[Discussion] Community

My concerns are about longevity and population, because the way I expect the problem of toxicity to be solved is by targeting their niche audience, building around that and waiting for others to come in and for the early 'toxic people' to leave.

Ashes seems to aim to walk a fine line between 'play the game how you want' and 'other people can hurt you, if they accept the penalty', which is hard to do while maintaining a population, since players without a community can be frustrated easily.

Subscription Model will also 'weed out' some people over time, but I mean, there's WoW.

The way people look at games now, I believe is known and studied, to have changed. But this game tells you up front 'you're going to lose things when you try to do things'.

It doesn't go so far as to say 'if you don't like it, the door's that way', but 'knowing' that the Devs might just ignore the person who 'complains that they can't get a flying mount' or 'that their caravan got robbed when they took the most obvious route', seems to me to be more likely to lead to a low population problem, than a full toxicity/low interaction problem.

There will always be people who don't socialize well, and gaming has brought those people into a space that has been a fairly social one up to now. The shift was in demographic more than anything else. If Ashes does not appeal as much to the 'antisocial' player demographic, you'll probably get a different result.

Edit: Since this post is asking for opinions and thoughts, my group's rule about not generally posting feedback in the same thread doesn't apply, mentioning this in case one of them sees it later.

Serial killers, kidnappers, and sometimes really rude customer service (depending on your other access to the product you want) can't be blocked irl.

It all comes down to culture. Humanity is very good at learning social norms. But the mechanisms behind them are just as important.

For example in a different thread someone was suggesting a built in reputation system to use against bullies and the ability for a shop to recuse service. The right to refuse service against a player that killed you is a good mechanism. You can change your mind. They can get shamed by the community if they ganked you in a repeated and mean spirited way. They have the opportunity to change via social means.

Social change through social interactions. A reputation based price penalty system otoh is a bad mechanism. No social experience has to happen to be 'forgiven' to be 'forgotten'.

Lots of little decisions add up combined with a community culture to cause a positive social environment.

I think Maezriel has a good point about the regionality of the game. I think its one of ashes possible places its design can really done relative to dealing with toxic people. A lot of peeps who just want to enjoy the game rather than be harassed in the field will start clustering during the initial gankfest of the first year. Once those people grow bored as 'nice' people get stronger gear and skill, they will eventually leave since it will be riskier and harder to pick on the 'weak'/'new', giving room to frontier even after launch.

The real question is what tools do we need if any that haven't been clarified that can let positive cultures flourish in a 'pvx' style game? What social norms can we as players add to the mix or want to see promoted?