Progressive decay of Q

[Rexz]

The problem is perception of decay. Losing something while doing nothing (note: "while" but not "because of") is bad because it forces people to keep playing to avoid losing stuff HAHAHA, like the current system does not force at all. It feels like Sisyphus work which was considered a cruel punishment from gods.

It isn't Sisyphus work until you expect the hill to be endless. Until you expect to be able to endlessly increase damage of stone axes, durability of plain leather armor, and so on. It isn't much real thing, so I think it mostly comes from existing H&H experience. Like, negative opinion about decay isn't universal, just more or less typical for "racing" players here. And I hope to overcome it by making it obvious that the hillside becomes impossibly steep sooner or later, thus there is no urge to roll the boulder until you have a reason.

I want to point that the decay of quality does not destroy items. All the base, all the equipment, all the household would only become less durable, less sharp, less nutritional, etc.

In response to what I've highlighted. This can, and is better achieved through effective power curve/ceiling. This is just my opinion, but it's based off of one of the more common game designs, and it can be applied in many varied ways in different situations and systems. Same can be said about progressive decay, but at it's core, it's much more uncommon to see this be applied, and applied effectively in other games. Based on that alone, I would bet on the merit of power curve over decay.

In response to the part in green. This is an MMORP survival game, the threat is always looming in both PVE as a challenge standing in the way of progression, or other players driving you out, so there is almost always a reason to try and push the boulder, to best of your ability, to progress up the ladder. We all understand the intention behind this suggestion, that is, the cliff is too steep for players who are behind once all the topdogs have monopolized control over top quality. But the matter of how we can tilt the steepness so that it would be more managable for casuals, while maintaining competitiveness for hardcore players, then an effective power curve would achieve this way better imo. You can adjust the curve to make even early mid-game players become more competitive if you wish - early game players should NEVER have the capability to compete with the topdogs, it's stupid - but once the early game players has established themselves as mid-game players, then an effective power curve would allow them to compete. Pretty straight forward really, since the curve is easy to adjust over time and be experimented with according to the developer's goals, while still not stunting players as hard as decay will (from a psychological and gameplay perspective).

IMHO it is easier to accept a cruel RNG which acts only while playing than an inevitable turning stuff into shit while being on holidays.

You don't lose much until you're at the top. And if you're not at the top nor aspiring to be (or what do you expect then, trying to reach the top heights by going on holidays?) quality does not matter that much. Again I want to point a thing written in the text: "new" quality is not an analogue to existing one. You don't have to grind it, you don't have to be much afraid of losing it, because you can start catching up at any moment you prefer. I suppose many of those who dislike the idea, do so because they imagine decay in the current situation when Qs and stats are to be heavily grinded day by day to reach hundreds and thousands. With progressive decay there won't be Qs of many hundreds at all.

So lets say someone who came back from vacation want to start being competitive again, and increase their quality and stats up to the optimal point of the decay ceiling within a few days or weeks or w/e. Cool.

Now lets say that there were people who were actively playing the game while that other person was on vacation, their stuff has reached the highest level within the optimal point of the decay ceiling. What's next? There is actually no point going further or pushing themselves, because it has reached a point where going further would mean getting pushed down faster, and it would be considered a CHORE to keep going further and then putting the effort to RACE against decay. Funny, because if people nolife to maintain a meta quality, casuals would still have to race against that if they want to be competitive, but now everyone is racing against a common enemy, decay.

That's not really fun or engaging at all; you might as well put a cap on everything, and power is determined by skill and cooperation/organization, at least that's less of a chore...

This would also kill trades. There would be no point to have a really really nice item if that item just decay faster than you can use it or mitigate it.

think soloing trolls as an example. It should not be possible.

I think even soloing a bear in a hand-to-hand combat is not a right thing. We have too many animals made irrelevant, that's a gameplay ditched, because of overpowered characters. There are many different animals created, but for a top char they are roughly equally insignificant encounters.

As unrealistic as an overpowered player is, that we can all agree on to be mitigated, so does universal progressive decay on stat and quality. To quite simply put it. If you want to apply decay in a realistic way, you would have to do into details in term of gameplay and game mechanics, where the application would be considered sensible and realistic.

I completely disagree here. The ultimate purpose of a computer game is to provide entertainment, with exception of educational games and some niches where entertainment acts as a pill sweetener.

Can't agree, if you used "entertainment" here as a synonym for happiness. Games offer a playing field, game objects, which are designed to represent some aspect(s) of reality. It may be not education in direct sense, yet it's a reflection of reality, so it supposes intention to educate or self-educate about that aspect of reality. E.g. chess is a simplified way to get ideas of what can happen and what may work in a battle from strategist's point of view. Then there are games representing social interactions or laws of physics in a simplified manner. Education is often mixed with entertainment, yes, but I think mostly because it happens naturally.

Then, the course of a game supposes that there can be desirable and undesirable outcomes, successes and fails, even if there are no outlined winners and losers. That's why games can't be total happiness. That's why an enterprise focused on creating unconditional happiness to everybody can't be a game.

If a game fails to provide entertainment in mid-term (and preferably in short-term too) then such a game is abandoned in favor of a better performing one. That being said, losing a balanced match can be an entertainment too, but being a victim of slaughter certainly is not (for most people at least). Playing a game which provides only frustration is dumb.

The fact of entertainment may be different for different people. So yes, unhappy players may leave the game, but this does not invalidate the game as long as there is stable base of people who are entertained.

This is a subjective topic, everyone have their own view and opinion.

But yes, to put it simply, a game provide challenge/s to overcome, and to overcome it AND using the means to overcome it, is "happiness" and "entertainment", whatever you want to call it.

To mitigate against that, would create frustration and/or boredom. Which is why I have been skeptical of the idea of decay from the start. This game does not provide much challenges outside of the quality and stat race/climb, and customizing your home/base/farm/item collections. With pretty much an effective quality/stat cap through progressive decay, what else is there to do once you reach the "meta" cap in this game? The only thing else is to LARP I guess...

Until more varied challenges can emerge, even having the best quality and stat become pointless unless you're competing with someone you know that may have something better than you, and could potentially threaten you. It's like an endless application of the Deterrence theory until world wipe. But again, because there are lack of other challenges, the "race" is the only sensible goal in game play due to potential threats from other "racers".

I think with the addition of added challenges and interesting PVE threats, and with PVP threats more mitigated through an effective power curve, this game would be much more fun to play for most active players, and even casual hermits from my perspective. PVE treats based on the power curve, and the power curve mitigating titans from becoming obscenely overpowered with little chance of catching up/competing with them.

[Agrik]

its faster to boost q gain than come with artificial mechanics to bring down top for effort.

It won't be simple gain. Decay applied backwards would be a self-growth of everything, including quality nodes and a base level, animals' stats, obtained and crafted items, INT requirements of curios... That would be really artificial and weird mechanic, IMO, a self-improving plate armor for example, or a fresh meat becoming better with time.

overcome the topguys.

I don't see what it has to do with the topic.

instead of coming up with plans and stuff it will become a waiting game where stubborn top people get killed by tedious mechanic of fighting artificial ceiling or it will become ridicolous enough that everybody will be able to catch up eventually too easy and too fast making death even less punishing.

First, instead of what plans? I see only two kinds of plans that the decay of quality may interfere with:
- plans to waste months of one's life on blowing up virtual numbers;
- plans to fast forward the game by all means, including pressure on the devs, and ending in complaints about lack of content.
While both may be desired by some players, I doubt a game developer should fulfill desires that are harmful for the client or for the dev himself. And all other plans are still possible with decay as well.

Second, what "fighting the ceiling" are you talking about? You will be able to "stretch" the ceiling for some time if you want higher Q for something else, but there will be no point in grinding Q for the sake of hoarding it.

As for making death less punishing, I'm not sure if it's better of worse. Anyways Q grows may be adjusted to be not too fast, though it all depends on how small gap you would see as insignificant.

after all youre giving artifical mechanic to punish people reaching for the top in exchange of... what?

In exchange for saving them from self-destructive addiction, for example. I'm sorry, this all sounds too much like children dreaming to eat kilograms of sweets, or maybe ice-cream, every day. While everybody (or almost everybody) wishes it, that's how brain works, some people consider drawbacks and some yet have to experience drawbacks firsthand.

q can be both and achievement and a score like in pacman. after all people like to push for bigger numbers since its almost what video games were about since almost beginning in form of highscores, have seen such similar mechanics developed in other games and its never ends well for competetivity. even if we aim for immortal world seeing higher numbers tickles that pleasure part of brain.

Sandbox MMOs are not like Pacman-like session games, I'm surprised I have to point this.

why do you think a lot of mmos goes up with numbers to ridiculous amount instead of scaling?

Because most of those developers do not aim to make a stable game. Because most of them prefer making money to making games, thus aim to sell happiness to clients, ending up with addictive tricks. Because most of them are copy-pasting approach and techniques from each other, not understanding difference as long as clients pay for their addiction.

why would it be bad design?

I don't know, I didn't state it would be surely bad design. It's unknown, that's why it's not an argument.

how long you expect to do the same shit like killing trolls in group without new content? this way as it is now, devs can push new content with new dangerous stuff while making the game capped, caps developers as well n a way. not to say that games must evolve and decay mechanics arent evolve friendly unless you want to be bloated with more unused content outside of larping.

As long as it would be interesting itself. Please note that overgrown Q of players does not make trolls more interesting. On the contrary, it makes PvE uninteresting, irrelevant, boring and grindy. It destroys content, not creates it. A not overpowered, simply "high" Q would still be possible with decay.

I wonder where you've got the idea that growth of Q allows devs to make new content while absence of it limits content... session games and single RPGs with storyline and levels? Again, sandboxes are different. Any content can be added to any existing Q level. And if you've made overblown Qs first and now struggle with absence of content for it, that's need, not possibility.

the core itself is important and core game isnt friendly for any sort of player decay shit

I'm not sure what core are talking about after you mentioned Pacman score as an example for a sandbox. I have a feeling you wish H&H to be a session game with highscores, so we just fundamentally disagree.

In response to what I've highlighted. This can, and is better achieved through effective power curve/ceiling.

It probably does, but this is not the main issue I try to target...

This is just my opinion, but it's based off of one of the more common game designs, and it can be applied in many varied ways in different situations and systems. Same can be said about progressive decay, but at it's core, it's much more uncommon to see this be applied, and applied effectively in other games. Based on that alone, I would bet on the merit of power curve over decay.

I agree that one is likely less often applied than other, but it's not a main argument for me. There should be a reason why it is this way or other, and if there is not, I think any way is worth trying.

This is an MMORP survival game, the threat is always looming in both PVE as a challenge standing in the way of progression, or other players driving you out, so there is almost always a reason to try and push the boulder, to best of your ability, to progress up the ladder.

If there is a gameplay reason then it's fine.

And I disagree that the PvE threat is always looming. Currently it becomes irrelevant and obsolete sooner or later, and does this exactly because Qs and stats grow too high.

We all understand the intention behind this suggestion, that is, the cliff is too steep for players who are behind once all the topdogs have monopolized control over top quality.

First, the "cliff" is equal for everybody, and the main feature is that higher Q experience higher decay. There is no point where you go ahead and experience less resistance.
Second, difference between top quality and second top quality doesn't make big difference in practical terms. At least it's not worse than now, when "topdogs" create that top quality pesonally.
Third, monopolization of resources is a separate issue. In short, it can be limited by distributing resources (especially top ones) regionally and limiting fast travel, to make simultaneous control of them nearly impossible. The only problem is that those people would demand not to change game mechanics in a way that gives them less advantage and convenience.
And last, I'm sorry to disappoint "you all" at once, but you're wrong about my intention, as far as I understand your accusation.

But the matter of how we can tilt the steepness so that it would be more managable for casuals, while maintaining competitiveness for hardcore players, then an effective power curve would achieve this way better imo. You can adjust the curve to make even early mid-game players become more competitive if you wish - early game players should NEVER have the capability to compete with the topdogs, it's stupid - but once the early game players has established themselves as mid-game players, then an effective power curve would allow them to compete.

Maybe. It depends on how do you measure "early mid-game players" and "early game players". Yet I have to say again — it doesn't solve the issue with natural objects becoming irrelevant. Either you do not hear me or I write it in a incomprehensible manner.

Now lets say that there were people who were actively playing the game while that other person was on vacation, their stuff has reached the highest level within the optimal point of the decay ceiling. What's next? There is actually no point going further or pushing themselves, because it has reached a point where going further would mean getting pushed down faster, and it would be considered a CHORE to keep going further and then putting the effort to RACE against decay. Funny, because if people nolife to maintain a meta quality, casuals would still have to race against that if they want to be competitive, but now everyone is racing against a common enemy, decay.

Well, yes, in a way. The level at which you come to stop depends on the amount of efforts you wish to make. The point is that you generally don't have to sit at some level, only to reach it for some specific purpose. E.g. to engage in PvP, to withstand a siege, to hunt a dangerous animal, maybe to kill a troll, to mine a deep-level jewel, to make trade runs on a really fast horse.

That's not really fun or engaging at all; you might as well put a cap on everything, and power is determined by skill and cooperation/organization, at least that's less of a chore...

Maybe. For me it looks like a too big change. Can't remember what were the downsides of a hard cap, surely there were...

No efforts would mean no value, while people would like to work for advantage. People might start levelling tons of replacement alts. With decay it would be problematic, as

This would also kill trades. There would be no point to have a really really nice item if that item just decay faster than you can use it or mitigate it.

Trades are mostly dead because of nearly nonexistent localization (?) of resources. Every advanced village is more or less autonomous, and even though it can sell high Q items to newbs, there is almost nothing valuable they can offer in return. It can be fixed by making resources heavily regional (e.g. tea bush and mulberry give leaves only on one continent, but there are no ores except tin), but people prefer demanding from the devs to keep the possibility to craft everything by themselves.

And, yep, there would be not much reason to call an item "really really nice" only because of its Q number. Though it's a bit strange reason even now, IMHO.

If you want to apply decay in a realistic way, you would have to do into details in term of gameplay and game mechanics, where the application would be considered sensible and realistic.

I think I don't understand what do you exactly mean by "to do into details in term of gameplay and game mechanics". There may be more fine-tuned and complex effect for sure, at least involving item wear. I'm not sure what exactly I should try to elaborate on.

To mitigate against that, would create frustration and/or boredom. Which is why I have been skeptical of the idea of decay from the start. This game does not provide much challenges outside of the quality and stat race/climb, and customizing your home/base/farm/item collections. With pretty much an effective quality/stat cap through progressive decay, what else is there to do once you reach the "meta" cap in this game? The only thing else is to LARP I guess...

Wild animals can be challenges. Generally it can be made by adjusting qualities and their stats, but now with unlimited growth we would still sooner or later get to the point where all these badgers, boars, bears are indistinguishable ants for the player. With any kind of limitation, mid and top tier animals can be made to be a challenge and a threat not becoming obsolete. And anyways they should be not so easily cheesed... for example, they should promptly run away if they can't reach attacker in short time, and suddenly fight back if you're chasing and catching up with them.

Until more varied challenges can emerge, even having the best quality and stat become pointless unless you're competing with someone you know that may have something better than you, and could potentially threaten you.

I thought most top players like to compete, and do compete often, and often are threatened by each other. They may like to contest local resources which would be of relevant quality then (I hope they would be not as they are now, a whole mountain nearby with many springs of... ~Q25).

It's like an endless application of the Deterrence theory until world wipe. But again, because there are lack of other challenges, the "race" is the only sensible goal in game play due to potential threats from other "racers".

I hope it translates into equal challenge of keeping Q on par with threat while looking for ways to improve it a bit. Moving closer to a coal node to save time, for example, yet not depleting it too fast needlessly.

[ctopolon4]

dont sure oneshot bears\trolls\mammont\whales was involved (but with 1234Q 5555stats it looks kinda broken)
dont sure players love to find stuff instead craft it
(take all animals, crops, gear, mineLVLs and start grind trolls and cheese every day with no new discovery)
also unlimited gap between players also not sounds nice

[Potjeh]

What I'd like to see for curbing q inflation is making quality be calculated only from ingredients quality, and equipment/infrastructure only capping that quality like stats do. And trees/crops would naturally decrease towards 10 on replanting, and to raise them you have to use fertilizer each planting cycle. Could also tie in local resources via fertilizer, for example guano. And I guess tools and infrastructure could gradually lose q with use.

[xzo]

needs to be tuned, not big fan of -10q a day on q200 but even like -1q a day on q200 would make massive difference in game, I think that in this kind of game there must be decay on almost everything, including all gear, tools, and why not on quality
think of food quality for instance, there could be another system to slow down q decay, for example

food q decays slower if in the cellar
clothes/ gear decay slower if in the wardrobe
gear decays slower if in shed
crops decay slower if in granary

and so on

it would make game more interesting, challenging and fun

[TurtleHermit]

needs to be tuned, not big fan of -10q a day on q200 but even like -1q a day on q200 would make massive difference in game, I think that in this kind of game there must be decay on almost everything, including all gear, tools, and why not on quality
think of food quality for instance, there could be another system to slow down q decay, for example

food q decays slower if in the cellar
clothes/ gear decay slower if in the wardrobe
gear decays slower if in shed
crops decay slower if in granary

and so on

it would make game more interesting, challenging and fun

You think it will make game more interesting and challenging if top people can quickly replace their tools while hermits or casuals like me, would have to basically stop playing casually. What if I trade my week dug and smelted metal if the tool I trade for use will decay faster than I play, thus either making me have to unhealthy keep playing the game as long as possible to get most of it or skip trade all together. Consequences of that, could You imagine?

[xzo]

You think it will make game more interesting and challenging if top people can quickly replace their tools while hermits or casuals like me, would have to basically stop playing casually. What if I trade my week dug and smelted metal if the tool I trade for use will decay faster than I play, thus either making me have to unhealthy keep playing the game as long as possible to get most of it or skip trade all together. Consequences of that, could You imagine?

if all you can trade for is metal then you are right, but if that was implemented then villages would need other stuff too, imagine if there was decay on fishes and they would need fresh fish, lets say salmon, instead of digging shit for days you can go once a day for some fishing and sell them salmon once its fresh, because in day or two it wont give so good bonuses, this is how trading should work in my opinion, you should be able to go out, hunt shit, and then sell it, village need 20 dead bears, there you go, go for hunt, theyt need it fresh so someone have to do it

same things goes for wild vs planted herbs, wild herbs should be implemented long time ago, idea on forum was great, would balance the game nicely

[Rexz]

You think it will make game more interesting and challenging if top people can quickly replace their tools while hermits or casuals like me, would have to basically stop playing casually. What if I trade my week dug and smelted metal if the tool I trade for use will decay faster than I play, thus either making me have to unhealthy keep playing the game as long as possible to get most of it or skip trade all together. Consequences of that, could You imagine?

if all you can trade for is metal then you are right, but if that was implemented then villages would need other stuff too, imagine if there was decay on fishes and they would need fresh fish, lets say salmon, instead of digging shit for days you can go once a day for some fishing and sell them salmon once its fresh, because in day or two it wont give so good bonuses, this is how trading should work in my opinion, you should be able to go out, hunt shit, and then sell it, village need 20 dead bears, there you go, go for hunt, theyt need it fresh so someone have to do it

same things goes for wild vs planted herbs, wild herbs should be implemented long time ago, idea on forum was great, would balance the game nicely

It would make sense for perishable goods, however we are straying from the original topic which has a different objective for decay.

The needs for perishables goods can help facilitate trading using stable/hard goods like metal, sure. But progressive decay is implemented to keep everything at relatively the same quality, which serves a different purpose.

[ctopolon4]

not days but uses will be the best counter
make all tools and bench / machines lose 1%Q after each use (and can be dissasebled into 10q parts)

[Agrik]

Sorry for the big pause.

Given

• World resets are fun.

it probably answers the question

The idea is applicable only if jorb&loftar have intention to get rid of endless world wipes

(and now I've found he said the same at W11 start)
it looks like there is no point in promoting the idea. Maybe a theoretical discussion, at most.

On the other hand, I see changes directed against eternal Q growth. I mean metal spiraling being stopped and crops made being capped by a local Q node. Yet my thoughts on Q caps seem to be applicable to this case as well, i.e. it's still the same growing gap until top players hit the cap and then they'll get bored as they did in the worlds with a stat cap.

needs to be tuned, not big fan of -10q a day on q200 but even like -1q a day on q200 would make massive difference in game

It surely has to be tuned. And I want to note, the idea of being "not big fan of -10q a day on q200" is based on the comparison of proposed dynamic Q with current Q levels, which is what I believe is called "comparing apples to oranges".

But the overall point is that -1q a day and -10q a day are supposed to happen somewhere. Maybe not at q200 but at q300. Maybe not at q300 but at q9000 or q100500. It just has to be tuned so that reachable levels are balanced with natural entities, while unnaturally high qualities get the decay the people are "not fans of".

You think it will make game more interesting and challenging if top people can quickly replace their tools

There is no way to simply "replace" tools when everything you have in possession, including raw materials, decays synchronously.

It's not like - one has a q100 axe, it decays to q90, the person then takes a block and a metal bar, both still q100, from the storage, and makes a new q100 axe. Q100 resources that were such at the time of the q100 axe, would decay to q90 as well. To replace tools one has to obtain those resources from nature.

while hermits or casuals like me, would have to basically stop playing casually.

What for? There would be no exact level you have to reach to be competitive. Technically, it would be as it is now, you can't buy a tool once and secure your competitiveness for the duration of the world.

You would be able to buy an item of a higher Q if you need it at the moment, but why would you need to constantly keep Q of your items above your level, and... how higher? I mean, you would be able to get tools as close to the top level as you wish if you offer payment high enough, and you can do the same now... but why?

What if I trade my week dug and smelted metal if the tool I trade for use will decay faster than I play, thus either making me have to unhealthy keep playing the game as long as possible to get most of it or skip trade all together.

I'm not sure what "faster than I play" means. If the tool is too expensive for you, you choose cheaper one of lower q instead. Doesn't it happen the same way currently?

not days but uses will be the best counter

Wear from use should probably be included in the formula, but it may lead to hoarding if there would be only wear, but no time-dependent decay.