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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Mag7spy

VmanGman wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Ashes is a game where time investment can result in better gear. Sure.
That didn't really clear up your point.

If time investment will result in better gear, and gear is a huge part of the player's power, then casuals will not be able to compete with hardcore players and like you suggested they will just have to take a beating in PvP and not fight... That''s horrible game design and they will quit. All I'm saying is that time should only result in about a 20-30% power increase (which is still significant) when it comes to gear.

If time results in better gear, which it will in AoC, and that better gear is an insurmountable advantage, then many/most casuals will quit the game. It's not fun to not be able to stand a chance and to be forced to not participate in PvP so that the other guys gets corrupted. It's a simple fact of gaming/MMORPGs. The game will not survive without casuals. A game that aims for 10,000 players per server needs casuals.

You really aren't understanding game design and are trying to make a slippery slope. Hardcore players have too much gear, hardcore players know to many mechanics, game is to complicated for casual players, etc.

Honestly i feel like you are using "casual gamers" and putting your own mind set on them on what they think, because you are worried for yourself you won't be able to be one of the top players. A player the decides to get geared, learn the game, make good builds and teams will beat casual players no matter what unless you dumb the game down so much where it doesn't matter.

Casual players will want a fun game with a fun community, their desire isn't to be the best nor is it to beat the most hardcore players. They want to play and have fun. BASED on your own words saying games need casual players meaning (as most other games) the ratio to hardcore - casual players is very skewed to casual- average players. Meaning they wouldn't be fighting hardcore guilds all the time.

ALSO if your mind set is you want to own a metropolis and run the highest level city without playing as much and being a casual player that is literarily not how any game works. The top players and hardcore ones that are the most skilled will always end up running things, it doesn't mean a casual guild can't own a smaller place and have fun, or be in a guild with more hardcore players. If you are social and fun to be around people will want you at the end of the day, unless you play once per week and are hardly on.

Mag7spy

OriginalSoultaker wrote: »

I just hope that the PVP is fun, not like all the other MMO where the fights last for like 2.3 seconds. I want to have to actually work to kill someone. Nothing is more underwhelming than 1 shotting someone your level and similarly geared like in BDO.

BDO combat is trash, aoe, iframe spam, and one shots. ITs not like a real gritty fight, i hate cat and mouse chase stuff.

What bdo does RIGHT is the feel of the movement and the flow of the combat when you use abilities. Things work together really well, its like pantheon rise oft he fallen which is the polar opposite where its like one ability, two ability, 3 ability. Having a sense of combos is always nice.

Ferryman

Otr wrote: »

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.

Being ganked once in a while is bad?
For that there is the corruption system and bounty hunters.
If I join the game late, I will stick near more experienced players. I'll avoid traveling alone if I have valuable stuff on me.
Veterans will not earn much looting a noob anyway.

The Eve Online advice for everybody is:
Don't fly ships you do not afford to lose.
Even in HighSec you was not really safe but only the very rich had reason to be afraid.

I think very rich AoC players should pay for protection. We should not worry about them

I did not say it is bad, and I am personally fine with the planned system. However, I am just saying that IF the developers want the game to become more casual friendly, then open world PvP is the thing which pushes some casual players away. Some players do not want to PvP at all or they want it to be 100% consensual, and you cannot change that mindset to match with yours by thinking it from your perspective. 😉

Anyway, my point was that the op suggestion was kind of weird because it offered gear squish as a solution for making the game more casual friendly. However, usually a hardcore player wins a casual player even with lower gear simply because they are more skillful. Therefore, the gear squish will not make any difference.

Noaani

Okeydoke wrote: »

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.

Actually, the post you quoted was kind of saying the opposite.

It doesnt matter if there is a large gear gap, because casual players will lose anyway. So if you want to protect casuals, gear isnt the place to do it.

Ferryman

Okeydoke wrote: »

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.

Yeah I think that is a valid point but when the same gear is used for PvE and PvP it usually makes the balancing quite challenging. That is why WoW has separated gear and Lost Ark's gear is equalized for PvP, for example. I think that the gear power does not need to be squished in Ashes in general, however, IF the power gap between different gear tiers appears to be too high in PvP after testing, then perhaps some kind of PvP specific squish could work.

Okeydoke

Noaani wrote: »

Actually, the post you quoted was kind of saying the opposite.

It doesnt matter if there is a large gear gap, because casual players will lose anyway. So if you want to protect casuals, gear isnt the place to do it.

The post was saying if they want to make the game more casual friendly they should look at the pvp systems. This is the direction some people will take the conversation if there are people going around 5v1'ing with ease because of their gear. (more of an extreme example just for emphasis)

As opposed to saying, well maybe we should cut down a little bit on the power gaps. So that in this very pvp focused game where there is material and time loss from death, city destruction and caravan destruction, maybe the playing field will be leveled a bit more.

The gear gaps absolutely do matter for casuals. I don't personally know where they should be. It's going to be more of a thing I'd have to feel in game. But it's the difference between if a group of 2 or 3 geared out tryhards can confidently jump a group of 6 casual types and expect victory due to their gear, or is it more like 12 casuals that they'd feel confident they can take on.

Okeydoke

Ferryman wrote: »

I think that the gear power does not need to be squished in Ashes in general, however, IF the power gap between different gear tiers appears to be too high in PvP after testing, then perhaps some kind of PvP specific squish could work.

Yeah there's a lot of different ways they can skin this cat. It'll all be tested and tweaked. My hope is that gear gaps are meaningful, noticeable and of some impact, but not overwhelming.

Noaani

Okeydoke wrote: »

The gear gaps absolutely do matter for casuals.

As I have said before, they also matter for top end content.

Gear is the key to the next step of content. If there is no gap in gear tiers, you can simply skip them.

The only way to avoid this is by gating content - which is something the MMO community rejected many, many years ago and is now only occasionally acceptable.

I'm not saying exactly what the gap should be either, I am simply saying that if there is to be tiered top end content (as Intrepid have stated) the gap in gear between each tier needs to be large enough so that you simply can not skip a tier.

The thing to keep in mind - as I have said many times in this thread - is that gear in an MMO is a direct reflection of how well you are playing the game as a whole. If someone beats you because they have better gear, they are actually beating you because they are playing the entire game better than you are, and as such they SHOULD beat you. Same applies to if they are significantly better geared, and are able to beat you and some friends - they are playing the whole game better than you and your friends combined, and so SHOULD beat all of you.

NishUK

Otr wrote: »

If those MMOs are popular, then players like the system.
MMOs are supposed to be like a 2nd job.
You should not envy those who can afford it and demand as much fun as they get.

Very exciting...

We should make that a mobile phone game!

Look, people don't know what they want until it hits them square in the face. Console gamers and FPS enthusiasts didn't care one bit for a moba, now it's the addictive virus of a game that pollutes our planet and people are sporting a grin whenever Jinx has a new CGI or some crap.

I don't appreciate those who don't look at the bigger picture.

Noaani

NishUK wrote: »

Console gamers and FPS enthusiasts didn't care one bit for a moba, now it's the addictive virus of a game that pollutes our planet and people are sporting a grin whenever Jinx has a new CGI or some crap.

The only people that have this opinion on MOBA's are people that are surrounded by MOBA's.

I'm not, and so I neither know nor care what/who a Jinx is. Same for many FPS players. If they don't play MOBA's, they won't give a shit about them and will likely care about as much as myself as to what ever a Jinx is.

The kind of person that thinks what they are surrounded in is what all people are surrounded in are the people that are not looking at the bigger picture. Just sayin.

Okeydoke

So you're saying essentially that if the gear gaps were shrunk too much to account for pvp, it could throw the pve progression scaling out of wack? I think I agree with that, like in concept. I understand what you're saying.

Using an extreme example, if the gear gaps between tiers was only 1%, it would be impossible to design pve content that is only 1% harder and have it feel meaningfully harder. 5 tiers of gear, 5 tiers of pve content, 5% total difference in difficulty between tiers 1 and 5. And therefore, above average player skill alone could account for players in tier 1 gear beating tier 5 content. Just to make sure I'm following your point, this is what you mean right. (Not even sure if this paragraph makes sense but you can let me know if I'm on the right track.)

To that I'd say, don't shrink it that much then. But where's the cutoff. At what percentage gear gap is it still possible to design the next tier of content appropriately. Wherever that is, is the beginning point of where you can think about setting the gear gap at. I'm not a dev so I have no idea.

It's not just about the numerical percentage value of gear gap though. There is a time element to this too. If tier 5 is 10,000% more powerful than tier 1, but the average player only spends 3 hours in game progressing from tier 1 to 2, then it almost doesn't even matter that that gear gap is so insane.

So I would expect, as in most mmos, that the design would funnel upwards so to speak. With the earlier tiers (character level essentially) being faster to get through and thus funneling the bulk of the player base into that B grade tier, 1 or 2 tiers from max. Those last couple tiers, I would make them as tight as possible, give or take.

If it's possible, albeit harder, for above average skilled, tier 4 geared players to take on some tier 5 content, so be it. I wouldn't view a little overlapping of the tiers like that as necessarily a bad thing. But maybe I haven't really thought this out as much as I should.

Whatever the case, if the day comes where a resounding majority of the player base says yo these gear gaps are too big, casuals everywhere are just getting shit on, no one can even progress, 5 guys keep wiping our 40 man, you gotta change the pvp systems, give us a pvp toggle, take away loot drop!....my advice to Intrepid would be to ignore them. Or lower the gear gaps.

I intend to no life this game. I'm not worried at all about being on the shit end of a gear gap myself. But I would like "higher end" casuals (not 5 hours a week casuals) to at least be somewhat competitive and able to participate and enjoy the game without constantly being dunked on by overwhelming gear gaps.

NishUK

Noaani wrote: »

The only people that have this opinion on MOBA's are people that are surrounded by MOBA's.

I'm not, and so I neither know nor care what/who a Jinx is. Same for many FPS players. If they don't play MOBA's, they won't give a shit about them and will likely care about as much as myself as to what ever a Jinx is.

The kind of person that thinks what they are surrounded in is what all people are surrounded in are the people that are not looking at the bigger picture. Just sayin.

Sorry,

Forgive me,

So let me get this straight, It is, in fact, you looking at the bigger picture....lemme take a look at that picture (snatches it).

"E V E R Q U E S T "

Hey, I can go on about Ultima Online, Legend of Mir 2, Lineage 2 and Archeage until spiders make cobwebs about me body but I like to keep relative to what most of the population experiences on the internet!

Noaani

NishUK wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

The only people that have this opinion on MOBA's are people that are surrounded by MOBA's.

I'm not, and so I neither know nor care what/who a Jinx is. Same for many FPS players. If they don't play MOBA's, they won't give a shit about them and will likely care about as much as myself as to what ever a Jinx is.

The kind of person that thinks what they are surrounded in is what all people are surrounded in are the people that are not looking at the bigger picture. Just sayin.

Sorry,

Forgive me,

So let me get this straight, It is, in fact, you looking at the bigger picture....lemme take a look at that picture (snatches it).

"E V E R Q U E S T "

Hey, I can go on about Ultima Online, Legend of Mir 2, Lineage 2 and Archeage until spiders make cobwebs about me body but I like to keep relative to what most of the population experiences on the internet!

I can go on about Archeage as well, I played it for four years. I have played a little over 20 MMO's, some for as little as a day, some for as long as a decade.

I can also go on about L2, even though I never played it. That's the thing with being able to look at the bigger picture, you can see and understand more than what you have personally experienced.

This is why I was able to instantly point to a mistake in another thread in relation to L2. I never played the game, yet I know enough to correct players that did play it when they make a mistake.

If you were truly someone that looked at the big picture, you would be able to have at least some sort of discussion relating to EQ/EQ2, rather than just the games you have personally played.

So hey, you claim you are a big picture kind of person, lets talk about EQ2 raiding!

Noaani

Okeydoke wrote: »

Using an extreme example, if the gear gaps between tiers was only 1%, it would be impossible to design pve content that is only 1% harder and have it feel meaningfully harder. 5 tiers of gear, 5 tiers of pve content, 5% total difference in difficulty between tiers 1 and 5. And therefore, above average player skill alone could account for players in tier 1 gear beating tier 5 content. Just to make sure I'm following your point, this is what you mean right. (Not even sure if this paragraph makes sense but you can let me know if I'm on the right track.)

You've got the general idea right, but perhaps not the implications.

Imagine you and your guild are in tier 2 gear, working on tier three content. If their three content only rewards you with gear that is 1% better, how hard would it have been for the developers to develop tier four content? They have a window where tier 2 content should not be possible to kill it, but their 3 content - with that jump of just one percent - needs to be able to.

But then you have other implications. If the game has five tiers of raiding, how many tiers of group content does it have? Another five would be reasonable, surely. Suddenly, the game has 10 tiers, not five. But then there is solo as well...

So, all of a sudden, someone that is taking on top end raid content going up against some casual that only plays the game a few hours a week - it isn't going to be fun for that casual, and there isn't really much of anything that can be done about this without actually changing the intent behind some aspect of the game.

To me, the correct answer to this - assuming Steven does not want to alter what he has said he wants Ashes to be (which includes tiered top end PvE content), is to tell that casual player that this game isn't for everyone.

That isn't a perfect solution, I am aware. However, I do recall pointing out a year or so ago on these forums that this game is a conglomeration of contradictions. One of these is the desire for tiered raiding (necessitating tiered gear with a somewhat sizable gap), being contrasted with open world PvP where you want less of a gap between players.

This leads to the only other answer I can think of that is a potential means of solving this issue - have gear degrade on use.

It is possible/probable that gear obtained via raids will require materials obtained via raids to repair it. If this is the case, people are unlikely to go out curb stomping casuals in raid gear if that would result in them getting closer to needing to repair it. People would hold back top end gear for when it is needed, and run with more reasonable gear when top end gear isn't.

Rather than reducing the gear gap between casual and top end players, this puts top end players in a situation where they don't want to use their best gear on casual players.

Ferryman

One option is primarily balance the gear for PvE content but reduce the effectiveness when fighting other players, if needed.

This way PvE tiers will not screwed and PvP power gap can be adjusted to the level wanted or needed.

PenguinPaladin

Ferryman wrote: »

One option is primarily balance the gear for PvE content but reduce the effectiveness when fighting other players, if needed.

This way PvE tiers will not screwed and PvP power gap can be adjusted to the level wanted or needed.

I dont like this concept. If i get something cool i want it to be cool. I dont want it to only be cool when i stand on one foot, cross both eyes, and am standing in the rain.

Good gear can be just good gear. Im not certain gear balance is a singularly discussed option. Ashes is aiming to balance based of off an 8 vs 8 party, not balance individual classes. I think this philosophy goes straight into we're going to balance gear teirs, not individual pieces of gear. Its okay for some outliers to exist. If everything is perfectly balanced to where skill is yhe only factor then casuals literally never have even the slightest chance.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

You've got the general idea right, but perhaps not the implications.

Imagine you and your guild are in tier 2 gear, working on tier three content. If their three content only rewards you with gear that is 1% better, how hard would it have been for the developers to develop tier four content? They have a window where tier 2 content should not be possible to kill it, but their 3 content - with that jump of just one percent - needs to be able to.

But then you have other implications. If the game has five tiers of raiding, how many tiers of group content does it have? Another five would be reasonable, surely. Suddenly, the game has 10 tiers, not five. But then there is solo as well...

So, all of a sudden, someone that is taking on top end raid content going up against some casual that only plays the game a few hours a week - it isn't going to be fun for that casual, and there isn't really much of anything that can be done about this without actually changing the intent behind some aspect of the game.

To me, the correct answer to this - assuming Steven does not want to alter what he has said he wants Ashes to be (which includes tiered top end PvE content), is to tell that casual player that this game isn't for everyone.

That isn't a perfect solution, I am aware. However, I do recall pointing out a year or so ago on these forums that this game is a conglomeration of contradictions. One of these is the desire for tiered raiding (necessitating tiered gear with a somewhat sizable gap), being contrasted with open world PvP where you want less of a gap between players.

This leads to the only other answer I can think of that is a potential means of solving this issue - have gear degrade on use.

It is possible/probable that gear obtained via raids will require materials obtained via raids to repair it. If this is the case, people are unlikely to go out curb stomping casuals in raid gear if that would result in them getting closer to needing to repair it. People would hold back top end gear for when it is needed, and run with more reasonable gear when top end gear isn't.

Rather than reducing the gear gap between casual and top end players, this puts top end players in a situation where they don't want to use their best gear on casual players.

You could have diagonal progression and built balancing off of that. You get marginal vertical growth in gear stats when you go up in tiers, but the horizontal stats on gear change from set to set, and you develop bosses/mobs according to that gear's acquisition.

Say you have a stun-protecting set at tier 2. And it has 100 m/p def/mitigation. And you have classes with stuns get most of their stuns at the lvl of gear tier 2 farming, so they're not OP out of the gate. And you have mobs with stuns on this tier.

Then a tier 3 set is a fire-protective one. It has 120 m/p def/mitigation. Classes that got their fire before this would be now weaker, once the majority of people acquires this set. Mobs at this lvl tier would run around lava locations or would just be more fire-based. And bosses would have both stuns and fire, so, depending on your party composition, you'd choose what set is better to go against that particular boss (depending on his atk, elemental attribute or stun frequency).

Tier 4 could be anti-ice with 140 stats and tier 5 anti-dark (corruption) with 160 stats.

Either way, I think you get the idea. You can still have gear that doesn't vary too much in its stats (which keeps pvp somewhat fairer), while you still have gear-dependent difficulty in pve and RPS counters to classes with different sets. Diagonal design

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

You've got the general idea right, but perhaps not the implications.

Imagine you and your guild are in tier 2 gear, working on tier three content. If their three content only rewards you with gear that is 1% better, how hard would it have been for the developers to develop tier four content? They have a window where tier 2 content should not be possible to kill it, but their 3 content - with that jump of just one percent - needs to be able to.

But then you have other implications. If the game has five tiers of raiding, how many tiers of group content does it have? Another five would be reasonable, surely. Suddenly, the game has 10 tiers, not five. But then there is solo as well...

So, all of a sudden, someone that is taking on top end raid content going up against some casual that only plays the game a few hours a week - it isn't going to be fun for that casual, and there isn't really much of anything that can be done about this without actually changing the intent behind some aspect of the game.

To me, the correct answer to this - assuming Steven does not want to alter what he has said he wants Ashes to be (which includes tiered top end PvE content), is to tell that casual player that this game isn't for everyone.

That isn't a perfect solution, I am aware. However, I do recall pointing out a year or so ago on these forums that this game is a conglomeration of contradictions. One of these is the desire for tiered raiding (necessitating tiered gear with a somewhat sizable gap), being contrasted with open world PvP where you want less of a gap between players.

This leads to the only other answer I can think of that is a potential means of solving this issue - have gear degrade on use.

It is possible/probable that gear obtained via raids will require materials obtained via raids to repair it. If this is the case, people are unlikely to go out curb stomping casuals in raid gear if that would result in them getting closer to needing to repair it. People would hold back top end gear for when it is needed, and run with more reasonable gear when top end gear isn't.

Rather than reducing the gear gap between casual and top end players, this puts top end players in a situation where they don't want to use their best gear on casual players.

You could have diagonal progression and built balancing off of that. You get marginal vertical growth in gear stats when you go up in tiers, but the horizontal stats on gear change from set to set, and you develop bosses/mobs according to that gear's acquisition.

Say you have a stun-protecting set at tier 2. And it has 100 m/p def/mitigation. And you have classes with stuns get most of their stuns at the lvl of gear tier 2 farming, so they're not OP out of the gate. And you have mobs with stuns on this tier.

Then a tier 3 set is a fire-protective one. It has 120 m/p def/mitigation. Classes that got their fire before this would be now weaker, once the majority of people acquires this set. Mobs at this lvl tier would run around lava locations or would just be more fire-based. And bosses would have both stuns and fire, so, depending on your party composition, you'd choose what set is better to go against that particular boss (depending on his atk, elemental attribute or stun frequency).

Tier 4 could be anti-ice with 140 stats and tier 5 anti-dark (corruption) with 160 stats.

Either way, I think you get the idea. You can still have gear that doesn't vary too much in its stats (which keeps pvp somewhat fairer), while you still have gear-dependent difficulty in pve and RPS counters to classes with different sets. Diagonal design

The issue with this is that we are talking about all of this happening at the level cap - everyone has all of their abilities before any of this even gets started.

As such, you have to assume that players will have access to all damage types.

So, if you have your ice protection gear at tier four, people will be using ice damage on everyone below their 4, knowing that they don't have particularly good protection against it.

This makes things worse for casual players, as it means literally everyone knows their weakness - ice damage (or any other protection that is only available at higher tiers).

Ferryman

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

Ferryman wrote: »

One option is primarily balance the gear for PvE content but reduce the effectiveness when fighting other players, if needed.

This way PvE tiers will not screwed and PvP power gap can be adjusted to the level wanted or needed.

I dont like this concept. If i get something cool i want it to be cool. I dont want it to only be cool when i stand on one foot, cross both eyes, and am standing in the rain.

Good gear can be just good gear. Im not certain gear balance is a singularly discussed option. Ashes is aiming to balance based of off an 8 vs 8 party, not balance individual classes. I think this philosophy goes straight into we're going to balance gear teirs, not individual pieces of gear. Its okay for some outliers to exist. If everything is perfectly balanced to where skill is yhe only factor then casuals literally never have even the slightest chance.

Of course good gear can be good gear and that is why I said "if needed". So you have the knowledge that the gear will be balanced around 8v8 PvP?

Dygz

8v8 PvX.

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