Protecting Our Casuals: Gear

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I mentioned it in one of the previous posts. To me, it seems easier to balance around predesigned sets that have a variety of pros+cons combos rather than having each and every gear piece have it's own combo that could then be combined with 7 more gear piece combos and you might get some imbalanced boost to whatever stat.

And it also either requires devs to randomize those potential combos or design unique ones for each piece of gear. And then on top of that, you have the crafting dials that could boost said combos even higher.

Though again, I'm looking at it through the lens of "I would prefer gear to be more than just a flat boost to your stats". L2 had this in the form of base character stats (int, con, str, etc) that gear would give you, and in most, if not all, sets you'd have a positive and negative stat addition. One of the biggest examples of this was the Plated Leather set.

It was mostly used by rogues and archers. They were already kinda low on hp (especially elven races) so a yet another hit to it would bring them pretty low. But the str boost was big enough to outweigh that negative. And even though it's a t3 (out of 6) gear set, a lot of people used it all the way up till t5/6.

Now obviously the overall stats on L2 gear were very simplistic, because the system itself was pretty straightforward, but I personally like this seesaw mechanic of balancing your stats instead of just getting boost on your base stats. And the example you gave of "I either have +crit or +mag def" is exactly that to me. It's just a "I have my base stats and I can choose how to boost them". It's not a "pro and con" system it's just a choice of pros.

And Ashes will already have a system like that in the form of Tattoos (also taken from L2 btw), where you'll have to pick the most optimal choice of "pro and con" setup.

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From the pov of L2 vet it looks like this: if I see a dude that's 2 tiers in gear lower than me, but I know that the game's gear scaling is very tight - I'll probably go and fight that dude, because I'd be fighting against his skill rather than just his gear.

If we have the same in Ashes, all the casual players, who don't have the skill for the pvp or don't want to be bothered with pvp most of the time, will complain a lot about being attacked by stronger dudes. Yes, you'll allow a skill-hardcore player to fight on more equal terms with better-geared people (that's what was cool about L2 imo), but all the casuals will suffer more from it.

But if we have at least steps of scaling (say, t1 and 2 are close but t3 is a fair bit more powerful, and then t3-4 a close, while t5 and legend uniques are at the top and stronger still), we might keep the casuals from complaining and give hardcore pvpers who want to test their target's skills a better indicator for their targets.

I myself would prefer the L2 balancing, just because I am a hardcore player who will not only put countless hours into the game right from the start but also try to learn literally everything there is to learn about all the classes and their mechanics/skills - so tight gear scaling is way more beneficial for me. But I would also prefer the game to live for as long as possible and I feel like some proper power lvl spacing would serve that goal well.

I think Josh Strife Haeys' video explained it well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGCFxHUsSGU

It's more about the time you put into the knowledge of the game and application of it. A casual player won't know the precise details of class interactions, so of course they won't be as good in pvp as a dude who knows that stuff. And on top of that, the knowledge dude has spent more time honing his skills in the game while casual player most likely didn't.

And all of that is on top of time invested into gear. So imo yes, casuals will lose in most cases, just by the nature of their existence.

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And I'm sure that in all those other games where they were hardcore, they'd have way more skills than casuals in that game. But if you come into this game w/o a ton of research on it and then not spend a ton of time learning about it or just playing it, the chances are - you'll lose in pvp against a person who did all of that.

If gear is scaled in a way that each tier is quite more powerful than the previous one, then player power will be determined by gear tier (excluding the skill, because that takes time on its own). Higher tiers will be locked not only by harder pve, but also pvp. Both of those things take time and skill (which takes time). Any higher tiered gear will be more expensive and will be rarer than the previous tier. So it won't be as easy as "just buy higher tier lol". Because acquiring big amounts of money will either require time or being hardcore in the money-making skill in the game (playing the market, going deep in the artisan skills - both take time).

So all in all, player strength will be related to their time investment. Yes, some time-casual players might have super hardcore friends that will for whatever reason give them BiS gear w/o asking anything in return. But that kind of interaction would mean that the casual player has friends in the top guild on the server, which already gives them a huge advantage over other casual players, but that's just how it be sometimes.

So all I'm trying to say is time-hardcore players will always be ahead and the only thing we can change is how far they are and what the influence of that difference is. Imo tight scaling leads to more pvp, which, I hear, annoys the non-pvpers. Wider scaling leads to bigger difference in power between time-dependent players, but it also allows the non-pvpers to enjoy the game at their own pace w/o worrying that they'll get attacked every day.

And allegedly casual-time/hardcore-challenge peeps might be completely fine with getting pvped every day, but what's the ratio between them and full casual players? I hope Intrepid knows that ratio (at least roughly) and account for it in their design accordingly. Cause we all know that the closer to release we get, the louder the full casuals will become (they always do).

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Everything else is skill (both mechanical and build-related), and those things require time or being hardcore about game knowledge (which kinda takes time too).

NiKr wrote: »

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

Everything else is skill (both mechanical and build-related), and those things require time or being hardcore about game knowledge (which kinda takes time too).

Someone mentioned something recently about how MMO players are on average the least skilled (even within their own Genre) of competitive gamers. I will assume they are talking about physical skills and analysis skills, since that's the only metric you could use across all genres.

This is an easy reasoning to both 'prove' and 'define as irrelevant'. MMOs take less skill of those types, so more people with less skills play them, so the average comes down.

But maybe MMO players that stick around have more of a specific 'skill' that comes up a lot in my circles. "The Will To Keep Winning" as the book goes. Getting better at games may be a function of time and the game's design, but the WILL to keep trying when losing is seemingly independent.

Poor gear balance pushes down more strongly, requiring a higher 'Will To Keep Winning' 'stat' for success, simply because you win/see the chance to win, less often.

Just rambling since 'being hardcore about game knowledge' seems to correlate to this.

Azherae wrote: »

But maybe MMO players that stick around have more of a specific 'skill' that comes up a lot in my circles. "The Will To Keep Winning" as the book goes. Getting better at games may be a function of time and the game's design, but the WILL to keep trying when losing is seemingly independent.

Poor gear balance pushes down more strongly, requiring a higher 'Will To Keep Winning' 'stat' for success, simply because you win/see the chance to win, less often.

Just rambling since 'being hardcore about game knowledge' seems to correlate to this.

Most definitely. And I think this is why pvp games don't live too long. Cause there's only a limited amount of people with that kind of "skill". And exactly why all the current L2 players still play on older versions of the game, because their "skill" is maxxed out and they can endlessly pvp against others, winning and losing yet always persevering.

And I personally dunno what kind of game design could help players hone that skill w/o just having pvp in it and saying "go git good". I hope Intrepid can figure that out and make the most successful pvp mmorpg out there, but only the time will tell.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

But maybe MMO players that stick around have more of a specific 'skill' that comes up a lot in my circles. "The Will To Keep Winning" as the book goes. Getting better at games may be a function of time and the game's design, but the WILL to keep trying when losing is seemingly independent.

Poor gear balance pushes down more strongly, requiring a higher 'Will To Keep Winning' 'stat' for success, simply because you win/see the chance to win, less often.

Just rambling since 'being hardcore about game knowledge' seems to correlate to this.

Most definitely. And I think this is why pvp games don't live too long. Cause there's only a limited amount of people with that kind of "skill". And exactly why all the current L2 players still play on older versions of the game, because their "skill" is maxxed out and they can endlessly pvp against others, winning and losing yet always persevering.

And I personally dunno what kind of game design could help players hone that skill w/o just having pvp in it and saying "go git good". I hope Intrepid can figure that out and make the most successful pvp mmorpg out there, but only the time will tell.

The most important part of PvP game design these days, I think, is making sure that by some means, the loser absolutely understands why they lost and what they need to do about it.

At least then, 'I can't do this, I quit' is an informed decision and not just 'idk what bullshit just happened but I'm tired of it'.

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And as the video I posted says, and I agree, if you decide to learn that knowledge to gain benefit from it - you're hardcore about the game. Also, just having knowledge doesn't always = ability to utilize it to its fullest potential. And that takes time. Yes, it'll take less time because you've got super hardcore friends, but how many people have those kinds of friends? And I'd bet that even fewer people have hardcore friends that would give them hardcore-lvl gear. At which point we're going into discussion of "how many people are we considering in our suggestions, a few hundred special ones or thousands and thousands of people who don't have easy access to high lvl resources?"