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
no cuz ull hti a point where you cant get stronger. depending on the game, and specialyl games nowdays, a guy playing for a few months same amount of hours as you should be pretty close in power to you.
So on this constant treadmill the vets are always AT LEAST a step ahead. And if that step means complete obliteration in pvp - there'll be no newbies. Or, well, Intrepid will have to go the classic casual path and find a way to boost those newbies to the level of vets through other means, which would effectively do the very thing I'm suggesting, except it'll make the early game feel pointless, as it has in pretty much all mmos up till now.
The RPS balancing between classes will play a role too.
calm down... it takes 45 days to reach max lv. That's a month and a half...
They will catch up.
People gear up at much different paces, PvP players tend to leave the game and come back later, developers tend to decrease the time needed to get to key points in gear paths, and many players run lesser gared alts.
You may not have many even fights the minute you hit the level cap, but after a brief period of time getting some level cap (not end game, just level cap) gear, you should find others at the level cap to fight.
What do you mean?
there wont always be new gear... also lots of things will reset every season. also, as expansions are added, it becomes easier to progress for new players .-.
We don't know either of those things afaik (outside of seasonal point in arenas and shit)
We'll have to see how Intrepid design this "easiness" though. Especially in the context of gear scaling. We could be getting "B grade is the new thing, but C grade can still stand up to it" or we get "we have elemental attributes now, and if you only have A grade - you're royally fucked".
A grade was relatively easy to get by the time Kamael update rolled around, but that A grade didn't mean shit.
If Steven says 'a character's power', what is he likely to be including here?
Like, in FFXI, food alone is 20-25% of 'a character's power', depending on class.
Teammates are another 10% (and I don't mean buffs, nor even Skillchains, there's specific things you can't do without at least other people). But it probably doesn't mean this?
Buffs, presuming you have a meaningful buff-er, is either 20-25% or 'even' if you are counting 'character power' as 'their base power as a fraction of their party'.
Weather and day are another 10% depending.
Gear is obviously a big deal if we're talking about going from 'naked' to 'full personal BiS', but the gap is more like 12% between 'an NPC sells me this or someone crafts it because of a Guild contract' and 'this is the best non-Relic gear for this slot in my build' (I wanna say 16%, 1% per gear slot, but obv different gear slots matter more than others).
But if I think 'no food, no teammates, neutral day/weather (or a class that isn't much affected by them), then gear can be 30-35% for sure, statistically.
L2 has other systems like Soulshots, so it's hard to know.
Again, this is why I have long since been saying that Stevens comment in this regard is meaningless (to us) without more context.
Like, the numbers mean nothing.
The intent behind the comment also cam't really be used to gain much information other than that equipment in Ashes won't have the same impact on player power as it does in WoW (which I don't think anyone expected it to have).
well. i believe that if you want combat to be more fair, your power should be distributed between different factors such as gear, char stats, buffs, consumables, possibly other things you equip that arent necessarily gear (like how you have cards, and gods,a nd religion and shit in other games), runes, etc. and reduce outside factors (like p2w, ping, etc) in favor of in game factors. all this is for a tab targetted mmorpg though.
but in the case of aoc, gear needs to matter a great deal, more than other stuff, because of the corruption system. is gear doesnt matter much then people wont care and go red all the time because theres no losing anything of value.
I could see 2 potential options:
I would assuuuuume that he's talking about the former, purely because gear is even in the discussion (and as Depraved pointed out, L2's gear kinda gave you "100%" power, cause you didn't do shit w/o it).
I could maybe see how all the multipliers don't really matter, cause they're just that - multipliers, and not direct sources of power, but then there's question of "is a +20 atk food buff a direct increase of a +20 "multiplier"?".
I do agree with Noaani that w/o more info/details on what player power even means in Ashes (or what Steven means when talking about it) - there's no real way to know what the hell Steven is even talking about.
I have to agree.
To me, the character power gained just by leveling is esentially immaterial. The point of leveling isn't to provide a steady vertical progression path, it is to ease players in to their final full class kit. Because you are actually constantly gaining new abilities (active or passive), as well as progression via gear, there absolutely will be large gaps in character power between characters of different levels.
This isn't a good thing, or a bad thing, it is just an inevitable thing.
So, in regards to discussions on player power and where it comes from, to me, leveling just shouldn't be in the discussion at all.
I also don't see your build as being a source of power. To me, your build determines how you use that character power you have, not how much of it you have. If you have 50 skill points, you have 50 skill points - that is the amount of power you have in relation to skill points. Any (reasonable) build you create with those skill points should be of about the same power level, in an over all sense.
Since skill points are gained via leveling, this means your build doesn't actually increase or decrease your actual character power - it just shapes it.
As far as consumables are concerned, while some games do have some classes that gain more from them than others, for the most part this is accounted for in over all class design. The assumption in such games is basically just that the player in question uses them. This is why most games of the last 10 years or so keep consumables as being more generic.
So, this means consumables aren't likely to be any real sense of power increase outside of "use" and "don't use" - essentially the same as someone equipping or not equipping an item in an earring slot or something (the assumption should be that they will be used, people are purposefully putting themselves at a disadvantage if they opt not to).
This really only leaves two sources of actual character power increase - gear (equipment and enhancements) and allies (buffs or combos).
To me (others may disagree) these are the only avenues in MMORPG's that players have to gain character power in relation to other characters (which is what matters).
(It literaly takes a mere 1.5 months to go from 1 to 50...)
Nikr, after called on his BS: Also, if gear matters, levels dont matter. Quick math
More BS.
Disclaimer: I absolutely know that what I'm about to say is a fairly bad take. I'm happy to be called out on its details, but you don't need to spend any time telling me that it's a bad take in itself.
This just sounds to me like Ashes has another inconsistency in its design. If combat is supposed to be tactical and fair, the punishments and style of the corruption system don't gel with it. If combat is supposed to be the usual Korean-game-tier of absolutely crushing anyone who doesn't realize how well geared you are, then George is obviously right and gear should be most of your power.
Now obviously there are some ... reasons... culturally, why Korean games work like that, but if we are going by 'Western' culture in game design, then it sounds like lifting the PK Punishment system from a Korean game might not be the best fit.
If everything is supposed to work together, and they have to choose, I hope they choose George's path. But if they are committed to the 'battles should be tactical' design, then gear needs to stay the way it is, and it's Corruption that needs to change.
He isn't lifting anything out of them.
True but I don't know any Korean MMOs with a focus on land surveying for gatherables.
Steven has indeed been playing Korean MMO's, and part of the reason he is making Ashes is due to his dissatisfaction with them.
Of the four MMO's Steven has listed in 2018 as having an influence on different aspects of Ashes, two are the Korean MMO's from above, and two are Western.
Make of these two facts what you will - just be aware that they are indeed facts.
His dissatisfaction is with the western mmos.
I've wondered for like a year now if you are really so absolutely convinced that everything Steven does is just 'to improve on the game you liked in exactly the ways you believe in'. Obviously not entirely so because there are things you disagree with, but mostly you just seem to 'assume that those things won't actually matter when the time comes'.
So I'mma just ask it outright. Are you really so absolutely convinced that Steven is just going to recreate your nostalgia days exactly with the same priorities? Because if so, I can only assume that you know Steven personally well enough to be sure, or that you're going to basically turn on him the moment Ashes deviates too much from your ideal.
Or to put it in two words...
Stop. Hammertime.
His dissatisfaction was with the MMO's he was playing.
This game is ideal and I will play no matter what.
Everything else is up for discussion.
He doesnt even know of my existance, why should I "turn on him"?
Others felt "unique" and got mad about High Seas, cosmetic packs and what not; felt they were owed explanations.
I dont have such petty traits.
Ye, the recent ones.
Alright, glad to know. But since you don't know him, I'm gonna continue to sort-of ignore your 'it will be fine, it will work like L2', because you apparently don't know Steven well enough for that to mean anything other than 'I want it to work like L2'.
I hope you get what you want, though, at least, I currently hope that because I expect TL will be for the other demographic. I'mma be whiny later if they don't add some stuff, but for now, remember that I only 'oppose' you based on my interpretations of Steven says or 'promises'.
"It will work like L2" and "It was fine in L2" doesn't cut it unless people know for certain that Steven agrees with your perception of 'working' and 'fine'.
No, he has specifically called out aspects of L2 that he considers - in literally his own words - to have flaws in their implementation.
Fact is, Steven played a lot of L2 and Archeage, saw that they weren't as good as they could be, and so decided to try and do better - looking initially at some aspects of some western MMORPG's for potential improvements.
L2 HF5, light-custom unofficial server, phys skill data (simplest dmg formula; objects with <5% impact on basic variable are skipped):
2. Weapon: up to 450-550 base pAtk, x1.15 pvp bonus. OE diff (from +4 to +16) is ~x1.25 base pAtk.
3. Special modifiers: position (~x1.1), attribute diff (up to x1.7), soulshots (x2)
4. Buffs from party: ~x2.5 pAtk. Setup-dependant. Only affects "mod_per".
5. Class self buffs: ~x1.7 pvp bonus, ~x1.33 pAtk, charges bonus (x2.4 dmg)
pAtk formula:
pAtk = weaponPAtk * mod_lvl * mod_str * mod_per + mod_diff
Realistic assumptions: mod_lvl=1.74, mod_str=1.54, mod_per is buff-dependant (from x2 to x3), and mod_diff is pretty much ignorable (~300 flat).
Dmg formula:
Damage = 70 * (power + pAtk) * SS * GDB * chrgBonus / pDef * ATT * POS * PVP_bonus
Realistic assumptions: SS=2, GDB=1.15113, chrgBonus=2.4, ATT=1.2, POS=1.1. PVP_bonus varies from ~2 to ~2.6, pDef (robe) from ~2000 to ~3000, pAtk from ~5000 to ~9000. "power" is skill-dependant (from 457 to 6496).
Character increases it through passives and self buffs. Class-dependant.
Party members increases it even further though party buffs (I'd roughly say ~x2 dmg). Also, they can debuff enemy (roughly ~x1.5-2 total dmg). And that's only a few stats in the simplest formula. If we are factoring more stats, impact from party becomes bigger.
Hope this helps somehow.
Ok, but on the other hand James pointed out that passives have a huge effect on it.
So in the hypothetical situation where a player has earned an augment that synergizes with a passive or other augment, do we count that? I feel like we should, but to be able to say 'gear is X percentage of power' even as an average, you'd need to be able to define 'how much power at each progression stage'.
To put it another way, if this is a game where your Fighter Passive gives you +20 Attack/Power/Whatever at level 25, then your weapon would also be giving you +20 Attack/Power/Whatever.
But if you can choose not to take that passive, and instead take something else, we know that because that Passive exists, for that number to be 'mostly true' you would still need the weapon to give +20 Whatever. Note that I'm not saying this is complex or hard. Lots of games do this, no problem, it's part of design. I'm just being lazy about going to check all the L2 data to figure out which things to count and which things to not.
We don't even know if we have the Liberty to choose Passives based on our Secondary Archetypes (I think, I really can't imagine this was a question they'd have been ready to answer yet).
Thanks a lot, just saw this.