Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Please no level specific areas.
ArchivedUser
Guest
Although i have no idea as to what character progression will be like, i really don't want to be stuck in areas that are level specific. i.e lv 1 to 10; 11 to 20; 21 to 30 etc.
Following is a scenario of what a quest system and encounter system could look like.
1. A troop of orcs moves into a region and sets camp. The spawn point is in the mountains and the group move down into the hills or valley near civilized areas. This group is considered a lv 1 encounter.
1.1 So far no quests have been spawned and the orcs are considered to still be a wondering troop.
1.2 Now if the orcs have managed to remain hidden they will establish a village. As the hours or days progress, the village gets more entrenched, fortified and will spawn smaller orc settlements near buy, all connected to the main settlement. These small settlements will now send out roving bands of warriors the raid the region.
1.3 Its at this time that the local town will start to spawn quests to clear the orcs out. The outer camps are now considered a lv 1 encounter and the main village is now a lv 5 encounter.
1.4 As time goes on, the camps area of influence will get bigger, the main camp will become lv 10, the smaller camps will become lv 5 and they in turn will spawn there own camps that will be lv 1.
1.5 Any unlucky adventures that try and fail to kill the main center bass will only contribute to strengthening it with there better gear. That +1 armor and sword is now worn by a sub chief and that wand of magic missiles is now the property of the orc wizard.
1.6 Now this will just keep growing until the center camps is a lv 50 encounter and the orcs control the region. What started off as being a lv 1 encounter has turned into a lv 50 encounter but still allowing low level PC's to nibble at the edge, higher level to venture towards the center and the big guns of the game to strike at the center. If not all the camps are wiped out then it will start all over again at one of the camps that was missed out. If 2 camps still survived then a civil war between the 2 camps might happen sparking even more quests for evil aligned PC's.
The above scenario is whats lacking in mmos. All you do all day is camp spawns to grind and grind. By having a dynamic system that changes all the time keeps an area interesting. The above scenario can be used for all intelligent races and once an area is cleared and new random spawn can come traipsing down from the mountains or out of the dense dark forest. This could be a lown troll, a tribe of Ogres, or even a Dragon.
The days of killing a level 1 wolf in one area and then killing that same wolf now level 11 with a different colour pelt and name in another, should be long gone. Its also the reason I no longer play any mmos, as I said in my introduction, there all the same.
I have a lot of other ideas that all stem around player driven quest spawning that i will give later depending on if this is well received buy the player base and staff.
Following is a scenario of what a quest system and encounter system could look like.
1. A troop of orcs moves into a region and sets camp. The spawn point is in the mountains and the group move down into the hills or valley near civilized areas. This group is considered a lv 1 encounter.
1.1 So far no quests have been spawned and the orcs are considered to still be a wondering troop.
1.2 Now if the orcs have managed to remain hidden they will establish a village. As the hours or days progress, the village gets more entrenched, fortified and will spawn smaller orc settlements near buy, all connected to the main settlement. These small settlements will now send out roving bands of warriors the raid the region.
1.3 Its at this time that the local town will start to spawn quests to clear the orcs out. The outer camps are now considered a lv 1 encounter and the main village is now a lv 5 encounter.
1.4 As time goes on, the camps area of influence will get bigger, the main camp will become lv 10, the smaller camps will become lv 5 and they in turn will spawn there own camps that will be lv 1.
1.5 Any unlucky adventures that try and fail to kill the main center bass will only contribute to strengthening it with there better gear. That +1 armor and sword is now worn by a sub chief and that wand of magic missiles is now the property of the orc wizard.
1.6 Now this will just keep growing until the center camps is a lv 50 encounter and the orcs control the region. What started off as being a lv 1 encounter has turned into a lv 50 encounter but still allowing low level PC's to nibble at the edge, higher level to venture towards the center and the big guns of the game to strike at the center. If not all the camps are wiped out then it will start all over again at one of the camps that was missed out. If 2 camps still survived then a civil war between the 2 camps might happen sparking even more quests for evil aligned PC's.
The above scenario is whats lacking in mmos. All you do all day is camp spawns to grind and grind. By having a dynamic system that changes all the time keeps an area interesting. The above scenario can be used for all intelligent races and once an area is cleared and new random spawn can come traipsing down from the mountains or out of the dense dark forest. This could be a lown troll, a tribe of Ogres, or even a Dragon.
The days of killing a level 1 wolf in one area and then killing that same wolf now level 11 with a different colour pelt and name in another, should be long gone. Its also the reason I no longer play any mmos, as I said in my introduction, there all the same.
I have a lot of other ideas that all stem around player driven quest spawning that i will give later depending on if this is well received buy the player base and staff.
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Comments
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I really like what blizz did with the new Legion levels in WoW. Mobs scaling with your lvl so all zones remain relevant even at max lvl. I really think this is the way to go for future mmo's.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/please-no-level-specific-areas/#post-8660" rel="nofollow">Helzbelz wrote:</a></div>
i dont think you can not have no level specific areas in a game with levels.
</blockquote>
I really like what blizz did with the new Legion levels in WoW. Mobs scaling with your lvl so all zones remain relevant even at max lvl. I really think this is the way to go for future mmo’s.
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Not going to work in a game like this where Nodes can and the mobs chance on the fly. Everything will chance based on the nodes progression not on players progression.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/please-no-level-specific-areas/#post-8660" rel="nofollow">Helzbelz wrote:</a></div>
i dont think you can not have no level specific areas in a game with levels.
</blockquote>
I really like what blizz did with the new Legion levels in WoW. Mobs scaling with your lvl so all zones remain relevant even at max lvl. I really think this is the way to go for future mmo’s.
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That's actually the worst and least realistic option I can imagine. Love the OP's idea though, great concept.
I read somewhere that near a higher lvl node there's let's say a forest and the more you venture in the harder the encounters get. That sounds great, there should be atleast some kind of starter and high end zones but not linear.
I read somewhere that near a higher lvl node there’s let’s say a forest and the more you venture in the harder the encounters get. That sounds great, there should be atleast some kind of starter and high end zones but not linear.
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I think with the nodes progressing and the monsters levels changing I think there will be some of what the OP wants. Add to that I think open world dungeons will have areas where the deeper you go the harder the mob but at least you can go and start in the open world dungeon for starters.
GW2 does manage to downscale players in a given area, which could be applied to areas with the low level events that were suggested, but it doesn't prevent all imbalances. I can only speculate on what could work in such a system.
Just the way I'm seeing things, that way you could explore more and change things up depending on the region you're in.
I would prefer the expanded territories not to magically appear if that's possible. Maybe having the orcs log the trees is too much server overhead (although it would be freaking cool), maybe they do a controlled burn to remove trees or have an orc shaman convert the trees and rocks in the area to resources for their camp..... Just trying to avoid an entire settlement popping in.
[quote quote=8759]Level scaling isn’t a bad thing, but I think where they will go with it is when the node levels up there will be higher level mobs around so lower leveled toons wont be able to roam around there too much, that is the impression the node system is giving me. The old area is replaced by the new area with each level of the node and new mobs and quests show up because of it.
Just the way I’m seeing things, that way you could explore more and change things up depending on the region you’re in.
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Personally, I'm not a level scaling fan. It doesn't make sense to me and breaks immersion, as does a traditional leveling system. I'd rather see proficiency based skills instead of skills points or ability strength scaling with level. I'd prefer a level-less system where we pick our class and each skill has a max proficiency level that increases the strength of the skill (like a max level of 10).
So if I were a Ranger, I'd start of with a basic bow shot. After shooting arrows a few hundred times my bow shot proficiency would go up to level 1. Maybe once I reach proficiency level 3, my next skill would unlock. Raise that to proficiency level 3 and the next one unlocks. The higher up the skill tree you go, the more likely your skill will fail unless you have a high overall proficiency level. So with three skills unlocked, the highest you could have is 30 levels of proficiency. If you try to use your newest skill with only 30% of your proficiency developed across your skills, you have an increased chance for the skill to fail or to backlash against your character. Maybe you damage the durability of your bow. Maybe your bowstring snaps and you have to restring it. Maybe you inflict an injury on your finger so you have a decreased fire rate for a few minutes or firing your bow depletes a small percentage of your health for that period of time.
This kind of system lets you balance the reward of finishing off enemies with underdeveloped, stronger skills more quickly at the potential risk of becoming debuffed or putting yourself in danger. Even for the experienced players, maybe dodging to much or executing shots too hastily by not holding on the bowstring long enough builds up a "chance to backlash" meter so that even later on veterans need to be measured in their fights and take that into consideration for the enemy they are fighting.
"Well, what about super strong bosses? Couldn't a dragon one-hit kill you if your health didn't scale?"
My answer to that can be a "hardiness" trait that requires you to take hits to build up resistance to a type of attack. So if you want your guild to go hunt down a fire dragon in the desert, maybe you need to spend a certain number of hours building up the proficiency of a trait like "Heat Resistance" via battle with smaller mobs in the desert so you can take the attacks of the dragon.
"That's too long! You can't possibly expect people to grind to a certain extent before they can fight a boss as a guild."
Well, yes, you can. You can make it a requirement for joining a guild. Minimum 20% resistance to all elements for joining. I like this kind of long term goal. A slow grind to become even more deadly. Or if you prefer a faster pace combat, instead of this system they could implement something like spending 10 minutes in combat in the desert region slowly increases your heat resistance to max level, then you can take out the boss. Then when you move back into another region, like the forest, your heat resistance depletes and your "Nature/Poison" resistance stat builds up. So you dynamically adjust to each region, requiring you to fight easier mobs first because you can't jump from crazy boss to crazy boss.
This is the kind of system I'd rather see than leveling or downscaling. It sells a little more realism in my mind.
As for the actual mob difficulty like having level locked areas, if my previous idea were implemented and it wasn't actually a level system, then basically it would rely on the node system to determine where the deadlier enemies were. You'd have to go to a region where the town node is small, so the mobs are far more developed and deadly. As regions struggle over the xp to level up their node, this changes the mob-node strength in the region as well, basically always ensuring that the dangerous ones are far away from developed towns and the type of creatures showing up in an area are always changing.
<em>"You’re basically correct, but keep in mind that our populations are mixed. <strong>We don’t have a strictly level 25 zone. Instead, that zone might have some level 10 creatures near the road, some level 20 creatures deep in the forest, and some level 30 creatures up the mountain.</strong> These ratios will change based on the Nodes that inform them, becoming generally more dangerous as the Node grows. All this civilization attracts the attention of Things-That-Should-Not-Be. This does not mean that wilderness areas are safe, by any means. Some may be safe-er, but all will have dangers that even the most experienced traveler needs to watch out for. We’re also playing with the idea of Nodes having relationships with Nodes that haven’t reached level 1 (a sort of anti-Node relationship), but we’ll talk about that sometime down the road."</em>
This looks good - A more natural placement of the beasties that reflects growing societies protecting themselves by pushing the more dangerous foes towards the edge of civilization.
Edit: Forgot to say, things are subject to change, but those are the plans so far.