I’m not sure about that. I’ve been turning it over in my head for a while though and think the issue is there’s a lack of consequences in this world. There’s no reputational effects. There’s nothing that comes back home to Speranza. People won’t notice that someone is a murderer eventually. You don’t lose access to the human city for being a bandit who is actively harmful to a war effort. Etc etc.
Even in a lawless society, reality has consequences for this behaviour. And reality actively encourages cooperation far more than a game like this which actively rewards NOT cooperating.
The pvp is necessary, both for the tension of the game and for the player choice of cooperation to feel as magical as it does. I wouldn’t want to change it. But I think far more can be done to encourage cooperation too.
Additionally, they have a serious problem with the mechanics rewarding the player who shoots first. If you’re the first to shoot you start a fight at a 50% hp advantage. The other player does not have time to heal and reset the engagement. 9 out of 10 times you lose the engagement. This could be changed, there are ways to mitigate this advantage and give players the ability to reset to neutral for a fair fight. This would alleviate many of the games issues such as extraction camping, corner peek ambushes and betrayals. Being able to reset these moments to neutral would remove most of the frustration players have with the game. I have a few ideas for this. An augment providing an anti-ambush shield that cracks on first hit, disengages for the player when shooting (like a Dune shield) and recharges automatically out of combat would effectively mitigate ambushes. Another option is a mixed shield, light in front, ultra heavy in rear, mitigating those shots in the back you get so often.
I don’t think they’re ever going to make an online game that isn’t the playspace of right-libertarians because that’s the dominant ideology of the people making the games for the forseeable future. People like Ralph Koster get ignored and treated as annoying or crankish when they talk about online ethics in games and how much more dynamic and robust the MUD/early-MMO space was in terms of taking online games as a new frontier seriously rather than simulated dimensions for christian-libertarians.
The studio are all Swedes. They’re probably socdems.
Also the game they wanted to make in the first place was purely PVE cooperation game. They pivoted to pvp with only 6 months remaining before planned release, it was not in their original plan at all.
I believe that they might consider this.
I do like Koster though. Even if he is a bit bought in on AI-brain techbro shit, he fundamentally likes communities and positive emergent player interactions.
I’m not sure about that. I’ve been turning it over in my head for a while though and think the issue is there’s a lack of consequences in this world. There’s no reputational effects. There’s nothing that comes back home to Speranza. People won’t notice that someone is a murderer eventually. You don’t lose access to the human city for being a bandit who is actively harmful to a war effort. Etc etc.
Even in a lawless society, reality has consequences for this behaviour. And reality actively encourages cooperation far more than a game like this which actively rewards NOT cooperating.
The pvp is necessary, both for the tension of the game and for the player choice of cooperation to feel as magical as it does. I wouldn’t want to change it. But I think far more can be done to encourage cooperation too.
Additionally, they have a serious problem with the mechanics rewarding the player who shoots first. If you’re the first to shoot you start a fight at a 50% hp advantage. The other player does not have time to heal and reset the engagement. 9 out of 10 times you lose the engagement. This could be changed, there are ways to mitigate this advantage and give players the ability to reset to neutral for a fair fight. This would alleviate many of the games issues such as extraction camping, corner peek ambushes and betrayals. Being able to reset these moments to neutral would remove most of the frustration players have with the game. I have a few ideas for this. An augment providing an anti-ambush shield that cracks on first hit, disengages for the player when shooting (like a Dune shield) and recharges automatically out of combat would effectively mitigate ambushes. Another option is a mixed shield, light in front, ultra heavy in rear, mitigating those shots in the back you get so often.
I don’t think they’re ever going to make an online game that isn’t the playspace of right-libertarians because that’s the dominant ideology of the people making the games for the forseeable future. People like Ralph Koster get ignored and treated as annoying or crankish when they talk about online ethics in games and how much more dynamic and robust the MUD/early-MMO space was in terms of taking online games as a new frontier seriously rather than simulated dimensions for christian-libertarians.
The studio are all Swedes. They’re probably socdems.
Also the game they wanted to make in the first place was purely PVE cooperation game. They pivoted to pvp with only 6 months remaining before planned release, it was not in their original plan at all.
I believe that they might consider this.
I do like Koster though. Even if he is a bit bought in on AI-brain techbro shit, he fundamentally likes communities and positive emergent player interactions.