Issue: The entry level of PVP gear is way too high. I think this is more apparent because of old player base being full of R70's and equivalent level of gear, anyone new either rises up to that level or die fail horribly. (On top of the learning curve even for returning vets + not max stats that are multiplicative with gear) From a new player point of view, this is far from ideal, also from game design perspective, the R50 weapons and Mastery rank 25 staves are only good for farming. We are back to the spot, where these weapons are only crafted to reach a higher tier of crafting and never seen again. Even if R50's are much cheaper than R60's, they have no PvP value at all, as even R60's are too weak at current state. Long term solution: Baseline weapons around (for example) R60/Q3/Full plate values and reduce the gap between ranks, like: Leave Full Plate protections, R60 damage and Q3 enchants value as it is, but change everything else to be closer. Example for Greatswords: R00: 0.63 (now 0.42) R10: 0.66 (now 0.56) R20: 0.69 (now 0.61) R30: 0.72 (now 0.66) R40: 0.75 (now 0.71) R50: 0.78 (now 0.76) R60: 0.81 (same, base for rebalance) R70: 0.84 (now 0.86) R80: 0.87 (now 0.92) With a change like this, player who used R70's before might consider using R60's, simply due to cost and viability ratio. Right now, a high melee weapon is kinda a must have even for a mage. R50 with Q3 might appear again on the market and in PVP gearbags for those who are more casual and just want a quick bang without hours of preparation. (The amount of preparation of a ready bag with enchants is insanely long, even if you got the mats in your bank.) Staves are fucked all the way up, they deserve a separate topic, I hope someones makes it. In short, either have Cobra or Spiritchaser, or downgrade to Blackbolt because of speed. (Maybe use a magnitude staff for self buffs or ray spam.)
Any new player, aside from the first few days, is just as able to farm the materials for high-end gear as anyone else. In any case, the differences between gear levels are really not that significant, except for perhaps melee weapons and bows (and that's just one item you need in your gear set). For example, the difference between a full-plate based mage armor set and an infernal-based mage set is about 1-2 points of resistances (about 5% in terms of damage taken per hit). And the difference in damage done with a cobra staff vs. a bb is also about 5%. Differences that small will not make a difference in a fight between a new player and a skilled vet. They might make a real difference in a long fight between two more or less equally-skillled players, but if that were not the case, there's be no point in having different levels of gear. If anything, these minimal differences should be reflected as lower costs to obtain the higher end items. But if that happened, everyone would just be in the highest tier gear, and would spend no time farming.
so 5% damage reduction and 5% additional damage, and new players have a harder time maintaining a bank That doesn't seem like a big deal to you? New Players/shitty players get absolutely bent over and rammed in this game. It's the reason its dead.
FUCK NO! This is a terrible idea, one of the worst I have seen in a long time Your suggestion is literally the exact OPPOSITE of what needs to happen More expensive gear should give MORE power reward if anything You people are brain dead when it comes to economy and proper sandbox mechanics. I swear to God you don't even understand the most basic principles like Risk vs Reward, item sinks vs item faucets, or the paramount importance of long term progression and the need for EVERY player to have to go out and perpetually farm SOMETHING (without that then open world pvp stops happening which leads to a chain reaction until game death) The economy needs fixes and a wipe, NOT lower power differences between gear ranks
People wear high end gear because that is what the population of the game dictates. Low population mean there isn't much contest at spawns and mines alone can provide more ore of all types than the entire active population realistically uses. Its virtually impossible to force scarcity in a low population game without handicapping future growth or causing undo tedium. Without scarcity there is no reason to wear lower value gear, as the values are completely fucked up when spawns and resources that are supposed to be fought over aren't due to lack of population. Another factor of low population is that it makes pvp itself more rare. That means less durability loss and also a desire to 'make it count' more when pvp does happen which means people wear better gear for the best chance to win since they might only get one fight that day if that. I don't think the actual effectiveness of the gear is that big of a reason for its proliferation. Its just the natural economic state of a game with zero scarcity. The economy is fucked up but aside from the low pop it is mostly due to the complete lack of gold sinks and ways to remove player earned resources from the system. A wipe wouldn't fix anything at the moment. It would just restart the timer until the inevitably fucked up economy comes back again. The underlying issues need addressed and then a wipe still wouldn't be necessary. I have a pretty large bank just sitting there doing nothing, but if the game was ever launch level populated again (and had some more sinks) it would probably only last me a few weeks tops.
No it's not. Even fixing loot faucets and raising gear sinks, too many people have so much fullplate/infernal and JB's+ that they could pvp and never farm again and still not run out of gear for at least a year, and in many cases if their winning players they would literally never need to farm again which= fewer people to run into for world pvp. The game simply has to wipe and relaunch EVENTUALLY if you ever want to bring people back. Ideally with soft or hardcapped character/ crafting progression to keep people from maxing out so fast and have nothing to do except slaughter noobs and casuals even harder due to early game power cliff. Don't you guys miss character progression or meaningful gear progression? I do. And character progression = more forced open world pvp and natural territory control for the best spawns Plus launch pvp= best most fun period by far, everyone knows this. I literally just popped into a discord from the top EU crews from New Dawn today (who quit RoA in 2017) and they were actually linking early launch pvp videos and saying how much they missed it and wanted a new DF launch in 2020. I can SS it, its a super common sentiment when I run into former DF players on redidit, other games, discord ect. If BPG has fixed/ continues to fix the game BEFORE launch a lot of that population boom will be retained If BPG did a poll by email to see how many people want a wipe relaunch in 2020 I bet you $100 PayPal that more people would vote yes Better yet do a Kickstarter for "RoA wipe relaunch 2020" and have people put their $ where their mouth/vote is and if enough $/ individual donors are raised then the Wipe relaunch in 2020 happens. If enough isn't raised refund the people and continue as usual. I'll personally put $ up if BPG shows they have a plan to right the ship and are making the right moves. One things for sure without a wipe relaunch (ideally under a new expansion but since BPG been talking territory control since October 2017 and it still hasn't happened...) you're NEVER going to bring in the critical mass of new/former players back to make RoA a success. I think BPG is playing like scared $ right now, they aren't willing to take a risk to reap a potentially big reward (that has been proven to work for many other games) They seem resigned to the status quo and I really don't understand why. Hopefully BPG doesn't delete my post and considers the vote/Kickstarter because I'm honestly trying to help and I really miss playing a populated Darkfall where you had character progression and meaningful stuff to grind for which= organic pvp/ TC
That's true of any game that involves skill and/or any game that involves levels. And no, 5% difference in effectiveness is not a big deal in a game where a skilled player can kill a mediocre one with 80% health left.
Except its not only 5% difference. 5% damage and 5% damage reduction is a 10% difference (your numbers), then apply enchants which makes the difference even more dramatic. Not saying its what broke the game/the reason why the game is failing but it there is a large discrepancy between gear. Try having no enchants and a blackbolt and fight someone in q5. Thats not saying that I want the gear to be changed. I am just saying there is a large difference between gear. The developers of this game need to avoid band-aid fixes like they have been doing for the past couple of years. Changing a gear stat here, spell damage there etc. They need fixes that make people want to group up and band together and have fun doing so. They need reasons for people to play other than just pvp. No one is going to start playing this game, get ass blasted by 1 dude while farming and keep playing. They need large scale pve/pvp spots that make groups want to play together as a zerg on a daily basis. Joining a zerg is good for sieges but other than that it doesn't have too many benefits outside of a siege setting. Average players want to log on and join the channel of their 30-100 boys and run around and have zerg objectives they can accomplish on a daily basis.
Game still needs tons of work before its ready for a wipe and relaunch. There is so much promised shit that should have been relatively easy to put in game still not in like Faction pvp with land towers, role based pvp gear sets, non pvp oriented content(If you ever want to have a population and retain it) and much more. You need to add -Reinstate faction wars and have faction based territory control perhaps add a pve element to it too. -Land towers and make each capture point reward based on the number of people in the vicinity and their gear score. -Better pve dungeons -More sandbox content like treasure maps; a in game collectible card game with world drops(IE goblins would drop specific rarities goblin cards stronger mob=better chance at higher rarity). -Role base gear that lets a person focus on an area of expertise instead of being master of everything. This will ease the skill ceiling and promote more direct rp elements. -Crafting updates to limit everyone being able to craft the best items -More skills a crop farming element like archeage would be great and could tie into the alignment system, you already have wild random herb spawns allow players to grow,steal, destroy crops. -Specific tie in to skills in a non pvp manner. Everything points to pvp, instead add things like Runescape does where skills tie into each other, but are independent. Specific crops from farming give rare resources for crafting. -PVE sieges on Npc towns and player hamlets/cities. -Add pirate npc faction you can fight with ships. -Random generated dungeons that pop up throughout the world We haven't got any substantial content additions since beta and its why most people don't want to stick around for AV 2.0.
How is this even a suggestion? The difference between Dragon and Infernal is practically nothing. Is farming in this game really that hard with its current population? --- Post updated --- If anything, this is a reason to make the gear gap larger, just so the shitty players can at least have gear crutching on their side. Take away gear crutching and news/bads literally have nothing left to help them in a fight except numbers. A guaranteed way to make sure they keep getting obliterated.
Gear gap should be larger but it should be a lot more fucking rare. Game was never designed to have everyone rocking R70’s+ and q5 dragon/infernal constantly.
Vets will always be rolling in top end stuff, no matter how rare you make it, something everyone somehow misses.
due to mines being constantly be hit over time none contested, also dragons can be solo or duo, ton of scales, low pop means high end enchants usually not contested, mines = bad for economy low pop = bad for economy
Except when something is super expensive, you wont want to wear it just to lose it due to being outnumbered 5 to 1... or will you?
Do not forget that new players don't have max stats, the differences add up. Also, new people aren't usually the ones who are the more skilled ones. Even if they farm high tier mobs, they will loose it. There is no way a new player will win any PvP in this game for a few months, not even if they moderately outnumber the enemy. Even returning vets from previous versions have trouble and get stomped. For new people farming and loosing high end gear is not viable. So what if you kill randoms at a spawn and they drop a few R60's or R50's even instead of R70s? Isn't the bang still worth it? If game was blooming and you couldn't take a breath without meeting someone, good drop mattered, sure, but now? About people having fun activities to do, I think the task system is very good and more enjoyable than any other versions of the game. Good job on implementing it and for who ever suggested it. I see little change opportunities there, only fix a few missing points around newly added materials, that are super scarce, but people would go for next tier even if it wasn't. PVErs and newbies could go to farm mediocre mobs at mediocre spawns with mediocre rewards, and yet have a feeling of accomplishment because what they farmed is useful. Maybe even meet other new players and have some fun PvP, that is not a stomp. The stuff they gain is sellable on the market, even if not for high profit, because is useful despite not being siege gear. I general, I do not understand this vet mentality to dissolve any fun or feeling of accomplishment for new or just bad players. Just because they would have to look more spawns to stomp newbies out of the game, or by doing so they wouldn't get any gear that they would use on a siege? How did the 'keep original clunkyness of controls, because clumsy controls makes the game more skillful' turn out? Every second newbie complains about it, every other quits instantly, a few returning DFO vets stick around, only because they were busy raising children or some shit ever since and haven't experienced 'modern > 2010' standards.
