Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems

[Kanye Qwest]

@pyrephox Only if you actually state that your projection shows both methods work just fine.

[Pyrephox]

@kanye-qwest Eh. I gamed for years with a group of engineers. I'm very used to people showing up at the table with five pages of probability distributions before they'll make a decision on how to spend a point of XP. Some people are really, REALLY into that level of optimization. Which is fine - a good system provides just enough of a reward for optimization to make people feel good about putting in the effort, but not enough to make it mandatory that characters have to be built THIS WAY to be effective, or to allow the optimizer to blow the probability curve out of the water (see CoD/WoD's notoriously bad balancing issues).

[Arkandel]

@pyrephox I'm the same way. If a game makes me want to optimize and run a spreadsheet of my future XP spends then it's got me.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

I don't concern myself much with the Arx economy because it seems so ephemeral right now, and I kind of expect MU/MMO economies to be bloated and broken to some degree. I am kinda eyeing it apprehensively with an eye to how it'll impact whatever domain systems are put into place, though. Is your House going to be impoverished and your peasants miserable because you aren't sufficiently grinding the mini-game? I doubt it, as that's not the ooc mentality I've encountered from staff, but I feel a little guilty on the weeks I can't invest grind on my noble as it is, with the impacts as only what they are.

[Groth]

@pyrephox said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Which means that both routes are nearly equal, and each character should just make a choice based on what's more in line with their own goals and experiences. Which is actually an excellent indicator of a part of system flexibility that works.

I'm unsure what you mean by routes here. @Too-Old-For-This was using an inefficient selling strategy because it felt like a good strategy because it produced bigger numbers (for more AP spent), I don't think that's a big problem because they were still in the same general area as the most efficient strategy.

I think it's healthy for players to be aware when they're making a choice because it's efficient and when they're doing it because they want to be a good member of the community and ideally the common sense choices should be close to the efficient ones.

[jibberthehut]

@groth I mean it may be ineffecient but... maybe the way she did it is fun? Haggling pre-ap change was addictive as fuck. I have both come out on top or fucked up major because dice got fickle.

Some folks give no shit about the intricacies of the code or math. They just want to fiddle and play and have fun.

[Pyrephox]

@three-eyed-crow I don't think there should be 'grind' associated with the systems, to be honest. I don't think that's what +work was originally intended to do or create, and that feeling of 'must grind' that's infected the playerbase is one of the things I'd probably want to put on a list to be looked at.

I think, if I were waving a magic wand and recoding an Arx-like game from scratch, I'd want the resources to generate from the lands, but not in an active 'run this code' way, but instead informed by character choices and abilities.

For example, something I was playing with in scripting on my own, was having the ability to assign parcels of land to a 'steward', who would have some powers over the land (mostly, determining what kind of resource it would produce: taxes (silver), troops, trade goods, crafted goods, etc.), but those would be set with a single command, and then at each rollover, the steward's relevant skill/stat would be checked each week, along with the land's inherent value (can't get blood from a stone, or wheat from a wasteland), and generate a certain, variable number of resources of the type chosen. Ideally, taxes would be automatically extracted to send up the ladder, and then the rulers of the lands could decide how to USE those resources, whether it's buying or selling to a central market, which could then be bought/sold by others, or whether to invest in trade treaties with other lands, etc.

Then, events and actions could just tweak the inherent production capabilities of the land in the formula up or down, as needed.

I haven't gotten very far, I admit, because I code for crap.

[Groth]

@kanye-qwest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@jibberthehut for a difference of 2.5 silver per AP.

This number is both wrong and very arbitrary so I'm curious what you think it means. It was probably a mistake of mine to have a right side of those equations at all because it's very misleading, the purpose of that series of equations was merely to demonstrate that the mid-point of haggle profit is at 275 and make it easy for anyone else to check the math if they felt so inclined.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@pyrephox
Yeah, work is leaps and bounds better than the old task system, which felt like it actively abused RP, so I don't want to complain. There's also really no other way to buy yourself things if you aren't rolling in crafter riches/deeply invested in the haggling system. Still, I eye it with a thoughtful and perturbed expression for what it might do down the line when domains are live.

[Apos]

@kanye-qwest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@pyrephox Yes. I don't honestly find this kind of display very constructive, because the projected margin is so slim it's in 'who gives a damn' territory, but is presented in a way that all but begs for interpretation by people who don't want to math out the systems as "oh no if I don't do this right I am at a big disadvantage".

I agree with this and I want to chime in here that I feel that a lot of mechanical discussion can be kind of misleading.

From my experience, a lot of 'this is an inefficiency, and will surely create problems' usually don't exist because an analysis of numbers only miss out on overwhelming contextual reasons that would otherwise prevent them. When I intentionally create huge incentives for something, and more people talk about how it is OP than actually engage with it and use it, that's worrying for entirely different reasons. Like as an example, there was 11 modeling coderuns since the assembly. There's was nearly a thousand separate uses of 'praise' last week. I'm certain without checking there was far, far, far more uses of 'work' than that.

So from a macro perspective, the analysis would be like, 'modeling has a lot of pain points that make it vastly underused and need to be tweaked' and that there's a lot of issues with the resources work generates compared to other incomes. And from a systems discussion, people kind of poking at the furthest edge cases alienates people from experimenting with the common, more rewarding common cases and is actively counter productive imo.

ETA because I know someone will ask- no, that's a thousand separate uses of the praise command, not individual praises. IE, someone doing 'praise/all' is counted as 1 in that thousand-ish count.

[Apos]

@three-eyed-crow said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

I don't concern myself much with the Arx economy because it seems so ephemeral right now, and I kind of expect MU/MMO economies to be bloated and broken to some degree. I am kinda eyeing it apprehensively with an eye to how it'll impact whatever domain systems are put into place, though. Is your House going to be impoverished and your peasants miserable because you aren't sufficiently grinding the mini-game? I doubt it, as that's not the ooc mentality I've encountered from staff, but I feel a little guilty on the weeks I can't invest grind on my noble as it is, with the impacts as only what they are.

Double post but important. No. It's too important to not make people feel they are penalized if they don't engage, or worse, that inattention is punished. It's a terrible gaming philosophy that games do to foster an addictive, 'can't afford to not play' mentality that I find unethical in freemium games and I would never do that.

So it would be about having a healthy baseline that feels 'okay' when left alone, and trying to make fun minigames that only create possible consequences when you engage with it, so that people that enjoy it deal with possible crises that hopefully are fun, and people that could not possibly care about the minigames never need to think about it.

[Sparks]

@pyrephox said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

When I try to critique Arx's systems, though, it's always with a caveat that there are at least two huge systems which currently don't exist, but which are likely to change everything else around, in terms of character resources and actions: Dominion and Magic. And I can't even say that I know enough of what those are going to look like to speculate on their effects.

The magic system is actually in the codebase already, so the basic design is done, though there may still be tuning to do; there's a few knobs I still want to twist and fiddle with to dial in balance better. (I also wrote up a guide to magic ahead of time, in hopes it'll make the system more approachable when it does go live.)

However, I've put aside finishing up the system, in particular the coded effects and consequences—the building blocks that get put together to make the results of magic—to look at redoing Prestige instead, since Prestige seems to be such a pain point for people right now.

@kanye-qwest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@pyrephox Yes. I don't honestly find this kind of display very constructive, because the projected margin is so slim it's in 'who gives a damn' territory, but is presented in a way that all but begs for interpretation by people who don't want to math out the systems as "oh no if I don't do this right I am at a big disadvantage".

My thought is that if people are going to focus specifically on the math of a system in a constructive criticism thread, I feel like it should be coupled with an explanation of what they think needs to change in that math and why. Even there, though, it's going to be a pretty niche discussion; I mean, no offense meant to those who derive their enjoyment of the game from optimizing the math, but I feel like a better focus for a constructive criticism thread is looking at the systems at a macro level to see what stymies engagement (or, conversely, makes people feel like engagement is required, which should not be the case).

If people aren't using haggle, why not? If people are no longer using modeling, why not? What could make the systems more fun?

As one of the Arx coders, that's what I skim the thread looking for.

[Groth]

@apos said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

From my experience, a lot of 'this is an inefficiency, and will surely create problems' usually don't exist because an analysis of numbers only miss out on overwhelming contextual reasons that would otherwise prevent them. When I intentionally create huge incentives for something, and more people talk about how it is OP than actually engage with it and use it, that's worrying for entirely different reasons. Like as an example, there was 11 modeling coderuns since the assembly. There's was nearly a thousand separate uses of 'praise' last week. I'm certain without checking there was far, far, far more uses of 'work' than that.

Part of the reason for that is because the 'You must be this tall to ride' sign on a lot of these mechanics is pretty damn tall. Anything less then perfect or near perfect stats is going to see a dramatic drop to less then a quarter of the results the people with perfect stats are getting.

@sparks said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

My thought is that if people are going to focus specifically on the math of a system in a constructive criticism thread, I feel like it should be coupled with an explanation of what they think needs to change in that math and why. Even there, though, it's going to be a pretty niche discussion; I mean, no offense meant to those who derive their enjoyment of the game from optimizing the math, but I feel like a better focus for a constructive criticism thread is looking at the systems at a macro level to see what stymies engagement (or, conversely, makes people feel like engagement is required, which should not be the case).

I don't think the haggle numbers need to change. I'm just trying to explain how haggle works and why AP prices will trend towards 3,000 if AP sales become a thing again. If that's the result you want you can cut out a lot of middle-men by just adding a command that trades 1 AP for 1,000 silver flat.

[Apos]

@groth said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Part of the reason for that is because the 'You must be this tall to ride' sign on a lot of these mechanics is pretty damn tall. Anything less then perfect or near perfect stats is going to see a dramatic drop to less then a quarter of the results the people with perfect stats are getting.

Nah, that's not really true. if it was, people would engage with it once then stop if they were disappointed in the results. But the overwhelming majority haven't done it at all, which means that's inaccurate. This is particularly meaningful since like for example modeling skews really heavily to being disproportionately rewarding to low values, like silk having a multiplier of 15 while star iron has a multipler of 3, as an example, but there isn't anyone of any skill and stat combination that's tossing up a random silk outfit per week at minimal cost for exceptionally high returns. No one is.

[Ganymede]

@kanye-qwest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Yes. I don't honestly find this kind of display very constructive, because the projected margin is so slim it's in 'who gives a damn' territory, but is presented in a way that all but begs for interpretation by people who don't want to math out the systems as "oh no if I don't do this right I am at a big disadvantage".

I see it the same way Pyrephox did, and I like the number-crunch. All I'm seeing is that there isn't really much of a difference, so it's not worth getting my knickers in a twist. That's encouraging, not discouraging.

[Groth]

@apos said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Nah, that's not really true. if it was, people would engage with it once then stop if they were disappointed in the results. But the overwhelming majority haven't done it at all, which means that's inaccurate. This is particularly meaningful since like for example modeling skews really heavily to being disproportionately rewarding to low values, like silk having a multiplier of 15 while star iron has a multipler of 3, as an example, but there isn't anyone of any skill and stat combination that's tossing up a random silk outfit per week at minimal cost for exceptionally high returns. No one is.

Yes, your system favors Silk and Umbra over the insanity that is Josephines creations but that's not the real bar to ride. The real bar to ride is that the result is more or less linear with clout and relies heavily of being able and willing to go to 30+ people events.

There's also that very non-trivial bar to make people engage with a mechanic at all. The default state of any player is that they don't know the command exists or why they would want to use it.

[saosmash]

People definitely know that modeling exists, though. This is a reduction in numbers from people using the command before.

[Groth]

@saosmash said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

People definitely know that modeling exists, though. This is a reduction in numbers from people using the command before.

Before people could run the command in the privacy of their own homes couldn't they? It's a pretty big ask for most people to have to be at a big event to run a command.

[Apos]

@groth said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@apos said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Nah, that's not really true. if it was, people would engage with it once then stop if they were disappointed in the results. But the overwhelming majority haven't done it at all, which means that's inaccurate. This is particularly meaningful since like for example modeling skews really heavily to being disproportionately rewarding to low values, like silk having a multiplier of 15 while star iron has a multipler of 3, as an example, but there isn't anyone of any skill and stat combination that's tossing up a random silk outfit per week at minimal cost for exceptionally high returns. No one is.

Yes, your system favors Silk and Umbra over the insanity that is Josephines creations but that's not the real bar to ride. The real bar to ride is that the result is more or less linear with clout and relies heavily of being able and willing to go to 30+ people events.

There's also that very non-trivial bar to make people engage with a mechanic at all. The default state of any player is that they don't know the command exists or why they would want to use it.

Yeah exactly, that's what I was getting at in my post. That the non-formula factors are much more significant than the formulas and ease of use is why we'll revamp it and not the astronomical differences in prestige so much.

[Sparks]

@groth said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@saosmash said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

People definitely know that modeling exists, though. This is a reduction in numbers from people using the command before.

Before people could run the command in the privacy of their own homes couldn't they? It's a pretty big ask for most people to have to be at a big event to run a command.

I do think the intention of making it so people were modeling actual outfits (not just privately modeling things named "-" or "shirt" or "for model" that were then immediately recycled) by making you model in front of others kind of backfired in ways we didn't intend; seeing the use of modeling go down—even though the rewards are potentially higher—suggests people don't like the idea of public scenes being required.

So I'm probably going to back out the public aspect of modeling as part of the prestige changes I'm working on.

As Apos suggests, though, we're still going to want to come up with some kind of public fashion thing so that people can engage with the system in public, and some way to incentivize real outfits over throwaway. Ideas are being tossed around by staff, but they still need to "gel" a bit more before I think they can be detailed here.