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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.
Comments
The topic is about the suggestion that a Level 40 Sword should always beat a Level 35 Sword.
And then there was an extrapolation to BiS gear at max level.
So... even then it's not about whether it's impossible to defeat the Winter Dragon without gear that has bonuses vs Frost and Winter.
You can expect the encounter to be considerably more difficult if your gear and Active Skills have weaknesses vs Frost and Winter. And significantly more difficult if your gear( and Active Skills) has no buffs vs Frost and WInter than it would be if your gear (and Active Skills) does have buffs vs Frost and Winter.
The design is intended to push players to adjust their gear layouts to fit the specifics of the encounter - and the config of those encounters - even at max Adventurer Level- dynamically change, rather than remaining predictably static.
When you go to the Tower of Carphin, it's not always going to be ice cream... sometimes it will be crabs... sometimes it will be steak... sometimes it will be cereal... sometimes it will be chitterlings.
In the Ashes design, the intent is that even at max Adventurer Level, when you decide to raid Tower of Carphin, you will need to prep your gear loadout for the specific content (and Weather conditions) that's there at that moment. And what's there will not always be the same.
The design is intended for even max Adventurer level characters to swap their gear loadouts even when they return to the same dungeon or raid - because the content there will change rather than remaining static.
What the OP suggests, if we follow the logic presented, is that with Level 50 gear you can always defeat the Winter Dragon, just by virtue of the Item Level of the gear.
But, the design for Ashes is that your Level 50 gear (and Active Skills) can suffer significant debuffs if it is not specced properly for the specific type of Weather. And that's just one simplistic example.
For all I know, it's not impossible for a naked group to sometimes defeat the Winter Dragon.
I mean... it's not impossible to eat ice cream just with your fingers. It's also not impossible to eat ice cream with crab leg crackers.
This is why I'm saying that gear being a much bigger part of player power would ruin other parts of the game.
As for having a dozen sets of gear for a dozen sets of situations, afaik people kinda dislike that. Especially when those situations might be changing as often as you seem to think they will. Because if the game is as dynamic as you claim - people will have to carry several sets of gear with them at all times (did so in L2, though for pvp purposes).
And if it's not as dynamic and things simply change once a week (if not 2), then the game will have grinds and gameplay loops (potentially even endgame ones
Right now I'm fairly certain Ashes will have the latter design. You seem to think it's gonna be the former. Do you have any other basis for that opinion other than Steven promising "super dynamic design"? Cause iirc you're one of the most prominent posters of "Steven promised Ashes before 2020" and yet you somehow believe this particular promise with seemingly no doubt?
You either selected a few isolated words, and based on them you wrongly argued back, or you dont have the capacity to grasp a topic.
Zero relevance.
So a dragon who's balanced around lvl35 swords would get demolished if the game is designed around lvl35 swords losing to lvl40 swords.
And if your entire point was "a dude in full lvl35 gear at lvl35 should always lose against a dude in full lvl40 gear at lvl40" - you should've said so, instead of being unreasonable vague with your initial statement.
Are you limiting this on purpose?
Lazy. You havent addressed nothing because you read nothing.
You keep saying Lv40 Lv35, you left out the next words.
You went all over the place just to blab on with whoever was willing.
At this point I have no damn clue what you're even talking about. And I'm more than sure that you won't clarify, because I'm not sure even YOU know what you're talking about.
And yes, I love to blab about pointless stuff, just as one does on a forum. And a thread about PKers using weaker weapons to kill people, while somehow also only talking about swords, when in the case of PKing ONE SIDE DOESN'T EVEN USE THE DAMN SWORD - seems like a pretty nice place to blab about pointless stuff in
If the Level 40 Sword is specced for Sweltering Desert combat it will be suffering debuffs against a WInter Dragon that inflicts Perpetual Winter. And that Level 35 Sword specced for Frost and Winter combat might be the better Sword v the Level 40 Sweltering Desert Sword (and of course the WD) while both wielders are in Perpetual Winter.
There are tons of types of Level 40 Swords that we should expect might defeat a Level 35 Winter Dragon.
I never suggested otherwise.
I never said that gear should be a much bigger part of player character power.
What I said is that the Item Level of the Sword is not necessarily going to be the primary factor that determines which Sword is best for the encounter. There are a variety of other factors that can change how effect that Sword is, like whether the Level 40 Sword is specced for Heat and Desert and the Level 35 Sword is specced for Frost and Winter. In Perpetual Winter, that Level 35 Sword specced for Frost and Winter could be significantly more effective than the Level 40 Sword specced for Heat and Desert. Because that specifc Level 35 Sword will gain significant buffs in a Winter environment, while that specific Level 40 Sword will be gain significant debuffs in a Winter environment.
Which means it will not be the case that a Level 40 Sword is better than a Level 35 Sword 100% of the time.
Again, that is just one very simple example.
It's even more complex when you factor in all the other gear and the Active Skills and the Passive Skills and the Augments and the myriad other buffs and debuffs that affect combat besides just Weather.
Sure. People kinda dislike that.
Ashes is not made for everyone.
I didn't say that I love that aspect of the design.
But that is part of the design. And it is designed that way to support the dynamic changes in the game that continue to occur as Nodes rise and Fall. Even max Level Adventurers will have to adapt to the changes.
And, if you don't want that Winter Dragon's Perpetual Winter messing up your preferred loadout and build for Desert combat, you will be motivated to remove that Winter Dragon when it brings Perpetual Winter to the Desert biome where you love to play.
For one thing, the Winter Dragon will remain until it is dealt with.
You can hear the devs say something similar about the Highwaymen Hills Bandits in the recent Events demo.
Again, we don't have the same defintion of grind, so I am reluctant to agree with you about "grinds". I might agree with you if you used some other word. I think what you mean is something like repeated gameplay and if that's all you mean by "grind", I don't disagree.
I might also agree with what you mean by "loop" - but it's not really a loop because the content doesn't "loop".
And when people try to "loop", the content in the same location will be significantly different. Which means you won't necessarily be able to do the same stuff you did that last time. And the Level 50 BiS gear you wore the last time might you looped through that region not be BiS gear this time you travel through that region.
Tower of Carphin will not always have the same predictable, static content that someone posted as a guide - the content will not always be ice cream.
Even if you return to the same Region during the same Season, that stuff may no longer be there.
For instance, if you try to loop back to your favorite Desert Biome, to do the stuff you like to do in that Desert Biome, you might find that you can't do it because there is a Winter Dragon you have to get rid of first.
Because that Perpetual WInter the WInter Dragon brings completely disrupts all the content you normally want to do in the Desert Biome.
Again, that is not just ice cream flavors because you don't have to change untensils if it's always ice cream and just sprinkles are added. In Ashes, the game pushes us to bring different gear to the same location because the content in that location changes significantly. And that continues to be the case even at max Adventurer Level.
Remember that this discussion is about gear.
Your sprinkles analogy is not valid and is irrelevant for this specific discussion.
Outside of this gear discussion, your sprinkles anlalogy probably has more merit.
If we were talking about a game where the graphics for Weather changes does not actually buff or debuff gear, then, yeah, Weather changes would effectly just be sprinkles.
OK we see some snow or rain, but it doesn't affect movement - it doesn't affect the gear we wear - it doesn't affect our skills. It's literally just visual sprinkles of snow and rain.
But, in the Ashes design, Weather signifcantly buffs and debuffs gear - to motivate players to adapt their gear to fit the Weather. It's one of the intended motivations to get players to want to remove that WInter Dragon and the Perpetual Winter it brings.
Other Events also bring signifcant changes to the world that are not mere graphics or sprinkles to the static quo.
I'm talking about what the current design is.
Super-dynamic design is one of the Core Pillars: Nodes.
"Part of the whole experience with Nodes is that there is no real Endgame, in that the world is constantly shifting every day. Month one is going to be really different from month two; and that's for the level 50s and level 1s."
---Jeffrey Bard
So, no, I don't expect Steven to change that part of the design. But...
That's why I keep saying "By design..." because we have no guarantee that the devs will be able to successfully implement that design.
Make your build work different?
Hoe does that work?
What kinda gear you takking about.
Whats a build? You mean how you level up your skills and idk job class?
What your fire mage changes into a ice mage?
Or do you mean armour penetration?
Idk what you mean.
Can you give me a example how it would change your build?
I really don't know what you mean with build?
Is that when some guy on the internet tells you how to "build" your char,
What skills to level up and what gear to get?
Is that a build?
Off topic.
(Once there was a time before internet,
When you played a game. U yes, U actually played a game)
In Ashes, it might also include Secondary Archetype.
It is how you have built your character. Some aspects of the character build will be permanent, like Primary Archetype and Race.
But, yes, sometimes people will try to push a Fire Mage to become an Ice Mage because the guide for Most Efficient Tactics Available for a specific Dungeon or Raid says that all Mages in the group must be switch to an Ice Mage build.
Into a ice mage.
Personally I want something fresh, something different, then what you are talking about. I don't really like those games. But I do love a good rpg.
I don't think u should respect and change your charter, for a dungeon that's bad programming or fanatic play.
Maybe they stuck in there build world and are blind for the thousand of other possibility. One way? Or thousands of ways?
want kinda role play is that, changing your char for a dungeon. Now your not uniek any more.
If I want that I can play those other MMO's
Dmg meters and stuff like that.
Gonna be hard, to make that game play. your talking about.
And how can Ashes of Creations avoid making those mistakes?
Agreed here. Changing conditions in game such as weather or territory control, I prefer (and am used to) them only changing strategy, not gear. Players continue to be 'who they are' and gear 'how they like', and alter their tactics for the 'efficiency'.
Therefore I feel like the discussion of changing elements in the world can be detached from this topic. Particularly since the topic had so much to do with 'heavy offense builds that are possible via cheap gear', and any statistical changes to weaponry or even skills would not divert it much.
Basically, we'd need to have the discussion of if the PKer strategy would be altered by their weapon in some way other than power. I suppose there are also some situations where their defense gear could matter, such as 'PKing target A while Target B who is willing to fight, is near'.
Generally I agree with NiKr that PKer strategy doesn't change much, but one consideration might be that cheap gear makes it less effective to chase a retreating opponent. This is, at least the dynamic I'm used to, since the PvX games I play are moreso about the comparison of 'the PKer's ability to kill' vs 'the NonCombatant target's ability to escape'.
If a lower level weapon somehow is tuned to fall just short of the expected TTK vs a retreating higher level target, I'm good with that.
I'll do me.
Play for the fun of the game,
And the armor pieces, they will come on my path or not.
But what you are saying, builds and gear.
And gear for this and gear for that.
I don't like that game play much.
Hope they force you to put most of your gears and items in your house.
Gotta go back to get that (overrated gear)
And then i see toxicity,
about thrash gear and builds.
Only time will tell, Maybe I like it maybe I don't.
I just hope not every body is gonna be stuck in that, one way of doing it.
And the whole surver respects to a fire mage. Because supposedly that's the one way to beat that certain area.
But the atk/def values would, in theory, not change. And @Dygz you said "significantly buff/debuff" in your last response. Do you have a quote for that? Cause my quick check of the seasons page only had 3 quotes on items changing and the biggest example of that was "a frozen cloak will get a buff", which doesn't tell shit except for the fact that I didn't hear "significant change" in there.
My main point was this. WD has 300 def, because he's balanced for lvl35 swords with, say, 200atk. The fight for lvl35 people is difficult, so they might want some anti-freeze buffs to take him down.
George wants lvl40 swords to always win again lvl35s. To me this implies that players with them do so much more dmg that a player with a weaker sword simply can't outpace that incoming dmg with their own. And this then leads to he WD dying to those lvl40 swords waaay quicker, even if the group with those swords doesn't have any anti-freeze gear/buffs.
But both George and Dygz are stuck in their views (not like I'm not either
I expect greens to be able to run away, like, 90% of times, if they start running away as soon as they're attacked. 30s ttk and "no CC against greens" supports this assumption imo.
And then on top of that, the bigger the difference between the attacker's weapon power and the victim's def values - the longer the victim can stay in one place and still survive.
George's examples of what he's trying to argue against are all over the damn place, so it's hard to figure out what exactly he's even trying to prevent. And I think I've already addressed all of his examples in this thread, but he refuses to acknowledge those. Classic George
Sorry, George. You might have intended this thread to be a sumptuous meal (to keep with the food analogies...) with many elaborated courses, but you've included, maybe as a side dish, a can of worms. Delicious, delicious worms. Their flavour, once tasted, overpowered all the others and people now gorge themselves as fast as they can work their forks and knifes. Whatever is the level of their cutlery...
Correct me if I am wrong or mistaken but isn't there a soft cap for recrafting gear that increases the risk vs reward of said item to the point where you risk losing the item more and more the higher you chance it?
Not only that, you will be continuously (at some point or another) replacing gear due to durability/destroyed and/or having a few sets catered to certain builds per se depending on how stats directly affect abilities & talents regardless of active or passive.
So there is always going be some gap, in power via gear vs character build. But i dont know how high that gap will be but I will say... skill should be more important than gear but the two do not always co-exist synergistically.
Usually in RPG's gear is relatively a power system that can increase but not limited to such things as armour rating, resource bonuses (health/magic/stamina), character stats etc.
I am quite curious on the crafting system if substituting resources will affect the gear if it is planned for that based on recipe but that just may be something not planned. I imagine quality plays a factor in it all as well?
will have to see
Or, you can build your fighter for attack speed instead of raw attack damage. More smaller hits in a short time vs fewer bigger hits in a long time.
Gear should allow you to change your playstyle, from one kind of build to another, on the same class, to better suit how you like to play.
edit: For the best examples of what I am thinking about, look 20-ish years ago into FF11
It is not intended to be “sprinkles”.
It is intended to change the world enough that players adjust the way they have been playing.
But…that is kind of the problem if only going to the wiki. You have to be sure to listen to the actual source. But, also, sometimes many quotes and sources are removed from the wiki to help keep it streamlined with the info Lex thinks fits best.
For example, there used to be at least 6 quotes about Ashes having no endgame, and now there are only 2.
And those 2 are mostly fine for general knowledge. But, kinda problematic when you’re looking for dev quotes during a debate about features.
And… it also helps if you know the source material well enough to remember how the quotes were used in conjunction with other quotes. And you remember why those quotes were stated in the first place.
Right. You are trying to find parameters to support some other debate.
This discussion is that a Level 40 Sword should never lose to a Level 35 Sword.
So, again, it doesn’t really even matter what def the WD has because the WD example is more about the effects of Perpetual Winter on a Level 40 Sweltering Desert Sword compared to a Level 35 Frosty Winter Sword.
Under the conditions of Perpetual Winter, the Level 35 Sword might very well do more damage than the Level 40 Sword because that specific Level 35 will have damage buffs and the Level 40 Sword will have damage debuffs.
Obviously, we should be expecting a Level 40 Sword to be doing significantly more damage against a Level 40 Dragon than a Level 35 Sword. It’s absurd to even broach that example.
If we’re gonna focus on the damage vs the WD…
we should commonly expect the Level 40 Sword to be the better Sword against a Level 40 World Boss than a Level 35 Sword would be against a Level 40 World Boss.
But, there will very likely be times when that is not the case, like when the World Boss is a Winter Dragon that brings the effects of Perpetual Winter, which will buff the damage of the Level 35 Frosty Winter Sword and debuff the damage of the Level 40 Sweltering Desert Sword.
The intent of the Ashes is design is that a Level 40 Winter Dragon will be significantly challenging vs Level 40 players using Levwl 40 gear.
Such that they will be motivated to use gear that has buffs for combat in a Winter Biome.
I don’t expect the balance to be such that it is impossible to defeat the Winter Dragon if you’re not using a “vs Frosty Winter” Sword.
What I said is that we can expect that the Level 35 “vs Frosty Winter” Sword is better than a Level 40 “vs Sweltering Desert” Sword when fighting in Perpetual Winter.
The OP states that a Level 40 Sword should never lose to a Level 35 Sword.
And I stated that won’t always be the case.
Then you reply: “Well, there will be times when the Level 40 Sword is better than a Level 35 Sword, for example, if you’re fighting a Level 35 boss.”
Yeah… duh. We agree. There will be times when when a Level 40 Sword is better than a Level 35 Sword. Especially vs a Level 35 boss.
That goes without saying.
I think you are not wrong.
I think I agree that the PKer strategy doesn’t change much. But, a PKer could also choose to fight naked for a variety of reasons.
That doesn’t mean that a PKer using a Level 40 Sword should never lose to an opponent using a Level 35 Sword.
And doesn’t mean that the Level 40 Sword will always be the better weapon compared to a Level 35 Sword.
😁
Jokes aside.
I have nothing against it, if there are several different Leagues of Gear. Like : when i run around with a muddy Wooden-Stick, that looks like i might have pulled out of the butthole of a dead Animal Cadaver,
it should be okay if lose against someone, who has a finely and extravagantly crafted Steel Sword.
If i run around in Rags - and encounter someone of my own Level and Skill, who wears Leather or Chainmail, changes are he might be better protected than me, right ?
Also, " AGAIN ",
can we count consumable Items like Potions and so on also to the Gear ?
Notice me, Senpais !!
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
Though when it comes to elements maybe it might be on the weapon or might be more semi vertical / horizontal progression using an enhancement system.
Though it also means a weapon at the level or above will be immensely more powerful dmg wise. The content maybe being more scaled on the higher side of dmg, meaning if you aren't full spec'd you will have a really tough time dealing 20-60% less dmg between varying players and their levels if not spec'd right.
Here is the sentance from the OP.
"I want to make the case so that a player with a Lv40 sword should never lose against a player with a Lv35 sword --- Just as higher level players will always beat lower level players, so it should be that people that have managed to get their hands on better gear will (most of the time) beat people equal in all aspects except for gear power---"
You are talking about PvE and you insist that the discussion is about 40-35, or frost buff variants are other nonsense irrelevant to the topic, when the discussion is about gear power should matter, to prevent ppl from killing with cheap gear, ignoring the punishment of gear loss
But please... tell me more about scenarios in which a lv35 sword with frost protection is better than a lv40 without, even though I have said "they are equal in all aspects except for power". Find some other irrelevant stuff/semantics to argue about.
Here I will give you some help. Say "does power mean effects or numbers? Because if power means effects then they are both 'equal' if they both have effects, but the Lv35 is frost protected and the Lv40 has mp regen the player with the Lv35 will win in PvE against the encounter and you are wrong George", and then go on your a couple of pages pretending that L40 and Lv35 swords have anything to do with the topic.
It's so easy to ignore the topic, pretent that the issue is what you decide it to be, talk about the defifition of end game for some reason, create a scenario of 0 relevance like a PvE encounter and elemental attributes and then decide that you got it all figured out. How can it not be when you dont read or leave out parts of the post like EQUAL IN ALL ASPECTS.
There must be someone watching all of this and say "what the f... am I reading here".
Oh well. Cheap entertainment for poor minds. Have your giggles.
They say the the villagers laugh at the madman and the madman laughs at them, but in this case, in these forums, Ima have wait until launch, in this village of mad men.
1) The topic isnt your favourite sentance.
2) Equal in all aspects.
The problem is that even you haven't defined this 'equality' in a way that makes sense in Ashes.
First we gotta at least assume something like 'both Fighters', maybe they can have different secondaries. Then we have to assume similar build loadouts, or at least, it's debatable.
If your whole post was 'I want two identical fighters, but one uses more powerful gear, and because they are equally skilled, the one with the better gear should win', that's totally obvious and the rest of your post made no sense.
We just went beyond you and started talking about when the characters aren't identical because most of the rest of your post brought it up. And when the characters aren't identical, in Ashes at least, 'better gear' isn't defined (unless you want them to make a level 40 version of every possible sword? I don't even mind that, there are enchanting systems that would work out fine for this, but STILL might not achieve it).
So which is it? Because fighting styles matter. A Rogue/Fighter or even Fighter/Rogue who stacks poisons is gonna win by having better poison and ability to 'stall', not 'the higher level sword'. So then what, we assume you didn't mean 'the higher level sword' but 'the harder to get sword'? Or what? There's no example to even use.
Come up with something, literally anything, better than 'lv40 vs 35', cause the fact that you couldn't come up with a better example in the OP is the entire reason it got fixated on.
You rolled up with what is essentially a balance suggestion for a game we have never seen an actual weapon or defensive gear effect for. So it wasn't even that no one took you seriously. They took it MORE seriously than you did.