Splinter Topic: Micro-Competition vs Macro-Competition

People misunderstand forced-PvP-averse vs owPvP-enjoyer in MMORPGs because of some stuff. Here's some of that stuff. If you poke me, I'll add more stuff or expand on this stuff.

1. A PvE-enjoyer (let's use a fisher), enters the game with the idea of getting good at fishing, building up knowledge, skill level, understanding of systems (plz donot assume they 'don't care about PvP'). That person is in micro-competition with every other fisher. When another person shows up at their fishing spot in a game with no forced PvP, their 'competition' is in 'who understands the fishing mechanics better and who honed their skills more'. In a game with forced PvP, their 'competition' can instantly become 'who is better at PvP'.

2. A PvP-enjoyer (let's say me, a 'fishing rights enforcer') enters the game with the idea of getting good at controlling an economic space. That person is in micro-competition with the PvP skill or the organizational ability (or zerg factor) of anyone who wants control of that economic space. But there's one catch to consider. In this case, the PvP-enjoyer has a vastly diminished incentive to cooperate compared to even a Survival game (but let's look at games where some attempt at simulating a world is happening, instead).

The 'flaw' in forced-PvP MMOs is contained in those two things above and all the fundamental issues relative to them that these games nearly never address, or cannot address because it would drastically warp gameplay. The result is, that all the 'real world equivalent' outcomes that 'would need to happen in the game, for it to make sense as a proper macro-competition', end up happening in terms of 'players existing in the world'. Basically, characters 'die' when their players leave the game due to the 'flaws', which are really just 'the equivalent of what would happen irl if too many immortal people with low incentives for cooperation entered an area'.

For a game to be enjoyable for most PvE-focused players, something must enforce the micro-competition within their skillsets. Otherwise, the only micro-competition they can be assured of getting to experience is PvP. This was the original failpoint of New World.

If I can 'help my friend win a fishing contest' by killing you, it is no longer a fishing contest. If you take nothing else from this post, let it be that. No matter how much someone likes PvP competition, if they also want to have 'fishing skill competitions' and the game allows another player to 'win the fishing skill competition by using PvP skill', it is a 'PvP game'.

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blat

It's a big, dangerous (see: "immersive") world. Find somewhere else to fish init.

We're talking extremely contrived scenarios, where you're:
a) fishing in the middle of some action
b) have a group of enforcers for your fishing mission, who are willing to gain corruption & log out

I just don't think it'll be a big deal in-game, is all. Yeah sometimes, but res up and move on. /shrug

I don't mean to be dismissive btw, I just don't think MMOs are about mini games is all. All dynamics are always at play.

Azherae

blat wrote: »

It's a big, dangerous (see: "immersive") world. Find somewhere else to fish init.

We're talking extremely contrived scenarios, where you're:
a) fishing in the middle of some action
b) have a group of enforcers for your fishing mission, who are willing to gain corruption & log out

I just don't think it'll be a big deal in-game, is all. Yeah sometimes, but res up and move on. /shrug

I don't mean to be dismissive btw, I just don't think MMOs are about mini games is all. All dynamics are always at play.

Azherae Cleric, GrilledCheeseMojito Paladin, GrandSerpent Fighter, JustVine Summoner, SpaceWolf Mage, SongRune Bard, one Rogue you haven't seen post yet, one Ranger or Mage, neither of whom has posted yet.

Technically 9.

Easy.

I have so far only met one person on this forum who both 'agrees with Corruption' and doesn't respond to my group's existence with either 'you won't really do that' or 'someone will come kill you'. However, we don't care. It's the PvE Fisher who has to care.

Are you accepting that the competiition that SongRune and the PvE fisher have is PvP?

Ace1234

Its kinda funny you brought this thread up cuz i've been working on my post for dev discussion im probably gonna finish today, that kinda touches on this topic a bit

blat

Azherae wrote: »

Azherae Cleric, GrilledCheeseMojito Paladin, GrandSerpent Fighter, JustVine Summoner, SpaceWolf Mage, SongRune Bard, one Rogue you haven't seen post yet, one Ranger or Mage, neither of whom has posted yet.

Technically 9.

Easy.

eh? Is this your group? I'm not sure what point you're making?

Azherae wrote: »

I have so far only met one person on this forum who both 'agrees with Corruption' and doesn't respond to my group's existence with either 'you won't really do that' or 'someone will come kill you'. However, we don't care. It's the PvE Fisher who has to care.

Are you accepting that the competiition that SongRune and the PvE fisher have is PvP?

[/quote]

Yeah. My point is so what? It's a highly contrived example, it won't be your every day fishing experience.
But yes, in a world with pvp (albeit with corruption to help manage the balance), then yes there is the threat of pvp.

I just don't think you can expect to fish in a protected little bubble. It's a massive world, you'll find plenty of opportunity to fish without interruption. But there's always a risk, yeah.

It's like everyone wants to jump into a massively multiplayer online world... and then play mini-games in instances.

Azherae

Ace1234 wrote: »

Agreed,

(Assuming I interpreted correctly) Since there will be systems in Ashes that naturally encourage macro-competitions (such as systems that allow for emergent interactions and gameplay between overlapping systems), there will also need to be ways to isolate and enforce those micro-competitions, which could potentially be done in a variety of ways in Ashes. For example, these could be enforced through things like instanced content/competitions that you can queue for, or through controlled settings within the game either set up by the community or through in-game boundaries. (Such as a colosseum that prevents pvp players from interrupting whatever competition is going on inside, or a sub-community that hosts its own fishing competition and disqualifies anyone who tries to interupt with with pvp.)

And this is why PvE focused players ask for:

Instanced Content
TL style events
Flagging systems
Safe Zones
Protection from PvP below certain levels
and other protections...

But generally don't ask for 'harsher Corruption'. They 'accept' that some people really believe the Corruption will work to help enforce stuff, but the thing they log into these games for is not solved by greater Corruption unless it's so strong that it becomes flagging/Safe Zones.

And even then, still insufficient half the time, in terms of achieving the goal of 'I am having a PvE skill competition that does not boil down to PvP if a strong PvP person wants to get involved'.

Ashes is a PvP game to those players until we see something that performs this function.

Azherae

blat wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Azherae Cleric, GrilledCheeseMojito Paladin, GrandSerpent Fighter, JustVine Summoner, SpaceWolf Mage, SongRune Bard, one Rogue you haven't seen post yet, one Ranger or Mage, neither of whom has posted yet.

Technically 9.

Easy.

eh? Is this your group? I'm not sure what point you're making?

Azherae wrote: »

I have so far only met one person on this forum who both 'agrees with Corruption' and doesn't respond to my group's existence with either 'you won't really do that' or 'someone will come kill you'. However, we don't care. It's the PvE Fisher who has to care.

Are you accepting that the competiition that SongRune and the PvE fisher have is PvP?

Yeah. My point is so what? It's a highly contrived example, it won't be your every day fishing experience.
But yes, in a world with pvp (albeit with corruption to help manage the balance), then yes there is the threat of pvp.

I just don't think you can expect to fish in a protected little bubble. It's a massive world, you'll find plenty of opportunity to fish without interruption. But there's always a risk, yeah.

It's like everyone wants to jump into a massively multiplayer online world... and then play mini-games in instances.

Why wouldn't this be everyday fishing experience?

The reason I bring up fishing is because fishing has a bunch of underlying requirements that funnel players to geographic locations, and often have limited space on the map, similar to bosses.

You're trying to say to me that the 9 people who I log into every other game with to hang out, even for going onto a fishing boat, is a 'highly contrived example'?

blat

Azherae wrote: »

Why wouldn't this be everyday fishing experience?

The reason I bring up fishing is because fishing has a bunch of underlying requirements that funnel players to geographic locations, and often have limited space on the map, similar to bosses.

You're trying to say to me that the 9 people who I log into every other game with to hang out, even for going onto a fishing boat, is a 'highly contrived example'?

Well kinda yeah. You're gonna have a squad of 10 at all times, willing to take on corruption (for someone with a fishing rod out, offering zero threat)? But let's just say, yes.
Then... fine! Doesn't bother me in the slightest (I quite want to fish btw!). I'll just move on. It's a huge world. Plus your mates need to sleep right?

Azherae

blat wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Why wouldn't this be everyday fishing experience?

The reason I bring up fishing is because fishing has a bunch of underlying requirements that funnel players to geographic locations, and often have limited space on the map, similar to bosses.

You're trying to say to me that the 9 people who I log into every other game with to hang out, even for going onto a fishing boat, is a 'highly contrived example'?

Well kinda yeah. You're gonna have a squad of 10 at all times, willing to take on corruption? But let's just say, yes. Then... fine! Doesn't bother me in the slightest (I quite want to fish btw!). I'll just move on. It's a huge world. Plus your mates need to sleep right?

Perfect.

That's also what the PvE fisher thinks.

"I'll just move on."
To Throne and Liberty, as soon as it implements fishing.

You're still in the realm of 'someone who wants to play a PvP game'.

The only reason I made this thread is to point out the precise reason why PvE players don't usually want to play this game.

blat

Azherae wrote: »

Perfect.

That's also what the PvE fisher thinks.

"I'll just move on."
To Throne and Liberty, as soon as it implements fishing.

I do see the point your making, the first post def helped clarify the position for me.
I just think it's being taken to a bit of a purist extreme position, personally.

It's an MMO, a big dynamic world. It's back to the point I tried to make earlier:
It's like everyone wants to jump into a massively multiplayer online world... and then play mini-games in instances.

There are plenty of people on all sides here, I just get the impression that the PvEers are mad fussy about it all, whereas it's actually the PvPers who are generally more forced into PvE content than the other way around. IMO.

Azherae

blat wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Perfect.

That's also what the PvE fisher thinks.

"I'll just move on."
To Throne and Liberty, as soon as it implements fishing.

I do see the point your making, the first post def helped clarify the position for me.
I just think it's being taken to a bit of a purist extreme position, personally.

It's an MMO, a big dynamic world. It's back to the point I tried to make earlier:
It's like everyone wants to jump into a massively multiplayer online world... and then play mini-games in instances.

There are plenty of people on all sides here, I just get the impression that the PvEers are mad fussy about it all, whereas it's actually the PvPers who are generally more forced into PvE content than the other way around. IMO.

Yeah, simply put I don't care at all about the actual outcome of that aspect of it. If people want to believe 'PvE is boring', 'PvE players are selfish', 'PvE players are whiny', 'PvE players just don't give games like this a chance', or 'people just want to play in instanced content', then to me it's just another MMO sociology fail due to bias.

We're all entitled to our biases, until we need to make a game for people without them.

That's why Intrepid pays their Senior System Designer the big bucks.

Azherae

Also, the reason why Survival games work is related to their sociology being better (less fiat protections, immortality, ability to just logout, etc) and the reason why people like PvP competitive games that aren't MMOs better is because they're more streamlined.

Just cut out or diminish all that unnecessary PvE and 'lifeskilling' when you're just gonna get killed or fall under the economic control of some megaguild anyway. Go straight to 'Guild V Guild fighting for castles for no real in-world reason'. Or all the way to a MOBA or Team Deathmatch game. Or EVE, that one works.

Halfassed worldsim with immortal monstrosities (that's us) killing each other over bear skins isn't even immersive.

blat

Azherae wrote: »

Yeah, simply put I don't care at all about the actual outcome of that aspect of it. If people want to believe 'PvE is boring', 'PvE players are selfish', 'PvE players are whiny', 'PvE players just don't give games like this a chance', or 'people just want to play in instanced content', then to me it's just another MMO sociology fail due to bias.

We're all entitled to our biases, until we need to make a game for people without them.

Again I'm not sure I'm following here.
"Everyone has bias" aside for a second, I'm not anti PvEers at all.
None of my posts have been remotely anti PvE. I've specifically said it's about trying to accommodate a variety of playstyles, several times. Which is clearly what the corruption system is intended to do.

But any kind of 'middle ground' by definition won't please anyone on the extremes.
And biased or not, I think expecting to sit fishing in the middle of an busy biome in an MMO, with total PvP immunity, is a bit of an extreme expectation, personally.

Azherae wrote: »

That's why Intrepid pays their Senior System Designer the big bucks.

Meaning? To me it sounds like approval of the corruption system, or at least the intent behind it?
If so, agreed! I like what they're trying to do.

Ethanh37

Azherae wrote: »

blat wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Azherae Cleric, GrilledCheeseMojito Paladin, GrandSerpent Fighter, JustVine Summoner, SpaceWolf Mage, SongRune Bard, one Rogue you haven't seen post yet, one Ranger or Mage, neither of whom has posted yet.

Technically 9.

Easy.

eh? Is this your group? I'm not sure what point you're making?

Azherae wrote: »

I have so far only met one person on this forum who both 'agrees with Corruption' and doesn't respond to my group's existence with either 'you won't really do that' or 'someone will come kill you'. However, we don't care. It's the PvE Fisher who has to care.

Are you accepting that the competiition that SongRune and the PvE fisher have is PvP?

Yeah. My point is so what? It's a highly contrived example, it won't be your every day fishing experience.
But yes, in a world with pvp (albeit with corruption to help manage the balance), then yes there is the threat of pvp.

I just don't think you can expect to fish in a protected little bubble. It's a massive world, you'll find plenty of opportunity to fish without interruption. But there's always a risk, yeah.

It's like everyone wants to jump into a massively multiplayer online world... and then play mini-games in instances.

Why wouldn't this be everyday fishing experience?

The reason I bring up fishing is because fishing has a bunch of underlying requirements that funnel players to geographic locations, and often have limited space on the map, similar to bosses.

You're trying to say to me that the 9 people who I log into every other game with to hang out, even for going onto a fishing boat, is a 'highly contrived example'?

Game Theory its simple in a game like ashes, IS is going to have to find a way to have the player base wanting to cooperate more than to take the easy/fastest route to MORE gold higher levels. and ways that if guild and larger groups dont want to cooperate, that there is a way from the rest of the player base to even that out....

"The prisoners dilemma" shows that if we assume everyone is selfish then there is only one course of action but breaking that assumption leads to the understanding that cooperation leads to better outcomes every time...

so yes you can think that if your fishing and you see a group of 8 walking your way that is a very bad thing but when there get there you might find out that they are from the same node and are interested in finding people to help craft foods for there guilds instead...

blat

Btw I'm sure a lot of this is based on our previous experiences in MMOs. I've come from Classic WoW (PvP), where there were absolutely zero repercussions for PvP, regardless of level etc.

And yes at times it could get a bit filthy.
But honestly most of the time I could very easily fish or whatever without interuption.

Also, it being an MMO and TTK is a bit longer (no headshots involved).. with a tiny bit of skill & awareness it really wasn't all that hard to avoid or escape pvp threats.

The map was also plenty big to just move on and find another spot. I believe the Ashes map is quite a bit larger.

I'd be interested in others experience of "PvX" games though, using @Azherae's "I just want to do some fishing" example.

Azherae

blat wrote: »

And biased or not, I think expecting to sit fishing in the middle of an busy biome in an MMO, with total PvP immunity, is a bit of an extreme expectation, personally.

This is because you view MMOs as a game, and a very specific type of game.

Let's not even talk about PvE vs PvP enjoyers. Let's talk about people who like to progress and live in worldsim and people who moreso want to play games.

Ashes of Creation is supposed to be somewhat like a living world. That is a large part of the appeal of this game to some people.

In a living world, what would happen if a random fisherperson from a village went out to a coastline to fish and was murdered or even just knocked out (the equivalent of death for us immortals) is that their community now doesn't have fish, and they're mad about it. This part might happen.

But in a 'realer world' after the 2nd or 3rd time that person should reasonably go 'I'm not going to do that again until someone does something about the thing hurting me'. This is, assuming their focus in life is on fishing. So the villagers get their pitchforks and they go out looking for 'the thing that is hurting the fisherman' and they kill it. In a 'realer world' that ends there. The fisher is safe for now, they go back to fishing.

In Ashes, the thing that is hurting the fisherman just revives. You can easily argue this is what happens in PvE too, but in PvE, you generally know 'I have to get X strong to go there'. In Ashes, the threat comes to you. I'll skip the long ecology explanation. This is just another 'why PvE-enjoyers don't like living worlds that play too much like games'.

Not only does the thing hurting the fisherman just revive, it can randomly appear with zero warning right next to that fisherman at any time. It does not NEED to eat or sleep. It can randomly appear and disappear on demand, at the will of another totally innocent person standing there.

Even if the attacker did need to eat, it could simply 'wait for an accomplice to buy fried fish in the village, and bring it out, appear for long enough to receive the fish, eat it, and disappear again'.

Literally none of the premises of a 'living world' make sense in most MMORPGs, so some simulate the idea that you might not just randomly take people's stuff due to being immortal, by making it impossible to take their stuff.

Ashes doesn't. Potential immortal predators everywhere. This is the premise of most horror movies.

Maybe Intrepid DID remake MineCraft.

SongRune

Ethanh37 wrote: »

Game Theory its simple in a game like ashes, IS is going to have to find a way to have the player base wanting to cooperate more than to take the easy/fastest route to MORE gold higher levels. and ways that if guild and larger groups dont want to cooperate, that there is a way from the rest of the player base to even that out....

"The prisoners dilemma" shows that if we assume everyone is selfish then there is only one course of action but breaking that assumption leads to the understanding that cooperation leads to better outcomes every time...

so yes you can think that if your fishing and you see a group of 8 walking your way that is a very bad thing but when there get there you might find out that they are from the same node and are interested in finding people to help craft foods for there guilds instead...

This isn't a prisoners dilemma though. You don't have a reason to respond with hostility, you'd just get obliterated. They might in fact be friendly. The problem is that not every such group will be friendly, so you don't need to 'get scared', but you will still experience the situation where your PvE activity is taken away from you by a pure-PvP competition that you cannot defend through PvE means.

Azherae

SongRune wrote: »

Ethanh37 wrote: »

Game Theory its simple in a game like ashes, IS is going to have to find a way to have the player base wanting to cooperate more than to take the easy/fastest route to MORE gold higher levels. and ways that if guild and larger groups dont want to cooperate, that there is a way from the rest of the player base to even that out....

"The prisoners dilemma" shows that if we assume everyone is selfish then there is only one course of action but breaking that assumption leads to the understanding that cooperation leads to better outcomes every time...

so yes you can think that if your fishing and you see a group of 8 walking your way that is a very bad thing but when there get there you might find out that they are from the same node and are interested in finding people to help craft foods for there guilds instead...

This isn't a prisoners dilemma though. You don't have a reason to respond with hostility, you'd just get obliterated. They might in fact be friendly. The problem is that not every such group will be friendly, so you don't need to 'get scared', but you will still experience the situation where your PvE activity is taken away from you by a pure-PvP competition that you cannot defend through PvE means.

And once again, please all remember:

This is fine.

Just don't ask Dygz to play 'because he might like it' or go 'well maybe you should make some PvP friends'.

7PvP+Dygz vs 8PvP.

Obviously Dygz wins in this case because Dygz is probably more powerful than half the 8-team, but the average person is not at Dygz' level.

SunScript

Right. So this thread gets very very close to the core reasons I don't bother much with posting on these forums and generally just let Azherae do it. I'm gonna try to break them down into simple chunks below.

All those people who meme about griefing PvE enjoyers, I find unbearably coddled by easy mode games and in my experience they just tend to run away when things get serious. There's too many of them on the forums. By all means, please attack whoever you want, but there's this conflation running around that for some mysterious reason PvE enjoyers aren't also hardcore PvP players. So let me introduce myself, I am a PvE enjoyer whose ambitions for Ashes are to own a shop where I sell all the jewelry I craft and to act as my group's enforcer/bodyguard by being so elite at PvP no one can touch my gatherers. Get that conflation out of here.

The second reason is that I strongly dislike Steven's design as presented so far, because Corruption as a system completely misses the point for a certain category of players in MMOs. The maniacs. Those people who get their jewelry shop looted once and then completely dedicate their entire remaining existence in that game to single mindedly chasing the offender wherever they go, with the purpose of griefing them until they quit playing. We all enjoy winning, but for these maniacs winning is secondary to the purer goal of making sure the only content their target gets is 'being chased'. The goal is seizing their target's time. I feel like Steven and people on these forums don't even believe those people exist. I know they do, because I am that maniac.

The third reason is because I dislike the way Steven presents himself relative to his vision. I feel like someone who appears to have always been in a position of great privilege as the rich guild leader of big guilds cannot possibly empathize with or even understand half the things I am worried about with game systems like these, because it's never been a problem for them. Of course it hasn't. This is the problem with privilege. No one gets close enough to disrupt the guild leader fishing.

And finally, the 4th reason is that I am the enforcer/bodyguard for my group. I will rotate my sleep schedule just to derive enjoyment out of killing whoever messes with my friends (I've done this before). I take pleasure in knowing people assume Corruption will have an impact on my motivation. It has never meant nor will ever mean anything to me because it makes me feel good to perform this role for my group so the others don't have to get Corruption. I don't feel like people spend enough time considering the existence of people like me in games like Ashes.

blat

Azherae wrote: »

And once again, please all remember:

This is fine.

Just don't ask Dygz to play 'because he might like it' or go 'well maybe you should make some PvP friends'.

Well I got the impression that people were mostly saying: don't be so quick to rule it out completely. Maybe just Dygz's style, but the statements sounded very definite, like it's a done deal.
Also some of those statements were kinda taken to the extreme and could easily put off other PvEers who don't share Dygz's fairly extreme position. (IE: "It'll be just like a WoW pvp server." It definitely won't).

Azherae wrote: »

7PvP+Dygz vs 8PvP.

Obviously Dygz wins in this case because Dygz is probably more powerful than half the 8-team, but the average person is not at Dygz' level.

Ha well I'm not sure a professional Care Bear is going to be the biggest help here. Unless they're debating semantics in which case it'll be *crit* *crit* *crit*

Azherae

blat wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

And once again, please all remember:

This is fine.

Just don't ask Dygz to play 'because he might like it' or go 'well maybe you should make some PvP friends'.

Well I got the impression that people were mostly saying: don't be so quick to rule it out completely. Maybe just Dygz's style, but the statements sounded very definite, like it's a done deal.
Also some of those statements were kinda taken to the extreme and could easily put off other PvEers who don't share Dygz's fairly extreme position. (IE: "It'll be just like a WoW pvp server." It definitely won't).

Azherae wrote: »

7PvP+Dygz vs 8PvP.

Obviously Dygz wins in this case because Dygz is probably more powerful than half the 8-team, but the average person is not at Dygz' level.

Ha well I'm not sure a professional Care Bear is going to be the biggest help here. Unless they're debating semantics in which case it'll be *crit* *crit* *crit*

I pity the person who assumes that Carebears can't fight. But you do you.

And to roll on this a bit more...

Did you know that as a Farmer in Ashes on your own Freehold you can potentially be killed and looted for your crops?

This is very realistic.

You can even hire NPC guards that might be competent.

What you can't do is poison the thieves, dig sinkholes, or go set their apartment on fire so it never happens again.

So they have to succeed at raiding you once per harvest (it requires at least two of them, one to kill you and the other to pick up the loot, doesn't matter which is which).

Do you have a solution for this part? Unlike fishing, your crops and animals don't move. You have to defend them at that time.

Child Item