Grinding for Armor

Is this game going to be like Black Desert, a continuous grind for armor? If you don't spend 10,000 hrs obtaining gear, forget about pvping and its really, really, really time consuming to get gear.

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unknownsystemerror

Game is PVX, there are no separate stats for armor for PVE/PVP. Multiple statements from developers over the last couple years of (paraphasing) "We hate the grind."
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Armor

Ravudha

Yeah they don''t want things to become a grind, which is good, and IIRC they once mentioned people 5-10 levels lower with high enough skill to have a chance in PvP - I don't know if/how this factored in gear, but it sounds more lenient than BD's system.

Corpier

I hope not. I doubt it will be since that is typically a trait of Korean MMOs and AoC will be a western MMO.

I'm not a fan of grind/rng heavy games in general though, so personally I hope Ashes has a hard cap on their gear and level system or at least a soft cap with increasing diminishing returns. I've played the type of games where someone has to no life to be competitive. I will never spend 8 hours a day 6 days a week grinding/farming boring content I don't enjoy just so that 1 day a week I can have 1-2 hours of fun. Been there, done that, I already have a job tyvm. Its just not worth it and it never will be.

George_Black

I dont mind spending 2 days to gather + craft mid tier gear. Solo
I dont mind spending 2 weeks to gather + craft end game gear (no RNG) with friends/guild in the open world.

I definatly dont want to spend time enchanting gear like BDO and AA. Total waste of mmorpg playtime.
I also dont like dungeon runs to farm armor/weapons

Gear should be valuable and meaningful.
Extremelly hard gear enchantment makes the game boring, as much as extremelly easy obtainable gear makes it a singleplayer rpg experiance.

Brolveth

Intrepid have confirmed that there will be not much of a grind in the game nor p2w. You will have to pay for the game monthly thou.

Wandering Mist

Grinding - the act of repeating the same action multiple times in order to achieve a desired outcome or reward.

Every mmorpg will contain some amount of grinding (you're not going to always get the armour you need/want on the first try). The trick is to not make the grind feel like a grind. The problem with the gear grind in BDO is that it takes up so much time and is heavily RNG-based.

Plateau

Despite what Intrepid says, I'm fully expecting AoC to offer a lot of grindy content. But those grinds will only provide soft-capped power, minor conveniences, side-grade abilities/augments, or cosmetics. In other words, there will be tons of side-content, some of it very grindy, because people need long-term goals to chase, but the rewards for that grind won't be necessary to compete or participate in the rest of the game.

My current expectation is that the difference between 200 hours into the game and 2000 hours will probably only be 10% raw numerical power.

My only question is how long the levelling process will be. It could be anywhere from 40-200 hours to get to max level, depending on how Intrepid wants to fulfill their promise that "there is no end-game; there's just lots of regular content." Does that mean levelling takes forever, but there is lots of low-level content (or lots of artificial scaling)? Or is leveling really short, so that you can quickly reach the max-level abilities, gear, and content (but don't call it "end-game").

Ravudha

leonerdo wrote: »

My only question is how long the levelling process will be. It could be anywhere from 40-200 hours to get to max level, depending on how Intrepid wants to fulfill their promise that "there is no end-game; there's just lots of regular content." Does that mean levelling takes forever, but there is lots of low-level content (or lots of artificial scaling)? Or is leveling really short, so that you can quickly reach the max-level abilities, gear, and content (but don't call it "end-game").

In 2017, Steven threw out the ~45 day number, but was hesitant and quickly added he didn't want to give a number. He said levelling is intended to be more about the meaning (of what you're doing while levelling) and won't be a grind fest.

I wouldn't hold on to that 45 day figure because it that was 3 years ago and they mentioned levelling speed could also vary based on what activities a character is doing.

Wandering Mist

leonerdo wrote: »

Despite what Intrepid says, I'm fully expecting AoC to offer a lot of grindy content. But those grinds will only provide soft-capped power, minor conveniences, side-grade abilities/augments, or cosmetics. In other words, there will be tons of side-content, some of it very grindy, because people need long-term goals to chase, but the rewards for that grind won't be necessary to compete or participate in the rest of the game.

My current expectation is that the difference between 200 hours into the game and 2000 hours will probably only be 10% raw numerical power.

My only question is how long the levelling process will be. It could be anywhere from 40-200 hours to get to max level, depending on how Intrepid wants to fulfill their promise that "there is no end-game; there's just lots of regular content." Does that mean levelling takes forever, but there is lots of low-level content (or lots of artificial scaling)? Or is leveling really short, so that you can quickly reach the max-level abilities, gear, and content (but don't call it "end-game").

Well, I call anything done at level cap "end-game" content so unless there is no level cap, there definitely will be "end-game".

As for levelling time, what I'm curious about is how the character levelling interacts with node levelling. We were told that as a node levels up it will spawn higher level monsters in its zone of influence. If that is the case could it be possible at your character could out level the node to the point where there aren't any monsters that are high enough level to give you exp?

This is something we will need to monitor carefully in testing.

Noaani

Wandering Mist wrote: »

leonerdo wrote: »

Despite what Intrepid says, I'm fully expecting AoC to offer a lot of grindy content. But those grinds will only provide soft-capped power, minor conveniences, side-grade abilities/augments, or cosmetics. In other words, there will be tons of side-content, some of it very grindy, because people need long-term goals to chase, but the rewards for that grind won't be necessary to compete or participate in the rest of the game.

My current expectation is that the difference between 200 hours into the game and 2000 hours will probably only be 10% raw numerical power.

My only question is how long the levelling process will be. It could be anywhere from 40-200 hours to get to max level, depending on how Intrepid wants to fulfill their promise that "there is no end-game; there's just lots of regular content." Does that mean levelling takes forever, but there is lots of low-level content (or lots of artificial scaling)? Or is leveling really short, so that you can quickly reach the max-level abilities, gear, and content (but don't call it "end-game").

Well, I call anything done at level cap "end-game" content so unless there is no level cap, there definitely will be "end-game".

As for levelling time, what I'm curious about is how the character levelling interacts with node levelling. We were told that as a node levels up it will spawn higher level monsters in its zone of influence. If that is the case could it be possible at your character could out level the node to the point where there aren't any monsters that are high enough level to give you exp?

This is something we will need to monitor carefully in testing.

In terms of end game, to me end game is when you stop running content for experience, and start running content to otherwise better your character. In some games, this can actually begin even before you hit the level cap, and in others, experience still plays a role in character growth after hitting the level cap, and so you don't start end game content for a while afterwards.

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I can see it being possible (and reasonable) that players won't have content to level to the cap on until there is a nearby node at level 4 or 5.

This is a good thing though, as it would mean players in a specific area (or from a specific starting portal) would all want to fall in to line to progress *a* node as fast as they can, rather than all fighting over making sure it is *their* node that gets progressed fastest.

There will be some fighting, but if your character level also requires a high node level, the kind of people that would want to fight would also soon realize that they also don't want to slow down their own character progress too much.

Tamael

meh

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