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Time required for relative character power milestones
Xeeg
Member
There have been threads about levelling times and instead of highjacking that thread I thought it might make sense to start a new one. Especially since the devs are asking about questions of "time dedication" at the moment as well.
A bird's eye view of this topic might first look at how many progression systems there are and how many fun game loops there are.
Progression systems:
When we talk about time to max level we are only talking about time to max 1 progression system. We are not talking about time to max character power, which would include all of the progression systems. So far the bar to max level has been set around 250 hours.
Now let's think about this in terms of how players are participating in the game loops at various stages of player power.
Game Loops:
OK, so the commissions and side quests come across as mostly during the levelling stage; the first 250 hours. The rest can be done to varying effectiveness at all stages of the game.
So now our question becomes:
"How much time should be required to achieve relative character power milestones?".
To answer that, we should also consider how players have multiple conflicting interests. We want to have both meaningful progressions in character power (part of the MMORPG game feel) AND we want to feel like our characters are somewhat balanced for pvp, while at the same time having a monster power scale that is mostly based on character level.
I'm thinking something like this:
50 hrs to 50% max character power,
250 hrs to 75% - freshly dinged 50,
1000 hrs to 100%.
The idea being that it still takes a very long time to cap on character power, but it doesn't really take that long to get strong enough to be effective in the world. This allows the different Progression Systems to add their own little bits of value as you engage with them. It also means that people who are arbitrarily grinding to lvl 50 might not actually be getting the best time value in character power progression, which is part of the design intent in Ashes of Creation.
However, this might be too steep to work with the pve/monster power scaling. It also means that number of players will be everything, because a couple guys that have been playing for a month can gank a maxed whale that's been grinding since launch.
Thoughts?
A bird's eye view of this topic might first look at how many progression systems there are and how many fun game loops there are.
Progression systems:
- Character Level
- Weapon skills
- Item power
- Character Religion
- Professions
- Enchantments
- World buffs/secondary power progressions
- Node reputation
- Node advancement (If you are a citizen)
When we talk about time to max level we are only talking about time to max 1 progression system. We are not talking about time to max character power, which would include all of the progression systems. So far the bar to max level has been set around 250 hours.
Now let's think about this in terms of how players are participating in the game loops at various stages of player power.
Game Loops:
- Commissions, Side Quests, Story Arcs
- Killing monsters/bosses
- Gathering resources / using professions
- Running caravans
- Node/Castle Sieges
- Open World PVP
OK, so the commissions and side quests come across as mostly during the levelling stage; the first 250 hours. The rest can be done to varying effectiveness at all stages of the game.
So now our question becomes:
"How much time should be required to achieve relative character power milestones?".
To answer that, we should also consider how players have multiple conflicting interests. We want to have both meaningful progressions in character power (part of the MMORPG game feel) AND we want to feel like our characters are somewhat balanced for pvp, while at the same time having a monster power scale that is mostly based on character level.
I'm thinking something like this:
50 hrs to 50% max character power,
250 hrs to 75% - freshly dinged 50,
1000 hrs to 100%.
The idea being that it still takes a very long time to cap on character power, but it doesn't really take that long to get strong enough to be effective in the world. This allows the different Progression Systems to add their own little bits of value as you engage with them. It also means that people who are arbitrarily grinding to lvl 50 might not actually be getting the best time value in character power progression, which is part of the design intent in Ashes of Creation.
However, this might be too steep to work with the pve/monster power scaling. It also means that number of players will be everything, because a couple guys that have been playing for a month can gank a maxed whale that's been grinding since launch.
Thoughts?
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Comments
I want both leveling and nodes to be a huge, meaningful event. And let's be honest if they have a little bit more time before everyone reaches max level that's a good thing, so they can polish stuff up and keep adding more content. Instead of currently having a sweaty try hard reach max level in 12.5 to 14 days. I made a video about this weeks ago, unfortunately it was 1 of my first ones and the sound sucked lol.
But to answer your post OP, I would like to see it increased, glad I'm not the only one. Time will tell, people will say let's test it and ya that's great. But he has already laid out the time table to do it, so what's to test?
I hope it's something they at least consider during the test phase to see how it would work.
https://www.youtube.com/@TheHiddenDaggerInn/featured
Thanks for the response. I just edited the post a bit to be more clear about what I was talking about, sorry if there was confusion.
In this case I'm saying that "level" is among a variety of proposed progression systems in Ashes of Creation. All of the different progression systems seem to be able to add to character power, but we don't know by how much.
A character level 40, but with a bunch of religion questing done, a citizen in a dope node, fully decked gear and enchants, professions maxed for their level etc. could still be more "powerful", and possibly sooner, than a fresh lvl 50 that grinded while ignoring the other systems.
That power could be in the form of pvp, pve or even resource accumulation.
This is my understanding of the design intent behind Ashes of Creation.
MMOs stopped being 'good' at this a long time ago, if they were ever even good at it.
An MMO with PvP like this will just be confusing if it has all the other things Ashes has in it.
Now, I'm a big fan of 'games so convoluted in terms of their power structures that you can't even begin to explain it to an average player', but any situation within Ashes where player A can be much stronger than the average player B of their own level is going to be really rough to balance.
To be clear, I'm saying:
"We can't have a monster power scale that is roughly based on character level, but also have progression paths before max level granting meaningful power."
Just gets too twisty. (will sing your praises forever if you can do this without it tying itself into a knot though, Intrepid)
It's a huge time sink with a lot of risk and very little reward at the moment. I could just be adventuring (in whatever sense) instead. Caravans subtract from progress as an opportunity cost compared to other activities.
I loved Star Wars Galaxies: one character, one account.
Steven talks about reputation a lot, and in SW:G reputation was legit because you couldn't just log off and play an alt. [Unless you paid for a 2nd account.]
You also couldn't just run and join the other faction to spy on them. [Unless you paid for a 2nd account.]
I can see that. The "reward" appears to be mostly node bucks for bringing deliveries due to a mayoral request for certain mats? Or perhaps bringing supplies to your node for purposes of defending or attacking another node?
Not sure how relevant the caravans are at different stages of the game, from the levelling process to after hitting max lvl.
I thought ESO's skill points were a great example of this. You could collect enough skill points to unlock all abilities needed for one build (IE, 100 SPs). But if you wanted to change out a weapon for another weapon in the middle of an activity like a dungeon run, you would need another 10-20 skill points total. Go unlock those skill points to give yourself versatility.
That might also work for Ashes