Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Cause, while you could fight mobs in low tier gear, when you got an upgrade in L2 you felt amazing. It was usually the result of weeks of hardcore grinding and you'd feel the difference pretty much immediately. Especially when it came to weapons.
L2's stages of progression were separated by ~5-6lvls, with gear tier steps at lvl20/40/52/61/76. The 61-76 was obviously the longest step and didn't really have internal progression, but that was mainly because gear at both ends was fairly difficult to acquire and gear from 61 would be then enchanted to make the farming of 76 gear faster (relatively speaking). Most of the time you'd be lagging behind the tier by a few lvls from the one that allows you to use that tier of gear.
The speed at which players experience progression as a positive is almost a mathematical function. It's pretty annoying (to me personally) in design because I'm on the 'long' end and I constantly have to correct it for players.
Imagine doing it in a card game where you have to make it so that people can 'grasp that they've gotten better' while still having all the same card options, and you have the approximate effect that very slow gearing has. It's a 'discovery' or 'skill advancement' loop. You can do a lot of stuff to make it exist even in games where all tools are available immediately, but you're still trying to hit the spot for the core player.
The more simplistic the game, the faster you have to do it.
The advantage to new gear every level is that it is easier to very finely tune your leveling content. If there are large gaps, you kind of can't as you don't know what strength your players will be at. Not knocking the game at all, but it seems to me that this isn't something the L2 develoeprs even considered - tight PvE experiences are nto what the game was about.
The downside is that it just makes for a worse experience.
This is kind of why 8-ish levels feels about right to me (though this does depend on the leveling speed). It is close enough together that developers have a good idea of how strong players will be for any content piece, making it much easier to tune, but slow enough that each upgrade still has the potential to feel earned.
Not necessarily? We're talking about the leveling process, not so?
Also remember this isn't about a 'real' thing at all. It's almost entirely a manipulation of a psychology thing. As a gamer, you can fight it, but as a designer, you don't. And as a result of that, gamers shouldn't have to.
If a designer can't manage to produce the illusions to make the game feel good, they need experience. If they can do it and turn those illusions into real gameplay, then they're probably quite experienced.
I guess this might not make a lot of sense directly to someone who doesn't study this a lot?
Ashes implies that it will be very very light on illusions, so that's partially why I hope they have deep understanding of how to push all the buttons in people's minds through real gameplay.
- Noaani prefers more frequent up-gearing
- iirc EQ2 had exactly that
- you say that the more simplistic a game is - the faster its gearing (which represents the feeling of progression) will be
- hence, EQ2 is simplistic, which is funny to me
But I think I just misunderstood your last sentence in that comment, so my thinking was wrong.EQ2's leveling was quite slow. Not Korean slow, but slow for a western game.
It took so long to level in EQ2, that when the first expansion came out a year later, it wasn't actually a given that people were at the level cap yet.
tera is basically just follow main quests till you hit max level T_T then that's when the game starts. where are you playing? i made a lancer in a private server (i played lancer main in tera back then in 2012 or something). nostalgia heheh
Well, opinions don't matter too much. I can't tell you if what they are doing is right or wrong. I can't say anything about how they are implementing it. in fact, no one can, because we haven't seen it yet. we don't know what gear progression looks like.
But to try and give you a better answer, taking everything I remember they have said into consideration, which is:
Possibilities are as follows:
Noaani, you have a sense of humor? what? lets go.
I think the most likely system for now is that we either get enough gear from other sources on higher levels similar how the latest levels in WoW usually were (because it was easier to farm the mats to level your artisan level when the mobs in those zones no longer posed a danger to you) or we will see a quality cap on artisan proficiency rather than a level cap. Less likely though possible would be that items themselves can be "levelled" so that a journeyman coat crafted at lv 30 will stay viable for longer - though this would give the "first wave" of players an entirely different gaming experience from everyone else at a later point in time, not sure if thats the intent.
I'd put my money on the "gear cap" thesis for release.
im playing there too T_T lmao but im low level, im playing very casually