To me its the opposite. To me people will do anything to defend a cash shop game, P2W or not. I take that back, they would literally stop on a bomb to get to a computer to defend it.
Just saying..there are 2 sides to every story. I have very little tolerance for cash shops in games. I would just rather have a sub. Cash shop games take more money to get all the things in the game. Of course you dont have to buy it...but for $15 bucks I get everything. Hell, most cash shop games $15 wont even buy one mount. If that isn't pay to win for the company collecting. I dont know what is.
Absolutely nothing wrong with not liking the model and preferring subscription. That's a completely legitimate position, and I have no problem with it. My only problem is when people call something pay-to-win when it very clearly isn't.
I DO happen to think the cash shop model is a little better, though. It's more profitable because of whales, so it helps the developers. I also think it opens the doors for people to play the game that wouldn't have otherwise. Several of my nieces and nephews like to play WoWS and WoT with me, for instance. It's free, and I get to give them stuff from the cash shop for birthdays, so it's a big win, imo.
It may help people to understand where you're coming from if they knew how much you pumped into Shroud of the Avatar.
I already know know since you gave up the ghost in another thread a while back, so no fibbing.
I dumped more into Crowfall.
Well Red, here's the thing about supporting two games and writing articles catering to both groups of fanboys...
Here's what your SotA friends have to say about Crowfall. You know, the ones that gush over your articles on how amazing SotA is when you publish them here:
Q: Do you think the graphics could be upgraded as Crowfall did?
I'm genuinely curious as to your opinion, Red. Is Crowfall cartoony and like WoW? Which is more atmospheric? Overall, which has the better graphics? You seem to have all the answers about both games so please, do tell.
This isn't a game of character vs character battles. Its a game of Kingdom vs Kingdom wars and all the Kingdoms are bought and paid for by the whales. Even the people that could "theoretically" challenge the Kings are THEMSELVES whales having spent thousands of their own dollars on the game. Get it yet?
Edit- This is getting too into the weeds of a non-Crowfall game and this was about Crowfall so I will leave it there. Feel free to continue to discuss the P2W CoE stuff in one of those threads.
For the record Crowfall in my opinion (as a backer who has his little keeps and castles waiting) is P2W. It's not over the top and much of it is limited to the less competitive Eternal Kingdoms.
We shall see how things shape up closer to launch.
As @Distopia said, you're really trying to shape things here to form an argument around what you want, rather than working with the facts as they are. I only rolled into the CoE thing because you brought it up, and I was shooting down your quoted data. I've been talking about CF the entire time.
The fact that whales are a statistically insignificant component of the playerbase happens to be valid in both cases. I'm not sure what benefits they get in CoE, but nothing I've seen them get in CF is in any way really significant.
In fact, your point about CF being kingdom vs kingdom makes it even less significant. Even if CF were P2W, which it's not, then these statistically rare players would have even less impact. I'm not sure what the actual data is, so let's assume some rough figures and pull from what we do have.
KS data is easy to pull, so let's start there. CF's KS campaign finished with 16,936 backers, and highest tiers were 57 @ $1k, 13 @ $2.5k, 10 @ $5k, and 15 @ $10k, for a total of 95 backers over $1k. We'll call those our whales, which make up about 0.6% of the total population (Assuming post-campaign numbers stayed the same, and they probably didn't since non-whales tend to back in greater numbers over time.).
I'm not sure what the total number is, but let's just say CF servers can hold 200 players, then that means there's about one whale per server. Future maps will be larger, but current servers are 9x9 tile maps, which makes for 81 total tiles. Thus, you have about a 10% chance of ever being in the same tile as a whale, assuming you're even online at the same time.
Since this is a kingdom game where the lines of battle exist on multiple fronts at any given time, even if that lone OP whale has a significant impact on the fight in his immediate vicinity(which is significantly less than an entire tile), it's only an impact in HIS immediate vicinity, and the fights elsewhere are more even.
Thus, even if CF were P2W, the impact of whales would be practically irrelevant on any campaign overall. The fact that EKs are personal things that are removed from the actual campaigns where PvP take place, and that I've seen no actual combat advantages to paying customers over non-paying (or non-whale) customers, I don't think there's any way you could actually claim CF is a P2W game in any sense of the phrase. Much less could you claim that being P2W would have any relevant impact on the game even were it true.
For clarity the Kingdom vs Kingdom statement was about CoE, not CF. As I said, CF is much less "over the top" P2W than other games because much of their benefits are tied to the Eternal kingdoms which will have limited impact in the main game, although I believe on some server rulesets it could have more of an impact. We shall see.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
To me its the opposite. To me people will do anything to defend a cash shop game, P2W or not. I take that back, they would literally stop on a bomb to get to a computer to defend it.
Just saying..there are 2 sides to every story. I have very little tolerance for cash shops in games. I would just rather have a sub. Cash shop games take more money to get all the things in the game. Of course you dont have to buy it...but for $15 bucks I get everything. Hell, most cash shop games $15 wont even buy one mount. If that isn't pay to win for the company collecting. I dont know what is.
Absolutely nothing wrong with not liking the model and preferring subscription. That's a completely legitimate position, and I have no problem with it. My only problem is when people call something pay-to-win when it very clearly isn't.
I DO happen to think the cash shop model is a little better, though. It's more profitable because of whales, so it helps the developers. I also think it opens the doors for people to play the game that wouldn't have otherwise. Several of my nieces and nephews like to play WoWS and WoT with me, for instance. It's free, and I get to give them stuff from the cash shop for birthdays, so it's a big win, imo.
It may help people to understand where you're coming from if they knew how much you pumped into Shroud of the Avatar.
I already know know since you gave up the ghost in another thread a while back, so no fibbing.
I dumped more into Crowfall.
Well Red, here's the thing about supporting two games and writing articles catering to both groups of fanboys...
Here's what your SotA friends have to say about Crowfall. You know, the ones that gush over your articles on how amazing SotA is when you publish them here:
Q: Do you think the graphics could be upgraded as Crowfall did?
I'm genuinely curious as to your opinion, Red. Is Crowfall cartoony and like WoW? Which is more atmospheric? Overall, which has the better graphics? You seem to have all the answers about both games so please, do tell.
Of course it's more cartoon like. That's the aesthetic they were going for. I happen to like it better and think it's a smarter choice. Folks aren't wrong for preferring the other style, though. That's why it's called a preference, and Shroud felt their choice was better for their target audience.
More cartoon like graphics are a smart direction for a game focused on PvP for the same reason it was smart for WoW. It's easier on GPUs, and I think a little easier to texture into the game.
Doesn't mean folks are wrong to push closer towards the uncanny valley, though. Shroud is more about story telling and the other aesthetic was considered the better choice at the time. I kind of disagreed, but there are a ton of considerations I was never privy to. They did some work before the campaign, so could be that they already had assets from another project or knew about some they wanted to use, or maybe it was a team experience issue. Or I could just be flat wrong and the more realistic graphics are actually better for the project because it appeals to their demographic better.
I'm not sure why any of that would be something you'd expect some kind of argument on.
This isn't a game of character vs character battles. Its a game of Kingdom vs Kingdom wars and all the Kingdoms are bought and paid for by the whales. Even the people that could "theoretically" challenge the Kings are THEMSELVES whales having spent thousands of their own dollars on the game. Get it yet?
Edit- This is getting too into the weeds of a non-Crowfall game and this was about Crowfall so I will leave it there. Feel free to continue to discuss the P2W CoE stuff in one of those threads.
For the record Crowfall in my opinion (as a backer who has his little keeps and castles waiting) is P2W. It's not over the top and much of it is limited to the less competitive Eternal Kingdoms.
We shall see how things shape up closer to launch.
As @Distopia said, you're really trying to shape things here to form an argument around what you want, rather than working with the facts as they are. I only rolled into the CoE thing because you brought it up, and I was shooting down your quoted data. I've been talking about CF the entire time.
The fact that whales are a statistically insignificant component of the playerbase happens to be valid in both cases. I'm not sure what benefits they get in CoE, but nothing I've seen them get in CF is in any way really significant.
In fact, your point about CF being kingdom vs kingdom makes it even less significant. Even if CF were P2W, which it's not, then these statistically rare players would have even less impact. I'm not sure what the actual data is, so let's assume some rough figures and pull from what we do have.
KS data is easy to pull, so let's start there. CF's KS campaign finished with 16,936 backers, and highest tiers were 57 @ $1k, 13 @ $2.5k, 10 @ $5k, and 15 @ $10k, for a total of 95 backers over $1k. We'll call those our whales, which make up about 0.6% of the total population (Assuming post-campaign numbers stayed the same, and they probably didn't since non-whales tend to back in greater numbers over time.).
I'm not sure what the total number is, but let's just say CF servers can hold 200 players, then that means there's about one whale per server. Future maps will be larger, but current servers are 9x9 tile maps, which makes for 81 total tiles. Thus, you have about a 10% chance of ever being in the same tile as a whale, assuming you're even online at the same time.
Since this is a kingdom game where the lines of battle exist on multiple fronts at any given time, even if that lone OP whale has a significant impact on the fight in his immediate vicinity(which is significantly less than an entire tile), it's only an impact in HIS immediate vicinity, and the fights elsewhere are more even.
Thus, even if CF were P2W, the impact of whales would be practically irrelevant on any campaign overall. The fact that EKs are personal things that are removed from the actual campaigns where PvP take place, and that I've seen no actual combat advantages to paying customers over non-paying (or non-whale) customers, I don't think there's any way you could actually claim CF is a P2W game in any sense of the phrase. Much less could you claim that being P2W would have any relevant impact on the game even were it true.
For clarity the Kingdom vs Kingdom statement was about CoE, not CF. As I said, CF is much less "over the top" P2W than other games because much of their benefits are tied to the Eternal kingdoms which will have limited impact in the main game, although I believe on some server rulesets it could have more of an impact. We shall see.
Fair point. It's possible that there will be some rule set that makes this a different conversation. My opinion is that they wouldn't do that, but it's certainly an intelligent point that they could.
Has anyone played any of the classes in the game. Is any of them less difficult meaning not as fast action. May be a ranged class that does not require as much twitch to play. I cannot manage a game with too much action orientated so hoping there is a place for me.
Wait, what? How the F are land parcels and items for them in instanced player owned realms P2W? They have absolutely nothing to do with the outer rings/regions of actual game play.
Wait, what? How the F are land parcels and items for them in instanced player owned realms P2W? They have absolutely nothing to do with the outer rings/regions of actual game play.
There are Import/Export rules for each campaign that dictate how much stuff can be brought into that campaign. Some will be zero.. others will be more than zero.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Has anyone played any of the classes in the game. Is any of them less difficult meaning not as fast action. May be a ranged class that does not require as much twitch to play. I cannot manage a game with too much action orientated so hoping there is a place for me.
Not really, not if you want to be competitive in any sense that is. I would liken it to something like Wildstar but in PvP form.
Good points. I can definitely see where you're coming from on it, and I think it is a bit of a different situation in MOBAs. Of course, I'm not really much on those sorts of games, so it's hard to have a personal opinion there.
I do think your point about gear is one of the better ones made with respect to this game, though. Because they're going to use this spirit bank concept and your loot chance will change what you bring back, increasing the odds there would have some real impact.
Keep in mind, the devs have never said they were planning on that. It's me purely talking out of my rear and thinking it'd be a good idea. Though, I'm re-thinking that now with your excellent points.
I have a fair bit of faith in the Crowfall devs. So I'd imagine they won't let microtransactions ruin their broader goals.
The need for a catch-up mechanic is an outcome of a general design issue (I don't follow Crowfall closely, so it may or may not apply). It stems from a vertical progression, where higher levels are directly stronger than lower levels. It's incredibly obvious in WoW, where a level 70 character has a huge advantage over a level 65 character. They also have an advantage economically, as lower level gear/rewards end up being mostly negligible.
This means you can put players on a one-dimensional scale. The more they play, the "stronger" they get, moving slowly along the scale, overtaking players who play less. Since the lower level content is not that relevant, players are encouraged to keep up with others at any cost. Hence, not having enough time makes the game a lot less enjoyable.
The solution to this is designing a system where people with less time are still viable components of the whole system. In the real world, owning a small restaurant is not necessarily less rewarding than owning a big national chain. Even small businesses can have big impacts locally - and additionally, the national corporations often rely on smaller companies for supply/production. Both come with different sets of challenges, impacting the world in different ways.
Sandbox games like Crowfall can definitely make this happen. From what I've read, EVE does this fairly well. The big skirmishes have large powerful motherships, but the smaller (more easily obtainable) ships still have meaningful parts to play out in the encounter. Economically, a component based system also empowers players with less time. Crafting an amazing sword might need high quality hilts. As such, crafting the final sword is probably more time consuming (you need to source more ingredients/components), but an established player who is known for making quality hilts is crucial to the process.
I think it's better to lobby for making people with less time viable, rather than push for boosts that mitigate not having time.
I'm not sure why any of that would be something you'd expect some kind of argument on.
I didn't ask for an argument, but you did a great job of squirming out of a response. You should take up politics.
BTW, CoE have started their P4A campaign. You should hurry and buy in. They just might let you write marketing fluff articles for them as well.
I said I like CF's graphics better, and I'm pretty sure I've pointed out in previous articles that I thought SotA would be better served by the more "cartoonish" graphics. It's a little hard to be more direct than that.
Wait, what? How the F are land parcels and items for them in instanced player owned realms P2W? They have absolutely nothing to do with the outer rings/regions of actual game play.
There are Import/Export rules for each campaign that dictate how much stuff can be brought into that campaign. Some will be zero.. others will be more than zero.
Import has nothing to do with how big your castle in your personal instance is. On the campaign with the most liberal import rules, you can import what you are carrying, which is gear you have crafted from resources you've gained in a previous campaign. The lesser resources of the Eternal Kingdoms is available to everyone since everyone gets a parcel for free, though there won't be any large castle on it unless you dedicated resources to build it.
There will not be PvE servers, not in the traditional sense. There will be Campaign Worlds, which will include a variety of PvP rulesets, and there will be the Eternal Kingdoms, which are basically instanced housing on steroids. Resource spawns in the EKs will be limited to the most basic resources. Mob spawns will be limited across both EKs and CWs. There will be no dungeons or raids, no quests. Mobs won't drop loot. They will drop some stuff used in crafting, but that's it, and they exist mainly to increase the danger in the world. If someone is looking to just PvE against mobs in this game, they are going to be disappointed.
If that is true, this game will end just like all the other similar ones before... with a ghost population after the first couple of months.
This is true. Accept it or move on.
I don't think a lot of traditional PVE players are fully grasping everything that is going on with this game. This isn't going to be "UO 2 The Gankfest Continues" the ideas around PVP and the rules and laws have evolved and changed over the last 20 years. This also isn't going to be "Planetside" where you can grab a gun and start blasting. There is going to be a very deep skill involvement to specialize, like years long deep. Essentially no one should be able to ever learn all available skills, much like EVE, who's systems CF is borrowing heavily from.
It will not just drop you in a jungle or desert and have you fight it out with rocks with the nearest person to you. The systems in the game will push you into joining your allies. Finding and keeping resources will be the PVE, getting the valluables back to a "safe" place will be the PVE, defending from marauding players and monsters will be part of everyday life. The crafting will be much deeper than what most people are expecting. Everything beside a few seed items will be player made. So there will need to be specialists for more than just weapons and armor. Even Fortresses, Siege equipment and BODIES!! will be player made.
While there will not be "dungeons" in the traditional sense, there will be difficult monsters in some places depending on the game ruleset. I would be highly surprised if there were not random caves with higher monster spawn and/or valuable collectables. These areas will be highly fought over and contested once the locations are known. However the "Explorer" to first find said cave, critter or item is by nature a PVE vocation.
The rulesets themselves deserve some special mention. While I don't have any first hand experience yet, the differing amounts of rulesets appear to be staggering. With anything from Free for All, to God's War, to Race wars and now probably Class wars. I still don't understand it all. There is a Class, a Race,a God, and a random Zodiac assigned to each Vessel I think.
So it is possible to be playing on multiple rulesets at once. One could be the Godswar where the Followers of Good,Evil and Neutrality are in a 3 way war for Victory this world will only exist for a total of 6 months as it is being torn apart. The next ruleset could be Race vrs Race Vrs Race for victory where it ends in 3 months. Then its off to where you are grouped according to Zodiac sign, this campaign goes for 9 whole months and would be one of the longer campaigns. Remember now that each one of these worlds is being destroyed over the time of the campaign. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Rulesets can include, how big your storage bank is, what kinds of items you may import, what kinds of items you may try to export, how dangerous the wildlife on the world is, the list goes on and on.
How mineral rich a campaign world is determined by difficulty or how tough the death penalty is. A low risk world that say only drops one random equipped item on death and vessel is safe would have reward just above what is available in your EK. A medium risk world would drop an equipped item and all backpack contents but vessel is still safe would have medium grade ore, wood ect. to find. A high risk world where everything drops and they can steal your vessel too would have the highest rewards. Now consider there should be many of these campaign worlds running at once, possibly dozens starting and stopping at different times. Your ultimate goal is to win as many campaigns as possible, thus allowing more of the stuff in your banks to make it back to your Eternal Kingdom, thus allowing you to use that stuff in future campaigns. (And make your EK fancier than the other guys.)
But you are really going to want to win the ones where you yourself have a bank full of good stuff and you will want to fight to keep it!
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
Comments
Well Red, here's the thing about supporting two games and writing articles catering to both groups of fanboys...
Here's what your SotA friends have to say about Crowfall. You know, the ones that gush over your articles on how amazing SotA is when you publish them here:
Q: Do you think the graphics could be upgraded as Crowfall did?
#1
I think they made a nice cartoon looking world
#2
So you want SotA to be more cartoony and like WoW?
#3
SotA looks 10 times better!!! And i agree about the "cartoony" look. We have way more atmospheric and less generous cartoony graphics like crowfall. It's like Path of Exile versus Diablo3. PoE is the more atmospheric one. So is SotA!
I'm genuinely curious as to your opinion, Red. Is Crowfall cartoony and like WoW? Which is more atmospheric? Overall, which has the better graphics? You seem to have all the answers about both games so please, do tell.
~~ postlarval ~~
As I said, CF is much less "over the top" P2W than other games because much of their benefits are tied to the Eternal kingdoms which will have limited impact in the main game, although I believe on some server rulesets it could have more of an impact. We shall see.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
More cartoon like graphics are a smart direction for a game focused on PvP for the same reason it was smart for WoW. It's easier on GPUs, and I think a little easier to texture into the game.
Doesn't mean folks are wrong to push closer towards the uncanny valley, though. Shroud is more about story telling and the other aesthetic was considered the better choice at the time. I kind of disagreed, but there are a ton of considerations I was never privy to. They did some work before the campaign, so could be that they already had assets from another project or knew about some they wanted to use, or maybe it was a team experience issue. Or I could just be flat wrong and the more realistic graphics are actually better for the project because it appeals to their demographic better.
I'm not sure why any of that would be something you'd expect some kind of argument on.
Eternal Kingdoms are player owned instances. Explain P2W https://crowfall.com/en/store/
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
BTW, CoE have started their P4A campaign. You should hurry and buy in. They just might let you write marketing fluff articles for them as well.
~~ postlarval ~~
Not really, not if you want to be competitive in any sense that is. I would liken it to something like Wildstar but in PvP form.
The need for a catch-up mechanic is an outcome of a general design issue (I don't follow Crowfall closely, so it may or may not apply). It stems from a vertical progression, where higher levels are directly stronger than lower levels. It's incredibly obvious in WoW, where a level 70 character has a huge advantage over a level 65 character. They also have an advantage economically, as lower level gear/rewards end up being mostly negligible.
This means you can put players on a one-dimensional scale. The more they play, the "stronger" they get, moving slowly along the scale, overtaking players who play less. Since the lower level content is not that relevant, players are encouraged to keep up with others at any cost. Hence, not having enough time makes the game a lot less enjoyable.
The solution to this is designing a system where people with less time are still viable components of the whole system. In the real world, owning a small restaurant is not necessarily less rewarding than owning a big national chain. Even small businesses can have big impacts locally - and additionally, the national corporations often rely on smaller companies for supply/production. Both come with different sets of challenges, impacting the world in different ways.
Sandbox games like Crowfall can definitely make this happen. From what I've read, EVE does this fairly well. The big skirmishes have large powerful motherships, but the smaller (more easily obtainable) ships still have meaningful parts to play out in the encounter. Economically, a component based system also empowers players with less time. Crafting an amazing sword might need high quality hilts. As such, crafting the final sword is probably more time consuming (you need to source more ingredients/components), but an established player who is known for making quality hilts is crucial to the process.
I think it's better to lobby for making people with less time viable, rather than push for boosts that mitigate not having time.
Import has nothing to do with how big your castle in your personal instance is. On the campaign with the most liberal import rules, you can import what you are carrying, which is gear you have crafted from resources you've gained in a previous campaign. The lesser resources of the Eternal Kingdoms is available to everyone since everyone gets a parcel for free, though there won't be any large castle on it unless you dedicated resources to build it.
This is true. Accept it or move on.
I don't think a lot of traditional PVE players are fully grasping everything that is going on with this game. This isn't going to be "UO 2 The Gankfest Continues" the ideas around PVP and the rules and laws have evolved and changed over the last 20 years. This also isn't going to be "Planetside" where you can grab a gun and start blasting. There is going to be a very deep skill involvement to specialize, like years long deep. Essentially no one should be able to ever learn all available skills, much like EVE, who's systems CF is borrowing heavily from.
It will not just drop you in a jungle or desert and have you fight it out with rocks with the nearest person to you. The systems in the game will push you into joining your allies. Finding and keeping resources will be the PVE, getting the valluables back to a "safe" place will be the PVE, defending from marauding players and monsters will be part of everyday life.
The crafting will be much deeper than what most people are expecting. Everything beside a few seed items will be player made. So there will need to be specialists for more than just weapons and armor. Even Fortresses, Siege equipment and BODIES!! will be player made.
While there will not be "dungeons" in the traditional sense, there will be difficult monsters in some places depending on the game ruleset. I would be highly surprised if there were not random caves with higher monster spawn and/or valuable collectables. These areas will be highly fought over and contested once the locations are known. However the "Explorer" to first find said cave, critter or item is by nature a PVE vocation.
The rulesets themselves deserve some special mention. While I don't have any first hand experience yet, the differing amounts of rulesets appear to be staggering. With anything from Free for All, to God's War, to Race wars and now probably Class wars. I still don't understand it all.
There is a Class, a Race,a God, and a random Zodiac assigned to each Vessel I think.
So it is possible to be playing on multiple rulesets at once. One could be the Godswar where the Followers of Good,Evil and Neutrality are in a 3 way war for Victory this world will only exist for a total of 6 months as it is being torn apart. The next ruleset could be Race vrs Race Vrs Race for victory where it ends in 3 months. Then its off to where you are grouped according to Zodiac sign, this campaign goes for 9 whole months and would be one of the longer campaigns. Remember now that each one of these worlds is being destroyed over the time of the campaign.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Rulesets can include, how big your storage bank is, what kinds of items you may import, what kinds of items you may try to export, how dangerous the wildlife on the world is, the list goes on and on.
How mineral rich a campaign world is determined by difficulty or how tough the death penalty is. A low risk world that say only drops one random equipped item on death and vessel is safe would have reward just above what is available in your EK. A medium risk world would drop an equipped item and all backpack contents but vessel is still safe would have medium grade ore, wood ect. to find. A high risk world where everything drops and they can steal your vessel too would have the highest rewards.
Now consider there should be many of these campaign worlds running at once, possibly dozens starting and stopping at different times.
Your ultimate goal is to win as many campaigns as possible, thus allowing more of the stuff in your banks to make it back to your Eternal Kingdom, thus allowing you to use that stuff in future campaigns. (And make your EK fancier than the other guys.)
But you are really going to want to win the ones where you yourself have a bank full of good stuff and you will want to fight to keep it!
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
An acerbic sense of humor is NOT allowed here.