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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
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I'll give you that argument. You're right. In such a system, that would be stupid.
But that doesn't change my core arguments, which you don't address.
Also, this game is not going to have a couple of hundreds of thousands of players that are engaging in this system in a meaningful way. First, the game will not be popular enough to have that many players by the time the bulk of people are hitting the level cap, and second, many people will simply not have the means to engage in this system.
So, how do your numbers look if we assume ten thousand players, but each of those 18 items that are being replaced (not enchanted, replaced with better items) 5 times each get enchanted 5 times?
Rather than 90 coin tosses, we are looking at 450 as a reasonable number - and when you factor in that much lower population of players engaging with the system the contrast isn't looking nearly as nad as you make it out.
Edit to add; when you factor in that enchanting isn't likely to be 50/50, meaning there will be even more "coin tosses", the numbers start looking even further from what you are saying above.
Hmm, from 450. Chance to get at least 250 successes is 1%. so 1 will get 250 successes other 250 fails. So 50 difference. around 25% difference. This is not small difference.
If you spend time killing a mob and do not get the thing you want from it, you lose that time.
If you spend time assembling items to enchant and don't get the thing you want from it, you lose that time. You perhaps misunderstood what I said.
I wasn't stating that it was or was not gambling, that is a matter I don't care to debate.
I was stating that if you consider it a form of gambling, there is nothing bad about it.
It is the notion that gambling is automatically bad that I reject - and your argument here so far amounts to it is gambling and so is self evidently bad - a notion I reject.
You have not given any reason as to why this "gambling" is bad, other than that you consider it "gambling".
thats why we increased the number to 450 from 90 in the first place tho?
if it is 50/50 - the result from my first calculation will hold effect where from 90 rolls 1 get 60 other 30
My dear,
Everything takes time. Video games themselves cost time. Eating, sleeping etc. takes time. That's an argument that makes a definition impossible if you apply it so generally to everything. The point is that apart from time, you also lose your investment (gold, Materials, items and the gear you use for the enhancing).
And i never said that gambling is a bad thing in itself. I even replied to you and wrote:
"That's not a bad thing to enjoy. It's just a matter of taste. But you shouldn't ignore the impact such RNG + vertical power scaling + long, boring grind and open world PvP will have on the overall game. As I argued, it will not have a good impact. And if this is not brought under control, then you won't have a vibrant economic game anymore."
But this kind of RNG and gear enchanting will damage other game principles, as I very painstakingly tried to reflect in a structured way in the OP. You haven't addressed that yet. Instead, we're having this pointless discussion.
No, there are three different things in play that affect the number of "rolls" that a player will have.
There is the number of slots a player has.
There is the number of items a player will expect to equip in those slots over time (item upgrades outside of enchanting).
There are the number of degrees to which a player wants to enchant their item (enchanting is not binary, there are multiple levels to it).
If you wanted to, you could even add in the notion of horizontal enchatment, which as a notion suggests that Intrepid intend for players to make use of more than one set of gear at a time, to have situational gear.
So, it we assume 18 slots, if we assume 5 item upgrades at level 5 for those 18 slots means a player will enchant 90 items, and if we assume an average of 5 enchant tiers per item, that means we have 450 enchant levels this top end (but somewhat average for a top end) player will want to have a success in.
If you want to work out how many attempted enchants this would take, assume a 25% success rate, even though I expect a higher success chance at lower enchant tiers and a lower success chance at higher tiers.
Then if you want you can add in an undefined number of additional, situational items in to the mix.
Compare that to an expected ten thousand players.
the 5 items in each slot that you want to enchant to lvl 5 are irrelevant. No one cares that the first item you get when you reach max lvl will be enchanted 2 times.
We talking about the item in each of the 18 slots that you will want to enchant to max lvl 5.
So you craft a Bis item, or get lucky drop from boss or whatever. and now you are enchanting this item to lvl 5. After this you get other item that you enchant and ect. Total 90.
So now if you roll 300 times. with a chance to success of each roll 25%. The chance that you will get 90 successful rolls is 2.83%
for 10'000 players its pretty big chance that someone will get all 90 rolls successfully from those 300 rolls.
Abd the opposite calculation: from 300 rolls with 25% chance to success. the chance that you will get no more than 60 successful results is 2.456%. Which with 10k players is still big chance to get.
You can opt to not enchant at all if you like, or you can opt to enchant just lower tiers. Those lower tiers have no risk of item loss associated with them.
It's when you get in to over-enchanting (which is what I have been talking about this whole time for simplicity) that there is a chance of losing items. However, the initial few enchants will have a low probability of anything negative.
It's only if you try to go to higher tiers that you have any real risk, and if a player doesn't wish to take on that risk, then they simply shouldn't.
If you want me to address the points in your OP, I will, but you won't like it.
Your first point has nothing to do with enchanting.
Your second point applies to enchanting. Enchanting gives players choice, they can opt to enchant items or not, and they can even opt which level of enchanting they want to go for - which level of risk they are comfortable with. Additionally, they can opt for purchasing already enchanted items if they wish. These are all options for players on top of deciding exactly which base item they are looking at before enchanting.
Your third, fourth, fifth and sixth points have nothing to do with enchanting.
Your seventh point applies to enchanting - enchanting gives players more avenues with which to be rewarded, if a given player wishes to undertake these avenues.
The problem is your OP wasn't about enchanting, it was about many things that are not inherently linked. As such, when we try to talk about just one of those things, the OP is kind of irrelevent.
The people that have the better items of the first tier of level 50 gear are far more likely to get the second tier of items sooner. Also, not all tiers of items will exist at launch.
Looking at Archage (the game we should be looking at to see how this will go) 5 tiers of items is a lowball number. I'm being generous to you here in suggesting it that low.
You're looking at it so one-dimensionally. Ashes is an open sandbox game with systems that interact with each other.
The combination or a strong vertical power scaling and open world PvP that leads to a one shot fiesta like in Archage will not make high tier gear enhancing optional.
Please please please think about this a second time. These arguments about "it's optional" miss the practical reality and I've heard it 1001 times in Korean MMORPGs. I really have little interest in going through all this again.
The bulk of my first guild didn't interact with regarding at all (we were first on our server to kill the Kraken). About half of my second guild didn't interact with it at all (this was more PvP focused).
The reason for this is simple - you can just buy shit.
Also keep in mind, while this game may be being created in America, it is essentially a Korean MMORPG at heart.
You miss the point. No matter of the numbers, there will always be difference. Yes the bigger the number the % difference will be less. But at the same time each % will hold more rolls in itself.
Now lets go the other way around. So if first 3 enchant levels are safe without chance the item to be destroyed. and the last 2 have chance to destroy the item.
if we exclude the calculation for all first 3 enchant levels. and calculate what is the chance to get 4th and 5th enchant successfully from the first time. Versus the chance someone will fail 4th time, which destroys his item, which he have to get again, enchant to 3rd level again, and then attempt 4th level and fail again.
The chance will be big, and the difference in mats between the 2 will be tremendous
That isn't missing the point, that IS the point. There will be a difference in people leveling and gearing up. Too much variation in this is bad, but some variation is not bad.
There are other ways they could do things, sure, but there is also this way they could do things.
the difference between RNG and leveling is that 1 depend on the player, the other is luck.
Like even in real life there are things that you dont have full control of, and can be considered as "Luck".
But you dont toss a coin and decide what to study for example based on RNG.
A lot of RNG rolls is statistics.
As I said, every item a player acquires from level 50 onwards matters. There will be many such items, with many such enchants. Each of them will have an impact on that players progression. While any given player may have an easy time or a hard time with one item, over time, over many such RNG rolls with this enchanting, it will even out to a small variation.
It won't be perfectly level, but it will be close enough.
In regards to your comment about not tossing a coin to decide what to study, your class choice in Ashes is also not RNG. If we were talking about everything being RNG, we would be having a very different discussion. However, we are talking about a single aspect of character progression where RNG in it is of note past a given progression point.
It is, in an over all kind of way, kind of small.
And again, if you do not wish to participate in it, there will be people that will be enchanting items and selling them - just buy one of them.
Buying gear from the few enhancers is only a sham solution for the individual, not for the game as a whole. Heavy power scaling, one shots, long and boring grind, open world PvP and the fact that a few RNG-happy enhancers set the market price will lead to the same problems. Also the same argument you hear 1001 times in games like Black Desert today. And how is BDO today: Catch up mechanics, short and meaningless leveling phase, one shot fiesta and dead open world PvP.
You're still only looking at the problem I'm talking about from one side.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Enchanting
Personally, I am fine with RNG in enchantment, so long as there are special ways to mitigate the RNG with investment, to a degree. For example, difficult to obtain enchantment scrolls that insure enchantment efforts, and including a buffer of safe enchantment in earlier pluses.[12] – Steven Sharif
There's your "I'm fine with it taking longer to enchant, as long as it's safe" mechanism. No one is stopping you from putting in more effort to ensure that your enchant is completely safe.
Also
It's a progressive tier of risk. At lower levels you have opportunities to potentially lose out on the pluses instead of breaking the equipment. But when you reach a certain threshold, there is an opportunity to essentially destroy the equipment, where you get resources back. But that's a risk that the player takes.[8] – Steven Sharif
We'll get mats back, even when the item is destroyed. And depending on how stingy Steven is, those mats could range from 10-15% of an item's cost all the way to 60-70%.
On another point, this was enchanting in early A2 (curtesty of Flanker's YT video)
I personally hate that approach and do consider THAT design to be gambling. Mainly because the "lose a lvl" and "lose all lvls, but not the item" bs is what creates the gambling feel, in my opinion.
It muddies the waters of the activity to a point where instead of thinking "ok, am I prepared to lose this item or not", the person starts thinking "ok, if I'm lucky I only lose a single lvl. Though even losing all lvls would still be fine, cause this item is rare". This puts people further away from the thinking that Noaani is using for his argument.
Proper enchanters only OE an item that they have, at least, 2 copies of. The current design (dunno if they've changed it since 7 months ago) decreases the amount of people whose thought process would be binary enough to be that safe. Imo THAT is the problem with AoC's enchanting system.
Also, as a personal preference, I'd want the enchant chance to always remain the same 66%.
They saw the BDO data and went 'hold my beer'. (I admire the commitment).
even if it doesnt give you that tremendous power, it will still make difference. And being RNG means some people will get lucky and other unlucky with it. So it creates differences for players based on luck.
These differences lead to bigger differences along the way, when those with the successful enchants get the advantage when fighting bosses and ect. So they only increase their lead that all began from RNG.
Its very similar to Pay to Progress. Just you dont pay with money, but with your luck. The result is the same.
You get Starter boost that only gets bigger
This fact seems to get ignored a lot when it comes to this... Combining that with the 'BDO-Beyond' numbers above, you can calculate the advantage itself.
Exactly. That is the core problem. The Rng enchantment system and all its ways to circumvent it, long leveling phase and grind with open world PvP, strong power scaling only prolong the time and the gap between players and thus increase the frustration of being exposed to one shots for much longer time. The end result is that you have to deal with being useless in open world PvP for a long time and every attempt to get involved as a low level player ends in a one shot. Everything would be solved if the vertical power scaling in the early game, mid game and end game was much more horizontal with flowing transitions.
Now, I would definitely agree that if the safe enchant is completely locked behind pvp then we're royally fucked, cause at that point the snowballers will be the only one safely enchanting their shit, which only make the snowball bigger.
But that's a piece of feedback for another time.
The extremes also remove themselves from the market gameplay more often than not (luckies by stopping and unluckies by leaving).
Of course there's gonna be the crazy people that will keep pushing their luck even if they were already insanely lucky, but in my experience those are the extremes of the extremes, and even more often they're also the ones that burn through the most gear possible.
And I'm too bad at math to calculate how many people would have enough luck required to successfully OE their entire gear set by even just a few steps w/o experiencing a single fail.
Though even THAT calculation doesn't take into the account the point of progression where that person was that lucky. Cause if we try to calculate how many people in true BiS gear will be that lucky - I'd imagine it'll be barely even 10 people on the entire realm, within the time period where that gear is still BiS.
You also have to consider that a lot of people cannot afford NOT TO enchant the stuff they're using. This is especially the case for more rare items.
This always depends on the game, and how it works, but if we take Archeage as an example, if you already have a rare item that you worked your ass off for (and needed a lot of luck to get), chances of you having another copy of the same item are very low.
This is especially multiplied if you are a casual player, or simply a regular player that's not in a hardcore guild, who cannot grind for that item for hours and hours each day.
Some people can afford to lose more time than others, so you have a situation where some people cannot afford to lose any time, therefore it's best they don't even interact with such systems that set you back HOURS and hours of playtime. If that's an option, great, but in a lot of games, this is the only way to play and progress.
This is just me playing devil's advocate btw.
Regarding the actual topic, as long as enchanting isn't the primary source of power (like it is in many games), then it will be fine. As long as it's just there for marginal gains, for those hardcore players who want to push their gear to the max, I'm fine with that.
And I feel this is also a very important point.
In Archeage, it was "optional", after a certain point.
As long as you can just buy stuff that's already enchanted, regraded, or whatever, then it's somewhat fine.
While regrading itself was optional, getting better gear wasn't, so it's either RNG (which includes a lot of grinding for the mats) or a lot of grinding to buy gear outright. It just depends how lucky you feel, but also regrading usually saves you money sometimes - or simply the item you're looking for is not available to buy.
Intrepid has managed to do a thing (at least from that chart) that I personally find really... 'scummy'?
Proving statistical issues to new players takes so long that just 'coming up with a new system' even if a statistician could eyeball it and go 'yeah that's definitely worse' from experience, is a House Bet.
"Prove that this new distribution of probabilities is also rigged/bad and not secretly just the perfect one that will solve all the issues that other games have with this system." is a real tactic that modern games can use.
I'm not even going to bother specifically claiming anything, I'm not interested in even doing the math for this particular probability obfuscation, especially since everything is subject to change. it's barely even worth having the conversation but I can at least let Intrepid know that I bet the consensus response from my group members will be [insert string of banworthy vitriol] when they see that chart.
I'll just remind them that such things have no meaning at this stage.
From what I remember from Archeage, these items were quite expensive, and only really used if you pushed your gear past certain points only the high end hardcore players did. It was just not worth using on lower/mid tier gear, due to the cost - and due to the cost, only those hardcore players that pushed for top gear were able to really afford using those.
From what I see, all of what you said sounds similar to how it worked in Archeage.
Over there. the stuff you got from breaking the item was miniscule, in terms of cost, as most of the actual expense came from the regrade scrolls themselves. Meaning even if you get 50% of mats back, that's maybe only 3% of the cost of the item.
You only received a portion of the materials used to craft a weapon.
Even though, supposedly, it's much "better" for the player, cause even at +9 the chance of item actually going away is only 3%, as opposed to L2's "at +4 your shit can go poof 1/3 of the time" (and even worse chances later on).
Sure hope we hear about some changes to this soon, though its ironic that the last change related to enchanting was mostly about the power scaling itself (at least iirc), so either changing the backend code for this shit is too cumbersome or changing it at all is nowhere near the upcoming plans for the development.