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
I’ve been playing mmorpgs since 99. I’ve acquired and lost more gear in full loot then most ever could hope to grind for.
Gear doesn’t make the gamer good, only top gamers know how to utilize the gear to maximum effect.
Been at the top, no reason to push new blood away so some shitters can stomp people for the Feelsgoodman Participation trophy.
An anagnorisis and peripeteia later and maybe you’ll get “it”.
It's atrocious, I'd enjoy anyone with this mindset to provide honest context to someone thinking of starting up on the mmorpg genre, making sure to include 100's like myself will be earning a hella lot waking up at the very early hours to get cheeky gold+loot gains away from off peak time and playing most of the day and telling them that every single gold piece and rare loot we earn keeps on increasing our strength...
I'm glad to be away from the genre if it can't evolve, I'd rather it be a PvE only co-op game that Josh Strife Hayes gushes about so I can take the piss out of it easier.
This is true, and no one has said the opposite.
However, ignoring gear does make a gamer bad. There isnt really any other way to put it.
Gear mattering in an MMO does not mean strength is decided primarily by how long you have been playing the game.
As I said specifically to you earlier, this is why developers add in gear resets periodically.
You need to stop reiterating arguments that have already been completely debunked. Sure, L2 didnt have gear resets, but again, L2 had among the worst development of any live MMO I have ever heard about. There are many reasons L2 has almost always had more players on private servers than on official ones.
Never once have I suggested that the acquisition of gear was supposed to be easy.
I'm trying to keep track of this conversation, and I think I was managing up until this post.
Mind pointing out where this was implied? Doesn't need to be 'said', just implied.
You watch someone like Summit1g play Tarkov, (and I love watching Summit don't get me wrong) but the man can't even be bothered to place items he finds in raid on the flea market(auction house). He'd rather just vendor it all because it's easier. Doesn't take as much brain power. I've watched him piss away millions upon millions doing that. You can make far more money selling an item on the flea market than to a vendor, just to be clear. For the longest time, he couldn't even be bothered to upgrade simple things in his hideout. I mention these things because they're "mmo-y" type things. But so anyway, then he complains he's always broke. It's incredible.
Intelligently playing the economic game in an mmo is a skill. And it matters. Knowledge of the crafting systems matters. Pve skill matters. Inventory/bank management matters. Being efficient in thought, decision and your own personal time in game, matters. All of this leads to a better, stronger, more pvp AND pve proficient character, and rightly so.
So that's the extent to which I agree with Noaani. I definitely agree with Solvryn that the power gaps in Archeage were WAY too big. But that's what this argument comes down to, what should the power gaps be. And secondly, how easy or hard it should be to climb the ladder rungs of that power gap.
In the case of a very pvp heavy game (supposedly) like Ashes though, I think power gaps should be moderate at most. I personally don't want to see insane power gaps. But I do want them to be meaningful.
But no matter what the gear gaps end up being, I expect the economy to fix a lot of potential issues. I expect the market over time to reach a state where enough mats and armor and weapons have been harvested/created that supply/demand does it's thing. The idea being that eventually, kind of "baseline competitive gear sets" are generally affordable for most players, with some effort on their part. (I understand gear deconstruction and needing mats to repair gear will affect this, the principle remains the same though, eventually the market will catch up, prices will moderate.)
There will still be better gear to chase after, but much of the general population will have access to baseline competitive gear due to economies of scale and supply/demand etc.
And then a patch/dlc/expansion will come with a gear reset and we do it all again.
That's it, that is it right there.
I was being literal when I was talking about peoples behaviors and design and ultimately Ashes needs subs to continue.
Design a phone? It's a pocket vibrator. That's the way people are, they'll decide the best use of someone elses design and product.
Here's how I see scaling; a copper weapon, a bronze weapon, and an iron weapon are just weapons to the untrained of their time, it would take a significantly skilled warrior to be able to utilize the weapons capability.
I only look at history for reference, look at the Halstatt culture and how it changed into La Tene culture whom would be the face of Celtic peoples. It drove their economic expansion and trade routes, they were some of the best metallurgists and crafters of their time.
I can look at Rome and how they took ideas from Celts and Illyrians in terms of technological advancements. It will not change the supply nor the demand of goods and services, people will always chase something that makes them feel empowered.
But, a range of pea shooter to hellfire missiles cleverly disguised as bow are not a good power scale. People will leave.
So thanks for seeing my point, even though I didn't reveal my whole hand through-out this conversation.
Early power growth is quite fast, but it gets way slower and the difference between each stage of progress lessens the further you progress.
I still disagree with this, but mostly because I know that the bulk of the best geared players in Archeage were damn good players, gear aside.
When they were actually trying on their alts, they were able to take on two or three equally geared, average players.
Again, when you consider that a great player will get more out of better gear than an average player, a great player with great gear will absolutely trample over an average player with average gear - and to be clear, the people here complaining about gear gaps are mostly average players with average gear - and delusions of grandeur.
That is very close to Archeages gear power graph.
The problem many people had is - they stopped at the first instance of potential gear destruction, which is probably equal to about level 20 on that graph. Then they complain that the gear gap is too big when they come up against people that are sitting around 50+1.
When I talk about the gear gap in Archeage not being that big, I am talking about people that have actually put some time and effort in to gear. Obviously the gap between those that have put some effort in vs those that have put no effort in will be fairly big.
However, to me, that is as it should be.
Yeah I see your point and agree. A lot of my post was speculation, and ideas of how I personally would design these things, and how I hope Intrepid will design them. But they could do anything. Steven seems to me like he's a fan of big power gaps. I could be wrong though.
But we'll see how it ends up. I'll play and enjoy the game either way.
If this was the kind of gaps we were talking about, I would agree.
However, that isnt it.
In Archeage, the first Legendary weapon I saw did a total of 4% more actual damage (after parsing via ACT) than the same weapon at Celestial grade. That is three solid tier upgrades, going from literally no risk of loss at all at celestial (literally scrub tier gear, if you had a celestial armor buff, you were considered an easy target) all the way up to literally the best weapon on the server at the time.
4%
In the game you guys are basically labeling the poster child of massive gear gaps.
The stupid thing is - 2% out of that 4% was obtained just by taking that celestial gear and upgrading it just one time to divine. Then going to epic was worth about 1.3%, with the last 0.7% being that last, near insurmountable hurdle at the end.
If those scrubs that gave up getting gear upgrades at celestial when they hit the first possible chance of gear loss had have instead just gone one step further, they would have closed half of the gap (in real terms, not in gear score terms) with the best geared players in the game.
So, rather than talking about pea shooters vs hellfire missiles, we should be talking about pea shooters vs other pea shooters with a 4% bigger pea.
The problem isnt gear, nor gear gaps.
The problem is some people will just always blame gear every time they lose in PvP. However, rather than blaming their gear - as would be reasonable- they blame their opponents gear, as if what they are using is now literally impossible to acquire in what ever game they are playing. These people - and they exist in every game with both PvP and character progression - will blame anything other than their failures for losing.
That is the problem here, not gear gaps.
Now, to be clear, in a game where gear gaps were pea shooter vs hellfire missiles, we would have a real problem.
However, in games where players are refusing an easy 2% improvement, which would leave them only 2% behind the actual best on the server, the gear gap just isnt the problem.
I'm not referencing anyone's skill level when I say the power gaps were way too big in Archeage. I'm just saying they were way too big for my taste. I didn't play Archeage very long though, to be fair. Maybe 3-5 months. I quit some time after the thunderstruck log update or Auroria, can't remember which came first.
AA power gaps were skewed by p2w also. So of course the power gaps seemed big if you didn't p2w. If there was no p2w, everyone would have progressed on a normal curve, staying within a normal range of each other gear wise. Some anomalies here and there. And obviously people who play more generally progressing faster. But it all would have stayed within a normal range.
But p2w just amplified the power gaps. I mean there were people so geared that they could 1v6, if not more. 1v6 against equally skilled players equipped with decent gear in their own right, just not p2w'd gear. And so that just put the power gaps on blast.
It's fine that a power gap like that exists if everyone is forced to naturally progress to that point over time. These people were able to create these gaps essentially instantly though.
So what I'm describing sounds more like a problem of p2w than power gap, which it is kind of. But the p2w exposed just how much of a problem that big of a power gap is, if players are allowed to reach it.
We've had this conversation before I'm pretty sure. I was in a pvp guild. We we're all pvpers. Guy in my guild had some kind of falling out with leadership. Guy was just like the rest of us, decent pvper, decently geared for not being a p2w'er. But guy had this falling out. Guy quit the guild. A few days later and for about the next 2 weeks straight, guy shows up every day at our housing area p2w'd out of his mind, basically instagibbing people.
Guy personally declared war on our guild and everyone in it because of whatever beef he had. This is the same guy that a few days before would have been a decent duel for most any of us. Now we have to 6v1 him just to get him to retreat. It wasn't even about trying to kill him, fat chance there. We might have got him a time or two, can't remember. But usually it was just...ok how many guys do we need just to make this raid boss retreat?
It's almost funny to think about. And for me at least, it was kind of funny at the time too. But man is that just dogass pvp. It's demoralizing. It's not FAIR LOL. I'm not even one of these omg everything must be fair types. But that shit was ridiculous. And that's just one example. I saw more than my fair share of what insane gear gaps can be like in that game.
Edit: But just to round out my thoughts, I want there to be badasses. I want there to be people who are very good at pvp, as well as very skilled at the economic/pve/crafting side of the game. I want all of that to be rewarded and for them to be a badass because of it. Just not 1v6 type badassery. Not against equal skill, decently geared players. There should be no gear set that allows that to happen. Imo. Not 1v5 either, nor 1v4, maybe the conversation starts for me at 1v3. I dunno, just my opinions. Who knows what Steven has in mind.
Yeah, I’ve been at the top without whaling and whaling.
People are going to defend their ego.
Unfortunately these forums have some folk with reputations for gatekeeping and hubris.
Gotta push past the bullshit to make sure other voices are heard.
This is the problem - you should be.
Players that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the game - players that many like to think of as no-skill, gear carried players - they are some of the most skilled MMO PvP'ers you will ever come across.
I'm sure you've heard me say on these forums that I used to run ACT in Archeage, and was one of the only people that did.
I had a group of players that paid me to analyze builds and gear for them in real world settings, and report back what ever I find.
These were among the best geared players in the game, across all servers (and across all regions, NA, EU, KR, and even RU- no one from JP or CH though).
They knew what they were doing better than probably anyone else on their server. However, a part of what they paid me to do was to not tell anyone else what we found.
That is why, for at least a few years, the best geared players in the game all ran what seemed to be odd classes, with even more odd gear. People just looked at them and assumed they had no idea what they were doing (that guy obviously bought all his gear, he doesnt even know what class is meta!).
They had put dozens of hours of their time (and my time, that they paid me for) in to working out what build would do well against the meta classes of the game (that literally didn't change for 5 years).
So, while Daggerspell and Darkrunner were the meta classes, they would find a single class that was paper, where both of those two classes were rock.
Just build alone would see them able to take on 3v1. They could literally 1v1 a darkrunner without even wearing armor or accessories - just class mechanics alone did it.
Add in their actual skill and knowledge of the game and you have an easy 5v1. Add in the best gear in the game, and sure, I could see (though never actually heard about) 6v1.
However, that isnt their gear carrying them. That is the fact that the bulk of their opponents were simply playing 'follow the leader' in terms of class build, so they would literally just play the counter to those classes.
Basically, they put a shitload of thought in to things, and their opponents put zero thought in. How do you expect that to go, exactly?
The problem was - as I have said - PvP players simply didnt want to admit that it was them that were at fault. It cant be them. They are playing the meta build, that some mysterious person on the games forums said is the best build, so the problem simply cant be the build (let's not pull the string as to who was pushing for specific meta builds).
It can't be skill either, because no PvP'er will ever admit that someone with better gear than them can also have more skill. To most PvP players, your own personal skill is directly, inversely proportional to your gear quality - or so it seems they like to assume.
So, the only thing left is that the gear gap must be too large.
Never mind that we are actually talking about 4 or 5 gaps in gear, not one gap. Never mind that the person that just killed you and your friends (who are all inexcusably playing the same class) is literally playing the best counter to that class in the game. Never mind that this peraonspent dozens of hours- and hundreds of dollars - working out just the tight build to pull all this off. Never mind that the player has spend dozens of hours practicing this exact scenario.
The fact is, the gap between these players isnt just gear. It is a gear gap, but it is also a skill gap, a knowledge gap, a practise gap and a build gap, a preparation gap.
When someone has ALL of these things over you, of course they are going to stomp you in to the mud.
People need to stop blaming gear, and start blaming themselves.
I mean, even if we ignore skill, preparation, build et al, and just talk about gear - you shouldnt be complaining about "gear gap" if there is actually about 20 gear gaps between you and the player that just stomped all over you.
That isnt an issue with gear gap, that is an issue with you falling behind in gear. Just because you spent some time and for gear that was considered decent for the time, doesnt mean you stop. Others are going to keep gearing up, making your currently decent gear kind of shit within a few months.
I saw this happen to so many players. You could kind of look at someone a gear and pick the month they stopped trying to do better.
You could maybe say that this is an issue of game design, perhaps even state that it is related to P2W mechanics in the game. I'm not really arguing these points, my argument is that if one player stops gearing up and another carries on gearing up, the resulting disparity in gear is not due to the games gear gap.
In fact, the reason a LOT of players stopped gearing up at the point they did is because they didnt consider the minuscule improvements they would see with a single gear upgrade to be worth the effort of crafting 10 - 20 of the item they are using now. The amount of effort, time and cost required simply wasnt worth it, so they were content with where they were.
In other words, people stopped gearing up in Archeage when the gear gap because too small to care about.
There are a few titles that have similar issues, those players defend them into the sun too.
For both PvP and PvE?
Because of this it might very well be that some of the most skilled pvp ers, the ones who will be corrupt most of the time, will opt to wear affordable gear that they don't mind losing, instead of the pve orientated max gear one. In addition, other holistic player benefits, will be less for corrupted players, no access to auction house, or node services, including trading, will severely impact those corrupted players that in other games use an alt to fund their activities.
With good testing tweaking (Alpha 2 and in game future updates) this might result in that the gear and consumable aspect powercreep is virtually non existant. What is left then is build, and skill
One thing that is guaranteed;
In any PvP game with gear progression, people losing in PvP will blame gear.
That is as sure as death and taxes, as far as I am concerned.
It absolutely will happen in Ashes, there is literally no way around it.
The complaint doesnt even need to be valid - the people making it wont actually take the time to work out if they lost to gear, skill, knowledge or a combination. They will just tell and scream about gear, and the gear gap, and literally do anything at all other than go out and get that gear.
Of course they wont get that gear, they literally dont have the skill to get it, so instead they will just complain about it.
Well I don't think of p2w'ers as necessarily unskilled. I'm sure it runs across a spectrum, with some being unskilled and some being very skilled, and everything in between. Same as people that don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars - they range from unskilled to very skilled too. Nor do I equate people who got good gear in a nonp2w game as unskilled pvpers either. Some of them are, some aren't, runs the same spectrum.
I'm aware of the phenomenon where people blame their losses on gear. Sometimes they have a point, if they're talking strictly pvp skill wise, that they would have won if not for being outgeared. And sometimes they're full of shit and making excuses. Either way, in the context of an mmo, it doesn't matter too much because it's about more than just pvp skill. But I know the type you're talking about. They come to a gear dependent game then blame their losses on gear, while not having the ability or desire to get better gear themselves.
You listed off a bunch of caveats, I'm not going to re read every single one, but I get what you're saying with them. But that's also why I used the caveat "equally skilled" and "decently geared." I'm not talking about guys who have knowledge over enemy players like you referenced with the ACT program, and know exactly how to counter their builds with exclusive information. I'm talking about approximately equally pvp skilled, and equally knowledgeable players.
In that specific situation, how big should the gear power gap be? Given that our 1 in this 1vX scenario has the best or close to the best gear in the game, and the X's are outfitted with decent quality gear from the next tier below it. The question can be extended downwards further to the X's having gear two tiers below too. The question can be extended to a comparison of every gear gap between tiers in the game. What should they all be set at.
The question is imperfect because there's too many variables. What class and build is the 1. What class and build are the X's. Is this an open field with just a 1 v 5 straight up faceoff. Does the 1 have terrain or other features that he can maneuver around and manipulate to his advantage. Is the 1 getting the jump on the 5 and able to quickly take out a squishy. Too many variables. But just in a broad sense, how big should the gap be?
And this is leaving out all other variables. We just assume they're all equally skilled at pvp, crafting, economy, pve, everything. How did the 1 get his gear advantage? Take your pick - he plays more, he got lucky, he's a guild leader that get's gear funneled to him, he's Asmongold. Whatever, none of that is the point. Whatever gear he got, he deserves. Because he got it. That's the game. But strictly gear gap analysis - How many people should this guy, on average, be able to take on at once, in just a general imaginary scenario. 1v2, 1v3, 1v5, 1v10? Where's the ceiling of the power gap.
You don't have to answer that. It's not a simple thing to answer. I mean we kind of already have an answer I think. The wiki quote that 50% of power comes from gear. I don't actually know what that means exactly though.
I can't exactly answer what the gear gaps should be. I think it's something you have to feel and experience in game before you can fully give an answer. But my general reasoning on it is...this is a game with pvp, people are going to get dunked sometimes. It's inevitable. Throw gear aside, people are going to get dunked from sheer pvp skill differences alone. Getting dunked is good. Builds character. Dunkees can always get better, try harder. Not everyone's a winner, I get it. That's why I'm here, for that kind of game.
But there is a point at which getting dunked turns into getting mega dunked. Where it's just not very competitive, and a good game dev has to set that ceiling somewhere. Other factors play into this too, like large gear gaps are not as big of a deal the more temporary they are. As in, how fast the general population can climb the gear rungs. There's a big difference between getting mega dunked for a couple weeks, versus a couple months, versus 6 months.
Also, the 1vX scenario is great to analyze. But an 8vX scenario is a completely different scenario, with potentially very different ramifications.
Or the super geared alliance of hundreds of players attacking a node of averagely geared players. Those averagely geared players are fucked, that's all there is to it. The question is, in the averagely geared players discord, after this is all said and done...do their coms sound more like damn we got rocked, but holy shit that shit was awesome when Bob jumped down from the wall and Tom came in from the side and the blah blah blah and man that shit was fun, we took out like 7 people there.
Or do their coms sound like damn...honestly bro...I couldn't even tell if I was doing damage. I mean I was pressing my buttons but... Did we even kill a single person? Anyone got a number for a good proctologist?
Did they have a chance? No not really. Did they have a chance to have some fun though, that's what I think is important in a game with pvp. It has to stay at least somewhat competitive.
1.2
One player with the next tier up of gear should be able to take on 1.2 equally skilled, prepared and knowledgable players in a fair fight with gear from that one tier lower than them. That is if literally every item is one full tier better.
Or 6v5, if you want whole numbers.
That is about what you could expect in Archeage if literally all of your gear was a full regrade higher than an equally skilled, prepared, knowledgable opponent.
The 1v3s and higher you hear about are all skilled players with good builds and gear vs less skilled players with worse gear and bad builds. Some of it was gear, but only when we are talking a player that is four or five tiers higher - and honestly, what can you expect in that situation?
I dont make excuses for shit players, and I wish others would stop as well.
There's plenty of people who run analytics and realize power-creep is an issue, in ESO it was in their champion point system. So bad to the fact that they created non cp servers.
And it was perfectly valid to get angry at the fact they had proc sets and improperly tuned sets.
It gave the Buildabros a false sense of accomplishment.
TERA also had terrible powercreep in their gearing system, both ESO and TERA had powercreep bad enough that a fresh max level could get one shot.
It's not really defensible, because there's no logical reason for it.
I'm not one to sing the highest praise for GW2, but they did manage to handle that somewhat well.
That sounds reasonable. Maybe even a little low. But that sounds good to me.
This is why I never stopped OEing my gear in L2. Even a 1% boost could give me an edge in a fight
There is no separation between pve and pvp when it comes to player power, so yes, that graph would apply to both and pve design would have to account for that.
Considering the tools that a party brings, and the buffs that other classes will probably provide, I'd say a range of 1v2 - 1v4 would be reasonable. And that range would depend on which classes that one dude's fighting. If he's a rogue that's bad against tanks and rangers and he's fighting a healer+bard+mage+summoner - I'd say the rogue should be able to beat them through proper approach to the fight and perfect use of his abilities.
If that rogue is fighting a tank+ranger combo - he better be ded.
There absolutely is a logical reason for it.
MMO's need to provide players with some form of meaningful progression. As soon as players have nothing left to progress on, they stop logging in. Simply look at WoW server populations during a content cycle to see this in play. Massive population when the expansion is launched, and as people run out of ways they can progress, they stop logging in and the server population goes down. When a patch comes in that gives a subsection a new means of progression, that subsection of the population start logging in again. Then when a new expansion comes, everyone logs in again.
So, it is in the best interests of the developer, the game and the players to try and maintain a state where there will always be a form of progression that is attainable for all players, in order to keep all players in the game longer and more consistently.
Essentially, maintaining an avenue by which players can progress is the fundamental goal of developers in an MMORPG. It is what keeps the lights on.
As I have said earlier in this thread, the way most games manage things is by having a progression reset periodically. This is easy to do with gear, and I have outlined two different methods that two games have used to accomplish this.
However, with ESO's CP, there is no easy way to perform a reset. A player with 3k CP will be substantially more powerful than a player that is newly level 50, there just isnt a way around that. This is why CP (or any experience based progression past a basic level cap) isnt a good idea in a game with any kind of PvP aspect. It provides an avenue of progression that simply cant be reset.
Indeed.
The issue in Archeage wasnt the gear gap between tiers. Sure, it's what people complained about, but those people literally didnt know what they were looking at.
The issue in Archeage is that the gap between people that tried and people that stopped trying could easily be 10 or more tiers. At just 6 tiers, that 1.2 per tier is close to 3. At 10 tiers, it is over 6. Fortunately, in Archeage, as you went up tiers, that 1.2 went down to probably 1.05, but when you do the math, it's really easy to see that the issue people had was in their lack of gear progression, not in the gap between tiers.
If a game has a gap between tiers of 2 (as in, a player could take on two players of equal skill, with gear one tier below his own), that would mean a gear gap of 10 tiers would see that player able to take on 1024 players.
That has obviously never happened in any game, and probably never will.
However, it does highlight just how factually mislead many people were and are about gear gaps in games - and also makes it fairly obvious to most people (I would hope) that the issue of gear being a major factor and allowing for 3v1 situations is actually a result of the people complaining having just not put any effort in to gear progression, in a game that asks players to put effort in to gear progression in order to be successful.
Indeed. And if you are a better PvP'er than your opponent, that 1% better gear will simply multiply.
Numbers dont really work for this, but if you are 10% more skilled than an opponent and get a piece of gear that makes you 1% better, that gives you a 1.1% buff over that player.
Now that's a worthy thread...
Forget about playing a game to "unwind", "enjoy yourself", "be a part of a great moment or conquest", no...mmorpg's have been dejected to the "meaningful progression only" corner.
I've known through many many MANY posts those certain individuals who are addicted to mmorpg practices that have no room for player growth and who pigeon hole "fun" into how hard you can progress your gearscore.
Just sad.
On a note related to the topic at hand, I believe Steven's plan with Nodes "for all" is to incorperate that sense of joy, passion and togetherness that Guilds had in Lineage 2 going after or owning castles but for nearly everyone commited in that node to be included and further conquests are the cherry on top that will potentially make people hungry to join or make stronger guilds.
If the gameplay is fun and interesting co-insiding with certain achievement goals it will carry the game similar to other genre's, it's really as simple as that.