyer (let's say me, a 'fishing rights enforcer') enters the game with the idea of getting good at controlling an economic space. That person is in micro-competition with the PvP skill or the organizational ability (or zerg factor) of anyone who wants control of that economic space. But there's one catch to consider. In this case, the PvP-enjoyer has a vastly diminished incentive to cooperate compared to even a Survival game (but let's look at games where some attempt at simulating a world is happening, instead).
The 'flaw' in forced-PvP MMOs is contained in those two things above and all the fundamental issues relative to them that these games nearly never address, or cannot address because it would drastically warp gameplay. The result is, that all the 'real world equivalent' outcomes that 'would need to happen in the game, for it to make sense as a proper macro-competition', end up happening in terms of 'players existing in the world'. Basically, characters 'die' when their players leave the game due to the 'flaws', which are really just 'the equivalent of what would happen irl if too many immortal people with low incentives for cooperation entered an area'.
For a game to be enjoyable for most PvE-focused players, something must enforce the micro-competition within their skillsets. Otherwise, the only micro-competition they can be assured of getting to experience is PvP. This was the original failpoint of New World.
If I can 'help my friend win a fishing contest' by killing you, it is no longer a fishing contest. If you take nothing else from this post, let it be that. No matter how much someone likes PvP competition, if they also want to have 'fishing skill competitions' and the game allows another player to 'win the fishing skill competition by using PvP skill', it is a 'PvP game'.
1. A PvE-enjoyer (let's use a fisher), enters the game with the idea of getting good at fishing, building up knowledge, skill level, understanding of systems (plz donot assume they 'don't care about PvP'). That person is in micro-competition with every other fisher. When another person shows up at their fishing spot in a game with no forced PvP, their 'competition' is in 'who understands the fishing mechanics better and who honed their skills more'. In a game with forced PvP, their 'competition' can instantly become 'who is better at PvP'.
2. A PvP-enjoyer (let's say me, a 'fishing rights enforcer') enters the game with the idea of getting good at controlling an economic space. That person is in micro-competition with the PvP skill or the organizational ability (or zerg factor) of anyone who wants control of that economic space. But there's one catch to consider. In this case, the PvP-enjoyer has a vastly diminished incentive to cooperate compared to even a Survival game (but let's look at games where some attempt at simulating a world is happening, instead).
The 'flaw' in forced-PvP MMOs is contained in those two things above and all the fundamental issues relative to them that these games nearly never address, or cannot address because it would drastically warp gameplay. The result is, that all the 'real world equivalent' outcomes that 'would need to happen in the game, for it to make sense as a proper macro-competition', end up happening in terms of 'players existing in the world'. Basically, characters 'die' when their players leave the game due to the 'flaws', which are really just 'the equivalent of what would happen irl if too many immortal people with low incentives for cooperation entered an area'.
For a game to be enjoyable for most PvE-focused players, something must enforce the micro-competition within their skillsets. Otherwise, the only micro-competition they can be assured of getting to experience is PvP. This was the original failpoint of New World.
If I can 'help my friend win a fishing contest' by killing you, it is no longer a fishing contest. If you take nothing else from this post, let it be that. No matter how much someone likes PvP competition, if they also want to have 'fishing skill competitions' and the game allows another player to 'win the fishing skill competition by using PvP skill', it is a 'PvP game'.
♪ One Gummy Fish, two Gummy Fish, Red Gummy Fish, Blue Gummy Fish ♪
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Comments
I think Throne and Liberty has a good balance for this with its world events, where some of them are fully PvE, some of them are guild-vs-guild, and some are a free-for-all. Every type of player gets to engage in the way they want, at worst it just means you need to wait a while for the next opportunity for your playstyle to come.
This is something that I feel Ashes currently has not addressed that I think is going to be really important for it's long term success. Part of what makes people invested in a game with a long term persistent world is the fantasy of your effort in one thing leading to success in that thing. If I farm in a game, I have success as a farmer because I get the results (the crops.) Why mmo's are beautiful is the crop grower can then translate their success into someone else's success (a merchant.)
In Ashes, the process of both the farmer being rewarded by the crops, and the merchant gaining success from other successful crafters is at risk due to the paradigm Azherae explains here. The 'skill' isn't crafting, farming, fishing, or even being a market savvy merchant. It's in having a safe supply line. Everything else hinges on that. The moment a crafter has their play cycle broken by this, the game, for them is at risk of being not fun because it breaks the fundamental fantasy an mmo is supposed to deliver.
But fear not! This isn't doom and gloom, merely a challenge for IS to resolve through masterful game design! The true challenge is to give the crafter and the protector in Azherae's example, some form of additional outlet in the play loop cycle that still relies on those skills without necessarily being simply 'killing the opponent to recoup whatever was lost.' That killing is important, but not as important as getting the crafter and the protector's play loops BACK ON TRACK. For example, having some form of quest at the node that activated from the string of player deaths from bandit PvPers not to attack the bandits, but to demand certain types of fish that are now in short supply to meet the nodes demand as a result of the disrupted flow of mats.
This isn't a great example, just a possible one. Intrepid has far more people and time than me to come up with a better answer, but the example should at least give readers an idea of what I'm talking about. Why is this a solution? Because it connects the fisher, the protector, and the MERCHANT back together by pushing on the specific economic incentive in play. And any solution by intrepid to solve this particularly challenging systems design question will be making sure the THREE of them 'get back together in feeding each other's play loops despite the adversity presented by owPvP.'
(Assuming I interpreted correctly) Since there will be systems in Ashes that naturally encourage macro-competitions (such as systems that allow for emergent interactions and gameplay between overlapping systems), there will also need to be ways to isolate and enforce those micro-competitions, which could potentially be done in a variety of ways in Ashes. For example, these could be enforced through things like instanced content/competitions that you can queue for, or through controlled settings within the game either set up by the community or through in-game boundaries. (Such as a colosseum that prevents pvp players from interrupting whatever competition is going on inside, or a sub-community that hosts its own fishing competition and disqualifies anyone who tries to interupt with with pvp.)
I guess the second best alternative is "everyone's a winner" and iirc GW2 has that with their events and stuff, but that kinda removes the entire "competition" part of the game, at which point it's simply a cooperative mmo.
And this thought process just keeps bringing me back to the idea of "using pve tools to counter pvp aggression". Have there been games where you could use the pve itself to win a competition in a "pvp-like" manner (outside of aggro mechanics, cause those are obvious)?
Say, smth like "if you do a certain action while fishing, you can pull out a strong mob that aggroes onto anyone but you". The mob would have no loot, so there'd be no point in doing this certain action while fishing, but it's a tool to remove a player from fishing competition in the same way as a pvper would, but w/o a direct pvp interaction. Do any mmos/survival games have that kind of thing?
FFXI, cast Sneak on self, pull up Sound Aggro mob, hope it attacks the person next to you (I feel like it generally wasn't aggressive in all areas).
I feel like that's a potentially a pretty big problem. Some aspects of open world PvP can be interesting, but just[/] fighting with people isn't really what I want out an MMO. For that I'd just play a MOBA or fighting game instead.
I do not understand this sentence: "That person is in micro-competition with the PvP skill or the organizational ability (or zerg factor) of anyone who wants control of that economic space."
- micro-competition with the PvP skill
- micro-competition with the organizational ability
- micro-competition with the zerg factor?
Also "macro competition" is new to me.
I know a PvP player who likes fishing and he was sharing the fishing spot with another player in our guild.
Then he noticed a fisher being attacked by a creature. The player was from an enemy guild. We would kill each-other always on sight. Yet in that moment he rushed to save him. Just because in all the chaos of a full loot PvP world they shared the passion for fishing.
Fishing can bring people together.
But maybe works only for PvP players because PvE players are greedy selfish jerks.
So much this. Sometimes I fish to take a break from ruling, you know? I don't want to be organizing people (or interrupting my chill every 5 minutes to defend my spot myself). If you don't let me fish to fish, I might as well log out. I'm totally happy to have a 'fishing contest', but if 'me winning that' just means 'PvP time' because my opponent can't win the other way, it's just a PvP game with an 'optional PvE minigame' at the start, and it only makes sense to play when the PvP game is what I want.
This is one difference between PvP and PvX to me. If PvP is "the win button", then all contests become pure-PvP. If you're good, you can design bosses where PvE skill matters equally and at the same time, but in fishing land? (and a lot of other places like it) Once PvP starts (and I have no say in this), only PvP matters.
This would obviously be a good start, especially if we get profession-related item buffs that could make this interaction even more favorable for the pver (say, a fish oil that repels mobs and you can only get the oil if you get the correct fish, which is itself a difficult fishing task).
And I feel like adding this kind of "tools" wouldn't even be that difficult, as long as the base design of the game supports the mechanic of "the mob ignores a target", and I sure as fuck hope we have that kind of mechanic because it has a ton of fun gameplay implications.
As someone who honestly thinks I am a very possible target market for PvX games as I love objective based pvp I have found TL's 'events' to be really well made for a similar experience. There is competition, there is a threshold for getting rewards in terms of performance but many people are winners. There is a clear goal with a time pressure to keep people on track and focused on their PvE or PvP approach to the competition. There are clear 'objective' based approaches that rely on PvE and PvP player psychology. There is PvE and PvEvP versions of the competition. PvE skills are intact. Really to me it's almost as close as ideal of a system as you can get while respecting PvE and PvP players honestly. I highly encourage IS look at the design of those and see what they can do to carry some of the things working in that system over to similar systems in Ashes to help 'keep players on track in their personal play loops'.
The "personal play loops" is the most important part here for me, because those events seem kinda gamey to me. I understand that gameplay should be above all else and that this kind of system might appeal to way more people, but I hope that if Intrepid do decide to draw inspiration from it - that they try to make is as least gamey-feeling as possible.
You're still in the realm of 'someone who wants to play a PvP game'.
The only reason I made this thread is to point out the precise reason why PvE players don't usually want to play this game.
Sure, everything you said is fun, but what good is it when my group of 8 rolls up to kill you because SongRune wants to fish in the spot?
The flaws are deep, and take a long time to explain, but try to keep in mind that the problem here is so core to MMORPGs that no amount of plaster or bandaids will solve it. If you make appealing PvE content and then tell people 'oh but your skill at that can be trumped at any time by murder', you create something else that 'honorable PvP players' don't seem to think about.
Even if I am equal at fishing, I have no incentive to get much better at fishing if my fishing rival is not good at PvP.
Next step. I don't need to get better at fishing if I have a friend who is better than my fishing rival at PvP.
Next step, even if (in a big enough guild) I don't want to defeat my fishing rival through PvP, some PvP-enjoyer in my guild is probably looking for a reason to PvP and the guild can reasonably argue 'but we as a guild would do better if you were bringing in more fish, and for that, we should send PvP people to kill your rival'.
Incentive. Problem.
I'll simplify.
I have 8 people in my group.
You don't get to fish by yourself in my area without one of them killing you. Ever.
What competition are we having?
Sorta half-and-half. Offensive mode? It's on the edge, since it results in "ending my fishing time, if I lose but one contest". Defensive mode? Fine with me. The real problem is that by the time I'm done fishing up that critter, Ashes' 7 second TTK is over and I'm already dead.
EDIT: Definitely see-also Azherae's post. If that critter will defend you against a whole party, it'll utterly stomp a single player. (Through either power, or durability. Afaik you gotta choose at least one.)
And we don't think corruption alleviates this? If a guy turns up, whips out his rod *ahem*, for a bit of fishing... would your group really want the corruption, when there are plenty other combatants around to kill?
Yes.
Absolutely yes.
NiKr, usual point here, you see it?
Which part of 'control the resource' are you not understanding? If we were interested in pure PvP for PvP's sake, we'd go find an arena. More willing participants for even fights. You are takin. Mah fish. You die now.
Also doubling down on this.
You label it as the PvE players, but you can use any label for any other-group you like. The point is, there are players who come to competitive games that have economies and are 'greedy selfish jerks' like me.
I don't care about your 'fair fights'. I don't care about what Corruption is 'supposed to do'. I want money and if you are in the way of my money and the game implies that killing you is the optimal answer to that, then I'm going to kill you because I didn't log into this game to lose.
Yeah what I'm not understanding is the need for a dickish tone.
I'm asking a question is all.
I understand the broader point, but either a) don't understand how corruption doesn't make a significant difference to the scenario, or b) just disagree.
Either way I'm having them fish.
There's a laundry list of reasons why Corruption makes no difference in the specific case we're talking about.
The first one, is that our enforcer will be the only one who gets any Corruption, and then he will log out.
It's not that 'our actions' are not a solvable problem. It's that CORRUPTION is not solving the problem. So from the perspective of 'The PvE Fisher who did not get to fish', nothing is solved.
They did not get any fish.
They did not 'win the competition' with SongRune relative to fish.
They did not win economically if our Rogue logs out without being killed.
They will not get to fish until they gather an equal number of people of similar skill and we get tired of dying in PvP.
What competition are we having?
We're talking extremely contrived scenarios, where you're:
a) fishing in the middle of some action
b) have a group of enforcers for your fishing mission, who are willing to gain corruption & log out
I just don't think it'll be a big deal in-game, is all. Yeah sometimes, but res up and move on. /shrug
I don't mean to be dismissive btw, I just don't think MMOs are about mini games is all. All dynamics are always at play.
Azherae Cleric, GrilledCheeseMojito Paladin, GrandSerpent Fighter, JustVine Summoner, SpaceWolf Mage, SongRune Bard, one Rogue you haven't seen post yet, one Ranger or Mage, neither of whom has posted yet.
Technically 9.
Easy.
I have so far only met one person on this forum who both 'agrees with Corruption' and doesn't respond to my group's existence with either 'you won't really do that' or 'someone will come kill you'. However, we don't care. It's the PvE Fisher who has to care.
Are you accepting that the competiition that SongRune and the PvE fisher have is PvP?
eh? Is this your group? I'm not sure what point you're making?
[/quote]
Yeah. My point is so what? It's a highly contrived example, it won't be your every day fishing experience.
But yes, in a world with pvp (albeit with corruption to help manage the balance), then yes there is the threat of pvp.
I just don't think you can expect to fish in a protected little bubble. It's a massive world, you'll find plenty of opportunity to fish without interruption. But there's always a risk, yeah.
It's like everyone wants to jump into a massively multiplayer online world... and then play mini-games in instances.
And this is why PvE focused players ask for:
Instanced Content
TL style events
Flagging systems
Safe Zones
Protection from PvP below certain levels
and other protections...
But generally don't ask for 'harsher Corruption'. They 'accept' that some people really believe the Corruption will work to help enforce stuff, but the thing they log into these games for is not solved by greater Corruption unless it's so strong that it becomes flagging/Safe Zones.
And even then, still insufficient half the time, in terms of achieving the goal of 'I am having a PvE skill competition that does not boil down to PvP if a strong PvP person wants to get involved'.
Ashes is a PvP game to those players until we see something that performs this function.
Why wouldn't this be everyday fishing experience?
The reason I bring up fishing is because fishing has a bunch of underlying requirements that funnel players to geographic locations, and often have limited space on the map, similar to bosses.
You're trying to say to me that the 9 people who I log into every other game with to hang out, even for going onto a fishing boat, is a 'highly contrived example'?
Well kinda yeah. You're gonna have a squad of 10 at all times, willing to take on corruption (for someone with a fishing rod out, offering zero threat)? But let's just say, yes.
Then... fine! Doesn't bother me in the slightest (I quite want to fish btw!). I'll just move on. It's a huge world. Plus your mates need to sleep right?
Perfect.
That's also what the PvE fisher thinks.
"I'll just move on."
To Throne and Liberty, as soon as it implements fishing.
You're still in the realm of 'someone who wants to play a PvP game'.
The only reason I made this thread is to point out the precise reason why PvE players don't usually want to play this game.
I do see the point your making, the first post def helped clarify the position for me.
I just think it's being taken to a bit of a purist extreme position, personally.
It's an MMO, a big dynamic world. It's back to the point I tried to make earlier:
It's like everyone wants to jump into a massively multiplayer online world... and then play mini-games in instances.
There are plenty of people on all sides here, I just get the impression that the PvEers are mad fussy about it all, whereas it's actually the PvPers who are generally more forced into PvE content than the other way around. IMO.
Yeah, simply put I don't care at all about the actual outcome of that aspect of it. If people want to believe 'PvE is boring', 'PvE players are selfish', 'PvE players are whiny', 'PvE players just don't give games like this a chance', or 'people just want to play in instanced content', then to me it's just another MMO sociology fail due to bias.
We're all entitled to our biases, until we need to make a game for people without them.
That's why Intrepid pays their Senior System Designer the big bucks.