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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CROW3

NishUK wrote: »

You know how to waste time, good stuff. I'm sure your view will be valuable.

Hm. Ok. 🤷‍♂️

NishUK

your view to a certain degree is valuable for this, as we would like you to co-exist with an actual social and player driven environment unlike the single player+ co-op drivel you've persisted with.

Now I'm done. next time could you be polite and just read, would entertain my mind frame and move the convo along....or you can just ignore it.

Dygz

NishUK wrote: »

You can't even explain RP, all you could do is a google it or say it's your own person experience from Raiding and being forced to work together with people, it's a really basic form of human interaction and linear gameplay.

I shouldn't have to explain RP.
You shouldn't need to google RP.
I almost never raid, so I don't really factor raiding into my comments.
There are many forms of social interaction in an MMORPG.
People shouldn't be forced to work together, rather they should be encouraged to work together.
Work together because you want to; not because you have to.

NishUK wrote: »

I wouldn't live in hope if I was you, look at Steven's history with games, he's on the side of expanding player driven systems that are known in South Korea mmo's and cutting away the bullshit entirely.

I think it's quite clear that you aren't me. And wouldn't do anything the way I do.
Steven isn't creating a game exactly like the ones he played.
I would say that his player driven systems are closer to EQNext designs than they are to Korean MMORPGs. And Ashes will be closer to Western MMORPGs than Eastern MMORPGs - case in-point, Steven has said if he can't do Hybrid combat and he has to pick just one, he will go with Tab-Target.

NishUK wrote: »

You don't have that vision in you to expand the genre, you see it as complete for what it already is, that's fine but just try and stop from saying Ashe's will be this super "rpg" focused game (is this ff7??) because you're assuming things from out of thin air.

What you really mean is that we don't share the same vision for the best way to expand genre.
My vision appears to be more in line with Steven's vision.
I'm not assuming anything from thin air. Steven has said that he wants to put the RPG back into MMORPG.
Nodes are a major system which supports that.
Also, while, Ashes will hopefully have some Action Combat as part of Hybrid Combat - I think e can expect it to be closer to NWO and Skyrim than it is to BDO or Lost Ark.

NishUK

@Dygz

You believe it's EQ based off of tid bits of things similar with other games?....L2 and Archeage are tab, Archeage is by far the most refined tab gameplay we've seen btw.

He's putting the 'RPG!' back into mmorpg, for one, with GW2, FF14 and WoW alive and fairly well that Steven is on about elevating THAT genre??
Steven is a massive multiplayer gamer first, honestly the guy can't contain his excitement at the fact he's making a great mmo for the people who were always hit with p2w and other bs, this isn't some explosive attempt at evolving how story games work. Roleplaying game, is simply, anyone, creating a character and throwing it out there, acting however they like with it (90%+ of the time, themselves) and there's nothing more to it than that.

CROW3

Somehow I doubt that a person with a Pathfinder campaign that spans decades, and who feels so strongly about his experiences with said campaign, that he then sinks a literal fortune in building a company to build an mmo based on that campaign views the role-playing aspect of MMORPGs as just ‘creating a character and throwing it out there.’

But it’s also clear that our perspectives are quite different. 😉

NishUK

@CROW3 d&d is excellent, for the amount of options you can do and that passion will obviously sink into this game.

I take weeks+ thinking about class skills and theory crafting etc, but want I meant from "throw it out there" is from a persona perspective. How you build relationships and trust is completely up to you, if it's encouraged cheekily and not forced that sounds good but I don't feel the need to expand on this more, that is player-based generated stuff, the game is responsible for the theme and immersion side mainly.

But "what is RPG" for the mmo genre, I know what it is, others might have some overcomplicated view of it that might take a wall of text, god knows.

Noaani

NishUK wrote: »

You can carry on speculating all you like

This is kind of what you are doing.

Case in point;

you want to stomp people just because you played longer than them.

Where have I said I want to be able to do this? I have said I should be able to do this, but not that I want to.

Let's imagine a game where gear is king. If I have good gear and you have shit gear, what possible reason could I have for killing you?

The answer is an absolute and complete "none".

There is literally no reason. If you had anything that I would consider valuable, you would have better gear.

The assumption you make that people wanting gear to actually mean something in an MMO means they want to kill people with less time in the game is simply you projecting. It isn't what I said at all. Sure, I should be *able* to beat any player with worse gear, but why would I?

Noaani

NishUK wrote: »

Archeage is by far the most refined tab gameplay we've seen btw.

Archeage was a total mess of a combat system. It's like they made about a third of the combat system, and then just gave up.

It's scaling was off, the abilities the game had were too simplistic, the game didn't give players enough tools to perform what I would consider basic roles. Then we can get on to the extremely low interaction between abilities in the game, the abysmally low number and effectiveness of buffs players can cast on each other, and the low total count of abilities players would run with.

If this is your honest opinion of Archeage, assuming you have some experience with the game, then your total lack of understanding of tab target games and the assumptions you have made to fill in the blanks you have makes a bit more sense.

Quite honestly, saying Archeage has the most refined tab target combat system of any MMO is about as accurate as saying Archeage has the most refined action combat of any MMO. Both statements are wildly incorrect.

Dygz

NishUK wrote: »

You believe it's EQ based off of tid bits of things similar with other games?

LMAO
What is this gibberish supposed to mean?

NishUK wrote: »

He's putting the 'RPG!' back into mmorpg, for one, with GW2, FF14 and WoW alive and fairly well that Steven is on about elevating THAT genre??

Again, I don't really even understand what you think you're trying to say.
It kinda sounds to me like, "How did humans evolve from primates if there are still monkeys?"

NishUK wrote: »

Steven is a massive multiplayer gamer first, honestly the guy can't contain his excitement at the fact he's making a great mmo for the people who were always hit with p2w and other bs, this isn't some explosive attempt at evolving how story games work. Roleplaying game, is simply, anyone, creating a character and throwing it out there, acting however they like with it (90%+ of the time, themselves) and there's nothing more to it than that.

Steven's stated intent is to make a great MMORPG based off of his homebrew Pathfinder Table Top RPG campaign. And, yes, Steven has spoken about how Ashes of Creation is a Themebox with a dev curated story which also includes sandbox elements. So, I dunno how you can think Steven is not evolving how story games work. Especially not after the recent demo and explanation of the Events system.

People create characters in Survival Games. Survival Game is not the same genre as RPG.
So, that already proves your claim to be false.
There are several types of MMOs. They are not all MMORPGs simply if someone creates a character.
When you google a game, you should go to the creator website and see how the devs describe their game genre.
There's a reason why Crowfall describes their game as an MMO Throne War Simulator rather than an MMORPG. Just as there is a reason why the New World devs describe their game as an open world MMO PC game, rather than as an open world MMORPG.

At this point, I think we've drifted way off topic.
You're just arguing to argue - not to clarify anything related to the actual topic.

NishUK

Noaani wrote: »

Then we can get on to the extremely low interaction between abilities in the game, the abysmally low number and effectiveness of buffs players can cast on each other, and the low total count of abilities players would run with.

Because many buffs make for excellent gameplay right? Let me tell you that every Lineage 2 player would, in some degree for that bs to calm down. It's tolerated gameplay with the limitations of tab target.
Let's also not go on about the "rotato" kind of mechanics needed for tab target to be "deeply" exciting either, of which many many many skills is just a form of cheap entertainment (when that could all be in 1 skill planted precisely depending on location, mob orientation and debuffs as an alternative)

What you fail to grasp for Archeage, is that they enhanced the gameplay to be a lot more fluid and the skills compliment that, I don't need to go on more than that, they elevated tab for a complete experience instead of stagnating only to some rotato PvE experience.

If it's so wild make a thread about how tab target is super interesting and what everyone really wants, I go on discord, discussions and guild chats and any talk of a game like WoW is met with depression, if it was so good we wouldn't be talking about it in a negative light, we'd just simply say something else about the game "it's not the right theme for me" etc.

Dygz

There are many reasons why a game like WoW is met with depression.
WoW being a tab target game is not the primary reason.

Noaani

NishUK wrote: »

What you fail to grasp for Archeage, is that they enhanced the gameplay to be a lot more fluid and the skills compliment that, I don't need to go on more than that, they elevated tab for a complete experience instead of stagnating only to some rotato PvE experience.

No, they didn't.

The game may be the best tab target game you have played, but that isn't really saying much. Archeages combat was one of the worst aspects of it, and after logging back in over the last day or two, it is readily apparent that it is not meaningfully better now than it was at launch.

The fact that you are still referring to rotations as a required mechanic for tab target just tells me that you refuse to actually listen to people that know more than you.

As to your comment on buffs - buffs are the mechanic by which rotations become obsolete.

Are you starting to grasp just how little you know about tab target combat yet?

PenguinPaladin

Ashes of creations over all mechanics have a strong potential to "protect casuals" without hard coding in protections and mechanics to do so.

Its a loose faction system, and that allows for things to balance themselves in a way. Guilds which want to rule over cities, will need to activly protect their weeker player base, or face those players move away to somewhere they are safer playing the game.

You have limited carry weight. You NEED somewhere to live, and store your stuff. And becoming a citizen of a node gives you allies. Allies that are all around you. It forces a since of community. And this doesnt mean you cant attack people and do as you like. It just means you dont attack people in your own home. Go to the outskirts and attack people of rival nodes, and watch out for your casuals who help gather and pay taxes to your node.

In ashes its not just a guy or group, and a different guy or group. It will mostly be a guy or group of node x, and a guy or group of node x. And if they live in the same city, why make problems for yourself? Piss off people too much and they move out of town. Or they hire the local guild for protection, or the mayor adds you to the kill on site list.

NishUK

@Otr if an mmo sung to the heart of a casual they would still move on because they are gaming addicts or are just freaks who get bored really easily?

A subscription model is employed to ensure fairness while maintaining a game/company growth, it benefits both casual and hardcore and it doesn't have to over reward hardcore, that is just the typical state of some popular mmo's where gear progresses way too highly on simple stats.

Noaani

Otr wrote: »

Some like to move from game to game, some want to stay and live in one game for a long time. They are all addicted to something.

Are you talking about casuals, or PvP'ers here?

Because this statement applies to both.

Tragnar

Thing is - considering equal low skill (mmo players are known to have the lowest average skill level between most popular pc game genres with pvp) then a casual should have a chance to beat a time investor, but time investor should have a significant advantage - but not to the amount where it is autowin

what i mean by autowin is to press 3-4 buttons and opponent is dead

Azherae

Tragnar wrote: »

Thing is - considering equal low skill (mmo players are known to have the lowest average skill level between most popular pc game genres with pvp) then a casual should have a chance to beat a time investor, but time investor should have a significant advantage - but not to the amount where it is autowin

what i mean by autowin is to press 3-4 buttons and opponent is dead

This actually doesn't work behaviourally, which is kind of a pain.

What happens is that everyone starts at low skill, and because there's few ways to build skill competitively in most MMOs, those with better gear 'win anyway', creating false negatives for the losers. Even in lower TTK games like Neverwinter this still happens.

The winners get the high and keep playing until they meet someone who beats them, climbing in skill. The losers are discouraged from doing this content, and practice less, so their skill grows slower. The true autowin in this type of PvP is 'knowing your opponent already expects to lose'.

Not saying that gear shouldn't be balanced, moreso that the only difference between perfect balance and bad balance is felt at the upper end. Casual players lose at the psychology point, so it would be hard to actually even use data to tell if the gear was causing the problem assuming that one INTENDED and TRIED to balance it.

The player with the 80% accuracy rate on skills (just like, Action skills for example) and ALSO a 4% better bow, blows the 50% accuracy player out of the water, but it takes too much data to know 'is 4% too much?' for an MMORPG.

Ferryman

If devs want to make the game more casual friendly they should look at the open world PvP rules. I am not saying they should, but making gear less valueable does not help because they will be ganked anyway.

Okeydoke

Ferryman wrote: »

If devs want to make the game more casual friendly they should look at the open world PvP rules. I am not saying they should, but making gear less valueable does not help because they will be ganked anyway.

FINALLY, someone just comes out and says it. I've been waiting for you. The gods spoke to me of your arrival lol

This is why gear in a game with, how do I say this without certain people losing their shit...a higher than average amount of pvp features...it's why the gear gaps should be somewhat tighter than in the average pve mmo, where it really doesn't matter as much.

Mag7spy

VmanGman wrote: »

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.

Id be very disappointed if the entirety of the game lvl 1-max my gear increase was being 30% stronger than a level one lmao. Also sounds like the game would have no end game. This honestly is a terrible idea. Unless you are taking about end game power of max levels characters between each other being only 30% stronger. Id much rather super end game be 50% stronger imo with a long grind to get there. #0% could be the softer cap with good investment and other 20% takes beating the hardest content, rng, etc.

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