Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Enchanting
I am not saying there's perfect equivalence between what I said and what this page discusses, but it would require all the same underlying aspects, so my point is that if they have a certain level of design skill, you can expect things like this to exist.
There were also indicators that it isn't just the Enchanting craft that does this, but, for example, a WeaponSmith might be able to have some of these effects on the sword they are making during the creation process or similar.
Don't take everything said as 'exactly what they say' because they're usually trying to describe, in a few words, a system that has taken months to develop and has dozens of pages of design documents and considerations. I'm not saying to make assumptions either, but still, it's usually better to assume something will be done properly than that it will be done badly.
If you don't understand 'how it can be done properly', then sure, topics like these help everyone including Intrepid.
Edit: word
Are we sure that Intrepid knows how to do it properly? We’re not. Like you said, I’m just bringing forward concerns and conversations because the game is still in development and it has not been made clear that the developers have addressed possible issues.
They especially won't learn anything new after Page 5.
It's just logic.
Imagine you are out harvesting iron ore. Iron ore is needed across all tiers of gear, the higher your gear, the more you need.
However, top end gear also needs materials that drop from group and/or raid mobs.
Since iron ore is essentially limitless (the resource scarcity notion can't really apply to basic resources like iron), it's value will be both nearly fixed and low. However, the value of the dropped items is high. If you were to buy the materials for an item as per what I am describing (essentially Archeage crafting), 95% of the cost of it would be the dropped materials.
Now, why on earth would I risk my shot at getting that 95% of the cost of my new item, in order to get a portion of that 5% for free?
Now, while the numbers above are not necessarily going to hold true in Ashes, the concept absolutely will.
While many players may not enter the game with this mindset, as soon as they lose that dropped component due to having corruption that was gained to get a mediocre amount of iron ore, most will quickly see the error in their ways.
Considering that there are games out there that don’t understand the effects of severe gear power differences, we cannot assume that Intrepid knows any better.
They can definitely gain insight from the conversation being had. Not too much from your and Caww’s suggestion for casuals to just sit and take a beating (hahahaha), but there is insight to be gained from everyone else.
Are you the forums police or what’s up with you coming here to tell us that everything was resolved early on in this thread and that we should stop discussing. Especially when early on in this thread you said that casuals should just sit and take a beating as if that’s ever acceptable game design hahaha.
1. Why are you assuming that casuals can only get their hands on basic materials?
2. What will happen when a dungeon is contested by a group of casuals?
3. What will happen when casuals run a caravan?
1, I'm not, but if I see someone with basic equipment, I am not going to attack them in the hopes they have rare resources. Why would I?
Even then, anything a casual player can get, a hardcore gamer has already obtained.
2, if you are casual and expect to contest something against non-casual players, expect to lose.
That said, casual players should not be contesting the same content as top end players. Casuals will be on lower tiers, top end will be on top end tiers. Top end players would have already been through the lower tiers and taken all they need before the casuals get to it.
This is why tiers are important. There should be no need to contest content more than one or two tiers below where you are focusing, which means only people with around the same quality of gear will be concerning themselves with any specific piece of content. The fewer tiers, the greater the scope of players going after any one piece of content.
3, the same as with literally every other person in the game, they will get others to help.
Running caravans is not going to be a solo activity for anyone.
Especially not after your suggestion. Thank you for your input forum’s police.
No, not at all!
I'm just pointing out that there will be many avenues for success and fun that casual players can find themselves adventuring down ^_^
1. Once again, I think you’re a rare breed of MMO player.
2. Earlier you suggested that tiers would not make players feel like their progress is obsolete and that they wouldn’t be disillusioned eventually after enough patches/expansions have passed. However, now you’re claiming that hardcore players will be grinding entirely different content from casual players. If previous content is not obsolete why would hardcore players not grind it anymore?
3. I never said that running caravans is a solo thing. I just said that hardcore players will most likely want to run their caravans with other hardcore players (for higher success rate) and since they’ve already run their caravans they will be much less incentivized to run caravans with casual players.
People don't get pissed off when they have to replace an item. Quite the opposite, in fact. That is kind of the point of the game. Same with gearing up enough to make content obsolete - it is a great feeling when you just breeze past something that had previously given you a world of hurt.
People get pissed off when they spend months raiding to get gear and then a patch later that gear is replaced by solo quest gear. This is what WoW did many times over.
If new content sees raid gear only replaced by raid gear, group gear replaced by group gear and solo gear replaced by solo gear, everyone is happy. This may well be true, but I fail to see the issue.
Like everyone else, that casual player needs to organize something to suit them.
Yeah… welfare epics replacing the previous top-end gear that had been meticulously optimized is frustrating as hell.
I’d just stagger the gear progression so the previous top-end tier is only starts being rivaled by Tier I of the next expansion.
I have a sort of different approach as to how I would do things (I assume no one is surprised by this).
I would make a game with 15 distinct tiers. The first four would be solo, the next two would be solo and group (if you are good, you can solo it). The next three are group, the next two are group and raid, and the last four are raid.
Then, when a new content cycle hits, simply retune each tier down three steps in terms of the content, but leave the rewards the same. This would mean tier 7 that is originally the first tier of outright group content would then be the last tier of outright solo content, but still drops the exact same items. Then you simply add three tiers to the top.
This will result in a small number of people complaining, but it offers a number of benefits.
The first is that all people that play the game can be assured that eventually, they will be able to see all of the content. There is also the benefit of people being able to go back to past content with ease, should there be reason to do so.
You coming here to say that the conversation is redundant when people are clearly still talking is exactly what policing means. Yes, it might have not been the most fruitful conversation after a while, but we were still talking and your comment is 100% pointless. I guess thanks for letting us know? It’s a free forum, you coming to tell us that the conversation was over on page 5 is exactly what policing looks like. Stop it. It’s ridiculous when you deny such obvious things.
And let’s not forget that you came in saying that you addressed Vaknar’s point on page 1 when on page 1 you had said that casuals need to just sit there and take a beating because they know they can’t win… hahaha amazing game design!
There's no hope dygz... he has to be trolling. And it's redundant by page 1.
After 12 pages of conversation you suggest that I said the following: “You seem to be dead set on having every scenario end in casuals winning. Apparently whoever plays the least and plays solo should get the best gear or no one will play this game’”. When in fact I never said anything close to it. It’s clearly not redundant if that’s how twisted your understanding is of this topic. And don’t make me keep reminding you that Dygz suggested that it would be good game design for casuals to just sit there and take a beating because they know they can’t win… I cannot be redundant or trolling when you two make such troll comments.
Edit: word
I think most devs have seen the issue but struggle to solve it after launch when people have already earned gear. They either resort to some form of equalized pvp like in FF14, lost ark, and wow in legion/bfa or they hand out free gear like in BDO, AA, and in some ways, wow.
Quitters quit, there is no remedy for that. You can give them best gear and they will die to a lvl 1 mob and quit and call the game shit.
Creating weak environment to pacify the "masses" is a sure fire way of leaving the game with only clueless casuals and trolls.
Imagine AoC where casuals can stand "almost" on par with hardcore players cuz of game design. Now imagine an AoC server where there are no hardcore players cuz they dont see the point of investing time in a game that doesnt reward them.
Tbh I am surprised this thread has gone on for so long considering it isnt based on anything concrete and just "it matters" and "game will die" slogans.
One shotting someone because you have better gear than them isn't hard, neither is being one shot.
Considering most games have tried to take steps to address this, i'm not sure how you can say it's not based on anything. It's an issue that is easy to see. The devs have already said that gear will be 50% of power which means they are already taking steps to address this issue.
I'm not sure how this creates a weak environment or would pacify anyone. If anyone wants casuals to be passive, it's you since you want your gear to save you from them. Maybe it would make you passive if you rely on gear to win fights?
Just because casuals are able to have a semi-competitive fight with a hardcore player doesn't mean they are on par with them skill wise or in terms of organization. It's not like this changes the fact that you need a group of players to do content and they need to be skilled so they are successful.
I have a simple question for you.
In your experience, what do players do when they no longer have any meaningful progress they can make in an MMO?
IMO one need look no further than WoW server populations to see this. They swell with new expansions, and as people complete the content they are able to complete, the population drops. Then, as new content (and thus new progression) is added, they come back - until they have completed the progression they are able to complete.
A good MMO will make sure players are never able to cap out on their progression. Before anyone gets to that top tier of progression, a new tier will be added to the game. This applies at the top end of the game, but also at various points all the way down so that no player has ever completed all the progression they feel they are able to complete.
Sure, that may make some people feel like the game is just a never ending treadmill - but that is what MMO's are. They aren't supposed to end until the game closes down.
I'm not sure this is realistic, ideally sure it would be nice to never run out of things to work towards, but short of making the content unbearably grindy or so difficult that the majority of players would never be able to complete it I don't think it could really be done. Players blow through content significantly faster than developers can realistically create engaging content.
Second of all, how am I weak if I expect players with top end tier of gear to not be bothered with new lvl50s? I mean they have already done what these new lvl50s would struggle against. The gear should reflect that. being an ex-competitive player I can go into more details why it should be like this if you want me to.
Let me summarize what OP is trying to convey. Casual/new level 50 players should be able to have semi-competitive fight with a hardcore player cuz otherwise they will die and quit the game and AoC will be lost to the annals of time cuz corruption system is waste. NOW, if the corruption system is such a waste then what is stopping max level players from wasting low level players and making them quit before they reach level 50 itself? Then shouldn't level 1 players be able to have a semi-competitive fight with a hardcore player?
You might find my argument to be non-sensical. Just like how I find this thread to be. But based on OP's assumption my argument is completely valid.
I will quote my earlier post when I took this thread seriously and tried to explain by quantizing gear power.
Edit: By average player I am referring to casual players who have put in some effort into the game and not new level 50s.
What you are describing is an issue in theme park MMOs. In sandbox/sandpark MMOs this is not an issue. The content is the players and events they bring forward not the necessarily the gear you chase. People will always have meaningful progress to make in a sandpark MMO as vast as AoC.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars
@CROW3 You and @Dygz should go hold hands since you both like disagreeing so much. You literally come here just to disagree... Your comment is absolutely pointless and factually wrong.