Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think that's a lot more severe than in PfO, given that there will be a high sec equivalent where the same thing is likely to occur (that is, loss of all your equipment). Maybe the high sec areas are larger in EVE? I'm not sure what the main difference is, given that I've never played EVE.
I agree that positive reinforcement will usually win out over negative reinforcement, but also think that both should be used. I hope that GW's plan to have low rep characters suffer in the long term is met, and I hope that the only characters who get to that point are the ones who are truly having a negative impact on the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well I think GW have considered this. They'll want to remove/reduce the +ve reinforcement for griefers so it takes too long is too inconvenient and they'll want to use +ve for avoiding that via groups and -ve for losing the ability to be part of such groups or access what said groups can.
Got to be too busy making money, making friends to create a big army/defence force (which also is good at offence) and then you can relax a bit more knowing you have routines/protocols/schedules and "intel" on what needs doing.
With all the potential options not even sure I will not end up thinking combat is a distraction to getting plans going! Much prefer setting two enenies against each other!!
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Player spends a MONTH of realtime reducing himself to "total criminal". Requires FOUR HUNDRED combat actions.
Player spends a MONTH of realtime rehabilitating himself. Requires continuously fighting NPCs who are known mostly for being incredibly boring, meaningless kills. The drudgery of this task cannot be overstated unless you've done it yourself.
This is extremely meaningful gameplay.
For 99% of players, the idea of spending a MONTH of realtime doing any of those things would forever and irrevocably remove any desire to play the game in that fashion. It is an immense barrier to that behavior.
EVE has 400,000 accounts. 1% is four thousand people. That's a lot of pirates, but not a statistically significant slice of the player population.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...they will be able to access training and marketplaces somewhere if they pay well.
In the MMORPG Q&A, Ryan said, in response to exactly the question about whether Chaotic Evil characters with low rep can get high-level training in a settlement they can bribe adequately:
"The design of the game punishes you for acting in anti-social ways purely to the detriment of the community. Those kinds of actions push your character towards Chaotic Evil. Chaotic Evil characters will find that the Settlements that they can access tend to have lower quality and less powerful character development options and facilities.
If you could "talk your way" out of that problem, then people would just play CE characters without making meaningful choices, and that system would cease to be useful.
So no."
When he says Chaotic Evil will suck, their settlements will suck, and those characters will suck, he seems utterly consistent...he means it, a lot.
To solve the issue of trading settlements back and forth, make the bonuses from holding a settlement grow periodically depending on how long the settlement has been held. If it is lost then recaptured the bonus resets.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Player spends a MONTH of realtime reducing himself to "total criminal". Requires FOUR HUNDRED combat actions.
Player spends a MONTH of realtime rehabilitating himself. Requires continuously fighting NPCs who are known mostly for being incredibly boring, meaningless kills. The drudgery of this task cannot be overstated unless you've done it yourself.
This is extremely meaningful gameplay.
For 99% of players, the idea of spending a MONTH of realtime doing any of those things would forever and irrevocably remove any desire to play the game in that fashion. It is an immense barrier to that behavior.
EVE has 400,000 accounts. 1% is four thousand people. That's a lot of pirates, but not a statistically significant slice of the player population.
If I understand your meaning here, you are reinforcing that player time is a meaningful cost, and that the cost (measured in dozens of hours of doing something boring, like ratting for security status) can be used to control the number of people who expend that resource (lowsec gank squads)?
I'll believe that in principle, but I see several difficulties in the implementation. The biggest hurdle I see is handling the type of player who will see it as a challenge to be the best at doing the things that negatively change the security-status-analogue (Reputation?), while keeping that indicator pegged. I intuit that if they are unwilling or mathematically unable to function with the minimum Reputation, then the cost of raising Reputation (measured in time, possibly on the scale of hundreds or thousands of hours) can be adjusted to control the distribution.
If, however, there are some number of people willing and able to function at the minimum Reputation, altering the cost of raising Reputation should have no effect on the number at the bottom.
Seeing that, I want more than ever to see Reputation as a ratio of the total +Rep and total -Rep, rather than (or in addition to) the sum.
I agree with using a ratio, however I think many negative things should be more heavily weighted then good things, rather then having the weight be equal on both sides.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If I understand your meaning here, you are reinforcing that player time is a meaningful cost, and that the cost (measured in dozens of hours of doing something boring, like ratting for security status) can be used to control the number of people who expend that resource (lowsec gank squads)?
I'll believe that in principle, but I see several difficulties in the implementation. The biggest hurdle I see is handling the type of player who will see it as a challenge to be the best at doing the things that negatively change the security-status-analogue (Reputation?), while keeping that indicator pegged. I intuit that if they are unwilling or mathematically unable to function with the minimum Reputation, then the cost of raising Reputation (measured in time, possibly on the scale of hundreds or thousands of hours) can be adjusted to control the distribution.
If, however, there are some number of people willing and able to function at the minimum Reputation, altering the cost of raising Reputation should have no effect on the number at the bottom.
Seeing that, I want more than ever to see Reputation as a ratio of the total +Rep and total -Rep, rather than (or...
DB, I'm not entirely sure what you said there, but it sounded sufficiently mystical for me to give you a big thumbs up!
The interesting thing about good vs evil, good doesnt do evil things, but evil will do both evil and good things (the latter usually as a setup or to gain trust from someone who can protect them.)
So maybe alignment should be a ratio between the bad things one has done over the amount of game time spent playing.
Same thing with law except reverse, get lawful points for upholding contracts etc, and have lawful points over time spent playing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I understand your meaning here, you are reinforcing that player time is a meaningful cost, and that the cost (measured in dozens of hours of doing something boring, like ratting for security status) can be used to control the number of people who expend that resource (lowsec gank squads)?Player spends a MONTH of realtime reducing himself to "total criminal". Requires FOUR HUNDRED combat actions.
Player spends a MONTH of realtime rehabilitating himself. Requires continuously fighting NPCs who are known mostly for being incredibly boring, meaningless kills. The drudgery of this task cannot be overstated unless you've done it yourself.
This is extremely meaningful gameplay.
For 99% of players, the idea of spending a MONTH of realtime doing any of those things would forever and irrevocably remove any desire to play the game in that fashion. It is an immense barrier to that behavior.
EVE has 400,000 accounts. 1% is four thousand people. That's a lot of pirates, but not a statistically significant slice of the player population.
If we believe Ryan's theory that player time is a cost (which I do) and that this cost would make certain activities more undesirable due to the boredom of the means to recover from the negative impact of those activities, then answer me this:
Regardless of the Security Status issue, there is no more boring and time consuming activity in EvE than Hi Sec mining (particularly ice mining). How do you account for those players that choose to do this anyway?
Comparing mining to low sec pirating on a boredom scale would be ridiculously obvious which would lose out. Although there is no associated recovery time for low security status for mining, that downside referenced by Ryan ignores the fact that it is not necessary for a majority of low sec pirates.
Low Sec pirates don't need to return to Hi Sec as long as they have alts or a corporation that support them . The few Low Sec pirates that have migrated back to Hi Security Status, and Empire space, did so for other reasons than the detriment of a negative reputation.
To be brief, the biggest factor that lead to low sec pirates leaving the life was Jump to Zero. Even if they decided to invest time, skill and ships to Interdiction Destroyers, their primary targets (haulers) were avoiding low sec space routes and accepting slightly higher travel times, risk free.
Then came the unfortunate decision of placing low level Faction War agents in entry way low sec systems (ie Amamake) which flooded that system with low level and value targets, that were PvP fitted and usually traveled in small groups or massive blobs. The low sec pirates pretty much got squeezed out for the first few months of FW. Once players began to realize that FW sucked they left or grew out of those low level systems. But, the damage to the low sec pirate population was already done.
There is somewhat of a misconception that low dec / gate camping pirates were looking for PvP. That may have been true for some, but most used ransoming as a means of gaining their wealth. Just as in PFO, the SAD system will allow bandits to get the loot they desire, with the thrill of the risk associated, but they won't necessarily have to kill for it.
I disagree that it was the reputation system of EvE that limits the choice of becoming a pirate in low sec. It is most certainly not the specter of having to grind your way back to a high reputation. If that were a consideration, you weren't built of the mentality to live the life of a pirate to begin with.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How do you account for those players that choose to do this anyway?
I'm sure we could find people who report not finding it boring; I believe it's not intended as a mechanic to control people's behaviour. Perhaps they simply enjoy EVE's lovely graphics?
It also, to my understanding, doesn't involve harming other players during their playtime, thus removing another psychological barrier that's hard for some people to clear.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If we believe Ryan's theory that player time is a cost (which I do) and that this cost would make certain activities more undesirable due to the boredom of the means to recover from the negative impact of those activities, then answer me this:
Regardless of the Security Status issue, there is no more boring and time consuming activity in EvE than Hi Sec mining (particularly ice mining). How do you account for those players that choose to do this anyway?
My guess is "Profit". I don't really know the situation, but I would imagine the folks who engage in this activity measure the return and determine it's worthwhile.
I believe there's a more fundamental question at hand, though: If players can recover their Reputation by engaging in some kind of boring gameplay for an extended period of time, what's to stop them from engaging in the activity from which they need to recover? My answer to this is that the Reputation system isn't meant to stop them from ever engaging in that activity, but rather to stop them from engaging in such activity consistently.
You can fall from +7,500 Reputation to -7,500 Reputation in 30 kills. It's conceivable that someone could do that in a weekend. If it takes ~200 hours of consistent grinding to recover from that, even if that character chooses to repeat this cycle as often as possible, they're still going to be out of commission for quite some time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I believe there's a more fundamental question at hand, though: If players can recover their Reputation by engaging in some kind of boring gameplay for an extended period of time, what's to stop them from engaging in the activity from which they need to recover? My answer to this is that the Reputation system isn't meant to stop them from ever engaging in that activity, but rather to stop them from engaging in such activity consistently.
You can fall from +7,500 Reputation to -7,500 Reputation in 30 kills. It's conceivable that someone could do that in a weekend. If it takes ~200 hours of consistent grinding to recover from that, even if that character chooses to repeat this cycle as often as possible, they're still going to be out of commission for quite some time.
I think you are correct in some cases. I think that the reputation system and its perceived time sink to recover from it will discourage some players from engaging in the activity to begin with. But, there will always be those who choose to accept the negative consequences and "live there" in that status and utilize other coping mechanisms to still realize the game experience that they are looking for.
Not everyone will view negative reputation (numerically negative) as a demonstration of negative game play (inwardly as a consequence or outwardly projected upon another as a negative judgement).
In EVE Online I had reached into the -9.0 range with only one hi sec kill to my record. The rest of the negatives were from hi sec stealing, and attacking but ransoming ships in low sec.
In PFO if "unsanctioned PVP" will result in small reductions in reputation, then it will be possible to have a low reputation without actually griefing anyone (based on most commonly held definitions of griefing).
I think the lessons learned from other Open World PVP games is that Goblin Works should set to public knowledge certain activities that will lead to banning, and then have a swift and uniform response. This was clearly not the case in Darkfall, where the Devs allowed the griefing to rise to the level that it impacted their game's image. But, I do not discount the undeniable fact that DFUW biggest detractor is its UI and incredible amount of grinding, and not necessarily its player culture.
If in Darkfall we gained a small amount of prowess over time, and reduced prowess gains from grinding, the game will attract and retain a much larger consumer base than it has or does now.
In PFO's case, GW has come up with a great solution with their system of skill point progression and expenditure.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In PFO if "unsanctioned PVP" will result in small reductions in reputation, then it will be possible to have a low reputation without actually griefing anyone (based on most commonly held definitions of griefing).
Events that alter your active alignment score include:
- When you do something that gains the Criminal flag, your Law-Chaos score is reduced by 500 points.
- Killing other player characters reduces your Good-Evil score by 500 (unless justified by warfare, self-defense, or PvP flags)...
- Killing non-hostile NPCs reduces Good-Evil score by 500 (or more if they are "civilians").
I'm not 100% positive, but I believe Reputation score impacts will be similar - that is, if you kill a High Rep character in unsanctioned PvP, then your own Reputation will drop by ~500 points.
And I think that "killing someone in Unsanctioned PvP" is the working definition of the "undesired behavior" that the devs are trying to steer players away from while still allowing freedom of action.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To give you an idea of how much these things will cost or grant in terms of reputation, killing a player with Reputation 0 who has no flags will cost about 500 Reputation, while killing an average low-reputation player (-5,000 reputation) will cost about 16 reputation and killing an average high-reputation player (5,000 reputation) will cost about 2,400. Note that killing Criminals, Attackers, people in wars, people with bounties, etc., all reduce or eliminate these reputation hits. ...
Killing other players without flags results in loss of good vs. evil along the same scope as losses in reputation described above.
The blog entry by Rich Baker is dated after the Reno blog, but that's the only place I've seen suggesting that the penalties won't scale. I wonder if he was using the 500 evil loss (for killing a Good/evil 0 character) as a shortcut. They may have spelled out that it was a major change and I missed it; that was the same blog entry where core alignment was introduced, which I thought was very cool.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If in Darkfall we gained a small amount of prowess over time, and reduced prowess gains from grinding, the game will attract and retain a much larger consumer base than it has or does now.
I'm concerned that, unless they instituted some equivalent of PFO's merit badges, there'd be little incentive--for those who can afford to wait--to come on and play, but only to sit back and collect their Prowess/XP/whatever, until they had a pile of "sufficient size". That sort of incentive system can't be good for the long-term health of a game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Jazzlvraz They'll need to play to turn skills into merit badges/whatever they'll be called. Companies will gain Influence based on their players deed/feat accumulation. Settlements will grow based on the placement and defense of POIs and Outposts. Getting online and doing stuff has lots of incentives.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not 100% positive, but I believe Reputation score impacts will be similar - that is, if you kill a High Rep character in unsanctioned PvP, then your own Reputation will drop by ~500 points.
And I think that "killing someone in Unsanctioned PvP" is the working definition of the "undesired behavior" that the devs are trying to steer players away from while still allowing freedom of action.
I'm willing to accept the rep loss as part of being a bandit / outlaw, it is what it is. As for whether or not the Devs consider that "undesirable behavior", I'll wait until I hear (read) it straight from the horse's mouth.
Just as they have been unwilling to say that at -7500 you will be banned. The idea that a settlement would suffer in its DI scores by granting low rep characters access is also a consequence that can be ignore, or its effects diluted by having a large population of positive reputation citizens.
IE. A settlement with a population of 1000, with an average Rep score of +3500 can absorb 100 characters at -7500 Rep and only reduce their average Rep score to +2750 (22.5% reduction). This I think would be an extreme case, I'm doubtful there will be a company of 100 x -7500 Rep toons.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm willing to accept the rep loss as part of being a bandit / outlaw, it is what it is. As for whether or not the Devs consider that "undesirable behavior", I'll wait until I hear (read) it straight from the horse's mouth.
First, I don't expect you'll suffer Reputation loss for being a Bandit.
Here's the quote from Tork about "desirable behavior":
These new systems are purely designed to refocus PvP. What I've tried to do is ensure that there is enough meaningful PvP (and by that I mean PvP with mechanical, RP, world shifting, and rewarding consequences) so that those who want to fight will focus on that kind of PvP, and not running about the woods ganking everything they see. Its about incentivising desirable behaviour, rather than limiting behaviour across the board.
Maybe you're reading it differently, but it seems clear to me that "behavior that does not lower Reputation" is "desirable", and therefore "behavior that does lower Reputation" is "undesirable".
For what it's worth, I know this is a touchy subject, and I hope we can continue to discuss it without that becoming problematic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Player spends a MONTH of realtime reducing himself to "total criminal". Requires FOUR HUNDRED combat actions.
Player spends a MONTH of realtime rehabilitating himself. Requires continuously fighting NPCs who are known mostly for being incredibly boring, meaningless kills. The drudgery of this task cannot be overstated unless you've done it yourself.
This is extremely meaningful gameplay.
This comment worries me. I think Mr Dancey and I must have vastly different definitions of the word meaningful.
Mindless drudgery is not meaningful gameplay, whether it be caused by having made (debatably) bad choices or because it has consequences eventually. It may, however, be a meaningful game mechanic. Please do not mistake the two. As game designers, I understand why GoblinWorks are interested in the latter; as a game player I am only interested in the former.
Saying that this is meaningful gameplay is just wrapping the grind up in pretty gift paper. There is none of the "human interaction" which has so far been the watchword of PfO - in fact there is nothing whatsoever meaningful about a month of ratting except that it takes a month. Yes, that does have meaning - but so what? That does not necessarily make it a good thing.
For 99% of players, the idea of spending a MONTH of realtime doing any of those things would forever and irrevocably remove any desire to play the game in that fashion. It is an immense barrier to that behavior.
I really hope that this is not the way that PfO is going to go. Yes, there will be griefers with low rep - but there will also be others there who have not griefed their way to -5000. Should we really consign them to the doldrums of PvE drudgery because they may have been involved in unsanctioned but arguably legitimate PvP?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think Mr Dancey and I must have vastly different definitions of the word meaningful.Probable. Other hand there is also a chance he said one thing and you understood another. I may have too, but...
I really hope that this is not the way that PfO is going to go. Yes, there will be griefers with low rep - but there will also be others there who have not griefed their way to -5000. Should we really consign them to the doldrums of PvE drudgery because they may have been involved in unsanctioned but arguably legitimate PvP?
The meaningfulness I get out of the example is rather that ever since the early days of online multiplayer gaming, some thirty years ago, many people, gamers and designers, have beaten our brains bloody trying to figure out how to dissuade the hardcore griefer from his ways, and this idea of Mr. Dancy & Co. truly looks like it might be very meaningful indeed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Successful does not equate to being meaningful, Being, except the meaning of the success itself. There is a world of difference between meaningful gameplay (in that it is hopefully enjoyable and has consequences in the world of the River Kingdoms) and gameplay with meaningful consequences (those consequences being on the player and not the persistent world of PfO). All I ask is that we do not confuse the two.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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The point I was replying to was the comment about "going Pirate, then becoming good again". The intent of the response was to say that people cycling in and out of Dredd Pirate Roberts territory and back is limited by the incredibly onerous time requirements and boredom required. It happens, but it happens infrequently. That's a good design from the standpoint of saying that you can do some edge-case thing, but the game system implies limits that few will bother to overcome the inherent challenge.
People do all sorts of incredibly time consuming and boring things in MMOs. Player boredom is the only truly meaningful resource in MMO design. However people who get off on the thrill of player-killing are temperamentally unsuited to long, boring intervals of grinding no-challenge content. They don't do it if they can avoid it.
There are other people, of a very different temperament, who are content to harvest resources using utterly boring mechanics for hour after hour. They are getting some pleasure just from seeing a number on a graph go up slowly over time. There is a reason Pachinko is a successful entertainment business. Some people find boring, repetitive behavior very soothing. Plus they can be super social while they do it; the resource extraction is just an excuse to log in and chat with friends.
These two people are fundamentally different and a game design can work at limiting the first behavior without limiting the second! even though that may seem counter-intuitive.
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Goblin Squad Member
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These two people are fundamentally different and a game design can work at limiting the first behavior without limiting the second! even though that may seem counter-intuitive.
Or you can do like it is done in EVE and support both. Some players can actually be comfortable and get enjoyment from doing both.
Although I would much rather steal resources from others, I also train up my gathering skills for those times of the day when there are few others online (target poor time period).
Then you should consider, in games like EVE and hopefully PFO, players are not thinking about character development in months, but rather in years.
My current 7 year old (100 mil SP) main toon in EVE, has maxed out all training in sub-capital ships (every ship, weapon system, core skills, etc,), every Drone skill, Leadership Skill, etc. He went from being about +4.0 to -9.9ish and then back to +5.0 in about 14 months time (8 months of recovery from -9.9).
The content to grind back was no more or less boring then Mission Runner content. I did not bounce back from just ratting. I buddied up with corp mates and we ran missions (sharing rewards) in low sec, until I gradually regained access to Hi sec space.
In EVE, Low Rep corporations are supported in many cases by Hi Sec corporations in a symbiotic relationship.
Two types of players, fundamentally different, finding common cause in earning ISK and having fun. Limiting one behavior, does sometimes limit the other. Your suggestion doesn't "seem to be counter intuitive", in some cases it "is counter intuitive".