Mentoring Programs

We are kind of getting off-topic but the removal of gear from pvp content is something I really don't like.

To me, that is removing a part of the game. I don't think gear progression should be the only thing that decides a fight (as it does in a lot of games) but I find it sad when it's completely cut out of pvp. To me, it's a part of the game and another aspect of the game that players get to think about.

A big reason I see games cut it out seems to be because they also use gear (and by gear, I mean gear score) as a gating mechanic for pve content. I know some enjoy that aspect of pve and think there should be games out there for them but it would be nice if some games didn't go down that route. If you really need a gate, there are other ways of doing it wither it's through the contents difficulty or other in-game requirements(attunements). One of Ashes core mechanics, Nodes, already is a huge gating mechanic for pve content.

You can even use gear as a gating mechanic without the mechanic only being about power. Easy example is things like resistances which you can take in a variety of directions. You can also make stages of the content require special items to defeat the content. To beat the frost dragon, maybe you need to get everyone set up in frost resist gear and have a certain number of people equipped with special harpoons that they use to prevent the dragon from flying away.

There are ways to create gear so players can be rewarded for progression but not be the only thing that decides a pvp fight.

mcstackerson wrote: »

We are kind of getting off-topic but the removal of gear from pvp content is something I really don't like.

I don't like it either, and that is why this is a situation where I can see a problem, but no solution.

mcstackerson wrote: »

I know some enjoy that aspect of pve and think there should be games out there for them but it would be nice if some games didn't go down that route.

You are greatly mis-stating things here.

Gear upgrades are the defining aspect of PvE content.

You kill encounters to get better gear (a reward), which then allows you to kill harder encounters, which then results in getting better gear so that you can kill harder encounters.

Gear upgrading is the central pivot of this system, and not only will developers not want to spend time trying to develop another central pivot for a multi-million dollar game, but players will immediately reject it even if they tried.

Even if it weren't an absolute fact that players would largely reject a game where gear upgrades were not the central pivot, developers wouldn't take a mechanic that offers such easy and obvious rewards from a PvE situation and move it to a PvP situation.

This is because PvP is self defeating in terms of maintaining a healthy persistent game.

If you put a PvE reward structure in to a PvP environment, it wouldn't take long at all before one group of players had caused the rest of the server to leave the game. Then that group of players would fragment due to having no one to fight, which would then see one of those fragments win more than the other, get better gear, and chase off the losing fragment.

Which brings us back full circle to why it is not always a good idea in PvP to always reward the stronger group of players if you want to maintain a healthy persistent world, and why I still have no solution to the problem (other than telling PvP players to just suck it up and deal with the game as it is, I suppose).

mcstackerson wrote: »

You can even use gear as a gating mechanic without the mechanic only being about power. Easy example is things like resistances which you can take in a variety of directions. You can also make stages of the content require special items to defeat the content. To beat the frost dragon, maybe you need to get everyone set up in frost resist gear and have a certain number of people equipped with special harpoons that they use to prevent the dragon from flying away.

The thing is, if you did this, the only challenge you could then offer in the next wave of PvE encounters is attacks on those resistances.

If you want to put in a challenge for the raid to maintain a specific amount of DPS on a specific target (or targets), then the gear in the previous content needs to contain DPS focused gear for all DPS classes. If you want to put in a challenge for the raid to be able to survive an unmitigatible AoE, you need to add in high HP gear for all classes. If you want to put in a challenge for the raid where the healers need to heal ridiculous amounts of damage, you need to provide them with gear that increases their healing output.

On top of all of that, the rewards for a specific encounter need to be somewhat balanced across all classes. If one encounter (or group of encounters) requires high DPS, then the encounter (or group of encounters) before that needs to provide DPS players with high DPS gear. In order to maintain balance though, that/those encounters also need to provide at least a few pieces of gear for healers, tanks and support as upgrades to what they already have.

mcstackerson wrote: »

There are ways to create gear so players can be rewarded for progression but not be the only thing that decides a pvp fight.

There are, but the only way to make that happen in a realistic environment (ie, one where you don't want to sacrifice your PvE game for a PvP game) is to have different stats on gear in PvE and PvP.

noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

We are kind of getting off-topic but the removal of gear from pvp content is something I really don't like.

I don't like it either, and that is why this is a situation where I can see a problem, but no solution.

mcstackerson wrote: »

I know some enjoy that aspect of pve and think there should be games out there for them but it would be nice if some games didn't go down that route.

You are greatly mis-stating things here.

Gear upgrades are the defining aspect of PvE content.

You kill encounters to get better gear (a reward), which then allows you to kill harder encounters, which then results in getting better gear so that you can kill harder encounters.

Gear upgrading is the central pivot of this system, and not only will developers not want to spend time trying to develop another central pivot for a multi-million dollar game, but players will immediately reject it even if they tried.

Even if it weren't an absolute fact that players would largely reject a game where gear upgrades were not the central pivot, developers wouldn't take a mechanic that offers such easy and obvious rewards from a PvE situation and move it to a PvP situation.

This is because PvP is self defeating in terms of maintaining a healthy persistent game.

If you put a PvE reward structure in to a PvP environment, it wouldn't take long at all before one group of players had caused the rest of the server to leave the game. Then that group of players would fragment due to having no one to fight, which would then see one of those fragments win more than the other, get better gear, and chase off the losing fragment.

Which brings us back full circle to why it is not always a good idea in PvP to always reward the stronger group of players if you want to maintain a healthy persistent world, and why I still have no solution to the problem (other than telling PvP players to just suck it up and deal with the game as it is, I suppose).

mcstackerson wrote: »

You can even use gear as a gating mechanic without the mechanic only being about power. Easy example is things like resistances which you can take in a variety of directions. You can also make stages of the content require special items to defeat the content. To beat the frost dragon, maybe you need to get everyone set up in frost resist gear and have a certain number of people equipped with special harpoons that they use to prevent the dragon from flying away.

The thing is, if you did this, the only challenge you could then offer in the next wave of PvE encounters is attacks on those resistances.

If you want to put in a challenge for the raid to maintain a specific amount of DPS on a specific target (or targets), then the gear in the previous content needs to contain DPS focused gear for all DPS classes. If you want to put in a challenge for the raid to be able to survive an unmitigatible AoE, you need to add in high HP gear for all classes. If you want to put in a challenge for the raid where the healers need to heal ridiculous amounts of damage, you need to provide them with gear that increases their healing output.

On top of all of that, the rewards for a specific encounter need to be somewhat balanced across all classes. If one encounter (or group of encounters) requires high DPS, then the encounter (or group of encounters) before that needs to provide DPS players with high DPS gear. In order to maintain balance though, that/those encounters also need to provide at least a few pieces of gear for healers, tanks and support as upgrades to what they already have.

mcstackerson wrote: »

There are ways to create gear so players can be rewarded for progression but not be the only thing that decides a pvp fight.

There are, but the only way to make that happen in a realistic environment (ie, one where you don't want to sacrifice your PvE game for a PvP game) is to have different stats on gear in PvE and PvP.

I'm sorry for not parsing this as beautifully as you.

I think it's silly that you say that players need to be reward with power and later in my resistance example you trivialize the reward and say all they get is new resistances. All you want to reward is power, just stats that make your numbers bigger and prettier

What's the diff?

What's the difference between content giving power vs content giving you something more unique, like a resistance. Especially when giving out so much power has caused so many issues that devs have resorted to removing the power (the pve reward) from certain game modes i.e. pvp. In some games, the power you get from pve means little to nothing outside of pve.

Giving players power, as a reward, obviously has caused issues for the rest of the game. Would it not be ideal to find a way to balance the rewards from high-end pve so that they can be used in other content like pvp without it being the only thing that decides a fight?

Resistances were just an example of a reward and a requirement. There is a large variety of interesting passive, active, and set abilities they could tie to pve content which could reward players and give them interesting options without rewarding them with out of control power. Remember, not every reward from content needs to be a requirement for the next stage of content and not every requirement for the next stage of content needs to come from the content before it.

It's about horizontal progression.

Optimized dps should be about mastering your character's rotation while reacting to the challenges of the encounter. I don't see much of the difference between doing that with stronger gear vs gear with some unique stat for the encounter.

At the end of the day, you are requiring the player to get gear. Why does it matter if it's power or something more focused like a resistance?

If you prefer power as a reward that then cool but I'm going to push back if you say that's the only way to reward players for pve. As I said, I still think there should be games that go down the route of constantly giving out power. I don't agree that it's the only way of doing things.

mcstackerson wrote: »

I think it's silly that you say that players need to be reward with power and later say in my resistance example you trivialize the reward and say all they get is new resistances. All you want to reward is power, just stats that make your numbers bigger and prettier

I'm going to use completely made up numbers here, as I am simply attempting to illustrate a point.

If my raid is regularly killing content that requires a combined raid DPS of 10,000, and then the next encounter we take on still only requires 10,000 DPS, but has a need for greater cold resistance, then my DPS are not improving.

If this were the case on all encounters, where the only thing that needed to be increased were resistances, then raid DPS would be static - there would never be any improvements to be had.

It isn't about bigger numbers per se, it is about being presented with a challenge that we can't overcome just yet, and each individual within the raid as a whole then improves on their specialization, until the point where we have all improved enough to be able to take on that challenge.

Sure, the end result of this is a bigger DPS number, but that isn't the goal. The goal is being able to defeat the content. The majority of bragging about DPS numbers is done in an ironic fashion - at least by those that know what they are talking about - as the numbers inherently mean nothing past proof of improvement towards a specific goal.

The fact that some people don't get that irony is not something to dwell upon.

Put perhaps more simply, players play classes on raids that do a job they enjoy. Progression of their character should progress that one job that they perform, as that is what they are on the raid to do.

Providing a DPS with loot on a raid that only increases their survivability is akin to providing a PvP player with a PvP reward item that has a passive that increases their damage output, but only in PvE combat.

In both cases, the reward is simply not appropriate. However, if the raid item also increased DPS, and the PvP item also increased damage output in PvP, then both items are suitable.

mcstackerson wrote: »

Giving players power as a reward obviously has caused issues, issues that have caused devs to make that power meaningless in other parts of the game.

Indeed it has, hence this discussion - not the one the thread started about, but the one we are having regardless.

mcstackerson wrote: »

Would it not be ideal to find a way to balance the rewards from high-end pve so that they can be used in pvp without it being the only thing that decides a fight?

Yes and no.

If we are talking about MMO's in general, then yes. If we are talking about Ashes specifically, then no.

In a game where the vast majority of items are able to be crafted, bought and sold - and thus obtained by anyone willing to pay for them - I don't see an issue. If I am coming at you with raid equipment in PvP, you have no one but yourself to blame if you don't also have raid equipment on.

It is no more available to me than it is to you in Ashes.

To me, the fact that all gear will essentially be available to all players nullifies the need to try and keep PvE loot from being powerful in PvP.

mcstackerson wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

We are kind of getting off-topic but the removal of gear from pvp content is something I really don't like.

I don't like it either, and that is why this is a situation where I can see a problem, but no solution.

mcstackerson wrote: »

I know some enjoy that aspect of pve and think there should be games out there for them but it would be nice if some games didn't go down that route.

You are greatly mis-stating things here.

Gear upgrades are the defining aspect of PvE content.

You kill encounters to get better gear (a reward), which then allows you to kill harder encounters, which then results in getting better gear so that you can kill harder encounters.

Gear upgrading is the central pivot of this system, and not only will developers not want to spend time trying to develop another central pivot for a multi-million dollar game, but players will immediately reject it even if they tried.

Even if it weren't an absolute fact that players would largely reject a game where gear upgrades were not the central pivot, developers wouldn't take a mechanic that offers such easy and obvious rewards from a PvE situation and move it to a PvP situation.

This is because PvP is self defeating in terms of maintaining a healthy persistent game.

If you put a PvE reward structure in to a PvP environment, it wouldn't take long at all before one group of players had caused the rest of the server to leave the game. Then that group of players would fragment due to having no one to fight, which would then see one of those fragments win more than the other, get better gear, and chase off the losing fragment.

Which brings us back full circle to why it is not always a good idea in PvP to always reward the stronger group of players if you want to maintain a healthy persistent world, and why I still have no solution to the problem (other than telling PvP players to just suck it up and deal with the game as it is, I suppose).

mcstackerson wrote: »

You can even use gear as a gating mechanic without the mechanic only being about power. Easy example is things like resistances which you can take in a variety of directions. You can also make stages of the content require special items to defeat the content. To beat the frost dragon, maybe you need to get everyone set up in frost resist gear and have a certain number of people equipped with special harpoons that they use to prevent the dragon from flying away.

The thing is, if you did this, the only challenge you could then offer in the next wave of PvE encounters is attacks on those resistances.

If you want to put in a challenge for the raid to maintain a specific amount of DPS on a specific target (or targets), then the gear in the previous content needs to contain DPS focused gear for all DPS classes. If you want to put in a challenge for the raid to be able to survive an unmitigatible AoE, you need to add in high HP gear for all classes. If you want to put in a challenge for the raid where the healers need to heal ridiculous amounts of damage, you need to provide them with gear that increases their healing output.

On top of all of that, the rewards for a specific encounter need to be somewhat balanced across all classes. If one encounter (or group of encounters) requires high DPS, then the encounter (or group of encounters) before that needs to provide DPS players with high DPS gear. In order to maintain balance though, that/those encounters also need to provide at least a few pieces of gear for healers, tanks and support as upgrades to what they already have.

mcstackerson wrote: »

There are ways to create gear so players can be rewarded for progression but not be the only thing that decides a pvp fight.

There are, but the only way to make that happen in a realistic environment (ie, one where you don't want to sacrifice your PvE game for a PvP game) is to have different stats on gear in PvE and PvP.

Resistances were just an example of a reward and a requirement. There is a large variety of interesting passive, active, and set abilities they could tie to pve content which could reward players and give them interesting options without rewarding them with out of control power. Remember, not every reward from content needs to be a requirement for the next stage of content and not every requirement for the next stage of content needs to come from the content before it.

It's about horizontal progression.

Horizontal progression is a placebo. It's one that only a small handful of people fall for, and so can't be used as a replacement for vertical progression for very long.

Your statement - not every reward from content needs to be a requirement for the next stage of content and not every requirement for the next stage of content needs to come from the content before it is quite false.

It's true that not every reward from content needs to be for the next stage, indeed most rewards should be somewhat general purpose. However, to the rest of that thought, if a specific piece of content doesn't need anything from the piece of content before it, then the piece of content before it is pointless as people will just skip to the latter one.

The only reason to not skip it is if it is needed for flagging zone access - which all that does is cause resentment in the raid population, who will literally run the content the minimum number of times to get everyone flagged, and then never do the encounter again. From that point on guilds that have done that encounter will only ever recruit players in to the guild that have that flag - effectively cutting the raid population in to two distinct segments (as bad an idea as cutting the PvP population in to two distinct segments).

mcstackerson wrote: »

Optimized dps should be about mastering your character's rotation while reacting to the challenges of the encounter. I don't see much of the difference between doing that with stronger gear vs gear with some unique stat for the encounter.

Games that have "rotations" are not worth my time to play.

Players master their character in the first two or three raid encounters of a game. How exactly do you propose they improve their output over the next several hundred encounters (or, if you want to talk EQ/EQ2, several thousand)?

Gear with properties unique to an encounter are not rewards, they are tools. This notion also conflicts with the idea that not every item reward needs to be for the next encounter, or series of encounters. If a reward is to be generic in terms of it's use, then by definition, it can't be specific in terms of it's use.

And I'd also like to point out your earlier statement...

mcstackerson wrote: »

the removal of gear from pvp content is something I really don't like.

What is providing raiders with gear that only works on specific encounters, if not removing gear from PvP?

This is why I am saying this is a problem with no real solution, as any solution may work for some players, but absolutely won't work for others.

noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

I think it's silly that you say that players need to be reward with power and later say in my resistance example you trivialize the reward and say all they get is new resistances. All you want to reward is power, just stats that make your numbers bigger and prettier

I'm going to use completely made up numbers here, as I am simply attempting to illustrate a point.

If my raid is regularly killing content that requires a combined raid DPS of 10,000, and then the next encounter we take on still only requires 10,000 DPS, but has a need for greater cold resistance, then my DPS are not improving.

Giving your dps gear with a higher gear score isn't improving them as players. They are doing the exact same thing they did on the previous fight but in gear with bigger numbers.

It's the same thing as giving them frost resist gear. Instead of the boss having big numbers that require them to have gear with bigger numbers, the boss has a bunch of frost damage that the need gear with frost resist to help mitigate.

In both scenarios, they are doing the same thing but in different gear.

Once again, resist is only an example of a raid requirement. I'm pretty sure you could take 1 minute and think of a variety of different item requirements (other than bigger numbers) that could be needed for different bosses.

Yes, mastering your class doesn't take long but in a pve encounter, you have to optimally use your class while performing the unique actions of an encounter (it's mechanics). Dps (as well as other roles) improve by learning the different encounters so they can perform mechanics as quickly as possible to maximize the time they spend performing their role.

Another crazy thing that can happen when there is more to gear then larger numbers, you can have gear sets that complement different abilities and changing how your class plays. Another thing players can do to perfect their performance at their role.

If you like endless number scaling then cool but from what I'm reading, it sounds like you are saying it's the only way to reward pve content which I disagree with. If you think horizontal progression is a placebo then I'm not sure if you have really given it any thought. I believe if you took a second you could think of meaningful rewards that could be given to players that aren't flat power. You can still prefer big, pretty numbers, but there are other things you can give players as a reward.

All horizontal progression means is you are being rewarded with something that is different, not flat out more powerful. It can be stronger, especially depending on how it synergizes with other things but it doesn't flat out have more stats/power.

If horizontal progression is a meaningless placebo, does that mean you are never going to change your augments or go for new ones? Are you never going to switch your secondary class because that's just a horizontal move? What about reworking the gear you get for different stats? The weapons power isn't going to change so what's the point of changing it from a weapon that has bonuses to defense to a weapon that has bonuses to damage?

mcstackerson wrote: »

Giving your dps gear with a higher gear score isn't improving them as players.

Gear score is a thing that games with rotations have.

I'm talking about good gear, not gear with a high gear score.

The notion of players improving as a player is as much a fallacy as anything else. Most raiders are as good at their class as they will ever be after the first few raids, all they need to do after that is adjust to the encounters they are faced with.

This is the same with PvP, most top end PvP players are as good as they are going to be after only a few days of having access to all their abilities. From that point, all they need to do is adjust to the new PvP meta as it develops.

The only way players ever need to "improve" as players - whether PvP or PvE, is when the game gives them new abilities to use that need to be mastered.

Character improvements is more important than player improvement in an MMO. This may not hold true in a BR, or in a FPS game, but character improvement is what MMORPG's are about, not player improvement.

mcstackerson wrote: »

Once again, resist is only an example of a raid requirement. I'm pretty sure you could take 1 minute and think of a variety of different item requirements (other than bigger numbers) that could be needed for different bosses.

Yes, but all of them confer the same level of benefit in PvP content.

If I have high resists due to having raid level gear, and you attack me with attacks corresponding to those resists, how well do you think that will work for you? Since there are many raid encounters, there will be resist gear for each resist type, meaning raid level players can always have much higher resists to all damage types than other players, meaning all damage types will do less damage to those players.

Anything you can come up with will have this same effect unless you put in encounter or content type specific effects on gear - which is that whole thing of removing gear from the PvP equation again, something we are both against.

mcstackerson wrote: »

If you like endless number scaling then cool but from what I'm reading, it sounds like you are saying it's the only way to reward pve content which I disagree with. If you think horizontal progression is a placebo then I'm not sure if you have really given it any thought. I believe if you took a second you could think of meaningful rewards that could be given to players that aren't flat power. You can still prefer big, pretty numbers, but there are other things you can give players as a reward.

I'm not at all saying it is the only way, I am saying it is the main way.

Further, I am saying that this is the case by necessity.

You can't keep players engaged in a content type if that content type doesn't give them and their character a way to improve at the singular thing they are in that content type to provide. This applies to all content types (solo, group, raid, PvP, crafting, naval etc), and to all things players bring to those content types.

mcstackerson wrote: »

All horizontal progression means is you are being rewarded with something that is different, not flat out more powerful. It can be stronger, especially depending on how it synergizes with other things but it doesn't flat out have more stats/power.

If you are in a raid, and you are a healer (just so I'm not talking about DPS all the time), if an item doesn't improve your ability to keep your charges alive (whether that is a specific person, group of people, or the whole raid), then you don't use it.

On the other hand, if that item does allow you to better do the one thing you are in the raid to do, it is vertical progression (or arguably angular progression - but that is just a term people that advocate horizontal progression use to argue their point when it becomes obvious that characters still progress vertically regardless of the game).

mcstackerson wrote: »

If horizontal progression is a meaningless placebo, does that mean you are never going to change your augments or go for new ones? Are you never going to switch your secondary class because that's just a horizontal move? What about reworking the gear you get for different stats? The weapons power isn't going to change so what's the point of changing it from a weapon that has bonuses to defense to a weapon that has bonuses to damage?

I am going to make use of the augments that deliver the best results. There may be encounters or situations that require different setups of augments (though, since we can't just change them at will, I hope not). If this is the case, getting these augments is the part of my statement where I said it can't be used as a replacement for vertical progression for very long.

If players find themselves having to hunt out new augments every time they want to take on new content, the game won't last very long.

All of that said, going back to the base argument of raid level loot having too much influence over PvP, I'm still waiting to hear any reason as to why this is an issue if that raid level loot is able to be bought and sold.

It's a very interesting discussion @noaani and @mcstackerson. When it comes to vertical character progression it's important to note that not only does your character have to be stronger, but to FEEL stronger. Those are 2 entirely different things. In a raid environment, what is the difference between me doing 100 damage with my Fireball spell compared to doing 200 damage with it? If the only thing that has changed has been the raw damage of the spell, then the answer is NOTHING. It feels the same to use the spell regardless of how much damage it does.

This is why it's important to have stats like Crit, spell casting speed and cooldown reduction, as these are things that you can feel as a player. If my character crits more often I will notice that. If I'm able to cast more spells in the same amount of time, I can feel that.

Oh and @noaani I disagree with you that players no longer improve after their first few raids with a character. There will always be improvements even after you've played 1000 hours or 10,000 hours. That's why speedrunners are constantly getting better and better times despite the games themselves never changing. As we play, we learn and understand more and more about how the mechanics of the game work in order to optimise as much as possible. For example, the first ever recorded speedrun of Super Mario 64 back in 2004 was 2 hours 57 minutes 47 seconds long. The current world record is 1 hour 38 minutes 54 seconds. Sure the improvements are slow, but they do add up over time.

Also, those stats I talked about above like spell casting speed can alter the gameplay so drastically that it is like learning a new character all over again. Give a character enough extra spell casting speed and their rotation completely changes without any new abilities added.

Rewarding gear with increased stats is the standard for all RPGs but it is by no means the only way to reward players. Cosmetics and different mounts are more and more popular these days and these are fantastic rewards that don't affect the balance of power. There are other things you can do too. GW2 has nearly all horizontal progression as stats on gear are capped and it is very easy to get the best gear possible. So instead, GW2 rewards horizontal progression with its mastery system, which mostly boil down to things that make exploring and moving through the world easier.

In GW2 the main reward for the raids are the legendary insights which are used to craft legendary armour and weapons. The legendary items aren't more powerful than other gear in terms of raw combat stats but they have the benefit that you can change the stats combinations whenever you like for free (something you cannot do with regular gear).

This shows that horizontal progression can be done well as long as it plays into the rest of the game. You couldn't copy the horizontal progressions from GW2 and put them into WoW for example.

Wandering Mist wrote: »

When it comes to vertical character progression it's important to note that not only does your character have to be stronger, but to FEEL stronger.

This is true in some segments of the game, but not in the top end raid environment.

Top end raiding is all about results.

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Oh and @noaani I disagree with you that players no longer improve after their first few raids with a character. There will always be improvements even after you've played 1000 hours or 10,000 hours. That's why speedrunners are constantly getting better and better times despite the games themselves never changing. As we play, we learn and understand more and more about how the mechanics of the game work in order to optimise as much as possible. For example, the first ever recorded speedrun of Super Mario 64 back in 2004 was 2 hours 57 minutes 47 seconds long. The current world record is 1 hour 38 minutes 54 seconds. Sure the improvements are slow, but they do add up over time.

Speedrunning is the equivalent of working on the same piece of content over and over again. It is the like working on one raid boss for years and years - you aren't getting better at the whole game, you are just getting better at that one piece of content.

The different is that the piece of content speedrunners are doing over and over again just happens to be the whole game. This is due to the fact that such games are very limited in terms of content. If someone took the same engine and made new content, those players wouldn't automatically be speedrunning that content, which suggests that it isn't the players that improved, it is only their ability on the specific piece of content.

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Also, those stats I talked about above like spell casting speed can alter the gameplay so drastically that it is like learning a new character all over again. Give a character enough extra spell casting speed and their rotation completely changes without any new abilities added.

Agreed.

Even better, have it change during combat - then their rotation changes on the fly.

This is something EQ2 does, which is what makes it such a good raid game. Spell cast speed, along with recast speed, spell power and GCD all being able to be affected mid combat in that game is why you don't have a spell rotation, but rather a spell priority.

You need to think fast in order to maximize your output, and that makes for a much more enjoyable game than simply deciding before the fight exactly what your rotation will be - even if it is different from the previous fight.

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Rewarding gear with increased stats is the standard for all RPGs but it is by no means the only way to reward players. Cosmetics and different mounts are more and more popular these days and these are fantastic rewards that don't affect the balance of power. There are other things you can do too. GW2 has nearly all horizontal progression as stats on gear are capped and it is very easy to get the best gear possible. So instead, GW2 rewards horizontal progression with its mastery system, which mostly boil down to things that make exploring and moving through the world easier.

It isn't the only reward, but it is (and will always remain) the main reward. I've never argued that such things can't exist.

My argument here is simply that gear upgrades as rewards for PvE raids that in turn allow the raid to take on the next level of challenge will always have to be a part PvE raiding, and any game that wants open PvP as well as PvE raids will simply need to work around that basic fact.

noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

If horizontal progression is a meaningless placebo, does that mean you are never going to change your augments or go for new ones? Are you never going to switch your secondary class because that's just a horizontal move? What about reworking the gear you get for different stats? The weapons power isn't going to change so what's the point of changing it from a weapon that has bonuses to defense to a weapon that has bonuses to damage?

I am going to make use of the augments that deliver the best results. There may be encounters or situations that require different setups of augments (though, since we can't just change them at will, I hope not). If this is the case, getting these augments is the part of my statement where I said it can't be used as a replacement for vertical progression for very long.

If players find themselves having to hunt out new augments every time they want to take on new content, the game won't last very long.

All of that said, going back to the base argument of raid level loot having too much influence over PvP, I'm still waiting to hear any reason as to why this is an issue if that raid level loot is able to be bought and sold.

Yes, you are going to pick the augments that synergize best with what you are trying to do. To do so, you are going to turn down the advantages other augments give you. It isn't necessarily that the augments you are picking are powerful then the other ones, it's that your chosen augment works better with your classes kit.

To make myself clear, i don't think it is a problem that raid loot is stronger then loot outside of raiding, my issue is the power creep that happens when they constantly increase the power with each new iteration of raid content.

I also think there should be some items that are legendary and strong compared to the others, I just don't want every new item to be a flat upgrade on new content release. I'm not sure if i have made this point clear but i'm not recommending all rewards be hyper focused on giving you what you need for the next fight, the gear should have interesting stats combinations, passives, active, and set bonuses. I want gear rewards to be something more interesting then the same base item with a little bit more stats. Maybe killing the frost dragon gives you a set of gear with frost dragon themed bonuses. The weapon might give you bonuses to frost damage or convert a portion of your damage to be frost and has an activatable that allows you to shoot a frost wave. In ashes, maybe there is an augment for some or all the classes.

I don't see getting gear with bigger numbers as improving. If you do then cool but i much prefer getting gear with a variety of different effects and trying to figure out how i can combine these different effects to maximize my effectiveness or just change my playstyle. Once again, i'm not saying that no game should ever have endless gear scaling, i'm just saying that horizontal progression is an option. I also just like the option to do things a little differently then others.

Damage resist was an easy example to give that some people might be familiar with. It wasn't necessarily the route they have to go. The idea is that if the devs think they need to make a gear requirement for a fight, they can do so with something more specialized and fitting of the theme of the fight instead of requiring x amount of numbers. Maybe it's resist gear or specialized damage gear, maybe it's a special amulet or ring that wards off a dangerous effect, or maybe it's some kind of consumable. Once again, this is only if the gating mechanic they want is gear related, there are other ways of gating people out besides gear, if they even feel the need to gate people at all.

Yes, if i build my character around a damage type and you try to hard counter it with the resist gear, then i would be at a disadvantage but you would also be at a disadvantage against anyone who doesn't focus on the damage type you are resisting. If it's horizontal progression, then you traded something for those resists.

consultant

Wandermist said
I love it how your title has absolutely no connection to your thread at all, but anyway

Well if you reward little bit better gear for good performance would not that encourage people to do better.
Instead iwell it is jus another dungeoun and prepare them for raids. Right? You understand the concept right? See how the are connected. Good performance for little bit better gear.

As far as the search function. Well does not work to well in my experiencing. Have to go through a lot of threads to find right info. Better to have useful information to develope toons all in one place for the most part. But thing forums would be good place to put that info after all cause not all good players make videos.
But could be encouraged to share what they know in a Forum. No such categories exists. Would be cool if category like Player Developement was there a place for toons to contribute knowledge.

Another thing Intrepid could do is to allow guilds to have spectator mode for dungeouns and raids for their guildies so they could learn the fight that way.

consultant wrote: »

Wandermist said
I love it how your title has absolutely no connection to your thread at all, but anyway

Well if you reward little bit better gear for good performance would not that encourage people to do better.
Instead iwell it is jus another dungeoun and prepare them for raids. Right? You understand the concept right? See how the are connected. Good performance for little bit better gear.

As far as the search function. Well does not work to well in my experiencing. Have to go through a lot of threads to find right info. Better to have useful information to develope toons all in one place for the most part. But thing forums would be good place to put that info after all cause not all good players make videos.
But could be encouraged to share what they know in a Forum. No such categories exists. Would be cool if category like Player Developement was there a place for toons to contribute knowledge.

Another thing Intrepid could do is to allow guilds to have spectator mode for dungeouns and raids for their guildies so they could learn the fight that way.

Your definition of a "mentoring program" is very different to mine.

To be brutally honest, forums seem to be going out of favour when it comes to learning about games. More and more people are using discord for that instead. In WoW for instance every class has a dedicated discord server for learning about your class and discussing it. I'd be surprised if we didn't see the same thing happen with Ashes of creation.

I would actually love to have a spectator function for raids and dungeons as long as you can choose who you let watch you.

mcstackerson wrote: »

To make myself clear, i don't think it is a problem that raid loot is stronger then loot outside of raiding, my issue is the power creep that happens when they constantly increase the power with each new iteration of raid content.

I agree, I just disagree that the solution is to alter the paradigm of raid loot.

That is where it is for a reason, even if you don't fully grasp the reasons (which is ok, it isn't your thing).

The solution is to make it so the power gap between players is able to be at least somewhat bridged.

There are two main ways of doing this. One is to always add an increase in the power of non-raid loot along with increases in raid loot power.

The other is to have systems in place that make it so there is a reasonable expectation that raid loot ( or the specific components needed to craft it) will always be up for sale on the open market.

Either of these will nullify the issue.

@noaani

This is true in some segments of the game, but not in the top end raid environment.

Top end raiding is all about results.

Even top end raiders like to feel that their character is getting stronger. Sure results matter more in top end raiding but the RPG elements are still present.

Speedrunning is the equivalent of working on the same piece of content over and over again. It is the like working on one raid boss for years and years - you aren't getting better at the whole game, you are just getting better at that one piece of content.

The different is that the piece of content speedrunners are doing over and over again just happens to be the whole game. This is due to the fact that such games are very limited in terms of content. If someone took the same engine and made new content, those players wouldn't automatically be speedrunning that content, which suggests that it isn't the players that improved, it is only their ability on the specific piece of content.

The techniques picked up from speedrunning one game can be applied to speedrunning other games of the same genre. If you can speedrun DarkSouls 3 you can speedrun Bloodborne and Sekiro for example. Speedrunners often switch games of the same genre to spice things up and not get burned out. And it's not just the mechanical skill either, but the knowledge of how the systems work. 2 games by the same developer (particularly in the same franchise) will have very similar mechanics. There is a technique called "load warp" that can be done in all the Elder Scrolls and Fallout Games, along with a bunch of other techniques.

Agreed.

Even better, have it change during combat - then their rotation changes on the fly.

This is something EQ2 does, which is what makes it such a good raid game. Spell cast speed, along with recast speed, spell power and GCD all being able to be affected mid combat in that game is why you don't have a spell rotation, but rather a spell priority.

You need to think fast in order to maximize your output, and that makes for a much more enjoyable game than simply deciding before the fight exactly what your rotation will be - even if it is different from the previous fight.

I'll have to take your word on that as I haven't played enough EQ2 to be fully familiar with the combat system.

It isn't the only reward, but it is (and will always remain) the main reward. I've never argued that such things can't exist.

My argument here is simply that gear upgrades as rewards for PvE raids that in turn allow the raid to take on the next level of challenge will always have to be a part PvE raiding, and any game that wants open PvP as well as PvE raids will simply need to work around that basic fact.

I agree with you that it has always been the main reward, but does it need to be? Can you keep the core RPG element of character progression without gear upgrades?

Regardless, if we keep the gear upgrades as rewards and want to keep open world PvP balanced the only kind of solution I can come up with is to allow players to equip gear for certain pieces of content, so gear acquired in a raid can only be worn in a raid. The problem with this is that players who do more than one type of content will have to carry around multiple sets of gear, which is a problem in a game like Ashes where we are limited on how much we can carry.

noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

To make myself clear, i don't think it is a problem that raid loot is stronger then loot outside of raiding, my issue is the power creep that happens when they constantly increase the power with each new iteration of raid content.

I agree, I just disagree that the solution is to alter the paradigm of raid loot.

That is where it is for a reason, even if you don't fully grasp the reasons (which is ok, it isn't your thing).

The solution is to make it so the power gap between players is able to be at least somewhat bridged.

There are two main ways of doing this. One is to always add an increase in the power of non-raid loot along with increases in raid loot power.

The other is to have systems in place that make it so there is a reasonable expectation that raid loot ( or the specific components needed to craft it) will always be up for sale on the open market.

Either of these will nullify the issue.

I get your reason and agree that there are people like you who enjoy and prefer raiding to be like that. I'm saying there are others that could still get enjoyment out of raiding with more of a focus on horizontal rewards.

I don't like catch up mechanics and is another reason i'd prefer a raid gear with more horizontal rewards. To me, catch up mechanics is one of the reasons i don't feel motivated to raid in some games as the raiding rewards are just going to be made available in easier content later down the line. I'd prefer raiding to have more unique horizontal rewards that don't need to be made available to players outside of raiding later down the line so they can catch up in power.

Yes, those are other solutions and if you prefer those then cool but i feel they are patches for the real problem. I'd prefer a more horizontal approach to raid gear as i don't find the constant power increasing compelling anymore and am annoyed with the issues it has caused. I'm much more interested in them trying to find other ways to make raid gear special besides constantly giving it bigger numbers.

consultant

Another thing that could be done it to have a couple of eight man dungeouns that are at the dificulty level of a raid. . Seems like the transition from dungeouns to raids is something like Dungeouns No problem. Then go to raids and seem like a fish out of water.

Not to sure why this is. But would be nice to give people some knobs to turn to make envoringment raid like. Guessing people make mistakes in dungeons and get away with it but in raids it causes wipes. So goal should be zero mistakes in dungeouns. Would be cool to have an app to track such progress.

Wandering Mist wrote: »

I agree with you that it has always been the main reward, but does it need to be? Can you keep the core RPG element of character progression without gear upgrades?

It would be possible to have non-gear rewards, but I don't see it being possible to not have character progression as a reward. It could come in other forms, but there needs to be character progression - gear is just the easiest way for developer to implement it, and players to understand it.

Regardless of what form it takes though, the issue will persist. There will always be some players that have progressed their character more than others, and those others will always not like this situation.

Regardless, if we keep the gear upgrades as rewards and want to keep open world PvP balanced the only kind of solution I can come up with is to allow players to equip gear for certain pieces of content, so gear acquired in a raid can only be worn in a raid. The problem with this is that players who do more than one type of content will have to carry around multiple sets of gear, which is a problem in a game like Ashes where we are limited on how much we can carry.

The other problem with this is that you aren't progressing your character, you would be progressing a content type.

I actually do think it is a viable solution to this problem to just tell players "this is the game world, this is where the character progression is, the character progression can be traded, have at it".

If someone enters this game knowing that the absolute best gear to PvP in comes from a raid, they have no reason to complain about that fact in the future.

mcstackerson wrote: »

I get your reason and agree that there are people like you who enjoy and prefer raiding to be like that. I'm saying there are others that could still get enjoyment out of raiding with more of a focus on horizontal rewards.

There absolutely would be "some" people that are fine with that, but probably not enough to fill a 40 man raid.

Also, people that are fine with horizontal progression are not usually the types of people to push things to the limit, which is kind of what raiding at the very top end is about. This would result in any game that puts in a horizontal progression system for raids not having an overly competitive or challenging raid scene.

they are patches for the real problem

I disagree.

Either allowing all gear to be traded, or maintaining a scheme where there is never that much of a gap between raiders and active and competent non-raiders is a fix to the core of the issue - assuming that issue is the gap in power between raiders and non-raiders.

A one off giveaway of gear to allow non-raiders to catch up is a patch.

If gear can be traded freely, no one is able to make any excuses for their gear, as their gear is a direct reflection of their financial situation in the game and nothing more. This kind of thing is bad in a game that has an easy way to convert real money in to in game money, but if that doesn't exist, your gear is then a direct reflection of what you are capable of doing in game.

I can't see how anything could be any more fair than that.

I don't think this argument is about fair, it's about a different way of doing things.

I know i don't have any stats to say how many people would enjoy it but to my knowledge, you don't either. We are arguing if a game could go a route vs all games going that route. Not sure why you have to be like that.

I don't consider giving players the rewards for content they have not done as a solution and it's necessity as a problem. In games where items can be distributed by the economy (usually sandboxes), yes, you are giving players a way to catch up in power but are still making content obsolete which causes the portion of the world that that content exists to not have a much of a use.

consultant

Another thing that could be done to hone in a players skill is to put mini bosses out in the open world that way they could practice on them without having to make a raid group. That way they could practice on actual in game content with out having to committ to an entire raid. So if you have raid like fights out in open world (not talking about mobs as previously stated) Pretty sure we are already having world bosses but I am talking about monsters that are slightly easier to kill and not so many people needed. They could fall in the category of rare spawn.

In summary would like to say that information that needs to be given to people to get them started in the right direction could be fit in the case of forums in aobut 45 min of reading. I am a tank and could make guide but guide is not the point it is getting the information to people. Would not recommend discord. unless there are going to mentors in discord all the time, plus what is the point of saying the same thing over and over again when it could just be documented.

Just want to share a story. It was the time in a guilds life to start competative raiding so raid leader recruited good players top dpsers to start. Well this particular guild had non meta methods of tanking and pulling and putting down mobs so the new toons that just got recruited aurgued with raid leader on how to do the raid.
Eventually Raid leader got sick of it and got rid of them and recruited people with no raiding experience and checked profiles to make sure they were not experienced raiders. And that is how they became the number 2 guild on their server. So is just a matter of teaching poeple how to develope raiding skills.

Persanlly normal non competative raiding is a joke to me cause well Bosses do not do cc chains or focus the healer or kite or try to pull cool downs from you and waste them like in PvP environment. Really kind of hard to beleive that lots of raiders think they have skill but only have progressed to the point that is required of them and actually end up belittling people... Really funny to how same toons that top dps meters are same toons running in world pvp. A joke as in well I could proabably out perform most guildies first time doing raid. But ounce again not becuase I am special or have skill but because was in an evorinment that was lot more demanding than raiding. (3v3 bracket PvP)

So would really encourage Ashes of Creation to invest Player Development or Mentoring program.