Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
You too want some restriction on overgearing. I think everyone agreed on that in the devs post.
So the discussion should be what is overgearing and where to set the boundaries.
Even an "anti-overgear" guy like me, is not against reasonable gearing of your alts.
Although I would not use it, as leveling while steamrolling thru content without expectations of gear updrage rapidly becomes a chore to me.
I also don't enjoy PWNing n00bz, so I'd rather compete on the same level as the rest of people around me.
The three examples of gearing systems you have listed are all to the best of my knowledge theme-park MMOs. I have played a lot of WOW, as much Wildstar as I could (RIP), I never played The old republic in protest to what they did to galaxies. The gearing systems of these games is all the same. None of the gear is really tied to the economy or open world. The gearing system exists in two vacuums or a combination of both. You kill raid bosses and get gear as a reward or you kill players in instanced PvP and get gear as a reward. You never have to leave town to get the gear, the state of the world is not a factor in what types of gear you have access to. Crafted gear never matters and is always something that is just there to get you started if you want.
Contrast that to a sandbox game. Crafted gear is nearly everything or actually is everything. The whole point in doing anything is to get more crafting materials or secure more access to crafting materials and the means to be able to craft. You need the crafting materials to craft endgame gear, upkeep endgame gear, or enhance endgame gear. You need the end game gear to be able to do anything. It is a never ending arms race and cycle. The story and fun is the victory's and failure you have in the process.
If this is your first sandbox MMO, and you have not seen the way the gearing system plays out. I would argue that you will think it is a lot of fun. The constant struggle and risk vs reward makes a fight with a rival guild in the open world, or even some random players, more engaging then any raid boss, arena, or battleground.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Skills and magic can degrade over time. You get better by using the skills. A sort of hidden exp if you will. Was always used on forum-based RPGs end-game can then, in addition to materials for gear drop or give access to skills lost to the ages. Or complex ones.
Or perhaps rather then just keep on adding stats, you add little effects. Like the old trinkets in WoW. Add an extra melee swing. Or have that fireball explode on impact. put a reflect on the absorb shield. Copy an ability used against you. Go crazy
What about progression that isn't based on power at all?
Or perhaps, to keep the raids relevant even after you have all the "gear" have it degrade over time and by using. Making it nearly impossible to maintain a full set of gear unless you raid and play a lot. Tie it in with other systems like city to city warfare. Kill the dangers and bosses, not for direct personal gain in many cases. But so your city does not stagnate and fail. Try and balance it so the struggly is continuous. And every time you kill the boss, you know it helps keep your home safe.
Just a few ideas to make gear less of a powercreep, y'know?
@Vhaeyne Lol, I just finished a post and this came up.. xD I do think that is a lot of fun. I am always a huge proponent of vibrant economies. Most games have an economy. But it is easy to have it get flooded. Once you get a piece of gear, you have it until you sell it or destroy. It doesn't degrade, so you get over saturation. With the way Ashes is set up and to encourage people actively playing the game in terms of warfare and organic PvP you can have bosses drop the materials as I said. This is fine. I am just arguing against how much of a power effect the gear actually has. I still believe it should not be too big a discrepancy.
I did not get the feeling everyone agreed on that when reading the Dev post. I had a less optimistic interpretation of what some people who are against overgearing were arguing.
I got the feeling that people seen the word twinking and only put it in the context of wow. Some of the posts read like they are from a guy who did AB one time and got sat on by a big bad tauren that was geared to the limits of level 30.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Good news, Gear does degrade over time. It is in fact a key feature of the system that makes power creep not a thing in most sandbox MMOs. The same resources that are used to create gear is often the resources needed to repair the gear. This is stated to be the case in AoC. Just because you have a +8 endgame sword of awesomeness. Does not mean you can repair it if you lose access to the crafting station you used to make it when you lose a node siege. Not 100% sure that is the case, but I do know you will at least need to use tiered materials to repair the gear that gets more intense with the power of the gear.
I would not mind if skills and magic also had an upkeep. As long as it required a resource that is one more thing to fight over.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
From what I have read. Boss drops will still tie into the economy because of the upkeep/upgrade system. I would not think a weapon is going to drop as an over enchanted weapon. The weapon will degrade, and need resources from the economy. You are actually kinda making my point here. Nothing against you, but unless I am misreading you. You are actually coming up with suggestions for the system that are already a part of what makes the system great. One of my key worries is that the systems of a sandbox are complex interlocking gears compared to a theme park and could be easily misunderstood. Jahlon has some great videos on youtube explaining these systems for new players, but I don't feel like his education gets to everyone before they make it to the forums.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I got the impression that we weren't too far apart too. I know I am making your point. I am not here to disagree with you. Or anyone for that matter. I just think this is an important thing to get right. (I forgot about degradation in Ashes until you mentioned it)
As far as resources for spells go. I've always been a huge proponent of using reagents in at least the more advanced spells. In fact. In Ragnarok Online. I always built towards those type of skills. Fire Pillar Wizards, Trap Hunters, ME Priests etc.
The final thing I mentioned does worry me greatly, as I've have seen it just too many times. Where gear is too big a part of your power growth.
I opened the thread ready to argue. I am not sure myself that we disagree.
I an generally for adding inconveniences such as reagents if it adds to the economy in a positive way. It is just another niche of the market for players to try and break into.
As for the power growth, they have a target percentage of how much power will come from gear vs character growth. I think they will hit it. Sandbox games can have power creep, but it generally takes much longer. I don't think we will have to worry about power creep for years to come.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Nah, I'm not referring to instanced PvP, because that's optional and you can just avoid it totally. Also, dieing in WoW is a bit annoying but that's it.
I was talking from an oldschool MMO sandbox perspective.
With death penalties and open PvP is when I think twinking becomes unfair for new players still learning in low level areas.
I was just using WOW as an example of the wrong ideas people are using to inform their opinions on this sandbox MMO.
Open world PvP will never be anything close to fair. You will always find yourself in a situation where you are out numbered and out gunned. A dislike of twinking will not change that at any level. I am also skeptical that AOC even has fixed "Low level areas".
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
My only sandbox experience is limited to EVE Online and, well, overgearing simply isn't possible there. Sure, some insane veteran could potentially gift a Titan or Supercarrier to a new player, but it would likely be a year or two before that new player could train up enough, just to be able to undock the thing, plus another year or so to earn the skills necessary to equip the ships and use them to their full potential. If you want to use a ship in EVE, you are gated by time sinks - the bigger the ship, the bigger the time sink before you can make use of it.
Having said that though, there is no corruption in EVE Online, nor much of any other deterrent stopping the highest level players from waltzing into beginner zones with advanced ships and taking advantage of new players in every way possible. Even if a new player could be overgeared in EVE, they'd just become a juicier target.
The deterrent in EVE is that it is not worth the attackers time to kill a new player. Time is money. That could be the case in addition to the corruption system in ashes.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
PvP is the end game. Raids, gear, crafting, ect are all means to said end game. Endgame I should login, take a look around, and go "which pvp thing do i wan to do today?"
I cannot tell you how annoying it is when I finally get to that point and a game comes out with a "fantastic new endgame feature!!!" and it just pushes me back further and further away from my PVP is life goal.
(To @Vhaeyne Comment)
I have played every single on of the games you've listed and i completely agree. I would however like to share the majority of the grief, that I feel, causes striff is unobtainable gear gaps. Some players see this God like character walking around and they know it's months if not years away from obtaining it for them selves. The "unfair", "Pay-to-win", or "no lifer" comments start flying and we have mob mentality.
I love seeing these players because it only motivates me to get there. By any means. I'll Guild hop, lose sleep, exploit a temporary bug, plan my free time around events to max econ, you name it. In L2 I remember the first time I saw a fully spec'd Draconic armor toon walking around Giran. I was so far behind the curve that I knew I needed to get serious and stop rerolling every few months. 10 months later I was in the top PVP guild and doing PVP all the flip'n time.
You seem to be talking about endgame gearing up. Different beast altogether. I REALLY, REALLY don't want the endgame to be about the constant gear treadmill. Like WoW and similar. That type of endgame can F right off. It's boring and ultimately pointless to chase the next shiny, in order to chase the next shiny again.
Gear will be important in AoC, so there will be a process to gear up at max level, but if the endgame ultimately doesn't revolve around the nodes and economics, politics and nodewars and such, the game isn't delivering on what is promised and the longevity of the game just isn't there.
My hope for AoC is that once a decent set of gear is obtained, you need to work a little for upkeep, but other than that you don't have to worry about gear anymore and can focus on the rest of the game, where the real meat is. Sure, maybe try to get a legendary, but it won't be for everybody for sure.
Edit: It's funny you bring up eve online, where endgame gearing isn't a really a thing except for some faction stuff perhaps. You can train for bigger ships, and to use them better, but that's it. All ship sizes have a role to play, pretty much.
In this case the end game gearing system is tied to the system that will let you think. Eve has the risk vs reward cost associated with using big ships. Which is something I want to see in ashes, but people keep arguing for less harsh death penalties.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I have no problem with a level 1 character running around with a level 50 sword of doom IF I can PK and get that sword that took another player 200 hours to farm for 5 seconds of PvP.
TLDR: Twinking is a reward system for people who spend a lot of time in the game and has it's place in a well crafted, challenging MMO.
TL;DR: Overgearing would be bad for AoC.
From reading the previous posts, there seems to be a bit of ambiguity in the terms overgearing/twinking. IMO allowing low level characters access to high level gear is bad for all the reasons @Cellzar (and others) point out. This form of overgearing goes directly against how I understood the integrated mechanics of AoC will function because players and crafting will gravitate towards high level gear raising the bar for new player entry and hurting the game economy over time. However, I understood "twinking" to mean equipping low level characters with best in slot gear specific for their level. IMO as long as best in slot is balanced properly for any given level, this type of twinking should not deter new players or crafters. Additionally, the introduction of "alt friendly" gear that levels with or help level characters is a terrible idea. That only sends a message that reaching max level is the only thing that matters. It's tough for any of us to say what will be the best system for AoC. However, given what we know so far, I would wager overgearing and heirloom type models will be bad and gear rarity by level is probably a safe bet. Thanks for all your hard work!
Gear should be about risk vs reward. High end gear should have tertiary systems on them that if you don’t execute proper timing on makes you lose performance. So theoretically legendary gear should be harder to pilot, but if you can pilot it perfectly will push out higher performance than lower tier gear.
A less skilled player may even want to play with lower tiered gear because it is easier to pilot and maintain a certain consistency in performance. High end gear should provide almost infinite skill growth because it should be tuned in a way that makes it extremely difficult to outperform lower tiered gear without perfect skill execution.
Having high end gear just provide linear power creep has been the most boring system ever. Gear should be a reflection of a players skill level beyond it just being a trophy for killing a difficult boss or getting extremely lucky.
point number 2 for sure it would create to much of an advantage in open world pvp. yes they do it enough and become a murderer, If you goal is to grief your not going to care.
Intrepid has already said before that it's not your typical leveling system in an mmo and that you will not get to max level in just two weeks. From what information I've gathered, they want the game as a whole to have meaning behind it, and having a max level character to feel at least somewhat of an accomplishment rather than just a trivial grind.
My opinion is that pieces of gear should have level AND attribute requirements as this will make it much easier for Intrepid to balance gear and give them much more freedom when creating new gear drops for new bosses and such.
Though it has also been stated before that even though characters will have attributes, as a player, you would not be able to individually place those attributes into your character which I also think it's a system that might need to change but that's for another discussion.
I would propose a system whereby gear improves with the player's level. For example, a helmet would have 2 stamina at level 10 but 20 stamina at level 60.
We all want the freedom to use the prizes we earn from adventuring and this idea makes that freedom possible.
The alternative is to allow full twinking of alts, but I believe that artificially inflates the ability of players and will affect the world.
The other option is to force all gear to be earnt in the world, either through combat, crafting or questing, for whomever uses that gear.
All gear should be sellable though. I don't think Ashes would be benefitted by the addition of no drop gear. That would enable a lower level to buy the gear with money they either earn or are given. Therefore I think gear would have to have some sort of level requirement if it didn't have varying stats.
I like the idea of varying stats on gear, though it may be more work for a development team.
The downside is that it limits the need for more gear later on, and therefore lessens the whole idea of an ever changing world and player driven economy.
I do think that required level is a put off for many, but maybe it is required.
I can see why the question has been asked now. This is a deep subject with many ideas and various upsides and downsides.
I started with the idea of gear that varies by level, but now find myself drawn to level requirements for gear. That won't stop players hoarding gear and passing it on to alts when they come of level, but it would stop lower levels being artificially stat inflated. I think the need to have players not be artificially over powered is more important than the desire to have items be for any level.
Having no sign of no drop items in the game is something I also believe to be very important. For a truly player driven economy I believe that all items need to be able to be sold.
Therefore, even though I think it may be undesirable for many, I think level requirements might just have to be the way.
It is a hard question to answer with certainty though. The only things I can be sure of is that I don't want to see items that are labelled no drop, I want to see a fully player driven economy where any item can be bought and sold, and that I want the game to prevent the overpowering of lower levels.
Perhaps some way can be found to make gear that is passed on suffer in some way, i.e. it is second hand. I am not sure people would like that. I think it is inevitable that some gear will be passed on to lower levels. There is the argument that if a player has done enough to make a bucket load of money then they should be able to buy anything they want. That is a truly player-centric economy after all.
So, yeah, it will have to be level requirements.