How is AoC going to incorporate all level of players in node warfare?

A little background: I'm a avid Eve online player, and many of the systems that AoC is going to have have similar like systems in Eve Online. Eve online however is not a level based system, and that is very good for its pvp playground. Due to Eve online's rock paper scissors systems and role dependancy and specialization options, new players can participate in, and sometimes even perform key roles in pvp. And more importantly no matter what skill level (both player skill and charactar skill point amount) they can all participate in attacking or defending someones home.

How will this be in ashes of creation? If i'm level 20, just got my first tiny house and membership of a node, what will i be able to do to defend my home? Will the level disparity between me and max level attackers make it that i have no chance? will i experiance a dissatisfying time, when i realize that the time and money my character has invested in his or her new home can't realisticly be defended because of level disparity, or will there be options to make yourself usefull?

Here are my suggestions:
Instead of a fixed amount of players, have it set to combined level. Eg 50 lvl 40 players attack, Total pool of levels is 200, the defending team can defend with 40 level 50 players, or 100 level 20 players (Or any combination resulting up to 200 level pool)
Siege weapon efficiency is independant of level or class. This will allow lower level players to partake without having to use immersion breaking scaling effects.
Battleground is split up in brackets of similar levels whenever possible.

When not all levels are equally important in node warfare, the game will become a must be max level to participate, wich will lead to stagnation, and ultimatly player decline and will prevent new player influx

Find more posts tagged with

Staff

Comments

Solvryn

Noaani wrote: »

Solvryn wrote: »

It's not really defensible, because there's no logical reason for it.

There absolutely is a logical reason for it.

MMO's need to provide players with some form of meaningful progression. As soon as players have nothing left to progress on, they stop logging in. Simply look at WoW server populations during a content cycle to see this in play. Massive population when the expansion is launched, and as people run out of ways they can progress, they stop logging in and the server population goes down. When a patch comes in that gives a subsection a new means of progression, that subsection of the population start logging in again. Then when a new expansion comes, everyone logs in again.

So, it is in the best interests of the developer, the game and the players to try and maintain a state where there will always be a form of progression that is attainable for all players, in order to keep all players in the game longer and more consistently.

Essentially, maintaining an avenue by which players can progress is the fundamental goal of developers in an MMORPG. It is what keeps the lights on.

As I have said earlier in this thread, the way most games manage things is by having a progression reset periodically. This is easy to do with gear, and I have outlined two different methods that two games have used to accomplish this.

However, with ESO's CP, there is no easy way to perform a reset. A player with 3k CP will be substantially more powerful than a player that is newly level 50, there just isnt a way around that. This is why CP (or any experience based progression past a basic level cap) isnt a good idea in a game with any kind of PvP aspect. It provides an avenue of progression that simply cant be reset.

Meaningful progression is in the eye of the beholder. It doesn't greenlight standing on the necks of players who are new or up and coming, scaling power at appropriate levels gives people a chance to fight back.

Even though New World didn't do it in the right way, it did allow people to fight back until they nerfed the dogshit out of it. Too many invalids getting their ass handed to them on a silver platter because they didn't know which end of their sword was QQd on the forums.

Noaani

NishUK wrote: »

"Meaningful Progression"

Now that's a worthy thread...

Forget about playing a game to "unwind", "enjoy yourself", "be a part of a great moment or conquest", no...mmorpg's have been dejected to the "meaningful progression only" corner.

I've known through many many MANY posts those certain individuals who are addicted to mmorpg practices that have no room for player growth and who pigeon hole "fun" into how hard you can progress your gearscore.

Just sad.

I've never seen an MMO where there is no room for player growth.

As I've said in this thread, I expect it to take players about 3 years to master any given class in EQ2 - that is a shitload of room for player growth.

I also find it odd that someone so against combat trackers (essentially a tool for assisting in measuring player growth) would also claim to be so pro player growth.

Kesthely

NishUK wrote: »

[ I believe Steven's plan with Nodes "for all" is to incorperate that sense of joy, passion and togetherness that Guilds had in Lineage 2 .

While i hope that this will be acomplished, i fear modern player mentality is going to make that goal hard to achieve. Lets face it, most players had years of conveniance, and even without that, voice coms, discord, google en youtube will allow people to communicate, look up theorycraft and play way differently then in L2 and archage's glory years.

Speedruns, ratings, ladders, content creators, will all attribute that the average player will feel pressured to perform, instead of to have fun. Its a different kind of gaming then back then (wich doesn't mean that either form is bad or better)

NishUK

@Kesthely ye I get what you're saying.

I think they're going to go maybe down the path of many random events to happen in the node area that you'll casually bump into like GW2, so basically to not put node progression on a set path or ideal lvling strategy.

Then dungeons/caves with elite mobs you need groups for, it's just a matter of going down there and collecting whatever resources or how many you can kill, which people would of naturally done anyway regardless of the games systems (go to the harder areas, group up and grind efficiently).

Percimes

Kesthely wrote: »

NishUK wrote: »

[ I believe Steven's plan with Nodes "for all" is to incorperate that sense of joy, passion and togetherness that Guilds had in Lineage 2 .

While i hope that this will be acomplished, i fear modern player mentality is going to make that goal hard to achieve. Lets face it, most players had years of conveniance, and even without that, voice coms, discord, google en youtube will allow people to communicate, look up theorycraft and play way differently then in L2 and archage's glory years.

Speedruns, ratings, ladders, content creators, will all attribute that the average player will feel pressured to perform, instead of to have fun. Its a different kind of gaming then back then (wich doesn't mean that either form is bad or better)

Maybe, but maybe not as much as you fear. Just by the fact that each servers will evolve differently will make direct comparisons more difficult. There will probably be many parallels between them, but, at the same time, they won't be exact copies or instances of the same world: nodes development will play a bigger part on what's even possible to do on a server.

Kesthely

Percimes wrote: »

Maybe, but maybe not as much as you fear. Just by the fact that each servers will evolve differently will make direct comparisons more difficult. There will probably be many parallels between them, but, at the same time, they won't be exact copies or instances of the same world: nodes development will play a bigger part on what's even possible to do on a server.

Maybe in pve boss mechanics it will be less, but because of that i think that the displayed theorycrafting of builds will be even more prevelant. People that consume content of their favorite game are going to watch something thats relevant to them. With ever changing worlds that relevance won't be bossfights, but will gravitate towards pvp, and towards builds. This will result in a portion of those players wanting to play that way as well, or believing that that way of playing is the best way..

I've seen it in some mmo's that early (wrong) theorycrafting, causes a stigma of how to play a class, that resonates so deeply that even the developers are influenced, and are changing the gameplay to match the perceived way to play that class.

When content creator "celebrities" proclaim something good or bad, their fan base will take that as gospel, and this will affect a lot of players even those that are not a fan of that celebrity.

(Fictional example) Asmongold says that Bard/Tank sucks, because that bard type focusses on strengthening defensive builds, and he plays a pure offensive character. This is then considered true, so fewer people play that combination, and those that see one are asking why they play such a bad combination. What you get then is that because its played so much less, it will get the reputation of beeing bad, wich results in even less people playing it. While in reality that combination would outperform other bard combinations in most party / raid situations

NishUK

Kesthely wrote: »

When content creator "celebrities" proclaim something good or bad, their fan base will take that as gospel, and this will affect a lot of players even those that are not a fan of that celebrity.

Stuff like this makes it ideal for deciding who is worth friending or who the bad eggs are in a guild.

I love methods of finding out who the chumps are but you need to calm down a little, the skill augment system is flexible and you can swap your secondary class whenever you like IF you've felt the game has let you down and not made that class combo quite well enough to handle certain things.

Just fyi, the fact that your last sentence over valued tank as a secondary for being "superior" in most party/raid situations has provided me with a negative impression of you that as an officer/big cheese type most of the time in a guild I would use to vote against you + the whinging about how "gamer zombies" are heavily influenced their favourite streamers, gamer zombies are the cattle of the server, make sure you're in one of the top guilds with adults and forget about them

Your opinion of classes should remain impartial, it's Intrepid's fault if people are leaning heavily to certain class combos and more.

Strevi

Potion launchers could use low level players as ammunition

Kesthely

NishUK wrote: »

Just fyi, the fact that your last sentence over valued tank as a secondary for being "superior" in most party/raid situations has provided me with a negative impression of you that as an officer/big cheese type most of the time in a guild I would use to vote against you + the whinging about how "gamer zombies" are heavily influenced their favourite streamers, gamer zombies are the cattle of the server, make sure you're in one of the top guilds with adults and forget about them

Your opinion of classes should remain impartial, it's Intrepid's fault if people are leaning heavily to certain class combos and more.

It was a FICTIONAL example of how a content creator could bias a community against a class combination. We know nothing of the bard nor the augment system, so no game interaction would be derived. However, in my experiance, the average player group, benefits more of a build that allows them to iive longer than do more dps, hence the example.

Percimes

There is a sad irony in the MMO player base. Everyone begs and begs for options to spec their own special way, to tailor their character to be unique, as they want, a special little star. And yet, if anyone dare to play differently than some dude proclaim to be the best way, the right way, wrong spec, not the optimal item for their class and what not, they should be shunned, disregarded and ignored.

Strevi

Potion launchers could u

Percimes wrote: »

There is a sad irony in the MMO player base. Everyone begs and begs for options to spec their own special way, to tailor their character to be unique, as they want, a special little star. And yet, if anyone dare to play differently than some dude proclaim to be the best way, the right way, wrong spec, not the optimal item for their class and what not, they should be shunned, disregarded and ignored.

No no, everyone wants to tailor the game to be in a certain way and then that who wins knows the best way to be played

Solvryn

Percimes wrote: »

There is a sad irony in the MMO player base. Everyone begs and begs for options to spec their own special way, to tailor their character to be unique, as they want, a special little star. And yet, if anyone dare to play differently than some dude proclaim to be the best way, the right way, wrong spec, not the optimal item for their class and what not, they should be shunned, disregarded and ignored.

People go out of their way to gatekeep others, destroy the gate hinges and it'll fall on their heads. Then indulge in a little bit of schadenfreude as their karmic value come backs to haunt them.

Okeydoke

Strevi wrote: »

Potion launchers could use low level players as ammunition

YES. lol

NiKr wrote: »

This definitely sounds like a p2w problem rather than a gear gap one. If p2w allow people to jump several lvls of character progress - obviously those characters will become stronger than those who haven't cleared those lvls.

I know, that's why I said this:

Okeydoke wrote: »

So what I'm describing sounds more like a problem of p2w than power gap, which it is kind of. But the p2w exposed just how much of a problem that big of a power gap is, if players are allowed to reach it.

Huge power gaps are a problem in their own right. P2w amplifies it. Either way, if you have as big and as achievable of power gaps (p2w or not) as I saw in early Archeage, you're going to have problems with pvp competitiveness in your game, not to mention just basic ideals of "sportsmanship."

I mean the whole reason so many people hate p2w, particularly in regards to pvp, is precisely because it helps to create large power gaps between players. This is not going to be an issue in Ashes because there's no p2w. But Ashes could still have a problem with power gaps if they go overboard with their gear balancing between tiers.

And to say the gear gaps in Archeage WEREN'T insane, is insane. That was their whole business model lol. Implement p2w, incentivize it with ridiculous gear gaps. People weren't paying 5000 dollars for a 10% increase in damage/mitigation. They paid that kind of money and more to go around absolutely dunking people. And that's what happened. I saw it. Lived it. And I quit over it. So did thousands of other players.

Edit: So basically my point is...I will play games with some p2w. I intend to play T&L, it will probably have some. Huge power gaps are the deal breaker for me, not exactly the p2w itself. And I view those huge Archeage style power gaps as a problem whether the game is p2w or not.

Child Item