I tend to think that there needs to be penalties when you die. Otherwise, who cares about dying, or becoming more efficient at survival or anything else?
Those who actually want to beat the dungeon.
If you keep dying and dying, you will never finish.
And you never lose either.
In the football analogy, it's like if you lose a game, you just play it again and never get a number in the loss column.
yes, what is the problem of never losing? There is still challenge.
Isn't positive reinforcement (winning if you are figure it out) better than negative reinforcement (losing if you do not figure it out)?
Losing time is the baseline risk that could be said about anything, you risk losing time finding the right channel to watch TV, etc. But sandboxes are about competition for resources and this requires real risk vs reward. The type of games centered solely about combat dont need these type of risks, but sandboxes do, because they have lots of layers of gameplay attached to combat.
The challenge in sandboxes may be about denying resources to your enemies, but how could you do this with no risk? They would keep respawning and the game would basically be a giant deathmatch arena.
I don't think you've thought this through...
Resource Competition: You're on a PVP server in WOW and everyone is looking for the new Unobtanium Ore Nodes that are spawning. You spot one. An alliance player spots one (you're horde obviously; you're not a damned fool.) You kill him. You get the node. He doesn't. He respawns instantly -- he still doesn't have the ore, and he can't mine that node because it's gone now.
So resource competition doesn't require excessive penalty to happen.
Non-Combat Competition: You're selling ships in EVE at a station, competing economically with other players at that station. Your price is too high. The penalty is: your goods don't sell. The penalty IS NOT: your goods are destroyed. The penalty IS NOT: your Bad Businessman Penalty has increased to 10% (10% reduction in profits). The penalty is just that your goods don't sell.
So combat vs. non-combat doesn't matter, and in fact makes it even more painfully obvious that excessive penalties aren't needed for good competition to occur.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The most wanted feature in a sandbox for me would be the ability to take my quad / dirtbike and jump it over sand dunes or other various portions of the environments.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I tend to think that there needs to be penalties when you die. Otherwise, who cares about dying, or becoming more efficient at survival or anything else?
Those who actually want to beat the dungeon.
If you keep dying and dying, you will never finish.
And you never lose either.
In the football analogy, it's like if you lose a game, you just play it again and never get a number in the loss column.
yes, what is the problem of never losing? There is still challenge.
Isn't positive reinforcement (winning if you are figure it out) better than negative reinforcement (losing if you do not figure it out)?
The problem with never losing is that winning is just a handout.
Losing time is the baseline risk that could be said about anything, you risk losing time finding the right channel to watch TV, etc. But sandboxes are about competition for resources and this requires real risk vs reward. The type of games centered solely about combat dont need these type of risks, but sandboxes do, because they have lots of layers of gameplay attached to combat.
The challenge in sandboxes may be about denying resources to your enemies, but how could you do this with no risk? They would keep respawning and the game would basically be a giant deathmatch arena.
I don't think you've thought this through...
Resource Competition: You're on a PVP server in WOW and everyone is looking for the new Unobtanium Ore Nodes that are spawning. You spot one. An alliance player spots one (you're horde obviously; you're not a damned fool.) You kill him. You get the node. He doesn't. He respawns instantly -- he still doesn't have the ore, and he can't mine that node because it's gone now.
So resource competition doesn't require excessive penalty to happen.
Non-Combat Competition: You're selling ships in EVE at a station, competing economically with other players at that station. Your price is too high. The penalty is: your goods don't sell. The penalty IS NOT: your goods are destroyed. The penalty IS NOT: your Bad Businessman Penalty has increased to 10% (10% reduction in profits). The penalty is just that your goods don't sell.
So combat vs. non-combat doesn't matter, and in fact makes it even more painfully obvious that excessive penalties aren't needed for good competition to occur.
The more penalty and "risk" you add, the deeper the competition for resources is. Following your example, this is assuming both players encountered each other before the node is farmed. If player A farmed the node before player B, with full loot he would need to plan his escape very carefully because only half the battle is done, he still needs to get home safely.
Now my post was responding to someone talking about no open pvp at all, so it would be the equivalent of a wow pve server. But since this issue isnt black and white, adding a little more risk (open pvp without loot) would make the competition for resources deeper, and adding even more risk (full loot) would make it even more deeper and meaningful.
TLDR: Resource competition doesnt require excessive penalty to happen but it does benefit from it by making the gameplay more meaningful.
Losing time is the baseline risk that could be said about anything, you risk losing time finding the right channel to watch TV, etc. But sandboxes are about competition for resources and this requires real risk vs reward. The type of games centered solely about combat dont need these type of risks, but sandboxes do, because they have lots of layers of gameplay attached to combat.
The challenge in sandboxes may be about denying resources to your enemies, but how could you do this with no risk? They would keep respawning and the game would basically be a giant deathmatch arena.
I don't think you've thought this through...
Resource Competition: You're on a PVP server in WOW and everyone is looking for the new Unobtanium Ore Nodes that are spawning. You spot one. An alliance player spots one (you're horde obviously; you're not a damned fool.) You kill him. You get the node. He doesn't. He respawns instantly -- he still doesn't have the ore, and he can't mine that node because it's gone now.
So resource competition doesn't require excessive penalty to happen.
Non-Combat Competition: You're selling ships in EVE at a station, competing economically with other players at that station. Your price is too high. The penalty is: your goods don't sell. The penalty IS NOT: your goods are destroyed. The penalty IS NOT: your Bad Businessman Penalty has increased to 10% (10% reduction in profits). The penalty is just that your goods don't sell.
So combat vs. non-combat doesn't matter, and in fact makes it even more painfully obvious that excessive penalties aren't needed for good competition to occur.
But if you're trying to encourage MEANINGFUL combat, meaning you choose your battles carefully and combat is important when it happens and not the complete focus of the game, doesn't that need death penalties? Sure the ultimate end of not selling your goods are that you are not as rich as you could, but combat should be something more important right?? Why does every game need to have meaningless, constant combat??
The more penalty and "risk" you add, the deeper the competition for resources is. Following your example, this is assuming both players encountered each other before the node is farmed. If player A farmed the node before player B, with full loot he would need to plan his escape very carefully because only half the battle is done, he still needs to get home safely.
Now my post was responding to someone talking about no open pvp at all, so it would be the equivalent of a wow pve server. But since this issue isnt black and white, adding a little more risk (open pvp without loot) would make the competition for resources deeper, and adding even more risk (full loot) would make it even more deeper and meaningful.
TLDR: Resource competition doesnt require excessive penalty to happen but it does benefit from it by making the gameplay more meaningful.
That's simply not true.
Game A has a 50% damage reduction death penalty. Players 1 and 2 compete for resources. After the first contest of skill, Player 1 wins. Player 1 then continues to win almost automatically if Player 2 attempts to compete for other resources. This is below average competition.
Game B allows the victorious Player 1 to further steal money directly from the defeated Player 2. Player 2 is discouraged from competing at all, so less competition happens. This is awful competition.
Game C has no excessive penalty. Players 1 and 2 compete for resources, each winning about half the time because they're pretty evenly matched. This is good competition.
Game D spawns twice as many resource nodes and death causes you to spawn only half the normal distance. There is now twice as much competition as in Game B! Great competition.
So risk actually makes things far less competitive, either by discouraging players from competing (Game or by reducing the fairness of competition for subsequent fights (Game A), whereas removing risk enhances competition (Game C) and the higher percentage of gameplay that actually revolves around direct competition the more competitive the game will be (Game D)
Penalties don't add depth. At the moment penalties happen, all of the game's depth has already been experienced:
Challenge is a measure of how much skill is needed to avoid failure.
Penalty is what happens after you fail.
So the depth of a game comes from its challenges, not from its penalties. In chess you loses pieces and eventually lose the fight, and can immediately start a new game with no penalties, and yet it manages to be one of the deepest games of all time.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The more penalty and "risk" you add, the deeper the competition for resources is. Following your example, this is assuming both players encountered each other before the node is farmed. If player A farmed the node before player B, with full loot he would need to plan his escape very carefully because only half the battle is done, he still needs to get home safely.
Now my post was responding to someone talking about no open pvp at all, so it would be the equivalent of a wow pve server. But since this issue isnt black and white, adding a little more risk (open pvp without loot) would make the competition for resources deeper, and adding even more risk (full loot) would make it even more deeper and meaningful.
TLDR: Resource competition doesnt require excessive penalty to happen but it does benefit from it by making the gameplay more meaningful.
That's simply not true.
Game A has a 50% damage reduction death penalty. Players 1 and 2 compete for resources. After the first contest of skill, Player 1 wins. Player 1 then continues to win almost automatically if Player 2 attempts to compete for other resources. This is below average competition.
Game B allows the victorious Player 1 to further steal money directly from the defeated Player 2. Player 2 is discouraged from competing at all, so less competition happens. This is awful competition.
Game C has no excessive penalty. Players 1 and 2 compete for resources, each winning about half the time because they're pretty evenly matched. This is good competition.
Game D spawns twice as many resource nodes and death causes you to spawn only half the normal distance. There is now twice as much competition as in Game B! Great competition.
So risk actually makes things far less competitive, either by discouraging players from competing (Game or by reducing the fairness of competition for subsequent fights (Game A), whereas removing risk enhances competition (Game C) and the higher percentage of gameplay that actually revolves around direct competition the more competitive the game will be (Game D)
Penalties don't add depth. At the moment penalties happen, all of the game's depth has already been experienced:
Challenge is a measure of how much skill is needed to avoid failure.
Penalty is what happens after you fail.
So the depth of a game comes from its challenges, not from its penalties. In chess you loses pieces and eventually lose the fight, and can immediately start a new game with no penalties, and yet it manages to be one of the deepest games of all time.
You just killed the free market and you actually blame every developed economy in the world is doomed. In fact developing too. And you say the regulated communism is the best system ever created And you do all that while you are talking about games. Do you know what is the competition? It is a negative penalty for the losers.
Competition is bad for companies, athletes, and everyone involved. Do you know why the competition is good? It is obvious you do not. The ultimate goal of competition is to win, to beat everybody else. So bigger penalties actually enforce the competition.
The competition is good for customers because they get better quality for lesser prices. But that means lower incomes and higher expenses for the companies.
Now to the point, the goal in games is to win. That is why you need competition. Because without losers there is no winners. If you want just to walk in some beautiful virtual reality sharing it with other people, you do not need competition, gear, weapons, skills.
If there is fight and conflicts the difference between PvE and PvP is only the difficulty. PvP is more difficult because players evolve and cooperate, but mobs do not. So if you remove the competition, you get to the wandering phase. If you remove the PvP you make the game easier, so better for noobs and bots. There is no need of A,B,C,D logic and wrong conclusions, to get the point.
I really really really like the direction that crowfall is heading, they understand that combat SHOULD NOT be balanced. A rogue should have a chance against a warrior but just that...a chance not likely but a chance. If you are a very good rogue then you can beat a ok warrior. They also understand that gear based MMO's are dumb, gear should play a factor but it should be geared around the player and the character not the gear defines the characters abilities.
I found all the stuff I want in an MMO with crowfall.
The more penalty and "risk" you add, the deeper the competition for resources is. Following your example, this is assuming both players encountered each other before the node is farmed. If player A farmed the node before player B, with full loot he would need to plan his escape very carefully because only half the battle is done, he still needs to get home safely.
Now my post was responding to someone talking about no open pvp at all, so it would be the equivalent of a wow pve server. But since this issue isnt black and white, adding a little more risk (open pvp without loot) would make the competition for resources deeper, and adding even more risk (full loot) would make it even more deeper and meaningful.
TLDR: Resource competition doesnt require excessive penalty to happen but it does benefit from it by making the gameplay more meaningful.
That's simply not true.
Game A has a 50% damage reduction death penalty. Players 1 and 2 compete for resources. After the first contest of skill, Player 1 wins. Player 1 then continues to win almost automatically if Player 2 attempts to compete for other resources. This is below average competition.
Game B allows the victorious Player 1 to further steal money directly from the defeated Player 2. Player 2 is discouraged from competing at all, so less competition happens. This is awful competition.
Game C has no excessive penalty. Players 1 and 2 compete for resources, each winning about half the time because they're pretty evenly matched. This is good competition.
Game D spawns twice as many resource nodes and death causes you to spawn only half the normal distance. There is now twice as much competition as in Game B! Great competition.
So risk actually makes things far less competitive, either by discouraging players from competing (Game or by reducing the fairness of competition for subsequent fights (Game A), whereas removing risk enhances competition (Game C) and the higher percentage of gameplay that actually revolves around direct competition the more competitive the game will be (Game D)
Penalties don't add depth. At the moment penalties happen, all of the game's depth has already been experienced:
Challenge is a measure of how much skill is needed to avoid failure.
Penalty is what happens after you fail.
So the depth of a game comes from its challenges, not from its penalties. In chess you loses pieces and eventually lose the fight, and can immediately start a new game with no penalties, and yet it manages to be one of the deepest games of all time.
Not only are you claiming things that are subjective to be wrong, you are claiming things that are definitively correct wrong as well.
First, your 4 game scenarios are subjective and entirely dependent on the game design and underlying goal. What you classify as "Great Competition" would likely ruin the game, and also remove the competitive and challenging nature of the game by introducing more convenience, which also removes the consequences and intricacies of the game (depth).
In chess, losing the pieces actually serve as a form of penalty. In fact, part of the depth of the game is adjusting your strategy as you lose or capture your opponents pieces. To apply your design, you are suggesting no one lose pieces, and its better to just always play with all the pieces because keeping things static and fair is more fun and somehow offers more depth, or hey, maybe we lose pieces but every once in a while you just get them back so they game last longer and is more "fun." Maybe we just don't declare any winners in competitions, don't give out any awards either. Thats just absurd and is full of socialistic undertones (do away with competition, keep everything "fair").
I tend to think that there needs to be penalties when you die. Otherwise, who cares about dying, or becoming more efficient at survival or anything else?
Those who actually want to beat the dungeon.
If you keep dying and dying, you will never finish.
And you never lose either.
In the football analogy, it's like if you lose a game, you just play it again and never get a number in the loss column.
yes, what is the problem of never losing? There is still challenge.
Isn't positive reinforcement (winning if you are figure it out) better than negative reinforcement (losing if you do not figure it out)?
The problem with never losing is that winning is just a handout.
How is it a handout when most cannot pass the challenge?
In fact, let's use an example. The highest greater rift in D3 done is 61 .. and only ONE person has done it so far. Tell me how that is a handout. There is no losing (unless you count not finishing) and there is little penalty.
I would invite you to get that "handout" if you are able to, of course.
If that is not a challenge, i don't know what-is ... not that a video game challenge means a lot since it is set up artificial by devs for players to have fun. But a challenge nevertheless.
The more penalty and "risk" you add, the deeper the competition for resources is. Following your example, this is assuming both players encountered each other before the node is farmed. If player A farmed the node before player B, with full loot he would need to plan his escape very carefully because only half the battle is done, he still needs to get home safely.
Now my post was responding to someone talking about no open pvp at all, so it would be the equivalent of a wow pve server. But since this issue isnt black and white, adding a little more risk (open pvp without loot) would make the competition for resources deeper, and adding even more risk (full loot) would make it even more deeper and meaningful.
TLDR: Resource competition doesnt require excessive penalty to happen but it does benefit from it by making the gameplay more meaningful.
That's simply not true.
Game A has a 50% damage reduction death penalty. Players 1 and 2 compete for resources. After the first contest of skill, Player 1 wins. Player 1 then continues to win almost automatically if Player 2 attempts to compete for other resources. This is below average competition.
Game B allows the victorious Player 1 to further steal money directly from the defeated Player 2. Player 2 is discouraged from competing at all, so less competition happens. This is awful competition.
Game C has no excessive penalty. Players 1 and 2 compete for resources, each winning about half the time because they're pretty evenly matched. This is good competition.
Game D spawns twice as many resource nodes and death causes you to spawn only half the normal distance. There is now twice as much competition as in Game B! Great competition.
So risk actually makes things far less competitive, either by discouraging players from competing (Game or by reducing the fairness of competition for subsequent fights (Game A), whereas removing risk enhances competition (Game C) and the higher percentage of gameplay that actually revolves around direct competition the more competitive the game will be (Game D)
Penalties don't add depth. At the moment penalties happen, all of the game's depth has already been experienced:
Challenge is a measure of how much skill is needed to avoid failure.
Penalty is what happens after you fail.
So the depth of a game comes from its challenges, not from its penalties. In chess you loses pieces and eventually lose the fight, and can immediately start a new game with no penalties, and yet it manages to be one of the deepest games of all time.
Constant fights doesnt mean the game has more meaningful competition. If player B doesnt spawn close to the fighting site, is discouraged from coming back or cant fight again because of a debuff, then the first fight had more meaning and consequences than 100s of fights in Game C and D.
If you cant loot the resource your fighting for (like in your earlier wow example), from your enemy, what would be the deciding factor in who gets the resource be? Only who got there first instead of who won the fight, which is just shallow gameplay. If player B dies he can just instantly respawn and go look for another node, and when he dies he keeps all the nodes he farmed, there is no way player A can deny him the resources. Everyone wins, how is that competitive?
In a game with proper risk vs reward, you get rewarded more the higher risk you take, so they are actually encouraged to take risks. Look at EvE, you can make alot more isk in low sec but theres a higher chance to get ganked, while you can farm at a slower pace but safer in high sec.
"At the moment penalties happen, all of the game's depth has already been experienced". This would be true for an FPS shooter where the game ends when the match ends, but its simply not true for persistent world sandboxes. The outcome of battles have consequences that go alot deeper than "I won" or "I lost". A simple gank can lead to a siege and then to a full out war between guilds, grudges and politics that go on for years. This is the meaning of depth, having more layers than just combat in the game and how they connect with each other.
Losing time is the baseline risk that could be said about anything, you risk losing time finding the right channel to watch TV, etc. But sandboxes are about competition for resources and this requires real risk vs reward. The type of games centered solely about combat dont need these type of risks, but sandboxes do, because they have lots of layers of gameplay attached to combat.
The challenge in sandboxes may be about denying resources to your enemies, but how could you do this with no risk? They would keep respawning and the game would basically be a giant deathmatch arena.
I don't think you've thought this through...
Resource Competition: You're on a PVP server in WOW and everyone is looking for the new Unobtanium Ore Nodes that are spawning. You spot one. An alliance player spots one (you're horde obviously; you're not a damned fool.) You kill him. You get the node. He doesn't. He respawns instantly -- he still doesn't have the ore, and he can't mine that node because it's gone now.
So resource competition doesn't require excessive penalty to happen.
Non-Combat Competition: You're selling ships in EVE at a station, competing economically with other players at that station. Your price is too high. The penalty is: your goods don't sell. The penalty IS NOT: your goods are destroyed. The penalty IS NOT: your Bad Businessman Penalty has increased to 10% (10% reduction in profits). The penalty is just that your goods don't sell.
So combat vs. non-combat doesn't matter, and in fact makes it even more painfully obvious that excessive penalties aren't needed for good competition to occur.
But if you're trying to encourage MEANINGFUL combat, meaning you choose your battles carefully and combat is important when it happens and not the complete focus of the game, doesn't that need death penalties? Sure the ultimate end of not selling your goods are that you are not as rich as you could, but combat should be something more important right?? Why does every game need to have meaningless, constant combat??
Yes.
But the term "meaningful" is probably wrong. Getting PKed and looted is meaningful.
Contextual might be the better term to use?
The problem with MMOs and PKing is that it is, after all, a game that people don't have to play. Wasting your time to feed PKers isn't going to fly for most gamers. And PKing is easy to set up and win most of the time. The gank using scouts is a very profitable tactic for PKers, and very unprofitable for the targets to the point of wasting your time in such a game.
King of the hill doesn't work well in a game that's trying to promote it's worldly and socially interactive aspects.
But using that same tactic only restricted to things that are meaningful to said world, now THAT is good stuff. Wars, factions, competitive goals, that's the sort of thing that I'd love to see. But mostly free of the old rampant PKing that can easily happen to a game, and drive it down the toilet.
So I like your idea for handling rampant PKing. I do need to study it more, but I like it. I'm interested in getting into some more ideas on expanding "legalized" PvP without the justice penalty coming into play. But I know as an Indie that sort of stuff is best left as expansion content down the road.
But if you're trying to encourage MEANINGFUL combat, meaning you choose your battles carefully and combat is important when it happens and not the complete focus of the game, doesn't that need death penalties? Sure the ultimate end of not selling your goods are that you are not as rich as you could, but combat should be something more important right?? Why does every game need to have meaningless, constant combat??
The decision of when to fight is fundamentally going to be less interesting and less frequent than the decisions you'd encounter in a deep game.
Chess is essentially one uninterrupted conflict. This doesn't mean someone is striking a piece every single move, but it does mean that the combatants are locked into the conflict until one emerges the victor.
You're suggesting an MMO chess could be created where the decision of when to play a match will produce deeper gameplay than chess itself. I've never seen a game come anywhere close to that, even if we're not discussing chess (a very deep game) but the combat of videogames (which can vary widely, from chess-like depth to much shallower.)
One reason for this is that the challenge of when/where/how to attack already exists in games without risk. For example in BF4 each round at face value is "non-stop" action. But you're not actually firing your weapon non-stop, or even running straight to the next point to immediately fire at the first thing you see. Instead, you're constantly thinking about when/where/how you're going to attack (or you end up losing badly because you're always in the predictable spot with bad cover, and attacking the wrong point.)
So excess penalty isn't adding an exclusive type of depth. That depth already exists in other games.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
But if you're trying to encourage MEANINGFUL combat, meaning you choose your battles carefully and combat is important when it happens and not the complete focus of the game, doesn't that need death penalties? Sure the ultimate end of not selling your goods are that you are not as rich as you could, but combat should be something more important right?? Why does every game need to have meaningless, constant combat??
The decision of when to fight is fundamentally going to be less interesting and less frequent than the decisions you'd encounter in a deep game.
Chess is essentially one uninterrupted conflict. This doesn't mean someone is striking a piece every single move, but it does mean that the combatants are locked into the conflict until one emerges the victor.
You're suggesting an MMO chess could be created where the decision of when to play a match will produce deeper gameplay than chess itself. I've never seen a game come anywhere close to that, even if we're not discussing chess (a very deep game) but the combat of videogames (which can vary widely, from chess-like depth to much shallower.)
One reason for this is that the challenge of when/where/how to attack already exists in games without risk. For example in BF4 each round at face value is "non-stop" action. But you're not actually firing your weapon non-stop, or even running straight to the next point to immediately fire at the first thing you see. Instead, you're constantly thinking about when/where/how you're going to attack (or you end up losing badly because you're always in the predictable spot with bad cover, and attacking the wrong point.)
So excess penalty isn't adding an exclusive type of depth. That depth already exists in other games.
No, adding decisions on when to play that chess match, or another one, or any at all at the present time, that all adds a whole new level of depth.
But if you're trying to encourage MEANINGFUL combat, meaning you choose your battles carefully and combat is important when it happens and not the complete focus of the game, doesn't that need death penalties? Sure the ultimate end of not selling your goods are that you are not as rich as you could, but combat should be something more important right?? Why does every game need to have meaningless, constant combat??
What is the big deal of "choosing my battles"?
I chose my battles last time I played a greater rift on D3. I chose which level, and whom I play with. In fact, to a larger extend, when i choose to boot up a certain game, i chose the combat. You don't even need a sandbox for that.
And "meaningful" is in the eye of the beholder. As long as it is fun, is it "meaningful"? Or you have to write dissertations about it before it is "meaningful"?
No, adding decisions on when to play that chess match, or another one, or any at all at the present time, that all adds a whole new level of depth.
Except if you take a game that was 100% chess and replace it with a game that's 50% chess, 50% checkers, then that's a shallower game. You've added a layer which causes the experienced depth to be shallower.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Lineage 2 before GoD. You think how bad is to lose some shitty gear, now imagine to lose a castle. A castle you conquered because all the players in your guild had great gear, taken with crafting, PvP, PvE and trade with other players. A castle you won because you made right alliances with other guilds and because you chose right enemies and wars. So after massive battle with 1000-2000 players involved you conquered this castle. But after another such a battle you lost it. Your guild is crushed, your allies are leaving you, your enemies laugh on you. It took you year to conquer a castle, will you try again? Can you imagine such a game, where you choose the time, the goals, the tools, the friends and the enemies in strong competition and cooperation? Well, EVE is the same. And do not answer me with WoW player base, because you have no idea what it is about, when you are talking about marketing. Market is much more complicated than you think.
The problem is players' inability to see how much of the potential depth of such games is ecilpsed by the shallow power accumulation elements. You just need the right alliances of players who've spent long enough progressing to gain huge non-skill advantages over your rivals. Enough so that -- barring a serious screw-up -- you're going to win if you simply go through the motions correctly.
So yes, those games do have a category of non-skill decisions that other games don't replicate, but they're the shallowest sort of decision-making and nothing to be proud of. They're there to make PVP more casual and slower-paced for the type of player who can't make the other decisions (including where, when, and how to strike) fast enough.
Not sure what you're trying to say about marketing vs. the market. "Marketing" isn't at all related to what we're talking about. As for the market, well they've shown a clear preference for pure PVP rather than the diluted PVP offered by L2/EVE. (Pure meaning it's undiluted by non-skill factors.) Doesn't make much sense (because often people prefer the casual thing over the hardcore thing) but that's what they choose.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Everything to be crafted or repaired, yes especially the best stuff to be crafted only by players. I never understood how killing some giant creature could net you some form fitting armor. I have no problem with the best materials being found in the highest risk places. As you use items they wear down and have to be repaired. The better the crafter the longer the items last and or better they are. Everything to be tradable, bind on pickup/use is a lame idea to make someone feel special that hurts a player economy. NPCs can sell items if they had the materials to make it and can only make so many in X amount of time (see #2).
2 – Quests that are meaningful.
Both NPC and player quests. A player should be able to post a quest for a reward (if he has the item to give). I think NPC quests could be great, even kill 10 rats. Say a town spawns 10 rats a day (hour?). If the players just go around killing the rats then no quest for them. When the town gets 100+ rats then the mayor posts a bounty for killing 10 rats for silver. After 6 people turn in the quest the mayor won’t pay for more rats as it is no longer a problem, but if it above 200 rats then he offers gold till under 100. A baker can make 50 pies a day to sell if he has enough ingredients to make them. His price on ingredients depends on how much he has. If he has too much he won’t buy any, if he doesn’t have any he won’t sell pies.
3 – Choices that matter.
You can’t do everything. You have to pick and choose where you want your skills (which you can only level up by using said skill). If you choose to excel in one area you will be gimped in others. You have to rely on others to be able to do everything. You can’t be the master adventurer, master builder, and master crafter. Now because games change over time so can you. Call it a slow respect, each day you can lose a skill point from one area and assign or learn it in another area. Where it would take you a month to slowly move from master of X to master of Y.
4 – Randomness.
I dislike knowing everything, the main reason I stopped end-game raiding. It was down the hall on the left 30 meters was a veteran mob, open the door and two groups of 3 regular mobs. Final boss at 2 min X happens, at 4 min Y happens, place the mob here. Soooooo very boring. Let me go down the hall and one time it was empty and one time there could be the veteran mob, or it could be a group of regular mobs and 2 elites, who had a 10% chance to summon 2 more elites. Needless to say I get owned by the double elites and have to come back another day. I go to a farm and buy some apples, later a friend goes to the farm and they are dead and he has to kill a few spiders for another family to have the chance to move back in, some other time someone goes to the farm and it’s a giant locust swarm that will take dozens of players to clear. I don’t want to know what is going to happen in a game.
I know, insane to program, and people would complain, but that's what I want.
Comments
yes, what is the problem of never losing? There is still challenge.
Isn't positive reinforcement (winning if you are figure it out) better than negative reinforcement (losing if you do not figure it out)?
What if you don't. Not all games, even sandbox ones, need a fully functional economy. May be a half economy with some NPC shops is good enough.
In fact, full virtual world war games like Planetside 2 needs no economy at all.
If you dont then you can play one of the millions of games without it
I obviously play those games. What is your point?
I don't think you've thought this through...
Resource Competition: You're on a PVP server in WOW and everyone is looking for the new Unobtanium Ore Nodes that are spawning. You spot one. An alliance player spots one (you're horde obviously; you're not a damned fool.) You kill him. You get the node. He doesn't. He respawns instantly -- he still doesn't have the ore, and he can't mine that node because it's gone now.
So resource competition doesn't require excessive penalty to happen.
Non-Combat Competition: You're selling ships in EVE at a station, competing economically with other players at that station. Your price is too high. The penalty is: your goods don't sell. The penalty IS NOT: your goods are destroyed. The penalty IS NOT: your Bad Businessman Penalty has increased to 10% (10% reduction in profits). The penalty is just that your goods don't sell.
So combat vs. non-combat doesn't matter, and in fact makes it even more painfully obvious that excessive penalties aren't needed for good competition to occur.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
The problem with never losing is that winning is just a handout.
Once upon a time....
The more penalty and "risk" you add, the deeper the competition for resources is. Following your example, this is assuming both players encountered each other before the node is farmed. If player A farmed the node before player B, with full loot he would need to plan his escape very carefully because only half the battle is done, he still needs to get home safely.
Now my post was responding to someone talking about no open pvp at all, so it would be the equivalent of a wow pve server. But since this issue isnt black and white, adding a little more risk (open pvp without loot) would make the competition for resources deeper, and adding even more risk (full loot) would make it even more deeper and meaningful.
TLDR: Resource competition doesnt require excessive penalty to happen but it does benefit from it by making the gameplay more meaningful.
But if you're trying to encourage MEANINGFUL combat, meaning you choose your battles carefully and combat is important when it happens and not the complete focus of the game, doesn't that need death penalties? Sure the ultimate end of not selling your goods are that you are not as rich as you could, but combat should be something more important right?? Why does every game need to have meaningless, constant combat??
Founder and Lead developer of Factions. The complete fantasy sandbox survival MMO.
Factions indiedb Page (most up to date info) | Factions Website
That's simply not true.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I really really really like the direction that crowfall is heading, they understand that combat SHOULD NOT be balanced. A rogue should have a chance against a warrior but just that...a chance not likely but a chance. If you are a very good rogue then you can beat a ok warrior. They also understand that gear based MMO's are dumb, gear should play a factor but it should be geared around the player and the character not the gear defines the characters abilities.
I found all the stuff I want in an MMO with crowfall.
Not only are you claiming things that are subjective to be wrong, you are claiming things that are definitively correct wrong as well.
First, your 4 game scenarios are subjective and entirely dependent on the game design and underlying goal. What you classify as "Great Competition" would likely ruin the game, and also remove the competitive and challenging nature of the game by introducing more convenience, which also removes the consequences and intricacies of the game (depth).
In chess, losing the pieces actually serve as a form of penalty. In fact, part of the depth of the game is adjusting your strategy as you lose or capture your opponents pieces. To apply your design, you are suggesting no one lose pieces, and its better to just always play with all the pieces because keeping things static and fair is more fun and somehow offers more depth, or hey, maybe we lose pieces but every once in a while you just get them back so they game last longer and is more "fun." Maybe we just don't declare any winners in competitions, don't give out any awards either. Thats just absurd and is full of socialistic undertones (do away with competition, keep everything "fair").
How is it a handout when most cannot pass the challenge?
In fact, let's use an example. The highest greater rift in D3 done is 61 .. and only ONE person has done it so far. Tell me how that is a handout. There is no losing (unless you count not finishing) and there is little penalty.
I would invite you to get that "handout" if you are able to, of course.
If that is not a challenge, i don't know what-is ... not that a video game challenge means a lot since it is set up artificial by devs for players to have fun. But a challenge nevertheless.
Constant fights doesnt mean the game has more meaningful competition. If player B doesnt spawn close to the fighting site, is discouraged from coming back or cant fight again because of a debuff, then the first fight had more meaning and consequences than 100s of fights in Game C and D.
If you cant loot the resource your fighting for (like in your earlier wow example), from your enemy, what would be the deciding factor in who gets the resource be? Only who got there first instead of who won the fight, which is just shallow gameplay. If player B dies he can just instantly respawn and go look for another node, and when he dies he keeps all the nodes he farmed, there is no way player A can deny him the resources. Everyone wins, how is that competitive?
In a game with proper risk vs reward, you get rewarded more the higher risk you take, so they are actually encouraged to take risks. Look at EvE, you can make alot more isk in low sec but theres a higher chance to get ganked, while you can farm at a slower pace but safer in high sec.
"At the moment penalties happen, all of the game's depth has already been experienced". This would be true for an FPS shooter where the game ends when the match ends, but its simply not true for persistent world sandboxes. The outcome of battles have consequences that go alot deeper than "I won" or "I lost". A simple gank can lead to a siege and then to a full out war between guilds, grudges and politics that go on for years. This is the meaning of depth, having more layers than just combat in the game and how they connect with each other.
Yes.
But the term "meaningful" is probably wrong. Getting PKed and looted is meaningful.
Contextual might be the better term to use?
The problem with MMOs and PKing is that it is, after all, a game that people don't have to play. Wasting your time to feed PKers isn't going to fly for most gamers. And PKing is easy to set up and win most of the time. The gank using scouts is a very profitable tactic for PKers, and very unprofitable for the targets to the point of wasting your time in such a game.
King of the hill doesn't work well in a game that's trying to promote it's worldly and socially interactive aspects.
But using that same tactic only restricted to things that are meaningful to said world, now THAT is good stuff. Wars, factions, competitive goals, that's the sort of thing that I'd love to see. But mostly free of the old rampant PKing that can easily happen to a game, and drive it down the toilet.
So I like your idea for handling rampant PKing. I do need to study it more, but I like it. I'm interested in getting into some more ideas on expanding "legalized" PvP without the justice penalty coming into play. But I know as an Indie that sort of stuff is best left as expansion content down the road.
Once upon a time....
The decision of when to fight is fundamentally going to be less interesting and less frequent than the decisions you'd encounter in a deep game.
Chess is essentially one uninterrupted conflict. This doesn't mean someone is striking a piece every single move, but it does mean that the combatants are locked into the conflict until one emerges the victor.
You're suggesting an MMO chess could be created where the decision of when to play a match will produce deeper gameplay than chess itself. I've never seen a game come anywhere close to that, even if we're not discussing chess (a very deep game) but the combat of videogames (which can vary widely, from chess-like depth to much shallower.)
One reason for this is that the challenge of when/where/how to attack already exists in games without risk. For example in BF4 each round at face value is "non-stop" action. But you're not actually firing your weapon non-stop, or even running straight to the next point to immediately fire at the first thing you see. Instead, you're constantly thinking about when/where/how you're going to attack (or you end up losing badly because you're always in the predictable spot with bad cover, and attacking the wrong point.)
So excess penalty isn't adding an exclusive type of depth. That depth already exists in other games.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Are you talking about the 2 extremes?
Once upon a time....
No, adding decisions on when to play that chess match, or another one, or any at all at the present time, that all adds a whole new level of depth.
Once upon a time....
Except if you take a game that was 100% chess and replace it with a game that's 50% chess, 50% checkers, then that's a shallower game. You've added a layer which causes the experienced depth to be shallower.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The problem is players' inability to see how much of the potential depth of such games is ecilpsed by the shallow power accumulation elements. You just need the right alliances of players who've spent long enough progressing to gain huge non-skill advantages over your rivals. Enough so that -- barring a serious screw-up -- you're going to win if you simply go through the motions correctly.
So yes, those games do have a category of non-skill decisions that other games don't replicate, but they're the shallowest sort of decision-making and nothing to be proud of. They're there to make PVP more casual and slower-paced for the type of player who can't make the other decisions (including where, when, and how to strike) fast enough.
Not sure what you're trying to say about marketing vs. the market. "Marketing" isn't at all related to what we're talking about. As for the market, well they've shown a clear preference for pure PVP rather than the diluted PVP offered by L2/EVE. (Pure meaning it's undiluted by non-skill factors.) Doesn't make much sense (because often people prefer the casual thing over the hardcore thing) but that's what they choose.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The 4 things that I want in a sandbox all games:
1 – Crafting to worthwhile!
Everything to be crafted or repaired, yes especially the best stuff to be crafted only by players. I never understood how killing some giant creature could net you some form fitting armor. I have no problem with the best materials being found in the highest risk places. As you use items they wear down and have to be repaired. The better the crafter the longer the items last and or better they are. Everything to be tradable, bind on pickup/use is a lame idea to make someone feel special that hurts a player economy. NPCs can sell items if they had the materials to make it and can only make so many in X amount of time (see #2).
2 – Quests that are meaningful.
Both NPC and player quests. A player should be able to post a quest for a reward (if he has the item to give). I think NPC quests could be great, even kill 10 rats. Say a town spawns 10 rats a day (hour?). If the players just go around killing the rats then no quest for them. When the town gets 100+ rats then the mayor posts a bounty for killing 10 rats for silver. After 6 people turn in the quest the mayor won’t pay for more rats as it is no longer a problem, but if it above 200 rats then he offers gold till under 100. A baker can make 50 pies a day to sell if he has enough ingredients to make them. His price on ingredients depends on how much he has. If he has too much he won’t buy any, if he doesn’t have any he won’t sell pies.
3 – Choices that matter.
You can’t do everything. You have to pick and choose where you want your skills (which you can only level up by using said skill). If you choose to excel in one area you will be gimped in others. You have to rely on others to be able to do everything. You can’t be the master adventurer, master builder, and master crafter. Now because games change over time so can you. Call it a slow respect, each day you can lose a skill point from one area and assign or learn it in another area. Where it would take you a month to slowly move from master of X to master of Y.
4 – Randomness.
I dislike knowing everything, the main reason I stopped end-game raiding. It was down the hall on the left 30 meters was a veteran mob, open the door and two groups of 3 regular mobs. Final boss at 2 min X happens, at 4 min Y happens, place the mob here. Soooooo very boring. Let me go down the hall and one time it was empty and one time there could be the veteran mob, or it could be a group of regular mobs and 2 elites, who had a 10% chance to summon 2 more elites. Needless to say I get owned by the double elites and have to come back another day. I go to a farm and buy some apples, later a friend goes to the farm and they are dead and he has to kill a few spiders for another family to have the chance to move back in, some other time someone goes to the farm and it’s a giant locust swarm that will take dozens of players to clear. I don’t want to know what is going to happen in a game.
I know, insane to program, and people would complain, but that's what I want.