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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Accessory Crafting for Specialized Builds
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
So while taking another look at Throne and Liberty's itemization and their Accessories, I came up with something I thought was interesting...
Like most Lineage-lineage games, it has the color grades for gear, and it uses Accessories for Magic Defense and similar.
But you 'push through' the Green Accessories fairly fast, as you'd expect. They partially resolved this by putting certain stats on most of them. Some are just 'outlevel straight to the trash' tier, but some are legit tradeoffs between whatever stat you're getting, and the Magic Defense you're obviously not getting by wearing Green Accessories.
Then I thought that if you had low level-to-equip Green accessories that enhanced 'classes' in ways that have diminished bonuses for low level players, but still had some components that were high level or at least hard to get in some way, it would create a potential for gear that low level characters could wear if they happened to have it or someone gave it to them, or could 'aspire to', could 'save up to craft, using mostly green tier materials, and buying the rare or powerful one', etc.
This probably wouldn't cause most players to just skip all other accessories, we tend to need that Magic Defense eventually somewhere, and rare items are still rare even if they are technically Green Grade. It also, in a game like that one, at least, opens up easier paths for enhancing those Green Grade 'specialized Accessories' and helps keep up some minor market for that tier of enhancement (however it is done).
You can also make the base form of the accesory much more powerful than you otherwise could, because in TL, at least, there's a cap on how high you can push Green gear (not making any statement on any equivalent in Ashes), so with a lower ceiling, depending on the design, you could raise the 'cap', making it more immediately obvious what it's for, unlike what happens in certain games where the 'base form' of very powerful accessories looks like just more random jank and you have to get that knowledge some other way.
Anyway, just a thought for if Ashes is going the L-style 'Your accessories are basic Magic Defenses' instead of the BDO 'Get your attack here! More attack here!' or FF's 'Resistances and Waterfall Stat sources'.
Like most Lineage-lineage games, it has the color grades for gear, and it uses Accessories for Magic Defense and similar.
But you 'push through' the Green Accessories fairly fast, as you'd expect. They partially resolved this by putting certain stats on most of them. Some are just 'outlevel straight to the trash' tier, but some are legit tradeoffs between whatever stat you're getting, and the Magic Defense you're obviously not getting by wearing Green Accessories.
Then I thought that if you had low level-to-equip Green accessories that enhanced 'classes' in ways that have diminished bonuses for low level players, but still had some components that were high level or at least hard to get in some way, it would create a potential for gear that low level characters could wear if they happened to have it or someone gave it to them, or could 'aspire to', could 'save up to craft, using mostly green tier materials, and buying the rare or powerful one', etc.
This probably wouldn't cause most players to just skip all other accessories, we tend to need that Magic Defense eventually somewhere, and rare items are still rare even if they are technically Green Grade. It also, in a game like that one, at least, opens up easier paths for enhancing those Green Grade 'specialized Accessories' and helps keep up some minor market for that tier of enhancement (however it is done).
You can also make the base form of the accesory much more powerful than you otherwise could, because in TL, at least, there's a cap on how high you can push Green gear (not making any statement on any equivalent in Ashes), so with a lower ceiling, depending on the design, you could raise the 'cap', making it more immediately obvious what it's for, unlike what happens in certain games where the 'base form' of very powerful accessories looks like just more random jank and you have to get that knowledge some other way.
Anyway, just a thought for if Ashes is going the L-style 'Your accessories are basic Magic Defenses' instead of the BDO 'Get your attack here! More attack here!' or FF's 'Resistances and Waterfall Stat sources'.
♪ One Gummy Fish, two Gummy Fish, Red Gummy Fish, Blue Gummy Fish ♪
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Comments
don't we have that already?
low level characters equip low level accessories (1-10, 11-20, etc) and high level chars equip high level accessories.
or do you mean the exact same accessory but the stats are reduced at low level? its pretty much the same thing, except you would only have to make 1 item and works for everybody at every level..less crafting I suppose.
what are the economic repercussions of that?
Based on this, I feel like I failed to explain it well enough.
Oh well.
Yes, I meant 'exact same accessory', and it's not that the stats are reduced, it's that it does something that is outright less useful at lower level.
Though, that might be an uncommon concept in certain games too.
Think like 'MP consumption down 2% when casting X ability type' or 'HP +1%'.
thought so but was making sure. but isn't that the same as having multiple level tiered accessories? difference is you would only have to craft 1 item, instead of 1 item every 5-10 levels or whatever. what are the economic implications of that?
While having lowbie rare (more expensive) items would be interesting, I feel like majority of them would be alt gear rather than get into hands of regular people from time to time, just as was usually the case with OE lowbie gear in L2.
Though obviously this also has a ton of implications for mage power scaling and balance in pvp interactions. L2's mages were OP FOREEEEVER, because getting good accessories and OEing them was quite difficult throughout your leveling process. This was also the fault of mage mobs being real rare, so majority of people simply gear up their clothes instead of gearing up equally or maybe even accessory-heavily.
I'd assume/hope that the mob issue is not in Ashes, so its relation to mage power might also not exist, and if that's the case then maybe it'd be fine to have lower-lvl gear that's still usable at higher lvls.
early game people can just focus on basic stats when playing and deciding what they want to do, after that they move onto more specific modifiers when doing mid game and late game would be the min/maxing and really nit picking from the larger pool available.
This is why in most games you won't see stuff like helms and accessories till you start to level. You start out just learning about damage and defense, then attributes then the other stuff.
The way OP is mentioning is just poor game design in my opinion, a game like this usually sets up stat walls like to kill the 10+ mobs you have to be this strong and to kill the 20+ mobs you have to be this strong, re-doing gear every 10 levels just to meet stat caps is like making people do endgame optimization over and over till they hit the cap.
Ashes of Creation will hopefully be complex enough but, at the same time hold things back for level 1 players so there's room for growth and learning. As a person levels up, they are having fun learning the game rather than being subjected to hey hit this wall, now hit that wall, and now this one too
If it was me designing the system and talking just accessories players would get access to them around 10+ the low level one they like will last a little while, the one's to replace will happen around after you get your augment to spice things up and then your third will be your endgame pieces