Progression insight from a Crowfall & New World guild leader.

Before I even read, here is a rude post:

You are giving as your insight from two games that came out yesterday, when AoC is attracting players from the golden age of hardcore mmorpging? As a guild leader?

Just messing with you a little bit.

Geronimo

It sounds nice, I guess the most obvious con is that anyone who is not in a guild, or is disliked in the guild they are in, is totally screwed.

@Orga How does that pan-out in Crowfall for people that aren't in a guild?

I agree. Community gameplay IS what mmorpgs should focus before everything else.

Rasper Nor

Geronimo wrote: »

It sounds nice, I guess the most obvious con is that anyone who is not in a guild or is disliked in the guild they are in is totally screwed.

Unless what the guilds can create can also be auctioned off for the most part. Each of the middlemen, whether in a guild are not, make the gear expensive rather than exclusive. Kinda reminds me of the Onyxia cloaks needed to be successful in Black Wing Lair of Vanilla WoW. Or like any number of tabletop RPGs that would lead the party on a quest line revolving around magic items. I like the idea of this being a large piece of the end gear pie, personally.

As far as I can tell, Ashes will be individualistic in terms of experience, but collaborative in terms of gear - or at least allow for collaboration.

Intrepid have said they don't want to have any kind of experience ce sharing, though it was many years ago they said it.

Especially based on Ashes game design and philosophy, Adventurer progression should be more individualistic.

Guilds will be collaborating on guild progression and Node progression. They might also be collaborating somewhat on Social Org progression and they might also be influencing Crafter progression to some degree.
Instead of Adventurer progression, guilds should be guiding members on how to synergize the Active Skills and Augments the individual Adventurers have chosen.

It's probably better to trade resources and base gear - which should be fully tradeable - than trading gear that's been tailored to specific specs for specific Active Skills, Passive Skills, Weapon Skills and the various types of Augments.

It's "collaborative progression" - other players dictating how people must build their characters - which is toxic.
The whole purpose of the Ashes class design w/Augments (along with any class can wear any gear and wield any weapon) is so that Adventurer progression can be individualistic while still synergizing effectively as a group.

Adventurer progression should be individualistic? What is this, eso?
Dygz I dont understand how you still get the wrong impression about this game.

George_Black wrote: »

Adventurer progression should be individualistic? What is this, eso?
Dygz I dont understand how you still get the wrong impression about this game.

You need to understand Dygz' MMO history to understand what he means sometimes.

Adventurer progression to Dygz is just experience. In this regard, he is 100% correct, he just didn't do an overly good job of wording his thoughts.

To most of the rest of us, experience is only one faucet of adventurer progression - the faucet that is usually the easiest to cap.

George_Black wrote: »

Adventurer progression should be individualistic? What is this, eso?
Dygz I dont understand how you still get the wrong impression about this game.

LMAO
Yes. You don't understand a lot of stuff.

If you two think that:
1) managing to explore the world
2) leveling up your combat class
3) gathering high lv raw materials

will be a solo (individualistic) task, you are mistaken, big time.

George_Black wrote: »

If you two think that:
1) managing to explore the world
2) leveling up your combat class
3) gathering high lv raw materials

will be a solo (individualistic) task, you are mistaken, big time.

I mean, it will be, but that isn't the point.

The point is that the experience you earn is yours and you can not transfer it to another character. You can't earn experience and pass it on to a guild member.

On the other hand, you can do that with gear progression.

Just because you have no idea what is being talked about, doesn't make others wrong.

Anarchy1

Pretty sure its going to be highly Collaborative Progression. Gear is tradeable. If you replace your weapon you could pass your old one down to someone else. You can only master one of the 3 profession trees.. So ether a master gatherer/processer/crafter. Which promotes working together, having different people with different masteries/recipes. Gathers could donate wood, processors could process that wood, and the shipbuilder could make the ship. But you will still be able to do go about some what individually. Gather ore, sell it, buy processed ore, find a crafter to make you gear. for leveling I believe experience earned for leveling is based on how much damage you do to a mob, so there wont be power leveling someone. I've never seen tradable combat skills.

Anarchy23 wrote: »

Pretty sure its going to be highly Collaborative Progression.

Indeed, gear progression will be.

Biccus

Everything I’ve heard about this game seems to point at the game being all about communities progressing the world forward together. With open competition/conflict for power within the world.

Although all of your xp and levels will be your own and untradeable. I think it could be interesting to see an apprenticeship system for crafting.

George_Black wrote: »

If you two think that:
1) managing to explore the world
2) leveling up your combat class
3) gathering high lv raw materials

will be a solo (individualistic) task, you are mistaken, big time.

You are the one who is obsessed with your concept of solo.
I didn't say anything about exploring the world solo or gathering raw materials solo.
I also didn't say anything about adventuring solo.
I don't consider solo and individualistic to be synonymous. Especially not within the context of the OP.
If you do - that's your issue. Has nothing to do with me.

Atama

Biccus wrote: »

Everything I’ve heard about this game seems to point at the game being all about communities progressing the world forward together. With open competition/conflict for power within the world.

Although all of your xp and levels will be your own and untradeable. I think it could be interesting to see an apprenticeship system for crafting.

My guess is that it won't be that unusual for people to play in a way that's completely oblivious to node progression. Honestly, that's what I did in Alpha 1. (Though I'm not sure how impactful node progression was there anyway.) In Alpha I never knew what node I was in, and just tried to do quests and level up.

Some people will just do their own thing, and if they are contributing to a node, whatever, they don't care. That might even be most people. I think it'll depend on UI... Will there be a progression bar on your screen next to character XP? If so, then players will set that as something personal to them. Kind of like the reputation progression bars in WoW that you can enable.

I'm curious to see how this is handled.

Alpha One Node progression was about as rudimentary as could be.

Orgagriffith

Thanks for the replies, everyone!

Geronimo wrote: »

@Orga How does that pan-out in Crowfall for people that aren't in a guild?

Progression was only really attainable in the "faction" gameplay if you were solo. I can't imagine being a solo player in that game though, it would be close to unplayable.
This does point out a pretty obvious "con" to communal style progression. Although iirc from livestreams, AoC is designed for group play. AoC supports solo players with "node citizenship" system, no?

Dygz wrote: »

I don't consider solo and individualistic to be synonymous. Especially not within the context of the OP.

Correct. You can have a group of players who have progressed individually, and you can also have solo players participating in a communal progression.

George_Black wrote: »

Before I even read, here is a rude post:
You are giving as your insight from two games that came out yesterday, when AoC is attracting players from the golden age of hardcore mmorpging? As a guild leader?
Just messing with you a little bit.

Ah yes, its true im a baby guild leader. I quit playing MMOs in 2005 because I did not like the direction. But ashes brought me back in. I've been testing the leadership chops ive developed over the years with my guild through the new games that have been coming out. We treat every new release as an opportunity to grow as an organization & we've got some catching up to do before AoC release. hah

Dygz wrote: »

It's "collaborative progression" - other players dictating how people must build their characters - which is toxic.
The whole purpose of the Ashes class design w/Augments (along with any class can wear any gear and wield any weapon) is so that Adventurer progression can be individualistic while still synergizing effectively as a group.

I love this take. This is a downside to collaborative progression. Iirc Devs have mentioned that they want players to be able to have individual skill expression and not lock people into meta builds. This is the benefit of "balancing for groups" and "rock paper scissor" balancing.

My primary concern is that individualistic progression leads to a political environment where a player's value is distilled down to their individual ability to grind. I'm not saying this shouldn't be a factor at all, but I'm really turned off by the idea that my guild wont be competitive if not everyone in the guild is a no-lifer. There is value that all kinds of guild members bring that is more than their ability to wfh and 2nd-monitor grind. If one of my guild members write a discord bot to organize our community I want my community to be able to decide if we kit that member out in our limited bis gear, etc. My bias here is pretty obvious.

Although a "con" to communal style progression is that exploits would be harder for AoC to control. Its easier to influence individuals through system tuning than it is to influence groups without taking away trade freedoms. Anyone see any mention of how much BoP or BoE there will be?

I think I had more "pros & cons" in mind when I wrote this post originally. My bias is pretty obvious but i'd still like to hear other insights. Thanks everyone.