gear progression.
Animikii
Member
From what I have heard and correct me if I'm wrong but gear is going to be more of the traditional vertical progression in ashes but just with a kind of soft cap where progressing gear past that point is kinda meh and not really needed but more of a humble brag type idea. Personally I feel that this wouldnt be the best idea in light of another system that a different game currently. This game is of course ESO where while I would say its gear system doesnt shine in that game, I would argue its cause the combat at its core is flawed for a mmo in that game as the game is build around the idea that you should be able to do almost everything solo to the point that people make 'invinicible builds' of all types to complete the hardest veteran content like it was nothing. The point is that the way that ESO does their gear progression is entirly horizontal as once gear reaches legendary and has max enchants placed on it than there isnt antyhing you can do to increase it further with the few options that do exist are either cp point passives for more armor or things like traits like infused that boost the enchants however at the cost that you can only have 11 infused traits maxed. This idea at its core without anything else would be bad but eso manages to make it very intresting which is set bonus's that boost your stats in certain ways and can even full blown give you massive new effects at a full set completetion that can REALLY change the way you play.
Personally i feel a system like this would work very well in ashes especially in light of the more special types of gear called monster sets and more importantly, mythics. monster helms are 2 piece sets that only have, well, 2 pieces in each set as you would expect and come often with set effects that MASSIVELY change how you play if you have the full on and mythics not just changing how you play but alterting how the core mechanics of the game apply to you like the snow treaders making you immune to immobilizations and snares but at the cost of being able to sprint and sets like the gaze of sithis or the soon to release oakenshield or the shield dodge ring that all 3 full blown disable a system of the game for you while giving you massive benefits with the shield dodge ring being the most intresting that doesnt just boost your stats massively like the oakenshield ring and gaze of sithis but full blown changing the way you dodge from actually dodging to producing a really damn big 20k dmg shield at base that last for 1 second and appears whenever you dodge.
At the end of the day im sure no matter what intrepid decides to do on this front, they will make it great but i feel that at least with the resources you get to make gear from things like end game world bosses like dragons at least could be used to replicate at least the monster helm set and or mythic system from eso of getting to wear legendary gear made from truly mythic materials and providing awe inspired changes to how you interact with the world around you to help give those who choose to really interact with the endgame something to try hard to make and fight for and especially give us ways to take on challenges with it could be really cool if certain mythics are great for certain areas but not others like how the harpooner's wading kilt for example is great if your playing in a group but not if your going to be playing solo as in a group you can avoid taking any damage and get the full buff without issue as the tank takes it all for you but if your solo than its almost as if you just took off a piece of armor with how worthless it would be with if ashes has mythics like this than it could be cool of what sort of stats open up depending on what mythics your raid group has or doesnt have and could alllow for RIDICULUS challenges for the hardcore guilds to have to do that requires you having put in enough time and research to get the right mythics to be able to take on the challenge that your guild wants to take on.
Personally i feel a system like this would work very well in ashes especially in light of the more special types of gear called monster sets and more importantly, mythics. monster helms are 2 piece sets that only have, well, 2 pieces in each set as you would expect and come often with set effects that MASSIVELY change how you play if you have the full on and mythics not just changing how you play but alterting how the core mechanics of the game apply to you like the snow treaders making you immune to immobilizations and snares but at the cost of being able to sprint and sets like the gaze of sithis or the soon to release oakenshield or the shield dodge ring that all 3 full blown disable a system of the game for you while giving you massive benefits with the shield dodge ring being the most intresting that doesnt just boost your stats massively like the oakenshield ring and gaze of sithis but full blown changing the way you dodge from actually dodging to producing a really damn big 20k dmg shield at base that last for 1 second and appears whenever you dodge.
At the end of the day im sure no matter what intrepid decides to do on this front, they will make it great but i feel that at least with the resources you get to make gear from things like end game world bosses like dragons at least could be used to replicate at least the monster helm set and or mythic system from eso of getting to wear legendary gear made from truly mythic materials and providing awe inspired changes to how you interact with the world around you to help give those who choose to really interact with the endgame something to try hard to make and fight for and especially give us ways to take on challenges with it could be really cool if certain mythics are great for certain areas but not others like how the harpooner's wading kilt for example is great if your playing in a group but not if your going to be playing solo as in a group you can avoid taking any damage and get the full buff without issue as the tank takes it all for you but if your solo than its almost as if you just took off a piece of armor with how worthless it would be with if ashes has mythics like this than it could be cool of what sort of stats open up depending on what mythics your raid group has or doesnt have and could alllow for RIDICULUS challenges for the hardcore guilds to have to do that requires you having put in enough time and research to get the right mythics to be able to take on the challenge that your guild wants to take on.
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Now, I disagree with many peoples views, priorities and function of gear in mmos, but before we start any discussion we need to accept that the BIGGEST fun factor about gear in mmos has changed, and that is the appearance. Appearance of the gear and be bought with real money and also changed in game. So what once was a driving force for mmo players, getting higher, better looking gear has changed. So what are we left for?
What is gear the purpose of gear in this new mmo setting where people want to hear YES to every demand (yes to paying for looks, yes to changing looks)?
The purpose of gear in my opinion has 3 functions:
1) enable better attack/defence stats
2) customize playstye (more MP regen, cooldown reduction, more defensive capabilities at the cost of mobility, more mobility at the cost of defence etc etc
3) Carrot on a stick. Yes, expansions and new areas for people to........ PLAY THE GAME. Without reason to visit new areas people wont pvp or farm or explore new areas. Take eso for example. I just bought a chapter and within 10 minutes I fell asleep. Explore what? Kill that delve boss and pick that skyshard? Change the map icon from black to white?
People need to get right with the 3rd function of gear. People need to accept that without new more powerful gear mmos become stale. And dont give me that new players arguement. Build new servers for new players. They will have a blast like I did with the new official Line][Age servers nearly 20 years ago.
New gear that simply increases defence and attack power is all that players need in order to keep farming, keep fighting one another, keep leveling for the new 5lv cap increrase, keep attempting the new zones with their new bosses and the new landscapes/architetcures. That's the only thing that gets people EXPLORING and LIVING in the new areas of the game.
Horizontal/vertical blah blah blah. It will all boil down to FOTM and BiS. Since we can change the appearance of the gear* and since we will be able to mix and match sets and unique pieces, and since I am pretty sure we will have some short of glyphs or runes or augments or all these fancy words that just say "here is some extra stats on your armor or weapon", what else do u need for vErTIcaL proGreSsion when it comes to gear?
Personally I dont want to spend my time making my gear gold from purple from green. What Lv are you? Lv30? you can wear lv30 gear that gives you 30 def and atk. When you get to lv40 you will get lv40 gear that gives you 40 atk and def (please dont take these numbers literally....). Why do you need to get a Lv30 gear 1.1 then making it green to make it 1.2 then make it purple to make it 1.5 and then make it golden to have the two point 0 of the same item? Why? It's such a CHEAP way to add content. So cheap. I rly can't understand people fascination with this vertical gear progression over new expansions and real, new content.
Gear should be simple. Its higher lv, it gives better base stats and it also gives you playstyle options, based on the set you put together (crit, mp regen, shield def bonus, movespeed, cooldown reductions) and a simple enhancement slot for more "flAvOur". What else do you need? And yes, when a new expansion comes up, that gear you would have wanted to vertically progress even further, should become redundant. Why? Because there is a whole new map area that just came out and people need to populate it. One new castle for massive multiplayer purpose and gameplay. And what the best way to populate the new area? To tick achievements? You visited that vista, here is a tick on your log that nobody cares for. No. It's with material physical tangible rewards. The new 55lv gear that I can wear once I reach the new lv cap. It gives me 55 defence and 55 atk and I will craft the set that gives me atk power, HP and CD reduction. I will slap an MP regen enhancement on it and if I feel crazy and RNG it to make it +4.
Are people happy with this vertical path or should there be more to it? And if people want more to it then let them cry more when the new expansion hits and all their tedious efforts for 0.0001% benefits go to waste.
Do you want to look like those cool nilfgardian short of soldiers? Go do that quest in their area, beat their raid boss, collect the appearance change schematic, farm all the base or processed mats needed to alter the appearance and then boom, you have a new costume you can sell to players and they can place it on the appropriate lv gear piece
It won't just be about bragging rights - it will be because they enhance the augments you've equipped and/or enhance environmental stats, etc.
Ashes will certainly have sets that provide bonuses for full sets.
Ashes doesn't have an endgame.
Max Adventurer Level does not mean everything else in the game ends except for gathering BiS gear, where all you're focusing on is bragging rights.
At Max Adventurer Level, we will still be trying to progress our Nodes and Religions and Social Orgs, thereby destabilizing rival Nodes, Religions and Social Orgs. As we do so, new bosses will appear - new foes which will require different gear.
I have a feeling gear will just be gear. I don't think there will be solo gear v group gear.
Expect gear to balanced for combat in an 8-person group.
For the most part we should get gear that best supports our class build, perhaps anticipating how our individual class build supports other members in the group - as well as how the group's class builds and gear aid us in defeating the specific challenges we're pursuing.
so wait? when you played eso did you full blown make lvl 30 gear purple? you know it takes less than no time to get a toon to 50 in that game right? and cp 160 is also easy to reach and than from there like i said just run dungeons with valuble motiff drops (typically that boils down to just run the new dungeons on normal) and than once you get a new motiff drop typically if its new enouugh which could be a few months later where you still can get over 300k gold for it by selling through a guild trader getting you more than enough to buy the improvement materials to get everything you wanna were to purple and hell if you have one of the sets you want at max level already than just run a vet dungeon with some of your guildies and you get purple max level gear without issue.
i would be fine with no improvement system and it being level only too but the issue with the type of gear progression you want is exactly the fact that at a certain point the gear needs to hard cap even if it can still technically level past it or pvp becomes impossible and unfun or well, pvp becomes impossible and unfun and anyways the progression i suggested would have you getting new sets that offer different bonuses and resitances and set effects that you can only get from farming the resources from certain dungeons and since the world bosses and dungeon raid bosses will be massive challenges that they seem to want to be challenging more for the reason of mechanics rather than sheer damage than like i said in my original post, a boss could have a arena wide fire aoe thats basically unavoidable that basically only the tanks and some healers are likely to survive but this can be fixed if you all go in with a set that gets you past a certian threshhold of fire resitance meaning people NEED to farm for multiple sets if they wanna engage with the endgame and it allows people to really haveta think and plan and prepare for these bosses with a large group. all in all your post sounded slightly unhinged and like i said in response to the first part of your post i quoted, you really do just sound like you got a chip on your shoulder from eso that seems kinda unhealthy my dude....
ohhh i think tha tcould be pretty fun! im not a crafter but i spend all my time and gold in eso chaning my gear appearance so a profression like that like the seamster from elden ring could be a fun thing for people who spend honestly too much time on the fashion side of mmos XD
fair point so it could work that you need specific items like it could be something like belthazzars eye! and you need that to make a ring or something like that but than from there you can just kill any dragon world/ raid boss and repair it. it will still be costly to fix but this way it could be done easy enough by guilds just makeing sure to use more basic 5-piece style sets to kill the easy bosses for the basic legendary materials every so often so everyone has what they need to keep their gear in good condition.
Currently I feel like they’ve already said they want quite a lot of what you said in the OP.
Gear will be about 40% of your power so there is room for a variety of factors in that 60% that can effect a battle.
There will be things you can use to augment/socket your gear for stats and effects, and there will also be enchantments separate from this.
There will be rare materials needed to craft and repair gear that you will get from dungeon/raid bosses, as well as mats farmed from deconstructed gear to keep lower level gear crafting important.
Crafters will be able to apply different skills/abilities and stats to gear.
And different types of gear (plate/leather/cloth/etc) will provide better defense against different things, e.g. cloth strong vs magic dmg, plate vs physical.
And there will be set bonuses. Maybe your point flew totally over my head and in that case apologies, but I think everything you asked for is planned. I also think just from looking at what they have planned we are going to be accumulating quite a lot of gear to change around depending on what we are doing on any given day.
not really at all actually. george was saying he wants it to work where the ONLY real difference between gear is what enchantments/ traits are on it and not the set effect idea seen in eso and he was wanting basically vertical progression of there being no cap technically to armor level where you continously get stronger and stronger gear. basically he wants super basic old school vertical progression whereas i want horizontal progression where enchantments/ traits are maybe 30% of what makes gear good and really only needed for the endgame type content like raid bosses and world bosses with the real difference be that each gear set have the set effects that ESO gear has and if you wanna better understanding of how gear is handled in ESO than it probably would be much better served by just finding a quick video of someone explining it since i suck at speaking normally, let alone conveying what im saying through text so honestly it really would probably be more helpful to do that. as for the most recent idea that Aryielle brought up, i figured that it was a good idea to probably make it so the mateirials to fix gear drop from ANY boss that drops material related to it like if you had as part of a mythic rings crafting recipe, dragonscales, than you could go with a raid party to kill literally ANY max level dragon and be able to get the mateirials to repair that ring BUT to make the ring in the first place requires you to go to either a specific dungeon or at least to go help kill a specific boss with an example i mentioned was if that same ring needed a specific mateirial item called the eye of balthazzar or something specific from a specifc boss AND THAAN you can make the ring and repair it with normal dragonscales. this way there is always reason to grind out gear and redo boss fights so people can get what they need to keep their gear fixed up.
Set bonuses have been talked about.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Gear_sets
I am however against getting materials to repair gear from any boss other then the one that drops the needed materials to make it in the first place. Gear should degrade and need repairs. However epic gear made from such drops should not be common. Epic gear made from boss dropped materials should only be able to be repaired from stuff dropped by that boss and if the main node that provides that raid gets sieged and dies then the gear will eventually be relegated to a relic. Nothing lats forever.
Gear is slated to be 40-50% of the total players power and I think 50% is a good number.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Armor
Gear has approximately a 40-50% influence on a player's overall power in the game.[13]
Long thread recently surrounding this topic of gear progression pvp.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/51953/protecting-our-casuals-gear#latest
The only thing George was actually against was gear only being a fashion statement and “tuning” gear where you go upgrade a piece of gear through gear rarities. Also based off another thread I happened to just see him post in he seems to dislike the entire concept of different gear rarities in general other than common gear and legendary gear.
That’s what I gathered at least when I reread it a few times. I’m pretty sure George is just incapable of typing in a tone that isn’t viewed as abrasive, and combative to the reader. He wasn’t against set bonuses and enchantments having meaningful impacts, just that they always boil down to “FOTM; BiS”, which is on IS to balance so certain enchants/augments/gear skills/set bonuses aren’t so good compared to the others that you neglect other aspects of your gearing because of how good those “FOTM/BiS” effects are.
Either way as long as IS stays true to what they say (which I hope and have faith they will), there will be a nice blend of horizontal/vertical progression as far as gear goes. “Gear score” for lack of a better term will level out at max and gearing will turn into tuning the limited stat pool you’re provided to what you want, and finding enchants/augments/gear skills that best fit the content you want to do. It’s on IS and testers speaking up to make sure to balance that out well enough that you don’t end up with a max level piece of gear that performs best in all situations.
I do recommend rereading the armor section of the wiki, to understand exactly what I’m saying because my discussions on things always falls into the parameters IS sets for us, and then where they don’t provide parameters is where I will insert my opinion.
As far as the added discussion of what mats are able to repair what items, I lean to specific bosses providing specific needed repair mats for the gear their mats craft. Otherwise you devolve into “what’s the easiest boss to get these repair mats from”. I could see certain components dropping from specific archetypes of bosses like “all dragons can drop a dragon scale”, but I hope that elder dragon of the tundra will only drop materials used in frost enchants/augments/gear skills, and elder dragon of the flame will only drop materials for flame enchants/augments/gear skills. Even if you make it so x flame boss can also drop those mats for enchants as well as the dragon, and they are the same difficulty it devolves into “which fire themed boss provides the best loot table for other items while getting me the specific loot I need”.
Anything Ashes can add that limits the “what is the most efficient way to get this thing done so I can go sit in town and not play the game” mindset is welcome in my book.
At max level, there is still Node progression, Social Org progression and Religion progression among other forms of progression. As those progress, the world changes and new mobs and quests and reources and augments become available - as well as new types of gear.
Nodes changing should not limit types of gear for 5 years. It shouldn't take 5 years to destroy a Node and rebuild the type of Node you need to repair your gear. Of course, if you've quit playing because you got the gear you wanted, you shouldn't be concerned about repairs in any case.
I don't think we need to worry about gear breaking forever in the first place.
But, yes, if you want to be able to easily repair your max level gear, your best bet is to defend the Nodes that have the resources you need for those repairs to be possible.
oh most definantly but it just feels like its nice to give another form of proggresion that mixes in the two sides of the mmo community as there is a big divide between horizontal progression and vertical progression and this way not only feels like it would be fun in general but lets both sides have their cake and eat it too.
It has been stated that some gear will be forever gear:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Armor
Legendary items are not intended to be temporary.[134]
A notable exception to this is Royal mounts.[135]
The fact there is only one of them... or very very few of them depending on what it is. I think that in and of itself is a balance component right and you need to make sure that the players who are striving for those legendary things and who are devoting the time energy, resources in order to achieve them are accurately rewarded... We do not intend on having legendary items that are temporary.[134] – Steven Sharif
Also from this page:
Item rarities
Item rarities in Ashes of Creation.
Poor.[120]
Common.[121]
Uncommon.[122]
Rare.[123]
Epic.[124]
Legendary.[125]
I took George's replay as a meme or troll replay in regards to just 2 levels of gear(I could be wrong).
I also agree that we should se a mix of horizontal and vertical progression. I would like to see skills or special effects from gear. Fire resistance or a short duration ability and so forth. That varies from piece to piece.
It could mean you need gear associated with a new damage type. The new area might focus on Shadow damage or Wyld damage or require some different type of resources.
Perhaps only Aether weapons damage Aetheral Dragons, but won't work on non-Aetheral Dragons.
So, you need a specific type of gear in the Aether Lands than you do in the previous areas of Verra. But, when you return home, you still need your original set of non-Aetheral BiS gear.
We'll have to see what the Ashes devs actually come up with.
I took it as directional, not as destination. In many cases, less is more.
I just personally would like to see some that are permanent and some vanish. Those that are permanent should be one of a kind or super limited. Will be interesting to see how they approach this maybe they will go the way you want and gear will be repairable to a lesser extent through materials from other raids.
Legendary gear is intended to be rare enough that it's highly unlikely for one character to have a full set of Legendary gear.
One character most likely will only have one Legendary item. Getting a full set of Legendary armor is nigh impossible.
I call needing to raze the new node and rebuild up the old node that has your rare mats, or protecting your current node that has those rare mats you want incentive to partake in node sieges or to participate in node defense.
If you are able to get the mats you want from both node A and node B, but you like node type A better you lose some incentive to build up node B.
I do get your perspective on it though, and they will definitely need to balance out how important those ultra rare mats are within the gear ecosystem.
correct me if im wrong but it sounds like you are saying that you think that the stuff to repair the item should be everything it took to make it meaning if you dont have access to that specific boss fight than you cant repair right? like im all for specific material drops only coming from specfic dungeons and raid/ world bosses and i think thats all thats needed to make certain guilds wanna push to keep node A up hardcore so they can make sure all their guildies get the item and than there would also be plenty of guildies who have no lifed all the major places and want node B up so they can get the specific materials to make the itmes. no need to make the repair materials drop from specific dungeons since that just means that gear will have way to limited a lifespan to really get a lot of use out of it or rely on it in any fashion.
This also helps to keep varying levels of crafting gear important as well other than just for deconstruction mats. Maybe the sword you make with that claw of the dragon of flame is your BiS epic sword, But it requires more maintenance to upkeep since you need that claw. Even though it’s BiS the next sword down might work fine too so you it creates a choice from the player; “do I bother farming this sword that will require some more specialized maintenance, or invest in this other one that generally gets me to that level but won’t be BiS”.
My overarching point is this game wants a player driven world and economy, and in order to keep that flowing for years to come there needs to be less permanence with player choice regarding “how important is this specific thing to me?; would I die for it to protect a node that may or not be my home?; would I die for it to tear down this other node?”.
Many games let you have everything all the time with no consequence, but I would argue that it’s not just having that thing that gives it meaning, but all the things you give up that make having/doing that thing more special.
There are many reasons to keep your Node at the Metro Stage if you can. And also to keep other Nodes you like at the City Stage.
Everbody won't get everything. But, yes, if you need specific resources for a specific item - sometimes those resources may become unavailable.
Ashes has a dynamic world, rather than a static world. The availability of items and resources ebbs and flows as Nodes fall and rise.
Way too limited lifespan and not a lot of time are both subjective.
ok i do see the appeal of what your saying in that it would be good for forcing a ever changing meta purely based on what resources are and arent avalible and would make raid gear in general something you dont wear around for the lolz which could actually help balance some pvp around what i guess could be called this games version of overworld sets and honestly in that mindset i dont know if i actually would oppose that as it would make raid gear feel even more important to not lose and to use well and thinking about things like relequins omniprescence in basically ALL dps endgame builds as one example of permanently repairible gear in ESO it does kinda help to force the meta and the idea of building around normal sets and doesnt overshine their importance with general and just really op raid sets and it makes raid sets feel like items you ONLY wanna use during things like sieges of guild castles or nodes as well as raids and ok now im getting what your laying down. i will hold my judgement on deeming which is better now rather than saying making raid gear always repairible even if limited to getting it in the first place from certain nodes for later although i feel that idea still offers that same feeling as seeing a guy running around in a set of raid gear from a node that was only avalible 2 years ago would still be a seen to be seen and once the nodes change, since it takes a long time to change them it would mean that that set would only be avalible again in probably at least several months if not a few years meaning the meta would still be changing but people would have access to raid gear from everywhere.
basically this word wall of a poorly written comment boils down to the thought that i see the appeal and even could be presuaded that limited time raid gear could be cool but also still see the appeal i had for my idea of raid gears repairibility and that instead of deciding which i feel is better before even seeing either in action imma just wait for seeing what things shake out to being when the games alpha 2 and eventual beta 1 come out to being like.
Is this also part of the much loved vertical progression? Is this meaningful gameplay to you? Not adding content in order to repeat the same content for years to come?
― Plato
In my experience, these people not only complain about losing their progression with new content, but should they reach the end of where they can progress in a given content cycle, they are the first to complain asking for more new content to progress on.
Basically, they seem to want new content only added to the game when they are ready for it - not a moment sooner, and definitely not a second later.
To me the problem with expansions is not that you lose progression, it's that they remove and replace content and hardly ever do you end up with more content than you had before. With expansions the problem is that ALL of the max-lvl content is wasted after the expansion ends because hardly anyone is going to do it, an no, doing content for mounts like in WoW is just dumb and doesn't count. After a few of these expansions you have about the same max-lvl content as when the game first launched but you have a lot more leveling content. People then complain that it takes too long to reach max-lvl and that gets conpressed down to whatever it was at launch or less.
Using WoW as an example but it could really be any mmo. When it first came out it had a lot of nice zones with quests and dungeons. This content only took up about a played week in the life of a character but took up the majority of the game studio's resources. Otherwise they wouldn't have ended up with only a couple of dungeons, 1 working raid and 1 broken raid as their max-lvl content. In an expansion the opposite is true, most or all resources are spent on max-lvl content depending on whether the lvl-cap is increased or not.
Following this formula most of the work put into the game is wasted and you always have about the same amount of content so I can see why people are against such expansions and it's not just because they lose progression.