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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.
Min-Maxers will ruin every server's storyline
Birthday
Member
I was thinking on the question:
How will Intrepid prevent the min-maxing mentality from ruining the storyline progression?
Once min-maxers find certain classes to be op they'll look for items that unlock from specific storyline progression paths. This will make most servers basically just go through the same storyline just because min-maxing mentality which always overwhelms all multiplayer games and forces even lots of casuals to conform to it in order to have fun in pvp and pve.
This will ruin the whole idea about different storylines on different servers etc. etc.
This is a big big feature of the game and it seems that it'll die quickly as soon as min-maxers make enough progression and wiki sites get filled with information about storyline progression related items.
How will Intrepid prevent the min-maxing mentality from ruining the storyline progression?
Once min-maxers find certain classes to be op they'll look for items that unlock from specific storyline progression paths. This will make most servers basically just go through the same storyline just because min-maxing mentality which always overwhelms all multiplayer games and forces even lots of casuals to conform to it in order to have fun in pvp and pve.
This will ruin the whole idea about different storylines on different servers etc. etc.
This is a big big feature of the game and it seems that it'll die quickly as soon as min-maxers make enough progression and wiki sites get filled with information about storyline progression related items.
1
Comments
Declare war on them, min their kills and max their deaths
People will try to get the best gear with exact sets but that will be far down the road when a lot of things are tested since there is going to be a lot of discovery in the game and will need a equal amount of time before you can min max all that.
My experience with a meta is that it is merely a class or synergy design that has the most advantages over the most broad range possible. It is not always the actual best setup, creating a meta will always happen, it is easier to lookup a build than to make one after all. In fact many times the new meta was several patches ago but nobody finds it until a few weeks or sometimes longer have passed. Of course IS should still aim to create as diverse a set of classes as possible that all have important synergies that encourages class differentiation and build differences, but don't worry that there will be a meta or believe that there shouldn't. There will always be a meta, lets just hope IS has designed the classes so that there are appropriate ways to deal with it.
Meta is usually just what is believed as the min/max or " a class or synergy design that has the most advantages over the most broad range possible"
One thing that YouTube is really useful for, in gaming, is making a reference guide for things, not even necessarily for 'clout', but simply for your small group and anyone who wishes to join it.
Basically, if someone makes a 'Mage Build Guide' it is sometimes just because otherwise it will take them hours to explain the same principles over and over to someone who asks them, if they want to be helpful.
For a properly competitive game, those players have no reason to make those videos/guides easily accessible to the public, they have some secrets they want to keep, or maybe they need to break a misconception about something that others have, which is then holding them back.
Diverse game means everyone's min-maxing their own build, and if the best players share it, it's no different than if Average Joe shares it. Anyone who doesn't 'understand on their own' will just look for someone to teach them.
If anything you'd have to worry that the 'masses' are strong enough by sheer numbers and randomness that they shut down other people just by pushing whatever their current belief is, but this isn't really about min-maxers, and therefore it'd probably be different by server.
But alas, if it is properly competitive then it can actually be beneficial to purposefully put out misinformation in an effort to maintain an advantage.
A lot of people zonk out before ever even thinking this way, though.
I think this only helps when you are trying to rise to the top of a pyramid, and even then, it just causes discordance, which would break up much of the 'min-maxer meta' that I think @Birthday is concerned about.
But I haven't played a balanced competitive MMO ... probably ever. So it's just speculation...
If there are so many choices when it comes to character builds, then there will be so many possible "best" builds depending on the circumstances you face. We know that there will be a rock-paper-scissors design when it comes to 1v1 combat, so no 1 class should be "best". Also, the game will be focused on group-based balancing, so when we talk about "best builds", we should really focus on what is the best team comp builds.
If we don't know how to do everything before release, we can't ruin the progression of servers at release. It's up to Intrepid to test all the game systems without actually just giving us access to the release version of the game during the betas.
Also, combat is the most important part of this game, but there will be a lot of other activities that you can focus on (and you can't do them all, so you have to pick). This system is counter intuitive to meta gaming, because you will need all the parts but wont be able to provide them for yourself. Things in this category include the 3 trees of artisan skills, focusing on trading and building wealth, engaging in politics based gameplay (mayors), to name a few.
I like the notion of what Azherae said about keeping secrets. Unfortunately it's never like that. Min maxes often get exposed or shared to the public.
Min maxing destroys the "RPG" element of MMORPGs. Minx maxing forces everyone to play the game like it's not an RPG but like it's a MMOExcelSheet. Everyone just looks up formulas and tries to copy paste them on their sheet in hopes that they'll have the most functional and optimal Excel sheet.
Don't get me wrong - it's not that I dislike hardcore gamers and theory crafters. I love them because they add a very fun feel when you play a MMORPGs. They are these walking raid bosses that absolutely shit on you no matter what you try to do. It's quite amazing. However the problem is that nowadays everyone tries to be a min-maxer and min-maxing secrets are very widely and openly shared, so everyone has pretty much the same "most optimal" build. So now there no longer are any of these walking gods. Most battles are most of the time very close and victory mostly boils down to a very slight mechanical skill advantage or very slight gear advantage or just a lucky crit.
This makes the whole PvP aspect of every MMORPG just feel utter trash really because everyone is like a 1%-er. There is no longer that feeling of getting absolutely shit-faced in PvP by someone. Which leaves you wondering what the hell just happened. You get me? There no longer is any spice in the PvP. I'd equate this to "success" in real life. Like success doesn't strike everyone because "success" in the sense of career, financial, glamerous life success, is something that requires a lot of work, energy, devotion and skill to achieve, most of the time. Which is why successful people are rare. This rarity creates a very big awe in you in moment that you meet them in real life. The feeling of star-struck. That's what min-maxing has killed in MMORPGs. There no longer is that feeling of meeting someone with a mad build & skills because everyone is building the same thing and trying to get good at the same playstyle. You are meeting many different players but you are always experiencing the same PvP experience.
Hopefully Intrepid builds AoC to be a MMO with very nice rock-paper-scissor type of mechanic which they promised to do. This is really the only hope to dampen the effect on the game that min-maxers have. Because they can build their class min-maxed to the max but as long as you counter them you'll have a good fighting. So this will basically make min-maxing viable only in cases where it's same class vs same class or class vs class which are not hard-counters to each other.
However saying this doesn't give me much hope cuz when I think about rock-paper-scissor games - I think of League of Legends. Where Riot has been trying to make LoL a rock-paper-scissor game since the beginning but has never really succeeded in doing so because some champs they release just have over-whelmingly over-loaded kits which always skews the balance towards playing them.
I think something that should be removed is the ability to inspect other player's gear & talent builds. This aids min-maxing culture a lot, makes it very hard to keep secrets from people. To top it all of it destroys the social part of MMORPGs because this is a mechanic which makes it so you don't have to socialize with people in order to find their secrets - you just have to click inspect on them & screenshot.
@Azherae My biggest worry is that we wont see different storyline progressions on different servers because everyone will be min-maxing the one and the same world-story progression path because they know it unlocks the best stat items for the current meta. This is a big turn off for me because I really like the idea that Steven is pitching about the choices that players make that will impact the world and storyline and ultimately there will be multiple possible endings and multiple storylines, each being good, bad or somewhere in between. I really love this idea because it really brings the RPG back in the MMORPG genre and I'd like to be able to experience this to the max by casually playing AoC with many alts on many servers in order to see and experience all the different choices and storylines and endings. Min-maxing can easily ruin this - every server might end up following the same or mostly similar choice-path and storyline path because of min-maxing.
I guess I'm not likely to understand your feelings as much since I'm a fighting game analyst/tryhard and those games are entirely 'small mechanical skills and such'.
I do get the feeling you're talking about in Predecessor but... well that's a long story that's only slightly related.
I have faith that Intrepid can make diverse and varied builds and classes. I've played and poked and 'built' enough games to know the principles of it and there's nothing obviously concerning about what we've seen so far other than 'lack of more of it'.
They also have many other options for moving the min-max 'part' of it out of the Server story. What I mean to say is, it seems to me that it would be more likely that someone would build a playstyle they really like and then do their best to find the Nodes/bosses where that playstyle is effective, not the other way around.
I think the stronger players on a server will determine what the server looks like, unless 'an army of carbon copy YouTube Knights' is enough to stop that. And if that's the case, it won't matter, popularity will win.
EQ2 had a lot of secrets.
The game had inspection of gear, so your gear waws never much of a secret. We also used to talk a lot about builds, sharing and giving each other suggestions and stuff. So that part was never a secret.
The secrets came in to it with content, even today you can't find complete information on raid bosses from almost 20 years ago. This is what was kept secret simply because this is what mattered the most in that game. The way you opted to take on a specific encounter would determine whether you had a chance at killing it, or just thought you had a chance at killing it.
Since the game had some raid encounters that were a competition between guilds on the server, we didn't want to assist other guilds with their raiding strategies, as that would lead to them potentially being able to beat us on one of these encounters.
If a game is properly competitive, and there are rewards to be had for succeeding in that competitive aspect of it, then there will be some secrets in regards to that specific aspect.
On the other hand, in a game like WoW where your guild is literally functioning in a vacuum in regards to any other guild, there is no real reason to keep secrets. People are more inclined to share everything - because there is no reason to not share everything.
All of this is applied more to PvE than PvP, but that is because in PvP the thing that matters the most is how many players you bring along - not what their gear or build is.
As to your concern - you say min-maxers will ruin the story of a given server. What you seem to think is that we will pick a node state and attempt to stay there. It would be bad game design if Intrepid had a single node state as being optimal. Rather, there will be many different node states a server could be in, and min-maxers will want to hit each of them, in time.
As such, min-maxers will be a part of the mix that is causing node state change on a server - in other words, we are a part of the servers story.
I would doubt that servers will go after the optimal nodes.
One because most people will care about their builds but if legendary items are truly rare than any 1 player getting them is unlikely and thus which node hits level 6 or not barely matters to the average player and thus will not be the target of their efforts in terms of min/maxing.
Second because I will not do that on my server unless the system is HORRIBLY balanced and I am a standard player when it comes to desires for in game.
And there is no stopping min/max lovers.
Disclaimer: I didn't bother with the rest of the conversation.
Metas will disproportionately affect games where they are statistics heavy than not, comes with the territory. If you want to soften the affect of metas. Then embrace more angles, movement, aiming, precision in the combat. Where a skill doesn't matter if the player doesn't have the talent to apply it.
The whole concern is based on the premise that there will be one or a few quite similar "OP" classes.
And if you think that Intrepid is unable to ensure that this is not the case, withhold your dollars until the Beta. Because if that turns out to be as unbalanced as NWs gauntlets were... well GG.
Me personally, I believe that there is a good chance that the offensive equipment such an "OP" class would need will be found in a different spot than the protective gear to protect from their natural enemies (see Game Balance & Rock-Paper-Scissors on the Wiki) so that the "meta" will not be able to hold up simply due to economic reasons.
Easier said than done I'd say. But considering this game has been "coming out" for a decade now I'd hope that they at least dont fuck it up. Ya know
6 years - not a decade.
And further, it has been "in development" for 6 years, not "coming out". They are very different statements.
Don't be fooled by the doomers. The game process naturally has to be slower for Ashes, considering they had trouble even hiring a sizeable amount of staff until recently, they are still despite the ambition and all not a major, established production studio and the production speed compared to the quality of what has been delivered in the end also points to this taking longer than 6 years (you know, you wouldn't want to have another New World after 7 years of production)
Node A researches the "best" setup and path, and gets the node there faster than anyone else, unlocking certain quests and bosses.
Node B is slower, and sees where node A is going and takes a different path on purpose, so they can do content at node A, and also content at node B
Node C sees what A and B are doing and does something even more different. Now there different content at 3 different nodes to do.
Etc.
Wait til the dataminers get their hands on the client.
How will Intrepid prevent the casual mentality from ruining the storyline progression?
Once casuals find certain storylines to be appealing, they'll look for items that unlock from specific storyline progression paths. This will make most servers basically just go through the same storyline just because casual mentality which always overwhelms all multiplayer games and forces even lots of min-maxers to conform to it in order to have fun in pvp and pve.
Nor how they will be able to ensure which regions have the exact same land management and resources.
Or how they will be able to determine the goals of the guilds running all 5 Castles.
Or who wins the Monster Coin Events. Or how they will ensure that the Goblin Raid Event has the exact same results.
Or how they will ensure that the various Social Orga have the exact same influence on every server.
What does "ruining the storyline progression" even mean??
What? xD Dude everyone has different tastes. Some like to play it evil, some good, some neutral and AoC offers many more choices like that. Meanwhile there is just 1 meta always.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Story_arcs
That link is a description of what the games story arcs are intended to encompass, but it says nothing at all about what you mean by ruining them.
It's been re-iterated that we'll first experience the story-to-be (in it's final iteration(s)) when launch-day comes. That equates to having a "placeholder" story for the Alphas/Betas. If we have to unlock/advance the story of each server and don't know what it is ahead of time? If we don't know what boss/raids/world bosses will - for certain - drop which items? How will anyone know pre-launch what's the best path to follow?
I mean, if after 2 years a perfect advancement has been all mapped out, and players WANT to band together and settle on/move to a new or un-advanced server, then what's the harm?
Let them. Good for them for figuring it out. Whatever server they move to can just be known as the "min-max" or "leet-ist" server. *I* won't miss the ethic, when they go....
85 regular nodes (not even considering the 15 castle nodes) to start with. Level 1 and 2 nodes won't develop much content, so let's just consider levels 3 - 6, or four levels of node possible. So, 85 nodes at 4 levels each, we have a possible combination of 85 to the 4th power or over 52.2 Million combinations of nodes/levels on a server. I would expect that we will never explore them all, much less be able to compare them somehow to come to an agreement of what is 'best' or 'ideal' storyline.
In other words, from a player perspective, this game will have an infinite number of possible storylines or paths to follow. The problem posited by the OP doesn't exist.