I studied computer game science in college (yes, it was a specific degree). They never directly taught you what fun is, but they gave a lot of hints for students to try to figure that out on their own. Here's my conclusion. Fun is learning done right. Now you may thing, "wtf, I hate learning, they do that at school." And here's the catch, you don't hate learning, you hate school because they do it wrong. There's a common trope in anime (or stores) where the strongest man becomes bored because there's no one else stronger than him. They're bored because they don't have anything else that pushes them to learn more and become stronger. And that's the other thing, motivation to start. Fun is also very subjective, as in quite literally, everyone's base of knowledge is different. Already knowing about how a mechanic works is a different feel than not fully knowing it. Creating fun right is creating lessons correctly. You can't jump from A to Z when it comes to learning, you do A, B, C... etc. Some people can take larger steps, other can only take tiny steps. Or maybe sometimes they vary the steps. People need reinforcement and feedback if what they're learning is correct, and it also needs to be clear indication that doing X will result in Y. Our brain are designed to always be learning, looking for patterns, looking for things to engage with, things to learn, things to have fun with. Something not being fun is the perception that there is nothing else to explore. Having a reward by doing X is not mutually inclusive to having fun (if I used that word correctly). You can very much not have fun while grinding all day to get that seasonal mount. Fun is not the reward, but the action of doing which results in learning. The fun in multiplayer games last a very long time because there's the element of learning human behavior. How will my opponent or teammate react in this situation? How does this differ from my past experiences? What do I think they will do next? What else can this player do? It's an unique property of multiplayer games that make them fascinating. Is Kingsmarch fun? Depends. How did you engage with it? Did you already know how it worked before you got into it? Did you pull up the cheatsheet that someone else already provided, skipping all the "fun" and learning you would have needed to go through? What were your expectations? Too high? Too low? Were you frustrated? Why? That's another thing too: frustration: the result of feedback in learning not being consistent to expectations or inconsistent. You see this in children a lot when they try to do X, expect something to happen, but it doesn't happen. They try it again and again but what they expect doesn't happen. They get frustrated. It's the same thing in a very complex and convoluted game mechanic or boss design. You expect a game mechanic or process to behave a specific way, but it doesn't. You try it again and again but it just seems random or inconsistent with no feedback or direction on how to do things better to achieve your goal. Frustration. Another thing too, is that learning has to be voluntary. This is the "want to" vs "have to" play. The other thing too is that someone can have no expectations, no love or hate for a game, but still have fun. TL;DR This write up is kind of all over the place, but in essence, from my experience, fun is learning done right.
Having the "need" to log in due to gold drain is definitely problematic as well. It's nudging people to log in and engage involuntary. If it's literally the only thing they are doing, it isn't fun. But you have to take into account the other things they might be doing when they are logging in. Are they having engaging and exploring things there? It's kind of a double edge sword kind of design. There are gacha games I used to play where I log in only to do maintenance and never engage with the other parts of the game. I don't have fun in those games anymore, except when I actually engage with the interesting parts of the game.
I guess it also be noted, is that learning can be a bad thing. Think about all the things trying to enforce player exploration of loot boxes or other things to pay.
About extrinsic and intrinsic motivators. I think these are a bad way to view player choices in games. I think the better way to view it is "where is the drive"? Extrinsic motivation describes the drive to do action A to get reward B. You perceive the fun in B, while A may or may not be fun. Intrinsic motivation describes the drive to do A, even in the absence of B. You perceive the fun in A, and B is just extra. What drives the player to do X? Is it because X is fun or because Y is fun, and is the result of doing X? The rewards from sending ships from Kingsmarch is fun because you can do a lot with currency, etc. The action of sending the ship itself might not be very fun after mastering how to send the best ships. In other words, Kingsmarch ship trading may be fun at the start, but after mastery gets boring later... as is many things in life.
Another thing to note is mastery, depth, and width of something to have "fun" with. Once mastery is reach and there is nothing else to learn, fun dwindles. The depth of something (how much to learn) in combination with how it translates to other things (how mechanic X interacts, if at all, with mechanic Y) is the amount of fun someone can have with something.
I finished reading your comment and additional replies. That was very interesting to the point that Ill probably carry much of what you said in mind into the future. There is a book i have on the shelf called full catastrophe living and towards the beginning the author essentially says 'happiness／fun／enjoyment(Or whatever we wanna call it) basically comes when people feel like they are challenged at the right level.' I feel like this is pretty much in line with everything you said and i think it all makes sense. And ya it makes sense what you said about shipping and others being fun at the beginning and waning because of mastery etc. For example in my last video i basically decided shipping is prolly just not worth it and have been just doing small shipments which i think is probably optimal from a time/efficiency standpoint but also gets boring and choreーesque quickly xD Anyways i dunno if ill always be able to read your comments as i continue to get more and more comments but id be happy to have you as a suba nd feel free to share any time and ill try to read it if i can. Cheers and thanks again for sharing.
The answer is "initially yes, but then no". Because at first you're discovering what it's all about. But once you understand it, you know what is needed to be efficient. 50% crop/50% dust large shipments, 3 active map devices with high level mappers, active dusters, etc. Your hourly cost becomes huge and you're no longer mapping to map, you're mapping to farm gold. And if you don't, you fall behind (relative to what's efficient). So now you're in a mobile game gameplay loop. Better log on and do your dailies (farming rogue exiles for gold) before you can have any fun. Can't log on today? What about all those mirror shards, divs and valdos from mappers/shippers you're missing out on?
There is a Venn Diagram with "fun to play" and "have to play" ... the middle is PoE 3.25. I planned to play every day anyhow, and the town building and usage was a nice bonus. Eventually once my build was farming T17s and hit 40/40 challenges, I was sitting on a massive excess of gold so the burn was no big deal. The enjoyment of the league (for me) was maxing it all out. Great league. Now would I want to build kingsmarch next league? Nope! One and done.
what I like about gold in this league is it's giving player agency with gold as a delayed income (not passive as I often read) it converts a percentage of random loot into a non tradeable points that you can convert into actual currency (or gear early on) following a few methods the delayed reward is designed to make you come back, it is not designed to make you stay now a lot of players get tricked into thinking it's passive income with extra steps and that's where it could be argued that the mechanic is an extrinsic motivator to me the 40/40 thing is mostly : play a lot for a league, get about 35/40 from playing the game minmaxxing the character, then go the extra mile if I feel like it but avoid silly things also the 40/40 challenges is good for new players because it gives directions to engage with content they wouldn't really try without the incentive
I remember back in Warlords of Draenor the introduction of Garrisons. It was very similar to Kingsmarch. The problem of an extra mechanic that you have to "feed" in order for it to function is that most players who are casual will quickly get bored. The Min/max crowd will milk the mechanic but they too, will get bored. There is a way to make the mechanic much more engaging but it requires GGG to think of the players experience. For example: 1) When you send shipments out, allow those shipments to open up a special map that the player can engage in. 2) Instead of feeding your unwanted maps to Kingsmarch, allow the player to send "scouts" out for search of rare maps that can grant access to Kingmarch bosses or add Kingsmarch mechanics to those maps. 3) Get rid of the wage mechanic and replace it with a one-time fee, then allow players to "level-up" their workforce with gold sinks.
There are only 2 things I don't like about the league. 1. The disenchanter should either be able to pull automatically from your stash tabs that you designate for it, or make the disenchanter a quad tab with multiple tabs. 2. Should have a stash tab by every NPC in Kingsmarch, and be able to move stashes around. DIsenchanting is super tedious since you have to do it every hour to keep it full (or 4 hours if you fill with only 1x1 items), and walking back and forth to it multiple times per hour is absolutely frustrating. Other than that, great season!
If i haven't had to play 10 maps every day on scarabs modifiers and specific atlas tree to sustain my not maxed kingsmarch for 24h then yes it would be fun. But hey currency exhange is cool
Part of the reason I like PoE so much is that your progress is 100% linked to your knowledge and skill at the game and Kingsmarch runs entirely counter to that maxim. The rewards are entirely timegated and those that wholly aren't depend on RNG (there's no progress bar for the Admiral or Bandit Lord bosses). Yet the constant expenditure of gold requiring that you play regularly (unless you can devote large swathes of time to PoE and run stratagies that grant large quantities of gold) results in a repeating cycle that gives rewards too slow to be of use to hardcore players and yet too expensive to run for casuals to make use of, resulting in the midcore playerbase feeling pigeon-holed into constantly running maps to afford Kingsmarch. As it stands now, Kingsmarch has no place in POE and would be detrimental to its health if it were added, adding that compulsion to play (as Bellular spoke of) to PoE where there previously was none. The type of forced multitasking it adds to the game would only be a detriment. If they removed the forced timers and instead linked progression to gold instead and made it a tradeoff between spending it on Kingsmarch or using Faustus' marketboard and item buyer, I think it would be a great addition.
It was way more fun earlier, now it feels like a chore. But it's partly because I didn't broke out of "gold farming prison". I needed to assemble stronger character to farm gold more efficiently but I didn't.
This seems true. I used to play Neverwinter for years. Then it got to a point where it felt like a job, having to do daily quests to try and keep up with my friends, trying to keep up with the guild, never feeling like I was reaching any end goal. Path of Exile....yeah, Kingsmarch gets a little much, then I started prioritizing my goals and stopped worrying about it. I worked towards killing Ubers and getting 40/40 on challenges....both of which I got done this league this past weekend. Now there is no obligation for anything....goals were met.
Yeah, that overburden by a need to fill the gold stash so farmers continue to gather things felt quite depressing on third day already, I was. Instead of having fun with different mechanics, I was just grinding for gold to pay my workers so they don't waste time(wasting my own instead, ironic)
Currency exchange is awesome. Building the town was interesting, not sure about being fun. Learning the mechanics early on was also interesting. I am at the point now where I do shipments of 2 verisium (to reach the 100 point requirement) to Ribben Fell so that I get scarabs and runes back. Using L2 or L3 shippers. When I lose one to starting a new life or a bar fight, no big deal. When I was doing mappers and lost L10 ones to RNGeesus I lost the feeling of fun, because I felt I had no agency in whether they died or not. I was only doing maps with the 1% chance. I didn't track it, but it sure felt like a higher than 1% chance. Have since stopped mappers because they just were not fun. The tiny shipments are feeding scarabs and runes. Not necessarily fun, but profitable. I have enjoyed the league itself immensely. The currency exchange has certainly played into that. The shipping to a degree has helped that enjoyment. I have not done anything with the recombinator. I didn't play the league that included it, so I would need to do some research for a better understanding. After stopping mapping and farming (after watching your flipping vs farming video) and just doing those tiny shipments, my enjoyment increased, because I didn't feel compelled to log in to generate gold to fund the town. Sorry for the novel. I am off to watch the video you referenced, thanks for the recommendation.
I don't know if Kingsmarch is "fun" as I view it as too "grind-driven" EDIT: I watched the video and I do feel that I "had" to login and didn't like the league as much because of that ... . I do think some changes would alleviate my biggest concerns though: 1. Finding & hiring L10 workers is a pain -- I believe that workers should be able to "level up" based on how long they've been actively working. 2. The constant feeling of "I need to log in to farm more gold" is also annoying -- I believe that mappers & shippers should generate gold in addition to what they currently do so your town has an illusion of "almost" being self sufficient. 3. Rolling maps for map runners, feeding them maps, running ships, etc. require to you check back in fairly often -- We need to have a better way of "automating" these functions. Maybe mappers should be able to generate their own maps and be nearly self sufficient?? Maybe we can set up a schedule so when a certain amount []differs by the good] is available the ships automatically sail to their destination?? EDIT: I don't mind building up the "buildings" too much at the start of leagues as you're likely to be playing a lot anyway.
I felt like the pressure to get gold is really high until you're able to blast 8 mod or even better t17 and then it's nearly a non issue. I think it's pretty well tuned until that beginning red map / right before juicing stage
I feel like there are a lot of people this league who definitely have not played a mobile game that psychologically manipulates them with timegates and it shows.
Challenges are a total killer for my motivation. I like to do challenges but not if the game tells me that they are challenges. I like to find out if it is even possible to juggle three balls at once but if the game tells me to do it I know that it is possible before I even tried once.
As somebody who likes city building/resource management games, I had fun with kingsmarch in the first week of the league which is how long it took me to fully upgrade it and equip it with t10 workers everywhere. Messed around with shipping for a bit cause figuring stuff out was also interesting. Then I felt no need to visit it again until I decided to do my 36 challenges. For what it is, a mini-game inside of PoE, I think it delivered well. I don't think the mechanic is going to go core, even though I expect Kingsmarch itself to be reused at some point. It would be a waste of a great story anchor to discard it. Maybe we finally move past eater and exarch and altar clicking. It was a great addition to the game but it's been 8 leagues already. The marketplace on the other hand is something I consider as being a core game feature, even though the devs tied it to the league mechanic to experiment with it (which is understandable given it is probably the biggest change since the game went from 4 acts 3 difficulties to a 10 act campaign).
I'll be fully happy if next league the market stays, and everything else goes away. Though Kingsmarch could be some kind of lasting place. Or, they could (they should) make Kirac's base a similar place, where you can use your skills (especially since items can drop there already). Make it so rarity doesn't impact gold drop next league. No one needs millions of gold, that makes it too easy to disrupt the market.
I personaly dont see any diffrence to other League, if u want to engage with the League mechanic u need to login and play. Lets say Sanctum League u had to farm maps do run your sanctum, now u just have to run maps to engage with Kingsmarch. I can just say for me its not different than most Leagues
Really enjoyed logging in daily until the update that upped dust costs. This threw the balance of my entire town off, and was never able to get fully engaged again. Mapper costs + disenchanting just felt too burdensome, even with max scarab t16s.
I totally disagree that Kingsmarch is only an extrinsic motivator. The town gives you currency without having to grind to improve your mechanical skill in play or your gear. That to me is a lot less frustrating. It is no less intrinsic than a hard boss you have to overcome with practice.
You don't have to improve mechanically skill wise, however you do have to know how to efficiently grind to really keep it going. Which is, in a sense, skill...
Is it fun? Not really no. However, the currency exchange is *fantastic* and I have made more currency this league than all other leagues combined. I really hope they expand "automatic" trading to all items, not just currency. 4 items I'd love to buy on poetrade I can't because the listers seem to have quit the league already.
As for challenges ... one can argue as you do that the name is incorrect. Call them what you will ... "league grinds"? Regardless, i like them. They are my natural stopping point for the league. I pick a number, usually 36/37 and sometimes 40, go for it, then put the game down. Aside from playing a single new build every league (which i have done since beta), the challenges are my favorite part.
I like the league, but I can agree with you mate about the fact that you feel like you have to log in because of the gold drain. It can be done differently and be fun imo cheers and keep up the good work 🙂
Settlers is the best league they have ever released. Also Kingsmarch is not really an extrinsic motivator. There is nothing you get from Kingmarch that you cannot get from regular play (sorry enchants) and thus no actual need to do it. Unlike a battle pass, where the transmogs or mounts or whatever are ONLY obtained from completing the dumb battle pass. I don't feel forced to log in to get gold for Kingsmarch, Kingsmarch is just free extra currency when I keep it running. In fact I argue this aspect of gaming is the aspect that POE does better than ANY other game, PoE adds End game mechanic after end game mechanic, all of which are useful but no single one is required, that is crazy and the things that truly puts POE ahead of the ARPG pack. Think of other games, they all fail here, their end game systems are either forced or useless.
I feel like this is more of a tell that you already played the game 4+ hours a day during any league than it is you actually knowing what an extrinsic motivator really is.
I agree that the "black market" [initial, very basic gear] is quite handy ; currency exchange is awesome if you don't want to fight with Discord or traditional trading ; Recombinator is nice to get some early game gear and create mid-game gear fairly easily. The "rune bench" is also a nice bump to power early and it helps take some of the late game gear a little better.
No, it's work. Early on it was good for currency, but unless you're an all day grinder it's not much more profitable than a good mapping strategy. The gold time/grind investment is the only way to make it worth while.
Were the first impressions good? Yes. Did it live up many days after launch? Its certainly a net positive. Its passive income done in an interesting way mixed with trading qol. The negatives? If you treat fomo like a make-believe thing (as it is.) , and ignore any "i have to log in to micro manage" yadayada nonsense then there's little to talk about. Having said that , if it goes core I would like to see some personality in the mechanics. Example settlers not only being tiered but also having traits (farms wheat x2 as fast , mapper is more likely to find "x" , sailor grants more protection to shipment etc) , for those who want to lean into that side. For those who don't , keep your gold stacks high for tradng , do little to no management and all is good.
As a generally standard player who no-lifed the whole league, I'd love kingsmarch(-the enchants) to go core. Make so you have enough gold for Faustus without atlas tree investment into the mechanic, and I think it's gonna be fine. I'm repeating myself a bit but....kingsmarch would be fucking awesome for standard
Personally i didn't love the league. Felt like a mobile game type gimmick. This game has enough loading screens and this just added another. What also felt terrible is having to go back to town, all the damn time, need to feed Rog Items to disenchant, have to optimize crops, need to feed the map runners maps, gotta decide what to send with the boats and where to send it... To me it just felt like a total chore, which made me just completely skip the league mechanic entirely.
The dusting ratios for unique items suck way too much. the difference between something like a binos and a brass dome shouldnt be 1.5m dust. The gold does not drop nearly as much as you need in the late endgame to the point where you have to actively farm specific strats to get enough gold to power your town for a single day with well over an hours worth of farming. The gold cost of everything was also way too punishing for literally everything you had to spend it on. Several thousand gold per passive reset point (if you even remembered that was a thing), 22,500 gold per refresh of the worker list when it takes several refreshes to get one tier 9 or 10 worker is insane. If you were actively trying to engage with the town as much as possible, it felt actively punishing to players and did not function at all for anyone that only played a reasonable amount of time per day/week. Shipping was arguably way too profitable and mapping was way too wasteful. also don't even get me started on how shitty the implementation of the ore system is vs how worthless it is for shipments. red maps should be guaranteed at least 2 ore nodes with a chance of a 3rd one regardless of the size of the map or its layout. Actively punishing people for preferring certain maps is 100% clown design.
Well im either always out of gold. Or my mappers die or my ship gets captured by a pirate thats on god mode. Ive melted every boss including eater and exarch in just minutes but i cant get a pirate down to half health even. Sure that makes sense! TH-camrs have no problem they stream on twitch 16hrs a day so plenty of gold plenty of magebloods. I like the idea of kingsmarch and earning things passively kinda but either lower the gold cost by ALOT. Or give more gold just in general maps. By ALOT. Then it would be fun!!
It's "fun" for those who treat the game like a job who play 26 hours a day and often stream. Said people are also the target audience for the game. Said people were also the target audience for the "buff" in the last patch to dust "improving" shipping rewards, and by "improving" I mean a 2 million shipment will net you a total value of 5 chaos orbs.
I'm a little surprised you didn't realize that the current league was too much like a mobile game, "free to play" with near-mandatory daily logins, etc... I didn't care too much at the start of the league when building up the "buildings" in the town but once I got the town built I REALLY got slapped in the face hard with the whole grind thing.
It’s all a psychological thing though, I didn’t have any issues with the mechanics of this league because you’re thinking about it as if you *need* to grind daily for gold to run the settlement, but I just thought of the gold as bonus thing that drops from maps, if i have enough, good, if i don’t, oh well. I’m not losing anything either way, the settlement is only extra currency/gear
It was never fun, but good only at league start for starting upgrades. Now it's only an annoyance you're better off ignoring, and if you don't, you soon will fall victim to FOMO. Yes, it's nice passive income but the interruption from mapping is just not worth it, specially if those easy but annoying multy-phase-time-waster bosses decide to interrupt your shipping/mappers There is a farming rule in ARPGs: "the town is lava" and this is just more time wasted at "town" Also i hate the stupid sailor music in maps Love this league mostly bc of Faustus but F Kingsmarch
Before I listen at all. No it's not. It's a phone game idle mechanic that makes you come back to the game to farm gold unless you're an insane juicer/person that plays all the time.
I'm the person who plays poe for a lot of time, tho I have a job and life too. And I agree Kingsmarch is shit. I love poe that I can login it any time and do my goals in ssf. Never liked games that had raids/dailies or something. Because sometimes I don't login into a game for a week. Or can play 2 weekends straight for 10 hours. It depends only on me. And that's why I love poe! But those "daily" or "raid" will feel like a job if I needed to do them daily. Boats every 30 minutes? Get tfo, no way I will do this. Kingsmarch was fun for first month or so, just upgrading town, seeking interesting things, but in my ssf journey, I don't send small ships or do mappers because they take tons of micromanagent. And I don't play ARPG for that, I'm sorry.
its not fun since the nerf shipping is only worth if its 50k and mappers are annoying to keep up with i do it cuz i might as well do something with the gold i accumulate
im sorry ..... All POE are about missing out in trade league if you miss game for one day everything changes . But it has so much content and the most profitable is sanctum at the start . Ask those people who race in this game and you will know how misarable thay are .
kingsmarch is not fun. you barely interact with it and every so often it spits out currency. the currency exchange has been an absolute game changer. i have been able to do so much more than usual just because i don't dread having to make trades.
i understand what whis is all about, but i really dont understand the people which dont like it and feel pressured top play anyway, if you ont like it doint play it ... ?! but some people just dont have enough mental strenght ( th hgt ? ah fuck it ;) )... and if someone complains it might have the cause that he´s to much influenced from all the youtube videos from people posting which awsome things they got from shipping and stuff) take itt slow and steady .. there is enough time in the league everyone shoud reach alot wealtth even if the town isn´t runnning all the time. but many dont´t think enough for themselves. at the start i really struggeled to generate gold but i though i have none so shall it be. sometimes i tried to run strats to generate some but thought thats not relly the best thing to do and got it out of my head.since some weeks i am sittin on 19 mill and i think all things are running almost 24/7 if no one dies or get kidnapped,... or i have to buy 5 new L10 map runner in 2 hours. all together gold i just another "currency" to farm kits not really any difference to whatever else is used
I studied computer game science in college (yes, it was a specific degree). They never directly taught you what fun is, but they gave a lot of hints for students to try to figure that out on their own. Here's my conclusion.
Fun is learning done right. Now you may thing, "wtf, I hate learning, they do that at school." And here's the catch, you don't hate learning, you hate school because they do it wrong. There's a common trope in anime (or stores) where the strongest man becomes bored because there's no one else stronger than him. They're bored because they don't have anything else that pushes them to learn more and become stronger. And that's the other thing, motivation to start.
Fun is also very subjective, as in quite literally, everyone's base of knowledge is different. Already knowing about how a mechanic works is a different feel than not fully knowing it.
Creating fun right is creating lessons correctly. You can't jump from A to Z when it comes to learning, you do A, B, C... etc. Some people can take larger steps, other can only take tiny steps. Or maybe sometimes they vary the steps. People need reinforcement and feedback if what they're learning is correct, and it also needs to be clear indication that doing X will result in Y.
Our brain are designed to always be learning, looking for patterns, looking for things to engage with, things to learn, things to have fun with. Something not being fun is the perception that there is nothing else to explore.
Having a reward by doing X is not mutually inclusive to having fun (if I used that word correctly). You can very much not have fun while grinding all day to get that seasonal mount. Fun is not the reward, but the action of doing which results in learning.
The fun in multiplayer games last a very long time because there's the element of learning human behavior. How will my opponent or teammate react in this situation? How does this differ from my past experiences? What do I think they will do next? What else can this player do? It's an unique property of multiplayer games that make them fascinating.
Is Kingsmarch fun? Depends. How did you engage with it? Did you already know how it worked before you got into it? Did you pull up the cheatsheet that someone else already provided, skipping all the "fun" and learning you would have needed to go through? What were your expectations? Too high? Too low? Were you frustrated? Why?
That's another thing too: frustration: the result of feedback in learning not being consistent to expectations or inconsistent. You see this in children a lot when they try to do X, expect something to happen, but it doesn't happen. They try it again and again but what they expect doesn't happen. They get frustrated. It's the same thing in a very complex and convoluted game mechanic or boss design. You expect a game mechanic or process to behave a specific way, but it doesn't. You try it again and again but it just seems random or inconsistent with no feedback or direction on how to do things better to achieve your goal. Frustration.
Another thing too, is that learning has to be voluntary. This is the "want to" vs "have to" play. The other thing too is that someone can have no expectations, no love or hate for a game, but still have fun.
TL;DR
This write up is kind of all over the place, but in essence, from my experience, fun is learning done right.
Having the "need" to log in due to gold drain is definitely problematic as well. It's nudging people to log in and engage involuntary. If it's literally the only thing they are doing, it isn't fun. But you have to take into account the other things they might be doing when they are logging in. Are they having engaging and exploring things there? It's kind of a double edge sword kind of design.
There are gacha games I used to play where I log in only to do maintenance and never engage with the other parts of the game. I don't have fun in those games anymore, except when I actually engage with the interesting parts of the game.
I guess it also be noted, is that learning can be a bad thing. Think about all the things trying to enforce player exploration of loot boxes or other things to pay.
About extrinsic and intrinsic motivators.
I think these are a bad way to view player choices in games. I think the better way to view it is "where is the drive"?
Extrinsic motivation describes the drive to do action A to get reward B. You perceive the fun in B, while A may or may not be fun.
Intrinsic motivation describes the drive to do A, even in the absence of B. You perceive the fun in A, and B is just extra.
What drives the player to do X? Is it because X is fun or because Y is fun, and is the result of doing X?
The rewards from sending ships from Kingsmarch is fun because you can do a lot with currency, etc. The action of sending the ship itself might not be very fun after mastering how to send the best ships. In other words, Kingsmarch ship trading may be fun at the start, but after mastery gets boring later... as is many things in life.
Another thing to note is mastery, depth, and width of something to have "fun" with.
Once mastery is reach and there is nothing else to learn, fun dwindles. The depth of something (how much to learn) in combination with how it translates to other things (how mechanic X interacts, if at all, with mechanic Y) is the amount of fun someone can have with something.
I finished reading your comment and additional replies. That was very interesting to the point that Ill probably carry much of what you said in mind into the future. There is a book i have on the shelf called full catastrophe living and towards the beginning the author essentially says 'happiness／fun／enjoyment(Or whatever we wanna call it) basically comes when people feel like they are challenged at the right level.' I feel like this is pretty much in line with everything you said and i think it all makes sense. And ya it makes sense what you said about shipping and others being fun at the beginning and waning because of mastery etc. For example in my last video i basically decided shipping is prolly just not worth it and have been just doing small shipments which i think is probably optimal from a time/efficiency standpoint but also gets boring and choreーesque quickly xD Anyways i dunno if ill always be able to read your comments as i continue to get more and more comments but id be happy to have you as a suba nd feel free to share any time and ill try to read it if i can. Cheers and thanks again for sharing.
The answer is "initially yes, but then no". Because at first you're discovering what it's all about. But once you understand it, you know what is needed to be efficient. 50% crop/50% dust large shipments, 3 active map devices with high level mappers, active dusters, etc. Your hourly cost becomes huge and you're no longer mapping to map, you're mapping to farm gold. And if you don't, you fall behind (relative to what's efficient). So now you're in a mobile game gameplay loop. Better log on and do your dailies (farming rogue exiles for gold) before you can have any fun. Can't log on today? What about all those mirror shards, divs and valdos from mappers/shippers you're missing out on?
There is a Venn Diagram with "fun to play" and "have to play" ... the middle is PoE 3.25. I planned to play every day anyhow, and the town building and usage was a nice bonus. Eventually once my build was farming T17s and hit 40/40 challenges, I was sitting on a massive excess of gold so the burn was no big deal. The enjoyment of the league (for me) was maxing it all out. Great league.
Now would I want to build kingsmarch next league? Nope! One and done.
Haha. great take. thanks for sharing
what I like about gold in this league is it's giving player agency with gold as a delayed income (not passive as I often read)
it converts a percentage of random loot into a non tradeable points that you can convert into actual currency (or gear early on) following a few methods
the delayed reward is designed to make you come back, it is not designed to make you stay
now a lot of players get tricked into thinking it's passive income with extra steps and that's where it could be argued that the mechanic is an extrinsic motivator
to me the 40/40 thing is mostly : play a lot for a league, get about 35/40 from playing the game minmaxxing the character, then go the extra mile if I feel like it but avoid silly things
also the 40/40 challenges is good for new players because it gives directions to engage with content they wouldn't really try without the incentive
I remember back in Warlords of Draenor the introduction of Garrisons. It was very similar to Kingsmarch. The problem of an extra mechanic that you have to "feed" in order for it to function is that most players who are casual will quickly get bored. The Min/max crowd will milk the mechanic but they too, will get bored.
There is a way to make the mechanic much more engaging but it requires GGG to think of the players experience.
For example:
1) When you send shipments out, allow those shipments to open up a special map that the player can engage in.
2) Instead of feeding your unwanted maps to Kingsmarch, allow the player to send "scouts" out for search of rare maps that can grant access to Kingmarch bosses or add Kingsmarch mechanics to those maps.
3) Get rid of the wage mechanic and replace it with a one-time fee, then allow players to "level-up" their workforce with gold sinks.
I like the passive income in the background. The mechanic doesn't really demand much of the player and kind of just runs in the background.
There are only 2 things I don't like about the league.
1. The disenchanter should either be able to pull automatically from your stash tabs that you designate for it, or make the disenchanter a quad tab with multiple tabs.
2. Should have a stash tab by every NPC in Kingsmarch, and be able to move stashes around.
DIsenchanting is super tedious since you have to do it every hour to keep it full (or 4 hours if you fill with only 1x1 items), and walking back and forth to it multiple times per hour is absolutely frustrating. Other than that, great season!
If i haven't had to play 10 maps every day on scarabs modifiers and specific atlas tree to sustain my not maxed kingsmarch for 24h then yes it would be fun. But hey currency exhange is cool
Part of the reason I like PoE so much is that your progress is 100% linked to your knowledge and skill at the game and Kingsmarch runs entirely counter to that maxim.
The rewards are entirely timegated and those that wholly aren't depend on RNG (there's no progress bar for the Admiral or Bandit Lord bosses). Yet the constant expenditure of gold requiring that you play regularly (unless you can devote large swathes of time to PoE and run stratagies that grant large quantities of gold) results in a repeating cycle that gives rewards too slow to be of use to hardcore players and yet too expensive to run for casuals to make use of, resulting in the midcore playerbase feeling pigeon-holed into constantly running maps to afford Kingsmarch.
As it stands now, Kingsmarch has no place in POE and would be detrimental to its health if it were added, adding that compulsion to play (as Bellular spoke of) to PoE where there previously was none. The type of forced multitasking it adds to the game would only be a detriment. If they removed the forced timers and instead linked progression to gold instead and made it a tradeoff between spending it on Kingsmarch or using Faustus' marketboard and item buyer, I think it would be a great addition.
It was way more fun earlier, now it feels like a chore. But it's partly because I didn't broke out of "gold farming prison". I needed to assemble stronger character to farm gold more efficiently but I didn't.
This seems true. I used to play Neverwinter for years. Then it got to a point where it felt like a job, having to do daily quests to try and keep up with my friends, trying to keep up with the guild, never feeling like I was reaching any end goal. Path of Exile....yeah, Kingsmarch gets a little much, then I started prioritizing my goals and stopped worrying about it. I worked towards killing Ubers and getting 40/40 on challenges....both of which I got done this league this past weekend. Now there is no obligation for anything....goals were met.
Yeah, that overburden by a need to fill the gold stash so farmers continue to gather things felt quite depressing on third day already, I was. Instead of having fun with different mechanics, I was just grinding for gold to pay my workers so they don't waste time(wasting my own instead, ironic)
Currency exchange is awesome. Building the town was interesting, not sure about being fun. Learning the mechanics early on was also interesting. I am at the point now where I do shipments of 2 verisium (to reach the 100 point requirement) to Ribben Fell so that I get scarabs and runes back. Using L2 or L3 shippers. When I lose one to starting a new life or a bar fight, no big deal. When I was doing mappers and lost L10 ones to RNGeesus I lost the feeling of fun, because I felt I had no agency in whether they died or not. I was only doing maps with the 1% chance. I didn't track it, but it sure felt like a higher than 1% chance. Have since stopped mappers because they just were not fun. The tiny shipments are feeding scarabs and runes. Not necessarily fun, but profitable.
I have enjoyed the league itself immensely. The currency exchange has certainly played into that. The shipping to a degree has helped that enjoyment. I have not done anything with the recombinator. I didn't play the league that included it, so I would need to do some research for a better understanding. After stopping mapping and farming (after watching your flipping vs farming video) and just doing those tiny shipments, my enjoyment increased, because I didn't feel compelled to log in to generate gold to fund the town. Sorry for the novel. I am off to watch the video you referenced, thanks for the recommendation.
Currency exchange was awesome and that's it... Nothing else is really great
I don't know if Kingsmarch is "fun" as I view it as too "grind-driven" EDIT: I watched the video and I do feel that I "had" to login and didn't like the league as much because of that ... . I do think some changes would alleviate my biggest concerns though: 1. Finding & hiring L10 workers is a pain -- I believe that workers should be able to "level up" based on how long they've been actively working. 2. The constant feeling of "I need to log in to farm more gold" is also annoying -- I believe that mappers & shippers should generate gold in addition to what they currently do so your town has an illusion of "almost" being self sufficient. 3. Rolling maps for map runners, feeding them maps, running ships, etc. require to you check back in fairly often -- We need to have a better way of "automating" these functions. Maybe mappers should be able to generate their own maps and be nearly self sufficient?? Maybe we can set up a schedule so when a certain amount []differs by the good] is available the ships automatically sail to their destination?? EDIT: I don't mind building up the "buildings" too much at the start of leagues as you're likely to be playing a lot anyway.
I felt like the pressure to get gold is really high until you're able to blast 8 mod or even better t17 and then it's nearly a non issue. I think it's pretty well tuned until that beginning red map / right before juicing stage
@@fatstacksmax bro 8 mod corrupted still requires farming like constantly if you are running 3 mappers. Just a bit rough, yet still kiinda fun
They can't level up dude cuz they're dead.😂😂😂😂
I feel like there are a lot of people this league who definitely have not played a mobile game that psychologically manipulates them with timegates and it shows.
Challenges are a total killer for my motivation. I like to do challenges but not if the game tells me that they are challenges. I like to find out if it is even possible to juggle three balls at once but if the game tells me to do it I know that it is possible before I even tried once.
Interesting take thanks for sharing!
As somebody who likes city building/resource management games, I had fun with kingsmarch in the first week of the league which is how long it took me to fully upgrade it and equip it with t10 workers everywhere. Messed around with shipping for a bit cause figuring stuff out was also interesting. Then I felt no need to visit it again until I decided to do my 36 challenges. For what it is, a mini-game inside of PoE, I think it delivered well.
I don't think the mechanic is going to go core, even though I expect Kingsmarch itself to be reused at some point. It would be a waste of a great story anchor to discard it. Maybe we finally move past eater and exarch and altar clicking. It was a great addition to the game but it's been 8 leagues already.
The marketplace on the other hand is something I consider as being a core game feature, even though the devs tied it to the league mechanic to experiment with it (which is understandable given it is probably the biggest change since the game went from 4 acts 3 difficulties to a 10 act campaign).
Good take. Agreed
I'll be fully happy if next league the market stays, and everything else goes away. Though Kingsmarch could be some kind of lasting place.
Or, they could (they should) make Kirac's base a similar place, where you can use your skills (especially since items can drop there already).
Make it so rarity doesn't impact gold drop next league. No one needs millions of gold, that makes it too easy to disrupt the market.
I am actually thinking to get only T5-T6 Miner and Smelter so i can keep my gold cost down and Disenchanter need to be only T8 at best i think.
I personaly dont see any diffrence to other League, if u want to engage with the League mechanic u need to login and play.
Lets say Sanctum League u had to farm maps do run your sanctum, now u just have to run maps to engage with Kingsmarch. I can just say for me its not different than most Leagues
Totally fair take
Really enjoyed logging in daily until the update that upped dust costs. This threw the balance of my entire town off, and was never able to get fully engaged again. Mapper costs + disenchanting just felt too burdensome, even with max scarab t16s.
Its not fun, but its rewarding, its like dialy quest in wow back in the day
I totally disagree that Kingsmarch is only an extrinsic motivator. The town gives you currency without having to grind to improve your mechanical skill in play or your gear. That to me is a lot less frustrating. It is no less intrinsic than a hard boss you have to overcome with practice.
You don't have to improve mechanically skill wise, however you do have to know how to efficiently grind to really keep it going. Which is, in a sense, skill...
@@samgreen8582 yeah send crops every 30 minutes and you are fine. Just enter some random crops number and you will get something.
Is it fun? Not really no. However, the currency exchange is *fantastic* and I have made more currency this league than all other leagues combined. I really hope they expand "automatic" trading to all items, not just currency. 4 items I'd love to buy on poetrade I can't because the listers seem to have quit the league already.
Tell ya what, when those 50m shipments come in you're having fun
@@Orekid1 not when you get 1 mirror shard every time. the t0s required for dust cost more than that
As for challenges ... one can argue as you do that the name is incorrect. Call them what you will ... "league grinds"?
Regardless, i like them. They are my natural stopping point for the league. I pick a number, usually 36/37 and sometimes 40, go for it, then put the game down. Aside from playing a single new build every league (which i have done since beta), the challenges are my favorite part.
I like the league, but I can agree with you mate about the fact that you feel like you have to log in because of the gold drain. It can be done differently and be fun imo
cheers and keep up the good work 🙂
Dude
The market.
Settlers is the best league they have ever released. Also Kingsmarch is not really an extrinsic motivator. There is nothing you get from Kingmarch that you cannot get from regular play (sorry enchants) and thus no actual need to do it. Unlike a battle pass, where the transmogs or mounts or whatever are ONLY obtained from completing the dumb battle pass. I don't feel forced to log in to get gold for Kingsmarch, Kingsmarch is just free extra currency when I keep it running. In fact I argue this aspect of gaming is the aspect that POE does better than ANY other game, PoE adds End game mechanic after end game mechanic, all of which are useful but no single one is required, that is crazy and the things that truly puts POE ahead of the ARPG pack. Think of other games, they all fail here, their end game systems are either forced or useless.
I feel like this is more of a tell that you already played the game 4+ hours a day during any league than it is you actually knowing what an extrinsic motivator really is.
I wouldn't call Kingsmarch fun, but a nice added tool to enhance the game.
I agree that the "black market" [initial, very basic gear] is quite handy ; currency exchange is awesome if you don't want to fight with Discord or traditional trading ; Recombinator is nice to get some early game gear and create mid-game gear fairly easily. The "rune bench" is also a nice bump to power early and it helps take some of the late game gear a little better.
No, it's work. Early on it was good for currency, but unless you're an all day grinder it's not much more profitable than a good mapping strategy. The gold time/grind investment is the only way to make it worth while.
Were the first impressions good? Yes. Did it live up many days after launch? Its certainly a net positive. Its passive income done in an interesting way mixed with trading qol. The negatives? If you treat fomo like a make-believe thing (as it is.) , and ignore any "i have to log in to micro manage" yadayada nonsense then there's little to talk about.
Having said that , if it goes core I would like to see some personality in the mechanics. Example settlers not only being tiered but also having traits (farms wheat x2 as fast , mapper is more likely to find "x" , sailor grants more protection to shipment etc) , for those who want to lean into that side.
For those who don't , keep your gold stacks high for tradng , do little to no management and all is good.
As a generally standard player who no-lifed the whole league, I'd love kingsmarch(-the enchants) to go core. Make so you have enough gold for Faustus without atlas tree investment into the mechanic, and I think it's gonna be fine. I'm repeating myself a bit but....kingsmarch would be fucking awesome for standard
Personally i didn't love the league. Felt like a mobile game type gimmick. This game has enough loading screens and this just added another. What also felt terrible is having to go back to town, all the damn time, need to feed Rog Items to disenchant, have to optimize crops, need to feed the map runners maps, gotta decide what to send with the boats and where to send it... To me it just felt like a total chore, which made me just completely skip the league mechanic entirely.
is is not a chore, it is a grind, we playing a game from GRINDING GEAR games. ARPG without a Grind is not an ARPG
When you realise you do not HAVE to have your town going 100% all the time...
Hey, "You" Here. Good video
The dusting ratios for unique items suck way too much. the difference between something like a binos and a brass dome shouldnt be 1.5m dust.
The gold does not drop nearly as much as you need in the late endgame to the point where you have to actively farm specific strats to get enough gold to power your town for a single day with well over an hours worth of farming.
The gold cost of everything was also way too punishing for literally everything you had to spend it on. Several thousand gold per passive reset point (if you even remembered that was a thing), 22,500 gold per refresh of the worker list when it takes several refreshes to get one tier 9 or 10 worker is insane.
If you were actively trying to engage with the town as much as possible, it felt actively punishing to players and did not function at all for anyone that only played a reasonable amount of time per day/week.
Shipping was arguably way too profitable and mapping was way too wasteful.
also don't even get me started on how shitty the implementation of the ore system is vs how worthless it is for shipments. red maps should be guaranteed at least 2 ore nodes with a chance of a 3rd one regardless of the size of the map or its layout. Actively punishing people for preferring certain maps is 100% clown design.
Well im either always out of gold. Or my mappers die or my ship gets captured by a pirate thats on god mode. Ive melted every boss including eater and exarch in just minutes but i cant get a pirate down to half health even. Sure that makes sense! TH-camrs have no problem they stream on twitch 16hrs a day so plenty of gold plenty of magebloods. I like the idea of kingsmarch and earning things passively kinda but either lower the gold cost by ALOT. Or give more gold just in general maps. By ALOT. Then it would be fun!!
It's "fun" for those who treat the game like a job who play 26 hours a day and often stream. Said people are also the target audience for the game. Said people were also the target audience for the "buff" in the last patch to dust "improving" shipping rewards, and by "improving" I mean a 2 million shipment will net you a total value of 5 chaos orbs.
Haha ya that buff was such BS im still really shocked about their wording on that tbh. Good take.
I'm a little surprised you didn't realize that the current league was too much like a mobile game, "free to play" with near-mandatory daily logins, etc... I didn't care too much at the start of the league when building up the "buildings" in the town but once I got the town built I REALLY got slapped in the face hard with the whole grind thing.
I gave up and play standard. If i wanna go play travian ill do that .
It’s all a psychological thing though, I didn’t have any issues with the mechanics of this league because you’re thinking about it as if you *need* to grind daily for gold to run the settlement, but I just thought of the gold as bonus thing that drops from maps, if i have enough, good, if i don’t, oh well. I’m not losing anything either way, the settlement is only extra currency/gear
Yes
Hello, I like money.
It was never fun, but good only at league start for starting upgrades.
Now it's only an annoyance you're better off ignoring, and if you don't, you soon will fall victim to FOMO. Yes, it's nice passive income but the interruption from mapping is just not worth it, specially if those easy but annoying multy-phase-time-waster bosses decide to interrupt your shipping/mappers
There is a farming rule in ARPGs: "the town is lava" and this is just more time wasted at "town"
Also i hate the stupid sailor music in maps
Love this league mostly bc of Faustus but F Kingsmarch
Before I listen at all. No it's not. It's a phone game idle mechanic that makes you come back to the game to farm gold unless you're an insane juicer/person that plays all the time.
I'm the person who plays poe for a lot of time, tho I have a job and life too. And I agree Kingsmarch is shit. I love poe that I can login it any time and do my goals in ssf. Never liked games that had raids/dailies or something. Because sometimes I don't login into a game for a week. Or can play 2 weekends straight for 10 hours. It depends only on me. And that's why I love poe! But those "daily" or "raid" will feel like a job if I needed to do them daily. Boats every 30 minutes? Get tfo, no way I will do this. Kingsmarch was fun for first month or so, just upgrading town, seeking interesting things, but in my ssf journey, I don't send small ships or do mappers because they take tons of micromanagent. And I don't play ARPG for that, I'm sorry.
gold is too scarce. shipping should yield gold.
its not fun since the nerf shipping is only worth if its 50k and mappers are annoying to keep up with i do it cuz i might as well do something with the gold i accumulate
im sorry ..... All POE are about missing out in trade league if you miss game for one day everything changes . But it has so much content and the most profitable is sanctum at the start . Ask those people who race in this game and you will know how misarable thay are .
kingsmarch is not fun. you barely interact with it and every so often it spits out currency.
the currency exchange has been an absolute game changer. i have been able to do so much more than usual just because i don't dread having to make trades.
i understand what whis is all about, but i really dont understand the people which dont like it and feel pressured top play anyway, if you ont like it doint play it ... ?! but some people just dont have enough mental strenght ( th hgt ? ah fuck it ;) )... and if someone complains it might have the cause that he´s to much influenced from all the youtube videos from people posting which awsome things they got from shipping and stuff) take itt slow and steady .. there is enough time in the league everyone shoud reach alot wealtth even if the town isn´t runnning all the time. but many dont´t think enough for themselves.
at the start i really struggeled to generate gold but i though i have none so shall it be. sometimes i tried to run strats to generate some but thought thats not relly the best thing to do and got it out of my head.since some weeks i am sittin on 19 mill and i think all things are running almost 24/7 if no one dies or get kidnapped,... or i have to buy 5 new L10 map runner in 2 hours.
all together gold i just another "currency" to farm kits not really any difference to whatever else is used
no
Yes
no