Game Development: Breath of Air

[ekzarh]

1. Reading through the breath of air announcement topic since erkzah's posts were quite interesting and entertaining lately. So was wondering what ha has to say about things. + I have been writing in the thread a couple of posts before him.

It's Ekzarh.

I've quickly went through the whole topic since I'm bad at reading over 10 paged attentively.

Regarding stat-cap and competitivenes and noobs vs factions
I do generally agree that equalizing the hardcore players and casuals is not possible. Let's take chess - players have equal everything, but casual would be devastated by master.
On the other hand - let's try to think psychologically. And let's try to look at it from several perspectives - hardcore players, mid-range players, casual experienced players, new ones.

Hardcore players need challenge. They need a ways to evolve, build up their powers and dominate. So stat cap bothers them. Although it is normal practive for over 80% of MMO
New players want to be safe until the know the game at least. They are more involved in 'scare away with perma death and first time being raided thingy'. I doubt they do really bother with statcap.

Everything in between is a tricky one. The thought and feeling (I mean it - not the 'fact', but 'feeling') that they are able to close the gap between them and top tier players. This warms their souls and keeps them motivated. Here stat cap plays well. They think: "Oh, the biggest stats I can meet would be the same as mine/a bit bigger than mine. So I can win!".

So the game developer (if he wants to be successful) has to maximize the satisfaction level of all kinds of players - give a new peak to reach for hardcore ones, give a feeling of being competitive to mid-level, give a bit of safety to newbies. Statcap fails to do that. Maybe exponential curve of effort vs reward could do. I'll explain if asked.

Regarding not occuring PVP
Here I can't put myself in everyone's shoes. To me the one and only meaning of months-long character building is using him for PVP.
I'm looking forward to try new siege system and see if it is possible to siege a bwalled casualwille with 2 crazy players
IMO - low population works as a demotivating factor too - it is easier to find yourself a node or to trade any resource you need than figting over a node. I dunno how to do it but having resources dynamically balanced with population could change that.

Regarding J&L responding to players
This is probably not a responce to your post but something J&L should know of.
There is a '80/20" rule in bizdev. 'Saying 20% of people do 80% of the talk'. As a result sometimes when you satisfy these 20%, 80% are silently dissatisfied and just leave.
The morale is - while user's' feedback has to be listened, numbers, analytics and statistics have more weight. Solution like statcap add or remove should preceed with the following DB queries.
"What % of players reached 300 stat"
"How fast did they reach that'
"What was their playtime before and after reaching the cap"
"What % of paying audience are 300 and what % is not"
"The reasons of death for 300 and non-300 chars - PVP, water, mobs"
And more.
Meanwhile 1 angry shittalker can make a big population decrease, so audience still has to be managed.

Regarding carebears and open cities
I'd be happy to know more details.
Making a player more valuable than his belongings is a good thing.
But there will always be dedicated raiders - who are ready to pay even with real $$ just to bring some pain and sorrow to the world.
Giving some economical motivation to fight them may be good
To make things fair - it has to be rewarding to fight with equal opponent.
And at the same time it is good when fighting much weaker one is economically negative for the attacker.

I'm running out of time. Write me If I've missed something interesting to discuss

[LadyGoo]

Regarding stat-cap and competitivenes and noobs vs factions
I do generally agree that equalizing the hardcore players and casuals is not possible. Let's take chess - players have equal everything, but casual would be devastated by master.
On the other hand - let's try to think psychologically. And let's try to look at it from several perspectives - hardcore players, mid-range players, casual experienced players, new ones.

It is true that many hardcore players were dissatisfied with the stat cap implementation. However, I do not think they mind it that much nowadays. The key problem with the stat cap is that it removes the incentive to farm, make food, keep domestic animals and etc.
There has to be a way to keep growing eternally, but let the new players to not feel bad about themselves as well. In my point of view, middle-class players that join a greater faction do not feel bad about themselves and can count on the titans (hardcore player's characters) and still participate PvP and be useful. The thing is, there is a little chance for them to join anyone easily due to lack of trust and betrayal in hafen.
Kingdoms could somehow help the situation and get more people involved into the world politics where everyone's effort counts in. People will start associating themselves with the whole alliance/group, rather than a sole village that has no chances to stand against the offenders.

Regarding not occuring PVP

I still think the PvP is not happening not because of the current combat system, but the hardness of getting back your character. Hafen is much more hardcore in this terms than the legacy, and worse as well.


Jorb's comment on their intention to have bigger civilizations and open cities:

[*] As some of you may know we are currently toying with several ideas with an aim toward improving the social dynamics of the game, making larger civilizations and, ideally, open cities, possible.

Ideas about the Kingdoms (noobs being useful and etc.) by J&Lo: http://pastebin.com/raw/FT6dHP2Q

[Pan_w_okularach]

http://pastebin.com/raw/FT6dHP2Q

wow this is bad

[zebratul]

This is probably not a responce to your post but something J&L should know of.
There is a '80/20" rule in bizdev. 'Saying 20% of people do 80% of the talk'. As a result sometimes when you satisfy these 20%, 80% are silently dissatisfied and just leave.
The morale is - while user's' feedback has to be listened, numbers, analytics and statistics have more weight. Solution like statcap add or remove should preceed with the following DB queries.

This is actually very true and important.

[Delamore]

Removed level caps.

Reasoning?

I don't see much healthy PvP around anyway, so if people want to push stats I see no reason to stand in the way of that.

Healthy PvP is easier to create within the limited frame of statcaps rather than the incredible variance no caps offers, removing the cap takes no steps towards improving the health of PvP while making future PvP balance and improvements harder.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

With no cap, there's no way I'll be able to play Haven again.

To be fair, it wasn't sone thing I was particularly contemplating either.

[jorb]

To be fair, it wasn't sone thing I was particularly contemplating either.

But slipping into the night would have been too classy, and thus you are still here.

[Gensokyo]

Is there any chance of a "abandon quest" feature being added in? I'm kind of in on the first meeting quest and I kind of don't want to hike back to the other corner of the world, considering I fled it for a reason.

[jorb]

Yeah, we're going to add that. Sorry for the delay on it.

[burnemall]

Is there any chance of a "abandon quest" feature being added in? I'm kind of in on the first meeting quest and I kind of don't want to hike back to the other corner of the world, considering I fled it for a reason.

This. I have the same problem since I had to abandon my old settlement. Please give us an option to partake in questing without the hassle of traveling all over the map to talk to Rockington. Please.