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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
It's not like nodes are new, they're just new to to us (nerd alert)
ekadzati
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
The way I see the node system is roughly encapsulated in this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.2281
What I'd LIKE to see is math models like the one linked being used to make games that are player driven, not mechanic driven, story driven, law driven, culture driven, or actual behavioral emergence boxes in which explication is part of the mechanic (i.e., only explicit contract is enforceable).
All it requires is as much attention to the behavioral economics of social exchange and a means to report/measure a given territory's economic and crime stats. Maybe some community tools for law enforcement that are open democracy driven.
Imagine a game where you were more motivated to solve problems than to fight over them. But when you did fall into conflict requiring war, you choose "Just" war or "Total" war it actually MATTERS if you're killing non-combatants because they're bound to contract not to fight as much as you are to defend them. And there are COSTS for all of them.
You know, the tools by which any society manages long-term civilization, and of course, all the Machiavellian appearance play around plausible deniability. Heh.
Long game hopes in a short-cycle (and often short-sighted) market, me.
What I'd LIKE to see is math models like the one linked being used to make games that are player driven, not mechanic driven, story driven, law driven, culture driven, or actual behavioral emergence boxes in which explication is part of the mechanic (i.e., only explicit contract is enforceable).
All it requires is as much attention to the behavioral economics of social exchange and a means to report/measure a given territory's economic and crime stats. Maybe some community tools for law enforcement that are open democracy driven.
Imagine a game where you were more motivated to solve problems than to fight over them. But when you did fall into conflict requiring war, you choose "Just" war or "Total" war it actually MATTERS if you're killing non-combatants because they're bound to contract not to fight as much as you are to defend them. And there are COSTS for all of them.
You know, the tools by which any society manages long-term civilization, and of course, all the Machiavellian appearance play around plausible deniability. Heh.
Long game hopes in a short-cycle (and often short-sighted) market, me.
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I can't see how that would be enjoyable.
Take a whole bunch of people, provide them with anonymity, and then put them all in to a world where it is them that decide how things operate, rather than a mechanic or system.
Doesn't seem to me like it would be enjoyable.
Since games are literally just a matrix of systems and mechanics, in order to create a game that is not driven by these things, the game would need to have enough of those systems and mechanics coded in to the game so that players never hit a wall that tells them they are actually still constrained by systems. The only plausible way to do this would be to use an advanced (as in, not yet developed) AI.
We all have things we would love to see in an MMO that are simply not plausible yet - this is not something that is unique to you. You just seem to be rather inarticulate in your description of what you want.
Games/MMOs are already player driven: players input to/interact with game mechanics, and this paper just covers one type of game-theory algorithm that can be used; mechanics are just (parts of) algorithms.
It sounds more like you just want the game world to have more in-depth social/political systems so players have more avenues of interaction to solve problems and the game world reacts more realistically.
More depth is nice, but I wouldn't say that fighting over a problem isn't a valid way to solve it either.
For example, if one node starts a war with another node, the consequence of that war will probably something along the lines of one node being destroyed and a bunch of players losing some in-game assets. Not a big deal. Compare that to real life where if a country declares war with another country, the result will likely be a huge amount of death, not to mention economic repercussions that will cause strife and even more death for years to come.
You really can't compare the two at all.
You can’t make a game be identical to real life because that isn’t fun. Nothing is gained from having permanent death, nothing is gained from punishing players for engaging with systems as intended (node wars and sieges, in this case), no one benefits from that. Not the PvP diehards, not the players devoted to trading, not the PvE raiders.
Alright, let's say you are playing Ashes and a dragon is approaching your node, intent on destroying it. You are given 2 options:
1. Talk to the dragon and convince it to go away
2. Fight the dragon
Now I don't know about you but I (and I'm sure a lot of other players too) would prefer to fight the dragon than to reason with it because, guess what, that is far more engaging gameplay.
Really, what you are suggesting seems to be another one of those "I want my games to be realistic!" things without stopping to think how it would negatively impact gameplay. There's a difference between adding depth to a system and creating barriers just for the sake of "realism".
Except even in terms of complete realism, Fight or flight has been our reality as a species far more then not. Civilization has been pushed forward more by conquest and destruction than any sort of peaceful cooperation. Even today's relative peace is in large part enforced by the idea that we have the capacity to so horribly annihilate each other.
Scope, budget, fun, necessity...take your pick.
MMOs have a political reality; it's not like it's completely missing. Players discuss issues and negotiate with each other outside the game. Since this meta level of play is widely known, it is factored into MMO design. Maybe the devs decided it's enough to simulate the politics needed to work in tandem with the other game systems.
Also, pointing out that some game experiences are carefully curated to the point of manipulation to be fun doesn't make them not fun or necessarily mean that fun is not the intent of design. It's simply talking about the phenomenon/experience of fun at different levels of abstraction: experiential and chemical.
Not all games are sinister business products or designed to mirror life to any significant degree. Many are artful or literary experiences designed to elicit emotion. Others, including MMOs, are purposely abstracted from reality to deliver a level of fantasy or escapism. They incorporate elements of social belonging and working toward medium-to-long term rewards on top of short-term conditioned dopamine hits. Yes, the effects of gaming is a separate discussion, and it requires a look at multiple facets, not just a focus on the elements of repetition and stress.
If you think competition is not the driving force of everything in life, you should consider taking biology, history and economics papers along with the articulation paper you really need to look in to.
In order for cooperation to exist, competition needs to exist.
It's got nothing to do with the "ol' DK effect". I tried reading the paper and got totally lost within the first paragraph, and it didn't even seem relevant to this discussion.
Anyway, I'd like to remind you that this is a game, NOT real life. Outside of a few edge cases, the majority of games are focused on competition and combat rather than cooperation via diplomacy.
It is probably best described as an academic paper that can be used to help others write academic papers.
My guess is the OP searched for game design papers containing the word "node".
This post boils down to a preference for a type of game experience. It's not necessary to read the academic papers explaining the mechanics or theory behind the systems you prefer. You already gave practical examples.
To the original point, sure, there is no reason you can't make a game with all the proposed systems; it might just mean re-evaluating your player demographic.
PVP is not an acronym for Players Valuing Peace, it is Player Versus Player. The 'versus' usually does not indicate cooperation.
That paper is about multiplayer, not MMORPG. It basically says that you should model very small interactions and extrapolate the rest. Try that with real life. It ain't gonna work.
Do you mean that I should model the interactions with me and 4 friends. Then apply that to the larger groups around us. So therefore, everyone gets along well, plays games, and drinks a lot.
For someone claiming we need more cooperation in games, you sure do like causing conflict a lot in your posts....
Anyway, I never said that change is bad, but change for the sake of change, in the name of "realism" is pointless when it comes to mmorpgs.
It has no place in discussion outside of people conducting research on multi-player games, and no relation at all to nodes as they will appear in Ashes. This forum thrives on differences of opinion.
It is practically the only way these forums DO function.
Take away the developer threads and occasional help topic, and difference of opinion is basically all that is left.
Arbiter of place?
Well, no. More like the only person here that has read and understood the paper in question (working on the assumption that only two of us have read it). I mean, I didn't read it at the time it came out (2013) or when it was revised (2015), because I took one look at the title and realized the purpose of the paper.
The part of the title that says "For Game Theory" is a fairly easy way to tell that the paper is designed to advance Game Theory study, not to provide any practical advances in actual game design. The fact that it has been cited by over 650 other papers says it does a good job at what it was intended for.
Failing that though, after reading it yesterday, it was very easy to see that my initial assumption about the paper was in fact correct. The fact that it has no conclusion should have also given something away to you (papers without conclusions are meant as a source of further study).
My assumption is that you came across it while reading the Wikipedia page on game theory - since it is used as a source there.
So, in your opinion, the average player would be drawn to a game where negotiation and diplomacy are the primary ways of resolving conflict, rather than combat. Now while there are games that are non-combat-orientated, these are very much a niche category not mainstream. Your argument that such a game will produce greater market shares and longevity is simply false.