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XP Loss/Enemy Territory
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Things may balance themselves naturally through the Renaissance, but inevitably it will be the case that one faction grows strongest because of what I just mentioned.
The good news is that no one is being eradicated or likely will be. If that were the case, every room in an opposing city would be destroyed nonstop. They'd uproot your totems and implant their own, force assimilation into Ashtan's culture or citizenship, and call the new city Little Bastion or Ashtanville or something. There are problems, sure. But we're not there yet.
Ideas for making city raiding more challenging, for making defense more rewarding or engaging, etc. are all great ideas. But IMO XP shouldn't be the driving factor in any of it; if you choose to raid or defend a city, then you should expect losses at times. What makes you stay and play through those losses should be something completely different (that maybe hasn't been imagined yet).
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
I am glad I don't have to login and do all of this myself or I would just QQ and not play. I'm not so sure trying to be offensive should be discouraged because it's pretty obvious that it's the most fun part. I think the divide between 'having to defend' and 'wanting to defend' should be lessened. And i don't think this is a game mechanic flaw, just an attitude problem.
Why is this a player motivation issue in Achaea and not a design issue like it is in other games?
World of Warcraft, arguably the most popular game of the past decade, has always had positive feedback loops. Early on in the game on PvP servers one faction always ended up stronger, which would entice people to change factions, which led to Horde dominated servers and Alliance dominated servers. After the Arena was introduced, the loop became focused on the Tichondrius server. The top players moved to that server (and battlegroup), resulting in a higher skill of everyone in the battlegroup, making it impossible to succeed in major tournaments like BlizzCon unless you played on that battlegroup because you simply didn't have the experience that players there did.
Diablo 3's ladder system rewards bonus stats to players who reach higher Paragon levels, allowing them to more easily level. People want to group with other high paragon level people to maximize clear speeds, resulting in faster paragon level gains and better chances for better items for players in those groups. This in turns speeds them up further.
Being vague and pointing out 'other games' is all good for maintaining your point when you don't actually have examples. The fact is games where there is competition and benefits for succeeding in those competitions are very popular. People enjoy experiencing gains for playing better and winning over their opponents.
There's a reason other games have positive feedback loops.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
Edit: From the link:
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
edit: Also, if you follow the link, there are many examples of positive and negative feedback loops from other games.
The first would effect your level only, and the latter would effect some special bonus, in fact PK XP could reset each month. Everyone starts at 0, you kill 6 people, and you get some groovy bonus, like 5% health bonus...kill 12 people and you get another...You die, you lose it all...What these bonuses would be are totally up in the air but you see my point. Dying from a player wouldn't effect your Denizen XP...I tried discussing this in another thread but...you know.
I guess the only problem would be abuse from people killing friends to boost a player...there are other options to single XP gains/losses.
Another option is to make Achaea open PK during the night (in-game) with no XP loss...see how it goes!
Hashan gets raided less than Targ? The only difference between the two mechanically is icons vs new houses.
It isn't necessarily a matter of having more loops, just older ones. By the time Hashan was introduced, other factions were already going concerns with friendships and loyalties to keep their combatants rooted in place, same as today. Sure, Hashan gets a marquee name now and again but c'mon. And the olds have seen some REALLY good players take the reins in Hashan, which isn't to say the current crop isn't competent or trying. We could wait around ten years or forever telling them the same thing: get gud. I'd rather have six equally-playable factions a bit sooner.
If you can think of an example of a negative feedback loop in Achaea, I'd love to hear it. I will even offer 1 credit bounties for the first five. Limit one per player.
From the Achaean wiki: "the city-state of Hashan, Crown of the Ithmia, is Sapience's third major city established in the year 222 AF. " So the only two older orgs were Ashtan and Shallam. So you have Eleusis and Mhaldor coming after Hashan, both of which are strong factions on the world conflict stage right now.
So time is obviously not a factor.
If you're in a city with an old stagnant leadership, that doesn't reward anything and punishes those who shows initiative and does things outside the norm generally looses players and drops in strength and influence. (old shallam?)
Moving from the bad to the good is generally a very long process. First you need to make a change in the leadership, then the culture and then you're always fighting an uphill battle. The other sides has more players, more arties, more experienced players, icons, other buffs, they secure relics.
"Yet another way to gain experience is to enter mortal combat versus other adventurers. This may not seem all that much different from combat against denizens, but it is! This activity, called PK for short, is more restricted, you'll be expected to have a valid reason for attacking another player (see HELP PK). Killing another player, or letting another player kill you solely for the purpose of gaining experience is not permitted." (HELP EXPERIENCE)
You're not even allowed to attack/kill somebody just for the sake of attacking them. There has to (in theory) be a valid reason for the person throwing the first punch. Granted, some people still might try killing each other for bonuses anyway, but given that a death appears on deathsight, I doubt they'd get away with it for very long.
I can't see this ending in anything other than mass griefing.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
Chronology still supplies a design argument for why new Ashtan and Targossan players inherit a healthier advantage than new Hashani players. And there has never been a point in time, going back to 1999, where Hashan was stronger than either one.
Hashan wasn't the last city created by any means, but it was created for the sole purpose of catching people who didn't want to join Ashtan or Shallam. It went for a very long time without having any actual purpose of existing other than that, which still plagues it. Eleusus and Mhaldor, on the other hand, were turned into player organizations to fulfill very specific ideologies and purposes.
What would happen to Eleusis and Mhaldor if Rangor, Rom, Xer, and Hasar went to Ashtan? You don't want to have irreplaceable players in organizations.
At some point you have to stop considering the intentions of the system or the "What if everyone just got better?" and consider the actual effects and what the current state of the game is, and make adjustments.
Isn't greifing the lost of XP on a absurd level? (Borderline harassment?) The argument I hear is, get rid of XP and everyone would jump in and PK...then when that is accepted, everyone will complain they die to much?
Right now you can defend your city without any XP loss and still people drag their feet into battle. Maybe it's just a problem with laziness.
I don't know...maybe there is no happy medium.
I didn't realize that there's a gaming specific term for what we're talking about. Interesting. So right now my faction in Imperian has something of a lead in a thing called "shard research" (but who cares about the specifics). Not only are people discussing this aspect of that mechanic (where one side can get such a sizable lead) as a problem rather than a desirable feature, it's pretty much a given (even on my side). And that's because even with no XP loss, when one side gets a huge advantage, it tends to mean there's not nearly as many people for our bloodthirsty PK-ers to fight. This discussion shouldn't be about some sort of judgment that certain cities just need to "buck up", or are trying to "tear down other cities", it's about making the game more fun by making it more dynamic (not stagnant with one faction dominating).
As for the experienced players, who really are key to organizational success, if a couple of you went to play in say, Hashan, not because anyone made you, but maybe because they had some neat class, or perk unique to them and you wanted to try it out, Hashan would benefit from your expertise and the other factions would benefit from having smart people on the *other* side to fight (and also just directing people in group situations). Every city should have some unique carrot that is worthwhile - probably skills that are kind of awesome and that no one else has (but that the other cities have counters to of course). Again, Ashtan's basic RP framework is comparatively sort of perfect compared to the other factions, too. Either other cities need to be more PK-er friendly (and be *allowed* to be more PK-er friendly), or Ashtan needs to have similarly restricting RP framework (guess which one I prefer).
For all the forum points we might award the souls willing to uproot themselves from friends and established RP storylines to begin again, I think a negative feedback strategy that relies on player charity is quixotic, at best.
UGSR: 0
Anyway... Achaea is already full of positive feedback loops. Every time we gain a new level, we get extra health and mana. That is a positive feedback loop. Every time we complete a difficult quest, we get an honours line. That is a positive feedback loop. These things are inherent to Achaea's make-up and each one makes it easier to progress (get the next level, figure out the next quest, etc.)
While Herenicus is correct that a city that pummels another may create a negative feedback loop if there is vast experience loss and room destruction for the defenders, he's not taking into account that there are other rewards for participation in raid defense. City favours. Positive feedback. City bounties. Positive feedback. Increased military rank. Positive feedback. In addition to these, there is one more thing that could turn even the most disastrous raid defense into the kind of positive feedback loop he's advocating:
Roleplay. If cities that raid merciless just take the time to reward others with this, it could all seem 'worth it' in the end, thus once more reinforcing the time and effort that took place with something positive.
To be sure, there are negative feedback loops, those things that make it harder for opponents to catch up and easier for the winning city to extend their lead, in Achaea as well, including in city raiding. Anything that makes it more difficult for a group to raid (the Eye of Proteus) is one. Their strength is weaker with each of its iterations. This is a stablizing mechanic; however, what it actually does is draw out the conflict as well, which the cities seem to be complaining about (length of raids) rather frequently.
There are ways around this though. Raid their city instead of defending your own. Start defiling their shrines around the realm, drawing them away from your city. Clear your city out or place them all in a safe haven (this was done repeatedly during the Refugees time in New Hope). But what Herenicus seems to be arguing for is more of this type of negative feedback loop (from the article he noted):
He wants the opposing side to be more challenged. But as the article says, whether a feedback loop is good or bad is always going to be a matter of player perception. Even if we add more positive feedback loops to counteract the negative ones, or vice versa, the way people feel at the end of a raid will differ dramatically based on who they are as an individual, how a city handles a raid (Hashan is a great example of a city that does a really great job of creating a positive feedback loop for their players even in the face of some poor defense scenarios), etc.
Thank you for the article though, @Herenicus. What you're arguing for and against just became infinitely clearer in my mind.
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
I would offer that "positive/negative" in the sense of feedback loops does not correlate to "good/bad." A PFL makes it harder for competitors to catch up, making the early game (in this case, as early as 1997) more important. An NFL makes the present day, or late game, more important. If you liked Mario Kart, you like negative feedback loops. From the article:
In multiplayer environments, or environments with interplayer competition, I think NFLs work better. In basketball and football, when one team scores they have to give the ball to the other team. In the National Football League, the teams with the worst records get the best picks in the draft. Racing games (as in Herenicus's example above) give the slower racers opportunities to catch up to the quicker ones.
You want to keep things balanced and interesting. Why haven't we had an A-list fighter come to Hashan or Cyrene and catapult them into the world conflict stage, in all these years? The game doesn't reward that behavior, and it doesn't encourage balance among the cities.
I'm curious because in a game where people create alts on a daily basis and quickly (within weeks if not days) can get them to exactly the same level as their main character (and decked out with all the same artifacts), the argument that people can't catch up seems moot. The real issue would be, "Where are those alts gravitating toward in the game and why?"
In addition, the article itself states that feedback loops, whatever their kind, will always be perceived as good and bad, depending on a player's perception. This would suggest that the feedback loop you feel Mhaldor and Hashan are currently under, and which is affecting their motivation to log in and defend, is not necessarily an issue of a poor game mechanic, but that it is your perception that it is that is really at issue. Do you think that's true?
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
Even Jhui cannot afford to create another Jhui. Ernam, bless his heart, would be eating out of garbage cans behind Panera Bread if we forced such a thing upon his pocketbook. Let's not underestimate the value of our respective investments. Not many of us can afford to clone our main.
Oh, absolutely. I disagree that the presence or absence of PFLs or NFLs can be chalked up to subjective perception, they exist or they don't, but individual decisions on whether to like or dislike the impact of these loops will depend on the individual. Someone who REALLY wants to win a race will not appreciate the last car getting a power mushroom. Get gud.