Let’s Talk Enchanting!

We have not received permission from Dygz to share the quoted post.

There have been several people including Nerror being vocal about it on the thread. So I think that much is fair, nor is it directly tied to claims relative to BDO.

Anyway Dygz now that I have your attention, I was interested in if you had thoughts on Rinta's post a couple pages back. Specifically, relative to the 'on the benefits of over-enhancing', 'mechanics of enhancing', and 'ragnarok shilling' sections. Thought those sorts of suggestions might be something you'd have a reaction to.

@JamesSunderland - Sorry about that, gonna try to address these as succinctly as possible. Please don't feel the need to respond to all of these at once, I just didn't want to make five posts, whereas given what the points below are, you may not need 5 yourself.

1. I actually spent some time trying to get that wording right. I originally wrote:

"There are three" and then in the second paragraph - "There's a fourth but it doesn't apply to Ashes." and then changed it for clarity. Please let me know if that would have led to less misunderstanding. Also, similarly, let me know if asking about how to change my wordings annoys you or seems condescending, my data on you implies it does not, but you're not often quite as passionate as you seem to be in this thread.

So to 'correct the misunderstanding', the fourth thing is the 'Failstack' style system, the 'way to mitigate RNG on a single enhance', and I've seen no indication this applies to Ashes, but it's also true that I don't know, so I will 'assign' someone to ask this question in the upcoming LiveStream. I don't expect an answer, though, since if there was a rigid one, this entire topic would be much less meaningful.

tl:dr, the fourth system I am talking about is 'Failstacks' and the fact that players have to learn and make a system out of that, to the point of disengagement. Even if the game allows one rely on other people for enhancing, that just creates a more complex, possibly scam-filled environment if any form of RNG manipulation is involved, without additional systems meant to show the 'customer' that the 'reductions' have been applied.

2. As for the maintenance of power gaps, I don't believe I mentioned P2W.

I believe I was making the point that I don't like the feeling of the constant shifting Catchup mechanics. In BDO I benefit from them immensely, but it means there's never any incentive to play the game the way it was historically designed. As a relatively risk-averse calculating person, I simply wait until the company caves to their own data and metrics about other risk-averse calculating people.

BDO is my main point here, not Lineage, but most of my data indicates that older Lineage is more troublesome than even Historical BDO. I can bring a lot of BDO quotes from the devs themselves about why they do things, in order to manage player behaviour, satisfaction, and retention. I also can find some Lineage data but that takes much longer to establish a valid timeline for, and I expect that it would be a waste of your time, since if I missed just one datapoint that would force a different conclusion, you'd then have to 'show it in context' and it would get really long. For now, if you don't mind, let's just skip this whole bit. I can only go with what I've seen developers do recently, so I doubt we'll be able to agree, especially if I reference a game that is dear to you.

3. I think that was my point, developers constantly misunderstand player incentives because game developers don't usually study psychology to the required level.

MMO developers in general have been really, REALLY bad at this for the last 10 years. I know that's what they're missing because THEY say it. And most of the time, the 'average player' or the 'average psychologist' could have told them long before they even did something, that a system will not work as intended or will receive considerably less engagement. Forcing engagement as a way of making players deal with your system works until some equivalent game that does not force it, appears. I feel Ashes can do better than this.

And yes, I'm implicitly implying that I am that person that they need. Someone has to be, right? But of course, I only ask to be judged on that point by the content of my posts. Decide for yourself if I show the requisite skills or understanding for this in general.

4. I was not speaking in terms of an RNG-less system, this is not part of the scope of Ashes.

However, I was referring to 'deleveling' and 'item destruction' as RNG outcomes, which I think they could change at this stage. I stand by the perspective that we have enough item sinks and that RNG item destruction is a poor one in almost every design schema. As I said before, I can go on for a really long time about this, but if the requirement of the conversation is that there are studies that I have access to, I can't just ask Pearl Abyss or NCSoft for their internal metrics on behaviour to run my analysis tools on. I'm just a random forumer, I can't 'prove' that I have the experience or capacity to make these predictions in any way that an opposing opinion will believe. That happens even when one actually has the data anyway, though generally, not with you.

5. You are a gambler.

I have to be direct about this one. That thing you say 'provides you excitement' does so because you are a gambler. To me, the feeling is 'dread', 'disgust', 'aversion', and sometimes 'hate'. And this isn't because I actually enhance things much. It's just the sheer annoyance and disgust at the shitty system that makes me have to do this and then restructure my whole game around it.

Because in BDO at least, if you say 'just get a backup', you're talking about something like 'Ok I need to get my Gloves to TET, which could has a 5% chance of success, I can raise it to 10, but either way if I fail, I either used up 80 mil to prevent it from dropping to DUO or I did it without that, but had another TRI version of these gloves to use.

Where did I GET the SECOND TRI?

Numerically, the 'backup gear' is supposed to be a 'consequence'. Technically game design wise it's SUPPOSED to be a disincentive, to keep power curves flatter. Overenchanting failures are supposed to hurt the majority of players by design because that's the easy way the designers chose to control their economy. The argument from me is 'y'all can do better than adding a system whose purpose is to threaten players with a punishment'.

This is not a thing that a gambler's mind synchronizes with as far as I know. That , I can find any number of studies on. I am not trying to say that you should not be the way you are, but I do not want Ashes to use an unnecessary system, and certainly not to base their choices on whether or not to use that system on the gambler's mindset unless that is definitely their target audience.

I would hope that the game will be enjoyable to you if they do not apply as strong of a gambling system, but please understand that for many others (as you can see in this thread) it does not provide any excitement. And for me, this applies to mob drops as well, yes, at least boss ones, I have a thread on it. If you would like to discuss this fifth point in detail since it's just psychology, that might be the better thread for it.

Ok, that was an essay as usual... but as I said, that's what I do...

Azherae wrote: »

Numerically, the 'backup gear' is supposed to be a 'consequence'. Technically game design wise it's SUPPOSED to be a disincentive, to keep power curves flatter. Overenchanting failures are supposed to hurt the majority of players by design because that's the easy way the designers chose to control their economy. The argument from me is 'y'all can do better than adding a system whose purpose is to threaten players with a punishment'.

A lot of people suggest harsh upkeep mechanics as an alternative to "OE fail destruction". So let me ask this, how would a player feel if after every pvp he had to think to himself "oh, I'd rather not use this super cool weapon that I spent weeks grinding for in the next fight because I don't have resources to repair it rn", so they use weaker stuff and might now lose because of that, even though they've put in countless hours grinding for their powerup.

Imo these 2 systems are pretty much the same. Except in OE's case you're the one who decides to go EVEN FURTHER BEYOND the already powerful level, while in the case of pricey upkeep you're constantly punished for using the thing you spent a ton of time achieving. And at some point you might stop using the item completely exactly because upkeep is too difficult.

Yes, I might be a gambler, but in case of OE I only suffer from my own decisions, while in the expensive repairs system it's the system that punishes me for just using my hard-earned item.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Numerically, the 'backup gear' is supposed to be a 'consequence'. Technically game design wise it's SUPPOSED to be a disincentive, to keep power curves flatter. Overenchanting failures are supposed to hurt the majority of players by design because that's the easy way the designers chose to control their economy. The argument from me is 'y'all can do better than adding a system whose purpose is to threaten players with a punishment'.

A lot of people suggest harsh upkeep mechanics as an alternative to "OE fail destruction". So let me ask this, how would a player feel if after every pvp he had to think to himself "oh, I'd rather not use this super cool weapon that I spent weeks grinding for in the next fight because I don't have resources to repair it rn", so they use weaker stuff and might now lose because of that, even though they've put in countless hours grinding for their powerup.

Imo these 2 systems are pretty much the same. Except in OE's case you're the one who decides to go EVEN FURTHER BEYOND the already powerful level, while in the case of pricey upkeep you're constantly punished for using the thing you spent a ton of time achieving. And at some point you might stop using the item completely exactly because upkeep is too difficult.

Yes, I might be a gambler, but in case of OE I only suffer from my own decisions, while in the expensive repairs system it's the system that punishes me for just using my hard-earned item.

To me, a non-gambler, these systems are not the same. I am on the 'enjoyment' side in that case. Having to maintain my weapon, come up with different weapons, skills, and builds, feeling good when I happen to finally get an item to repair my 'favorite' weapon. Having the weapon and the option of when to use it to be optimal is part of the game, just as for you, being able to choose when to risk the OE Item Destruction is part of the game.

All of these to me contribute to enjoyment, RP, engagement, adaptation. It's a role-playing game. In a competitive game based on maintaining one's overall optimal function for general enjoyment, I would consider that system to be absolute trash and join you in arguing against it.

But if we speak ONLY in terms of economy design, I believe I can qualitatively prove why the 'having to upkeep' is better in any game with a similar economy.

So it's the combination of what Ashes is aiming to be, and the systems:

Roleplay/social focused with adaptable builds + catering to risk-averse players = No OE Item Destruction
Competitive focused with optimized builds + catering to risk-averse players = This is not usually an MMO?
Roleplay/social focused with adaptable builds + catering to risk-attuned players = OE Item Destruction valid
Competitive focused with optimized builds + catering to risk-attuned players = Upkeep is a punishment and invalid, if this is an MMO (the reason the other isn't, is probably that it lacks RNG in interactions of any kind)

Again, speaking only economically here in this last part.

If Steven is a gambler or wants the game to reward the mentality, we'll get the OE Item Destruction for sure, I doubt even a giant pile of feedback would change his mind. I just don't think it's necessary economically and we can do better, so IF he isn't one, I would hope to convince him (or whoever is in charge of this design) that it isn't necessary, because I'm the risk-averse player for whom it's a pain point.

I just got an idea that would have the scaling upkeep, would have a good gold sink, mats sink and a potential gear think in it w/o rng in the OE. Hear me out.

Let's say that each piece of gear consists of 4 part during a craft. Those parts have their own multiple parts too, but when you're about to press the button to "craft the Sword of Awesome" you need to have 4 particular items in your inventory that represent 4 parts of said gear.

Those parts would be linked to the crafting dials and would represent some stats of the full gear, which the dials would then control. Horizontal enchantment would add more effects on these parts. So let's assume we'll be able to horizontally enchant each piece of gear 4 times (once for each part).

Now let's assume that gear decay is not dmg-based, but instead time-based. The decay timer would tick only when you're wearing the gear. Intrepid would decide how long that timer is based on their own calculations of potential time-to-farm-for-repairs. And we could even prolong that timer by using high quality mats and services of a top tier crafter, so each part of the piece of gear could add some amount of time to the decay timer.

Let's say we only need mats for repairs when the timer runs out. But if you have just the base version of said gear, at the end of the timer only one part of that piece will break (at random). So to bring back the timer to full you'd just need to use the material that is used to craft that part of the gear. This would be our main mats sink.

Horizontal enchantment would remove some amount of that timer (the amount would probably depend on the power of the enchantment), because it's putting some burden on said part.

To represent ware and dmg to the gear we'd have some decrease in its power at certain intervals of the timer. And to bring the power back we'd buy "honing stones" (or whatever alternative for different pieces of gear) at the node stores (with tiers of those nodes relating to the lvl of the node). This would be our gold sink.

Now we come to vertical enchantment. I suggest having +8 as the max vertical enchant level. Here's why. When you vertically enchant a piece of gear for "+1", you pick a part of said piece and increase the stats that this part provides (enchantment included). By doing so you double the amount that horizontal enchantment removed from the timer (or if there was no HE, you just remove some fairly big amount). And on top of that you make this part always break at the end of the decay timer. So now you'll have 2 parts break and will have to use more mats to repair the gear.

Once you repeat this +1 on all parts, you'll have a way shorter decay timer and you'll have to pretty much recraft the whole piece of gear once it decays fully (but all your enchantments and power remains). This will be our main gear sink.

And after that step you can now OE that piece. OE is just a repeat of the first round of vertical enchantment and it puts "strain" on your gear parts so you now have to use double the mats to repair any +2 part. And this way at +8 you'll have to double the crafting mats to repair your gear. And if you're going for this kind of OE, you'll just HAVE TO use the best mats and craft at the best crafter, just to balance out the decrease of the decay counter. This would be our great gear sink, meant only for those at the very top of the game.

I think this kind of system would keep the RPGness that @Azherae talked about (because to keep the timer from ticking, you'd be switching to other sets of gear). This system would provide several resource sinks that, in theory, should keep the power creep from growing too much. The vertical enchantment resources should be even rarer in this system (because of the 100% success), so the power growth of the whole server would be fairly slow. There'd be no RNG involved, but OE would still be a huge hit to anyone who tries to play with it. Also, this kind of vertical enchantment would empower the horizontal one, so in a way it'd be DIAGONAL! And ain't that just super cool

We have not received permission from MrMeme to share the quoted post.

Corruption is a system that'll only influence maaaybe 1% of people (if not less). Top lvl bosses with super hard mechanics and open world pvp for them will only reward 1% of the playerbase and maaaybe 10% will ever even come close to the farm itself. Castles are only meant for the big guilds or a big alliance of smaller guilds. Any casual/random player will never even enter a castle. Flying mounts are meant for only ~20 players out of the damn 10K on the server.

All of those are game mechanics in Ashes that are meant only for the very top of the food chain. All of those mechanics are deeply developed and have been shown the most in the dev streams. So this is not a good argument against the OE system that would only influence the top of the top.

We have not received permission from MrMeme to share the quoted post.

You might consider it a bad mechanic, but a lot of other people like it quite a lot. And a ton of top players in L2 gladly OEd their gear even though they knew the risks. You might say that literally everyone who played L2 was a damn gambling addict, but I somehow doubt it.

We have not received permission from MrMeme to share the quoted post.

The only innovation AoC brings are the nodes. Everything else has been done before in other games. And the currently planned form of enchanting has been done in Lineage 2 almost 1 to 1. No one is reinventing the wheel with this system.

I'm all for any more systems, crafters love complex things anyway.

I definitely agree that I wouldn't really worry about 'this system is too complicated', because if there's no easy scam path for a crafter to use, it plays into Ashes' philosophies even more.

I've read your suggestion twice, @NiKr , and idk if you put any value on my opinion/design skill, but I can find no flaws in the system other than 'complexity', and as mentioned, 'complexity isn't a flaw'.

If anything, the 'recognition that your gear isn't in the state you want when you need to use it' would be the 'pain point', but if the timer only ticks down while you're wearing it, I feel like players would adapt to it quickly.
That said, I usually expect negative reactions to complex-seeming systems regardless, so, good luck with that aspect of it.

Azherae wrote: »

That said, I usually expect negative reactions to complex-seeming systems regardless, so, good luck with that aspect of it.

Oh I know that full well. Yesterday I came up with a system to encourage time-casual players to come back to the game, while hardcore players pay for their return (while getting their own reward for it) and got downvoted on reddit to all hell I thought of rewriting that post onto the forum, but was to tired to bother.

But as for this enchanting system, I was just trying to find a way to keep the gold sink that destruction-based OE brings, but leave out the RNG part of it, while also keeping the power creep contained to the maximum.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

That said, I usually expect negative reactions to complex-seeming systems regardless, so, good luck with that aspect of it.

Oh I know that full well. Yesterday I came up with a system to encourage time-casual players to come back to the game, while hardcore players pay for their return (while getting their own reward for it) and got downvoted on reddit to all hell I thought of rewriting that post onto the forum, but was to tired to bother.

But as for this enchanting system, I was just trying to find a way to keep the gold sink that destruction-based OE brings, but leave out the RNG part of it, while also keeping the power creep contained to the maximum.

It definitely comes out as a meaningfully stronger containment, with a much larger commitment to a specific personal weapon. It might be stressful in another way if Ashes doesn't deliver on its Classes and Builds vision (so that people need to change moreso than finding their identity) but that's just my 'designer auto-worry'.

Also, my 'head of Marketing' would never let 'us' use 'Diagonal' as a buzzword, so I don't expect Margaret would let Steven do it either, lol.

Azherae wrote: »

Also, my 'head of Marketing' would never let 'us' use 'Diagonal' as a buzzword, so I don't expect Margaret would let Steven do it either, lol.

What do you meaaan, it's aaaawesome. It's like TUBULAR, but DIAGONAL

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Also, my 'head of Marketing' would never let 'us' use 'Diagonal' as a buzzword, so I don't expect Margaret would let Steven do it either, lol.

What do you meaaan, it's aaaawesome. It's like TUBULAR, but DIAGONAL

And that's why I wouldn't let you use it lol

We have not received permission from Sarevok to share the quoted post.

One of the references mentions Lineage 2 by name and says that this system is similar. L2 destroyed your item completely if you failed OE. So unless Intrepid decides to listen to all the people who dislike that kind of system, there'll be item destruction within that system.

We have not received permission from Nerror to share the quoted post.

Guess we'll have to see how exactly it looks. You might be right and a big part of this whole thread is useless complaining because people screamed about not having any item removal through enchantment system. The rng problem remains, but if the item doesn't go away I see no problem in OE being rng. Especially if you need less resources to repair the item than you would've to re-craft it.