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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
Are you fighting naked?
I am not confused about anything. Maybe you should stop running up and down the MC Hammers stairs, looking for a point to make.
Me and my friends were beating better geared enemies because we were good.
There shouldnt be a case for every single player to have a chance against better geared enemies. Only the good ones will make it happen, rarely. Even with 80% of a characters power output coming from gear. High tier gear, mid tier gear, low tier gear.
High lv gear, mid level gear, low level gear.
80%.
That's 2 steps of skills, a tiny bit of base stats and unknown difference in gear (was it top B vs low A or the other way around?).
Was this on an IL server or smth later? Also, how late was this into the server's life? Cause that relates to the cheapness and ease of B acquisition.
You said you don't want PKer groups to be able to kill people in cheap gear. What, in L2's terms, would be "cheap"? C grade at the start of a server? B grade a few months in?
Cause iirc C grade against S grade would be around 100 vs 1k dmg, let alone Kamael-onwards chronicles with their elemental attributes.
Your problem can't be with daggers, cause you mentioned shooting from far range, so an archer in C grade would be maybe criting a few hundred against a proper high lvl character? I assume you want them to do 0 in Ashes, right (relatively speaking in terms of gear difference)?
So what, in your opinion, would be the cut off for "cheap gear"? Also, what about simply super rich players for whom losing even full A grade sets on a few months server wouldn't be an issue? Would you be fine with those PKers?
c4, don't remember how late into the server. The server lasted 2 more or so years.
2-3 duels, my underleveled, true-skill player friend always won. He was the only SK to beat Dark Avengers in the Lineage2 c4, he would even beat multitudes of players alone. The other SK was the most famous SK of the server at the time from one of the most organized guilds, part of one of the 2 stronger alliances.
So again, all those people here talking about "skill" dont know what true skill is. Skill isn't the Developers making it easier for you to complete. That is blatantly asking for help to "prove your skill".
I consider C grade cheap gear and easy to replaced. In a server with mostly top B-graders, a group of mages/archers equipped with cheap gear could easily wipe an enemy group if PK wasn't a concern. Gear has to matter so that people dont PK without fear.
For context, C grade was considered Lv40 acquired gear. Top C grade gear wasn't really produced, so the fact that it can be considered lv46 gear shouldn't be taken in account.
Low B gear could be produced by players around 52, with top B considered mostly at around 58.
So we have cheap gear at Lv40 which could be used to bypass the fear of item loss and tip the scales on a fight against a group of people mostly dressed in Lv58 gear. That's 18 levels.
18 levels that cover hunting zones, mobs with farming mats, and related quests for designs. All that can be skipped if an organized group chooses to have hits squads to take out competition before the conflict even begins. They can just replace the cheap gear.
I don't think C grade against S grade is a reasonable example.That's a 36 level difference at least.
If however, once people start reaching the levels of gaming that S grade can be produced, the levels of market and gold circulating in the economy, as well as the abundance of mats that are saturated, having improved nodes, build ships and FHs, in a few words, if the server has so many materials that "top B grade" would become easily replaced in AoC, then organized groups could wipe out strategic targets in S gear, such as healers, bards and 1-2 enemy nukers, if they don't worry about the punishments of PK. Zero chance of fighting back. The conflict will be over before it even begins.
Cheap C grade and top B grade have 18lvs difference. Top B grade and S grade have 18 levels of difference. So here is the cut-off.
I would never believe that people would get so stuck on a tiny sentence of L40 sword vs L35 sword - it's immediately obvious that there was no attempt to be specific with the number there, nor do we have any concept of what AoCs gear grading and leveling will be - but people completely missed the point.
In L2 at the time we had 78 levels, Ashes aims to start with 50 levels. Numbers dont matter, the concept matters.
And the concept is that gear needs to modify your characters potential to such extent that people should always aim to get up to date with their gear
Rogue classes take distance out of the equation. Stop assuming. The only reason we won't be including rogues in our PK group is that ranged DPS fair better at PvE and organized pvp. Rogues are a fun class, but in the grant scheme of things, the most useless class for those that want to influence a server. That's why I dont care to talk about their potential with cheap gear.
Filthy rich players? When was ever anybody in this life managed to compete fairly against money? Yes I would be fine with those PKers that choose to share their wealth with us upon dying and losing their valuable gear.
They want to claim the raid for a chance to loot? We will loot their PKers and they can keep their damn raid boss.
That's not a serious argument. Dont further discuss this bit, it's ridiculous.
Crits against the weakest (def wise) mage (or was SH even weaker, I forget) in the game are in fact quite nice. But the response from the mage is as deadly.
Obviously it's almost impossible to draw 1-to-1 parallels between Ashes and L2, because we don't know gear design, buff design, skill ranges/casts/dmg design and attribute defense designs/interactions.
If Ashes ends up somewhere along the lines of this setup, I guess diagonal nerfs along the lines of "your crit rate/dmg gets lower the more gear lvl steps there are between your gear and your current lvl" would be fine with me.
It would effectively achieve the same result George wants w/o completely nerfing the gear itself, because lower lvl players would have full stats with their proper gear and would be able to fight upwards, while high lvl players in low lvl gear would have diminished stats.
I think that would be a good compromise here. Interested in others' opinions on this suggestion.
Is that what you are saying?
What I want is gear to impact the characters potential to the point that people should be up to date with their gear. It's that simple. Gear providing only 50% of strength is a problem.
I never talked about this " It would effectively achieve the same result George wants w/o completely nerfing the gear itself, because lower lvl players would have full stats with their proper gear and would be able to fight upwards, while high lvl players in low lvl gear would have diminished stats." stuff. That's you saying things.
Top B is 3 gear steps away from S, while low C is 5 steps away from top B (4 if we're talking about Plated instead of Mithril, or in case of mage gear).
And so, just to make sure cause you dislike it so much when I say smth you didn't, do you want Top B on a high lvl player to do 0 (or at least super negligible) dmg against S grade?
Cause in terms of gear steps (assuming steps of 5 lvls) this would be roughly "mid tier lvl45 gear does not do dmg to anything higher than base tier lvl50".
Because, again, in the context of a PK party who're assist killing people, you'd need 0 damage from all of them in order to NOT PK a target. And it would have to be 0, because the remaining 20% of player power would have to be negligible (which is a whole separate discussion in its own right).
This is gear regulation. You do realize that your request of "gear should be 80% of player power" is an even stronger "class balance" idea than mine, right? Because your suggestion requires all other mechanics to be weaker.
If gear decides 80% of my power, any change in my class-side build matters waaay less, because it changes a fraction of a %, while changing a single piece of gear would shift my power by ~5% (or would at least have the influence on 5% of my overall power).
So your suggestion is a much bigger "fuck over the class design" idea than mine
My suggestion literally accomplishes what you say you want. Suboptimal gear builds will force people into wearing their lvl-appropriate gear.
Though, just to make it clear once more, I'd want this if the situation with AoC's balancing is in the same place as that screenshot I posted, where archer does ~x5 on crits, so even though his baseline attacks are not all that powerful, his high crit rate/dmg make his overall dps insane.
A person wearing lvl-appropriate gear would not have the nerf. Lower-lvled players would still have troubles against high-lvled players, because the difference between the two is not only in the gear power. While high lvl people who're trying to cheese the system by going down in gear lvls would get fucked over (which is exactly what you're asking for).
You are not saying anything here.
2) "Top B is 3 gear steps away from S, while low C is 5 steps away from top B (4 if we're talking about Plated instead of Mithril, or in case of mage gear)."
You are not saying anything here.
3)"And so, just to make sure cause you dislike it so much when I say smth you didn't, do you want Top B on a high lvl player to do 0 (or at least super negligible) dmg against S grade?"
A top B (non ++++) should do negligible damage against S. Zero dmg and super negligible dmg are extremities to discredit the concept.
4) "Cause in terms of gear steps (assuming steps of 5 lvls) this would be roughly "mid tier lvl45 gear does not do dmg to anything higher than base tier lvl50"."
So you are taking the "steps" from L2 and draw a correlation to AoCs system that we don't even know? The only thing we know is the lv Cap.
Why are you so stuck up on numbers that dont reflect anything logical at this point. Read 3) for your answer.
5) Because, again, in the context of a PK party who're assist killing people, you'd need 0 damage from all of them in order to NOT PK a target. And it would have to be 0, because the remaining 20% of player power would have to be negligible (which is a whole separate discussion in its own right).
You are repeating your self.
See 4)
6)
I am opposed to nerfing any class mechanics, which is the core of gameplay and fun, in order to preserve a non-visual gear modifier of "50%" or whatever.
If you are going to start with "lower crit/chance based on gear" what's next? Are you going to do coding on all classes and their unique features JUST TO AVOID CHANGING THE 50% NUMBER? What the actual fvck.
I will say it again. ESO did the same mistake of messing around with classes instead of addressing the gear in that game which was 100% of the power, due to the active combat gear did for characters.
I will also repeat that I did not use meta gear in ESO, in other words, I chose to ignore the 100% of power that meta gear would give characters, and with my build based on my classes strengths (ignoring the OP weapons in favor of dual wielding), I achieved competitiveness. so:
a) Spare me the "your idea will fvck up the class design".
b) You say that changes to your build will be negligible if gear provides 80% of the characters potential dmg?
Are you saying that two people with the same gear, one of them having build cleverly and the other not having a clue will fair the same? All the skills, all the cooldowns all the combos, all the decisions will not matter? Who is taking you seriously any more? Same level, same gear strength, but oh no! Just because universally gear for all levels and tiers has a real impact on passive stats, STATS, active gameplay goes out of the window all of a sudden. What kind of upside-down logic is this? Who do you hope to brainwash here?
c) Spare me the talk of skill, when all you do is ask to lower the importance of gear in some twisted crusade to give everyone a chance to punch up; only the good ones can.
I am asking again. Are you saying you want to nerf classes in order to address the issues I brought up in this thread, due to how skippable gear will be if it only contributes 50% of power?
7) "My suggestion literally accomplishes what you say you want. Suboptimal gear builds will force people into wearing their lvl-appropriate gear.
Though, just to make it clear once more, I'd want this if the situation with AoC's balancing is in the same place as that screenshot I posted, where archer does ~x5 on crits, so even though his baseline attacks are not all that powerful, his high crit rate/dmg make his overall dps insane.
A person wearing lvl-appropriate gear would not have the nerf. Lower-lvled players would still have troubles against high-lvled players, because the difference between the two is not only in the gear power. While high lvl people who're trying to cheese the system by going down in gear lvls would get fucked over (which is exactly what you're asking for)."
You dont have a suggestion. Just a knee-jerk reaction. It's a non-practical roundabout system, which nobody would ever code for, IF they saw the need to address the numerous issues I brought up. If not, fine by me.
Your suggestion will impact all classes, while mine mostly impacts dpsers, who're at the core of your OP's problem.
I want to nerf non-lvl-appropriate gear, just as you do. But I don't want to change the entire game's power scaling balancing to do so.
Here are some facts from other games:
Mages in L2 did not have critical dmg until way later. In fact, criticals where only tied to normal attacks and the rogues skills, in which they either dealt critical dmg, or didn't work.
In ESO for a period, crit rate was completely ignored in favor of other metas.
Nuking (pvp burst/focus dmg) isn't the same as dpsing, which is a consistent flow of dmg, useful for large periods of time. DoTs, are good for DPSing, they don't do anything for my PK squad tactic I mentioned.
ESO/Tera online/BDO.
You suddenly became hooked on crit rate/dmg ever since I mentioned that I dont care for rogues, but I would favor ranged DPS. Ranged DPS have other usage other than PKing people around or goals; I simply wouldn't waste guild slots with rogues.
You somehow linked it to this discussion, showing everybody how you just say stuff on the fly. That's not feedback. That's just social media back and forth.
So first you want to nerf classes (with critical for some reason, even though dps has nothing to do with nuking) and secondly you want to nerf every poor guy that doesn't keep up to date with their gear, because I said that people should keep up with their gear.
At this point I think it is evident (especially if we have a quick look at your threads) that you are more interested in chatter than thinking things through and contributing.
I then suggested a way to curb that kind of burstdown, with the asterisk of "if Ashes has this exact kind of problem". Your rogue comment had no influence on my suggestion.
So let me get this straight. You confirmed what I said, that cheap gear can be used to bring down properly geared targets. Does that mean that all your posts, all your arguments, all your mental gymnastics and provocations up to this point are nulled?
But now you think that the answer is to nerf criticals and classes to address the issue that you were denying up to now? What about all the aggressive classes that don't rely on criticals? Will you code for all sorts of mechanics?
Why don't you sit this one out? You own goaled..
Considering that you didn't provide any concrete info or argument previous to me asking for them, I had to see for myself whether my statement very anywhere close (this entire testing thing having been triggered from discussions with others and not you, as well).
I was correct on "does a few hundred" statement, but I forgot that highly lvled archer in L2 had very high crit rate/dmg, which let them burst down their targets (same applies to mages). I ignored dagger crits because you mostly talked about ranged attackers.
After having reminded myself of those archer stats I saw that there was a potential bigger problem (class-based btw, not gear one), so I decided to look for a compromise between my stance of "change only the corruption system" and yours "change only gear". So I came up with the crit idea, because burst usually implies crits, given that lower powered gear will usually result in lower base attack.
And having provided my asterisk, I suggested tying gear to lvls from both sides (currently it only works with forward progression), but in a weaker way. Currently we won't be able to equip higher lvl gear on lower lvl characters. And I suggest limiting benefits that gear provides, if that gear's lvl is lower than yours by a wide margin (just as C grade is on a 76+lvl char).
I know this is a novel idea for you, but people can in fact change their minds after getting new information. Sometimes that's even the entire point of discussions.
Could you provide such a class?
Checked just to make sure and mage's attacks w/o crits would need to land 20 times to bring an unhealed archer down (with A grade jewels too, so would need even more against S).
Also, your main argument was through ranged PKers cause they could attack out of nowhere, so which ranged chars would be able to burst a target w/o crits, while wearing a lower-powered piece of gear?
And if you just come back to "party of 8 all just assist hitting a target" then, even outside of the details of buffers and/or healers and stuff like that - if crits can get up to x3-4, that would mean that absence of crits would decrease overall power of that group ~a dozenfold.
p.s. AoC's ttk will be way longer than anything buff-based in L2, so it would take EVEN longer than 20 hits.
Tyrant gladiator
From ESO Templar
From Tera Bers warrior
Explosive builds that don't rely on crit and have ranged capabilities.
I for one never cared for critical and as much as I could avoided it as a source of power. It makes my skill more reliant on luck. In L2 I'd have a sword singer in my gladiator, warlord etc etc group, instead of a BD.
In ESO I would completely ignore critical and stack WD.
You want to punish a big section of the player base for a very specific situation, whereas I suggest that all gear, all players, all builds be equally affected by 80% instead of 50%. The ones affected would be those that use cheap gear for tactics or skip gear and rush to end game, since 80% power on rubbish gear would hurt them.
Anyway. Let some1 else keep you company. I told you, you are the one moving the goalposts just for the sake of arguing. You can discuss with others your 180 turn around and your class nerf.
The crits could've been even higher as the archer is missing the Blessing of Queen
Chant of Protection(-30% total critical damage received)
Counter Critical(-30% total critical damage received)
Eye of Pa'agrio(-30% chance to received a Critical Hit)
{PvP}Robe Armor Critical Down triggered skill(-15% total critical damage received -15% chance to received a Critical Hit)
This + buffing other classes skill power and giving those skills the possibility to crit was Lineage 2's way of dealing with the Daggers and Archers Non-Gear character power unbalance, and i would say it was pretty effective.
Aren't we all sinners?
the potential problem is with the difference between gear tiers.
You cant claim that it gave you 99% of your power and at the same time you maintained that power without using it.
What are you saying?
Cheap gear =/= endless gear, so I can just buy all of it up, then go hunt those PKers with said cheap gear and just be their main provider, while also selling them their own gear back.
This is pretty much a money printer, at least until they run out of the ability to come back from the corruption pentalties.
So bring on the 30% gear power and people PKing dudes in starting gear - I'M ALL FOR IT
Are you saying that PK squads after killing a few ppl during a specific goal, without having to keep track of their PK count during that encounter, dont have the mental capacity to complete redemption quests to lower their PK count after the goal is complete?
Is that how little you understand the concept of using cheap gear to bypass the fear of loss, during raids for example?
Dont retract. Retire.
get fully naked and attack a monster your level. see what happens, not elpys lol this will show you that gear gives you like 99% of your power and thats not only limited to damage.
2. In L2 PVP_MOD exists and don't accessible for low lvl gear.
3. In L2 ATT_MOD exists and don't accessible for low lvl gear.
4. In L2 masterwork (rare crafted) items exists and kinda hard to obtain and replace.
I think that 30%, 50%, 80%, 100% or whatever is something impossible to set in stone with a formulas with a lot of variables. The best I can see from this thread is gear mechanics that starts with some gear tier, requires time to obtain to prevent power spikes and increasing the risk of losing these gear in PK scenario. Am I close to your mindflow, @George_Black ?
People should work for their gear, visit locations, complete quests, farm mats, put the effort in order to get better gear and progress in the world. They should be afraid to lose it.
I agree that playing with numbers is silly, that's why I didn't put effort nailing them down. I had hopes that people could see the big picture.
It's a no brainer that gear should matter. How you tinker with your stat sources (like I did in early L2 and went for HP instead of speed and extreme dmg), how you use your active skills, what consumables you use and what affiliations empower you is part of skill.
Your combat reflexes, your positioning and your awareness of the environment, team and enemies. All skill.
Demanding for gear not to play an important role on your stats, or now asking for some classes to be weakened, is all illogical.
Steven gave us a number. 50%. I understand the rest of the 50% coming from archetype skills, class combos, consumables, affiliation bonuses, guild bonuses, any other Ashes of Creation bonus relevant to our characters stats.
I think that if players are equal on all the above aspects, meaning they have a good understanding of their class and how to PvP, the 50% of the gear impact on your character will be weak enough for people to bypass certain gear brackets and aim for endgame, skipping entire AoC content, or in my case, build a ranged mage/archer group, in addition to the main pvp group and the pve group, whose purpose during objectives will be to focus fire without worrying about the PK count. The main pvp group will make short work of the rest, and if any red player dies and drops gear, it will be replaced easily.
This whole numbers showcase for pages was a bit funny for me, and the cherry on top of the cake was that it proved my concept 100% possible.
Then more mental gymnastics followed, and semantics arguments.
im trying ot say your suggestion of making gear 80% of character power wont work to solve the issue of people using cheap gear to pk. why? because gear in l2 is like 99% of your power and you could still pk with cheap gear.
what will solve the problem is if the difference between cheap/easily acquired gear and expensive/top/difficult to acquire gear is huge
Why because you said take your gear off and hit a mob in your level?
Is that your definition of 100%?
In ESO you could kill mobs your level with L1 items, but the gear trully was 100% of your power due to the design the studio followed, which was gear does 100% of the active combat for you.
How do you explain your logic of "L2, 99%" and "Steven: gear will be 50% of your power"?
You are mixing things up here.
so because in l2 gear gives you most of your power, your suggestion of making gear give you 80% of your power in aoc rather than 50% to prevent people from pking in cheap gear wont work because you can already pk in l2 with cheap gear, where gear is more than 80% your power.
the solution has to be something else. i explained a possible solution above
Within my experience, your logic is correct.
Note that I still can't figure out if George is 'offering a true solution' or 'working towards defining the problem'. In the first case, then George would already have worked out the only solution that solves the problem in a way he doesn't mind. So, for example, his question asked would be 'accusatory' (at least in the sense of verifying that you're never going to agree)
In the second, I can see the continuance of the conversation gaining anything from this line, though.
Also, having never played L2 seriously and having to extrapolate it from the numbers, there's no way to know what the true concern here even is.
The damage formulae don't back up what George is saying, what Depraved is saying, and sometimes not even what you are 'saying'. The only person whose comments seem to match the data I can find is James.
tl;dr I kinda don't even know what y'all are talking about.
And if Intrepid is still paying attention I'd like to throw in the point here that losing gear is a weak and ineffective punishment against going red in general. I assumed that was the intention, and that the punishment for PK was 'being hunted' and then, for those who like to do it too much, stat dampening. I'm with ye all the way here, if the intention is to make PK a valid option while encouraging responses.
Y'all need some stat blocks? A whiteboard? No? Y'good? Great.