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The case for gear to provide more than 40-50% of a characters power.

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    George_BlackGeorge_Black Member, Intrepid Pack
    A few quick PKs turn a 50v 50 one sided for sure, nikr.
    It has nothing to do with fighting back.
    If there is no fear of losing cheap gear that could work nearly as well as proper gear (as everybody wants to for some reason with that 50% number) forget about the flagging systems' gurantees.

    In a 50 v 50 in which one side relies on quick ranged dmg despite the cheap gear, it becomes 50 vs 40 without a healer and supports just like that.
    If gear power matters people wouldnt be so reckless in PKing, because they would consider dropping their items upon death.
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    A few quick PKs turn a 50v 50 one sided for sure, nikr.
    It has nothing to do with fighting back.
    If there is no fear of losing cheap gear that could work nearly as well as proper gear (as everybody wants to for some reason with that 50% number) forget about the flagging systems' gurantees.

    In a 50 v 50 in which one side relies on quick ranged dmg despite the cheap gear, it becomes 50 vs 40 without a healer and supports just like that.
    If gear power matters people wouldnt be so reckless in PKing, because they would consider dropping their items upon death.
    Again, can you explain what kind of situation you're envisioning? Are you talking about an attack on passive players that wouldn't have fought back ever or are you talking about ranged chars attacking a raid full of melees who also somehow got all their healers between them and you and you then manage to outdo all their healing before those melees catch up to you (while healers remain completely in one place not moving a damn inch)?

    I just can't understand what precise super small probability situation you're talking about here.

    Also, in case this gets lost cause you responded before reading it
    NiKr wrote: »
    And in L2 gear was all over the place.
    Some low C grade were better than top B grade, some top B grade were as good as S grade (with a bit of cheap enchantment at low cost/risk).
    Could you give an example, cause I'm not quite sure what you're referencing here?

    Do you mean the horizontal stats on gear, like +4 str -1 con? Cause pure atk/def stats grew vertically and jumped by a nice margin quite often.
    nllt593xccls.png
    50atk jump within the same lvl of gear, but just at different tiers.
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    George_BlackGeorge_Black Member, Intrepid Pack
    Now try karmian and its insane casting speed, plated leather, the low C grade armor that is the best aggressive armor in the game, a cheaply enchanted +6 armor of doom against any other tanking armor.

    The armor sets of L2 had their bonuses all over the place, atk and magic atk did not matter for rogues and mages.
    High end daggers and staves were replaced with lowgrade dark screamers and humunculus swords.

    Low grade items would not weaken the atk potential of the aggressive classes because they rellied... drum roll... on other strengths besides good items.

    It was ez for a karmian boy mage to PK it was ez for a thecaboy and dark screamer to pk.
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    George_BlackGeorge_Black Member, Intrepid Pack
    It's not a super small propability to have a group cheaply geared to fend off any nearby player without carring if they lose gear upon death, while the msin groups take care of objectives.
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    NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    NiKr wrote: »
    Majority of my discussions imply a minmaxers pov on the game. And George implies that his group will be minmaxing the fuck of the game in order to get ahead at release. Imo that is exactly how that should be.
    Step one of being a min/maxer - get to max level.

    You can min/max how you get to max level, but not during the launch period. You either min/max that during beta, or (if there is a reason to have multiple characters at the cap) after you have at least one level capped character.

    If we are only talking min/maxers, there isn't even a discussion to be had here.
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    George_BlackGeorge_Black Member, Intrepid Pack
    Noaani wrote: »
    NiKr wrote: »
    Majority of my discussions imply a minmaxers pov on the game. And George implies that his group will be minmaxing the fuck of the game in order to get ahead at release. Imo that is exactly how that should be.
    Step one of being a min/maxer - get to max level.

    You can min/max how you get to max level, but not during the launch period. You either min/max that during beta, or (if there is a reason to have multiple characters at the cap) after you have at least one level capped character.

    If we are only talking min/maxers, there isn't even a discussion to be had here.

    I am not talking about min/maxing. If the difference between gear is negligible, people won't bother acquiring it. They will skip content since the 50% 'other' power can carry them through the game.

    One more thing Nikr since you linked swords. Do you know how ez was for a +7 damascus and how ez it was to get it, to go against an S grade forgotten blade, which took way more effort?

    Why should gear be so weak as to account only for 50% of a players potential? So much content will be skipped and so much abuse can happen.
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    Depraved wrote: »
    geroge gear mattered a lot in l2 in 1v1, more than class toolkits (formulas have always been fked up in pservers).
    and by gear i really mean stats. so buffs + gear + level. classes toolkits mattered in 1v1 yeah but i dont consider 1v1 if you have buffs that arent from your class. true 1v1 is selfbuffs only. also are we using cp potions or not? quick healing potions or not?

    of course, some classes had advantage over others. pony in b grade beats every warrior in a or even s grade in a 1v1

    also depends on the chronicle. c2? daggers pierce defense so if ur a tank u take the same damage as a mage. c4? necro.

    gracia? If you don't have element in your armor anyone with an elemental weapon will beat you, especially if you are still in a grade. doesnt matter who you are, doesnt matter how good you are. all your strategy and tactics and whatever you want loses to f1 spam tactics. you die in 1-2 hits.


    if gear matters too much in aoc we might just turn into another tera, where literally (at least when i played) a fresh level 60 with the most basic pvp gear can go afk vs a level 59 and the level 59 will not kill him.

    so im a bit confused by your post title. if gear matters too much, other aspects will matter less, such as character toolkits.

    character toolkits, player skills and tier skips (or not using the best tier) matter more when gear matters less.

    AoC doesnt have BG armors, not itemLevels.
    It wont become like that.
    Personally I dont confuse character development (tool-kits, world affiliations, consumables, class combo) with gear and stats. On that we agree.
    It's two different things.

    So:
    Since we dont have the scenarios of tera and wow which rely on repetitive instanced gameplay to forever farm gear and endgame mentality, in which the gap is like some1 that just finished the npc MQS and some1 that advanced in the arena

    and
    since I am just saying gear should affect the stats (atk and defence) in order for gear to account for more than 50% of the power output

    why are people so against this?

    And in L2 gear was all over the place.
    Some low C grade were better than top B grade, some top B grade were as good as S grade (with a bit of cheap enchantment at low cost/risk).

    As for 1v1 my friend who was playing SK, beat the servers most famous SK in 1v1 again and again, underlevelled and undergeared.

    ok bdo then. open world farming and gear matters too much hehee. tera was just an example T_T

    im not saying it was impossible to beat players who were better geared or higher leveled in l2, but it wasnt likely. it also depends on the class.

    sk vs sk, evasion alone should be enough so that ur friend didnt stand a chance, but evasion never works in p servers.

    open world has too many variables, buffs, etc. in olys ur friend could beat him, maybe ur friend was better, or got lucky with paralysis. maybe he used drains and the other dude didnt have good jewels? lucky crits etc i dont know. also the chronicle matters. also famous doesnt mean super good.

    let me ask you this. if your friend and the other dude swapped characters, do you think the other dude would win consistently ith the weaker character?

    im just saying if gear gives you too much power, then your strategies matter less. using an l2 example, when element was added. it didnt matter how good you were. you could both have the same gear but if the other dude had 300 element in his weapon and u had 0 in ur armor (plus no elemental buffs) you just die. doesnt matter what u do. they target u, hit f1 and u die.

    there was a famous video of a gladi called gicobbe in office who got a +16 duals with 300 element, 10k cp, 20k hp. u could see him beating everybody in a siege just spamming one button, the gladi long range aoe (forgot the name). ive tried to find that video with no luck ugh but f uve ever seen it, theres no skill or strategy or ability involved. he is literally just pressing one button and obliterating and entire guild. just the same button over and over and over. the only time he uses another skill is when a dagger got close to him and he hit him for a 16k or so TSS (yes i remember it was 16k because it was ridiculous). no skill involved, nothing, just press f2 and win, i think the dagger even had UE so he kinda got lucky he landed the skill.

    i dont want AOC to be like that. 30%-50% power form gear seems ok. 50 probs too high.
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    Now try karmian and its insane casting speed, plated leather, the low C grade armor that is the best aggressive armor in the game, a cheaply enchanted +6 armor of doom against any other tanking armor.
    So you ARE talking about horizontal stats and not vertical, ok :) We just disagree on this, because I'd definitely prefer if lower grade stuff had horizontal bonuses similar (in some cases better) to high grade stuff.
    It's not a super small propability to have a group cheaply geared to fend off any nearby player without carring if they lose gear upon death, while the msin groups take care of objectives.
    So you're now talking about a group PKing a solo player?

    This falls under the "other players should deal with it" situation for me. I remember countless times when people would shout "PKer near kruma entrance" in chat, because some high lvl dick in cheap stuff was just having fun PKing everyone he saw.

    First of all, Ashes will already have stat dampening for this, so you wouldn't be able to do this for all too long (again, unless you spread the kills among the party).

    Secondly, if you're a group of people doing this - I expect other groups to have problems with that (for a multitude of reasons) and come kick your ass, or at least try to. This is simply good pvx design imo (cause I'd imagine that you're protecting pve).

    So once again, I see no issues here.
    Noaani wrote: »
    Step one of being a min/maxer - get to max level.
    This is a process, not a binary state. At some point you'll be at lvl30, while some theoretical better minmaxer could be at lvl40. And I'd want your lvl30 char to still be able to stand up against the lvl40 one, even if it's quite hard to beat him. I just don't want complete negation of your damage against him.
    One more thing Nikr since you linked swords. Do you know how ez was for a +7 damascus and how ez it was to get it, to go against an S grade forgotten blade, which took way more effort?
    What stage of the game's life are we talking about here? What stage of the player in question are we talking about here?

    I'd expect that at the start of the game both a +7 Dam and a basic Forgotten would be quite hard to acquire or simply super expensive. Mainly because Dams would be required by a shitton of people, so it's not assured that you'd have enough of them to +7 one (unless you're super lucky) and I'd expect for there to not be too many Enchant scrolls as well.

    And this is in case you've gotten to lvl76 w/o a +3 A grade weapon. Which, btw would still have more atk stat than a +7 Dam (unless wiki is lying to me about OE scaling).

    And if we're talking later stage of the game's life, that +7 Dam would just help the newbie lvl faster, which I wholeheartedly support and want.
    Why should gear be so weak as to account only for 50% of a players potential? So much content will be skipped and so much abuse can happen.
    This will wildly depend on how Intrepid design gear acquisition in the game. And, once again, the context of the game's life stage.

    No one will be skipping stuff on release if lvl20 gear can't survive all that well against lvl40 mobs, while you need to kill several lvl40 bosses and a shitton of mobs to get the mats for just a single craft of lvl40 gear.
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    Now try karmian and its insane casting speed, plated leather, the low C grade armor that is the best aggressive armor in the game, a cheaply enchanted +6 armor of doom against any other tanking armor.

    The armor sets of L2 had their bonuses all over the place, atk and magic atk did not matter for rogues and mages.
    High end daggers and staves were replaced with lowgrade dark screamers and humunculus swords.

    Low grade items would not weaken the atk potential of the aggressive classes because they rellied... drum roll... on other strengths besides good items.

    It was ez for a karmian boy mage to PK it was ez for a thecaboy and dark screamer to pk.

    plated is terrible. its only good in pve if ur not getting hit or if you are an archer. for pvp, drake and theca are better. maybe you can use pl vs mages.

    leveling with an homun to 3rd class only works in p. servers that arn the old chronicles, they are 5x rates, you have buffs, dual box, etc

    try a mage in a x1, old chronicles where you cant turn on ss or u lose money every time you kill something, no dual boxes, no buffs, no herbs. u gonna have to sit a lot and level really slowly if you skip gear, because for a mage, killing a mob in 2 hits makes a huge difference than killing it in 3-4 or 6-7 hits. warrior dont care too much, just make a party turn off ur ss and go cata 24-7. summoners also dont care, get to 76 in no grade.

    yes, if you are going to pk, you arent going to wear ur dark crystal. u put on ur karmian and go pk, but guess what? you arent going ot pvp, you are going to pk. you are gonna hit the other dude 2-3 times before they realize whats going on (unless they are experienced players) if you pvp in karmian at level 70 u get 1-2 shotted. its the same as pvping in devotion at level 50-60.

    you also gonna wear ur best weapon since you cant drop it from using a life stone, so u can pk all you want. mages and archers are different than melee
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    It's not a super small propability to have a group cheaply geared to fend off any nearby player without carring if they lose gear upon death, while the msin groups take care of objectives.

    u even said it in another thread. if someone tries to pk you with bad gear, u just turn around and kill them. so why does it work if you are the one doing the pk, but not the other way around? people arent gonna turn on ur group and kill you when u flag and ur wearing bad gear?
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    Depraved wrote: »
    u even said it in another thread. if someone tries to pk you with bad gear, u just turn around and kill them. so why does it work if you are the one doing the pk, but not the other way around? people arent gonna turn on ur group and kill you when u flag and ur wearing bad gear?
    This is why I don't understand George's issue here. It just doesn't match the reality of majority of the situations I'm used to or can come up with.
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    edited September 2023
    I don't know.

    Mages rogues and archers did not need to get the latest gear. They mostly relied on their tool-kit as well as their defining stats which were casting speed and crit chance/dmg.
    It was easy to PK with such a class, even if you had weak gear, as they were front loaded with aggression.

    A couple of people have spend a fair few posts debating the numbers and I did not participate because I think the issue at hand is simple:

    A weak weapon, not necessarily trash, should not dent the armor of a properly geared let's say lv40 character, at the hands of a lv40 character.
    I include armors in the topic, as gear sets provide bonuses, which will affect the atk potential.

    Gear must matter on all aspects.
    It is a powerful drive in the economy, it is a reason to explore and travel to certain destinations, its acquisition is a reason for people to fight all over the open world. Land and sea, everywhere players will transport mats to craft gear, and all these scenarios are gameplay sessions full of action. Gear should not be skipped, nor should it be used in the tactic I described.

    When I play the Assassin's Creed games, or Nioh or whatever singleplayer video game they want to turn into an open world single player mmo these days, seeing gear with levels and stats feels ridiculous. Unless there is a story for unlocking a tool or an armor or a weapon or a skill, suddenly picking it up from every second enemy you come across feels stupid.

    We are talking about an mmo here.
    Questing, character progression, conflict is what fuels an economy.
    Gear is at the center of it all.

    One more thing, the more the gear power is weaker, the quicker you will feel like you reached the end game "and now what?"

    I haven't played L2 for a few years, but each time I do with my seasoned friends, we skip so much gear it's not even funny. We use gear that's supposed to be for players between 1-20 until 35. We use gear for players between 40-52 all the way to lv 68 or so, with only the tank having a decent armor set. And they while everybody else that doesn't know the game as much as we do, still fucks around with gear for level 52-61, we are crafting endgame gear.

    If gear power doesn't matter, on top of the PK abuses and the pvp tactics that skip it, 70 of the gear that the devs will prepare will be skipped by all the Alpha testers, along with all the areas/quests and drama that comes from the zones you are farming it.


    People here that post about "skill" and say that I want my gear to do the fighting for me have no idea what actual skill means.

    Back in c3-c4 L2, when gladiator had to charge 10hours for a single skill, and daggers were all the craze, I'd beat them two at the time.
    I'd see them coming from a distance and I'd had my macros rdy with their character names. No matter how much they'd try to make me lose target I'd always face them, giving them 0 chance for Backstabs.
    When they though I'd cast my good moves, I'd just use the crap skills for them to interrupt me, and when they wasted their chance I'd give them a good 2500 dmg in their face.
    I'd be with 52lv gear specs for HP, swapping 1h handed axes (before it was the meta for Classic) and twin swords, whilst every other gladiator in the universe would spec for speed and DMG, and I'd take down players with 61lv gear or all classes.

    So many here can't put 2 and 2 together and see beyond their assumptions about how great they are, and how everybody else is looking for an ez way out, then some of them admit they they can't even begin to understand what is being discussed, and then submit that *** answer for data, and 10 more follow their school of thought of "I don't even know why I disagree" with likes.

    You want gear to account for 50% of a characters strength? Cool. Whilst the rest of the testers parade around with their $5000 backing skins, me and my friends have all chipped in to get as many inrl ppl to join us in testing. We will discover the meta and skip the gears that are not needed. We will rely on our classes tool-kit and whatever else AoC has in store for, as as part of character progression (which many of you confuse with character power).

    Our forth group will be just archers and mages with cheap gear; let's see how many hits you can survive from a distance from players that have 0 concern in losing gear due to PK, before the fight has even began.

    Take this as a rant (not u James; I'm talking to all takers) if it makes u feel better. I'll just add this discussion to the numerous I've had for the betterment of the game.

    We are not there yet, for an mmo to do away with levels and gear, and provide us with unlimited potential and exploration and unique ways to create our playstyle and class. All that would be nice, but we are not there yet, so dont look down on the basics.

    Do you understand why those classes in particular(Mainly Dagger and Archer) had such power(in their toolkits) with low gear?
    Because their base skills power scaled way better with levels than other classes and their skills could crit when many others couldn't.
    While for them gear power represented less than 40% of character power for the rest of the classes it represented over 60%.

    In later versions the other classes skills power were increased and many got crit chances, gear became more of a characters power for the outlier classes lessening the pk potential issue you presented.

    As long as Ashes classes are properly balanced, 40-50% will be just fine for gear characters power,

    Gear power balance is a very delicate thing to deal with too low and gear becomes meaningless, too high and gear completely disregards skill.

    Have you ever played a game with a very high gear character power %?
    I had, Archeage, Gear disparity there was really insane(i would say gear there represented over 90-95% of a characters power) the abyss between 4K Gear Score and 12K gear score was enough to almost skillessly 1v50+. something unthinkable in L2 for characters of the same level but a difference in gear like C to S(C4).
    6wtxguK.jpg
    Aren't we all sinners?
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    NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    NiKr wrote: »
    This is a process, not a binary state. At some point you'll be at lvl30, while some theoretical better minmaxer could be at lvl40. And I'd want your lvl30 char to still be able to stand up against the lvl40 one, even if it's quite hard to beat him. I just don't want complete negation of your damage against him.
    I think you'll find is that we aren't talking about completely negating damage (although over a 10 level gap it should be damn close), but rather talking about making it essentially unreasonable to think you would ever win.

    If you are a min/maxer in a new game at level 30, you should probably be somewhat scared of someone that is level 40, as they are better at the thing you are trying to do (min/max) than you.

    They will beat you, potentially without even realizing you are there. This is how it should be - this is a sign of a good game.
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    Noaani wrote: »
    talking about making it essentially unreasonable to think you would ever win.
    And this is the thing I disagree with :) We've discussed this before, so I don't think there's much point in discussing it again.
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    George_BlackGeorge_Black Member, Intrepid Pack
    edited September 2023
    Depraved wrote: »
    Depraved wrote: »
    geroge gear mattered a lot in l2 in 1v1, more than class toolkits (formulas have always been fked up in pservers).
    and by gear i really mean stats. so buffs + gear + level. classes toolkits mattered in 1v1 yeah but i dont consider 1v1 if you have buffs that arent from your class. true 1v1 is selfbuffs only. also are we using cp potions or not? quick healing potions or not?

    of course, some classes had advantage over others. pony in b grade beats every warrior in a or even s grade in a 1v1

    also depends on the chronicle. c2? daggers pierce defense so if ur a tank u take the same damage as a mage. c4? necro.

    gracia? If you don't have element in your armor anyone with an elemental weapon will beat you, especially if you are still in a grade. doesnt matter who you are, doesnt matter how good you are. all your strategy and tactics and whatever you want loses to f1 spam tactics. you die in 1-2 hits.


    if gear matters too much in aoc we might just turn into another tera, where literally (at least when i played) a fresh level 60 with the most basic pvp gear can go afk vs a level 59 and the level 59 will not kill him.

    so im a bit confused by your post title. if gear matters too much, other aspects will matter less, such as character toolkits.

    character toolkits, player skills and tier skips (or not using the best tier) matter more when gear matters less.

    AoC doesnt have BG armors, not itemLevels.
    It wont become like that.
    Personally I dont confuse character development (tool-kits, world affiliations, consumables, class combo) with gear and stats. On that we agree.
    It's two different things.

    So:
    Since we dont have the scenarios of tera and wow which rely on repetitive instanced gameplay to forever farm gear and endgame mentality, in which the gap is like some1 that just finished the npc MQS and some1 that advanced in the arena

    and
    since I am just saying gear should affect the stats (atk and defence) in order for gear to account for more than 50% of the power output

    why are people so against this?

    And in L2 gear was all over the place.
    Some low C grade were better than top B grade, some top B grade were as good as S grade (with a bit of cheap enchantment at low cost/risk).

    As for 1v1 my friend who was playing SK, beat the servers most famous SK in 1v1 again and again, underlevelled and undergeared.

    ok bdo then. open world farming and gear matters too much hehee. tera was just an example T_T

    im not saying it was impossible to beat players who were better geared or higher leveled in l2, but it wasnt likely. it also depends on the class.

    sk vs sk, evasion alone should be enough so that ur friend didnt stand a chance, but evasion never works in p servers.

    open world has too many variables, buffs, etc. in olys ur friend could beat him, maybe ur friend was better, or got lucky with paralysis. maybe he used drains and the other dude didnt have good jewels? lucky crits etc i dont know. also the chronicle matters. also famous doesnt mean super good.

    let me ask you this. if your friend and the other dude swapped characters, do you think the other dude would win consistently ith the weaker character?

    im just saying if gear gives you too much power, then your strategies matter less. using an l2 example, when element was added. it didnt matter how good you were. you could both have the same gear but if the other dude had 300 element in his weapon and u had 0 in ur armor (plus no elemental buffs) you just die. doesnt matter what u do. they target u, hit f1 and u die.

    there was a famous video of a gladi called gicobbe in office who got a +16 duals with 300 element, 10k cp, 20k hp. u could see him beating everybody in a siege just spamming one button, the gladi long range aoe (forgot the name). ive tried to find that video with no luck ugh but f uve ever seen it, theres no skill or strategy or ability involved. he is literally just pressing one button and obliterating and entire guild. just the same button over and over and over. the only time he uses another skill is when a dagger got close to him and he hit him for a 16k or so TSS (yes i remember it was 16k because it was ridiculous). no skill involved, nothing, just press f2 and win, i think the dagger even had UE so he kinda got lucky he landed the skill.

    i dont want AOC to be like that. 30%-50% power form gear seems ok. 50 probs too high.

    come on man... bdo is p2w. What are we talking about? I doubt bdo would have tri tet pen etc etc if it wasn't for p2w. I'd would end at cap and then expansions.
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    George_BlackGeorge_Black Member, Intrepid Pack
    edited September 2023
    Depraved wrote: »
    It's not a super small propability to have a group cheaply geared to fend off any nearby player without carring if they lose gear upon death, while the msin groups take care of objectives.

    u even said it in another thread. if someone tries to pk you with bad gear, u just turn around and kill them. so why does it work if you are the one doing the pk, but not the other way around? people arent gonna turn on ur group and kill you when u flag and ur wearing bad gear?

    I guess people dont read, they just skim over.
    In every post here on this topic I said "cheap gear (not necessarily trash gear). There is a distinction.
    btw what evasion are you talking about? SK is shillien Knight

    nikr I dont know what do you mean by a group killing a player. Nuking a target (focus fire) isn't a group vs 1 player. It's a group vs a group.
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    NiKrNiKr Member
    edited September 2023
    nikr I dont know what do you mean by a group killing a player. Nuking a target (focus fire) isn't a group vs 1 player. It's a group vs a group.
    You said "any nearby player". To me that reads like "a group of dudes standing around attacking anyone who approaches. And in this case they attacked a player".

    How or why would another group of players (seemingly in normal gear, considering the context) not fight back against a group of flagged dudes in shitty gear?

    Also, if this group of newcomers have their healer at the front - they're dumb. And if your PKers in rags attack the newcomers in normal gear - the newcomers would just kill you in the same way you expect to kill them. They'll just assist kill your dudes in a few hits and that's that.

    I once again ask you to write out the full situation in which you expect gear to somehow matter in a PKing situation.

    Or just finally admit that you simply want 100% gear control over player power, cause your comments sure come off that way.
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    Balrog21Balrog21 Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Nope, nada, zilcho
    if you want a gear based power there are plenty of other games out there....
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    George_BlackGeorge_Black Member, Intrepid Pack
    I don't know.

    Mages rogues and archers did not need to get the latest gear. They mostly relied on their tool-kit as well as their defining stats which were casting speed and crit chance/dmg.
    It was easy to PK with such a class, even if you had weak gear, as they were front loaded with aggression.

    A couple of people have spend a fair few posts debating the numbers and I did not participate because I think the issue at hand is simple:

    A weak weapon, not necessarily trash, should not dent the armor of a properly geared let's say lv40 character, at the hands of a lv40 character.
    I include armors in the topic, as gear sets provide bonuses, which will affect the atk potential.

    Gear must matter on all aspects.
    It is a powerful drive in the economy, it is a reason to explore and travel to certain destinations, its acquisition is a reason for people to fight all over the open world. Land and sea, everywhere players will transport mats to craft gear, and all these scenarios are gameplay sessions full of action. Gear should not be skipped, nor should it be used in the tactic I described.

    When I play the Assassin's Creed games, or Nioh or whatever singleplayer video game they want to turn into an open world single player mmo these days, seeing gear with levels and stats feels ridiculous. Unless there is a story for unlocking a tool or an armor or a weapon or a skill, suddenly picking it up from every second enemy you come across feels stupid.

    We are talking about an mmo here.
    Questing, character progression, conflict is what fuels an economy.
    Gear is at the center of it all.

    One more thing, the more the gear power is weaker, the quicker you will feel like you reached the end game "and now what?"

    I haven't played L2 for a few years, but each time I do with my seasoned friends, we skip so much gear it's not even funny. We use gear that's supposed to be for players between 1-20 until 35. We use gear for players between 40-52 all the way to lv 68 or so, with only the tank having a decent armor set. And they while everybody else that doesn't know the game as much as we do, still fucks around with gear for level 52-61, we are crafting endgame gear.

    If gear power doesn't matter, on top of the PK abuses and the pvp tactics that skip it, 70 of the gear that the devs will prepare will be skipped by all the Alpha testers, along with all the areas/quests and drama that comes from the zones you are farming it.


    People here that post about "skill" and say that I want my gear to do the fighting for me have no idea what actual skill means.

    Back in c3-c4 L2, when gladiator had to charge 10hours for a single skill, and daggers were all the craze, I'd beat them two at the time.
    I'd see them coming from a distance and I'd had my macros rdy with their character names. No matter how much they'd try to make me lose target I'd always face them, giving them 0 chance for Backstabs.
    When they though I'd cast my good moves, I'd just use the crap skills for them to interrupt me, and when they wasted their chance I'd give them a good 2500 dmg in their face.
    I'd be with 52lv gear specs for HP, swapping 1h handed axes (before it was the meta for Classic) and twin swords, whilst every other gladiator in the universe would spec for speed and DMG, and I'd take down players with 61lv gear or all classes.

    So many here can't put 2 and 2 together and see beyond their assumptions about how great they are, and how everybody else is looking for an ez way out, then some of them admit they they can't even begin to understand what is being discussed, and then submit that *** answer for data, and 10 more follow their school of thought of "I don't even know why I disagree" with likes.

    You want gear to account for 50% of a characters strength? Cool. Whilst the rest of the testers parade around with their $5000 backing skins, me and my friends have all chipped in to get as many inrl ppl to join us in testing. We will discover the meta and skip the gears that are not needed. We will rely on our classes tool-kit and whatever else AoC has in store for, as as part of character progression (which many of you confuse with character power).

    Our forth group will be just archers and mages with cheap gear; let's see how many hits you can survive from a distance from players that have 0 concern in losing gear due to PK, before the fight has even began.

    Take this as a rant (not u James; I'm talking to all takers) if it makes u feel better. I'll just add this discussion to the numerous I've had for the betterment of the game.

    We are not there yet, for an mmo to do away with levels and gear, and provide us with unlimited potential and exploration and unique ways to create our playstyle and class. All that would be nice, but we are not there yet, so dont look down on the basics.

    Do you understand why those classes in particular(Mainly Dagger and Archer) had such power(in their toolkits) with low gear?
    Because their base skills power scaled way better with levels than other classes and their skills could crit when many others couldn't.
    While for them gear power represented less than 40% of character power for the rest of the classes it represented over 60%.

    In later versions the other classes skills power were increased and many got crit chances, gear became more of a characters power for the outlier classes lessening the pk potential issue you presented.

    As long as Ashes classes are properly balanced, 40-50% will be just fine for gear characters power,

    Gear power balance is a very delicate thing to deal with too low and gear becomes meaningless, too high and gear completely disregards skill.

    Have you ever played a game with a very high gear character power %?
    I had, Archeage, Gear disparity there was really insane(i would say gear there represented over 90-95% of a characters power) the abyss between 4K Gear Score and 12K gear score was enough to almost skillessly 1v50+. something unthinkable in L2 for characters of the same level but a difference in gear like C to S(C4).

    Unfair nerfs to classes in this or many other games happen because the Devs have't considered that this or that (or gear in this case) may affect things in different proportions. I think it's a better idea to consider the effects that negligible gear power difference may have on the game, before people start complaining about how a rogue with cheap gear fairs the same as them, perhaps a tank or a fighter or a bard, but they had to spend effort to get properly equipped.
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    Depraved wrote: »
    It's not a super small propability to have a group cheaply geared to fend off any nearby player without carring if they lose gear upon death, while the msin groups take care of objectives.

    u even said it in another thread. if someone tries to pk you with bad gear, u just turn around and kill them. so why does it work if you are the one doing the pk, but not the other way around? people arent gonna turn on ur group and kill you when u flag and ur wearing bad gear?

    I guess people dont read, they just skim over.
    In every post here on this topic I said "cheap gear (not necessarily trash gear). There is a distinction.
    btw what evasion are you talking about? SK is shillien Knight

    nikr I dont know what do you mean by a group killing a player. Nuking a target (focus fire) isn't a group vs 1 player. It's a group vs a group.

    both elves had higher evasion than other races. have u ever missed auto attacks vs an sps? i have as an archer and it sucks lmao.

    anyways, in l2 when you are higher level, lower levels have a penalty. they miss more (auto attacks), they can also miss magic attacks and do 1 damage or do half damage more often. on top of that, you suffer damage penalties, your skills will do less damage to higher level characters or mobs. tanks main damage source is auto attacks (although sk has some magic), thats why i mentioned evasion

    but none of this is ever properly implemented in private servers. you also have anchor landing with 90% chance lmao. debuffs landing left and right, etc. so yes its possible that ur friend was lets say in b grade, lvl 60, and beat the other dude who was lvl 61 in common a grade, or maybe even 62-64 in private servers.

    in retail, if your friend was level 52 in b grade, he would never win sk vs sk if the other dude was 61 with full a grade. all the other dude has to do is auto attack and go afk, unless he had 0 buffs and ur friend was fully buffed with dances and songs and prophecy.
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    George_BlackGeorge_Black Member, Intrepid Pack
    edited September 2023
    My friend was in b grade 68 lv vs SK 72 with A grade. Re-think what you said about the miss hit penalties.
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    My friend was in b grade 68 lv vs SK 72 with A grade. Re-think what you said about the miss hit penalties.
    I'm trying to understand this correctly. Did you dislike that your friend could do this? Or did you like it?

    Cause I feel like you're arguing against this exact situation, yet you present this as something good?
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    DepravedDepraved Member
    edited September 2023
    My friend was in b grade 68 lv vs SK 72 with A grade. Re-think what you said about the miss hit penalties.

    retail or private server?
    what i said about penalties is 100% accurate, except in private servers.

    also what buffs?
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    NiKr wrote: »
    My friend was in b grade 68 lv vs SK 72 with A grade. Re-think what you said about the miss hit penalties.
    I'm trying to understand this correctly. Did you dislike that your friend could do this? Or did you like it?

    Cause I feel like you're arguing against this exact situation, yet you present this as something good?

    exactly T_T
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    Depraved wrote: »
    there was a famous video of a gladi called gicobbe in office who got a +16 duals with 300 element, 10k cp, 20k hp. u could see him beating everybody in a siege just spamming one button, the gladi long range aoe (forgot the name). ive tried to find that video with no luck ugh but f uve ever seen it, theres no skill or strategy or ability involved. he is literally just pressing one button and obliterating and entire guild. just the same button over and over and over. the only time he uses another skill is when a dagger got close to him and he hit him for a 16k or so TSS (yes i remember it was 16k because it was ridiculous). no skill involved, nothing, just press f2 and win, i think the dagger even had UE so he kinda got lucky he landed the skill.

    Oh i remember this video but was able to find just a piece of it:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybOHLEdwQaU
    at 12:24

    That +16 {PvP}300 element with +30 Duelist Spirit and other skills with Full buff, Final Secret + Heroic Berserk is no joke. Truly at the high end of Gear disparity of Gracia Final/Epilogue

    6wtxguK.jpg
    Aren't we all sinners?
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    George_BlackGeorge_Black Member, Intrepid Pack
    NiKr wrote: »
    My friend was in b grade 68 lv vs SK 72 with A grade. Re-think what you said about the miss hit penalties.
    I'm trying to understand this correctly. Did you dislike that your friend could do this? Or did you like it?

    Cause I feel like you're arguing against this exact situation, yet you present this as something good?

    I wont repeat myself anymore.
    Go back and read the op.
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    I wont repeat myself anymore.
    Go back and read the op.
    Ok, so you hated that your friend could stand up to higher lvled players, got it :)
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    SongcallerSongcaller Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Noaani wrote: »
    Neurath wrote: »
    I think the power disparity is not 12.5%.

    The gap in levels is 12.5%, so if the power gap is less than that, it means there is a less than linear progression. This is a bad thing - being 12.5% higher in terms of level should absolutely translate to 12.5% more power, and the base level gear available to each should support that.
    Neurath wrote: »
    Thus, a 35 might outclass the 40 in terms of gear tier. Level of item doesn't really compare to tier of item. Thus, the power disparity is actually less because the only advantage the level 40 has would be horizontal augments and 5 minor levels of vertical progression.

    You are talking about possible specific situations, rather than a generic state of balance.

    From a mathematical perspective, if you consider the level 40 player to be 100% power (which for our discussion that is the case), as a general point of balance the only real variable that could prevent a level 35 being anything other than at least 12.5% less over all powerful is the power of a newly created character. If a newly created character is half as powerful as a level 40 character, a level 35 is still 12.5% less of that difference.

    Its just basic math.

    Gear probably shouldn't be able to fill in that much of a gap, unless we are talking extreme situations that are theoretical rather than practical.

    We are not talking about that. You have skewed the situation. George mentioned weapons and armour making an outcome 100% guaranteed. I am saying an outcome should never be guaranteed. Really there are 50 levels which equates to 2% power gap between each level. So, a naked 35 to 40 match up would only be 10%. Easily overcome with skill.
    2a3b8ichz0pd.gif
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    CravenosCravenos Member
    edited September 2023
    I didnt like the say of " 35 Level should win the 40 Level "
    Yes you have some base stats advantage on you but i dont think it should really be a critical thing on a PvP.
    Also comparing L2 PK system with AOC it just doesnt work , L2 was unbalanced on many aspects epsecially on lower chronicles.
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    SongcallerSongcaller Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Cravenos wrote: »
    I didnt like the say of " 35 Level should win the 40 Level "
    Yes you have some base stats advantage on you but i dont think it should really be a critical thing on a PvP.
    Also comparing L2 PK system with AOC it just doesnt work , L2 was unbalanced on many aspects epsecially on lower chronicles.

    What comprises of a level 40 exactly? 5 levels more than lvl 35 and a few more augments? Great. Seems like a misnomer when compared to a level 20 vs 25 fight.
    2a3b8ichz0pd.gif
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