DCP

[sidusar]

I agree with you. The demoralization of players in a losing alliance is a huge problem that the devs really need to address. Its hard to say just what they exactly they should do. There have been many good suggestions for making ops more dynamic or adding pvE ops. Another route might be to decrease op rewards while simultaneously adding another endgame mechanism (balanced mini-ancient lands, kitin lair or whatever).

I agree that it's a problem, but it seems to me it'd be a necesary evil if we want the players to have any effect on the world of Atys. In a kitin invasion event with different possible outcomes, it would be the whole server that wins or looses together. But if we want to have any events where the players have to make a choice (build a bridge here or build a camp there, give the artifact to the Kami or to the Karavan, etc) there'll always be a winning majority and a loosing minority.

It's either a world where the efforts of a part of the players are meaningless (because more players went with the other option), or a world where the efforts of all players are meaningless (because the outcome was already determined before the event even began). The only possible midway that I can see is to only have events where all players work together for a single goal, and where the outcome only determines on how well they do. Any event that has effect on the world and forces players to pick a side, will have one side that constantly looses.

[d29565]

But if we want to have any events where the players have to make a choice (build a bridge here or build a camp there, give the artifact to the Kami or to the Karavan, etc) there'll always be a winning majority and a loosing minority.

Not necessarily, or not necessarily an important 'problem.' When I first came to Ryzom, faction was the least of everyones worries (granted I was on Windermeer but it was probably similar on other servers). Faction just wasnt important, fighting the Kitin was important, helping everyone from level 15 to level 250, if you wanted PvP you went to PR or Nexus to have an good fight.

Now though the only endgame PvE that exists is grinding another skill or getting massive dp raiding a kitin lair with little benefit, and there is more PvP than anything and it has pretty much turned to place extreme importance on faction where it wasnt necessary before.

But, in Ryzom that's not how it has to be. The amount of PvP added to the game has far outweighed the amount of decent PvE things, thus tossing out many of the "old" subscribers that wanted a decent Kitin Raid, cared little for faction, and wanted more PvE endgame.

In what you mentioned about 'building bridges', etc; again there doesn't need to be a majority or minority (as I just noticed the exact wording of your sentance). Maybe that is true, but content doesn't have to be about 'building bridges' or creating spires or whatever. All that will give us is more PvP, and we really dont need more PvP in Ryzom. I'm an avid PvPer and I say this...

[katriell]

Deleted; I need to learn to read more carefully.

[sidusar]

How does building bridges and camps get equated directly to PvP? Although it's possible such events could involve PvP, they wouldn't have to and I wouldn't expect them to. Sounds more like a revival of the presumably unifying "rebuilding our post-apocalyptic civilisations" theme. Which I would love to see happen.

Ehm.... I see I wasn't completely clear. Allow me to try again

I'd also love a revival of the "rebuilding our post-apocalyptic civilisations" theme. So imagine an event where we have to build a new bridge over the Scorched Corridor. The foragers have to harvest special materials to build the bridge out of, the crafters have to build bridge-segments out of those materials, and the fighters have to protect the harvesters and crafters from kitin who don't like this bridge.

There are three ways in which the outcome of this event could be handled:
A. At the end of the event, the bridge will be built. Doesn't matter if the players construct 100 bridge-segments or 10.000 bridge-segments, the bridge will be there.
B. The players have 5 days to construct 1000 bridge-segments. If they succeed, the bridge will be built. If they fail, it won't be.
C. Two bridges are being built simultaneously, and the players can choose which one they want to work on. Whichever bridge will have the most bridge-segments at the end of the event will be built, and the other one won't be.

With option A, it's guaranteed that everyone involved wins. But the player actions will have no actual effect whatsoever on the outcome of the event, and I believe for most of us that's not what we want.

With option B, the player actions do have an effect on the outcome of the event. But there's the risk that we loose the event, in which case nothing will change and all our efforts were for nothing.

With option C, it gets turned into a PvP event. This way, the player actions also have an actual effect on the outcome of the event, but there is no risk of an all-out failure; there will always be a bridge. The disadvantage is that one side will loose.

I wasn't really trying to make a case for either type of event (though at the moment I'd prefer a few type B events). I was just trying to point out that we can't have it all. Either our actions have no actual effect on the world, or we run the risk of loosing the event and having all our efforts been for nothing, or we have a winning majority and a loosing minority. One of those evils will be necessary.

Does that make more sense?

[katriell]

Bleh, I was hoping you wouldn't catch that. I was actually responding to the last part of Keiko's post.

[vguerin]

Just as a side note DT, in the link you mentioned, faction PvP is not in the same topic as OP which refers only to guilds so maybe it doesn't all work as intended...

I didn't refer to faction PvP because it doesn't really exist, and isn't how we are playing. I referred to "guild wars" and "alliances" because that is how the game is being played, exactly working as intended (page 62 of the SoR manual). The guild wars going on have a faction flavor often, but all you need do is click "attack, defend or neutral" with no impact on faction occuring and same factioned folks sometimes being in conflict with each other.

[calel]

There's an oversight in your explanation however Sidusar. Wether someone wins or looses isn't as much important in those examples, but what is is what the effect would be of winning or loosing. 'Meaningfull' and 'reward' seem to be undeniably important keywords for a majority of participants to ensure involvment.

Co-operative events/features ensure that in case of a 'win' everyone will enjoy benefits, directly or indirectly. In most cases a 'win' goes along with getting rewarded based on the level of involvment. Non-participants will still benefit of the overall effect but won't see rewards on a personal level.

Competitive event/feature rewards are way harder to implement and please both sides involved. 'Winning' usually results in having or getting an advantage over the ones you competed with. There is still a possibility of rewarding based on level of involvment wether you win or loose, but when there isn't it won't take long before people decide it's not worth their time or the hassle. Especially if rewards for winning are perpetual and considerable.

[sidusar]

True, I only considered the global consequences of winning or loosing the event, and not the personal rewards. It's quite possible to have seperate personal rewards that are awarded, based on level of involvement, regardless of whether the event as a whole is won or lost.

During the temple wars, if the Karavan had lost dramatically, the global consequences would've been different (there would've been 3 Kami sanctuaries and only 1 Karavan temple), but on the personal level everyone would still have received the same rewards.

So you believe that the problem with outposts isn't so much that one side constantly looses, but rather that loosing means getting no rewards whatsoever for the efforts you put in?

As that would seem to be directly opposite to Final's point that Riveit agreed with:

When a person plays a game of course they don't like losing, so they will hate losing consistantly. It's not about not having access to OP Produce

[calel]

So you believe that the problem with outposts isn't so much that one side constantly looses, but rather that loosing means getting no rewards whatsoever for the efforts you put in?

I believe it is somewhere in between. Different playstyles can consider different things as meaningfull rewards. Where roleplayers could see story advancement or participation as a reward in itself or exploration inclined players could be perfectly happy with unlocking new features, those with an achiever playstyle could feel left out if those were the only rewards available. So I believe both the loosing and the involvement vs. lack-of-reward are the demoralizing factors in the OP-feature.

Unlike the EP2 templebuilding which was impossible to completely loose out on.

[sidusar]

Hmmm, I'm still inclined to believe that constant loosing is an inherent evil of any PvP feature. Any balancing mechanism put in to give an advantage to the loosing side just forces things into a permanent stalemate and makes the entire feature pointless.

But that's probably just how I feel because I look at it expecting a story advancement; that eventually one side wins and things move on. I suppose outposts (and spires as well) were really meant to be locked in an eternal stalemate battle where no side can ever truly win.