"Mis-Land Management" - Solutions to preventing Extinction level events

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As someone who plays this sort of thing in games as of now... this doesn't work.

All 'friction based' PvP interactions should be considered from the perspective that one has only about a 33% chance of winning.

Organized groups will repeatedly flatten 'upstarts' and force negotiation more often than not. Giving them more power to do this for the sake of 'Friction' will help no one.

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

I hope I am not coming off as saying that I agree with the idea that 'chopping down a tree' leads to Land Value depletion. I will also hope they come up with something more sensible than 'if you gather stuff you reduce the land value'.

Is that how we're interpreting it? Either we need more clarification or I need someone to point me at the section I need to rewatch, no sarc.

Why are we assuming that 'I chop down a tree, the land value goes down, no complementary effect happens'.

This is a really obvious system design wise to me, but not if we start from that presumption.

Management WOULD be rotating/dealing with the complementary forces, but if we are assuming that those aren't even a thing, then sure, the system is just silly.

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

Ok, agreed. I thought that was the intention.

That doesn't affect the individual player much though, so I don't quite 'see the problem'.

Also if you timestamp videos in the Forum YouTube player it doesn't go to the timestamp nor show it, for future reference. I saw it in the quote though.

Now as for addressing that. I pay more attention to what Devs say than what Steven says, at this point. So to quote that person, as I believe this is probably the most important line:

"It could be positive, it could be negative, it could be both at once."

And

"The Land Health value ties into the health of a specific ecosystem ."

All given examples from the developer were of positive actions players can take that would also probably interest some people and very likely have decent rewards. Specific ones, too. Steven's words make it sound somewhat different. I don't doubt that there would also be negative effects, but I feel like we may be overfocusing on those, when there would be no need to design it that way.

Some posters here definitely have very strong and valid reasons why this would be able to cause frustration to other players, but I'm not sure it wouldn't be 'frustration through the node'. Their day-to-day wouldn't be more affected than just 'respawn timers lower than the demand for gatherables', which would happen either way. Being able to frustrate 'the node object' is possible far more easily than frustrating individual players anyway.

While I do believe that one of the goals of this system is to cause people to spread out, it can be built so that it's very targeted. Of course it 'screws over players' but there IS a case in which that is the best thing to happen, it's a countermeta/anti-strategy guide force.

Basically, I don't see an innate flaw in the system relative to their obvious goals, nor do I agree that most of the problems people have noted would happen based on developer statements. There are certainly some things that Steven desires which will frustrate some player types, and arguments in that vein, I probably have no comment on, but the system itself does not inherently contain certain issues unless we make assumptions about what exactly causes entirely negative effects.

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To add to this, we also probably should not be thinking about a player's activity or behaviour relative to a single Node, since while the Node system IS a big deal, it doesn't actually function even at that level.

A system that 'causes the residents of a Metro to walk a bit across to the Vassal Cities or further down' is a complete requirement for this to work. If you can just 'gather near a Metro with no effects that ever need to be managed', people will just always do that.

Lots of better gathering is probably going to be a group activity. There is no reason to build this system so that solo gatherers are particularly affected by it, and we've already had multiple design hints that would indicate a system where that does not happen anyway.

It's literally an array of spawners on the server side that someone throws through a statistical map/filter function every 'tick'. The code requirements to implement what is being discussed automatically include multiple methods of easily tweaking or controlling it.

Even if Steven came to a Dev and said 'I want people to notice when they cut down all the trees!' the implementation isn't guaranteed to be 'ok boss I'll make sure that cutting down trees is bad'.

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Azherae wrote: »

Also if you timestamp videos in the Forum YouTube player it doesn't go to the timestamp nor show it, for future reference. I saw it in the quote though.

Thank you

Azherae wrote: »

Some posters here definitely have very strong and valid reasons why this would be able to cause frustration to other players, but I'm not sure it wouldn't be 'frustration through the node'. Their day-to-day wouldn't be more affected than just 'respawn timers lower than the demand for gatherables', which would happen either way. Being able to frustrate 'the node object' is possible far more easily than frustrating individual players anyway.

If I'm a master wood gatherer who works in the forest, the forest being stripped down and having stone nodes with faster respawn times in the area absolutely is felt by me on the individual level. I also just realized that this system promotes the resources with the highest demand to be the one's farmed, meaning that players are literally incentivized to gather all the most valuable type of resources the most. Undoubtedly will be a problem unless they provide positive externalities and let players actually defend their node.

Also, does is matter if it's felt most on a node management level? Mayors aren't just coming up with cool tournaments for players to do every week. Mayors are what determine whether their node is being sieged or if they have enough players in the node providing enough XP so the node doesn't atrophy. If mayor's can't manage their economies then that will eventually trickle down to the individual player's experience when their node gets destroyed or they lose access to content they wanted to keep.

Azherae wrote: »

Basically, I don't see an innate flaw in the system relative to their obvious goals, nor do I agree that most of the problems people have noted would happen based on developer statements. There are certainly some things that Steven desires which will frustrate some player types, and arguments in that vein, I probably have no comment on, but the system itself does not inherently contain certain issues unless we make assumptions about what exactly causes entirely negative effects.

It's a system that can easily fall to the tragedy of the commons, and it's incredibly worrisome in a sandbox game. I want to hear more about this system, because it isn't due to paranoia that people are scared this system will fail.[/quote]

Then my only question to you is, assuming the respawn timers are somewhat slow.

Doesn't the same thing happen, almost WORSE, with no Management system?

Let's assume 40 spawns, you CAN gather all in 15 minutes alone.

Seven different master wood gatherers come to this node because it is known to have 40 spawns and they can make money. Nodes respawn... say every 20 minutes.

If everyone knows they can never lose out on this if they have the place to themselves, nothing will ever change, then they stick around.

You log on, there's nothing to gather because two other gatherers just split the 20 spawns and now there's nothing for you. It's pointless to try to join in and compete with them, and you don't want to kill your NodeMates.

Every time a new person 'learns that there are a static 40 respawns of this cool thing they want near this Node' they head here. Then they complain about how 'everyone else is always taking the spawns', but no one leaves because they feel 'well I just have to not flinch and I'll get them'.

The Land Management system is there to say 'no, screw ALL of you, you can't win by not flinching, LEAVE'.

@Goalid

Then my only question to you is, assuming the respawn timers are somewhat slow.

Doesn't the same thing happen, almost WORSE, with no Management system?

Let's assume 40 spawns, you CAN gather all in 15 minutes alone.

Seven different master wood gatherers come to this node because it is known to have 40 spawns and they can make money. Nodes respawn... say every 20 minutes.

If everyone knows they can never lose out on this if they have the place to themselves, nothing will ever change, then they stick around.

You log on, there's nothing to gather because two other gatherers just split the 40 spawns and now there's nothing for you. It's pointless to try to join in and compete with them, and you don't want to kill your NodeMates.

Every time a new person 'learns that there are a static 40 respawns of this cool thing they want near this Node' they head here. Then they complain about how 'everyone else is always taking the spawns', but no one leaves because they feel 'well I just have to not flinch and I'll get them'.

The Land Management system is there to say 'no, screw ALL of you, you can't win by not flinching, LEAVE'.