High and low lvl players in the same location

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I had this discussion with other L2ers here and to most of them "train" meant "pulling a ton of mobs and somehow redirecting their agro on a victim player, be that through logging out or through a particular ability". To me trains usually just meant mass farming, so you'd pretty much do the same thing as the above but farm those mobs instead of killing a player at the hands of those mobs.

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Mainly because it'd turn it into a solo game. And if any new player manages to get to max lvl (say, 100-150h) as a solo player - they're way less likely to get right into all the hardcore content at the top, with a shitton of pvp everywhere, with contested locations and with a pretty hard requirement for a party.

The more newbie churn there is in the game, the MMOey the game will feel. And with Ashes trying to go for the oldschool "you're having fun from lvl1 and not only at max lvl" design, they'd need to keep putting out good lowbie content so that after a few expansions the game doesn't just become very max lvl content heavy, as pretty much every other mmo does.

There's several ways to try making this kind of development feasible and I think that planning for max+lowbie content beforehand is one of the better ways.

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I might've used churn incorrectly there? Cause I meant that the game should always have a healthy inflow of newbies, so that the situations where a latecomer doesn't have anyone to party up with are rare.

And if the whole game is mainly aimed towards group gameplay and interplayer interactions, making those interactions a solo thing where the remainder of your party is just npcs would be counterproductive.

And while I can't speak for most players, I personally like games that have great gameplay all throughout the leveling process, especially when that gameplay remains the same. So if I, say, hadn't known about AoC's release and then months later heard that it's a good mmo not only at max lvl (that takes up to 200h to get to) but right from lvl1 - I'd be way more interested in trying it out.

And then if my gameplay consists of bosses/party quests/caravans/sieges right from the start (or within the first few hours) - I'd know for sure if I'm interested in playing the game further.

From everything I've seen in other mmos, the longer they go on for the shorter the path to max lvl becomes. And that path is usually quiiiite different from what you get at the top. Afaik LA had you just run from NPC to NPC for a few hours to reach max lvl and then the game opened up to you with a ton of other kinds of content. I find that quite silly.

FF14 doesn't quite have this problem because it's very story-based and that story continues all throughout your leveling (across all classes iirc). And alternative modes of gameplay come on quite early on too, so it's not like you're time gated from non-story stuff by a huge wall of content.

Ashes already plans on having low lvl veterans due to its separation of artisan and adventure lvls, so it'll probably be a bit easier to find a lowbie party. And I just think that reinforcing that by adding some cross-lvl interactions would make the game even better.

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This sounds like exactly the sort of thing that high level players will have their friends make low level alts to cheese through.

We gotta give low level players their value as PLAYERS, not just as 'an existence that fulfills a mechanic'.

Their TIME has to convert to some benefit to someone, for this to reach the outcome that I think NiKr is suggesting. Because then, at least, a high level player who makes an alt is trading one 'time' for another.

(I'm startin' to feel bad about all these negative half-answers)

Azherae wrote: »

Their TIME has to convert to some benefit to someone, for this to reach the outcome that I think NiKr is suggesting. Because then, at least, a high level player who makes an alt is trading one 'time' for another.

Yeah, my ultimate goal is to have a system that helps the game attract newbies at all stages of the game's life, so that there's a constant inflow of new people. Newbies feeling valuable almost from the start of their gameplay seems like a great thing to have for that goal. So a way to not make that value greater than anything a max lvl player can do (so that they don't try to abuse it as often) would be perfect.

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I know you won't play the game at all, so it's all good, don't worry about us trying to make a good game for ourselves

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Do you mean killed by a player? Cause this is why I'd prefer that people see either others' lvls or at least "threat value", so that you couldn't just "accidentally" attack a lowbie. And nodes will already have locations where both high and low lvl players will be close to each other, so I don't think Intrepid sees this as an issue.

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Imo this issue can be resolved by tight gear balancing and proper ability acquisition lvl distribution. I'd prefer if a 20 lvl difference between people didn't mean a oneshot by the higher lvl player. And that by lvl25 you already have pretty much your whole toolset of abilities, so that you can already try and fight lvl50s, even if it's really hard.

And then Intrepid would only need to separate <25lvl mobs from pretty much all the others, so that the true lowbies can pvp in piece, while everyone else has a chance to fight each other.

Also, slower gear acquisition on higher lvls would help with this too. Say at lvl25 you can get a good set of gear within a few days (even easier later on in the game), but pretty much any other gear from there upwards requires at least a week to get. So more high lvl players will still be wearing lower tiered gear, which would mean that only the char stats and the player skill would be the difference between them and a lowbie. And with gear comprising ~50% of character power, I'd say that the pvp between a high lvl player and a low lvl one would be way more fair than in most games.

This is roughly how it worked in L2, though the ability part was way different and if you were above a certain lvl you might've had a pretty OP skill that let you win way more pvp than you probably should've.

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Well, yes, it would be slow, just like the leveling will be. But at the same time every step up in gear progression will be so much more impactful and valuable. I still remember the times when I got myself an upgrade back in early L2 days. It felt amazing. Getting a shitton of gear quickly would make the progression meaningless and would also make most players feel bad when they get to a point where their only progress can be achieved by going and killing bosses, but all those bosses are guild-blocked, so all those players will pretty much just stop progressing at all.

But if you have an overall slow progression, it would not only give more time for people at the top to start farming bosses before the masses catch up to them, but would also feel much smoother to most players. Obviously the current generation of players will probably dislike slow progression, but the game literally requires 200+h of gameplay to get to max lvl. People who hate slowness are definitely not the target audience.

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Nope, I don't want to separate pve and pvp. Mobs can require different augments or other specialized tools that a lvl25 player just wouldn't have, so that player wouldn't be able to just go and farm lvl50 mobs. Also, there'd be an upwards lvl difference limit on XP and loot, just as there would be one downwards. Lvl25 player killing a lvl35 mob shouldn't get any XP or loot imo. Likewise for a lvl35 player and lvl25 mob.

So while either of those players can kill the mob, there's no benefit in it so they wouldn't do it (well, most of the time of course).

NiKr wrote: »

Lvl25 player killing a lvl35 mob shouldn't get any XP or loot imo.

Hey!

Rude...

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I prefer when most of the things in the world are dangerous even if I've outleveled them. And again, I don't want to separate pve and pvp damages, because Intrepid would have to start balancing the game with that in mind and usually that just leads to shitty decisions.

NiKr wrote: »

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I prefer when most of the things in the world are dangerous even if I've outleveled them. And again, I don't want to separate pve and pvp damages, because Intrepid would have to start balancing the game with that in mind and usually that just leads to shitty decisions.

Going only by what Intrepid has told us so far about how they want to balance damage and scaling, this is going to be impossible.

Normally I don't like to make hard blanket statements like that, but I'd bet you a whole PS5 that they HAVE to change one or two of their tenets because what they want to do can't mathematically be done simply, and adding a certain amount of complexity is changing a game tenet (though I would accept 'losing such a bet' anyway if they did a particular one).

You cannot have 'Meaningful Waterfall Stats' + 'Gear being 50% of character power' + 'No damage scaling by level even in PvE' + '30-60s TTK' all in the same game and still have a good open world combat experience.

ONE of those is going to go, or become so complicated that it might as well be gone, particularly as you get near to max level. The real question is 'which one of them should go', I think.

My preference ofc is biased and I'd prefer the 'no damage scaling by level' to go. But analysis indicates that the best way to achieve what you imply as a wish in this thread is actually for the Waterfall Stats to go, and put the other 'half' of player/character power into skills (with a nice base progression on Main Weapon damage for gear reasons to maintain the 50% of character power part).

So that's what I'm expecting, based on what I understand of L2, since I bet Steven and the team will have a goal relative to new players that is more similar to yours.

Azherae wrote: »

My preference ofc is biased and I'd prefer the 'no damage scaling by level' to go. But analysis indicates that the best way to achieve what you imply as a wish in this thread is actually for the Waterfall Stats to go, and put the other 'half' of player/character power into skills (with a nice base progression on Main Weapon damage for gear reasons to maintain the 50% of character power part).

So that's what I'm expecting, based on what I understand of L2, since I bet Steven and the team will have a goal relative to new players that is more similar to yours.

I'm too dumb with proper gaming mechanics lingo, but from the ashes wiki quote on waterfall stats, that sounds fairly similar to how L2's stats worked (though I'm not fully sure if classes changed growth directions too). Your stats would just grow reaaally slow, but each point would have a fairly noticeable impact (a +4 would be felt greatly). And gear set bonuses would usually give up to +3 (+4 in very rare cases) of a stat and quite often would take away some other stat too.

And so in L2 we had meaningful stat growth, gear that impacted your power (through def values and set bonuses) and pretty slow ttk if the buffs on pvpers were equal (very slow with 0 buffs).

As for the "no scaling" that's not quite what I was talking about. There would be scaling in pve, but it just would be "slow" because the gear acquisition would be slow. And with gear representing 50% of power and, most importantly, your defense values - if you don't have gear that's much higher in "lvls", you gonna get bonked pretty hard even by a lower lvled mob. And the same would obviously apply to pvp.

And yes, a big chunk of the remaining character power would be in abilities, but imo it should be augments and specializations rather than purely the existence of particular abilities. This way your vertical ability progression would be fairly short, but then you'd have a shitton of horizontal progression in all directions and with considerations of all kinds. And mobs would require those augments too, so you'd either need to overpower them somehow or just have a partymember who has a particular school of augments (solos would just be choosing who to fight).

L2 kinda had that too, but on a super basic lvl. Mobs had resistances to different weapons and elements and classes had different weapon specializations and different attack elements on their abilities. Some classes had buffs against particular mob types too. I'm sure FF11 had something similar or, most likely, a much better system (I think we might've even talked about this before?). Due to Ashes allowing us to use any gear - we'd need to find specializations elsewhere, which is where the augments come in imo.