Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Having big gaps between gear will limit the player because the one is obviously better and stronger than the other.
Having pve/pvp-specific dials/enchantments for gear would limit pvers and pvpers to only use those for their preferred playstyle.
Having mismatched gear allows for a much more meta'y gameplay because people will just look at what's the most optimal combination of shit and just go with that, while having sets have higher benefits while having downsides would make you take a risk for an encounter. And parties will have to adapt their gear builds to each other, instead of just going with the literal best combination of different parts.
So imo it's your suggestions that are limiting to a player. But obviously you don't see it that way and I ain't budging on my points, so this avenue of discussion is also growing pretty pointless. Good talk though
I want players to be able to mix and match from the items they have, in order to come up with the setup they want.
Yet you are saying that I am suggesting something that will limit player choice?
Instead of having sets with great benefits and also downsides, you have individual items that have this. This means I can take my robe that has a mana proc so I won't run out of mana, or I can take my robe with a damage proc. Neither one of these is an obvious best choice, it depends on the situation. If one of them also has high fire resistance, and the other has high ice resistance, then all of a sudden I have a multi-dimensional decision to make.
Or, add in items like one specific one from EQ2 (Bloodthirsty Choker). It increases your damage by 25% - a flat increase that applies before all other modifier. But it also deals an unmodifiable 10% of your total HP pool in damage every time you use an ability or spell.
Or, you know, just slap on all the gear from X set because that is what the developers decided I should wear.
But if each party member has to sacrifice some stat "for the greater good" of the party, which then might lead to complications in pvp/pve - that's not only "risk vs reward", but a meaningful choice on the part of each member of the group instead of a selfish "I'm in my best gear so it doesn't matter what yalls are wearing". For me, the player choice comes at the stage of choosing my party. If I prefer one set benefits over the other - I'll pick it and find a party that I suit best.
And as I see it, it's way easier to balance pros and cons of a full set of gear, rather than have pros and cons on each and every piece of gear and hope that there isn't some omega OP combination out there in the millions of possibilities.
Also, I don't remember your stance on transmogs, but I hate them so I wanna wear well-designed cool-looking full sets of armor instead of having some random rags that give me the best stats and cover them up by some cheating mechanic. That's a yet another L2 echo in my preferences.
That makes literally no sense.
I understand the want of a set bonus as like just a bit of a cherry on top idea, and i also see, then everyone would just use the same set anti meta argument.
Maybe there is a best of both worlds.
What if there was lore based peices that got a bonus from one or two other peices but never a full set. A full set with an over power bonus would "build itself" take away all the thought involved and kind of make metas form, where pieces that went together, you lose the variability if your gloves and pants have to be together, so you lose out on other potential stuff
But considering how long it takes to lvl classes, if you have sets with pros and cons, across the whole tier spectrum, the meta would be way harder to properly figure out. Or at least that's how it seems to me.
If Intrepid decides to go for +- singular gear pieces and let us completely mismatch everything and all - I'll live with it.
I don't think you are making leveling pointless my removing the free stats it usually rewards since it would still be rewarding skills. As you level, you are still augmenting your playstyle with the new skills you get as well as getting access to more utility.
I think it more irrational to promote a system that limits who people can play with. Yes, there should be rewards, even some vertical rewards, but i think some restraint should be used to limit how much they divide the playerbase and where possible, other types of rewards should be used.
With over enchanting allowing weapons to be enchanted more and more at risk of their distruction. If every over enchantment gives 3% more gain. A teir 1 weapon that manages to be over enchanted 3 times is 1% less than a teir 2. I think this system manages to blend and balance the gradient between the teirs just fine.
Okay, as I thought, it was just your opinion.
Its not my opinion, "combat in ashes will be balanced with 8 vs 8 combat in mind"
I guess ill go scoure the wiki for a quote. Ill let you know when i find it.
Alright, the quote isnt 8 vs 8.
The quote is now "group content." 8 vs x.
Either way the game isnt being balanced so a 1v1 is balanced. Its based on a group of players vs whatever they are up against.
I honestly hate to 'butt in' here but I'll remind that a slot->enhancement system already resolves almost literally all of these 'problems' by making them moot. Even the main 'choices' of how to design (sets vs something else) disappears mostly.
That said, I don't like set bonuses either, if the game doesn't give me slot-enhancements.
There's a ton of stuff I put up with in MMOs where it feels like the Devs just didn't BOTHER making the (almost?) objectively better system (not talking about this one, lots of different stuff) and I end up wishing that they had to at least explain or justify 'why doesn't this method work to achieve the same thing or similar' instead of just going 'well we didn't feel like doing it that way'.
Because sometimes it reveals strong differences between the game they want to make and the game their players want to play, but more importantly, it lets other designers piggyback better. If you 'see that someone can make decision A but didn't', at the start of your own development, you can either 'assume that person found a problem with option A' or 'that person didn't desire the same outcome you do'. One of those will cost you lots of money.
I mention all this because IF we as a community can get to the point where we 'stop arguing about specific preferences and try to find whatever system achieves all preferences', then at least we know that if Intrepid 'picks a side' instead of using that, they either found a problem with it that we missed (which they could tell us), or they just didn't WANT the game to be that way (in which case we could choose our involvement level).
So do ME a huge favor and tell me why 'Tier of Gear changing the slots available' doesn't resolve all these problems. On the design side, gear is almost always just balanced by 'well how much is it allowed to have' anyway, right?
The simplest form would be a progression bar (not thinking linear) that would result in increased power output at certain thresholds. Leans into the argument - which I agree with - that time spent with a sword would make me much more effective at dealing damage with that sword.
Just a thought to find a blend between the camps here.
I believe I can briefly detail how even without boost drawbacks, it still works.
In Ashes any Class can wear any gear, so if they spend a ton of time on Gear Itemization (which stats go on which gear) I expect a meta would evolve too quickly within Gear. People would lose most of that freedom. If they didn't, it would still be more work than doing something more like this:
"Low level Green Robes have two slots for 'Magic' buffs and Two slots for Resistances."
"Low level Medium Armor has one slot for 'Any' buff, one for Resistances, two for 'Physical'."
:Low Level Plate Armor has one slot for 'Any', one for 'Defense' (like Physical but takes better/more specialized stuff), 2 Physical."
"High Level Epic Plate Armor has Two Any, 2 Defense, 3 Resistance, 2 Physical."
I'm explicitly leaving out a ton of other possible stats and slots. Imagine for UI convenience that these have shapes, you can tell at a glance. Circle, Hexagon, Diamond, Square, Triangle (I think this is the convention now).
Your 'tradeoff' is in the slots themselves. If your Epic Level 50 Plate Armor already comes with high defense, you don't need to slot anything into it's Defense or Resistance slot to beat 'Tier 1 Content'. You slot it accordingly for Tier 2 content when you get that stuff (from running the Tier 1 content, I'd assume').
I'll stop here, if the rest isn't obvious lmk. Tradeoffs that aren't just 'option number limits' are never 'real', they're just shackles on player choices once the spreadsheets get involved.
And then I would want to be able to add Runes for the specific stats/FX I want.
For me, gear sets with bonuses add to the RP.
It evokes some "legendary" hero or harkens to a specific boss.
And you said "you don't need" when talking about def slots on a high def gear piece. Do you mean just freedom of choice or is the "tradeoff" the fact that you have a limited amount of usable slots (less than the available ones)? Cause I feel like I'd still slot the def boosts even if I already have a high def gear piece, cause why da hell would I not if I can?
Overkill. Or maybe you're a Fighter who wears it because you need some survivability but want to use other stuff, mostly.
Whereas for EXAMPLE high level 'Leather' wouldn't give enough defense options'.
Well either way, my main point in this particular discussion is - have drawbacks to gear bonuses. Imo it adds some flavor and decision-making to the process of picking out gear and it's a great balancing and meta-preventing tool. Be it done through pre-designed sets of gear or slotted enhancements, or just raw pieces of gear that you can mismatch to your hearts desire - I don't really care, as long as it's not just a "ooh, this piece gives me these buffs so I'm gonna use it 4Head"
I hope you noticed that I spoke about gear and not combat. 😅
Drawbacks to gear are part of encounters, not gear.
I hope you understand balancing gear outside of the context of combat is just what they look like?
The intention would be that if the person takes their Epic Armor and specs it for Encounter A, but that Spec does not work for Encounter B, within any sort of slotted crafting system, they must now either reSpec at meaningful cost, or keep that Epic Armor for THAT ENCOUNTER and obtain a whole new Epic Armor with a different spec for another encounter.
Also, though, to answer the question, the meta build happens faster in the gear part because META is a function of human ability to process data, in any game with varied encounters. Gear is easier to process (or just absorb someone else's process) than slots and has less nuance, particularly when it has set bonuses.
Reference Points:
Onigiri (sorta), Monster Hunter (I hope I can use this since we're talking about Combat), Aion, Elite (Similar hope since we're talking about builds and META), WoW (at a particular time in its life, WoW players probably know what I mean but I don't think you are one).
I am sure that some people understands and I understand your pov as well. I have Albion Online background and therefore, something similar with your EvE experience.
We cant make a fact based assumption, but we can use basic logic.
If a game is designed around the idea that set gear is the optimal, that means when you find the best gear, you are tied to that 3, 5 or 7 item set. As soon as you realize that set is the best, you have locked in half of your gear.
If gear sets are marginal (or are slot based), then you need to consider each individual item. This leaves more room for variation, gives players more freedom to gear up to suit their specific conditions.
As an example, perhaps you are in a group with a class that buffs crit chance to the point where diminishing returns kick in - youwould be best to remove items that grant crit chance in favor of other things. Perhaps that player has to leave, and now you have someone that buffs max damage to a high degree and triggers diminishing returns there - suddenly you want to drop max damage gear and re-equip crit chance gear.
Maybe the group you are going up against a group with a bard that is buffing up spell reflect, you now need to either equip gear to reduce the chances ofnreflecr, or to buff yourself more against the damage type you are dealing.
Perhaps you are up against people from a node with a relic that reduces crit chance on them. All of a sudden, gear that increases the additional damage that a crit does is far less effective, and so may need to be swapped out for gear that increases crit chance - even if you were otherwise above the point of diminishing returns.
Perhaps you are coming up against a guild that has a passive that reduces chance to hit - either chance, max damage and crit damage all now take a back seat to increasing that chance to hit.
Perhaps you take on a guild with that passive that also happens to be from that node above, and has that Bard buffing them - you now have to work out what gear is best suited to taking them on, and perhaps also need to factor in gear that most benefits the relic buffs, guild passives and group buffs you happen to have.
The more complex a system, the less chance of there being any one right way to do it.
Set bonus gear is great for games where player choice is limited. When players have multieple avenues to get stats and effects, and when not everything is available to players at all times, giving players full choice in regards to gear is key.
And I've played L2 with multiple different gear pieces meant for different matchups. I had around 10 different pieces that I used for different enemies on the arena. And I personally disliked that I had to do that. And the pieces were even from the same set, just with different horizontal enchantments, so it's not like I had to mismatch my whole character gear, but I still saw it as just an unneeded hassle.
However, if we just outright ignore that fact, what you have so far neglected to show is why these setbacks you talk about need to be a part of gear sets, rather than just a part of gear.
And it also either requires devs to randomize those potential combos or design unique ones for each piece of gear. And then on top of that, you have the crafting dials that could boost said combos even higher.
Though again, I'm looking at it through the lens of "I would prefer gear to be more than just a flat boost to your stats". L2 had this in the form of base character stats (int, con, str, etc) that gear would give you, and in most, if not all, sets you'd have a positive and negative stat addition. One of the biggest examples of this was the Plated Leather set.
It was mostly used by rogues and archers. They were already kinda low on hp (especially elven races) so a yet another hit to it would bring them pretty low. But the str boost was big enough to outweigh that negative. And even though it's a t3 (out of 6) gear set, a lot of people used it all the way up till t5/6.
Now obviously the overall stats on L2 gear were very simplistic, because the system itself was pretty straightforward, but I personally like this seesaw mechanic of balancing your stats instead of just getting boost on your base stats. And the example you gave of "I either have +crit or +mag def" is exactly that to me. It's just a "I have my base stats and I can choose how to boost them". It's not a "pro and con" system it's just a choice of pros.
And Ashes will already have a system like that in the form of Tattoos (also taken from L2 btw), where you'll have to pick the most optimal choice of "pro and con" setup.