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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SirChancelot

I said

SirChancelot wrote: »

....

Yes I know there are technically dozens of other variables, but I'm posing the question in an attempt to just focus on those two and magically pretend everything else is equal.

Should experience with the game and skill win?
Or should a higher tier level of gear win?
Hell, I'll accept win percentages for answers even...

I used both the terms skill and experience... Since they SHOULD go hand in hand...

You can change the number of days to suit you, I was just throwing out random scenario to ask the question.
How much weight should gear carry when compared to skill?

Noaani

SirChancelot wrote: »

I said

SirChancelot wrote: »

....

Yes I know there are technically dozens of other variables, but I'm posing the question in an attempt to just focus on those two and magically pretend everything else is equal.

Should experience with the game and skill win?
Or should a higher tier level of gear win?
Hell, I'll accept win percentages for answers even...

I used both the terms skill and experience... Since they SHOULD go hand in hand...

You can change the number of days to suit you, I was just throwing out random scenario to ask the question.
How much weight should gear carry when compared to skill?

Yes, I know you attempted to alter it to the above, but what you originally said was;

SirChancelot wrote: »

Who should win this scenario?
This takes place 1 year after launch.

Person A has played every day since launch has played his main to max level, and acquired all his best gear. Decides to roll an alt. He has level capped his alt, but is only tier 7/10 with his gear. (made up numbers as we don't know how this works yet)

Person B has played every other day since launch only has the one character but all his gear is tier 9/10. ( Again just made up levels)

They run into each other in the wild and fight over a rare spawn.
Should person A with more experience but worse gear win
Or
Person B the guy who has played less but has more powerful gear equipped win?

No mention of the word "skill" in there at all.

Since skill is unquantifiable, in your original post, we cant assume one player has more skill than the other. Sure, one has more experience, but experience is not skill. Since your orogonalnpost about this question did not mention skill, we need to assume both are equally skilled, one has more experience with the game as a whole but les with the character in question, the other has more experience with the character in question and better gear.

Who should win in that situation (if we also ignore R/P/S class factors) is fairly obvious.

Now sure, you clarified after I gave my first answer that one player had more skill than the other. But this is an alteration to the paradigm of the original question, not an addition to it. You are adding in player skill as a factor when it wasnt before. You seem to be conflating experience with skill at this point, but the two are not the same - they are even less the same when the bulk of the experience for the player in question (player A) is from a different class.

So, I stand by my answer, with the information in the original question, player B has the better gear and the more relevant experience and so should win based on the information given.

If you want to get any deeper in to it than what your first question posited, I would suggest that we need to look at where the gear came from.

In your scenario, if both players earned their gear, then player B did more and so should win. They are playing the game better than player A at that specific point.

If player B was handed their gear, then they are playing the MM aspect of the MMO genre better. If they have good enough friends to hand over top end gear, then player B deserves to beat someone that doesnt have such good friends.

If player B bought their gear from the market, they are obviously playing the economic aspect better than player A, and so deserve to win.

If player A has the option of using their well geared main to get better gear for their alts and dont, then they are not playing that alt to the best of their ability and so do not deserve to win.

The problem here is you are looking at gear in isolation.

Dont do that. Look at gear as being a accumulation of how well you are playing the game as a whole, be that successfully running content, having good friends, or playing the economic game well.

Based on all of that, the better player will ALWAYS have better gear, and so should win. Sure, player A in your scenario may be better at combat, but since they are clearly failing at other aspects of the game (hence not having good gear), they do not deserve to beat someone that is playing multiple aspects of the game well.

Dygz

It's not just gear though.
Gear plus character build should trump player twitch skills.
Player experience is a bit more complex than implied.

There's a whole bunch of assumptions that have been added to the conclusions.
For instance, I have 5 characters planned for Ashes at the moment. None of them are the same class.
So, just because I've got the META down for my 1st character does not mean I will know, or should know, how to play my 2nd character as well as Player B knows how to play his 1st character.

If my 2nd character is just a clone of my 1st character, then sure, my player experience might give me an edge over Player B, despite the gear disparity.

Uboon

One reason why New World lost players was because only the top 50 could participate in some of the content, to the exclusion of everyone else.

So casuals must be able to obtain viable and enjoyable roles, across all content regardless of gear disparity, in order for them to keep playing.

By 'casuals' I do not mean everyone, just the majority in the 20% to 80% band of geared-up players.

Dygz

Mmmn. More importanly, there was not enough diversity in content to maintain much interest.
But, yes, also... it felt like I had to wait to be Level 25 or more to make any signifcant impact on incursions.

Aetyr

Daijoubu

Andy

Investement in MMORPGs MUST be rewarding.

I'm against any form of scaling. This doesn't belong to MMORPGs and it doesn't incent player to play more.

A level 60 should be able to easily kill a level 20 (corruption must play a role here to avoid massive greykill) and a fresh level 60 should have a hard time to kill a fully geared level 60. It depend how many time it take to be fully geared in AoC but this advantage could go (for me) up to 70%.

Of course skill must matter, but to a certain degree. If you want games that mainly promote skill i think MMORPGs aren't the best genre for that (especially sandbox ones like AoC).

At some point, there is always gonna be a difference between someone who play 10h a day vs 30min/day.
No matter how hard you try, the difference will exist. And, if you try to reduce it too much : the game will die because it would mean that you don't need to play because your progression will be meaningless.

Craiken

I want to lend my voice to the side advocating that gear tiers provide small, incremental power increases. In addition to keeping player power levels within a good range for competitive PVP, it will reduce the rate of power creep and keep content relevant longer. We don't want a game where only a handful of encounters are challenging and most bosses can be soloed by anyone with current gear (looking at you, WoW).

Sunboy

Balance is overrated. Embrace chaos. 😈😈😈

Tragnar

honestly that's a place where I hope the vertical progression goes - which is you need to get gear that is good against that particular boss

what I realized is that lost ark has a interesting mechanic and that is that you can get powers that change the damage school of your class - so for example you are a warrior and you can change all of your damage to be holy damage type

it isnt the most immersive mechanic, but it allows for interesting customization and gameplay experience which should imo be always higher priority than immersion

Sol Raven

Tragnar wrote: »

honestly that's a place where I hope the vertical progression goes - which is you need to get gear that is good against that particular boss

The last thing I want to have to worry about is having a million types of gear to enjoy content I already am not a fan of (PvE). Not only are those games annoying and tedious, and promotes the game to move into a grindfest direction, but it usually causes an inventory problem as well. I would like for once in an MMO not to have to worry about being out of inventory space within 20 minutes of leaving a city just to have to return back and forth 50 times a day to get the resources I need.

NishUK

Dygz wrote: »

It's not just gear though.
Gear plus character build should trump player twitch skills.
Player experience is a bit more complex than implied.

There's a whole bunch of assumptions that have been added to the conclusions.
For instance, I have 5 characters planned for Ashes at the moment. None of them are the same class.
So, just because I've got the META down for my 1st character does not mean I will know, or should know, how to play my 2nd character as well as Player B knows how to play his 1st character.

If my 2nd character is just a clone of my 1st character, then sure, my player experience might give me an edge over Player B, despite the gear disparity.

From a competitive and accessibilty standpoint your 1st paragraph is a disability of the mmorpg genre, I urge you to reconsider.

You have 5 characters planned? Why do you require 5 avatars of yourself? If you geninuely enjoy the growth phase with newer players I'm not going to tell you your wrong or maybe it's a hardcore attempt for PvP purposes to get a real feel for the strengths and weaknesses of certain classes.

But what I'm getting at is, with the games Steven has enjoyed/sees potential with, both Lineage 2 and Archeage you're encouraged to stick with the 1 character so I'm very curious as to your gameplan.

Noaani

NishUK wrote: »

From a competitive and accessibilty standpoint your 1st paragraph is a disability of the mmorpg genre, I urge you to reconsider.

No, it is a cornerstone of the MMORPG genre.

It would be a disability in some other as yet to be named genre where action combat and player skill are king, and content is tertiary.

However, that genre is not MMORPG's.

NishUK

Noaani wrote: »

However, that genre is not MMORPG's.

No that is just a different style of MMORPG.

Do not sully the experiences of others.

I don't even want to eliminate your content, I want you to learn that another side needs incorperating but you're looking to destroy it.

You're not even attempting to try and gather the many casuals or dedicated players taking refuge in genre's that are far more populated than FF14, you're only looking to create another one and hope that it will garner more popularity.

Dygz

NishUK wrote: »

From a competitive and accessibilty standpoint your 1st paragraph is a disability of the mmorpg genre, I urge you to reconsider.

I don't play MMORPGs to be competitive.
I play MMORPGs to play different roles.

NishUK wrote: »

You have 5 characters planned? Why do you require 5 avatars of yourself? If you geninuely enjoy the growth phase with newer players I'm not going to tell you your wrong or maybe it's a hardcore attempt for PvP purposes to get a real feel for the strengths and weaknesses of certain classes.

Typically, I do not play MMORPGs to have avatars of myself. I play MMORPGs to play different characters and each character has their own unique roles.
Since becoming a co-host of the TheoryForge podcast, beginning with Landmark Game, I do now always have one alt that is basically an avatar who is recognizably myself.

NishUK wrote: »

But what I'm getting at is, with the games Steven has enjoyed/sees potential with, both Lineage 2 and Archeage you're encouraged to stick with the 1 character so I'm very curious as to your gameplan.

I don't even know what "encouraged to stick with one character" means.
And, no, Archeage is not a game that interested me at all.
Encouraged to stick with just one character does not sound like an RPG to me.

Sol Raven

Noaani wrote: »

NishUK wrote: »

From a competitive and accessibilty standpoint your 1st paragraph is a disability of the mmorpg genre, I urge you to reconsider.

No, it is a cornerstone of the MMORPG genre.

It would be a disability in some other as yet to be named genre where action combat and player skill are king, and content is tertiary.

However, that genre is not MMORPG's.

Completely disregarding player skill because your gear is higher is called being gear carried, in PvE and PvP.

Now, specifically regarding PvP from now on: You cannot ever put gear above good skill as a meta unless it's an extremely casual MMO that requires little to no player skill, like Runescape. Ashes of Creation will definitely not be that casual, nor should it be with how much of a PvP crowd that it is garnering attention from. Casuals and mindless endless progression fans should stick to clicker games and the MMOs that are meant to support that mentality, not invade or impose their lack of skill based enjoyment onto others.

The idea that gear should trump player skill no matter what honestly baffles me and I hope there is none of that implemented into AoC. The only time someones gear should take priority over someones innate ability and knowledge to play the game should be a vast difference in level or quality of gear, for example a max level player vs a player still halfway or just finishing the story.

Noaani

NishUK wrote: »

I don't even want to eliminate your content, I want you to learn that another side needs incorperating but you're looking to destroy it.

No I'm not, I'm trying to say it should be it's own thing.

When one side is after a game where skill is the operative factor, and the other is after a game where a cumulation of their efforts in game (aka, character progression) is the operative factor, there is no room for them to both exist in the same game.

This is just one of the many incompatibilities here.

Noaani

Sol Raven wrote: »

Completely disregarding player skill because your gear is higher is called being gear carried, in PvE and PvP.

Gear is literally an indicator of what you have accomplished in a game.

If a game puts in some big boss mob, and I am able to kill it and you are not, I should have an edge over you just because of that fact.

If a game has a strong economic side and I am able to earn more money than you, I should have an edge over you just because of that fact.

If a game has a community focus, and I have friends that hand me gear, I should have an edge over you just because of that fact.

In each of the above three cases, it is someone playing the game better than you. You can tell they are playing the game better than you because they have better gear than you.

If they are playing the game as a whole (as in, all aspects of the game combined) better than you, why do you think you should be able to beat them?

Sol Raven

Noaani wrote: »

Sol Raven wrote: »

Completely disregarding player skill because your gear is higher is called being gear carried, in PvE and PvP.

Gear is literally an indicator of what you have accomplished in a game.

If a game puts in some big boss mob, and I am able to kill it and you are not, I should have an edge over you just because of that fact.

If a game has a strong economic side and I am able to earn more money than you, I should have an edge over you just because of that fact.

If a game has a community focus, and I have friends that hand me gear, I should have an edge over you just because of that fact.

In each of the above three cases, it is someone playing the game better than you. You can tell they are playing the game better than you because they have better gear than you.

If they are playing the game as a whole (as in, all aspects of the game combined) better than you, why do you think you should be able to beat them?

Sure. As long as it's just "an edge" and not "I auto-win every fight even though I may suck or you may be better than me" sort of thing. Having an edge is completely different from being unequivocally gear carried.

Noaani

Sol Raven wrote: »

Sure. As long as it's just "an edge" and not "I auto-win every fight even though I may suck or you may be better than me" sort of thing. Having an edge is completely different from being unequivocally gear carried.

If someone has better gear than you, they are better at the game than you.

It really is that simple.

As such, it isn't and shouldn't be a case of "an edge". They are just better than you at the game as a whole, because they have better gear than you.

They should win. It shouldn't be a contest, because they are better at the game than you.

If you want to be better at the game, do something to get better gear. If you don't or can't, then you are not very good at the game and should lose.

This is the problem - you should look at gear as literally nothing more than how good a player is at the game, and when you do this, you will find that you rarely lose to a player that is not as good as you.

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