My Life As A Gamer: A Similar Conversation To Braunstein Is Going On In MMOs

Over in the MMORPG space, one of the games in development--Ashes of Creation--gets a lot of attention due to regular livestreams from the developers followed by a small group of YouTube channels milking it for content.

A lot of the talk surrounding this game mirrors a lot of the talk about Braunstein in the tabletop space. This got to the attention of the Balding One, Asmongold, and he addressed the latest round of talk about the game's aim at Open World PVP being core to the game. Note that this is a LONG video; play at 2x Speed if you're keen on time.

Asmongold's objections to Ashes' PVP system have two flaws that he refuses to acknowledge: (1) he presumes that what the majority of players wants is objectively correct and (2) he has no idea how things will actually work out because this has not been tested yet.

The former is an error because he has not taken the time to analyze how the entireity of the design works, so he has not taken the time to work out the second and third-order effects. Neither has others who have positions similar to his. This is just like those '70s Boomers who failed to comprehend what Gygax and Arneson actually invented. He's running off presumptions from WOW, FF14, etc. and forgetting that Ashes is not even not a Themepark MMO, but as close to a Braunstein as the MMORPG scene allows for at this time. In short, category error.

The latter is an error because he does not know the full extent of the PVP design, has not seen it in action, and therefore presumes it will be exactly like his previous experience with Open World PVP in MMOs- completely ignoring some of the effects he thinks as negatives are intended and desired because you need adversity to create conflict, and without conflict YOU DO NOT HAVE A GAME.

Take a keen ear to the argument he makes. "Dude just wants to play the game", presuming that "playing the game" means "engage in static NPC encounters" and not what Ashes actually is: Players Vs. World, and "World" involves both other players as well as NPCs.

What Ashes actually is is a player-driven game where you, as a solo player, are going to have a bad time. You are expected to group up, and it is entirely intended that you get wrecked if you wander into unsecured territory to do economic activities- and you are certainly expected to group up to go exploring or travel through dangerous territory. You are going to come into conflict because what you want to do directly conflicts with the intersts of other players, and that direct conflict is what makes a RPG work.

In short, Asmongold and others like him are complaining that they are not getting what a MMORPG is supposed to be and the makers are willing AND ABLE to live with the consequences of this decision.

They are the MMO versions of people like Lew, Pundit, et. al. who still think RPGs are all about single PCs joined at the hip, doing everything together, and Timekeeping Doesn't Matter Because Reasons- all the stuff that videogames do better.

These people do not realize that the MMORPG is a tabletop RPG derivative, which is a wargame derivative, but it is going to dawn on them that it is when Ashes starts to show what it reall is about over the course of its development cycles- and the best part is that the man behind it has never heard of Braunstein.

Imagine his shock when he realizes that all he's chasing was realized generations ago- and he's just blindly reinventing the wheel.

And this video just dropped get into the knockon effects of giving people like Asmongold what he wants.