Splinter Topic: Micro-Competition vs Macro-Competition

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I no longer know what you're talking about, and that's probably fine.

I'll try not to assume anything, though. If you feel like answering my question sometime, I'll be looking out for that.

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In Elite Dangerous, a player has the option to, at any time, log into a solo instance, a 'group instance' that can be just one's own guild, or play in 'Open'.

But my more important thought in response to 'themepark ride' style content such as 'instanced fishing contests with no capacity to level up your fishing or make any money from the fish' would be 'wouldn't it just be better to play a different game at that point, or just have an observer account in Ashes?'

Obviously the option to swap between 'Solo Play' and 'Open' is important sometimes for many reasons, though, so I get it. If Intrepid eventually decides to go with more instanced, 'meaningless to open world and Node system' content, though, I fear that the result would be similar to Elite.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/b1qyqr/a_friendly_reminder_about_a_pve_private_group/

EDIT: I misread the post.

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Ah, no, I meant that we'd end up with something similar to 'two separate games' where there are a bunch of people who are trying to get through Ashes without ever having to seriously engage with non-themepark-ride content.

Also, I don't know if you're as aware but, depending on your level of abstraction, nearly nothing whatsoever in Ashes is original as an experience except maybe the 'Nodes look different from each other'. This was barely even true in 2016.

What has generally happened, is that a lot of people who are very into MMOs and disregarded certain trends and options in gaming, or were fans of very specific MMOs that Steven played (and therefore come across Ashes through word of mouth or similar) have less experience about what is 'out there'. Ashes is, at best 'not-broken ArcheAge'.

Which brings us to the last bit that the 'PvE-enjoyer' of the modern day is thinking. Why play Ashes when we have new upcoming games that can deliver all the same things without the parts I don't like? The appeal, to those people, would be 'the intensity of the world', because Ashes is not 'winning' on any other metric that anyone has actually seen, anymore.

I believe your post above is acknowledging that the specific combination of factors that Ashes provides, might be a good reason to play it, but that is a strange perception to me personally. Game design is highly convergent, to me, and MMOs are among the most convergent designs possible.

Basically, 'all MMOs with the same goals will turn out the same because there's only probably one way to do it correctly'.

That is actually the core, underlying premise of this thread. If you want your game to have micro-competition and macro-competition side by side and both be meaningful, your methods for getting this are pretty limited.

If you don't want that, and instead want to focus on macro-competition and 'Risk vs Reward', you have an original idea, that excludes a certain playerset. Which is ok because Ashes is not for everyone.

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Ah, sorry, I think you misread the 'I' in that sentence for meaning me, when, in context, it meant 'A person who enjoys open worlds and change factors, but does not enjoy the restricted micro-competition'.

So let's be clear, I personally want Ashes to soar like the blazing Phoenix it is, beyond Throne and Liberty (which seems to be taking the approach I expect of releasing a minimum product and iterating), beyond ArcheAge 2 (which is dialing back the harder structures), beyond Pax Dei (which is wobbling along trying to figure out how to be slightly better MineCraft), beyond Reign of Guilds (just look it up), beyond even the Riot MMO (good luck to them with that, though).

Hence my supercritical prickly attitude (despite which, I want to encourage and defend Ashes Devs at all times).

But just note that for a person with less faith and investment than me, Ashes is mostly words, and maybe some pain-point implementations. Looking at the same Riot MMO, a person might go 'That will probably never release, it'll be cardboard when it does, Riot only knows how to make lowest common denominator games'. But that's the same type of judgement that Ashes can get from a lot of people.

(I feel like I kinda-answered your 'question' even if it wasn't actually about me, lmk if I didn't)

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I feel like what happened here is that you slightly projected your frustrations with bad games, onto my potential mindset for Ashes. So if you don't mind, let's step back a moment.

Disregarding the fact that only the person who lands the killing blow gets any Corruption in Ashes at this time, I am talking about a person who wants to fish, to improve at fishing or support their economic needs in game, becoming unable to fish due to my willingness to kill them.

This player could absolutely, as you say, just hand over the fish. But it's not the fish necessarily that is the target. What if I want my bard to level up their Fishing and you fishing at all at the spot, is therefore a problem?

I agree with you that bots, gatekeeping players from quest mobs, etc, is bad and also not competition. That's the core problem I'm taling about.

We are immortal, we are locusts, we do not tire, we do not eat, we do not sleep. We are all Daywalker Vampires who just can't kill magical town guards or shopkeepers.

As for my setup that does not deliver on the game pillar, can you describe it to me? I don't feel like I offered a 'setup' to try to deliver anything, so I'd appreciate that clarified.

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Obviously I can't answer that with any definitive, I can only give you a specific lens to look at it with.

Ashes of Creation has ingame Weather and things about the game that change based on that weather (but they're not all implemented yet)

FFXI has ingame weather and things about the game that change based on that weather.
BDO has ingame weather and a few things that change based on that weather, including your farm plots
FFXIV has ingame weather and some things that change based on that weather.
Throne and Liberty has ingame weather and many things that change, including dungeon openings and paths.
ArcheAge 2 can be expected to have at least as much weather as ArcheAge 1.

The purpose of that preamble is not to say 'Ashes of Creation needs to have better weather' or 'Ashes of Creation is not doing well because not all of the parts of the weather are implemented'. It's specifically to say:

"If Ashes of Creation attempts to use the ingame weather as a large part of its marketing strategy, it will not impress the current market of MMO players much."

I feel like it's hard to know the current market for a deep MMO like Ashes at the moment because every time someone hitches their MMO idea to the Unreal 5 hype train, we all have to carefully check if they even know how to make a good HQ MMO.

And just this last week we learned that Riot (harshly paraphrasing here) didn't. By their own admission, and good on them, they realized 'oh wait this is just normal old stuff, we need to do better'.

Ashes is in the same position as Riot. So, the market kind of isn't even defined, at the moment? I hope that made some tiny amount of sense, despite all the abstractions.

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I didn't say anything was wrong with the direction your mind went.

I used the word 'living world' to describe a thing, I could've used any word because the complexity of the thing is so high that the label probably barely matters.

If 'living world' means something else to you, great. I'm saying that I know from past experience that there's no way for you and I have to have a reasonable conversation once you get to the point of perceiving that my definitions are wrong in some way.

My other option is to define 'living' or 'changing' world in Ashes as 'some buildings go up and then they go down'... or something. I don't even know. I barely want to know. If their definition of 'living world' is enough for you, and therefore the design is not flawed, fine. I, at least, am trying to discuss how PvE players should not be expected to be positive at all toward a world with no micro-competition aspects that can't be reduced to PvP.

In my bias, within that context, it's fair to say that owPvP, by its nature in most implementations particularly the one Ashes currently is presenting to us, is in conflict with the design, and since I believe that 'Nodes and Economy' is the important part of Ashes (as it is practically the only sorta-original part), I see interference as a 'flaw'.

If you would like to define owPvP as the important part of Ashes (design pillar: Meaningful Conflict) and 'unnecessary living-world aspects' as a flaw that interferes with the owPvP, that's ok too. A discussion for a possible thread in the bleak future where we are struggling to get PvP players to care about Ashes, instead.

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Thanks, I'm with you now.

Now, Macro-competition, a thing that I didn't really get to directly in the thread yet, somehow .

When a big guild is trying to get ahead of other guilds, depending on the design of the game, this is where Macro-competition appears. This is where a lot of people have fun in owPvP games, but it can happen in PvE-only games too. Using economic tactics, playing at specific times, knowing spawn timings of bosses, and ofc PvE griefing (so many ways). These Macro-competition PvE tactics are usually also not very fun for most players, actually. Zerging objectives, botting activities, Mob Player Killing via training mobs onto other groups, etc.

For many PvE-focused (not necessarily even PvP-averse) players, the ideal game is one where the following is true:
"If I am in an area with no other person who has the same skills, there is no competition."
"If I enter an area where PvP skills are known to be required, there will probably be a PvP competition, and I can choose an appropriate area."
"My ability to engage in Macro-competition (economics, guild support, etc) depends on whatever my main skills are, probably via cooperation with others who have different skills."

Ashes is already almost perfect here, especially if Corruption is strong.

For many PvP-focused players, I would guess that the ideal game is one where the following are somewhat true if not very true:
"If I am in an area with a person with different skills, I would like to cooperate with that person if it helps me in Macro-competition."
"If I try to do something where non-PvP skills are known to be required, there will be a competition, and I can choose an appropriate area."
"My ability to engage in Macro-competition (economics, guild support, etc) depends on whatever my main skills are, probably via cooperation with others who have different skills."

Again, almost perfect, with one huge problem.

In a system based around 'Corruption', the PvP focused player has much less power. The PvE focused player doesn't need to cooperate with them. Their only actual option is to 'use their PvP skills to set back the PvE focused player', and that's assuming that PvE focused player doesn't have greater PvP skills than them.

And then they get punished for this, too (but have lots of ways to avoid it).

And finally we have the fact that not every PvP focused player cares about this one:
"If I try to do something where non-PvP skills are known to be required, there will be a competition, and I can choose an appropriate area."

Some PvP focused players are quite happy to change every competition into PvP. Especially if the game incentivizes this for Macro-competition. This is the type of game that Ashes of Creation currently is.

(I cut out a lot of the examples and preamble from this one since it was quite long, lmk if you need it, it's no effort to paste it)

Anyways @Otr , the reason I keep bringing up the 'Immortal' thing, is simpler.

Macro-competition gets really easy or sometimes disappears entirely, in MMOs, because they don't require as many macro-competition skills as 'RL' or 'Survival games'.

In most MMOs, a guild doesn't need three fisherpeople, two cooks, a weaponsmith, a security detail, and 2 procurement merchants to keep dragging down a different guild or control an area .

It's like, 'every guild can just be a bandit guild'. And that means they can focus much more heavily on PvP and basically not suffer or seriously slow down much if they don't want to help or give their 'PvE people' anything. They just need money.

Take that down one level, let's not look straight at 'actually successful guilds', they would probably have those things. Let's just look at 'griefer' guilds. Guilds who just like to run around dragging down other people's activities. They need some money.

Most MMORPGs that allow any form of owPvP, don't actually reward those people much for all the dragging-down and killing. They can't support themselves without some 'PvE skills' or financial support. Because they don't get resources or items to sell, so they lose really badly at macro-competition until they make some effort to get good at some skills.

Ashes can reward players for running around and dragging-down others, though. They might be able to sustain themselves in overall macro-competition this way, by using the fact that they 'can't die' and 'don't need to find a safe place to sleep' and 'don't care about food'.

Survival games make players care about all those things, and then on top of that, add 'if you do actually die, your macro-competition status falls' (but this isn't consistent so even these games have SOME issues).
PvE-focused players don't like having to deal with these 'Immortal Predators'.

Just like PvP-focused players don't like having to deal with 'Immortal/Invincible Hoarding Locusts'. Each group invalidates the skills of the player type that hates it.

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While I can see that having the effect of 'more total players, playing Ashes', what happens on the Elite side, is that people who might be okay with playing in 'Open' get pulled into Private Groups to be with their friends who are less okay with it.

This probably wouldn't be as big an issue in Ashes, but I feel like anything that risks segregation of the playerbase is ... suboptimal. Personal sense, though.

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Well, subtracting the PvP aspect for the moment, despite how obviously important it is, most of what Ashes offers is some combination of Elite Dangerous and FF11.

Freeholds and Node Reliquaries are good, if you can experience anything related to them, so definitely a plus there. And ofc, FF11 is old, and Elite Dangerous isn't a fantasy game. BDO has some bits too, ofc, but it's just 'bits'.

Throne and Liberty doesn't have any housing yet (but you can see that the design allows for it). I don't know if it is fair to say overall, but I think that unless Ashes goes beyond what I can even begin to imagine, I've mostly had the experiences it intends to offer already. As I always say to Intrepid Team though...

"If y'all can manage to put those into the same game with L2 or better tier PvP, you have automatically won."

Which sounds a lot like I'm saying 'build the game I want' but technically it's largely the game they say they're going to build and I'm just waiting for them to do it properly (my only point here is that if they don't knock it out of the park, they won't surpass the upcoming mentioned below)

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The problem with this, I think, is that ArcheAge 2 is likely to be this 'mashup', and TL is likely to be 'slightly more than this' if they ever start taking their Economy and Territory control aspects more seriously. So it comes down to 'how much do I really want to see a different node in this spot?' (larger content changes are apparently not a thing that technically appeal to a very large number of players? But I definitely care about it).

The thing about that, is while Ashes could 'change Instanced Content based on what Nodes were built up', it might hit, as you say, 'scope creep', so anytime we see anything suspicious in development that seems like something might get 'cut' or 'trimmed down', it's worrisome.

I did not think my 'we Riot' reference would go in this direction, now that I think about it...

I don't actually think Ashes has another market differentiator available to it at all.

Lineage 2 players often perceive Ashes as a return to that game's glory days. I ended up here because it sounded like someone was going to 'make FF11 style gaming great again'.

But, fortunately, I do have examples of playloops.

In Ashes, I would like to see a situation where:
1. Because many more people than usual have visited a node, from outside that node, a small outbreak of a not-terrible disease has occurred (Can happen in Elite, something slightly like it can happen in FFXI)
2. Players are requested or expected to import medicines from another nearby node with good Alchemy facilities, or make them, themselves (obv can happen in both games)
3. Players can vote on or influence a decision from the Node Government about secondary approaches to dealing with the problem (can happen in a particular subsection of FFXI, only partially in Elite Dangerous)
4. Players fulfilling or ignoring the decision and synchronizing with the relief effort can lead to a quicker resolution, or a loss of confidence due to 'incompetence' (can happen in both games)
5. NPC behaviour both in-node and external conditions such as battle and enemy spawns, change because of this shift in activity, such as gathering more herbs for medicine, or bandits taking advantage of imports (definitely happens in Elite, happens slightly in FFXI)
6. Disruption of relief efforts by rival player groups having control of specific territories/areas can affect all of the above (happens in FFXI slightly more than Elite, but not really anymore due to additional fast travel options)
7. Complete failure to respond to the situation results in economic downturn due to weakening of defenses of the Node, etc (happens in both games, in a very roundabout way also happens in BDO)
8. Strong coordinated success in response to the situation results in reputation benefits for involved players (happens in both games, and during BDO events of certain kinds)
9. Changing control of some territory during this, to improve supply lines, can automatically have some positive effect through things such as NPC actions in the open world (happens in both games, and in TL, though TL lacks most of the above currently).
10. The overall price of medicine or related items rises or falls due to the situation.

To me, this sounds like what Intrepid is already planning as a standard for their game (most of the above would be handled with the World Manager and a good economy design), and 'the thing that would be driving most of our play loops', since things like Node Sieges would be less frequent than 'node status changes' or 'world status changes'.

Elite's changes are more visible, and less 'abstract'. FFXI requires a bit more 'careful attention' to easily see differences in the world-state, but you often get more benefit out of paying attention. Elite's overall simulation state changes once per day on average, and FFXI has some systems that change 'in real time' and others that go through bigger changes once per week.

Therefore, in terms of 'what Ashes offers to me', I can experience it all already, with the main difference being that the complete destruction of a Node and therefore some absolute loss of related content, is more possible than it is in standard play of Elite Dangerous or FFXI (it is, actually, also possible in both those games as well, but it's just 'a change of control in an area that is considered more important than most others')

I can imagine more specific and granular forms of this, but it's hard to go very far beyond where Elite already is.

"An outbreak in this system has changed the missions in the Passenger Lounge so that rather than seeing sightseers who are going on joyrides, quarantines have led to requests from Medical Officers needing to go to different high tech systems with Pharmaceutical facilities, and long-haul explorers who intend to get out of the area until the situation is resolved."

The above is just 'normal' for that game. That, if anything, is my entire point. I'm not really asking for Intrepid to do much, if anything, beyond 'my normal'. But 'my normal' is relatively complicated with a lot of balance levers and non-obvious pitfalls, and I can't always tell when they are 'choosing to do something differently because they have a different, detailed plan', and when it's that they don't have experience doing a specific thing properly, which leaves me in the unfortunate position of 'having to express that I think they might be messing something up' without knowing the details.

The last thing I want is to be giving useless feedback to a developer with a really clear plan, because I 'think they forgot to consider something'. But the second-last thing I want is to not point out something they overlooked.

I think Ashes can just count on the fact that WoW players are far more numerous and generally less likely to know what is available in other MMOs, and that FF14 is actually also a type of WoW-clone, itself. They just have to do what they say they are going to do, but do it better than all the other upcoming games, many of which will also be made/influenced by people who, like me, are familiar with 'a game that had almost all of this implemented by 2007'.

A good, solid execution of their core goals, using the reference games that already do it, with the correct MMO sociology adaptations to make it all fit Ashes.

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All I want is for AoC to expand its player base as much as is reasonable within their own goals. They want crafting and have put a lot of thought to making both the economic side of crafting and the social side of crafting feel right. I think we can all agree that more people feeding Ashes economy will make any server more interesting and fun. So it's important we keep the ones that can actually like the game with some nudges from the game designers in rather than 'elsewhere' yeah?

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I do.

The moment I see that Ashes has meaningfully improved on FFXI's individual systems, I'll consider it 'set apart' due to the PvP aspects (assuming those don't, in turn, become a detriment, and by that, I mean to PvX players who might otherwise stick to TL or AA2).

Hence why I say I just want the first 'FFXI+L2' game to come out (I didn't like ArcheAge 1 much for some reasons). If it's Ashes instead of 'full featured TL', or if they're 'equal' in quality, and Ashes 'wins' by having no Fast Travel and Nodes, great. (Despite liking TL combat better, I don't want TL to 'win' since that would imply Ashes falling short of the proposed vision).

Over 70 comments while I was asleep


Azherae, what's your party's opinion would be on smth like this setup?

1. The game tracks account-wide PK Count History (i.e. even if your current count is 0, the game would know that you have 10 PKs overall; and the count itself is not account-wide)
2. Military nodes have access to the PKCH of players that have PKd people in the vicinity of allied nodes
3. Other nodes can request the full PKCH list by sending a Mayoral caravan to get it (requires a full back&forth track to do)
4. PKCH info needs to be retaken every month (could be more often)
5. Guards in nodes operate according to the available PKCH
6. Guard power exists on a sliding scale of "can kill a weak mob" to "literally immortal and hits like a truck" (controlled by the mayor choices)
7. Guards are positioned across the node in predetermined places, with a predetermined patrol route
8. Guards aggro onto mobs that enter a certain radius and onto PKers who enter x2 of that radius
9. Guard-killed targets don't drop loot ("killed" here means "Guard did any dmg to the target") and Guards don't aggro onto bosses
10. After a certain PKCH value Guards aggro onto a flagged player with that value
11. If there's been a PK, Guards over a certain lvl (let's say 3/5 minimum) will go to that location and stay there for a certain amount of time
12. Amount of Guards and the duration of their presence in that location is set by the Mayor (debatable)
13. All of the above don't apply to military nodes themselves

As I see it, this would be a player-controlled TL-like system. There'll be nodes that are very good for pvers, but the system itself doesn't remove the possibility of being killed at least once. The economic macro-competition is still present in the form of mayoral actions (and any influence on them by other players), node wars/sieges (wars could have a goal of "destroy the guard post in the node", which disables it for several days) and caravan attacks to prevent the Guards from knowing the latest info about PKCH.

And this would also enforce pve-based micro-competition on the spots themselves, while not removing a casual PKing as the last resort. In other words, your enforcer might not be able to PK as much as yall might need, but a random person can still use the system for their benefit. Obviously this doesn't prevent your entire party going corrupt one after the other, but this too would only be doable up to a certain extent.

I feel like this system would be a nice way to have a not-as-gamey application of TL's events.