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Steal ESO's gearing system
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https://youtu.be/2gSGPbn6mh0Found this video and thought it's interesting and we should discuss the proposition.
Things I agree with:
-This type of gearing system definitely gives me tons of motivation to grind like crazy
-It fixes the new expansion old gear flop problem
- It would give more incentive for players to grind the zones which will speed up and help node development.
What are your thoughts?
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The way of getting the gear is irrelevant here. It's about the gearing system as in the gear it self, stats + effects and bonuses.
I do agree with you that ESO has no real challenge of obtaining good gear (been a while since I played it though), but the way the gear is itemized is interesting, fun and long term viable. Yes they have some balance issues but still interesting and fun.
I also just want to say that I haven't watched the video yet so maybe i misunderstood something
Plus at this point, gear stats should be well established. We don't want AOC to be a New World, making massive sweeping changes midway through development based on no reason other than "some people want this".
While I completely agree with the sentiment of your post, I don't think Gear stats are actually established at all right now?
Are you saying that what we saw in Alpha-1 is the final concept of what stats go on gear?
I think it might have been somewhat 'hinted' that we won't know that until Alpha-2, and that they aren't really that far along yet. There's still a chance to overhaul a bunch of stuff, including class abilities and such, that we saw in Alpha-1.
Heavy armor drove the highest dmg output, max MP was used to increase magic dmg along with spell dmg,
Max mp, mp regen, mp cost reduction cancelled each other out for unlimited MP usage and depending on the flavour of the month you'd invest on them. No static value in the concept.
Same with weapon dmg, weapon penetration, weapon critical. Flavour of the month, 2/3 were useless every other day.
Not to mention armors dealing burst dmg every 4s or every 10s.
Now let's see the weapons.
Dual Wield bonuses where all over the place. For three months DW was used to boost defence and that was its primetime.
Ill say it again... dual wield was used to boost defence...
For 2 years sword/shield was better than 2handed for damage dealer brawlers, two handed was only used by rogues.
Bow was always supplementary, never an actual playstyle. (Too much realism hurts videogames).
What else.... recently the developers realized the futility of their stats and now they combined all magic/physical attributes into the same stat per category (dmg, penetration, armor).
All they had to do YEARS AGO was to remove the dmg bonus attached to max mp and max stamina pools, as well as remove the free dmg bursts from the armors and make heavy armor feel heavy and medium feel medium.
So yes, fvck eso for anything related gearwise.
The only thing I like from eso is its transmorg/glamour system. That's it. And that was crap in the first 3 years of it. If you wanted to be effective you gad to look like shiet with all the monster sets.
Gear has approximately a 40-50% influence on a player's overall power in the game.[16]
I do agree with you on all those points! I mean I no longer play ESO for a reason xD
But what I do remember from ESO is the flexibility you had with gear and the cool experimental gear setups you could play with. I like the interesting gear bonuses ESO have, In comparison to like World of warcraft were most power comes from raw stats to increase power, which leads to hear from older expansions/patches being completely useless.
My suggestion would be to make it the other way around: Make the old sets at an expansion upgradeable.
It would be easy to make the way of upgrading as difficult as getting the new gear from the expansion.
Just make the possibility to get those special upgrade-coins in the same raid, where you would get the new high gear.
Then let the upgraded gear be comparable in strength with the new gear of the new raid.
That means that you still have to do the same raid to get better, but the player could decide for himself what he wants to wear.
The only problem that i see is that the devs would have more work to balance the new gear with all the upgraded old gear from previous expansions.
Thanks for the post above @Kaban. It had some good examples I am less familiar with in there. I think I like your third proposed option with a lot of caveats/context below.
I believe there was a mention of set bonuses as something the devs were going to try and work in. Set vs 'mix and match grade' is a very fine line to walk. In many mmos set bonuses create a situation where certain sets overwhelm individual pieces depending on the games over all stat balance (e.g. if there is a set bonus with crit or attack expect it to be the default set for most builds in the meta other than support.) This comes up because a set bonuses is usually used to strengthen otherwise middle of the road gear into something unique and desirable. It can be a lot harder to balance a set bonus relative to other gear pieces and so it slips through the balance cracks.
This isn't to say set bonuses are inherently bad. There is a potential for set bonuses to create a genuine trade off in boosting a stylistic approach vs 'optimized meta approach'. I feel monster hunter world did set bonuses best in a way applicable to mmos. You only needed a few pieces of the gear to trigger parts of the set bonus and basically the entire set to trigger the 'full' bonus. This let's you more fully calculate what exactly the trade off is with the full set bonus vs other full sets, while still giving people the 'stylistic approach' through the first 'tier' of the gear bonus to keep creativity in build sets competitive with full sets. Additionally, this tier one set bonus is easier to restrict to certain gear piece combinations rather than fully free form, this makes what your comparing the trade off to as a dev and a player building more apparent and adjustable in a balance patch if there was some sort of mistake or overlooked combination.
I feel like your third option is taken in some mmo's with varying degrees of success, therefore, and think it's more about what stats are available to tweak and balance with in the first place. When there are more beneficial stats and a relative wide variety of 'different win conditions' for different enemies in the same areas of content,, the healthier a meta and economy tend to be. But to achieve this, it needs to be the 'goal' of the design day one and 'easy' answers need to be present but avoided as the 'over all best' answer. I also feel keeping gear slots sticking to only a certain set of stats that they benefit helps keep balance easier to achieve and tweak over all.
Tl;dr I think set bonuses are a fine line to walk and work better when they have different tiers of effect and are more focused on stylistic approaches to combat rather than general buffs. I also think gear as a whole benefits from more stats with stylistic impacts, to fine tune balance and style. And I feel that a tiered set system also fits better for content progression.
Therefore I think in my ideal system I would have the first tier of a gear set be how one 'boosts stylistic class choices' unlocking a different way to fight or approach an enemy, the full set bonus giving an 'easier and serviceable answer' to 'general content' but ultimately a mix and match approach being the 'most optimal' at fighting specific match ups in pvp and bosses with those same fighting styles. I'd prefer if there was different viable styles and specs that make you more or less effective against different matchups. And lastly I think this tiered set bonus approach scales with content challenge levels well. The more optimal the gear piece the harder the content is to acquire it, while the 'mid steps' in a build are obtained from high level crafters in nearly all cases to keep different level gaps of players on a floor footing of stats.
Obtaining a legendary sword feels great, until you read the tooltip and see that you don’t get anything more from it than a normal sword until you pair it with a pair of gauntlets.
No... what's wrong with you? Making an MMO require players to have some form of skill outside of time sunk is just wrong! How will the average, braindead player be able to compete? Everyone needs a participation trophy, stop trying to split the community!
Players that think time is what is involved in getting top end gear have never had too end gear.
Having sets or even two (like a one full, one incomplete or anything in between) is usually added as a fix for boring item stats. I would very much like to not see any sets before the stats are refined to be a fulfilling system that works by itself and doesn't need another game system to make up for its flaws
Those suggestions for "improving" sets from the video is honestly inapplicable to the current state of Ashes, because item sets are always either a fix or a sprinkle above the base gearing system. Not to say that class specific sets are an antithesis to the custom character build that Ashes wants to provide.
So if anything to take from this post is that Ashes needs stats to be the pillars that will carry the gearing treadmill, because Steven's philosophy for gearing is really solid
― Plato
EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT ESO'S GEAR IS SHIT.
The stat system is jank.
Gear advancement is shit.
Also as pointed out:
Zero challenge in obtaining gear=Zero pride in having gear.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Gear creep / gear degradation associated with expansions is commonly a p2w "milk-the-whales" technique. I hope Ashes will put the focus on a developing storyline which the players interact with. Why the next BiS gear better than the last _absolutely must_ make sense as far as the campaign is concerned and not just be an arms race/power creep that players eventually tire of. There doesn't need to be a new BiS every time there's an update, an update can just change a game mechanic, the seasonal weather or acknowledge Easter/Halloween/Christmas in some way.
I actually agree with you heavily. As a lover of open world sandbox and PvP games, I think the focus of new content should always be to make the world better.
I honestly would be fine if the level cap never actually increased and gear creep was not a thing. I know many might not agree with this but, I don't think in these specific types of RPGs that focus on open world PvP and risk vs reward should have gear that has no heavy maintenance fees to keep the war machine and economy going.
Slaying a dragon today should not grant you a lifetime of good gear that can only be bested by defeating a dragon with good stats. Dragon bones and scales are not indestructible. You proved that when you slew the dragon. Instead, you are using the dragon as a resource to make gear that will give you an increase in power until it is worn out and needs upkeep or replacement. The competition for these resources is what makes these games so real and replayable.
Even without PvP so long as gear is hard to obtain and takes real time and effort to obtain you can have a game go years and years without level increases or gear creep. This is why FFXI private servers like to stay with the same level cap. I have seen the same people playing FFXI on private servers for decades. On the PvP side, I have seen it with L2.
Nothing beats the feeling of getting one piece of gear in after working for months and months on it. You can be full BiS in a week or two on WOW and FFXIV of active play. Feeling all of those slots never feels as good as getting a single slot in some older games.
I know I was a little all over the place on this, but I do agree with you. "Expansions" in most games just amount to a few new fights for DLC. Going to play endwalker in a few weeks. Looking forward to paying for a few new EX trails, 12 Savage fights over 2 years and maybe 2 ultimate trials if we are lucky... I will probably be full pre-raid BiS day 2-3 waiting for raid... Yay
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
They should add a few more lvs
New, hard ro craft, top end gear. People shouldnt get it straight away but should ve there to chase. And it should look better than any cosmetic.
Add a few more skills per archetype. For balancing reasons these new high lv skills should not be a part of the class combo/flavours.
There should be new zones in which you can farm better if you are strong (high end)
1 or 2 new castles for guilds to compete
1 or 2 new epic raid bosses ruling the new zones
A few new raid bosses.
I cannot believe that people say no to expansions. We are not talking about the eso model here.
And I dont want to hear "p2w". In the old days you had buy them in order to log into the game. How is it p2w if it's not handed to players. Just because you dont want to but it that doesnt mean that older players shouldnt look forward to new adventures.
All "DLC" or "Expansions" with Ashes will not need to drum up sales, because they will be part of the sub price. This has been asked and answered multiple times, including them trying to name content something else to get around that promise. For all the hand-wringing and pearl clutching displayed by others in this post earlier, I would say to look at previous information on the wiki where this issue has been talked about.
The issue with expansions is that it tends to be a drastic change to the game that in most cases harms older content. Maybe you don't need to suddenly have the ability to hit lvl 65. Why not release 1 or 2 levels at a time with important patches rather than tying such progression purely to an "expansion"? One of the crappiest parts about expansion-focused games is that it delays fixes for my class or some other important feature if it ends up sucking. The company will delay the release of finished fixes until they can fill the "fruit basket" that is an expansion allowing them to stick an extra price tag on it.
Players have been conditioned to think that paying for these massive game updates is "good" when they don't realize that these updates could have been released over time rather than all at once. Look at wow for example, between 9.1 and 9.2 there has been a year of time, so around 180 dollars per account spent subbed to the game during that time. That is you paying for the 9.2 patch and the game maintenance.
So in summary, the things you are saying an expansion does should just be done persistently over time in smaller batches rather than saved up to over-charge your players ever few years.
Not saying it is pay to win. Just saying it's a shit DLC system. A standard feature set across all MMORPGs...
New zones, quests, raids, and gear.
In reality, the only thing that is "New" is the bosses when they put in the effort to come up with new mechanics. Everything else is just them ruining old systems or adding a few new items and a fresh coat of pain on existing tech.
I would actually prefer that they don't add a bunch of boring zones and shit to the game. It takes 2 days to burn through it all and honesty it's not fun. If I could just PvP to end game and skip the story, I would. I don't need that shit. There is no PvP in the open world, so why go there and hear NPCs cry about their fake problems.
Consider something like C3 for L2. It added the seven signs. A whole new system that changed up the way people were interacting with the world. A normal update added more replay value and content than just skinning over the same old shit like WOW and FFXIV do.
I would rather they do updates to the world that keep people in the world, then just shit out a new coat of paint on the same shit as other MMORPGs for 60$.
That is what I have a problem with.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Personally, I think weapons should only offer different ways of applying damage and crowd control. Better weapons should apply dots/cc for longer, aoe to bigger areas, have shorter cooldowns and additional effects. Gear should only offer damage mitigation bonuses. Stat bonuses to the basic class mechanics of damage/healing/hit points, should be kept to an absolute minimum, and they should always be a % of existing cardinals (hit points, damage, healing) not a flat bonus.
Personally, I would want to solely use the crit and crit mitigation mechanic to gear. Take that away from the class altogether. (And I wouldn't allow crit heals). The idea is to keep things separate so that changes are contained. If you do this, then not only do expansions become much simpler, but scaling, should it ever be necessary, is a breeze.
I understand that you are suggesting a solution to a problem here, but my point is that the problem only exists in the first place, because of poor design choices, and there are wider issues caused by getting gear wrong than just expansion creep.
I like expansions.
While it is easy to say that expansions do nothing but ruin old content, make things obsolete etc, the simple reply to that is - yes, they often do.
So what?
I am quite happy to see conte t I have been running for a year be made obsolete. Why is this a bad thing? I can't think of anything worse than playing a game for 10 years where this DOESN'T happen.
A lot of people get all upset with this, but I don't know if they have considered the ternatives.
Even Ashes is going to have content become obsolete, despite what some people think. The only difference the node system will have is that it won't be entire oveand zones that are empty - it will just be some of the dungeons that are.
The thing with Intrepids design though, is that many of those dungeons will be removed from the server as players (and thus nodes) level up.
I can point to a number of expansions in MMO's that have added nothing actually new. They all add new quests, which are great, new story, which is great, new zones, which is great, new bosses, which is great, and new gear, which is great. However, there is nothing really new in that, most of it is just a continuation of what has been before, and it can usually be added as patches.
However, there have also been expansions that add new things. New classes, new professions, new systems or mechanics. These things are harder to add as a regular update, because they all need other things surrounding them. A new class, as an example, likely needs new itemization at every level. A new profession probably needs new materials at ever level.
These are the things that is easier to do as an expansion rather than an update.
Same with new levels - in most games, this requires new overland zones, new dungeons, new raids, new crafting recipes and materials, new items, new abilities and often a new combat mechanic or two for those new abilities to use.
Content additions that large should be considered expansions - for two reasons. The first is that it gives players the mindset that the game is changing. This shouldn't be overlooked.
The second - the actual important one imo - is that it generates buzz. People that cover MMO's are not going to generate as much content over an update as they are over an update as they are over an expansion.
Because if you can transform any crafting resource into another (of course considering x:1 crafting ratio) then the whole world is a playground to look for resources, because it might be more profitable to gather low lvl materials and transform them into high lvl materials only because of opportunity cost.
Devs could even allow you to create repair materials for cutting edge gear from low level materials if the ratios are setup correctly.
There are a lot of ways how to make low level zones relevant for a max lvl player - it just needs a little bit of creativity and passion
― Plato
That is how it is going to work.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Resource_quality
Lineage2 and SWG both had these systems.
They ensure that everything in the economy maintains value.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.