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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
TTK and Power scaling can be easily fixed.
Aladaur
Member, Alpha Two
I was told to post some *issues* that should be changed in here,
Could a dev straight up apply a 0.5 mod to all weapons in the game? The power spike from weapons is still to crazy and this SIMPLE fix will help with TTK. the starting zone weapons give 9pp on 2h weap, the lvl 1 vendor weaps give 41... this is an INSANE jump... quadrupling dmg at lvl 1 with the WHITE vendor weapons... not even counting sanctus weapons which are even crazier... those lvl 1 vendor weapons should give around 20pp on a two hander... doubling dmg from a white vendor weapon is plenty... now the jump to lvl 10 weapons.. it does to over 80pp for the regular vendor weapons, to like 110 for the tin, and then forsaken weapons are at 160pp for white quality... so the worse lvl 10 white weapons are twice as good as the lvl 1 vendor weaps and the forsaken are 4 times stronger... so they atleast need a 50% nerf to bring them back in line. have the while bronze weapons have 40-45pp like the lvl 1 weapons currently do, and the forsaken can stay at double bronze power and have 80pp. then do the same for lvl 20 weapons as you get the picture.
TLDR: nerf weapon physical and magic power in half for every weapon except the lvl 1 starting weapons you get off the ground in the starting zone
Could a dev straight up apply a 0.5 mod to all weapons in the game? The power spike from weapons is still to crazy and this SIMPLE fix will help with TTK. the starting zone weapons give 9pp on 2h weap, the lvl 1 vendor weaps give 41... this is an INSANE jump... quadrupling dmg at lvl 1 with the WHITE vendor weapons... not even counting sanctus weapons which are even crazier... those lvl 1 vendor weapons should give around 20pp on a two hander... doubling dmg from a white vendor weapon is plenty... now the jump to lvl 10 weapons.. it does to over 80pp for the regular vendor weapons, to like 110 for the tin, and then forsaken weapons are at 160pp for white quality... so the worse lvl 10 white weapons are twice as good as the lvl 1 vendor weaps and the forsaken are 4 times stronger... so they atleast need a 50% nerf to bring them back in line. have the while bronze weapons have 40-45pp like the lvl 1 weapons currently do, and the forsaken can stay at double bronze power and have 80pp. then do the same for lvl 20 weapons as you get the picture.
TLDR: nerf weapon physical and magic power in half for every weapon except the lvl 1 starting weapons you get off the ground in the starting zone
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Comments
In other games without this, what happens is that very skilled players don't need gear chase and get to save a lot of time and money (and I mean a lot) just by how skilled they are.
Ashes does not have a 'Gear Score' system or any other system that helps to equalize this effort disparity, so it gets tied to the economy, the thing they can control.
I'm not saying they shouldn't nerf it, but if they do, it will create other problems with bottlenecks in the leveling phase and those absolutely matter with the game's current design.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
To be clear, I was referring to the gap between tiers of weapon power.
I'd support increases in Armors and PvE complexity/difficulty while leaving the weapons gap as it is.
I'd also support a more wholesale change to stats and the economic design of the game so that the benefits of the skill gap go into exploration and 'soft power' instead of being linked to the gear chase.
TTK is being adjusted soon, so maybe we will get those things, I'm only saying that if they divide the gaps between weapon strength in a way that actually matters, other issues will pop up.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
if lvl 10 bronze weapons have 80pp currently and get reduced to 40, and the forsaken weapons have 160 and get reduced to 80, they are still twice as strong.
for exact numbers, a white lvl 10 forsaken longbow has 180 power rating, nerf that to 90, and a legendary lvl 10 forsaken longbow has 300, nerf that to 150... The legendary bow is 67% stronger either way, and it makes the added stats that it gives from being a higher rarity more importance, so if anything it makes quality more important.
So if you just want to keep the rarity system relevant, it becomes even better this way.
Just so I'm clear, do you care about the PvE impact of these changes at all?
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Add enchantment on top of this (ease of it decreasing with tiers) and you got yourself a fairly equalized battlefield, instead of whatever the fuck we've got now.
Rarities can provide non-enchanted growth within steps of gear tiers, especially if enchantment is tied to rarity rather than being universal. This way hardcore rich players would still be slightly ahead, cause they got both rare and enchanted, but more casual players would still be able to enchant their basic stuff and not be toooo behind.
As for pve, that shit can be balanced 6 ways to sunday. Figure out your pvp side, so that players don't leave because a single guy can fucking oneshot several groups of people and then balance your pve around the scaling of player power that you landed on after having figured out your pvp.
What pve impact does lower dmg cause? you dont get to see dmg numbers that are as big? a 67% upgrade to dmg is still a 67% upgrade.... if dps was 100 vs 167.. youre still 67% better? does 10,000 vs 16,700 just look better?
in terms of pve time to kill, they can change mob hp values... do you expect them to never balance classes or mobs in the future?
exactly, fix numbers around player hp amounts, then fix mob's hp to feel good.
OR
apply player modifiers so that players take 50% less dmg or 70% less dmg?
but they dont want player dmg taken to be different than pve dmg.. so they need to lower pve dmg.. simple as that
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
This just shows you have no clue - hence Azherae disengaging with you above.
If you reduce damage output, the impacts on PvE are greater than the impacts on PvP.
This is because the effects in PvP go both ways, both sides lose over all damage output. This is in contrast to PvE, where it is only one side that is affected.
This "simple" change you are talking about here would require literally every encounter in the game be altered. This is not something you can do as a blanket change - each encounter would need to be manually adjusted.
You, sir, have no clue.
Did you not read his post where he said they can change the mob values??? If u cut the mob hp values as much u cut the dmg then it turns out the same...
So... you, sir, have 0 clue.
Player's hp values arent being changed... nor would armor or any other mitigation... they would take the exact same amount of dmg... if you lower mob hp by 50% too it is same time to kill...
The ONLY change would be a reduction in healing output which is probably what you are trying to bring up but didnt... for an quick easy pick.. bring more healers until they have it dialed in... oh no you need 2 cleric 2 bard rather than 1 cleric 2 bards.
tanks arent going to get magically 1 shot with the same armor values and health. if their defenses are two weak, double their weapon power coefficients...
Yeah, but they need to change the value of each mob.
This means that this is anything other than a simple solution. It is probably the single most time consuming way to deal with this issue possible.
PvE - even simple PvE like Ashes has - doesn't work that way.
The entire scope of what PvE is in relation to players changes when you make drastic, sweeping changes like you are talking about here. Mana calculations, respawn times, cooldowns, mobs damage output - these things would all need to be basically redone from the ground up in order to support your "easy" fix to an issue that isn't related to PvE at all.
Doesn't this mean that Intrepid are barely 5% into their PvE development? And then, considering how much of an issue PvP balancing already is - wouldn't it be better to figure out PvP NOW and then build the entire PvE side on top of that figured out PvP?
Or do you think that Intrepid will just do a "x5" on mob stats when those become higher lvl after a node lvl up? Because if you believe that, then OP's suggestion would fit right in, because it's also just a multiplier on stats.
Ok I think I started a derail actually in the usual way so I should clarify what I actually meant.
For various reasons, some of which can be mitigated by 'just changing multipliers' if the PvE is simple enough, when you offer a wide range of potential power ratings for players, what will happen is that skilled players will have zero economic incentive to engage with the 'subsystems' for power gain.
This creates some basic problems, but since Ashes' enchanting is currently ... not finished, I'll briefly reference BDO and TL.
In BDO I can upgrade defense gear and use a jank/weaker/underleveled weapon to save money. Some areas even have direct AP caps but require 'higher skill' to get the drops. This was necessary to prevent the 'no-lifers' and 'whales' from trivializing the content, a consequence of using Enhancing systems in a game at all, really. In Korean MMOs this is the point because 'culturally' this is 'appealing'.
Throne and Liberty has to solve this by doing what WoW does and adding 'Levels' to PvE dungeons but that's the only content that actually gets this treatment. The result is that Moderate Enhancing effort + High Skill will clear the content without too much difficulty (and for some, myself included, more fun) but fully Enhanced players absolutely trivialize it and have to go for the 'Mythic Plus' equivalent. If you want PvE challenge in Open World (or even most Abyss dungeons) for some reason, you have to be significantly below even basic gear-score you could achieve. I'm talking about 'sitting on potentially hundreds of Enhancing mats just so the game isn't bot-tier difficulty'.
When the numerical gap is smaller, the number of 'holes', the number of ways players can find to mess with the difficulty curve, increases for various reasons. This can be solved by rebalancing everything, but I wasn't talking about balance. I was talking about incentives, how people feel and how they treat each other.
TL doesn't allow players below a certain level and gearscore to participate in Dungeons of specific tiers, but this is absolutely not because they couldn't clear them. I know this because my group, who generally don't bother going meaningfully past the requirement in Gear Score, can 4-man them and probably could do it with 3 if trying 'harder' (bringing someone who actually does go past the GearScore requirement).
The reason for this is to prevent the confusion. If 3-4 skilled people at the required GearScore is all you need to clear the content, then 6 skilled people below it, would probably clear it similarly. But this destroys communication and PickUp Groups, y'see.
You can't tell if the person with the half-Enhanced secondary weapon and blue tier Armor is skilled-build, new, or overconfident, and TL doesn't offer either DPS meters or the ability to see damage numbers of other people in the UI, a thing that people will absolutely also want as an option in Ashes and I bet Steven will grant and encourage.
This also spills back over into PvP but this post is already long. Let's leave it as "The PvE players this affects were not going to benefit from any changes."
tl;dr Big power jumps in gear are related to discouraging average players from mixing with high-skill players without either side realizing that's what's happening. In a game with no DPS meters and simple PvE, this is among the only ways to do this.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Those same tools could be used for cross-power interactivity. The game sees that a mob was aggroed by a group with high enchantments? Now this mob has a different reaction pattern, a stronger buff effect and a faster enrage. The game sees the same mob attacked by a group with underpowered people? Now this mob calls upon his weaker friends that mainly attack the underpowered dudes (if there's still someone of an equal power to the mob in the party).
And sure, Steven has never been a pve guy, so I highly doubt anything like this would ever appear in Ashes (cause even other mmos don't do this shit), but a man can dream...
No, the mechanical solution to this is much easier. Like, incredibly easier, but again, it's about stroking egos.
It's not worth derailing this thread with (I'm happy to make a Splinter if we end up starting to) but the main thing people need to accept is that MMOs that don't stroke egos don't generally draw big crowds, for obvious reasons.
Older MMOs didn't have to compete with WoW, and generally were trying to draw audiences that wanted to experience a (personal) story and perceived this to be related to challenge. Even WoW was this for a while, but eventually they got the usual 'why can't you tell me the story without all this difficult game-playing?' and everything since then has had to figure out how to get investors to understand this.
Games made by those who have become used to this also automatically drift that way. But all hope is not lost yet. New World started with nearly no ego-stroking (but unfortunately also went full PvP in a way that made no sense) and TL is learning the 'separate it from the gameplay and discourage people from talking about it' technique. Ashes will find its own way, I think. Steven has experience in what it takes to change from being one type of player into another.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Blown past falling sands…
They shouldn't be.
If you are creating mobs that scale, you create every level range at once. You will then have small tweaks to make to some kobs at some level, but nothing compared to needing to redo almost every aspect of almost every mob - which is ehwt would be needed with the OP's suggestion.
Even if developers don't know what actual power players will have at any given level, they will know that player offense and defense will remain roughly on par with each other.
With thar in mind, the OP's suggestion isn't just lowering player power, it is lowering player power in an imbalanced manner - offense is going down but defense isn't. That is the reason mobs need to he redone completely - the very nature of what they are facing (players) is being drastically altered, as opposed to just going through some power scaling.
You get points for moving towards balance, but this extremely out dated view that player progression has to focus on massive vertical power progression has to go.
Based on what I have seen and heard from PTR. I would like to remind everyone we are half way to the level cap, and we are supposed to add gems and sockets. Stuff like enchanting, node buffs, scrolls and buffs already play way too strong role in player power boosting.
I like pvp sandbox MMORPGs, but this is heading straight towards the niche of a hamster wheel stat grinder, where "get gud" means insane gear grind time investment, not actually "getting good" and enjoying the game content built around player competition.
You are designing Ashes into a game which core content is built around player competition, that is fine, but that by itself is already a niche. You allow for player time investment to rig the outcome of that competition to the point that too many players willing to play a competitive MMORPG are going to simply walk away after few months, due to the stat race.
The game content is focused too much on vertical power growth, instead of horizontal progression to unlock different archetype playstyles, gear sets which enable them and different playstyles through secondary archetypes. It isn't 2003 anymore.
Sincerely,
A play(test)er with a job and life outside the game.
Blown past falling sands…
Separate substats from the main enchantment effect and make the substat enchantment insaaaaanely expensive/difficult AND rng-based. Only a select few on the entire damn server should be able to get to the peak of power and only after having spent months of their time and guild-based effort/money.
We had almost 3 decades of MMORPG history and emerging player behaviours to show how well those games are doing, especially if mixed in with game systems based on player competition. People just leave, or never join in the first place, if a competitive game turns them into paying losers by design. Give people build, playstyle options to discover and work towards to, but limit their vertical power growth.
Leave the grind in and all those systems which add more and more power, but after hitting a specific point, power growth from stats should be extremely minimal. The same should apply to defensive stats (ironically this is a case to some degree already, like mitigations) also like CON, HP and armour.
That can be achieved only through steep diminishing returns, which apply to ALL power / stat sources: gear, enchanting, scrolls, potions, guild/node buffs, gems&sockets etc.
From PTR comments on the official discord, we still don't have diminishing returns applied to magical and physical power gained from stats. If those comments are remotely accurate, it is pure insanity at this point.
Blown past falling sands…
What this achieves in the end is to make the game 'dry' and more like FF14.
A WoW+L2 hybrid can work, an FF11+L2 Hybrid can work, but an FF14+L2 hybrid cannot work.
I base this opinion on the fact that whenever I do see complaints about changes in direction for Black Desert Online or lately Throne and Liberty, it's been from the type of player who wants FF14 style gameplay.
Those players play long enough to do the story, faff about in a new guild for a month, or try out a new weapon or something. They like the novelty and being able to achieve it, they're not here to hone anything. The problem is that Ashes' approach to gameplay doesn't hold them.
Ofc, the fact that the current stat design is (imo) somehow moving even further from being effective at the thing it needs to be is not going to help, making it harder on top of that would just be building its own coffin.
No matter how much I also like games like this, I have now concluded that they do not work without a much more complex approach to this feeling.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
yep , basically going the archeage gear system but even worse lol
That is approximately what I said when I first heard about this. I had some questions, obviously. I do not think I will be testing this particular update, myself.
I am worried about their implementation choices on a genre and a niche inside it, with such low pop already, repeating some mistakes that eventually led to the downfall of many games:
1. Long leveling and progression: That's great. That's one of the things people enjoy about the more old-school games. Even the more sweaty players will have some progression to achieve long after the game launches, and the lull between progression and expansion is going to be low.
2. Big power creep and power gap: Here, we start seeing the problems. Alongside long leveling in progression, you create big power spikes, creating a big disparity between players that play hardcore (12~16h) and players that play like 4~6 hours a day (which is more than most casuals). It's good that progression is meaningful and gear matters, that's the old-school philosophy.
But when gear is the main thing that matters, even between players who started at the same time and play a little less than the other, it creates a huge problem. With a big power gap, and long leveling, how long til a new player, a guy that started 3 months late, will be able to participate in content with older players? How many new players will the game acquire and hold throughout its lifetime, and how does that not lead to a death spiral in more players quitting than joining?
3. Open-world pvp and "forced" pvp events: Again, another great design choice. The game should be always on pvp. Node wars, node sieges, PVP events, competing for gatherables and grind spots, and caravans. It's all unavoidable PvP, and it's PVP without any rank matchmaking or balance. Max level players will be fighting with players that just started the game. How will a guy who is 3 months in the game feel when he still has no chance to contribute to a defense in his node against a siege, or when he is getting killed over and over without any chance, solely because he started late, and gear is a huge part of why he is losing? Will he stick around when he keeps losing caravans to way more geared players without a chance to fight back?
4. Low TTK: In here, all the problems above get hyper-boosted. You are late to the progression, the power gap is big, and because of that, you are literally being one-shotted out of the game. You go to join a siege, you don't even have a chance of landing a spell before a random attack hits you, and you die. You don't get to press buttons in PVP until you are max level with good gear. Other than that, you die in 1 second. Will players stick around when they are unable to play the game for 3+ months before getting good gear and not dying in an instant?
Groups don't fix this. Doesn't matter how much shield or healing you throw, the guy is way weaker and he will be deleted anyway.
5. Death penalties, lost node stash, destroyed ships and caravans: So we established that the guy is weaker compared to the more try-hard players, or even started late and is tryharding, but it's still a long time before catching up. He is being deleted in 1 second because of the power differences. Every time he dies, he either gets exp debt, he loses the materials he was gathering, his caravan, or in worst-case scenarios, loses every material on his node stash. He never had the chance to win in any of these scenarios, but worst of all, he didn't even get to play. A random guy showed up and deleted him before he could react. Now he has to walk back 10~30 minutes just to get back on where he was, and maybe risk dying again in 1 second without a chance to fight.
So the guy keeps getting bodied everywhere he goes, doesn't get to participate in any of the PVP content in the game, and every time he dies without even a chance of running or fighting or playing the game, he suffers a loss. Don't worry, 3 months of this and (hopefully) that changes, and you get to be the one doing the bodying.
How many players will take that deal? Will the players who started on launch but play more casually endure this situation? For how long? How many new players will the game attract, knowing they have 3+ months of pure grinding before getting to the good parts of the game? Enough to substitute everyone who is quitting and keep the game from entering a death spiral? I don't know.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy most of those design decisions. The long leveling and progression, the open world PVP, the losses tied to death, even the part where gear matters. I just think putting them all together in the direction that is going is not gonna be healthy for the game.
Suggestions:
1. Properly saturated power curve: The power growth should be proportional to the time spent getting there. Power can really spike in the first week or two of the game, as it is a low time investment required to reach there. But after that, we need significant reductions in power growth per time spent. Every time we get deeper into the game, you should get less for the time you invest. By the time we are end game, players should be investing hundreds of hours for 0.01% power growth. That way, players can easily, in the first month reach, let's say, 90% power cap, and have enough power to at least participate in PVP content against the players that are 6 months ahead and grinding to reach 99% power. This is how old-school games have made long progression work without breaking the balance of the game and maintaining a healthy player base and new player acquisition.
2. Naturally gated progression: We already have the foundation for this. Node progression naturally gates progression by being behind the player's level. We have level 25 players using and investing in level 10 gear because level 20 enchanting was not unlocked, so level 10 was better.
With the increase in level cap and mobs dropping gear in a future launch, this won't be the case anymore. Players will completely bypass early-level crafting, rushing to max level by acquiring the gear they need to keep grinding stronger mobs. No systems in the game will matter before max level, no one will run a caravan, and no one will care about gathering low-tier mats unless it is to progress their profession. Players probably won't fight for it. This destroys the early game professions economy, increases power disparity between sweaties and casuals, and makes every single system in the game irrelevant until players reach endgame.
If low-tier mob drops are removed (rare and below), players will have no choice but to engage with the economy and make crafters relevant for gear. They will be soft-locked into progression, temporarily reducing the power gap between try-hard players and casual players. The incentive to rush to max level is reduced, because now you are in lower level gear, grinding inefficiently to reach a level that is meaningless because you won't be that much stronger than a guy that is just grinding 2 hours a day and the rest of the time engaging with all the other systems and enjoying the content. Players will have to gather, fight for resources, and run caravans even at early levels to get gear. You still have progression avenues like enchanting, increased rarity upgrades, gems, and all that in lower-tier gear, and sweaties won't run out of things to do. You retain some of that dopamine hit by substituting gear drops with valuable material drops that are used for crafting gear, and you still maintain that dopamine of dropping high rarity gear (heroic and above) without being reliable enough not to engage with the rest of the game.
3. High TTK: This one I have fought for over and over again, and won't write everything I've said previously on it. I'll just say this. In high TTK games (45~90s), even the more weaker players, new players that are behind, get to at least have a chance to run, or fight, and they actively play the game before dying. No more one-shots. You drastically remove that feeling of unfairness that players get when they die without a chance to play their character.
4. Player agency on some of the biggest losses:
I'll give the example of node sieges. Once your node is successfully sieged, citizens lose their material inventory. This will generate a feeling for the majority of players of losing their stuff without any chance to do anything about it. You are not a guild or alliance leader, you're not a mayor, you don't have control over a large number of players. All you do is be an ant in the big battle, and it's out of your control if you win or lose.
We can improve this, not by removing the losses, but by giving a player a say in what and how they lose it. You can do it through a few possibilities:
1. A special vault: Most games with big losses do this nowadays. You get a small vault that you get to keep when your base (node in this case) is destroyed. You have a choice in what you really don't want to lose, and while it keeps the losses, you remove the player's feelings of unfairness and lack of control.
2. Once a siege is declared, allow players to move their resources out through caravans. See that this is not a bailout for players. Once a siege is declared, and enemies know the citizens will be looking to move material caravans out of the node, players will totally scout for it. The risk of losing your mats is still there, and to be honest, the risk of losing your mats in the caravan might be greater than losing them in a node siege. But it gives players a choice: Do you want to bet on a siege defense, which is not in your control, or do you want to risk it on a caravan run, which could possibly be riskier but at least you have some control over the outcome.
By allowing players to choose, even though they are still likely to lose and the risk remains, they are going to feel much better about taking that L when eventually it happens.