Bramble

I thought we, the players, would figure out what our "old player experience" was supposed to be . . . in the sandbox . . . as opposed to the dev house themeparking that based on a (more, as opposed to less) scripted lane-feed. The CWs should be large enough to support/allow all playstyles, without being so large groups become superfluous and without being so small any "solo" activity of any kind is simply impossible. Conquest of the CW through it's lifespan was, generally, the scoreboard goal, if you will, with the ebb and flow, back and forth of competative activity within that CW organically occurring based on the guilds and individuals competing in that CW. Within all of that you have some distinct choices for yourself: Crafting, Gathering, Hunting/fighting, Marketing/buy-and-sell, and developing each to whatever mix suits you and/or is optimal. The "Old Game Experience" then would involve, at least in my opinion, the gaining of experience as a player, developing newbs to the guild based on that, honing strats and tactics to improve our success rates in CWs, managing friend vs foe relationships and diplomacy, managing the acquisition of assets and wealth for improved position and/or capabilities, etc. In your view, what do you think a well implemented "Old Player Experience" is supposed to be?

With what we know of how the game will play today, this is the most practical/reasonable expectation or plan I've seen. The ability for this to happen (to reasonable degree) will be, without fail, allowed or disallowed based on the SIZE and configurations of the CW worlds. It's not uncommon (in other MMOs) to have PvP centric players turn their backs on wide-open Open PvP Zones in favor of perching at entrances to cities or zones or outposts or rezz points. If you were to overfly the maps taking Infrared panoramic photos of the landscape, what you'd see is huge open spaces in the Open PvP areas with just a smattering of red dots, with packed red dots clustered around doorways, around rezz spots, etc. I'm interested to see how this game play dynamic does, or does not, or to what degree and how/when occurs in Crowfall.

2. OK. 4. Correct, it is about PvP. 6. There is a massive amount of "PvE" to Crowfall. The trick here is that far, far too much of the MMORPG community have been programmed into a box intellectually when they try to think about the E)nvironment . . . and invariably fall into a binary mental rut in regards to the idea of the E)nvironment. When we talk Crowfall 'PvE" no one should be blindly shovelling over into that domain the same, tired, boxlike paradigms . . . that don't apply. Because this is Crowfall, not WoW, not Archeage, Not LOTRO, etc. Not everyone believes "PvE" is shaped like a 2 x 2 cube, and that's it. Perhaps more intuitively, think "Open World PvP" vs "Arenas", and how you immediately feel the difference between the two in your minds-eye. 7. I know it's pre alpha kid. I've backed the project from the beginning, long before it's overrun in delivery date. And as to your last paragraph, I disagree. If you design it to produce those results, then of course yeah, that's what you are going to get. The trick here is this is CROWFALL . . . so you need to design the ENVIRONMENT ("PvE") accordingly. What attracted me to Crowfall was it's more (as opposed to less) insightful vision for a game. Which was NOT to be two things: 1) A PvE drekk-fest of grinding out quests and goods via farmville, and 2) An FPS / MOBA arena lobby game. The original vision of the game had more going on IMO. My opinion anyway.

1) The point is to allow P)layer vs P)layer to exist in the first place, not P)layer vs L)evel or G)rind / T)raining. 2) To accomplish this, the entire scaling of power/dominance has to be a gentle gradient bounded by lowbs still capable of being dangerous to "Vets" at the other end, while also allowing Vets their advantages. e.g. "Advantage" does not have to be synonymous with untouchable Vets. Just as a Lowb should be very wary of a Vet 1v1, a Vet should be wary of taking on too many "lowbs" (whatever "many" is). Risk and Danger at both ends of the scale. 3) "The Grind", or "Levelling", or "Training" then simply becomes a natural part of playing the game, instead of a crack-heads focus on "stroking the mechanics", be it account stabling over time to gain passively levelled/trained assets to be sold off to new players, etc. 4) "PvP" is something we do, it's not why we are there. While PvP is the adrenaline rush when it's happening, it is, IMO, not the binary centerpoint around which everything revolves. If it was, lets just stop double-talking and turn CF into a fantasy version of Counterstrike or any other FPS. Specifically, PVP involving personal objectives such as protecting caravans bringing goods back to a base, or defending (or taking) an installation, etc., is vastly more satisfying than (for instance) just dropping into an Arena to pew-pew / facrollthekeyboardspankywanky. Wielding PvP to successfully bring a Caravan home, or to protect someone is where it's at for me. 5) The first, highest priority for PvP is Population. And that includes enough space in the CW for a balanced degree of "solo" activity. As opposed to a tuna-can approach (relatively speaking) where the size of the CW themeparks (forces) rolling balls of groups while simultaneously forcing-out all solo activity. Variety is the Spice of Life, we want the CWs highly attractive to ALL play styles and activities, sized appropriately to allow all modes of play to live and breathe well without any of those modes choking off any of the others. It is expected that solo activity will carry with it the risks of being solo. But that must be true for the solo Hunter as much as it is of the solo Harvester (e.g. Five harvesters with head bashing mining picks might be (for instance) a potential mouthful for one Hunter . . . who might be tempted to call in another buddy or two to take out the five, burly Miners . . . just as a conceptual example. PvP is a dangerous occupation after all, if that's your choice). 6) This means, IMO, it is a fallacious idea that PvE and PvP are separate domains. That we have to structure (theme park) PvE events for PvE oriented people, and PvP events for PvP oriented people, because that's the nature of "the structure". It's not. That's simply how some people theme-park their heads into square boxes. While you can have PvE competitions (e.g. crafting competitions), and you can have PvP competitions (eg. Tournaments or what have you), those things have absolutely nothing to do with the idea that's what defines PvE vs PvP activity. Because if we consider WHY we go to a CW, what our goals are, what we need to bring back to advance our EK or Guild or personal fortunes or crafting activity, the E)nvironment and everything "PvE" simply becomes part of the whole, interwoven through everything we do in a CW. Assuming, of course, that you've built the construct to support that game play design objective to begin with (or not).

Is this still testing sessions you are logging in to, or live game play?

I agree with APE. Also, "losing" doesn't have to be not-fun. For lack of a better way to put it, the cliff-notes version would be something like: "Balance Matters". Meaning, if I'm actually IN the fight, losing isn't necessarily un-fun because I was actually engaged in the competition. Alternately, if a game is riddled with weaknesses, severe balance issues, exploits, what have you, that keeps certain players OUT of the competitions due to gear/stat tiers, stand up players vs cheat/exploiters, then losing over and over again under those conditions isn't fun and is a death-knell for many player's willingness to continue playing. Because in that kind of losing it's the game itself that's eventually recognized as the enemy. I had a Hunter in WoW and I was always a regular at responding to attack announcements on world chat. For a while there was this Druid who regularly stalked into Lakeshire to ambush players. I'd show up on an off-vector, slip into spotting position and stealth up, my Tiger stealthed, until the Druid popped out of stealth on a target. Then it was on. This went on for a couple of months, sometimes I'd die, sometimes he would. We both would experience "losing" . . . while having fun at it. He logged his Alliance alt one time to introduce himself and compliment me on how I was able to figure out his retreat path so often. Good times, "honored foes" even though pains in the neck, but . . . the game provided the platform for competition and that's what it was about. Conversely, Runes of Magic started out as a good experience for myself and some friends. Right up to when we became educated on the fallacies and exploits being worked in that game. End game enchants and enhancements able to be mounted on lowbie gear giving low level characters (alts of capped old timers and/or exploiters - item and gold dupping) absolutely ridiculous amounts of HP and power. The dev house FINALLY dropped the hammer at one point, in a rather spectacular fashion, entire guilds hearing they were about to be nuked passing out tens of thousands of gold before it hit, etc. Losing in Runes of Magic simply became a common sense reason to leave the game. There was no reason to stay anymore because the game itself, and what it allowed the unscrupulous to get away with, was the enemy. Losing is part of PvP, and not that big a deal . . . depending on what kind of losing it is, and the reasons thereof.

Ah, the good ole days of Tauren's Mill in WoW, where Raids would run a bunch of non-aggressive ALTS woven through their raid so that when the bombs started to drop, and tab targetting was flying . . . opponents would get smacked hard, raid wide, with no-no points. This doesn't bring anything IMO to the spirit of Crowfall, and is a gimmick that can be twisted and gamed by all the "clever peepls".

Unnecessary, and potentially "game-able" given the multi-account stabling that will be going on. Presence of opponents (population) in the CW is the principle catalyst for PvP, not artifically buffed character abilities. Goods and booty is also at play. IMO the original vision for the INTERLINKED roles between EKs and CWs is still valid, and attempting to blur that line (too far) is likely to generate undesirable side-effects. That said, adjustments to core dynamics between CWs and EKs is likely best deferred to, for instance, 1 year out past release when a more solid and real cross section of the community and game state can be had.

I'm in agreement with Lightsig. Basically my feeling is: Anything that diverts players from a Campaign (context is PvP activity) is bad. Anything that supports participation in CWs is good. As long as a CW is POPULATED . . . PvP will take care of itself. Population = "Signs of Life". As far as different modes of play, etc., I sort of felt the idea of LARGE, open-world environments, in a CW, would set the stage for players having the room to work that out organically. As opposed to a BG or Arena-lobby game where the entire framework of game-play participation has been shaved down to a limited set of experience possibilities, by design. Popeurban's post just up a bit outlines how a "tournament" system might could work ok, tied to CWs very specifically, and acknowledged by Lightsig. I won't be particularly happy if we end up with free-forming Arenas, BGs, etc., establishing a drain away from CWs, no matter the good intent. Instead, I'd rather see creative thought FOCUSSED on those types of avenues (if any) embodied within the open world of a CW.

Agreed.

This is not a social problem if the code is prohibiting negotiation of the issue through "physical means". The OP pointed out the code is protecting the thieves, which means it's been taken out of the hands of the players to deal with as it is happening. Do I understand this correctly? It IS A CODING PROBLEM, if the code is, by virtue of a loophole, being used to perpetrate this kind of thing. E.g. leveraging flagging protections to get away with it. ACE: If you have ANY dynamics like this, tune that up. The concept here is: In the matrix of design regarding harvesting and loot drops, there can be NO wide open mouse-hole players can drop into to get away with asset theft under the protection of coding. In my experience this usually means exploiting prohibited flagging vs versus open looting capability. Dizzy down has it's roots in the desire to prohibit people from exploiting in/out of combat (do I remember the rational for it correctly?). In a sense, a similar objective. This issue ONLY becomes a design issue IMO . . . if it's protected by the code, which would mean same-faction toons can't be attacked. This is NOT an issue at all so long as the looter can be attacked and dealt with.

And I like this one too. Great game-play thinking IMO, from both of you.

I like this answer.

There is an argument for reasonable "Push back" from the virtual world in this regard. Depending on how you look at it, NOT having BALANCED guard complements at forts/keeps is more theme-parking, as opposed to less. I'm NOT arguing to make every place 100% safe. That would be just silly. However, based on what I consider balanced experiences in another game: In AC2 there were Faction Forts out on some islands. Portals to those forts were present in each Faction's HQ. The Forts were not of course staffed by players 24/7. Most often they were near empty. The Forts DID have NPC protection stations with "auto-guns" on them. Hmmm, I don't remember how many. One for sure at the end of the bridge, land-side, and I think one over the Gates. They hit hard enough they were dang dangerous. The design intent was to PROHIBIT EZ-MODING up to the fort. Exception: There were Jump Pads available that could be used to get inside the fort, but, again, there was the gate-gun that could still, in limited fashion, fire on them if they happened to have a jump pad entry. Result: Balanced, and did enhance PvP (a lot). Upon detecting attackers and initiating fire, a faction alert was sent by the fort. If players wanted to mix it up at the fort then they had to hoof-it to the HQ and take the portal, or use their personal recall to the fort if they bound there (lots of people didn't bind to the fort). The NPC guardians provided the right amount of push-back to: 1) Disable theme-parked ez-moding entry into a fort, 2) were not overpowered, could be destroyed within a "reasonable" amount of time, and 3) Most importantly: CONTRIBUTED to generating large scale, fun, PvP engagements. As opposed to giggling-ez-mode gank circles parked around the zone-in point. Yes, "It's a PvP game". That's sort of the point. If defending players were slacking on responding quickly, they'd zone in to a captured fort and a ganking by enemy players parked around the zone in point. If defending players were snappy, they'd get to the fort in time to mix it up, have a ton of fun, maybe be successful at defense or maybe still lose it (yes, that still happened plenty of times if attackers had their shizz-whizz together. A responsive, "living, breathing, world" (use of the environment) can absolutely contribute to that. It's all in the design. "Balance Matters" though, and I am in agreement that guards shouldn't be one-shotting detected enemy players. That they should frustrate detected players solo-ing in, and be a pain in the bow-tocks . . . you betcha. Part and parcel of infiltrating an established enemy stronghold, no matter it's size. As opposed to insisting the entire scenario be theme-parked for you.

Part of the problem at the concept level is what I've been perceiving as a growing fallacy in belief and understanding: That anything "PvE" is counter to "PvP", and "gaming history has proven it . . . (then insert repeating examples that "support" said fallacy)". Given the E)nvironment is simply a tool to be wielded in service of the "roots" of a game, and is not counter to PvP to begin with, there's a misqueue going on in regards to "PvE-stuff-zors can't ever-zors be relevant to PvP". That's just nonsense. "Sticking to it's roots" . . . might be exactly the point, not that you see it. The first step is to establish RELEVANT CONTEXT: The game's intended goal / structure / target audience. Then follow with open-minded thinking that's organized and rational, considering the E)nvironment as nothing more than a world-tool and an overall game-play experience tool. 1) PvE, in form and function, will NOT be the same between games who implement / use / structure said tool . . . to serve different goals. "PvE" is NOT a draconian definition in my mind, that means only one thing. 2) PvP, in form and function, will operate somewhat differently, with varying degrees of boundaries and limitations, depending on the game. Not every PvP-centric game has been particularly good, no matter it was PvP-centric. 2A) There are different flavors for what people want in PvP: Proscribed FPS / MOBA / Arena environments where the game-play spectrum is limited to bang-bang point and shoot, to MMORPGs where you have "regulated" open world (e.g. target enemy only, not friend/same faction), to Arenas, to Battlegrounds), to FFA environments. In all cases there is a common set of environmental designs placed to provide the target audience with a recognizable framework to operate in as humans The virtual world. PVE objects, AI's, and scenarios, are nothing more than TOOLS to be wielded by dev houses. That's all. Just a tool, but a foundational one. The simulation of a virtual world within which we play. And, in my mind the importance of creative E)nvironments (more responsive, less dead/them-parked) increases if you start talking about virtual worlds looking to be larger and Open World, and less shooting-lane restricted FPS/MOBA. It's not about FPS's or MOBAs being "lesser" in nature. It's about understanding the intended application of the environment, and the objects designed to support that: The Arena/MOBA/FPS environment contains less opportunity for variance, focused on a sub-set of human-interest and capabilities. While an MMORPG is, IMO, more open, variable, and diverse. As you would expect in an Open World environment to include an economy, crafting, persistent guilds, etc. I'm in agreement you don't want to see a game "become something other than what it was "supposed" to be". Fair enough, I think we are in agreement then with the idea: Balance Matters. The Fallacy: If you take examples of "how PvE works, see there, it doesn't fit with PvP" from games designed as PvE centric, you are basically attempting to drive a flat-head screw with a phillips head. Not much relevance to the insightful concept behind Crowfall (dying worlds, eternal kingdoms). If you take examples of "how PvE can't work with PvP" from games that . . . did it poorly . . . you are attempting a long range sniper shot through the lens of a wavy glass block set in a bathroom wall. You aren't seeing clearly for all your belief your experiences in other games is the standard for what that means everywhere. If you see "PvE" as an arbitrary set of conditions counter to the HUMAN EXPERIENCE of PvP . . . you've got a tired, worn out, calcified and inflexible mind set to start breaking free from. You are limiting yourself and what modes of creativity you may have. The E)nvironment is what the devs make it. So it goes without saying it needs to be made corretly for Crowfall. No differently than PvP needs to be made properly for any game that supports it. But to understand what "PvE" means for Crowfall, you first need to stop looking through a wavy glass block thinking you are seeing things clearly. Assuming Crowfall will not be an Arena-lobby queue'd game, we should all expect, without question, that "PvE" shall truly be a big part of the long-term health of the game. But you have to be wise enough to understand the CONTEXT of that, and what the philosophy and critical-thinking pathways are to Form and Function to serve a goal.