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A suggestion for crafting/decay/enchanting system
NiKr
Member
I had a post in the Enchanting thread that I'd like to get more reactions/critique to. This suggestion would have the scaling upkeep, would have a good gold sink, mats sink and a potential gear think in it w/o rng in the OE (overenchanting). Hear me out.
Let's say that each piece of gear consists of 4 part during a craft. Those parts have their own multiple parts too, but when you're about to press the button to "craft the Sword of Awesome" you need to have 4 particular items in your inventory that represent 4 parts of said gear.
Those parts would be linked to the crafting dials and would represent some stats of the full gear, which the dials would then control. Horizontal enchantment would add more effects on these parts. So let's assume we'll be able to horizontally enchant each piece of gear 4 times (once for each part).
Now let's assume that gear decay is not dmg-based, but instead time-based. The decay timer would tick only when you're wearing the gear. Intrepid would decide how long that timer is based on their own calculations of potential time-to-farm-for-repairs. And we could even prolong that timer by using high quality mats and services of a top tier crafter, so each part of the piece of gear could add some amount of time to the decay timer.
Let's say we only need mats for repairs when the timer runs out. But if you have just the base version of said gear, at the end of the timer only one part of that piece will break (at random). So to bring back the timer to full you'd just need to use the material that is used to craft that part of the gear. This would be our main mats sink.
Horizontal enchantment would remove some amount of that timer (the amount would probably depend on the power of the enchantment), because it's putting some burden on said part.
To represent ware and dmg to the gear we'd have some decrease in its power at certain intervals of the timer. And to bring the power back we'd buy "honing stones" (or whatever alternative for different pieces of gear) at the node stores (with tiers of those nodes relating to the lvl of the node). This would be our gold sink.
Now we come to vertical enchantment. I suggest having +8 as the max vertical enchant level. Here's why. When you vertically enchant a piece of gear for "+1", you pick a part of said piece and increase the stats that this part provides (enchantment included). By doing so you double the amount that horizontal enchantment removed from the timer (or if there was no HE, you just remove some fairly big amount). And on top of that you make this part always break at the end of the decay timer. So now you'll have 2 parts break and will have to use more mats to repair the gear.
Once you repeat this +1 on all parts, you'll have a way shorter decay timer and you'll have to pretty much recraft the whole piece of gear once it decays fully (but all your enchantments and power remains). This will be our main gear sink.
And after that step you can now OE that piece. OE is just a repeat of the first round of vertical enchantment and it puts "strain" on your gear parts so you now have to use double the mats to repair any +2 part. And this way at +8 you'll have to double the crafting mats to repair your gear. And if you're going for this kind of OE, you'll just HAVE TO use the best mats and craft at the best crafter, just to balance out the decrease of the decay counter. This would be our great gear sink, meant only for those at the very top of the game.
I think this kind of system would keep the RPGness of the game (because to keep the timer from ticking, you'd be switching to other sets of gear). This system would provide several resource sinks that, in theory, should keep the power creep from growing too much. The vertical enchantment resources should be even rarer in this system (because of the 100% success), so the power growth of the whole server would be fairly slow. There'd be no RNG involved, but OE would still be a huge hit to anyone who tries to play with it. Also, this kind of vertical enchantment would empower the horizontal one, so in a way it'd be DIAGONAL! And ain't that just super cool
Let's say that each piece of gear consists of 4 part during a craft. Those parts have their own multiple parts too, but when you're about to press the button to "craft the Sword of Awesome" you need to have 4 particular items in your inventory that represent 4 parts of said gear.
Those parts would be linked to the crafting dials and would represent some stats of the full gear, which the dials would then control. Horizontal enchantment would add more effects on these parts. So let's assume we'll be able to horizontally enchant each piece of gear 4 times (once for each part).
Now let's assume that gear decay is not dmg-based, but instead time-based. The decay timer would tick only when you're wearing the gear. Intrepid would decide how long that timer is based on their own calculations of potential time-to-farm-for-repairs. And we could even prolong that timer by using high quality mats and services of a top tier crafter, so each part of the piece of gear could add some amount of time to the decay timer.
Let's say we only need mats for repairs when the timer runs out. But if you have just the base version of said gear, at the end of the timer only one part of that piece will break (at random). So to bring back the timer to full you'd just need to use the material that is used to craft that part of the gear. This would be our main mats sink.
Horizontal enchantment would remove some amount of that timer (the amount would probably depend on the power of the enchantment), because it's putting some burden on said part.
To represent ware and dmg to the gear we'd have some decrease in its power at certain intervals of the timer. And to bring the power back we'd buy "honing stones" (or whatever alternative for different pieces of gear) at the node stores (with tiers of those nodes relating to the lvl of the node). This would be our gold sink.
Now we come to vertical enchantment. I suggest having +8 as the max vertical enchant level. Here's why. When you vertically enchant a piece of gear for "+1", you pick a part of said piece and increase the stats that this part provides (enchantment included). By doing so you double the amount that horizontal enchantment removed from the timer (or if there was no HE, you just remove some fairly big amount). And on top of that you make this part always break at the end of the decay timer. So now you'll have 2 parts break and will have to use more mats to repair the gear.
Once you repeat this +1 on all parts, you'll have a way shorter decay timer and you'll have to pretty much recraft the whole piece of gear once it decays fully (but all your enchantments and power remains). This will be our main gear sink.
And after that step you can now OE that piece. OE is just a repeat of the first round of vertical enchantment and it puts "strain" on your gear parts so you now have to use double the mats to repair any +2 part. And this way at +8 you'll have to double the crafting mats to repair your gear. And if you're going for this kind of OE, you'll just HAVE TO use the best mats and craft at the best crafter, just to balance out the decrease of the decay counter. This would be our great gear sink, meant only for those at the very top of the game.
I think this kind of system would keep the RPGness of the game (because to keep the timer from ticking, you'd be switching to other sets of gear). This system would provide several resource sinks that, in theory, should keep the power creep from growing too much. The vertical enchantment resources should be even rarer in this system (because of the 100% success), so the power growth of the whole server would be fairly slow. There'd be no RNG involved, but OE would still be a huge hit to anyone who tries to play with it. Also, this kind of vertical enchantment would empower the horizontal one, so in a way it'd be DIAGONAL! And ain't that just super cool
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Comments
I do think we’d need to find ways to simply the management to be more practical. It feels like we would need a spreadsheet to manage the maintenance of our gear. That could be smoothed out with some basic in game tools - and maybe reducing the number of various mats post enchanting to say 2-3 types of mats, if not increasing the quantity of those mats required.
I would prefer that to a system where it just had a single + number that impacted both physical and magical.
Having it tied to uses would muddy the waters way more imo. Like, does any amount of dmg decrease it by one point out of some amount? Does bigger damage remove more points? Does me dealing dmg to different things decay my weapon differently? That kind of math tracking would be too much for any non-math-liking person I think. While a timer just tells you "your weapon will break in 10 days, ya better get to farming those potential repair mats"
The whole system is extremely hard to approach and learn, with backwards progression (improving item quality increases upkeep for it)
1 - having 4 bases for stats is unnecessarily confusing - having only 1 mandatory base with 3 optional mats keeps the desired depth, but makes it much more approachable for new player
2 - the proposed overenchantment introduces 2 gold/mat sinks - initial and recurring. Which is feels extremely punishing for the player - repair cost for an item should be the same regardless of the enchantments on it - the initial cost is completely fine and expected
3 - upkeep system - keeping tabs on the substate of parts inside your gear is straight up bad - if you want to introduce gear parts system on all gear for increasing the depth of improvements to the gear is fine, but to use it only for convoluting the repair process is toxic towards players - nobody wants to pay for repairs and needing to give up gold or mats to repair is bad enough
― Plato
- it might be dropped due to griefing.
- it would be destroyed if not repaired (probably).
Considering one complete set of gear will have 16-20 items (I dunno the exact number) and players are likely to have at least 2 sets, it is already more than what a normal player would like to deal with if only basic timer or usage based repair system is implemented.
Add this and there is no way anyone can handle playing AoC without having a personal spreadsheet or spending 1 hour daily checking each and every item in the inventory. Not to mention even the the spreadsheet would need to be updated and maintained regularly.
There are some aspects of AoC which are fairly complicated as well, specifically achieving anything worthwhile in the game - PvP or PvE wise. I think going this route will make the game unplayable for people who can only invest 10-15 hr/week and the players who would be able to do anything would have to spend at upwards of 25 hr/week i.e. only the most hardcore players. I am also taking lack of fast travel into account here.
While resource sinks are important, introducing too many complex and time consuming systems where they are not necessarily needed can be off putting at best and frustrating at worst which can lead to quitting.
To be clear, I am not saying that the proposed system is bad or anything but the player base it would appeal to would be very small.
I split it into fours just so it'd be easier to enchant and repair later on, because you'd know what your item consists of. Imo enchantments should be part of the "risk vs reward" system (the vertical part is already that). When you make your item stronger, there should be a higher price to pay for keeping it as strong as you made it. As I see it. Though obviously it's up to Intrepid to decide how they want to balance it out. You'd only need to look at what you need for repairs when the timer runs out. Before that it's only the "honing" part and that could be removed from the system completely w/o influencing it at all. I just added it for an extra gold sink, cause in my head the timer would be fairly lengthy (I was thinking a week's worth of gameplay for a hardcore player and 2 weeks for casual), so having a gold sink within that time seemed reasonable.
As for destruction w/o repairs, I don't think we've heard about that. There's a few quote from Steven mentioning destruction after a failed OE, but even then he says that the item would just be unusable, so there's a chance that items don't get destroyed ever. We'll have to see. Yes, I was thinking of how to simplify this system to the max. The best I could come up with was this.
You'd have 3 gear presets (just for example). You can set them up however you want. You'd have 3 buttons near your skills bar that would change you into that preset. Intrepid don't want macroses in their game, but I think a gear preset system-based macros should be fine.
For the visuals of decay I thought a small glowing line at the bottom of the gear icon would suffice. It would change color based on its honing stage (that is if we were to keep that mechanic as a gold sink. It could definitely be removed if seen as too much). It would lit up when the gear is worn indicating that the timer is ticking. I had it change color with the honing stages because those were tied to some timer intervals, but, even if we remove the honing mechanic, the color change could still stay to indicate how much time you have left (ideally colors would be customizable in the options of the game). When you hover over the item icon, you'd get detailed info and would see the precise timer at the bottom of that window.
The preset buttons next to your skill bar would have the same glow (to indicate which set is on and ticking) and the color of the glow on the button would indicate the decay timer of the set (ideally you'd be able to change this indicator to be "the lowest decay timer in the set", "the highest one" or some other possible options). Considering that you'd equip the whole set at once, I'd imagine that in most cases the whole set would have roughly the same timer so this should be somewhat easy.
So just as an example of how you'd check on your gear day to day: You'd just equip it and take a quick glance at the glowing colors. That's it. Intrepid is already planning gear decay to be a thing, so I don't see how my system would add any more complexity to it.
As for the repair complexity, as I said before, when you see that the timer has run out - you just go to a crafter and see what you need to fix it. And as I stated in the post above, I was envisioning these timers to be fairly lengthy, so you'd have ample time to farm up the mats for a recraft, with higher tiers of gear getting harder and harder to upkeep so that they require you to use better quality mats and higher proficiency crafters. And by the time you get to high tiers of gear you'd be completely used to the system and it wouldn't seem complex at all (as any other system in any other mmo always does).
This would not only show others who you are in the game (which might lead to you meeting new people cause they asked you smth about your profession), but would also just lest you run around w/o worry for your gear and not naked. Obviously in the best case scenario we'll have different options for this kind of gear (racial, location-based, etc) and we'd be able to recolor it however we'd like to make it more personal.
An example of great gold sink is auction house fee - why? because the player gets something for using the gold sink - you propose a gold sink that that punishes the player by loosing ingame power when you forgot to have a notification for specific mats for repair.
Don't get me wrong - your system would actually play pretty well in a text game from 80s, but action game is a different story
― Plato
So the system will already be punishing to the people at the top of the food chain. And I see that as a good way to control the difference between casual and hardcore players w/o necessarily completely equalizing gear power. With this kind of system hardcore players will need to pay for their power more than weaker players, which would allow weaker players to have some time to catch up, because top players won't just be able to amass even more wealth. Good point. I could see an option where you can use a fraction of all crafting mats required for the item to replenish the decay timer. And if you forget to do that, you'd only need some particular kind of mat, but the full amount (in case we went with my suggestion of enchantment influencing repairs). Yeah, like I said the honing part doesn't impact anything else so I'd be completely fine with removing it. And it could maybe get added in later expansions if by some chance gold amount on the server gets too high and Intrepid wants some way to sink it (that is if they don't come up with smth else).
Alternatively we could have some atk buff for an hour or 2 after honing. So you not only fix up your dulling weapon, but also get a boost for doing so. And now we have a positive reinforcement for the gold sink. Though that could bring its own balance problems.
Thx for the feedback though, definitely good points.
I have a problem with the act of enchanting making the item worse in certain way. The act of enchanting feels bad in practice when you trade practicality away for little bit of extra power.
What I'd add toward the gold sinks is that there is already planned scaling gold sink in terms of the rare mats - there could also be an option to "buy" the rare mats needed for repair at the NPC that repairs it for a higher price than the current auction house pricing, but it would be just so you dont supply the mats, but those would come form the NPC's stash
And to the enchantment complexity - it is way better to introduce it early (which means during leveling) in the most simplified way and then preferably add depth without complexity.
Like items could have their own enchantment trees and enchantment levels would buy you points to allocate it on the tree - like that would be best on those top tier items of course
― Plato
Enchantment could follow the same logic. Low tier enchantment (both in terms of gear being enchanted and the quality of the enchantment itself) could barely decrease the timer, so that, even at lowest levels of progress, casual players could still just go buy some materials and repair their gear, or have ample time to just farm it themselves.
We don't know the current decay and repair system so it's difficult to say which one is harsher towards casual players. Maybe in the currently planned system you need a fraction of all crafting materials every few hours. Or if it's based on active use, then any casual could get harassed by "pvpers" and their gear would just die within a day of playtime. So in a way, my system could be even better for casuals (though I doubt it).
I put some penalty on enchantment because, as I see it, enchantment is an increase in your character's power lvl. And imo that kind of increase should come with a price. And assuming that horizontal enchantment will most likely be widespread, the base price of enchantment will probably be fairly low, which is why I added a material sink on top of that.
Also it is given that PvP death should NEVER decrease the remaining durability of anything you own.
Both systems you proposed (durability + enchantments) are designed with a perspective to "realistically" punish player for what you deem is "fair".
Durability is gold sink - there is no reason to complicate it any further than the planned division into mats and gold - best approach is to have tiered repair mats and have each item have the amount needed for repair - anything more complicated than that will make players hate the system - not as much because they pay the gold and mats, but because they must actively interact with the system beyond what they seem reasonable
enchantments are a system that is generally avoided by the more casual playerbase and creating higher engagement floor with extra punishment system is like telling players: "If you dont go hard on farming then dont enchant your gear"
― Plato
Second rule of armed combat: remember spec ops can kill with a pair of glasses.
My suggestion allows them to have their gear for 2 weeks w/o worrying about attacks from people and at the end of that time they'd need to only buy 1/4 of the mats to repair their gear. Yes, and imo that is a good system. You can play w/o enchantments, as a casual, and be completely fine. Enchantments should become a "requirement" only if you're planning to go hardcore, where each % of your power is important.
And even then, as I said in a different comment here, low tier enchantments could be very lax in their penalties so casual players can still add some elemental attacks/defenses to their gear and not really feel the consequences too much.
so first of all - this is first draft on the system
and more importantly is that there the initial process has drawbacks that you can mitigate with consumable items (such as mentioned scrolls/mats)
and let me tell you - "exceeding safety margin" will most likely be extremely criticised and people will make the comparison with bdo
in other words - any backwards progression will make extremely bad reputation
― Plato
And my initial post was made precisely to address that destruction. But I personally like L2's system and what it represents (that being a big money/mats sink), so I just came with a system that would save the goal of the system while removing the rng and "feel bad" associations that come with it. I kept the planned decay system, I kept the "risk vs" reward" theme (you risk not having enough mats/money for the repair vs the reward of higher power) and I might've even made the system more casual-friendly, though we'd obviously have to see Intrepid's implementation first to know that for sure.
But I think uncle Ben's approach to high/over-enchantment works best. You wanna be strong? You gotta pay for it.
― Plato
Completely agree.
I've made plenty of time for myself to be in a better position than the average player and ultimately it all devoids into a cheap form of entertainment for both sides IE hard working/no lifer has better enchants, gets to stomp but the content or milestone is over and young/casual players have a system to grind for a long time but are never likely to be part of the dedicated playerbase, 100% so in the competitive sense.
My main mmo's have been UO/Legend of Mir 2/L2/Archeage/BDO and the only one I would pick from that for having a fundamental system that lasts is UO, all the rest literally limit the playerbase as their fundamentals are pretty much dead focused on who plays the game the hardest. The key difference with UO is that you can't become too strong and your life is still fragile at any miss step while still providing a lot of item and..."slice of life" content.
I would urge Ashes to never go with any raw vertical gearing progression
Lineage 2's enchanting system was a simple design at the time to make players stand out and feel special as their p.atk or m.atk values end up much higher from the rest BUT at the time L2 had a decent online demographic, actually having PvP appeal.
10+ years or so after L2's release and every gaming man can get their PvP or player interaction fix far easier, moba's/FPS/Sports/Fighting, some of you need to ask yourself why do people go through loops of grind just so that they can feel special/dominant for 5 mins of PvP or even PvE in an mmo.
That said I will be very excited if Ashe's showcases their enchanting system and I don't see armor or weapons simply having stronger attack or defense, which strengthens absolutely everything that your character can do.
Like an example, a very simple one, would be if you had a slashing weapon, enchanted it high, it would aid slashing skills from your class but increases their crit rate only, it is not a direct "be all and end all" improvement that gates or limits the playerbase and still promotes milestone achieving.
I really think that Enchanting should not be the main focus of strength anyway, I think we're very much past those days, especially with what we can achieve with games in terms of improvements with technology and promoting skilled and smart interactions. BDO had many flaws but it lit the path to skilled, good looking and addictive gameplay is an example of this ( it has no team based gameplay though! I want to stress! ).
pvp is not here to provide pvp environment.
Trying to create "world" and having inspiration in old games that achieved that in some way is great, because mmos are primarily about worldbuilding and players being part of it
What is foolish is to copy paste game systems that are 2 decades old to create friction for players to facilitate "content". There is a reason why 2 decades old mmos were niche games for a few thousand players
― Plato
And any mmo that came out after WoW had to fight against a giant. The only one who managed that was FF14 and even then it was only possible because it was led by a very smart person who also had a shitton of money behind him, AND WoW was killing itself in the process. I'm 100% sure that FF14 woulda stayed somewhat niche if WoW didn't fuck up most of the updates and changes in the last decade, with all the internal scandals being the cherry on top.
You don't notice your loops of grind in those games, unless you smurf. Due to rank ladders and matchmaking the power of your opponent is usually the same as yours. And for some people, constant struggle is not fun. While in pvp mmos you can see the hours you put in directly. Your attacks are stronger than other people's who played less. Your life in the mmo world is easier exactly because you spent a long time getting to a point where it becomes easier. It's the payoff for your hard work.
And even outside of that, mmos are usually rpgs, so there's a character that represents you. And this representation grows with time. This character gets a reputation and respect (if you were going for that). And sooner or later it can become "you". While in all other pvp genres you get an already preestablished character. With preestablished abilities and potential (that is if we take the games where you can level up within a match). And in most sports game it's not even a character but a whole team with, usually, real people in it. None of those games give you the same feeling and experience as an mmo does.
And considering that there's barely any pvp mmos out there (with most of them being p2w to all hell), while there's a shitton of pve ones, I think it's fine for Ashes to go a different route and take that niche for themselves.
The point I'm trying to make and I believe @Tragnar is on the same wave length is that this is niche entertainment. You specifically focused on the raw strengths gains for prolonged play, as a hybrid player enjoying both good PvE and PvP, I'm probably not alone in saying that being statistically stronger than someone is not a great avenue of fun.
As someone who plays an mmo or any other online genre online for mores hours than the average player, I'm stronger than most without stat benefit, my experience of playing and countering via game/class knowledge is instinctive and/or higher.
You've failed to tackle a failing of mmorpg's, it's no longer a game when most of the chips are on your side, why are you always significantly stronger than someone just your're a year in front of them? Do you label this as healthy content?
Why can't hard work manifest into other aspects? cosmetically, gaining special titles, having an event item/mount from xxx date to stand out in a transmog contest or having a good looking and consistent shop in the game world (UO). As a player you're only interested in your character being more powerful than most??
Well, for starters, you're bigging up mmo's way too much. Classes and abilities in nearly every mmo pretty much functions the same as any other game, there's just more, you cannot say there are many diverse playing styles and gearing in mmo's, I know that for a fact. You enchanting reflect damage on a summoner (L2) for 5% or so more reflect damage to pet makes for extremely little satisfaction and does not change anyones gameplay.
The character that represents you is ofc true but how much does that devoid to, end game you become Warrior/Archer/Wizard/Healer #323, you're a bit friendlier than most, you have a weapon+8 when the highest is usually +11, you have your classes optimal set gear and you have a cowboy hat and your names "CowTrap", you have 500+ pvp kills, you know some people from the top clan on server and you have drama or KOS with x amount of players. A player like this is going through a rather dull motion, it really depends on the person ofc but if we're going to debate on whether that is the potential and excitement factor of an mmo, I'll say immediately it's shit and needs improving.
I'm very much in the ball park of most real mmo's (not ones like FF14) had their moment in the sun but since other genre's went online it's very much a niche genre and that's extremely sad because we know the passion many millions of people around the world feel for things like LoTR.
Enchanting yourself to make your character stronger in your role, usually in everyway is a failed practice that only results in cheap thrills for a minority of players that are addicted to selfishly owning a server through power and time, leaving things like player skill, social and team work almost in the dust.
Now I know I'm a rare breed these days, but, exactly because of that, I try to make my voice heard so that, when the genre goes even deeper into "let's all be friends on rainbow horses" direction, I could at least say "I did my best to try and point it into another direction". I'm not trying to stop the movement itself, I'm just trying to say that we could have both (even though the ratio would probably be smth like 1:10). Yes, the function of your character is the same as any other character of the same class/gear/combat ability, but all those other things is exactly what I love about mmos. The relationships I build throughout my path to my character's peak function. The rivalries I have at the top. The 500+ pvps that I had with people, through which we earned respect for each other and which might lead to us playing other games together or making our own new guild if our last ones fall apart.
That is the exciting part in an mmo for me. Showing off a pretty costume that I spent weeks doing quests for is not. And other pvp genres don't provide you with that kind of experience. You just grind them until you can say "oohh, look I spent thousands of hours on this game and the only thing I have to show for it is this shitty high rank".
And most of the time, the higher rank you have, the more toxicity there is in those games, because everyone sees each other as a barrier to getting even higher rank. You might spend 30-50 minutes with some player and you could hate him because he failed some simple task or you could see him as a friendly person but you'll never see him again because your ranks might diverge too far.
Now you could try to send a friend request and play games with him in the future, but after talking to hundreds of people that I met in L2, who played those other pvp genres, I don't think I've heard of any of them making long-time friends in those games (if any friends at all). What I did hear and experience though is years-long friendships, marriages, long time relationships and visits across the world - all because they played an mmo together. That is what interests me in mmos. That may very well be the case. And it may lead to Ashes failure, if Steven decides not to change his core designs. Which in turn would lead to me not playing anymore mmos because, at that point, I'd be completely sure that my kind of mmo gameplay is a thing of the past and no one else is interested in it. And that's fine, times change. I hope new generations of gamers get to experience the same things I did back in the day, in whatever way they themselves prefer.
Think is thread is too overbloated now, I've said my thoughts that consider a wide range of players.
@NiKr I'm not sure why you're on here discussing, you're only after improvements to an already dead horse of a system, it's baffling to me.