Discussion about grinds

JamesSunderland wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

To me, this isn't a grind at all, it is a rough outline for an end game concept.

The very notion of a grind is performing a specific task in order to achieve a specific outcome.

I mean, it's still a specific task even witrh all the RNG(killling monsters) in order to achieve a specific outcome(acquing certain drops and/or exp). This 'very notion' is malleable, and still works under RNG aspects.

Noaani wrote: »

Some aspects of the above are fine for a grind, but if you are after a specific item (say, bear hide), you absolutely do not want to be grinding in an area where bears are only one of many possible spawns, nor do you want multiple potential drops from the bears you are grinding on.

On the other hand, if you are just playing the game, then having mobs randomized to a degree, and drops randomized to a degree are both perfectly fine. However, that is not a grind.

How about different type of bears?
I would assume a basic material like bear hide would probably be the most common drop on their loot table.

If you're grinding for experience, then sure, RNG is all good. However, I have yet to play a game that has required more experience than is able to be obtained by running all of the level appropriate content. I would personally consider such an oversight to be a grave error on the part of the developers.

As to different types of bears - there isn't all that much variation you can add to them in terms of how they fight, while still being recognizable as bears (this is why I picked bears, rather than a more intelligent enemy).

While bear hide may well be the highest dropping item, there may well still be the chance of dropping a bear claw, or bear tooth, or even bear meat. Chances are, if I am after bear hide, other people would also be after bear hide. Said people would also be getting those other drops, which they likely do not want - just as I do not want them. As such, those items are probably dirt cheap on the market, making them not even worth picking up.

It is virtually impossible to have multiple drops on a mob that all retain their actual value. As soon as players want a higher ratio of one drop than what the loot table allows for, the other drops all instantly become worthless.

When you are grinding for a specific item (as opposed to just playing the game with no specific goal), you really do want the least amount of RNG as possible. The more focused your goal (which is my personal definition of grinding), the less RNG you want. The less focused the goal, the more you want.

My preferred RNG Method is Random Resource Cache, Random Armament Cache and Random Treasure Chests often strewn around specific Points of Interest.

Accessible to all and with vast potential. Another source over which to fight or cooperate. The concept is reinforced due to the flagging system.

Anyway, just food for thought right now.

Noaani wrote: »

While bear hide may well be the highest dropping item, there may well still be the chance of dropping a bear claw, or bear tooth, or even bear meat. Chances are, if I am after bear hide, other people would also be after bear hide. Said people would also be getting those other drops, which they likely do not want - just as I do not want them. As such, those items are probably dirt cheap on the market, making them not even worth picking up.

It is virtually impossible to have multiple drops on a mob that all retain their actual value. As soon as players want a higher ratio of one drop than what the loot table allows for, the other drops all instantly become worthless.

That just sounds like a bad crafting system then. Especially in the context of what Ashes is planning for their crafting. Make all those resources used somewhere on the crafting ladder so no material becomes useless or unwanted. This would also keep people fighting over mobs because they'll always stay important.

Yes, some prices will fluctuate, but that's the case with anything in a free market.

P.s. because gold can't be dropped by players, please do not add gold amounts to treasure chests etc unless gold ingots etc is required for crafting.

Ranger would be the wealthiest class if they can find hidden caches without risk.

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

While bear hide may well be the highest dropping item, there may well still be the chance of dropping a bear claw, or bear tooth, or even bear meat. Chances are, if I am after bear hide, other people would also be after bear hide. Said people would also be getting those other drops, which they likely do not want - just as I do not want them. As such, those items are probably dirt cheap on the market, making them not even worth picking up.

It is virtually impossible to have multiple drops on a mob that all retain their actual value. As soon as players want a higher ratio of one drop than what the loot table allows for, the other drops all instantly become worthless.

That just sounds like a bad crafting system then. Especially in the context of what Ashes is planning for their crafting. Make all those resources used somewhere on the crafting ladder so no material becomes useless or unwanted. This would also keep people fighting over mobs because they'll always stay important.

Yes, some prices will fluctuate, but that's the case with anything in a free market.

A bad crafting system? We have a star wars galaxies crafting system. If I was a dairy farmer I don't want rng whether the cow gives milk or not. I might also have different cow breeds to affect the milk formulation but at the end of the day it's all still milk...

Neurath wrote: »

A bad crafting system? We have a star wars galaxies crafting system. If I was a dairy farmer I don't want rng whether the cow gives milk or not. I might also have different cow breeds to affect the milk formulation but at the end of the day it's all still milk...

I meant that example in particular. If when you killed a cow you got milk, meat, skin, horns, hooves - I'd expect all those items to get used somewhere in the crafting system and be fairly valuable. With maybe one of those being used in some important recipe so its price is higher than others, but you don't feel bad for not dropping that exact item because everything else has a good price too.

Yeah, I don't mean remove the loot table. I simply meant, give a crafter options. For example, skinning should always give a skin but skill should give the chance for higher tier reward (BDO). in terms of legendary drops, in most cases they would be reagents rather than base materials due to rarity and supply/demand.

I'm not sure if you've heard of The Devilsaur Mafia in WoW. Now, they locked down a resource region from a whole server. Perfectly fine if it's a raid zone or a contested zone. However, the resource in question only came from a single source and thus a monopoly was created.

Star wars galaxies prevents monopolies because you can get materials from other sources and horizontal enchant to get the end result.

Neurath wrote: »

Star wars galaxies prevents monopolies because you can get materials from other sources and horizontal enchant to get the end result.

It's a double-edged sword for me. On one hand I want there to be limited sources for things so that players have to fight each other over it, on the other hand I understand how monopolies can kill the game's economy and lead to a ton of people leaving. Have definitely seen a few monopolies in L2 back when you had some resources farmable only in one locations (or at least meaningful farm in only one) and big guilds would lock it down and control said resource.

And I don't really know how you'd balance those things out.

I don't want to prevent monopolies at all. You are confused between unique dropped legendaries and crafted legendaries.

A master crafter can make a legendary form of any item. The master crafter needs a vast supply of resources to level to the skill of legendary status.

Nodes are like Greek City States. One Node might not have iron. However, a trade alliance could see iron flow from elsewhere . It is not my intention to protect anything. I am a combat expert and people can fight for caravans, legendarys, territorial control, casters etc. Whilst incurring decay, destruction and experience loss. Not to mention portional resource loss.

At the end of the day, I feel I can not take on all economic duties and combat duties if requested because I have no idea on the speed at which my requests can even be implemented. Its one thing to be a designer, its another thing entirely to be a dictator.

Neurath wrote: »

I don't want to prevent monopolies at all. You are confused between unique dropped legendaries and crafted legendaries.

A master crafter can make a legendary form of any item. The master crafter needs a vast supply of resources to level to the skill of legendary status.

Yeah, and those supplies can be controlled by a guild. So I'm not confusing things. But I've already seen some people complain about the potential of big guilds taking over some parts of the map/nodes/resources and setting their own super high prices on those things. That is if they even decide to sell them.

Now I'm completely fine with that cause I'm used to fighting against stronger and bigger foes, but I can already see people leaving the game because they can't get some piece of gear because some huge guild is controlling all the ways of acquiring that gear.

Dygz

I don't believe a piece of gear will be so crucial that people will quit because they can't get it.
Especially because Ashes is a game where no person can get everything or do everything.
It's unlikely to be a guild that's preventing that acquisition - it's much more likely to be the Node type you prefer does not have a Metro or your race does not control a Metro.

JamesSunderland

Noaani wrote: »

If you're grinding for experience, then sure, RNG is all good. However, I have yet to play a game that has required more experience than is able to be obtained by running all of the level appropriate content. I would personally consider such an oversight to be a grave error on the part of the developers.

Ashes is going for a fairly harder/longer leveling process than most recent MMORPGS, i don't think possible RNG grinding for exp could be an oversight let alone a "grave error".

Noaani wrote: »

As to different types of bears - there isn't all that much variation you can add to them in terms of how they fight, while still being recognizable as bears (this is why I picked bears, rather than a more intelligent enemy).

Yeah, bears probably aren't the best type of monsters to apply RNG variation in types.
The only reasonable bear fighting styles i can think from the top of my head are, more agressive bears with higher damage, a more tanky bear, a more agile bear with higher speed/evasion/accuracy/crit chance and maybe a more debuff oriented bear with bleed, slows and stun.

Noaani wrote: »

While bear hide may well be the highest dropping item, there may well still be the chance of dropping a bear claw, or bear tooth, or even bear meat. Chances are, if I am after bear hide, other people would also be after bear hide. Said people would also be getting those other drops, which they likely do not want - just as I do not want them. As such, those items are probably dirt cheap on the market, making them not even worth picking up.

It is virtually impossible to have multiple drops on a mob that all retain their actual value. As soon as players want a higher ratio of one drop than what the loot table allows for, the other drops all instantly become worthless.

When you are grinding for a specific item (as opposed to just playing the game with no specific goal), you really do want the least amount of RNG as possible. The more focused your goal (which is my personal definition of grinding), the less RNG you want. The less focused the goal, the more you want.

From my experience with Lineage 2 big RNG loot tables there was never a "drop you didn't want" or that "didn't retained their actual value" even with basic materials, that were typically the most common drops in the loot tables due to Lineage 2's resource scarcity, this permanently maintained the game economy healthy and thriving..

If any resource in Ashes ever makes you feel that you don't want it and that it retains no actual value, i would consider it a system oversight and possible a design flaw.

The more consistent the drop of a material is, the more offer of that material is avaliable, unless demand is constant and high enough in comparison to the drop rate, it's price will go downhill to the dirty cheap realm.

JamesSunderland wrote: »

From my experience with Lineage 2 big RNG loot tables there was never a "drop you didn't want" or that "didn't retained their actual value" even with basic materials, that were typically the most common drops in the loot tables due to Lineage 2's resource scarcity, this permanently maintained the game economy healthy and thriving..

If any resource in Ashes ever makes you feel that you don't want it and that it retains no actual value, i would consider it a system oversight and possible a design flaw.

The more consistent the drop of a material is, the more offer of that material is avaliable, unless demand is constant and high enough in comparison to the drop rate, it's price will go downhill to the dirty cheap realm.

Yeah, but that is because L2 was a shit game, objectively speaking.

I have literally never heard anyone say L2 had a "theiving" economy. I have heard people say they spend far more for an item than they should, just so they can avoid PvE, but not that the economy was ever thriving.

Barely functioning is the description of L2's economy I get from people I know who were playing it from 2003to 2006.

The reason every drop had a market was simply because there were so few drops, and people wanted to avoid PvE when they could. My suggestion is we dont label that as "good" in any form, so as to not mislead developers in to making a game with that poor of an economy or PvE content ever again.

Literally the only good thing about L2 was the PvP. Anyone that ever says anything else was good about the game has a series case of rose tinted glasses.

Noaani wrote: »

Literally the only good thing about L2 was the PvP. Anyone that ever says anything else was good about the game has a series case of rose tinted glasses.

Its pvp was good exactly because pve was super basic though. Yes there were sieges, but those are every other week. But daily pvp only worked because you could pvp around mobs w/o being scared shitless that you'd both die.

I can already see people complaining a ton if Ashes has challenging pve in the open world, just because they keep getting attacked by other people and die because of it.

Dunno about the very early days, but from what I've heard L2 was ridden with bots so of course the economy would be in utter shambles.

George_Black

Noaani wrote: »

JamesSunderland wrote: »

From my experience with Lineage 2 big RNG loot tables there was never a "drop you didn't want" or that "didn't retained their actual value" even with basic materials, that were typically the most common drops in the loot tables due to Lineage 2's resource scarcity, this permanently maintained the game economy healthy and thriving..

If any resource in Ashes ever makes you feel that you don't want it and that it retains no actual value, i would consider it a system oversight and possible a design flaw.

The more consistent the drop of a material is, the more offer of that material is avaliable, unless demand is constant and high enough in comparison to the drop rate, it's price will go downhill to the dirty cheap realm.

Yeah, but that is because L2 was a shit game, objectively speaking.

I have literally never heard anyone say L2 had a "theiving" economy. I have heard people say they spend far more for an item than they should, just so they can avoid PvE, but not that the economy was ever thriving.

Barely functioning is the description of L2's economy I get from people I know who were playing it from 2003to 2006.

The reason every drop had a market was simply because there were so few drops, and people wanted to avoid PvE when they could. My suggestion is we dont label that as "good" in any form, so as to not mislead developers in to making a game with that poor of an economy or PvE content ever again.

Literally the only good thing about L2 was the PvP. Anyone that ever says anything else was good about the game has a series case of rose tinted glasses.

Noanni you keep calling a L2 a shitty game, just like unpopular kids at school would call a party that they didnt get invided to "a shitty party". Dont talk to us about rose glasses and grow up.

George_Black wrote: »

Noanni you keep calling a L2 a shitty game, just like unpopular kids at school would call a party that didnt got invided to "a shitty party". Dont talk to us about rose glasses and grow up.

I mean, it was definitely not the biggest and best thing since sliced bread like WoW was, but that's mainly due to the reasons of WoW being way more casual-friendly and NCsoft being utter shites at promoting/developing/admining their game in the west. And then it all just snowballed down a mountain.

JamesSunderland

Noaani wrote: »

Yeah, but that is because L2 was a shit game, objectively speaking.

I would say that was quite a interesting thing to say from some one who never played it.

Noaani wrote: »

I have literally never heard anyone say L2 had a "theiving" economy. I have heard people say they spend far more for an item than they should, just so they can avoid PvE, but not that the economy was ever thriving.

Barely functioning is the description of L2's economy I get from people I know who were playing it from 2003to 2006.

Really don't know whom you spoke to but, from release to around late 2006 the economy was the best, and started getting destroyed around late 2006 and early 2007 when the first bot programs stated coming out and overflooding the market with basic material and over-inflating the game main currency and destroying the game economy.

Noaani wrote: »

The reason every drop had a market was simply because there were so few drops, and people wanted to avoid PvE when they could. My suggestion is we dont label that as "good" in any form, so as to not mislead developers in to making a game with that poor of an economy or PvE content ever again.

Literally the only good thing about L2 was the PvP. Anyone that ever says anything else was good about the game has a series case of rose tinted glasses.

People didn't want to avoid L2 PvE because of the scarcity of drops, but because Lineage 2 PvE truly was bad, very simplistic and not very challenging(other than a few areas and bosses).

My suggestion is, we don't make big assumptions from hearsay of systems we aren't truly familiarized with.

In a big fight you want strong pve thrown in. In other mmos a mixed fight was the only way a tank could do more than pve.

At the end of the day, if u don't want to die to npcs in a pvp fight, don't gank, don't murder and don't steal. Just do duels.

George_Black wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

JamesSunderland wrote: »

From my experience with Lineage 2 big RNG loot tables there was never a "drop you didn't want" or that "didn't retained their actual value" even with basic materials, that were typically the most common drops in the loot tables due to Lineage 2's resource scarcity, this permanently maintained the game economy healthy and thriving..

If any resource in Ashes ever makes you feel that you don't want it and that it retains no actual value, i would consider it a system oversight and possible a design flaw.

The more consistent the drop of a material is, the more offer of that material is avaliable, unless demand is constant and high enough in comparison to the drop rate, it's price will go downhill to the dirty cheap realm.

Yeah, but that is because L2 was a shit game, objectively speaking.

I have literally never heard anyone say L2 had a "theiving" economy. I have heard people say they spend far more for an item than they should, just so they can avoid PvE, but not that the economy was ever thriving.

Barely functioning is the description of L2's economy I get from people I know who were playing it from 2003to 2006.

The reason every drop had a market was simply because there were so few drops, and people wanted to avoid PvE when they could. My suggestion is we dont label that as "good" in any form, so as to not mislead developers in to making a game with that poor of an economy or PvE content ever again.

Literally the only good thing about L2 was the PvP. Anyone that ever says anything else was good about the game has a series case of rose tinted glasses.

Noanni you keep calling a L2 a shitty game, just like unpopular kids at school would call a party that they didnt get invided to "a shitty party". Dont talk to us about rose glasses and grow up.

If L2 was half the game you like to claim it was, you would be playing it on a private server and wouldn't be interested in Ashes.

The fact that Ashes is taking some PvP aspects from L2 is great. The fact that it is not looking at L2 for anything to do with the economy, crafting, PvE, classes, races, lore, world design, or basically anything else - is even better.

The fact that almost all of the senior developers at Intrepid (including the environment lead, character art lead, and previous lead designer, among others) are all from EQ2 is even better still.