Retaining player pop after total loss

Scenario:
A player joins AoC for the first time and becomes a citizen of a large and stable city. Acquires land, gear and saves months worth of items/materials in their home.
3 months after playing, the city comes under siege and they lose their homeland and all of their belongings other than what they have in their inventory. They had no secondary home or alt character and their friends/connections scatter to different Nodes.

What systems or driving forces are going to be in place to motivate this person to keep playing the game?

Context: I have Alpha2 and I am hyped for AoC, asking as it's one of the very few things that concerns me most with AoC player retention.
I often look at how Albion has become a gankfest of PVP and is much less of an enjoyable mmo for many character progressive focused mmo players.

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Comments

Yuyukoyay

You can still be a citizen of the conquered node after they ransack it and potentially ask them for some of your stuff back. xD It's important that stuff isn't made too cheap just because of the risk of losing it as well. Assuming these systems are balanced properly. Bad tuning can ruin a game so it's important to get that right when thinking about this issue.

Noaani

Yuyukoyay wrote: »

You can still be a citizen of the conquered node

Actually you can't.

A "conquered" node is reduced to level 0, and a node needs to be level 3 in order to have citizens.

Merek

How could those people even handle a game such as Minecraft then? Lazy players should seek out alternative games.

Noaani

Merek wrote: »

How could those people even handle a game such as Minecraft then? Lazy players should seek out alternative games.

This isn't about being lazy or not, it is about the fact that one of the things that distinguishes MMORPG's from almost all other genres is the notion of a persistent world. The genre is all about progression, and many players are not willing to accept that level of loss in a persistent world.

As I said above in this thread, I don't think many people will leave the game over losing their home to a siege, but people will leave the game due to continued loss.

JustVine

Good game design with loss gives you some sort of feeling of choice or control. Usually systems, with loss are bad when they take away from this sense of agency.

Loss (of progress in particular) is difficult in this regard. Minecraft, Darksouls, even Mario, recognize this issue. This is why they try to give you a second chance. If you succeed after the second chance, it makes you feel good, possibly even better than if you never fell in the hole or got stabbed by the hidden skeleton in the first place because you conqured the personal obstacle. Game companies are fielding focus testing and research into how to optimize the second chance and how to minimize the feeling of agency loss all the time. It is a pretty big deal if your game does it wrong as you lose a lot of players over time. It's just basic human psychology.

Mmos are far more difficult, because other players are acting against you and the other player is generally taking away your agency. This is the real reason why people hate being ganked. They feel a loss of agency. In a game with no 1v1 balance I can only imagine it being so much worse. Node wars can have this same feeling depending on their design, but amplified. I highly doubt node wars will always be even. Especially with many large guilds. In fact if Intrepid isn't accounting for it to be commonly uneven I would be surprised (because that is short sighted game design and they have shown themselves to not be so far.)

AoC pushes the limit of good game design just on its core design principles and systems. This is why I think they would benefit highly from my solution above. It still fits their design culture as far as I understand it, and adds more layers to the politics of the game as well. It gives you the opportunity for a comeback type feeling and helps mitigate your sense of loss a little bit while also giving you an outlet for some feeling of agency in the situation.

Merek

Noaani wrote: »

Merek wrote: »

How could those people even handle a game such as Minecraft then? Lazy players should seek out alternative games.

This isn't about being lazy or not, it is about the fact that one of the things that distinguishes MMORPG's from almost all other genres is the notion of a persistent world. The genre is all about progression, and many players are not willing to accept that level of loss in a persistent world.

As I said above in this thread, I don't think many people will leave the game over losing their home to a siege, but people will leave the game due to continued loss.

Retaining everything from any and all interactions is a themepark principle. Sure, I expect people to find it jarring after having their homes consistently destroyed, but I guess that'd push them to align themselves with groups or guilds that aren't weak or easily oppressed, no? That's where the politics come into play. Now if they were smart, they'd avoid building a house altogether, then they wouldn't have to be concerned with losing it. It's also worth noting that this game will avoid the ArcheAge landrush issue too.

Noaani

Merek wrote: »

Retaining everything from any and all interactions is a themepark principle. Sure, I expect people to find it jarring after having their homes consistently destroyed, but I guess that'd push them to align themselves with groups or guilds that aren't weak or easily oppressed, no?

Not really, as this same principle works on the guild level just as it works on the individual level.

If you are in a guild that is always losing, that guild is likely to move on to the next game, or back to the last game. In PvP, there is always a side that loses, and the side that wins gets stronger, making them more likely to win next time, at which point they will get stronger, making them more likely to win next time.

This is an effect that is well known to game developers, and is the principle reason Crowfall is being developed the way it is. It is also why Civilization Online was such an attractive prospect to XLGames, as it was going to be a non-persistent PvP "MMO", and XL had seen the drastic effect of this loop in every version of Archeage (which is why the notion that pay to win killed that game is not really accurate - the game died in areas without it and also in areas where players were more open to it at exactly the same rate).

I'm not proposing any solutions to this, as since actual professionals in this field have not been able to come up with a solution for well over two decades (this effect is also seen in early L2), I am not arrogant enough to think that I would have the solution.

All I am doing is pointing out the problem to those that may not be aware of it.

Ramirez

Noaani wrote: »

Merek wrote: »

How could those people even handle a game such as Minecraft then? Lazy players should seek out alternative games.

This isn't about being lazy or not, it is about the fact that one of the things that distinguishes MMORPG's from almost all other genres is the notion of a persistent world. The genre is all about progression, and many players are not willing to accept that level of loss in a persistent world.

As I said above in this thread, I don't think many people will leave the game over losing their home to a siege, but people will leave the game due to continued loss.

Many players doesn t like persistent gear/items to, thats why i play Rust, Eve , Albion, mo, Valheim, I love the adrenaline of losing my things for real and believe or not thats create the real immersion in an mmorpg.

So what? They can lose that lazy people but can get much more from a Niche that is really weak right now in terms of MMORPGs

The majority PvE players Will leave anyway, back for ffx14,wow, Eso , Riot game, and the 1001 PvE MMORPG that Will Come. People Will Stay for Open world pvp, conquest, polítics, economy, crafting and pvx

Noaani

Ramirez wrote: »

So what? They can lose that lazy people but can get much more from a Niche that is really weak right now in terms of MMORPGs

You ask so what... and then answer your own question.

Sure, Intrepid can take the position that these players can just leave and thats fine.

What that means is that Ashes is the next game in line from Lineage 2, Darkfall, Wildstar, Archeage, BDO and Albion. All of those games are in various stages of the same fate, and that is what Ashes will be.

What that means is that rather than Ashes being the game that takes that weak niche corner of the MMO scene and makes it popular, it will simply be another in the long line of weak games in that niche corner.

You can't do the same thing and expect a different outcome, after all.

If you want Ashes to be the game that finally makes it in that niche, then Ashes needs to find a way to keep those players that you are happy to see go.

Dygz

People still retain the vast majority of their stuff - they just move to a new location.
I don't know why people would be saving months worth of mats - but you still only lose a portion of mats in Siege, it shouldn't feel too bad for most players.

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