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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III 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.
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Wait!! dull Grind, vertical Power Scaling and RNG Gear Enchanting?? WTF
Sophisticus
Member
This RNG gear enhancement, dull mob grind and strong vertical power scaling (In an open world PvP environment) undermines (almost) everything that is fun in a video game in general. There are 7 different basic video game design principles that determine gameplay fun.
1. competence & challenge
The player is challenged, but not overwhelmed. This creates the so-called flow state. Fun is created when you get better, overcome obstacles and surpass yourself in your abilities.
2. autonomy & freedom of choice
Players want to make meaningful decisions. Freedom of choice creates a sense of control and self-efficacy. Fun is created when you have the feeling: “I have an influence on this world.”
3. connectedness & social resonance
Multiplayer games, MMO´s, guilds, co-op: playing together (and against others) strengthens bonds and creates collective fun. Fun comes from community or emotional connection.
4. discovery & curiosity
Fun exploring worlds, mechanics or stories. The thirst for knowledge is rewarded.
The player thinks: “What else is out there?”
5. fantasy & aesthetics
The escape into other worlds, roles or perspectives. Many games offer emotional or visual experiences. Fun through aesthetic fascination or immersion.
6. narration & meaning
Stories and Interactions with meaning create emotional depth. You don't just experience something, you feel something. Fun is often more “meaningful” than entertaining.
7. reward & progress
Level-ups, loot, new skills - the progression system activates our reward system. Fun through measurable growth and feedback.
Principles 1-6 are inherent fun, i.e. the activities themselves are fun. No. 7 is external fun. The activities you do don't necessarily have to be fun, the rewards just have to be good enough to motivate you.
Ashes tries to apply all these principles. Intrepid also places great emphasis on No. 7 with a strongly vertical power scaling, long and dull mob grind and RNG gear enhancement.
1. strong vertical power scaling should increase the extrinsic motivation to make progress.
2. the grind should only artificially create playtime until you get the reward.
3. an RNG Gear Enhancement System should increase the thrill of the reward and thus reinforce it.
The problem, however, is that Ashes contradicts and damages many inherent fun principles with these three concepts, which all lead up to and reinforce #7.
The way in which Ashes #7 is motivated, prolonged and reinforced by thrills contradicts #1, #2, #3, #4 and #6
No. 1 Skill & Challenge
The RNG Gear Enhancement System will penalize the player for something which they have no control. You lose resources, progress, even items and become weaker.
This contradicts the flow principle (skill growth) and often creates learning blocks or frustration. (Which in itself is not a bad thing to go backwards if the cause was my lack of skills)
No. 2 Autonomy & freedom of choice
Successful enhancement is not skill-based, but random. This can destroy autonomy and a sense of competence. Players feel powerless because their efforts are not reliably rewarded. There is no player agancy here. If I want to get ahead, I hand over success or failure to a passive system.
To compensate for the luck system, there is often massive grinding, which artificially inflates the playing time but doesn't really fill it with content.
No. 3 Connectedness & social resonance
The strongly vertical power scaling harms being part of a collective. It does not connect through shared meaning and adventure, but divides through strong power differences. Low level or low geared players will feel disconnected from the high level players and useless to the community, e.g. in PvP. The prolonged leveling process only reinforces the time gap.
No. 4 Discovery & Curiosity
The highly vertical power scaling will increase the need to progress. This will feel more like a compulsion than fun. This perceived compulsion and dull grind will kill the fascination and curiosity for the beautiful game world.
No. 6 Narration & Meaning
With the tedious dull grind, the wide separation from the other players you want to catch up with in order to be included and the regression of gear progression over whose success or failure you have no control, the very last meaning and purpose of your efforts is completely emptied. This makes the entire progression feel pointless.
The reinforcement of rewards through RNG, their artificial and blunt temporal extension through mob grind and the compulsive gear progression through a strong vertical power scaling that leads into a one shot fiesta will only lead to one thing: All the players who experience gameplay fun through inherent motivation (#1-6) will leave the game completely fatigued, pointless, bored and disappointed after a few months at the latest. The only players left will be those who enjoy the game through the reinforcement and extension of No. 7. No. 7 will ultimately dominate and destroy everything else. It exploits psychological weaknesses (FOMO, reward dopamine, fear of loss) rather than focusing on sustained enjoyment through skill, discovery, community or meaning.
If most players then leave, a world as large as Ashes can no longer be sufficiently populated and player-driven content no longer works well, then this leads, as in any other MMORPG with such power scaling (korean MMORPG´s), RNG Gear Enhancement System and long and dull grind, to catch-up mechanics, leveling will run faster to get to the endgame quicker to be able to retain new players. that devalues all Progress, Zones and Items.. Come on guys, we know this from 1000 other MMORPG's.
1. competence & challenge
The player is challenged, but not overwhelmed. This creates the so-called flow state. Fun is created when you get better, overcome obstacles and surpass yourself in your abilities.
2. autonomy & freedom of choice
Players want to make meaningful decisions. Freedom of choice creates a sense of control and self-efficacy. Fun is created when you have the feeling: “I have an influence on this world.”
3. connectedness & social resonance
Multiplayer games, MMO´s, guilds, co-op: playing together (and against others) strengthens bonds and creates collective fun. Fun comes from community or emotional connection.
4. discovery & curiosity
Fun exploring worlds, mechanics or stories. The thirst for knowledge is rewarded.
The player thinks: “What else is out there?”
5. fantasy & aesthetics
The escape into other worlds, roles or perspectives. Many games offer emotional or visual experiences. Fun through aesthetic fascination or immersion.
6. narration & meaning
Stories and Interactions with meaning create emotional depth. You don't just experience something, you feel something. Fun is often more “meaningful” than entertaining.
7. reward & progress
Level-ups, loot, new skills - the progression system activates our reward system. Fun through measurable growth and feedback.
Principles 1-6 are inherent fun, i.e. the activities themselves are fun. No. 7 is external fun. The activities you do don't necessarily have to be fun, the rewards just have to be good enough to motivate you.
Ashes tries to apply all these principles. Intrepid also places great emphasis on No. 7 with a strongly vertical power scaling, long and dull mob grind and RNG gear enhancement.
1. strong vertical power scaling should increase the extrinsic motivation to make progress.
2. the grind should only artificially create playtime until you get the reward.
3. an RNG Gear Enhancement System should increase the thrill of the reward and thus reinforce it.
The problem, however, is that Ashes contradicts and damages many inherent fun principles with these three concepts, which all lead up to and reinforce #7.
The way in which Ashes #7 is motivated, prolonged and reinforced by thrills contradicts #1, #2, #3, #4 and #6
No. 1 Skill & Challenge
The RNG Gear Enhancement System will penalize the player for something which they have no control. You lose resources, progress, even items and become weaker.
This contradicts the flow principle (skill growth) and often creates learning blocks or frustration. (Which in itself is not a bad thing to go backwards if the cause was my lack of skills)
No. 2 Autonomy & freedom of choice
Successful enhancement is not skill-based, but random. This can destroy autonomy and a sense of competence. Players feel powerless because their efforts are not reliably rewarded. There is no player agancy here. If I want to get ahead, I hand over success or failure to a passive system.
To compensate for the luck system, there is often massive grinding, which artificially inflates the playing time but doesn't really fill it with content.
No. 3 Connectedness & social resonance
The strongly vertical power scaling harms being part of a collective. It does not connect through shared meaning and adventure, but divides through strong power differences. Low level or low geared players will feel disconnected from the high level players and useless to the community, e.g. in PvP. The prolonged leveling process only reinforces the time gap.
No. 4 Discovery & Curiosity
The highly vertical power scaling will increase the need to progress. This will feel more like a compulsion than fun. This perceived compulsion and dull grind will kill the fascination and curiosity for the beautiful game world.
No. 6 Narration & Meaning
With the tedious dull grind, the wide separation from the other players you want to catch up with in order to be included and the regression of gear progression over whose success or failure you have no control, the very last meaning and purpose of your efforts is completely emptied. This makes the entire progression feel pointless.
The reinforcement of rewards through RNG, their artificial and blunt temporal extension through mob grind and the compulsive gear progression through a strong vertical power scaling that leads into a one shot fiesta will only lead to one thing: All the players who experience gameplay fun through inherent motivation (#1-6) will leave the game completely fatigued, pointless, bored and disappointed after a few months at the latest. The only players left will be those who enjoy the game through the reinforcement and extension of No. 7. No. 7 will ultimately dominate and destroy everything else. It exploits psychological weaknesses (FOMO, reward dopamine, fear of loss) rather than focusing on sustained enjoyment through skill, discovery, community or meaning.
If most players then leave, a world as large as Ashes can no longer be sufficiently populated and player-driven content no longer works well, then this leads, as in any other MMORPG with such power scaling (korean MMORPG´s), RNG Gear Enhancement System and long and dull grind, to catch-up mechanics, leveling will run faster to get to the endgame quicker to be able to retain new players. that devalues all Progress, Zones and Items.. Come on guys, we know this from 1000 other MMORPG's.
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Comments
Btw, they've already changed the scaling to a barely impactful range with a really high cost, afaik.
I have random feelings about random stuff, i can't pintpoint where they belong exactly, sometimes its a yes sometimes its a no
The issue is that a good number of western players don't understand them. People tend to treat it like luck, when they should be treating it as a matter of probability.
Never enchant what you can't afford to lose, and never enchant only one of any given item.
In Archeage, where this system is mostly pulled from, if I was enchanting an item with the target of hitting a tier 3 above where the risk of destruction starts, I am starting off with 32 of that item, and am stil prepared to walk away with nothing.
It's not really 'for' the solo-ish player in the game type we're talking about, since it 'evens out' in a big guild moreso.
Well, unless the aoe design of the game is so out of whack that a single archer/mage can oneshot dozens of people with a single skill. Cause that's what L2 turned into in later stages of the game.
While this is absolutely true, my time of making good use of regrading (this system in Archeage) was while I was playing the game solo - after my initial guild left due to PvE being shit, and before I joined a more PvP focused guild.
That said, this system in Archeage was purely economic in nature, and my economic output during that time was on par with that of a medium sized guild.
i know dude, i played archeage since release 2014 and i play now Archeage Classic on privat server in the moment and i KNOW how shit this kind of system is and the main Reason for this System is only Gambling addiction, economy and uncrativity.
There are so many more exciting and fun options for Gold Skins, Items Sink and Gear Progress Risk vs Reward. Albion Online shows you how.
Just to point out the obvious, your response to the OP is, in fact, the definition of a juvenile response, especially since the post from the OP was not particularly over the top, all things considered within these forums.
Update: The post being quoted above has been removed from the thread and now has no context - but you can see why with just the snippet shown...
1. competence & challenge
The player is challenged, but not overwhelmed. This creates the so-called flow state. Fun is created when you get better, overcome obstacles and surpass yourself in your abilities.
2. autonomy & freedom of choice
Players want to make meaningful decisions. Freedom of choice creates a sense of control and self-efficacy. Fun is created when you have the feeling: “I have an influence on this world.”
3. connectedness & social resonance
Multiplayer games, guilds, co-op: playing together strengthens bonds and creates collective fun. Fun comes from community or emotional connection.
4. discovery & curiosity
Fun exploring worlds, mechanics or stories. The thirst for knowledge is rewarded.
The player thinks: “What else is out there?”
5. fantasy & aesthetics
The escape into other worlds, roles or perspectives. Many games offer emotional or visual experiences. Fun through aesthetic fascination or immersion.
6. narration & meaning
Stories with meaning create emotional depth. You don't just experience something, you feel something. Fun is often more “meaningful” than entertaining.
7. reward & progress
Level-ups, loot, new skills - the progression system activates our reward system. Fun through measurable growth and feedback.
Principles 1-6 are inherent fun, i.e. the activities themselves are fun. No. 7 is external fun. The activities you do don't necessarily have to be fun, the rewards just have to be good enough to motivate you.
Ashes tries to apply all these principles. Intrepid also places great emphasis on No. 7 with a strongly vertical power scaling, blunt grind and RNG gear enhancement.
1. strong vertical power scaling should increase the extrinsic motivation to make progress.
2. the grind should only artificially create playtime until you get the reward.
3. an RNG Gear Enhancement System should increase the thrill of the reward and thus reinforce it.
The problem, however, is that Ashes contradicts and damages many inherent fun principles with these three concepts, which all lead up to and reinforce #7.
The way in which Ashes #7 is motivated, prolonged and reinforced by thrills contradicts #1, #2, #3, #4 and #6
No. 1 Skill & Challenge
The RNG Gear Enhancement System will penalize the player for something they can't do. You lose resources, progress or even items.
This contradicts the flow principle (skill growth) and often creates learning blocks or frustration. (Which in itself is not a bad thing to go backwards if the cause was my lack of skills)
No. 2 Autonomy & freedom of choice
Successful enhancement is not skill-based, but random. This can destroy autonomy and a sense of competence. Players feel powerless because their efforts are not reliably rewarded. There is no player agancy here. If I want to get ahead, I hand over success or failure to a passive system.
To compensate for the luck system, there is often massive grinding, which artificially inflates the playing time but doesn't really fill it with content.
No. 3 Connectedness & social resonance
The strongly vertical power scaling harms being part of a collective. It does not connect through shared meaning and adventure, but divides through strong power differences. Low level or low geared players will feel disconnected from the high level players and useless to the community, e.g. in PvP. The prolonged leveling process only reinforces the time gap.
No. 4 Discovery & Curiosity
The highly vertical power scaling will increase the need to progress. This will feel more like a compulsion than fun. This perceived compulsion and dull grind will kill the fascination and curiosity for the beautiful game world.
No. 6 Narration & Meaning
With the tedious dull grind, the wide separation from the other players you want to catch up with in order to be included and the regression of gear progression over whose success or failure you have no control, the very last meaning and purpose of your efforts is completely emptied. This makes the entire progression feel pointless.
The reinforcement of rewards through RNG, their artificial and blunt temporal extension through mob grind and the compulsive gear progression through a strong vertical power scaling will only lead to one thing: All the players who experience gameplay fun through inherent motivation (#1-6) will leave the game completely fatigued, pointless, bored and disappointed after a few months at the latest. The only players left will be those who enjoy the game through the reinforcement and extension of No. 7. No. 7 will ultimately dominate and destroy everything else. It exploits psychological weaknesses (FOMO, reward dopamine, fear of loss) rather than focusing on sustained enjoyment through skill, discovery, community or meaning.
I'm sorry if I somehow hurt your feelings with this, but if your only strategy is to attack me personally instead of responding to my arguments, then you will only be ignored by me.
What exactly is good about RNG? You mention how to mitigate some risks and ect, but nothing about what makes the system good.
For me RNG is never good, because it creates unequal ground for players. From all players that play the game you will have results varying from someone getting multiple successful enchants in a row from the first try. and someone failing for the 50th time for the same item.
Yes the average scenario will be for example 10 fails and most will vary between 8-12. But what if you are the one who failed 50 times? And yes this can be mitigated to an extend by what some Korean games implement as "Pity system" - which can be for example 20 fails, and the 21st is always success. But this still wont work on the long run. Someone will get 10 items and all will be with 20 fails, and other will get 6 of those items in first try.
And if the idea is to just destroy 10 items in the process of enchanting - you can just make the cost of the enchant those 10 items with 100% success rate.
If you see an RNG system in a game and immediately assuming it is to satisfy people with a desire to gamble, that is an issue inside your head.
It would be good if you could tell me then the “real” reason for the fun value of RNG, other than increasing the thrill of the reward and thus reinforce it (aka Gambling). I'm not talking about RNG in general, such as Loot RNG. I'm talking specifically about the RNG Gear Enhancement System, where you can lose progress.
I think I've pretty much explained above why such an RNG system is bad for everything else in the game when combined with heavily vertical power scaling and lots of dull grind. That was exactly the case in Archeage and that was one of the main reasons for Archeage's death.
Do I have to worry now that Ashes will somehow indirectly find ways to introduce P2W later?
The more RNG events you have, the more equal it makes players.
As to why an amount of RNG is good, especially in an economic sense, it is because it keeps said economy shifting. If they went with your suggstion, then the market would be fairly stable on a day to day basic. Make it so that there is a good amount of randomness, and the market will shift and move on a day to day and week to week basis, even though over a longer period of time (year to year) the market is kind of stable.
This makes it more viable to play the economic game, especially the long game. It means there will be times when you don't want to buy materials, because they may be too expensive due to someone having bought up many.
This ability to influence the market was key to the economic side of Archeage (the best aspect of that game by a mile), and Ashes wants to go even further in that direction than that game did. In order to do that, a means to keep te market shifting is literally essential, and an amount of RNG to crafting is the only real way to do that.
Ok i see your idea, and it kinda makes sense. BUT...
1. The shifting of the market can be done by multiple ways, its not necessary to be RNG. For example:
There are seasons in AOC. So the idea is that in summer you will be able to get some materials, and in winter those materials will be hard to find, and there will be abundance of other type of materials.
This will shift the market by itself. You can stack summer materials and not sell them, and then when winter comes you can sell them on higher price and ect.
Also - The caravans will play big role in the market shifting. If there is shortage on some materials and then you get multiple caravans from other regions who want to sell their good in your region, since they can earn more gold this way - this will shift the market and make those rare mats cheaper. And the other way around.
You may be having regular caravan deliveries of some material so its not in shortage. But then war breaks out or some muggers or whatever stop the caravans. So now the those materials that were never in shortage are gone.
Node development will unlock or change areas, which may unlock/lock materials in a ZOI.
Building Crafting stations in Nodes can bring more crafters if the neighboring nodes dont have this building. Which will make some materials more needed than they were before
2. "The more RNG events you have, the more equal it makes players." this is only true when you look the Bigger picture. The probability that you will get bad luck on all RNG events is not 0. Multiply this by all players that will play AOC. So you will get some pretty high chance that someone will fail all RNG events multiple times, and other that will get all of those RNG events from first try. Thus - Unequal player experience.
I have played some Korean Games like Lost ARK, and call say for myself that the frustration that you feel when you fail multiple 90% success chances is far greater than the satisfaction you feel when you get some success with 30% chance. And yes i guess i was pretty average with the luck on most my characters i played there. Meaning in the long run even if you fail multiple times, after this you will get few lucky successes to compensate.
But There was 1 of the expansions where they increase the level cap of items with new raids and dungeons, where I was so unlucky with the RNG that i fell behind other players that hard that they didnt even want to take me in groups coz i was low item level because of the RNG.
So want neither someone getting ahead of other players coz of RNG, Nor someone getting behind.
Caravans won't provide much of a shift in the market outside of very small nodes.
This isn't how stats work.
If you look at just one upgrade of item, then you perhaps have a point. However, players in Ashes will have roughly 18 gear slots, and the expectation should be that each of them are upgraded at least 5 times in the year after hitting the level cap (there is no point in any of this before hitting the level cap), and each of those upgrades cane be enchanted several times.
So, there should never be a point where we are talking about one upgrade. We should always be talking about hundreds of successful enchants, and many thousands of attempts.
In a sample set as large as this, things balance out.
Take a simple roll of a dice, as an example. It is perfectly possible to roll the same number three times in a row. That isn't even statistically unusual.
If you roll that die 600 times, you are likely to have 100 of each number come up, but the variation could quite easily be 10% without it beign a statistical anomoly. If you roll it 6000 times, you are likely to be within perhaps 3% of 1000 of each.
However, when you roll that one die 60,000 times, the results will be within a very small margin of you getting 10,000 of each number. The variation is likely to be less than 0.5%.
A game with a small amount of highly important RNG would indeed be bad. The low number of attempts at that with the major impact a good result has absolutely would and does result in what you are talking about. However, the more rolls on that RNG players all have, the less of an impact it has between players.
That's exactly what I mean. This is exactly what is called gambling. You want RNG to make the economic side even more unpredictable than it would be with loot RNG or just player behavior. This gives your economic playstyle an additional thrill that would be almost impossible to predict = gambling.
That's not a bad thing to enjoy. It's just a matter of taste. But you shouldn't ignore the impact such RNG + vertical power scaling + long, boring grind and open world PvP will have on the overall game. As I argued, it will not have a good impact. And if this is not brought under control, then you won't have a vibrant economic game anymore.
For example, through an RNG trash rate, more RNG in the procurement of the necessary materials or RNG events, etc.
But an RNG Gear Enchanting system that makes you weaker will only hurt you. All of us. You could leave it the way how the RNG Gear Enchanting works, if you keep the power scaling mostly horizontal and replace the boring mob grind with diverse and challenging events, open world dungeons and PvP battles.
But at the moment, most of the time you are busy with long boring grinds and as a low level player you get one shots by high level players.
By your logic, killing a mob that may drop an item you want, but also may not, is gambling.
The only (and I do mean only) negative aspect of gambling is the notion that some people gamble more than they can afford to lose, and thus it has a negative impact on their lives, or more importantly the lives of people that depend on them.
This is not something that is possible at all in Ashes, and so unless they introduce something that involves real money, the entire notion of something in game being gambling and thus bad is a notion I outright reject in it's entierity.
It can make you poorer in an in game sense, but not weaker.
If you are enchanting the items that you are currently using, then you absolutely deserve to be put at a disadvantage.
Time for a Mathematical question.
What is the probability that if you toss a coin 10 times that you will get at least 8 tails? (hint: around 5.5%)
18 pieces of gear with 5 enchants each = minimum amount of tries of RNG to get all gears full encahnged = 90
If you toss a coin 90 times, what is the probability that you will get at least 60 tails? (around 0.1%)
so from couple of hundreds of thousand players that will play the game the chance that someone will get 60 fails and another to get 60 successes are tremendously high. So with 90 tries, you will have someone with 30 enchant successes, and other with 60. The one with 60 has 100% more enchanted pieces than the one with 30. Seems fair?
No, with loot drop rng you effectively lose nothing in the game. With RNG Gear Enchanting you do.
And what you mean by gampling are the negative consequences of the gambling principle in real life. But The principle is the same: I pay a stake into an RNG-based system, the effects of which I have no control over. I effectively lose or win my stake (and sometimes even more). In video games (as long as the stake is not real money) this gambling principle is simulated, which has an influence on the other systems.