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Which Gear Progression / Enchanting Systems would you like to see in MMORPG's?
Andel_Skaar
Member UncommonPosts: 401
This is mostly related to artificial gameplay, aka time sink ,which for one players is enjoyable and grants great feelings of archivements, and for others represents sheer grind and is not a necessity.
This discussion is much more focused and relevant related to PvP Gear rather than PvE gear. But only becouse of the direct implications towards competetivness.
PvE gear is still almost on top, or has the only relevance to the players that only play PvE, or on PvE servers.
I for one appreciated much more the type of games ,like Rift(at least on this matter) which allowed players to accumulate points to reach targeted gear piece in time with 100% chance, rather than most other games which "Enchanting/Upgrading" leaves bitter marks of RNGesus, and opens a whole new perspective from a business point, from selling 100% charm upgrades for lets say 300$, to $ rng boxes, which may or may not give you what you seek even after 500$.
As for the gear progression, there ought to be a system which would make several things possible for the game to be completely enjoyable.
Here are just a few examples:
1.Old, dated gear should be upgradable, competetive like in Aion, or given the opportunity to break down for materials for newly released pieces.
2.Gear could be equalised or carry a hard cap on stats, and the time sink should be focused on Gear Skins instead, like in Guild Wars 2.
3.Casual players should be given a chance to fight on at least nearly equal footing as Hard-Core grinders by making gear stat difference between tiers slight and not a priority compared to skill.
4.Or, there ought to be no gear what so ever, like Skyforge tried.
5.Maybe Gear, Armors, Weapons ought to be earned with skill rather than grind? Purely Arena/PvP points earned Gear, with no implications to grind nor rng and cash shop.
6.Gear should be earned solely with grind and or active playing allowing players to accumulate great amounts of materials/points, which would in return grant you a 100% chance to purchase gear pieces from the select Vendor.
What do you think?
Whats best and worst example, or make some new constructive ideas if you have them please.
Thank you
This discussion is much more focused and relevant related to PvP Gear rather than PvE gear. But only becouse of the direct implications towards competetivness.
PvE gear is still almost on top, or has the only relevance to the players that only play PvE, or on PvE servers.
I for one appreciated much more the type of games ,like Rift(at least on this matter) which allowed players to accumulate points to reach targeted gear piece in time with 100% chance, rather than most other games which "Enchanting/Upgrading" leaves bitter marks of RNGesus, and opens a whole new perspective from a business point, from selling 100% charm upgrades for lets say 300$, to $ rng boxes, which may or may not give you what you seek even after 500$.
As for the gear progression, there ought to be a system which would make several things possible for the game to be completely enjoyable.
Here are just a few examples:
1.Old, dated gear should be upgradable, competetive like in Aion, or given the opportunity to break down for materials for newly released pieces.
2.Gear could be equalised or carry a hard cap on stats, and the time sink should be focused on Gear Skins instead, like in Guild Wars 2.
3.Casual players should be given a chance to fight on at least nearly equal footing as Hard-Core grinders by making gear stat difference between tiers slight and not a priority compared to skill.
4.Or, there ought to be no gear what so ever, like Skyforge tried.
5.Maybe Gear, Armors, Weapons ought to be earned with skill rather than grind? Purely Arena/PvP points earned Gear, with no implications to grind nor rng and cash shop.
6.Gear should be earned solely with grind and or active playing allowing players to accumulate great amounts of materials/points, which would in return grant you a 100% chance to purchase gear pieces from the select Vendor.
What do you think?
Whats best and worst example, or make some new constructive ideas if you have them please.
Thank you
Comments
The acquisition of gear, the progression of power etc. is important to the RPG experience, but if the differences between low and high end are too great, as they are in 99% of MMORPGs, it has very negative, often detrimental effects on the MMO experience.
I don't think having no gear, no power curve, no power progression is the answer.
You just have to reign it in.
Like, the difference between starter gear and end-game gear is like, +1 stat vs. +5 stat.
Usually it's more like +1 stat vs. +5,000 stat.
I know it's fun to go back to lower level areas and just wreck stuff, but not as fun (especially in the long run) if yeah you are more powerful, but you are not invincible and just 1-shotting everything.
You should always be in danger.
You should always be able to play along side another player - even if it is their first day in the game and your 500th.
I think games like Destiny and GW2 have done a fairly good job with scaling, where everything scales so that content is always relevant...
but at the same time, you still have to slog through 10's of levels and acquire all this high end gear etc. to do most of the content in the game, and you are still quite OP in lower-level stuff.
Anarchy Online
Improved Solar-Powered Pistol
You obtain a weapon as a starter and it stays with your fore ever. You upgrade it at certain points in your development. It becomes a source of quests all through out the life of your character until you finally turn it into one of the BiS items in the game.
Or you could just eliminate the vast power gains.
Yes, well Aion had the gear system where lvl 40 with upgraded gear could be fully competetive against lvl 50 for example.
Also i think since game start and endgame tend to be sooo far off, time invested might take weeks or months, there still ought to be a proportionate difference ,since its mostly everyone's purpose to reach the end goal.
So stat difference should by me stay much greater, but once players reach endgame offer the pvp balance to them than. There might be just some protections like normalisation of players which enter low lvl maps to lower their gear stats just enough so that new players could have even some chance in pvp.
That seems reasonable enough for me. Or next best thing.
Power gain is important, but vast/crazy over the top power gain is bad for the MMO side.
There ought to be some even better solutions without total equalisation of players.
Some even say preference should be given to skill progression rather than gear progression, but i think that is ok, but not as correct ,since players will always be guided by that overpowerfull feeling of gear in mmorpgs, so if you cant give them that (or make them think they are), most wont stick.
These are the little things, the building blocks, that help form a community in an MMO.
It happened in SWG for sure.
Crafters set such outrageous prices on goods, you'd have to grind for hours to buy anything - days/weeks for higher-end gear that was pretty much necessary for any form of PvP.
The super rich got super richer, their friends got in on the sweetness of it, everyone else was left fighting over the scraps and toiling away for meager gains/hopes.
Too much like RL IMO.
If I remember correctly, EvE used to have NPC/system created goods/materials on the markets in order to help regulate prices and fight inflation/player greed and price gouging.
I think they stopped doing that, however.
Very sad.
In a full player-run economy where crafted gear is everything, you HAVE to have some control over it or it runs away and ends up more harm than good.
I agree with you on GW2. I had a pretty good time leveling up to 80 and crafting and getting loot etc. but then I kind of hit that wall where it was like, do I REALLY want to grind for the next month to get maxed out gear that is really only like 5% better than what I have?
I ended up buying some gold with RL $ and just bought a full set of max-tier crafted gear.
Bad decision, in hindsight. I stopped playing not too long after.
So neither choice was good for me. Not worth grinding for, lost interest after paying for it.
But as to the open world feeling, and gear feeling, related to genuine mmorpg experience it is somewhat lacking.
Solution might be to offer balance in pvp in the same game like equalised arenas, but at the same time, give a little bit of that hard-core feel of gear relevance in open world so that you dont feel entirely irrelevant and oblivious to the world.
And the arenas, the same equalised ones, should offer genuinely skilled players to get geared, with arena points earned with only high skill of the single player , and reach grinders faster,
i mean, it ought to be tested ,but it could work if implemented right.
The min/max crowd will insist on the very best though and that keeps the economy ticking over.
I do agree with your point though. I've always hated seeing players being gouged by greedy pricing. When that happens I usually just undercut the greedy ones by a big margin and sell stuff for a decent price, and not using an AH so these gougers can't just buy my stuff and re-sell it. I'd always deal direct with players.
It's funny when they start crying about low prices and how your ruining their profits. Screw em.
1.Endgame geared player percentage
2.Endgame gear stat compared to average stat gear difference
It should also be kept in mind, if there is to be gear elitism, how large a chunk of population will get, reach it in reasonable amount of time.
Like will it be
1% given by p2w rng, or
10% by time invested, or it can be even
30%-50% given skill, time invested and strategy combined.
Also how large will the gear gap be..
Becouse i have seen things in online gaming, 1 player beating up 20 in Archeage, and i myself was chased by a big chunk of entire faction in RF Online with them being unable of killing me, i mean its incredible feeling, but it gets ridiculous at some point, and pretty frustrating for the other side if i may add.
There are many examples so far in gaming to see how mistakes were made, and what not to do, that it gives a pretty good margin of how the open world/faction wars/ player gear world should look like.
Yeah, there is a difference between lower and high quality craftsmanship, but a piece or armor or weapon doesn't become "legendary" or whatever until a person does something incredible with it.
So in gameplay details-
All craftable gear would have a measure of quality, based on the quality of materials used, and the skill of the crafter.
This quality would affect things like durability, ease and necessity to repair, etc. as well as maximum potential.
As a player uses this piece of crafted gear, and does things with it like PvP, killing monsters, etc. the item gains experience and levels.
As your item(s) gain experience and levels, they start to take on "magical" properties like the typical +5 strength and/or +2% critical hit chance etc.
If an item levels up enough it becomes legendary, unique, like a Borderlands style system where it gains a special property and gets its own name.
Obviously an item could only advance to it's maximum potential, based on initial quality.
Very skilled crafters, as well as some additional magical applications like blessings or whatever could improve the quality of a weapon and help you level it up.
The kicker? These items could be traded. You could pass down legendary artifacts to your friends, guildies, or simply sell them to the highest bidder.
As for loot, looted items would be the same as crafted gear, of varying quality and at varying levels of progression in terms of experience/levels and magical properties, based on the strength of the monster/NPC who was using it (or hoarding it.)
You could limit the number of legendary items a player could equip, like Destiny does with Exotics, so that they remain sought after, important, and special.
I think that would make for a pretty cool system in a MMORPG that gave fairly equal focus to crafting, looting, but most of all to really customizing and progression your character through your deeds and actions, not just farming and/or buying (but that could certainly be a part of it too.)
BiS Raid Gear = BiS PvP Gear = BiS Crafted Gear
In other words, comparable incomparables. There should be no power gap between all the top gear sets in a game, regardless of how you obtained them. The gear should be exactly the same, but should be comparable, perhaps just specialised in one way or another.
I would prefer a game where all, or at least 90% of gear is crafted, like SWG. I think the SWG system worked great - randomness of raw material quality, combined with experimentation etc, produced a large variety of gear stats and thus variety in prices. Gear degraded, which kept the economy healthy. Some recipes were limited use (e.g. scythe) so some items remained rare. Only problem was there was no cash-sink in SWG, so price inflation was terrible at endgame.
However, I realise the need to incentivise players to participate in raids / pvp, so I'm fine with there being dropped loot. I think I'd rather go with dropped attachments rather than full kit, so everyone would still need to buy crafted gear and then upgrade it using drops from raids / pvp.
Finally, I prefer horizontal gear progression at endgame. Once you max out your character, the power gap between a fresh maxed toon and hardcore veteran maxed toon should be, at most, 10%, but preferably less.
Biggest problem with that kind of a model is the "time/effort to gear acquisition" and RNG etc.
Like, some players will get carried by their friends/guild through a raid and get super lucky with RNG and get all kinds of BiS on their first run.
While others will grind and farm and craft for days/weeks or even months etc. to craft a similar item.
And then yet another player will abuse mechanics, class imbalances, even like lag/latency to get an "easy" route to BiS PvP gear, something that another class or whatever could never do because of balance issues.
I mean those are all fixable or at least addressable problems, but they have to be planned for and compensated for etc.
WoW went through many, many phases both positive and negative over the years with how many ways players could acquire gear with the least possible effort and such, so-called "welfare epics" which at times where from PvE, other times from PvP, other times craftable, etc.
It also makes a lot sense. If you think about a skilled swordman fighting a peasant who picked up a sword from a dead soldier, the swordman probably is somewhat stronger due to professional exercise but the biggest difference is in what he can do with his sword and how much better he can dodge and parry the peasant's attacks.
To make PvP and PvE co-exist in MMORPG game the gap in powers between the highest level and the lowest level should be small enough to give the noobs a chance against the veterans but at the same time big enough to encourage progressing both vertically and horizontally.
I'd also allow RNG in gear for some extent. If you can craft "Soldier's Plate Bracers of Defence" and every one of these items have (+100 armor, +1 stamina), it gets old very quickly. But if there's a chance to crit in crafting and produce a pair of bracers with (+150 armor, +1 stamina, +1 strength) you can keep doing it much longer. Same for other crafting professions.
In addition, games should reward those who have played the game a long time with better gear and/or enchants. I really like the idea of the system implemented in Allods Online (also many other games), where you can enhant your gear with runes. Each rune gives a bonus according to it's level, and you need 2 runes to make 1 rune of a higher level. There should be no cap for this to ensure no player can whine the game is too grindy and the highest tier enchant is too hard to acquire, so players should be allowed to farm these items as much as they want and enchant their gear with no limits. Just don't implement any stupid catch-up mechanisms or cash shop to make it easier with RL money.
One more thing. There should never be such item as BiS (best in slot). There should always be at least a slight chance to improve your gear no matter how long you have played. Players should never be on equal ground gear-wise in MMORPGs, unlike in MOBAs and FPSs. The whole point of playing MMORPG is to have constant progress for your character. Playing 2 weeks of a single player game to get the best gear so you can finally get to PvP part of the game is just silly (I'm looking at you ESO).
If game makers/publishers notice even a hinch of money being made that isnt going into their pockets they will create p2w enviroment, so it is everyone's best intention so that the possibility of making real funds from gear is cut-off from online gaming.
After an idea is created and tested to work in player enviroment, there is always that other factor,
Chinese golden grind ring, Hackers, Bots, Macros, and most importantly Gold sellers.
It is my oppinion that these things is one of the big reasons why mmorpg's are having a hard time, and going towards p2w model, becouse their non-legal competition surely will.
So if some items which crafting, unlocking special properties as well,takes time and resources, effort, if those items were to be not bound, i am almost entirely certain they would have a price tag almost in every case possible.
No mmo can block 99% of gold sellers, and black market sales, if you give players even a slight crack to exploit something, they will do exploit the universe out of it, and than some.
High-Tier Gear, Very Rare resources, Gold Trades larger than certain amounts, and accounts should be completely locked.And bound to same account, email and IP adress.
Trust me, i know. Maybe in some distant future we could have perfect solution, with no worries, but this now, is a cruel world.
I meant sell in game, in game currency, etc. all in-game trading.
Like, they are not BoP or BoE.
I am 100% totally against RMT in MMOs.
Also, i have played long enough to see not all players called jhgjkhj, fdfdfgfdf, and wewe7687, are gold/account/item sellers, those are just bots ,or worker bee's, the actual sellers are the ones who are one of the most grindy players around, trying to sell those.
For players were, are ,and will be the core of the mmorpg's, and their advices/wishes/poll's are gold.