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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.
Gear Scaling does not feel good
nanfoodle
Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Seeing the dup items shows the scaling between common, Uncommon and Legendary items.
Common Bow - 99-134 damage
Uncommon Bow - 140-187 Damage
Legendary Bow - 481-634 Damage
(these are all level 10 bows)
From Common to Legendary thats 4.7 x more powerful on a level 10 bow. That is way outside realm of skill mattering in a PvP fight. Gear should never be an advantage of more then 50%. IMO from common to Legendary you should not have more then a 30% boost. PvP feels best when you can still kill a top gear char still with skill. With a 4.7 x gear jump. Thats just not going to happen. In game now Carphin geared players are 1 and 2 shooting people of the same level even vs the the same class of the same level.
What are your thoughts?
Common Bow - 99-134 damage
Uncommon Bow - 140-187 Damage
Legendary Bow - 481-634 Damage
(these are all level 10 bows)
From Common to Legendary thats 4.7 x more powerful on a level 10 bow. That is way outside realm of skill mattering in a PvP fight. Gear should never be an advantage of more then 50%. IMO from common to Legendary you should not have more then a 30% boost. PvP feels best when you can still kill a top gear char still with skill. With a 4.7 x gear jump. Thats just not going to happen. In game now Carphin geared players are 1 and 2 shooting people of the same level even vs the the same class of the same level.
What are your thoughts?
10
Comments
This will translate to pvp really poorly, basically rewarding players for insane time investments and luck with RNG, instead of their understanding of the game and personal ability.
The passive power creep related to levelling also feels too much. Just look at HP values between different levels.
For me the pvp competitiveness should be decided by gameplay depth, skill synergies, proper builds, player "skill", ability to adapt to a situation, taking advantage of terrain, mobility, spacing, timing, and understanding of other classes strengths and weaknesses. Basically player skill, game knowledge, tactical thinking should be king, NOT grind and RNG.
Blown past falling sands…
That gets compounded by several orders of magnitude when end game raiding gets piled on whether instanced or open world bosses. In addition to PvP being exceedingly biased toward having best in slot gear all other non-raid open world content gets trivialized by overly powerful raid gear. Further what content you can participate in frequently gets gated by having that uber gear - again ramping up playerbase drama created by the poor gameplay design mechanics of including an insane gear power curve in the first place.
With that being said though, what we're experiencing now from the servers is the "growing pains" stage, as crafting is -very- daunting to undertake, having to go through several hoops to even craft a piece of gear. Instead, it seems everyone is routinely farming certain areas of the nodes such as Highway, Carphin, Seph, Halls, etc.
You also have to stay within 1-3 levels of the group so that the chance of getting a drop doesn't plummet substantially. I tested it out with a group in Steelbloom Citadel last weekend. I was 21, and the lowest was 17. Once I joined the group, the loot came in very slowly, but once I left, it made a major difference.
Outside of that, yeah, I think adjusting the weapon scaling may not be a bad idea, so long as it doesn't incur a nerf. Perhaps give a little boost to grey/standard, take a little bit from green/blue/purple, but keep legendary as it is? I'm not entirely sure.
All in all, players who group up together and stay within the 1-3 level range are going to benefit the most with loot for now, until crafting actually takes off and the economy gains some footing where players have more readily available access to stronger weaponry.
I thought that adding PVP gear though to add some sort of resilience stat to incoming player damage... Things may start to get very wonky. WoW has struggled with PVP gear throughout various expansions over the years. Players often just wore full sets of PVE gear and still outperformed those with strict PVP gear on.
I do know one thing though, we are flooding Intrepid with TONS of data during our weekend playtests, which may help the team see a bigger picture on what may be the best route to go.
Does not matter how they balance the gear is fine. Make commons to uncommon be a 10% damage jump and again to Legendary a jump to another 10% and doing so buy jumping the common and uncommon items a boost and leaving the Legendary where it sets currently in damage, do so by raising the damage of the common and uncommon. At this point, the game is based on gear not skill.
Have any of you actually gathered legendary copper or zinc?
PvE focused: WoW / FFXIV / Lineage II
Sandbox: Ultima Online / Darkfall / Mortal Online
Big Influence: SNES Fighting games / Starcraft / Diablo II / Smite
Balancing this is a challenge because it risks diminishing the value of higher-tier drops. Furthermore, just because a player has all the best items doesn’t mean they are invincible. It only means that the group facing them will need more strategy to handle the fight.
When we eventually have the Leaderboard system with rankings and scores, perhaps we should consider having two separate systems: one where all your gear counts, and another where everyone is evaluated purely on skill and reflexes. This way, we can have two ways to measure players: by the quality of their equipment and by their skill and ability.
Many PvP games try and keep gear progression under 50% as this gives skill the main reason to win a PvP fight. In these games it never stopped people from chasing better gear. Matter of fact it normally increased it because ever % better was harder to get. Its up to IS in the end to decide what % each tier gets. 4.7 times better then a common, that just not fun. Also makes it a ha ha. My gear is better I always win.
Its open world, not Arena game. What do you want in PvP, gear be the deciding factor every time you engage in PvP, or would you like your skill to account for 50%, 60%, 70% of what decides the battle you face? As it stand, low end gear vs top end gear at the same level. Your skill stands for about 20% of the battle if you are using commons. And about 30% if uncommon.
What games?
I used to want equalized pvp but really next to nobody does, took a long time to realize that seeing what worked and what didn't in games. Outside of reddit, I don't know a single real life person who plays GW2 for instance. Try joining any wow pvp without pvp gear. They added an equalized battleground in tera and nobody at cap played it.
And aside from all that, which game listed by Steven makes you think gear won't actually be a massive decider in combat? Doesnt matter anyways you'll just end up dying to the bigger zerg equalized gear or current gear.
PvE focused: WoW / FFXIV / Lineage II
Sandbox: Ultima Online / Darkfall / Mortal Online
Big Influence: SNES Fighting games / Starcraft / Diablo II / Smite
The best I ever saw was epic droppings!
No, it's just incredibly lucky. Very slim chances is a rather skewed definition of 'difficulty'. It's more similar to a random lottery. Making a few players deliriously happy when making everyone else less happy and worse the frequent victim of the lucky players(or worse still those that have used RMT to gain those items from gold farmers) is not a winning business strategy.
Frequently that is exactly what it means, especially vs players that are not equivalently equipped regardless if they have greater skill or strategy. No strategy will overcome a one or two hit kill or the massive advantage gained by removing more than half your opponents heath in the opening attacks.
I get that PvPers want to increase their self-reliance, reduce their risk, and increase their reward at every turn, but that isn't building a widely enjoyable good game, or being realistic.
The minute PvPers stop caring about their artisans, the game fails. People have to realize that. They are like your villagers in Age of Empires. It is a PITA protecting them, but they are essential to success, and you need them for your upgrades.
Completely agree with you, glad you made a post about it. Leaving the gear scaling how it is will damage the game and has moved it away from player skill/gear being somewhat even to determine the outcome of a PvP encounter. As it stands is, my gear is best I'll face roll you, that's not fun and not engaging.
I spent some silly amount of time in a coop pve game, where people would lose it, because the RNG wouldn't give them that "perfect item" with a "perfect stat" distribution and they would continue farming for hundreds of hours to get that. I would like to stress that is a COOP game with no pvp.
Blown past falling sands…
Sooner or later people will crunch the numbers, for classes and gear alike. Then the Intrepid's excuse of balancing the game around group pvp is going to be exposed for what it is. Sooner those issues are discussed with hard data, better for the game.
Blown past falling sands…
Exactly, you haven't grinded out the thing you have an opinion on. Basically you would never have that gear and you want it to be not worth farming for people who do. Calm down and go pick some rocks. I have actually gathered legendary copper, legendary zinc, and legendary basalt - I have not gotten above a green grem skin or anything beyond blue lumber.
PvE focused: WoW / FFXIV / Lineage II
Sandbox: Ultima Online / Darkfall / Mortal Online
Big Influence: SNES Fighting games / Starcraft / Diablo II / Smite
Depends really, what is the scaling between legendary lvl 10 and legendary lvl 20?
In AION I pvp'd at lvl 31 until I had the full elite lvl 30 pvp set - at which point I regularly killed lvl 50s that were geared. Leveling up to lvl 50 made things even easier, but it was very common to see people running around in lvl 40 elite gear at cap as well. In games like lineage II, having some decent enchanted D or C grade could last you quite far - and if the legendary lvl 10 gear holds you over until you need to work on a new set at lvl 30, I'm happy with that. Means time/energy into gear actually means something, and won't just get turned into garbage at lvl 20.
PvE focused: WoW / FFXIV / Lineage II
Sandbox: Ultima Online / Darkfall / Mortal Online
Big Influence: SNES Fighting games / Starcraft / Diablo II / Smite
It sounds like the OP wants more fairness in PvP with a reasonable chance of being able to take down someone who is better geared than they are. In a lot of games I would be right alongside them in the hopes of having more fun and challenging PvP. In this game I strongly disagree - you should absolutely be able to out-gear your opponent. If you read on though, remember that right now the gear drops are inflated, people are still figuring out crafting, and we are dealing with a duping problem where people have probably abused a bug to mass produce legendaries.
Should PvP be fair in AOC, despite gear differences?
One of the design principles at play in a lot of the game systems is the need for collaboration of players with different styles (PvE, PvP, artisanry, politics, etc) working toward a goal for the betterment of all involved parties. The way this principle comes into play for PvP is that a group that is strongly organized enough to get even a few of its members legendary gear should be rewarded so strongly that a similarly leveled group with uncommon gear should have an extremely difficult to impossible challenge in a straight fight. This is because when you fight a group that wears legendaries, you are also fighting their entire support team and the effort that went into crafting those items.
Legendaries being so overpoweringly strong makes sense given just how difficult it is to manufacture them. Even at apprentice level the materials are extremely difficult to gather in enough quantity to craft a single piece of gear, let alone whole sets of armor. Just getting to apprentice weaponsmith is so difficult that I'm not sure we have more than a couple of them in any server (requiring 2000 copper before xp bonuses, maybe 1400 after). And not only do the crafters and gatherers have to come together, but the node mayors have to work together so the buildings are set up appropriately to allow for each of the apprentice-tier mats to be made... it goes on and on.
You aren't just fighting a player with a legendary, you are fighting their entire organization.
The choice to place so much weight on the collaboration of an organized groups of players working towards a common goal means that PvP is not going to be fair, at least among people with vast gear disparities. It should probably be easier for a lvl 15 to pk a lvl 25 than for a lvl 25 with all uncommon to pk a lvl 25 with all legendaries. This makes sense given how difficult it is to attain lvl 25 vs how difficult it is to attain even one lvl 10 legendary weapon. You don't bring a knife to a gun fight, and you don't mess with someone with the backing to carry legendaries unless you can bring that same kind of support to bear.
At the highest levels of conflict and PvP, like node conflicts and guild wars, having a strong crafting corps (or a strong relationship with an artisan guild) is going to be one of the minimum requirements to sit at the table with the big kids. It is a testament to the strength of your group's cohesion, planning, and logistics. This factor also opens up avenues of attack that will really hit your opponents where it hurts - if you go after their gatherers while gearing your team up over an extended period, you come into the big fight with a huge advantage.
That being said, legendaries are almost certainly not going to be so common that every guild member gets a legendary weapon in even a mid-sized guild, even a few months into the game. Each group will have to decide where they want to put their best gear to be most effective as a group, so I doubt most people will be running into the gear disparity in most open world PvP. If you are running into this problem right now it is probably due to the dupe that has been passed around, which I'd agree is lame.
Defence gets x2, dmg gets x4 this i think might be the biggest issue :P although mybe the calculators balance out, i feel weapon might need to be halfed
Blown past falling sands…
Ok... so why does the armor makes some sense but the weapons scale to god mode?
That being said, I do agree that the impact of gear in PVP needs to be significantly dampened, you definitely don't want a scenario where the best gear always win, regardless of skill. My own personal opinion would be that a difference of no more than 20-30% between uncommon and legendary would be ideal for PVP, at least thats my gut feeling.
Really interesting post @Veeshan thanks for putting it together. I agree with @nanfoodle the armour numbers look alright to be honest but the difference in scale for weapons is mad. Surely it's an oversight or something from of testing by IS as they can't have intended the that difference in armour and weapons?
I understand your point about it needs to be an increase. But when you tune down the numbers it's still a significant increase on your output because the whole playing field is brought in line so it makes sense. People are just comparing it to the numbers we have now which are crazy.
Also it's a competitive game, people will absolutely chase an extra X% increase in power to try and gain every possible advantage they can.
i think a lot of people are forgetting this, or just tend to not understand how rare getting those materials are. and when you finally do get those materials i think one should be rewarded with a bit of power. this is an MMO and yes small scale pvp will be a thing but they already stated theyre not going to balance classes to be even in 1v1s. so why would they care about someones gear being 30% better
There focus is group content, node sieges, guild wars, stuff like that. so in that scenario, one or two people out of 50+ wont make that big of a difference.
When you factor in the decrease chance of getting materials and drops in the future, i think the system isn't as bad as we all seem to think it is. not perfect, but definitely not broken
And people saying the scaling isn't that nuts, compare the gear difference between normal crafted gear in wow with mythic raid gear. Wasn't uncommon even in heroic gear to do nearly a 3rd of a bosses life alone in raid finder.
Other half of the equation is that we do not know the **actual** effect of those numbers in damage calculations. For instance twice the armor does not mean twice the mitigation, mitigation rating is based on level and is on a curve. Getting a lvl 10 weapon had more than double the stats but did not double my damage.
PvE focused: WoW / FFXIV / Lineage II
Sandbox: Ultima Online / Darkfall / Mortal Online
Big Influence: SNES Fighting games / Starcraft / Diablo II / Smite