How do you define "Risk vs. Reward"?
Dimitraeos
Member
In your own words: what do YOU think Risk vs Reward is? There seems to be a general consensus that "reward" should be commensurate with the "risk" of PvP happening in a given context but that seems a bit narrow considering there are downsides to failing at PvE encounters potentially. What would be a more all-encompassing conceptualization that fits the equation of Risk v Reward into it?
Personally I find the idea that Time + Resources (and hence the risk of losing them upon failing the given task) should equal reward. This opens broadens the definition to include things like PvE contexts which may or may not involve PvP as well.
What do you guys think or what are some other conceptualizations that wrap up Risk vs Reward as cleanly as possible?
Personally I find the idea that Time + Resources (and hence the risk of losing them upon failing the given task) should equal reward. This opens broadens the definition to include things like PvE contexts which may or may not involve PvP as well.
What do you guys think or what are some other conceptualizations that wrap up Risk vs Reward as cleanly as possible?
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That spent time usually comes from dying over and over (either to pve or pvp). In Ashes you'll lose even more time per death, cause we have player loot and XP debt mechanics.
this is actually the thing that drives me away more than losing every other form of progression. You can restock, rebuild, rearmor, relevel etc. But you will never get your time invested back.
The more you have of all these mechanics the harder it becomes for you to go back and do it again each time.
Risk is any scenario in which your ability to achieve fun can be set back considerably, either to a previous state of advancement (relative to the fun specifically) or you can be prevented from being able to experience the same fun for a certain amount of time.
Reward is anything where your success at 'fun' leads to a progression in your ability to achieve similar fun.
I define it this way mostly because it helps to unite multiple types of gamer personality. People who go red and stay red can be viewed as Risking little if they get to continue to have their expressive fun. People who get ganked and lose stuff are also risking little if they get to continue to have their expressive fun.
I don't view time spent as a risk, for this reason, unless we are looking at the really old days of design where one needed to spend long periods not having fun, to advance your ability to occasionally have fun.
So tl;dr:
Risk is a potential setback to your ability to have more kinds of fun, and Rewards are when you gain more ways to have fun. Fun itself is relative.
Even when we try and "calculate" (for lack of a better word) it on the basis of lost resources etc, it still comes down to time (because it takes time to get those invested resources in the first place)
How would this apply to so called "safe" forms of content and their potential rewards? Like for Instanced pve content? Obviously we still don't know the full scope of what this will entail but since we can assume there will be some form of instanced PvE, assuming it was hard enough and hence has the potential to lose lots of invested time, shouldn't the rewards in theory also be commensurate with that?
Basically, 'no', for me.
If the content is fun, and for PvE players that I know to actually like the PvE, the effort of trying and solving the encounter is the fun, then they don't need to be additionally rewarded, you rely solely on your balance and intended encounter difficulty.
For me, if you are enjoying the process of facing that encounter, you are not risking anything unless there was some resource other than time which was being consumed to eventually prevent you from being able to attempt that encounter.
I also believe that encounters 'need' these things especially in MMOs. They can take many forms, but overall, even if you want your players to have fun, if the encounter offers a Reward, then the players should be at risk of 'running out of something they use to do it', thereby Risking their ability to continue experiencing the fun of that activity/encounter.
EDIT: I think I see what you mean now, but I glossed over it because of my mindset.
Balancing for time is an economics thing or a hardcoded time gate thing, depending on the game, for MMOs.
Less players involved = more time spent doing task (because doing the thing will take longer) = more reward
I think that fits into the original post as well as what others have said as far as Time/Resources Invested = Reward
From an objective standpoint, this is the only correct answer.
This is simply because time is the only thing we players put in to an MMORPG other than the subscription that only grants access.
Even Azheraes notion above of risk being a setback of your ability to have fun is still a risk of time. That setback simply means you need to spend more time in order to have the fun you want from the game.
But Risk v Reward is a core design pillar of Intrepid's game so we actually need to quantify that objectively. I understand if something is fun but takes time then the perception of loss is relative as you're saying, but we still need to quantify that to decide how to determine rewards.
Bingo. This is what im trying to get at. If Risk v Reward is a *literal* design pillar, it has to be a rock solid, objective thing.
I think *time* is the ultimate measure of that. Everything else seems secondary and up to player choice to value that time in other ways (fun, challange, etc)
The problem with this concept, not that it's overall wrong at all, but just a general problem, is that MMOs and MMO-likes now exist in which there is no real risk of 'opportunity cost'.
A specific set of MMO designers have 'lost the plot' and led us to a game type that some of us find boring or 'soulless' because they have figured out 'if we don't have any opportunity cost to work out then we have no disparity and therefore no pain-points, and we get less complaints from the less invested players'.
When there's pressure from your 'suits' to keep numbers up, they can look at painpoints and go 'remove that, it's making people have less fun', but when the game eventually 'loses its soul' and dies, they can't point at anything in particular, and might even have enough whales to consider things to still be fine.
I get it but, we still have to quantify the notion of Risk in = Reward out and I think Ashes will have a much MUCH larger scope of activities that players can choose from to find their gameplay loops and be happy within them.
Sure we do, multiple people have been having heavy discussions about it for years now.
The problem is that those people don't agree because they don't all experience the same type of fun, so we get stuck. That's one of the hardest issues to face in game design and generally should be approached more from aiming at your target audience.
But if you mean within the game relative to other actions, it's basically game economy work. I'm mostly saying two things:
1. Making gameplay that isn't fun for most people but they still need to engage with to get rewards is a bad idea.
2. Risk/loss is only a thing experienced by a player who has no path to anything fun to do, according to whatever their personal mental structure is.
While this is also all true, it leads to a key point that all 'suits' need to keep in mind.
Players (people in general) don't look at how good something is in isolation. They look at the difference between the highs and the lows. A good game by definition needs to have pain points in it, as it is these pain points that make success meaningful. Removing those pain points removes the meaning in being successful, which is what results in a soulless game.
I think I'll disagree. I don't think that we have to quantify it, I don't even think quantifying it is strictly 'possible' without a really specific definition of your audience, which we don't have yet.
For me personally, this is the biggest current weakness of Ashes.
There is no 'risk in, reward out' calculation until you've narrowed down your audience to 'remove' all the people who enjoy doing a thing in your game that you didn't intend to be fun, OR you've changed your whole game because you realized that the audience you ended up with, doesn't find your original ideas fun.
What we have is debates though. Lots and lots of debates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk
If you do not care about the consequences (getting the reward or losing something) then it is not a "risk" but a "probability".
Typically it should be a repeatable process to be able to put some numbers onto it.
You can observe risk also when you do PvE, as your success is not guaranteed.
Also when you try to reach the end of a jumping puzzle.
But even if you have a single attempt to try something, you can estimate chances if others tried the same thing.
Or if you tried similar content in other games.
Or if you know how things work, like how many numbers can be pulled out from a bag. You have only one attempt, there is a fixed amount of time spent yet you have risk or probability if you don't care.
So with all this set up lets now look at how much time is invested.
You need to either craft or buy the "loadout" required to go back out, and that might require gathering, running around to player vendors across the map, etc. Even if you have multiple sets of loadouts now set up, you need to then go through and equip all of that (and depending on the game this shit can be tedious). Then run back out to the dungeon and clear back in to your old set assuming there are no red players and assuming you dont die to someone training mobs on you. You finally get back to your old body and loot it. Now you are nearly overweight because you have 2 full sets on you and need to leave the dungeon to extract your first set.
The main thing involved in all of this is the time invested into what you lose. The gear, the consumables, etc. The hassle of getting set up to go out is a major problem I have with games like this. Of course, in the context of ashes we dont lose gear (normally) but you will be directly losing time via xp loss on death. Gear requires materials to repair so you need to go shopping or gathering to fix it.
I really, really hope that the devs understand this and can help streamline this to some degree. This is why i personally get so frustrated with play games like ultima or mo2 or dark and darker. The Logistics of regearing to sometimes go out and instantly lose all of it to some prick or horrible mob pull is frustrating. (also time to kill in these games can in most cases be so low that you can't even learn how to play)
I actually fundamentally agree I think. Although I think the question about how fun taking that risk/time investment in the Risk v Reward equation would simply be up to the player at that point if its worth it. The devs can still roughly decide the reward structure for any piece of content or activity based on *Time* input in the Risk v Reward equation.
For example:
Player A loves fishing. Fishing in a river near town takes a low to moderate amount of time/resource investment and hence earns him a low to moderate reward (low quality or common fish, low chance of catching rares etc and hence less reward). The player KNOWS he can take a bigger risk elsewhere (invest in a boat, go out into the ocean and potentially get killed or lose income etc) but simply enjoys having his little loop near town and chill out.
Player B kind of hates fishing and finds it boring but knows there are hardcore fishers out there making a KILLING fishing in risky areas or in the ocean. This player chooses to look for something else to do because despite the Risk v Reward being good for Ocean fishing, he just wouldnt find it fun.
My point is Intrepid can, and has to, quantify these things otherwise there will be a depressing amount of dead content throughout the world.
This is called bad management. If you know you might lose a set, you have two or more sets prepared. Not only that, but, by retrieving the lost set would then get you two sets anyway so the process can be repeated. There is a risk you might have to retrieve multiple bodies but the notion is the same. You'd then have multiple sets of gear.
I agree on that.
If the time to prepare is not a fun process or when is just like the leveling when ppl want to reach the "end game content"
There is no doubt that with more time some players can achieve something. Others cannot. I might fall on every single jumping puzzle no matter how many times I try... Or with a bad team/guild, I might never see the end boss of a dungeon especially if a bigger guild prevents access to it.
The thing is that some players enjoy those moments when the chance to lose something occur if the event outcome is uncertain. Other people hate uncertainty.
It is important to enjoy the process more than the result.
This is the response of someone who takes some form of satisfaction in 'good management'.
For some people it is the process of actually doing it. For other's it's the feeling of being better than the people who don't do it.
And for some other people (not saying if those people should play such games or not) this is just unfun tedium because what they want is to grind mobs, or fight people and win every time.
So to one group, there's no risk at all here, gathering all the gear and building multiple sets is the fun, they might not even go back for the set they were using. And for another group, the risk is so huge that they don't even accept it.
Yes but you are now not playing the content you want, you are dicking around with logistics.
the problem is that those sets of gear do have value. meaning you are heavily incentivized to go retrieve them. if you dont, you have to go shopping again sooner. but either way you are stuck doing something that just isn't fun.
thats my key point. Time lost doing things you dont like to do should be reduced as much as we can without it trivializing the content/game.
I think I should clarify that I don't agree with the "Risk vs Reward" tenet in the first place.
I can agree with 'Progression vs Investment', but even considering the definition I mentioned I don't think MMOs, not even PvP MMOs, actually need the simple concept of 'Risk', particularly because it can't be defined.
What I think they need is choice, challenge, dynamism, etc, and whenever true choice is involved it's possible to make the wrong one. But making the wrong choice isn't usually that big a deal, you learn it was wrong, you change your choice, then progress.
Sometimes due to the dynamic part of the game you lose a specific chance to make that choice for a while, and have to make different ones.
But as demonstrated by the two posters above, 'Risk' and 'Reward' outside of game economy is too subjective. One loves logistics more than the other (or at least likes having it in the game). We have the same sort of disagreement on things like PvE Bosses, 'daily Quests', 'login rewards', 'fast travel', 'Caravans', 'Corruption', 'gear loss via enchanting' all down the line.
The devs just need to make their stand on whatever, and players decide if they are okay with that line. I recently heard 'no gear durability loss during Node Wars', so I'm waiting to find out if the 'Risk' of those was raised in some other area, the 'Reward' was lessened, or if it was just removed because 'it would be a pain point'. Who knows.
Risk is the level of conflict * the value of what you have on the line for it, which will give you the potential loss and negative outcome; or the positive outcome and gain.
Time is universal and a inevitable investment into anything you are doing, time doesn't mean you are just inherently getting a potential negative element. The actual risk again is what you are carrying on you and the conflict you experience or could experience by continuing on.
Now even if we look at the worse example with enhancing gear and say it takes awhile to get the materials and such for it. And you are risking your gear on blowing up and you feel it will take forever to get the gear up again. Even that you can't really say the risk is time unless they do a bad design. More than likely the risk and the reason it takes so long is the level of conflict to obtain these items do to sacristy.
Awhile back in one of the pve threads i created a brief design that was more around risk and factoring time into that. But that was with time being part of the content and challenge.
Long story short playing the game a lot and investing tons of time does not equal risk.
I think logistics is a key staple to do the game. I mean, once the game is live the risks will be real. The caravans could get raided, the supply might not sustain the production, the only sources of the repair materials are now under enemy control, your base of operation might be sieged or levelled. Everything will be active. Time can be a bane and time can be an ally. You can improve your gameplay by doing timed runs. We might have to time specific phases and moves on a boss. Just travelling around the game world will be difficult enough if you want to explore everything. Yes, everything does take time but not everything you devote time to will have risk.