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"Mis-Land Management" - Solutions to preventing Extinction level events

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Comments

  • LinikerLiniker Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    edited November 2022
    Vaknar wrote: »

    Say Guild X is the main guild behind the development of node Y and a neighboring guild A is racing to develop Node B. The two guilds and all of the citizens of their respective nodes are competing for which node will gain supremacy and will become a parent node.

    If Guild X decided to go near Node A to take as many resources as possible, would you call this player abuse, or behaviors and systems working as intended? 🤔💭

    Working as intended, and I love this design. I hope we get to test it soon so you can get meaningful feedback based on data, a dozen people saying a system is garbage after a 10 minutes dev chat about it doesn't mean much.

    I love the node systems and the player driven aspects of the game, looking forward to test and play this, I'd hate to see yet another game going for what is 'safe' where everyone can play their singleplayer campaign in a lobby world just minding their own business.

    People that don't want to be bothered, and engage, be part of a guild, get to know their mayors and be part of a real mmorpg community with all it's ups and downs have plenty of good games out there that allows for that.
    img]
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  • Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani; Claims EQN was cancelled due to Rallying Cries SPECIFICALLY making the game unfun: This system was one of the things in EQN that was deemed to be unfun (it is actually the only specific thing I have been able to get anyone that worked on EQN to specifically label as unfun). If it is in Ashes, it will be unfun.
    Are you alright there?

    The thing here you claim I said, followed by you quoting verbatim where you thi k I said it,are not saying the same thing.

    You claimed I said EQN was cancelled specifically because of rallying crys. All I said was it is the only specific thing I could get someone to admit was unfun.

    Literally not the same things at all. Honestly not even close.

    Yeah yeah yeah, blah blah, keep on tellin yourself that :wink:

    So, for context and clarification, you think the statements "this is one member of this set that I am aware of, though I have no knowledge of how many members this set has" and "this is absolutely the only member of this set" are the same statement.

    Because that is what I said - I commented on that being one member of the set in question. You have represented that I am saying it is the only member of that set, which I clearly did not say.

    And the angle of the light from the sun reflecting off mars hit the swamp gas, and that's what you saw....

    a041a46bc59f2a35a88ad59408bf8e34.gif
  • GoalidGoalid Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Liniker wrote: »
    Vaknar wrote: »

    Say Guild X is the main guild behind the development of node Y and a neighboring guild A is racing to develop Node B. The two guilds and all of the citizens of their respective nodes are competing for which node will gain supremacy and will become a parent node.

    If Guild X decided to go near Node A to take as many resources as possible, would you call this player abuse, or behaviors and systems working as intended? 🤔💭

    Working as intended, and I love this design. I hope we get to test it soon so you can get meaningful feedback based on data, a dozen people saying a system is garbage after a 10 minutes dev chat about it doesn't mean much.

    I love the node systems and the player driven aspects of the game, looking forward to test and play this, I'd hate to see yet another game going for what is 'safe' where everyone can play their singleplayer campaign in a lobby world just minding their own business.

    People that don't want to be bothered, and engage, be part of a guild, get to know their mayors and be part of a real mmorpg community with all it's ups and downs have plenty of good games out there that allows for that.

    I like the system too, I just hope while we're doing our ecological warfare there's a method that flags people so they can't grief a node and be protected by the corruption system. As well as enough systems to let players do quests to raise the land management score back up.
    bRVL6TR.png


  • oh oh i just thought of the solution to all our problems the war is over! no more arguments!

    If you are not the citizen of the node you are in, you will become flagged as a combatant for 30 seconds after gathering.

    This encourages players to stick to their own area and gives them the tools to properly manage their node against outsiders. It isn't forcing pvp on gatherers they are making the choice to move into a riskier area if they decided to go outside of their node.

    Slap a paten on it and ship it out Steven gogo.
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    Commissioned at https://fiverr.com/ravenjuu
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    Okeydoke wrote: »

    I mean you can see in what you quoted from me that I didn't say all, I said some. I also said, "None of these groups are monoliths." Which means I'm not assuming all gatherers would want the same systems.
    Indeed. To be clear, I wasnt suggesting that you were assuming all gatherers wanted a dynamic system, I am suggesting Steven assumes that.
    I don't think this is exactly a system you can make opt in.
    If this is true (and determining if it is true or not is it's own discussion) then the thing to do is to leave gathering as it is.

    For most players (at least that I know) gathering is considered the lowest common denominator activity in an MMO. It is the thing most players do when there is nothing else to do. If you have plans with friends at 8PM but are able to log on at 7PM, no worries, spend an hour gathering.

    I'm fairly sure it is obvious to all of us here, and I have no doubt at all that you would agree with this statement - but you don't mess with a lowest common denominator activity without explicitly providing a substitute activity to fill that void. Any change to gathering along the lines of what has been suggested by Intrepid (let alone the places posters here have run with it) removes the concept of gathering being a lowest common denominator activity.

    If an acceptable activity cant be conceived, you shouldn't mess with gathering.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    edited November 2022
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani; Claims EQN was cancelled due to Rallying Cries SPECIFICALLY making the game unfun: This system was one of the things in EQN that was deemed to be unfun (it is actually the only specific thing I have been able to get anyone that worked on EQN to specifically label as unfun). If it is in Ashes, it will be unfun.
    Are you alright there?

    The thing here you claim I said, followed by you quoting verbatim where you thi k I said it,are not saying the same thing.

    You claimed I said EQN was cancelled specifically because of rallying crys. All I said was it is the only specific thing I could get someone to admit was unfun.

    Literally not the same things at all. Honestly not even close.

    Yeah yeah yeah, blah blah, keep on tellin yourself that :wink:

    So, for context and clarification, you think the statements "this is one member of this set that I am aware of, though I have no knowledge of how many members this set has" and "this is absolutely the only member of this set" are the same statement.

    Because that is what I said - I commented on that being one member of the set in question. You have represented that I am saying it is the only member of that set, which I clearly did not say.

    And the angle of the light from the sun reflecting off mars hit the swamp gas, and that's what you saw....
    Nono, what I saw was someone that claimed to read a sentence, explain what that sentence said and got it totally wrong.

    No swamp gas involved at all.
  • Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani; Claims EQN was cancelled due to Rallying Cries SPECIFICALLY making the game unfun: This system was one of the things in EQN that was deemed to be unfun (it is actually the only specific thing I have been able to get anyone that worked on EQN to specifically label as unfun). If it is in Ashes, it will be unfun.
    Are you alright there?

    The thing here you claim I said, followed by you quoting verbatim where you thi k I said it,are not saying the same thing.

    You claimed I said EQN was cancelled specifically because of rallying crys. All I said was it is the only specific thing I could get someone to admit was unfun.

    Literally not the same things at all. Honestly not even close.

    Yeah yeah yeah, blah blah, keep on tellin yourself that :wink:

    So, for context and clarification, you think the statements "this is one member of this set that I am aware of, though I have no knowledge of how many members this set has" and "this is absolutely the only member of this set" are the same statement.

    Because that is what I said - I commented on that being one member of the set in question. You have represented that I am saying it is the only member of that set, which I clearly did not say.

    And the angle of the light from the sun reflecting off mars hit the swamp gas, and that's what you saw....
    Nono, what I saw was someone that claimed to read a sentence, explain what that sentence said and got it totally wrong.

    No swamp gas involved at all.

    Don't be too hard on yourself. #lotsofswampgas
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani; Claims EQN was cancelled due to Rallying Cries SPECIFICALLY making the game unfun: This system was one of the things in EQN that was deemed to be unfun (it is actually the only specific thing I have been able to get anyone that worked on EQN to specifically label as unfun). If it is in Ashes, it will be unfun.
    Are you alright there?

    The thing here you claim I said, followed by you quoting verbatim where you thi k I said it,are not saying the same thing.

    You claimed I said EQN was cancelled specifically because of rallying crys. All I said was it is the only specific thing I could get someone to admit was unfun.

    Literally not the same things at all. Honestly not even close.

    Yeah yeah yeah, blah blah, keep on tellin yourself that :wink:

    So, for context and clarification, you think the statements "this is one member of this set that I am aware of, though I have no knowledge of how many members this set has" and "this is absolutely the only member of this set" are the same statement.

    Because that is what I said - I commented on that being one member of the set in question. You have represented that I am saying it is the only member of that set, which I clearly did not say.

    And the angle of the light from the sun reflecting off mars hit the swamp gas, and that's what you saw....
    Nono, what I saw was someone that claimed to read a sentence, explain what that sentence said and got it totally wrong.

    No swamp gas involved at all.

    Don't be too hard on yourself. #lotsofswampgas

    See, now you're posting at a Mag level.
  • NerrorNerror Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    edited November 2022
    Just a few notes here that tie into the land management system, based on several posts:
    1. Not being able to freely do what you want in the game is pretty much universal. This includes gathering whatever and whereever you want. There are limitations to everything. This is not a bad thing. Having an ever-changing gathering experience based on a land management system can stop things from going stale. As with all things, implementation matters.
    2. Intrepid puts node affiliation over guild affiliation in the game. This means the incentives for making players care a lot about their nodes have to be strong, or one the single most important overall systems in Ashes is pointless. This has to include caring about the well-being of parent and vassal nodes as well. Vassal nodes have to have real tangible benefits for being vassals to a successful parent node and vice versa. And the citizens in vassal nodes have to be happy to be in those vassal nodes through ingame incentives, and not simply there because their parent nodes are full. Without that the system fails.
    3. I am sure a majority of the playerbase will initially come into the game thinking guild affiliation is all that really matters, because this is true for most other MMORPGs. It's up to Intrepid to change that through those ingame incentives.
    4. I like the previously mentioned notion of this being a game of nations of a sort. Guild and node alliances need to be really important. There is still room for individuals not caring much for the politics of it all, but not without limits. Much like Eve Online there are boundaries and areas where they might not be welcome, but it will definitely be less hardcore PvP oriented than in Eve due to the corruption system.

    The land management system doesn't have to mean doom and gloom for some gatherers at all. It can add strategic and political aspects to gathering resources that I've mostly only seen in Eve Online before, which to me is a good thing. It can add variety and spice and unpredictability to a system that in many other games have none.

    Clearly some people like routine. In some games they have their little gathering route they can log in and complete in 20 minutes, with somewhat expected results. Ashes might not be able to provide that experience day in and day out with a land management system that keeps things fresh and malleable. I think that's good. There are other games for that.

    My main request for the land management system is that it allows for players to actively increase the land management score of an area in equally significant and rewarding ways. Don't just make systems that are destructive by nature, where the only way to counteract extinction of an area is to stop all gathering through inaction or by force. The example @Vaknar gave with two competing nodes is good and something I want, but I think there has to be more to it. I also want the other side of the coin, if you will.

    Please let us be good stewards and wardens of an area. Let us plant trees and flowers and help wildlife grow by feeding them, or even breeding them and releasing them into the wild. And let us be rewarded for doing so in more direct and tangible ways than simply having healthy land around us:
    • Quest rewards
    • Node reputation
    • A buff on the character that increases drops of rare resources when gathering.
    • Perhaps even access to rare materials that are otherwise impossible to get. A gift from the land kinda thing. These could be quest rewards or from drops.
  • Nerror wrote: »
    [*] Intrepid puts node affiliation over guild affiliation in the game. This means the incentives for making players care a lot about their nodes have to be strong, or one the single most important overall systems in Ashes is pointless. This has to include caring about the well-being of parent and vassal nodes as well. Vassal nodes have to have real tangible benefits for being vassals to a successful parent node and vice versa. And the citizens in vassal nodes have to be happy to be in those vassal nodes through ingame incentives, and not simply there because their parent nodes are full. Without that the system fails.
    [/list]

    Indeed, the parent-vassal relationship in AoC is a game mechanic to bring the nodes themselves together.
    If players have to care about the well being of the parent node, that means they also have to see the sibling nodes as allies. Players will have to defend caravans running between sibling nodes, which are indirectly vassals of the greater metropolis. For the same reasons they should care about the resources. After-all these resources go into the caravans which somehow sustain the nodes themselves.

    Then there might be alliances and trade agreements between nodes of different metropolis ZoI.
    In that case, those allied players should also have the incentive to protect the resources which eventually will reach them via caravans. If they don't, then it may lead to war.

    Which node will become a metropolis can be seen as a random event even if is not.
    Players who want to be in high level nodes, will have to move as soon as their node becomes a vassal.
    Which might eventually be expensive because
    Taxation rates scale based on when a player joined a node as a citizen. The goal is to exert financial pressure on node populations by making taxes increasingly expensive as nodes advance, rather than putting in place hard population caps.[7]

    So guilds formed before the server starts buy cheap apartments in lvl 3 nodes and might have to stay where they are. Or might be split between a few nodes but always trying to stay in the same Metropolis system.

    When a node falls and guilds or solo players move, going directly to a Metropolis might be way too expensive.
    And might even be risky. If the metropolis cannot defend it's vassals, then it may also fall soon.

    In this context where players should avoid over-harvesting, my wish is the game to offer the possibility to burr the actions of a player.
    What I want to see is a system where there is a trade agreement between nodes and that is broken because players of one node go and take resources from the other. Or the trade agreement survives because it turns out that only a few players broken the rules and the node took some actions.
    It should somehow involve reputation and deception and attempt to identify those who break the rules and declare them enemy of the state (or something similar but less drastic).

    It can also happen (if the game is made so) that the resources are enough to sustain a node to stay at level 3 or 4. But as it grows, it need more resources. If you as a mayor of a level 4 node allows harvesting too many of them, the parent node or the metropolis itself may get upset about your policies as the they are responsible for the survival of all nodes in the structure.
    September 12. 2022: Being naked can also be used to bring a skilled artisan to different freeholds... Don't summon family!
  • Okeydoke wrote: »
    I just take issue with Nikr's and many other's portrayal of "gatherers." I'm a gatherer, spent thousands of hours gathering over decades of mmo play. I'm very excited about dynamic resource spawn. Don't know why more games haven't done it. It solves so many problems. In New World I probably could have ran my static iron mining route blindfolded. That's great and all, kind of convenient, mined a ton of iron ez pz. But if I was offered something a little less braindead, I'd be down for it.
    And I hope that a lot, if not most, gatherers are like that. I just saw a parallel between Dygz' dissatisfaction with the open seas change and the potential issues that gatherers might have with land management.

    I'm not trying to say that everyone is the same. It's just that, from what I've seen/heard so far, quite a lot of people dislike systems that prevent them from playing how they want to play. And while there's obviously those who prefer that (me included), I feel like they're more of a minority within their group.

    Just like a lot of people like to say (justifiably so sometimes) that most owpvpers just want to kill weaker players instead of having equal pvp, even though from my experience that is not the case.
  • DygzDygz Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    I still don't see how the Land Management system prevents Gathering or even deters Gathering - it just means Gatherers will sometimes have to travel to a new farming spot.

    Doesn't have to be most OWPvPers to be a significant problem for non-PvPers.
  • Dygz wrote: »
    I still don't see how the Land Management system prevents Gathering or even deters Gathering - it just means Gatherers will sometimes have to travel to a new farming spot.
    But if I want to level up my node and do stuff inside of its ZOI to help my node and the land management system prevents that - I can't do what I want to do. I'd assume you wouldn't want to explore seas all the time, but when you do - you can't cause it'll autoflag you.

    While yes, the seas are a permanent thing so, in theory, you can never go there because it would always flag you, but I'd imagine that relatively speaking there's a chance that the amount of explorable stuff in the sea would take even less time than any future LMSed overharvested lands.

    Open seas imply no connections to nodes, which means that their dynamism is way lower, if there is even any. So, theoretically, there's only a few places that you could explore there and they won't change in the future (unless expansions). But LMS will be influencing stuff as long as players farm lands. And as that UO video says, players will always be locusts. And Intrepid would have to balance the LMS against that.
    Dygz wrote: »
    Doesn't have to be most OWPvPers to be a significant problem for non-PvPers.
    True, but if it's a fraction of owpvpers against thousands of pvers - how many of those pvers would get killed often? But a ton of pvers complain about the system as a whole just because THERE'S A CHANCE! And quite often they say seem to imply that this chance is almost always 100%.

    But they seem to forget that raiders quite often don't have their preferred content (Noaani not included cause EQ2 had hundreds of raids for him to constantly farm), not even talking about AoC's open worldness of bosses. PvPers also have preferences that include time-limited content, so they have to do smth else in the mean time (for me it's sieges).

    In other words, almost every type of player spends some amount of their time not doing their preferred gameplay. So why should gatherers be an exception to that rule? Dying once or twice every several hours is but a tiny fraction of the overall gameplay, while sieges would only happen once every few weeks (unless you participate in each node siege and start them yourself) and top raids will have long respawns and in Ashes they'll be contested too.

    And even then! As you said yourself, the gatherer can usually just move to another location and avoid their potential attacker, while raids and sieges might just not be happening for some time so other types of players will literally have nowhere to go to enjoy their preferred content.

    tl;dr everyone will have times where they can't enjoy their preferred content, including gatherers.
  • Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    DarkTides wrote: »
    Noaani; Claims EQN was cancelled due to Rallying Cries SPECIFICALLY making the game unfun: This system was one of the things in EQN that was deemed to be unfun (it is actually the only specific thing I have been able to get anyone that worked on EQN to specifically label as unfun). If it is in Ashes, it will be unfun.
    Are you alright there?

    The thing here you claim I said, followed by you quoting verbatim where you thi k I said it,are not saying the same thing.

    You claimed I said EQN was cancelled specifically because of rallying crys. All I said was it is the only specific thing I could get someone to admit was unfun.

    Literally not the same things at all. Honestly not even close.

    Yeah yeah yeah, blah blah, keep on tellin yourself that :wink:

    So, for context and clarification, you think the statements "this is one member of this set that I am aware of, though I have no knowledge of how many members this set has" and "this is absolutely the only member of this set" are the same statement.

    Because that is what I said - I commented on that being one member of the set in question. You have represented that I am saying it is the only member of that set, which I clearly did not say.

    And the angle of the light from the sun reflecting off mars hit the swamp gas, and that's what you saw....
    Nono, what I saw was someone that claimed to read a sentence, explain what that sentence said and got it totally wrong.

    No swamp gas involved at all.

    Don't be too hard on yourself. #lotsofswampgas

    See, now you're posting at a Mag level.

    This Mag guy sounds awesome.

    Mag>Noanni.

    I have a command for you to follow Noanni, since I've reached Mag level.

    I ORDER you to reply to as many posts on these forums as possible, especially this post. Now every time you make a post, you'll remember it was because I told you to.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg3q6qW2aKo

  • Dygz wrote: »
    I still don't see how the Land Management system prevents Gathering or even deters Gathering - it just means Gatherers will sometimes have to travel to a new farming spot.

    Doesn't have to be most OWPvPers to be a significant problem for non-PvPers.

    Yeah I would agree that they will just move elsewhere, like grazing. We seem to get little drips of info as time goes on, which causes a stir.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    Nerror wrote: »
    Just a few notes here that tie into the land management system, based on several posts:
    1. Not being able to freely do what you want in the game is pretty much universal. This includes gathering whatever and whereever you want. There are limitations to everything. This is not a bad thing. Having an ever-changing gathering experience based on a land management system can stop things from going stale. As with all things, implementation matters.
    2. Intrepid puts node affiliation over guild affiliation in the game. This means the incentives for making players care a lot about their nodes have to be strong, or one the single most important overall systems in Ashes is pointless. This has to include caring about the well-being of parent and vassal nodes as well. Vassal nodes have to have real tangible benefits for being vassals to a successful parent node and vice versa. And the citizens in vassal nodes have to be happy to be in those vassal nodes through ingame incentives, and not simply there because their parent nodes are full. Without that the system fails.
    3. I am sure a majority of the playerbase will initially come into the game thinking guild affiliation is all that really matters, because this is true for most other MMORPGs. It's up to Intrepid to change that through those ingame incentives.
      a thing. These could be quest rewards or from drops.

    I mostly just want to touch on these three points.

    To the first, yes, in Ashes you cant always fo what you want. However, that doesnt mean this needs to apply to literally every activity in the game - in fact it should not.

    For your second and third points, Intrepid need to change their intention here.

    When you are talking about players coming to the game by themselves and finding their way, node first perhaps makes sense. When you are talking about players that have been in the same guild with the same people across multiple games, for multiple years (or indeed multiple decades, as is now the case for some people), persisting with this notion that players will care more about their node than their guild shows a total lack of understanding of human beings as a species.
  • Arya_YesheArya_Yeshe Member
    edited November 2022
    Vaknar wrote: »

    I'm curious what your interpretation of this scenario would be:

    Say Guild X is the main guild behind the development of node Y and a neighboring guild A is racing to develop Node B. The two guilds and all of the citizens of their respective nodes are competing for which node will gain supremacy and will become a parent node.

    If Guild X decided to go near Node A to take as many resources as possible, would you call this player abuse, or behaviors and systems working as intended? 🤔💭

    Does gathering generates xp for the node? If so, then:

    1) Is outside the Zone of Influence?
    A: Than that's just being smart, there's no abuse in any kind here

    2) Is within the Zone of Influence?
    A: It depends if gathering generates xp for the node...

    If gathering generates xp for the node:
    • I will call X as naive, because if they do a lot of PvE at B, then B will level and become master of Y
    • Because Y is now a vassal of B, then Y is level capped under B
    • Now build A can go steal lumber at Y as much as they please, this will feed Y of xp and all excess xp will be funneled back to B
    • The excess xp comes from the vassals without any kind of loss
    • So in the end of the day, B won because A was smart, now A can permanently make sure B will not be deleveled while the land is regrowing at B

    If gathering doesn't generate xp, then:
    • X did a smart move when started stealing lumber
    • Then A has to immediately declare war on X and kill them all, protect their resources at B and go steal lumber at Y
    The main thing that differentiates us from other MMOs is that we have a living, breathing, reactive world... Our world is separated into zones, which are then separated into what we call nodes. Nodes are sort of invisible zones of influence that listen to everything that a player does; so as players gain experience from killing things, gain experience from doing quests, gain experience through crafting things, the node is also gaining that experience. Once a node gains enough experience it levels up and then starts to attract NPCs to it .[33] – Jeffrey Bard

    I could not find yet where is the proof that gathering gains xp for the node.
    PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
  • What if you aggro monsters from node B, aggro it to outside B zone of inflience and kill the monster outside the node?

    Will that generate xp for B?
    PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
  • Arya_YesheArya_Yeshe Member
    edited November 2022
    Do we already know if gathering generates xp for the node?

    In the wiki I found:
    • killing things: does this include PvP?
    • doing quests
    • crafting things

    How about gathering?
    How about PvP?
    PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
  • NerrorNerror Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    edited November 2022
    Noaani wrote: »
    Nerror wrote: »
    Just a few notes here that tie into the land management system, based on several posts:
    1. Not being able to freely do what you want in the game is pretty much universal. This includes gathering whatever and whereever you want. There are limitations to everything. This is not a bad thing. Having an ever-changing gathering experience based on a land management system can stop things from going stale. As with all things, implementation matters.
    2. Intrepid puts node affiliation over guild affiliation in the game. This means the incentives for making players care a lot about their nodes have to be strong, or one the single most important overall systems in Ashes is pointless. This has to include caring about the well-being of parent and vassal nodes as well. Vassal nodes have to have real tangible benefits for being vassals to a successful parent node and vice versa. And the citizens in vassal nodes have to be happy to be in those vassal nodes through ingame incentives, and not simply there because their parent nodes are full. Without that the system fails.
    3. I am sure a majority of the playerbase will initially come into the game thinking guild affiliation is all that really matters, because this is true for most other MMORPGs. It's up to Intrepid to change that through those ingame incentives.

    I mostly just want to touch on these three points.

    To the first, yes, in Ashes you cant always fo what you want. However, that doesnt mean this needs to apply to literally every activity in the game - in fact it should not.

    Mainly because I believe semantics to be important, yes, literally every single thing in Ashes has limitations and players can't all get and do what they want. We can argue about the degree and nature of limitations we like though, and land management vs. no land management is one of those.
    Noaani wrote: »
    For your second and third points, Intrepid need to change their intention here.

    When you are talking about players coming to the game by themselves and finding their way, node first perhaps makes sense. When you are talking about players that have been in the same guild with the same people across multiple games, for multiple years (or indeed multiple decades, as is now the case for some people), persisting with this notion that players will care more about their node than their guild shows a total lack of understanding of human beings as a species.

    Au contraire! :)

    Humans are tribal, yes, and we generally want and need that group affiliation, and I think we both agree that guilds are akin to tribes right? Ashes is taking that to the next logical step with the node system. It perfectly aligns with human nature. Tribes form alliances. Alliances form mega-alliances. Once you combine that with holding land (nodes), we start seeing nations forming. Call it kingdoms if you prefer. A single unaligned node can be considered a city-state, and historically they weren't typically comprised of a single homogenous group. There were all kinds of groups and factions within. Rome grew from a city-state to being a vast empire.

    A node can have patron guilds, defined basically as the guilds that contribute the most to the node. This provides direct and tangible benefits to the guild and it's members: Stockmarket access, abilities, guild hall, guild emblems for armor, and guild missions to improve the guild. This incentivizes guilds to focus on one node, or a few nodes at the most, in order to get those benefits.

    Node and guild affiliations can be complementary to each other and they can be at odds with each other. Much of that is up to the players to decide individually. If a guild leader decides to break with a node, there is a good chance they'll lose a bunch of guild members if they are fond of their current node. I think this is an amazing thing. It keeps the sometimes bloated egos of guild leaders in check and it provides the players with options and the game overall with a whole new layer of dynamic politics and conflict and reconciliation that not many games can provide.

    In RL I would sure as hell rather belong to a nation than to a tribe with only loose alignments with other tribes. And if my tribe in the nation decided to go against said nation, and I believed in the values and ideals of that nation, I would seriously consider switching tribes. I am not alone in this I am sure. In the game I have some RL friends I'll be playing with, and we'll come to a consensus and take it from there whether to leave the guild or leave the node if a conflict occurs. And yes, I understand the concept of old guilds that go from game to game. I am in one that was formed 20 years ago. I joined it 14 years ago.

    Tying all this back to land management, if Intrepid can deliver on the idea that node affiliation really matters to a lot of people, sometimes even over guild affiliation, and they provide both constructive and destructive ways to manage the land, I can absolutely see the value in it. It's a lot of "ifs" for sure, but that's what A2 is for.
  • OkeydokeOkeydoke Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Dygz wrote: »
    I think emergent systems is not the issue, but, yes... that's why I like to share my Bartle Score:
    Explorer 87%; Socializer 73% ; Achiever 47%; Killer 0%.

    That is an incredible bartle score.

    I remember I asked you one time something like, so what do you do when your village is attacked? And you said something like, "Sometimes you get back from exploring and the whole village is gone." lol that reply still kills me, so awesome.

    Anyway, I think you're going to be pretty safe exploring everywhere except the open sea. And even there it will be "safe" in the sense that it's harder to catch people by surprise on the open sea in many situations. In Archeage, it could be pretty hard sometimes to catch people at sea who don't want to be caught.

    Depends on a lot of things though, the width and length of the lawless zone. The different speeds of ships. Draw distance/visibility on the sea. How long it takes to get a motionless ship underway etc. I dunno, we'll see.
  • DygzDygz Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    edited November 2022
    NiKr wrote: »
    But if I want to level up my node and do stuff inside of its ZOI to help my node and the land management system prevents that - I can't do what I want to do. I'd assume you wouldn't want to explore seas all the time, but when you do - you can't cause it'll autoflag you.
    The Land Management system does not prevent Gatherers from doing stuff inside their ZOI as far as I can tell.
    It does not deplete all resources within a zone. And, you can still go Gather in other nearby Nodes.
    And... even if it did, that wouldn't be permanent for that location - it would be temporary for that location.
    Similar to Node Ruins, rather than similar to the Open Seas.


    NiKr wrote: »
    While yes, the seas are a permanent thing so, in theory, you can never go there because it would always flag you, but I'd imagine that relatively speaking there's a chance that the amount of explorable stuff in the sea would take even less time than any future LMSed overharvested lands.
    The Open Seas is a large area and is dynamic; not static.
    So... we disagree.


    NiKr wrote: »
    Open seas imply no connections to nodes, which means that their dynamism is way lower, if there is even any. So, theoretically, there's only a few places that you could explore there and they won't change in the future (unless expansions). But LMS will be influencing stuff as long as players farm lands. And as that UO video says, players will always be locusts. And Intrepid would have to balance the LMS against that.
    Open Seas is still connected to seasons and other forms of dynamism.
    "Way lower" is an unsubstantiated claim, so not worth discussing.
    Players will likely be locusts if there are no consequences for being locusts.
    Again... we will have to see if there are consequences for depleting an area - like triggered Events - rather than just needing to move to a non-depleted region to farm while waiting for resources to replenish.


    NiKr wrote: »
    True, but if it's a fraction of owpvpers against thousands of pvers - how many of those pvers would get killed often? But a ton of pvers complain about the system as a whole just because THERE'S A CHANCE! And quite often they say seem to imply that this chance is almost always 100%.
    Fraction only has to be significant enough for Non-PvPers to choose not to play.
    Frequency only has to be often enough for Non-PvPers to choose not to play.
    What fraction of a population has to mug me before I choose to move from that location and live elsewhere?
    How often do I have to be mugged before I choose to move from that location and live elsewhere?
    When I drove from DC to Los Angeles, people advised me to drive around Texas. :D


    NiKr wrote: »
    But they seem to forget that raiders quite often don't have their preferred content (Noaani not included cause EQ2 had hundreds of raids for him to constantly farm), not even talking about AoC's open worldness of bosses. PvPers also have preferences that include time-limited content, so they have to do smth else in the mean time (for me it's sieges).
    I don't know that "preferred content" matters.
    It's not really about content. The issue is non-consensual PvP.


    NiKr wrote: »
    In other words, almost every type of player spends some amount of their time not doing their preferred gameplay. So why should gatherers be an exception to that rule? Dying once or twice every several hours is but a tiny fraction of the overall gameplay, while sieges would only happen once every few weeks (unless you participate in each node siege and start them yourself) and top raids will have long respawns and in Ashes they'll be contested too.
    I don't know what you think "the rule" is.
    You are trying to equate Gathering with non-consensual PvP... and failing miserably.


    NiKr wrote: »
    And even then! As you said yourself, the gatherer can usually just move to another location and avoid their potential attacker, while raids and sieges might just not be happening for some time so other types of players will literally have nowhere to go to enjoy their preferred content.
    Yep. The Gatherer will move to a different location and then return when resources replenish.
    So... if auto-flag on the Open Seas were somehow temporary... I would play... and then return to the Open Seas during the periods when normal flagging with Corruption was active.


    NiKr wrote: »
    everyone will have times where they can't enjoy their preferred content, including gatherers.
    You seem to be tryng to equate "preferred content" with non-consensual PvP... and failing miserably.
  • OkeydokeOkeydoke Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    edited November 2022
    Noaani wrote: »
    Indeed. To be clear, I wasnt suggesting that you were assuming all gatherers wanted a dynamic system, I am suggesting Steven assumes that.

    Ok, I kinda figured you weren't referring to me but just wanted to make sure. I don't think Steven neccessarily assumes that though. I'm not in his head, but that'd be a pretty broad assumption for someone who has been mmo gaming for decades, like Steven. I don't know how he wouldn't realize that that's wrong. I think it's pretty common knowledge that there's a substantial segment of gamers that just want very casual, relaxing systems that don't take much thinking.

    I think he's just trying to break the mold some. Ideas that break the mold have a chance of being wildly successful, or falling flat on their face. But that's how innovation happens generally.
    Noaani wrote: »
    It is the thing most players do when there is nothing else to do. If you have plans with friends at 8PM but are able to log on at 7PM, no worries, spend an hour gathering.

    I think this is where we're envisioning different things with this system, because we don't have it in our hands, in the game. I envision people generally still being able to casually gather in offtimes. Because players would be able to just move to an area that is not currently overharvested. My assumption is that overharvesting isn't going to be this constant, major wrench in the works either. But I could be wrong, I don't have a firm grasp on what Steven is envisioning.

    But just to put it into perspective, this system will exist somewhere on a spectrum. Examples of the extremes of this spectrum - it could take 500 players to successfully overharvest an area, and when done it's really just a minor or moderate impact on the resources and node. On the opposite extreme, 20 players just passing through on the way to a dungeon could stop and start harvesting for a few minutes and accidentally overharvest the node, with major impacts, like slow spawning resources for hours afterwards.

    Extreme examples of the spectrum. I imagine it being somewhere in the middle of the extremes and gatherers still generally having access to gathering either way, but perhaps with some inconvience sometimes.

    Obviously if this system goes through, it will upset the people in the camp of "I just wanna go around gathering pressing E on things at all times, with no hassle, no complications, ever. Ever." There's only so much Steven can worry about that though when he's trying to innovate and create compelling systems. And the people in that camp...I think they're going to have even more issues with the current design of the game regardless.

    Anyway, I'm officially rambling. But just to sum up, I think you're envisioning more of a savage system than I am. I just wanna gather but damn the node I'm in is overharvested, great. Well let me go to the next node over. Overharvested. Ok next one. Overharvested. On a DAILY basis. Fuck it I give up. Yeah that would suck. But we don't know yet what exactly Steven is envisioning. I don't at least.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    Nerror wrote: »
    In RL I would sure as hell rather belong to a nation than to a tribe with only loose alignments with other tribes.
    Yeah, but this isnt what the situation is. It isnt a case of picking to be in a node or be in a guild.

    Nodes are large entities whose membership is essentially open and unregulated. You wont see or directly interact with most members of your node on a weekly basis, let alone a daily basis.

    Guilds are smaller entities with restricted membership. You often know the people in your guild well, in game and irl. It isnt unusual at all to have met family members of guild members.

    Your guild mates are people you generally play the game with daily - if you are heavily involved in an MMORPG, it is rare to have a day where you do not interact with the bulk of your guild in some manner.

    Now, the issue here isnt which of these two would people pick to be in - most players in Ashes will be in a node and in a guild. The issue here is that when the interests of a node and a guild collide, will people pick their node (nameless, faceless masses) or their guild (actual friends).
  • NerrorNerror Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    edited November 2022
    Noaani wrote: »
    Nerror wrote: »
    In RL I would sure as hell rather belong to a nation than to a tribe with only loose alignments with other tribes.
    Yeah, but this isnt what the situation is. It isnt a case of picking to be in a node or be in a guild.

    Right, which is why I didn't say it like that at all. The point is that many people want to be part of something bigger than their immediate group/tribe. Sometimes people need to make a choice though, and if they choose the node, they'll find a different guild to be a part of that share that vision.
    Noaani wrote: »
    Nodes are large entities whose membership is essentially open and unregulated. You wont see or directly interact with most members of your node on a weekly basis, let alone a daily basis.

    Guilds are smaller entities with restricted membership. You often know the people in your guild well, in game and irl. It isnt unusual at all to have met family members of guild members.

    Your guild mates are people you generally play the game with daily - if you are heavily involved in an MMORPG, it is rare to have a day where you do not interact with the bulk of your guild in some manner.

    Now, the issue here isnt which of these two would people pick to be in - most players in Ashes will be in a node and in a guild. The issue here is that when the interests of a node and a guild collide, will people pick their node (nameless, faceless masses) or their guild (actual friends).

    First of all, you are most likely underestimating how much people will interact with fellow node-citizens. Maybe YOU won't, but that is a different matter. I can 100% envision guilds forming out of node-citizenships, or just be group and raid and gaming buddies in general, centered around node chat. It won't just be "nameless, faceless masses" as you say. The bigger the node, the more faceless masses there are though, obviously, which is one of the downsides to being in one.

    I understand the old guild thing where people know each other in RL. We've done christmas parties, summer parties, became RL friends, etc. Two of my ex girlfriends were guildmembers. I have a couple of friends who met, got married and have kids that met each other in a guild. Many other became couples the same way. I get it. But that type of guild is not the norm. By far most guilds are not people that meet up in RL or become RL friends. Of course those types of RL friendship guilds are way more likely to stick together rather than break up to stay in a node. But they also constitute a minority of the playerbase. I hope you know that most guilds don't do that at all.

    The node system in Ashes seems to be built for that too, intentionally or not. Node and guild affiliation conflicts are simply another thing to cause node wars and dynamic changes on the servers, so the world doesn't become stagnant.

    Are you afraid the node system will challenge loyalties in your guild?
  • OkeydokeOkeydoke Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Nerror wrote: »
    First of all, you are most likely underestimating how much people will interact with fellow node-citizens.

    Yeah I mean I think Noaani has a pretty negative view of the node system and it functioning how Intrepid intends it to. Same with this land management system.

    And it's a fair view. Nodes haven't been tested really. We don't know how it will all play out. That's just where we're at. It's cool that we have a company willing to try out new, maybe even revolutionary, ideas though.

    I agree with Noaani that in a general sense, guild loyalty will be greater than node loyalty. But there will be some crossover where node loyalty wins out, and interesting politics that play out due to nodes. That's just all my own personal theory until it's tested.
  • Okeydoke wrote: »
    Nerror wrote: »
    First of all, you are most likely underestimating how much people will interact with fellow node-citizens.

    Yeah I mean I think Noaani has a pretty negative view of the node system and it functioning how Intrepid intends it to. Same with this land management system.

    And it's a fair view. Nodes haven't been tested really. We don't know how it will all play out. That's just where we're at. It's cool that we have a company willing to try out new, maybe even revolutionary, ideas though.

    I agree with Noaani that in a general sense, guild loyalty will be greater than node loyalty. But there will be some crossover where node loyalty wins out, and interesting politics that play out due to nodes. That's just all my own personal theory until it's tested.

    I think you are right in that it may cause some interesting interactions. or more dynamic relationships between guilds/nodes/players in that I can see scenarios where guilds or nodes start making decisions that very directly impact you as a player much less/more than others so you might find yourself at a crossroads (I know for me personally this won't happen much). Something like a guild being paid to disrupt a parent node which might have an effect on your freehold or crafting set up and severely impact how you make money. Do you side with you guild or do you try to hold on to your set up or other scenarios like that.
  • Dygz wrote: »
    Fraction only has to be significant enough for Non-PvPers to choose not to play.
    Frequency only has to be often enough for Non-PvPers to choose not to play.
    What fraction of a population has to mug me before I choose to move from that location and live elsewhere?
    How often do I have to be mugged before I choose to move from that location and live elsewhere?
    When I drove from DC to Los Angeles, people advised me to drive around Texas. :D
    And I'm talking about the bigger picture. One PKer might kill 5-10 people during a short period of time. Even if he doesn't get caught immediately (hope he does because that'd mean that BH system is working), he'll start getting hit with bigger and bigger corruption values which increases the chances of him getting caught or at the very least shooed off from that location.

    Even if we assume that all those kills were against different people, that's still just a fraction of citizens of one node. Unless each node has several such PKers who somehow manage to kill 5-10 people every day, while also removing their PK count so that they can repeat this forever - the amount of gatherers impacted by non-consensual PvP is negligible.

    And when we consider that those victims can move to another location and that Steven promised to balance the system in such a way that PKers can't in fact keep killing dozens of players daily - we have even fewer death at the hands of PKers.

    In other words, at the bigger scale of the game the impact on most gatherers will be miniscule, if there even will be one.
    Dygz wrote: »
    I don't know that "preferred content" matters.
    It's not really about content. The issue is non-consensual PvP.
    But the only thing that non-consensual PvP impacts is that preferred content. You don't want to play the game because forced pvp prevents you from enjoying your preferred content. Some gatherers want pve servers because they want to enjoy their preferred content in peace. Same applies to all the raiders who want to have more instanced content or those same pve servers - they all want owpvp to have no impact on them when they're partaking in their preferred content.

    Which brings us to the LMS. If there is a way for other players to influence people's preferred content, and especially if they can completely prevent it - to me that seems like the same thing as non-consensual pvp. Now, you disagree with me that this is even a possibility within LMS, but I don't think we have any details either way, so it's hard to know who of us will be correct. The same applies to open seas. I'm not sure that open seas will be as dynamic as nodes, but you seem to think otherwise. I'd like to be wrong on both, because to me that seems like a better design.
  • DygzDygz Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    edited November 2022
    NiKr wrote: »
    And I'm talking about the bigger picture. One PKer might kill 5-10 people during a short period of time. Even if he doesn't get caught immediately (hope he does because that'd mean that BH system is working), he'll start getting hit with bigger and bigger corruption values which increases the chances of him getting caught or at the very least shooed off from that location.
    The bigger picture for whom?
    Non-PvPers don't care about fraction of PvPers who PK.
    Non-PvPers care that non-consensual PvP is as minimal as possible.


    NiKr wrote: »
    Even if we assume that all those kills were against different people, that's still just a fraction of citizens of one node. Unless each node has several such PKers who somehow manage to kill 5-10 people every day, while also removing their PK count so that they can repeat this forever - the amount of gatherers impacted by non-consensual PvP is negligible.
    Non-PvPers don't really care about that.


    NiKr wrote: »
    And when we consider that those victims can move to another location and that Steven promised to balance the system in such a way that PKers can't in fact keep killing dozens of players daily - we have even fewer death at the hands of PKers.
    Steven also promised that the game would release before 2020.
    Steven also promised that the game would not have permanent zones that auto-flag as Combatant, where Corruption is not a penalty for PKing.
    Why should anyone care what Steven has promised? Everything is subject to change.
    Doesn't matter how many times an individual PKer can PK once there is a permanent zone that auto-flags as Combat - because PKing does not occur on the Open Seas.
    The Open Seas, everyone is a Combatant with half-normal death penalties, so that is not balanced to deter or minimize non-consensual PvP. It forces players to auto-consent for PvP.
    So people who are against non-consensual PvP are unlikely to be willing to accept that ruleset.



    NiKr wrote: »
    In other words, at the bigger scale of the game the impact on most gatherers will be miniscule, if there even will be one.
    I guess we agree that Land Management will not be an issue for Gatherers.
    Your comparison of that with non-consensual PvP is still tragically flawed.


    NiKr wrote: »
    But the only thing that non-consensual PvP impacts is that preferred content. You don't want to play the game because forced pvp prevents you from enjoying your preferred content. Some gatherers want pve servers because they want to enjoy their preferred content in peace. Same applies to all the raiders who want to have more instanced content or those same pve servers - they all want owpvp to have no impact on them when they're partaking in their preferred content.
    No. I don't play games with non-consensual PvP.
    I especially don't play RPGs with non-consensual PvP.
    So I have to be convinced to play a game that has non-consensual PvP.
    The Corruption penalty has the potential to reduce non-consensual PvP to a frequency I am comfortable with. A permanent zone with no Corruption is an automatic deal-breaker.

    I have played the Carebear Challenge where I only level by Gathering resources.
    I don't see how Land Management could be a deal-breaker for Gatherers.
    It is normal gameplay for Gatherers that when resources are depleted you Gather elsewhere until the resources replenish.
    Land Management might increase the time it takes for resources to replenish, but it's still going to be temporary rather than permanent.

    NiKr wrote: »
    Which brings us to the LMS. If there is a way for other players to influence people's preferred content, and especially if they can completely prevent it - to me that seems like the same thing as non-consensual pvp. Now, you disagree with me that this is even a possibility within LMS, but I don't think we have any details either way, so it's hard to know who of us will be correct. The same applies to open seas. I'm not sure that open seas will be as dynamic as nodes, but you seem to think otherwise. I'd like to be wrong on both, because to me that seems like a better design.
    I think the other players would have to not only completely prevent the Gatherer from Gathering but also force them into some hardcore activity they did not wish to engage in - like train a difficult mob on them.
    Which is closer to being flagged as consenting to PvP, but is still significantly not the same thing.

    I think what seems to you like non-consensual PvP is likely to be flawed because you have the mindset of a PvPer, rather than the mindset of a non-PvPer.
    I didn't say that the Open Seas will be as dynamic as Nodes. I said it will be dynamic.
    If the Open Seas is dynamic at all, that means explorers will want to explore the changes in the area.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    Okeydoke wrote: »
    I can 100% envision guilds forming out of node-citizenships, or just be group and raid and gaming buddies in general, centered around node chat.

    I can see this happening as well - but this is my point.

    If you are one of the nameless, faceless citizens of a node (of which there could be well over a thousand in a Meteopolis), and you decide to form a guild from select people within that node, then you have literally just done the thing I am saying will happen. You have formed a smaller collective that you are inherently going to be more loyal to than you will be to the greater node.

    This is kind of my point. The smaller the collective is, the more restrictive entry to it is, the more loyalty people will have towards that collective.

    I mean, what is the point of forming a guild out of players within a node if that guild isnt then going to become your primary social unit?

    Since guilds are by design selective membership and smaller in number, and nodes are jot selective in membership and larger in number, the default status for most players will be guild before node.

    People that have been in guilds for years (or decades) are indeed the minority. However, they are not the only people that will out their guild before their node.

    What I just dont see at all is why any person would pick a group of people they didn't chose to associate with over a group of people they did chose to associate with.

    That is essentially the difference between a guild and a node.
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