Throne & Liberty : finaly so different (edit)

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Now this response is interesting, so if you don't mind...

When I analyzed this data, I found it to be 'not much different from what they were originally offering'. Three 'real' changes occurred.

1. Probably more 'Field' type zones which have no PvP in default conditions.
2. No unrestricted PvP at night, this was moved to Dungeons which only open at night, making it clearer
3. Supposedly no P2W

Your note was the game will be quite hollow because people can avoid its core mechanics. But this isn't Ashes, so there's less open world gathering for example, and no 'Node exp' that we know of, so the driving meaningful factors of open world unrestricted PvP aren't even there (I've read both the public datamine and the other one, so just trust me on the gathering part).

So I wish to understand which core mechanics they're avoiding? I see the reason that Ashes needs open world PvP + Corruption from the design perspective (not the preference one) to be that the world's dynamism and node progression are tied to it.

A game without Nodes or strong dynamism could easily have a PvP model that TL has and most people will be happy, so, any thoughts on it as a whole? This is what I expect to see from most MMOs going forward, because I don't expect most to have any 'Nodes'. And similarly I expect all the other 'Node' style ones that have either gathering or 'Node Progression' to have the 'Corruption' style owPvP.

Also @Dygz what say you? I think this works better for you, right? Or are the Night Dungeons a concern? I can't be sure because you could theoretically, since they're very targeted locations, get a group together to 'explore' them (I see this as different from the Open Sea, so I ask).

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It only penalizes the WoW-style of pvp. That is, PKing. Any "normal" player will just be in a guild and that guild will most likely have a war with another guild. And you'll have a shitton of enjoyable consensual pvp. Just as it was in L2.

I do hope we learn more about their plans for guild wars, cause we don't really have that many details about warring details and requirements.

There's also node wars, but we'll have to see how hard/expensive it is to declare a war on another node. Node wars will also be way less consensual for the majority of citizens, so we'll also have to see how those people respond.

The rules are meant for the middle part of the pvx spectrum. Pvers will be attacked by other players and pvpers won't be able to kill everyone they want for free.

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How many people are at such extreme ends of that spectrum that they wouldn't play the game if they saw this kind of system though? I feel like it's not as many people as there are closer to the middle.

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And this is why I wanna know more about the rules/requirements for both of those systems.

They'll supposedly be more goal-oriented than L2's wars were, so probably closer to AA's stuff, but the goals might be hard enough that people just have days-long wars.

Though I would definitely find it funny if you end up being right and there's gonna be no wars in the game (once-a-month thing is literally nothing, even if it's a 3-4h thing).

At that point L2's influence will be pretty much gone, there's gonna be 0 owpvp (well, outside of ships, but that's an insane investment to just have some random fun) and I'll definitely feel a bit bad about the money I'm still planning on putting into the game.

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And that's the other extreme then. They wouldn't play a game because of pvp.

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I'm currently not even sure that system still exists. We'll have to see how corruption is tuned, but so far it definitely seems that it'll be way too harsh for people to attempt going there. Do think that people will make alts to go around that system (which is why I want PK count to be account-wide), but that's still a real minority of players.

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Yeah, that is what I expect, but I do think that there's enough people in the middle of the spectrum that are just waiting for a good game to come out that is placed in that middle. So far we either have pve games with arena-like locations for pvp or full-on murderhobo games with unpunished PKing.

If anything, popularity of Albion kinda hints at me being at least somewhat correct. It's obviously closer to the pve side of the spectrum cause it has non-pvp locations (iirc?), but I think that pvp locations also relate to economy, so it's somewhat similar to Ashes in that respect.

And Albion is obviously niche in its style (well, when compared to other mmos, that is), so we'll have to see if Ashes can appeal to more people cause of its much more basic style.

NiKr wrote: »

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Yeah, that is what I expect, but I do think that there's enough people in the middle of the spectrum that are just waiting for a good game to come out that is placed in that middle. So far we either have pve games with arena-like locations for pvp or full-on murderhobo games with unpunished PKing.

If anything, popularity of Albion kinda hints at me being at least somewhat correct. It's obviously closer to the pve side of the spectrum cause it has non-pvp locations (iirc?), but I think that pvp locations also relate to economy, so it's somewhat similar to Ashes in that respect.

And Albion is obviously niche in its style (well, when compared to other mmos, that is), so we'll have to see if Ashes can appeal to more people cause of its much more basic style.

You believe this because you have the mentality of pushing when games are hard and you aren't succeeding.

As a person with access to three (two and a half, I guess?) separate internal datasets of sample size > 8000, I say that your belief is incorrect.

Also, Albion is, in some weird ways, closer to TL's design than what we've been told so far for Ashes.

I'll hope that Ashes isn't going on the 'gut feeling' of players like me or you, because I've spent years learning all the ways in which those gut feelings are wrong. The only reason I don't agree with you is because I've been 'taught by reality' not to.

We're wrong. Because so-called PvP players who 'would enjoy a game with both' are usually not happy PvP players . A happy PvP player enjoys the game even when they are not winning as long as they can express themselves or grow. Or they find some low-stakes casual interaction where they get to 'mess around'.

Give them a game where there is no 'casual mode' in the PvP aspect and they generally love the idea of it, they love talking about it, they love showing off and 'teaching' new players who they know they won't get stomped by. But do they like competing? Nah.

Ashes is too hardcore for most 'PvP players'. I actually expect them to quit before the PvE-first players.

Azherae wrote: »

As a person with access to three (two and a half, I guess?) separate internal datasets of sample size > 8000, I say that your belief is incorrect.

Yeah, probably.

I said this a few years back at this point, but Ashes will be the last check for me to see if my preferences are shared by enough people to warrant a game like this successfully existing. If Ashes completely fails - I'll just know for sure that the time for me to play mmos has past. I'll still play the soloable stuff, just to experience the story and world, but I won't invest myself as much as I'd like to invest myself into Ashes.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

As a person with access to three (two and a half, I guess?) separate internal datasets of sample size > 8000, I say that your belief is incorrect.

Yeah, probably.

I said this a few years back at this point, but Ashes will be the last check for me to see if my preferences are shared by enough people to warrant a game like this successfully existing. If Ashes completely fails - I'll just know for sure that the time for me to play mmos has past. I'll still play the soloable stuff, just to experience the story and world, but I won't invest myself as much as I'd like to invest myself into Ashes.

But there's no reason Ashes would completely fail, that isn't really the pivot so far of this thread, so I wouldn't worry about it.

If you want to consider 'will TL be more popular than Ashes', answer is 'maybe'. Ashes doesn't have a 'core premise' problem at all, it only has an 'execution' or 'shortcoming' problem, if even that.

Or, if relevant... I personally think Steven is right and Dygz is wrong. Based on my experience in competitive gaming communities I expect Ashes to do 10x as well as Dygz seems to expect (this can't really be put to 'numbers' so don't focus on this part).

But I also expect Ashes to tilt more toward the thing that most other games will be and its competitive advantage in an MMO market will be its points of additional depth. If they do not deliver on that depth, then people will play other games.

I'm just saying that the 'PvE vs PvP' spectrum is not the thing that matters to this at all, not even the Corruption aspects. The Open Seas thing for example, comes entirely down to if the Open Seas loot is the best or nearly the best.

For a game that had Naval content as a stretch goal to begin with, this is a huge wildcard anyway. This is the reason I didn't understand a certain prior point in the thread and had to ask about it. There seems to be a big gap between 'people who like to have consequential PvP in games' and 'people who don't want other people to be able to avoid PvP'. Designing games for the first group is easy. Designing games for the second group is ... an interesting exercise.

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Yes, there will be people like that. And yes, they might be the majority. But there could still be enough people out there who'd play Ashes for exactly what it is. Which is why I'm trying my best to be as close to Steven's vision in my feedback as possible.

If he ultimately decides to make Ashes into, pretty much, TL with a much bigger pve-lean than what the current design would indicate - so be it, even if I would dislike that turn of events.