Thought experiment: What if they removed dropping things on death?

Just as a thought experiment, what if Intrepid decided to stop glint, gathered and processed goods from dropping on death? What cascading effects would it have? What would need to be changed at a minimum, to stop the whole system from falling apart?

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Korela

This is not a "thought experiment". It is a fact. You just have to wait until the empty slogan “this game is not for everyone” is forgotten. About a year after launch, like many other problematic mechanics.

Mag7spy

NiKr wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

L2 corruption is not as harsh as AoC. Effectively you are saying make corruption even worse for players. If we are going down make corrupting as bad as possible to the point people don't use it for pvp, just remove owPvP flagging and the element of risk/ reward. That way development time wont be wasted and pvp can only be around guild / node decs. Very easy solution if we are catering to this kind of element and reducing this pillar in the game.

Well, you have obviously not read the corruption thread. Seems like a you problem, rather than my suggestion's

I've very much read it, you are clearly not getting what I'm saying. You are essentially advocating for removing the pillar while creating immense risk 0 reward. And trying to use L2 as an example even though the corruption system is tuned to be more extreme.

Hence I'm saying just advocate to remove owpvp around corruption. There is no point adding a system in with extreme negatives just for the sake of it.

Songcaller

Would play the game. Would play the game with or without drops.

Ludullu

Mag7spy wrote: »

I've very much read it, you are clearly not getting what I'm saying. You are essentially advocating for removing the pillar while creating immense risk 0 reward. And trying to use L2 as an example even though the corruption system is tuned to be more extreme.

And how exactly did you read it when I literally several times repeated that I want laxer tuning for corruption? And the comment here starts "if you've read my stance - you'll know my stance". Hence you haven't read it.

daveywavey

Nerror wrote: »

Just as a thought experiment, what if Intrepid decided to stop glint, gathered and processed goods from dropping on death? What cascading effects would it have? What would need to be changed at a minimum, to stop the whole system from falling apart?

There are just too many variables to make any concise answer possible. I started writing out an answer, but it got so long that even I stopped reading it.

The most basic answer is that it would change the feel of the game from a more gritty and dangerous one to a more mainstream one, which I don't think is what any of us really want from it.

Azherae

Nerror wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

I was just talking to a friend who won't play Ashes, and one reason is they don't like dropping stuff on death. I told them there are cascading effects if they remove that aspect of the game, and I was just curious what ya'll think those effects are.

Well, what did you tell your friend the cascading effects were?

There's certainly a cascading effect on development...

I didn't really get into specifics much. It wasn't the setting for that, since I was driving.

I mentioned changes would have to be made to caravans, the corruption system, boss drops like epic and legendary materials, and the economy in general, since it removes one of the significant money/item sinks in the game.

But the topic kept buzzing in my head, hence this thread.

I don't see how any of these are true.

Either that or I don't understand the point of the post.

Surely, the game might feel different. It might even feel different in a way we don't like. But 'the system' wouldn't fall apart any more than it would fall apart with very high Corruption values.

The cascading effects on the systems would be minimal if players did not drop items on death. It would require a rebalance of the economy, but so does 'changing Corruption in any way'. I'd argue that any change to Corruption would require a larger economy rebalance than that, except that we have no solid information on the economy to begin with, at this time.

We simply don't know what work has been done to the systems so far, that would be affected if this was changed. There are models in which this would instantly break the whole thing, and models in which it would require a few number tweaks.

I say this to point out that if you're talking to a person that doesn't follow Ashes, explaining the effects won't always 'land', since any logical bases you use to explain it, will just be speculation, to them.

abc0815

A variety of content already has no drop on death. I don't think it would be a big deal.
If you stick with the game you have to be cool with the mechanic no matter what (and deal with it).

Drezden

First they don’t want pvp, then it doesn’t drop items from pvp, then they want fast, safe teleports and pve servers. I'm afraid the game will turn into Palia with such an audience

Xeeg

Nerror wrote: »

Just as a thought experiment, what if Intrepid decided to stop glint, gathered and processed goods from dropping on death? What cascading effects would it have? What would need to be changed at a minimum, to stop the whole system from falling apart?

The main cascading effect would be the "risk" part of gathering/transporting materials. Assuming the caravan system would be kept in tact, there would have to be a rebalance to make the caravans more lucrative considering you risk losing it all versus just travelling by foot.

Also, the original design seems to be attempting to encourage some kind of "fair enough" pvp, where you drop more items if you don't attack back, but they get corruption in exchange. So fighting back minimizes your losses. The idea here is, if you think there is a chance you can win or escape, it is worth fighting back. This dynamic would be lost if there are no items dropped when killed.

It might be something they can just fine tune. Maybe the default loss is 50% of your mats upon death, 25% if you attack back (although I can see this being abused as a teleport back to town). 100% loss sucks, hope they don't do that.

Otherwise, no drops on death could actually be healthy for the game. A lot of the people who just log on for an hour to grind out don't necessarily want to be at high stress the whole time, watching for gankers. This is especially true while gathering. Sometimes you wanna just put on some music and chill at your game, no adrenaline/hyperactive attention required. Feeling like some kind of prey animal constantly ain't really that fun and requiring a group of 5-8 just to go out and gather some mats is ridiculous. It can take an hour just to get 8 people to agree on an objective and get ready to go, let alone just to bodyguard you for mat gathering.

Mag7spy

NiKr wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

I've very much read it, you are clearly not getting what I'm saying. You are essentially advocating for removing the pillar while creating immense risk 0 reward. And trying to use L2 as an example even though the corruption system is tuned to be more extreme.

And how exactly did you read it when I literally several times repeated that I want laxer tuning for corruption? And the comment here starts "if you've read my stance - you'll know my stance". Hence you haven't read it.

So now we are talking about what you think (even though you didn't post it here with your stance) in changing the system to be more lax.

Do you not see the issue as this is not sounding like just some slight changes.

Percimes

Can't say what people at large would do, and, let us be honest, considering my mindset for drops in general I'm probably the wrong person to speculate anyway.

But on the personal side of things... Dropping things from my inventory upon death doesn't make me want to die less: I already prefer to die as infrequently as possible. And it certainly doesn't make me want to kill others for their stuff either. But death is inevitable. Thus losing mats and glints is inevitable. Better not getting involved too much with that if possible then.

If we didn't drop resources and glint, I don't say I would then play a master gatherer, but I would keep the door open and maybe dabble a little more in the collecting of fine herbs and sticks. But as it is, I won't spend much serious time into something I can lose at anytime from random events, whether other players, monsters, lag, or a server disconnect. It will remain an extra, a small bonus, but never the main attraction.

Percimes

Side question...

Will you guys loot the random ash piles you come across? Or leave them for their dead owner to claim them back?

Azherae

Percimes wrote: »

Side question...

Will you guys loot the random ash piles you come across? Or leave them for their dead owner to claim them back?

This depends on the soft power risk variance in my node.

In general, I'll pick up the ash piles, but the question of where that loot goes by the next day or so depends on about six factors we still don't know.

Depraved

Nerror wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

I was just talking to a friend who won't play Ashes, and one reason is they don't like dropping stuff on death. I told them there are cascading effects if they remove that aspect of the game, and I was just curious what ya'll think those effects are.

Well, what did you tell your friend the cascading effects were?

There's certainly a cascading effect on development...

I didn't really get into specifics much. It wasn't the setting for that, since I was driving.

I mentioned changes would have to be made to caravans, the corruption system, boss drops like epic and legendary materials, and the economy in general, since it removes one of the significant money/item sinks in the game.

But the topic kept buzzing in my head, hence this thread.

hey! don't text (post) and drive. that's dangerous!

Aszkalon

Nerror wrote: »

Just as a thought experiment, what if Intrepid decided to stop glint, gathered and processed goods from dropping on death?
What cascading effects would it have? What would need to be changed at a minimum, to stop the whole system from falling apart?

The Game would become "less dangerous". Like in WoW. And You wouldn't need to watch out as much for PvP-Gankers a.k.a. Playerkillers.

Can we Please keep the "Risk" of losing some Stuff on Death ? It makes the Game sound so fresh, interesting and alive. I must sometimes keep myself awake when i do Stuff in WoW-Token Craft.

Azherae

Skip the spoiler section, go back to it if you disagree with either of the two paragraphs that follow it.

(Production Time * Fungible Value per Hour) - (maintenance "time" * fungible cost per hour) = Progression Cost Investment + Loss/Surplus

At this point it can be applied to single player games, but they only care about tuning the Loss/Surplus value by Difficulty.

(Production Time * Production Method Portfolio Expected Value) - ((maintenance "time" * fungible cost-value analysis of production activity) + access/existence cost) = Progression Cost Investment Incentive Portfolio + Loss/Surplus

Now applies to any game with random drops and actual choices about which ones to go for that doesn't have a single obvious answer (the access/existence cost exists because we must at least assume that two different activities have different access costs, even if only in terms of time). Could still be a single player game.

((Production Time + Disrupted Time) * Production Method Portfolio Expected Value) - (((maintenance "time" + (disruption mitigation time cost)) * fungible cost-value analysis of production activity) + access/existence cost) = Progression Cost Investment Incentive Portfolio + Disruption Mitigation Cost Investment + Loss/Surplus

Depending on the game, you might be able to directly factor Disrupted Time into the Production Portfolio Expected Value, so you can write that part however you prefer to perceive it. Games where you have 'the ability to go to a dungeon but that dungeon has a known 10% chance of spawning a special obstacle that will delay you but not offer any additional reward', for example. Doesn't work as well when the percentage chances are unknown, so this is the version easier to work with for MMOs. You can expand the equation for when that special obstacle offers an additional reward, that just goes back into Production Portfolio Expected Value.

The Disruption Mitigation Time Cost is factored where it is, because there are games where you can spend time beforehand to mitigate disruption itself, but for more complex games these need to be calculated separately because Disrupted Time is almost always a probabilistic distribution, whereas Disruption Mitigation Time Cost should always be a set value for the given player's Risk Tolerance (relative to their perceived Disruption chance).

(Production Time + Disrupted Time) * (Production Method Expected Revenue) - Related Expected Expenses - (((maintenance "time" + (disruption mitigation time cost)) * fungible cost-value analysis of production activity) + access/existence cost) = Progression Cost Investment Incentive Portfolio + Disruption Mitigation Cost Investment + Loss/Surplus

Just splitting up the Expected Value variable. Expenses include basic things like food, potions, taxes, monetary travel costs. Things that tend to pop up in MMOs. This one is a little hard to write up clearly because, for example, the Expense of Taxation on products goes up (and has variability) as your product volume increases, but depending on your play style, your Travel Expenses don't, if you don't travel back to town every time, in most games.

Travel expenses can be grouped into the access/existence cost, if you're particular about it, for certain games, therefore, but I personally prefer to keep it separate unless the only way to access the production method is to pay a Travel Expense. Otherwise, you can't know if a given player will pay the Travel Expense in time, or in Cash.

If all of the above is acceptable, then I'd say that 'dropping things on death' (let's not even bring other players into the picture) counts as a morph of the (Production Time + Disrupted Time). A large enough Disrupted Time addition is equivalent to a material loss, but it is difficult to apply one of these in a reasonable fashion for a game people like, because it must be an actual forced time disruption, not just a theoretical subtraction, and no one wants that.
i.e. it's not enough for you to be kicked out of the area, you would have to become unable to pivot to any other portfolio within any reasonable timeframe.

In strong theory, you'd have to go further and enforce this over at least a 20h period.

But, at the values of Disrupted Time that are acceptable in a game with competition and fiat (to prevent population bleed, debate this value at leisure) it's not actually highly unlikely, and you can just tightly tune the Expected Revenue across most portfolios, and then have death increase Related Expected Expenses and access/existence costs.

There is a range of values for those, where enforced Disrupted Time is not, itself, required to be too large. You can also mess with the 'fungible cost-value analysis of production activity' that I haven't explained, if you want, but that's a huge catch-all term for a large number of different things, and this is so game-dependent that discussing it as a real option is impossible in Ashes.

In the end, there's a theoretical tuning of Expected Portfolio Revenue, death-related Related Expected Expenses and access/existence costs, where item drops on death don't matter. This isn't 'it should be removed', I'm saying 'it literally does not matter what the value is, there is a tuning for these things where it works'.

However, full-loot games almost certainly have low death-related Expected Expenses and Access/Existence costs, which then leads to an entirely different structure. As for Ashes, we do not have enough information on the subcomponents of those three things to make any inferences, which also 'unfortunately' theoretically means that they could easily be tuned to optimize for 'no loot drop on death'.

What we do have, is a relatively large indicator that there's some concept around that, because players don't necessarily drop items on death in certain content or under certain conditions. Remember that whole 'guild war dec to get to kill people and take their stuff for free' problem?

If I am gathering, and have items in my inventory and I join a passing caravan in order to walk back to my home node, and I get killed during the Caravan attack, do I drop my gathered items? Do I only drop 25% of them because I was technically purple?

Does a person who was hunting me for my items, get to approach the caravan, choose to Ignore the Attack/Defend option, and still target me, who has explicitly chosen the Defend option, in a situation where the battle has already started?

And if not, is a Caravan Attacker required to actually attack within a certain timeframe, or can I have 'fake bandits' attack my empty Caravan so that anyone approaching won't get anything for killing me, and just have all my mats in my own inventory? Can I use Decoy Caravans to protect my inventory?

Insufficient information.

Otr

Depraved wrote: »

Otr wrote: »

How about a change which would show if players have something valuable?
So that explorers to be safer to explore while having no backpack or mule loaded with things?

nah that was suggested before. it removes risk from attackers and defenders.

The presence of mule already is a hint that something is being transported.
Players without a mule will have some obvious behavior either fighting mobs, gathering or running on fast mounts.
So maybe my suggestion is redundant. Explorers might get enough safety.

Otr

Percimes wrote: »

Side question...

Will you guys loot the random ash piles you come across? Or leave them for their dead owner to claim them back?

I will leave them if I recognize or determine that the player is part of my metro nation.
I will collect if I am in enemy territory.
Also depends on server habits.

Nerror

Azherae wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

I was just talking to a friend who won't play Ashes, and one reason is they don't like dropping stuff on death. I told them there are cascading effects if they remove that aspect of the game, and I was just curious what ya'll think those effects are.

Well, what did you tell your friend the cascading effects were?

There's certainly a cascading effect on development...

I didn't really get into specifics much. It wasn't the setting for that, since I was driving.

I mentioned changes would have to be made to caravans, the corruption system, boss drops like epic and legendary materials, and the economy in general, since it removes one of the significant money/item sinks in the game.

But the topic kept buzzing in my head, hence this thread.

I don't see how any of these are true.

Either that or I don't understand the point of the post.

Surely, the game might feel different. It might even feel different in a way we don't like. But 'the system' wouldn't fall apart any more than it would fall apart with very high Corruption values.

The cascading effects on the systems would be minimal if players did not drop items on death. It would require a rebalance of the economy, but so does 'changing Corruption in any way'. I'd argue that any change to Corruption would require a larger economy rebalance than that, except that we have no solid information on the economy to begin with, at this time.

We simply don't know what work has been done to the systems so far, that would be affected if this was changed. There are models in which this would instantly break the whole thing, and models in which it would require a few number tweaks.

I say this to point out that if you're talking to a person that doesn't follow Ashes, explaining the effects won't always 'land', since any logical bases you use to explain it, will just be speculation, to them.

"Falling apart" might have been a little hyperbolic.

I don't see it requiring more than a rebalance of the affected systems, which is probably much less of a deal now than it would be after release.

There is no deeper point to this thread other than me being curious what people think about such a change. I think the biggest change for me will be how the game feels, rather than how it plays. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.

The more nuts-and-bolts part of things that you go into in the longer post you wrote all seem very solvable for the developers, IMO. Depending on what they have already done, it might not even require a whole lot more dev time, just a slight course correction.

Nerror

Depraved wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

I was just talking to a friend who won't play Ashes, and one reason is they don't like dropping stuff on death. I told them there are cascading effects if they remove that aspect of the game, and I was just curious what ya'll think those effects are.

Well, what did you tell your friend the cascading effects were?

There's certainly a cascading effect on development...

I didn't really get into specifics much. It wasn't the setting for that, since I was driving.

I mentioned changes would have to be made to caravans, the corruption system, boss drops like epic and legendary materials, and the economy in general, since it removes one of the significant money/item sinks in the game.

But the topic kept buzzing in my head, hence this thread.

hey! don't text (post) and drive. that's dangerous!

They were in the passenger seat! But traffic was busy

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