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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.
RNG Weapon Enhancing Alternative?
Over1ander
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Introduction:
In my opinion the Risk vs Reward system of RNG enhancing is a poor system that take advantages of the dopamine rush from gambling, especially when you take into account the amount of time and resources you can potentially sacrifice to the RNG void that achieves nothing in your overall progress of your account.
I do not feel it is a rewarding system to skilled players as there is no way to become "better" at RNG, the worst can be rewarded and extremely happy while the best can be absolutely screwed repeatedly and face extreme frustration. You can only become better at making currency to throw more dice rolls, which you are strong armed into under this mechanic. I understand having luck is also a skill but I also believe in putting your nose to the grindstone and seeing rewards of progress little by little.
My baseline is that I do not feel that RNG is a worthy system to put my no-life time into for end-game gear, as the amount of time and resources that I'd have to throw away for each failure yields nothing.
Alternatives:
I'm curious if anyone has any enhancing alternatives or paths that they'd like to present, voice or discuss.
A couple of mine would be;
1. A "Growth" type enhancement system where you can choose your weapons path of enhancement (Either PvP or PvE as a base), and apply the concept of adding an XP bar to your weapon which can then start gaining XP from each relative field of choice. Participating in PvP events, Caravan conflicts, general faction/guild based PvP would contribute to the PvP Enh. path, whereas Dungeon running, World Events and PvE Grinds would contribute to the PvE Path.
Or possibly a third "General" path that gains XP from every factor in the game at a reduced rate that would provide a little of both worlds, this "Growth" can also be more specified. I.E. To my knowledge there will be element types in the game, at a certain enhancement rank you could possibly chose your element path and have a more specified grind locking the growth to certain biomes and Events within those biomes, dialing down your node citizenship choices.
This would add another incentive to participating in these events repeatedly in the end game and being rewarded with strengthening your character.
2. A more basic "Material" type enhancement similar to "Obsidian Weapons" in another MMO, where instead of upgrading weapons with marketable materials you must obtain soul/account bound materials from a quest line, participating in the events I mentioned in the Growth suggestion above, or more grinding in the world. This very well may be the concept for general weapon smithing among its own tiers already but could possibly branch into Enhancements as well.
Conclusion:
My bias is against RNG Enchancement as a solo lategame gear mechanic and end goal, and for any arguments that its optional, IF it is the only thing you can do to your gear after getting top level base gear, it is at the end of the day the gear end game.RNG Enhancement (If stayed true to the concepts of Archeage/BDO) has its place as an economical sink and economic demand creation, but has a poor psychological effect on players and a negative effect on the longevity of the game. I would argue it's a strong factor as to why ArcheAge is mostly played as seasons/freshstarts, because when starting fresh the RNG probabiltiy is higher and you hit those rolls more often, thus hitting the dopamine rush and enjoyment. But I say factor and not reason as there's many other factors that go into freshstart mentality. Which is what I'm assuming intrepid does not want for this game.
If this game is to promote longevity should we not be attached to our gear that has been with us through thick and thin and choose to have it grow with us* rather than be willing to throw it to the void in hopes that it can become stronger to allow you to move to the next level of progression? If the ONLY thing that awaits my gear in the end of it all, in AA/BDO terms, once I reach T7 or get that Kazarka** weapon is this +1-15 Enhancement and Overclock. Then I've never really left the casino have I, no clocks (feeling of passage of time), people having "fun" left and right (grinding with the economical endgame being gear/enhancing) with shiny lights and distractions (cosmetics/content drops) everywhere.
And this very well could not be the case entirely as Intrepid is familiar with BDO/AA/L2 and want to avoid that kind of endgame but with this post I wish to push against the lackadaisical attitude to RNG Enhancement that has allowed said games to have the near same gear end game. It's not good for the mind of an average young player in the demographic that ashes wishes to reach to. In my opinion at least.
* I understand that pushing my suggested growth method doesn't inherently allow for the demand of weapons and create that economic void to be filled by artisans, measure's could be taken to make it so, higher durability drain, increased resource required for repair, everything can be balanced if looked in to well enough.
** I have no idea the current end game base weapon for BDO.
*Edit*
I am also not suggesting to do away with RNG enhancing and putting alternatives in its stead but provide players alternative paths to enhancing, if that wasn't clear. Just because I'm not a fan of it doesn't mean it doesn't have it's place in the game as a money sink.
Upon browsing more and collecting info I've come upon https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Enchanting which seems to both encompass both vertical enhancing and horizontal enchanting. For anyone that wishes to read on it.
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My issue is when two RNG systems are combined.
Would you be willing to go into more detail on that? Do you mean two levels of the same RNG rolls i.e. having to RNG both your weapon upgrades and enhancements, or two different forms of RNG to achieve one result?
Like in Archeage.
You had RNG in terms of whether an item could be upgraded or not, and you had RNG in terms of the tier (Divine, Epic, Legendary, Mythic, etc) of the item.
You could invest a lot in to one, only to be blocked in the other.
Imagine grinding for 10 hours and failing a 5% enhance rate (1 in 20). And then doing it again and again, and due to your luck just being utter dogshit, it takes you 25 attempts. That's 250 hours of grind. Maybe less, as by then your efficiency of grinding might be better. But ignoring that fact for now. That's 250 hours. Meanwhile, some other dude comes along, not only gets it within two tries but then uses that extra time and is lucky enough to also hit that 2.5% enhance rate for the next tier.
It doesn't matter how much you love a game. If you're held back by RNG is feels so bad and people will leave the game. Now, if you're held back because you're bad. Because the next tier just requires mats from a stronger mob or boss. Then I see that is completely fine. Nothing worse than getting an RNG drop and then failing the RNG upgrade. Leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
If, at the end of the day, RNG is the difference between the top tier players who just got lucky and those who just got unlucky after so many attempts. Then the game is designed for a cash shop that will be no better than BDO.
I like the idea of using a weapon and gaining experience in it to upgrade it. So, it's still a 10-hour grind of getting the mats or whatever and leveling the weapon. But at the end of it all. At the end of ALL that hard work. You know you're going to upgrade the weapon and not going to get shit on by RNG.
Now I called out RNG at the start pretty hard. But I do believe it has its place if it's done well, and the tasks that have RNG attached to them are very repeatable. Take grinding a single mob for their teeth or scales or whatever, even if the drop rate is 1 in 10, and you need 100 of them. It's a tough grind, but it's also very doable.
Take RuneScapes drop rates for example. 1 in 1024, 1 in 512, and some crazy chances on weaker mobs which are 1 in 5000 or 1 in 10000. You can grind them out. They're not really strong. But when you do get the drop you feel good. As it's not only valuable and sellable but could even be usable/useful.
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I definitely feel that these other means can be used and it will actually benefit the game financially as adding these alternative paths promote active and continuous play which is exactly what a subscription model game is looking for.
Whereas only having gambling end game mechanics halting your progression makes it feel like a casino and there's a reason people rarely spend an extended amount of time at casinos, they are free 2 enter (play) where when you run out out of funds and motivation because of a poor hand you leave.
What an RNG system should teach people is to know what they are willing to lose, and stop before then.
What a terrible excuse to add detrimental gameplay.
RNG padding the end-gear is stupid. Why do you think people quit BDO after two weeks and learning what end-game is like.
Personally, I'd rather the game be padded by time. Put 10 hours in. Get 10~ hours out. Put 100 hours in, get roughy 100~ hours out. This way it becomes more social in the fact that maybe you have to create grinding parties and fight for contested zones. Maybe you're efficient so the 100-hour grind is only 88 hours. Maybe the best zones are too contested, so you got to go to less contested zone but it takes 120 hours because it's not the most efficient.
Maybe the weapon upgrade requires the blood of every animal on the east continent so the grind to kill one of everything begins. And perhaps there are a few elites/rares that are the hardest part and you need to track them down. There are SO MANY more INTERESTING ways to pad out the end-game than to just add an enhancing RNG mechanic system that every MMO has and dies by.
Heck, even add achievements for such feats as not everyone is going to bother hunting down every animal to upgrade their weapon. Might even make a market out of it. Buy 2+ of the lower-tier weapon, kill 2+ of every as you're there, finally upgrade them all, and then resell it to people who cbf doing the grind for sweet profit. Adds so much more impact to the game than stupid RNG.
I hope this game doesn't go in the same direction as BDO minus p2w for enhancing items endgame. The only thing RNG isn't random for, is its 100% kill rate of MMOs.
Again, RNG for drops and other cases are generally good. But for me, a big no for end-game enhancing. It creates boring padding, not due to lack of skill or game-knowledge but a pure lack of luck. It's, (in my opinion, along with p2w) one of the biggest reasons why all MMOs fail.
Why do you think people hated titan-forged RNG in WoW so much? It was an RNG drop which is fine. But the problem was another RNG chance of the item actually being useful or not because of the boosted ilvls. This basically leads to players replaying as much as they could to get said luck, and thus it padded the end-game for no great reason. You either were lucky at the start of the expansion or are still grinding for it to this very day. This type of padding isn't fun.
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People quit BDO cause they were stupid and didnt understand the enhancement system. If they enhance their gear that they are using and lose gear score ofc its frustrating because its stupid. But if you have backup gear that you upgrade instead, you never lose gear score.
Makes no sense at all, if the chance of a drop is 0,1% or the chance to get a weapon and enhance it to +10 is 0,1% its the same thing.
It's not the same there's far more factors when specifically talking about weapon enhancing vs. drop farming.
In the two enhancing modern systems so far that this game pull's heavy inspiration from (Archeage in particular) there is the concept of weapon downgrading and destruction, which has been suggested by Steven that it would likely be the same here. This multiplies the grind triple-fold by taking your time, currency and psyche.
Whereas when you farm for drops, you literally only invest the time. As each time you roll you just add on to the time spent getting it. Whereas with weapon enhancing you can literally go into the negative on all 3 fronts I mentioned earlier.
When you're enhancing and your weapon breaks instead of fails, everything you put into that weapon all that time is not added up, but poofs into non-existance. It's even worse for downgrades as the mental hit you take when RNG put's your currency and grind back, going from knife's example, 250+ hours is not an ok system if your gear is gated by RNG that means you could potentially take an infinite amount of time to achieve top tier gear.
Durability and destruction through usage is fine but not rewarding time spent in game and potentially removing said time through the rng destruction system is even worse. As I said before it's alright to have it in game but its not alright to have it be the ONLY progression.
What I gathered.
So, the important sink of materials. The only one I'm going to cover, as my thoughts on the others is above.
Let's bring up your explanation of crafting and repairing, and let's say you have a choice between a 2.5% upgrade rate or killing 10,000 skeletons (regardless of mob level, so obviously try to find low level, big groups)
Man 1) Get's lucky, the first click, gets upgrade, is happy. No sink.
Man 2) Unlucky dude, odds of 2.5% are 1 in 40. Let's say it takes him 44 attempts. Huge sink of materials x, y, and z.
Man 3) Kills 10,000 skeletons, during this process has to repair his weapon AND armor 27 times, sinking materials x, y, and z. Then upon completion sinks more materials of x, y, and z to complete the upgrade.
People's dream -> Man 1. People's reality -> Man 2. What I propose -> Man 3.
Now, I don't see this being a problem. This means EVERYONE now has to sink x, y, and z materials and this can be calculated by the team/game studio as it's a realistic goal so they can have more control of how much money/material sink there is in the game.
Wheres, you will get people who are lucky and don't sink many materials, while others will only sink materials until they leave the game and never came back after a terrible experience but it's bad RNG there was nothing they could do about it. I don't know about you, but this game and its goals will work best with high population. This game will truly be the definition of a hit or miss. So, I'm just providing what I think would be the best feedback to make this a great game.
If they stick with only Man 1 and Man 2, and don't have a Man 3 option. Then I will glad there will be no box cost. I can enjoy the game for 2-3 months and then move on once I hit the RNG barrier. 100 hours of gameplay to click a button and delete that 100 hours is just not for me.
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Hmm, I can understand the psyche standpoint, but only if you see things like you do. I have a more statistical approach to this. You think you lose time and money if the weapon fails, thats really not true actually, its only the partial cost of the whole process. If the chance is 50% then its expected to fail like once. So I dont see every attempt at upgrading as a single time investment, but the complete time investment until I succeed. And then its the same as you said it just adds time.
If you are going to go out and kill people and gain corruption, don't wear gear you are not willing to lose.
If you are going to go out and harvest, don't keep so much on you that you are not willing to lose a percentage if you are killed.
If you are going to run easier content than you usually run, don't wear gear that you may have trouble repairing.
If you are going to try and enchant something, don't enchant what you can't afford to lose.
It is all essentially the same idea.
It isn't required to get the best gear, it is just a way to tailor gear a little bit.
Side-tailoring gear means best gear as 1.5 is higher than 1.0
That would be upgrading.
Source: AoC Wiki
EDIT:
On the Looting Wiki (under Loot Tables) it does detail that there's a hybrid of RNG and "Investment" where Bosses have a chance to drop completed gear and a high chance of dropping material and unique recipes that can be used to craft the gear.
So example above, 57% to upgrade, means I have a 43% chance to fail, so this a favored coin flip which means I should only fail once if at all correct?
Failure #1, alright am I set up for success now or did nothing literally change and "If the chance is 50% then its expected to fail like once." still applies?
The answer is literally nothing changes and there's no average in applicable probability, each person has their own "luck". There is an average on a data sheet over an extended period of time but there is no case by case average and I can just continue failing if my luck is bad enough, pushing me past the Average cost expectancy and into the negative. Which puts my time, cost an psyche into the negative as well, which I want to avoid as an average player.
*Edit*
This is from a couple years back I think I failed 2 more times after this and just raged quit off the game without continuing my screenshot taking, still looking through old photos.
I completely disagree.
Everything here is a choice and an action can be done about it.
Except for enchanting.
Everyone is going to enchant. No one wants to be a noob with weak gear (unless you do, then all power to you, Ser). Everyone is going to enchant and therefore it's not really a choice. It's an action that's going to happen regardless of how much you want to say it's a choice. And this RNG padding gameplay will burn out players faster than using a bucket of water to put out a candle.
No. People quit BDO because of that + p2w. Heck, I would have even put money into BDO if their enhancement system wasn't a cock in the face. Their combat was beyond fun but they designed that game with huge padding, and guess what. That's boring! No sense of achievement. All risk no reward. You can disagree. But if it was so good, then it would have more players. It gets carried by its amazing combat.
As for drop chances. For one, you don't have to lose 10 hours of time for one kill. Maybe, 2 seconds to 10 seconds per mob. 3-5 minutes (making up numbers cause I have no idea on TTK for general bosses) for a boss + its respawn timer. But anyway. It's nowhere near 10 hours. That's the major difference. The time between rolls. Scroll back up and read the RuneScape example I posted.
And it's not only that. There is a huge difference between a drop and an enhanced RNG rate. For one, if it doesn't drop that 0.1% drop, it's still going to drop something and you can feel good about that, and then go on to kill another one. Wheres, what about your enhance? OH, I now can repair it again for the 100th time? HOW FUN. GAMEPLAY 10/10.
But to be fair. Until I see the completed system in place I would be able to give good feedback, I only can give what I think are good ideas. But if it's anything like BDO, well then, another MMO in the bin
What do you think about that? Let's move onward from the idea of enhancing the gear for now, as I see we're all going to disagree until we see the system in action.
So, progressing the topic.
Do you think the way you can achieve the end-game gear will make/break the game?
There are a lot of systems in place but the core of the game (from all I've seen so far) comes back to PvP. There is no way to avoid PvP in this game as it's entangled with everything, and gear will most likely be the deciding factor to PvP.
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If you flip an evenly weighted coin (50/50 chance of heads or tails), you have an equal chance of it landing on either heads, or tails.
If it lands on heads, your theory here would suggest that you are guaranteed to get tails on your next flip - which is obviously not correct.
I understand I was just making a point to what Asura said in a reply,
Even if we assume that classes have a primary stat (which we have no specific reason to assume at this stage, but without it your argument falls apart), the only time you would want to enchant an item is if the item you have wasn't designed with your class in mind.
Maybe you are a caster that decided you want a sword - you get a sword but it has strength instead of intellegence on it. You enchance it to take some of that strength away and replace it with intellegence.
No matter what you do to that sword though, it isn't going to be as good of an item for you as a weapon designed for a caster - so if it is the best quality gear you are after, then no, enchanting is not needed.
He's trying to say, imagine a magical coin with a 57% chance for heads. 43% for tails. I think. But at the same time. You have 57% for success. That doesn't mean you can't roll tails 100 times before heads. It's RNG. But add statistics, and the bell curve will say you're most likely "guaranteed" success on your first or second roll.
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I think you're getting enchanting mixed with enhancing, enhancing in the words meaning alone is synonymous with "better", enchanting would be "unique" which is the scenario you're presenting, If I ENHANCE a mage weapon, I get a stronger mage weapon. If I ENCHANT a mage weapon I get a different functioning mage weapon.
Well ofc you dont have a guaranteed success after you failed once, its basic statistics, but you also have the chance to succeed directly, yea "everyone has its own luck" is kind of true, but over you land at the expected value.
Can some people be extremely lucky and enhance to from +4 in +10 with 0 fails? Sure. Can you fail 100 times instead. Yes. You may think that this is unfair and does not reflect the real effort put into this. But there will be more gear that needs to be enchanted, and it will all even out eventually. Sometimes you are lucky and are better than what is expected, sometimes you are not. I hope you can trade enhanced gear, so that you can also buy +10 gear from other players if you want, if u prefer buying things to avoid the RNG enhancement.
I see. So it is nothing like BDO? Then I'm glad.
I may have interpreted what Steven said on Timthetatmans stream incorrectly then. As at the end of the day, I would rather pay a pricy cost and a high time cost than being required to RNG less than 20% odds. As nothing feels worse than having your work and time deleted because of RNG.
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And its an issue that's outside of just a "couple people get lucky" I'll give an example that a guild has a 6000 gear score requirement. The average player has 4k and only the lucky ones have 6k. That means all the 6k players that are lucky can conglomerate and do content at a higher average efficiency than the lower 4k players, this including PvP, World bosses, Dungeon running and PvE farming. Thus through the RNG enhancement system allows them more dice rolls in the same time span than the average player.
Yeah, buying to avoid would be good. As long as it's not as bad as BDO and no one sells the gear because they did odd things with the market there. There would be crazy people in that market to make or break themselves over RNG. I would buy 10 out of 10 times and just sell all the base tier loot I gather. It might have been possible in BDO if their drop rates weren't so terrible. Or maybe I was gated due to not getting all the pets. Silly p2w game imo. Could have been great with a sub fee and no p2w.
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I maybe be wrong though, @StevenSharif Have you clarified between Enchanting and Enhancing? Do you plan to possibly both have these separate mechanics for gear? Am I right to assume, enchants/gems would change the damage type/element and enhancement further strengthens the base of a gear?
To be fair, there is some vertical progression in enchating, which is where the risk is, and the horizontal enchating has less/no risk involved (I was mistaken about that part - thought they had changed their mind from 3 years ago but it seems not).
Basically, how the system works is that you have an item, you can vertically enchant it up to a point, any attempts to enchant it past that point have a risk of it being destroyed.
In order for the item to break, you need to essentially over-enchant it, similar to overclocking. That is not a risk all players will do, and is not something that is going to be necessary.