Oort online: playing with high level friends

General
1

I just started dabbling into GW2 again since the new expansion is coming soon and since they changed so much from the last time i played to now, i decided to make a new character.

A while ago i got one of my main gaming friends to buy GW2 and he leveled up to 80 too, now that i decided to play again he came and joined me on his level 13 in the level 3 area and we still enjoyed playing together, those who play the game knows that that is because of the downgrading of levels to the zone you are in, which means that while he is obviously stronger than the average person he wasnt AS strong as he would be in a level 13, if he was he would oneshot everything

I would like for something like this to be possible in oort online, we have talked/discussed it a bit but it kinda died out and i havent seen it since.

so the discussion is of 2 points

  1. would you like to see something like this, why, why not
  2. how would you suggest this could be done in oort online if they decided to do it

A possible suggestion would be if we have an RPG style stat system with str, int and dex then there would be softcaps for each, on each of the tiers and after that the increase in points wouldnt matter or a hardcap which the higher level players would get knocked down to if they joined, an example

Say that the hardcap of a tier is 95 str 95 int and 95 dex, if you got all the best gear on the zone with pure focus on strength you would just about hit 90, meaning that the player wont hit the limit and even with max stats he would have an easier time fighting, but could still die. if a person from two tiers above goes down to the mentioned tier and he have 250, 390, and 150 in stats, all of his stats would be knocked down to 95 meaning he would still be quite strong for the tier, but not in a way where oneshotting is possible, this would mean that if i have played for a month and gotten to tier 3 and i want to play with my friend who have gotten roughly 80% of the progression on tier 1, we could still play together and still enjoy it as a challenge instead of a system where if i go down to tier 1 i would oneshot everything.

3 starter arguments to get going

For: i would like to still have challenge when going back to the lower worlds so i canā€™t just nobrain through the areas

For: i fear that if a player can get so strong that nothing can hurt him on a lower tier world, they would get monopoly on the resources which the actual tier players struggle to get because they are in dangerous zones

Against: i want to truly feel that i have gotten more powerful and limiting me in power would remove that feeling, why should i get weaker just from going to weaker tiers?

(This discussion is based on the hypothetical idea that the powers of the players would increase over the course of tiers to encourage progression, it is also build on the players having litteral stats, none of these 2 have been confirmed)

5 Likes
2

I agree with the scaling. It prevents higher leveled players from farming all the low tiered mobs with no effort. Seeing how we can teleport back to different tier worlds in the future. Itā€™s bound to be a problem. Assuming that the low tiered worlds will be heavily populated(200 at most per world) upon release.

Going Off Topic: are you and your friend planning on pre-purchasing the HoT expansion? If you already did, how fun was revenant during the beta weekends?

3

My friend have prepurchased it, i havent, so i have no clue.

4

I love the method of downscaling of gw2. I think we had a discussion like this before here, but thatā€™s along time ago (was called level adjustment back then :wink: ).

But yes, if players get significantly more powerful on higher tiers, you should add a adjustment when those go back to the lower tiers. They still should be more powerful then players based on that tier, but never ever overpowered so that they only need one or two shots per creature or player. Especially if you think about pvp a scaling is needed.

The method through a cap sounds good. I would like if a start or value is over the cap, the difference is divided through a factor which proved as logical. Here an example (with 25% as a factor) : ā€¦

The cap of tier one is 100 per attribute, but John of tier X already has 200 in str and 150 in dex. If he now come to the lower tier with cap 100 he would have 125 str and 112 dex, cuz the difference (100 and 50) are reduced to 25% and then added to the rest (untouched by the cap).

On this way an agile character still feels agile and an a strong still mighty. It would be helpful to maintain the meta of a gameplay build :wink:

1 Like
5

The problem with allowing people to keep some of their power through going down tiers, especially with this high a number is that in your example he is literally 25% stronger than the best gear you can achieve on the tier, which i assume when you have the best gear on the tier you are pretty damn strong, another problem i would see with it is if it is exponential scaling over tiers, meaning if the stats gets constantly steeper. which will most likely happen, to make an actual progression system where you need to go up.

For example:

lets assume there are 5 tiers, the str caps are as following for each tier

1= 100
2= 200
3= 400
4= 800
5= 1600

which would mean if a tier 5 went to a tier 1 world with the 25% restriction, he would still be around 5 times as strong as the strongest player on the tier 1 world, that would most likely result in oneshots.

So while your idea is great in terms of only jumping 1 tier down, when you got 2 or 3 down it is not at enough downscaling, which is why i personally think a hardcap is better, however i suggested both a hardcap and a softcap because a softcap CAN work done right.

Now the counter argument would be ā€˜ā€˜but that seems like insane scalingā€™ā€™ yes and no. if you say tier 1 and tier 2 are just a tier armor apart then yes it is, but i dont think i will be, it was hinted by ben that you might go fight a titan after having aquired gear but you are too weak so you need to get better gear and get stronger then try again, so i think it is reasonable to assume that each tier is somewhat split into 2 or 3 strength levels or quality or what you want to call it, so you start with making quality 1 gear which can help you kill standard mopigs and herbivores after some farming you get quality 2 which allows you to kill protectors and then after a while you get enough materials to make quality 3 armor/weapon set which is what you need to stand a chance against a titan, when you finally get to tier 2 you can only kill basic enemy with tier 3 weapons and it will go on and on and on over the tiers, so within the tiers there are different difficulties of enemies and if that is the case there needs to be a somewhat steep progression so its not like ā€˜ā€˜i have a quality 1 weapon i can kill a titan nowā€™ā€™

Nice suggestion though :smile:

6

I personally dislike downscaling, but I also disliked GW2 in general so my opinion might be a bit biased by that fact :smile:

However, I think this would make a great question for the upcoming backer survey.

1 Like
7

Well, I donā€™t have the feeling that the power of a character goes that high (in numbers) in Oort. If it will be that extreme then yeah, 25% are to much ^^

But we should not start to discuss if there should be a mega progress in stats (like in WoW) like your numbers show or a more softer one, so letā€™s stay on the topic :wink:

What if the game has a look on your stats and let one be higher then the others ā€¦ for example if I have 200 str, 150 dex and 90 con and come to a cap 100 world, the game will see that my str is the highest statt and would leave me with (bonus of 20%) 120 str, 100 dex and 90 con.

On this way we would keep the stats needed for the builds we play.

ā€¦

Indeed ^^

8

That could indeed be a nice alternative

1 Like
9

Im very curious, can you explain why you dislike downscaling? the more arguments we get for both sides the easier it will be for people who arent very good at explaining their feelings or thoughts to show which they would prefer :smile:

1 Like
10

Zouls I think I entirely agree with one of your ideas for once! level ā€œbluntingā€ like this would allow people to get an edge up on the competition while still having challenge. It would make things more skill based, but still reward people for playing / dedication. Iā€™ve played a couple of games with this system and I think it works quite well. In practice, this is probably the best compromise between skill junkies like me and mmo players like you.

1 Like
11

Ok so it looks like our problem is this:
How do we create a mathematical system that does the following:

  • Makes sure even the highest tier players can play with the lowest tier players
  • Allows for people coming down from higher tier to feel at least somewhat superior
  • Keeps the play style of whatever class you chose.

I think we should do a class based cap-scaling-scale kinda system:

Every tier has a cap for each stat based on whatever class you are.
Beyond that stat additional stat points are cut based on a % modifier
The number of points added at a certain % modifier is limited
Once that limit is exceeded, additional points are still added, but with a much smaller % modifier.
for example:
25% of stat points up to 50 additional pts.
13% of stat points up to 25 additional pts
8% of stat points up to 15 additional pts.
4% up to 8 additional pts.
2% up to 4 additional pts.

This way a player still feels more powerful in lower tier worlds, they still have the same play style, but they arenā€™t Op

12

Sorry but I donĀ“t like the idea of staged percantages based on on the points you are over the Skillcap.
How about following formula?

Pasted image846Ɨ73 14 KB

13

Hmm, bot a fan of classes, so letā€™s do it with builds in mind (sets of attributes). That would not change much of your method, but simply would remove the cap of attributes per class, setting them global for all players of that tier, looking at each separated and calculates it down when needed.

For balancing I would suggest that a player of a tier one step above should be able to get about 30% more damage output and health/armor while the next steps would give smaller and smaller bonuses, stopping at 100% effective power for the maximum tier.

On this way a player of max power in a lowest tier world would be able to kill two players or monsters of that level with the same effort then one maxed of that tier would need to get one of them down. So each one would feel mighty without getting a god among mortals.

1 Like
14

Might we have a graph?

15

Agree with Birne, predetermined classes is most likely not going to be a thing (judging from the player votes)

again the easiest would just be a flat out hardcap, as i there might very likely be a heavily progressive scaling like most MMORPGā€™s so you cant just rush through the tiers and i dont think 2x the previous statcap for each tier sounds unlikely tbh which is why with softcaps and the systems suggested you might very heavily still go over the basis and eventually end up OP if you are from higher tiers, if you are just from 1 tier higher then its not to bad but what if you are max tier? you will most likely have way higher stats so keeping even 10% or so of the stats might lead to 3 times as much dmg etc.

The only way to keep it truly balanced and not end in 1shot wonder, is with a hardcap which still makes you stronger, as i mentioned if you have a hardcap that is slightly higher than what players can actually achieve statwise with the best gear on the server then being hardcapped still makes the players really strong, but they are also strong in the sense that the low level player might have 95 str and the upperlevel have 100 on the tier, however the low level player then only have 20 dex and 30 int because all of the stats went into str while the high level most likely will also meet the cap for those.

The biggest problem i see now in discussions are the difference in just how the hardcap would work, for example:

i would assume the cap is again

  1. higher than you can achieve being on the tier
  2. when you have hit hardcap you hit pretty freaking hard

imagine having the best gear on the tier and then being a little stronger than that, thats the hardcap, its not the worst gear and a little stronger, its the Best gear achieveable which at that point should make it relatively easy to deal with most stuff on the tier and the only hard thing being killing the titans.

that is my thought process atleast

1 Like
16

Sure,

I made this equation in a rush on my handy yesterday, today I notices a few flaws in it. Here is a better version with graph:

Pasted image932Ɨ98 15 KB

I added the ā€˜adjustment factorā€™ because nobody knows how steep the progress will be.

With your skillpoints on the x-axis and your downscaled skillpoints on the y-axis.
I used 50 as skillcap and 0.5 as adjustment factor.

2 Likes
17

If you had to choose (since you are not a big fan of downscaling) do you think players on the tier should be able to hit and pass the cap for the max stats? quite a bit of mmoā€™s seems to do it just so you cant powerstack one stat, forexample ESO would have a cap where stats mattered very little when you went over it, and it was tbh pretty easy to hit, do you think the cap should only apply for those higher tiered going down or should it also apply to those who only use one stat?

18

I think you are mixing two entirely different game systems together here.

The one is downscaling which means that a player that has already progressed to a later state of the game gets his stats reduced in an adequate amount when he goes back to an area/world that is intended for an earlier state of progress.

The other one is a softcap that prevents players from focusing on only one stat by reducing the value of each point spent after a certain limit.

However, the equation I posted should only apply if a high tiered player visits a low tiered world (still no fan of it though but I see itĀ“s necessity in a game like Oort).
The cap of each tier should be located slightly above the stats you can reach by using the materials intended for that tier (as you already suggested in your first post)
I personally didnĀ“t like the softcap system in ESO because it was (as you already said) pretty easy to hit and it felt like IĀ“m wasting points when I hit the cap and had to skill into stamina/magica as a tank.

3 Likes
19

what about the Spiral Knights Damage capping per Tierā€¦ when you have a 5 stars gear (top gear) you still do a lot of damage to monster but it impossible to one shoot them for example:
the monster in tier 1 has 70 Hp
a 1 star weapon hits 10 so you kill the monster in 10 hits
a 5 stars hit 15 so you kill the monster In 5 hits
(numbers are hypothetical and should be only consider as a example)

20

Necro!

Lets get this up and running again. since with the removal of tier system and the semi-reveal of levels it seems more relevant than ever.