PvP centric resources

PvP centric resources could be material or crafting recipes to help with guild keep defense and attack, like catapults, trebuchets or boiling oil.

 

Plans for things like this should be available for PvE as well, if PvE players are offered the opportunity to assault a fortification defended by NPCs. I don't see that any weapon should be specific to PvP. Weapons are for killing things, and weapons that apply to should apply to PvP should apply equally as well to PvE.

 

To complement, fortification siege scenarios are part of the $2M (achieved) stretch goal, with both online and offline (and, thus, forcibly PvE) versions promised. So, siege machines are likely to have both PvP and PvE uses in SotA.

 

Its not that they are PvP centric resources... they are regular crafting resources. Just that they want to make certain rare resources to spawn only in PvP enabled zones. Or have resources there spawn in larger amounts or easier to harvest.

Just because we PvP doesnt mean we dont also craft... its silly to assume that. I am just naturally comfortable being in areas where it is not safe, i simply don't feel in danger, it feels natural. So i would be going to those areas to harvest all the time.

 

What is your justificaton for more resources in you are PvP enabled? If you select full loot, you already have access to more resources than you would otherwise.

More resources is just another bribe, which should be unnecessary if PvP is made to be attractive enough by itself.

 

Keep in mind that you are counting discontinuted accounts, professional gold farmers, children (who aren't paying for their own account, so marketing is questionable) PvP fans who could care less, pure RP fans who could care less, and spare accounts.

Even discounting all the accounts that shouldn't be considered in this census, yes, there were a huge number of players who didn't have the skills to reach max level, let alone tackle "extra" content at the top. Strangely enough, those players were constantly challenged by the content they were IN, and seemed to me to be having fun. I see no reason why the game had to be redesigned to "fix" this, as it wasn't really a problem. Those players who couldn't handle top end content were still playing, and enjoying themselves, and by the very nature of the game, would have trailed along a few months or even years behind the frontrunners, encountering each and every trick, dungeon, monster, and quest, and if they didn't follow the path at full speed, whatever. The path was still there.

Right here is where I think I really disagree with you, and with the thinking at Blizzard. WoW is one of the history of the world's highest grossing video games. Ever. They had spare budget. Did they need to gear the entire game towards raids? No. Did they NEED to make any given raid perform to a certain standard? Also No. It's a video game. The only resources it consumes are sever space, programmer time, tech support paychecks, and a telecommunications bill. The player memberships more than covered these expenses, leading the game to make consistent profits. They didn't NEED to justify anything. If they had just released a raid expansion every year or two, and let it be the place the elite players hung out, that would have continued to be stable. Those players who weren't quite up to snuff could ALWAYS have gone back a few expansions and started working their way up through the outdated raid content.

How's that workin out for them, having driven off so many of their most dedicated subscribers? The large body of mediocre players they were left with tends not to be so quick to spend money on a monthly, and they tend not to bring in their friends quite as fast. Blizzard shot themselves in the foot.

 

Most of the players never followed at all. Unfortunately the source of this number was lost when Blizzard threw away their old WoW forums with Cataclysm's launch, but Blizzard once said that, for the whole Vanilla + BC, less than 10% of the players had even set foot once inside any raid instance at all, and less than 5% of the player base had ever beaten a single raid boss, even one that was not current.

The programmer time is limited, though. To the point Blizzard often has serious issues releasing new small group content at the same time it releases raids, since the team behind raids is the same team behind 5-man instances, and competes for development time with all other content in the game in some aspects, such as art.

So, if you can release content that will provide one hour of fun for 50% of the player base, or else content that will provide 20 hours of fun for 1% of the player base, and you don't have enough developers to tackle both simultaneously, which one do you choose? This was the kind of issue before Blizzard regarding spending development time in raids. I believe that the main reason raids weren't scaled down before is that the devs believed the raid format to be simply superior for the longevity of the game and decided to insist on it despite having little to show for it for a long time.

LFR turned that around. Now that raid content is seen by 20%-30% of the player base, it's on a much more equal footing to the rest of the game when Blizzard has to decide where their limited development effort will be spent.

I see WoW's main problem as a different one: it's leveling content - in other words, everything below max level, where most players are - is a pain to go through. It is mostly solo (all the questing), with a few instances in the middle if the payer has been queuing for them (but, since it often takes more time to queue for the instance than to run the instance, even players attempting to play as much group content as possible will likely play more solo content); it's so easy most classes can go through all of that content using only auto attacks and a few abilities, resulting in boring gameplay and leaving the other dozens of abilities unused; the XP curve has been messed so much that it's impossible to complete a quest line before outleveling it; the Cataclysm questing style, which uses too many cutscenes, is linear almost to the point of being railroaded and uses so much phasing it's almost impossible to play quests with a friend, was used to remake the early questing content; there's a jarring style change whenever the player changes which expansion he is playing; and so on. Not to mention that players have to purchase the base game, plus two expansions, just to get to the end game.

So, it's a huge pain to go through the leveling content, with an experience that is often worse than that of other MMOs, including F2P ones. Add to that the fact WoW had roughly a 20% annual churn rate even when it was at it's best (in other words, some 20% of the player base would leave every year, requiring new players to replace them in order to avoid having the player base shrink) and those issues with getting new players to stay are a huge problem. I've personally seen quite a few people attempt to start playing WoW and give up before reaching max level this year alone.

BTW, since my real life friends that had reached max level in WoW are mainly casual players, my first hand experience with why players left was completely different. Every single one of them left WoW shortly after Cataclysm was released, mainly because 5-man content was made harder enough that they didn't find the content fun anymore.

 

Dude, I honestly don't think you've even answered any of my points here. Who CARES if some part of the player base never sets foot inside a raid. Those accounts never WILL set foot inside a raid, and that's not a problem.

Who CARES if programmer time is limited? I never claimed it was infinite. It wasn't so limited that Blizzard wasn't able to produce multiple consecutive expansions and hold it's place as the top grossing video game of all time. Complaining that it could have done even better is a far cry from explaining why the violent change in direction was appropriate.

As for your final response, I don't even get your point. You had indicated the changes they were making were to support the bottom line. I responded that the effect of the changes they made reduced their bottom line. Your counter to that is that it's hard to reach max level? I care why? This affects the game's profit line how?

 

It is a problem if what is typically regarded as the hardest, and most expensive, content to make is seen by less than 10% of the player base, and played by close to 1%, which is more or less what was happening before. What makes more business sense is to spend the development budget according to how many players will see and play each piece of content, which would require Blizzard to drastically reduce the amount of raid content.

Which is why Blizzard had to bring way more players into raiding in order to keep their push towards raids; to do otherwise, to spend most of the content budget on content that most players would never see, was just plain irresponsible. The only thing that justified this was that Blizzard thought that they could make more players start raiding, but after half a decade without any meaningful success it was clear that Blizzard couldn't do so without drastic changes to their raid model - which was done by adding a ridiculously easy raiding option with an automated queue feature, the LFR.

Who cares if programmer time is limited? The people that determine what gets done and what doesn't. The same ones that decided that bringing more players to the dungeons with the LFD, and a couple years after to the raids with the LFR, was worth breaking Blizzard's old promise to never add a teleport to dungeon option because it would make the world feel small.

Besides, given that during the period where WoW had it's largest growth less than 1% of it's player base actually raiding, I sincerely don't think raids had much, if anything, to do with WoW's success.

Having watched that market from the start, my guess is that WoW became such a hugely successful MMO in the first place by being, among the well polished MMOs, the one that was more casual and solo friendly. No death penalty worth mentioning, ways to reach max level without grouping even once, server options where all PvP was consensual, instanced group content eliminating player competition for mobs with actually good loot, no consequences for failing at crafting, an AH and a good mail system with item attachment and cash on delivery that allowed trade without being face to face, faster travel than almost anything else at it's time, character respeccing for gold, bonus XP for casual players (the rested bonus), etc.

It affects the bottom line because someone that leaves before even getting to max level is someone that won't be playing the game, someone that the end game content - including raids - don't even get a chance to impress. One of the shareholder conference calls before Cataclysm revealed that, even back then, WoW already had a huge problem with this, given that about 70% of the people that did the WoW trial - which, though free, required downloading over a dozen gigabytes - gave up on the game before even reaching the halfway point of the trial.

Also because, without new players, my guess is that WoW would lose roughly 20% of it's player base per year even without doing anything to drive them away. Players leave naturally due to changing interests, playing other games, having less leisure time or free money, and even though death.

Sincerely, making changes that greatly irritate the less than 1% of the player base that actively raided before WotLK can't explain the loss of over 30% of the player base in roughly 3 years. No matter how much you irritate and drive away an "elite" group that was tiny to begin with, that alone would never cause the kind of player loss WoW is seeing. Specially when it seems like there is no other game better than WoW for that specific niche; most MMOs nowadays don't seem to even bother creating content for very large organized player groups.

 

No, they don't and now you are slowly getting around to my point. I don't think that regular raid CONTENT updates were particularly valuable to those of us who raided. MOST raid groups took months or even years to complete the raid content, we didn't NEED updates.

But the raiding guilds, and their members, formed a crucial part of a social economy, they were the ones who drove flask purchases, which in turn drove component prices on the AH. They were the ones who bought tons and tons of ore, driving it's prices on the AH. That small segment of hardcore raiders were the leaders of numerous groups and functions throughout the story part of the game, they were the respected elders and advisers. Saying that they were only 1% AND THEREFORE DIDN'T MATTER would be like saying that the arena season champions were only 1% of the PvP crowd, so why bother having an arena?

In addition to the massive economic impact that the raiders had, their actions inspired and directed easily five to ten times their numbers in followers, people who played IN ORDER TO BECOME THAT GOOD, people who aspired to having that gear, people who were in the guild but didn't raid. Prior to becoming a raider for the first time, I joined a guild so that people would explain to me what was happening as I played, and having that guild chat dropping pearls of wisdom on me shaped and changed my entire solo play experience. Once I was a raider, I was constantly being called on to help with all manner of minor tasks by friends, acquaintances, guildies, even random strangers. They saw that I had the epic accomplishments, assumed that my presence in their group would lend that epic-ness, and begged me to come help. Sometimes it was a day of running instances, sometimes PvP, sometimes just helping them with an obscure quest. I probably spent more time helping random strangers who saw my gear and knew what it meant than I did EARNING that gear. Those requests are what led me INTO PvP, since the battleground system had never appealed to me (no good story, no apparent point, all hidden away in dead end instances), but when people started asking me to come help them win, because they cared, I cared, and I gradually started to value the chance to compete.

Trying to list the raider population, and it's significance, by how many players actually completed the raids missed the point. The ORIGINAL programming team for WoW had a vision of a unified story world, which allowed players to experience whatever part of the world they wanted, as their skill and ability allowed, so that the population of the game would literally BE the population of that world. Just as in the real world, only a very small portion of the population will ever stand on the floor of the NYSE, let alone successfully trade millions of shares there, but those people have a tremendous impact on billions of other individuals. It only takes one doctor to start up a medical office, but he or she will employ twenty other people, and treat hundreds of patients. For every ten thousand minimum wage workers toiling away on the street, we get ONE corporate CEO founder running the company and employing them all. Those are real world examples of the exact same numeric relationships at work.

If, say, 50% of the WoW membership had completed all raid content (which would have required not one but dozens of kills on each boss, such that all appropriate gear had dropped), it would have fatally destabilized the game's balance. Just like what would happen to the world economy if half of the citizens of China suddenly became multibillionares.

There was nothing in those population statistics that was an actual bad thing. Nothing needed to be fixed. The system was supporting the existence of the game, and for all that you keep saying that WoW lost 20% of it's membership each year, somehow the actual player base continued to GROW annually, so I guess something you aren't discussing was causing it to gain even more players, each and every year. I maintain that that something was a self sustaining and stabilizing economy/ecology. The game brought in and enchanted new players, who found themselves fitting in to a fun, rewarding fantasy world. It didn't work for everyone, but it does seem to have worked for millions and millions and millions of players.

It didn't need to be FIXED.

 

Hi, thank you all for your responses. Interesting comments.

It seems many have the ideal that all resources should be available to be gathered by everyone in either pvp or pve. I think this subtracts alot from a game. Having some available in only PVP areas and some in PVE areas creates a challenge that forces people who want something specific to go do something out of the normal comfort zone. It also creates an economy and makes the game interesting with more 'ill trade you this for that'. This said, all resources should be 'accessible' with work and creativity.....or money. This is consistent with the real world in which we live.

 

Full disclosure, I haven't read the entire thread yet, will do so when possible.

I think there should be resources that are exclusively found in areas that require the possibility of PvP
I think there should be counterparts to those resources located in non-PvP areas
I think the resources found in those areas are no more or less 'powerful/important/critical/valuable" than their non-PvP area located counterparts
I think the primary differences should be in visual appearance for bragging (eg: dull bauxite anywhere, blue bauxite only found in badlands)

From what we understand now, the game is NOT going to be gear-centric, so the bonuses from materials should not be so important that every PvP player is going to *have* to have a ______ made of ______ to be competitive. That allows for the PvP-willing crafters who go and gather additional materials to offer prestige items that may have higher value from a lower supply, but does not change the balance of economy between both types of crafters.

 

Though one thing that is a long standing resource in Ultima games, are the herbs used to assemble and cast spells. I would suggest that the herb that winds up being the choke point in making 'ressurect other' would be found exclusively in group content areas, whereas the choke point for 'slay living' or whatever ends up being the prized PvP kill spell would be found exclusively in PvP areas.

Similar distributions of reagents could be found throughout the game, and the more sense the locations made, the more I'd like it.

 

Love this idea.

 

Very game breaking ideas. The herbs (Reagents) will/should be purchasable through vendors. Sure you will be able to find them on the ground randomly but it is laughably inneficient.

The reagents were used more of a money sink (since mages were more powerful than melee) and strategy (you could run out of reagents mid battle or they would get stolen from you, very important to keep watch).

They are too vital to the game and game mechanics to turn into a bottleneck in gameplay. Crafting resources are non essential as far far far far less people rely on them and you can always craft using less rare resources.

 

Yeah I am really hoping for this too. I hate any online games where the central point is gear (ie everything Blizzard makes). All gear should be easy to obtain and easy to replace. Players should not be afraid of losing it nor should we be spending countless hours running dungeons to find that uber piece of lewt.

I'd be pretty pissed if this game had raid content and just turned into another item whore out like WoW.

BTW, I think there should def be resources in PvP areas that do not have any counterpart, although I agree they should mostly be either only used to craft items for PvP (like UO's Bola balls) or simply add a unique visual modifier (like the only place to find Shadow Copper is in PvP areas, it has same stats as regular copper but creates dark colored armor).

 

So let the vendors sell reagents. But if you want to just pick them up free from the ground, you have to go to the area they grow in. There is nothing that prevents someone who never ever ever wants to set foot in group play areas from buying the reagents for ressurect from a vendor, and having a few. There is nothing that prevents someone who never goes near the water from picking up the mats for water-breathing. On the other hand, they won't really NEED those spells much, since they won't be using them often. The players who ARE in those areas though, can save cash harvesting their own mats, and get the mats appropriate to what they do. They MIGHT even make more money by collecting mats they don't need, and selling them cheaper than the merchants do on the open market.

 

@MalakBrightpalm

Ah ok, yeah I see what you mean now. That works. As long as you can get regs in bulk from a store it doesn't really matter where they spawn.

 

From what we understand now, the game is NOT going to be gear-centric, so the bonuses from materials should not be so important that every PvP player is going to *have* to have a ______ made of ______ to be competitive. That allows for the PvP-willing crafters who go and gather additional materials to offer prestige items that may have higher value from a lower supply, but does not change the balance of economy between both types of crafters.

I agree as well, I do not like the Wow model which involves constant upgrading. I do, however, believe there should be some type of hurdle to reward a character for effort... ie, 'ding you've hit max level and go to walmart and buy the exact armor set that is equal to those that the most seasoned players equip is a bit anti climatic. I think a great solution to this, for example, is having a fixed statistic cap for among all gear, however, character progression allows for gear that has more flexibility to these statistics. The reward here, therefore, is not 'more powerful gear' but opening another layer of flexibility to your sandbox character. To be crystal clear, as an example, you start with a piece of armor which provides "10 armor, 10 dexterity, 10 strength, 10 vitality" for a total of "40". Character progression would allow for the purchase of a piece of armor with "10 armor, 11 dexterity, 9 strength, 10 vitality"...still for a total of 40.

 

@Mordecai & Owain: Thank you for getting the discussion back on subject. @MalakBrightpalm &Silent Strider: Stick to the subject!
Personally I found the original idea of kryptonite neaseatingly uncreative and unexciting so Avatar kryptonite (even though it obviously wouldn't be called that) is out of the question for me just on principle.