BLEEP the Casuals.

We keep seeing these "protect the causals" posts, frankly I'm sick of them. Here's a list of reasons why altering gameplay for the sake of people who aren't invested in the game is bad (if that isn't reason enough already):

1) Removing features because SOME people can't handle them is wrong. The goal of AoC shouldn't be to pander to as large of a group as possible, simplifying things to the most mediocre levels, it should be to make a good game and receive a following based on a good design.

2) Easy =/= Good. If I play a video game that requires me to learn absolutely nothing from it mechanically, chances are I can play an exact copy of the game somewhere else. Casual players don't want to learn anything new, they want to play the same game presented in a different format, till the end of time. I expect to be bad at something in this game, and I will overcome it, because I'm not a quitter and I want to be challenged. Will a casual player?

3) "WHAA! I have responsibility's now!" And so your new job/family/situation should effect the outcome of a game enjoyed by a potential million +/- player game? I'm sorry you don't have as much time on your hands as you used to, but frankly that's just a "not my problem" moment. It's also a really stupid argument, because If you don't have time to do basic "casual" things like leveling or grinding, I don't want you in my raid group, because if I give you gear I'll never see you again.

4) When a new game comes out, the casuals leave, and all the shitty choices made for their sake stick around.

Do I want people to not play because they are casual? Of course not. Do I mind lowering the skill floor if it doesn't forsake the nature of the game? Of course not. Do I think that these players should have a dramatic impact upon a game that they play 1 hour a day for 1 month and then quit?
Of. Course. Not.

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Dygz

Where do people get these crazy definitions of casual??

SongRune

Sweatycup wrote: »

If bob works for 7 days a week and john only works 3 days a week, they both work the same job, obviously bob is going to make more. It's no different. Now i'm not saying there isnt a system that could be built in a game that can properly level out that playing field, i just don't know of one.

I am willing to say that.

If spending more time or having more skill (either works) provides some reward, then people who invest that time or skill have more of that reward than those who do not.

The question is only this: Is the reward meaningful? If it's not, it's not really a reward is it? If it is, then people who earned it (through whatever method) have something meaningful that others do not, and this will always make some of those others unhappy.

The only questions that truly matter therefore are:
1. Can you provide a reward that is only meaningful to the type of person who is both able and willing to invest in it, and not meaningful to others?
2. Do you want to reward people at all?

From there, it's just a question of "how much?", and that will always be subjective.

The simple problem is that "able to invest" is always going to be different between time-casual and time-hardcore, and between skill-casual and skill-hardcore players. You will always have "interested, willing, but unable to invest", regardless of what that investment is. And that player will always be unhappy.

What investments do you want to reward, and with what?

No matter what you choose, there will always be people who are unable to invest as much as others. If you want your game to contain rewards at all, this is something you have to accept.

Sweatycup

SongRune wrote: »

Sweatycup wrote: »

If bob works for 7 days a week and john only works 3 days a week, they both work the same job, obviously bob is going to make more. It's no different. Now i'm not saying there isnt a system that could be built in a game that can properly level out that playing field, i just don't know of one.

I am willing to say that.

If spending more time or having more skill (either works) provides some reward, then people who invest that time or skill have more of that reward than those who do not.

The question is only this: Is the reward meaningful? If it's not, it's not really a reward is it? If it is, then people who earned it (through whatever method) have something meaningful that others do not, and this will always make some of those others unhappy.

The only questions that truly matter therefore are:
1. Can you provide a reward that is only meaningful to the type of person who is both able and willing to invest in it, and not meaningful to others?
2. Do you want to reward people at all?

From there, it's just a question of "how much?", and that will always be subjective.

The simple problem is that "able to invest" is always going to be different between time-casual and time-hardcore, and between skill-casual and skill-hardcore players. You will always have "interested, willing, but unable to invest", regardless of what that investment is. And that player will always be unhappy.

What investments do you want to reward, and with what?

No matter what you choose, there will always be people who are unable to invest as much as others. If you want your game to contain rewards at all, this is something you have to accept.

I think the latter of having to gamble on loot/progress may be wrong if you really want to level out the playing field. If you allow people to choose the loot they want maybe one piece per run it would give casuals time to catch-up till the next content release comes out. However you would need a steady stream of new gear to be looted again. And that costs money+constant development. This might also push people towards pvp as alot of extreme players with insane play-time would be bored and choose to pvp and contribute in other areas such as economy. Not saying you couldnt do that it just seems alot of people are stuck on the dopamine, liking not knowing when and how your play time will be spent with a guaranteed gain. However beyond loot itself from dungeons or bosses systems like gathering it's almost impossible to make it fair in comparison again to the casual vs no-lifer. No matter what you do, as you said in a way, you can never please everyone.

Mag7spy

Rng is better then getting a item 100% that wouldn't be good long term design. Any average and hardcore player will get all the gear they want at an extremely fast rate. Then the gear chase would be over and people would spam more content when. And when that content does come out for the people that are left will beat that content in a week.

Ludullu

What if we had a donation-like system. Time-hardcore players would obviously have excess of gear, so why not have a system that lets them exchange that excess gear for upgrades to their main gear, while sending all that excess down the power lvl pyramid.

You could tie this to social structures in the game so that players get better augments from their preferred social structures by investing their overtime into their future enemies. Make each gear piece have some arbitrary point value and set different point prices for different upgrades. Add some diminishing returns to repeatable donations, so that a player couldn't get 1k points for donating 1k t1 boots.

And on the side of the low lvl/casual players, have a tower-like solo instance where clearing floors would give them points that they need to combine with rewards for some open world quests, in order to buy the donated gear. This would give those time-casual people some constant content and a way to catch up faster. Add some reward scaling for clearing floors super fast and you'll have yourself a reward for all the hardcore-challenge casual-time players.

This system doesn't add gear into the overall market out of nowhere. It rewards everyone for doing things that they would've been doing either way and/or just like doing. It creates a soft equalization of gear on the whole server w/o creating direct systems that do so.

If you put some quantity limiters on the donation amounts per node (considering node's lvl) and add a caravan-like pvp event for transferring all the excess gear to another node - you have yourself an additional fun thing for the high lvl pvpers to do.

The instance tower thing could even go up to max lvl and give out some title/cosmetic rewards, akin to FF14's "The Necromancer" title.

CROW3

It’s an interesting concept, @NiKr - how would you avoid cutting into the crafting market? Do any augments to the gear automatically disappear, or are they subject to the overall degradation %? Would donation be restricted to only other players (e.g. not alts)? Just within a guild? A node?

insomnia

Though i agree with OP's statement. The way he wrote it, makes me think he is an immature manchild.

I don't think this game will be completely for me. I will give it a try. But i don't think certain things should be changed, even though i don't like that. And i don't think Steven will chanve them. Steven has a vision for the game, and he should make that vision. If it works. One think is how things work in theory, another is in practice. If the game isn't for me, i'll just move along

Ludullu

CROW3 wrote: »

It’s an interesting concept, @NiKr - how would you avoid cutting into the crafting market? Do any augments to the gear automatically disappear, or are they subject to the overall degradation %? Would donation be restricted to only other players (e.g. not alts)? Just within a guild? A node?

You could tie artisanal profession progress to the tower instance rewards. Make it be a catalyst that you need in order to use the tower points. This, on top of the usual "I need money so I'll just sell what I crafted on the market instead of donating it" should be enough? Though obviously testing would be required.

I think they should go with degradation. Or maybe at least decrease in power and you'll have to power them back up with stuff that you can buy with points.

I saw donations be mainly tied to nodes. I even thought about them being tied to purely religion and divine nodes, but I feel like that would be an unneeded overcomplication of the system. You'd donate the gear through your preferred social structure, but the gear itself would go towards the node bank (which would also play into node sieges). The bank would have a limit on donations, at which point it get some overflow and you'll need to transfer that overflow in smth like a caravan. This would increase gear trade between nodes, increase pvp in the area and high lvl pvpers would be interested in attacking these caravans to get themselves some free upgrade points.

As for alts, you'd still have direct trading so it's not like you couldn't just give your alt the gear itself. The main point of this system (at least as I see it) is to help casuals catch up to the higher lvl people w/o implementing super direct catchup mechanics and w/o adding gear outside of the owpvp systems. All the gear within the donation system would still be acquired through the usual "farm - craft- sell/trade/donate" means. There'd still be pvp for the resources required for that gear. Caravans would still run between nodes, in order to provide the resources required for crafting.

And through the "catalyst" part of the Instance Tower thing, you could have any kind of content that you consider super important for a newbie/lowbie to experience. It could be small low lvl party bosses, pure traveling, social structure interactions, questing, node tasks, etc etc. The Tower itself would just be a way for high skill low time players to powerboost themselves faster (because imo they deserve to do so), while also giving some quick content for any low skill low time casual player who might not be in the mood to just cut grass or trees for their artisanal profession.

Ferryman

Definition of casual, core and hardcore player is more complex today because so much has changed in past 20 years, for example. Thus, researchers have tried to find new ways to define players. Here is one definition model which might need a little bit chewing. Anyhow, according to this research most of the players can be consider as "casuals" who plays games more like a filler when they have time for that. Therefore, this audiance is reasonable to take into consideration as well.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techspot.com/amp/news/80094-hardcore-casual-no-longer-adequate-defining-gamers-research.html

Dygz

CROW3 wrote: »

It’s an interesting concept, @NiKr - how would you avoid cutting into the crafting market? Do any augments to the gear automatically disappear, or are they subject to the overall degradation %? Would donation be restricted to only other players (e.g. not alts)? Just within a guild? A node?

Don't even need a system for that, though.
Just do it. Feels good to help other people with donations. That's all the reward that's needed.
Pay it forward.

Dygz

Ferryman wrote: »

Definition of casual, core and hardcore player is more complex today because so much has changed in past 20 years, for example. Thus, researchers have tried to find new ways to define players. Here is one definition model which might need a little bit chewing. Anyhow, according to this research most of the players can be consider as "casuals" who plays games more like a filler when they have time for that. Therefore, this audiance is reasonable to take into consideration as well.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techspot.com/amp/news/80094-hardcore-casual-no-longer-adequate-defining-gamers-research.html

I mean - those are definitions for gamers, rather than players.

Ferryman

Dygz wrote: »

Ferryman wrote: »

Definition of casual, core and hardcore player is more complex today because so much has changed in past 20 years, for example. Thus, researchers have tried to find new ways to define players. Here is one definition model which might need a little bit chewing. Anyhow, according to this research most of the players can be consider as "casuals" who plays games more like a filler when they have time for that. Therefore, this audiance is reasonable to take into consideration as well.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techspot.com/amp/news/80094-hardcore-casual-no-longer-adequate-defining-gamers-research.html

I mean - those are definitions for gamers, rather than players.

Technically yes, however, both can be considered as a same thing in video game context. Anyway, this was just one research but at least it shows that things have changed and evolved and it is hard to use only definitions such as casuals or hardcore because there is so much more in that field nowadays.

Dygz

Not really.
Those gamer personas are meaningless in terms of helping me understand the playstyles of people I'm playing with in-game and who I'm likely to enjoy playing with in an MMORPG.

Ferryman

Dygz wrote: »

Not really.
Those gamer personas are meaningless in terms of helping me understand the playstyles of people I'm playing with in-game and who I'm likely to enjoy playing with in an MMORPG.

The point was not make you to understand the playstyles who you like to play with but rather show that it is today hard to categorize people only to casuals or hardcore. Different playstyles can be defined e.g. with help of Bartle's Taxonomy or something similar updated closer today. It would be interesting to find a research about player type distribution in video games and if it would be about MMORPG even better.

Ludullu

Dygz wrote: »

Don't even need a system for that, though.
Just do it. Feels good to help other people with donations. That's all the reward that's needed.
Pay it forward.

As much as I agree with this sentiment and will be doing just this in the game, I know for sure that the majority of people won't be doing this. Especially not for random people on the server. You might pass down your old gear to a trusted guild member, but distributing a ton of gear to a ton of people is something only the very generous and "those who RP a good guy" people would do - and those are a rarity.

A system like the one I suggested would just add motivation to sharing your stuff with others. Just like social structures will have rewards for climbing their ladder instead of just going "oh well, you can just go RP as a thief. I bet that's gonna be enough for you". Yes, pure RP would be enough for a few dozen people on the server, but everyone else wouldn't participate in that part of the game if there weren't augments and other potential rewards within the system.

CROW3

Dygz wrote: »

CROW3 wrote: »

It’s an interesting concept, @NiKr - how would you avoid cutting into the crafting market? Do any augments to the gear automatically disappear, or are they subject to the overall degradation %? Would donation be restricted to only other players (e.g. not alts)? Just within a guild? A node?

Don't even need a system for that, though.
Just do it. Feels good to help other people with donations. That's all the reward that's needed.
Pay it forward.

I was thinking for bound gear.

Dygz

NiKr wrote: »

As much as I agree with this sentiment and will be doing just this in the game, I know for sure that the majority of people won't be doing this. Especially not for random people on the server. You might pass down your old gear to a trusted guild member, but distributing a ton of gear to a ton of people is something only the very generous and "those who RP a good guy" people would do - and those are a rarity.

A system like the one I suggested would just add motivation to sharing your stuff with others. Just like social structures will have rewards for climbing their ladder instead of just going "oh well, you can just go RP as a thief. I bet that's gonna be enough for you". Yes, pure RP would be enough for a few dozen people on the server, but everyone else wouldn't participate in that part of the game if there weren't augments and other potential rewards within the system.

It's not pure RP.
It might not be something that hardcore extremists do.
I dunno how actually passing the gear you've acquired to others equates with merely RPing theft. Especially within guilds.

I also don't understand the conncection between climbing the ladder of social structures and RPing a thief. Do you mean joining a Thieve's Guild Social Org?

Ashes doesn't have very much bound gear.
"A lot of what we experienced in games that usually come before us is that many things are account bound and they're soulbound to your character... Instead very little here is character bound. Very very little. The vast majority of gear- yes you will get quest related gear as rewards- but it won't be let's say one set in one dungeon and you must run the dungeon over and over. Instead we want to really emphasize the reliance on the economy and crafters and gatherers and processors to support a majority of the gear structure in-game, combined with that of world raid bosses and dungeon bosses; not a repetitive quest line through a single dungeon."
---Steven 2018

"The vast majority of items that exist in the game are tradeable. There is no soul bound or bind on equip or bind on pick-up. The economy is built in a way that requires not only the deconstruction of items in order to continue to advance on the crafting side of things, but also the repair system for gear degradation is not some trivial, simple gold sink. They actually require a portion of raw and processed materials in order to repair certain types of items. So, in that regard, we wanna make sure that the economy is a closed system, but is not bound-dependent. It is open, so can be traded and sold."
---Steven 2020

Ludullu

Dygz wrote: »

It's not pure RP.
It might not be something that hardcore extremists do.
I dunno how actually passing the gear you've acquired to others equates with merely RPing theft. Especially within guilds.

I also don't understand the conncection between climbing the ladder of social structures and RPing a thief. Do you mean joining a Thieve's Guild Social Org?

Yes, the Thieves Guild was just given as an example to prove a point, it wasn't meant to be taken literally, as you often do.

And person who likes to RP could rp as a thief. The game could provide them with a "Thief" title and the RP player might be satisfied with just that, because they create their own gameplay on top of the tools the game provides. Or, well, at least that's what I've heard about how people RP in mmos. If your RPing is different, pls do explain the difference.

But Ashes doesn't just give you a title. It provides you benefits for participating in social orgs system. It gives you motivation to move through their ladder, because there's better benefits at the top of it. And the system I suggested would function in the same way. Of course there's pretty much no bound gear in the game, but what I suggested is not just giving a piece of gear to your mate. I suggested a system that would give out way more gear to way more people, while giving benefits to the players that provided said gear.

In my experiences of being a guild crafter of many years, you usually have waaaay more gear than what your guild requires. And that was in a game w/o an artisan profession system. From what I've seen in NW, people crafted fucking thousands of pieces of useless gear just to level up their professions. Roughly the same thing will happen in Ashes, but instead of just crafting low lvl shit to bump up your artisan XP, I suggested a system where you'd craft a good piece of gear that no one in your guild needs (because they're already overgeared or just don't require that particular piece) and you can then donate that piece to the overall gear donation system in exchange for some benefits to your character. The high lvl player benefits from this, the low lvl players benefit from it, there's no "came out of nowhere" gear acquisition mechanics that are usually tied to instanced content in mmos - as I see it, that's a win-win for all sides. And all the non-crafter players can still just buy gear from crafters/market and get their upgrades from their social org by donating that gear through the system (this would be on top of the standard planned rewards of the social org system).

derp

As an x hardcore gamer who is now the director of a large web design company, with a wife and child, it's safe to say I no longer have the time I'd like to, to play games. This being said, I completely understand your sentiment (even if it was a bit too harsh) and honestly wouldn't expect Steven to compromise the game just because I have less time. Hell, if anything giving me a tougher game just makes the time I do get to play time well spent. Though I'd be sad if I didn't get to enjoy lategame content in the short-term, I'd just have to stick to it until I got there

derp

I think something else worth noting is that the age of the audience has changed drastically and there has to be some level of understanding that a large portion of the mmo playerbase started gaming in their teens and are now 20-35 with real life commitments. This isn't an anomaly, this is THE NORM. I wouldn't want Steven to compromise any content for the sake of 'casuals' but it would be foolish for intrepid to not consider the enjoyment of players that have less time too. Remember, intrepid receive income from a monthly subscription, not the amount of hours a player spends on the game.

The best way for intrepid to ensure that the game is enjoyable for hxc/casual players is by making sure that low level content is enjoyable and that there is enough horizontal progression in the game. This is something that ALL players will appreciate regardless of the hours they spend and honestly I assume they are already way ahead of me on this one..

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