I hope we don't see an endless gear treadmill in this game

Some_Jerk

Endless character advancement is not a bad thing, but endless gear progression is. At some point in the game, one should be able to feel like they can safely invest in the best gear available without having to worry that newer, better gear will be released and make the gear that player has completely inferior in comparison. I'm not saying don't come out with new things on items such as new models and new sets, but every time there are new veteran levels being released I really hope we don't see new gear coming with them.

I like to feel like I can advance my character for a very very very long, if not an endless amount of time. I do not feel this way about gear; at some point there must be a place where it peaks - it may be very hard to reach this gear level cap, but it's gotta be there. I hope that we will see many more veteran levels, new skill lines, and new skills added to old skill lines. But I hope that we won't see higher level veteran gear each time new veteran levels are released.

Character progression, not gear progression. This is an important difference.

Let me know if you agree or not.
Thanks

aleister

s_tibob16_ESO wrote: »

Endless character advancement is not a bad thing, but endless gear progression is. At some point in the game, one should be able to feel like they can safely invest in the best gear available without having to worry that newer, better gear will be released and make the gear that player has completely inferior in comparison. I'm not saying don't come out with new things on items such as new models and new sets, but every time there are new veteran levels being released I really hope we don't see new gear coming with them.

I like to feel like I can advance my character for a very very very long, if not an endless amount of time. I do not feel this way about gear; at some point there must be a place where it peaks - it may be very hard to reach this gear level cap, but it's gotta be there. I hope that we will see many more veteran levels, new skill lines, and new skills added to old skill lines. But I hope that we won't see higher level veteran gear each time new veteran levels are released.

Character progression, not gear progression. This is an important difference.

Let me know if you agree or not.
Thanks

You say there is an important difference, but I fail to see it. You either on the gerbil wheel of leveling or on the gerbil wheel of gear-grinding, unless of course the game designers do something truly creative and give you something else to do. Besides, if you increase the level cap, players are going to expect new gear to go with those levels.

Either way, if there is another level cap increase any time soon i am done.

Lazarus_Long

It will be a while before we see new things to enhance character progression, but the devs are working on it. The crime/justice system is coming someday as well as spellcrafting and quite a few other things I bet. The game is still very young and there is a lot of room left on the world map.

As far as gerbil wheels go, isn't that what all video games are? If you want to use your PC for something else then <insert Gentoo meme here>.

sbyrn9cub18_ESO

Doesn't much much sense to increase your character level and keep on using low level armour. Plus it would sort of invalidate the gear crafting professions.

Thulsola

s_tibob16_ESO wrote: »

Character progression, not gear progression. This is an important difference.

In a game that is so focused on crafting, I disagree completely. I play a crafting primary character. I enjoy gathering materials, researching, searching for and buying things to deconstruct, and the sense of accomplishment when I have crafted every aspect of someone's kit - the armour, the weapon, the enchantments...

In order for there to be a viable crafting economy in the game, I not only need for you to occasionally need to upgrade you armour, but also for your armour to degrade slightly after each repair so that at some point the benefit of repairing is outweighed by the benefit of having me craft you new armour. I also think we need to shift repairing from the NPCs to the crafters.

kalilkareem

Huh? I don't even... OP: Stop posting before morning coffee mkay?

hk11

Im probably crazy, but I like gear treadmills.

kalilkareem

Yeah. You probably are. Then again so are all of us. The gear treadmill is the heart and soul of the mmo.

Epona222

Hmmm... I do see what you are saying in a way, I am hoarding all my improvement mats until such time as I feel I would be getting long-term use out of them. If there are going to be new levels added all the time, that may be never, because I play slowly. I'd like to think that at some point there will be an end in sight.
Is that what you meant?

Bangstin

kalilkareem wrote: »

Yeah. You probably are. Then again so are all of us. The gear treadmill is the heart and soul of the mmo.

No it isn't. There are other ways to have progression other than the gear progression.
It's actually not a progression at all, you are just grinding the gear to get back to the status quo power level you were before the new tier of gear and enemy level.

Dayv

I'd quite like a crafting system where you can continually improve existing gear. including upping its level. It wouldn't necessarily have to be cheap on improvement materials but it would just be nice if you could have some items that have lasted you through the game and be even better if you could name them.

Sleepydan

The only way to avoid a perpetual hamster wheel gear grind, where you continue to get incremental power advantages from increasingly better gear is a need to reacquire the "best" possible gear.

Either through someone looting one item off your corpse when you die in pvp (yes pls) or through gear being impossible to repair (meh).

I firmly believe that pvp looting is a very compelling system. It creates a ceiling that can be reached, and also makes using less than the most op items viable. It promotes crafting. Most people use the best possible crafted gear and rarely use their legendary rare gear, as even the best eventually die and would likely lose it.

Most people disagree with me though, and I would be playing alone if they implemented this. Alas.

For the record, I think the gear grind hamster wheel is the *** worst.

"Oh, you've played our game a lot and have some uber ***? Expansion! Pay up another $60 and everyone is now at a clean slate! Do it again! "

Ugh.

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO

aleister wrote: »

Either way, if there is another level cap increase any time soon i am done.

Have you seen crafted tier 9 glyphs? They cover V10 to V14 gear.....

isengrimb16_ESO

Why should I bother grinding for a legendary cloak when an expansion will render it obsolete after a couple of quests in a few months? It's the same problem everywhere; if you're going to increase your character's power, he's probably going to need new gear every once in a while.

The day they allow players to steal from one another is the day I definitely unsub and stick to single-player only. Diablo one and 2 online nearly put me off of trying WoW, because I assumed that player theft was common. ("No, WoW isn't like the RTS games, it's more like Diablo". "Oh? Oh. You mean people can steal all your loot and wear your ears. Damn.") I hope the justice system/thieves' guild does NOT include stealing from players!

Maybe flag known bots for pvp ganking and stealing sure, but no stealing from real people.

Dayv

If they bought in PvP looting, I wouldn't go anywhere near Cyrodiil with anything worth looting. I don't think anyone would.

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO

isengrimb16_ESO wrote: »

Why should I bother grinding for a legendary cloak when an expansion will render it obsolete after a couple of quests in a few months? It's the same problem everywhere; if you're going to increase your character's power, he's probably going to need new gear every once in a while.

Bingo! Character progression is never rendered obsolete, it will stay with you as long as you play your character. Item progression means the stuff you have worked for in time become irrelevant.

mndfreeze

Because they use a gear system that specifically has a level requirement for use as a game hook, anytime character level increeases you WILL see gear get created to at least match the level increase, even if its just the same gear from before with raised stats. Though I have yet to see a company not use it as a reason to come out with new sets or gear to appease the gear heads.

IMO since this is elder scrolls instead of your classic cookie cutter wow clone, I hope they use their new gear moments to come up with more unique effects with their gear. We don't need more X magicka or Y health regen stuff, we need more sets with crazy unique effects, even if they are very specific where only a small percentage of people wear them, but those who wear it well can really benefit.

ozgod22_eso

s_tibob16_ESO wrote: »

Character progression, not gear progression. This is an important difference.

Let me know if you agree or not.
Thanks

What you are talking about is vertical vs horizontal character progression.

Unfortunately in most MMOs vertical progression is seen as the simpler way to provide players with a sense of advancement. Because as they release harder and harder bosses for endgame, people need better and better gear. You can certainly create more and more complex mechanics in a raid environment without tuning bosses for higher gear sets, but more often than not you get a mix of the two - more complexity along with bosses that have more health and hit harder.

Also, look at all the threads in this forum from people complaining that they got to V12 and have "nothing to do". As soon as you cap the gear people can earn, you will hear all the QQ about how the game is boring, the bosses are easy, there are no more rewards, blah blah blah. In a lot of players' minds end game development is inextricably linked to gear progression, whether we like it or not.

You can certainly have horizontal progression - a more open-ended, single player, Morrowind style character progression where you learn infinitely more new skills, fill out your character more, get more into the immersion of it, but ultimately that makes it harder for the publisher to develop new content for players who want to achieve a zen type character (e.g. a Skyrim where every skill is levelled to 100) to be able to make use of those skills, as well as develop endgame content tuned for it. Because in that case endgame may not even be fighting bosses at all. Maybe it's solving puzzles that increase one of your skills, or something like that.

the_falcorrwb17_ESO

I disagree with the OP.
As new tiers come out we need to strive for the better gear.
The fact that someone probably crafted full legendary VR10 gear only to have it potentially get replaced with VR12 gear doesn't have me shedding a single tear. Now they have something to strive towards.
Lose that and you then have to ask, "why should I bother playing?". This then leads to fewer people playing and then the game shutting down and failing.

Sleepydan

the_falcorrwb17_ESO wrote: »

I disagree with the OP.
As new tiers come out we need to strive for the better gear.
The fact that someone probably crafted full legendary VR10 gear only to have it potentially get replaced with VR12 gear doesn't have me shedding a single tear. Now they have something to strive towards.
Lose that and you then have to ask, "why should I bother playing?". This then leads to fewer people playing and then the game shutting down and failing.

Why should you bother playing if there's not an endlessly moving arbitrary goal to chase?


Have you ever heard of heroin hero?

Jeremy

s_tibob16_ESO wrote: »

Endless character advancement is not a bad thing, but endless gear progression is. At some point in the game, one should be able to feel like they can safely invest in the best gear available without having to worry that newer, better gear will be released and make the gear that player has completely inferior in comparison. I'm not saying don't come out with new things on items such as new models and new sets, but every time there are new veteran levels being released I really hope we don't see new gear coming with them.

I like to feel like I can advance my character for a very very very long, if not an endless amount of time. I do not feel this way about gear; at some point there must be a place where it peaks - it may be very hard to reach this gear level cap, but it's gotta be there. I hope that we will see many more veteran levels, new skill lines, and new skills added to old skill lines. But I hope that we won't see higher level veteran gear each time new veteran levels are released.

Character progression, not gear progression. This is an important difference.

Let me know if you agree or not.
Thanks

I agree with you on your first point. Don't agree with you on the second.

If I had my way, there would be no level cap at all. And I've never quite understood why so many players want to sit at max level on their character so badly.

So me and you are simpatico in the idea that endless character advancement is not a bad thing. In fact, I think it's a good thing and keeps the game interesting. To me, a game starts to lose its appeal once my character can no longer advance in levels.

But I'm not sure why you are against frequent gear additions at higher levels. New loot is always welcome from my point of view (as long as it's interesting). And investing into its acquisition is a huge part of what makes RPG games addictive. So I don't have a problem with it.

yenkin2001b14_ESO

While I like the idea of degrading armour, from levels 1 - 50 I doubt you need it as you change weapons and armour every couple of levels. I would like to see Jewelery making, there is a serious lack of drops for "Accessories" leaving me to look through the Guild AH now and again for upgrades. While that is not a bad thing I hope we can do our own Jewelery eventually.

McDoogs

We will have an endless veteran level grind instead. I don't see the difference tbh. What would be ideal is an endgame (PvP, trials, etc) that is fun and ever evolving into more fun iterations..

BrassRazoo

Endless gear progression is very annoying.
Frequent level cap increases exacerbate this.

Some_Jerk

Interesting, i really didn't think so many people were in favour of the gear grind. I was hoping for a daoc like system where gear was not an endless grind, but there were new passive and active abilities that your character would gain post max level to increase their power. There was still always something interesting to be gained and progress to be made, and you didn't have to re gear your character if you didn't want to.

iuki

Get to current VR cap, spend lots of time/gold/materials to bling up gear sets, and then a month or two later....watch as the VR cap is increased and all that junk you wasted lots of effort on is now worthless. GG!

I can't be bothered to increase my gear past purple quality b/c it's a waste of time for a marginal increase of stats that will have to be replaced every single time they decide to increase the VR cap. It's a silly design if you ask me....most MMOs only force extreme re-gearing in a true expansion every few years...they do this monthly here by the looks of it.

Singular

hk11 wrote: »

Im probably crazy, but I like gear treadmills.

I like fine tuning gear, for sure. But I don't like the wholesale outdating of older, hard to get loot that occurs in MMOs b/c of poorly managed power creep.

Carnage2K4

Anyone else notice that only half the map is filled in?

And yeah, there needs to be a mechanic that allows you to level up some gear, like the sets... eg, I finally just got 5 lvl 20 parts for the Akavari Dragonguard Set on my second character... and now everything I pick up is better... how pointless...

Would it be that hard to add a passive for each craft that allows you to reforge a piece of armour to a higher level? Maybe it costs 2x mats to do it... I'd prolly still use it, make those non-craftable sets worth getting.

tanthil

He's right, all the successful MMO's are doing it wrong

tanthil

Singular wrote: »

hk11 wrote: »

Im probably crazy, but I like gear treadmills.

I like fine tuning gear, for sure. But I don't like the wholesale outdating of older, hard to get loot that occurs in MMOs b/c of poorly managed power creep.

you dont realize it, nor have you really though it through but you are asking for a game were you defeat the last boss and the credits roll, or you just ride around on your completed character for the next 4 years with nothing to do and pay $15 a month to do it (current game set up lol)

Arreyanne

There is not an MMO that doesn't do that crap, so ESO will surely follow the leaders