Splinter Topic: Micro-Competition vs Macro-Competition

Percimes

NiKr wrote:

Over 70 comments while I was asleep

I'm with you man, 80ish in my case.

As for being chased by PvPers... In my experience it is quite common with fixed factions. If you see someone from the other team, if they can kill you, good chances they'll try. It's not 100% sure, but definitely not rare.

Otr

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Dygz often explains the stuff PvE-focused players are thinking, clearly, but as has been noted, is a fairly extreme case. Not the case we're looking for here.

Yeah, I know It's just one of my pastimes, trying to "throw a ball against the wall" in hopes of finding a design that might finally find a middle that even Dygz could agree to.

I know this is a futile exercise, but it's these attempts that lead me to design thoughts that have been already implemented in the games you play (while I myself haven't played or even properly researched them)

You have to make the cat both dead and alive and be as Dygz wants it when he looks at it.

Otr

Azherae wrote: »

Right, but you and I want the same game, like, very very explicitly.

And therefore, obviously, since this is how I believe MMO design works, you and I could therefore 'sit down for a week and work out the balance of every single aspect of that game on the whiteboard because we know exactly how each piece is supposed to feel when the game is done'.

But big studios don't have that luxury. They have to have roundtables, concepts of their audience, etc. In fact, nearly every larger MMO lately has been built from three or more competing perspectives, then had to be retooled (or just faltered due to not unifying).

Save us, Jake Song!

Archeage 2 seems to shift away from it's original style.

https://www.mmorpg.com/news/archeage-2-to-be-more-pve-and-group-focused-a-departure-from-large-scale-faction-war-pvp-2000129413

Otr

NiKr wrote: »

Over 70 comments while I was asleep


Azherae, what's your party's opinion would be on smth like this setup?

1. The game tracks account-wide PK Count History (i.e. even if your current count is 0, the game would know that you have 10 PKs overall; and the count itself is not account-wide)
2. Military nodes have access to the PKCH of players that have PKd people in the vicinity of allied nodes
3. Other nodes can request the full PKCH list by sending a Mayoral caravan to get it (requires a full back&forth track to do)
4. PKCH info needs to be retaken every month (could be more often)
5. Guards in nodes operate according to the available PKCH
6. Guard power exists on a sliding scale of "can kill a weak mob" to "literally immortal and hits like a truck" (controlled by the mayor choices)
7. Guards are positioned across the node in predetermined places, with a predetermined patrol route
8. Guards aggro onto mobs that enter a certain radius and onto PKers who enter x2 of that radius
9. Guard-killed targets don't drop loot ("killed" here means "Guard did any dmg to the target") and Guards don't aggro onto bosses
10. After a certain PKCH value Guards aggro onto a flagged player with that value
11. If there's been a PK, Guards over a certain lvl (let's say 3/5 minimum) will go to that location and stay there for a certain amount of time
12. Amount of Guards and the duration of their presence in that location is set by the Mayor (debatable)
13. All of the above don't apply to military nodes themselves

As I see it, this would be a player-controlled TL-like system. There'll be nodes that are very good for pvers, but the system itself doesn't remove the possibility of being killed at least once. The economic macro-competition is still present in the form of mayoral actions (and any influence on them by other players), node wars/sieges (wars could have a goal of "destroy the guard post in the node", which disables it for several days) and caravan attacks to prevent the Guards from knowing the latest info about PKCH.

And this would also enforce pve-based micro-competition on the spots themselves, while not removing a casual PKing as the last resort. In other words, your enforcer might not be able to PK as much as yall might need, but a random person can still use the system for their benefit. Obviously this doesn't prevent your entire party going corrupt one after the other, but this too would only be doable up to a certain extent.

I feel like this system would be a nice way to have a not-as-gamey application of TL's events.

The list is interesting but after reading it a few times I have doubts.
I would use a system with more guards only in Divine nodes to protect only the divine citizens.
And only when they do not team with other citizens.

Dygz

Yeah. I think Noaani has a competitive PvE playstyle.

Aszkalon

daveywavey wrote: »

Blackjack and hookers?! Screw the Fighter Preview, I wanna watch that livestream!

You can't. No Virgins allowed.

Ethanh37 wrote: »

Also this has been a really interesting tread so I'm glad you guys are spending the time talking about these issues... i hope when alpha 2 is out that there will be the same level of discussions.

You can be confident there will be. But just my feeling -> i think some Issues will get solved quickly in Alpha Two when just enough Players point them out at the relatively same time.

Isn't it always like that ?