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
Other than that, though, I have no opinion. As long as they don't balance offensive aspects of gear AGAINST the defensive aspects on the same tier of gear, I don't care what happens here.
I have a strong dislike for games where the devs have not yet learned to NOT do this, though.
Don't balance offensive stats by removing defensive ones.
For every gear piece, just have a separate 'Defense stats and abilities' and 'Offense stats and abilities' ... 'bucket', I guess, for balance purposes.
Nothing ruins a game faster than 'I am giving up Offense to get more Defense' and vice versa, when it's just 'raw' power in one of those two, or worse, both. In a game like Ashes where everyone can wear everything, I'd put money on the gear meta sucking one month after the first Metro, if they made this mistake.
Excellent points. I agree with everything you said.
Here are a few I haven't seen mentioned yet:
The only concern I have with this is the minimum level requirement. I would like to be able to hop into arenas right after character creation to minimize the time it takes to test everything out and start PvPing. However, if I only have to play for <5 minutes to reach the min level required for each character, that would be O.K. (40 minutes to min level all 8 primary archetypes for arenas).
The gameplay players are asking for exists in other game genres. Why are you people looking at an open world MMORPG in the hope of finding the gameplay type that belongs in a BR, FPS or MOBA?
If that is the gameplay you desire, look to those genres.
Ashes has an open world specifically so players and characters can progress. You are literally asking Intrepid to set all of that aside so you can experience the gameplay type from another genre of game.
You can still switch things up via gear absolutely! The base armor stars are locked in but other than that, you have all the freedom to pick perks and addons such as frost resist, bleed sesist, % critical chance, % chance to cause bleed, % chance to proc heal, etc etc.
I agree 100% with the PvX side of things for all world PvP (node sieges, owpvp, caravan sieges, castles, etc) but I think adding this feature for arenas only would be great.
If I put in the time to get amazing gear, I want to be able to use it in every aspect of the game, especially the competitive instanced PVP. And switching gear should require you to have that gear. Not having an entire wardrobe to pick from at will. Otherwise you can basically ignore the rest of the game to only PvP. Vote is no.
I always found it interesting when people enjoy winning knowing they have a stat advantage over their opponents. If I beat someone like that, it feels cheap. I would rather win knowing I played better than due to the fact that I farmed for longer than they did/got luckier. But to each their own.
Also, that's not to say that arenas can't give you the best gear possible. It just allows everyone fight on an even playing field by giving everyone the best gear to choose from.
I enjoy winning with gear that I have earned, thus earning that advantage if there even is one. I have even more fun if I outplay someone who has slightly or even far better gear than I do, but you cant do that if everyone is a cookie-cutter stat block. Wanting everyone to have the same crap, to me, is just lazy and doesnt want to put the work in on the PVE side of things, and I am even saying that as a PvP sociopath.
My experience from GW1 was that pvp armor was ugly, like most basic cosmetic. And to unlock the great stuff, if was very hard and had to be acquired through pvp achievements.
You could also PVP with PVE characters and PVE armor but the base stats of pvp armor were maxed out, so unless you had also maxed out your pve gear, it wasnt worth it.
That being said, the players that strived both in pve and pvp, with max pve armor, could pvp no problem. They didnt have a competitive advantage but they had a cosmetic advantage compared to sum1 who didnt grind.
Thats also a completely different MMO compared to AoC. A PvX game requires the player to do both, not one or the other, into order to progress in either aspect of the game.
To add to your point, last year, I learned the actual deffinition of "competition". Competition means "go together" ... "com" (together, in latin) and "petere" (to walk, in latin). In ancient times, it was honorable to face the best of the best in competition, win or lose. Opponents were brothers, and they felt honor in pushing the best out of themselves and their opponents. It was only by measuring yourself to the best of the best that you could really test and improve yourself.
Cheating or having unfair advantages was viewed as extremely coward and they had no patience for it.
Nowadays the meaning of competition has changed somewhat though... win at all costs and screw the others! Sad thing.
Yeah that's a philosophical difference. I don't want to be able to earn advantages, it takes away the satisfaction of knowing I fought better than they did because I wouldn't know if I won because of gear or skill. I'm not saying there's no skill in acquiring gear or putting together good builds, but that's completely different than fighting skill and actually being good at PvP. I liken it to having a numbers advantage over your opponent(s). For example, if an arena match was 6v5, the team with 6 will have an advantage at all times. If I was on the team of 6 and won, that would feel lame. If I lost, that also feels lame. It's a lose-lose for me. At that point, I don't know why I'd even play. But that's why I prefer games with equalized gear systems in PvP.
In BDO, I joined a guild where everyone hyped up the guild leader as this great PvPer who 1v3'd all the time in open world. I had 3 days on the game vs my guild leader who played for 3 and a half years up until that point. When we decided to hop into arenas:
I played for a few months afterwards but the feeling that I'd lose to a player like that in open world because they had a gear advantage even if they were worse at the game just took away the fun. Even if I grinded to get the best gear and ran around killing people with worse gear than me, that's not fun either.
I mean, if you go about it that way, no person has the same stats. Is it cheating if your character has better stats due to the work they put into the game, which could be akin to training irl? Or is the champion in ancient times who put more work into their training or had better genetics cheating?
I look at it like training for a fight irl. If I put more work in and train harder than the other person and I make myself mentally stronger than my opponent, I am working to give myself an advantage over my opponent. Or should I limit myself to the exact same amount of training as them at the same limitations of strength and endurance instead of pushing myself beyond my own capabilities?
Stats on gear in MMOs reflect the strength your character would attain from acquiring that gear. So if you fight someone too strong for you due to them putting more work in? Put more work into it yourself.
You're overlooking the fact that there are weight classes in fighting.
I've been an athlete all my life. There's a reason they don't match a 220 lb guy against the guy that weights 130. People wouldn't enjoy watching such a one-sided fight either. The weight difference in fighting is equivalent to gear advantages in games.
How much you train will reflect on how well you know how to fight. A.K.A. how well you PvP and use your skills. If you simply eat more and train to increase your muscle mass and weight, the fight organization will simply move you up a weight class. So, they equalize the playing field and you'll get beat if the other person knows how to fight better than you.
Well of course you have weight classes. But if you take a 195lbs office worker who has never been in a fight in his life against a Lightheavyweight Champion at the same weight, they will get absolutely destroyed.
Yeah that's exactly my point.
At that point it's deserved because the champion has better skills than their opponent. As long as they both were in the same weight division, that follows how competitive fighting works. Competitive fighting may also take into account the fighters' skill, but that's why MMR is a thing in games.
If I was in the highest division of skill in a game or sport, and I constantly was matched against the lowest/lower division players (or vice versa) that wouldn't be fair or fun either. So it's a combination of equalized weight (aka gear) and equal skill (good matchmaking) that makes for fair fights.
A players characters "training" in an RPG is reflected through the stats they get from gear and level. The players personal skill is just the other half of the equation.
Your weight would be more of a comparison to your Rating in matchmaking. Not your Gear. You compete and increase your rating, so you compete with people of a similar rating.
No, weight would not be equivalent to rating. That's like saying a fighter's weight is equivalent to their win ratio. That's incorrect and inaccurate.
Gear is equivalent to weight. They both give 'stat' advantages.
Winrate/MMR is what matchmakers use. They both relate to competitor skill.
Good, competitive systems take into account BOTH in order to make things fair. You'll never see a professional fighting organization or esport game compromise and/or sacrifice on either of these because that defeats the purpose of competing in the first place.
I mean it more along the lines of Classes. Like Diamond, Platinum, Gold, silver etc. Those are your weightclasses. You dont put a bronze up against a diamond, if they want to compete up there they are going to have to move up a class. They can be the number 1 Bronze though. And I understand how it works irl, but weight classes arent actually a thing in this game so its simply a correlation.
The way I see the correlation between an RPG and IRL competitions is
Gear+level=characters training(not to be mistaken with players skill)
Rating Class=Weight Class
Individuals skill is what it is
Individual Rating=Individuals Skill+characters training
Both an individuals skill and the characters training are earned by playing the game. This is what makes your character what it is in an RPG. Taking away half of what you earned as that character for a competition isn't the move.
Gear + level = weight
Rating = Rating in both scenarios
"Character training" is not something taken into consideration in any form of competition. You don't match people up based on how much time they spent training. See my example of BDO above, I spent 3 days on BDO and got better than my guild leader who had 3+ years on the game. Time spent is not directly correlated to 'stat' advantages irl or in-game nor is it directly correlated to how good someone is at something.
You'll never see UFC go: Fighter A has a weight of 220, a win/loss of 10-1, and he trains 14 hours a week. But it would be unfair to match him against Fighter B who also has a weight of 220 and win/loss of 11-0 because Fighter B only trains 7 hours a week.
That would be silly.
Youre not thinking of it as an RPG though. Your logic would work for something like Call of Duty or other FPS games or even MOBAs and quick matchmaking games. But in an MMORPG your character isnt just "everyone has baseline stats now go kill eachother". Using that character in a competition means its ability through its training is absolutely relevant. The Gear+Level of your character represents who your character is and what experience they have had in the game. This represents your characters skill. Pair that with your individual skill, the result is what you get to work with in a competition against other players, because you as a player earned them both.
And I am not saying any of that. My whole point is that having different class tiers in a video game separates players similarly to how weight class separates fighters IRL. Its to protect different classes from eachother. This analogy has sort of gone beyond what I was originally implying.
And in the end, if you can beat someone with better gear than you, awesome, you get better rating due to all that skill. If you cant, then get better gear, or practice more. Provides several avenues to utilize in order to progress in the game, both of which involve playing the game.
The analogy is accurate. If you want gear to matter, then the matchmaking should also take gear into account so that if you spent TIME to get a better piece of equipment, you'd only get matched against people who have also spent TIME to get a better piece of equipment. You are correct that weight classes exist to protect the fighters, so by the same logic, gear classes should exist to protect the players. That would be a fair system with the consequence being that the eligible player pool you could compete against would be shrunk significantly. Again, there's a reason they don't match a 220 lb guy against a guy that weighs 130. Yeah, sure, the 130 guy could win. But that's not a fair fight no matter the outcome. It's just not how actual competitive systems work.
See that analogy described the skill difference. Gear difference would be giving the office worker metal gauntlets while the champion has rubber gloves. Now it's less about who is more skilled, because someone just had better gear...
Where as if they both get access to the same line up of gloves it levels the paying field and the skill dominates more.
I actually played a ton of GW2. And that is a perfect example of an MMO that entirely separates PVP and PVE. which is exactly what AoC isnt. You could argue WvW is PvX, but anyone who has played it knows the PVE in WVW was just using NPCs as punching bags until another zerg showed up. And a time barrier is a reality when you have PvX progression. You are going to spend far more time to be able to participate in late game content that is both PVE and PVP. Just enabling players to jump right into playing like an endgame beast isnt a great design for an MMORPG that relies on progression. That entire argument is "I dont want to play the rest of the game, let me just play this part."
Gear does matter, otherwise why even acquire it? And factoring gear quality into matchmaking is pretty pointless when your outcomes against other players would do the job just fine as far as placing you against others during your initial placement matches. So no need to artificially shrink the player pool.
Its not a weight factor. The 130lbs dude isnt going to suddenly grow 7 inches taller and gain 90lbs to compete against that guy. Have a level 1 ranger with shit gear (the office worker) against the max level ranger with raid gear( the champion fighter of the same weight). You dont match those up against eachother. Once you get max level, youre fair game. You have the ability to acquire the same gear as everyone else at that point, so its up to you to get it, thus increasing your characters ability, to further augment your individual skill. If you dont want to play the entirety of the game to progress in an aspect of it, thats your problem, and likely means that this games design isnt your playstyle. If its the way you like to play, you've provided a few examples of games to continue playing in that manner.
In an RPG its not just the players skill, your characters stats factors into its ability. This is reflected in gear acquired, and level achieved. Itd be one thing if none of the items gave stats, and only provided armor and damage modifiers. But gear stats in RPGs are meant to reflect the strength and power gained through getting that item. And even then, nobody in this instance would stop the champ from putting on some gauntlets they pick up as well. Both players have access to the gear, its just a matter of them picking it up.
I think the separation between gamemodes can be healthy if done well with proper amounts of overlap IF players want to diversify their experience. It's the same reason why "Ashes of Creation is designed for solo players as well as large and small groups." Catering to both solo, small, and large groups of players is important. Same as catering to arena PvP, PvE, and open world PvP players. Again, you do not have an accurate perception of how competitive matchmaking works. I am not going to continuously reiterate the explanations. If you want to improve your understanding, read what I wrote above. Otherwise, I don't see this specific part of the discussion going anywhere. See above. Until you acquire the gear to match, then you should not be placed against people who have the better gear. This is fair, it also shrinks the player pool as a consequence. It's perfectly fine for gear and levels to matter in open world PvP and PvE but equalized arenas should be just that, equalized arenas.
Alright, I will just put this here. I don't think you're going to enjoy this game dude.
"We're very clear with our objective and philosophy on the game and we understand that they may not appeal to everybody. But you know it is an important reciprocal relationship between the content that's related to PvE and the content that's related to PvP and they feed off of each other. They're catalysts for change: Their progression, their development. It's things that people can value when they see something earned and they see something lost. That elicits an emotional response from the player: That they've invested time in to either succeed or fail; and PvP allows for that element to be introduced into gameplay. And we're very clear that is our objective: That risk versus reward relationship, that achievement-based mentality. Not everybody's going to be a winner and that's okay."[8] – Steven Sharif
edit: also this one
"Ashes is a comprehensive game. It is not a PvP focused or a PvE focused, it is a comprehensive PvX game and as a result these systems are all interconnected and have to coexist with one another with certain types of mechanisms that can provide that give and take, that push and shove.[2] – Steven Sharif"