Splinter Topic: Motivation - Opportunity vs Necessity

From the other thread then, and you can let me know if it is too simplistic as an answer to your question:

Azherae wrote: »

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The point is not to make it so that every player can own land.

The point would be to make it that not every player wants to own land, and then tie people's desire to own land to 'how available land is'.

i.e. when a big guild buys up 6 plots, that they find themselves going 'damn, no one wants these for high prices, and it's not a benefit to us to hold onto them, we probably have to sell them for cheap'.

My problem with explaining in more detail is that it's burning too much energy on an incorrect premise of design.

Achieving the Freehold should not be monumental. Profiting from it should be, and most importantly 'holding onto it just so others functionally can't have it' should be a remarkably stupid idea.

We're better off with 'abandoned repossessed homesteads' than 'Someone using their second account as a Plot Device'.

Azherae wrote: »

Achieving the Freehold should not be monumental. Profiting from it should be, and most importantly 'holding onto it just so others functionally can't have it' should be a remarkably stupid idea.

Would "paying it back" work? Smth like "taxes constantly increase if your plot is not providing any node points". This would probably require the thing I discussed with Depraved (a system to provide your processing to others) and farming to somehow count towards "paying back" as well. Business-based freeholds would obviously provide a service to the node.

In other words, make freeholds unsustainable unless they're good for others outside of the player/group that owns it. And it would be a huge gold sink for anyone who just wants to squat land to "fuck others over".

This obviously doesn't resolve the issue of "not everyone has a plot of land to chill on", but it could at least bring more positivity into the game? Maybe?

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Achieving the Freehold should not be monumental. Profiting from it should be, and most importantly 'holding onto it just so others functionally can't have it' should be a remarkably stupid idea.

Would "paying it back" work? Smth like "taxes constantly increase if your plot is not providing any node points". This would probably require the thing I discussed with Depraved (a system to provide your processing to others) and farming to somehow count towards "paying back" as well. Business-based freeholds would obviously provide a service to the node.

In other words, make freeholds unsustainable unless they're good for others outside of the player/group that owns it. And it would be a huge gold sink for anyone who just wants to squat land to "fuck others over".

This obviously doesn't resolve the issue of "not everyone has a plot of land to chill on", but it could at least bring more positivity into the game? Maybe?

This is what I meant before.

We could be discussing the specifics of how the community would like Freeholds to interact with the positive game loops. But here we are discussing potential for RMT.

As I've told you before, you often know how to build the base levels of these things, I usually assume everyone can do so. And yet...

Land speculation.

I suppose this is a boon for ingame realtors.

Azherae wrote: »

And yet...

Land speculation.

In Bill Trost we trust then

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

And yet...

Land speculation.

In Bill Trost we trust then

Actually I can solve this now, I forgot that INH already has this system worked out (partially, there's always loopholes).

If you own a Freehold and are required to provide Anything Whatsoever to your Node and you do not do so, you accrue Debt. This will probably never result in your Freehold being repossessed, but it does mean that you keep on losing money or profit in some other place. I.e. when you do some transaction, something is taken from you (maybe disabling a building, a health inspector comes and shuts down your Inn).

A player who doesn't know they will be gone and accrues debt can choose to pay it back.
A player who knows they will be gone chooses what to do beforehand.
A player in a large amount of debt can 'lose' it to someone else who can instantly pay it off.

That last one is where it gets complicated because you have to construct something kinda like the 'opposite of bidding' where the controller of the land knows it will be 'lost' but not to who. But in all cases, it's a sink for Anything Whatsoever (it's best if this isn't cash but Ashes doesn't offer much else exactly that we know of).

Since Freeholds are Account based, there's options for putting pressure on the Account owner's 'Alts' or similar.

But none of this was even remotely the point, because it's scarcity and competition that would keep us talking about things like 'well what if the Big Guilds just always buy up all the repossessed Freeholds?'

That would never be a sensible thing to do. 10k gold of debt, they pay it off, now there's no debt, the Freehold is not available to anyone else. They can't sell it because they'd need to wait to accrue more debt, and it probably has a bunch of buildings that need to be repaired to be used. They can't sell it for more than the debt they accrue.

They're 'sitting on it only to keep it from their competition' (at no point does this person make any money from doing this except via RMT by luck).

But the problem would remain, right? "Hold land in order to drive up the value of other land" (in this case through limiting Master Processing stations".

If the server offered 8000 plots, and one guild decided to quest up 70% of those just to keep other people from Processing high level Ores, then they've created many accounts whose outcome will be not to produce but also while not producing, to actively drain their resources. The more they have to get control off, the smaller the Opportunity for them.

Which they would then compare to a whole calculation that just thinking about explaining makes me feel tired.
Basically 'assuming you want to be a Master Artisan but not taking it seriously means you make a loss instead' sort of thing would prevent every person from 'trying to get one'. Now if only I could easily demonstrate why this is meaningfully different than the current model without six reference books...

Azherae wrote: »

If the server offered 8000 plots, and one guild decided to quest up 70% of those just to keep other people from Processing high level Ores, then they've created many accounts whose outcome will be not to produce but also while not producing, to actively drain their resources. The more they have to get control off, the smaller the Opportunity for them.

Would heavy node point weights on freeholds be too strong of a solution against this? Say, node needs 1k points to not decay. 300 of those can be provided through normal player means, while 700 gotta be provided through freehold activity (which links back to the "give back" idea). Now, if that guild decides to buy up a shitton of plots (w/o working them), they're pretty much dooming those nodes to decay, which means that the guild has now not only literally wasted all their money, but also lost the freeholds.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

If the server offered 8000 plots, and one guild decided to quest up 70% of those just to keep other people from Processing high level Ores, then they've created many accounts whose outcome will be not to produce but also while not producing, to actively drain their resources. The more they have to get control off, the smaller the Opportunity for them.

Would heavy node point weights on freeholds be too strong of a solution against this? Say, node needs 1k points to not decay. 300 of those can be provided through normal player means, while 700 gotta be provided through freehold activity (which links back to the "give back" idea). Now, if that guild decides to buy up a shitton of plots (w/o working them), they're pretty much dooming those nodes to decay, which means that the guild has now not only literally wasted all their money, but also lost the freeholds.

Bad direction. Weaponizable.

Never give players a way to have intentional failure affect the Commons.

We have not received permission from CROW3 to share the quoted post.

I believe that the land speculation can be avoided while retaining (rather, by increasing) the limits, and that the price that will be paid is 'denial of this content to a very large portion of the playerbase' which is the thing I have the problem with.

And as you know, this is not a personal problem. If it reaches the point where it is a 'personal problem' for my very tight knit family who are basically all 'definitely not casuals' then I have no condolence I can even offer to any other.

I just believe that 'repossessing someone's cool Trophy or functional furniture' is cleaner.

If your house is empty, why should the Node/State 'let you keep it' in a game like Ashes anyway? It's unrealistic. The Node Citizens would vote to have it taken from you.

I really really don't want to go all the way down to explaining how land's ability to produce is the only real value and the societal structures built up around it that we take for granted. It would become politics.

We have not received permission from CROW3 to share the quoted post.

My problem with this is that an MMO isn't a chemical reaction, it's more like a nuclear reactor.

Without the required mass to keep the chain going, everything just dies down. And unlike most of their decisions, this one is borderline calculable. You can't have a goal of 'Freeholds not being for everyone' with an implementation that is so likely to lead to 'Actually Freeholds will be for everyone because everyone who doesn't have one will just leave' (obviously exaggeration, assume 'everyone who wants one').

I'm saying it's not a good goal . It's not even the right way to think about the goal. Choose a number of Freeholds that you want in the world and tune stuff until everyone who has one under the parameters you set actually wanted one, give or take.

There needs to be more 'gap' here. There should probably always be some number of Freehold plots that 'no one can be bothered with'. This is a demographics thing way more than anything else.

Which brings me back to:
Why did you make them BIGGER, Intrepid?

I guess you maybe received feedback from NDA spot testers that they would like them to be bigger? Cause I don't remember ever seeing anything else related to it.

On another note if this stays as is I hope we get planters/pots to grow things in our instanced housing.

I personally prefer Brass Flowerpots over Ceramic Flowerpots , but that's only because of the Gardening system actually caring which type of pot you use and it affecting yields, so if we're not getting yield effects by flowerpot I'll take just aesthetics I guess.

I don't think I'll feel fine doing Animal Husbandry in the Stables of the Node permanently though. I'll think about it, since that seems unrealistic for me given how much time I spend in the Chocobo Stables. It's not like I could have raised my Chocobo in my house.

Azherae wrote: »

Which brings me back to:
Why did you make them BIGGER, Intrepid?

My current theory is "someone during a meeting said: We should promote families somehow. And someone else answered: Freeholds are now for families!" And you obviously need a hugeass freehold if you want to have several people live/use/work on it.

These types of answers from Steven support my theory.

We have not received permission from CROW3 to share the quoted post.

No! Bad. No politics! (I know this is not politics).

This is also the reason why I don't discuss Fiat Magarin's premise. Because that's the first chapter's concept draft.

"All currency is tied directly to the productivity of worthwhile land or access and therefore all idle land automatically devalues currency and trade."

It's theoretically a long book.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Which brings me back to:
Why did you make them BIGGER, Intrepid?

My current theory is "someone during a meeting said: We should promote families somehow. And someone else answered: Freeholds are now for families!" And you obviously need a hugeass freehold if you want to have several people live/use/work on it.

These types of answers from Steven support my theory.

If so, I agree with it to a point, but why do both things at the same time?

1. Freeholds were almost obviously beneficial for families before, I think most people probably expected some level of that.
2. Adding more UPKEEP to Freeholds that can then be shared amongst the family is still the better solution for this .

The rich/hardcore player gets their whole Freehold to themselves and can rent out their stations or whatever with no guarantees of anything, but can always use it for whatever they find most profitable, probably living in a high traffic area and paying the appropriate upkeep costs from their wealth.

The casual/middle class family shares their freehold, doesn't/can't rent things out as often, but all together they contribute and can match up to the single hardcore player and because they don't use the stations/etc all at once, or have to spread their activities and storage over the plot.

Hence the 'expectation that upkeep and location was going to be the main factor'.

If they make it bigger to encourage the use of it across a family of players/alts, it's still too big, probably, and also way more abusable without the upkeep part being the primary part.

We have not received permission from CROW3 to share the quoted post.

Hey now, I've probably written it twice over now in design documents and forum arguments. This change alone is refining my ~checks notes~ third chapter for me!

I'm just really aware of the low demand for a book explicitly about how to design fantasy MMORPG economies.

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

You're the sort of person that I need to write the book for.

Like, definitionally.

The people who decided it was 'not ok' to beat someone else up and take their $100 are the same people who decided what a '$100' was.

It is your land until someone takes it. It is your money until someone takes it. Do you know why you get to claim otherwise without being laughed at and then skewered on a pike?



Or as my friend says:

You know who doesn't agree with you...?

THE MONGOLS.

Azherae wrote: »

If they make it bigger to encourage the use of it across a family of players/alts, it's still too big, probably, and also way more abusable without the upkeep part being the primary part.

There's the tiniest sliver of a chance that the upcoming article about the freehold updates will clear this up. Steven also mentioned that apartment sizes changed, so there might've been a bigger shift in the design overall. We'll have to see.

Azherae wrote: »

You know who doesn't agree with you...?

THE MONGOLS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp6iqzeA2pQ

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

Wait you think we have laws because doing illegal things is evil ? I take it you either aren't an American or don't study their history much whether you are or are not (this is still not politics, right? Someone call me out if it is).

Also you can remove gold from MMORPGs, that would be the entire point of the book. Not saying you should but that you can and that it is important to understand how and why you can that leads to understanding how to design MMORPG economies.

Some humans agreed at some point that it was okay for some people (without an army, no less) to buy potentially profitable land and do nothing beneficial with it.

If you want to design a fantasy MMO economy you have to start from the very bottom or mimic someone else's design or you will introduce holes that will quickly remind us why human behaviour is based on those agreements that we all take for granted.

Otherwise you will create a system that no bulk group of humans would be willing to live under, and they will not play your game with the goal of experiencing an economy.

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

Actually a bunch of people literally don't agree on that.

Some people believe that taxation is theft, but the government will 'beat you up' if you don't pay the taxes, and some people believe that the very concept of property is theft because it will always be taken to the extreme of 'X uses their claim to property, to deny access to some other resource'.

There are hundreds of laws worldwide about this, complex ones too.

You can try to extend my logic like that and I won't complain because in the end, trying to reduce this topic to simplicity is itself the 'wrong'. Now we're definitely at 'politics', whereas I prefer to just discuss economic things in the view of MMORPGs, so please proceed with any further interpretation you have of my position, and I'll probably concede it regardless of what it is.

Go big, it's fine.

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

Yeah don't worry about it, I'm like a crazy anarchist anthropologist who looks too deep into the abyss of human nature and all that.

I'll never get it, I'm blind to the Truth from staring into said Abyss for too long.

I think there are cookies down there though.

Azherae wrote: »

I think there are cookies down there though.

Do they have eyes to look back at you?