Protecting Our Casuals: Gear

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

But it doesn't.

You have no numbers, not even true hypothetical ones. You have perceptions of player styles that others explicitly are willing to 'let slide' for Ashes. You have ideas of what Ashes 'needs' and what methods people use to get 'gains'.

What you have is a perception of how games like this are generally designed, and whether you realize it or not, a ton of expectations (I sympathize, because MMO designers have a long way to go) about what style of thing they will come up with.

If you have this feeling because you played Alpha-1 and saw their stats on the gear, I understand, I have several objections to both the stats and the damage formulae that I was able to reverse engineer from Alpha-1. But they're just test data. I'm concerned that we didn't have those things in better shape yet, but if I didn't have a designer for that aspect, I wouldn't have delayed Alpha-1 because of it.

So what's the basis of your concern, in 'numbers' here? Because right now, your numbers don't work even if you start using hypotheticals OR Alpha-1 data.

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

Agreed, which is my point. In order to conclude with such certainty that 40-50% is too much and 20-30% is better, you have to make a lot of assumptions. I count... around sixteen, I think.

Only five of them are even slightly valid even if you assume 'Alpha-1 is exactly how they're going to keep going with this' which they've explicitly told us that they won't. They changed the entire thing to Split Body at the end which offsets the damage calculations, etc.

I personally benefit from these conversations a lot, since it's just 'time I would spend on Cardinal design anyway' and maybe someone will help in my eternal quest to find holes in my struct there, but it has nothing to do with Ashes.

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

In the words of the Spartans:

"If."

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

Then go for it. Discuss some 'ifs' with me.

Because my assertion is that your numbers are wrong. If all you care about is 'please balance gear', then no one who is currently still talking with you, actually has an objection to that.

If you are saying '40% of character's power is definitely too much', show me.

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

I know you want to have tons of faith, but please understand that in the world many players of competitive games come from, developers fail at this more often than not. Sometimes spectacularly. It's really hard to do. I mean, terrifyingly hard.

So the expectation of players of competitive games, is that the devs absolutely will mess this up. And half the time, they don't even want to accept that it's messed up until some stupidly devoted min-maxer demonstrates it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

And then after that, they usually fix it incorrectly for months.

The graveyard of 'competitive' games is filled with dozens if not hundreds of these, and not just from inexperienced developers. So to someone like me, for example, 'highly unlikely' isn't the perception, it's 'this almost always happens'.

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

And if that was the thing Intrepid said, I would then be able to back up that feeling you have, with numbers.

But that is not what Intrepid said. They said that gear is 50% of a character's power, and the number of meanings that term has, in nearly any MMO level of complexity in terms of damage and defense formulas, is too many to count.

As I said, if all you want is balance, then wait for Alpha-2 and test a lot of things. But the thing you said doesn't relate to the thing they said unless they are meaningfully below average in terms of design skill, even considering the recent crop of MMOs we've seen.

But don't go 'claiming that the numbers must be less' as the main argument you have. I have a relatively strong hunch what they based the damage numbers and relative stats on, and 50% is not only fine, I'm personally concerned that it might be too little if you interpret that line slightly differently in conjunction with something else.

Are we cool yet?

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

We don't, though. Unless you mean things like this paper ?

We have strong correlates based on things that sound similar to that, but much fewer direct points based on that. Churn isn't about whether or not a player keeps losing, it's a psychological effect that you build up based on multiple factors, and loss isn't directly a core except when the game's stated purpose is victory, and even then.