Re: Risk, Reward, Difficulty & FUN: What Intrepid is Missing

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Pretty much. The pvpers that are attracted by these kinds of games do everything in the game, simply cause it benefits them. If only pvers could do the same.

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You get to lvl10 by doing a quest chain and killing a few mobs here and there. Then you can easily get to ~lvl15 completely solo. After that it'll really slow down, but is still more than doable. And that's me talking as a tank, who has the supposedly worst dps in the game, so any other archetype can level even faster solo.

Ludullu wrote: »

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Pretty much. The pvpers that are attracted by these kinds of games do everything in the game, simply cause it benefits them. If only pvers could do the same.

To be fair that is because most PvP games just dumb down the crafting/sourcing aspects to the point where nearly everyone can do them.

I don't think we want PvP dumbed down to the level that they tend to dumb down crafting 'so that the PvErs can do everything in the game too'. That hasn't worked out well for any of my preferred games so far...

Azherae wrote: »

To be fair that is because most PvP games just dumb down the crafting/sourcing aspects to the point where nearly everyone can do them.

I don't think we want PvP dumbed down to the level that they tend to dumb down crafting 'so that the PvErs can do everything in the game too'. That hasn't worked out well for any of my preferred games so far...

While I definitely see your point and agree with both of its parts, I somewhat disagree with its application to even the promised Ashes crafting.

With full trade and proper markets, all any singular players needs to do to craft is to go buy some stuff. All any single players in the crafting chain needs to do is to go do their singular (maaaybe 2-3) profession. At its core both of those things are kinda dumbed down, cause they do not require much thought.

Will the overall process be less smooth than if the server was full of pro artisans? Sure. But it'll still work well enough for people to progress. Or, at least, I assume it would, cause even though the base lvl of material acquisition in L2 was just "farm mobs on a specific class", I don't really see that as too much different from "just cut trees as a specific artisan profession" or "process rocks as a specific artisan profession".

Ludullu wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

To be fair that is because most PvP games just dumb down the crafting/sourcing aspects to the point where nearly everyone can do them.

I don't think we want PvP dumbed down to the level that they tend to dumb down crafting 'so that the PvErs can do everything in the game too'. That hasn't worked out well for any of my preferred games so far...

While I definitely see your point and agree with both of its parts, I somewhat disagree with its application to even the promised Ashes crafting.

With full trade and proper markets, all any singular players needs to do to craft is to go buy some stuff. All any single players in the crafting chain needs to do is to go do their singular (maaaybe 2-3) profession. At its core both of those things are kinda dumbed down, cause they do not require much thought.

Will the overall process be less smooth than if the server was full of pro artisans? Sure. But it'll still work well enough for people to progress. Or, at least, I assume it would, cause even though the base lvl of material acquisition in L2 was just "farm mobs on a specific class", I don't really see that as too much different from "just cut trees as a specific artisan profession" or "process rocks as a specific artisan profession".

Oh no, I meant that the reason PvP players stay in games like Ashes and 'just craft' is because crafting is not complex.

I own items in FF11 that were so relatively hard to make that I needed to get 3 people with the required experience together, decide who was going to be in charge of what functions of the Synergy Furnace, and still spend half an hour with maybe 7 fails (tbf half of those were just bad luck) before we synchronized enough to eventually make the gear.

I'm not saying everything needs to be that level, I'm just noting that we can't really draw a parallel, because Synergy is stilleasier than proper PvP.

Some PvE players can't do the same because they wouldn't be good enough to PvP or craft. It's just that some PvP players are 'only good enough to get carried in PvP so they would also fail at difficult crafting'. Knowing that, the games make crafting simple, because those are the people PvP games need to keep attracting.

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This isn't quite what I meant.

I'll demonstrate by giving the 'crafting formula' for my Legend of Mana main weapon 'White Joker'. Understanding it is not required:

IshePlatinum Knife

---

Base stats: POW 37, Elements none

1 - Spiny Carrot
2 - ShadeSilver 1S, 1U - 42 POW
3 - Mercury 2S, 1U Shade 44 POW
4 - UndineSilver 3S, 2U Witch, Shade
5 - Mercury 3S, 3U Undine, Witch, Shade
6 - Mercury 3S, 4U Witch, Undine, Witch
7 - Acid 3S, 5U Witch, Undine, Witch
8 - ShadeGold 4S, 5U Witch, Witch, Undine
9 - Mercury 5S, 5U Shade, Witch, Witch
10- Glow Crystal 6S, 5U Witch, Shade, Witch
11- UndineSilver 6S, 5U Nymph, Witch, Shade
12- Mercury 6S, 6U Undine, ---, Witch
13- Glow Crystal 6S, 6U Witch, Undine, Witch
14- Mercury 6S, 6U Nymph, Witch, Undine
15- ShadeSilver 6S, 6U Witch, Nymph, Witch
16- Sulphur 7S, 6U Shade, Witch, --- (changed from #5 onward)
17- Cornflower 7S, 6U, 1W Shade, Witch, ---
18- Cornflower 7S, 6U, 2W, Shade, Witch, ---
19- WispSilver 7S, 6U, 3W, Sorcerer, Shade, Witch
20- Sulphur 7S, 6U, 4W, Wisp, Sorcerer, Shade
21- FireStone 7S, 6U, 4W, Sorcerer, Wisp, Sorcerer
22- Acid 7S, 6U, 5W, Sorcerer, Wisp, Sorcerer
23- Chaos Crystal 7S, 6U, 5W, Salamander, Sorcerer, Wisp
24- Sulphur 7S6U, 5W1F, Ancient Moon, Salamander, Sorcerer
25- Acid 7S6U, 5W2F, Ancient Moon, Salamander, Sorcerer
26- Acid 7S6U, 5W3F, Ancient Moon, Salamander, Sorcerer
27- Acid 7S6U, 5W4F, Ancient Moon, Salamander, Sorcerer
28- FireStone 7S6U, 5W4F, Sorcerer, Ancient Moon, Salamander
29- Mercury 7S6U, 5W4F, Salamander, Sorcerer, Ancient Moon
30- Glow Crystal 7S6U, 5W5F, Witch, Salamander, Sorcerer
31- Mercury 7S6U, 5W5F, Nymph, Witch, Salamander
32- Undine Gold 7S7U, 5W4F, Witch, Nymph, Witch
33- Wisp Gold 7S7U, 5W3F, Undine, Witch, Nymph
34- Sulphur 7S7U, 6W2F, Wisp, Undine, Witch
35- Glow Crystal 7S7U, 6W1F, Sorcerer, Wisp, Undine
36- Sulphur 7S7U, 6W1F, Nymph, Sorcerer, Wisp
37- Wisp Silver 7S7U, 6W1F, Sorcerer, Nymph, Sorcerer
38- Ender (note that Rocket Papaya don't Dawnbreak so you can add Tower and then one more Glow Crystal

This is one of the methods to get the outcome I want on this dagger.

It only works on this material.

If I make the dagger out of a different material I need a different formula to get a similar outcome. If I wanted a dagger with slightly different elemental damage I need a different material and a different formula.

If I wanted a sword of the same material I have to come up with a new formula from scratch because the skill empowerment for swords has to happen at stage 28 (I think, but maybe I'd come up with a way to do it earlier).

Combat can be like the above in terms of sequences/synergies, etc. Some games, it is. Compare that to normal game crafting:

"Gather 4-8 things and shove them together". If PvP was 'get your build and then hit a button to see if you win', more people would be good at it.

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Among people I know and know of you are an absolute minority.

I'm not discounting what you're saying, I'm just clarifying that I was talking about a different demographic.

"People who don't PvP because PvP is difficult" and/or "People who do PvP, but would not do crafting in a game where being able to make White Joker was the base requirement for crafting."

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I think this is more of an observation about the player type rather than the content one. Obviously, players who are more interested in stories and lore would be able (and interested in) telling their own stories about experiences related to the games they've played.

PvPers just fight. You can always make stories of revenge, fighting against bigger odds, backstabbings, betrayals, heel-turns, etc etc etc - but none of that is really interesting to majority of pvpers. They just want to kill some dudes and the videos represent that, only having those kills shown off. And, of course, while the first few kill videos might be interesting as a way to see the pvp in a game - everything after that is just repetitive.

Also, when it comes to having those videos on YT, there's the music copyright factor as well. Back in the day, when pvp videos had a shitton of views, people would just use hype music to keep people more engaged and to keep video more interesting. Nowadays you gotta either find some random basic royalty free tune or have your video completely killed in the algorithm, if you use some nice trendy track. I'd imagine this is also why the short form is more visible here, because you either don't need to use music, cause it's a short clip, or you're on tiktok that doesn't give a fuck about rights (at least didn't in the past, dunno about now cause I don't use it).

And on the viewer side of things, I'd imagine that the ones interested in pvp would be more interested in just participating in it themselves, rather than watching a video about it. While people interested in stories are more than willing to watch a video about said stories, or even just about someone else's outlook on the story they've already experienced.

Like, just an hour ago I watched a video of a dude playing Warcraft 3 for the first time and loving it. I played the game myself back when it came out and I've watched videos about it before, but this was a new pov on the theme, so the video was interesting. I could watch countless pvp videos from L2, but over the years I've pretty much seen any potential matchup, tactic and approach to the game, so there's not as much interest for me there (even though I'm endlessly more interested in L2 than WC3).

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As I said, people that like stories will watch those videos. People that like pvp will just go and pvp. It's a "passive vs active" preference.

Crafting is even harder to present well because it's rarely designed in a presentable way, because crafters seem to be an even bigger niche than pvpers.