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Artifact powersets to counter power stacking
Despite knowing the likely response this kind of suggestion will get, I still want to propose a change to the 'stacking' or purchased enhancements and upgrades to your character. Please feel free to disagree entirely, but if you agree at least that the underlying problem could be addressed in a different way, I'd love to hear some alternative approaches!
So first let me try and define the problem as I see it.
This means that I can (and often do) purchase multiple utility skills from other archetypes for me to use, defensive upgrades that make it harder to pin me down or kill me, wealth generating upgrades that make my character a better crafter and trader or simply able to pump out more free upgrades for myself, offensive upgrades that make me do more damage, or extra hindering, or faster afflicting. And all of them combine with each other (sometimes literally stacking on top of each other). There's no tradeoff I have to consider in upgrading myself - every time I get a new artifact power I will be slightly better than someone else without them.
- Nerf some artifacts to be less useful. While this does act to undermine the benefit provided by specific, 'overpowered' upgrades, it doesn't really address the underlying issue in general. It's also likely to cause major headaches for the company, because the value of real money purchases (in some cases, probably not the majority) will be deliberately lowered. As a result, I don't think this is a good long-term solution, it's only going to need to be repeated again every time something comes out that is considered too strong in combination.
- Let players ''rent" or otherwise borrow artifacts for no real world cost. While I do like the democratisation aspects this approach has, it's effectively ceding the argument that artifacts are required to be competitive. Worse, by making certain artifacts available to everyone for a little bit of in-game time, you are still reducing the value of those artifacts purchased for real-world money to the equivalent number of minutes of in-game effort it would take to hire them. I don't necessarily disagree with this solution if it were made prohibitively expensive in terms of in-game effort for a short loan, but by doing so that would counteract the intent.
Give players a slot-limited 'artifact set' to setup wherein only a certain number of purchased upgrades can be active at any one time.
This would take the form of every player having a certain number of 'upgrade points', let's say 50 points for the sake of an arbitrary example. You would then be able to:
POWERSET <setname> CREATE
POWERSET <setname> ADD <artifact power>
POWERSET <setname> REMOVE <artifacts power>
POWERSET <setname> INFO
POWERSET <setnams> ACTIVATE
Artifacts powers would be specific upgrades that provide a character boost, for example 'celerity_1' or 'custom_beast' or 'wonderpipe_resist_2'. Some upgrades would be exempted as always-on if they would make no sense to include in the character advantage system, for example non-decay, customisations, manse (but not aethership) upgrades, etc.
Any artifacts you own that aren't in your currently active powerset would be considered dormant, and you would not have access to the associated verbs. They still retain most of their value though - they work at full strength if you choose to activate them.
Having an active powerset with fewer points used than the full amount available would provide a scaling decrease on experience loss at death and experience gain, down to nearly zero loss for having no artifacts enabled.
This is intended to provide a bit of a counterbalance mechanic for those who either don't yet have artifacts, or would like to show their skill by competing without them.
Artifact powers would have a weighted number of points, based on how much advantage they provide.
Boxes that provide instant escape might have a weighting of 8. Health runes might have a weighting of 3 per level. I don't actually know enough about the current meta to know what are the most powerful artifacts or wonderitems powers, but this is just to illustrate the idea.
I know this is going to take a bit of work, but I think it provides a happy medium between nerfing and unlimited gains - it puts control and strategy in the hands of players to decide what layout they want to take into each conflict, and it seems to me the least terrible way of devaluing existing customer purchases.
The system is flexible enough that you could add further restrictions or options as necessary - for example making powerset changes have a cool down of X minutes/hours to prevent rapid switching, or adding a maximum point penalty for wealth generating artifact usage (which I'm not sure about, to be honest).
Anyway, any thoughts? Not necessary? Better options?
So first let me try and define the problem as I see it.
Problem
Artifacts, wonderitems and the like are entirely cumulative, meaning that the advantage you gain scales somewhat linearly with how many upgrades you can obtain.This means that I can (and often do) purchase multiple utility skills from other archetypes for me to use, defensive upgrades that make it harder to pin me down or kill me, wealth generating upgrades that make my character a better crafter and trader or simply able to pump out more free upgrades for myself, offensive upgrades that make me do more damage, or extra hindering, or faster afflicting. And all of them combine with each other (sometimes literally stacking on top of each other). There's no tradeoff I have to consider in upgrading myself - every time I get a new artifact power I will be slightly better than someone else without them.
Other Suggestions
Some ways to address this escalating power discrepancy between have and have-not included the below ideas:- Nerf some artifacts to be less useful. While this does act to undermine the benefit provided by specific, 'overpowered' upgrades, it doesn't really address the underlying issue in general. It's also likely to cause major headaches for the company, because the value of real money purchases (in some cases, probably not the majority) will be deliberately lowered. As a result, I don't think this is a good long-term solution, it's only going to need to be repeated again every time something comes out that is considered too strong in combination.
- Let players ''rent" or otherwise borrow artifacts for no real world cost. While I do like the democratisation aspects this approach has, it's effectively ceding the argument that artifacts are required to be competitive. Worse, by making certain artifacts available to everyone for a little bit of in-game time, you are still reducing the value of those artifacts purchased for real-world money to the equivalent number of minutes of in-game effort it would take to hire them. I don't necessarily disagree with this solution if it were made prohibitively expensive in terms of in-game effort for a short loan, but by doing so that would counteract the intent.
My Proposal
I'd like to suggest a different option that may have been considered before, but I haven't heard about it yet if so.Give players a slot-limited 'artifact set' to setup wherein only a certain number of purchased upgrades can be active at any one time.
This would take the form of every player having a certain number of 'upgrade points', let's say 50 points for the sake of an arbitrary example. You would then be able to:
POWERSET <setname> CREATE
POWERSET <setname> ADD <artifact power>
POWERSET <setname> REMOVE <artifacts power>
POWERSET <setname> INFO
POWERSET <setnams> ACTIVATE
Artifacts powers would be specific upgrades that provide a character boost, for example 'celerity_1' or 'custom_beast' or 'wonderpipe_resist_2'. Some upgrades would be exempted as always-on if they would make no sense to include in the character advantage system, for example non-decay, customisations, manse (but not aethership) upgrades, etc.
Any artifacts you own that aren't in your currently active powerset would be considered dormant, and you would not have access to the associated verbs. They still retain most of their value though - they work at full strength if you choose to activate them.
Having an active powerset with fewer points used than the full amount available would provide a scaling decrease on experience loss at death and experience gain, down to nearly zero loss for having no artifacts enabled.
This is intended to provide a bit of a counterbalance mechanic for those who either don't yet have artifacts, or would like to show their skill by competing without them.
Artifact powers would have a weighted number of points, based on how much advantage they provide.
Boxes that provide instant escape might have a weighting of 8. Health runes might have a weighting of 3 per level. I don't actually know enough about the current meta to know what are the most powerful artifacts or wonderitems powers, but this is just to illustrate the idea.
I know this is going to take a bit of work, but I think it provides a happy medium between nerfing and unlimited gains - it puts control and strategy in the hands of players to decide what layout they want to take into each conflict, and it seems to me the least terrible way of devaluing existing customer purchases.
The system is flexible enough that you could add further restrictions or options as necessary - for example making powerset changes have a cool down of X minutes/hours to prevent rapid switching, or adding a maximum point penalty for wealth generating artifact usage (which I'm not sure about, to be honest).
Anyway, any thoughts? Not necessary? Better options?
3
(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
1) Don't take the role of 'the outsider'. The very fact that you have 'p2w' in the title of this thread virtually guarantees that it won't make it past page 3 without being closed. The term is too loaded to be useful and is just going to get people's backs up. Whether or not you're trying to be antagonistic, you're downplaying the role of skill in combat, and that will piss people off who have artefacts and yet are skilled pvpers.
2) Note that Pandora's Box is open. If we were designing a new game I'd say your idea was fantastic. But there is simply no feasible way that the Godmin can roll this thing back. I mean, seriously, what are they going to do for people who are already past the artefact cap? Give them back an assload of credits that they now have literally no use for? Again, I'm not saying it's a bad idea for the game - mechanics wise - in the long run, but for a business it would be suicide.
You could also include exclusivity, preventing combos of artifacts that are too powerful together, enabling the ability to create artifacts that would be problematic in combination with others but it's fine because they can't be used together.
Another potential method is the equipment slot method, which reduces flexibility a bit further than the point method with it's own benefits and detriments.
On the first one, I definitely wasn't trying to be antagonistic, but you were right that 'P2W' is too loaded a term, so I have removed it. I wouldn't want to downplay the talent required to succeed in PvP quite independently of equipment, class and so on - I can admire it precisely because I don't possess those skills as a player!
On your second point, you may be right, but that applies equally to the other solutions I can think of. Reworking artifacts to be less powerful also means likely crediting back the value to the player, as does making them free in game. When I think about how I'd want to have my (perhaps minor) investment in upgrades handled, I think I'd vastly prefer having the option to use them fully in sets that I can swap in and out as I prioritise their usefulness to my gameplay, as opposed to having their effect reduced permanently (like the effective devaluing of critical hit artifacts, I guess?).
@Anita - that's fair. Downgrading the artifacts we already have wouldn't be my preference (partly because I suspect it would focus exclusively on PvP balance, which isn't a race I'm in myself), but I'd probably take the opportunity to get credit/refunds for lots of things if I could. As I said above, I don't think it addresses the underlying problem, and won't really give me the choice of how to manage the downgrade across my existing artifacts, but it's still a reasonable bandaid that might still have a positive effect on reputation.
@Saran - Yep! There are lots of variations that might be possible (and I'm sure you can come up with some clever ones!). I look at it as having multiple benefits - you're not discouraging sales significantly I hope (more options or that perfect power combination can still be enticing), plus you're giving us players an interesting set of strategic choices to layer on top of our gameplay (do I max out my defense, or pick up extra utility skills from other classes, or choose powers that complement my favourite attacks).
Like promos selling good sets of artifacts for different classes and you have an ability to go more powerful in some aspects because there's areas where you're going to be weaker in.
You could say, for example, that there's one damage buff rune slot, you could put one of the current ones in there but there could also be a series of runes with two damage types but that give less of a buff to either.
With that restriction (potentially something similar for defense) I imagine you'd probably have situations where you'd want to switch around what's in that slot.
I understand wanting to start with a smaller change to see the effects, but I'd suggest one of the dangers of compartmentalizing this too much (for example, you can only have 2 rooting artifacts active at once) means that the value of those artifacts to those who have them already above the limit becomes almost nothing.
Instead, I'd prefer having a choice between maxing out my rooting with all my rooting artifacts, even though that means I have almost no points left to spend on other upgrades being active. That means I can still use my artifacts and they have only depreciated slightly in most cases, but I might choose to swap them out for others depending on what I need most in a particular scenario.
To be clear - I'm not suggesting hard limits on specific artifact powers that replicate the buff weighting system, I think that's a very difficult thing to get right. I'm suggesting a larger overall cap that just means it's not possible to be enhanced in every conceivable way at the same time.
I'd also add there's an equal danger in making artifacts far cheaper, or more easily obtained with in-game time investment. If I have spent $200 on something, and then the game decides you can get the equivalent by bashing for a few hours instead or sells it for a tenth of the cost a few months later, I'm going to feel like I was taken advantage of by spending real money, and I'd seriously question doing it again.
Particularly in a case like this because doing something about the complaints provides a positive experience or at least resolves a negative one.
That would effectively achieve nothing towards the issue the suggestion is trying to resolve because the issue isn't really the people who'd benefit from your suggestion, the issue is the people that would flip it off.
You'd start out by coming up with your slots, domoths seem appropriate. Then you group artifacts together, maybe all damage enhancements go into the War slot, maybe vitals enhancers go into life, but potentially supportive type artifacts (like the trueheal stuff mentioned) might also go into life.
Once you're done you then just apply the groupings en masse to the artifacts. You can also enable exceptions to the system by marking them as slotless, or even introduce the ability for some artifacts to be both slotless and slotted with different functionality for each. You could also, in limited cases, likely consider having artifacts that could go in multiple slots or maybe some that are so powerful they take up multiple slots.
You could even consider class slots as a way to limit class specific artifacts and/or to allow a specific class access to certain artifacts that have another slot.
No need to worry about points, similarly no need to worry if the upgrade path on an artifact increases it's point value.
Easy to sort through because you just add a feature to search artifact lists by slot.
And having the empty slot there can provide a prompting to players to find an artifact to use in said slot.
Imagine if we said that skill changes were an opt-in system - so that you didn't have to be limited to the current flow restrictions if you didn't want to (ah, the crazy old days!). I suspect everyone would just choose to ignore the restrictions, and there would be no net impact.
If I try to think about scenarios anyway, my immediate thought would be that opt-in allows competing in various event types, plus gives a significant boost to in-game rewards of all types, but I suspect that would contravene your 'required' proviso. It also seems to punish players who don't opt-in, which is not something I really want to do.
Would there be any potential bonus in this kind of a capped set system that *would* be of interest to you? I'm guessing experience gain/loss probably doesn't mean much to you at this point, nor would battle leagues or anything (which doesn't to me either, but is possible if we can choose what upgrades are active). Is there another way that swapping in and out the other-class skills, artifact buffs and curio powers you can access might be made into more of a 'game' that has some sort of engaging strategy to it?
If not, do you have any alternative ideas that might help to make Lusternia more of an attractive investment for players who may not be able to accumulate quite so many upgrades but still want to eventually hit an equivalent level where the veteran players are at? How would you try to solve that immediate impression of literally thousands of dollars being necessary to come near the in-game power levels of veteran players (even if that isn't actually the reality)?
Sure, if you laser target for a specific aspect of the game you can get really close to competence with little investment for that aspect. Maybe even competitive if that aspect isn't PvP or debating. Until you start trying to branch into two or three interesting things.
Want to bash? Leveling credits will get you most of the skills you need at a baseline, and no brainier packages get you the rest. Want to bash competitively? You need tritrans, virtuoso in four other skills, an aethersuit, a gnomish weapon with full gears, a transportation artifact, a pyramid, and either having natural access to pathways and tracking or a wonderbrazier, plus you'll probably want a level 3 health rune, RoA, at least one artifact pipe and vial, some of the goop-made trades items, kirigami, a bashing beast, artifacts to increase celerity, reduce balance times, and grant sprint if you don't have environment high enough yet, a critical hit rune, and rune(s) to enhance your chosen element(s). And I'm probably forgetting something because there's a metric junkload that goes into it.
Influencing? You can get to transcendant influence without to much trouble, maybe stretch to get trsnscendant dramatics and netzach/whatever-color-that-is. Competitive influencing needs runes for ego, charity and empowering, one or more jars of mist unless you're in a village during a revolt, a pyramid, celerity stuff, a nose to make sure you aren't about to get debated out, a goblet to clear that if you do, a beast with ego regen, charity and empowerment boosts, a scarecrow hat and cloak to hide the billion peices of jewellery you have some of those runes on, a set of tawdry items and runes to prevent them from decaying (or just drop 25cr each to no-decay them), a set of really high prestige items, and probably a few wonder items I'm forgetting.
And again, while it's hyperbole to say you need every artifact ever to be a realistic threat in combat, you do at least need tritrans, four more virtuoso skills for the vitals buffs so you don't pop like a pinata, a fair few lessons in environment to be able to escape pits and manoeuvre through rubble/briars/walls, ways to improve your own rooting, and a bunch of class specific things like the demesne rune and dominion rune for mages, dominion rune and tinkering stuff for bards, or whatever it is that warriors need these days short of a miracle. Plus a few things that at least one person on the team needs, like a censer, a cubix or bubblix for offensive raids or domoths, some form of scent, a way to stop fliers, and a way to put up/take down trees/illusory terrain faster than the other team can take down/put up theirs.
EDIT: lost my train of thought. Established players have the advantage of having had years to accumulate a lot of the things that put the entry bars where they are. To pick on Xenthos, your retirement value is high because you've been on Elite for years, you've dropped quite a bit of money over time even outside of elite, and you had at least a few avenues of wealth generation that have either been closed or capped since. Whereas someone newer who is close to your retirement value can only do that by dropping a boatload of real life cash all in one go, and still will be a little short thanks to guiding/mortal reviewing/Bardic rewards. Nevermind missed opportunities like the OG stockings and commodity mines that aren't available but either directly or indirectly contribute to your stockpile of gold, and by extension credits from the market.
Is it possible that it might not be the preference of some players? Absolutely. But again, has that ever stopped a combat balancing change from going through? I look at this more as a game-balancing change, that is eventually going to be necessary unless it is decided that the status quo is fine, and we just leave the game to continue in the same direction.
I may be wrong, but I suspect externally to the wonderful current playerbase we have, Lusternia both has a reputation for being a cash-grab, as well as profoundly affected by many years of accumulating artifacts and wonderitems and curios and so on directly impacting the game systems and mechanics that you can participate in. Want to craft? You'll be at a disadvantage unless you buy a few hundred dollars worth of trade artifacts. Want to fight competitively? You'll have to work a bit harder on your strategies to overcome the missing runes and purchaseable utility skills until you can spend up to catch up. And so on.
Does that mean if artifacts had some sort of balancing limits in place it would be more attractive to new players? I don't know. I suspect it would, but that's just a guess. Honestly, I think that the endless theorycrafting on the hypothetical mindset of a newbie can be well over-done and used to justify pretty much anything. I do think there are some clear trends that should be visible from the rest of the game industry that we could learn from though. A game that gets a reputation for being more concerned with commodifying otherwise carefully tuned mechanics tends to attract a smaller audience willing to stick with it long-term and look past being seen as revenue sources rather than players.
So personally, I am probably well over several thousand real-world dollars invested in Lusternia myself by this point, and I haven't scratched the surface of what character upgrades are available in comparison to some of the players like yourself and others. Partly that might be due to not choosing the right investments (a lot of that was before the things you can buy that generate goop/artifacts/etc), but I know when I jump onto an alt I start to notice the conveniences I am missing. Recently, I have been most focused on buying in primarily to achieve the self-generating items, because it seems like that's the only real value to be found - buying any actual upgrades with real money will eventually be seen as a poor decision compared to the amazing new wonderitem of the month, or become trivially acquired anyway if you just let those passive generators get you there eventually.
Anyway, even having bought in to this degree, I quite often feel that Lusternia is a bad investment going forward. I don't see a point where I would ever feel 'caught up' and that I could focus on mastering in-game rewards and systems because the item shop didn't have anything left to appeal to me. I don't see the current concentration of power dynamics changing - it is a bit like knowing that instead of a fixed level 100 being the goal, with every new upgrade item released the level cap is growing by a couple more each time, and unless you can find a way to spend enough to keep up, you're never going to improve your character to parity with those who can. And if I tell friends that I have spent hundreds of dollars a month on a game and still feel like I'm behind, the reactions are not usually encouraging.
Now, absolutely there's an aspect of mindset and perspective there. I can (and do try!) to give up on mechanical equivalence or in-game capability, and instead focus on the systems that are not linked to real-world purchases: there's nothing stopping anyone from being the most notable RP-consistent character in the game, or from becoming known and immortalised for the political influence or descriptive eloquence they have. But I suspect that is an 'end-game' that appeals to only a small subset of players who are going to choose an intricately complex PvP MUD to spend their time in.
Again, this suggestion doesn't even say that you won't still be able to purchase any number of upgrades that significantly affect in-game systems. It just says that eventually, you will reach a limit on how many of those upgrades can be active at one time, so you might have to choose which of them you take into each conflict.
Is this the drug-dealer approach? Give them a tiny taste so they become good customers?
I know in my case it wouldn't, and I don't really see how it affects the endlessly growing cumulative power stacking issue at the heart of the problem. I don't think it's about people feeling locked out from the lower end of investment - it's easy enough for anyone to buy a small promo package occasionally - the issue is at the other end, where there just isn't any ceiling to the escalating upgrades some are able to achieve.
But yeah... there are so many things like this that I still hear about and never knew existed.