Perception of Player control

[sidusar]

should ether be rigged to end in the way wanted

I disagree about this. Yes, in theory it's only the perception of control that's important, and making the players believe they're in control, while in reality they're going to end up where you want them one way or the other, would be perfect.

But in practice.... Nevrax has tried this several times, and every time what I heard from players was mostly disillusion and a feeling of being cheated. Trying to make your players believe the game has a level of choice that it doesn't have, doesn't speak of much respect for your players. It sooner creates a feeling of "how stupid do they think we are?" amongst them.

Obviously you cannot give the players complete control, but you can give them control over some things. I'd rather the devs be truthful, and the things that are outside our control are clearly outside our control while the things that are presented as being inside our control are actually inside our control, than the devs constantly making us think we're in control only for it to be revealed later that we were being led around by the nose.

That probably means the control we'd get would be limited to occasional binary choices that don't effect the storyline at large, but there's nothing wrong with that. The PCs are only a small group of homins in a larger civilisation in an even larger universe, so realistically a lot of things would happen completely outside their control.

As for continuous changes, such as spires, I agree they should be selfregulatory in such a way that the closer the situation gets to an extremum, the harder it becomes to push further in that direction. Limited control, but not complete control.

And sorry for dragging the thread back up, but I find the topic too interesting to let it die off so quickly.

[alisa112]

I disagree about this. Yes, in theory it's only the perception of control that's important, and making the players believe they're in control, while in reality they're going to end up where you want them one way or the other, would be perfect.

But in practice.... Nevrax has tried this several times, and every time what I heard from players was mostly disillusion and a feeling of being cheated. Trying to make your players believe the game has a level of choice that it doesn't have, doesn't speak of much respect for your players. It sooner creates a feeling of "how stupid do they think we are?" amongst them.

Obviously you cannot give the players complete control, but you can give them control over some things. I'd rather the devs be truthful, and the things that are outside our control are clearly outside our control while the things that are presented as being inside our control are actually inside our control, than the devs constantly making us think we're in control only for it to be revealed later that we were being led around by the nose.

That probably means the control we'd get would be limited to occasional binary choices that don't effect the storyline at large, but there's nothing wrong with that. The PCs are only a small group of homins in a larger civilisation in an even larger universe, so realistically a lot of things would happen completely outside their control.

Ack, not the Matrix again!!

[wardone]

it would be interesting having GvG op battles but again this opens up possabilities for people to exploit.
personnaly i prefer the larger style battle that you get with a factional conflict.

op ownership has been goverened by the players devs have no control over that imo (unless they playing too ofc)

you can't force balance it has to come from the players and this world will always be swings and roundabouts with eitherside holding the upper hand at any given time.
in all honesty the wars have been mostly fun and cleanly fought, as yet aris has not the population for op ownership to be a serious issue, soon as there is a new active kami or kara guild seeking a op i am sure that one of the existing guilds would surrender willingly their op. its good for the game which we all love be it kara or kami.

Faction? its the higher power to lesser and greater degrees for each player play it your own way and there lies the real beauty of ryzom you get out exactly what you put in no spoon feeding.