Progression insight from a Crowfall & New World guild leader.

I am posting to record my opinion on how progression as a guild worked in two games in which I lead guilds. Feel free to ponder and connect with me about my ideas here.
Both games (CF & NW) had vastly different approaches to character, crafting, and gear progression. Crowfall had a collaborative progression system, New World's progression was entirely individualistic. Let me explain what I mean by communal vs individualistic progression, then express my opinion on which is better.

Collaborative Progression (Crowfall):
In CF, leveling up your character, gear, and crafting was often a Guild effort. Players can trade their progression to others in the form of disciplines. Crafting skill, combat skills, all gear and equipment was tradable. This lead to a natural guild structure that celebrated our crafting leads and supported our members with apprenticeship-style crafting progression for all of our members.

Individualistic Progression (New Word):
In stark contrast to CF, at the time of this post, progression in NW is not tradable. All progression must be done as an individual. All trade skills are the product of your individual grind. All gear is downgraded (even purchased gear) to your expertise (aka gear score) which can only be achieved through individual grind. This lead to a server culture (including my guild) that rewarded collections of individuals who grinded the most hours.

My main question is: will AoC have more collaborative or individualistic progression?

As a guild leader, I personally advocate for more collaborative progression because it allows for organized guilds to outfit all members in their guild, including the less hardcore members, with competitive gear and/or skills. Individual progression promotes a toxic, elitist environment since the only competitive edge is distilled down to players who put the time in to grind endlessly. I want my guild in AoC to remain competitive and I don't want to need to resort to poaching the most active players as the primary means to stay competitive. I want to be able to outfit my more casual members and bring them along to major battles. I want "working together" to be our avenue to success, not "work more." /endrant

There are other pros and cons to consider, but this is my primary concern and I would love to hear other people's ideas about the pros & cons of individual vs collaborative progression systems.

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Dygz

Orga wrote: »

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.

Fascinating post. Thanks for sharing!

I am a cooperative player, rather than a competitive player. And my playstyle is casual challenge/hardcore time. So... I have plenty of time to "grind".
Seems to me that it's the competitive perception that is causing the sense of toxicity - especially if you're hardcore.
The guilds I join are casual and cooperative, so we just help each other when we can because we like helping each other. The value of each player is that we like the people who are part of the guild and we enjoy playing games together.

Ashes has numerous forms of progression, so everyone should be able to contribute adequately to the guild.
To me, instead of thinking about whether the meta-guild is "competitive", I'd be more concerned about whether we are able to accomplish the goals we've set for Node progression and Social Org progression.
I'd be wondering how we can help our various in-game sub-guilds accomplish their goals.
To me, it goes without saying that we try to help our members get the gear they want - even if they haven't written a discord bot. Especially if someone does something for the guild that you like, you should be motivated to helping them out. That really has nothing to do with individualistic progression v solo progression. If want to gift a member some cool gear, for whatever reason, you are free to do so.

IIRC, BoP and BoE is fairly minimal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHC1A1wIsRk&t=255s
mark 4:31
"A lot of what we experienced in games that usually come before us is that many things are account bound and they're soulbound to your character... Very little here is character bound. Very very little. The vast majority of gear- yes you will get quest related gear as rewards- but it won't be let's say one set in one dungeon and you must run the dungeon over and over. Instead we want to really emphasize the reliance on the economy and crafters and gatherers and processors to support a majority of the gear structure in-game, combined with that of world raid bosses and dungeon bosses; not a repetitive quest line through a single dungeon.
---Steven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1duIKUf8gVs&t=1573s
mark 26:18

Atama

tautau wrote: »

We have been 'trained' by the games we have played to equate 'level' with 'strength.' True, there is a strong correlation. But it appears that AoC is going to be a much more complex game.

Max level won't take that long to achieve. Most players will then default to 'gear' = 'strength' as they have been trained to do in other games. True, there is a strong correlation. I suspect that we will have a LOT of players with 'max level & good gear' and not a whole lot to distinguish between them after maybe 9 months from release.

Perhaps the strongest players will be those who have the rare ability to think differently, to not assume that 'what I learned to do in WOW is what I need to do here.' Even this far before launch, there are several other possible 'paths to power' that are being hinted at.

There will also be meta FOM builds that people will adopt.

I wonder how unique gear will be. In Star Wars Galaxies (which AoC is imitating in some ways) you could end up with a blueprint for an item that requires a limited source of materials. Once those materials are gone, no more of those items could be made again. Could we have completely unique (or extremely rare) crafted items that might set someone apart? No more, "Farm this dragon until it drops the best-in-slot armor you need."

McShave

I think every aspect of Ashes leads away from individualistic play. Like EVERY aspect. With the open pvp in the world, adventuring, gathering, and exploring will all be dangerous when you are in the world alone. Yes there is corruption, but I doubt that will be enough to discourage a group of 2 or 3 from stomping on people caught out in the world alone.

Since you will only be able to pick one artisan skill path, you will be required to work with others to make things with professions. Node society is the most important community you will be in. Group compositions will require some collaboration so that you get a good mix of different archetypes, you cant just do tank, healer, and any random dps (you could, but it would not be optimal and there is no dungeon finder queue tool). Castle sieges and caravans will require many people together to accomplish the task, and again no finder tool for this too.

So ya, any thought of playing alone would be very limiting to your experience in Ashes.

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