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
Therefore, your concepts could be included but not necessarily classified under a pvp or pve tag.
Successful completion of each stage will grant max power. Effects and construction parameters will come from augments and the crafters input.
Items can decay and be destroyed through death etc rather than overenchant. Repairs can be eternal but supplies might not be.
I've tried to create risk/reward, personal choice and skilled gameplay.
Much love,
Neurath.
Why?
- Due to the breaking/demoting of weapons and gambling feel (Addicting)
- Risk if it breaks just makes me annoyed and not want to play ( Rage inducing)
- More of a hassle (Additional work)
What I rather have: for enchanting is adding Gems/Rune Stones that add things like CC chance, damage modification, dots, etc.
Example:
- Ice gem: Makes your weapon have a 10% slow and ice surrounding your weapon/attacks effect
- fire gem: burn dot and fire effect to your weapon/attacks
- Lighting gem: +5% damage and lighting effect to weapon/attacks
Why I like this more:
- Adds customization to your gear look(variety in look)
- Adds combat customization (variety in pvx builds)
- No risk and no rage-inducing ( Equality and no risk of failure)
I prefer a system where you put more effort and you get rewarded more. Work hard and play hard. Not a system where you work hard but have a chance of getting rewarded or failing miserably.
Not at all. I played both Aion and TERA when they were P2P sub based MMO's and their enchanting systems sucked just as much during their sub days as when they went F2P. The only change is that you could pay your way past some of the RNG when they went F2P, but the enchanting system sucked from day 1.
It's partially the opposite, from the designer perspective.
There are four metrics designers are 'supposed' to use when making these systems, and player retention is the WEAKEST of them, so 'people leaving' is not the thing you focus on. The fourth does not apply to Ashes, we'll ignore it.
Attracting new players is the first, and it's tied directly into the second, maintenance of power gaps. The third is player behavioural type in game.
A game with BDO's system attracts new players by offering catchup mechanics, and the P2W is part of that. Players can make an initial investment as 'part of their game purchase' and count on all the ingame catchup mechanics to get them to a mid-level. I don't spend money on BDO, for example, I just leverage all their 'daily logins' and 'free stuff' to power up. The important part is that if they did not offer those things, I would not PLAY.
Maintenance of power gaps is the second issue but it's the PvE power gaps. You must retain the gap between a player at X level/skill and the mobs, or everything becomes easy. While item destruction prevents market saturation and seems to cause this, it also causes something else, because of the third thing.
Player behaviour type is what destroys games like BDO and ArcheAge. The player feels that 'not having X tier of gear implies that they are wasting their time'. This leads to doubly avoidant behaviour, where players who don't have the time or wish to achieve that tier at the moment, don't want to join growth-based guilds or groups because they don't want to feel like they are holding the group back, and those groups start to be taken advantage of by players who DO leech off them.
Players quitting isn't the problem that is actually created. Its entirely possible that more players play the game, but what 'the game' is, changes, usually for the worse, in this design, by creating a real incentive for players to be risk-avoidant.
"Why even buy blue gear and enchant it? Just grind with the bare minimum until you can afford better/low meta gear?" - This sort of thing resonates with a lot of people.
A lot of BDO's 'history' also is hard to find because the game has transformed so much almost entirely due to the enhancing system, yet there are many players out there like myself who never spend any money, and can't even 'complain' that others spending money matters, because the catch-up is so strong. The RNG though, is just 'a hurdle that some people push through or get RNG-carried through' and for everyone else it might as well be randomly swimming in shark water. Sure, USUALLY you won't get bitten, but when you do...
Some people just don't enjoy gambling enough to play these systems the way they are 'meant to be played', and this skews the outcome of the system. If the target audience was more predisposed to gambling like yourself, it would work better and be a flatly positive addition to the game even though this design style is unnecessary.
As it is, Intrepid will need to consider the fact that they may be enforcing a risk-avoidant mechanic in a game that is supposed to encourage it.
Horizontal Progression
While not strictly horizontal – I quite enjoyed the gear improvement system in Monster Hunter: World.
To elaborate:
I think that a similar tree-based approach can make for a very interesting system in Ashes, where certain materials availability (especially high end) depend on the state of the world, with world bosses blinking in and out of existence, and even seasonal changes affecting what you can and cannot get.
Perhaps, one specific branch will eventually lead you to the shiniest, most spiky sword with highest bonus damage against humanoids for ye PvP enthusiasts – but its last steps are also the ones that require all 4 Great Dragon Gems, and Great Dragons only appear when there's a Metropolis of a relevant type available in the world, and who knows if this is ever going to happen in your lifetime, and until that point your sword will remain a rather average stabber – while still requiring a lot of work to make.
Meanwhile, this other option on a completely different branch requires materials that are going to be routinely available, if hard to obtain, and results in a pretty damn great (but not as awesome as that other one) Fire-Infused Sword with 20% immolation chance on hit, so perhaps all your efforts should go in there instead.
Such progression can be made as much or as little vertically-aligned as needed:
For pure horisontal style, it can have, say, an elemental branch, starting off with more popular elements, going to the more specialty ones, and culminating in two or three possible endings of rarest types, such as Shadow, Holy and Astral, with perhaps Bosses being more commonly vulnerable to such elements.
It could have a branch based on status effects, lifesteal, spell auto-cast and what have you. Possibilities are endless, and none need to involve additional pure damage dealt.
Each such improvement could of course be eclipsed by a specialised weapon: the genuine original Fire Sword will always do better as a Fire weapon than a Fire-Infused Normal Sword; But then, imagine the Fire-Infused Fire Sword!
Vertical Progression
The dreaded RNG-based +Number label.
I played it, I lived it, and I have a few thoughts on it.
On "Safe Level":
In my opinion, it devalues the over-enhanced gear, and mixes two unrelated mechanics.
Devaluing of over-enhanced gear:
If everyone is running around in +10 hats – my +13 hat might look impressive, but essentially gets somewhat lost in the crowd.
But if the general population level of improvement is "None" - then my +3 hat looks very special, as it well should.
Mixing unrelated mechanics:
My understanding is that the main goal of "Safe Level" is to assign a "level of commitment" to a specific item. For example, sharpening stones are very rare, so you need to pick your favourite sword to commit to, and not upgrade literally everything you own. This mechanics then gets mixed with the RNG of over-enhancing.
To separate them, the "commitment upgrade" could be an entirely separate type of gear improvement: "Safe Vertical Progression" vs "RNG Vertical Progression". You could call it Sharpness and Gambler's Bonus respectively.
Alternatively, if a system similar to MH is implemented for Horizontal Progression – then some of the Safe Vertical Progression can be mixed in there as well, just like MH does.
Essentially, "Make +1 Great Again".
On benefits of Over-Enhancing:
In fact, I would much rather the benefit decreased with further over-enhancement, and overall be barely noticeable, to dissuade the gambling approach.
Over-Enhancing shouldn't be mandatory to be relevant, it shouldn't separate the Gods from the Plebs.
It is a Gambling Mechanics, and as such has to be tamed down to not exploit and destroy fragile psyches of us gamers. We already have a plethora of Eastern MMOs to do just that.
Who here has a friend who decided to "go YOLO" and attempted an RNG upgrade on their main equipment set, just to break it all, fall into depression, and quit the game "forever" (that is, for 2 months)?
What motivated them to do that?
Perhaps, it was the classic Gambler's idea that success will gain them immeasurable wealth or power.
Perhaps, if the Gambler's Bonus is just a few style points of damage / defence – then people will chill out a tad, and treat this mechanics as a little fun when you really have too much ingame coin on your hands, not a "Get Rich Fast" scheme with predictably catastrophic results.
Relevant comments in this thread:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/338683#Comment_338683
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/338696/#Comment_338696
Terminology: Enchantment vs Enhancement
Enchantment – applying magic (not necessarily improving – e.g. changing property from Water to Fire, or even applying a Curse)
Enhancement – betterment (not necessarily magical – e.g. blade sharpening or plate reinforcement)
Currently there are two articles on the wiki:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Gear_enhancements and https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Enchanting
Both use the two words near-interchangibly, and talk about the same set of game mechanics.
Perhaps, the horizontal part of the gear progression could be solely called "Enchantments", and vertical - "Enhancements"?
Perhaps, one of the terms could be eliminated entirely to avoid any confusion?
Mechanics of Enhancement
Some could be material-based: Dragon Scales go on top of your armour, making it stronger
Some could be quest-based: your Scholarly pursuits resulted in a new chapter for your Spell Book of Doom, increasing its associated magic damage
Some could be done by you, and some could require a party, or a specific class, to help you: Only in tandem with another Priest can you decipher the holy runes embedded into your staff, and unlock its hidden healing powers (the magnifying glass crafted from Red Desert Sands is consumed in the process)
Well, this is getting to be more and more of a wishful fantasy, so I better stop here.
Obligatory Ragnarok Online shill
It acted as a part of the desired "gear sink", not based on gear destruction: Once a Card is put into a piece of gear - you can't take it out, and effectively can't keep upgrading that piece of gear using other systems.
It introduced an exciting RNG mechanics, also not based on gear destruction: Monster Cards were an extremely rare item drops, obtained more often by accident than on purpose, and even the smallest of Monsters could have a Card useful even at the highest levels - making it an exciting drop at any level, at any location.
And more...
Now obviously not everyone would have the ability to OE their low tier gear while leveling, but that's where a guild would come in and help promising players to be on par with people in better gear. I've done so multiple times in L2. And again, if the OE methods are expensive and rare, you'd still have most people running in base armor, while only a chosen few would be above them in power at the same lvl. And I've played old versions of L2 for 12 years and I don't remember a single person leaving just because of it. Most people either overprepared for the OE with backup gear or would be ready to lose their gear just because they were that kind of person. And L2's OE is way more overabundant than what I'm suggesting for Ashes. And Ashes already has that kind of system. But how I see it panning out is people who have that kind of gear would not use it until they had the resources to repair it. Instead they'd be using pre-top gear that's way easier to upkeep. Same situation played out on L2 server releases where people wouldn't have soulshots for their new tier of weapons, so they'd just keep using the old one. But because of that, they couldn't just go clear new content that was lvl-appropriate. And OEing their older gear allowed them to do just that. And once they had enough resources to upkeep the usage of the higher tier - they'd either sell their old OE item or pass it down or lend to a guildmate, which would increase overall guild power lvl.
You suggest having some safe vertical enchantment system, but if we do, then all the base gear at pretty much all tiers would become useless (well outside of deconstruction for repairs). The cost of that base gear would be on the floor, while any higher enchanted gear would cost quite a lot (exactly because it'd let you farm harder content while having low upkeep). And now any new player who comes to the server will see that they can easily buy some shitty gear while everyone runs around with OEd uberguns that cost as much as a new car.
Having a super exclusive OEing system that also has a chance to remove that powerful weapon from the game is a nice power balancing tool. The base power lvl of most people at any given lvl of progress would be pretty much the same, while those who can afford to try and OE their stuff could be just a bit stronger (because I support OEing giving only 1-3% of power boost). Which is why I want to prevent those gambling addicts from having the opportunity to throw it all away as much as possible. But I want to do that w/o overboosting the whole server in the process. And potential removal of super strong gear sounds like just the perfect thing. It's not that I live in the past, it's that I prefer this particular system over anything that I've seen suggested so far or any other OE system that I've seen in other games.
Also, as I've said in a later comment, if repairing an item after a failed OE costs exactly as much as crafting and OEing the same item again - I'd be completely fine with not destroying said item (in the context of you losing all OE lvls and the broken item being unusable until you fix it).
And then 'the amount of effort to reach the end of the path' is vastly different between players. I'm not clear on what prevents this?
Even if it is a massive effort to OE to max, the first person to get 'RNG-carried' there is strong, that's fine, people are meant to be strong, but what of all those who end up 'RNG-kicked'?
When one person invests 2 hours and gets something and another invests 200 hours into the same activity and still doesn't have it (this is straight from the standard bell curves of these games in general), it's that more and more people become risk avoidant, and worse, build up negativity towards the successful.
There's also POSSIBLY some confirmation bias, in that people who don't like these systems quit quite early, or quit trying and the game changes.
So for my education... what does L2 do to stop this aspect, JUST the 'I can spend 2 h and you can spend 200 and I get the thing and you don't'. Not talking about 'server gear sinks' anymore, just... does it even bother to address this other than to tell the player 'well you took the risk that it would take 200h so that was your choice'.
The main thing that can prevent that disparity from happening is the amount of attempts someone can make to get an insanely OP item. If the availability of required resources is low and the chance to get super high in OE is low, then statistically it's more likely that anyone who tries to get that high would just fail. And only after years of attempts made by everyone on the server would there be a person who has some ultimate super OEd weapon that has maybe 5% more power than its base version. And at that point, would anyone even care about that kind of difference (well outside of said person, who can now win potential 55% of pvp instead of 50%, when fighting an equally skilled player)?
The only times I ever saw +10++ weapons in L2 (with +3 being the safe limit) was on servers that let you OE your stuff hundreds upon hundreds of times. People would just be sitting in town OEing their gear over and over and over again for hours until they'd get to a super high stage. And from what I understand of BDO/LA/AA systems, that's roughly the same issue they had. A lot of people had a lot of access to a lot of OE resources, so statistically there'd be quite a few people who got so damn high that they could beat anyone w/o a problem. I might be wrong in that assumption though.
But if the availability is super rare to begin with, the chances of someone getting super strong are abysmally low. And it'd take a ton of time for a few people to get to some low OE stages, at which point you'd get someone them wanting to go even further, and they'd fail and go down in power. Alternatively they might succeed which would push others to try and catch up to them which would increase chances of powerful weapons leaving the game (or getting broken and "recrafted" and re-OEd).
Also, this was in the context of boosting top lvl gear. If we look at lower tiers, just as I previously said, there'd be a few more OEd weapons there just because resource availability would be higher, so there'd be more chances to succeed. It was still in the hands of maybe a dozen or a few of people out of thousands on the server, so the overall influence wouldn't be that high, but it also allowed those people to compete with higher tiered enemies or harder content. Quite often those weapons would be used to fast level some alts within a guild, but that's a separate discussion of movement of power among people/characters.
Thanks for clearing it up, sounds like my general approach will work well, if the system is kept as is, so at least from the 'me gaining power' side, I don't think I have much to worry about.
For reference for others, to the 'market controlling magnate that manipulates the psychology of other players for her own benefit', this system sounds great. Deflate the economy by funneling liquidity to myself or my guild, gain surreptitious control of two things, pressure the players with specific psychological triggers into going broke doing this, in chat, and then swoop in.
If this sounds like something you WANT me to do (or want to join me doing, guild is open) then let's rock.
I might be? If you're talking to me, that is. Which part?
Oh, yeah, then by that metric I'm definitely nuts. I want ALL of the money. Control of entire economies. Psychopathic enough to take control of it by manipulating other people to make them hand over their real-value items to me, the whole bit.
"Economic PvP" is the name of the game.
I could be 'nicer' about it, but then I'd lose to all the people like me who aren't. And there's no way I'm losing to them, they're mean and will make my people suffer (yes, I claim the people too).
I guess based on your response that you're not joining my Merchant Guild?
Have you ever watched a high level economics focused player explain their stuff in BDO? I think it's fair to say that's an accurate description lol.
Yeah, just think like that. My 'competition' in 'the part of the game I'm playing' are the sort of people who will scheme an idea so close to broken that they have to LITERALLY e-mail support in advance to verify that what they are about to do is not against the ToS and will get them banned'.
Then using this method and a ton of spreadsheets, buy half a server for their guild. Bonus points if they have a stream and can use it to manipulate the market more.
The times, they are a-changin'. Back in MY day you had to track FIFTEEN economic flows, BY HAND, in Excel, with NO developer-provided Marketplace APIs!
Edited posts do cause the appearance of babble with the previous response.
Anyway,
Yeah I used to watch a lot of economics videos. However, much of economics is exploiting downturns, upturns, returns and resales. The rest is quite superficial.
Nah, nah, I mean like:
(indepth explanation version)
(shorter meme version)
The wagon trick required 3 things: space loophole, millionaire investor to start and devs never changing the economic patterns of seasonal events.
I don't want to tread on our economic devs though. I also don't want to name and shame 'mmo celebrities'. Better to be a meme than a moment.
L2 went into decline when games with more forgiving systems were introduced. You can give me no argument that L2 was not the game of nolifers, which was fine at its time.
Aion was one of my first MMOs, played when it released and before it even, and it was full of people saying how easier it is to play Aion than L2, and they were happy about its much more forgiving enhancing, though it was garbage also. Obviously people will stick to L2, and WoW and Aion and what not if they are emotionally attached enough, or rather desperate.
You could say I am biased, as this is not even my opinion. It is just hundreds, if not thousands of people were telling me the same reason why they left L2. They all loved the game for similar reasons, and quit it for similar reasons. I even went and tried it L2 myself, and I could see very fast why Steven is inspired by its systems.
Back in the days we were all kids, or at least the majority of us had plenty of time at our-hand. The MMORPG community has aged, no average adult wants to be slapped by the RNG-gate.
So yea, take what was good in L2. It is factionless feeling, it is group composition system, the needed of different classes in groups and what not, I have not played enough to have it burnt into my memory.
If Narc was here he would say "You are high on copium if you think L2 did not decline because it is unforgiving systems".
Oh, since you were talking to my 'economics dev', I figured I'd draw the parallel. But as for the topic, you (Neurath) don't really want power increasing enchants anyway right? Is that why mentioned 'shame'? (I wouldn't thought of it as shaming since I think BladeBoques is awesome and a content creator I respect quite a bit. That was one of my favorite vids by him.)
And when multiple gamer generations have grown up on such ease of play, you'll be very hard-pressed to even try making a game that's more difficult and hard on the player. And that's one of the main reasons why I'm afraid Intrepid will have to change their core designs or just fail due to its hardcore features. I hope I'm wrong though.
Now, we have hardcore to denote level of challenge.
It is more important to build a good game to cover a range of challenges.
I've always been an advocate of old school. Let the player earn the titles, don't give the player labels.
I am not sure how PK and corruption system came into this topic. So I skip this.
This hardcore players you seem to mention, is a group I am part of.
I feel like there is no real reason for me to answer this one either, as I mentioned I have only read through the first page when I quoted you. My 2nd post I go into better explanation.
I only have a vague idea about this gear grade system you are talking about, as I have played L2 only for a few weeks with my friend.
Sure you have not.
Not going into details again, as I have explained better in my 2nd post regarding vertical progression.
You could just add item dismantle that adds to the crafting scene, so that partially fixes the issue you are refering, like how AA did.
You are trying to make me believe with item destruction there would be no item saturation, which is quite the assumption as we do not clearly know how it will work. Only thing we know that Steven was inspired by AA's crafting system. Which I can understand as up until today, I think there was no MMORPG with as big of a potential as ArcheAge 1.0 was.
If Steven takes the crafting system from AA and puts extra layer on it then there will be so much diversity that my head hurts just thinking about it. If you have never played AA, if you wanted to get the best gear, you always had to start from the lowest tier of gear and craft it up. then around mid-level the RNG started kicking in. That system alone already solves your "low tier gear" becoming irrelevant. Any new player that came to AA could contribute to the economy in a worthwhile way.
Still a big fat no from me, I rather have a very diverse horizontal progression that adds a good extra layer of rock-paper-scissor into the system. If you rather take your OE system than a diverse system that recommends creativity and adaptation to situations, then there is this entertainment building called Casino, just make sure you have enough save up before you OE.
As I said in my 2nd post, as long as meta does not take over horizontal progression, all will be fine.
Well in one post you say you have never had anyone leave L2 because of its enhancing. Now people leave just to join the easier route. I guess thanks for agreeing with me at the end.
Though games without any hardship can be really successful, it is all about the systems and its content. cough... Final Fantasy XIV.
I do long myself for a challenging MMORPG that is modern and the best of all the past 20 years is within it. As long as AoC gains its identity, all should be fine. I can only hope the man sees his vision come true.