Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Dev insights on Sieges, War System, Consequence System
AmazingAvery
Age of Conan AdvocateMember UncommonPosts: 7,188
Firstly if he is reading would like the take the time to thank Ilaliya "Tradeskill Czar" for taking the time to share some thoughts on the game, and taking the time to write a thoughtful response on the test server forums. It is most appreciated! Keep up the good work. If you have access LINK.
The response I am referring to is actually some questions posed by a fellow mmorpg'er Spellshaper
Here is the text, that holds some good direction from the thoughts and insight of a dev on the companies intentions in a couple specific area's. Finally Didek another dev replies to IKshadow, (another mmorpg'er) who raises some feedback.
Quote:
Originally Posted by spellshaper
Hello,
I would like to make some suggestions based on latest live patch.
War System
Main problem in my oppinon is, that war system is tied with Siege Battles.
This is bad esspecially for RP-PvP and PVE servers because of two main reassons.
1) You declare war against guilds you dont want to. If you declare war against siege owner, you also declare war against people that are also trying to attack same siege. Problem is that these another attackers you cant choose and often it isnt enemy.
2) You can only declare war on siege owners. But all people we are at war dont own battlekeep.
So my suggestion is to make War declaration independant on sieges. So you can know exactly who you are at war with and you can choose them.
We've certainly moving in the direction of more meaningful world PvP. The PvP resources in Cimmerian End is a good step in this direction. And we have plans for mechanics in the other Border Kingdoms, sure.
Now we've talked about a war system internally, and the main issue is: what would be the goal of such a system? What incentive do guilds have to war or not war? I can see some utility to war declaration on PvE servers, but at present, there'd really be no point on PvP servers. And PvE servers have border kingdoms if they really want to duke it out.
I think what's fun about the idea of a guild v guild war is the idea of something being gained from the conflict, and the risk of something being lost. Currently we only have two things in the game that could really fulfill this for organized guild PvP - Battlekeeps, and PvP resources.
As a developer, the two major questions I always ask myself when evaluating a design are: "Is it fun?" and "Are the choices presented meaningful to players in game terms?" These two concepts are generally linked in my mind, because I believe a lot of what's fun about MMOs is progressing in one's knowledge of the game world and applying that understanding to improve the decision making process when it's time to make a choice. Be that in PvP ("What ability do I use to counter this opponent?") or PvE ("This boss just performed some action -- How can I respond in a way that helps us beat the encounter?") or building one's character ("What gear and talent choices should I make that best fits my playstyle.") For this to work, the choices have to all be meaningful, and transparent in terms of what they actually do. The player shouldn't feel overwhelmed by too many choices, and he also shouldn't feel like there's only one option. Then if we've designed a good system, for the player it comes down to finding the optimal choice for the specific scenario.
When applying this line of reasoning to guild v guild war, there should be some strategy to which guild you want to war. And also as a guild who has several war declarations against it, which ones to accept and which ones to decline. That's what I think such a feature would need to really be solid.
The third question I might ask myself is "Does this system achieve the goals we want to achieve?" (note that a producer or director might ask this question first). Either way, the goals should be laid out at the very beginning in one's mind. An example goal of a guild v guild war system might be "Enable guilds without enough resources to participate in sieges the ability to experience organized PvP combat." A simple war declaration system might seem to do this, but the reality is players like games to reward them for achievement. Players generally don't enjoy systems that aren't rewarding in game terms. Without that reward, the PvP isn't meaningful, and players will find the system pointless.
I only have good things to say about Didek, my counterpart on PvP. PvPers are in very good hands with him. He's pretty active on the forums, so if you have great ideas for a war declaration system he would be your man.
Quote:
So my suggestion is to lower number of nodes. One node for each resource could be enough I think. Or maybe some dynamic spawn of nodes based on number of players in instance. For example one node if there is less then 10 players, two nodes if there are 30 and more players and so on.... But one node per zone would be enough for most servers I think.
Another suggestion is to make purpose for every player to gather these resources. Or even better make purpose to kill players for these resources.
When Didek and I cooked up PvP resources, it was something that wasn't done before in Conan. Items dropping in PvP was something that had to be coded, and the concept and implementation work had to get sign-off from the big C himself. So the PvP resource mechanic was definitely testing the waters in terms of how players would respond to such a system. New concepts in a live MMO that break the established mold tend to be easier to get green-lighted if the initial offering is an acceptably small investment in terms of company resources, and player impact. Especially for ideas that get pushed up the chain like this one. This is just good business sense.
If you guys, the players, start clamoring for more things like the PvP resources and expansions to that system because you're having a blast in Cimmerian End, then I think we've done our job. MMO companies tend to improve the systems that have the greatest impact on player retention (which ultimately boils down to fun, meaningful and engaging gameplay). So keep that in mind. I think the fact players seem to be really enjoying PvP resources means that we'll be able to do more with the system in the future.
Quote:
PvP Consequences System
So there should be many tweaks I think. In some other thread Didek asks, if we want more PvP or less. I can answer this question that we want more but fair PvP.
So first I would decrease getting murder points line to +-1 level. Eight levels is too much and -8 player dont have a chance against +8 lvl player(s).
Another change should be to punish every kill and attack no matter what level it is. Even attacker with same (or lower!) level should be "flaged" as attacker if he do so.
It shouldnt be same as its now, because if you are murder now, its very bad for playing. So my suggestion is to bring new middle flag. That flag makes you free prey but you still can teleport and res normaly. That free prey you get for attacking and killing another players even if they are considered fair kills by current system. Unfair kills still give murder flag just like now.
In this case, high level friends can kill low level gankers without penalty.
PvPers will live in constant danger of being attacked and killed (they will have free prey flag) but their playing will be still normal because they wont be murderes (they can teleport and buy normally).
I would have to ask what goal are you trying to achieve here. Also, I bolded your statement because I really disagree with the idea that games should punish players for doing something really basic in the game (aka, killing people in Conan). Players generally don't like to be punished.
Now one goal of the murder system was to de-incentivize ganking lowbies. We felt that the frustration of being ganked as a lowbie out weighed the fun achieved by the ganker (I suppose frustration being the opposite of fun). One way to look at the murder system is a way to increase the total fun across all players. So we applied the punishment we did introduce pretty surgically, as a conscious outcome of weighing all the factors.
One can think of it like this: as the level difference between a ganker and his victim grows, the frustration is increased for the victim. Because his helplessness increases. And if one is helpless there is no choice or option to even escape, much less fight back. Conversely, this means there is some threshold whereby the levels are close enough that we yield the greatest net fun. We determined this level gap to be what it is on the servers now.
In Conan I think level differences are a lot more forgiving than other MMOs in the same genre. When I was level 60 and leveling up my own character on live (long before the PvP system), I saw a level 80 attacking a another level 60. So I started snaring him, and joined the fight. A 3rd 60 jumped in to help us, and we eventually took the aggressor level 80 down. It was about a 20 minute fight. We were all potting but the 80 didn't have the advantage of a healer. Incidentally, that was a lot of fun. I personally would be very disappointed if the PvP system removed that kind of dynamic completely.
Also, as a general note, the more flags you add to system the greater opportunity there is for behavior outside what's desirable. By this I mean: flag-based systems will always get exploited, especially flag systems that seek to enforce some desired social behavior. This is true in every MMO. And generally I've observed the amount and severity of the exploits are proportional to the complexity of the flags. We see this in Conan, and it's something you have to consider when you think about making flag-based PvP consequences in any MMO. So a lot of the short-term improvements you should see to the murder system is solving the worst of these issues. This is a non-trivial task because flag systems are so delicate by nature.
Quote:
Sieges
I think that number of players in siegs should be decreased. Or maybe better, make another sieges for just raids (24players). I think thats enough for massive PvP, but it will be less lagy, more guilds will participate and mor battles will be happening. There also wont be problem with killing people from other raids and many more problems will be solved.
There were suggestions to make sieges even bigger or for alliances. But I think every guild that participate in sieges dont want this. Sieges are very dependant on strategy and more players means less startegy. Also more players means more nationalites and there language barriers comes into place.
So my suggestion is less player sieges, not more. 24 players would be great number because its needed for raids anyway and every serious guild can get 24 players ready (48 is too many for most of them).
The vision of sieges is that they are massive PvP. This is one thing Conan has that you don't see a lot in other games. I make this point because, as a developer, you generally want a small set of your features to be unique and different from what's in other games of the same genre.
Your goals are "more guilds participating in PvP" and "more battles happening" and "less lag." I absolutely agree with all three. But I think there are a lot of ways to achieve these without changing the number of players you see in sieges. Part of that is future improvements to the border kingdoms, and as for the lag we have some very talented coders who've made great strides in our tech, and they'll continue to do so.
One of the challenges of expanding organized PvP is our existing reward structure. There are only 8 Battlekeeps. I don't think reducing the number of players in a siege will increase battles. I think the number of massive PvP battles you see on servers is dictated by the number of battlekeeps and the number of guilds that want to have them.
So the direction we're heading is offering different incentives to PvP, in different places, that appeal to different kinds of players. If you think of sieges as "massive PvP" and mini-games as "casual PvP," there's a lot of room in the middle that we have to play with. That's all Didek's domain.
Didek: ~
Quote:
Originally Posted by IKShadow
I was looking forward to Cimmerian End & PvP resources before the patch.
I really hoped majority of PvP will move to Cimmerian End and our guild were there for first 7 days after release.
Unfortunately majority of players just dont want to move to CE for PvP. ( we had few good fights but now CE is quite deserted )
Suggestions:
1. Make PvP resources "regen" A LOT SLOWER.
Atm PvP resources will be full within 2 minutes and that makes any kind of protection in that area completely useless.
PvP resources should regen VERY VERY SLOW .. probably from 0% to 100% in 2 hours .. so guilds have objective to be there pvp and farm resources.
2. Give additional PvP XP for PvPing in Cimmerian end so players are motivated to do it there and not in Kheshatta all the time.
( maybe 20%/50% more PvP XP )
p.s. Current guild war system is very very exploitable so please remove point gathering. ( i explained in exploits forums )
Keep in mind that if the resources nodes regenerate too slow players will get bored. It might be able to tweak them a little. We do have plans to use these resources for other things. So there will always be people in cimmerian end trying to get them. PvP exp bonus for being in the border kingdoms is something we can look into.
I have said it before, but if you really do want to leave constructive feedback on any mechanic in AoC the place to go is the test server forums. The guys making the game often reply back to questions in this format. They are also quite open for discussion on idea's and you can see the passion they have for their work. When some people said that when AoC lost it's CS staff dialogue between customer and company would suffer. This is simply not the case. The game is better for it. Especially over the past couple of patches. There has been direct enough constructive feedback which has had big effects of what has been included in patches specific, direction to take, focus to work on. It is truly a two way street. It is more open floor than ever before.
As to the replies they give, do you agree with the reasoning and focus direction? Is there anything specific you would like to see done?
Comments
Report for giant wall of spam...
Also, stop making me almost reinstall this game... I still have to beat Fallout3
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
This might just push you over the edge then :P
Ask the devs if they are every going to put going to Hel back in!!!
Watching the vid now...
{ Mod Edit }
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
Contrary to popular belief, Hell was not removed from the game. Login now, go to endgame and look around you. That IS Hell.
Seriously though.. Hell was one of the concepts that sounded good on paper but was horrible in reality, just like Drunken Brawling. Those two are never coming back.
I would also surprised after initial silence, how detailed and long answer I get from Ilaliya
I would like to say big THANKS to him also here.
It also shows, how different solutions have players and devs. Even if I think I have closer to devs than to players.
I am really looking forward to 24 players PvP battles
.
_____________________________
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.
Contrary to popular belief, Hell was not removed from the game. Login now, go to endgame and look around you. That IS Hell.
Seriously though.. Hell was one of the concepts that sounded good on paper but was horrible in reality, just like Drunken Brawling. Those two are never coming back.
Lets do the math: Recent join date, ALL posts in teh AoC forum trolling/flaming/hating on AoC and while more subtle than most DF asshats, you are touting WAR here and there... why don't you just start a thread that says "WAR>AoC" and just link it instead of whatever useless drivel you were going to post anytime you want to post?
Save us all a lot of time and aggravation from some stupid alt troll account...
Gaming since 1985 and still going strong.
Looks like there has been a few updates from him recently on gem changes too, I'll update after get home from work.
Keep up the good questions!