September Development Update viewing

Hello, I just want to say I am not well versed in forum interactions but I did a quick search and I couldn't find any topics that address my question and concern with the sept development update 2023. Id like to say that I have been watching and paying attention to this game for awhile now and am excited about the things I see well done in my humble opinion.

My concern is with the escalation system in place for events. In this video where a caravan was attacked Steven and Margaret spoke in length about how player actions direct how the nodes and the server world of Vera develop over time. I wonder how our gamer elitists will tackle this. Aside from forcing events to generate over and over, what about purposefully failing so that it forces an escalation to a global event just to generate greater loot or that sword our inevitable elites will be drooling over. Not only does this seem possible with the system in place now but the incentive to fail seems to be greater in the incentive to succeed in the small event. So I guess my question is there incentives to keep this from a simple caravan raid becoming a city busting or area busting or world busting event? or is that really the hope? Maybe these events can and will be inevitable but will the players actually feel the pain of it and maybe the rewards of these larger events will be worth defeating it but not so much to purposely cause it through purposeful failure?

I have played more MMO's in my time more than I can count, and most games tend to regress into a nerfing their creatures to the point of harmless fluffy bunnies and creating a socialist environment where everyone gets the same cookie just for showing up. A recent example is Elder Scroll Online. the Cyrodil pvp system is more about who you know and you can become emperor just because you have friends on both sides and its been determined that is "Your turn" and so there is no legit war over it because there is no downfall for losing the emperorship. This dynamic ruins the game for people that actually want to experience it in its fullest potential fight over becoming emperor in epic battles and cling to it as long as possible because the power and prestige has real benefit. It has regressed into everyone gets a turn and if you go against the narrative you are public enemy number1 because you are not falling in line to let the elitist title collectors get their cookie for free.

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Ludullu

Iirc they said we can join the other side of the event, so those who want the failure-state type of escalation would just do this, and anyone who wants the win-state type of escalation (and I assume/hope this exists) will try to fight those players.

Braxiz

NiKr wrote: »

Iirc they said we can join the other side of the event, so those who want the failure-state type of escalation would just do this, and anyone who wants the win-state type of escalation (and I assume/hope this exists) will try to fight those players.

I did not hear this explained and for sure if this is the case than I'm all for the pvp conflict maybe their is another node nearby that benefits from the caravan being destroyed I get that. But what I am concerned about is players collaborating from opposing sides to generate an event for the purposes of making it fail in order to generate a larger event and agreeing to split the rewards... so you come across an event and you join it thinking you are doing good and being a hero only to see a bunch of players who are supposed to be in opposition laughing and joking and jumping around waiting for the NPC raiders to slaughter the caravan so they can move on to the next escalated event and continue it until it spawns the specific boss they need to kill to get the item that someone needs or wants. I am concerned about the drops incentives to fail being great enough that it pulls people out of the game itself and into the realm of exploitation.

Braxiz

sorry something I forgot to add into my example... so you go in thinking you are helping the caravan and doing good only to get grieved and yelled at to stop from both sides as they want the event to fail. This kind of thing kills the depth for anyone trying to enjoy what the game has to offer and its intent.

Ludullu

Braxiz wrote: »

sorry something I forgot to add into my example... so you go in thinking you are helping the caravan and doing good only to get grieved and yelled at to stop from both sides as they want the event to fail. This kind of thing kills the depth for anyone trying to enjoy what the game has to offer and its intent.

Don't think they mentioned it during the stream, but I'd assume it's logical enough for the game to have this. As I said in my comment, there might be a win-state type of escalation with its own rewards that grow in value. So, ideally, you'd have 2 sides of people that are interested in their own type of reward.

This would obviously not remove any potential "getting yelled at" situations, but those would simply be the soft friction between players that Steven likes. Every hero is a villain of someone else's story

Enigmatic Sage

@Braxiz potentially unless the event has to be completed with in a time frame perhaps and the next time it's triggered it's a stage 2 catastrophe?

there could be various ways the events could escalate depending on the type they are? which side won? how frequent they're accomplished vs failed for scale?

I am also imagining they'll have a well thought out assorted arrangement of locations for the events discovery to prevent farming to some extent as frequency will play a major role in this but it's good to remember that standing around waiting for events probably not the best idea as open world pvp is a key part of the games design especially if you have to travel to different nodes and vassals. The events need to be discovered instead of just showing up on the map and having everyone zerg to them like the food court at lunch time. Need's to have some level of unveiling and element of discovery to incentivise players to not be GPS gamers and actually discover the world instead of going from ping to ping lol.

EDIT:

just thought of something interesting, say the event is a caravan siege and the bandits win... maybe next time it returns the bandits will be upgraded IE better gear, weapons, different abilities, more numbers depending on the category of esclation. Who knows.. maybe it will be like 5 tier system, 10 tier system or even more depending on various factors such as node level and things mentioned earlier.

Depraved

Braxiz wrote: »

sorry something I forgot to add into my example... so you go in thinking you are helping the caravan and doing good only to get grieved and yelled at to stop from both sides as they want the event to fail. This kind of thing kills the depth for anyone trying to enjoy what the game has to offer and its intent.

why does somebody yelling at you kills you enjoyment? either ignore them and do ur thing or kill them and do ur thing.

if they wanna fail, they can always pk you and deal with the consequences.

also, afaik, steven said that failing will open up new paths, but he never said those paths were good. it could be that constantly failing those events is really really really bad for everyone and no one will want to fail them.

Braxiz

Depraved wrote: »

Braxiz wrote: »

sorry something I forgot to add into my example... so you go in thinking you are helping the caravan and doing good only to get grieved and yelled at to stop from both sides as they want the event to fail. This kind of thing kills the depth for anyone trying to enjoy what the game has to offer and its intent.

why does somebody yelling at you kills you enjoyment? either ignore them and do ur thing or kill them and do ur thing.

if they wanna fail, they can always pk you and deal with the consequences.

also, afaik, steven said that failing will open up new paths, but he never said those paths were good. it could be that constantly failing those events is really really really bad for everyone and no one will want to fail them.

I am speaking about people playing outside the parameters of the game structure for the sake of farming rewards titles and gear, if there is an incentive for this, then people trying to play the game how it was intended are going to be a miserable minority and victims of the exploit. This is a legitimate concern. Now if the game is structured in a way that gives equal type of rewards without having to purposely escalation of the failed path spawning a large boss with huge rewards great! I'd also accept a pvp solution to this as well say this caravan is important to the two nodes trading and the group that are just item/reward farming are doing enough harm to these nodes the node members can deal with this group through pvp that is a great answer to this potential problem as well. I am only pointing out possible issue with game mechanics that cater to people that cause harm to the structure of the expected style of experience with no possible solution outside of forum complaining and ticket creating under the structure of game mechanic exploitation.

tautau

I don't really see how an intentional failure intended to spawn a larger event is a problem.

Whether the larger event is due to a player failure or to player planning, the larger event might be fun. If the larger event was intentional because it caused difficulties for the node where the event happens, it might be because a rival node (or enemies of the event node) thought that the larger event might harm the node somehow, to make it weaker for an upcoming siege, for example. All of that would be (I think) legit political/military/diplomatic strategies for enemies of the node to use.

This is going to be a fascinating game, with all kinds of new schemes that it will take years and years to discover and utilize.

Depraved

Braxiz wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

Braxiz wrote: »

sorry something I forgot to add into my example... so you go in thinking you are helping the caravan and doing good only to get grieved and yelled at to stop from both sides as they want the event to fail. This kind of thing kills the depth for anyone trying to enjoy what the game has to offer and its intent.

why does somebody yelling at you kills you enjoyment? either ignore them and do ur thing or kill them and do ur thing.

if they wanna fail, they can always pk you and deal with the consequences.

also, afaik, steven said that failing will open up new paths, but he never said those paths were good. it could be that constantly failing those events is really really really bad for everyone and no one will want to fail them.

I am speaking about people playing outside the parameters of the game structure for the sake of farming rewards titles and gear, if there is an incentive for this, then people trying to play the game how it was intended are going to be a miserable minority and victims of the exploit. This is a legitimate concern. Now if the game is structured in a way that gives equal type of rewards without having to purposely escalation of the failed path spawning a large boss with huge rewards great! I'd also accept a pvp solution to this as well say this caravan is important to the two nodes trading and the group that are just item/reward farming are doing enough harm to these nodes the node members can deal with this group through pvp that is a great answer to this potential problem as well. I am only pointing out possible issue with game mechanics that cater to people that cause harm to the structure of the expected style of experience with no possible solution outside of forum complaining and ticket creating under the structure of game mechanic exploitation.

you dont know that. maybe the majority of players wont care about that title. how are you so sure it will be a minority?

also flip it around. what if the majority of people wanna do the events and only a small minority of players want it to fail, for whatever reason. dont you think thsoe who want it to fail wont enjoy then? using your own logic here.

why a gorup of people is more important than the others?

good thing aoc has open world pvp and we can solve our differences pvping ;3

also, you could do the event again at a later time...

daveywavey

Braxiz wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Iirc they said we can join the other side of the event, so those who want the failure-state type of escalation would just do this, and anyone who wants the win-state type of escalation (and I assume/hope this exists) will try to fight those players.

I did not hear this explained and for sure if this is the case than I'm all for the pvp conflict maybe their is another node nearby that benefits from the caravan being destroyed I get that.

38:45 in the latest livestream.
https://ashesofcreation.com/news/2023-09-30-development-update-with-event-a2-clarifications

"There are some events that do have you pick sides in PvP."

Braxiz

tautau wrote: »

I don't really see how an intentional failure intended to spawn a larger event is a problem.

Whether the larger event is due to a player failure or to player planning, the larger event might be fun. If the larger event was intentional because it caused difficulties for the node where the event happens, it might be because a rival node (or enemies of the event node) thought that the larger event might harm the node somehow, to make it weaker for an upcoming siege, for example. All of that would be (I think) legit political/military/diplomatic strategies for enemies of the node to use.

This is going to be a fascinating game, with all kinds of new schemes that it will take years and years to discover and utilize.

your first statement here kind of points you as part of the problem. But you go on to speak about the in game conflicts between nodes. Again I will state: If it is an attack or of interest to a rival node to make the caravan fail by players joining the bandit side of things than GREAT! I look forward to that kind of conflict. What I am trying to point out is that in my experience with MMO communities it tends (maybe not always) to degrade into both sides playing outside the game and manipulating the mechanics to suit them, which goes in conflict with people that are trying to just participate in the game. My concern here is for the people that are trying to play and enjoy the game as it was intended not exploit or manipulate the mechanics for their own personal gain. If the open world pvp allows for a group of legit gamers to go in and slaughter the whole mass of them than great. But I am pointing out an issue with degrading the submergence value of the game. And my question is just based around the the notion that some game developers over look such things and don't understand how a split in the community can cause a real problem with overall submergence and enjoyment in the game.

I truly don't understand why this concern or idea is such a problem here are you just arguing for the sake of it?

A legit political/military/diplomatic strategies is all great as long as there is a possible counter to this built in to the mechanics as well.

I for one hope that when I come across a caravan under siege I can join whatever side I want and those people are going to be my allies and not standing around with the enemy while im trying to fight the good fight and getting pk'd by both sides because it suites everyone there to fail the event that ruins games for me and I know I speak for some people as well just based off my experiences.

Braxiz

Depraved wrote: »

Braxiz wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

Braxiz wrote: »

sorry something I forgot to add into my example... so you go in thinking you are helping the caravan and doing good only to get grieved and yelled at to stop from both sides as they want the event to fail. This kind of thing kills the depth for anyone trying to enjoy what the game has to offer and its intent.

why does somebody yelling at you kills you enjoyment? either ignore them and do ur thing or kill them and do ur thing.

if they wanna fail, they can always pk you and deal with the consequences.

also, afaik, steven said that failing will open up new paths, but he never said those paths were good. it could be that constantly failing those events is really really really bad for everyone and no one will want to fail them.

I am speaking about people playing outside the parameters of the game structure for the sake of farming rewards titles and gear, if there is an incentive for this, then people trying to play the game how it was intended are going to be a miserable minority and victims of the exploit. This is a legitimate concern. Now if the game is structured in a way that gives equal type of rewards without having to purposely escalation of the failed path spawning a large boss with huge rewards great! I'd also accept a pvp solution to this as well say this caravan is important to the two nodes trading and the group that are just item/reward farming are doing enough harm to these nodes the node members can deal with this group through pvp that is a great answer to this potential problem as well. I am only pointing out possible issue with game mechanics that cater to people that cause harm to the structure of the expected style of experience with no possible solution outside of forum complaining and ticket creating under the structure of game mechanic exploitation.

you dont know that. maybe the majority of players wont care about that title. how are you so sure it will be a minority?

also flip it around. what if the majority of people wanna do the events and only a small minority of players want it to fail, for whatever reason. dont you think thsoe who want it to fail wont enjoy then? using your own logic here.

why a gorup of people is more important than the others?

good thing aoc has open world pvp and we can solve our differences pvping ;3

also, you could do the event again at a later time...

I am not certain why arguing semantics is a good way to go here. But I am speaking out of experience. These exploitations usually start with a small group of people that end up gaining an advantage of some kind over the masses, the masses fall in line because they have no choice in order to stay competitive they need to use the exploit. And so an exploit left unchecked for too long becomes an majority and the norm so when players come in that want to just join the "caravan attack" as an event don't get to enjoy the experience because both sides turn on them so the event will fail. And so this part of the game becomes broken.
And so my question really is about the dangers of escalating one side with big rewards creates an incentive to break the game.

back to my ESO example. Cyrodil is broken because no one sieges anymore which was the point of the pvp area. the "opposing" groups will simply trade off keep sacking just for titles and reward. two sides working together to trade ownerships was not the intent of the game and so it ruins it for those who joined the game to experience siege warfare. The problem here is there is no punishment for failure only reward for success so we just stack up successes and play outside the game parameters. Overall not good for the game imo.

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