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

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

This doesn't make sense to ME yet and I can explain why pretty quickly I think.

You have 300 players you need to coordinate. Let's assume ALL of them want to gather resources from some 'bucket' that all have the same negative effect.

You put up a message somewhere that says 'There was a lot of gathering over the weekend, please hold off on it a bit'.

If there WAS a lot of gathering, shouldn't the supply now go so far beyond demand that no one should have a good reason to WANT to just gather more? If you don't manage to make an economy that causes at LEAST that effect, I consider there to be larger problems.

Would we really expect that of these 300 people, ALL of them go 'no I'm gathering anyway' when the value of the item they are gathering will probably drop if they gather more anyway?

Sure, sometimes it would be random, but in MY mind it's not in their best interest to gather more in the first place . Some subset of them 'do something else', some subset don't, and it would work out, even if not every time.

The only way this sort of thing fails is with those crappy 'sell to NPC' Econ models, isn't it?

EDIT: Realized the possibility of getting caught up in your own arbitrary numbers. We DO get to assume that 300 people are all gathering, right? If not, you should probably give 'the number that are likely to influence the bucket' in your mind.

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

I think this might be somewhat dampened by the fact that nodes will most likely have enough space for more people than an optimized guild would. And with guilds being spread out across several nodes, even if members' own nodes tell them to stop gathering for a while, those players can go to the ZOIs of their guildmates' nodes.

Unless each node can't support literally every citizen gathering at the same time (I'd hope that would be the upper limit for the management system, maaaybe just a bit below that) - the loyalty to both guild and node should, in theory, stay upkept.

And you'd not only upkeep that loyalty, but would also help your guildmates' nodes to remain undecayed. Hell, I could even see some guilds moving their members to different nodes, in order to help them stay alive, because that would be beneficial to the guild itself.

So it all still comes down to how Intrepid balances the management system and what will be its limits and triggers.

NiKr wrote: »

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

I think this might be somewhat dampened by the fact that nodes will most likely have enough space for more people than an optimized guild would. And with guilds being spread out across several nodes, even if members' own nodes tell them to stop gathering for a while, those players can go to the ZOIs of their guildmates' nodes.

Unless each node can't support literally every citizen gathering at the same time (I'd hope that would be the upper limit for the management system, maaaybe just a bit below that) - the loyalty to both guild and node should, in theory, stay upkept.

And you'd not only upkeep that loyalty, but would also help your guildmates' nodes to remain undecayed. Hell, I could even see some guilds moving their members to different nodes, in order to help them stay alive, because that would be beneficial to the guild itself.

So it all still comes down to how Intrepid balances the management system and what will be its limits and triggers.

I definitely agree with @Noaani that this is a sticking point here, and I am biased because my experience with 'Nodes' comes from 1.5 games where the situation is the reverse.

The Guild is large, strong, and has a lot of peripherals/temporary supporters. In fact, INARA (the Elite Dangerous fansite) has an EXPLICIT function for 'marking yourself as the supporter of a Player Faction) while you are NOT part of their 'guild' (Squadron).

The main thing that matters that I DO see potentially paralleling to Ashes is simply that I REALLY REALLY don't expect Ashes to be made of 'individual nodes' at all. I expect it to be made of 'Nations' and those 'Nations' to be coalitions of Guilds and their supporters.

So within the entire 'ZOI of your nation' I would not expect a strong guild to have trouble finding a good place for everyone to become a citizen that suits their needs unless the Node system sucks, at which point I concede all points because if the Node system sucks, who cares?

The four 'Nations' near me in Elite have entire systems for this. Any given Node would automatically be secondary to the Guild Coalition Nation that would form. If Intrepid expects an outcome OTHER than this, I too, am concerned.

Azherae wrote: »

The four 'Nations' near me in Elite have entire systems for this. Any given Node would automatically be secondary to the Guild Coalition Nation that would form. If Intrepid expects an outcome OTHER than this, I too, am concerned.

Yeah, I'm curious to see how Intrepid plans to deal with this inevitability, if at all. I know my allegiances will always be to the node, but that's mainly cause I prefer being the leader of my own guilds, so having a guild that could prevent me from doing what I want is out of the question. But loyalty to a node is directly aligned with my plans, so, ideally, becoming a mayor of one would work out just fine.

But I definitely see how most of the node mechanics will just be used by the guilds, and no matter how many times Steven says that nodes are not controlled by guilds - it won't change the fact that they effectively will be.

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

I feel like this kind of a mechanic would seem to gatherers exactly as forced pvp seems to you. They just want to do the thing they want to do, but the game prevents them from doing that. And in both cases other players might've been involved.

You say you don't want to play Ashes because open seas change prevents you from exploring them (because auto-flag). Don't you think that this change might do the same for gatherers?

NiKr wrote: »

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

I feel like this kind of a mechanic would seem to gatherers exactly as forced pvp seems to you. They just want to do the thing they want to do, but the game prevents them from doing that. And in both cases other players might've been involved.

You say you don't want to play Ashes because open seas change prevents you from exploring them (because auto-flag). Don't you think that this change might do the same for gatherers?

Those are not really the same, I would bet.

Trying to think of a half-decent analogy.

Gatherers stop other gatherers from being able to gather just by existing in sufficient numbers at the same times, right?

So while it IS different, we can't really say that a system that 'propagates this effect when people are not online RIGHT THEN' is ACTUALLY worse, just mostly imagined to be so. They're equally tweakable.

But as noted before, some people will gather just because 'it is the thing they do' even without it actually being profitable. It leads into complex and somewhat stupid territory, design wise, but the other options that make those types of people happy ruin the game in a different way.

Land management would be a decent way to make it not only unprofitable but 'unfun', and you'd question 'well why would I have anything in a game that isn't necessary that makes it unfun?'. Mostly because you're just 'hiding the unfun part in a place most players don't see at first' if you don't.

EDIT: tl;dr PART of the reason why New World's economy is jank is because gathering is 'too easy and fun' but actually making real relative progress due to doing it is therefore impossible.

Azherae wrote: »

Trying to think of a half-decent analogy.

Gatherers stop other gatherers from being able to gather just by existing in sufficient numbers at the same times, right?

So while it IS different, we can't really say that a system that 'propagates this effect when people are not online RIGHT THEN' is ACTUALLY worse, just mostly imagined to be so. They're equally tweakable.

I'm not sure if I've understood this.

If land management can reduce resource respawn after a huge gathering session, the gatherers that had that session wouldn't have to be online to influence the experience of players that come to gather in that location afterwards.

To me, that sounds much worse than "you get autoflagged in this location, but there's no real assurance that another player will come across you and kill you".

Mainly because the former has an effect even w/o other players present, while the latter requires other players to be present to have the effect.

And while Intrepid seem to have "tweaked" the open seas already (namely the area increase), the only tweak of the land management system I could see working out is the one that only triggers respawn reduction if there were more people gathering in one node than if all of that node's citizens were to start gathering at the same time.

And while such a tweak is possible, I dunno if Intrepid would go for it. Though even if they do, there's also the part of "if there's other gatherers around, I might not be able to do the thing I want to do", which only pushes gathering even further, in terms of "players preventing players from doing smth".

Though I guess it's just my pvp side speaking Avoiding some players in the sea (with slight potential of pvp) seems much better to me, a pvper, than not being able to gather stuff purely because some dudes have already made the lands barren or are in the process of doing that.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Trying to think of a half-decent analogy.

Gatherers stop other gatherers from being able to gather just by existing in sufficient numbers at the same times, right?

So while it IS different, we can't really say that a system that 'propagates this effect when people are not online RIGHT THEN' is ACTUALLY worse, just mostly imagined to be so. They're equally tweakable.

I'm not sure if I've understood this.

If land management can reduce resource respawn after a huge gathering session, the gatherers that had that session wouldn't have to be online to influence the experience of players that come to gather in that location afterwards.

To me, that sounds much worse than "you get autoflagged in this location, but there's no real assurance that another player will come across you and kill you".

Mainly because the former has an effect even w/o other players present, while the latter requires other players to be present to have the effect.

And while Intrepid seem to have "tweaked" the open seas already (namely the area increase), the only tweak of the land management system I could see working out is the one that only triggers respawn reduction if there were more people gathering in one node than if all of that node's citizens were to start gathering at the same time.

And while such a tweak is possible, I dunno if Intrepid would go for it. Though even if they do, there's also the part of "if there's other gatherers around, I might not be able to do the thing I want to do", which only pushes gathering even further, in terms of "players preventing players from doing smth".

Though I guess it's just my pvp side speaking Avoiding some players in the sea (with slight potential of pvp) seems much better to me, a pvper, than not being able to gather stuff purely because some dudes have already made the lands barren or are in the process of doing that.

I do not intend to speak for Dygz here, I am answering mostly from my understanding of a similar person (not main group, decided not to play until he knew it was gonna be good, probably won't now for similar reasons as Dygz).

The positive feedback loop an explorer's mind gets is not the same as the one a gatherer's mind gets, and the obstacles they are used to dealing with (or at least, used to be?) are not the same.

It's entirely possible that we have in fact reached the point where 'Intrepid! There are no resource spawns for me to gather when I log on because OTHER PEOPLE were gathering! Add more of them!' is a serious point that has to be addressed for an MMO player. It would explain a lot of things.

But overall my understanding is that an explorer's obstacles are their own ingenuity and time requirements, OCCASIONALLY mobs (but for example, Elite's explorers face no threats out there other than their own management of their ship and they stay out in the black for LITERALLY YEARS).

Gathering USED to be a more complex incentive system in games, maybe it no longer is though.

I think I can explain it better, grabbing something from a post in the actual feedback thread. A list of things a player wants from a gathering system.

- abundance (no problem here i suppose) not to much friction over common resources
- diversity (more then just 3 different resources to gather
- must be rewarding and difficult or time consuming to master

What does the above MEAN, in terms of a gameplay loop a person could potentially be looking for? It could mean lots of things, but let's assume (baselessly) that the person does not want to just be a 'veg-out bot', mainly because games can't AFFORD to have scriptable gathering these days, for safety.

So they want to be able to find DIFFERENT things (let's presume novelty), enough things (let's ASSUME so that they don't have to run around as much without finding anything, whether that is due to wanting profit or just the reward reaction in the brain) and 'rewarding and difficult' (there's NEARLY no reason for this that doesn't fall under 'I want to feel like I'm progressing and that other people who are not like me are not progressing as much/as fast').

As much as I dislike agreeing with a certain recent poster on anything, there is a subset of players for whom the optimal gathering game is:

"One that they like, that is fairly easy, and gives them a constant stream of rewards, but also feels like it is rewarding outside of that, and that their numbers get to go up (money or just a skill number) while other people's numbers don't go up as much."

From a basic 'game psychology' perspective, the only way to achieve this is to tune it toward one specific type of mind and leave it there. If it is fun for everyone, they will all do it, and then the last part doesn't happen, OR the first part doesn't happen (or gathering is basically instanced).

I don't know if I'm making sense here, but if you give someone 'easy gathering where they can run around a big area and there is always enough for them to feel like they are progressing even with a bunch of other people doing the same thing', you either made it a bot fiesta or you took away ONE of the things they cared about. Either the materials are worthless because 'anyone who wanted them could just go have fun gathering them because they're abundant', or 'it's not difficult/rewarding', to prevent gatekeeping from 'whoever does it the most at first'.

"And when everyone is a Gatherer... No One will be." (yes this applies even within the subset of players who would actually choose to master Gathering if there is low chance of competition for spawns, and the competition for spawns is the thing I was referring to as the 'obstacle a gatherer is used to')