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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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+.
AoC from what I've seen so far looks great and I'll certainly be keeping an eye on it.
Panopticon Labs is working with us directly on crafting fraud prevention and detection mechanisms for use in Ashes of Creation. The systems they have designed specifically for Ashes are of paramount importance to the game experience we wish to create and we have made it a pillar of our design from a very early point in the development process to leverage their expertise in gaming, payment processing, and data intelligence.
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A game that from its very inception has had one of its goals combating the mechanics you are worried about has a pretty good chance of reducing such behaviour to negligible levels. Will they be able to eliminate it entirely? Probably not, but they gonna give a good ass whuping along the way.
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.
Next livestream is Aug 23rd at 3pm PST.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/10158/quotebin-quotes-of-intrepid-team-from-discord/p1
http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles/interview-ashes-of-creation-wants-bring-virtual-world-life/
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?
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.