Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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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
There is no denying in my part, that some people will definitely quit because of getting rekt by RNG,
the important part for me is how many especifically because of RNG alone and not other insanely more impactful reason like Monetization models and Terrible company management.
As for the 3 "Sources" you provided sadly they seem barely relevant, A few Reddit threads with 23-31 comments and 31 to 45% upvotes just doesn't look very reliable....
I would like to invite you, @Leiloni and whomever would be interested in the death of those games that people claimed were "Killed by RNG as its main Assassin in general" to if possible. watch the decently in-depth videos made by nerdSlayer, which is well known for his fair and reasonable investigations reletated to the reasons that caused the death of many games(mainly MMORPGs).
Death of a Game: Tera
Death of a Game: Lineage 2
Death of a Game: Archeage
Death of a Game: Aion
Aren't we all sinners?
Other than item destruction, and speaking explicitly about items that are difficult to repair in some way, my concepts of 'harsh' are:
1. Durability losses, which, eventually, will increase the cost of the item. I would tie these to 'the act of unslotting an enhancement' personally. The player's choice of how to deal with this is entirely interesting to me, then. The outcome is that if I get the 'wrong' enchant', I can still use it until I want a new better enchant. Or, I could decide to ditch this and pass off the item to someone else, so while the item is not destroyed, it's still gone from ME.
2. I would prefer that individual enhancing items(or itemsets) are hard to obtain, and I don't mind as much if the RNG is in the obtaining (and the aforementioned possibility of getting the 'wrong' augment). So the harsh loss is actually 'attempting to use the item instead of just selling it to someone else', and then the augment being 'so far from your goals that you need to reroll it'.
With regards to the risk vs reward thing, the above is actually an example. If enhancing items are rare, and I am risk-averse, I will always sell them. Players like me may also just always sell them. If Intrepid factors for this, great. If they 'think that the system is interesting or that needing to be second in line' will cause my behaviour to change, they'd be incorrect, so if anything, my point is that unless they're assuming 'risk averse players aren't even our audience so it's fine', they need to factor for all the people in this thread who would behave this way. (EDIT: That wasn't a point 3! Autopilot lol)
I'll hope that they can come up with something that also accounts for risk-attuned players and rewards them exponentially. Being able to get exactly what you want instead of 'random enchant' through perseverance and luck will hopefully be a real boost to builds with specific goals.
I wanna see some 'Personal Legendaries' so bad.
Always good to broaden my horizon of possibilities by talking to well articulated and reasonable people like you @Azherae .
Aren't we all sinners?
I am sorry, I often forget that people need to have a perfect coursework put into their mouth to have an idea.
L2 was a loop of unforgiving problems.
Endless repetetive grind (was bareable because needed group) → you grind the same item over and over and over and over again (or as you say backups) → You essentially walk the same path forever → Then the RNG will decide if you can take a step further, back a bit or you go back to the beginning (succeed, drop a level, destruction). This was pretty much L2 in a roughened up picture, with some amazing ideas, systems on the side. I cannot imagine why and how would I have kept playing L2 if it was not for it is PvP aspects and how it was made.
The only reason why the whole system of L2 content was easy to deal with, was because of how the social aspect of the game was interconnected with it. I can guarantee you, Ashes will fail as an appeal to the mass if we get the loop of L2. Just think why WoW exploded and killed every MMO at its finest.
Now you can add your cashshop on top of this and it will deal the final bow. But cashshop is subjective, while game content is something you will face. At least I have not seen a player in my MMO experience who has not tried progressing their character. (seen a few actual crazy crafters, but even they progressed). Aion had basically no cash shop early on, yet it still started to decline quite rapidly at one point, because of it is unforgiving systems, it was basically a "been here, done that, I rather leave" situation. A good game that appeals to the mass will be played with or without cash shop, but a bad game will die out eventually regardless of cash shop.
As I have said before, we have an insane accumulated knowledge and experience of the past.
I have been out because exams, I'll not quote everything just add an accumulated answer.
To find a middle ground, as long as item destruction (as in complete removal from the game due to failed enhance) is not present at all other than you yourself dismantling it. I personally think RNG is fine, just like crafting has a proc rate to it. The main problem with destruction is that it is just devastating to many of the playerbase, and since we have experienced better this so called "many" would rather avoid it. Now obviously f*ck people who think they should be provided the same to their 2 hours of gameplay compared to someone who puts 8 hours a day at all times. But theoritically if there is an end, the 2 hours person should catch up at one point in time. When this so called "many" caught up, that is when expansion comes into the picture. But the point, what you mentioned also, that those that play 8 hours will always have the upper hand (should have at least...) because of their hours put in, so their expertise at the game is just much more refined. That is what will forever draw the line between casual and hardcore (though there are always exceptions... on both sides sadly)
I am not sure how Alpha1 crafting was related to L2 crafting, as to me honestly it did not seem like anything. It was just a basic placeholder. Apart from the caravan that basically is AA's tradepack system, which was I think still the BEST feature of any MMORPG. Or you maybe talk about Tier2 crafting needed Tier1 mats, then Tier3 crafting needing Tier2 mats (but I am sure this was not showcased in Alpha1?). That was a thing in ArcheAge as well.
OE sounds fine, if you add a pity system to it. I just cannot stress enough how devastating it is to be behind the curve because you are simply UNLUCKY (Yes I am pointing at my past gaming experience). I still remember in BDO this guy who was trying to get a certain enhance level of necklace, and he just could not. So he decided to farm the money for it (at this time game was out for year+ already). Then his friend who just joined the game one-clicked the enhancing all the way to this desired necklace, like tell me how is this "good game design". Also this guy who wanted the necklace just quit the game after, just to reinforce my people do quit over failing. Or there was this guild member of mine, who could not get a 35% success rate item in over 100+ tries, I repeat again do you think this is "good game design".
I again cannot stress enough how important is it to appeal to the mass. I have been to both sides, the one that wakes up, plays, goes to sleep then repeat, and the group with 2-3 hours a day gametime. When you are in the 2nd, you question if your time input is worth in the long run (also this is where cashshop comes into the picture, but we don't discuss that). That is why having a definite end is appealing, then you add all the horizontal, side content and it will result in a happy player.
What I personally hope for the game is the absolute complete freedom of choice feeling, like I had in AA 1.0. In that game I literally logged in with no necessary plan for the gametime and even with a goal set in mind I could do anything I wanted at moments time, it just did not matter. And on top everything somewhat had hardship to it until you work was paying off and it was becoming progressively easier (as it should be).
I know right? Its a sad reality that demonstrates the limits of one's comprehension potential...
"Endless repetetive grind"
Yep, definitely a term i would associate with not only Lineage 2 but probably the absolute majority of MMORPGs
"you grind the same item over and over and over and over again (or as you say backups)"
Only on the very very end game which very few people would reach considering how hard and how long leveling took and how scarce materials/gear were in lineage 2 old days, very few people would over enchant stuff and it became more of a thing in later versions of the game as the game became easier and easier and the cash shop became crazier and crazier as time went by.
"You essentially walk the same path forever"
Not really at all, Lack of people to farm a certain grind spot, the pvp aspect of the game would force different "paths" everytime, may it be competition for grindspots, a shift in priority or a shift in the value of items farmed there and many otehr things would change "your path".
You certainly wasn't joking when you said it was a "roughened up picture" of the game.
And i have to agree with you that Lineage 2's PvP was by far its greatest selling point nnot just for me and you but for the majority of players, as the PvE aspect of the game was pretty limited
If the L2 game loop "roughened up picture" you gave, truly was the way you tried to summarize, i have no doubt at all that Ashes would fail. If that was your experience with Lineage 2, i genuinely feel sorry for you.
Lineage 2 was far from being a perfect game, it had many flaws, but it's enchanting system certainly wasn't one of its dramatic downfall motives.
I would recommend you to watch both Death of a Game: Lineage 2 and Death of a Game: Aion videos i mentioned in the first post of this page 8 if you are still adamant in the idea that the enchanting system was the main factor that killed those games and not cash shop or even WAY bigger factors.
Aren't we all sinners?
If we're talking enchanting in Ashes, let's also talk about the power gained per enchant level and the total number of possible enchants because that's perhaps more important than the methods. I do not want more than a tiny single digit percentage difference in total between 0 enchants and max because then you start to have massive player power differences which exacerbates the already existing gear/skill imbalances in PvP between casual/hardcore.
Edit: Some references points:
You get +4 Min and Max damage per level of enchant, up to +15 (+10 being "safe" in the sense that failure doesn't decrease enchant levels, and +11-+15 a failure sends it back to +10).
So here's the level 40 and level 50 PvP weapon to see those min/max numbers.
So power increase totals come out to:
- 21% increase in power from +0 to +10 on a level 40 weapon and 18% on level 50
- 32% in total to go to +15 on a 40 weapon vs 27% for level 50 weapon
- 13.5% extra power for a +10 level 50 vs a +10 level 40 weapon. That's 31 extra power which is the equivalent of 8 extra enchant levels. However some of these players got their weapons higher than that.
Due to the insane amount of effort required either in grind time or gold spent to get a level 50 weapon, only the most hardcore had that while the level cap was 50, so many average players only had a level 40 weapon until the expansion came out. This was also heavily based on your faction's ability to win forts on your server. So many players were running around with a 13.5% or more (if their weapon was +15) power advantage over their fellow players.
These numbers are absolutely unacceptable and I do not want to see them in Ashes.
While I understand that this is very subjective, I have 'run your numbers' against multiple PvE and PvP scenarios (basically all the ones from the combat systems I can extrapolate from the design goals discussed and shown in Alpha-1 and on forums).
I can't see exactly why this is a concern relative to enchanting. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm actually asking for the preconditions, because it doesn't look like the problem is with the numbers on the gear enchant, it looks like the problems with these numbers are in a different part of the design. Now, those design parts are common, but they're not required.
So please elaborate for me what your concern is, you were talking about wanting small differences in the enchant power, but the data you gave indicates that the problem was entirely with the leveling curve and the power gap between top level gear. Enchanting/enhancing didn't seem to be the problem at all?
So I'm just checking if you're still talking about problems that enhancing causes, or giving general feedback on the power gaps and power scaling between levels.
1. No fun gear chase of finding new weapons and gear as drops. You lose the excitement of a cool legendary sword and its replaced with a gambling system.
2. Constant gambling every day trying to scavenge whatever resources you can to keep gambling over and over.
3. One of the reasons why a lot of people and casual (Casual people that play consistently just not hardcore hours) end up quitting and have no reason to come back.
4. When your gear progression becomes mostly gambling every day you lose that mmorpg feeling.
*** Not saying enchancing shouldn't be there in some form, maybe its a very rare material you get and had a 5-40% chance to succeed. Its not something you do every day it is a once in awhile thing as a rare drop. With a gear increase of 5-25%.
*** Please no weapon blowing up, if you really want to make theg ear chase longer just set it so you only have a set amount of chances to enchance on a piece of gear. aka you get 3 attempts then you have to find or create another piece of gear to try again.
Elyon your gear blows up and goes bye bye. ELYON IS A DEAD MMORPG.
Lost ark your gear doesn't blow up it has rng and eventually succeeds 100%. People disliked the rng and the bad points, if gear blew up in that game it be a dead game. Another bad point is the staggered enhancing and how they do gameplay makes it hard to play with your friends like you actually can't sometimes. Feels like im playing single player half the time without anything to do after doing the weekly content.
Maybe you missed this part. Including the weapons is important because it gives context to exactly how much +4 power per enchant level really is in that game. It's the overall percentage increases that people look for. So here -
- 21% increase in power from +0 to +10 on a level 40 weapon and 18% on level 50
- 32% in total to go to +15 on a 40 weapon vs 27% for level 50 weapon
Your best case scenario as a casual player with exactly the same gear and a +10 enchant vs a hardcore with the +15 is you're still about 10% less powerful than them. A +0 weapon vs a +15 fully enchanted weapon is a 30% increase. If those numbers don't make your blood boil, then no argument is going to get through to you. This is the sort of enchant system balance that I do not want in Ashes. Enchanting to safe shouldn't give you more than 5% total increase with Overenchanting giving maybe another 1-2%.
Second, instead of having a system where an enchantment costs almost nothing, but the success chance is very low I think it would be much more enjoyable and less likely to cause burn out to have a system where the success chance is high, but the materials are rare or hard to produce. The higher the enchanting level the rarer /harder to make the materials should be.
For example, for the highest levels of enchanting the materials should be obtained in highest difficulty raids and/or life skills with very high mastery.
The enchanting materials should be tradeable to encourage player interraction and give players who don't want to/can't do the content a chance of obtaining those items for a high monetary cost.
I think I might have come off too accusatory somehow?
I don't disagree with any of your numbers. But your numbers seem to be saying 'enhancing is more effective on Level 40 weapons than on level 50 weapons. That's moreso a catch-up help, to me?
The casual player isn't in trouble because their level 40 weapon 'isn't pulling its weight' for a level 40 weapon. It actually gets more out of enchanting than the level 50. The 'problem' is that level 50 weapons just outclass them, which is a question of 'should you get big rewards for leveling'.
If you prefer, we can ignore all that part and address only this part:
Your best case scenario as a casual player with exactly the same gear and a +10 enchant vs a hardcore with the +15 is you're still about 10% less powerful than them. A +0 weapon vs a +15 fully enchanted weapon is a 30% increase.
Now it's a question of how hard enhancing is, but if 1-10 is easy and 10-15 is hard, and the increase is 'only' 10% difference, I personally don't have a problem with it, in games with high TTK and forced error options. The same thing would happen, for example, if both players had the exact same gear but one player had 10% more HP than the other (through any source) assuming the game doesn't contain a LOT of healing items on really short cooldowns, or something.
I'm trying to say that the problems don't exist in the weapon strength gap, but in the combat and item design outside of that, so trying to fix it by limiting the power gap on enchants won't actually fix it, people will find some other way of 'abusing' the same flaws in combat and item design.
Whereas in an MMO, gear power gaps are part of the play situation, because people like progression, and afaik, many people actually RESPECT progression too, though obviously less so when the player is stabbing you in the face and you have no chance of winning.
So to 'reflect' a bit... it's bad combat systems that make my blood boil, not 10% power gaps, because 10% power gaps don't mean anything on their own, they're very close to both 'standard' and 'basically required' for most better combat (in an MMO where gear is supposed to determine success to some extent).
Hope that clarifies, if not, and this post also comes off to you to be the same as the last one, I'll just disengage.
Where's the risk vs reward element, then?
I wouldn't quit because something down-graded when when taking a chance on getting it up-graded. It might steam me for a couple of days, but I knew the risk, going in. Gearing is fun and all - but it shouldn't be the only reason to play a game.
Some folks just want 1+1=2 - but players like yours truly have always found it more fun if there's an element of chance or risk.
In games where the enchanting material is hard to get, the risk is 'losing the materials instead of selling them for guaranteed profit to someone else who will most likely just lose them'.
This is an effective form of economic PvP as well. If I know someone is the type to try to 'keep going on their Enchant until they get it', but they have low capacity for success, I'll hoard the materials, and sell them to that person when they're in the middle of a fail-flow and will pay me more just to 'try to get that hit'.
In games where the enchanting material drops randomly from every mob in the game like some sort of shiny candy token, it is completely valid to say that there's no real risk.
Can you really call something a risk if you don't have a choice not to do it? Enchanting isn't going to be something anyone can avoid doing simply because they might risk losing an enchant level for failing. Sure doing the Overenchant which risks gear breaking is avoidable, but nothing up until that point. So I'm not sure the risk vs reward design element really has a huge place in a system with no choice. Risk vs reward is only a good design when the player has a true choice to avoid the risk.
Wouldn't you consider saving/selling resources that could be used to over-enchant, to buy an already over enchanted item a choice?
Aren't we all sinners?
If the "over enchanting" route is taken there is usually a risk of destruction or degradation involved. This can be frustrating when applying to legendary or unique artifact gear.
One system I have always thought would be cool is a slider based system. This wouldn't matter too much at lower levels, but around like +6, it could start using a slider bar. If you move the bar down, it uses less materials, has a higher chance of success, but also the enchant isn't as good. If you slide the bar up, it uses more materials, has a lower chance of success and the enchant becomes better, perhaps with some powerful bonuses at higher levels, things like (On use mechanics, Bound to Character and can't be looted by other players (except at higher levels of corruption), chances for extra attacks, chance of resurrection on death) powerful but rare enchantment bonuses. This would keep players enchanting to try and get better bonuses on gear. There could also be critical failures that could make the weapon unusable/can't be enchanted/applies a debuff when used, for a period of time.
As far as failure goes, I think losing the materials is enough, especially if the material cost scales with the attempt. Weapon destruction, or degradation is unnecessary, as players will probably just sell the items that don't end up with the enchants they want. Being able to use rare items or items that are crafted by other professions (based on the type of item being enchanted) could reduce the chance for critical failure, but no item should exist for critical success or bonus enchants, as those should be a complete surprise and feel like a gift from the gods.
Niküa are most likely going to have ship building buffs from the lore and style that we have from them now. However the Empyrean Elves, we are more likely to have enchanting bonuses. We are the more magically inclined race after all.
I totally agree with this 100%. When enchanting, even with over enchanting the items should never break. The materials can be lost and the item on cool down to try again but breaking is way too much. You will make a system that only the richest players will take the risk, making it not worth working toward. A mini game where player skill is needed would be preferable to any rng mechanic.
A good way to make the tiers of crafting meaningful is to have a quest line for each tier to make the accomplishment that much more meaningful. I do not agree with giving everyone access to enchanting alters or you remove the need for the artisan skill. I also don't see someone giving you their item for a week or two while you complete this quest to enchant the item, this would cause countless issues.
The sentiments here I fully agree with 100%. I can also understand to a point how it might be important to make a system where there are truly unique opportunities to show ones prowess in their chosen artisan skill. Making the system with risk that is meaningful, I suppose a system that makes it that anyone with enough time can achieve the best might not have the impact. It's a hard dilemma to overcome for sure, either way there will be a group unhappy.
These are both interesting ideas as long as they don't overshadow the artisan system.
-Horizontal improvements would likely be better as temporary enchants with lower tier material requirements, allowing for a material sink and constant service to be provided. These would be less costly and little to no risk. As far as times for duration, maybe it could depend on the enchantment level, the amount of materials, or just be flat rates ranging from 1 hour to 24 hours. This would also make sense since these would likely be applied for specific raids or events to gain an advantage against specific mobs.
-Appearances customization would be a plus in 1 major regard. Allows the color to be changed for each enchantments effect while make the effect itself unique to each enchantment. Only say this so people can match their enchants color to whatever look they are going for. To make it more interesting the colors can be made to be learned or found as recipes.
-Perhaps have class specific enchants? Not only are they limited for use by a specific class but they need to be made by that specific class as well? Just a thought as far as increasing the demand for different enchanters and not having everyone just go to that one guy all of the time.
I wrote a list of ten or so random risks earlier in the thread. Loss of mats is one. Others include death, item durability loss, getting cursed, spawning a demon, changing the visual of the item, getting a different enchant, and I think I’d add being turned into a sheep for 3 min.
I was always a fan of the Deck of Many Things.
Ships were more of a stretch goal, so I think ship-building won't be a Niküa Artisan Profession.
I would think that Empyrean might be more likely to focus on Enscription for Enchanting, rather than Runesmithing.
But, we shall see.
Have safe enchant to one point, then you have RNG , BUT you can farm different scrolls like in Lineage 2 (blessed enchant scroll) which doesn't break your weapon but returns you to 0, also they can add some very difficult to craft scrolls which if fails doesn't lower your enchantment or decrease your enchant by 1 but increases your chances of success with X amount. I would be nice enchanting system if they have RNG but also a way to some rare materials which allows you to craft safe scrolls of some kind, tbf lineage 2 enchanting system has some great potential. One thing for over enchanting is if we can use these hardly craftable (or drop from boss) scrolls is to not increase chance of success and reduce enchant of item by 3 instead of going to 0. But yeah I dont know anything about their enchant system so i guess thats just a suggestion...
Well, the thing about enchanting is that it is integral to a high fantasy world. Everything about it is important from; magical weaponry, to magical furniture, magical armor, magical accessories, and so on. It gives thing that are mundane something to make them unique.
From a narrative perspective and a roleplay perspective, oddly enough Runescape and Warhammer have the best enchanting systems in my opinions. Enchantments run amuck and make everything in these games fantastical.
I'd be concerned if the enchanting system in this game is lackluster, because there's so many things you can do with enchanting.
Cool glowy effects or fantasy words swirling around a blade or glowing runes added to armor. Give us some flavor and fun cosmetics to work twards. I feel challanging and rewarding a better insentive then tedious and repetative and punishing. If the enchants are mostly cosmetic it gives us reason to re-enchant things if we want to change our looks or see something else that's cool to wear.
And if its environmental and can be done on the fly then an enchanter in a party could be very helpful not just for raids but in the world traversal. They shouldnt be able to 100% solve a hazard but they can lesson the impact. Proffesions should be fun and feel like they matter otherwise why should they be included? They need to fill a niche and feed off of each other.
If an enchanter needs a wand to enchant or alter for more powerful enchants they can talk to a logger for wood and a miner for stone. Put uses on the Alter so the tool breaks down after too many uses. The processors can shape the object and Enchanter can enchant the object to the finished piece. Fishing pole only catching trash and low rarity fish? Enchant the pole for better fishing. Did a player upset you? Slip a cursed ring into their pocket. Not all enchants have to be positive. They can be cursed.
Are you in a diffrent religion then another fellow enchanter? Make the enchants specialized to that religions "ethics".
It's a bunch of ideas thrown at the wall maybe others can add to it?
Weirdly enough the closest I’ve come to a truely complex and complete enchanting system is in the mod for Minecraft call thuamcraft. It basically breaks enchanting into a series of work steps, gathering the knowledge to make enchantments, gathering the components to make the enchantments, setting up the infrastructure to process the materials and support the enchanting, then finally the enchanting itself that is an active process that takes around 30 seconds, but can go horribly wrong if done incorrectly. Of course this is a game mod, that is basically enchanting the game, so it probably more complex than need for ashes, but I think it’s the best model out there for crafting.