Jarod Leercap
On Three 125
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Posted - 2012.07.01 04:04:00 -
[1] - Quote
Thor Kerrigan wrote:1. What exactly is a reasonable amount of risk? In other words, at which point would losing your most expensive ship (NPCs or Players, no matter) result in you going "Yep, I truly deserved to lose that ship and I can only blame myself". Showing emotion - sadness or rage - for such a lose is understandable; such is the nature of the game. So please, an honest response.
2. What exactly is a reasonable amount of profit you should be allowed to make? What is the maximum and the minimum isk/hour that should be available when you perform said activities under you ideal risk/reward ratio you thought of when answering question 1.
I think to get to the heart of the answer, I have to phrase the questions differently. I'll venture to outline new questions and rough answers.
(1) How long should recovery for a loss take?
I would say that this is a sliding scale, in that loss recovery should be quick for new players and longer for more experienced players. That said, the answer to this question also depends on loss frequency, as an activity is not profitable of losses happen more quickly than they can be recovered.
Assuming a low loss frequency, I wouldn't want recovery to make more than a work day (say 8 to 10 hours). This assumes I have enough savings to replace what I lost, and therefore do not see my earnings drop.
(2) How frequent should losses be?
For high-sec care bears, I would say not very. The problem with a higher loss frequency is that the loss frequency will vary, and you don't want a player to buckle because two or three losses can come too quickly with a relatively minor variation in loss frequency.
(3) What should the net income of the activity be, once you subtract for a typical loss rate?
This is where I really struggle to come up with an answer.
Let me take off my care bear hat for a moment and try to think like a PvP'er (which I am not). PvP tends to be an income sink, so I want there to be activities that generate net income to fund my PvP. Ideally, that net income is high enough that I can spend a signficant fraction of my time in PvP.
The question then, is how the game can let PvP players cover their losses without leaving PvE players flush with cash when both engage in the same activities.
Some other comments...
Thor Kerrigan wrote:In other words, at which point would losing your most expensive ship (NPCs or Players, no matter) result in you going "Yep, I truly deserved to lose that ship and I can only blame myself".
Frankly, I think this is the wrong way to ask a care bear to measure risk.
PvP is a more directly competitive endeavor. Wins and losses are typically, but not always, determined by player skill. Even in this sense, though, skill shouldn't just be about "not making mistakes". It should (typically) be about executing better, having marginally more precision, better twitch, and/or better timing, not, "Shoot, I forgot to turn on my guns!".
In the end, PvP victory should go to the player who deviates less form perfect execution. One can call deviation perfect execution "mistakes", but ideally the good matches are determined by deviations to small to warrant the term. In that sense, there should be at least some matches where the loser says, "He/she just outplayed me that round. I should practice so I can do better next time."
PvE is very different in that the player trying to defeat a more-or-less fixed obstacle. Unless you accept that the player always wins if he or she doesn't do something stupid--which would imply little or no external risk--then the thought of a losing player should not be, "I messed up," but rather, "My number came up."
Thor Kerrigan wrote:I should make enough money in highsec to barely pay for a PLEX on a good month.
Perhaps I'm too casual about the game for your taste, but my sense is that it should be awfully hard to earn a PLEX in a month, even for an experienced player, especially in high sec. There is a logical limit to how many players can fund their accounts with flex before the game becomes, in effect, free to play. At some point, no one pays for the actual game, and a subset of players buy tokens from the publisher that they (indirectly) trade to other players for high-end gear. I'm not opposed to a funding model that works for the publisher, per se, but enough free to play games look sufficiently lousy to make me wary. |