We need PVE servers here's why

We have not received permission from bloodprophet to share the quoted post.

But I think that's at the core of Azherae's question. Is there a deeper reason to having nuts in your brownies than just "I like/want it that way"? Maybe, for whatever reason, nut allergies in the region have spiked and now your "brownies with nuts" shop can't sustain itself because you don't have enough customers, even though 10 years ago a similar shop was booming and made a ton of money and you yourself enjoyed it a lot.

If the reason is only your desire to do it then you should be prepared to fail. And fail not only yourself, but all the other people who enjoy brownies with nuts. But you could potentially avoid that failure if you provided at least one other type of brownies with a texture/taste similar to the nut ones, so that you can appeal to the allergic people (though this probably wouldn't work irl, but you get the point) and you might even provide another type of brownie to lure all the people who might not be interested in nut ones. But after they try your no-nut brownie, it might get them interested in trying out the ones with the nuts. You haven't really conformed to what everyone else is doing, because nut brownies are still your main staple, but you've broadened your appeal far enough to sustain your shop for longer and now you have more chances for your shop's name to become so famous for having great nut brownies that people from other places come to you.

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But the whole point of "having a thousand flavors" is that they mostly come from the same company Yes, there's a few different sources, but from what I've seen, they're usually under some mega conglomerate that bankrolls them w/o any problems. That was the case with pretty much all big mmos of today. They were either riding the coattails of a long-standing franchise or came from a huuuuge studio, or even both.

Ashes has none of that and doesn't have investors to prop it up in the case it fails at the start (i.e. NW), but that's obviously why we like it. So having just a few more flavors of icecream from this particular brand could mean the difference between life and death for them. Of course I hope that their current design will be more than enough, but I'm preparing myself for worse cause I've seen too many games fail before.

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If you're fine with failing, definitely no. Hope that doesn't happen and the potential of failure doesn't spook Steven/Intrepid from being what they want to be, but we'll have to see.

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As a designer I expect it's just that I think beyond just 'I hope the game is good' and my mind always goes into 'wait what might be going wrong here that I need to bring to their attention'?

Maybe the companies I've worked in sucked. Maybe the companies all my cohorts worked in also suck. But if I go purely by personal experience and anecdotes, people usually do not think about all of the potential fails because they go into things with their biases, and working hard to get through them is absolutely required. It's even easier when you're not the one in charge because you can just ignore them because 'the boss said so'. The boss' bias becomes yours, your day-to-day isn't focused on 'critically examining everything'. It's focused on 'making what the boss told you to make, as best as it can be made, within those assumptions'.

There's no way this isn't happening in the MMO industry, because if it wasn't, MMOs would NOT be failing this much. All these bad games happen precisely because of this. The number of things in New World that someone explicitly told Amazon 'wait no this is a bad idea' was staggering.

So you are at 'I hope they make a good game', and I am at 'What exactly is the definition of 'good' here?'

Not my definition, not Dygz' definition. If anything, I would be targeting NiKr's definition, because NiKr is the person so far that has shown me the most 'understanding of PvP incentive structures' beyond the thing I personally believe creates the problem.

If you believe there's no problem, or that it can be solved, just that MMO designers just need to 'git gud', then you don't have a PROBLEM with any discussion on the matter. You don't need to have a single reaction to any of my hypotheticals, you can just ignore the entire thing at all times.

Azherae wrote: »

So you are at 'I hope they make a good game', and I am at 'What exactly is the definition of 'good' here?'

Not my definition, not Dygz' definition. If anything, I would be targeting NiKr's definition, because NiKr is the person so far that has shown me the most 'understanding of PvP incentive structures' beyond the thing I personally believe creates the problem.

And even my definition is what's good in the context of what Ashes wants to be is layered with a ton of bias towards a pvp-centric mmo. And that kind of design allegedly died more than 10 years ago, so all that I'm trying to do with my suggestions/thought process is to find a way to merge that design with what potentially might attract people who've never experienced its "good" parts. And even those good parts are usually seen as something completely undesired by a lot of people

I hope for the best for Ashes, while expecting some very rough times during the first few months of the game (that is if they stick with the current design, which I hope they do). And because of that expectations I'm trying to find anything that could decrease its probability of happening.

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You know what? I am, actually, but let me clarify why I don't think of it as 'censoring'.

If I try to tackle something I see as a problem and you don't see as a problem, continually going 'I don't think this is a problem, so you can ignore it', but without being able to address my concern in itself other than 'I think it's fine', is wasting your own time, right? If I engage with you, it's wasting mine too. My best bet would be to ignore you and keep addressing the problem.

There's a system for that, I'm only asking you to 'self-censor' because if 90% of your posts don't seem to relate to what I'm talking about, I will ignore you and miss the 10% that have valid points. I'm fine with just ignoring you too, I'm just, in all arrogance, letting you know that you're getting to the point of 'a pointless distraction', and therefore if you do ignore these things until you have a full response, it's more likely for that full response to be seen.

If you don't care and just 'talk because you feel like it', then just lmk, it's no issue to me, I just tend to assume that when people talk on forums it's because they want to discuss things.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

So you are at 'I hope they make a good game', and I am at 'What exactly is the definition of 'good' here?'

Not my definition, not Dygz' definition. If anything, I would be targeting NiKr's definition, because NiKr is the person so far that has shown me the most 'understanding of PvP incentive structures' beyond the thing I personally believe creates the problem.

And even my definition is what's good in the context of what Ashes wants to be is layered with a ton of bias towards a pvp-centric mmo. And that kind of design allegedly died more than 10 years ago, so all that I'm trying to do with my suggestions/thought process is to find a way to merge that design with what potentially might attract people who've never experienced its "good" parts. And even those good parts are usually seen as something completely undesired by a lot of people

I hope for the best for Ashes, while expecting some very rough times during the first few months of the game (that is if they stick with the current design, which I hope they do). And because of that expectations I'm trying to find anything that could decrease its probability of happening.

That 'bias' in your definition is the thing I personally consider to be required. If this is going to be addressed at all, within Intrepid, I would absolutely expect it to be by the PvP centric designers on the team, as the forefront, not the PvE ones.

Therefore if I conclude 'wait they didn't seem to achieve what they were aiming at' (because somehow most games don't despite coming out of bigger studios) then who else are they going to ask? I don't have the L2 experience to go 'This is what we as PvP players in L2 which is the same style of game as Ashes, were aiming for', so I can't 'say how to preserve it'. Therefore my feedback is not as relevant as yours.

I'll POKE you until the problem's defined. YOU fix it. I can't poke Intrepid and hopefully I don't need to.

But I can do that in PM from now on, and let the 'PvE players always try to ruin our games, good thing Steven will stand up to them!' flow continue. I was really interested in the data for 'what happens if a PvP community is welcoming and can give good reasons for the implementat to PvE players, does it help the game's reputation?' But that's selfish, since it requires a change in behaviour from others and not from myself.

I will, as always, hope to be wrong. I will further hope that if I'm not wrong, the reason is somehow obvious.