Progression Speed - Gear

Dear AoC community,

I would like to know your views on your preferred speed of progression in relation to equipment. Personally, I very much disliked the way this topic is dealt with in the vast majority of MMORPs that have been released over the last years. For example, New World, in which, after landing on an island, we change weapons about five times after the first hour of gameplay, making visual progression seem meaningless. I remember Steven mentioning that advancing to each successive level, should provide the same excitement, and not just be a +1 number change in the game interface. In my opinion, it is equally important to provide the same excitement when changing weapons, or a single piece of equipment. Maybe some of you will be familiar with such a game like FlyFF (Fly For Fun). I remember those days when, after 2-3 days of leveling, you could finaly go to the blacksmith in town and change your sword/club/bow to a slightly better in terms of stats and visual experience. Of course, you had to turn off the entire UI and zoom in camera before putting on this new piece of masterpiece (celebration ritual). By masterpiece I mean the change from a wooden club, to a wooden club with a nail.

Are there really people in the mmorpg world who enjoy starting a game with a big steel sword with ornaments that additionally covers half the screen ? #LostArk. Is there a more effective way to destroy all the immersion from an RP game ? Equipment changes, should be less frequent, but noticeable. A change of equipment should be an indicator of the work we put into the game (an illusion of the experience achieved by defeating 150 boars). Information to the player that from now on they can go try to hunt higher lvl mobs, or complete a quest they were unable to complete with their previous weapon.

I am very curious about your views on this subject. Also I do not remember Intrepid mentioned on this topic so far, but if it was otherwise, please let me know.

I apologize for the mistakes made, I do not use English on a daily basis.

Greetings!

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Comments

Dygz

New World is a Survival Game trying at the last minute to add RPG elements.
Lost Ark is an Eastern "ARPG".
Steven's pulling more from Lineage II and has a bunch of Daybreak devs on is team, so... I wouldn't expect to see much resemblance to New World or Lost Ark.

daveywavey

heebi wrote: »

I apologize for the mistakes made, I do not use English on a daily basis.

Please don't apologise. You're doing us English-speakers a favour!

Ludullu

Dygz wrote: »

Steven's pulling more from Lineage II

And L2 had great gear progression mainly due to its leveling progress being sloooow as fuuuck. And gear progress was even slower really. You'd usually move onto the next tier of lvls (lvls determined what gear tier you could wear), but would still be wearing penultimate progression step of the previous tier. It was expensive, it was hard to craft and it took several people farming several different resources and even more people farming mats for the craft. And all of this took days.

I fucking loved it and definitely hope that AoC's "45 days of 4-6h a day" of leveling will get us the same kind of feeling.

SongRune

I would find it much less immersive to start with a meaningfully different weapon type than I intended to use long term. Different types of weapons have very different weight balances and fighting styles. If you're going to fight with a greatsword, you need to train with something of at least similar size and style. I'm all for starting with a dull, rusty old hand-me-down, but it would be unimmersive not to start early with a similar sized weapon that you swing in a similar way, no matter how large that may be for some people.

MaiWaifu

I don't mind either way.

As long as I have some control over the overall look of my character and style as I progress.

If I want to look like a ragged, homeless guy with a nail in a plank as a weapon or a graceful noble with a sword, I'd hope for this kind of freedom to role play my character once I've reached a certain point.

I wouldn't want to be limited to only using low level equipment to achieve a specific look.

Nerror

We come through the portals to Verra as heroes, or at the very least as adventures with decent non-magical gear, because non-magical is what Sanctus can offer. We aren't a bunch of ragtag noobs in broken down shit. As for how the magic-using classes know fireballs and healing spells from the get go, after a thousand years without magic, is really weird, but I think they just expect us to suspend disbelief on that one.

My point is, I agree with gear progression being ideal, but this is not a game where we'll be getting a good version of that. We might end up with 8 years of monthly cosmetic sales before release.

I have a friend. MMO player. She loves what the game is doing in many aspects, but she is very unlikely to play because visual progression is very important to her, and collecting costumes and such (through ingame means). Ashes is most definitely not catering to that crowd of people who care a lot about visual progression. Having a cosmetics store for many years before release with time limited stuff kills that completely.

Dygz

Yep.

Taleof2Cities

Nerror wrote: »

I have a friend. MMO player. She loves what the game is doing in many aspects, but she is very unlikely to play because visual progression is very important to her, and collecting costumes and such (through ingame means). Ashes is most definitely not catering to that crowd of people who care a lot about visual progression. Having a cosmetics store for many years before release with time limited stuff kills that completely.

Your friend isn't losing the option to display their character's visual progression, though, @Nerror.

I haven't read anywhere that Ashes requires players to wear cosmetic skins at all times.

In other words, your friend can ignore any of their owned cosmetics (in-game achieves or cosmetic store) and still display the base game gear/weapon styles as they level up their character.

If your friend's issue is other players wearing cosmetics, why is that so important that it trumps all the other positive things that Ashes is doing? What does your friend suggest Ashes do to fund itself instead of a cosmetic shop? Is your friend aware that there will be in-game equivalents of items in the cosmetic shop?
Genuinely curious.

Nerror

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

I have a friend. MMO player. She loves what the game is doing in many aspects, but she is very unlikely to play because visual progression is very important to her, and collecting costumes and such (through ingame means). Ashes is most definitely not catering to that crowd of people who care a lot about visual progression. Having a cosmetics store for many years before release with time limited stuff kills that completely.

Your friend isn't losing the option to display their character's visual progression, though, @Nerror.

I haven't read anywhere that Ashes requires players to wear cosmetic skins at all times.

In other words, your friend can ignore any of their owned cosmetics (in-game achieves or cosmetic store) and still display the base game gear/weapon styles as they level up their character.

If your friend's issue is other players wearing cosmetics, why is that so important that it trumps all the other positive things that Ashes is doing? What does your friend suggest Ashes do to fund itself instead of a cosmetic shop? Is your friend aware that there will be in-game equivalents of items in the cosmetic shop?
Genuinely curious.

Ok so the following is not directly quoted from her, but how I interpret what she told me. And yes she knows about the equivalents and all that.

One aspect about how it ruins visual progression is the sheer amount of costumes from the shop. It's not only a couple of dresses or armors that can easily be ignored. It's hundreds of pieces of cosmetics.

And as for you saying she can just ignore it, no, that's not how that works. She also enjoys the character progression and levelling and getting better items, but they aren't more important than the visual aspects. So to her, selling cosmetics like that is not completely unlike if the cash shop sold potions that gave you insta lvl 50 and also sold endgame gear equivalent to what you can achieve ingame. Maybe not at release, but a few months down the line.

I bet you wouldn't like if people just said to you, "why do you care if people can buy lvl 50 and endgame gear in the shop? You can just focus on your own progression".

Again, she hasn't said this directly, and she would also disagree with selling those items in the shop. But I use it as an example to show that for people who care a lot about visuals and cosmetics, it's not just a simple matter of ignoring how the cosmetics affect their choices, or ignoring how they affect the people around them. It directly and negatively affects what they enjoy about the game.

And for those of you who start going on about how that is different because selling lvl 50 boosts and endgame gear affects other stuff in the game, bla bla bla, yeah, sure, but only at release. Not as soon as a bunch of people are already level 50. Using the exact same logic, why would you care about if other people can buy a lvl 50 character if you already have a lvl 50 yourself?

There is also no doubt that she generally disagrees with the nature of the shop and the tactics of only selling time limited cosmetics. And I am sure there is an element of her not being able to ever acquire certain costumes she might have liked too. It's not just one thing.

For my own part, I care about the visual progression a lot less than she does, and I have accepted Ashes isn't a game for that type of gameplay. Costumes are kind of all over the place in Ashes, with no real overall theme or general direction, and that's just how it is. It's too late to change that now with what has already been released.

Plandemonium

It seems to me that I have misspoken, so that the discussion did not move in the direction I intended. I was more referring to what you would like gear progresion to look throughout the entire leveling up to 50. Personally, I would prefer it to look more or less like this:

In a way, I answered myself already, because I used the armour from AoC here for visualisation purposes. This means that more or less this is what the gear progresion will look like. Anyway, I wanted to ask for your opinion. Which do you prefer:

1. Slow progression (from zero to hero) - This would be my choice,
2. Starting the game with a character appearance like the one at lvl 30 (image above),
3. It doesn't really matter to you. You pay no attention to the speed of visual progression. There are much more important aspects of the game for you.
4. Other answer.. describe

I'm very curious about this, because if the game offered very quick access to really cool looking armor and weapons, I'd probably be discouraged from playing it. Of course, I care about making my character look epic, but I want to feel that I've earned it.

Greeting!

Ludullu

heebi wrote: »

I'm very curious about this, because if the game offered very quick access to really cool looking armor and weapons, I'd probably be discouraged from playing it. Of course, I care about making my character look epic, but I want to feel that I've earned it.

My answer is 3, but the game will let you wear extravagant cosmetic costumes from lvl1, so if that puts you off - be warned.

Plandemonium

SongRune wrote: »

I would find it much less immersive to start with a meaningfully different weapon type than I intended to use long term. Different types of weapons have very different weight balances and fighting styles. If you're going to fight with a greatsword, you need to train with something of at least similar size and style. I'm all for starting with a dull, rusty old hand-me-down, but it would be unimmersive not to start early with a similar sized weapon that you swing in a similar way, no matter how large that may be for some people.

I agree with you. It was just to show my point using Lost Ark as an example. Of course, if you want to fight with a huge sword, you should be able to do it right at the start of your adventure. Similarly, if you know that your character will be an archer, you don't use a wand at first lvls. My point was more that this sword at the beginning of the game should not look like a high-level weapon.

Plandemonium

NiKr wrote: »

heebi wrote: »

I'm very curious about this, because if the game offered very quick access to really cool looking armor and weapons, I'd probably be discouraged from playing it. Of course, I care about making my character look epic, but I want to feel that I've earned it.

My answer is 3, but the game will let you wear extravagant cosmetic costumes from lvl1, so if that puts you off - be warned.

From lvl 1 ? Are you sure ? It seems to me that Steven said that in order to put some skin on a weapon, armor - the first thing you need to do is to get that particular item in game. So at the first levels, you should not be able to get any cool looking clothes.

Ludullu

heebi wrote: »

[From lvl 1 ? Are you sure ? It seems to me that Steven said that in order to put some skin on a weapon, armor - the first thing you need to do is to get that particular item in game. So at the first levels, you should not be able to get any cool looking clothes.

Skins yes, costumes no.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Costumes

JustVine

NiKr wrote: »

heebi wrote: »

[From lvl 1 ? Are you sure ? It seems to me that Steven said that in order to put some skin on a weapon, armor - the first thing you need to do is to get that particular item in game. So at the first levels, you should not be able to get any cool looking clothes.

Skins yes, costumes no.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Costumes

To be fair we don't know if there are gear requirements for that either e.g. 'you need to wear a leather body slot to wear a leather type cosmetic'. I asked in the Q&A a few months ago and they said 'ask again later we aren't willing to talk about cosmetics clarifications yet'.

Ludullu

JustVine wrote: »

To be fair we don't know if there are gear requirements for that either e.g. 'you need to wear a leather body slot to wear a leather type cosmetic'. I asked in the Q&A a few months ago and they said 'ask again later we aren't willing to talk about cosmetics clarifications yet'.

Either way, we know this, so people will be running around in lavish-looking clothes from lvl1.

Plandemonium

NiKr wrote: »

JustVine wrote: »

To be fair we don't know if there are gear requirements for that either e.g. 'you need to wear a leather body slot to wear a leather type cosmetic'. I asked in the Q&A a few months ago and they said 'ask again later we aren't willing to talk about cosmetics clarifications yet'.

Either way, we know this, so people will be running around in lavish-looking clothes from lvl1.

As long as putting a skin on a ship, caravans or other things doesn't cause other players to misjudge the class of that equipment (putting a skin of a super-fancy ship with 40 cannons on a fishing boat - I'm deliberately exaggerating), then I'm ok with it.

In every mmo there are costume skins that can be equiped at first lvls, but it is unlikely to come across excessively. Maybe it's also because the people who buy this kind of stuff are more likely hardcore players who quickly run away from the peloton. The moment when peloton catches up with them, they already prefer to put on eq they have acquired themselves.

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