I want to repeat myself. Character levels are an archaic way of showing and feeling character progression. There are better and more meaningful carrots.
I'd go so far as to say that any game that puts more emphasis on 'achieving' the leveling rather than 'learning something about yourself' (even just your chosen/preferred ways) during the leveling, is doomed to feel empty and fall off like the many dust-in-the-wind MMOs out there.
And remember, if one 'steps outside one's bubble', there are a lot of MMOs out there.
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I want to repeat myself. Character levels are an archaic way of showing and feeling character progression. There are better and more meaningful carrots.
Depends on the genre of game.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I don't know about that. If you look at the graphs of WoW's player base, it skyrockets when they add the level cap, and slowly dies down until the next level cap increase.
It skyrockets with the next content dump.
I"m not aware of a content dump that did not also include an increase in Level cap.
So... there really is no WoW data that refutes the suggestion that Level cap is not imperative for an expansion.
I don't know about that. If you look at the graphs of WoW's player base, it skyrockets when they add the level cap, and slowly dies down until the next level cap increase.
It skyrockets with the next content dump.
I"m not aware of a content dump that did not also include an increase in Level cap.
So... there really is no WoW data that refutes the suggestion that Level cap is not imperative for an expansion.
Fair enough. I'm not really trying to argue that levels alone is all it takes, but just making the point that it's not clear that significant amount of people quit due to level increases.
Typically, an "expansion" content update comes with some kind of increase to levels, gear, or new power progression paths. Your old character becomes relatively weaker/obsolete after the patch.
It could be that the idea is players are not only drawn to the new content, but also the new journey to make their characters stronger again. I mean that's part of the reason we play these games in the first place, we like the journey.
All that being said, Ashes can really set itself apart with node mechanics. With the nodes they have a way of making power structures built into the map itself, and not just at the character level. They can mix PVE power progression (levels, gear, character stats) with the PVP power progression (Node seige weapons/resources, defences, caravan wars, territory control).
Maybe the major content updates over the first few years of launch have nothing to do with characters getting better gear and more to do with the systems in the world. Ways of accumulating and utilizing node power, or things like the naval warfare.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Why would people quit due to Level increases?? I'm not aware of that being a thing.
I don't agree that my character "becomes relatively weaker/obsolete after the patch".
I can still kill the mobs I've been killing with the same ease. Most likely I willnot have been playing for many months up to several years because there is no new content for me to explore. So II will have quit playing long before the new content dump.
And the draw for the expansion is not increased levels - rather it's new mobs and new quests and new areas to explore.
In RPGs, vertical progression is important to represent The Hero's Journey - but past level 30 or 40, I should already feel heroic compared to the Level 1 mobs. Fighting different TYPES of mobs via horizontal progression would be fine with me in an expansion.
Ashes has many potential paths for more Horizontal progression, rather than more Vertical progression in their early expansions.
I don't agree that my character "becomes relatively weaker/obsolete after the patch".
I can still kill the mobs I've been killing with the same ease.
This is why he's included the word "relatively".
Relative to the maximum / relative to other players (in an MMO world). Clearly.
His point stands, unless you are suggesting you should be Equal and/or stronger than new content with your current character. When new content comes out in mmorpgs you are weaker and have some path to progress to become stronger. Else new content would be DOA.
Adding new levels or not both are true with gaining more power, the difference with new levels is it equalizes all players. Also im getting the vibe people are thinking they are gaining new levels every like 6 months, and not thinking this is years down the line.
Why would people quit due to Level increases?? I'm not aware of that being a thing.
It was something that another poster said, and the reason I was talking about data showing playerbase increasing after level cap, basically to refute this point.
In RPGs, vertical progression is important to represent The Hero's Journey - but past level 30 or 40, I should already feel heroic compared to the Level 1 mobs. Fighting different TYPES of mobs via horizontal progression would be fine with me in an expansion.
Ashes has many potential paths for more Horizontal progression, rather than more Vertical progression in their early expansions.
Fully agree with this and hope this is the direction they go.
Adding new levels or not both are true with gaining more power, the difference with new levels is it equalizes all players.
This is actually a fairly good point. Another reason for the "level" increase with a major content expansion is that, in the mind of the players, we are all starting off at similar points again and going through the content together at the same time. Whether you had BIS gear or 2nd or 3rd from BIS gear (which could be a difference of months of effort to obtain) within a few days of the patch it wont matter anymore and you are basically on an equal playing field. It's the exact same motivation that people have with joining the game on day 1 of launch. This type of "power increase expansion" disrupts solidified positions of players and can help a stale game feel fresh again.
There's also the excitement of the large player base increase that is here to check the game out again. Just the fact that other people are interested and joining the game psychologically makes the game more appealing. Although, that is a different argument than level increase.
Of course there is a bit of a tug of war, because the players that were actively playing, or who had maxed characters who they played off and on for other content they enjoyed, now are forced to do the levelling process again.
So really a "level increase" expansion is good for the players who are now asking for more time to level, because they enjoy the levelling process itself. These are the players who get bored after reaching max level and wait for an expansion to play again. But it is bad for the players who like the end game content and other systems, because they have to do the "levelling" content when they would rather be doing their professions, pvp, caravan runs, node wars, etc. These are the people who argue for a fast levelling process, or even no levels, because they could see themselves spending years just playing the end game systems in a PVX environment.
Adding new levels or not both are true with gaining more power, the difference with new levels is it equalizes all players. Also im getting the vibe people are thinking they are gaining new levels every like 6 months, and not thinking this is years down the line.
Yeah agreed with previous poster, this is a good point.
I realized why I wasn't quite 'getting it' for this thread, in the end.
It's because I see 'level cap' and 'stat cap' as equivalent. Briefly:
There's a stat in FFXI called 'Conserve MP', which is 'the chance that when you cast a spell, it will use less MP than the base value'.
If an expansion provides a new gear piece that raises the 'effective cap' of 'Conserve MP' by providing a strong option (let's say +4) in an equip slot where previously, the best you could get was 0~+1, now a very specific type/build of mage is 'stronger'.
Note that I don't mean 'hey there's a class for whom max Conserve MP is BIS', I mean there's a playSTYLE where it is SOMETIMES considered BIS.
Let's say that slot was the back slot, so, your cape. But your prior cape was something like 'Magic Accuracy'.
There are ways to rearrange your gear set such that you can get to a higher cap of 'Conserve MP' if you happen to be one of the mages with that style. You might want to swap some other slot that was giving +2 Conserve MP, to Magic Accuracy option, and then put on the new cape, as your new build.
It's possible that the final result is that you have more Conserve MP AND more Magic Accuracy.
But if you consider it really carefully, you still needed all the Conserve MP gear from prior content. Except maybe the ... idk, Gloves (the thing you replaced with Magic Accuracy). So, an up-and-coming player has reasons to still do the old content if they care, to gather those pieces. Or they can buy it. Or they can 'skip it' and have more Conserve MP by going straight for the 'new cape' but still not necessarily have enough for a Conserve MP Build.
This is how I experienced most of this back then. Maybe that's 'not enough' for players today (I'm personally irritated that we get Gear Enhancing With Failstacks instead), but 'exactly which piece of old content was invalidated by new content' was 'patchwork'. Basically such that, for any given build, only one or two 'old content targets' would be utterly invalidated. Probably because there was just less gear that would just make you 'more powerful' without you thinking about it and building around it.
This is also why I don't like set bonuses on gear or simplified gearsets. It's too easy for a rushed designer to just go 'well this set needs to be better than the last set' and shower players with new gear to make them feel progression even when maybe it's not required to be that way?
So, all that said. For people who care about level cap rises, is it that the pace of new gear I described above is too slow, for you?
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
It's possible that the final result is that you have more Conserve MP AND more Magic Accuracy.
That is an issue with poor itemization, not with a level cap increase.
If a stat or effect is strong, or if two stats or effects together have the potential to be strong, they should only ever exist on one item slot.
This is something PoE does a fairly good example of. Players have a lot of freedom to customize their gear, but each slot still has a limit to the stats and effect that you can have on it.
So, all that said. For people who care about level cap rises, is it that the pace of new gear I described above is too slow, for you?
What matters more to me here is the difference between the perceived player power when comparing the two playstyles. And I feel like that's usually the main complaint about "lvls risen, new gear is more powerful - if you don't have either of those you gonna die to anyone who has even just one".
If that new playstyle you described is 5-10% stronger than the previous one (meaning that someone who considered that one great and hasn't gotten the item for this new one) - I'd be completely fine if we got new items like that every 6 months (obviously across all gear types).
And if some new items can enable playstyles that require older items, but still provide and overall increase in power - even better.
Changing level cap and creating new areas where everyone is going to quest is wrong game design. I purely don't like it - this way whole WoW makes no sense to me. Adding things to existing areas or creating new areas as addition to existing world is something I would like to see. Believe me or not I still like to play Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, because of its PvP systems, sieges, warbanding, etc...
Changing level cap and creating new areas where everyone is going to quest is wrong game design. I purely don't like it - this way whole WoW makes no sense to me. Adding things to existing areas or creating new areas as addition to existing world is something I would like to see. Believe me or not I still like to play Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, because of its PvP systems, sieges, warbanding, etc...
There should definitely be new areas, the idea no new areas after the game has been out for years doesn't make a lot of sense.
New areas should be added, and changes to current areas should be a thing as well.
Changing level cap and creating new areas where everyone is going to quest is wrong game design. I purely don't like it - this way whole WoW makes no sense to me. Adding things to existing areas or creating new areas as addition to existing world is something I would like to see. Believe me or not I still like to play Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, because of its PvP systems, sieges, warbanding, etc...
The reason WoW (and games of that era) did it is fairly obvious.
The serverside game engine divides it's resources to in game zones - often as granular as individual CPU cores for specific zones. These resources need to be allocated based on the expected maximum use, as there wasn't a dynamic system to add more resources to a zone on the fly or anything.
If a developer continually adds new zones to a game, those zones need server resources. If those new zones were added at the same level as existing zones, and thus those existing zones weren't being made significantly less used, then the server hardware would likely need to be upgraded to accomidate the new zones.
On the other hand, if you add a level cap increase, the older zones become significantly less used, and thus can have significantly fewer resources added to them, thus freeing up resources for the newer zones.
There is a similar thing in a game like Ashes.
If Intrepid simply add new content to level 50 players, then those level 50 players would be more spread out over that larger amount of content. This means things like open world PvP would be less frequent, it means there will be less people you could happen upon while running trade route, it means you will see less people out on the open ocean. Even if the same number of people are playing, if they are more spread out, you will see fewer of them.
This is why any new content specifically in Ashes needs to replace existing content, rather than add to the total content the game offers.
Inclusion of the word relatively does not make the claim any more sound.
It remains a flawed concept.
Hence.... why I said what I said.
Losing power relative to the new max power level attainable is an uncontroversial basic fact. All other things being equal, a lvl 60 is stronger than a lvl 50 in WoW, for example, so on day 1 of the expansion you are at 80%. max power instead of the 100% the day before. It's also not the main thrust of the argument I make in the OP at all.
How the new levels equalize everything for new and old players is part of the problem though, and is an argument worth having. If done WoW-style, it's a complete reset of the months spent grinding raid gear while at max level, getting those smaller incremental upgrades, which are obsoleted with the first green gear of the new levels. I don't want that for Ashes.
You've said you don't play that way Dygz, but rather do the content up to max level and then wait for more content and do that to max level, without the grind at the endgame to get those smaller incremental power changes, so your perspective is clearly different.
I want gradual character progression with new skills/abilities/mitigations/attunements, and not so much gear and level based power progression. Catch up mechanics for new players are better than the abrupt reset a level cap increase tends to bring. FFXI may have solved some of that obsolescence problem, and if so, great, Intrepid should look at that too.
I wrote more here, but I was essentially just repeating myself from OP and previous posts in this thread about how level cap increases affects the world of Ashes specifically, and the problems with it, so I cut it.
I want gradual character progression with new skills/abilities/mitigations/attunements, and not so much gear and level based power progression.
This still makes no sense to me - especially in the context of a game like Ashes.
The games economy is supremely important here. The bulk of the economy will be based around character gear. If there is no new gear added to the game, the games economy will grind to a halt.
A continual addition of new tiers of gear to the game is required to keep the game functioning as intended.
I agree with you that WoW's total gear reset with every level cap increase is not ideal, but Intrepids basic design for Ashes would render that impossible anyway. In Ashes, your power is measured more by your ability to earn gold, where as in WoW it was measured by your ability to complete content. Thus, if you have a solid means of being able to generate an in game income, you will maintain that through a level cap increase.
Then there is the additional notion that it is probable that Steven will implement gearing in a way where the next tier of gear requires a piece of the current tier of gear as a component - much as Archeage did.
Thus, if you have an enchanted item and a new tier of gear is added, you could use that enchanged item to create an item of the new tier that maintains that enchant - maintianing your gear progression.
I want gradual character progression with new skills/abilities/mitigations/attunements, and not so much gear and level based power progression.
This still makes no sense to me - especially in the context of a game like Ashes.
The games economy is supremely important here. The bulk of the economy will be based around character gear. If there is no new gear added to the game, the games economy will grind to a halt.
A continual addition of new tiers of gear to the game is required to keep the game functioning as intended.
New gear is needed yes, to some extent, to keep the players happy. But for the economy, we don't need new tiers of gear. It can absolutely be the same tier, but gear for different environments, with different resists and stats, and even just gear with cool new looks based on the new expansion content.
The economy of Ashes has to be solid and working fully in a self-contained loop, without constantly adding any new content. Repairs requiring mats and sometimes even the schematic, blowing up items in enchanting, new players entering the game, new alts, new meta builds requiring different stats on gear, all the consumables, new caravan parts, new ships. If all of that can't keep the economy running indefinitely by itself, the system is deeply flawed to begin with.
New gear is needed yes, to some extent, to keep the players happy. But for the economy, we don't need new tiers of gear. It can absolutely be the same tier, but gear for different environments, with different resists and stats, and even just gear with cool new looks based on the new expansion content.
Yeah, because players in ESO loved this.
Players don't want different gear, they want better gear.
The economy of Ashes has to be solid and working fully in a self-contained loop, without constantly adding any new content. Repairs requiring mats and sometimes even the schematic, blowing up items in enchanting, new players entering the game, new alts, new meta builds requiring different stats on gear, all the consumables, new caravan parts, new ships. If all of that can't keep the economy running indefinitely by itself, the system is deeply flawed to begin with.
It really can't - but that isn't a flaw.
The point of a games economy - in every MMO to date - has been about getting gear (ships in EVE = gear).
Everything else in the economy builds to that point. Harvesting is the fundamental layer in Ashes, with transport next (including caravan parts, and probably ship parts). The games entire housing system is based around the economy, with freeholds being a key tool. Nodes provide services to assist in the economy, as well as access to top tier economic activity. PvP is largely about the transferrence of economic entities from one player to the other.
All of this is in service of players getting better gear. That is essentially the point of MMORPG's as a whole.
Not different gear, better gear.
Take away the possibility for players to get better gear, and you take away their primary reason to participate in the games economy - to participate in the game at all.
I want gradual character progression with new skills/abilities/mitigations/attunements, and not so much gear and level based power progression.
This still makes no sense to me - especially in the context of a game like Ashes.
The games economy is supremely important here. The bulk of the economy will be based around character gear. If there is no new gear added to the game, the games economy will grind to a halt.
A continual addition of new tiers of gear to the game is required to keep the game functioning as intended.
New gear is needed yes, to some extent, to keep the players happy. But for the economy, we don't need new tiers of gear. It can absolutely be the same tier, but gear for different environments, with different resists and stats, and even just gear with cool new looks based on the new expansion content.
The economy of Ashes has to be solid and working fully in a self-contained loop, without constantly adding any new content. Repairs requiring mats and sometimes even the schematic, blowing up items in enchanting, new players entering the game, new alts, new meta builds requiring different stats on gear, all the consumables, new caravan parts, new ships. If all of that can't keep the economy running indefinitely by itself, the system is deeply flawed to begin with.
FFXI economy runs on this, and a higher reliance on true consumables than other games.
There was definitely the concept of 'better gear', but there was not much of it, and as noted, a lot of it was build related.
This worked primarily because FFXI players don't think like Noaani (presumably everyone who did, left to go play EQ2, and vice versa, resulting in that equilibrium they had for a while).
So basically, in at least the games I play, there is a reasonable subset of willing players whose goal is not just to get better gear, but who will still participate in the economy because better consumables (or horizontal gear progression) allow them to take on harder content in new or different ways, and the adaptation, exploration and experimentation with those strategies is fun.
Adaptation of various kinds is also a large factor.
As further proof of this, a large amount of stronger gear in the game is entirely Job-Exclusive, and sometimes outright Exclusive (Untradeable), yet the economy worked because people's approaches to the content had dependencies on Consumables and 'new build experiments' (which involve obtaining different gear, but not strictly 'better' gear, as previously described).
In case somehow unclear, I share your opinion on the 'this feels flawed if it isn't possible'.
As further proof of this, a large amount of stronger gear in the game is entirely Job-Exclusive, and sometimes outright Exclusive (Untradeable), yet the economy worked because people's approaches to the content had dependencies on Consumables and 'new build experiments' (which involve obtaining different gear, but not strictly 'better' gear, as previously described).
But was the games economy as central a part of the games design as it is in Ashes?
While I am happy to argue that most players want to always have some manner of gear progression before them, my main argument in relation to the constant need for better gear in Ashes specifically is that of the effect it would have on the economy as large numbers of players simply stop attempting to upgrade their gear.
To me, a bigger design flaw would be creating a game that has the economy as essentially the glue holding the whole game together (PvP, freeholds, caravans, castles, nodes - these are all held together by the economy) and then purposefully subjecting that economy to the massive shift that would happen if players got to a point where they just stopped trying to get better gear.
If the economy can be held together without players wanting better gear, what would the economy look like at the point in the game where everyone IS trying to get better gear?
If the economy can be held together without players wanting better gear, what would the economy look like at the point in the game where everyone IS trying to get better gear?
I keep forgetting, did EQ2/AA have gear decay/repairs? I think they didn't have destruction on OE either, right?
If both of those things remain in Ashes - that's your perpetual economic machine. People will constantly need to farm stuff to fix their things and those who decide to risk OEing things to get even more power will need even more mats cause sooner or later they'll destroy their things (and/or will have needed more mats for a backup).
If the economy can be held together without players wanting better gear, what would the economy look like at the point in the game where everyone IS trying to get better gear?
I keep forgetting, did EQ2/AA have gear decay/repairs? I think they didn't have destruction on OE either, right?
If both of those things remain in Ashes - that's your perpetual economic machine. People will constantly need to farm stuff to fix their things and those who decide to risk OEing things to get even more power will need even more mats cause sooner or later they'll destroy their things (and/or will have needed more mats for a backup).
FF doesn't have this, and wouldn't benefit from it directly, for a bunch of odd reasons, but FF is also very slow pacing wise, so I think it auto-filters out people who don't value the 'rotating economic existence with occasional interesting event' and they either up/crossgraded to EQ2, drifted back to EQ1, or got onto the WoW themepark ride.
I point that out to remind that even though we are probably getting the 'having to repair gear' therefore turning it into more of a consumable as well, doing it for top tier gear as much as midgame gear might be a meaningful pain-point for a lot of people.
Hopefully the sort of person who plays Ashes generally is fine with 'economic activity as maintenance' or that whole thing is going to fall apart quite fast (or get changed to just be 'throw Gold at problem' which will put us back to Big Guild Energy).
I point that out to remind that even though we are probably getting the 'having to repair gear' therefore turning it into more of a consumable as well, doing it for top tier gear as much as midgame gear might be a meaningful pain-point for a lot of people.
Yeah, repair speeds/requirements of top lvl gear will definitely be a highly debated topic once we get to that point in testing.
I had a suggestion for the overall system 2 years ago and I feel like it could still be implemented, cause iirc we haven't seen gear repair mechanics yet, right?
Hell, my suggestion could even include the stuff they showed in the artisan stream, with better quality mats fixing the item better. This would also keep more professions in the server's end-game economic loop as well, though I'd imagine that is already the case (or at least logically should be).
I point that out to remind that even though we are probably getting the 'having to repair gear' therefore turning it into more of a consumable as well, doing it for top tier gear as much as midgame gear might be a meaningful pain-point for a lot of people.
Yeah, repair speeds/requirements of top lvl gear will definitely be a highly debated topic once we get to that point in testing.
I had a suggestion for the overall system 2 years ago and I feel like it could still be implemented, cause iirc we haven't seen gear repair mechanics yet, right?
Hell, my suggestion could even include the stuff they showed in the artisan stream, with better quality mats fixing the item better. This would also keep more professions in the server's end-game economic loop as well, though I'd imagine that is already the case (or at least logically should be).
Well, you already got a lot of your pushback-feedback from that same thread.
Same deal here. You know exactly what game you want, and you just gotta figure out how many other people don't want it, and whether or not they actually really should have to suck it up and accept it for the sake of other aspects.
I'd say yes, here, but relative to the concept of Level Cap increases and the related shifts in economy, you wouldn't need to go 'as far' as your suggestion, so it will probably remain unaddressed until Alpha-2 Year 2.
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100% this.
I'd go so far as to say that any game that puts more emphasis on 'achieving' the leveling rather than 'learning something about yourself' (even just your chosen/preferred ways) during the leveling, is doomed to feel empty and fall off like the many dust-in-the-wind MMOs out there.
And remember, if one 'steps outside one's bubble', there are a lot of MMOs out there.
I"m not aware of a content dump that did not also include an increase in Level cap.
So... there really is no WoW data that refutes the suggestion that Level cap is not imperative for an expansion.
Fair enough. I'm not really trying to argue that levels alone is all it takes, but just making the point that it's not clear that significant amount of people quit due to level increases.
Typically, an "expansion" content update comes with some kind of increase to levels, gear, or new power progression paths. Your old character becomes relatively weaker/obsolete after the patch.
It could be that the idea is players are not only drawn to the new content, but also the new journey to make their characters stronger again. I mean that's part of the reason we play these games in the first place, we like the journey.
All that being said, Ashes can really set itself apart with node mechanics. With the nodes they have a way of making power structures built into the map itself, and not just at the character level. They can mix PVE power progression (levels, gear, character stats) with the PVP power progression (Node seige weapons/resources, defences, caravan wars, territory control).
Maybe the major content updates over the first few years of launch have nothing to do with characters getting better gear and more to do with the systems in the world. Ways of accumulating and utilizing node power, or things like the naval warfare.
I don't agree that my character "becomes relatively weaker/obsolete after the patch".
I can still kill the mobs I've been killing with the same ease. Most likely I willnot have been playing for many months up to several years because there is no new content for me to explore. So II will have quit playing long before the new content dump.
And the draw for the expansion is not increased levels - rather it's new mobs and new quests and new areas to explore.
In RPGs, vertical progression is important to represent The Hero's Journey - but past level 30 or 40, I should already feel heroic compared to the Level 1 mobs. Fighting different TYPES of mobs via horizontal progression would be fine with me in an expansion.
Ashes has many potential paths for more Horizontal progression, rather than more Vertical progression in their early expansions.
This is why he's included the word "relatively".
Relative to the maximum / relative to other players (in an MMO world). Clearly.
His point stands, unless you are suggesting you should be Equal and/or stronger than new content with your current character. When new content comes out in mmorpgs you are weaker and have some path to progress to become stronger. Else new content would be DOA.
Adding new levels or not both are true with gaining more power, the difference with new levels is it equalizes all players. Also im getting the vibe people are thinking they are gaining new levels every like 6 months, and not thinking this is years down the line.
It was something that another poster said, and the reason I was talking about data showing playerbase increasing after level cap, basically to refute this point.
Fully agree with this and hope this is the direction they go.
This is actually a fairly good point. Another reason for the "level" increase with a major content expansion is that, in the mind of the players, we are all starting off at similar points again and going through the content together at the same time. Whether you had BIS gear or 2nd or 3rd from BIS gear (which could be a difference of months of effort to obtain) within a few days of the patch it wont matter anymore and you are basically on an equal playing field. It's the exact same motivation that people have with joining the game on day 1 of launch. This type of "power increase expansion" disrupts solidified positions of players and can help a stale game feel fresh again.
There's also the excitement of the large player base increase that is here to check the game out again. Just the fact that other people are interested and joining the game psychologically makes the game more appealing. Although, that is a different argument than level increase.
Of course there is a bit of a tug of war, because the players that were actively playing, or who had maxed characters who they played off and on for other content they enjoyed, now are forced to do the levelling process again.
So really a "level increase" expansion is good for the players who are now asking for more time to level, because they enjoy the levelling process itself. These are the players who get bored after reaching max level and wait for an expansion to play again. But it is bad for the players who like the end game content and other systems, because they have to do the "levelling" content when they would rather be doing their professions, pvp, caravan runs, node wars, etc. These are the people who argue for a fast levelling process, or even no levels, because they could see themselves spending years just playing the end game systems in a PVX environment.
Yeah agreed with previous poster, this is a good point.
It's because I see 'level cap' and 'stat cap' as equivalent. Briefly:
There's a stat in FFXI called 'Conserve MP', which is 'the chance that when you cast a spell, it will use less MP than the base value'.
If an expansion provides a new gear piece that raises the 'effective cap' of 'Conserve MP' by providing a strong option (let's say +4) in an equip slot where previously, the best you could get was 0~+1, now a very specific type/build of mage is 'stronger'.
Note that I don't mean 'hey there's a class for whom max Conserve MP is BIS', I mean there's a playSTYLE where it is SOMETIMES considered BIS.
Let's say that slot was the back slot, so, your cape. But your prior cape was something like 'Magic Accuracy'.
There are ways to rearrange your gear set such that you can get to a higher cap of 'Conserve MP' if you happen to be one of the mages with that style. You might want to swap some other slot that was giving +2 Conserve MP, to Magic Accuracy option, and then put on the new cape, as your new build.
It's possible that the final result is that you have more Conserve MP AND more Magic Accuracy.
But if you consider it really carefully, you still needed all the Conserve MP gear from prior content. Except maybe the ... idk, Gloves (the thing you replaced with Magic Accuracy). So, an up-and-coming player has reasons to still do the old content if they care, to gather those pieces. Or they can buy it. Or they can 'skip it' and have more Conserve MP by going straight for the 'new cape' but still not necessarily have enough for a Conserve MP Build.
This is how I experienced most of this back then. Maybe that's 'not enough' for players today (I'm personally irritated that we get Gear Enhancing With Failstacks instead), but 'exactly which piece of old content was invalidated by new content' was 'patchwork'. Basically such that, for any given build, only one or two 'old content targets' would be utterly invalidated. Probably because there was just less gear that would just make you 'more powerful' without you thinking about it and building around it.
This is also why I don't like set bonuses on gear or simplified gearsets. It's too easy for a rushed designer to just go 'well this set needs to be better than the last set' and shower players with new gear to make them feel progression even when maybe it's not required to be that way?
So, all that said. For people who care about level cap rises, is it that the pace of new gear I described above is too slow, for you?
It remains a flawed concept.
Hence.... why I said what I said.
I submit.
:white-flag ; )
If a stat or effect is strong, or if two stats or effects together have the potential to be strong, they should only ever exist on one item slot.
This is something PoE does a fairly good example of. Players have a lot of freedom to customize their gear, but each slot still has a limit to the stats and effect that you can have on it.
If that new playstyle you described is 5-10% stronger than the previous one (meaning that someone who considered that one great and hasn't gotten the item for this new one) - I'd be completely fine if we got new items like that every 6 months (obviously across all gear types).
And if some new items can enable playstyles that require older items, but still provide and overall increase in power - even better.
There should definitely be new areas, the idea no new areas after the game has been out for years doesn't make a lot of sense.
New areas should be added, and changes to current areas should be a thing as well.
The reason WoW (and games of that era) did it is fairly obvious.
The serverside game engine divides it's resources to in game zones - often as granular as individual CPU cores for specific zones. These resources need to be allocated based on the expected maximum use, as there wasn't a dynamic system to add more resources to a zone on the fly or anything.
If a developer continually adds new zones to a game, those zones need server resources. If those new zones were added at the same level as existing zones, and thus those existing zones weren't being made significantly less used, then the server hardware would likely need to be upgraded to accomidate the new zones.
On the other hand, if you add a level cap increase, the older zones become significantly less used, and thus can have significantly fewer resources added to them, thus freeing up resources for the newer zones.
There is a similar thing in a game like Ashes.
If Intrepid simply add new content to level 50 players, then those level 50 players would be more spread out over that larger amount of content. This means things like open world PvP would be less frequent, it means there will be less people you could happen upon while running trade route, it means you will see less people out on the open ocean. Even if the same number of people are playing, if they are more spread out, you will see fewer of them.
This is why any new content specifically in Ashes needs to replace existing content, rather than add to the total content the game offers.
Losing power relative to the new max power level attainable is an uncontroversial basic fact. All other things being equal, a lvl 60 is stronger than a lvl 50 in WoW, for example, so on day 1 of the expansion you are at 80%. max power instead of the 100% the day before. It's also not the main thrust of the argument I make in the OP at all.
How the new levels equalize everything for new and old players is part of the problem though, and is an argument worth having. If done WoW-style, it's a complete reset of the months spent grinding raid gear while at max level, getting those smaller incremental upgrades, which are obsoleted with the first green gear of the new levels. I don't want that for Ashes.
You've said you don't play that way Dygz, but rather do the content up to max level and then wait for more content and do that to max level, without the grind at the endgame to get those smaller incremental power changes, so your perspective is clearly different.
I want gradual character progression with new skills/abilities/mitigations/attunements, and not so much gear and level based power progression. Catch up mechanics for new players are better than the abrupt reset a level cap increase tends to bring. FFXI may have solved some of that obsolescence problem, and if so, great, Intrepid should look at that too.
I wrote more here, but I was essentially just repeating myself from OP and previous posts in this thread about how level cap increases affects the world of Ashes specifically, and the problems with it, so I cut it.
The games economy is supremely important here. The bulk of the economy will be based around character gear. If there is no new gear added to the game, the games economy will grind to a halt.
A continual addition of new tiers of gear to the game is required to keep the game functioning as intended.
I agree with you that WoW's total gear reset with every level cap increase is not ideal, but Intrepids basic design for Ashes would render that impossible anyway. In Ashes, your power is measured more by your ability to earn gold, where as in WoW it was measured by your ability to complete content. Thus, if you have a solid means of being able to generate an in game income, you will maintain that through a level cap increase.
Then there is the additional notion that it is probable that Steven will implement gearing in a way where the next tier of gear requires a piece of the current tier of gear as a component - much as Archeage did.
Thus, if you have an enchanted item and a new tier of gear is added, you could use that enchanged item to create an item of the new tier that maintains that enchant - maintianing your gear progression.
New gear is needed yes, to some extent, to keep the players happy. But for the economy, we don't need new tiers of gear. It can absolutely be the same tier, but gear for different environments, with different resists and stats, and even just gear with cool new looks based on the new expansion content.
The economy of Ashes has to be solid and working fully in a self-contained loop, without constantly adding any new content. Repairs requiring mats and sometimes even the schematic, blowing up items in enchanting, new players entering the game, new alts, new meta builds requiring different stats on gear, all the consumables, new caravan parts, new ships. If all of that can't keep the economy running indefinitely by itself, the system is deeply flawed to begin with.
Players don't want different gear, they want better gear. It really can't - but that isn't a flaw.
The point of a games economy - in every MMO to date - has been about getting gear (ships in EVE = gear).
Everything else in the economy builds to that point. Harvesting is the fundamental layer in Ashes, with transport next (including caravan parts, and probably ship parts). The games entire housing system is based around the economy, with freeholds being a key tool. Nodes provide services to assist in the economy, as well as access to top tier economic activity. PvP is largely about the transferrence of economic entities from one player to the other.
All of this is in service of players getting better gear. That is essentially the point of MMORPG's as a whole.
Not different gear, better gear.
Take away the possibility for players to get better gear, and you take away their primary reason to participate in the games economy - to participate in the game at all.
FFXI economy runs on this, and a higher reliance on true consumables than other games.
There was definitely the concept of 'better gear', but there was not much of it, and as noted, a lot of it was build related.
This worked primarily because FFXI players don't think like Noaani (presumably everyone who did, left to go play EQ2, and vice versa, resulting in that equilibrium they had for a while).
So basically, in at least the games I play, there is a reasonable subset of willing players whose goal is not just to get better gear, but who will still participate in the economy because better consumables (or horizontal gear progression) allow them to take on harder content in new or different ways, and the adaptation, exploration and experimentation with those strategies is fun.
Adaptation of various kinds is also a large factor.
As further proof of this, a large amount of stronger gear in the game is entirely Job-Exclusive, and sometimes outright Exclusive (Untradeable), yet the economy worked because people's approaches to the content had dependencies on Consumables and 'new build experiments' (which involve obtaining different gear, but not strictly 'better' gear, as previously described).
In case somehow unclear, I share your opinion on the 'this feels flawed if it isn't possible'.
While I am happy to argue that most players want to always have some manner of gear progression before them, my main argument in relation to the constant need for better gear in Ashes specifically is that of the effect it would have on the economy as large numbers of players simply stop attempting to upgrade their gear.
To me, a bigger design flaw would be creating a game that has the economy as essentially the glue holding the whole game together (PvP, freeholds, caravans, castles, nodes - these are all held together by the economy) and then purposefully subjecting that economy to the massive shift that would happen if players got to a point where they just stopped trying to get better gear.
If the economy can be held together without players wanting better gear, what would the economy look like at the point in the game where everyone IS trying to get better gear?
If both of those things remain in Ashes - that's your perpetual economic machine. People will constantly need to farm stuff to fix their things and those who decide to risk OEing things to get even more power will need even more mats cause sooner or later they'll destroy their things (and/or will have needed more mats for a backup).
FF doesn't have this, and wouldn't benefit from it directly, for a bunch of odd reasons, but FF is also very slow pacing wise, so I think it auto-filters out people who don't value the 'rotating economic existence with occasional interesting event' and they either up/crossgraded to EQ2, drifted back to EQ1, or got onto the WoW themepark ride.
I point that out to remind that even though we are probably getting the 'having to repair gear' therefore turning it into more of a consumable as well, doing it for top tier gear as much as midgame gear might be a meaningful pain-point for a lot of people.
Hopefully the sort of person who plays Ashes generally is fine with 'economic activity as maintenance' or that whole thing is going to fall apart quite fast (or get changed to just be 'throw Gold at problem' which will put us back to Big Guild Energy).
I had a suggestion for the overall system 2 years ago and I feel like it could still be implemented, cause iirc we haven't seen gear repair mechanics yet, right?
Hell, my suggestion could even include the stuff they showed in the artisan stream, with better quality mats fixing the item better. This would also keep more professions in the server's end-game economic loop as well, though I'd imagine that is already the case (or at least logically should be).
Well, you already got a lot of your pushback-feedback from that same thread.
Same deal here. You know exactly what game you want, and you just gotta figure out how many other people don't want it, and whether or not they actually really should have to suck it up and accept it for the sake of other aspects.
I'd say yes, here, but relative to the concept of Level Cap increases and the related shifts in economy, you wouldn't need to go 'as far' as your suggestion, so it will probably remain unaddressed until Alpha-2 Year 2.