You guys need to not get bated on people saying risk vrs reward is time based. It is a surface level take and not really a strong one since at this point we may as well say any game is risk vrs reward because you play the game *sarcasm obviously*
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 you are going too general with your idea of time. There is a difference between playing a game for 1000 hours and playing a game for 1000 hours but 40% of that time was spent setting up to actually play the game or catching back up after failing. Time becomes apart of the risk factors when its a direct penalty to progression (exp loss/gear loss).
A good example of this is why most players do not hit 100 in path of exile each league. Once the penalty to exp becomes so high in terms of time required to catch back up each time you die, most people hit a point where that risk of death is just not worth it and stop playing.
Yep, it me The closest I've gotten to the "your gear drops on death" was a recent EVE-related closed alpha test.
Definitely took me a few deaths to get used to it, but that test also provided people with the most basic set of "gear", which let you at least do some basic stuff to restart your grind, so the impact on my gameplay was still not as big as some of other similar games might've had.
In Ashes, the only management would come from you not dying, because even if you don't have any droppable loot - you'll still go into XP debt and get other debuffs that relate to the "prevention of the same lvl of fun".
And depending on whether artisan tools are seen as "gear" when it comes to decay on death, even the pure artisans might get their fun stopped by PKer, if the artisan tool decays and/or gets destroyed on death.
We're very clear with our objective and philosophy on the game and we understand that they may not appeal to everybody. But it is an important reciprocal relationship between the content that's related to PvE and the content that's related to PvP and they feed off of each other. They're catalysts for change: Their progression, their development. It's things that people can value when they see something earned and they see something lost. That elicits an emotional response from the player: That they've invested time in to either succeed or fail; and PvP allows for that element to be introduced into gameplay. And we're very clear that is our objective: That risk versus reward relationship, that achievement-based mentality. Not everybody's going to be a winner and that's okay.[11] – Steven Sharif
You guys need to not get bated on people saying risk vrs reward is time based. It is a surface level take and not really a strong one since at this point we may as well say any game is risk vrs reward because you play the game *sarcasm obviously*
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 you are going too general with your idea of time. There is a difference between playing a game for 1000 hours and playing a game for 1000 hours but 40% of that time was spent setting up to actually play the game or catching back up after failing. Time becomes apart of the risk factors when its a direct penalty to progression (exp loss/gear loss).
A good example of this is why most players do not hit 100 in path of exile each league. Once the penalty to exp becomes so high in terms of time required to catch back up each time you die, most people hit a point where that risk of death is just not worth it and stop playing.
Naa the issue is anyone here making a time arguing is being general which it literarily = people playing the game.
The risk is the death and how that comes about, you talking about recovering from your death is a result of the risk but not risk itself.
That could be 40% for some, 60% for some and 20% for others, that depends on how they play the game and how the choose to use their time. IE go out to high risk areas that are super far, or play it safe. The value of what each person obtains could be different as well based on what they are doing to feel its worth the risk.
There is a difference in talking about risk and talking about you not liking the result of death in general in the game or travel time. But if that death is tied to high conflict / reward zones which means high risk. Then perhaps its better to avoid going their constantly for some types of people.
Without doing to large a post for my point above that conflict zone is going to spread to other area potentially. Regrouping and getting back to your spot if a large war is going on will be a journey start to finish with content and pvp (potentially).
Im currently playing poe (lvl 93) and I'm a casual in it cause game is too deep so i just go as far as i can go with my own build and not being copy paste and search online for everything + buy all the gear. PoE has to be the worse example for you to use here since there is no down time in reaching the content. So i don't know how you are comparing this to poe, which makes me think you are not a big fan of risk.
The challenge in poe is your build + gear and how you can approach the challenges + surprises and overcome them. The more effective your build is the most easily you will level up. Though since the game is min maxed so hard when you are going from lvl 90-100 its difficult because you need a strong build for that if you are doing it on your own. It doesn't mean you can push on getting better gear and increasing your odds.
Even when i play poe i don't feel like I'm losing time or look at time. I'm looking at the level of danger between maps and my xp bar as it isn't tied to time. If i ran t17 or juiced 16 and my build was op leveling would be easy.
Hence where i bring it back and again say the view things take time is a general point on all games. Something taking time has nothing to do with risk, which the risk is the conflict. You are simply talking about the result of losing the conflict. Also people in conflict need the breathing room, you shouldnt be dying and then showing up in 1 min to attack them again. Which if that was the case is on the side of not wanting risk since you know yuo have nothing to lose and want to run it down every life.
You guys need to not get bated on people saying risk vrs reward is time based. It is a surface level take and not really a strong one since at this point we may as well say any game is risk vrs reward because you play the game *sarcasm obviously*
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 you are going too general with your idea of time. There is a difference between playing a game for 1000 hours and playing a game for 1000 hours but 40% of that time was spent setting up to actually play the game or catching back up after failing. Time becomes apart of the risk factors when its a direct penalty to progression (exp loss/gear loss).
A good example of this is why most players do not hit 100 in path of exile each league. Once the penalty to exp becomes so high in terms of time required to catch back up each time you die, most people hit a point where that risk of death is just not worth it and stop playing.
Naa the issue is anyone here making a time arguing is being general which it literarily = people playing the game.
The risk is the death and how that comes about, you talking about recovering from your death is a result of the risk but not risk itself.
That could be 40% for some, 60% for some and 20% for others, that depends on how they play the game and how the choose to use their time. IE go out to high risk areas that are super far, or play it safe. The value of what each person obtains could be different as well based on what they are doing to feel its worth the risk.
There is a difference in talking about risk and talking about you not liking the result of death in general in the game or travel time. But if that death is tied to high conflict / reward zones which means high risk. Then perhaps its better to avoid going their constantly for some types of people.
Without doing to large a post for my point above that conflict zone is going to spread to other area potentially. Regrouping and getting back to your spot if a large war is going on will be a journey start to finish with content and pvp (potentially).
Im currently playing poe (lvl 93) and I'm a casual in it cause game is too deep so i just go as far as i can go with my own build and not being copy paste and search online for everything + buy all the gear. PoE has to be the worse example for you to use here since there is no down time in reaching the content. So i don't know how you are comparing this to poe, which makes me think you are not a big fan of risk.
The challenge in poe is your build + gear and how you can approach the challenges + surprises and overcome them. The more effective your build is the most easily you will level up. Though since the game is min maxed so hard when you are going from lvl 90-100 its difficult because you need a strong build for that if you are doing it on your own. It doesn't mean you can push on getting better gear and increasing your odds.
Even when i play poe i don't feel like I'm losing time or look at time. I'm looking at the level of danger between maps and my xp bar as it isn't tied to time. If i ran t17 or juiced 16 and my build was op leveling would be easy.
Hence where i bring it back and again say the view things take time is a general point on all games. Something taking time has nothing to do with risk, which the risk is the conflict. You are simply talking about the result of losing the conflict. Also people in conflict need the breathing room, you shouldnt be dying and then showing up in 1 min to attack them again. Which if that was the case is on the side of not wanting risk since you know yuo have nothing to lose and want to run it down every life.
You are actively taking the risk out of the game when you play it safe like you described. Like I tried to explain, playing the game to 100 is different from playing the game to 100 and trying to craft your own build and seeing if you can do bosses or juiced maps. I could just sit there farming t16s with my build, but there's no risk there and its much slower. A risk is when i decide to go 10 rounds in ultimatum or do a pinnacle boss not sure if my dps or skill can overcome the mechanics. Death at 96 is literally 2 hours of your life expunged from the character.
So when you put yourself in situations to gain more reward or exp at the risk of death, you are directly putting forth the chance that you are losing time invested in the character. In many cases its not even "more than normal" its just "normal" exp or reward that you are fighting for. This will absolutely be the case in ashes by the way. Funny enough Time is probably the most prominent of risks involved in ashes compared to most other mmos. exp loss on death is the purest form of it.
For me off the top of my head I think risk is two-fold
A) the potential consequence of spending time not doing what you want to do
(best example for me was playing one life modes like search and destroy in COD, cuz who wants to spectate while everyone else plays the game? Not me if I am trying to play/win), this makes you want to stay alive, thus evoking a sense of risk that gives you the "sweaty palms moments" and boosts adrenaline.
This assumes the player actually wants to stay alive to play the game/win though, which means the actually gameplay needs to be fun and worth investment from the player otherwise why would they care if they have to sit out, which is subjective, of course, based on individual player preferences (including the notion of risk itself and if players enjoy a stressful type of experience). Thats where the other aspects come into play like choice, reactivity, challenge, etc. to create investment into the gameplay for certain types of players and to create that opportunity for risk to be injected into the experience.
Obviously we get in our moods and sometimes couldn't care less about dying in a specific mode and just want to play something else, or just want to relax or whatever, which would eliminate the risk within the context of that situation. So if I feel like playing team deathmatch instead, then I now don't care about dying in search and destroy so there is no risk anymore, the real "risk" at that point would be being forced to continue to play search and destroy because I now prefer to be playing something else entirely. So I think the idea of risk itself is also contextual as well.
B- level Effort/Mastery
If someone is a master at running caravans, pvp, economy, etc., etc., I think they should get rewards that should allow them to better progress in the aggregate experience of those activities, compared to someone who just specializes and excels at one of those activities.
So, for example, in theory if you were going to offer different types of experiences to players (like being able to choose between purely playing arena pvp, vs. having the choice to play the open world). For something like arena pvp if it had progression; one could master arena pvp by simply playing arena pvp and progressing within that and could be equally competitive as someone else who has mastered the other systems in the open world (no advantage to open world player in arena pvp otherwise you force the arena pvp person to play open world and eliminate that content choice)- However, the arena pvper would not be as competitive in the open world, due to not mastering the other open world systems compared to the open world player, due to the additional mastery/effort that the open world player invested and thus was rewarded with that competitive advantage.
Risk is the possibilities that can set you back. As many have said, it all boils down to time lost, but these things tend to also result in death/loss of resources as the risk.
Risk is the possibilities that can set you back. As many have said, it all boils down to time lost, but these things tend to also result in death/loss of resources as the risk.
You guys need to not get bated on people saying risk vrs reward is time based. It is a surface level take and not really a strong one since at this point we may as well say any game is risk vrs reward because you play the game *sarcasm obviously*
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 you are going too general with your idea of time. There is a difference between playing a game for 1000 hours and playing a game for 1000 hours but 40% of that time was spent setting up to actually play the game or catching back up after failing. Time becomes apart of the risk factors when its a direct penalty to progression (exp loss/gear loss).
A good example of this is why most players do not hit 100 in path of exile each league. Once the penalty to exp becomes so high in terms of time required to catch back up each time you die, most people hit a point where that risk of death is just not worth it and stop playing.
Naa the issue is anyone here making a time arguing is being general which it literarily = people playing the game.
The risk is the death and how that comes about, you talking about recovering from your death is a result of the risk but not risk itself.
That could be 40% for some, 60% for some and 20% for others, that depends on how they play the game and how the choose to use their time. IE go out to high risk areas that are super far, or play it safe. The value of what each person obtains could be different as well based on what they are doing to feel its worth the risk.
There is a difference in talking about risk and talking about you not liking the result of death in general in the game or travel time. But if that death is tied to high conflict / reward zones which means high risk. Then perhaps its better to avoid going their constantly for some types of people.
Without doing to large a post for my point above that conflict zone is going to spread to other area potentially. Regrouping and getting back to your spot if a large war is going on will be a journey start to finish with content and pvp (potentially).
Im currently playing poe (lvl 93) and I'm a casual in it cause game is too deep so i just go as far as i can go with my own build and not being copy paste and search online for everything + buy all the gear. PoE has to be the worse example for you to use here since there is no down time in reaching the content. So i don't know how you are comparing this to poe, which makes me think you are not a big fan of risk.
The challenge in poe is your build + gear and how you can approach the challenges + surprises and overcome them. The more effective your build is the most easily you will level up. Though since the game is min maxed so hard when you are going from lvl 90-100 its difficult because you need a strong build for that if you are doing it on your own. It doesn't mean you can push on getting better gear and increasing your odds.
Even when i play poe i don't feel like I'm losing time or look at time. I'm looking at the level of danger between maps and my xp bar as it isn't tied to time. If i ran t17 or juiced 16 and my build was op leveling would be easy.
Hence where i bring it back and again say the view things take time is a general point on all games. Something taking time has nothing to do with risk, which the risk is the conflict. You are simply talking about the result of losing the conflict. Also people in conflict need the breathing room, you shouldnt be dying and then showing up in 1 min to attack them again. Which if that was the case is on the side of not wanting risk since you know yuo have nothing to lose and want to run it down every life.
You are actively taking the risk out of the game when you play it safe like you described. Like I tried to explain, playing the game to 100 is different from playing the game to 100 and trying to craft your own build and seeing if you can do bosses or juiced maps. I could just sit there farming t16s with my build, but there's no risk there and its much slower. A risk is when i decide to go 10 rounds in ultimatum or do a pinnacle boss not sure if my dps or skill can overcome the mechanics. Death at 96 is literally 2 hours of your life expunged from the character.
So when you put yourself in situations to gain more reward or exp at the risk of death, you are directly putting forth the chance that you are losing time invested in the character. In many cases its not even "more than normal" its just "normal" exp or reward that you are fighting for. This will absolutely be the case in ashes by the way. Funny enough Time is probably the most prominent of risks involved in ashes compared to most other mmos. exp loss on death is the purest form of it.
Again this time argument isn't valid like I said it is akin to playing any game and saying it equals risk. Talking about xp loss is the closest thing you can get to that if you are making a argument for it. Which then you be saying they shouldnt have xp loss in the game. Though this is going to be minimal as i expect xp loss to only be around corruption which will be very minimal in the game.
Arguments around i died so i need to walk back to my spot and it takes time is not risk. The risk is the encounter that yuo were pvping in and died.
So ill just repeat the way you are explaining time is just playing AoC in general which at that point playing any game is risk suddenly. You are mostly complaining about the affect effect of dealing with high risk situation. It is extremely clear to know what is the actual risk factor by looking at the extreme. If you remove the time element all together is it still high risk, answer is yes as the people attacking you is why you died. If you remove the people attacking you element it will be deemed as almost 0 risk.
Risk is the possibilities that can set you back. As many have said, it all boils down to time lost, but these things tend to also result in death/loss of resources as the risk.
Yep, this pretty much. I think a chance of some sort of loss of a resource should be present in pretty much all risk vs. reward style gameplay. XP, gold, materials, reputation, whatever. All "tangible" things that take time to regain. Very rarely, if ever, should the cost only be the time spent. Time spent playing is never a risk unless the game is really bad and the time spent playing it hurts your soul and requires you to go to therapy after.
You guys need to not get bated on people saying risk vrs reward is time based. It is a surface level take and not really a strong one since at this point we may as well say any game is risk vrs reward because you play the game *sarcasm obviously*
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 you are going too general with your idea of time. There is a difference between playing a game for 1000 hours and playing a game for 1000 hours but 40% of that time was spent setting up to actually play the game or catching back up after failing. Time becomes apart of the risk factors when its a direct penalty to progression (exp loss/gear loss).
A good example of this is why most players do not hit 100 in path of exile each league. Once the penalty to exp becomes so high in terms of time required to catch back up each time you die, most people hit a point where that risk of death is just not worth it and stop playing.
Naa the issue is anyone here making a time arguing is being general which it literarily = people playing the game.
The risk is the death and how that comes about, you talking about recovering from your death is a result of the risk but not risk itself.
That could be 40% for some, 60% for some and 20% for others, that depends on how they play the game and how the choose to use their time. IE go out to high risk areas that are super far, or play it safe. The value of what each person obtains could be different as well based on what they are doing to feel its worth the risk.
There is a difference in talking about risk and talking about you not liking the result of death in general in the game or travel time. But if that death is tied to high conflict / reward zones which means high risk. Then perhaps its better to avoid going their constantly for some types of people.
Without doing to large a post for my point above that conflict zone is going to spread to other area potentially. Regrouping and getting back to your spot if a large war is going on will be a journey start to finish with content and pvp (potentially).
Im currently playing poe (lvl 93) and I'm a casual in it cause game is too deep so i just go as far as i can go with my own build and not being copy paste and search online for everything + buy all the gear. PoE has to be the worse example for you to use here since there is no down time in reaching the content. So i don't know how you are comparing this to poe, which makes me think you are not a big fan of risk.
The challenge in poe is your build + gear and how you can approach the challenges + surprises and overcome them. The more effective your build is the most easily you will level up. Though since the game is min maxed so hard when you are going from lvl 90-100 its difficult because you need a strong build for that if you are doing it on your own. It doesn't mean you can push on getting better gear and increasing your odds.
Even when i play poe i don't feel like I'm losing time or look at time. I'm looking at the level of danger between maps and my xp bar as it isn't tied to time. If i ran t17 or juiced 16 and my build was op leveling would be easy.
Hence where i bring it back and again say the view things take time is a general point on all games. Something taking time has nothing to do with risk, which the risk is the conflict. You are simply talking about the result of losing the conflict. Also people in conflict need the breathing room, you shouldnt be dying and then showing up in 1 min to attack them again. Which if that was the case is on the side of not wanting risk since you know yuo have nothing to lose and want to run it down every life.
You are actively taking the risk out of the game when you play it safe like you described. Like I tried to explain, playing the game to 100 is different from playing the game to 100 and trying to craft your own build and seeing if you can do bosses or juiced maps. I could just sit there farming t16s with my build, but there's no risk there and its much slower. A risk is when i decide to go 10 rounds in ultimatum or do a pinnacle boss not sure if my dps or skill can overcome the mechanics. Death at 96 is literally 2 hours of your life expunged from the character.
So when you put yourself in situations to gain more reward or exp at the risk of death, you are directly putting forth the chance that you are losing time invested in the character. In many cases its not even "more than normal" its just "normal" exp or reward that you are fighting for. This will absolutely be the case in ashes by the way. Funny enough Time is probably the most prominent of risks involved in ashes compared to most other mmos. exp loss on death is the purest form of it.
I heard there are people who don't like to see the numbers going down.
What do you do if you get a freehold and you lose it after a siege? With stored resources too?
Which then you be saying they shouldnt have xp loss in the game. Though this is going to be minimal as i expect xp loss to only be around corruption which will be very minimal in the game.
So are you yourself arguing for minimal XP loss here? Or do you believe that pve will be so damn easy that people will never die to mobs?
Imagine if the game implemented character degradation. If you do not log in, or do not use your skills, they slowly degrade, and you would have to build them back up.
Which then you be saying they shouldnt have xp loss in the game. Though this is going to be minimal as i expect xp loss to only be around corruption which will be very minimal in the game.
So are you yourself arguing for minimal XP loss here? Or do you believe that pve will be so damn easy that people will never die to mobs?
im saying if he has a issue then it would be the xp loss, my point is even if that is the case corruption isn't going to be wildly a pvp common thing for most people in the game.(mainly around nonconsensual pvp if you are actively trying to fight back against everyone that that is on you.).
If you die to mobs you will have people to res you. Most likely you are not going to be dying on repeat. If you are bad not much else i can say but it being a skill issue. Most pve in the game is not going to be raid level obviously.
Loss and Gain are two sides of the same coin with respect to:
Time
Resources
Organization
Perks
Etc.
I generally believe these things should be aimed at proportionality. The more time, resources, organization, perks, etc. invested into an experience the more gain should be available to be earned. So, zerging a raid boss requires very little investment. Ganking a harvester requires very little investment, but the split should be inversely proportional to the number of players (aka actual loot drop not guaranteed "gank reward."
Time spent is absoutely not a risk... the game is made for fun, if you are spending time you are consuming fun. Time being a risk is nonsense, sorry.
Risk is losing, reward is earning, it is this simple. So, in Ashes of Creation there's barely any risk in pure PvE, if you die you will have to spend a few gold coins for repais and maybe materials, that's all, you will have the death penalty too.
Not sure if PvE will engaging in AoC:
there is no hardcore mode (which is fine)
no blend of normal and hardcore mode (character in coma for a day or for an hour whatever)
death penalty
gold and material loss on repairs
no full loot loss
Most of the danger will come from PvP
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
Time spent is absoutely not a risk... the game is made for fun, if you are spending time you are consuming fun. Time being a risk is nonsense, sorry.
Just because you are "playing the game" doesn't mean you are automatically having fun though, if you aren't doing what you want to be doing.
When its all said and done you care about losing resources and other tangible things because of the time it took you to acquire them.
And yes the game is supposed to be fun, but the risk of a potential time sink can add to the fun for some players, but with that comes.....a potential time sink where you may not be doing what you want to be doing at a given moment due to the consequences reaped. Its the dichotomy of the good and the bad that makes the good better. It may be frustrating to work off xp dept or walk to the nearest harbor cuz you ship got blown up (which is a time sink taking you from your preferred gameplay), but that's the point, its supposed to be frustrating for the types of players that enjoy the extra risk factor because it makes it more rewarding when you put someone else in that position instead of yourself, and it makes the situation more tense when you think you might end up as the loser.
Please reference my above post for further detail on the relationship between risk, time sinks, and preferred gameplay, and the contextuality of risk.
When its all said and done you care about losing resources and other tangible things because of the time it took you to acquire them.
Resources is not the only thing that could be lost, there are other types of losses:
losing access to certain areas
losing the ability of doing certain things
losing the character itself, even if it's for a day only
having your access to certain types of content inacessible
Losing the time you spent to acquire something is not important, only miners think that way. If you played and joined a party, and had your gaming session and acquired one item then you played the game. It is consumed, what matters is consuming the game.
Time is only "lost" if the person lives on a day by day grind, which is horrible, everyone gets burned by doing that someday. The grind itself is the loss, having an item as prize in the end or not.
People have to stop being so oriented to farming, that's why I quit WoW, I realized it is a game built for farming only, even the PvP is based on the gear you farmed.
And yes the game is supposed to be fun, but the risk of a potential time sink can add to the fun for some players, but with that comes.....
While some gamers find time sinks "exhilarating", others find time sinks disgusting. Time sinks can be demotivating, particularly if they feel arbitrary or punitive and bring no meaningful gameplay at all.
"You will get this loot if you grind this one thousand times, repeat repeat repeat."
a potential time sink where you may not be doing what you want to be doing at a given moment due to the consequences reaped. Its the dichotomy of the good and the bad that makes the good better. It may be frustrating to work off xp dept or walk to the nearest harbor cuz you ship got blown up (which is a time sink taking you from your preferred gameplay), but that's the point, its supposed to be frustrating for the types of players that enjoy the extra risk factor because it makes it more rewarding when you put someone else in that position instead of yourself, and it makes the situation more tense when you think you might end up as the loser.
Unintended consequences should be seen as part of the experience, even they don't always contribute positively to the enjoyment. Farmy people find consequences frustrative, then farmy people will feel that the time spent dealing with setbacks outweighs the "reward", this happens due to the Blizzard effect by creating the extreme repetition in WoW.
So, to me, effective game design should have an understanding between risk and reward without causing excessive frustration or forcing players to spend large amounts of time on activities that they find tedious or counterproductive.
For many people a full loot pvp game is just overly punishing and they feel helpless, specially if there is a mix of PvE grind after loot mobs for dozens of hours and then you lose the gear you acquired in a 10 seconds gank
In both cases, it is the dev's fault!!!! Everybody started copying Blizzard's model of grinding for gear for days and weeks since they had a monthly subscription, and then because of this model there is also no loot, aboslutely no loot!
I would rather have specific regions and specific contents where you can lose loot and where you can farm faster... and THAT would be true risk vs reward, and then in the noobie areas and let the farmy people farm during the entire month and lose no loot at all.
I absolutely love my idea of gambling your own loot in the arena and people depositing gear in the arena bank so they can have many fights and take other people's loot and combine with your gear and improve your game in the arena.
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
Resources is not the only thing that could be lost, there are other types of losses:
losing access to certain areas
losing the ability of doing certain things
losing the character itself, even if it's for a day only
having your access to certain types of content inacessible
Losing the time you spent to acquire something is not important, only miners think that way. If you played and joined a party, and had your gaming session and acquired one item then you played the game. It is consumed, what matters is consuming the game.
Time is only "lost" if the person lives on a day by day grind, which is horrible, everyone gets burned by doing that someday. The grind itself is the loss, having an item as prize in the end or not.
People have to stop being so oriented to farming, that's why I quit WoW, I realized it is a game built for farming only, even the PvP is based on the gear you farmed.
Thats why I redirected you to my post which better explains things. These all fall under "time spent doing something you don't want to do". Every one of them can be traced back to that. Any other example you could possibly think of would also trace back to that. I'll address each of your examples:
- losing access to certain areas
Connection: you want to be in that area, but you cannot, so now you have to spent time doing something else until you are able to be in that area again= a time sink
- losing ability to do certain things
Connection: you want to be doing a certain thing that you tempirarily cannot do, so now you have to spend time doing something else until can do that thing you actually wanted to do= a time sink
- losing character itself
Connection: you want to play the game, you cannot, so you wait until you can use you character again and doing something else instead= a time sink.
- etc.
I addressed this in my first post if you could reference that for better explanation.
Even if in the scenario where you lost something and now have to "redo content" that you really had a lot of fun with so you think "no big deal that just means I get to play more of what I enjoy", that could still be a time sink if the content plays the same way the next time, because the thing a lot of players "would rather do" would be doing content that is dynamic and plays differently for a different experience each time, not repeating the same exact experience even if it was fun the first time. Thus it could be a time sink to have to slog through that content again when they could have been having a unique experience had they not suffered the consequence that put them in that position. Thus a part of Risk= time spent doing something you don't want to do.
While some gamers find time sinks "exhilarating", others find time sinks disgusting. Time sinks can be demotivating, particularly if they feel arbitrary or punitive and bring no meaningful gameplay at all.
"You will get this loot if you grind this one thousand times, repeat repeat repeat."
Yeah I agree I mentioned that in my original post that some players don't like the stress that risk induces, but following the logic of risk under my definition as long as you can play some other type of content instead that you actually enjoy then it wouldnt be "risk" (for your described type of player specifically) to include content that has that dichotomy of time sink/reward because you could just play something else instead, wheras players that enjoy it could have that content available to them for the adrenaline rush.
The repetitive aspect is another separate gameplay related issue I also addressed in my original post about ensuring the content itself is worth investing into and the gameplay is fun and dymamic to where players want to play it, which would be necessary in order for the risk of a potential time sink to be effective at improving the gameplay experience for the thrill seeker players (basically the gameplay needs to be fun for people to want to avoid missing out on it). But for the dichotomy to exist there has to be the potential of "doing something you don't want to do" so there has to be some sort of time sink that prevents you temporarily from playing how you want to have that aspect of risk, meaning there needs to be alternative content to support that possibility. That could simply mean forcing someone to gather to work off xp debt even if they don't want to be gathering materials, it doesn't mean gathering can't be fun, but its still risk for people who don't want to have to do that. If they want to avoid that then they need to avoid corruption penalties. If they need to avoid corruption penalties then that introduces more risk during a duel, which can make it more fun for certain players.
Im pretty sure we agree for the most part but there might be some misinterpretation/semantics going on.
1
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited August 11
For Ashes, it's Steven's Pillar to have PvP intrinsicly tied to all Rewards.
Typically, when Steven talks about Risk, he really means PvP combat.
So far it seems like the risk is time being lost as a result of failing to succeed at the given activity (a pvp fight, raid, dungeon, etc)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I guess then 'Progression vs Investment' is a better understanding of what we are trying to get at here. Im starting to think "Risk v Reward" is a nebulous slogan to be honest. Risk of pvp happening vs reward just seems so narrow...
"Divinity is not just Love, Devotion or Purpose. Divinity is the hammer which we use to crush Corruption."
You guys need to not get bated on people saying risk vrs reward is time based. It is a surface level take and not really a strong one since at this point we may as well say any game is risk vrs reward because you play the game *sarcasm obviously*
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 you are going too general with your idea of time. There is a difference between playing a game for 1000 hours and playing a game for 1000 hours but 40% of that time was spent setting up to actually play the game or catching back up after failing. Time becomes apart of the risk factors when its a direct penalty to progression (exp loss/gear loss).
A good example of this is why most players do not hit 100 in path of exile each league. Once the penalty to exp becomes so high in terms of time required to catch back up each time you die, most people hit a point where that risk of death is just not worth it and stop playing.
Naa the issue is anyone here making a time arguing is being general which it literarily = people playing the game.
The risk is the death and how that comes about, you talking about recovering from your death is a result of the risk but not risk itself.
You are objectively wrong here.
Imagine you are playing a version of Ashes that is only slightly different to what we know, but this version of Ashes sees Steven working on your assumption that the risk is death, and not recovery from that death.
So, you are in PvP with me, you kill me, and I just instantly respawn in that same spot. I died, so according to your definition of risk, I paid the price. Now, however, I am free to just continue to attack you. No item drops, no experience debt, nothing like that as these things are all just things that take time to regain. Even respawn locations aren't a thing as they exist to provide a time element for players to get back to where they were, if we are assuming time isn't the risk factor in MMORPG's, then there can be no notion of spending time getting back to where you were.
If death is the risk, then once you have died, there is nothing more to do other than respawn in the same location. There can't even be a timer or countdown, as that is simply time.
Talk to any developer of any genre of game other than pay to win and ask them to describe risk in computer games as easily as they can. Every single experienced game developer will say the same thing - the only risk is time. This is just an objective truth.
You guys need to not get bated on people saying risk vrs reward is time based. It is a surface level take and not really a strong one since at this point we may as well say any game is risk vrs reward because you play the game *sarcasm obviously*
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 you are going too general with your idea of time. There is a difference between playing a game for 1000 hours and playing a game for 1000 hours but 40% of that time was spent setting up to actually play the game or catching back up after failing. Time becomes apart of the risk factors when its a direct penalty to progression (exp loss/gear loss).
A good example of this is why most players do not hit 100 in path of exile each league. Once the penalty to exp becomes so high in terms of time required to catch back up each time you die, most people hit a point where that risk of death is just not worth it and stop playing.
Naa the issue is anyone here making a time arguing is being general which it literarily = people playing the game.
The risk is the death and how that comes about, you talking about recovering from your death is a result of the risk but not risk itself.
You are objectively wrong here.
Imagine you are playing a version of Ashes that is only slightly different to what we know, but this version of Ashes sees Steven working on your assumption that the risk is death, and not recovery from that death.
So, you are in PvP with me, you kill me, and I just instantly respawn in that same spot. I died, so according to your definition of risk, I paid the price. Now, however, I am free to just continue to attack you. No item drops, no experience debt, nothing like that as these things are all just things that take time to regain. Even respawn locations aren't a thing as they exist to provide a time element for players to get back to where they were, if we are assuming time isn't the risk factor in MMORPG's, then there can be no notion of spending time getting back to where you were.
If death is the risk, then once you have died, there is nothing more to do other than respawn in the same location. There can't even be a timer or countdown, as that is simply time.
Talk to any developer of any genre of game other than pay to win and ask them to describe risk in computer games as easily as they can. Every single experienced game developer will say the same thing - the only risk is time. This is just an objective truth.
That death can decide something, like obtaining a unique item.
Certain legendary items may be limited to one per server realm at any given time.[7][8]
We had recently suggestion threads about wagers or gambling. One death can decide the fate of an item.
Items can be unique in other ways too, being gifted to the player, having the name of the crafter on them, who might never craft anymore for some reason.
These cases can actually happen if the player is corrupted. And will respawn close to his death location, just like you said. The death took the item away and no matter how many times tries to kill the bounty hunter, the item doesn't come back.
Becoming a mayor can also be virtually unique for a player, if that player loses support because of a death.
Losing a node in a siege can cause a new configuration and the old one might never come back again. That happens not because one death but is scaled up to deaths of more players.
But in general for normal game-play which implies repeatable content, the rewards or consequences are not unique and players can try to get the reward or restore lost state.
For Ashes, it's Steven's Pillar to have PvP intrinsicly tied to all Rewards.
Typically, when Steven talks about Risk, he really means PvP combat.
Risk exists in other form too. PvP is just very important because that hurts PvE players the most.
Economic node mayors are elected via a blind-bid auction where the citizen bidding the most money wins.[13][89][90][3]
Tavern games if added, will have risk too.
There will be jumping puzzles. You can fall and die without anyone pushing you.
Even if there is no PvP combat. Whoever is first to loot gets the loot.[54]
That can happen inside the party too and if players race to the NPC body over a lava pit, that can be a risky process, especially with the body collision.
But you dislike adrenaline rush so no matter how the risk manifests itself, you will not like it. If is not PvP then you will call it bad balancing and you will blame Steven anyway.
That death can decide something, like obtaining a unique item.
Unless death is tied to some form of time penalty, this is not true. If you lose the item because you respawned a distance away, then that lost item is due to travel time.
Even if there was a situation where you could lose out on that item, all you are risking is time. There is the time invested, and the time until that item is made available again.
If you run for mayor and miss out, you lose the time you spent running for mayor.
If tavern games have a gambling component associated with them, you risk the coin you bet and lose - which can then be regained via spending time earning coin.
If you fail a jumping puzzle, you lose the time you had invested in to said puzzle up to that point, as well as the time needed to go from the respawn location to the start of the puzzle, and the time needed to cover cost or repairs, and to regain experience debt from dying.
Time as a penalty can take many forms, but in an MMORPG, all penalties are simply a matter of time.
That death can decide something, like obtaining a unique item.
Unless death is tied to some form of time penalty, this is not true. If you lose the item because you respawned a distance away, then that lost item is due to travel time.
Or if the death count matters. If a little bit of travel is needed then time plays a role too.But is a bit extreme, like talking about physics, how nothing happens instantly and even the finger needs time to move from a key to another unless you are a bot.
Even if there was a situation where you could lose out on that item, all you are risking is time. There is the time invested, and the time until that item is made available again.
If you run for mayor and miss out, you lose the time you spent running for mayor.
If tavern games have a gambling component associated with them, you risk the coin you bet and lose - which can then be regained via spending time earning coin.
If you fail a jumping puzzle, you lose the time you had invested in to said puzzle up to that point, as well as the time needed to go from the respawn location to the start of the puzzle, and the time needed to cover cost or repairs, and to regain experience debt from dying.
Time as a penalty can take many forms, but in an MMORPG, all penalties are simply a matter of time.
Again, this is just an objective fact.
If you enjoyed the time spent, then you gained fun. It is not a penalty in that case but just well spent.
That time and enjoyment can be risk free or can have risk too, with various levels of adrenaline rush.
Only if the player says he could have spent the time differently and have more fun, can he say he lost time.
Or gold farmers who have an rmt business can say they lose time because playing is not done for fun.
Actually players who sacrifice fun to rush faster to a greater tangible reward have such problems. They rush to level up to reach "end game" content where the best drops happen. Then they run out of fun things to do because they have those items and there is no progression for them. (unless they sell them for real money)
In an mmorpg, even spending time with your guild mates is a reward. Having different situations and seeing their reactions creates memories. If they take their losses lightly, looking forward to the next opportunity, then those events are good memories too. The game is just a reason to spend time with other people.
Comments
I think you are going too general with your idea of time. There is a difference between playing a game for 1000 hours and playing a game for 1000 hours but 40% of that time was spent setting up to actually play the game or catching back up after failing. Time becomes apart of the risk factors when its a direct penalty to progression (exp loss/gear loss).
A good example of this is why most players do not hit 100 in path of exile each league. Once the penalty to exp becomes so high in terms of time required to catch back up each time you die, most people hit a point where that risk of death is just not worth it and stop playing.
Definitely took me a few deaths to get used to it, but that test also provided people with the most basic set of "gear", which let you at least do some basic stuff to restart your grind, so the impact on my gameplay was still not as big as some of other similar games might've had.
In Ashes, the only management would come from you not dying, because even if you don't have any droppable loot - you'll still go into XP debt and get other debuffs that relate to the "prevention of the same lvl of fun".
And depending on whether artisan tools are seen as "gear" when it comes to decay on death, even the pure artisans might get their fun stopped by PKer, if the artisan tool decays and/or gets destroyed on death.
This is why I will play the game.
Naa the issue is anyone here making a time arguing is being general which it literarily = people playing the game.
The risk is the death and how that comes about, you talking about recovering from your death is a result of the risk but not risk itself.
That could be 40% for some, 60% for some and 20% for others, that depends on how they play the game and how the choose to use their time. IE go out to high risk areas that are super far, or play it safe. The value of what each person obtains could be different as well based on what they are doing to feel its worth the risk.
There is a difference in talking about risk and talking about you not liking the result of death in general in the game or travel time. But if that death is tied to high conflict / reward zones which means high risk. Then perhaps its better to avoid going their constantly for some types of people.
Without doing to large a post for my point above that conflict zone is going to spread to other area potentially. Regrouping and getting back to your spot if a large war is going on will be a journey start to finish with content and pvp (potentially).
Im currently playing poe (lvl 93) and I'm a casual in it cause game is too deep so i just go as far as i can go with my own build and not being copy paste and search online for everything + buy all the gear. PoE has to be the worse example for you to use here since there is no down time in reaching the content. So i don't know how you are comparing this to poe, which makes me think you are not a big fan of risk.
The challenge in poe is your build + gear and how you can approach the challenges + surprises and overcome them. The more effective your build is the most easily you will level up. Though since the game is min maxed so hard when you are going from lvl 90-100 its difficult because you need a strong build for that if you are doing it on your own. It doesn't mean you can push on getting better gear and increasing your odds.
Even when i play poe i don't feel like I'm losing time or look at time. I'm looking at the level of danger between maps and my xp bar as it isn't tied to time. If i ran t17 or juiced 16 and my build was op leveling would be easy.
Hence where i bring it back and again say the view things take time is a general point on all games. Something taking time has nothing to do with risk, which the risk is the conflict. You are simply talking about the result of losing the conflict. Also people in conflict need the breathing room, you shouldnt be dying and then showing up in 1 min to attack them again. Which if that was the case is on the side of not wanting risk since you know yuo have nothing to lose and want to run it down every life.
You are actively taking the risk out of the game when you play it safe like you described. Like I tried to explain, playing the game to 100 is different from playing the game to 100 and trying to craft your own build and seeing if you can do bosses or juiced maps. I could just sit there farming t16s with my build, but there's no risk there and its much slower. A risk is when i decide to go 10 rounds in ultimatum or do a pinnacle boss not sure if my dps or skill can overcome the mechanics. Death at 96 is literally 2 hours of your life expunged from the character.
So when you put yourself in situations to gain more reward or exp at the risk of death, you are directly putting forth the chance that you are losing time invested in the character. In many cases its not even "more than normal" its just "normal" exp or reward that you are fighting for. This will absolutely be the case in ashes by the way. Funny enough Time is probably the most prominent of risks involved in ashes compared to most other mmos. exp loss on death is the purest form of it.
A) the potential consequence of spending time not doing what you want to do
(best example for me was playing one life modes like search and destroy in COD, cuz who wants to spectate while everyone else plays the game? Not me if I am trying to play/win), this makes you want to stay alive, thus evoking a sense of risk that gives you the "sweaty palms moments" and boosts adrenaline.
This assumes the player actually wants to stay alive to play the game/win though, which means the actually gameplay needs to be fun and worth investment from the player otherwise why would they care if they have to sit out, which is subjective, of course, based on individual player preferences (including the notion of risk itself and if players enjoy a stressful type of experience). Thats where the other aspects come into play like choice, reactivity, challenge, etc. to create investment into the gameplay for certain types of players and to create that opportunity for risk to be injected into the experience.
Obviously we get in our moods and sometimes couldn't care less about dying in a specific mode and just want to play something else, or just want to relax or whatever, which would eliminate the risk within the context of that situation. So if I feel like playing team deathmatch instead, then I now don't care about dying in search and destroy so there is no risk anymore, the real "risk" at that point would be being forced to continue to play search and destroy because I now prefer to be playing something else entirely. So I think the idea of risk itself is also contextual as well.
B- level Effort/Mastery
If someone is a master at running caravans, pvp, economy, etc., etc., I think they should get rewards that should allow them to better progress in the aggregate experience of those activities, compared to someone who just specializes and excels at one of those activities.
So, for example, in theory if you were going to offer different types of experiences to players (like being able to choose between purely playing arena pvp, vs. having the choice to play the open world). For something like arena pvp if it had progression; one could master arena pvp by simply playing arena pvp and progressing within that and could be equally competitive as someone else who has mastered the other systems in the open world (no advantage to open world player in arena pvp otherwise you force the arena pvp person to play open world and eliminate that content choice)- However, the arena pvper would not be as competitive in the open world, due to not mastering the other open world systems compared to the open world player, due to the additional mastery/effort that the open world player invested and thus was rewarded with that competitive advantage.
*Sword Art Online entered the chat*
Again this time argument isn't valid like I said it is akin to playing any game and saying it equals risk. Talking about xp loss is the closest thing you can get to that if you are making a argument for it. Which then you be saying they shouldnt have xp loss in the game. Though this is going to be minimal as i expect xp loss to only be around corruption which will be very minimal in the game.
Arguments around i died so i need to walk back to my spot and it takes time is not risk. The risk is the encounter that yuo were pvping in and died.
So ill just repeat the way you are explaining time is just playing AoC in general which at that point playing any game is risk suddenly. You are mostly complaining about the affect effect of dealing with high risk situation. It is extremely clear to know what is the actual risk factor by looking at the extreme. If you remove the time element all together is it still high risk, answer is yes as the people attacking you is why you died. If you remove the people attacking you element it will be deemed as almost 0 risk.
Yep, this pretty much. I think a chance of some sort of loss of a resource should be present in pretty much all risk vs. reward style gameplay. XP, gold, materials, reputation, whatever. All "tangible" things that take time to regain. Very rarely, if ever, should the cost only be the time spent. Time spent playing is never a risk unless the game is really bad and the time spent playing it hurts your soul and requires you to go to therapy after.
I heard there are people who don't like to see the numbers going down.
What do you do if you get a freehold and you lose it after a siege? With stored resources too?
im saying if he has a issue then it would be the xp loss, my point is even if that is the case corruption isn't going to be wildly a pvp common thing for most people in the game.(mainly around nonconsensual pvp if you are actively trying to fight back against everyone that that is on you.).
If you die to mobs you will have people to res you. Most likely you are not going to be dying on repeat. If you are bad not much else i can say but it being a skill issue. Most pve in the game is not going to be raid level obviously.
Loss and Gain are two sides of the same coin with respect to:
I generally believe these things should be aimed at proportionality. The more time, resources, organization, perks, etc. invested into an experience the more gain should be available to be earned. So, zerging a raid boss requires very little investment. Ganking a harvester requires very little investment, but the split should be inversely proportional to the number of players (aka actual loot drop not guaranteed "gank reward."
Dwarven Guild est. 1996. Hammers High!
Risk is losing, reward is earning, it is this simple. So, in Ashes of Creation there's barely any risk in pure PvE, if you die you will have to spend a few gold coins for repais and maybe materials, that's all, you will have the death penalty too.
Not sure if PvE will engaging in AoC:
Most of the danger will come from PvP
Just because you are "playing the game" doesn't mean you are automatically having fun though, if you aren't doing what you want to be doing.
When its all said and done you care about losing resources and other tangible things because of the time it took you to acquire them.
And yes the game is supposed to be fun, but the risk of a potential time sink can add to the fun for some players, but with that comes.....a potential time sink where you may not be doing what you want to be doing at a given moment due to the consequences reaped. Its the dichotomy of the good and the bad that makes the good better. It may be frustrating to work off xp dept or walk to the nearest harbor cuz you ship got blown up (which is a time sink taking you from your preferred gameplay), but that's the point, its supposed to be frustrating for the types of players that enjoy the extra risk factor because it makes it more rewarding when you put someone else in that position instead of yourself, and it makes the situation more tense when you think you might end up as the loser.
Please reference my above post for further detail on the relationship between risk, time sinks, and preferred gameplay, and the contextuality of risk.
Resources is not the only thing that could be lost, there are other types of losses:
Losing the time you spent to acquire something is not important, only miners think that way. If you played and joined a party, and had your gaming session and acquired one item then you played the game. It is consumed, what matters is consuming the game.
Time is only "lost" if the person lives on a day by day grind, which is horrible, everyone gets burned by doing that someday. The grind itself is the loss, having an item as prize in the end or not.
People have to stop being so oriented to farming, that's why I quit WoW, I realized it is a game built for farming only, even the PvP is based on the gear you farmed.
While some gamers find time sinks "exhilarating", others find time sinks disgusting. Time sinks can be demotivating, particularly if they feel arbitrary or punitive and bring no meaningful gameplay at all.
"You will get this loot if you grind this one thousand times, repeat repeat repeat."
Unintended consequences should be seen as part of the experience, even they don't always contribute positively to the enjoyment. Farmy people find consequences frustrative, then farmy people will feel that the time spent dealing with setbacks outweighs the "reward", this happens due to the Blizzard effect by creating the extreme repetition in WoW.
So, to me, effective game design should have an understanding between risk and reward without causing excessive frustration or forcing players to spend large amounts of time on activities that they find tedious or counterproductive.
For many people a full loot pvp game is just overly punishing and they feel helpless, specially if there is a mix of PvE grind after loot mobs for dozens of hours and then you lose the gear you acquired in a 10 seconds gank
In both cases, it is the dev's fault!!!! Everybody started copying Blizzard's model of grinding for gear for days and weeks since they had a monthly subscription, and then because of this model there is also no loot, aboslutely no loot!
I would rather have specific regions and specific contents where you can lose loot and where you can farm faster... and THAT would be true risk vs reward, and then in the noobie areas and let the farmy people farm during the entire month and lose no loot at all.
I absolutely love my idea of gambling your own loot in the arena and people depositing gear in the arena bank so they can have many fights and take other people's loot and combine with your gear and improve your game in the arena.
Thats why I redirected you to my post which better explains things. These all fall under "time spent doing something you don't want to do". Every one of them can be traced back to that. Any other example you could possibly think of would also trace back to that. I'll address each of your examples:
- losing access to certain areas
Connection: you want to be in that area, but you cannot, so now you have to spent time doing something else until you are able to be in that area again= a time sink
- losing ability to do certain things
Connection: you want to be doing a certain thing that you tempirarily cannot do, so now you have to spend time doing something else until can do that thing you actually wanted to do= a time sink
- losing character itself
Connection: you want to play the game, you cannot, so you wait until you can use you character again and doing something else instead= a time sink.
- etc.
I addressed this in my first post if you could reference that for better explanation.
Even if in the scenario where you lost something and now have to "redo content" that you really had a lot of fun with so you think "no big deal that just means I get to play more of what I enjoy", that could still be a time sink if the content plays the same way the next time, because the thing a lot of players "would rather do" would be doing content that is dynamic and plays differently for a different experience each time, not repeating the same exact experience even if it was fun the first time. Thus it could be a time sink to have to slog through that content again when they could have been having a unique experience had they not suffered the consequence that put them in that position. Thus a part of Risk= time spent doing something you don't want to do.
Yeah I agree I mentioned that in my original post that some players don't like the stress that risk induces, but following the logic of risk under my definition as long as you can play some other type of content instead that you actually enjoy then it wouldnt be "risk" (for your described type of player specifically) to include content that has that dichotomy of time sink/reward because you could just play something else instead, wheras players that enjoy it could have that content available to them for the adrenaline rush.
The repetitive aspect is another separate gameplay related issue I also addressed in my original post about ensuring the content itself is worth investing into and the gameplay is fun and dymamic to where players want to play it, which would be necessary in order for the risk of a potential time sink to be effective at improving the gameplay experience for the thrill seeker players (basically the gameplay needs to be fun for people to want to avoid missing out on it). But for the dichotomy to exist there has to be the potential of "doing something you don't want to do" so there has to be some sort of time sink that prevents you temporarily from playing how you want to have that aspect of risk, meaning there needs to be alternative content to support that possibility. That could simply mean forcing someone to gather to work off xp debt even if they don't want to be gathering materials, it doesn't mean gathering can't be fun, but its still risk for people who don't want to have to do that. If they want to avoid that then they need to avoid corruption penalties. If they need to avoid corruption penalties then that introduces more risk during a duel, which can make it more fun for certain players.
Im pretty sure we agree for the most part but there might be some misinterpretation/semantics going on.
Typically, when Steven talks about Risk, he really means PvP combat.
I guess then 'Progression vs Investment' is a better understanding of what we are trying to get at here. Im starting to think "Risk v Reward" is a nebulous slogan to be honest. Risk of pvp happening vs reward just seems so narrow...
Yeah, im beginning to realize that and I think thats really disappointing.
Imagine you are playing a version of Ashes that is only slightly different to what we know, but this version of Ashes sees Steven working on your assumption that the risk is death, and not recovery from that death.
So, you are in PvP with me, you kill me, and I just instantly respawn in that same spot. I died, so according to your definition of risk, I paid the price. Now, however, I am free to just continue to attack you. No item drops, no experience debt, nothing like that as these things are all just things that take time to regain. Even respawn locations aren't a thing as they exist to provide a time element for players to get back to where they were, if we are assuming time isn't the risk factor in MMORPG's, then there can be no notion of spending time getting back to where you were.
If death is the risk, then once you have died, there is nothing more to do other than respawn in the same location. There can't even be a timer or countdown, as that is simply time.
Talk to any developer of any genre of game other than pay to win and ask them to describe risk in computer games as easily as they can. Every single experienced game developer will say the same thing - the only risk is time. This is just an objective truth.
Indeed - having money doesn't make one correct on every count. Steven can be objectively wrong sometimes too.
That death can decide something, like obtaining a unique item.
Certain legendary items may be limited to one per server realm at any given time.[7][8]
We had recently suggestion threads about wagers or gambling. One death can decide the fate of an item.
Items can be unique in other ways too, being gifted to the player, having the name of the crafter on them, who might never craft anymore for some reason.
These cases can actually happen if the player is corrupted. And will respawn close to his death location, just like you said. The death took the item away and no matter how many times tries to kill the bounty hunter, the item doesn't come back.
Becoming a mayor can also be virtually unique for a player, if that player loses support because of a death.
Losing a node in a siege can cause a new configuration and the old one might never come back again. That happens not because one death but is scaled up to deaths of more players.
But in general for normal game-play which implies repeatable content, the rewards or consequences are not unique and players can try to get the reward or restore lost state.
Risk exists in other form too. PvP is just very important because that hurts PvE players the most.
Economic node mayors are elected via a blind-bid auction where the citizen bidding the most money wins.[13][89][90][3]
Tavern games if added, will have risk too.
There will be jumping puzzles. You can fall and die without anyone pushing you.
Even if there is no PvP combat. Whoever is first to loot gets the loot.[54]
That can happen inside the party too and if players race to the NPC body over a lava pit, that can be a risky process, especially with the body collision.
But you dislike adrenaline rush so no matter how the risk manifests itself, you will not like it. If is not PvP then you will call it bad balancing and you will blame Steven anyway.
Even if there was a situation where you could lose out on that item, all you are risking is time. There is the time invested, and the time until that item is made available again.
If you run for mayor and miss out, you lose the time you spent running for mayor.
If tavern games have a gambling component associated with them, you risk the coin you bet and lose - which can then be regained via spending time earning coin.
If you fail a jumping puzzle, you lose the time you had invested in to said puzzle up to that point, as well as the time needed to go from the respawn location to the start of the puzzle, and the time needed to cover cost or repairs, and to regain experience debt from dying.
Time as a penalty can take many forms, but in an MMORPG, all penalties are simply a matter of time.
Again, this is just an objective fact.
If you enjoyed the time spent, then you gained fun. It is not a penalty in that case but just well spent.
That time and enjoyment can be risk free or can have risk too, with various levels of adrenaline rush.
Only if the player says he could have spent the time differently and have more fun, can he say he lost time.
Or gold farmers who have an rmt business can say they lose time because playing is not done for fun.
Actually players who sacrifice fun to rush faster to a greater tangible reward have such problems. They rush to level up to reach "end game" content where the best drops happen. Then they run out of fun things to do because they have those items and there is no progression for them. (unless they sell them for real money)
In an mmorpg, even spending time with your guild mates is a reward. Having different situations and seeing their reactions creates memories. If they take their losses lightly, looking forward to the next opportunity, then those events are good memories too. The game is just a reason to spend time with other people.