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Power of levels and gear
BigRamble
Member
Have we gotten any information about the ratio of power that comes from level and gear? As in how much stronger is a level 20 than a level 19 over a level 15, etc.
I've had a go at searching for details/past discussions and I know there is an active plan against level scaling or suppression systems for level disparity, but I couldn't find much on specifics (most likely because we are still such early days).
My concern is that level suppression isn't a big thing if characters only a few levels apart are so much stronger than each other that a skilled player can't punch above their level. The only note close to covering this on the wiki is a quote about how lower than max level characters can help in seiges, just not in actual PVP.
While I enjoy PVP, my personal experience was with SWTOR where end game PVP was so affected by the power of end game gear I generally gave it up to only PVE at max level. SWTOR did have a seperate gear stat for PVP so that is an unnecessary thing for AoC.
Further, my understanding is that leveling provides skill points that unlocks active skills, passive skills, and weapon skills. This appears to me to make most of the active skills already unlocked for current alpha characters by level 10 as they cannot spend them on passive/weapon options still locked.
If leveling is primarily just more skill and a little extra stats, that would appeal to me. But my experience with MMOs in that regard is limited, do most players need big number bumps to feel like leveling is a true event or can the numbers be incremental gains?
I've had a go at searching for details/past discussions and I know there is an active plan against level scaling or suppression systems for level disparity, but I couldn't find much on specifics (most likely because we are still such early days).
My concern is that level suppression isn't a big thing if characters only a few levels apart are so much stronger than each other that a skilled player can't punch above their level. The only note close to covering this on the wiki is a quote about how lower than max level characters can help in seiges, just not in actual PVP.
While I enjoy PVP, my personal experience was with SWTOR where end game PVP was so affected by the power of end game gear I generally gave it up to only PVE at max level. SWTOR did have a seperate gear stat for PVP so that is an unnecessary thing for AoC.
Further, my understanding is that leveling provides skill points that unlocks active skills, passive skills, and weapon skills. This appears to me to make most of the active skills already unlocked for current alpha characters by level 10 as they cannot spend them on passive/weapon options still locked.
If leveling is primarily just more skill and a little extra stats, that would appeal to me. But my experience with MMOs in that regard is limited, do most players need big number bumps to feel like leveling is a true event or can the numbers be incremental gains?
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Seems too big to me. But we don't know exactly what "fresh" level 50 means. Just quest gear? Probably. Will there be relatively accessible upgrades from quest gear to close that gap some is the question.
Games like WoW (used for easy reference) are significantly higher than this.
Even a game like Archeage is 2 or 3 hundred percent - and was significantly more as time went on. 50% is the lowest of any MMO I can think of.
Also, from memory, he said an the higher geared player was ~50% better, not that the weaker player was ~50% weaker. This is an important distinction.
I'm personally going to be tricked out in some of the best gear relatively fast. Because that's just what I do in mmo's and I'm going to invest a lot of time. If the game wants me to just shit all over the average player then fine lol, I'll roll with it. I just don't think that's the best design for the health of the game though. Meaningful power gap, but not overwhelming.
PvP in Ashes is less of a focus than Archeage.
Or, more accurately, PvE is more of a focus than Archeage.
But the node system of Ashes is going to be Archeage on steroids, as well as the open world dungeons. Ashes will have caravans (AA trade packs), naval stuff like AA, castles like AA, guild wars like AA etc. But the node wars and open world dungeons will make Ashes way more of a pvp game than Archeage was.
Yeah, Ashes will have about as much PvP as Archeage, which is why I have been saying that in order to make the game equal PvP/PvE, it needs to get serious about it's PvE content.
I'm not just arguing for PvE because I prefer it (though I clearly do), but rather because we know a lot more about the games PvP than we do it's PvE - and this is giving many players a false assumption that the game is mostly PvP.
I don't think most people are having false assumptions. There will be a great many pve player that looks at Ashe's systems and features and comes to the conclusion...that's a pvp game. It doesn't matter how many dungeons you add. There are pve players that just the mere existence of any type of pvp you can't opt out of = pvp game. So I mean, are they wrong? Well maybe. But I see what they mean lol.
Hoping Ashes is taking the pve seriously though and putting out some good stuff.
To me, there seems to be even more of a reason for specific organized PvP events in Ashes than in Archeage. Ashes looks like it will have things worth fighting over, whereas Archeage kind of didn't.
However, Ashes seems like it will have more of a reason to not attack players at random than Archeage had. The corruption system is more of a deterrent than the crime system ever was.
When you look at it, with events like BR/GR (though the PvP here varied on some servers), MM, Halcy, and other similar events, there was a lot of PvP happening in that game. It just wasn't a part of some central gameplay asepct of the game (as nodes in Ashes will be), because that game didn't have a central core at all.
I suppose I can have some hope that if it is supposed to take 45 days of playing a few hours each day, presumably the time taken for levels 41-50 being the longest, having those players excluded from meaningful major events like castle seiges, doesn't sound like the best design call.
It's unfortunate that there are pve players that just cannot handle or tolerate being killed by other players at all, as in zilch zero nada. It's unfortunate that there are pvp players, that if allowed, will repeatedly kill people over and over until there's no option left for those people except to quit the game.
And even in the middle, outside of those two extremes, it's unfortunate that there's still things that divide the pvp/pve communities in mmorpgs. But that's just the way it is. At least there are multiple games that cater to either side.
I think Ashes is trying to tap into new markets. The interviews that Steven has done with Summit and Shroud, and others who are more fps focused leads me to believe that Steven is trying to tap into the market of fps gamers that have some interest in mmos. The emphasis on pvp in Ashes and having an action combat system reflects that.
We'll see how it all turns out. I hope you and your friends find something in Ashes that draws you in. There will be plenty of pve. And there will definitely be a place and need for pvers in Ashes.
I definitely agree with this, and had made that assumption years before those interviews.
I don't think the intention is to aim it at that market at the expense of existing MMO players, but rather to tap in to a small portion of that market in addition to existing MMO players.