Best Of
Re: Interested in Aetolia? I'm looking for a player.
You're not bright enough to be projecting on me like this
Quell
1
Re: Artifact Ideas
I too would like something like this, as long as it didn't work in combat. Duration could be longer
Deltrion
1
Re: Artifact Ideas
I would very much like a Distortion Field artifact to return my ability to become invisible, for RP purposes, as it has been a big part of Poet's character development. I'd be fine with it being limited in some way. Such as 60 seconds of invisibility with a 1 hour cooldown, or some such.
Poet
1
Re: Artifact Ideas
I think a good artifact is a quality of life feature or a very min/max bonus that doesn't substantially increase the gap between you and players without it (pay to win).
Things that probably shouldn't be arties:
I'm definitely not trying to make anyone feel bad about their ideas here. I just think it's important that we continue to try to keep these sorts of things in mind when considering new artifacts so that we don't wind up with gross power disparity years down the line that's based on the amount of wealth a player has instead of the amount of skill, knowledge, or experience they have.
Things that probably shouldn't be arties:
- Other classes' skills. Unless they have heavy limitations, like one use per <reasonable time period> ala the rezz auction arti (which is still highly questionable, to be clear), these arties just build more capabilities into classes that were balanced around not having those capabilities and de-incentivizes synergizing with other people who have other classes. One person should definitely not be able to do all things by themself.
- Trivializing conflict mechanics. Anything that gives an individual a substantial and overt boost in conflict mechanics can be interpreted as pay to win. I'll directly address the suggested power for this one. The 30s harvest timer is built into the system to provide a minimum for conflict event length, and it gets shorter with each additional person you have harvesting. Making this faster would exacerbate this issue, reducing opportunities for interested parties to engage with a cache. I understand that it could give an advantage to disadvantaged parties who could theoretically run around and harvest more crystals before they're detected or whatever, or provide some relief to people who stumble on uncontested caches, but the advantage it would give to the people on the other end of this spectrum is just going to make their plight more difficult. The tl;dr here is that if a conflict mechanic legitimately has issues that need to be addressed to improve engagement, then it's something that should be re-balanced for everyone, not just those who can afford it.
- Altering population perception. I think this has already been confirmed by Ilyos to not be a thing SM is going to do, but I'll clarify why this is bad. When you entirely remove people from WHO/QWHO, what you're really doing is shrinking the visible playerbase for newcomers and returning players. Even if they can see at the bottom that the total people online is greater than what they're seeing, it makes the world feel emptier, which is a problem during times when there are already few people around. In addition, it gives individuals a way to completely disengage with the rest of the playerbase if they so please by removing proof of their being online, which is similarly hazardous to the game's health. There are IC methods of masking (literally) your presence or even imitating someone else, but these don't impact the game in nearly the same way.
- Interfering with the balance of wetwiring. I'll be honest here, I'm not well-versed in the use of wetwiring, but I think the balance implications of paying to be able to use it more efficiently are probably pretty severe, and therefore don't have a place in the game.
I'm definitely not trying to make anyone feel bad about their ideas here. I just think it's important that we continue to try to keep these sorts of things in mind when considering new artifacts so that we don't wind up with gross power disparity years down the line that's based on the amount of wealth a player has instead of the amount of skill, knowledge, or experience they have.
Rhindara
2
Re: Remove INR loss from caches/allied areas
My suggestion is to increase the xp gain from kills within free PK areas, and to remove xp loss/INR drop on deaths in free PK.
I used to think that xp loss didn't matter, and that it wouldn't have any real bearing on who participated in PK. Then I played in Aetolia for a little bit, where there is no xp loss in their main conflict event. There were definitely people who would only participate in the free-death pvp, and then would pass on playing in the xp-loss pvp. This wasn't just an observation, but it was verbalized by those people. Sairys touched on this, but I agree, there is psychology involved. People are risk-averse when there is the perception that something can be be lost, but the same risk is acceptable when there is a perception that something can be gained.
If you increase the kill XP and remove death loss, participants will still risk feeding xp to the enemy, but it will be more palatable to try when they themselves have nothing to lose. And actually in Aetolia, I think the xp scales with your level, so it encourages young people to try because they can actually gain a lot from it, even if they're likely to get smacked hard. There are still times when people will quit or not bother, because they don't want to feed, but at least the option is always benign.
Instituting this change would also solve another issue I've had here, in that I don't think you should have to wait for INRs to unlock when they're earned in PK events. I get that some people enjoy trying to RP or gank after caches to get their INR back, but to me this always just feels like harassment. Running around while they unlock or having to sit guarded with your friends after the cache isn't very fun.
I think we will get more raiding objectives or direct factional conflict in the future, and maybe those you'll still drop INR. But for what we've got, I think the population would benefit from no xp/supply loss in caches/CPs. This is probably contingent on giving more value to crystals, in either making CPs more competitive to hold and/or in giving a purpose to crystals above the faction limit.
I think we will get more raiding objectives or direct factional conflict in the future, and maybe those you'll still drop INR. But for what we've got, I think the population would benefit from no xp/supply loss in caches/CPs. This is probably contingent on giving more value to crystals, in either making CPs more competitive to hold and/or in giving a purpose to crystals above the faction limit.
Azlyn
1
Re: Remove INR loss from caches/allied areas
Yep, timequakes aren't the only PvP system in Lusternia and they were introduced as they are to get players engaged in PvP who were put off by the potential risks (which looks to be literally just exp loss) which is a goal they've apparently achieved. And following that, when the death buff needed updating it was modified to prevent exp loss from death.
The people that were PvPing before participate, so do new people. It seems like the PvPers are happy because they have more people to fight with/against, the people that were hesitant are more willing to dive in because the risk was holding them back, so doing the thing you seem convinced won't help has apparently helped.
It's all relatively simple, negative feedback loops like exp loss are a game design tool used to discourage certain behaviours, people who consistently hit those negative loops are likely to become averse to engaging with the activities that cause those loops (i.e a reluctance to participate in pvp). Some people are more or less affected by them because psychology, it's similar to the framing around rested xp people react negatively to negative things and postive to positive things (even if they're literally the same thing with just different labels).
At the end of the day, what choices other games have made provides insight, MMOs are really the closest game genre MUDs so their learnings can be handy. (i.e WoW moving away from a negatively framed mechanic)
Cause yeah, otherwise people are just debating their thoughts and personal preferences, which will always trend towards maintaining the status quo because the people who don't like that are more likely to have left.
The people that were PvPing before participate, so do new people. It seems like the PvPers are happy because they have more people to fight with/against, the people that were hesitant are more willing to dive in because the risk was holding them back, so doing the thing you seem convinced won't help has apparently helped.
It's all relatively simple, negative feedback loops like exp loss are a game design tool used to discourage certain behaviours, people who consistently hit those negative loops are likely to become averse to engaging with the activities that cause those loops (i.e a reluctance to participate in pvp). Some people are more or less affected by them because psychology, it's similar to the framing around rested xp people react negatively to negative things and postive to positive things (even if they're literally the same thing with just different labels).
At the end of the day, what choices other games have made provides insight, MMOs are really the closest game genre MUDs so their learnings can be handy. (i.e WoW moving away from a negatively framed mechanic)
Cause yeah, otherwise people are just debating their thoughts and personal preferences, which will always trend towards maintaining the status quo because the people who don't like that are more likely to have left.
Sairys
1
Re: Remove INR loss from caches/allied areas
That's not actually what Vega asked for, they asked for "numbers and data" .
Responding to such by digging out those comments is a waste of my time because they would then be dismissed as not "numbers and data". However, now the request has been made the comment is made in the OP of this topic https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/3680/timequakes-and-thank-yous
If you like, here are some other examples that would indicate MMOs as a genre have moved away from experience loss as a mechanism.
The only games I've seen at a glance that have exp loss on death are:
Responding to such by digging out those comments is a waste of my time because they would then be dismissed as not "numbers and data". However, now the request has been made the comment is made in the OP of this topic https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/3680/timequakes-and-thank-yous
If you like, here are some other examples that would indicate MMOs as a genre have moved away from experience loss as a mechanism.
- WoW did have exp loss during their beta period but it was removed following their testing. (Tangentially: Early WoW testing is also noted as demonstrating how negative and positive framing can completely change players views on a mechanic https://www.psychologyofgames.com/2010/03/framing-and-world-of-warcrafts-rest-system/)
- FFXI has experience loss on death. With the cross over of dev teams, however, the devs that transferred from it to FFXIV decided to remove exp loss as a concept from the new game. Presumably if it was a good mechanic, it would have been kept. (FFXI also has complaints popping up about exp loss causing people to drop below their gears minimum level, increasing the negative aspect of dying because they have to then go find gear to gain the exp to be able to use their gear again)
- Looking across google results for MMO... SWTOR, Secret World Legends, LOTRO, ESO, TERA, Skyforge, Blade & Soul, Rift, Star Trek Online, Runescape... all lack experience punishments for death.
The only games I've seen at a glance that have exp loss on death are:
- Archeage, however, PvP is a specific exception so doesn't incur exp loss. My understanding though is this is an exp tax, not an actual loss. (This variation means you can't lose a level to the loss)
- Black Desert Online is similar to Archeage (not an exp tax though), except that there's a system "karma" which tracks player actions so if you're intentionally bad and break certain laws you can get a flag that does cause you to lose exp on PvP deaths.
Sairys
1
Re: Remove INR loss from caches/allied areas
Jerom said:The scenarios you described can already be achieved the way things are. Do you see them happening? I know I don't.
Also, I don't know how much you think an INR would sell for, but I think you're highly overestimating the amount. If you want marks, it's probably faster to do hard incursions than the way you suggest. But hey, feel free to have your character kill himself over and over to find out. Let us know how it turns out.
The issue is that removing the costs of death entirely trivializes death, or incentivizes schemes to abuse no-cost death, or both. The original post is about removing barriers to caches, a group pvp environment so that more people can participate worry-free in dangerous pvp. Removing experience loss from death entirely, on the other hand, without removing the corresponding experience gain from scanning an INR creates an undeserved windfall to anyone who scans it. INRs, then, become experience gained for only some marks. If the death occurs in a cache, then the cost in marks of a level 75 player is under 200 marks (because the cost of death in a cache is reduced). If all it takes is a visit to HETE to generate, what, 3% experience for a leveling player without any genuine experience-generating activity, then that is a fundamentally flawed system. That is why I disagreed with your proposed remedy to the problem identified in the original post.
I have made not made any "ridiculous statement."
Steve
1
Re: Remove INR loss from caches/allied areas
Anything that involves a benefit should have a negative. This just a plain simple mechanic. Taking away exp lose is a step backwards towards faction vs faction content.
We need arenas for parties and tournaments for prizes! Saturday night Starmourn pvp tournaments! Think outside the box. Regulating things just cause you don’t like it is not fair. Rather focus on creating something you would like! Cosmpiercer powers revolve around caches. Cosmpiercer powers are strong so effort dictates that reward.
My two cents
We need arenas for parties and tournaments for prizes! Saturday night Starmourn pvp tournaments! Think outside the box. Regulating things just cause you don’t like it is not fair. Rather focus on creating something you would like! Cosmpiercer powers revolve around caches. Cosmpiercer powers are strong so effort dictates that reward.
My two cents
Woodro
2