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Throne and Liberty Hype Thread
Interesting
Member UncommonPosts: 973
I had a change of mind in regards to Throne and Liberty.
I said in the opening thread that Throne and Liberty was going nowhere, based on my perception of NCSoft lack of evolutionary design implementations. I was wrong about that, but I said that months before the first public opportunity to see people playing.
I will explain, what I perceive now.
1. Autoplay is an evolution. It is necessary. It is the future. Its a safety net. Its life for the player and those around him, in all aspects. Its wisdom. Throne and Liberty developers from NCSoft were doing this years ago and have learned that resting and allowing players to rest is good, is necessary and its profitable.
It allows hundreds of psychological processes that are superior and evolutionary, conforting, stable, flexible. By all means, its even Divine to have autoplay feature, specially in a true massive scale of time and effort, longevity game. Its an evolution of what Lineage 1 and 2 were and the experience they gave us and what it required of us as players. We perceived it as healthy at the time, but nowadays that same experience would be sick, causing us to be sick, and its plague ridden with all kinds of prejudices and fallacies, all understandable, same with prejudices against consoles, monetization, mobile, nfts. These are all structural sedimentary apparent natural increments of evolutionary design. It just take the fine tunning, the elegant intelligence to make it work and I think Throne and Liberty has that. It has layers of thought in it, its not just a simple binary "lets have it", not a simplistic system, not void of what a game design must have, which is to think the end from the beggining.
2. Gameplay choice is a Trade off, currently in 2023 technology, economical, development levels. I saw Unreal Tournament modded with 400 bots, I saw Firefall with near a hundred people in game events, I saw Battlefields, I saw Planetside, I saw all the popular battle royales with a 100 people. Isaw modded games of the past like Freelancer multiplayer with near a hundred players, I saw Space Cowboys/Flysis/Ace Online with hundreds of players. I am mentioning the games that have the "Action" at standard or above standard levels. The dream is to have hundreds of players with action gameplay working smooth, stable, without lab, without the visual pollution and the confusion of hundreds of people casting spells/shootings weapons, etc. If this can be done currently and I believe it can be done, WE CANNOT REQUIRE OF NCSoft to design and deliver this. We cannot realistically require that from any company that currently exists in the market. Its in the future.
Now I could mention all the massive scale fantasy, melee, medieval or sci-fi isometric or top down MMORPGs of the past that did provide the Massive Scale 100+ players battles, from the very own Lineage to Warhammer Online, Dark Ages of Camelot, Shadowbane, Rising Force Online, etc and many other smaller, less well known games, that had that in some working measure. Even EVE Online, which we often forget, or the most recent attempts like New World instanced pvp modes which are arguably golden standard, but still not defensably "epic or massive" in scale or often enough, or well seasoned enough, or well balanced enough, and so on and so forth, despite the technical achievement of having a few dozen people fighting a moba like game mode in New World.
So what about the Gameplay of Throne and Liberty being Tab Target and the Tradeoff I am speaking about?
That they do manage to provide the hundreds of players on screen fighting. You want to experience that? You want. If you played the games I mentioned above, you know its worth the tradeoff for a significant portion of potential players, both old and new. Yes, you can always play a small scale action based high skill based melee hybrid MMO, but in New World at some point in the development they made it so you couldnt fight 5 players alone with your archer and win, even if you were highly skilled, intelligent, knowledgeable, etc. So in many games, that do have action and small scale PVP, even if its on open world, it is still not as fun as the epic massive scale.
Many people mention Black Desert, but its visual pollution, confusion, a clusterfuck, too fast. Just like the problem with Warframe that caused the developers to make Soul Frame.
The idea is the experience of pvp has to be degusted, tasted, chewed, thought, measured, clean, polished. Not a button mashing with sperging of seizure inducing sickness. On small skirmishes, those games work, but THEY ARE LIMITED to that, "1 x 1"s, small skirmishes. Skillfull action based dueling is fun, "4x4" is fun, etc. But EPIC MASSIVE SCALE IS ANOTHER DEGREE OF FUN. Throne and Liberty kept that essence from Lineage, that is good, we need that, the kids nowadays need to feel and experience that.
I said in the opening thread that Throne and Liberty was going nowhere, based on my perception of NCSoft lack of evolutionary design implementations. I was wrong about that, but I said that months before the first public opportunity to see people playing.
I will explain, what I perceive now.
1. Autoplay is an evolution. It is necessary. It is the future. Its a safety net. Its life for the player and those around him, in all aspects. Its wisdom. Throne and Liberty developers from NCSoft were doing this years ago and have learned that resting and allowing players to rest is good, is necessary and its profitable.
It allows hundreds of psychological processes that are superior and evolutionary, conforting, stable, flexible. By all means, its even Divine to have autoplay feature, specially in a true massive scale of time and effort, longevity game. Its an evolution of what Lineage 1 and 2 were and the experience they gave us and what it required of us as players. We perceived it as healthy at the time, but nowadays that same experience would be sick, causing us to be sick, and its plague ridden with all kinds of prejudices and fallacies, all understandable, same with prejudices against consoles, monetization, mobile, nfts. These are all structural sedimentary apparent natural increments of evolutionary design. It just take the fine tunning, the elegant intelligence to make it work and I think Throne and Liberty has that. It has layers of thought in it, its not just a simple binary "lets have it", not a simplistic system, not void of what a game design must have, which is to think the end from the beggining.
2. Gameplay choice is a Trade off, currently in 2023 technology, economical, development levels. I saw Unreal Tournament modded with 400 bots, I saw Firefall with near a hundred people in game events, I saw Battlefields, I saw Planetside, I saw all the popular battle royales with a 100 people. Isaw modded games of the past like Freelancer multiplayer with near a hundred players, I saw Space Cowboys/Flysis/Ace Online with hundreds of players. I am mentioning the games that have the "Action" at standard or above standard levels. The dream is to have hundreds of players with action gameplay working smooth, stable, without lab, without the visual pollution and the confusion of hundreds of people casting spells/shootings weapons, etc. If this can be done currently and I believe it can be done, WE CANNOT REQUIRE OF NCSoft to design and deliver this. We cannot realistically require that from any company that currently exists in the market. Its in the future.
Now I could mention all the massive scale fantasy, melee, medieval or sci-fi isometric or top down MMORPGs of the past that did provide the Massive Scale 100+ players battles, from the very own Lineage to Warhammer Online, Dark Ages of Camelot, Shadowbane, Rising Force Online, etc and many other smaller, less well known games, that had that in some working measure. Even EVE Online, which we often forget, or the most recent attempts like New World instanced pvp modes which are arguably golden standard, but still not defensably "epic or massive" in scale or often enough, or well seasoned enough, or well balanced enough, and so on and so forth, despite the technical achievement of having a few dozen people fighting a moba like game mode in New World.
So what about the Gameplay of Throne and Liberty being Tab Target and the Tradeoff I am speaking about?
That they do manage to provide the hundreds of players on screen fighting. You want to experience that? You want. If you played the games I mentioned above, you know its worth the tradeoff for a significant portion of potential players, both old and new. Yes, you can always play a small scale action based high skill based melee hybrid MMO, but in New World at some point in the development they made it so you couldnt fight 5 players alone with your archer and win, even if you were highly skilled, intelligent, knowledgeable, etc. So in many games, that do have action and small scale PVP, even if its on open world, it is still not as fun as the epic massive scale.
Many people mention Black Desert, but its visual pollution, confusion, a clusterfuck, too fast. Just like the problem with Warframe that caused the developers to make Soul Frame.
The idea is the experience of pvp has to be degusted, tasted, chewed, thought, measured, clean, polished. Not a button mashing with sperging of seizure inducing sickness. On small skirmishes, those games work, but THEY ARE LIMITED to that, "1 x 1"s, small skirmishes. Skillfull action based dueling is fun, "4x4" is fun, etc. But EPIC MASSIVE SCALE IS ANOTHER DEGREE OF FUN. Throne and Liberty kept that essence from Lineage, that is good, we need that, the kids nowadays need to feel and experience that.
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Comments
Throne and Liberty is a juggernaut of popularity built solid on a company that is specialized in delivering that, THEY ARE SUCCESFULL. Their earnings are on billions of dollars, they are rock solid. No amount of scorning from us or the west will cause them to fail suddenly. They are not on a "spiral of descent" either. These 12 years of so they are working on this game, its actually all the 20+ years they have been working on this MMORPG field in the industry. It is believeable that these TRADE OFF AND COMPROMISES and these CHOICES THEY HAVE MADE are actually THE RIGHT ONES!!!
Its an improvement upon everything they have made. They are going to LEAD in the wisdom of having Autoplay for their THOUSAND HOURS LONGEVITY game. They are going to Lead, because THE OTHER GAMES COMPETING WITH THEM DONT HAVE THAT. Its a genious play. Look around, everything mediocrity, not even worth to play the actiony ones, much less sacrifice your life (time commitment to a new MMORPG) to the sure disappointment. Throne and Liberty is filled with safety nets, safety nets against bots (players autoplay eat bots alive, diluting their potential/earnings), safety net against black market, safety net against people quitting for "real life reasons", imagine that. They circunvented with their design even the meta aspects of social gaming. Look around, everything irrelevant, everyone only cares about the new games so they move like a flock of birds to the next game, unable to find a place to call home, unable to use one game as a plataform for long term, to add it as an asset in their life. Throne and Liberty fit like a glove. And amongst those that have autoplay, Throne and Liberty is the Big Blockbuster AAA. Its going to have the old players, and its going to have the new ones. It has safety net against entry barrier, because free to play on Steam by Amazon. It has safety net against company competition, because NCSoft can shrug of Microsoft, Tencent, and say "bring it on", "we hold our ground and we survive and we thrive".
They are going to LEAD in the wisdom of allowing the old school design of POWER FANTASY "If everyone is a hero, noone is", allowing 1 player character or a small group of players to enter the fray of battle of a 100 x 100 and turn the tides. This eastern design is the stumbling stone that the western MMO designers abandoned over the years for the sakes of having "fairness" or "balance", which is not what MMORPGs exist to provide, an escapism from the equality/equity or inferiority of real life. The western designers tried to catter to the casual audience by limiting levels, creating the notions of "end game", of "raids", of entitlement to being "like the cool kids". Whereas MMORPGs are about the experience of power fantasy, of becoming more and more powerfull, more and more relevant amongst as many as possible. This is what the Tab Targeting and Autoplay empower. They allow competition AND LIVING LIFE (through the autoplay designs, offline for sleep, semi-afk/assisted for when you need to multitask, focus on something else, prioritize something else, you know, "life", either wife, children, family, studies, work, fitness, house chores, socialization in general, YOU CAN KEEP ALL OF THOSE THINGS, AND STILL BE like a hero AQUILES IN THE FIELD, withot sacrificing anything, because the autoplay is enough to psychological cause you to not give up, its a hand preventing you from falling, you never think like "I cant do both" or "I missed this or that day, and now I cant catch up". You only really cant catch up if you quit for weeks. See, the autoplay is a little help, it dilutes the side effects of withdrawal temporarily from the game. It still allows the rush of the race for power, progression, the competition.
3. The Monetization. They are doing Pay to Win LITE. Pay to Win Light. Something new as well. Basically, the game is worth the price of a BOX purchase, or the price of a monthly subscription, and thats more or less what is fair to expect a player to spend on the technicaly pay to win market. Its not thousands of dollars, its not dozens of thousands of dollars. There is this imaginary, hypothetical investment that achieves what players call satisfatory cost benefit of investment for the purpose of competing, which for Throne and Liberty is within a hundred dollars. The excess of expenditure does not require, incentivize, allow or benefit infinite investment. The inner workings of their pay to win monetization require a mix of player time and effort, commitment, are mitigated by actual player luck, by free to players with autoplay flooding market, affecting prices, the reward system, the chemistry required involves actual play alongside a proportionate amount of investment. Like fuel to a car, you may be able to pay for infinite upgrades, but if you can only grind, play, acquire materials for 4 upgrades, then thats your pay to win cap, it would still require you to attend, lets say 4 events daily, that happen once every 3 hours, so even if you play 12 hours, you can still spend only 4 measures of money, but then again, if you play 12 hours, you will likelly generate value from things you sell on the market to remain afloat.
ONLY A PURIST will find fault. Anyone that understand the reasonableness of investing the equivalent of a box purchase or a monthly sub on something that gives them hundreds to thousands of hours such as an MMORPG will not feel bad, copium, guilty or hypocrite about opening their wallet.
In resume THRONE AND LIBERTY name means:
the autoplay gives you LIBERTY, freedom to keep your life activities
the tab targeting allows you to be part of an epic massive scale where you can actually socially rise to glory status of mythological hero (who else is selling this drug on the industry so fair and so cheap, so new and so popular, so experienced, so polished, as Throne and Liberty?) IT ALLOWS YOU TO BE KING, king over multitude of other players, King by your own merits, by the lack of "progression limitations" which was the stumbling stone of the western casual cool kids who scorned grinding and power fantasy in their designs and games. The true essence of MMORPGs and the significance and relevance is with Throne and Liberty.
The western, tried to shift what is relevant to what is "currently popular", but look around, what is popular is garbage and not MMORPG, there is chance to be King over others, a hero with high kill:death ratio in the epic massive scales in the western games, they dont even have massive scales for the MMORPGs, and certainly not new. New World from the beggining said "we are making this for the spoiled rich cool kids with a life, so our game has level cap, garbage itemization power potential, useless ratio of reward per effort expansions, be agressive get a town live like a cesar by earning taxes and thats it" They designed it according to their image and similitude and it became obvious and garbage to 90% of the player base within 1 season (3 months).
Throne and Liberty is not like that, IT WILL GO SOMEWHERE.
So I post this here to correct myself.
I love 400 people Unreal Tournament, but look at that on youtube, its a clusterfuck.
Now look at the 100+ players on Lineage 1, 2 or Throne and Liberty! Its a beauty, it is clean, its a ballet, it allows thinking, reaction, its merciful, the time to kill is good enough, its engaging, its something noone else is doing or can do or provide. And thats the tab targetting tradeoff.
You can still play Throne and Liberty and some actiony game on the side, even at the same time. The Autoplay will cause you to love Throne and Liberty and always forgive it, because it forgives you.
So I decided to go all in with Throne and Liberty, and spend some $100 on it, without remorse, because its worth it, regardless where I actually choose to spend it in the shop.
I know some people will spend more, I know some people will still deploy bots that surpass the autoplay, I know its going to be met with huge scorning from the action crowd, from the westerners that have prejudice against the easterners. But I know that at the end of the day, they have no where to lay their heads. They have no house, no place to call home, no plataform. I know they will keep going from game to game, that in all my reading, are full of flaws, despite the pros. Whereas Throne and Liberty is still, above average in most aspects, solid quality/polishing, surviving, with community, worth participating from the start.
Tab targeting, Autoplay and Lite Monetization is not slacking, its INTELIGENT DESIGN, flexible, considering the longevity, the journey, the proposition, the objective, the experience, the current limitations, etc.
What we want in our dreams is something that is going to take many more years to be deployed in the field (the "dream MMORPG"). And might actually be the child of this one, still leading the breakthroughs of technology and socio-economical-cultural designs.
The game is going to have a test in the west, the registering is open, go look it out.
The game is free, try it, millions will. Make your own mind, your own conclusions.
My thoughts I share for free also.
I suggest the content creator Steparu which has been bridging the audience of the West with the East games for us for more than a decade now. Like Omer used to do.
Steparu played the Korean test and streamed it on twitch (over a hundred hours, live with hundreds of people watching and commenting for the duration of the korean test) and has a playlist of specific topic videos on youtube wich I recommend:
Here you will get the most unbiased, neutral, factual and yet popular and relevant opinion and also comments section worth reading about the game.
If you want to give Throne and Liberty a try.
I suggest this as a starting point in your absorption of data for your own analysis and conclusions, somewhat free and clean from the negativity and ignorance and madness spread by the other "popular" video game youtubers.
The "misunderstandings" will be clarified in due time. There will be a Western global test and the game will get more hype and coverage and it will escape the clutches of the few more stablished youtubers and gain the world. I think it cannot be contained, because the AAA quality, global release, free to play, the starvation/hunger/thirst for "the MMORPG" is just at an all time high like never before.
People are looking for a MMORPG to settle, to start on, to weave their soul into, to bond and form/participate in a community. They want it big, new, relevant, popular, etc. This ensures this game will have the popularity that New World, Lost Ark, Elden Ring, Diablo 4, etc had.
The player retention post launch here on Throne and Liberty will be higher than all those games also. They have localized the game to many languages, voice overs, cinematics, in-game direction, polished, balanced, etc. They have everything nailed down.
Unlike previous Eastern releases on the West, they didnt made the mistake Blue Protocol had of launching first on Japan. They wont be plagued like Lost Ark was. They wont die from car crash character progression accident full stop like New World. They are not this solo, co-op adventure like Elden Ring or this after thought of fast food design aspects that Diablo 4 is, with "seasonal wipes" and "dozens of uniques per hour" spoilage and overall claustrophobic, depressing outlook on social aspects devoid of living breathing long term massive world aspects.
Here is the Steparu, atleast watch the Prologue, which has the above Steven Spielberg Jurassic Park levels of "be amazed". Because this is actually a world to play in, and not just a 1 hour movie.
Here is an article from The Korea Economic Daily, in which representatives of NCSoft declare plainly that they want to make all their NCSoft games wrought into play to earn. They will design it, they will think how to make it.
They know the pay to win is winding down. They see Mir4 IS SUCCESFULL. They know their (NCSoft) games are much better. They are closer to where the breakthrough, boom, tech-design of play to earn is happening. They have their own take and ideas on it. They are independent, etc.
Their only limitation is that they cant make it on Korea, because its forbidden currently, but they can and will do it abroad.
What exist in terms of NFT or Play to Earn is in its infancy, its bad, its trash, its not well thought out, the chemical balancing of how to distribute the value of those who inject money and those who are lured by the promise of earning, etc.
NCSoft can do it. It might happen for Throne and Liberty. It does not surprise me if the autoplay, tab targetting and the entire game design has already accounted for this possibility conversion.
They use the word CATALYST. They perceive it, its a first step.
"NCSoft expects NFT-based games will provide a new catalyst for its business growth by attracting new gamers and taking commissions from operating an NFT exchange."
"We are also considering applying the play-to-earn game model to all games developed and distributed by NCSoft," NCSoft's Chief Financial Officer Hong Won-jun
https://www.kedglobal.com/blockchain_technology/newsView/ked202111110012
Guys, you dont want to miss this.
This is incline. You want to be part of this game atleast from the Western Test, from the release and since its free, you want to see with your own eye where it is going. The way I see its not even a bet. Its a solid guaranteed thing, because of the multitude of safety nets designs.
SteamCharts will have Throne and Liberty free to play with hundreds of thousands of players. They have content prepared its been many years. I have researched their pay to win design, its going to pierce bypass our defenses.
This is already disclosed as FREE TO PLAY.
1. consumed as novelty, as a popular release event, "because its a movie and all your friends are going", so when Throne and Liberty gets Western Test and Global Release, nobody is going to really have a ground to complain. Experiencing a release, regardless if a game ultimatelly fails is always something that adds value as a life experience;
2. if you are not required dont spend any money in it, no entry barrier, no ticket fee, opportunity cost is your time, which is already addressed by 1;
3. if said game has AUTOPLAY and you dont give an inch of your life of what is important to you BESIDES THE GAME to stay sitted playing the game that might flop. Your life book of memories dont become full of blank pages, because you were semi-afking the game, you were having "assisted play", light, low cost, cheap, time investment.
Besides there are people that have evolved psychological defenses where they accept the risk of a game not surviving and they play anyway for the first day, days, week, or weeks. I dont regret nothing nowadays and I wash my hands of other's people's design's shortcommings, I set myself to enjoy and analyse what can be enjoyed and analysed. I always win because I always extract value/experience out of my time invested into anything.
In other games people with a thousand hours write reviews of ressentment when something goes sour, when a nerf happens, where it gets flooded with dlc, when the company decides to kill the sheep instead of shearing it for the wool, etc.
All of this is far from Throne and Liberty right now.
Its a win win, for streamers, for testers, players, content creators, people who just want to pass time, people who just want to analyse the design, etc.
Only losers here I see are the people that publically exposed themselves and criticized the game openly and are now snared by their own words, and might fall on their own sword based on their declarations. I.E. The youtubers that are being EXPOSED as just riding the common initial gameplay disappointment sentiment to get views and went over what is acceptable and true in their words and will later have to reengineer the cleansing of their public image, to save face. Or those who will remain prideful and cut of their own ears and blind their own eyes, so as to not feel the internal corrosion of hypocrisy, contradiction, lies and misjudgement.
Every player autoplaying is like an ant and every player using a complex bot is like a spider.
Since every player gets to autoplay, you turn 100% of the players into "ants" and the offenders (breaking terms of service by using third party software) are like "spiders" in the midst.
So the proportion of players with autoplay starts from 100% and the % of players using bots starts from 0% and may reach, lets say 10%, for the sake of exemplification.
100 thousand to 10 thousand ratio.
Now when you dont have players with auto play, the players are like sluggards and the players using bots are like ants.
When players go to sleep, disconect, or whatever are doing that they are not "working", the botters have an advantage over them. The advantage is like near 100%, because no autoplay equals to 0 value when afk or offline, and botting, usually is done in the most efficient way, so it somewhat could achieve somewhat near 100% value (assuming the bot is all set up, correctly in place, time, skills, equipment, all the conditions).
The autoplay versus normal play has a different ratio of efficiency. People who played Throne and Liberty said that the autoplay is like 20-25% of the maximum efficiency compared to when the player is actually playing. These numbers could be higher or lesser, also depending on how the character for the autoplay is set and how the player is playing.
There are ways to play that are highly efficient, usually the best methods are secret. Anyways, assuming someone playing can go and do the method of "tagging many mobs, using a skill rotation most efficiently, well timed and killing a group of mobs in the time of its cooldowns", then another player also manually playing might fight one enemy at a time, with a different build, without proper skill, rotation, equipment, location, etc.
You can assume that from all the players manually playing, there will still be a significant discrepancy in efficiency, which is ok, as gaming the game is part of gaming, and the reason we play, to win, to be more efficient, more inteligent, to progress faster or be victorious, etc. This is ok.
Now, imagine that if 90% of the players autoplay, after a few days, they will somewhat learn how to most efficiently or smartly do it, same way for the botters.
Still, the amount of players autoplaying will dwarf the efficiency of the players botting, JUST LIKE A COLONY OF ANTS stomps a few spiders.
Now, since this is the rule, i.e. always the majority will autoplay, and botting is forbidden and only a portion of the player base will risk it and it will also be tracked, spotted, banned, combated over time, etc.
What will happen is that the botters advantage will be diluted, weakened. In this game, people's character that are not attending/assisting the character, but are afk, may get attacked and killed, same with Bots.
The time to kill is enough so that the player who is around somewhat semi-afk can still defend itself, save itself, escape, reposition, whatever and still thrive. I.e. informing whoever attacks them that they are there, so as to not waste both players time, because of the time to kill, escape features, etc.
In any other game what happens?
The ants (bots) eat the sluggard (player who is afk, disconnected, offline, sleeping, whatever)
In this game what happens?
The players are the ants (due to autoplay) and they thrive due to numbers against the spiders (botters
How this affect a game economy? The botters curse the autoplay, because instead of eating the sluggard and having a huge economic advantage, they become the spider pariahs, more agile, still more efficient, but who can barely get a little edge, instead of having a huge feast.
The society becomes one that AUTO POLICES ITSELF in two levels:
1. autoplay characters lets say 100.000 autoplayers generate 50.000 coins at 50% autoplay efficiency and the botters, being lets say 10.000, with a 80% bot efficiency, will still generate just 8.000 coins.
The numbers are just examples (even if 20% of the players were botters and even if the autoplay efficiency ratio to the botting efficiency had a higher than 30% deviation, it would still be a huge deterrant, any number is a win here), but you get the overall idea of the equation: autoplayers are more numerous and righteous, safe and their overall value generation dwarves the botters, thus STABILIZING THE ECONOMY, preventing them from achieving their intent, i.e., they cant turn "professional" in a game where they are just a spider in the midst of ants, instead of games where they are the ants (no effort bots) feasting on the sluggards (rich kids using black markets and credit cards also).
2. ANYONE CAN ATTACK ANYONE if they suspect of "spider" activity (i.e. bot), or even the other autoplayers.
In other words, not only do they dilute the effects of botting, it deters bots incentive, they also allow players to kill them all day long.
All working in synchrony because of the gameplay type, the time to kill, to freedom to attack, the autoplay risk, etc.
It seems like a MAJOR PLAY by NCSoft against botting.
And guess what? Every other company that doesnt follow and copy/modifies such design is going to remain being plagued by bots. Even Lost Ark is the biggest example, it was like a sluggard that got surrounded by ants and brought down to nought.
Another reason to be optimist and relieved for Throne and Liberty, BECAUSE IT IS WARDED AGAINST THIS.
It is huge brains game design guys!
They are not telling them everything they are doing under the hood or why they are doing and what they are trying to achieve, but I am revealing their secrets here on MMORPG.com only for our fair minded community, that you may understand they dont want to be copied by Tencent/Microsoft,etc competition, so they dont want to boast and teach, but I can read the design, I understand what they are doing, how they are doing, where they are going with the ball and they are going to score.
Get on board.
I'm legit scared cause if AI generated posts/responses become main stream, it'll be trolling 24/7
So yes, player time weights heavier on this design than in a game with, lets say "prophetic gameplay" where you can strafe/dodge every attack and have to aim/predict accurately every attack of yours.
But even this tab targetting, rotating skills, has some form of skill like timing and distance, gauging who to target, when to engage, when to disengage, kiting to heal, move outside attacks, aoe, etc.
So there is enough player skill for someone to enter a hundred pvp fight and get dozens of kills per death ratio. Which I think is what trigger certain satisfaction, incentives, and provides a certain feel and experience that other games, specially from the West think its a "no no", are afraid of the backlash from the frustration their own kids would experience, etc.
NCSoft as a Korean root MMORPG developer, of the Korean school of MMORPG design will not back down from the essence of massive scale of time and effort, the epicness of the character progression, etc that is essence to the original MMORPG's experience.
No 1 hit kill sniper headshots or a short burst to the head with an assault rifle or a grenade or rocket launcher, etc type of instantaneous, gratuitous, entitled power of the casual games here, far from that. Again, this is an MMORPG, they know what they are doing.
Its not World of Warcraft level cap, one week to level cap, everyone entitled to end game, and being given equality, etc. The target audience they pleased is the not original target audience of MMORPGs. The elitization feeling through raids they provided was even corrupt. Things (even certain MMOs) being popular or not in a certain historical period are irrelevant, because, casualization, consoles, mobiles, etc are structural corruptions (cultural produce, many times moved by the sin of greed and other sins) of the superior form of the experience of games: the ideal experience are true old school MMORPG, played on desktop computers in the confort and luxury of your home, with time, patience and dignity of someone whose life standards, education, experiences, etc are angelic top notch human life experience. Throne and Liberty retains and is an evolution and Lineage 1, 2 also from NCSoft had that pedigree.
So time and effort spent being the grand weight in the balance of win or loss for Throne and Liberty is a "back to the roots" of the essence of MMORPGs. The target audience needs to be some corrupt form of human experience to scorn grind or notions of progression, either in gaming or in real life, some lesser being. You dont catter to those when you make a prime top of the line 12 years in the making MMORPG in the montage line you have 20+ years of experience like NCSoft. Thats what the mobile games and in some measure, the consoles were for, economic enablers for the companies, while being sampling experiences for the humans, not really being intended for them to root themselves to a specific game for years, like the original MMORPGs could provide and what Throne and Liberty can provide.
Its the antithesis of consumism, the centralization of people and resources into One Product/Service MMORPG to "rule them all", that when its made with enough quality, having the capability of providing a wide breadth wealth of rich human experiences (like EVE Online) can be considered a time well invested, such as the time someone spends on a University or to acquire some degree in some area. Thats the type of human value that a top of the line MMORPG can provide, and it justify the time and the resources, both for players and developers. And at this level of cultural engineering and manipulation, stablishing the time and effort (i.e. grind) as King is the only true learning that needs to be absorbed for real life, whereas player skill to win, or pay to win are corruptions of the truth, and therefore the games needs to be designed to free the minds of people from thinking skill or money are big or relevant factors generically on a long term real life. Thus the "MMORPG university" experience of spending many years on the same game counters consumism and all greedy corruptions. Thats why so much hate against making one game "the savior" or "the king", or even the hate against MMORPGs genre, as they are (if done according to the original blueprints, according to truth) all attention and time consuming.
The autoplay feature is an evolution of that, which enables both the "MMORPG University" as part of a life phase/experience of people, without regrets/resentment and without sacrifices, decay, degeneration of the general balance that is required for a healthy life. Throne and Liberty is doing everything correctly.
Might not be as much skill ceiling to draw Michael Jordan types of people into the game though, but enough to have the turn the tables, turn the tide moments. Its all about knowing when to stick your turtle neck out or in, engaging/disengaging. When to wait for your cooldowns, when to use your resources. Like throwing faints, fadeaway, etc. Just because you dont move and attack/cast at the same time, doesnt dodge with a roll and doesnt need to aim to hit doesnt make it skilless. Just look at the League of Legends, Dota gameplay, its practically this, and this is as good as those when the PVP happens, and much better than that when its massive scale pvp.
And do I need to remind that NCSoft made the best moba ever? Master x Master, with wasd+mouse with rolls and mouse to aim, wasd to move, with pve, double tagging characters, all the things, top of the line design and it flopped because OF THE DARKNESS of the MANIPULATION OF THE POPULARITY of the people using those stablished games as monetization plataforms for the content creation. NCSoft knows all of this, they choose not to insist and pay the streamers and viewbot themselves and spend millions on marketing in the West to breakthrough into the moba field, BUT THEY HAD THE BEST PRODUCT. Its a fact.
NCSoft knows the ins and outs, the corruptions of the systems, they are going the tried and true method, they are making conscious choices, their tab targetting+ autoplay combo has top security, antibotting, anticheating, probalancing, field control, stability, bug free, smoothness, etc. They wont give up all of that to risk and do something that might not be doable in 2023. What Black Desert, Warframe did is too fast. What New World did is full of mistakes/errors/holes in many levels.
NCSoft can, in a 5 years+, make the action based MMORPG we want. Its that they are pacing it, its not the time yet they think.
In other words, Throne and Liberty PVP is in essence, derived from Lineage and other games of the original MMORPGs, reminiscent and identical to the MOBAS SECRET SAUCE of PVP. The difference is that while the mobas are "always on" with volume of PVP interactions every minute, from the first minutes to the end, MMORPGs have the encounters more sparsed.
I see people saying that Black Desert PVP wipes the floor with Throne and Liberty, but that is only for duels and small skirmishes and the small fry PVE moments. Every 3 hours or so Throne and Liberty has PVP events that put it back above Black Desert, New World, or any other action MMORPG. Its not about the character control, movement, dodging or precision, its about the MOBA MOMENTS, that actually happen around the objectives "dynamic world events, pvp", and 3 hours is often enough, and that happens for Dungeons, and other PVP events as well, so Throne and Liberty has the "on and off" modes. Where you can chill and the moments when you got to experience PVP and it has skill in it, unless there is imbalance in number of players or actual character progression or build types.
In that case, I suggest being wise in choosing your guild, being wise and diligent in progressing your character and researching your build and playstyle before, so as to be responsible for minimizing frustration of loss/defeat. Which is implied to exist, without safety nets as this is of the essence of a true MMORPG, think your build, be diligent and efficient with your progression and walk with wise people around you (guild/team mates), so you dont get destroyed. Totally acceptable part of the experience of an MMORPG as these games simulate war, battles, fight, political conflicts and intrigue, espionage, assassination, drama, etc. Its all a game, so we remain angels, without ever doing these things in real life.
What I noticed is that the "time to kill" chosen is good, instead of 1 second or less, it still takes half a dozen seconds or a dozen seconds in many circunstances, from Boss fights to PVP and thats a very good thing to have.
Whereas in shooters, the time to kill is detrimental, a structural limitation that people dont perceive (you would have to have played games like Elite, Freelancer, or Mecha games to understand that after a certain amount of seconds engaged in a PVP fight the brain stimuli trigger certain spots and the dancing generated affects the heart rate, eye, hand coordination, types of hormonal and psychological triggers) And this game has some of that.
So yeah, you are correct, Throne and Liberty equation of success is like
2 parts time and effort, 1 part player skill and half part pay to win, and that summed and divided by the people in your team vs the people against your team. That sort of thing.
Whereas some other games, some other MMORPGs, are designed to either have higher weight on pay to win and player skill and less time on time, but as I said, this is an MMORPG, unless some are one of these people that call marriage things that are not marriage and the like, relativizing, subjectivizing, toiling and spinning around objective truths. This is a true MMORPG, so over many months of daily adventures it only makes sense that some develop to become heroes of glory might and renown.
Therefore, start from day 1, dont quit, dont look back, and try to get into the test and read/consume content about the game many days, weeks, months in advance. This is one of those games that requires being ready to go, as it has in its DNA a race for power.
The games with 1 week to level cap, entitled "end game", forced "balance", equal "gear score" and level, etc are corruptions of the essence of experiencing, virtually, the state of being equal from the start, at some times inferior, at some times superior and again, at some times at balance. And all these are alright to experience and try your best to improve is the moral of the experience that you bring with you for life. Games without that are useless/unprofitable for your advancement as a human being. We didnt even called those games disguised/dressed as MMOs MMOs back in the 2002+ years.
Soon 99% of the posts will not be human.
Confucius say 'what the heck is this bs'
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I believe this to be true as well. I've always felt that the design concept behind WoW SoO raid boss Nazgrim was probably one of their best simply because there were phases (namely his defensive stance phase) that most of the raid just couldn't do dps otherwise he would go apeshit as a result. Sure, some raid bosses afterwards had some spin concept of this (like splitting the raid or having a sub group deal with an entire mechanic all together), but I still feel that fight handled it the best. For the most part though, 'skill' isn't really reflective of the style of combat as much as it is the implementation of certain mechanics and phases, with many developers just relying heavily on timers and dps checks as fight design. There's not many fights with reactive mechanics anymore or ever a combination of reactive mechanics alongside timers and mechanic specific groups.
Still, I loved how EVE leveled the playing field with its skill training tied to one just having to subscribe and get the same training rate as anyone else in the game regardless of account age.
Yeah, yeah, I know, "but Kyle, I can never catch up," true of course but also not necessary either but that would be a discussion for a different thread.
I'm not against getting free stuff, but it has been my experience such can come with strings attached or design consequences because it exists.
It was mentioned that autoplay in T&L gives inferior experience gains. Usually this means one can pay extra for a superior experience, especially in the mobile game market which is the "trap" I'll be interested in seeing whether or not exists once game has its Western launch.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
More effort, time spent or even cash shop spending should equal better rewards in a progression centric game.
There are games which are more of a measure of a players "skills" at manipulating a keyboard, others measure their ability to outthink an opponent, with most being some combination of all of these.
As pointed out, there will still be inequities no matter the design, so it all comes down to playing games with the mechanics one prefers.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Yeah, I'm sure their are people who enjoy a game that plays itself and the only focus is on how dashing one can look while doing it. Maybe this will be it. xD