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

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Noaani

morphwastaken wrote: »

As reward goes up - the chance to have competition goes up.

Yes, but my point is that this is still dependent on players, and players are not predictable.

That specific kill of that encounter - I literally have no idea why no one else showed up. Same time every week, 400 the week before, over 300 the week after - but only 15 of us that week.

All the stuf you are talking about in regards to item rarity (supply vs demand) is probably all true (I say probably because I am not putting a lot of thought in to it). The thing is, it isn't relavent to this discussion.

morphwastaken wrote: »

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.

See, I don't disagree with this either - but only as a generalization.

It is not a universal rule - which is my point.

I'll go over a few events that I know have had direct impacts on the population levels of MMO's I've been playing over the years...

Oblivion, Skyrim and Baulders Gate 3 launches all had massive impacts on the populations of the games I was playing at the time.

Superbowl ususally sees less activity.

Thanksgiving usually sees fewer people with regular schedules able to log on.

Christmas is often just dead, as is New Years.

Game of Thrones episode drops saw drops in numbers at any given point in the night, though most people still logged in (I noticed this most with seasons 4 - 6). I've not noticed this with any other show.

The recent Oppenheimer/Barbie weekend saw the game I was playing at the time have surprisingly low population.

When playing on an AU server, the whole place was disturbingly quiet on days with NRL or AFL finals - and fairly quiet for any Origin game.

EU servers are often quiet for Champion League finals (or other major games), though this depends more on who is playing that it does with AU servers.

Olympic Games often seen people technically online, but not paying attention.

People can really be fickle - the above are just the drops in population that I noticed in the games I was playing, and that I could place a reason on. And these are the people you want game developers to rely on for their games challenge. I would much rather the developers provide the challenge directly, thanks.

Depraved

Noaani wrote: »

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.

so why no one went there the next week, just u?

morphwastaken

Noaani wrote: »

Yes, but my point is that this is still dependent on players, and players are not predictable.

That specific kill of that encounter - I literally have no idea why no one else showed up. Same time every week, 400 the week before, over 300 the week after - but only 15 of us that week.

So it worked the next week, and previous, and maybe every week before that? It's ok to sometimes not get the expected result. It happens all the time - in games and in life. Unexpected things can feel bad, or be exciting. It's just the way it is.
Look at any game that retained popularity over long period of time, 90%+ of them are competitive.

Noaani

Depraved wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

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.

so why no one went there the next week, just u?

No idea, that is kind of the point.

You can't rely on people to provide the risk aspect of your risk vs reward.

If you do, you have a game with inherently uneven and unpredictable risk vs reward.

Noaani

morphwastaken wrote: »

Look at any game that retained popularity over long period of time, 90%+ of them are competitive.

Game yes, MMO no.

The popular, longer lasting MMO's are cooperative, not competitive. That is this genres strength.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

No idea, that is kind of the point.

You can't rely on people to provide the risk aspect of your risk vs reward.

If you do, you have a game with inherently uneven and unpredictable risk vs reward.

But in the bigger picture the balance stays the same. The ones who missed one farm would now have a higher desire to not miss the next one and definitely win against you, otherwise you might snowball in power. So now they might bring more people to the next farm or do whatever is in their power to mess you up.

So between those 2 farms the overall risk/reward equation stays equal.

It's similar to boss mechanic rng. On one day you might get insanely lucky and the boss won't do half of his super hardcore mechanics, while on the other day he might do them all more than usual. So while one farm was super easy, the overall encounter history would still be considered difficult, because of the implication.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Game yes, MMO no.

The popular, longer lasting MMO's are cooperative, not competitive. That is this genres strength.

Doesn't this go against your own words? You said that EQ2 had the fiercest competition in the genre. You keep saying that EQ2 still releases updates that are amazing and great.

Those two things would imply that the most competitive mmo out there is also the longest lasting one, which contradicts this comment.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

No idea, that is kind of the point.

You can't rely on people to provide the risk aspect of your risk vs reward.

If you do, you have a game with inherently uneven and unpredictable risk vs reward.

But in the bigger picture the balance stays the same. The ones who missed one farm would now have a higher desire to not miss the next one and definitely win against you, otherwise you might snowball in power. So now they might bring more people to the next farm or do whatever is in their power to mess you up.

So between those 2 farms the overall risk/reward equation stays equal.

Except the following week they bought fewer than they did the previous week.

See, what you guys are all doing is talking theory. You are all forgetting that theory doesn't mean shit when you include the human element - and that human element is exactly what this kind of game design relies on.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Except the following week they bought fewer than they did the previous week.

Yeah, I dunno the specifics of what AA had in their bosses that people couldn't give fewer shits about them in this way. Or maybe it was just your server or whatever other reason.

I'm speaking from experience of being that one guild that decided to farm a boss instead of defending a siege and has been the guild that had to bring stronger forces to the next farm because we missed a boss. And I've been on the sidelines of other guilds doing exactly this.

And all of this was on private servers where the perceived value of the gameplay itself is lower, cause your character are not "endless" how they'd be on official servers. So if AA had problems with people fighting over bosses - to me that's either a problem in design or the fact that AA attracted more non-competitive players to itself.

Cause if you're talking about the release of AA, that's the exact time when I was big time GLing in L2 and the exact time when the experiences I'm talking about took place. So to me it's obvious that either the target audiences of the games were different (and we'll have to see which one Ashes attracts) or that the design had some kind of a flaw where the best boss with the best loot in the game was so damn worthless that people didn't even contest it.

morphwastaken

Noaani wrote: »

See, what you guys are all doing is talking theory. You are all forgetting that theory doesn't mean shit when you include the human element - and that human element is exactly what this kind of game design relies on.

I'm talking based on my experience, and i am able to extract logical arguments out of it. Experience may differ, but logic either makes sense or it does not. Your logic is not keeping up, and you keep trying to fall back on experience instead.

Noaani

morphwastaken wrote: »

I'm talking based on my experience

As am I, obviously.

That's the thing, experience is a part of that human element - different people will have different experiences meaning different results when they are put in the same situation.

Again, the human element at play.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Yeah, I dunno the specifics of what AA had in their bosses that people couldn't give fewer shits about them in this way.

It isn't that people didn't care - again there were hundreds the week before and hundreds the week after.

I straight up don't know the reason for this particular situation - but I did list a whole pile of the reasons I have found over the years for similar situations of lower population/engagement with the game.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Game yes, MMO no.

The popular, longer lasting MMO's are cooperative, not competitive. That is this genres strength.

Doesn't this go against your own words? You said that EQ2 had the fiercest competition in the genre. You keep saying that EQ2 still releases updates that are amazing and great.

Those two things would imply that the most competitive mmo out there is also the longest lasting one, which contradicts this comment.

In the context of the post I was replying to, I made the assumption that competion was essentially a synonom for PvP - as it is to many people.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

It isn't that people didn't care - again there were hundreds the week before and hundreds the week after.

I straight up don't know the reason for this particular situation - but I did list a whole pile of the reasons I have found over the years for similar situations of lower population/engagement with the game.

But you said that the next week there were fewer people instead of more, so imo that boss' loot didn't enough value in people's eyes to fight over it as much as they should've.

It kinda feels like AA attracted more of a casual scene at the start and by the time your group was already farming the boss (I assume yours was a hardcore one) the general playerbase hadn't distilled to a super hardcore group that would try harder to fight for the boss. While on L2 private servers that's pretty much what the entire playerbase was.

Were there cases later on where people tried to contest the bosses harder if they lost/missed on the previous farm? Or did your group just dominate everyone so they didn't even try to fight you?

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

But you said that the next week there were fewer people instead of more

Yeah, over three hundred people still.

I've only given numbers of three weeks - a bit over 400, then 15, then a bit over 300.

If we go back a futher 6 weeks and forward a further 6 weeks, that bit over 300 is fairly average. It isn't a low number, it was just lower than the week with a bit over 400. That slightly over 400 was something of an exception in terms of there being more people than normal.

In terms of people considering it not worth it - the items were quite good and could make the difference in even large scale PvP, and both of the two major sides had weeks where they came out on top so neither side would have been overly discouraged as it likely to happen (considering how one sided other timed events on the server were, I was somewhat surprised at how balanced the kills between these two sides was).

The third side was there to cause trouble. They didn't care about winning or losing, they just wanted to fight. It was this group that bought most of the additional players to that week with 400 people - there numbers went from a normal showing of about 25 - 30 up to about 80 that week.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

I've only given numbers of three weeks - a bit over 400, then 15, then a bit over 300.

If we go back a futher 6 weeks and forward a further 6 weeks, that bit over 300 is fairly average. It isn't a low number, it was just lower than the week with a bit over 400. That slightly over 400 was something of an exception in terms of there being more people than normal.

Then it seems that it was just a weird fluke. Those will inevitably happen even if the pve is great (your own group's people either can't make it or servers having issues or whatever).

But as we've discussed before, I do agree that we need good pve in the game, no matter how pvp is designed into/around it.

Depraved

Noaani wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Yeah, I dunno the specifics of what AA had in their bosses that people couldn't give fewer shits about them in this way.

It isn't that people didn't care - again there were hundreds the week before and hundreds the week after.

I straight up don't know the reason for this particular situation - but I did list a whole pile of the reasons I have found over the years for similar situations of lower population/engagement with the game.

well, ive played games where my guild wasnt interested in a particular boss, however, when they found out that another guild was, we would go kill the boss just to screw them. so maybe thats what happened in aa. people did this boss, not for the boss, but for the fight. didnt you say there was a boss with better loot?

so that week when the main people who did that boss couldnt do it for whatever personal reasons they had, the opposing forces didnt, because there was not gonna be a fight and they werent really interested in the boss. thats my theory

Dygz

Depraved wrote: »

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

I think, you are talking about "RP motivation" and I am talking about player motivation.
And, you seem to be talking about "games" in general, wheras I am talking about RPGs, specifically.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

I've only given numbers of three weeks - a bit over 400, then 15, then a bit over 300.

If we go back a futher 6 weeks and forward a further 6 weeks, that bit over 300 is fairly average. It isn't a low number, it was just lower than the week with a bit over 400. That slightly over 400 was something of an exception in terms of there being more people than normal.

Then it seems that it was just a weird fluke. Those will inevitably happen even if the pve is great

This is my conclusion as well.

My point is - this isn't what a game should be basing it's risk vs reward on.

Noaani

Depraved wrote: »

didnt you say there was a boss with better loot?

As someone that has killed all the bosses in WoW while you played, you would know that if there is one boss that has better loot than the boss in question, the boss in question is still dropping nothing but best in slot items.

The other boss may be dropping mage boots, rogue gloves, a healer shield and a tank weapon, but this boss may be dropping tank boots, healer gloves, mage weapon and rogue bow.

As to people just randomly deciding to show up because they suddenly found out that people were after that mob - everyone in the game capable of not being instantly killed by said boss knew what the boss was, where it was, when it spawned and who was after it. Not only was the spawn of the boss announced hours before it happened, but the game had an in game calander that included every future spawn of the mob. It was in the calander because it was "the" boss for a good long while.

Basically, there was no scope in that game for people to "find out" about that boss.

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