Off-topic Discussions from 'we have a new lead game designer bill trost'

Noaani wrote: »

Thus, the basic point I am making is something you agree with.

The solution to your model of a problem would be to not make BIS trivial to obtain, not whatever you are trying to suggest.

I feel like you misunderstand the whole reasoning behind open world PVP, content that can be contested and risk versus reward. It is not to make everyone fight everywhere all the time for anything of value. There will likely be maybe 5% of content that is always contested (such as world bosses), maybe 10% that will be contested most of the time (anywhere between once an hour to once a day) and remaining 85% will get contested between once a day and never. Giving you a somewhat realistic example based on experience. So when it comes to PVP, having something be not worth fighting for is absolutely normal, most things will be that way. And if it happens to be a BIS item that was made too easy to obtain - just make it harder. This is why i don't like your example - it's only a problem because you made it into one.

If i understand what you are trying to do - i don't think it is possible within core principles of AoC, or at least neither your suggestions seem functional, nor i have a better one. L2 had something closest to what you want, but still not quite it. Most world bosses were instanced once the fight would start, but there would still be massive battles for hours to get into an instance in the first place.

Noaani wrote: »

Yeah, this is poor game design.

Leaving the challenge of your game up to it's players means that as your player population wanes, your games challenge wanes.

It's really wild to see someone say that difficulty based on challenge from other players is bad design.
Main pillar of AoC "risk vs reward" is inspired by content being open world and contested by other players in L2. The more value something has - more players will be competing for it and harder it will be to obtain. Who are you going to compete against to become a Mayor, to collect rare ore, skin an animal, play auction house? Everything you do in AoC will involve competing with other players one way or another at some point (not always and not necessarily through violence, scaling up with reward).
Would you say MOBAs are also bad design, because if you have no opponent to play against - there is no challenge? You don't say! Conclusion that should come from this is that player base is important, not that it's bad design. Irony.

morphwastaken wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Yeah, this is poor game design.

Leaving the challenge of your game up to it's players means that as your player population wanes, your games challenge wanes.

It's really wild to see someone say that difficulty based on challenge from other players is bad design.
Main pillar of AoC "risk vs reward" is inspired by content being open world and contested by other players in L2. The more value something has - more players will be competing for it and harder it will be to obtain. Who are you going to compete against to become a Mayor, to collect rare ore, skin an animal, play auction house? Everything you do in AoC will involve competing with other players one way or another at some point (not always and not necessarily through violence, scaling up with reward).
Would you say MOBAs are also bad design, because if you have no opponent to play against - there is no challenge? You don't say! Conclusion that should come from this is that player base is important, not that it's bad design.

If you focus onto a PvE fight, it is easy to not notice PvPers approaching behind you. They can even damage you to help the NPCs win.
You are right that pure PvE encounters are not supposed to be in AoC because it is a PvP game.
But that will cause PvE players to have a different kind of experience than they are used to enjoy.
They might try the game being confused by the PvX label used so often but eventually they will realize that it is not what they want. And they will leave.
All we can do is to accept that this is how AoC is supposed to be and repeat Steven's mantra: "and that's ok".

Dygz

Bigger issue is that it actually taints the basic foundations of an RPG - poisoned by PvP gamers.
Because the true motivation for killing the Winter Dragon should be to save the region from the Perpetual Winter it brings, rather than killing others attempting to achieve that goal out of greed and/or the desire for glory.

PvP makes way more sense in a Fighter or an FPS.
Typically MMORPGs have used racial hatred to try to justify PvP which, obviously, is... less than ideal.
Similar to e-sports - just because something is fun is one game genre, does not mean it needs to be added to every game genre.

It's probably fine for people to try Ashes. It's subscription, so... they can cancel their subscription if they don't enjoy it. But, we have YouTube and Twitch to take a look at gameplay before spending money on the game.

Not to worry, though...
Ashes will be a great game for its target audience.
And it's very likely there will be plenty other games that are more fun to play for those who don't love PvP in RPGs.

Noaani wrote: »

Your insistance on not actually bothering to read before replying really is tiresome.

To be fair, there was something you said, that caught my attention as potential direction for improvement. Maybe you didn't present it well enough, or everyone already formed an opinion by that time, so it did not catch on. I sure did get distracted bashing on what i found to be wrong in your posts. Maybe it needed separate topic and more thought through angle of delivery. I'll try to convince myself below that something can be done with that idea.

It had to do with Caravan System.
Before i continue, i want to point out that some systems and mechanics aren't inherently bad - they might just be poorly designed or misused (for example see long leveling topic).
Back to Caravans. TLDR: players put effort to collect raw materials and deliver them to a node. Then to process them and deliver to another node through Caravan System. Now, would it break anything to replace effort put into processing materials within safe zone of a node, with an effort to kill an instanced boss for let's call it a mid-tier trade pack, that can only be claimed once delivered to a node through Caravan System? Materials would get consumed of course. Many players hate instancing, me included, but i did just remind myself that L2 had a form of world boss instancing that i did not find to be an issue, or at least a compromise worth making. Would that work? Make raiding something equivalent to an artisan class? In addition to all other content obviously. As long as best gear is not obtained this way, and no other system is made worse - could be ok? Am i missing an obvious issue?

Raven016 wrote: »

morphwastaken wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Yeah, this is poor game design.

Leaving the challenge of your game up to it's players means that as your player population wanes, your games challenge wanes.

It's really wild to see someone say that difficulty based on challenge from other players is bad design.
Main pillar of AoC "risk vs reward" is inspired by content being open world and contested by other players in L2. The more value something has - more players will be competing for it and harder it will be to obtain. Who are you going to compete against to become a Mayor, to collect rare ore, skin an animal, play auction house? Everything you do in AoC will involve competing with other players one way or another at some point (not always and not necessarily through violence, scaling up with reward).
Would you say MOBAs are also bad design, because if you have no opponent to play against - there is no challenge? You don't say! Conclusion that should come from this is that player base is important, not that it's bad design.

If you focus onto a PvE fight, it is easy to not notice PvPers approaching behind you. They can even damage you to help the NPCs win.

that comes with practice and being good ;3

Dygz wrote: »

Bigger issue is that it actually taints the basic foundations of an RPG - poisoned by PvP gamers.
Because the true motivation for killing the Winter Dragon should be to save the region from the Perpetual Winter it brings, rather than killing others attempting to achieve that goal out of greed and/or the desire for glory.

what if my true motivation is fame greed and glory? am i not allowed to RP as the villain, or anti villain, or anti hero? why do i have to RP the way you want me to RP?

also, again, games (and i dont mean video games only) were pvp. you had to compete vs other players to win. i could actually say that it was pvers who "poisoned" games

Ludullu

morphwastaken wrote: »

Now, would it break anything to replace effort put into processing materials within safe zone of a node, with an effort to kill an instanced boss for let's call it a mid-tier trade pack, that can only be claimed once delivered to a node through Caravan System?

Noaani has already suggested this in the past

So you agree on this.

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani has already suggested this in the past So you agree on this.

Yea, i am bringing his suggestion back, in a way that does not make me instantly say "no" to it. I liked trade pack idea. Didn't like everything else

So i'm debating if such form of instancing can be ok.

Depraved wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Bigger issue is that it actually taints the basic foundations of an RPG - poisoned by PvP gamers.
Because the true motivation for killing the Winter Dragon should be to save the region from the Perpetual Winter it brings, rather than killing others attempting to achieve that goal out of greed and/or the desire for glory.

what if my true motivation is fame greed and glory? am i not allowed to RP as the villain, or anti villain, or anti hero? why do i have to RP the way you want me to RP?

also, again, games (and i dont mean video games only) were pvp. you had to compete vs other players to win. i could actually say that it was pvers who "poisoned" games

May thy knife chip and shatter.

Depraved wrote: »

Raven016 wrote: »

morphwastaken wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Yeah, this is poor game design.

Leaving the challenge of your game up to it's players means that as your player population wanes, your games challenge wanes.

It's really wild to see someone say that difficulty based on challenge from other players is bad design.
Main pillar of AoC "risk vs reward" is inspired by content being open world and contested by other players in L2. The more value something has - more players will be competing for it and harder it will be to obtain. Who are you going to compete against to become a Mayor, to collect rare ore, skin an animal, play auction house? Everything you do in AoC will involve competing with other players one way or another at some point (not always and not necessarily through violence, scaling up with reward).
Would you say MOBAs are also bad design, because if you have no opponent to play against - there is no challenge? You don't say! Conclusion that should come from this is that player base is important, not that it's bad design.

If you focus onto a PvE fight, it is easy to not notice PvPers approaching behind you. They can even damage you to help the NPCs win.

that comes with practice and being good ;3

You can also designate somebody to observe the area. But the consequence is the same.
You have to be able to disengage safely the fight, heal up and be ready for the PvP part.
Normally PvE encounters do not let you do such things easily or don't let you leave the area at all.
If you cannot, then is like having human opponents with very powerful summons fighting against you.

Imagine a summoner getting summons as strong as the strongest NPCs the other classes can barely solo.
Everyone would rage and ask the summoner to be nerfed, either his summon or the player attributes.

To further simplify and generalize the idea. Have a set of boss fights that are neither contested, nor give a reward, but instead are followed by secondary objective in which both risk and the reward are present (reward being loot appropriate for the boss killed).
I think i'd be ok with that. Would PvE players be happy?

morphwastaken wrote: »

To further simplify and generalize the idea. Have a set of boss fights that are neither contested, nor give a reward, but instead are followed by secondary objective in which both risk and the reward are present.
I think I'd be ok with that. Would PvE players be happy?

Seems an improvement. Is much much closer to PvX (as I define a pvx game).
I estimate it could attract a higher percentage of PvE players.
However, would you accept the risk vs reward to be balanced based on performance during the first fight?
The better you fight in the first stage the lower the risk to be in the 2nd stage?

Raven016 wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

Raven016 wrote: »

morphwastaken wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Yeah, this is poor game design.

Leaving the challenge of your game up to it's players means that as your player population wanes, your games challenge wanes.

It's really wild to see someone say that difficulty based on challenge from other players is bad design.
Main pillar of AoC "risk vs reward" is inspired by content being open world and contested by other players in L2. The more value something has - more players will be competing for it and harder it will be to obtain. Who are you going to compete against to become a Mayor, to collect rare ore, skin an animal, play auction house? Everything you do in AoC will involve competing with other players one way or another at some point (not always and not necessarily through violence, scaling up with reward).
Would you say MOBAs are also bad design, because if you have no opponent to play against - there is no challenge? You don't say! Conclusion that should come from this is that player base is important, not that it's bad design.

If you focus onto a PvE fight, it is easy to not notice PvPers approaching behind you. They can even damage you to help the NPCs win.

that comes with practice and being good ;3

You can also designate somebody to observe the area. But the consequence is the same.
You have to be able to disengage safely the fight, heal up and be ready for the PvP part.
Normally PvE encounters do not let you do such things easily or don't let you leave the area at all.
If you cannot, then is like having human opponents with very powerful summons fighting against you.

Imagine a summoner getting summons as strong as the strongest NPCs the other classes can barely solo.
Everyone would rage and ask the summoner to be nerfed, either his summon or the player attributes.

i know what it feels like. been doing that in l2 for 20 years. its amazing tbh.
i like killing bosses, but killing bosses AND players is even better

Noaani

morphwastaken wrote: »

It's really wild to see someone say that difficulty based on challenge from other players is bad design.

No, it really isn't.

Lets imagine we have a game, lets call it Archeage.

Lets imagine this game has an encounter, it's big, red and dragon like, lets call it Red Dragon.

Now, this encounter drops the best items in the game, and lets also imagine the design of this encounter is based on other players showing up preventing you from killing it.

Explain to me how risk vs reward works here if no one shows up to stop you killing it.

As I've said, the above has happened, specifically on that encounter in that game, but on other encounters in that game, and other games as well. My guild killed the Kraken with no one else even in sight, no ships (or even clippers) on the radar, let alone putting up a fight. This is back in early days of Archeage as well, when the Kraken was still the hardest boss that was able to be killed - and it was on one of the most populated servers in the game at the time.

FIghting players should result in rewards for fighting players that is approiate to the risk that players pose. Fighting encounters should result in rewards from fighting those encounters that are appropriate to the risk that those encounters pose.

That is how risk vs reward properly functions. As soon as you have a situation where you are fighting players for rewards from bosses, you have lost any sense of actual valid risk vs reward, and have just set up a pinata for players to fight over.

This is fine if the objective is to encourage mass PvP (it works at that goal just fine). However, attempting to call it risk vs reward is just an outright fallacy, because the risk you undertake and the reward you stand to get are not actually connected to each other at all.

Noaani wrote: »

morphwastaken wrote: »

It's really wild to see someone say that difficulty based on challenge from other players is bad design.

No, it really isn't.

Lets imagine we have a game, lets call it Archeage.

Lets imagine this game has an encounter, it's big, red and dragon like, lets call it Red Dragon.

Now, this encounter drops the best items in the game, and lets also imagine the design of this encounter is based on other players showing up preventing you from killing it.

Explain to me how risk vs reward works here if no one shows up to stop you killing it.

As I've said, the above has happened, specifically on that encounter in that game, but on other encounters in that game, and other games as well. My guild killed the Kraken with no one else even in sight, no ships (or even clippers) on the radar, let alone putting up a fight. This is back in early days of Archeage as well, when the Kraken was still the hardest boss that was able to be killed - and it was on one of the most populated servers in the game at the time.

FIghting players should result in rewards for fighting players that is approiate to the risk that players pose. Fighting encounters should result in rewards from fighting those encounters that are appropriate to the risk that those encounters pose.

That is how risk vs reward properly functions. As soon as you have a situation where you are fighting players for rewards from bosses, you have lost any sense of actual valid risk vs reward, and have just set up a pinata for players to fight over.

This is fine if the objective is to encourage mass PvP (it works at that goal just fine). However, attempting to call it risk vs reward is just an outright fallacy, because the risk you undertake and the reward you stand to get are not actually connected to each other at all.

did you kill it after everybody had killed it and had its loot or did you kill it when everybody wanted to kill it?
did you kill at 4 am when everybody was sleeping? at 10 am when everybody was working? during prime time? when.

also, what makes you think those boses were designed as risk vs reward? ashes is a different game. the only thing ashes has from aa is naval combat lol. just because a game is pvx doesnt mean tis automatically risk vs reward. thats soemthing you add intentionally. a game can be pure pve or pvp and have risk vs reward

Noaani

Depraved wrote: »

did you kill it after everybody had killed it and had its loot or did you kill it when everybody wanted to kill it?
did you kill at 4 am when everybody was sleeping? at 10 am when everybody was working? during prime time? when.

So, when I left the game it was considered the second highest boss in the game.

It had a regular spawn time of the same time every week.

ashes is a different game.

As have no proof at all that Ashes is designed to be any different. Since Archeage is one of the main games that Ashes takes insperation from, we actually have reason to believe it will be the same.

Also, this same thing happened in L2, because the design was the same.

just because a game is pvx doesnt mean tis automatically risk vs reward.

Every game ever made that has progressive loot "is risk vs reward" - at least every game I have ever played.

Noaani wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

did you kill it after everybody had killed it and had its loot or did you kill it when everybody wanted to kill it?
did you kill at 4 am when everybody was sleeping? at 10 am when everybody was working? during prime time? when.

So, when I left the game it was considered the second highest boss in the game.

It had a regular spawn time of the same time every week.

ashes is a different game.

As have no proof at all that Ashes is designed to be any different. Since Archeage is one of the main games that Ashes takes insperation from, we actually have reason to believe it will be the same.

Also, this same thing happened in L2, because the design was the same.

just because a game is pvx doesnt mean tis automatically risk vs reward.

Every game ever made that has progressive loot "is risk vs reward" - at least every game I have ever played.

yeah but how many people were after that boss when you were killing it? maybe people already got what they needed and other people didnt have the gear or numbers to kill it. it happens. maybe your guild couldnt get the boss because other guilds just killed you and you could only get it when they werer interested?

well aoc is 80-90% l2, aa influence is minimal. basically just naval combat. ashes has more from aion than from aa lol

but anyways there are differences. in l2 you didnt really drop loot on death (only at the beginning, you could drop your gear if you were white and died to a monster) but that changed and there were also ways to protect your gear even if you were red.

there were also bosses that dropped stuff than any1 could get even if oyu didnt kill them, like the sub class bosses. there werent that many risks in l2 for losing a bos fight. it was only not getting the loot and pretty much anything dropped by a boss could be acquired in other ways except for the epic jewels.

id say the risk is bigger in l2. you have social risks that literally affect your city and your items in your wharehouse. you drop stuff when you die. death penalty, stats dampening, etc. we have to play the game and see

Noaani

Depraved wrote: »

yeah but how many people were after that boss when you were killing it?

As I said in the post a few above, the week before there were over 400 people present.

well aoc is 80-90% l2

Yeah, but the content in question from Archeage was based on L2 as well.

The same thing happened (from what I have been told) on low population L2 servers (including private servers).

The point here is fairly simple though. If there is an encounter that has it's reward based on the risk that players assume will come via other players, if those other players do not come, there is no risk and thus the risk vs reward is out of place.

I'm not really arguing any other aspect of risk vs reward here other than this fact.

In regards to Ashes, it is perfectly believable that there may well just be times when people don't show up for world boss kills. They may have sieges or wars that need their attention - meaning that this situation where a world boss that offers no challenge itself spawns, and no one shows up to contend it is actually even more likely to happen in Ashes than it does in other games.

Noaani wrote: »

This is fine if the objective is to encourage mass PvP (it works at that goal just fine). However, attempting to call it risk vs reward is just an outright fallacy, because the risk you undertake and the reward you stand to get are not actually connected to each other at all.

You still keep thinking that difficulty is what dictates the worth, and that killing a boss inherently is difficult (it's not) - your argument stems from faulty logic. Supply and demand determine worth. You can have two items that have exactly the same way of obtaining them, yet one of them is 1000x more valued. Did no one care about the loot from your boss? Was the boss worth fighting for? Think why no one else was there - should they be? If they should - find out why they weren't and fix that. My bathwater would be extremely difficult for you to obtain, how much are you willing to pay? You are being like those people that think squashing 100 watermelons with their ass is a world record worth being proud of. Maybe no one cares about red dragon as much as you do?
As reward goes up - the chance to have competition goes up. There are other factors involved as well, that can either increase further or reduce the competition. So yes, if reward is not high enough - sometimes there will be no competition. It is logic based self-balancing system, it's not perfect, but it's very good.
TLDR: Logic chain works one way, but not the other (like you are trying to say). Demand goes up - so does the worth - so does the competition - so does the difficulty. Higher competition leads to higher difficulty. But higher difficulty leads to lower competition.