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Dev Discussion #24 - Overgearing

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    VirtekVirtek Member, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    I enjoy twinking, to a degree.
    TL;DR: As long as people can't grind lvl 50 content to supply the top-tier gear for their lvl 10, I'm ok with it.

    I've experienced PvP systems where people would lock their level, hunt for the absolute best gear for that certain level character, and attempt to kit everything out as well as possible. This has the feel of a professional fighter trying to improve as much as they can and fine-tune their weight to stay within a goal weight class. Professional gladiator. Much excite. YAY!

    If they can bring a lvl, 50 item and give it to their lvl 10....that's just cheesy and lame. There is zero possibility that someone with level-appropriate gear would stand a chance. No fun in that, I feel.
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    Late to the party but its definitely interesting seeing different people's perspective. I'd be interested in seeing a cross reference poll that correlates people support/against twinking related to when they entered the MMO genre.

    For me, Everquest and Vanguard were flat out the two best MMO experiences in the 11 or so I've played in the last 21 years. Both of these had some available twink methods and also created true appreciation for equipment. Any more, every game is so exactly balanced off mathematical equations and boring stats etc that it is so hard to get excited about loot which is a huge draw for many MMO players including myself.

    If they can recapture the allure of early EQ with the relatively challenging access to gear, especially some of the rare truly transformational items then they will have a game i'll play for a long period of time. Especially in the early days of a game, I remember seeing low lvl alt's of the top end guild just rocking the most bad ass gear possible and it just cleared that drive and allure to want to strive for that.

    Definitely one of the top 5 experiences in 21 years of MMO playing was camping a Tranquil staff and Fungi Tunic in EQ back in Kunarak on my main which took me over 65 hours of gameplay and alot of luck. Once I got it a made a monk ult and had such a fun time doing things that I couldn't on my main leveling or being in groups and then all being so happy to have someone who had got that crazy gear.

    Vanguard another great example of keeping it abit more in control but working hard to become a crafter and then making optimal pieces that while level restricted some where still very noticeable differences in power range when you spent alot of money or time crafting the top end (orange) gear for each level range.

    It adds so much replayability, i'd spend days just working towards camping, crafting, or tracking down gear for my entire alt's leveling experience. Vanguard did it best as well as there still was PVE gear incentives that were better then twink options in the form of legendary quests that literally took 8-10 lvls worth of hard work and hard group content to finish but gave you awesome rewards that you kept for the next 10 levels. It was a great mix of working this legendary quest lines and having twink gear to supplement, was so great.

    21 years....and my fondest memories other then hardcore raiding challenges were the fun with alt's and being able to play with a family member or friend who was just starting the game and being able to help carry them etc.

    For me, if i want a game where everyone is equal and fair all capable of doing the same damage and having gear give minimal to no true power swings i'd play a MOBA. I want variability, I want uniqueness, I don't want equality just fairness. So sick of games that you change your entire gear set and you see a few % bump in output strictly due to stat increase. Give class specific ability improvements, give unique click abilities, give proc's.....EQ and VG to some extent did this SO well compared to all the games that maybe have the best "mathematicians" as develops but the games lack any soul. FFXIV perfect example....such an amazing game but gear is basically pointless, and worse even they scale EVERYTHING so if you do lower content you scale down. Its 100% "play it exactly the way THEY want you to play it, everyone is the same"....sure its easy to design around games that have no flexability or variance but man does it just suck the joy out of the game for me.

    The biggest trick is to control access to the gear, again back to EQ I remember being on CoM farming epic parts with a group of friends for our bud. A jade reaver dropped and I was there for 12 hours strictly trying to help out, the group knew I had just started a SK alt so they kindly gifted me the Jade Reaver even though it was something still at that point that many lvl 40-50 people wanted. I was so freaking tickled pink, i played way more then I was going to focusing on my SK twink that could finally do some awesome damage.

    We just need to try to get back to "fun" instead of being so damn concerned about every single chance of imbalance. Do the math in the background, put creative ideas to at least have the illusion of uniqueness (weapon that proc's 20% chance of 55 damage ability Vs. just slightly higher damage ratio). Really hoping AoC gets back to this type of design instead of thinking they can use a math equation to derive enjoyment....many of us are still going to gravitate towards figuring out the min-max & BiS options but lets get some creativity back in loot and flexibility as well as exclusivity. If i get a super rare item then damnit it should do more then just look pretty, i should see a noticeable difference.

    lastly....please be the first MMO to go back to a post max level progression system for power. EQ AA's were still one of the greatest things in MMO history even if they did introduce harder levels of entry in expansions for newer players. You can scale that eventually to address some but it just provided additional reason to play at max level and provide further opportunity to differentiate yourself from every other joe-blow. Give us a world that isn't designed from the ground up to all be cookie cutter people with identical power levels....again I can go play an MOBA for games that I want ONLY skill to truly matter. Let all my hard work, dedication, efficiency, relationships etc ultimate cultivate into part of my power level. I think its just a younger generation and entitlement thing where people think everyone should have everything.....

    Good luck, extremely challenging topic :) My ultimate suggestion is put a fairly lose band on level requirements that let for ballpark ~50% increase in power/capability if we are are playing the math game vs. people that are just flat out using gear they find on their first main character. Maybe throw in a few super extremely rare items as gear that has wider level ranges, so flaming sword of awesomeness that comes from outdoor raid boss for lvl 40's and is a rare drop etc may be usuable by lvl 20's instead of the normal lvl 30 requirement most gear has of -10 levels or something. That creates that "unicorn" item that not alot people can get but chase, drives big ticket economy items that people save for and chase etc.
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    Why not reduce the equipment attributes and balance the equipment attributes so that you don’t need to over-equip it, but it is beneficial to the life of the game. When the progress of a game is extremely slow, the life of the game will be longer. The progress of the game is fast, the gap between the top-level personnel and the downstream personnel is too large, and the players have no sense of experience. What about the game? This will lose many players.
    Over-equipment means that there will be a big gap in the equipment attribute gap. In future games, although equipment is part of the core, its attributes should be lowered and let him become a support, rather than the player having a huge gap in equipment gap .
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    Overgearing is something I dislike when I play through a game the first time. I like to have an appropriate challenge, instead of just steamrolling my way through everything.

    Yes, over-equipment will greatly increase the player's equipment or demand. For example, WOW, when the player is over-equipped, it will greatly reduce the difficulty of the game and make the game no fun.
    In the AOC game, there may be similarities in Sword Art Online animation, but I want to point out that in Sword Art Online, the equipment is not over-equipped. Some rare equipment can be obtained at low or high levels, but this equipment has unique characteristics. The characteristics are irreplaceable even after the adventure is completed. This is due to the gap in equipment attributes and its narrowing, so that the gap between game players in the game equipment is not too large, but the difficulty and difficulty of obtaining the equipment makes the equipment unique The value of the equipment in the game will not change even if a long time has passed. The value of equipment in the game will remain a part of the life of the game, not like WOW, when the player owns this equipment. There will be no interest in this game, this is a vicious circle.
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    moerumoeru Member
    edited December 2020
    considering that the discussion was made last month i'll give my full opinion about gear systems.in the consideration that there is room to change some mechanics
    i always disliked the idea of level limitation for gears, you can roughly translate level as improvement and the sheer number of improvements you had isn't the main factor in the capability of using anything.

    however stats are totally relatable. if i don't have enought strength, how am i suposed to use X item to it's fullest.

    one system that i never saw would be total equip stats. for example.
    all my gear together has a power requirement of 400, but i only have 300.
    in theory you should be allowed to put it because 400 is the requirement to use 100% of it's efficacy.
    think it like you can lift a 20 kg of weapon, but you can't fight correctly with a 20 kg weapon.

    same can be used to defensive gears
    if i'm using a dexterity set of hard leather or something like this.
    and it has a 200 dexterity requirement, but i only have 150
    in this case i would not be able to use it to fullest because i wouldn't have the agility, or reflexes to use the armor properly,
    i.e.:
    this type of armor isn't able to receive a direct impact, but they can be used to nullify the attack if you are capable of repositioning your body. which may redirect the attack or turn it in only a graze.

    anyway, the best system for gearing in AoC in my opinion would be something like this:
    if my overall gear needs 1000 power, 250 dexterity and 400 constitution. but i have 700 power, 200 dexterity and 250 constitution.
    i would have 70% of power requirements, 80% of dexterity and 62,5% of constitution resulting in something like 70,83% of the total efficacy required ( by raw stats would be 69,69696969% "100% not intentional, but nice" ) to use the gear to it fullest. then you could apply an table like if you have 80% of total efficacy you manage to gain xx% of the gear atributes. for a little of realism the table would be an exponential.

    that way everyone in the game would win.

    -research players ( i like to call then like this because they tend to spend a great time planing and studying new non-meta builds ) would have their fun trying to find OP "secret" combinations of overall gears for every aspect of the game i.e. you could have an absolute broken build ( class + stats + gears ) for a certain dungeon that is uterly trash in every other place of the game.

    -hardcore players would go for most efficient combination at moment.

    -role playing would have 1 more realistic thing in their world.

    -casual gamers wouldn't be left too far behind.

    -developers would have an easier time balancing since they would have 2 forms of balance for the classes without having to nerf them directly, they can adjust the correlation table or increase specific stats to give more proeficiency to some classes and less to the others without denying role playing gamers to go for a dagger wielding minstrel, or mace wielding assassin.

    -stingy players that keep saying i want to play it hard my level 0 first character but don't want others to have advantage in their second or third character would see some limitations.

    i don't know how much complexity it would apply to the code, but i imagine would be something like 2~~3 new variables for every gear and the counters for the player, however it would solve the overgearing problem in a more "fair" solution.


    sorry for the long post
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    TurboX wrote: »
    For me, if i want a game where everyone is equal and fair all capable of doing the same damage and having gear give minimal to no true power swings i'd play a MOBA. I want variability, I want uniqueness, I don't want equality just fairness.

    TurboX put in words exactly what I think about twinking. I'm definitely one who appreciates uniqueness in a player's gear. But I would add that there be some form of balance so as to not make a character become overpowered to a point where there is no point in investing time in other loot.

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    consultantconsultant Member
    edited December 2020
    Not quite sure why you are asking this question. Retail wow over gears and it is a design mistake.

    Lots of players looked down at over gearing or in WoW heirlooms cause since your toon is so over powered toons have a tendency to only used a few offensive abilities instead of full array of abilities. So players would hit max level and not hae the appropriate skill to do herioc dungeouns and raids in general cause spent entire time leveling pushing like four or five buttons.

    Another thing I wnat to say is if you over gear a toon and allow it to say be 25% more effective than usual then that in essence is a 25% percent experience boost Cause you kill every thing 25% faster.

    This goes back to how long should the leveling process be. Already mentioned in another post about how toons really do not spend enough time at lets say level 20 to get all the level 20 gear. so during the leveling process you will have a wide array of gear different levels I mean.

    In another post also mention how WoW leveling is so overpowered that upgrades donot feel like upgrades.
    I am going to exaggerate a lot but just so you get the jist of what I am saying. Lets say you use one ability 2 times to kill mob....so to kill 3 mobs it takes letsay 6 fireballs. So you get a piece of gear that is numercially an upgrade but well it still takes 6 fireballs to kill 3 mobs no difference so items that you get are kind of worthless. Now if you were undergeared and you got same upgrade then it would be more noticiable.

    Players should be allowed to min max their toons but that over all should not make them lets say more than 10 percent more effetive or it just makes thme to over powered.

    Leveling process should be at least somewhat challenging if it can be somewhat challenging and have your toon twinked then yes it is ok. But againast over powered low level toons
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    Only problem is you make it sound like a job, people play games to escape some of the realities of the world. Is it so much to ask to not be told exactly how I have to play a game? If you don't want it to be easy, don't twink? If you don't want people in groups carrying you, don't group with them? (do you also avoid playing with highly skilled players since it makes it easier?).

    Point is, too many games are going down the path of calculating everything to a decimal and taking out the various methods to do it any way other then be the designed calculation. Lets get back to flexibility and god forbid some fun. Honestly even pvp i'm fine with gear being fairly impactful to the outcome. This isn't a damn MOBA or FPS game, if I work extra hard to get gear then let a person enjoy it. Honestly it helps push people to dream of doing the same just as much as it negatively drives people when they get smoked.

    I got out of WOW pvp back when they made gear basically useless.

    You can still put some general common sense limitations that will govern the ultimate power curve (gear reqs w/ the rarer gear having a wider range of lvls to reward people who get it). Honestly i feel like people demanding no twinking are similar to communists vs. capitalist's. Lets not force everyone to be the same...

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    consultant wrote: »
    Not quite sure why you are asking this question. Retail wow over gears and it is a design mistake.

    Lots of players looked down at over gearing or in WoW heirlooms cause since your toon is so over powered toons have a tendency to only used a few offensive abilities instead of full array of abilities. So players would hit max level and not hae the appropriate skill to do herioc dungeouns and raids in general cause spent entire time leveling pushing like four or five buttons.

    Another thing I wnat to say is if you over gear a toon and allow it to say be 25% more effective than usual then that in essence is a 25% percent experience boost Cause you kill every thing 25% faster.

    This goes back to how long should the leveling process be. Already mentioned in another post about how toons really do not spend enough time at lets say level 20 to get all the level 20 gear. so during the leveling process you will have a wide array of gear different levels I mean.

    In another post also mention how WoW leveling is so overpowerede that upgrades do feel like upgrades.
    I am going to exaggerate a lot but just so you get the jist of what I am saying. Lets say you use one ability 2 times to kill mob....so to kill 3 mobs it takes letsay 6 fireballs. So you get a piece of gear that is numercially an upgrade but well it still takes 6 fireballs to kill 3 mobs no difference so items that you get are kind of worthless. Now if you were undergeared and you got same upgrade then it would be more noticiable.

    Players should be allowed to min max their toons but that over all should not make them lets say more than 10 percent more effetive or it just makes thme to over powered.

    Leveling process should be at least somewhat challenging if it can be somewhat challenging and have your toon twinked then yes it is ok. But againast over powered low level toons

    really good, i just fear that the majority will read 25% more effective as 25% more stats.
    it's really hard to explain power spike to some people.

    and normally the ones that complain about someone gilding their characters are people who want to do the same but don't have the condition ( be it time or money ), nothing you do will change their mind because is a subconcious thing from human nature to hate others doing what they want but can't.
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    TrenbolonexTrenbolonex Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Over gearing is fine within reason. As many people have pointed out you shouldn't have max level gear at say level 19. Indivduals at that level though should be able to do dungeons, craft, etc and be able to max out that chars potential at that level of bracket. I think wow is a good example where lower level enchants, gearing, and heirlooms can be used to provide a fun "over-geared" experiance for players.
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    ZorrZorr Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    I'm not necessarily a big fan of overgearing...in my opinion, it can easily make early game content irrelevant which could be a detriment for enticing new people to the game...depends on exactly what is meant by overgearing though and how exactly it is implemented....
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    I think overgearing must not be forbidden but it must have some drawbacks.

    As I come from Lineage 2, I liked the system of penalties that was inflicted to the owner of a stuff that he normally can't wear.

    L2 has a system of grade (Which was simply a range of lvl. No grade : 0-20, D grade : 20-40, C grade : 40-52...). Then imagine you want to equip a weapon grade C while you are lvl 15, you will have a penalty lvl 2 (The number of grade between your current grade (No grade) and the target grade (C)).

    A penalty (For a weapon*) consists in some malus to your damage, accuracy, critical rate / critical power, speed... which increase function of the grade difference. Then, it's globally better to wear a superior grade (But not too much) but not totally broken.

    *: Penalties for armor parts are a little bit different, but there are.

    But to weight my answer, there was a little problem to this system. With some good buffs, a low level can easily handle a 2/3 penalties weapon without being really impacted by the penalty. In my opinion, this is something to think about to avoid some broken things.
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    Just wanted to mention that getting almost fully geared like as soon as you get to level ten you get full set of level ten gear plus big stacks of consumables cause you have high level toon that has gold to send to level toon is not over gearing.

    Think maybe company should make educational videos about thing like power leveling and the things to be mind ful. Vidoes on questing that explains the different types of quests and intents. I mean a toon could power level and in the process kill the same mob a lot of times or they can take a little bit longer and do ti by a variety of things. As it pertains to the topic overgearing should warn players to be mindful of being overpowered. As in questing and farming and killing mobs is a good way t target practice ine hone in your skills. Not going to happen if you kill things to fast. So practicing cc chains ans targeting system and combos on mobs in the open world is a good way be more skilled character when you get to max level and be more apt to raid and do more difficult content. That way it is the players choice.

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