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Gear and horizontal progression
Gear and horizontal progression
So i played a lot of Monster Hunter World lately and i came to the conclusion, that i would like
a similar take on gear progression in MMOs.
Think about it.
The Gear is Boss-specific. That allows not only to play around with Designs but also you could achieve more variety.
Lets say you have Boss A, Boss B, and Boss C – all endgame Bosses (instances, raid-bosses, world bosses etc)
Now if there is no gear spiral causing you to just grind for the next piece of gear, which often defines the endgame of mmos, you could instead give these gear-sets different main focuses.
For Example
Boss A – focus on defense
Boss B – focus on lifereg
Boss C – focus on Raw dmg
Etc…
This would not only bring more variety to character building, it would also narrow the gap for newcomers reaching the endgame.
Thinking about this game running for 2 Years, there might be one or two expansions and one decides to start AoC from that point. He would have to play his way to Max-LvL in order to play side by side with his friends and when he finally reaches the endgame there is a big chance that he is not able to play the same endgame content, ´cause of the difference in gear.
With a system mentioned above, he could grind one set of gear and join in on all the content.
Instead of getting higher and higher, the endgame progression would become horizontal and there would be much to do from that point (not one after another).
For expansions or patches, there would be no need for raising lvl-cap, the devs could just add stuff that is different (gearsets with new main focuses like adding an attack-speed set etc).
New bosses with fancy mechanics, time runs, minigames and whatever.
Lets say, i slayed a few bosses with my buddy, and i want to try something new instead of my lifereg build, i´d just grind other gear and would be able to play a crit build.
I could play around with set bonuses and so on, and i could give my character a new touch everytime i want to, instead of grind for gear that is +2 points on whatever.
Maybe its a bad explenation of what i actually mean but try to think about it.
It would solve a lot of problems, mmos have nowadays.
- Endless Gear Spiral
- Closing the endgame-gap for newer players
- Makes it easier to add new and fancy content
- Allows to play around more on both sides (devs and players equally)
In the end it is about playing a game, not working for gear
to catch up.
It should be good times with your buddies, and socializing should be easy.
With a horizontal progression you could achieve this and get „fun“ and „play“ back on the front of your thoughts.
Ashes wants to make MMOs great again and this is my idea for the part im most annoyed with from other mmos.
Thx for reading and have a nice day 
Comments
If you want a vibrant in game economy, you need to have your game focussed on player-made goods. Ore mined by people and forged into ingots, leather straps gathered from animals, all of those combined and forged by a blacksmith who sets the price. From there, the supply and demand of the component materials allows players and harvesters to have a real investment in what they are doing.
Another thing I love seeing is tiered equipment--a player can get their piece of armor upgraded eventually when the game releases a new tier so their old armor doesn't just have to sit around unused.
It would be possible to get the materials from bosses with the system i mentioned, that still need to be crafted by players to make the gearsets.
The economy is a really important point here, also the ability to upgrade your gear (pls not like BDO for gods sake) so you can still use it as u progress further in the game is a thing i´d love to see here.
But with upgrading gear in generall im worried on how they implement this system.
Have seen too much bad mechanical designs here.
Ashes content is dynamic - changing with seasons and node leveling and the buildings that players build.
For the most part, I expect players to be tinkering with and swapping out their gear to best support their abilities and augments. We will continue to accumulate augments even at max level.
But, yes, Steven recently shared an example of perhaps wanting to swap the Holy damage on a weapon to Force damage if you find yourself fighting more incorporeal opponents than unholy opponents.
Gear will have horizontal progression as well as vertical progression.
How do you keep player retention whilst also not making it so that a veteran player will two shot a newer player in PvP.
Intrepid claims they will fix this issue by having multiple progression paths, so in addition to gear progression, we will have weapon,skill,class and other paths to grind achievements and ranks in, thus not making our character more powerful in raw damage, but in reputation and recognition on the server.
The idea of multiple progression paths within just Gear like the one you described, is actually not that bad and would be welcomed. Its an additional path to spend time and effort without achieving more direct power.
This is essentially what Intrepid is looking to do, instead of focusing on one vertical progression path that will cause power creep, they have chosen to do the opposite.
I would like to see a soft incremental scale for gear where it is fair easy to catch up to *near* endgame, at which point hard content/grinds are for a bit here an there. Not like Everquest for example, where the difference between raid gear ceiling vs casual gear ceiling was as much as 50%, depending on the era. So gear would increase at some reasonable rate per item level, and quality type would be +/- some item level. Like a legendary (q5) level 50 item might be item level 55, whereas a rare (q4) level 50 item might be item level 54.