[Long] Four grave problems with Cut Throat, and how to fix them.
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The Cut Throat league is the one and only reason I intend for PoE to be my game of choice for a long, long time.
I cannot emphasize enough how important this league will be for me, and for many of my like-minded friends. For some people CT may just be a gimmick, a fun feature in which to waste a couple hours when bored of other PvP modes, but for me, given that GGG implements it correctly, will be a life style within the game. Having said that, I foresee several big problems with the way CT has been hinted to be implemented, and I think now, when the team is working on it, is the best moment to strike. I believe I have experience with open world, non-consensual PvP, having been a long time UO and Darkfall player, but the most of my experience comes from three years of being a pirate fleet commander in EvE, in which I've gotten to understand the mindset of that particular audience, and the problems they may bring if the league is not designed around them. I have worked very hard on this post, thinking of all the possible issues with the mode and a proposed solution to address them in a simple, easy to code way. It's going to be a HUGE post, so I decided to hide the specific sections in spoiler tags with a TLDR version of top. If you wish to provide feedback about any of the points, please read it fully. So without further ado, let's analyze the four main problems... -------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Level Disparity (Consequence of open instances) -------------------------------------------------------------- TL:DR: Open instances will lead to level disparities and uncontrolled, zero-risk ganking. This is bad design regardless of how "hardcore" the mode aims to be, Higher level players should have risk involved and low level players should be rewarded for their skill, not their luck finding ganker-free instances.
Detailed Explanation
If the CT league is implemented in such a way that any player may join any instance, level disparities will occur. Without control, this will kill the cut-throat league by itself alone. It's essential for people to understand this reality. I've heard some saying that's the way it should be; that CT is the simulation of a harsh world, in which "ganking" is acceptable regardless of level difference. I am pretty sure the proponents of this aren't really interested in CT as a league in which to play seriously, and think of it, like I pointed out before, as a gimmick or a time waster. I'll put EvE as an example: In EvE, it's perfectly possible to be an old character and engage in PvP against newer players (in certain areas). However, this works right because in EvE there are no levels. The difference between newer and older characters is marginal and a well trained, well equipped rookie can beat a veteran easily (that's what my friends and I did when we started). "Good gear" in that game means more risk and more reward, and not necessarily a direct increase. This unfortunately doesn't happen in PoE, where a disparity in levels means one character is strictly better than another. Even while holding a full set of whites (zero risk) a level 70 will destroy a group of level 15s, and pitting these players together would be terrible, terrible design. There is no fun in ganking when there isn't risk involved for both parties. Even worse, there is an additional issue that adds up to the one I just discussed: hierarchy of game areas. There are low level, and high level zones, which means a higher character with a defensive/mobile build may choose to delve at a rookie area destroying every lower level character for hours, simply avoiding others of his level or changing instances. If CT goes live like this, after the initial race to high levels, the mode will die as nobody will be interested in playing through a duck shoot in which survival is not due to skill but completely random (eventually, it will depend in your luck coming across high level characters trying to gank you). And no, this opinion does not come from the fact "I'm not hardcore enough". I don't want to turn this into an epeen measure competition, but I assure you I have gone through things in EvE that no other game will be able to replicate, both in stress and real-life consequences (thousands of dollars worth of ships at stake, all under my command). No, zero risk ganking is never good design, and I don't want to take part on it, from neither end. -------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Group Dominance -------------------------------------------------------------- TL;DR: There is no incentive for solo or small group play. Unless design measures are taken, groups in Cut Throat will be of the biggest possible size by default. This is severely limiting and incompatible with the "lone survivor" ambience and mentality.
Detailed Explanation
I'll bring EvE online up again, as it gives many great examples. In EvE, grouping for non consensual PvP is fine. From being an experienced FC, I can tell you bigger groups are harder to coordinate, and their most important weakness is... The enemy can have a BIGGER group. In EvE, you can never tell if your numbers are higher than your opponent's. Therefore, giving up mobility in exchange for sheer numbers is a tradeoff, not a strict improvement. This will not be the case in PoE. Knowing that the instances are capped to a specific amount, even if the maximum group is half that number, full groups will still be optimal. Even if GGG come up with a nice system to avoid higher level players interacting with lower level, the group dynamics will still kill the possibility of solo or duo play: players will not have any chance against 6 or 8 people groups. While a CT mode in which full parties are mandatory could still work (much better than one with level disparities) it would still underperform compared to what GGG can offer. Let's keep on highlighting problems... -------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Stale instances / Respawn problems / Camping -------------------------------------------------------------- TL;DR: The segregation between players temporarily interested in PvE objectives and PvP encounters will lead into misuse of instance dynamics. Existing instances will be camped and barren, or those willing to advance in PvE will assume so anyway, unnecessarily multiplying the amount of instances creating server load and spreading the population.
Detailed Explanation
Being caught in the middle of a PvE encounter by an enemy player is not something you want to happen. Players actively looking for a fight will prefer to do so focused and from the advantageous position. This leads to the obvious conclusion of groups cleaning instances and camping in them. Were this to go unpoliced, the conclusion would be that most instances in the instance list are already cleared, and players are simply camping them for a fight. While this is not necessarily bad, there are arena modes for that. CT should be a mix of PvE progression and PvP survivability, and this dynamic can destroy that balance. If PoE monsters somehow respawned in-instance, this could be partially fixed, but such solution would be hard to implement and other problems would arise from it (such as accumulation of loot on the ground). Giving the player the possibility to create his/her own instance at will (like Default works) is a non-solution too, because it would immediately spread the amount of instances far too wide, as the players who are interested in pursuing a PvE objective would be creating unnecessary new instances, while those interested in PvP camp the former or unsuccessfully try to pursue the PvErs, constantly switching through barren instances. -------------------------------------------------------------- 4) No interest in impromptu grouping -------------------------------------------------------------- There is no reward for banding with other players in the middle of an instance. A hostile player will only be perceived as such, and the potential for rich interactions a la Battle Royale will be wasted. Only premade groups will exist, making emergent strategies pointless.
Detailed Explanation
This is not exactly an issue but rather a missed opportunity. Of all the games that enable full, non-consensual PvP, I haven't seen any that take this approach correctly: Groups are usually planned in advance by people who know each other, but there is no interest in grouping in the middle of the action.
This is a shame, because the survival mechanics would be much more interesting with this tradeoff. Perhaps some of you have read The Dark Elf, by R.A. Salvatore, and remember that training arena in which Drizzt partnered with another participant to get and advantage and got ultimately betrayed by him. Also, people like media like the Hunger Games and Battle Royale precisely because of the ever present tension of potential betrayal, and not knowing if the person you just found will be a friend of a foe. The current implementations of CT look like there will be no such dynamics: A hostile player will be a hostile player, and there is no reward from questioning that line of thought. Only premade groups will collaborate, thus giving more importance to preset strategies instead of emergent gameplay. Fortunately, my proposed solution solves this issue by making impromptu groups interesting, so read on! -------------So... How do we fix all this? -------------- I think the four problems I highlighted need to be addressed if GGG intends Cut Throat to be a living, breathing scenario. They must do it just right though, ant not as an afterthought, or players like me who are looking for this niche will not stick. Unfortunately, many of the adopted strategies from other games won't work. For example, straight prohibiting high level players to agress lower level ones would not blend with the game concept and would be extremely artificial and bland. Similarly, artificial constraints such as buffs or debuffs based on group size, level disparity from the instance or time wasted on a cleared instance are non-solutions. In my opinion, the best way to enforce proper player interaction in the Cut Throat league is through an intelligent, hidden matchmaking system, in which everything from level to group dynamics is taken into account to provide automatic balanced pairings. I have done a sketch of this system, that I provide below, which should address all four problems I mentioned and also provide interesting situations such as emergent impromptu grouping. Here goes!: -------------------------------------------------------------- THE SOLUTION: Effective Level Matchmaking -------------------------------------------------------------- Effective Level Matchmaking is a comprehensive, hidden mechanic that will handle instance dynamics in a way that benefits all players involved. The detailed explanation is in spoiler form below, but if you want to skip it you can directly read the consequences it would have on player dynamics and the new emergent roles / possibilities it will create.
Detailed Explanation
The first step on implementing this on CT league is that players will lose the explicit control they have on instances, and will instead get two options when entering a new area: -> Access last instance (in case they were going through one already). -> Access random instance (no need to explain). The way it works is as follows: Each player or group of players has a hidden stat called "Effective level". For a single player, this is equal to his or her player level, while in a group it would be some non-linear formula, to compensate for the advantage of being multiple players (for instance, two level 35 players would perhaps have a ELVL of 45). Instances also have an ELVL value, also hidden, and completely independent of the area and difficulty level. A Normal Mud Flats may perfectly have an ELVL of 195. So how do instances get their ELVL? When "Access Random Instance" is clicked, an algorithm checks if there are instances of that area with an ELVL similar to yours (or your group's). If there is an instance within a +-5 ELVL range, you're thrown into it. If there isn't, an instance with an ELVL equal to yours is created. Instances raise their ELVL very slowly (1 point per 15min) until half of the monsters have been cleared, or until meaningful PvE objectives are already achieved. When either of those things happen, the instance's ELVL will start rising by 1 per minute. While this is not explicitly stated to the player, visual feedback may be provided in a background-friendly way. (Wolves howling, lights getting darker, messages hinting that the area is becoming more dangerous...). When an instance has no players in it, it will retain it's ELVL. The 15 minute timer to destruction remains, but new players won't be assigned to it unless there's someone inside. If a group forms in a city or across instances, the players lose the ability to join any instance they were previously in, and must access a random one correspondent to their new ELVL. Optionally, GGG may wish to implement an option (from the Party billboard or a NPC) called "go hunt", which would take the player/group to ANY populated instance in the game for which he/they have the WP, with their adequate ELVL. This would be a way to directly find other players of their level on low-population days. So here's a list of the reasons why this solution is optimal, and deals with all the aforementioned problems: -----1): It lumps problems 1 and 2 together and deals with them in a comprehensive fashion, while maximizing the amount of players that interact. Higher level players will be paired with players of their level, and if they wish to hunt at lower levels they will be able to do so, but they'll be paired against bigger groups. Group dynamics and level hierarchy interact perfectly so that one may compensate the other, making all play styles viable, from the lone hunter to the coordinated pack. -----2): It deals with the instance dynamics by making stale instances inreasingly dangerous for the people inside them, making camping barren instances a risky business, while doing away with the issue of players constantly stumbling into instances in which the PvE content is already stale and cleared. -----3): As a consequence of the last point, high level players who wish to gank will still have that possibility available to them. They just have to join random instances at a low level area until they find one of the "Dangerous" ones, and then take the role of the "reaper", taking away players who have made that instance stale by overcamping it. They can let their instincts loose and enjoy the dominance while making a community service, by sweeping clean old instances and preventing foul play. Symmetrically, players who believe they can take the challenge may claim an instance for themselves, dealing with increasingly powerful enemies in the fashion of a true survival horror game. -----4): Emergent, impromptu grouping is encouraged. As stated in the detailed explanation, a group formed on a city will require players to create a new instance with the combined ELVL. However, players who meet inside a instance and decide to band together will not need to leave. This creates an intrinsic imbalance as these players actually have a higher ELVL than what the instance is for, but that's their reward for deciding to stick together: They will be able to enjoy their higher chances to survive for a while. Of course, since these players met randomly, the possibility for betrayal is there, and it's their price to pay! When they advance to a new area, it will spawn with their combined ELVL normally. As you can see, my ELVL matchmaking solution would (in paper) turn Cut Throat mode in a vibrant, diverse arena without artificial gank-prevention mechanics. Of course it won't be perfectly balanced, but major design mistakes such as uneven, risk-free matching are neatly avoided. Best of all, it's code-friendly (ELVL mechanics are extremely simple to implement) and can be easily hidden from the player's end, who will benefit from them seamlessly. That's all for now. I've made a lot of effort with this thread so I'd love to hear your opinions, specially if you work at GGG =). Thanks for reading!! Last edited by Falcord on Jun 1, 2012, 11:47:44 AM
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Nice post, as you are probably aware, Cut-throat is still being balanced.
After an initial levelling period, level disparities are inevitable. I like your solution because it will delay the game from 'breaking', where some people are already too high level for the league to function properly. Right now I think that is why the leagues for cut-throat only lasted 90 minutes. Your solution could probably extend that time, to at least 3 hours if balanced properly. Though what happens when someone with the highest Effective level enters a random instance when he is too far from any opponents? Would PvE be his only option? I also like that your solution makes it harder to just try and stop people from focusing only on PvE to out-level their opponents, this was probably occurring because players had too much control over instancing. | |
" What is your alternative though? We can't make players from thin air. Take into account those league tests were made with a very small population. My solution implies the game has achieved a certain degree of popularity and the player base is enough to provide a substantial buffer. If a player or group is just too high level to find any enemies, that's how it should be. Anyway, the margin for joining an instance (which I exemplified with +-5 ELVL) could be flexible and a function of the number of players connected at that very moment. it could also be made even more flexible at higher levels. What is clear to me, is that the solution for underpopulation simply isn't "put this character together with the level 10s". An alternative could be having the option for higher level players to be sent to ANY instance with their ELVL; as long as they have the waypoint. | |
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Don't have time to make a long post how I agree with the OP, but I agree 100%, I'm also a longtime and current EvE player and understand that there is definetly some very key elements namely ones mentioned that should be included in cutthroat.
As it is right now its too uncertain. | |
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I dislike the inability to use skill gems if you drop the only gear you have that can hold them.
IRON MAN
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Thanks alot for writing this. It has been a most interesting read.
It is a complicated system you are describing and I'm sure I don't understand all of it. However, it does seem coherent and should be contemplated seriously. |
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Good post, there are some potential issues with your proposal though.
I assume that for this to work you would need to prevent players from being able to choose which instance they wish to enter, and that they would instead be assigned to a new or pre-existing instance automatically. This could cause stale instances to hang around longer than they otherwise would. Currently if you want a fresh instance you can simply ctrl-click on an area transition or waypoint to create one. However with automatic placement, it might prove difficult to find an instance that actually has monsters in it, or that has a quest boss still alive. Players would constantly get recycled into pre-existing instances, which could be frustrating. So I suppose you would also need something to combat this for instance: a) fast or instant closure of empty instances, or b) 50% chance to enter a new instance, even if there is an existing one with an appropriate ELVL, or c) respawning monsters, or d) retain the ability for players to manually create a new instance, just use auto-placement by default, or e) etc. " What would be to stop players intending to group from entering an instance individually, then grouping, and therefore gaming the ELVL to be much lower than it should be? Assuming the group was all similar level and entered at the same time, there would be a high chance of them being able to meet up. Even if you had something like dynamic adjustment of the ELVL based on the current highest group in the instance, people would still be able to just not party up, while still acting as if they are partied. | |
" Exactly. In fact, it's quite explicit in the detailed description of the mechanic. Did you read the spoiler? =) But yes, that's how it works. " Not really... Sorry if I sound harsh, but I'm starting to doubt you've read the proposal in detail (nothing wrong with that, I admit it's too long). The problem you mention is one I've taken into account and highlighted in the problem sections, and addressed it specifically. Instances won't get stale as their ELVL will constantly increase at higher pace. What this means is that incoming players will be higher level, and a high level player joining a low level area is doing so explicitly to gank. When such thing happens, the camping players will be swept and the instance will be rendered useless as the gankers will eventually leave. Also, the constantly increasing ELVL means that players who were going to join that area to complete its relevant PvE objectives won't be assigned to that specific instance, so they won't have to deal with the recycling. As I also explained, when an instance is devoid of people, even if it's still alive, will be locked so new players cannot enter. If you think carefully of the interaction between the ELVL mechanics, what they achieve is maximizing contact between players of similar power, and minimizing staleness and outdated instances. " With a big enough player base, this shouldn't be an issue. In case the playerbase is so small it cannot be guaranteed, some artificial measures can be taken. For instance, people who have already grouped together that day cannot be randomly assigned to the same instance. Either way it's a minor issue, and in case it was so bad it could be circumvented by disabling grouping from inside the instance altogether, limiting interaction to mutual respect and care with the friendly fire. Last edited by Falcord on Jun 1, 2012, 11:06:23 AM
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I used to play Ultima Online a lot back in the day. Between that and Asheron's Call [Darktide server] nothing has ever really come close to great PvP for me. I was hoping PoE would be one of those games but soooo many things are wrong with cutthroat and the instancing system right now.
I really, really, like a lot of the OP's suggestions and ideas. This could be a great boon to the CT league if GGG considers some of these ideas or uses them as jumping off points. Bump. |
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Nice post. I'm sure the devs have thrown around a lot of ideas for how to make Cutthroat compelling. It's definitely a mode that they really want to include.
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