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Horizontal progression, or Vertical?

Hello everyone.  I'll get right to it:
Is this game going to have vertical gear / power progression or more Horizontal?

Many MMORPGs fall into the trap of the carrot on a stick gear/power grind, with constant vertical progression. I've always felt this is a mistake.  Even though I'm the kind of person who always gets the best gear and I play with mostly hardcore players, I feel the constant vertical power creep makes existing game content trivial / useless and makes it nearly impossible for new/casual players to get into the game. (Very few people want to grind out gear for 6 months just to be semi viable in PvP / end game PVE).

It also creates a pay to win environment.  Even if the game doesn't have a P2W cash shop, 3rd party sites will sell gold, items and accounts, which benefit whales while making the game less fun for average players. This eventually kills the game's appeal and makes retaining casual players or keeping fresh players coming to the game extremely difficult.

Focusing on more horizontal progression keeps all content valuable, reduces barriers for pvp and makes it so new players feel they can be quickly viable in the game world.  Just my 2 cents, interested in hearing how this game is going to handle gear, levels, power creeping, etc.


Comments

  • There is a ton of information out there that should allay your concerns. I am sure one of the quotemasters from the community will come along. To briefly summarize.
    Levelling and gear progression is a mix of horizontal and vertical. There is no difference in pvp/pve gear. Gear is not boe/bop. What little is known of gear progression at this time is 5 increasing tiers.
    P2Win is a big no-no. There are multiple systems in place to stop people selling gold, items, and accounts using RMT. 
  • Welcome @Gallus! Might be a good idea to keep an eye on PAX West here soon. They will have more of a demo and go over many of the questions you have put up! @UnknownSystemError did a great job summarizing!
  • Hello @Gallus o/ and welcome to the community smile
  • Thanks for the welcome.  P2W may be considered a big no no but if there's a steep gear / leveling curve and it has a substantial effect on your pve / pvp effectiveness, it won't matter.  There's nothing that can be done to "stop 3rd party sites".  Many have tried to stop em.  All have failed. AoC won't be different.

    The only way to combat P2W is to make progression as horizontal as possible in the core design.

    If there's some vertical progression, but it's not extreme (lets say just a few weeks of dedicated playtime at most to cap out) it won't be a huge problem.  But if it takes months or years to gear up and gear gives large advantages in PvP/PvE (Like in Archeage), you won't be able to combat P2W.  At all.

    I'm interested in the game either way.  Just curious if AoC devs will be smart enough to learn from the failures of power grinder MMOs of the previous decade+.
  • A little about me: Started playing MMOs back in 1997 with a game called Legends of Kesmai.  Was more of a online MUD with a GUI.  Moved on to EQ back at launch in 1999.  Since then I've played about 35 MMORPGs more than casually, and tested many others.

    AoC from what I've seen so far looks great and I'll certainly be keeping an eye on it.
  • That doesn't seem to really hit at the core of what I'm talking about though.  The issue with steep vertical progression based MMOs is that after the honeymoon period of the game wears off, getting new members and retaining casual players becomes nearly impossible.

    In MMORPGs, players are the content.  You fall into the trap of requiring players to play months on end doing chore-like tasks to "catch up" only to get constantly out-geared by veteran players along the way, it's a death sentence for the game.

    And, lets be honest, when it comes to P2W and combating 3rd party gold/account/item sales, many MMORPGs have tried to combat it, and none of them have ever had any real success, unless the core game design is based more around game play and not vertical gear grinding.

    GW2 for example.  You can't P2W in GW2 even if you tried, because PVE gear is insanely easy to obtain and SPvP all gear is 100% equal.  Combating P2W starts at the design.  Vertical progression will always retain some P2W elements, and the more severe the vertical progression, the worst it is.
  • Hmmm....have you researched "endgame" here? Many people come in with the concept that like other MMOs you are going to be running such and such dungeon at level 10, the next in the cycle at level 20, and so on till level cap reached and then an endless succession of the same raids/dungeons over and over. Expansions come out with a small increase in levels and a couple more instances for you to grind on. I think once you delve a bit deeper into what is coming you will find that those concepts have been thrown out. "Endgame" is a dirty word around these here parts. There is alot of info out there to be digested before you should form an opinion. I recommend the quotebin, Discord Intrepid_Answers, and the over 20 hours of livestream Q&A videos out there to get a good handle on it. 
    Next livestream is Aug 23rd at 3pm PST. 
    https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/10158/quotebin-quotes-of-intrepid-team-from-discord/p1
  • Interesting class system from the sounds of it.  Where playing more and unlocking more secondary trees gives you more variety, more tools, but not "more power".

    It's things like that the game should focus on, imho.  More unlocks, cosmetics, housing, city building, etc, things that you can work towards, but doesn't give you a "statistical advantage" in combat over newer players.

    I'm sure it'll take a little bit of time to max out your primary, and a full secondary, but that's not really a concern I'm having.

    I'm more concerned about vertical power creeping, especially when it comes to gear. Lets use Archeage for example.

    Archeage had 5 end game gear tiers and 11 grades that those tiers could progress through. 

    If you were on average 2 or 3 combined tiers/grades higher than your opponent, you could beat them in pvp every time with little or no effort.  Obtaining Tier 5, grade 8/9 set of gear took players  sometimes years to obtain, even with daily grinding/play, hours on end and spending a lot of RL cash.  

    The average joe (probably 80% of the player base) was running around with tier 3, grade 5 or 6 type gear that took them months upon months of casual play to obtain.

    That's a difference of about 4 or 5 "power levels" lower than core end game veterans.

    They stood no chance in combat.  I'm talking situations where I could get attacked by 4 or 5 max level new players (with shit gear) and my gear would let me murder them all solo.

    It was a complete shit show.  New players were basically useless and provided nothing of value.  As you could imagine, that game's new player joining / retention was non-existent.  

    I'm the kind of guy who will put in the time and effort to get that level of gear.  But it's a hard sell trying to get new people to join the game when they show up and can't help with basically any content.  You know what I mean?

    If you guys have any links with more talk about how they're going to handle gear/power progression (aside from how leveling was described here) I'd be really interested in reading it.  Any info on how gear works?
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited August 2017
    @Gallus
    I completely agree. It sucks when the game introduces crazy power creep. Not only is it bad for new players as it increase how much time it takes for them to get into the game but it sucks for older players as well because it decreases the amount of competition they have. 

    https://youtu.be/hIVnt8SDdrY?t=4m19s here is a interview where he has talked about it a little bit. He says he doesn't want someone to dominate purely because of gear and wants to find a balance between allowing players to be rewarded for progression but also allowing skill to play a role. He has said this kind of thing a few other times but not sure if he has given us a lot of details.
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