Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
Yeah, that's exactly what I was talking about. An aggresive representative of local fauna constantly tries to kill certain threads by spamming and shifting the topic, when there is a suggestion that doesn't fit his personal preferences. Glad that I'm not the only person who actually sees that.
My point also kinda got swallowed up by that response. I was genuinely asking for clarification on the intention behind the discussion in the last 2-3 pages.
1. Leave it as it is
2. Remove health bars of green players (non-combatants) and leave them for purple/red players
3. Forget about those 1/4 1/6 1/8 segments on a health bar and simply make it accurate
I would support #2, unless a better suggestion appears
Personally, I don't really care whether that will be segments or the exact HP, so I'd let other community members decide what is better for them
I can... make a Splinter about it if we care for some reason?
Y'all are borderline-non-parsable so lmk if I need to actually read it myself.
It was not stated there were insufficient top tier farming spots. In fact there were plenty of choices. What was explained was that within various tier zones (of many levels) there were player determined sweet spots that became more popular and contested. They were not valuable to all players, namely ones in a particular level range, and moreover particular class specific grouping combinations.
These were contested for a variety of reasons, some listed before, some not such as:
The developers of L2 had to have done it intentionally, beucase the exact amount of content of each type needs to be fairly well balanced.
It's kind of funny how you now basically agree with my original point though.
Was it, perhaps, the population?
Not interested in another pointless conversation with you as I've seen enough of your mental gymnastics
The terms "this aids player retention" and "this is better for the games population" can generally beconsidered to be functionally the same thing in casual conversation when talking about something that is intended to keep players in a game.
There is an argument that they have a different meaning, but they are functionally the same thing in the context of something intended to keep players in a game.
WRONG. There may be things that are good for player RETENTION, but not necessarily good for player's POPULATION and vice versa.
New World is a game that had a high POPULATION at first (because it's an easy casual-friendly game) but had problems with RETENTION (because everything was relatively easy to achieve)
Lineage 2 in the middle of it's existing (ignoring the first patches and the latest patches) didn't have a huge POPULATION compared to WoW, for example, but the RETENTION was insane, compared to the overwhelmiing majority of other games.
See the difference? Whatever. Even if you do, you'd never admit it cuz it doesn't fit your clown narrative.
The criticism is more a result of you being told about an aspect of a language that is not your first, and refusing to listen to it.
It is obvious that English isn't your first language - not because of your spelling, nor the way you form sentences, these things are all quite good.
The reason it is obvious that English isn't your first language is because you don't understand the subtleties of the language at all.
This is the only valid argument I have seen for this, honestly.
It is, however, subjective. Some people get an amount of excitement in seeing a rivals health bar going down, especially in large scale PvP.
No, it doesn't.
For reference: here is Steven talking about it (timestamp from 1:00:26):
Your comment would be true if we were talking about PvE content.
Edit to add; getting lucky with a lack of information isn't skill. Skill is having information and using it well.
If you want to increase the skill ceiling (ie, the amount of skill a player can put to use), you want to give players more informaiton, not less. Less information increases the luck ceiling.
As I said above, decision making without information isn't skill, it's luck.
If you want to increase the skill ceiling, you give players more information, not less.
There is an element of luck in PvP in general - sure, such as getting lucky with crits/debuffs etc. But those are two separate things.
Simple comparison:
1. Chess - a skill-based game with full information and no luck factor involved.
2. Poker (classic NLHE, for example) - a skill-based game with limited information and a luck factor involved.
When it comes to poker, you only see your pocket cards and cards on board (flop/turn/river), but you don't know the pocket cards of your opponents. Does it mean that you can't make calculated and mathematically right decisions based on GTO? Absolutely not
Metaphorically saying, removing HP bars makes PvP more similar to poker rather than chess
In my mind, this is almost the opposite.
I'm not sure how to keep this short without trying to get into a 'credentials measuring contest' though, so I'll do the usual and leave the 'he said/she said' aspect to anyone still paying attention to this poor thread.
'She said': Removing HP bars in a PvP MMO has a minimal effect on the skill check required for combat-related decision making in almost any such game.
Ok I will try again, because I feel like based on your previous point you don't understand.
The skill involved in Poker is specifically guessing and estimation of probabilities. It's more complex than BlackJack but similar, and as you probably know, BlackJack can be treated as a mathematical adversity, to the point where you get thrown out of casinos for counting cards.
The skill involved in Chess is about memory, understanding of opponent psychology, and a tiny bit about your ability to hide longterm intent, on a board with all data visible. So, obviously, removing a datapoint would seem to bring the game closer to Poker than chess.
But what you've done is bring the game condition closer to Poker than chess, which is not the same thing, and I say this as a former very high ranking chess player.
Changing the game's informational condition is not making decision-making more difficult, it often makes it easier, what it does is change what type of decision one is making from tactics and calculation, toward gambling.
My specialty games are between the two of those. My years of analytics and 'amateur' design tell me that your 'argument' is wrong because Noaani said 'it's subjective' and you wanted to reframe it.
It's subjective. Invisible HP bars are not directly correlated to an increase in the skill ceiling in most MMORPGs. It is equivalent to 'having your opponent's gear be covered entirely by their cosmetics'. This is not a 'skill ceiling rise', this is a 'skill type change' and by most reasoning, a skill ceiling decrease relative to outcomes by increasing volatility.