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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
"New Player Experience", Vertical Progression and Server Stagnation.
ArchivedUser
Guest
My first forum post here, and boy is it a doozy! TL;DR at the end, but if that's all you read then you won't find the unicorn!
I understand and agree that you need to reward players for doing well and for consistently playing the game and those rewards need to feel proportional to the time and effort the player has put into achieving them. You put more in, you expect more out, it goes without saying. However in MMO-RPGs these rewards often have a direct and significant influence on players' in-game economic and combat potential, and this leaves the genre with a very core dilemma.
How do you make new and casual players feel like they can at least be relevant in the grand scheme of things, without cheapening the more significant investments that the devoted players have made... It's a tough balance to strike. While myself and many others have plenty of time to invest in these games, many others do not and they are just as important to the health and longevity of the game.
The upper echelons of the player base also need a reason to play, just as much as those below them, and if they feel like they don't have anything more to achieve then they won't have much reason to continue playing the game. If you keep adding new end-game content á la World of Warcraft then that will increase the power cap, further widening the gap that everyone else has to overcome, and we all know how that story goes!
What Intrepid's Devs are proposing is to allow anyone to contribute towards changing or influencing the world through the nodes, and to make the achievements of the established players open to capture. The hope seems to be that this and the multitude of available nodes will solve both problems. It gives the new and casual players some influence in the world AND give the older players a reason to stick around, since the world will be dynamic and their place in the status quo isn't a permanent thing. I think this idea definitely has potential, and I love the proposed ways that all these things will influence the world at large, but within the current system of "vertical progression", the more time and effort someone has put into their city or gear the harder it will be to take from them... So, we're left facing stagnation again. Besides, what happens when all of the nodes have been levelled to maximum and all the metropolises have been built? How will new encounters be made when there's no more space for the nodes to expand into?
Obviously the game is meant to be dynamic enough that servers don't become stagnant, but I'm sceptical given the vertical progression that's common among MMO-RPGs and the inclusion of RTS elements... I foresee one or two guilds per server getting ahead and reaching critical snowball mass, where their accrued advantages allow them to gain even more advantages until no-one else on the server is even relevant anymore. Opening new servers would keep it fresh, but that would spread the population too thinly if the older servers remained online. I can see a way to salvage this, but only with a couple of serious overhauls:
<strong>-> Scrap combat levels:</strong> This is gonna be pretty controversial, but character/class levels compound the problem of vertical progression and really aren't necessary at all. I know that levels are an essential tool to quantify how skilled your character is at performing tasks - and it should definitely stick around for non-combat pursuits - but combat proficiency should be representative of the player's personal skill. If you personally play your character more and play it well then you will out-perform your peers without needing the inflated stats. If fresh recruit Jimmy wants to help tackle the Ancient One he should feel free to do so, but if he doesn't know how to use his combos and always stands in the fire then he probably won't be invited back to the raid! Achievements and ability combos should be gated by their inherent difficulty, not because the developers feel like you haven't been playing long enough... This also encourages a focus on making encounters legitimately difficult and not just a DPS/gear check - and it feels so, SO much better if you had to put in a active and concerted effort to overcome a challenge, compared to spending passive hours of grinding. This is all coming from a guy whose main profession in MMO-RPGs is harvesting, I'm married to the mother-loving grind! (See <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6UV2gXwFPw">Shadiversity's video</a> for more on character levels if you aren't yet convinced.)
<strong>-> Give items and worlds a limited shelf life:</strong> This gives people at the top a reason to keep playing since their legendary swords and mighty empires won't last forever, it means you can make the real content of the game available to new players faster, and it means you don't end up with stagnant worlds where only one or two guilds are really able to play the game as it was intended. If done correctly it should also mean that powerful items and strategic advantages can still be very influential, since they only have a limited shelf life. See <a href="https://youtu.be/uFIjHrwTe0w?t=54">ACE's "Uncle Bob" analogy,</a> and how they're using the system of temporary worlds and items to solve this problem. The way this would work is that instanced housing would become yours or your guilds "home base", and the servers would essentially be super-long RTS games on a far-off world. Import and export of items and materials from these worlds will be restricted and the degree/severity of these can be varied according to taste This means that while the more successful will accrue more wealth over time they won't be able to use <em>all</em> that wealth to exert excessive influence over a server. You could instead allow people to spend most of their wealth to build up huge houses, even whole communities and cities, in their instanced housing. Give us crazy potential for development and customisation in these zones and those who consistently win will feel appropriately rewarded without having to make everyone else feel like spectators to the real action!
<ul>TL;DR/Conclusion:</ul>
As a prospective player (who's looking for an MMO-RPG to play for closer to one decade than one year!) I love A LOT of things about this game... However I'm worried that due to "vertical progression" and the relative permanence of the worlds that people will be fighting over that AoC servers will become stagnant, even in spite of all the other countermeasures... Scrap combat/character levels, give items limited durability and give the worlds a limited time frame/win condition, and I'd be delighted to play this game till I die. :D
Maybe Intrepid can make it work as it is, who knows? Will they strike the perfect balance - making the most desirable in-game achievements proportional to the effort required, yet still accessible to most? I hope they at least read the TL;DR and consider what I said, and remember that it's not always bad to copy someone else's notes - imagine what would happen if we ignored all good ideas just because someone else came up with it first!
I understand and agree that you need to reward players for doing well and for consistently playing the game and those rewards need to feel proportional to the time and effort the player has put into achieving them. You put more in, you expect more out, it goes without saying. However in MMO-RPGs these rewards often have a direct and significant influence on players' in-game economic and combat potential, and this leaves the genre with a very core dilemma.
How do you make new and casual players feel like they can at least be relevant in the grand scheme of things, without cheapening the more significant investments that the devoted players have made... It's a tough balance to strike. While myself and many others have plenty of time to invest in these games, many others do not and they are just as important to the health and longevity of the game.
The upper echelons of the player base also need a reason to play, just as much as those below them, and if they feel like they don't have anything more to achieve then they won't have much reason to continue playing the game. If you keep adding new end-game content á la World of Warcraft then that will increase the power cap, further widening the gap that everyone else has to overcome, and we all know how that story goes!
What Intrepid's Devs are proposing is to allow anyone to contribute towards changing or influencing the world through the nodes, and to make the achievements of the established players open to capture. The hope seems to be that this and the multitude of available nodes will solve both problems. It gives the new and casual players some influence in the world AND give the older players a reason to stick around, since the world will be dynamic and their place in the status quo isn't a permanent thing. I think this idea definitely has potential, and I love the proposed ways that all these things will influence the world at large, but within the current system of "vertical progression", the more time and effort someone has put into their city or gear the harder it will be to take from them... So, we're left facing stagnation again. Besides, what happens when all of the nodes have been levelled to maximum and all the metropolises have been built? How will new encounters be made when there's no more space for the nodes to expand into?
Obviously the game is meant to be dynamic enough that servers don't become stagnant, but I'm sceptical given the vertical progression that's common among MMO-RPGs and the inclusion of RTS elements... I foresee one or two guilds per server getting ahead and reaching critical snowball mass, where their accrued advantages allow them to gain even more advantages until no-one else on the server is even relevant anymore. Opening new servers would keep it fresh, but that would spread the population too thinly if the older servers remained online. I can see a way to salvage this, but only with a couple of serious overhauls:
<strong>-> Scrap combat levels:</strong> This is gonna be pretty controversial, but character/class levels compound the problem of vertical progression and really aren't necessary at all. I know that levels are an essential tool to quantify how skilled your character is at performing tasks - and it should definitely stick around for non-combat pursuits - but combat proficiency should be representative of the player's personal skill. If you personally play your character more and play it well then you will out-perform your peers without needing the inflated stats. If fresh recruit Jimmy wants to help tackle the Ancient One he should feel free to do so, but if he doesn't know how to use his combos and always stands in the fire then he probably won't be invited back to the raid! Achievements and ability combos should be gated by their inherent difficulty, not because the developers feel like you haven't been playing long enough... This also encourages a focus on making encounters legitimately difficult and not just a DPS/gear check - and it feels so, SO much better if you had to put in a active and concerted effort to overcome a challenge, compared to spending passive hours of grinding. This is all coming from a guy whose main profession in MMO-RPGs is harvesting, I'm married to the mother-loving grind! (See <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6UV2gXwFPw">Shadiversity's video</a> for more on character levels if you aren't yet convinced.)
<strong>-> Give items and worlds a limited shelf life:</strong> This gives people at the top a reason to keep playing since their legendary swords and mighty empires won't last forever, it means you can make the real content of the game available to new players faster, and it means you don't end up with stagnant worlds where only one or two guilds are really able to play the game as it was intended. If done correctly it should also mean that powerful items and strategic advantages can still be very influential, since they only have a limited shelf life. See <a href="https://youtu.be/uFIjHrwTe0w?t=54">ACE's "Uncle Bob" analogy,</a> and how they're using the system of temporary worlds and items to solve this problem. The way this would work is that instanced housing would become yours or your guilds "home base", and the servers would essentially be super-long RTS games on a far-off world. Import and export of items and materials from these worlds will be restricted and the degree/severity of these can be varied according to taste This means that while the more successful will accrue more wealth over time they won't be able to use <em>all</em> that wealth to exert excessive influence over a server. You could instead allow people to spend most of their wealth to build up huge houses, even whole communities and cities, in their instanced housing. Give us crazy potential for development and customisation in these zones and those who consistently win will feel appropriately rewarded without having to make everyone else feel like spectators to the real action!
<ul>TL;DR/Conclusion:</ul>
As a prospective player (who's looking for an MMO-RPG to play for closer to one decade than one year!) I love A LOT of things about this game... However I'm worried that due to "vertical progression" and the relative permanence of the worlds that people will be fighting over that AoC servers will become stagnant, even in spite of all the other countermeasures... Scrap combat/character levels, give items limited durability and give the worlds a limited time frame/win condition, and I'd be delighted to play this game till I die. :D
Maybe Intrepid can make it work as it is, who knows? Will they strike the perfect balance - making the most desirable in-game achievements proportional to the effort required, yet still accessible to most? I hope they at least read the TL;DR and consider what I said, and remember that it's not always bad to copy someone else's notes - imagine what would happen if we ignored all good ideas just because someone else came up with it first!
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Ya happy?
Not sure if you have this info but some items, like tools, will break and need to be replaced. Gear that breaks will need a crafter to "recraft" using materials used in it's initial construction. We still don't know how the whole durability system will play out but there is a mechanic where you take more damage to gear based on how much you are over-killed.
I disagree with the win condition. I feel like there goal is to try to avoid stagnation which is a better solution for a MMO in my opinion. Hopefully they can accomplish that.
They do in fact have world ending PvE events. The higher the zone level....the tougher the event.
They have already said that the more you push the world, the more it pushes back.
If you think about the main storyline.
You are returning to an abandoned world.
It was not abandoned by choice either.
You were forced out.
And here in lies the answer to your concerns about a stagnating world.
If they have a total node development spring mechanism that drives the PvE attack frequency and power...
...The resistance to advancement can escalate rapidly.
You can create a hysteresis loop between 100% progress and 0% progress that regulates it.
Push over baddies at the beginning.
World enders at completion that you simply cannot beat.
So escape through the gates or die....but the world will be levelled.
Stuff will decay and break....hopefully have a fixed lifetime too where it cant be repaired and must be scrapped for parts.
Not sure if you have this info but some items, like tools, will break and need to be replaced. Gear that breaks will need a crafter to “recraft” using materials used in it’s initial construction. We still don’t know how the whole durability system will play out but there is a mechanic where you take more damage to gear based on how much you are over-killed.
I disagree with the win condition. I feel like there goal is to try to avoid stagnation which is a better solution for a MMO in my opinion. Hopefully they can accomplish that.
[/quote]
Yeah hopefully the vertical progression isn't all that bad and that Intrepid does a good job of making sure that the world stays dynamic - they tend not to share these details until they're ready to reveal the whole thing so I'll have to wait and see!
[quote quote=16564]How much for the unicorn ?
They do in fact have world ending PvE events. The higher the zone level….the tougher the event.
They have already said that the more you push the world, the more it pushes back.
If you think about the main storyline.
You are returning to an abandoned world.
It was not abandoned by choice either.
You were forced out.
And here in lies the answer to your concerns about a stagnating world.
If they have a total node development spring mechanism that drives the PvE attack frequency and power…
…The resistance to advancement can escalate rapidly.
You can create a hysteresis loop between 100% progress and 0% progress that regulates it.
Push over baddies at the beginning.
World enders at completion that you simply cannot beat.
So escape through the gates or die….but the world will be levelled.
Stuff will decay and break….hopefully have a fixed lifetime too where it cant be repaired and must be scrapped for parts.
[/quote]
For that beauty, I'd need about tree fiddy 8)
But yeah I can see that working too, as I said to MrStackerson the devil's in the details so I really want to see how this falls together in the end. Sounds like a lot of work for the people who have to come up with the lore behind it all, they'll have a neverending task at hand!
" ability combos should be gated by their inherent difficulty"
so do you want everyone to automatically have all the abilities, but they wont be as effective since they are hard to use?
So while there will be more of a vertical, powercreep progression, I think AoC has the foundation to create something similar in regards as to why we play. We're not just logging in to do our dungeons and grab our loot or currency tokens, we're logging in day after day to further advance whatever node we've decided to call home, be it as simple as gathering enough timber to build a workshop in a village, setting up and seeing through a trade agreement and all the logistics that go with that, or even staying vigilant on an aggressive neighbor. Vertical progression might afford your character to swing a bigger sword, but it's not going to necessarily make you a shrewder negotiator, charismatic leader, or better organizer.
Yeah I definitely see potential in everything AoC is promising on, but I have/had a few concerns and I'm glad I aired them. Most of this is really is down to personal taste I guess (you can't please everyone and other clichés come to mind) and everyone's ideal game looks different no matter how much you might agree on. The world reset mechanic and removing levels are good ideas but perhaps a little ambitious, especially when the game's core mechanics are already this far along! I'd probably have been better off just voicing my concerns before I thought about making any grand proposals, but that's just me putting my foot in my mouth as per usual.
At the end of the day it's inevitable that there will always be a few guilds who will be dominant... Whether it be here or anywhere else, due to skill or size of active playerbase or whatever, there's always gonna be people who out-perform everyone else... The key is to make sure that everyone feels like they were given a decent chance to participate in the good stuff without cheapening the value of the highest achievements - otherwise it just becomes a meaningless participation medal. Not everyone can be a winner, so by definition there are going to be things that not everybody gets to do!
Having said that there's nothing to stop smaller guilds from making alliances with each other or even the "baddie zerg" guilds. It's certainly not uncommon and not necessarily a bad idea! At least that way you get to have your cake and eat it - you get to do all the big "end-game" content like raids and sieges while maintaining a decent level of autonomy and a closer-knit guild. They're also right in saying that reaching those achievements shouldn't be something that just anyone can do - as I said before, winning is meaningless if everyone gets it.
Same thing goes for combat as far as personal taste goes (a lot of people are getting tired of the easy-mode tab targeting, the cookie-cutter builds, and the 1-2-3-4 rinse and repeat spell rotations). Diminishing returns, increased resistance from the world as guilds make more progress, and the threat of other players are all good ideas to prevent stagnation, and there's lots to say on vertical progression and anything else you can think of!
It all depends on how the Devs deliver on their vision, it's as much in the execution as it is the ideals themselves! I don't doubt for a second that Intrepid are aware of all the potential problems and are putting heads together just as we are to ensure their game is enjoyable and long-lasting. All we can (and should!) do is voice our own concerns so that the Devs are aware of how the playerbase feels, since we're the ones who will keep the game financed in the long run! I wish everyone the best of luck to this end, AoC has truly great potential and at the end of the day we all want the same thing - to make this a good game!
Everyone needs to express their heartfelt opinions and what makes and what breaks their heart kind of thing.
Assuming never worked for anyone.
If I was designing a game I'd steal rather outrageously from other games, every game that has gone before is always inspiration, and I believe the Buddhists came first with this idea so there'd hopefully not be a copyright issue, but Kingdom of loathing had quite a good plan for this.
Make max level not unachievable for relative newbies.
Then when you hit max level give players a choice - to remain as they are, or to 're-incarnate'
If they re-incarnate they can choose a 'reward', one that doesn't give a massive game advantage but either looks pretty or a boastful title or a stats improvement against certain mobs etc.
Those who reincarnated could then choose a way to continue to play from level one:
So your toon stays the same, you have the same inventory (only you're now too low level to use most of the stuff)
You could choose an 'easy' path, just level again from scratch as normal, or a 'hard' path such as, you can't 'eat' or 'ride'
The harder the path the prettier the reward ... flying unicorn with sparkle dust!... nice clothing...or the more outrageous the title.
If you make the wrong choice for the path, you could have an in world 'path finder' npc who would just place you back on the 'normal' path for 'normal' rewards (ie just remove any penalties)
Ooooooooh, actually, I looooove the idea that every-time you could choose to reincarnate from level one, you could choose to selectively ban from your character a skill that your class would normally have, then you could keep on going and stacking reincarnation after reincarnation ie:
A bard would normally have skills a - e
Round one: normal mode
Round two: you choose to ban skill C
Round two : you choose to ban skill B aswell
Round three: well you get the idea....
The more re-incarnations, the better the 'rewards' the more kudos 'titles' , and at any time you could choose to drop out of the system and just carry on like normal.
What do they say? Steal like an artist?