I just realised... (yet another relics rant)

[Vilin.8056]

56 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

If you were actually reading what i wrote, you'd realize i definitely never advocated this. The current system is structured in such a way that powercreep helps those that are already at higher levels of the chart. It does nothing for those at the bottom. As such, it makes content easier for those for whom that content was already easy, but does not help at all those that found it to be too difficult. If anything, by increasing the gap between the bottom, average and top, it creates even bigger issues as Anet keeps adjusting balance to the new situation (see DE case).

You're talking skill gap, a natural trait of a horizontal progression system. Which is exactly why anet increasingly alternating the course onto a vertical progression system where the attention gradually shift onto gearscoring. The new relic system will inevitably introduce a new grind, but the combination is still a universal stat boost despite of skill level and will inevitably overpower existing challenge contents.

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

If the design of this system went in the direction i was advocating, the runes would not be split into 6 runes and a relic, but would be compressed into a singular rune.

You weren't advocating a rune system, but the elements you were advocating for the past several years were all part of a vertical progression system.

 

[Astralporing.1957]

11 minutes ago, Vilin.8056 said:

You weren't advocating a rune system, but the elements you were advocating for the past several years were all part of a vertical progression system.

They were not. If you think so, it just means you completely misunderstood what i was saying.

Hint: i was advocating for changes that would bring up the bottom without increasing the top. Mostly by removing bad choices from consideration, or minimizing their impact. In the system we have now, introducing elements of vertical progression just makes the matter worse, not better.

Also, from the very beginning (and by that i mean even before ascended were introduced - and definitely after that) i was always a loud opponent of vertical progression systems and anything related to them.  You must have completely missed that.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[Vilin.8056]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Offering players even more choices to get their build wrong is not helping casuals. It's harming them.

So far the only additional complexity it brings is the extra gear slot. Where in the current rune system, we need to calculate around trade offs between stats and effect bonus, with the price of making a mistake is swapping off the entire rune set. Neither system is more or less new player friendly.

 

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

And for "casual players want vertical progression", i'd really like you to give me a  source for that, because i just don't see it. I mean, significant part of casual playerbase still doesn't seem to run in ascended, so if you'd try to claim they might want even higher gear tiers, i'd find that hard to believe.

Funny coming from someone who claim the majority of the casual playerbase wants legendary armor.

A great significant portion of casual players who still playing after story do possess ascended gears, and grinding for legendary equipment remain the most common long term goal for them today.

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Vilin.8056

[Ashen.2907]

28 minutes ago, Vilin.8056 said:

You're talking skill gap, a natural trait of a horizontal progression system. Which is exactly why anet increasingly alternating the course onto a vertical progression system where the attention gradually shift onto gearscoring. The new relic system will inevitably introduce a new grind, but the combination is still a universal stat boost despite of skill level and will inevitably overpower existing challenge contents.

You weren't advocating a rune system, but the elements you were advocating for the past several years were all part of a vertical progression system.

 

Not just skill gap. Engagement with build gap. At one point ANet stated that a significant number of players didnt even bother to select traits (and others still did not choose traits that contributed meaningfully to their build). If more complexity is added, complexity that will enable top end players to push their performance even higher, complexity that other players who already find selecting traits to be too complex to bother with, then the gap between top performers and lower end performers is likely to increase.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 minute ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Funny coming from someone who claim the majority of the casual playerbase wants legendary armor.

A great significant portion of casual players who still playing after story do possess ascended gears, and grinding for legendary equipment remain the most common long term goal for them today.

 

I'm fully aware that most players will never be able to achieve those goals (or at least not fully, because obtaining one, two or even three legendary items is not beyond capability of casual players). But they can pursue them, and one of major reasons why they can is because those goals don't keep running away from them like they would in case of vertical progression system.

1 minute ago, Vilin.8056 said:

A great significant portion of casual players who still playing after story do possess ascended gears

Is this why a lot of hardcore players ask for gear inspect option? In hardcore content, no less (where the most casually minded players are already filtered out by virtue of not applying)? That "great significant portion" is probably not as big as you think. And unlikely to be even close to majority.

 

[Vilin.8056]

17 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

They were not. If you think so, it just means you completely misunderstood what i was saying.

Hint: i was advocating for changes that would bring up the bottom without increasing the top. Mostly by removing bad choices from consideration, or minimizing their impact. In the system we have now, introducing elements of vertical progression just makes the matter worse, not better.

Which is exactly what a vertical system does:

Where the powers of a player isn't determined by skill rotation or built craft, but gearscore and character level - a hard system which eliminate skill factors, which is then filtered by the system as a requirement of entry where everyone will grind for as a long term goal.

You won't have DE issue in a Diablo game.

[Cuks.8241]

59 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Hint: i was advocating for changes that would bring up the bottom without increasing the top. Mostly by removing bad choices from consideration, or minimizing their impact. In the system we have now, introducing elements of vertical progression just makes the matter worse, not better.

Well the new system will do that. If we assume a bit, we will have runes that will increase 2 or 3 basic stats and a relic with a bonus. No longer you need to weigh stats vs bonus which is really hard even for experienced players. 

Also its really hard to have horizontal progression and not constantly increase complexity unless you just completely stop character progression which could spell player engagement disaster. Vertical, its easy, you introduce new gear tiers. Horizontal, you need new options on par with existing and each option increases complexity. 

[Vilin.8056]

17 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Not just skill gap. Engagement with build gap. At one point ANet stated that a significant number of players didnt even bother to select traits (and others still did not choose traits that contributed meaningfully to their build). If more complexity is added, complexity that will enable top end players to push their performance even higher, complexity that other players who already find selecting traits to be too complex to bother with, then the gap between top performers and lower end performers is likely to increase.

Having the know-how to build a character is part of a player skill.

[Vilin.8056]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I'm fully aware that most players will never be able to achieve those goals (or at least not fully, because obtaining one, two or even three legendary items is not beyond capability of casual players). But they can pursue them, and one of major reasons why they can is because those goals don't keep running away from them like they would in case of vertical progression system.

The process of pursuing them purely by gold and resource grinding alone, omitting contents with no development in understanding the game's buildcrafting and skillcrafting, is exactly playing the game solely in its vertical progression element, while skipping horizontal ones.

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Is this why a lot of hardcore players ask for gear inspect option? In hardcore content, no less (where the most casually minded players are already filtered out by virtue of not applying)? That "great significant portion" is probably not as big as you think. And unlikely to be even close to majority.

I guess you don't frequent instanced contents much, gear inspection were introduced as a proof that the contender knows the buildcraft of his own role. Challenge grade contents were never meant for casual players, if there is a lack of hardcore players, it only means players are no longer heavily invested with this game.

Furthermore, you're clearly out of touch with the playerbase for claiming what's not close to the majority, either ask around any daily players in any casual guild on whether if they are currently working on a legendary, or simply check out some of the biggest MMO today (including ones from NC Soft) ‐ they are all running on a vertical progression system.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Vilin.8056

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Vilin.8056 said:

You won't have DE issue in a Diablo game.

Which Diablo game? Haven't seen D4 yet (although i doubt it's any different, tbh), but in DIII for example the difference of having a complementary build and gear vs just having good gear can result in 10k times the damage (or greater). Diablo is probably the worst example you could have used here, because it has exactly the very issue i am arguing against.

[Astralporing.1957]

53 minutes ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Furthermore, you're clearly out of touch with the playerbase for claiming what's not close to the majority, either ask around any daily players in any casual guild on whether if they are currently working on a legendary, or simply check out some of the biggest MMO today (including ones from NC Soft) ‐ they are all running on a vertical progression system.

Yes, yes, i heard those very same arguments before, only then they were about how every MMORPG player likes raiding. Turns out that turned out very far from the truth.

[Vilin.8056]

37 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Which Diablo game? Haven't seen D4 yet (although i doubt it's any different, tbh), but in DIII for example the difference of having a complementary build and gear vs just having good gear can result in 10k times the damage (or greater). Diablo is probably the worst example you could have used here, because it has exactly the very issue i am arguing against.

You still don't get vertical progression do you? All Diablo games have complementary builds, it's irrelevant because minimal skill gap is involved as everyone overpowers the boss after sufficient grinding at end game.

Again, you'll never have GW2's raid or DE issue in a Diablo game.

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Vilin.8056

[Vilin.8056]

56 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Yes, yes, i heard those very same arguments before, only then they were about how every MMORPG player likes raiding. Turns out that turned out very far from the truth.

I have a news for you, in these MMOs, raid do succeed on their casual playerbase because they have a vertical progression system.

Again, you need to understand what exactly is a horizontal progression before throwing these accusations around, your claims continues to contradict your points.

It seems to me your issue isn't about vertical or horizontal progression, but instead just want everything easy for yourself.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Vilin.8056

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

Maybe: 1 relic slot, multiple relics to obtain. 

Maybe a PvP path, a WvW path, a PvE path. You know, just like the backpacks?

[Shuzuru.3651]

On 7/24/2023 at 9:51 PM, Vilin.8056 said:

I have a news for you, in these MMOs, raid do succeed on their casual playerbase because they have a vertical progression system.

Again, you need to understand what exactly is a horizontal progression before throwing these accusations around, your claims continues to contradict your points.

It seems to me your issue isn't about vertical or horizontal progression, but instead just want everything easy for yourself.

I have news for you too, raids in those MMO succeed, because that's literally the only meaningful content in the game. 

Also, you're the one out of touch with the community, as the horizontal progression is the main reason why a large part of the community plays the game. Never heard "I like this game, because I can do a big break and then return and do the lastest content without grinding"? I heard it thousands of time, that's the most frequent argument that's come up with veteran players

Also, all the precedent fiasco + this one, should tell you the vertical progression is not welcome in the mind of the community. 

[Geralt.7519]

On 7/24/2023 at 9:51 PM, Vilin.8056 said:

I have a news for you, in these MMOs, raid do succeed on their casual playerbase because they have a vertical progression system.

They don't. Raiders are a minority of the playerbase, in every MMO.

A LoTRO community manager once said that raiders+pvpers are less than 10% of the playerbase yet they write the overwhelming majority of forum posts. Blizzard said that during vanilla less than 5% of the players ever set foot in a raid, and only 1% cleared the last vanilla tier (Naxxramas), yet if you were on reddit when WoW Classic launched, it would seem to you everyone was raiding Naxx back then.

Forums and reddit are always skewed toward the more hardcore players, they are never representative of the entire playerbase, there's a silent majority that doesn't play competitive content and doesn't write on forums, reason why Blizzard introduced casual versions of raids to make them available to more players, and yet they don't catch them all.

 

1 hour ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

as the horizontal progression is the main reason why a large part of the community plays the game. Never heard "I like this game, because I can do a big break and then return and do the lastest content without grinding"? I heard it thousands of time, that's the most frequent argument that's come up with veteran players

I hear it all the time on different gaming subreddits and some videos too, not invalidating player progress is the biggest selling point of GW2 and the main reason for playing it for a lot of people.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Geralt.7519

[Vilin.8056]

5 hours ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

Also, you're the one out of touch with the community, as the horizontal progression is the main reason why a large part of the community plays the game. Never heard "I like this game, because I can do a big break and then return and do the lastest content without grinding"? I heard it thousands of time, that's the most frequent argument that's come up with veteran players

Also, all the precedent fiasco + this one, should tell you the vertical progression is not welcome in the mind of the community. 

You have completely missed the point here. An easy vertical progression element is still a vertical one. The game clearly designed an easy vertical as a draw, but that does not necessarily meant the horizontal progression elements are getting to them. And let's not forget the obvious fact that grinding legendary gear remain the most popular "long term goal" of the casual community.

So far the fiascos are veteran players who grinded their legendary runes asking for compensation, they're obviously frequent grinders, and hardly represent the community at large.

 

Edited July 26, 2023 by Vilin.8056

[AliamRationem.5172]

On 7/24/2023 at 6:34 AM, The Boz.2038 said:

Friendly reminder that *none* of the relic effects shown thus far replicate a rune's 6th bonus effect 🙂

Friendly reminder that none of the 6th rune bonus effects will exist on the legendary rune either.

[Vilin.8056]

3 hours ago, Geralt.7519 said:

They don't. Raiders are a minority of the playerbase, in every MMO.

A LoTRO community manager once said that raiders+pvpers are less than 10% of the playerbase yet they write the overwhelming majority of forum posts. Blizzard said that during vanilla less than 5% of the players ever set foot in a raid, and only 1% cleared the last vanilla tier (Naxxramas), yet if you were on reddit when WoW Classic launched, it would seem to you everyone was raiding Naxx back then.

It depends on which MMO you're referring to:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQhnJYXXUAgm23T?format=png&name=4096x4096

In terms FF14 it hangs around 1/3 of the player base, which we can safely assume it almost account all of its sustained playerbase (those who kept playing after story). In general casual players are less detered by level/gearscore requirement in instanced contents compared to player skill.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Vilin.8056

[psizone.8437]

21 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Friendly reminder that none of the 6th rune bonus effects will exist on the legendary rune either.

Only 26 runes have "active effects" that sound like what they're doing with relics so the other 73 superior runes 6th bonuses should stay the same.

[Shuzuru.3651]

26 minutes ago, Vilin.8056 said:

You have completely missed the point here. An easy vertical progression element is still a vertical one. The game clearly designed an easy vertical as a draw, but that does not necessarily meant the horizontal progression are getting to them.

So far the fiasco are obviously players who grinded their legendary runes asking for compensation, they've obviously grinded for a long time, and hardly represent the community at large.

 

And you make no sense ? 

Your point was that "the playerbase want vertical progression". I told you that over the year, every vertical progression added on top of the initial one have been met with very virulent reaction from the community, as a whole. And that the main selling point noted by most of the community is the absence of vertical progression (after the initial one). 

And the current situation, who concern everyone because no one want to regrind the 6th bonus, is another show of my point. Of course, legendary rune owner are more invested because in this case, it kinda break the "legendary promise", but it concerns everyone. 

[Vilin.8056]

1 hour ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

Your point was that "the playerbase want vertical progression". I told you that over the year, every vertical progression added on top of the initial one have been met with very virulent reaction from the community, as a whole. And that the main selling point noted by most of the community is the absence of vertical progression (after the initial one). 

And the current situation, who concern everyone because no one want to regrind the 6th bonus, is another show of my point. Of course, legendary rune owner are more invested because in this case, it kinda break the "legendary promise", but it concerns everyone. 

Let me correct you here: casual players prefer vertical progression. And before you mistook me for an vertical progression advocate, I have a long history of speaking against changes in this direction.

But we no longer live in 2013, the playerbase has moved on (and severely aging), given the braindrain going on across all game modes, it's not realistic to expect the current horizontal model to sustain.

If you have read the threads, the reaction so far only centers about compensating legendary owners, some of whom I find ironic for they've also been speaking against horizontal progression for the past several years. If adding vertical progression element is really that much of an issue, our playerbase would have already revolt at Jadebot, in which we didn't.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Vilin.8056

[Shuzuru.3651]

1 hour ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Let me correct you here: casual players prefer vertical progression. And before you mistook me for an vertical progression advocate, I have a long history of speaking against changes in this direction.

But we no longer live in 2013, the playerbase has moved on (and severely aging), given the braindrain going on across all game modes, it's not realistic to expect the current horizontal model to sustain.

If you have read the threads, the reaction so far only centers about compensating legendary owners, some of whom I find ironic for they've also been speaking against horizontal progression for the past several years. If adding vertical progression element is really that much of an issue, our playerbase would have already revolt at Jadebot, in which we didn't.

I'm giving you the fact of the nuance of casual vs the whole playerbase

But I do disagree that casual prefer vertical progression. 

If the logic there is : Casual want easier content, so powercreep, so vertical progression. 

Then I reply that no, because casuals don't want to grind, so yeah casuals want easier content, but by the means of either nerfs or passive powercreep than doesn't require grind.

About the relics, like I said, there is both, but I do agree that the legendary compensation is more prevalent on the topic, for the sake of horizontal progression. 

And about jadebot, there were a bunch of complaints, actually, maybe not as much as relics or ascended gear, but they were there. 

[Reztek.7805]

3 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Let me correct you here: casual players prefer vertical progression. And before you mistook me for an vertical progression advocate, I have a long history of speaking against changes in this direction.

Let me correct you here: casual players do not prefer vertical progression, random players do.

GW2 is probably the only "good" MMO where you can easily reach max level and equip every class with casual playtime. You can take a break for months or even years and come back without much trouble. That's a big difference to most other MMOs. Besides compared to a legendary weapon, for which every veteran player had 10+ years time, the legendary runes are rather cheap.

Random players join the game, kill their brain cells by doing farmruns all-day, cry for the lack of "endgame" and then leave for the next hyped MMO. 😉 And in most other MMOs casual players probably never reach the endgame because they can't stand the grind or are bored by playing on deserted maps.

 

Edited July 26, 2023 by Reztek.7805

[draxynnic.3719]

On 7/25/2023 at 3:10 AM, Vilin.8056 said:

 

Funny coming from someone who claim the majority of the casual playerbase wants legendary armor.

A great significant portion of casual players who still playing after story do possess ascended gears, and grinding for legendary equipment remain the most common long term goal for them today.

 

I put it to you that once a player has a single meta build in full Ascended, pursuing legendary equipment is horizontal, not vertical, progression. Legendaries do not have more stats than ascended, but being able to change those stats freely opens up options.