Curse

Pharalon · Feb 15, 2005, 06:46 AM // 06:46

Is there an abridged version of the above essay available? Or a telemovie with very low production values?

I've got a book report to hand in tomorrow, and I really don't want to have to read the whole thing....

Brett Kuntz · Feb 15, 2005, 06:56 AM // 06:56

Someone sum up his post in 50 words or less, no punctuation.

Cicciro · Feb 15, 2005, 09:36 AM // 09:36

For kunt0r:

gaile avoided a question on the idea that gw is not just skill based arguing that it is and then he described other possibilities of how to create a stable economy

That is hard to do...

SpineLok · Feb 16, 2005, 07:44 PM // 19:44

Very informative/thought provoking post Saus.

As far as whether something or another is going to make an individual or guild more competative, its inevitable. In fact it will make the game a bit more realistic. Yes, those of us who are competative will do everything in their ability to tip the advantage in their direction, but I think, (maybe I have interperated you wrong) it not going to be near as bad as you make it sound when the game has had a chance to stablize a bit.

Yes, for the first X period of time it may be most unbalance that it ever will ever be, but like I said its going to take a period of time to reach some sort of slowly changing equilbrim. At that point sure you will end up fighting guilds with better gear, and thus will have a slight advantage, but if your team skill and stratagy are slightly better, if not way better you will steam roll them. The aspect I think that is going to most affectively help this situation of severely uneven matches, is going to be the algorithm that works to match guilds by winning record, and other parameters. Of course this will be unstable and faily worthless in the beginning, but as time progresses and things begin to neutralize out, it will become a significant tool in progessing the ladder and competition in the right direction.

Once the game finds a near stable equallibrium to this dynamic system... I believe those item/weapon type advantages will be easily neutralized and better yet made near negilable due to people really beginning to adapt to well executed team strategy, and player skill. The key is that the game must find an equilibrim and when adding new content, it will cause a new imbalance that will eventually find another equillibrim. The key is that there needs to exist an equillibrim, new content (item/weapon and skills) shouldn't be added at a rate faster than the gaming universe system response, otherwise an equilibrim will never be reached. So it will be a huge balance of economy, rare item find rate, and newly added content, etc etc... to keep the game fresh, while still keeping a fairly fast response rate so that an equilbrim can be reached quickly, thereby making weapons/items/skills relatively neutral in creating advantage (thus skill & strategy remain deciding factors for winning or loosing), but still fun for PVE'ers to go explore and find new valuable things.

Its a huge problem, with way too many degrees of freedom to be able to model and thus allow you to have decent control of. A nice idea for one area creates a spiraling effect for the other area of the game. There is a bit of juggling involved, and most of all this equilibrim will constantly be changing making one aspect of the game a bit more appealing than the other. Lets just hope it stays fairly balanced between PVP and PVE areas. Otherwise, there is a good possibility that one area will completely collapse, and thus be a game of PVP or PVE only. I guess you could liken this process to balancing a ball on top of a pinnacle with hopefully a "slight breeze" disturbing the ball one way or another. At the start of the game, that ball is definitely going to be well on PVE side. It will be interesting to see how it equilibrates... if it ever does... I think I'll put my faith in Anet until, proven otherwise.

BTW great post Saus!

Ensign · Feb 16, 2005, 09:38 PM // 21:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpineLok

Once the game finds a near stable equallibrium to this dynamic system...

One's spot on the ladder is not a function of just player skill, but of player skill and equipment / skill availability. Guilds with much better equipment access will be competing about their 'natural' level - those with worse equipment will be competing below. This is true as long as there are equipment disparities, the only question is their magnitude.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpineLok

The key is that there needs to exist an equillibrim, new content (item/weapon and skills) shouldn't be added at a rate faster than the gaming universe system response, otherwise an equilibrim will never be reached.

I draw the opposite conclusion from the same points. Reaching equilibrium is reaching a point of stagnation. Once people have fully explored the limits of a skill base, of the equipment available - once new tech stops being developed at a reasonable pace - then it's time for an expansion. The fun of the game is in the unstable phases - merely rehashing what everyone knows is not particularly exciting.

Peace,
-CxE

SpineLok · Feb 17, 2005, 12:11 AM // 00:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

One's spot on the ladder is not a function of just player skill...

First of all I don't believe I ever said it was only a function of player skill... in fact I believe I eluded to the fact that this function was highly dependant on many aspects of the game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpineLok

Its a huge problem, with way too many degrees of freedom to be able to model...

ie the ability for the player to win or loose is more dependant on either player skill/team tactics, and in the worst case scenario, described by Saus, skills and weapons/items. These dependancies are merely weighted more heavily depending on how far the game is from an equilibrim state. I was mainly trying to say that as the game approaches an equilbrim... ie no huge influx of new items/weapons or skills (game just released), winning would be more dependant on player skill / and teamwork, especially because people will try and get an edge by creating fancy team tactics because they can't rely on new gear as crutch to boost thier advantage ie those guilds who are very competative will have nearly all the best gear. So the most likely way to create a large advantage in this case is tactics and player skill. Its just my opinion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Guilds with much better equipment access will be competing about their 'natural' level - those with worse equipment will be competing below. This is true as long as there are equipment disparities, the only question is their magnitude.

Basically all I was try to say is that magnitude will be far less of a deciding factor in the game when enought time has passed since the release, and there will be other factor in this infinite varible fnc that are probably going to make equipment advantages look like peanuts. Again this is all considering that Anet sticks to their game design and doesn't create uber uber weapons.

I will agree with you if people didn't have a clue/couldn't figure out how to come up with creative strategies or strategies at all, then equipment would yeild a significant advantage even if the game had nearly reached an equilibrim, no matter how small of an increase in weapon dmg or increase in AL or etc etc. There is always going to be relative magnitude differences.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I draw the opposite conclusion from the same points. Reaching equilibrium is reaching a point of stagnation. Once people have fully explored the limits of a skill base, of the equipment available - once new tech stops being developed at a reasonable pace - then it's time for an expansion. The fun of the game is in the unstable phases - merely rehashing what everyone knows is not particularly exciting.

I agree with you that yes if you reach an absolute equilibrim in this case the freshness of the game would stagnate. My point was not to argue that we need to reach an equilbrim, but to fluctuate around a point of feeding new content at a rate that wasn't too fast that would drive the game to be something where equipment was always a large deciding factor on PVP battle outcomes. This would affectively squash the value or desire for PVPing... because it sounds like people want a battle to be won more often based on skill not equipment, Saus' arguement. I'm pretty sure I said something along those lines,

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpineLok

A nice idea for one area creates a spiraling effect for the other area of the game. There is a bit of juggling involved, and most of all this equilibrim will constantly be changing making one aspect of the game a bit more appealing than the other. Lets just hope it stays fairly balanced between PVP and PVE areas. Otherwise, there is a good possibility that one area will completely collapse, and thus be a game of PVP or PVE only.

And yes I agree with you that its important to add new content... just not too fast that you out pace the response time of your gaming virtual environment. Outpacing will cause a "large" instablity and more than likely create an adverse effect causing gamers too loose interest in a certain aspect of the game or the game entirely... ie too unbalanced.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpineLok

The key is that the game must find an equilibrim and when adding new content, it will cause a new imbalance that will eventually find another equillibrim. The key is that there needs to exist an equillibrim

By this quote I ment tend to an equilibrim... and the rest of the quote implies that game will constantly fluctuate around some equillibrium because new content will be continually added.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpineLok

The key is that there needs to exist an equillibrim, new content (item/weapon and skills) shouldn't be added at a rate faster than the gaming universe system response, otherwise an equilibrim will never be reached.

This bit of my response implies that if content is added too rapidly an equilibrim will not exist (ie its @ infinity) and the game will staturate in some fashion, reduce the value of gameplay options of one extreme for many players.

All in all I was trying to make the point that fluctuation is indeed necessary, (just not drastic) to keep the game fresh for both aspects of the game PVP, PVE. I also was trying to point out if Anet does there job and the game fluctuates about an equilbrim (not too drastically) that PVP has the potential to be highly based on player skill and team tactics, and that the PVE content will stay fresh. This of course is not the ideal solution for either PVP or PVE extreme players, as game content will tend to stagnate for both at some period in time, and will be refreshed as the balance fluctuates about this "equilibrim point". The method of including both PVP and PVE and trying to highly please both PVP and PVE extremer's is impossible because like I said when highly pleasing one extreme the other is going to feel like they are getting the shaft because both play styles are completely different and the driving forces behind them conflict. So basically Anet was trying to target a wide varity of people that aren't too attached to one extreme or the other.