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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Getting to the point that you can overgear a character is an extreme challenge in itself in the context of a sandbox MMO. Not only to you have to get to the point that you can make or obtain the gear, but you also have to get the resources to do so. This is by no means easy or quick, it is also not a solution that will be available to most players on their first character unless they are in a guild that can afford to give them starting gear.
Over enchanted gear is all about risk vs reward. It is more expensive to upkeep, and can even be taken upon death form corrupted players. If a red name is running around PKing for fun in OC gear, that player is going to eventually lose his twink gear. It can be an expensive habit. I wish they would make it so that all players have a chance to drop gear on death at all times, but that is another conversation for another thread.
Your bit about less skilled players wanting to use lower tiered gear makes no sense to me. I think you are also confused about how much better OC gear will be in comparison to base line gear. At least it feels that way when you use the word "infinitely", even if you are using it as a hyperbole.
Endgame gear is not power creep in the context of a sandbox MMO where gear is not eternal. Gear has upkeep. You can lose the gear when trying to improve it. Gear is not a reflection of a players skill in a sandbox, it is more a refection of their dedication or how well networked they are. It is why sandboxs are more social games. You don't have to do anything in EVE, but get to the point that you have the skills to pilot a ship. After that if your company wants to keep supplying you with ships they can, you never have to earn anything.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
If mobs are your idea of a challenge and content than we have drastically different ideas of what a sandbox world is. Mobs are simply a part of the setting, like a gathering node. I doubt you would object to having to chop a tree for 30sec vs 5-15sec depending on how good your gathering axe is. Mobs are basically nodes that attempt to fight back, sometimes they are a little spicy and need a few more people to beat on them, but they are never a big deal. If you are playing AoC for the mobs, you are better off playing monster hunter or duantless.
Max level is stated to be something like 45 days of 4-6 hours of play or something. The details on that don't make a difference. What can be speculated about this is that no one will have overenchanted gear while leveling at release unless their guild pools together to make it happen. Which is fine, that has risk vs reward associated with it. If you think that AoC is not going to be a grind with a 45day cap time, but every other MMO takes 2-3 days for a slow player to cap. I can't help you. AAA MMOs struggle to have a more than a few day leveling experience be "Meaningful". It is not possible for a game as dynamic as AoC to maintain a story for 45 days unless, it is repeatable quests or procedural non-sense. Back to the main point, If I can afford to kill mobs in 1 hit vs 2-3 three, that is between me and my coin sack, and does not take away from other players in anyway. I don't pay your sub.
The gear is stated to have baseline requirements already. Twinking would be enhancing the weapons via the overenchanting system. Tuning is never going to be as close in a sandbox as it would be in a themepark, because intrepid is not going to control how many people are fighting a mob.
Attributes are another discussion you are right about that. From what I understand your race,class, and sublcass make your attributes. Not sure that is everyone's cup of tea, but it is classic.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
In WoW or ArcheAge, you could be a skilled miner that is 1 point from the next tier, but get 'lucky' and come across rare resource nodes. It is endlessly frustrating to find those and be restricted from gathering them by something so arbitrary as missing a single skill point. You are right there and you have the pickaxe, damn it.
I feel the same way about loot and gear, which is why I support at least some system that allows you to use gear that is not easily obtainable for your current level on any character.
If this is available for everyone, than everyone is on an even ground. No matter what you do, a larger group will inevitably gank you anyway, so why does it matter if they do it with better gear? In turn, if you are a part of a larger group of players, than it is in your best interest to do this as well.
I believe that the built-in attribute requirements for gear will be enough. If it is too powerful, than it can just require attributes that aren't easily attained at low levels.
I keep forgetting to add to the point that you hinted at. People needing to team up because they are afraid of how overgeared people can be, only makes the game more social. In WOW I have never once felt the need to ask a guild mate to come with me because I am going out in the open world. In EVE, Darkfall, Lineage 2... Depending on the area, I want as many people as I can get with me. Hell even old-school Aion was suicide to go into the abyss alone, because people would be decked out in AP gear looking to one shot you. As a team, you a least had a chance.
I keep forgetting that their are people on this forum that think solo play is going to be a viable option.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Without any offence intended. Your definition of a sandbox seems based soley on Star Wars Galaxies. All things we've seen indicate that Ashes isn't going to be -that- much of a sandbox. It'll still be a sandbox. But it's far more theme park-y as you think. At least that's how I see it. With that in mind. your previous post mentioned upkeep for gear. We know there will be upkeep, to a degree. But what we do not know is exactly how this will be balanced.
And I tend to agree with the person you quoted. Difficulty should be in mobs/bosses and the mechanics therein. Perhaps even the ability to use the right spells at the right time in the right order.
Obtaining the materials for repairs won't be hard, it MIGHT be time consuming. But it won't be hard.
Whereas mobs, depending on which mobs, might be an entirely different story. If you fight "humanoids" say. It will be different to fighting a mushroom popping up in a swamp. No matter how "badass" your character is. No matter how good a fighter you might be, every battle with someone carries with it potential risk. If too much of your power comes from gear. The world no longer causes danger, and the only content for which you'll have to even semi pay attention is PvP and end-game PvE.
Make it so gear has less effect, and force you to stay on your toes as you venture away from your node's safety zones. And that'll mean that gathering those higher end resources also carries with it a lot more risk. Making up-keep even harder, yet again.
I think I have used Galaxies as an example one time in this thread. I mainly think of EVE, Darkfall, and Lineage 2 when I think of sandbox MMORPGS. When they say that Ashes is going to be a sand-park or whatever. I just don't see it. I have watched all of the videos, seen most of the interviews, spent a insane amount of time reading the AoC Wiki. I just don't see the themepark.
You are right that we don't know the degree to how upkeep will be balanced. That is one of those things I am sure they are going to use the alpha and beta to get right. I don't think the upkeep will be trivial like in retail WOW. It would just devalue all of crafting, gathering, and some of the node system.
I don't know about difficulty in mobs. I don't consider myself to be an extremely skilled gamer, but I have never had mobs be an issue in any game. Most of the time bosses are not an issue, unless I am trying to farm them undersized and undergeared. I must once again point out that there is a production cost associated with over enchanting low-level gear and the chance of destroying the gear out right while enchanting it.
I can give you a more direct example. Lineage 2, a game that Steven has sighted as inspiration for AoC quite a few times now. The first char I made in L2 had trash gear. It was a struggle to get to 40, I had low D grade the whole way up. Which is basically me wearing crap level 20 gear at level 40. I decided I did not like my class because there just was not enough demand for it and I wanted to craft. I rerolled dwarf. and Started making actually money. I learned the economy better, and started farming SOP's to fund gear. Once I got my dwarf to so reasonable B-grade, I decided I wanted to play the other character too, now that I can make money. I used a portion of the wealth I generated to make some overenchanted C-grade because I wanted to level faster and feel the power. I managed to get up to like +6 on my weapon before I lost my nerve on Overenchanting. The and brutality of the that twinking system made it beneficial, but prohibitively costly for a someone to twink.
The only time I ever had an easy time twinking in L2 was when my clan loaned me some OE high D-grade so I could catch up faster, but I had to still pay for my own soul-shots. In AoC gear upkeep is the replacement system for soul-shots that balances gear with the economy (That is a side point). What I am getting at is that twinking is not going to be as easy as you think. If it is than intripid is making a soft-core game that everyone will be done with in two weeks. The grind and brutality is what makes sandbox games stand out.
Safe zones? You mean stalls, houses or freeholds? There are not than many safe zones. Ideally there would not be any, but that is another discussion.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I mean zones that are close to cities/settlements. Logically they tend to have less dangerous mobs around. And the further you venture into the "wild" as it were, the chance of encountering dangerous creatures increases.
This probably has to do with the fact we've only been shown the barebone and first iteration stages of the unique mechanics, not to mention many of the things that make an mmo a theme-park give away a lot of lore. Something Steven's been avoiding. He's given us tidbits. But once proper quests and such are shown. You'll see it's a much more hybrid type of experience, with elements of both. I don't really see a Sandbox like the ones mentioned above. Especially not EVE. EVE is a lot of spreadsheets. I never got far into the game, hell, I tried it for about four hours. Which is nothing. But from what I can gather based on these very cool sounding stories of EVE that go around. When you destroy a guild's capital ship. It takes a LOT of resources to replace. This only happens in Ashes during certain levels of corruption, and then, from what I understand only a few equipped items.
That sounds a lot like Ragnarok Online's system of upgrading gear and enchanting gear.
There were safe upgrades, usually until +4 and after that each upgrade gave an increasingly high chance to destroy the item outright. That system of gearing was fine. There weren't a lot of stats involved in the gear. Except the higher "MvP" loot (MvP is essentially a boss) The gear helped, at least a little. What made the gear OP there were cards.
But the system of the gear itself is fine. In fact, most gear systems are fine with me. Even WoW's gear. Especially vanilla with the random stats.
But to go back to the point there. What were called grades in L2 I know as gear levels. You had 1~4 4 being the best. And the difference between 1 and 4 was significant enough to want full level 4 gear the differences just weren't crazy.
And that right there is the only thing I am afraid of. I don't want huge power spikes between gear.
I'll give an example using a spear.
Level 1 spear
one-handed with an attack of 44
Glorious Spear level 4
One handed attack 130
You can upgrade them too the maths there are complicated so to make it easier let's just say +1 adds 1 atk +10 adds 10 atk
There are other stats added sometimes. Like adding some Dex or Str Or flat out percentage damage bonuses on monster race/type which are worth considering. But at the higher levels. The difference between the two isn't quite as pronounced as it seems. At the lower levels though, it is a huge boon.
This is a wonderful system, to me at least. Of course it isn't quite as simple as that. As the higher level weapons in this game are also paired with ridiculous bonuses like +95% strength on demi-humans (players)
But without those bonuses, the difference is worthwhile, just not crazy.
It probably won't be as trivial as retail WoW, but I don't think it'll be really high either. But only time will tell here. I hope the cost is quite significant. I also hope that if you're not a smith yourself. Weapon/armour degradation is a bit faster.
I think someone already mentioned this above, but it might be worth clarifying. When you’re talking about over-gearing, are you talking about endgame gear progression or twinking?
It sounds like you’re talking about the former, where the dev topic is about the latter.
Both are fine, integral parts of the game. Though, I don’t know if I would over state that the only reason you are here is also the only reason other players are here.
If I were truly interested in endless pursuits of power, I wouldn’t be focused on gaming. I just want to see what’s over the next ridge, and have a little fun while making the climb.
You don't see the sandbox, I don't see the theme park. The best I can do is say that I don't think a theme park should be devoid of lore. I think where a lot of people are thinking that AoC is a theme park is the fact that Steven is a long time DM, and ashes started as a D&D campaign. I am actually very excited about that myself. Having a rich setting and lore doesn't make a game become a theme-park. When I DM I world build from the outside in. Which means that I focus on the setting, and when we get to the table. I let the players figure out what there goals, are and what they want to do. Want to be jurks and steal a boat? Sure, head to the nearest port town, but the world is going to treat you accordingly. This is more of a sandbox style of DMing. Others build from the inside out. They want to get you to their dungeon or plot hook as fast as possible. They may rail road you or tick you into thinking the dungeon was your idea. This is more like a themepark style of DMing. This is exaclty how WOW and FFXIV are. There is nothing wrong with that. The reason why I think AOC is a sandbox is because, all of the games it is stated to be derived from are sandboxes.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars Look under inspiration.
Can there be some elements of theme-park MMOs? sure, but I don't see it. To me a theme-park MMO is exactly what makes the term derogatory in the first place. You go from ride to ride getting your participation trophy's, then you wait until the next patch to see what rides they added to the park.
I played a little Ragnarok... I want to say in like 2006 or 2007. It was a very long time ago, but what you are saying checks out with the gear system. I keep using lineage 2 as and example because that is the example Steven uses. The way it reads on the wiki is that it is lineage 2, but with a few extra things you can do, like add elemental damage types or other odd ball enchantments. L2 vertical progression.
Yeah, they got two years to figure out the tuning on this. I lean more towards a harsh world.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I am talking about both. They are the same system. Unless they want to make us unable to over enchant gear below cap or something.
Over enchanting in lineage 2 fueled the end game economy. Otherwise you would just craft s-grade and call it a day unless they dropped it.
As for the reason why I am here? It is the reason why I prefer sandbox games to theme-park games. I want a more freedom in my MMO, I want a more social experience, and I want to earn my place in the world. I actually am not a power gamer or a hardcore PvPer. I want to me a part of a living world. That type of game play can only happen in a sandbox where the world is in constant flux depending on who is in power. A dev team could write a massive game of thrones stlye story where you pick a house and do quests and work your way through a set path to the end. That is cool, but that is literally every theme park MMO on the market. The real story's happen in the sandbox MMOs. You can click threw a game of thrones story of betrayal and feel a little involved, but in EVE online. People are living it every day.
It's like do you want WOW with different lore? or do you want a fantasy world simulator? I want the fantasy world simulator.
This all ties into the topic of twinking, and over enchanting because they are the same system. They are there to fuel the war, and the economy and make the world dynamic. If we give up ground here and get rid of twinking, the economy is less cut throat, and the bonds people have to form to get anywhere in the world are less meaningful. Some risk vs reward is lost, and the game become one step closer to being like WOW.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
You don't need fancy mechanics for mobs to be challenging.
In the sandbox MMOs I have played, you just needed to make the wrong move to pull too much and die. In this case, loosing potential exp and maybe the loot you had been farming for hours. So, no, it's not trivial in every MMO.
An area that would require a small party may suddenly become trivial if twinked, tho. So yeah, it removes the risk of hunting there.
No offense, but if you point anyone to another genre for wanting risky hunting, I may point people who see dungeon diving to be as ridky as farming a node to any ARPG or hack n' slash game.
Edit: I just read your comment on the open world mobs and I know now I got the wrong idea here from what you said 🙃
What I said was, part of the reason you haven't seen a lot of theme parking is because of where they are at in development, and the fact Steven wants to keep the lore a surprise for as long as he can. Meaning all those lore heavy quests aren't advertised.
I don't think anyone here wants WoW with different lore. That doesn't mean you can't take things from them. Taking things from other games and putting their own little spin on it has been a successful business model for them.
Most people would want a simulator as you put it. But there are varying degrees here. EVE levels of sim and freedom are already sort of confirmed not to be in. The corruption system for one.
Player-made content is usually very engaging and endless. However that's not really what is being argued. Because even in the most sand-boxy game in your list, it's the developers that give the tools and rules.
And these are being argued. In short. What form should gear take, how much should it take to maintain/upgrade. And of course, how much of an effect should it have on your character.
Let's visualise a pie chart.
It represents your character's power progression. As you level, things keep going rather evenly.
Character Level
Character abilities
Character class
Character's gear
Character experience
Just to keep it simple. When you reach the max level, over time that part becomes less and less important, taking up a smaller piece of the pie chart that represents the power of your character. And, usually all the elements are static, except for gear. The inevitable result of which is an ever increasing piece that is gear. Until it covers most of the pie chart.
I cannot emphasise enough how lame that system is. And I hope intrepid finds a way to keep the chart balanced.
Overgearing during levelling is a completely different topic to overgearing at max level. Why? Because one is temporary and the other is permanent. Once you get to being overgeared at max level, you cannot go back without making it feel like a punishment to the players. WoW tried to fix this problem by having the world scale with a player's gear and it backfired horribly.
I'm also a little confused by your statements. You say you want a game with more social experience but if you are on an overgeared character you have no need to group up with anyone because you are strong enough to solo whatever you wanted. You also say you want to earn your place in the world but if you are gifted overpowered gear all the time, you haven't earned anything. None of that has anything to do with a game being a sandbox vs a themepark.
Just returning to WoW for a moment, one of the reasons why I find end-game so frustrating is because of how the gear progression works, and this has absolutely nothing to do with it being a themepark mmo.
While the enchanting aspect of them may well be similar, the manner in which the gear itself is obtained is not likely to be the same. You are unlikely to need to participate in a PvE raid to obtain gear for a level 30 character, but if you are trying to overhear a character at the level cap, that participation is probably a given.
Overgearing at the level cap will always be harder to do than overgearing at lower levels, and each will have different results, with different impacts.
I don't hate theme-parks. I am currently actively subbed to both FFXIV and WOW. I also have full intentions of raiding in shadowlands next month when the raid drops. When I say I don't see any elements of a themepark in AOC, understand that I am also looking at what systems Steven has confirmed for the game. The only two systems currently in the game that are not present in other sandbox MMOs are the nodes, and the religion system. I can see directly what systems were inspired by what sandbox game. Then to hammer it home further. Steven has stated it himself. Here it is on the wiki:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars
I don't feel like I am shooting from the hip here.
With WOW in its current state. I think most things to be learned from WOW are what not to do. In fact, if you were trying to make a themepark, I would recommend that you only use systems that are common in WOW,FFXIV, and ESO simultaneously. With the exception of mythic+, WOW does not have a single stand out system that is successful and unique to WOW. I am saying this as a player of all three games.
It is being argued, because reducing the twinking, reduces how competitive the economy is, and makes the world less brutal, this makes players not need to or want to work together to the same degree.
We have this information:
"Gear has approximately a 40-50% influence on a players overall power in the game."
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
With a fair upkeep system overgearing is not permanent at cap. More to the point, overgearing whist leveling is a major boon for the economy. People wanting to overgear their alts or make sets to help new leveling guildmates dives sales of a lot of mats. Especially when you can lose the item over enchanting or just going red. This makes resources that much more competitive. In drives every system in the game. If the world is more competitive people have to work together more, and thus the game is more social. If you have not played a sandbox game than you might not see that.
I agree that world scaling is awful. What I am advocating is the opposite.
I told a story in another post in this thread about the struggle it is to even obtain overpowered gear for your level range in Lineage 2. Which is a good example because is the template for the over enchanting system in AOC. I explained that it had grind to get to the point that you can even afford such gear. Having the gear doesn't magically make you able to solo ever mob in the game. It might help you level faster, or even turn a profit when you can farm more mobs per hour, but it never makes you a literal god. For the lucky few people who are given over enchanted gear while leveling by their guild. It ends up being more like a catch up mechanic in practice. You will out level it, and be back on your own or asking for handouts.
I am arguing from a place where I have seen this system in practice. It hard to obtain and maintain such gear, and it is good for the entire game. So long as they don't make it easier. Tera tried to use the system and it did not work because they took out the part where you can destroy your gear twinking.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
You can disagree, but the evidence is that most gear will be crafted.
"There is a much higher chance that materials and unique recipes are dropped that can be used to craft items of equitable value."
He clarified this in his interview with Asmongold, and even used lineage 2 as an example. In l2 nearly every item was craftable. Chances were a raid boss would drop the parts to make a weapon with a small chance to actually drop the weapon.
You are right that overgearing at cap will be harder. Here is the kicker. Steven was talking about being able to take the resources to make tier one gear, and make tier two gear, then continue all the way to the endgame gear.
This means that the resources gathered and processed to make low level gear is useful in part to making high level gear. Which means the end game is tied to the same system that gives early game gear. This makes the economy more competitive, which makes the open world more competitive, which means people will have to band together more. This is once again exactly the gearing system from lineage 2.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Ashes has been referred to as a 'Sand park' so its kinda hard to really put a finger on how its gearing system will be done.
If you had a more sand box game like old SWG, sure, just toss a set of good armor on a player, and its got great defenses, good job, gearing over. There is no restriction on a players limit to wear gear other than who you know, or a price tag. If you have been playing for 6 years or 6 minutes, you can have endgame armor. However, in that game, armor served little purpose other than reducing damage you took, at a cost to how difficult it was to move in or do tasks (increased ability cost etc)
In most themepark MMOs you have simple level requirements and color coded rarity for gear, allowing for some easy and healthy twinking if you have the resources (time, crafting, money, friends).
I am not sure how you hit that in the middle ... like remotely. However, it has been said that there are boss drops and loot and things that sound traditionally 'themepark'-like and if the gear is done in that fashion I feel like you should be able to twink your butt off to your hearts content (within normal themepark level restrictions).
When it comes to twinks in PvP yeah, they are good. They put in the time, effort, and resources to get that gear to perform at peak for that level. They should have an advantage. You may see it as not fair because you are of an equal level, however you are wrong. An unfair system would be one in which undermines the gearing system to put everyone on an equal playing field. I don't know how low level battlegrounds will work in ashes, or if they will be a thing at all, but I feel like it would be extremely unwise to try to level your first character through them after the fist few weeks of the games launch. Structured PvP at any level is meant to be competitive, not inclusive.
As for open world PvP not being fair, I feel like some people are not taking some aspects of ashes into consideration. Steven himself has said that he does not want there to be a system of it being needlessly hard or impossible to fight creatures a hefty amount out of your level bracket. So if you are in an area on your first playthrough killing level 19 bandits at level 19, level 19 twinks are probably going to be out there killing level 25 bandits. And if you are you there killing level 19 bandits and some level 13 twink tries to square up, you'll have the advantage of more skills from levels etc, to counterbalance your lesser stats. If you are just getting farmed by a level 19 twink while you are level 19, ask a buddy to come knock his head off, move, or let him get corrupted off killing you. If it becomes a bigger problem you may need to find some friends and roll around in a group.
The economy is going to be extremely important in Ashes, and I feel like having gear that scales with you, or that you get partial stats from till you meet a 'optimal' level are 'friendly' and 'convenient' but overall make for bad game design. If you can just toss on some level 40-50 meh gear at level one and just let it scale, or slowly trickle up its stats, you entirely compromise the purpose of level 1-40 gear. Even if you need high end materials to repair it, the economy would shift to only care about spreading around those resources.
All of that said, I feel like if you want to make a twink, it should not be a 'one and done' cost. I feel like you should not be able to halt your exp. If you want a twink to stay in a PvP bracket or w/e you should have to invest into multiple alts and sets of gear to maintain that advantage.
It is a very easy concept to understand. There should be some form of skill based handicap on gear to obtain say a 10% power increase. If you are not able to execute the extra mechanic on the gear you don’t get the performance. The game should be more mechanically difficult the higher you go in gear tiers. There is always some requirement for the player to constantly be working at to gain that performance. Just like in an FPS with sniper rifles someone is always trying to increase their hit percentage. Getting 100% hit chance is so incredibly difficult that there is an almost infinite skill growth because you are constantly working on refining your mechanical skill. In terms of rpgs it could start out as something simple like a proc increases x skill by +y damage for 2sec. Forcing you to pay attention to a change in rotation. Than you could increase the skill even more for higher gear. Something like X skill does bonus damage, but puts Y de buff on you which is removed after applying z status effect.
Unfortunately due to the limited combat mechanic of mmo’s you can only really increase difficulty through timing, positioning, target swapping, resource management, or some triggered game state change like a cc/status affect.
Power in rpgs has always been about sacrifice and playing around downsides and managing those weaknesses. The glass canon is a great example of this. You can 3 shot people but people can 3 shot you. This is even true in real life we can armor a vehicle, but it will have extra weight making it move slower. This concept is what keep hybrids balanced against specialists. Specialist do something incredibly well at the cost of having a few glaring weaknesses vs a hybrid having no inherent weaknesses but no huge performance increase. Gear should be the same way. Learning to use your gear and managing weaknesses is so much more interesting than putting it on and getting a flat increase.
A less skilled player may chose lower gear because it provides less upkeep and skill to maintain that performance. Just like in an FPS a low skilled player might choose a automatic rifle over a sniper rifle. Because it is easier to maintain consistent damage with the automatic rifle if you can’t consistently land sniper shots.
I understand wanting to be able to give armor to an alt. But please, please make sure there are penalties that make the armor only almost as good as crafted/quested armor for that level. If I want my toon to run around in a particular armor set because I like the looks, have the stats penalized until they are comparable to other armor sets of that level. Also, make the durability much less if a lower level is running around with higher gear. A newbie would absolutely damage that fine sword way more than an experienced user. For folks with alts, they can weigh if they want a particular look versus having to repair it frequently. This also helps crafters since they are needed for repairs.
Please limit the gear that can be shared between toons. I am not a fan of all gear being able to be transferred between toons. I want folks to be able to see certain gear or pieces on my toon and know that I can truly heal the content we're heading into based on the gear I'm wearing that can only be achieved by similar or better content. If we're supposed to find and group up with folks to run content, then visually seeing their gear could help us judge their competency before we head out together. If we have to dump a team member due to incompetence and then go back and search for a replacement, it dims our game experience.
In a sandbox the mechanical difficulty comes from dealing with players in the open world that are competing for the same resources. Not, mobs. Yes, you could have gear gifted to you, or game the market to the point that you get a nice set of gear. That path has its own challenges, and the gear is never eternal.
More to the point, very little gear is soul-bound. That is a feature not a bug or oversight.
"There may be some gear binding (BoE or BoP) but it will be an exception rather than the rule, as this doesn't facilitate the objectives for the economy"
"The game economy is based around crafting and degradation of items"
both quotes seen here.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Economy
My guess would be that the religion gear gives is stated to give side grades of gear. "That may be the gear that is not tied to the economy" That gear will be inferior to normal gear.
Your bit about skill rotations might be non-sense in the context of AoC, and is a unrelated point.
That is all unrelated. Simple talking points about how you think power in RPGs should work don't work here.
We are talking about how the same system used to gear people at the endgame, is the same system used to twink characters, and why that is good for the game. You are not even supporting your arguments with sandbox MMORPG examples. Which was something I asked for in the original post. I appreciate the engagement, but you seem to only understand the argument in the context of a non-sandbox game.
Tell me about why you don't like the way a low level character can be overgeared compared to their peers, and use a sandbox MMO as an example.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Except for the punishment that comes to those who force PvP. You'll only lose a tiny portion of what's in your inventory if you don't accept the PvP. Which means it's not worth it for the attacker to try and get non-consensual PvP
You also just continue dodging the point.
It doesn't fucking matter how much you need to maintain, or how hard it is to get.
What does is that gear should not be too large a contributor to player-power. The figure you quoted earlier is about 20~25 percent too high already.
Well, assuming that the gear has less of an impact on player power, what's wrong with letting a player use any equipment they come across or is passed from friends or their main?
Also, I know from experience that people are more likely to PvP because they can than to PvP to obtain resources/loot. The fact that they don't get much of a reward, if any, and that they can even be penalized for it will not stop people from PvPing.
It does come down to two varieties of skill influencing this:
1) How effective the player is at knowing how to obtain and optimize the ideal gear for the situation.
2) How effective the player is mechanically at using the equipment with skills and tactics.
At this point, I am having a hard time balancing those two things in my mind, as I feel that a good system should benefit from both types of skill.
That is not dodging the point, mobs almost never offer a real challenge in an MMO outside of endgame raid bosses. When it comes to PvP, you will be PvPing in a open world sandbox. The corruption system will not save you.
"Gear has approximately a 40-50% influence on a player's overall power in the game."
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Gear
I gave you the figures from the wiki.
Nearly everything I am saying so coming from a place of knowing and loving the same games as Steven. I would not be here or caring about AoC at all if he did not sell me on the idea of him taking the elements of games I already love, and fixing them for the next generation of MMOs.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Very low level gear requires easy to acquire materials in small quantities. The next level of gear above that requires that very low level item, as well as additional materials.
The materials are all easy to get until you get to the level cap, where there is a number of new materials needed to perform each item upgrade.
This is a system separate from enchanting. You can regrade (Archeages enchanting) the gear at any time in this process, and that level of regrade will carry on as you upgrade the item. This is the system I expect to see in Ashes, as Archeage is the game that Steven most recently played, and the system as described sounds literally exactly as it was in that game - less the RNG.
The thing is, you are not going to want to use a very low level item to attempt to overgear a level capped player. You will use it as a component to craft a low level item, and keep that going all the way up until you get to the items that are for level capped players - at which point you will need those raid dropped materials in order to continue this specific upgrade path.
You may still be able to enchant the item further, but you need raid drops in order to actually craft the final version of the item so you are enchanting a pre-final version of that item without them.
Except it is. For you are arguing against the wrong point there.
Yes, I know, that's the figure I was referring too.
I'll try and keep it more concise.
1: The question was in regards to twinking.
2: The opinion I gave was based on that. I don't mind the twinking they meant, which is a direct result of the type of power system they employ. Namely having gear be the source of strength for your character. Meaning, it's not actually the character that's growing stronger. So 40~50 percent is a mistake, they are making, and I'm providing feedback based on that.
3: Upkeep has nothing to do with my point, so continuing to bring it up means you're not actually addressing what I said. Or you know, dodging the point.
4: Sorry about my language earlier, the use of the f word. I've had a long day. And I shouldn't take it out on anyone.
I think you are getting MMO's and FPS games confused here.
MMO's are literally all about progressing your character. That is their point of existance.