This statement can be taken in different ways, so I guess I'll share mine.
I agree. If I played 6 hours a day, I fully expect to have better gear than someone who plays only a couple hours every now and then. I've experienced much more than he has in the game. Overtime he'll be able to get my gear, and by that point, I will most likely have better gear than him.
That's the way I view the statement. Basically, those who play longer, will get the better gear first and foremost. It's entirely possible for casual players to get the gear, but those who play longer will be able to attain the top notch stuff right away.
Oh, and he doesnt say just 'how' great the gear will be, as opposed to 'casual' gear. We know that some of the best gear will be coming from RvR Capital raids. There's also the gear you can get from the public quests and influence system. Crafting will probably have some great items, since we know Mark Jacobs wants it to actually be useful, and not some worthless time/moneysink. There will also be three end-game PvE dungeons, and an RvR one, so those might also have some good gear to attain.
Those are the big end-game item sources I can think of at the moment. Can't really rank them in terms of greatness yet. From what we know, Casuals will be able to do all of that content, just slower than those who spend more time playing the game.
I guess until he comments on it further more, it will just be a huge opinion fest.
Oh, I just had to comment on one thing that really irked me.
"However, the quote posted was: 'we do feel that a great time investment must yield great gear.' Great yields great, so spend twice as much time and your gear will be twice as good? Maybe that is not the way the statement was meant but that is the way that I read it."
I find that your assumption of spending twice as much time and your gear will be twice as good to be asinine. No MMO does that. You may get more gear in the extra time spent, or some gear that's a notch above the other stuff, but not gear that's twice as powerful.
EDIT: added/changed some things.
EDIT #2: Lance Robertson had some good things to say on items and time spent getting them in the Podcast here on this site.
Oh, I just had to comment on one thing that really irked me.
"However, the quote posted was: 'we do feel that a great time investment must yield great gear.' Great yields great, so spend twice as much time and your gear will be twice as good? Maybe that is not the way the statement was meant but that is the way that I read it."
I find that your assumption of spending twice as much time and your gear will be twice as good to be asinine. No MMO does that. You may get more gear in the extra time spent, or some gear that's a notch above the other stuff, but not gear that's twice as powerful.
Hopefully you're not going to lose any sleep over it.
If you look at the quoted statement literally and mathematically I don't see why you think my interpretation to be asinine. Firstly he describes the gear in question as 'great'. By definition great means very good, extraordinary, etc. not simply a 'notch above' or a little better. Therefore the suggestion is that the 'great' gear is substantially better than the 'not-great' gear. Of course in what capacity is unclear - it could be power, size, etc.
Secondly he uses the same adjective to describe the time investment required. In other words, a sizable time investment should be paid off with a sizable reward. This suggests a linear or one-to-one pay off not one of diminishing returns like you are describing. My comment of 2 for 2 was merely an example only to differentiate it from a game like EVE where a 10X investment buys a 10% better weapon and a 100X gets you about 20%.
Regardless, my first point says that he suggests the existence of very good gear and my second suggests that there will be some significant time investment required to get it. Yes I might be playing the devil's advocate but I don't think it's a stretch given his statement. Maybe he was exaggerating or maybe they are not going to implement all of their beliefs into WAR. However I did listen to that podcast and he did more or less say that the game would be significantly itemized yet that it would be better integrated than in DAoC.
Your Interpretation is still asinine because in a gameplay sense, spending twice as much time to get twice as good loot makes zero sense what so ever. You should know that. No successful MMO would ever have a system like that.
You can look at the statement as litterally and mathematically as much as you want, but I think that's your problem. You're trying to disect a statement that was given out as a simple answer to a question. I'm sure he didn't ponder mathematically and litterally over any of the answers he gave out during that interview.
I don't mind with people playing the devil's advocate, but getting 'spend twice as much time to get twice as good gear' out of that statement is just silly.
I'm sure the game will have very good gear, and could take a very long time to get if you consider the situations that I listed originally which will dish them out. I'd say the longest would be the Capital raids. The influence system could be too, simply because it sounds like a faction grind.
TBH if I played a game for a year and someone who has only played for a month was as powerful as me i would feel like I was jipped a bit. Getting better is what MMORPG's are all about -
I thought they were all about playing with thousands of real people. This concept of perpetual character advancement is nothing but a rut that the MMO design wagon can't seem to get out of.
We have not decided on anything specific on this matter yet, but we do feel that a great time investment must yield great gear.
I read this statement as: We still think that we need to have some PvE carrot in our game to encourage continued subscriptions since we do not feel that our game can prosper without it.
You would be right... if not for the fact it has been stated over and over that best loot ceom from PvP campaigns... So your PvE carrot theory flys right out of the window.
Now back to topic. Gear and time to get it is a very delicate problem. Here people seems to all have grasped the concept "if top gear is much much superior and it takes an harcore gamer that can play 10 hours a day to get, that is no fun for everybody else that can still reach top level but cannot use 10 hours a day for getting that gear"
There is the other hand though. If you make top gear hard to get for minimal rewards, why should I go and get it? Yes, a minority will for status symbol and just because +x, no matter how small, is still an advantage, but the majority of people will completely disregards such time sinks, so having the devs do work for a minority of the persons.
I think this is a problem that the devs should focus on because it happens so very often. To take a popular mmorpg, WoW, it came out that only a minority of people (i think it was like 25%) ever went to Molten core. the number of people that went to higher instances was smaller and smaller... so why the devs continued to invest time and resources on things that only a relative minority was using? Was it just because they are the only one whining about lack of content?
Shouldn't it be better to find another solution that would benefit the majority of people? I suppose the campaign system is a step in that direction, what else a dev could do to achieve such a goal?
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
How you can infer so much on the gameplay mechanics from ONE line is probably the most amazing aspect of your overall assumption. We can speculate as much as we want the fact remains, its just that speculation as educated as it may be or as logical as we may see it. The statement is:
"We do feel that a great time investment must yield great gear"
Originally posted by Ohaan
Hopefully you're not going to lose any sleep over it.
If you look at the quoted statement literally and mathematically I don't see why you think my interpretation to be asinine. Firstly he describes the gear in question as 'great'. By definition great means very good, extraordinary, etc. not simply a 'notch above' or a little better. Therefore the suggestion is that the 'great' gear is substantially better than the 'not-great' gear. Of course in what capacity is unclear - it could be power, size, etc.
However and this is a point I think your missing, there is no statement as to what casual time invested will reward. Perhaps the gear for the casual gamer would be good, meaning that the very good gear isnt really that much better? To try and define this statement we have to make further assumption outside of the assumptions we are already making based on that single statement. How long, is a great time investment? How good is the gear for a good time investment? What difference in time are we talking between good, great and excellent? All unknowns and thats one of the base reasons your argument doesnt fly.
Originally posted by Ohaan
Secondly he uses the same adjective to describe the time investment required. In other words, a sizable time investment should be paid off with a sizable reward. This suggests a linear or one-to-one pay off not one of diminishing returns like you are describing. My comment of 2 for 2 was merely an example only to differentiate it from a game like EVE where a 10X investment buys a 10% better weapon and a 100X gets you about 20%.
Regardless, my first point says that he suggests the existence of very good gear and my second suggests that there will be some significant time investment required to get it. Yes I might be playing the devil's advocate but I don't think it's a stretch given his statement. Maybe he was exaggerating or maybe they are not going to implement all of their beliefs into WAR. However I did listen to that podcast and he did more or less say that the game would be significantly itemized yet that it would be better integrated than in DAoC.
Yes its quite logical to assume that if great is a number then the great gear is that same number. However again we dont know the difference between the other types of armour (lets just say good and excellent). So we cannot claim to know how big the discrepancy between the two is. Finally how great is great? Does he means 4, 8, 16 hours? More, less? In a single run, over a long period of time? What is the time for the good gear? I agree with Bhazrak the idea of gear on the power level you are suggesting isnt realistic in a game.
And to end this post, the game has a year to go, they have yet to go through extensive beta testing and anything could change. You cannot infer so much from a single line concerning the game, it just isnt reasonable to assume so much.
The real question is how much of a edge is it. Is it going to be the person who has been on 6 months longer takes on 10 others who haven't, due to the others not being able to hit. Or will it be that person will have a edge up in a 1v1 fight but when it comes to 2v1 they get slaughtered.
This is what I was referring to as well. I fully expect that someone who spends twice the amount of time will advance faster, have better gear, have more abilities. That is absolutely understandable. However, will the advantages from the gear be so overwhelming that it can not be countered by skill to a point. WoW raiding is a perfect example, the gear discrepancy for the people who could/would/liked-to join giant raids and run the same raid night after night had overly significant advantages due to that gear in the PvP settings IMO. One of the reasons my account has not been on for a significant time now. It absolutely should take me longer to get to the top tier if I am playing half as much as the next guy, but when I get there I shouldn't be so overmathched that regardless of how much skill or understanding I have of my abilities, my chances are slim due to gear descrepancy. I understand what u want to say, and i agree with you
There is gotta be a balance between gear and skil, sure a guy that have played 200 hours should easily kill one that have only played 100 hours but there should be a point where a guy with better skills can overcome gear and lvls
There should be that CHANCE that a guy that is lvl 15 can kill a lvl 20 by OWNING him in all the meaning of the word hahaha
Balance... gear and skills should matter but not that much to be imposible to kill
They could make the gear that takes more time to look much better than normal gear and to have small small advantages. It should be like in real life if u have a pair of crappy shoes to play basket and u have the latest shoes it should help even when is almost unnoticable
Comments
This statement can be taken in different ways, so I guess I'll share mine.
I agree. If I played 6 hours a day, I fully expect to have better gear than someone who plays only a couple hours every now and then. I've experienced much more than he has in the game. Overtime he'll be able to get my gear, and by that point, I will most likely have better gear than him.
That's the way I view the statement. Basically, those who play longer, will get the better gear first and foremost. It's entirely possible for casual players to get the gear, but those who play longer will be able to attain the top notch stuff right away.
Oh, and he doesnt say just 'how' great the gear will be, as opposed to 'casual' gear. We know that some of the best gear will be coming from RvR Capital raids. There's also the gear you can get from the public quests and influence system. Crafting will probably have some great items, since we know Mark Jacobs wants it to actually be useful, and not some worthless time/moneysink. There will also be three end-game PvE dungeons, and an RvR one, so those might also have some good gear to attain.
Those are the big end-game item sources I can think of at the moment. Can't really rank them in terms of greatness yet. From what we know, Casuals will be able to do all of that content, just slower than those who spend more time playing the game.
I guess until he comments on it further more, it will just be a huge opinion fest.
Oh, I just had to comment on one thing that really irked me.
"However, the quote posted was: 'we do feel that a great time investment must yield great gear.' Great yields great, so spend twice as much time and your gear will be twice as good? Maybe that is not the way the statement was meant but that is the way that I read it."
I find that your assumption of spending twice as much time and your gear will be twice as good to be asinine. No MMO does that. You may get more gear in the extra time spent, or some gear that's a notch above the other stuff, but not gear that's twice as powerful.
EDIT: added/changed some things.
EDIT #2: Lance Robertson had some good things to say on items and time spent getting them in the Podcast here on this site.
http://cache.libsyn.com/gameon/GameOn_February2nd.mp3
If you look at the quoted statement literally and mathematically I don't see why you think my interpretation to be asinine. Firstly he describes the gear in question as 'great'. By definition great means very good, extraordinary, etc. not simply a 'notch above' or a little better. Therefore the suggestion is that the 'great' gear is substantially better than the 'not-great' gear. Of course in what capacity is unclear - it could be power, size, etc.
Secondly he uses the same adjective to describe the time investment required. In other words, a sizable time investment should be paid off with a sizable reward. This suggests a linear or one-to-one pay off not one of diminishing returns like you are describing. My comment of 2 for 2 was merely an example only to differentiate it from a game like EVE where a 10X investment buys a 10% better weapon and a 100X gets you about 20%.
Regardless, my first point says that he suggests the existence of very good gear and my second suggests that there will be some significant time investment required to get it. Yes I might be playing the devil's advocate but I don't think it's a stretch given his statement. Maybe he was exaggerating or maybe they are not going to implement all of their beliefs into WAR. However I did listen to that podcast and he did more or less say that the game would be significantly itemized yet that it would be better integrated than in DAoC.
You can look at the statement as litterally and mathematically as much as you want, but I think that's your problem. You're trying to disect a statement that was given out as a simple answer to a question. I'm sure he didn't ponder mathematically and litterally over any of the answers he gave out during that interview.
I don't mind with people playing the devil's advocate, but getting 'spend twice as much time to get twice as good gear' out of that statement is just silly.
I'm sure the game will have very good gear, and could take a very long time to get if you consider the situations that I listed originally which will dish them out. I'd say the longest would be the Capital raids. The influence system could be too, simply because it sounds like a faction grind.
We have not decided on anything specific on this matter yet, but we do feel that a great time investment must yield great gear.
I read this statement as: We still think that we need to have some PvE carrot in our game to encourage continued subscriptions since we do not feel that our game can prosper without it.
You would be right... if not for the fact it has been stated over and over that best loot ceom from PvP campaigns... So your PvE carrot theory flys right out of the window.
Now back to topic. Gear and time to get it is a very delicate problem. Here people seems to all have grasped the concept "if top gear is much much superior and it takes an harcore gamer that can play 10 hours a day to get, that is no fun for everybody else that can still reach top level but cannot use 10 hours a day for getting that gear"
There is the other hand though. If you make top gear hard to get for minimal rewards, why should I go and get it? Yes, a minority will for status symbol and just because +x, no matter how small, is still an advantage, but the majority of people will completely disregards such time sinks, so having the devs do work for a minority of the persons.
I think this is a problem that the devs should focus on because it happens so very often. To take a popular mmorpg, WoW, it came out that only a minority of people (i think it was like 25%) ever went to Molten core. the number of people that went to higher instances was smaller and smaller... so why the devs continued to invest time and resources on things that only a relative minority was using? Was it just because they are the only one whining about lack of content?
Shouldn't it be better to find another solution that would benefit the majority of people? I suppose the campaign system is a step in that direction, what else a dev could do to achieve such a goal?
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
How you can infer so much on the gameplay mechanics from ONE line is probably the most amazing aspect of your overall assumption. We can speculate as much as we want the fact remains, its just that speculation as educated as it may be or as logical as we may see it. The statement is:
"We do feel that a great time investment must yield great gear"
However and this is a point I think your missing, there is no statement as to what casual time invested will reward. Perhaps the gear for the casual gamer would be good, meaning that the very good gear isnt really that much better? To try and define this statement we have to make further assumption outside of the assumptions we are already making based on that single statement. How long, is a great time investment? How good is the gear for a good time investment? What difference in time are we talking between good, great and excellent? All unknowns and thats one of the base reasons your argument doesnt fly.
Yes its quite logical to assume that if great is a number then the great gear is that same number. However again we dont know the difference between the other types of armour (lets just say good and excellent). So we cannot claim to know how big the discrepancy between the two is. Finally how great is great? Does he means 4, 8, 16 hours? More, less? In a single run, over a long period of time? What is the time for the good gear? I agree with Bhazrak the idea of gear on the power level you are suggesting isnt realistic in a game.
And to end this post, the game has a year to go, they have yet to go through extensive beta testing and anything could change. You cannot infer so much from a single line concerning the game, it just isnt reasonable to assume so much.
Cheers
There is gotta be a balance between gear and skil, sure a guy that have played 200 hours should easily kill one that have only played 100 hours but there should be a point where a guy with better skills can overcome gear and lvls
There should be that CHANCE that a guy that is lvl 15 can kill a lvl 20 by OWNING him in all the meaning of the word hahaha
Balance... gear and skills should matter but not that much to be imposible to kill
They could make the gear that takes more time to look much better than normal gear and to have small small advantages. It should be like in real life if u have a pair of crappy shoes to play basket and u have the latest shoes it should help even when is almost unnoticable