Protecting Our Casuals: Gear

One big concern I have for AoC is that gear will end up providing too much power. AoC is already a game that will greatly reward those who play a lot which is why I believe that it is imperative for gear to only account for at most 20-30% of a character's power.

People will enjoy grinding out their gear even if each piece gives small increments of power increase. These small increments of power increase will allow the bulk of the population to not feel like they are so out geared that they cannot even come close to competing. This is very important because when those casual players will die over and over to a hardcore player that severely outgears them without any chance of fighting back, they will be very likely to just quit. Hardcore players will have other advantages (gold, skill, etc.) anyway because they play a lot more and there is no reason to further widen the gap between casual and hardcore players.

Please understand that I am not against rewarding those who invest more time into the game. I am just suggesting that their reward should not create such a great disparity between them and casual players. I truly believe that this can greatly help the health of the game and its population.

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Dygz

Also - as Azherae mentioned - Challenge Casual, Challenge Hardcore.
And, regarding Time Casual, Time Hardcore - I would say it's the amount of time a person plays per week.
Playing isn't always focused on progression.

VmanGman

Dygz wrote: »

VmanGman wrote: »

It would be helpful if you understood the conversation before commenting.

No one said that casual players would need to acquire gear on their own. Also, the insurmountability is referring to the gear power difference and not the time.

The gear power difference is not insurmountable because they can acquire better gear to bridge the game.

VmanGman wrote: »

It’s undeniable that a hardcore player will have better gear than a casual player. The entire point of the conversation is regarding how big the gear power difference is between that hardcore player and the casual player… we’re 17 pages into this… come on now. Pay attention.

LMFAO
Casual players do not have to acquire their gear by themselves. Other people can give them BiS gear.
Especially if they are in a guild.
The power disparity of the gear has little to do with casual v hardcore... as I keep telling you.
Not that it matters since nothing anyone says will change your mind about this topic.

Casuals will acquire gear at a casual pace. Hardcore players will acquire gear at a hardcore pace. We are not talking about pace here… the pace is not a variable in this conversation since there will always be a difference in pace between the two groups. We are talking about how much each tier of gear will increase your power by. If a casual pace allows someone to increase their power by 50% and a hardcore pace allows someone to increase their power by 200%, then the gear power difference is most likely insurmountable. Pace is irrelevant because it’s always going to be slower than hardcore players… what matters is what tier of gear casual players have access to and how much worse it is from hardcore player gear. This is especially true when Intrepid has clearly stated that some content will be designed so that very few people can complete it… this means that casuals will most likely not have access to it or only have access to it after a very long time.

I don’t know what fantasy world you live in, but guilds don’t just gear casual players like it’s candy… you’re making the assumption that casuals will just be able to mooch off of their more hardcore neighbors. Not to mention that you’re missing a very core element to MMORPGs… hardcore players often make guilds with other hardcore players and casuals with other casuals. Who will gear the casuals? Other casuals?

VmanGman

Dygz wrote: »

There is also a Mentorship feature to help with that.

You don’t know that the mentorship program will be designed to help with endgame gearing. It could be to help new players into the game. Also, casuals aren’t dumb or inexperienced… they just have less time. You’re once again making assumptions both about the systems in the game and about casuals’ needs.

Dygz

They might acquire gear at a casual pace.
That can be depedent upon level rather than time. Especially if they are in a guild or community with hardcore players.This is especially true in a game with very little BoP, BoE or Soul Binding.

VmanGman

Dygz wrote: »

They might acquire gear at a casual pace.
That can be depedent upon level rather than time. Especially if they are in a guild or community with hardcore players.

When we’re discussing this we’re obviously talking about max level… it has to do with time not level. And had you read my entire comment, you would understand that hardcore players often play with other hardcore players which would mean that your suggestion doesn’t make sense. Why would a hardcore group want to drag a casual behind them, when they can just get more hardcore players into their guild and therefore be more powerful.

Noaani

VmanGman wrote: »

I feel like you don’t understand the kind of game that AoC is.

In almost all MMO's (I defy you to name an exception), when players reach the end point of viable individual progression, they leave the game.

So, unless you are saying that Ashes won't be an MMO, my point is fairly valid.

VmanGman

Noaani wrote: »

VmanGman wrote: »

I feel like you don’t understand the kind of game that AoC is.

In almost all MMO's (I defy you to name an exception), when players reach the end point of viable individual progression, they leave the game.

Albion Online. Ashes of Creation. Because both of these games are designed for the massively multiplayer interactions that can happen in a sandbox/sandpark MMORPG. The game is designed for the conflict and adventures that the world provides. They’re not designed for you to just get the next bigger stick.

Even though gear is more like a consumable in Albion Online, gear is also not static and permanent in AoC due to how the gear degradation/durability system will work. Regardless, both of those MMORPGs are designed for much more than gear grind.

I’m afraid that you really don’t understand what AoC is trying to achieve.

Dygz

Help from one's guild or community is even more true at max level.

Azherae

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGCFxHUsSGU

You don't even have to read the studies, Josh Strife Hayes will read out the summaries for you (beginning of the video up to about 3 minute mark.

If you want to use the studies for knowledge vs not knowledge, i.e. the type of Hardcore that I am vs the type of Hardcore that the most casual player in my group is, I suggest using the basic easy-search one:

https://peterhancock.ucf.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/03/Lakhmani_Oppold_Rupp_Szalma_Hancock_2015Knowledge-distribution-on-MMO-players.pdf

If you want to go in deep, for some reason, start here:

https://quanticfoundry.com/notes-on-phase-1-sample/

Formalize the stance using the data any way you like @VmanGman

Note that according to my understanding of Ashes, assuming logarithmic gear tiers, I personally have no concerns or complaints:

16h a day players (I think it's fair to call these people no-lifers, right? Even they shouldn't be offended at this?) would have Legendaries if lucky, and otherwise probably be BiS for whatever they are trying to do, across multiple activities.

8h a day players will probably still be BiS for multiple activities, which may or may not be PvP according to the discretion of the player.

4h a day players (still in 'Hardcore' territory) will be BiS for their specialized activities, and probably one tier lower, maybe 2 tiers lower in PvP.

2h a day players (dropping out now) will probably be BiS for one slot unless their guild values them, one tier lower even for their specialized activity, almost certainly 2 tiers lower for 'PvP gear spec'.

1h a day players (led by strong guild leaders) will probably not be prioritized for BiS in any slot, but get hand-me-downs from anyone higher to put them 1-2 tiers lower than the Hardcore, which in Ashes is around 6-12% I believe.

Intermittent players (I won't even try to quantify the capability of players who play less than 1h a day but somehow play every day) are likely to be wearing 2 tiers below (i.e. Average gear) that they still earned themselves, or got as hand-me-downs if in a guild.

Guildless intermittent players (not even enough time to play the economy game) will be the ones who have below Average gear. 'What they can scrounge up' with no guildmates to give them hand-me-downs or what they can buy cheap because no one else wants to hold onto it. Bonus chance for this due to having to maintain the gear.

So at this point, you'd have to worry about 8h a day players (full timers) stomping on 1h a day players and Intermittents. This seems like a valid concern based on what you're arguing, but the problem you're trying to address isn't solved by anything within the gear system usually, and Ashes is within parameters.

Dygz

^^^
And...Ashes is balanced around 8-person groups; not 1v1.

CROW3

Well, I’m hoping the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 3 isn’t linear. In which case we’re just talking about a relatively small slope difference between one steep curve to another. If time is the only difference (I don’t think it is, but let’s go with that) the delta between 50% and 30% is not going to be as consequential as you think. Someone in Tier 3 would crush someone in sub-Tier 1.

And again if time is the only difference (and again I’d argue it isn’t) it’s entirely reasonable that a player in Tier 3 that spent 100 hours in the game would wipe the floor with someone in sun-Tier I who has spent 10 hours in the game.

I don’t think any casual player would look twice at that…

If this were in court, I’d ask who the aggrieved party is in this 17 page thread as this whole discussion seems like a proxy concern. Am I off?

SirChancelot

Since you mentioned GW2, that was one of my favorite things about it's PvP
That everyone got level capped and the same gear, making it only dependent on player skill. I actually really appreciated that, because I could not play for a bit then go to PvP island and still wreck face. Unlike something like WoW where the difference would be "insurmountable" because my gear was 2 seasons ago.

But I do understand that does remove the gear chase from the equation which is kind of part of the whole MMO genre.... And ashes won't have the hard line between the PvP and PvE the way GW2 did either so that isn't even possible in ashes ( unless they did that for arena fights which could be cool)

I feel like there could be a middle ground somewhere. Sure the gear can give you a stat advantage, but it shouldn't just make you unbeatable to someone with lesser gear... There no fun in that.

And honestly if you win just because you have more free time, I could definitely argue that starts to fall under pay to win at a point.

CROW3

SirChancelot wrote: »

And honestly if you win just because you have more free time, I could definitely argue that starts to fall under pay to win at a point.

This isn't pay to win (edit: like 100%, absolutely, irrefutably NOT p2w).

It's called play to win.

Kovrm

I sincerely hope Intrepid ignores this thread and makes the game how they plan to make it..

VmanGman

After all these conversations, ultimately what it all comes down to is that people who oppose my suggestion feel that they need to see their numbers go up by a lot or else they feel like their time is not valued and they also feel like they should be able to wipe the floor with under geared players not because of skill but because they have better items. We just have very different ideas of what good and healthy game design is.

Dygz

We just have more trust in the Ashes devs and what has been shared of the dev design than you do.

Azherae

VmanGman wrote: »

After all these conversations, ultimately what it all comes down to is that people who oppose my suggestion feel that they need to see their numbers go up by a lot or else they feel like their time is not valued and they also feel like they should be able to wipe the floor with under geared players not because of skill but because they have better items. We just have very different ideas of what good and healthy game design is.

That is in no way at all the counterargument you were facing here.

It's definitely a thing you could project, but as someone who I hope can see both your side and theirs, you heavily misinterpreted what people were telling you.

"This isn't the way to solve the problem."

"This isn't the actual problem to begin with."

Two possible better summaries of the majority of responses.

Okeydoke

I understand what you're saying Vman, conceptually. I'm not reading 17 pages to see if I agree with everything you've said point by point, I probably don't. But you're right in that the more pvp focused a game is, the more it needs to moderate how big power gaps are.

That doesn't mean the power gaps need to be tiny necessarily. But relative to other mmos that don't have nearly the same focus on pvp, the power gaps need to be tighter, to some extent. This is common sense.

I've heard the "50% of character power will come from gear" quote. I don't know exactly what that means, like how exactly that will affect power gaps. But I trust Steven realizes that if he creates a system where new, casual players have to spend months before they can even put a dent in a hardcore players armor, he's created a game that will eventually wither away and die.

Kovrm

Interview from July 19, 2020 states gear will account for ~40-50% of your overall power. Which to me means the other 50-60% would be split between class/archetype/player skill in some ratio or another. Would be nice if player skill held a higher determining factor if that is indeed how it ends up being.

40% gear
25% player skill
20% class/archetype
10% character stats
5% misc/luck/etc or whatever

One thing I would love for them to implement in the game would be for players to get X amount of 'stat points' (like in Diablo 2) to spend how they want, instead of being a static increase like in WoW. Would need a way to prevent strength/dex glitching for gear like D2, imo.

Azherae

CROW3 wrote: »

Well, I’m hoping the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 3 isn’t linear. In which case we’re just talking about a relatively small slope difference between one steep curve to another. If time is the only difference (I don’t think it is, but let’s go with that) the delta between 50% and 30% is not going to be as consequential as you think. Someone in Tier 3 would crush someone in sub-Tier 1.

And again if time is the only difference (and again I’d argue it isn’t) it’s entirely reasonable that a player in Tier 3 that spent 100 hours in the game would wipe the floor with someone in sun-Tier I who has spent 10 hours in the game.

I don’t think any casual player would look twice at that…

If this were in court, I’d ask who the aggrieved party is in this 17 page thread as this whole discussion seems like a proxy concern. Am I off?

I could (arrogantly) argue that the premise is sound but the argument isn't being made correctly/strongly enough, and I don't care enough to jump in on the OP's side again, any more than anyone else seems inclined to.

There is definitely a potential for an 'aggrieved party' here, if you run some basic numbers (not the ones I did before, separate ones based on the time investment thing), someone would just need to properly define what that is, and THEN show that such a situation would exist in Ashes, even hypothetically.

Themepark games DO have this sort of problem. The player who can walk through the story faster gets a large gear advantage, because it's intended to bring them up to the bottom of 'raiding tier' or the 'lowest rung of endgame PvP', depending on the game.

So a casual player wandering around in an Open World game who doesn't have time to play through the 20-30 hours of story quests and such and still do what they logged into the game to actually enjoy, will get stomped by any relatively skill-less but 'time endowed' player who just 'had more time to go through the storyline and get handed a pile of gear'.

Guilds don't solve this, friends don't solve this.

But it's just another symptom of the Themepark Virus (I don't hate these as much as this might sound), and has nothing to do with Ashes, still.

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