Lack of soft and hard stat caps is killing the pvp - stat stacking, gear rarity, enchanting & buffs

SmileGurney

Time To Kill values especially in group play are insane, even before we factor in few other broken systems. This is Phase1 rarity gear situation all over again.

There is no space for player skill expression in the game, there is no space for being an underdog player or guild if stats dominate everything else. There is no space to even start talking about class balance in the context of 1v1 or group pvp.

It's all out damage stat race, which brings up your damage output to insane levels from single ability casts. We are back to a scenario, where you are able to 1-2 shot people.

We had the rarity gear nerfs during Phase 1, those came pretty late. The current issues are equally as obvious. Why aren't those issues closely tracked? Why the math behind the stats, the damage output and defensive stats has not been done?

This should have been hot fixed weeks ago, I mean the power gap between geared and not geared players is surely not intended. I have little interest in a game which allows me to 1 shot my opponents due to stat differences. The life of underdog in Ashes has to offer a sensible access to the game content or the population will just die.

If the power gap is intentional, please can we have a statement about it, so those of us who care about balanced and fun pvp experience can direct our attention elsewhere?

Thanks

gogupsn

Put a cap on stats. 350 power. Will result in longer time to kill at least. And go from there +|-Simple solution. But its not a priority for Intrepid. Just like mob training isnt,while it could be resolved simply by locking the encounters. Nobody seems to care.

SmileGurney

Soft, hard caps might be a way to solve some of those problems. After few practical test today with enchanted lvl 10 and some basic uncommon, rare etc lvl 20 gear, the power gap is staggering. I had a quick look at item rarity and enchanting power gains across the board on the Codex also. I have no idea how they intend to fit all that stuff in on the power scale and have a sensible talk about balance or player skill in that equation.

At the present trajectory the game will end up as another massive hamster wheel, because nothing else but specific dmg / dps stats count. This will just fuel the natural tendency for servers to be dominated by certain guilds/communities and leave the rest of the population in the dust, purely due to economics and stats. This will gate keep a lot of content for those players who simply have less time for gaming. No one wants to suffer through game content due to purely stat based power gaps. Not the greatest plan for a successful sub based game.

kerrai

It’s an alpha. Enchanting is a placeholder system. It won’t work like it currently does. And everything else you bring up is a balance issue. That’s for later. They still have umpteen million gamebreaking bugs with caravans, PvP flagging, nodes, etc. to deal with on top of a million systems to add. PvP TTK is not on the list.

Aardvark

Part of the issue is instead of using level 20 gear people are enchanting level 10 gear which warps the numbers. As enchantments add alot to damage but not much to defense. We need to not still be locked to level 10 crafting/enchanting weeks and weeks after people hit 20. Without the cap people would be 40 by now and still only able to enchant level 10 gear.

Cyjax

Agree with others that enchant stacking on gear has led to 1-2 shot PvP meta and just feels terrible. I think the enchanting system needs a complete rework and could stand to benefit from taking a close look at what the folks over at UO Outlands did with enchanting and the birth of the Arcane enchantment system. One of the big gripes I have about ashes right now is that the grind to be minimally PvP viable is just not possible for your average casual gamer.

Proposed Design Changes:
1) De-couple enchanting from having an effect on players who become PvP flagged. The grind for gear is heavy enough as is, we don't need some horrible BDO style RNG stat grind tossed on top just to be PvP viable.
2) Re-design enchanting so it is not just grind to + stats on gear, instead take some inspiration from D&D and have the enchants give you some PvE specific power that can be incrementally raised. A simple example would be applying a poison effect to your weapon that can be raised up in efficacy. I'll drop a link to UO Outlands Arcane system for yall to review, they designed something very special there I think modern indy mmo's could really benefit taking inspiration from.
3) Consider adding some cosmetic only enchants as a carrot for PvPers to chase after.

https://wiki.uooutlands.com/Aspect_Mastery

SmileGurney

I'm not a fan of crafting system which enables massive power advantage. Those gains should be negligible. Number obsessed people will chase them anyway.

What crafting and enchanting should enable is more playstyle options, not power gaps which totally override smart class plays, positioning and timing.