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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Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

With PvE, players do everything they can to make it as easy as it can be - the maximum number of the best players, the best gear, the best tools, the best strategy. And yet it is still hard. If PvP players put that paradigm (the maximum number of the best players, the best gear, the best tools, the best strategy) in to PvP, then it would not be hard.

Here's a question that will give me the absolute answer for this situation: Have you ever tried to or heard of <40-man raid groups clearing top lvl 40-man raid instances in EQ(2)?

Azherae wrote: »

Basic example, there is an instanced content battle (technically five of them) in FFXI where you take your party of six players, and go up against an enemy party of six Beastmen.

These Beastmen, like most mobs, have all the abilities of their 'class', but they're explicitly tuned to this and work in a group, and can use the 'Ultimate' of their class one per fight. Their advantage is high HP, the player advantage is having consumables (minor) and being able to raise after falling (major until you are really good at it).

Same question to you, Azherae, have you tried/heard of people beating those Beastmen instances with <6 people?

Azherae wrote: »

You simply 'know that the enemy can do XYZ things, and you prepare for those'. What I'm failing to see is if the ONLY thing people are discussing as 'the thing that makes PvP more challenging' is the 'numbers' part. Because it's entirely possible that they've just never 'had to face the equivalent of Grimshell Shocktroopers' in their games of choice and just don't think it can even be done.

The answers to my question will provide me with explanation. Or will at least let me make a parallel for the mentality of both groups.

Assuming I'm allowed to use a parallel (because the Beastmen ones are rarely spoken about, people don't make guides for this type of content). There is a similar encounter against six giant Scorpions, meant to be done by the same 6 people.

The Legendary Red Mage Avesta can do it alone.

Forgive me if that's not helpful, I seem to be unable to make the connection between the two points, but I presume you will proceed to do it.

I expect that a sufficiently skilled group could do at least Divine Punishers with five... Maybe four at an absolute stretch (at which point they would be extremely limited in which classes they could bring and still have a reasonable chance of winning, 'RPS' style, but not exactly, moreso classes that diminish the danger of the special attack type of the Beastmen in question for that one).

Okeydoke

This thread is wild man

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

I expect that a sufficiently skilled group could do at least Divine Punishers with five... Maybe four at an absolute stretch (at which point they would be extremely limited in which classes they could bring and still have a reasonable chance of winning, 'RPS' style, but not exactly, moreso classes that diminish the danger of the special attack type of the Beastmen in question for that one).

This is kind of my point. Yes, the "difficulty" in owpvp does usually come down to numbers, but any self-respecting pvper always tries to go for the lowest possible number on their side against the highest possible number on the enemy's side. A type of 300 Spartans approach to owpvp.

And what I was trying to get at by asking my question is whether pvers have a similar/same kind of mentality when it comes to pve. Noaani has said that he's beaten all EQ2 content at the time of him playing the game. That would mean that he overcame all difficulties of that pve. And by asking whether anyone at the time has ever tried beating the same content with fewer people I wanted to learn whether top lvl pvers had the same desire to prove themselves against, in their eyes, difficult content by making it even more difficult, by pushing it and themselves to the limit.

Because to me, the truly difficult content is something that I can't beat. I don't care if the limiters on my ability to beat said content were placed by the devs or by me myself. Either of those limits are arbitrary because someone came up with them. Devs designed encounters with some way to beat it. The only difference is that some devs don't really care how it gets beaten, so the encounter itself is quite easy, while other Devs make such granular and detailed combat designs that you might have a very limited amount of successful approaches to the encounter.

I do the same with owpvp. There's a guild of 200 people defending a castle? Let's sit and think up a way where we use the least amount possible of people to successfully siege that castle. If we win - we're super cool, but the content was still fairly easy. Let's make it even harder the next time. Let's maybe give that side some good gear or give them a boss that we previously controlled, so that they become stronger before the next siege.

Obviously this kind of approach is not widespread among the pvp population, but from my experience with thousands of people in L2, this kind of approach is always respected and is usually the goal for a lot of people. Everyone wants to be the 300 spartans, while the whole server are the persians.

This video ingrained this desire into me and countless other people back when we were just starting to play L2. It was also the main reason why I mained Dark Elf Tank for several years, but that came mainly from the coolness effect of the video itself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1feB1I0ohQ

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

With the above three qualifiers to your question, the answer is no.

Just as an additional question to make sure: was there a reason for never even trying?

With the design of some encounters, it was a literal impossibility. Every single person in the raid had a specific role to perform, and any of them failing would cause the raid to wipe.

I'll give one example that is easy to understand even if you don't know the EQ2 combat system at all.

The boss spawns adds ever 30 seconds. These adds will pick a group within the raid, and will only be able to be attacked by that group. The add will have a massive AoE with a fairly long range that will one shot anyone other than a tank - but it only affects people that are NOT in the group that the mob has selected. The obvious way to deal with this AoE is to pull the mob away from the bulk of the raid, so that only the group that is immune is in range of this ability.

The add requires an effective tank and healer, and needs at least 3 DPS to get it down before the next add will spawn, and there wasn't enough room to have the boss as well as two adds at the same time - so two adds would mean at least half of the raid would be hit by at least one of the adds AoEs.

So far, we have a tank, a healer and three DPS in each group, with 1 spot left. That spot needed to go to a support class, as the fight was fairly long and mana would have been an issue about half way through without a support in each group.

So, that raid not only required a full 24 players, it also dictated that you needed 4 tanks, 4 healers, 4 support and 12 DPS. You would not attempt that raid with anything else, because it simply would not work.

This was only 1 encounter, to be clear (and actually was only a mid tier encounter, not even a top tier one), but it is an example as to why you would need a full raid, with every slot filled, that even those not familiar with EQ2 should be able to understand (assuming I explained it well enough).

For other fights, it was a case of working out the mechanics, and then working out what you need to counter them. Things like "we need four of this class with this ability to counter this attack, and we also need 2 of these over here. Then we need to make sure we have 5 healers with this cleanse, but we also need one of this other healer over here for this thing that only they do. Then we need 12 or so DPS, and we need some bards for mana regen - oh shit we don't have room left for a tank, who can we drop?

I have said many times on these forums that the notion of an off tank (as in, a tank that isn't specifically asked for by the content) is a ridiculous notion. This is why that is my opinion - a good raid will either ask you to bring that tank, or you will simply not have space in your raid for it.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

I have said many times on these forums that the notion of an off tank (as in, a tank that isn't specifically asked for by the content) is a ridiculous notion. This is why that is my opinion - a good raid will either ask you to bring that tank, or you will simply not have space in your raid for it.

So yeah, this whole post was the direct example of "granular and detailed pve design", where Devs planned exactly what their players would have to do in order to overcome the raid barrier.

To me personally, "just adding more people" is the same limiter as this design was for you, except the direction of member amount is opposite. You couldn't decrease that number because the devs told you so, while I couldn't increase that number because I limited myself. Of course you can dismiss that kind of approach as "fake difficulty" or "unreasonable attitude", but that's just where we'll have to disagree due to differing opinions on the topic.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I expect that a sufficiently skilled group could do at least Divine Punishers with five... Maybe four at an absolute stretch (at which point they would be extremely limited in which classes they could bring and still have a reasonable chance of winning, 'RPS' style, but not exactly, moreso classes that diminish the danger of the special attack type of the Beastmen in question for that one).

Because to me, the truly difficult content is something that I can't beat. I don't care if the limiters on my ability to beat said content were placed by the devs or by me myself. Either of those limits are arbitrary because someone came up with them. Devs designed encounters with some way to beat it. The only difference is that some devs don't really care how it gets beaten, so the encounter itself is quite easy, while other Devs make such granular and detailed combat designs that you might have a very limited amount of successful approaches to the encounter.

This video ingrained this desire into me and countless other people back when we were just starting to play L2. It was also the main reason why I mained Dark Elf Tank for several years, but that came mainly from the coolness effect of the video itself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1feB1I0ohQ

I understand you. So let's circle way back (yes I've been tracking the relevance of this to the rest of the game this whole time).

1. Self respecting PvPers are not usually the problem-person that 'casuals' face, as you probably know.
2. With a larger gear gap, the devs don't have to make the encounter easy for people, they can make it mechanically difficult to the point where even if you play perfectly you lose with insufficient gear but you can tell that's what happened.
3. The above means that you practice the run even if you don't have the gear to survive it, sometimes, while you gather that gear. This is an option for 'casual raiders'. Since 'top end' raiders don't expect the win EITHER, expecting the win as a casual player is not relevant.

But if the encounter is FUN, you don't need to win it. Winning it (assuming you get better gear) just makes it easier, a thing to do on days when you aren't at the top of your game (and hence it is still pretty challenging).

I must disagree with the idea that because Devs don't care exactly how a target is beaten, that the fight is easy. I don't want to say 'this must be L2's experience', but I certainly can see... no. I certainly can DESIGN fights where I don't much care how exactly you do it, but it still is not overwhelmingly easy for any given group mechanically. This is literally just a matter of knowing one's own balance levers, and adding things to 'counter' main strategies and obvious things. This is how PvE improves over time in games all the time.

But none of this 'makes sense' to players who haven't faced good PvE, and therefore finally back to the point of the topic. When a player thinks 'PvP will result in me dying if the gear gaps are big', they want a chance to win. You... don't. Not truly, as far as I can tell. You just want to 'fight'. To get better, to see yourself 'be yourself'. I am pretty sure I understand you in this regard.

The key point being made is that if you don't have good PvE experience, it is reasonable to conclude that PvP is the main source of this challenge, and unlike PvE where 'if I play perfectly and have great gear this should be beatable some of the time because it's designed to be' at MINIMUM, you get...

"If I play perfectly and my opponent is ahead of me in the gear progression this is not winnable."

The sensible thing to do here if you want a chance of winning is to ask for clamped gear progression, but that is based on the underlying 'wish to have a dynamic experience in the game'. If PvE is boring, but PvP is basically unwinnable even when at perfect skill, why play?

If PvE is interesting enough to engage the same part of your mind and then rewards you with gear, there is always a feeling of progression because the PvE encounter is static. If the only solution to this in a PvP heavy game is to make the PvP encounters 'gear-static' as well, rather than altering the behaviours of PvP players or adding enough PvE to give people other things to do, then I don't think one has a PvX game.

Therefore my expectation is that the best way to 'protect casuals' is to make a good PvE gear-ladder where 'getting higher on the ladder requires more and more effort or allies'. Anyone who comes into the game thinking "PvE is just boring trash but I need PvP to be gear-homogenous" is missing the POINT and therefore some recent posters have had some attempts made to reach an understanding on this.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

I have said many times on these forums that the notion of an off tank (as in, a tank that isn't specifically asked for by the content) is a ridiculous notion. This is why that is my opinion - a good raid will either ask you to bring that tank, or you will simply not have space in your raid for it.

So yeah, this whole post was the direct example of "granular and detailed pve design", where Devs planned exactly what their players would have to do in order to overcome the raid barrier.

To me personally, "just adding more people" is the same limiter as this design was for you, except the direction of member amount is opposite. You couldn't decrease that number because the devs told you so, while I couldn't increase that number because I limited myself. Of course you can dismiss that kind of approach as "fake difficulty" or "unreasonable attitude", but that's just where we'll have to disagree due to differing opinions on the topic.

You couldn't increase the number of people because you limited yourself.

That is the key difference.

There is a method to make it easier if you want to take it, but you are opting to not take it. That's cool, your prerogative.

I don't have that avenue to make it easier, whether I want it or not.

As an attitude, you are more than welcome to it. My point in this regard is that you can't say that the thing you are doing is hard, you can only say that the way you are trying to do it is hard.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Therefore my expectation is that the best way to 'protect casuals' is to make a good PvE gear-ladder where 'getting higher on the ladder requires more and more effort or allies'. Anyone who comes into the game thinking "PvE is just boring trash but I need PvP to be gear-homogenous" is missing the POINT and therefore some recent posters have had some attempts made to reach an understanding on this.

And here's where I chime in with a "haven't you people ever heard of closing the god damn door" my suggestion of the Solo Tower instance (this one

NiKr wrote: »

What if we had a donation-like system. Time-hardcore players would obviously have excess of gear, so why not have a system that lets them exchange that excess gear for upgrades to their main gear, while sending all that excess down the power lvl pyramid.

You could tie this to social structures in the game so that players get better augments from their preferred social structures by investing their overtime into their future enemies. Make each gear piece have some arbitrary point value and set different point prices for different upgrades. Add some diminishing returns to repeatable donations, so that a player couldn't get 1k points for donating 1k t1 boots.

And on the side of the low lvl/casual players, have a tower-like solo instance where clearing floors would give them points that they need to combine with rewards for some open world quests, in order to buy the donated gear. This would give those time-casual people some constant content and a way to catch up faster. Add some reward scaling for clearing floors super fast and you'll have yourself a reward for all the hardcore-challenge casual-time players.

This system doesn't add gear into the overall market out of nowhere. It rewards everyone for doing things that they would've been doing either way and/or just like doing. It creates a soft equalization of gear on the whole server w/o creating direct systems that do so.

If you put some quantity limiters on the donation amounts per node (considering node's lvl) and add a caravan-like pvp event for transferring all the excess gear to another node - you have yourself an additional fun thing for the high lvl pvpers to do.

The instance tower thing could even go up to max lvl and give out some title/cosmetic rewards, akin to FF14's "The Necromancer" title.

from this thread) with this exact feature in mind. Give the casuals an alternative way to acquire gear w/o just giving out gear out of nowhere, while also giving higher lvled people some benefits.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Therefore my expectation is that the best way to 'protect casuals' is to make a good PvE gear-ladder where 'getting higher on the ladder requires more and more effort or allies'. Anyone who comes into the game thinking "PvE is just boring trash but I need PvP to be gear-homogenous" is missing the POINT and therefore some recent posters have had some attempts made to reach an understanding on this.

And here's where I chime in with a "haven't you people ever heard of closing the god damn door" my suggestion of the Solo Tower instance (this one

NiKr wrote: »

What if we had a donation-like system. Time-hardcore players would obviously have excess of gear, so why not have a system that lets them exchange that excess gear for upgrades to their main gear, while sending all that excess down the power lvl pyramid.

You could tie this to social structures in the game so that players get better augments from their preferred social structures by investing their overtime into their future enemies. Make each gear piece have some arbitrary point value and set different point prices for different upgrades. Add some diminishing returns to repeatable donations, so that a player couldn't get 1k points for donating 1k t1 boots.

And on the side of the low lvl/casual players, have a tower-like solo instance where clearing floors would give them points that they need to combine with rewards for some open world quests, in order to buy the donated gear. This would give those time-casual people some constant content and a way to catch up faster. Add some reward scaling for clearing floors super fast and you'll have yourself a reward for all the hardcore-challenge casual-time players.

This system doesn't add gear into the overall market out of nowhere. It rewards everyone for doing things that they would've been doing either way and/or just like doing. It creates a soft equalization of gear on the whole server w/o creating direct systems that do so.

If you put some quantity limiters on the donation amounts per node (considering node's lvl) and add a caravan-like pvp event for transferring all the excess gear to another node - you have yourself an additional fun thing for the high lvl pvpers to do.

The instance tower thing could even go up to max lvl and give out some title/cosmetic rewards, akin to FF14's "The Necromancer" title.

from this thread) with this exact feature in mind. Give the casuals an alternative way to acquire gear w/o just giving out gear out of nowhere, while also giving higher lvled people some benefits.

I've seen it, so forgive my... arrogance?

They can do better. I know they can do better because I can do better and if they legitimately can't figure out how to do it better than me at least (in their own opinion) then they can just ask me how to do it better.

This is a lot of work, and systems that can be gamed, for a problem that can be resolved entirely via itemization. This whole thing can be solved via itemization and normally is. That's why this whole thread has morphed into what it has. It started with people not understanding balance via itemization (I blame WoW for this) and looped back around to that from the PvE perspective later.

I hope that Intrepid just blows this sort of discussion out of the water by implementing such finely tuned Itemization goals (greatness is a function of goals here) that literally everything, all 30 pages of this, is moot and a general waste of all our time (relative to them getting anything useful from it).

EDIT: Also just to be snarky, this system exists in the game already, it's called 'money'.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

I hope that Intrepid just blows this sort of discussion out of the water by implementing such finely tuned Itemization goals (greatness is a function of goals here) that literally everything, all 30 pages of this, is moot and a general waste of all our time (relative to them getting anything useful from it).

Our hope here is completely the same.

Azherae wrote: »

EDIT: Also just to be snarky, this system exists in the game already, it's called 'money'.

How cheap do you think low-mid tier will become several months after release, considering that Intrepid plans to incorporate deconstruction and gear decay into the game? I'd assume there'll be at least some price growth just because everyone will have more money later on (unless the gold sinks are really finely tuned to stop that), and the price of that gear would grow too because, in theory, it wouldn't be too abundant.

So how exactly would a newbie easily afford some new gear to try and catch up to other players? Especially if we have a somewhat wider gear scaling.

And now that I think about it, my suggestion is a yet another gear sink, but one w/o removing the gear from the system completely. I think my love for L2's gear sinks just constantly shows itself in most of my design suggestions

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I hope that Intrepid just blows this sort of discussion out of the water by implementing such finely tuned Itemization goals (greatness is a function of goals here) that literally everything, all 30 pages of this, is moot and a general waste of all our time (relative to them getting anything useful from it).

Our hope here is completely the same.

Azherae wrote: »

EDIT: Also just to be snarky, this system exists in the game already, it's called 'money'.

How cheap do you think low-mid tier will become several months after release, considering that Intrepid plans to incorporate deconstruction and gear decay into the game? I'd assume there'll be at least some price growth just because everyone will have more money later on (unless the gold sinks are really finely tuned to stop that), and the price of that gear would grow too because, in theory, it wouldn't be too abundant.

So how exactly would a newbie easily afford some new gear to try and catch up to other players? Especially if we have a somewhat wider gear scaling.

And now that I think about it, my suggestion is a yet another gear sink, but one w/o removing the gear from the system completely. I think my love for L2's gear sinks just constantly shows itself in most of my design suggestions

Exactly as cheap as Intrepid's Economy Designer wants it to be.

Remember that there are people who spend literally all their time learning how to control the economic/play behaviours of massive numbers of people at a time. Sure, we note that there are exceptions and they're often bad (outside of MMOs where apparently it is the norm and they're REALLY bad), but those people aren't Intrepid.

But as noted, I was being snarky, the implication of my snark was probably 'shopping is the way to do this'.

I agree with and support the following concepts from your suggestion:
1. A player can convert dropped/crafted gear to gear that they intend to donate to their Social Org or Node.
2. That player gains rep or something substantial that they want other than raw $$, from this.
3. Other players can work for that gear or buy it from that Social Org or Node, and it will sit there until someone does.

Note that first aspect, because I play games with these systems too (it's not as useful in FFXI but you can donate gear to your nation and it does act as a sink when things start to get silly).

But it's intentionally not as useful in those games because as soon as you make it useful, someone games said system for their own benefit, that's why point #1 even has that 'convert dropped gear' part. You can't offer a benefit of real value to TopPlayerA for 'donating gear' and still also have them able to buy that gear to donate it.

I was even reluctant, after just the initial design iteration passes that happen in my head automatically (does this come off as bragging? I never know, it's not quite complaining... oh well) to add 'crafted' to that. The economic incentives and behaviours in this case would just get twisty SO fast. Players unable to find new gear to buy because a rich person who wants Social Org points just keeps buying it up and donating it, FORCING them to go through the 'tower'. Players running the tower to get the gear just so they can sell it back to the same sort of person who wants the points for cash and have it just be re-donated...

My 'internal alarms' rang about 3 more times but I don't have the wish to go investigate what I'm 'sensing'. Yes, these things are 'fixable', but 'fighting with the nature of your economic actors' never goes well. You almost always lose.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

I was even reluctant, after just the initial design iteration passes that happen in my head automatically (does this come off as bragging? I never know, it's not quite complaining... oh well) to add 'crafted' to that. The economic incentives and behaviours in this case would just get twisty SO fast. Players unable to find new gear to buy because a rich person who wants Social Org points just keeps buying it up and donating it, FORCING them to go through the 'tower'. Players running the tower to get the gear just so they can sell it back to the same sort of person who wants the points for cash and have it just be re-donated...

No bragging at all. I completely understand what you're talking about cause I'm the same. When I see someone else's design suggestion, the literal first thought that comes to my mind is "how can I break this completely?" I try to apply the same thinking to my own suggestions, but I either miss some stuff or come up with solutions later on and forget to write them down or just decide not to cause barely anyone should care about what some rando on the internet has come up with.

As for that kind of exploit, I think I mentioned diminishing returns on donating the same gear. Maybe it was in the additional explanation on this idea that I wrote for Crow. Another obvious solution would be to put markers on the gear that has gone through the system or just make it bounded to the recipient and only meant for deconstruction later on. But yeah, I'm sure there's at least a few other exploits that I've missed in the overall system, just cause it was the first pass on it. And, same as you, I'm sure that if even I was able to come up with a semi-ok system to address some potential difficulties in casuals' lives, then Intrepid definitely could do the same thing and better.

There's only one problem with that kind of logic though. There's been countless games where the solution to whichever problems seems so damn obvious that the devs would have to either be stupid or explicitly malicious in their design choices to have those issues still in the game. There's of course the chance that the problem is not as easily solvable as it seems on the surface, but the sheer existence of the problem, update after update, at least hints at some underlying issue with the devs/studio. Now I hope Intrepid can avoid that kind of stuff, but they've had a few problems in their development already so I'd rather first let them prove themselves through good decisions, rather than blindly believe that all their designs will be better than even smth I could come up with. But only time will tell what the situation will be at release.

Noaani

Mag7spy wrote: »

It honestly doesn't matter if you have done world first

I mean... you're the one that bought it up, not me.

If it doesn't matter, why would you say

Mag7spy wrote: »

If your view point is you are the less then one percent that is going to world first

I do agree that it doesn't matter, but you are the one that bought it up, not me. If you know it doesn't matter, why did you bring it up?

And also, you'll note that I specifically didn't say only EQ2. If you read it that way, you read it wrong.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

There's only one problem with that kind of logic though. There's been countless games where the solution to whichever problems seems so damn obvious that the devs would have to either be stupid or explicitly malicious in their design choices to have those issues still in the game. There's of course the chance that the problem is not as easily solvable as it seems on the surface, but the sheer existence of the problem, update after update, at least hints at some underlying issue with the devs/studio. Now I hope Intrepid can avoid that kind of stuff, but they've had a few problems in their development already so I'd rather first let them prove themselves through good decisions, rather than blindly believe that all their designs will be better than even smth I could come up with. But only time will tell what the situation will be at release.

I have the same feeling as you, I'm also here to kick and scream about every such thing I perceive as an error, at least until a justification is provided.

Fortunately, I don't have to yell at Intrepid, I can yell at other people who have such ideas and IF Intrepid also happens to have overlooked the same thing, they can quietly change it and act like they never did that.

So in this case it's not optimism, it's definitely arrogance and in some cases experience (if I talk a lot about something, if not, I'll summon someone I know who has it).

If they start doing silly-seeming things relative to PvP incentives, be 'warned', I'm summoning you.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

If they start doing silly-seeming things relative to PvP incentives, be 'warned', I'm summoning you.

To paraphrase a quote from Gangs of New York "Everybody complains, everybody argues, because that's how you stand up against the rising of the tide".

And I'm ready to complain and argue, in order to stand up against the rising tide of unneeded or unreasonable changes to Intrepid's core designs. Now I don't personally think that Steven will crumble under the pressure from people as easily as Amazon did, mainly due to his alleged freedom from the corporate shackles, but in case he does, I'll at least do the most and to the best of my abilities to prevent those changes.

p.s. here's the scene I was quoting, if anyone's interested (it's the last 10 secs)

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

NishUK

SirChancelot wrote: »

And to argue with with your "having a guide and practice"... You can do that in any style game. I had a buddy that used to study heat maps of player activity on CoD MW/MW2 maps just so he would learn spots to yeet grenades into the distance and pick up kills on statistical guesses. People said he was cheating all the time because the kill cam would show him throwing grenades randomly and getting a double kill... But it just comes down to people are predictable.

I'm sorry, I'm not impressed by your feelings on PvP...

I was there in Modern Warfare days, religiously as a bolt action sniper and refica dual pistol as sub (those subs slaughtering people only a millisecond slower than shotgun and the best close range sub machine gun).
I would not change my playstyle ie to kill the most people, I was an MVP murderer and always doing unorthodox or different things and was mostly defensive minded (and on MW2, an FPS legend via its large and tactical maps, this was great).

You've not taken into account poor matchmaking + non existant measures to punish players that ruin their last or recent games being heavily countered by methods you're highlighting as guarenteed winners.

Yes, most players do have predictable tendencies once you know what they're after, in any PvP game but then it's exactly the same thought process exists for your opponent and that's where the "Chess" game happens which is VASTLY superior to any AI or script. PvE's only answer to this is to "cock block" you and put literal barriers down, ie you need x people to defeat monster, this monster has 100% debuff land rate regardless of PvP limitations, this monster becomes invincible at certain stages, you will not damage this monster optimally if you don't have at least x P/M atk (ie significantly higher than player achieved defense) and the most common one, this mob cannot be CC'd, at all.

Increasing your monster pool via progressing through the system is an achievement check box, it is NEVER a subsitute for mental satisfaction and challenge that can occur beating another players strategy or objectives.
(unless ofc the gear game sucks to the point of where the 16 year old with more game time than you can knock you out without much effort).

Azherae

NishUK wrote: »

SirChancelot wrote: »

And to argue with with your "having a guide and practice"... You can do that in any style game. I had a buddy that used to study heat maps of player activity on CoD MW/MW2 maps just so he would learn spots to yeet grenades into the distance and pick up kills on statistical guesses. People said he was cheating all the time because the kill cam would show him throwing grenades randomly and getting a double kill... But it just comes down to people are predictable.

I'm sorry, I'm not impressed by your feelings on PvP...

I was there in Modern Warfare days, religiously as a bolt action sniper and refica dual pistol as sub (those subs slaughtering people only a millisecond slower than shotgun and the best close range sub machine gun).
I would not change my playstyle ie to kill the most people, I was an MVP murderer and always doing unorthodox or different things and was mostly defensive minded (and on MW2, an FPS legend via its large and tactical maps, this was great).

You've not taken into account poor matchmaking + non existant measures to punish players that ruin their last or recent games being heavily countered by methods you're highlighting as guarenteed winners.

Yes, most players do have predictable tendencies once you know what they're after, in any PvP game but then it's exactly the same thought process exists for your opponent and that's where the "Chess" game happens which is VASTLY superior to any AI or script. PvE's only answer to this is to "cock block" you and put literal barriers down, ie you need x people to defeat monster, this monster has 100% debuff land rate regardless of PvP limitations, this monster becomes invincible at certain stages, you will not damage this monster optimally if you don't have at least x P/M atk (ie significantly higher than player achieved defense) and the most common one, this mob cannot be CC'd, at all.

Increasing your monster pool via progressing through the system is an achievement check box, it is NEVER a subsitute for mental satisfaction and challenge that can occur beating another players strategy or objectives.
(unless ofc the gear game sucks to the point of where the 16 year old with more game time than you can knock you out without much effort).

~sigh~ Called it.

Literally everything about you could have been predicted from your behavioural model, and I hate that so much.

So, my dear 'Defensive Bolt Action Sniper' (I'm sure you are very good and could play with any weapon in whatever style you feel is best), I don't suppose I can try to convince you or explain that the experiences you are describing are not only not the requirement (in terms of PvE bosses) but the effect on enjoyment is not the same for everyone?

I have not been THIS sad to have the predictive models work in a long time. Because it leaves me with only the thought that I hope Intrepid basically ignores your perspective, and I don't like that. Do you have any interest in trying to see the perspectives of others from the position that maybe because of your playstyle and experiences you don't have the full picture?

Or is it always going to be 'this will NEVER be as good as what I consider to be good'?

SunScript

NishUK: People aren't predictable at the top levels.

Also NishUK: Defensive Bolt Action Sniper.

The irony is palpable.

NishUK

SunScript wrote: »

NishUK: People aren't predictable at the top levels.

Also NishUK: Defensive Bolt Action Sniper.

The irony is palpable.

Cool youtube format comment bro

Any personal merit to share or you've just come in for the kidney punch and out?

NishUK

Azherae wrote: »

Or is it always going to be 'this will NEVER be as good as what I consider to be good'?

Azherae wrote: »

If they start doing silly-seeming things relative to PvP incentives, be 'warned', I'm summoning you.

There's a lot to unravel there from your bias toward PvP, I'm not even against PvE but I'm very much against PvE being the highlight attraction that is the focus of most if not at content updates in a supposedly massive multiplayer title.

Anyway, I'm not going to entertain or bore you with my predictable dribble, I'll just step in when I feel like unless the conversation holds some merit and then I'll talk more (or unless coaxed better).

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