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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.
Comments
You took my BDO thing a bit out of context, I meant that most people that quit BDO because of the enhancement system did it because of the reason I mentioned.
Im pretty sure this game will differ a lot to BDO in terms of enhancement. Im pretty sure they wont do all the failstacking stuff where you had to prepare for enhancing which took the greatest portion of the enhancement process and was a pain in the ass. Also repairing wont cost you a fortune and it wont cost you as much time as in BDO. If I remember correctly you had to farm stupid scrolls and do stupid scroll runs to get your repairing materials for boss gear. In this game it will be way better, because you can go gather some materials instead which is way more accessibly.
To your last question, yeah the gear will have a deciding factor, I think Steven mentioned something about being 50% of ones combat power. I believe that it should be hard to aquire fully enhanced BiS gear but it should give a huge advantage to overall PvP. Lets say fully enhanced BiS gear is our 100% gearscore, I wanna see that when 100% gs A fights 90% gs B, that A has a 60% of winning the 1v1, vs 80% gs 67% of winning the 1v1 and so on. It shouldnt be a clear decider, but it should kind of significantly factor into your winrate.
Now its the question how easy or hard it is to gain certain percantage of the gear score. I would like s.th. like this: 500h = 50% gs, 1000h = 70% gs, 2000h = 90% gs, 4000h = 100%gs. Now the difference between someone who played 2000h and someone who played 4000h is that the one who played more has only a 20% edge in the duel (60:40), while vs the 500h guy you beat him like 99% of the time. (All numbers are for example purposes, and dont exactly represent what I think would be appropriate).
So all it comes down to is time investment, as long as the time spend is fun, engaging and challanging, then it is a good game in my opinion. If its not fun, or not engaging, or fucking easy (everyone has best gear after 100h), then its a fucking bad game. The enhancement, or gear achieving process accounts only for a small portion of the whole equation and I dont think it will significantly impact the player count.
I strongly agree with that. This game is no need RNG as this Enhancing is. In L2, for example, this system, in the end, become most P2W feature in the game.
As Alternatives non RNG ench mechanic you can take from FF14RR with meld and overmeld things. This system just maximize that stat you want not much but it did and even with this little impact it could change your build.
P.s. thank god someone starts to talk about that my knowledge of the language is not enough to make a post like that.
Guaranteed outcomes speed up inflation. If you dont like participating in rng systems just dont. Farm gold, buy full item. Because if you think you will be able to craft high risk items, u think u will be high tier player with that money
That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.
A game like AoC which requires an openly non-meta system that has to thrive on mass casuals running the foundations of nodes while more Elite players command territory, destroying 90% of your playerbase will only spell complete doom and failure for a territory based MMORPG sandbox game.
I don't understand where all of you Korean based MMORPG players have come from but this form of RNG does not work in Western Audiences, and implementing this would be a quick-fire way to insure that this game dies mere months after release, that's not a maybe, that is fact.
Mob based RNG is fine, 20 mobs, 5% drop rate for item or mat, is fine. Western players have had that since the start and understand that. Gear based RNG is atrocious, Korean MMORPG's are while admittedly beautiful, atrocious gameplay wise for anyone other than niche western players and eastern players. Again, this isn't subjective, this is factual when considering Western audiences opinion on Korean MMORPG's.
Lastly another fact on the matter.
Western players will brutalize this game in reviews for gear based RNG in the vein of Korean MMORPG's, you will not keep Western players, you will not maintain a base, you will not attract new players months down the road. Korean and niche players will move back to their bread and butter Korean MMORPG's and this game will sadly flop less than a year down the road.
You want your gear based RNG, you have Korean MMO's, you want to kill a Western MMORPG by shooting yourself in the foot, add it here.
I would like to say I understand this concept, I updated my conclusion to approach the "If you dont like participating in rng systems just dont." as it strong arms you into having to Min-max your gold making to obtain these rng created gears in the shortest amount of time. So from my understanding if you don't want to play rng you have to play the min-max game or spreadsheet simulator, which I personally do not feel is fun for the average 15$ sub player.
I'll give an example, I'm a market player and I have poor RNG. I skip guild/community content that doesn't net me financial gain if the time is spent making gold to buy gear that will allow me to better contribute to said events in the future. Now I'm out loyalty to my community and guild and sacrificed my enjoyment that would have possibly been spent in those events under my suggested growth system. For an extra 3000 gold a day.
Does that seem like a fair system to the average player?
When it's optional like real life for sure, that's why we have casinos ^^
I agree with you and this suggestion in particular I think would work well. It gets people out in the game world playing the content while also progressing their gear. I think the upgrades would need to be carefully balanced so as to not grossly make players that can play more hours that much more powerful. Perhaps after a certain point it takes a ton more XP that needs to be gained per enchant level so as to slow down those with exponentially more time to play. I'd also suggest certain activities should reward more XP.
They keep mentioning risk vs reward and for me I don't need nor really want risk in my gearing. Gearing to me is like picking a class and augments - it's part of your character and the actual gameplay is where risk should come in. But whatever let's just for argument's sake say there needs to be risk - maybe they can just put standard XP debt into this type of gear enhancement system - so if you die you also gain XP debt on your enhancement XP bar on your gear. So maybe that, too would promote more skilled gameplay and add in that element of risk (don't die!).
Also I commented on this topic in another thread so I'm just going to repost those thoughts here as well -
Steven commented on this system yesterday in the TimtheTatman inverview (around 16:20, video below).
I'm concerned that it's going to be like other Korean MMO's (BDO being the most recent but just one in a long line of games) where you have to go out of your way to grind for it because nobody will just have the mats from normal play. Especially with the unpredictable element of luck factored in, so it's not really a gold sink if you don't even have gold to waste on it to begin with. Aside from the gold sink argument, Korean MMO's generally add these systems to drive people to the cash shop to buy items to make it easier to enchant, but this game won't have that, so why then still have the enchant system?
This game has all this cool content and a player driven world, but much could be wasted if we're just grinding to get gear so we can finally have fun much of the time, and then grinding to maintain said gear (via the item decay and repair systems).
Not to mention the community as it always does will set a high bar for what's needed to be competitive, so everyone will have to enter the frustrating RNG side of the enchanting. That alone will cause a lot of people to question whether they want to even play the game to deal with that (especially the hardcores that are going to want to be the best of the best). Let's remember we're not the same gamers we were 10-15 years ago. People optimized the fun out of WoW Classic and it was not at all like Vanilla was. What makes you think people aren't going to make the enchanting system already even more terrible than it already is?
I've also read some people are concerned that it will encourage people to illegally buy gold to get around the problem which is another valid point we should be worried about. Others have pointed out the potential for it to increase the disparity between hardcore and casual players (considering the aging demographic for an MMO like this, this could also be an issue and you don't want to drive away the casuals).
I appreciate the way you put that, there would definitely be need to be checks and balances in the growth system for the people who have all the time in the world to invest, but I also do feel like it would allow people to understand that "Oh the reason he's stronger is that he's put more time into the game than I have" and not "Oh that guy just got lucky" or "That guy probably bought gold". I do feel it would give players a sense of goal and reason to show up for community based events.
And on the topic of gold buying it just goes back to my quote "You can only become better at making currency to throw more dice rolls" OR what was unsaid was "You can just buy gold for more dice rolls" which is an issue in of itself which I agree with.
I think as long as enhancements don't have a chance to destroy or downgrade your item, it will be totally fine. Most enhancement chasing games have these mechanics and cash shop items to mitigate them which makes them p2w.
Even if items to mitigate destroying or failing are implemented in-game, I just think those extra layers are terrible.
I'm completely fine with having an RNG chance of success or failure. And potentially having items to raise success chance. Also based on enchanter's skill.
This gives enchanting as a profession lots of freedom to build a market around their craft. Do you charge beforehand at a lower rate, or do you only charge if successful but at a higher rate, etc?
I don't mind the RNG downgrade/destruction system as long is its not the only system, because it truly then becomes the players choice.
In all honesty I don't mind if RNG enhancing makes a weapon stronger than the growth enhancing maybe (5-10% at max) in the end, and as an option to make your weapon stronger is a shorter period of time it would be ideal to still promote the echanter/enhancer market but . Allowing players to choose to play the game or play the gold making market or casino game.
Sort of like in Classic WoW with the enchanting system. You don't collect all of these materials and then get potentially a different, lower grade, or higher grade enchantment when you go to apply it to your armor and or weapons.
Clear, concise, and simple.
But the RNG part poses problems still. You don't know how much you're going to have to grind because success is random chance. And when people get bad luck they get irritated and rage quit. We don't need people hating the game once they see RNG changes of enchanting. Making it so failure does nothing doesn't make the system better, it just makes it less bad, but still very much bad.
People want to know what work they have to put it for something so they can do the work, and feel satisfied when they are done. But most players don't want to be on a constant gear treadmill. They just want to get out in the world and enjoy the game. That's going to turn away more players than anything else no matter how the system is designed.
If taking away the enhancement system is not an option, then whatever problems it supposedly solves needs to be solved another way that won't make your potential fanbase rage. This game has the potential to blow up and be huge and popular and awesome, but this enchanting/enhancing system needs to be dealt with before people write off this game as another game that could have been.
Can you translate that into English for me?
Interesting, Attaching it to PvE/PvP event criteria would add an interesting system and add new mechanics versus kill dungeon boss and get loot. I could get behind that.
1. Gold sink
2. Risk vs Reward
3. Keep crafters busy
I'm not sure if all are necessary but let's just leave them there for the time being. I don't think you need a vertical enchantment system to satisfy the needs of this game. Instead, I have another idea.
Briefly, here's what you do - you focus on crafted gear that is work to get, but not too much so (one month for full long term-viable endgame set with gold offering shortcuts via the economy), and offer various different sets/set bonuses, stat combos, etc. to entice players to continually create and play with new/different sets. No vertical enchanting. Hardcore players will min/max and have a perfect set for every build or every situation, while more casual players will find one or two sets that is good enough for everything and they too, will be satisfied. This also entices people to make alts and rinse/repeat because it's not a slog to get one or several gear sets. And then we also will need to continually deal with item decay and repair. All of this means crafters will be kept busy and players will always need to gather/sell the mats either for themselves or someone else, so that keeps the economy moving.
The details:
I'd say get rid of vertical enchantment entirely and take a note from other Western MMO's on how to keep people busy earning crafting mats and using crafters without forcing players to do anything they don't want, and without making them feel like they have to do something in order to "keep up with the Jones's". Specifically games like ESO and to a lesser extent GW2. Both games, but ESO more so, have crafting classes that are needed and often used, and gear is constantly being earned and worked on. But there's no major RNG systems and players don't hate it at all - in fact most love it.
Better yet, AoC already has several components of such a system built in that they can just build upon to make this happen easily. Primarily, the best gear is crafted although in both games you can also get some or all via gameplay activities like PvE drops. AoC is the same and this works well. Crafted gear is something you do have to work towards, especially the highest tiers. However it's not an obscene grind, so even a casual player can and will put in the work and feel good about it. Even if it takes them a few weeks longer because they don't have gold for shortcuts or mats saved/friends to help, they're still happy because they can compete and participate in all aspects of the game (this is important!).
You focus on offering several different sets and set bonuses and you can always introduce more in the future to keep people wanting to create and play with new sets. This entices players to try out different character builds, or to have different sets for different gameplay scenarios, or to roll alts and do all of that on an alt. With 64 class combinations, players are going to want to try alts, but having a massive barrier to entry like vertical enchanting may dissuade them from doing that. This can fix that as well.
Once you craft one set, you're good to go. No vertical enchanting. Done, gear is final. This is huge because players are satisfied, yet will still desire to try to craft different sets for a different scenario or alts, and gather mats for item decay and repair. But they won't be irritated doing it because they're already on par, and anything more is just icing on the cake.
This allows both hardcore and casual players to choose how much effort to put in while still being viable or "good enough" no matter what they do. This is because even with one set, your stats are still "on par" with most other players. You may not be able to specialize as much or play with different builds, but that doesn't make you less capable, it just makes you more of a generalist and other players who put in more time or effort, more able to specialize for each situation. But both work. AoC already has introduced the idea of set bonuses so this will work well and they can delve deeper into this system.
ESO also has crafting stations located in specific parts of the world for certain sets, and those sets can only be crafted there. Here, AoC already has introduced the idea of crafting stations being tied to the node progression system and can take the idea further. To take it even further and require more work to get those sets, or some bit of risk to make them, you can tie unlocking set bonus specific stations to certain types of nodes, or other "unlock" conditions, so they're not easy to get to and need to be maintained in order to keep up access.
In conclusion, I think arguably with a system like this, you could satisfy all 3 checklist items at the top while giving both hardcore and casual players a real choice in how to gear and the capability to feel like they're competitive and happy.
This is not a point I actually do not agree with, removing vertical removes the feeling of growth over time and catering towards alt making means you have to move up the time to reach end game by a significant amount imo, and I feel that AoC wants to create a game with a long road to the end but enjoyable at every moment. Making the end game arrive quickly takes away from that.
Ill use GW2 for example, that has an insane amount of horizontal progression so people are free to choose what build they want to go, but none of the builds are necessarily hard to get, which kind of takes away the reward to effort factor that I'm mainly putting my focus on.
The other aspect is I think the average player doesn't want to keep track of above 2/3 sets of gear, like you said. I know I'd only want 2 sets of armor and around 3 weapons to keep track of. And if ArcheAge still maintains as strong as an inspiration as it already is, that has a VERY large focus on progressing one character. Alts on AA merely take care of most life-skill or w/e alt based boon. With AoC, from what I understand, is going to have very large and diverse time investments applicable to one character that will dissuade people from making alts, due to the perks of progressing on one character. Which is part of my basis from growth based enhancement. And a lot of my points have the timeline of 1 year+ to start closing in on the ceiling of the gear cap in mind.
Both of these are the opposite of fun to me. Grinding gear is not fun, it's just a necessary evil to begin the fun. To me the content is the fun, all the endgame, the nodes, the dungeons, the PvP. Getting gear is something I hope to complete as quickly as possible so I can get to a point where I'm competitive in PvP and PvE as soon as possible. Then the fun begins. Constant gear progression sounds like a nightmare. It just feels like a job and something you have to do, especially since everyone else will be as well, so unless you log in every day to do your enchanting, you fall behind very quickly. Nobody wants a massive gear disparity and that's one of the other major issues systems like this create. We've seen it in Korean MMO's and nobody is going to enjoy PvP or want to continue playing if they feel like they have no chance.
The basic thing is... If you don't decay your weapon/armor/etc. than you won't need a skilled artisan in that area to get rid of the decay debuff. If that doesn't happen, you are getting rid of the need of a skilled artisan, and you are hurting the healthy economy that is present with the system that is also present (for a reason).
Not to mention if you don't disable the weapon entirely. Than the artisan ship would be ABSOLUTELY useless overall, and the path they are trying to take with artisanship (which is absolutely amazing, btw.) would lead to a dead end. But that is the point! You won't need to grind the piece of equipment itself. You might have a WAY better chance of getting the materials and making a crafter make it for you, again. For a price, of course. And for the grind of the materials... or you can pay the crafter even for the materials, which he can either obtain himself, or pay someone else to get it for him. All in the favor of the economy. So you might get rid of the grind, but for a price, of course. Than the illegal gold comes in, but that is something that can come in at any point, and they have a fairly well made system to get rid that... somewhat, so it should be able to solve it self.
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Fact is, I never liked RNG systems, because I come from a poor family, and all the other people always did all they could to lessen the breaking chance of an item (even if it cost real money, which it did most of the times). It made my game experience shitter and shitter, until I stopped playing MMO's entirely, because I just couldn't afford it. Can you get the idea? I couldn't AFFORD to play a FREE TO PLAY game, to get the most out of it. I could enjoy the content, yes... but I also knew, that my end game would be shitty as hell because of P2W, even before I got there, so I, logically, couldn't enjoy the journey to that point, even.
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In this case, however, this system pretty much NEEDS to be implemented in the game, for it to be done properly. The player driven economy is going to be the key to the end game, in every aspect you can think of, because of the Node system. Just like Steven said, everything is connected.
If you start thinking about it, you'll see that you just can't get rid of it. And it won't be such a problem, in the end.
But all this is just my opinion
U.S. East
No way in hell. Because it will be the same for EVERYONE. There is NO way to get lower chance of failure than anyone else, other than with in-game currency, as far as I know. And if it doesn't fail, how are the crafters gonna make money, if they make only 1 piece of equipment to you and that's it? Of course, they can make higher quality later on, but still, it's just 1 piece. There is a limit, that comes with the endgame and if they will become useless in this matter, NOBODY is gonna focus on the artisanship mastery, which is pretty much a basic need for the economy to function, regarding the crafters. How would you solve that, if you dont want your weapon to decay or get disabled?
I personally feel a weapons damage should only go up based on materials used and their effect on a players abilities to hit, block, riposte etc. In other words, if a new player bought the best crafted sword, he could use it but it's benefits would be lost until he possessed the skill to hit, block, riposte etc.
I was in a huge crafting guild in SWG (shout-out to MASC Bloodfin) and I miss the RNG and variety in crafted pieces. It made it worth shopping around and even more worth crafting a masterpiece.
Don't forget that it is easier to pay the Master Artisan to make the gear for you, if you do not want to grind the stuff. The gear would be on the same level as the one that drops. Even in end game (and I think that it's meant especially for the end game) He can obtain it himself and craft it, or he can pay his personal gatherer (or someone who makes business out of gathering stuff for crafters) to gather it for him and craft it. Since they try to push the professions to their limit, I think this will be a huge thing implemented in the game naturally, given how they're trying to push the player-driven economy. And I love all of it.
Are you aware that for the master artisan to craft end game gear they need items from end game raid bosses? Do you think the first guilds who will have these raids on lock down will sell these items to the general public so they can gear up and contest the raid bosses? Or do you think they will keep them when they need them to repair after failed over-enchants?
This item would involve the same rng as the original enchantment system.
- each rank would be harder to attain
- start at rank 1 then require resources and artisans to increase it. Creating more interaction.
- the item will be consumed when applied to an item.
- if the upgrade fails it'll destroy the gem or scroll, saving the item you worked so hard for but still maintaning the cyclical need for resources.
- require an item to need better and more items to repair as it's enchant gets higher.