Leveling the playing field in instanced PvP

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Please understand that my point was in no way meant to say 'this would result in a good eSports scene for Ashes'.

It was meant to indicate that given what Ashes is, if there were to be any situation in which this were the case, it would end up like this.

My other post above may provide more background on the thought process that led to mentioning it, though. If you find that one to be equally irrelevant, you can just ignore me.

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But then it isn't an MMORPG anymore most of the time.

I am sure that Ashes could make a good 'fighting game', a good 'multiplayer team arena deathmatch' game, or a good 'tactical shooter arena' game, and any of those would be successful. They could even make what you are (indirectly) suggesting, a kit-based one separate from the rest of the game as a generality.

But those will probably not be considered MMORPGs by most people either. Since Intrepid's goal is to make an MMORPG, the question is if that MMORPG, with most if not all of its MMORPG elements INTACT, could make a good eSport.

According to your definitions, the answer is most likely no.

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I think the closest thing to that is WoW's world first runs and arena stuff? Though as a complete wow hater I have the most surface-level knowledge about that stuff. But WoW has also millions of players (or at least had), so it obviously attracted at least some amount of esports people.

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I think that would be great.

I just definitely don't think that the concepts of leveling the playing field or equalizing gear in any of the ways mentioned in the OP would lead to that.

The game could, like GW, focus on people 'perfecting' their builds rather than 'gaining direct power', with all 'direct power' being leveraged through nodes, or Guild Perks (which presumably might disappear in Arena matches, but then it's the same thing if they choose perks that affect combat, for whatever reason).

But if it DID do that, there would be no need to equalize that much. It would just be like playing a very slow MOBA. Gear for your bracket, perfect your gear, compete, repeat.

And without the 'concern' that the best Warlock on the server' is 'nerfed' in PvP arena because their Legendary Staff of Resna's Blessing isn't 'allowed' even though it isn't actually explicitly 'superior' to other staves.

I would say that any such requests or appeals to Intrepid would be better focused on getting them to do the gear itemization in a way that prevents the whole 'you beat me through your Objectively Statistically Better Gear' problem outright.

We need some more Diagonal Progression (this is an in-joke, you can ignore it).

Azherae wrote: »

We need some more Diagonal Progression

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Gear will supposedly sum up to a half of your character's power. So your time spent in the game will mean that half of it was spent on gear power and half of it was spent on honing your gameplay skills. Removing a whole damn half of that means that you're removing half of the investment in the game. If both lvl and gear is just given to you - you haven't played the game at all. And that's pretty much what has been suggested in this thread.

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That's my point though. People that only care about arena pvp wouldn't have to play the game at all, because they'd be given the gear to participate in the arena pvp. To me that's bullshit. Obviously GW has a different design, but that whole game's design is different from what Ashes is trying to do, which is why I don't think that this kind of arena mechanic would work (or even should work).

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PvP progression paths in MMOs are a little too much 'freedom' a lot of the time though.

Throwing matches, colluding, outright agreeing with or paying someone externally to let you beat them...

It's theoretically fun, but just ends with the players who want to play legitimately and NOT do any of those things being left in the dust by everyone who does.

Too many problems, which is why the assumption is almost always 'just get to PvP with provided PvP gear'.

Fortunately Ashes will probably have quite a few people willing to pay their Mercenaries to literally PvP, and pay them in 'PvE gear' or enough coin to get it.