TTK and Power scaling can be easily fixed.

This gap is necessary in Ashes because if it doesn't exist, the skill expression will be too high relative to the gear chase, for what the game is designed to be.

In other games without this, what happens is that very skilled players don't need gear chase and get to save a lot of time and money (and I mean a lot) just by how skilled they are.

Ashes does not have a 'Gear Score' system or any other system that helps to equalize this effort disparity, so it gets tied to the economy, the thing they can control.

I'm not saying they shouldn't nerf it, but if they do, it will create other problems with bottlenecks in the leveling phase and those absolutely matter with the game's current design.

dmg being cut in half with make skill expression too high? reducing a ranger's snipe from 6k+ crits down to 3k crits is too much skill expression? because you have a chance to react? sorry my 25% left over hp would be too much.... sounds like you want an economy game of who can farm the more amount of gold to buy gear rather than having any skill... rogues are hitting for over 12k non crits... a 50% nerf wouldnt even let someone live through it... not a single class in this game takes longer than 2sec to kill another player and that includes clerics... steven already mentioned he wants TTK to be 8+ seconds.... avg at is 1-1.5sec at the moment...

Aladaur wrote: »

dmg being cut in half with make skill expression too high? reducing a ranger's snipe from 6k+ crits down to 3k crits is too much skill expression? because you have a chance to react? sorry my 25% left over hp would be too much.... sounds like you want an economy game of who can farm the more amount of gold to buy gear rather than having any skill... rogues are hitting for over 12k non crits... a 50% nerf wouldnt even let someone live through it... not a single class in this game takes longer than 2sec to kill another player and that includes clerics... steven already mentioned he wants TTK to be 8+ seconds.... avg at is 1-1.5sec at the moment...

To be clear, I was referring to the gap between tiers of weapon power.

I'd support increases in Armors and PvE complexity/difficulty while leaving the weapons gap as it is.

I'd also support a more wholesale change to stats and the economic design of the game so that the benefits of the skill gap go into exploration and 'soft power' instead of being linked to the gear chase.

TTK is being adjusted soon, so maybe we will get those things, I'm only saying that if they divide the gaps between weapon strength in a way that actually matters, other issues will pop up.

if you mean the gap between rarity/qualities of weapons, the percent upgrade will stay the same in the method i mentioned.

if lvl 10 bronze weapons have 80pp currently and get reduced to 40, and the forsaken weapons have 160 and get reduced to 80, they are still twice as strong.

for exact numbers, a white lvl 10 forsaken longbow has 180 power rating, nerf that to 90, and a legendary lvl 10 forsaken longbow has 300, nerf that to 150... The legendary bow is 67% stronger either way, and it makes the added stats that it gives from being a higher rarity more importance, so if anything it makes quality more important.

So if you just want to keep the rarity system relevant, it becomes even better this way.

The notion that there could be a simple fix to one of the more complex notions of an MMORPG seems somewhat optimistic to me.

Aladaur wrote: »

if you mean the gap between rarity/qualities of weapons, the percent upgrade will stay the same in the method i mentioned.

if lvl 10 bronze weapons have 80pp currently and get reduced to 40, and the forsaken weapons have 160 and get reduced to 80, they are still twice as strong.

for exact numbers, a white lvl 10 forsaken longbow has 180 power rating, nerf that to 90, and a legendary lvl 10 forsaken longbow has 300, nerf that to 150... The legendary bow is 67% stronger either way, and it makes the added stats that it gives from being a higher rarity more importance, so if anything it makes quality more important.

So if you just want to keep the rarity system relevant, it becomes even better this way.

Just so I'm clear, do you care about the PvE impact of these changes at all?

Ludullu

Here's my classic bias

Fast growth at early lvls, but then smaller and smaller growth the higher you go in gear tiers (pic read by column top to bottom, left to right).

Add enchantment on top of this (ease of it decreasing with tiers) and you got yourself a fairly equalized battlefield, instead of whatever the fuck we've got now.

Rarities can provide non-enchanted growth within steps of gear tiers, especially if enchantment is tied to rarity rather than being universal. This way hardcore rich players would still be slightly ahead, cause they got both rare and enchanted, but more casual players would still be able to enchant their basic stuff and not be toooo behind.

As for pve, that shit can be balanced 6 ways to sunday. Figure out your pvp side, so that players don't leave because a single guy can fucking oneshot several groups of people and then balance your pve around the scaling of player power that you landed on after having figured out your pvp.

Azherae wrote: »

Just so I'm clear, do you care about the PvE impact of these changes at all?

What pve impact does lower dmg cause? you dont get to see dmg numbers that are as big? a 67% upgrade to dmg is still a 67% upgrade.... if dps was 100 vs 167.. youre still 67% better? does 10,000 vs 16,700 just look better?

in terms of pve time to kill, they can change mob hp values... do you expect them to never balance classes or mobs in the future?

Ludullu wrote: »

As for pve, that shit can be balanced 6 ways to sunday. Figure out your pvp side, so that players don't leave because a single guy can fucking oneshot several groups of people and then balance your pve around the scaling of player power that you landed on after having figured out your pvp.

exactly, fix numbers around player hp amounts, then fix mob's hp to feel good.
OR
apply player modifiers so that players take 50% less dmg or 70% less dmg?

but they dont want player dmg taken to be different than pve dmg.. so they need to lower pve dmg.. simple as that

Thanks for the response, I'll disengage, based on that one.

Aladaur wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Just so I'm clear, do you care about the PvE impact of these changes at all?

What pve impact does lower dmg cause? you dont get to see dmg numbers that are as big? a 67% upgrade to dmg is still a 67% upgrade.... if dps was 100 vs 167.. youre still 67% better? does 10,000 vs 16,700 just look better?

in terms of pve time to kill, they can change mob hp values... do you expect them to never balance classes or mobs in the future?

This just shows you have no clue - hence Azherae disengaging with you above.

If you reduce damage output, the impacts on PvE are greater than the impacts on PvP.

This is because the effects in PvP go both ways, both sides lose over all damage output. This is in contrast to PvE, where it is only one side that is affected.

This "simple" change you are talking about here would require literally every encounter in the game be altered. This is not something you can do as a blanket change - each encounter would need to be manually adjusted.

You, sir, have no clue.

Rivrocker

Noaani wrote: »

This is what Aladaur said ---> in terms of pve time to kill, they can change mob hp values... do you expect them to never balance classes or mobs in the future?

Did you not read his post where he said they can change the mob values??? If u cut the mob hp values as much u cut the dmg then it turns out the same...
So... you, sir, have 0 clue.

Noaani wrote: »

If you reduce damage output, the impacts on PvE are greater than the impacts on PvP.

This is because the effects in PvP go both ways, both sides lose over all damage output. This is in contrast to PvE, where it is only one side that is affected.

This "simple" change you are talking about here would require literally every encounter in the game be altered. This is not something you can do as a blanket change - each encounter would need to be manually adjusted.

You, sir, have no clue.

Player's hp values arent being changed... nor would armor or any other mitigation... they would take the exact same amount of dmg... if you lower mob hp by 50% too it is same time to kill...

The ONLY change would be a reduction in healing output which is probably what you are trying to bring up but didnt... for an quick easy pick.. bring more healers until they have it dialed in... oh no you need 2 cleric 2 bard rather than 1 cleric 2 bards.

tanks arent going to get magically 1 shot with the same armor values and health. if their defenses are two weak, double their weapon power coefficients...

Rivrocker wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

This is what Aladaur said ---> in terms of pve time to kill, they can change mob hp values... do you expect them to never balance classes or mobs in the future?

Did you not read his post where he said they can change the mob values??? If u cut the mob hp values as much u cut the dmg then it turns out the same...
So... you, sir, have 0 clue.

Yeah, but they need to change the value of each mob.

This means that this is anything other than a simple solution. It is probably the single most time consuming way to deal with this issue possible.

Aladaur wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

If you reduce damage output, the impacts on PvE are greater than the impacts on PvP.

This is because the effects in PvP go both ways, both sides lose over all damage output. This is in contrast to PvE, where it is only one side that is affected.

This "simple" change you are talking about here would require literally every encounter in the game be altered. This is not something you can do as a blanket change - each encounter would need to be manually adjusted.

You, sir, have no clue.

Player's hp values arent being changed... nor would armor or any other mitigation... they would take the exact same amount of dmg... if you lower mob hp by 50% too it is same time to kill...

PvE - even simple PvE like Ashes has - doesn't work that way.

The entire scope of what PvE is in relation to players changes when you make drastic, sweeping changes like you are talking about here. Mana calculations, respawn times, cooldowns, mobs damage output - these things would all need to be basically redone from the ground up in order to support your "easy" fix to an issue that isn't related to PvE at all.

haelin

I also think melee classes in melee form should have a damage block enabled from ranged attacks which allow them to close the gap. It should be very small, but still there. They do this in other games too like Dota.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

The entire scope of what PvE is in relation to players changes when you make drastic, sweeping changes like you are talking about here. Mana calculations, respawn times, cooldowns, mobs damage output - these things would all need to be basically redone from the ground up in order to support your "easy" fix to an issue that isn't related to PvE at all.

But the game is barely built right now, right? We barely have one full biome, and even that is not completed because we don't have nodes up to lvl6, which means that all the mobs that we do have cannot grow up to max lvl.

Doesn't this mean that Intrepid are barely 5% into their PvE development? And then, considering how much of an issue PvP balancing already is - wouldn't it be better to figure out PvP NOW and then build the entire PvE side on top of that figured out PvP?

Or do you think that Intrepid will just do a "x5" on mob stats when those become higher lvl after a node lvl up? Because if you believe that, then OP's suggestion would fit right in, because it's also just a multiplier on stats.

Ludullu wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

The entire scope of what PvE is in relation to players changes when you make drastic, sweeping changes like you are talking about here. Mana calculations, respawn times, cooldowns, mobs damage output - these things would all need to be basically redone from the ground up in order to support your "easy" fix to an issue that isn't related to PvE at all.

But the game is barely built right now, right? We barely have one full biome, and even that is not completed because we don't have nodes up to lvl6, which means that all the mobs that we do have cannot grow up to max lvl.

Doesn't this mean that Intrepid are barely 5% into their PvE development? And then, considering how much of an issue PvP balancing already is - wouldn't it be better to figure out PvP NOW and then build the entire PvE side on top of that figured out PvP?

Or do you think that Intrepid will just do a "x5" on mob stats when those become higher lvl after a node lvl up? Because if you believe that, then OP's suggestion would fit right in, because it's also just a multiplier on stats.

Ok I think I started a derail actually in the usual way so I should clarify what I actually meant.

For various reasons, some of which can be mitigated by 'just changing multipliers' if the PvE is simple enough, when you offer a wide range of potential power ratings for players, what will happen is that skilled players will have zero economic incentive to engage with the 'subsystems' for power gain.

This creates some basic problems, but since Ashes' enchanting is currently ... not finished, I'll briefly reference BDO and TL.

In BDO I can upgrade defense gear and use a jank/weaker/underleveled weapon to save money. Some areas even have direct AP caps but require 'higher skill' to get the drops. This was necessary to prevent the 'no-lifers' and 'whales' from trivializing the content, a consequence of using Enhancing systems in a game at all, really. In Korean MMOs this is the point because 'culturally' this is 'appealing'.

Throne and Liberty has to solve this by doing what WoW does and adding 'Levels' to PvE dungeons but that's the only content that actually gets this treatment. The result is that Moderate Enhancing effort + High Skill will clear the content without too much difficulty (and for some, myself included, more fun) but fully Enhanced players absolutely trivialize it and have to go for the 'Mythic Plus' equivalent. If you want PvE challenge in Open World (or even most Abyss dungeons) for some reason, you have to be significantly below even basic gear-score you could achieve. I'm talking about 'sitting on potentially hundreds of Enhancing mats just so the game isn't bot-tier difficulty'.

When the numerical gap is smaller, the number of 'holes', the number of ways players can find to mess with the difficulty curve, increases for various reasons. This can be solved by rebalancing everything, but I wasn't talking about balance. I was talking about incentives, how people feel and how they treat each other.

TL doesn't allow players below a certain level and gearscore to participate in Dungeons of specific tiers, but this is absolutely not because they couldn't clear them. I know this because my group, who generally don't bother going meaningfully past the requirement in Gear Score, can 4-man them and probably could do it with 3 if trying 'harder' (bringing someone who actually does go past the GearScore requirement).

The reason for this is to prevent the confusion. If 3-4 skilled people at the required GearScore is all you need to clear the content, then 6 skilled people below it, would probably clear it similarly. But this destroys communication and PickUp Groups, y'see.

You can't tell if the person with the half-Enhanced secondary weapon and blue tier Armor is skilled-build, new, or overconfident, and TL doesn't offer either DPS meters or the ability to see damage numbers of other people in the UI, a thing that people will absolutely also want as an option in Ashes and I bet Steven will grant and encourage.

This also spills back over into PvP but this post is already long. Let's leave it as "The PvE players this affects were not going to benefit from any changes."

tl;dr Big power jumps in gear are related to discouraging average players from mixing with high-skill players without either side realizing that's what's happening. In a game with no DPS meters and simple PvE, this is among the only ways to do this.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

tl;dr Big power jumps in gear are related to discouraging average players from mixing with high-skill players without either side realizing that's what's happening. In a game with no DPS meters and simple PvE, this is among the only ways to do this.

I know it's been a huge fucking ask from me, but this is exactly why I've kept asking for cross-lvl interactivity in encounters.

Those same tools could be used for cross-power interactivity. The game sees that a mob was aggroed by a group with high enchantments? Now this mob has a different reaction pattern, a stronger buff effect and a faster enrage. The game sees the same mob attacked by a group with underpowered people? Now this mob calls upon his weaker friends that mainly attack the underpowered dudes (if there's still someone of an equal power to the mob in the party).

And sure, Steven has never been a pve guy, so I highly doubt anything like this would ever appear in Ashes (cause even other mmos don't do this shit), but a man can dream...