A Treatise on a Core Design Issue and Why the Community is often Divisive

#1

I originally wrote this in reply to the “Wilds Chest / Invisibility Potion” thread, but felt it really developed into a discussion of its own topic.

Let’s please try to avoid the ‘us vs. them’ fallacy that plagues this forum and have an actual discussion for once. I think the PvP issue is just one symptom of a larger issue with the game. This is the ‘rich get richer’ design:

Want to get the trickster chest? Better have thousands of dram worth of invisibility potions ready.
Want to make dram? Better find someone who has a stall and give them some of your profits.
Want a chance at clearing the harder end-game content? Better have fat stacks of aged potions, and don’t forget you can moneybags your way through a fight since there is no potion cd; just chug health potions and ability reset potions (yes, these are all oversimplifications).

I’m not saying this is always bad design, I think it is appropriate to an extent in some parts of the game (mainly PvE), but it is too prevalent in Orbus. It is a huge barrier to entry for new players, or especially a new group of players, to get into any end game content, and I think this forum is so divisive because of the very different perspectives this system results in. For people at the top, the rich get richer can certainly be a lot of fun as it is catering directly to them, but when this fun is coming in part at the expense of 90% of the playerbase, it becomes an issue for the ongoing health and longevity of the game and its community. Look at it from a new player’s perspective:

Say Player “X” just hit 20, wants to participate in end-game content, but doesn’t want to join ABC or EK since they have a pretty fleshed out roster already. Let’s say X even manages to find some other like-minded players and is able to put together a consistent 10 player fellowship. X and friends decide to go and try for a trickster chest and are suddenly killed by players who pop out of nowhere. Confused, X and friends decide they need to gear up more and go do shard dungeons, but eventually they hit a wall in difficulty. With no stall, they have no way to easily make dram to buy potions, and no existing stockpile of potions from a veteran member, so they decide to make the potions themselves. A lot of the information on how to do this is not easily available, making this slower and more tedious than for experienced players. X goes to the wilds to farm, but without connections to any major fellowship, is often attacked by any other players he comes across. After significant effort and research, X manages to make some potions, but they then must be aged… so X and friends have to wait another week for the aging of their potions to complete so they can finally try and push past that wall they were hitting in shard dungeons. They manage to push a bit farther, and decide to try a raid. Since strategies are not publicly available, they burn through lots of potions figuring the fights out, and very quickly are back to trying to farm and waiting for aging again. Farming very quickly becomes a chore, and most players can’t or won’t put in the tens of hours per week to support the PvE and PvP potion needs of a full fellowship. Without a constant supply of consumables, X and friends realize they can’t really participate in endgame PvP unless they can somehow put together overwhelming numbers, and they can’t progress much farther in PvE. The fellowship quickly dissipates as members quit out of frustration, or just join one of the few existing fellowships who can boost them and offer them cheaper potions from their stockpile.

This is something we have seen happen over and over in Orbus: 2-3 fellowships dominate, while other fellowships appear, get to around shard level 5, hit a wall and then dissipate. There’s a lot of areas that could be adjusted to fix this, but this post is already too long so I’ll leave that discussion for the comments. The main thing I want to emphasize is that, when we make suggestions and get in arguments, keep in mind the different perspectives people are coming from. What may be fun, or sound like a good idea for one group may not be the best for everyone, or for the overall health of the game and its greater community.

8 Likes
#2

Can’t say much more than 100% agreed.

Especially with the voice chat in this game, when I’m trying to find party members I feel like a new kid in high-school trying to make friends with everyone who already settled into their groups… It’s a very un-welcome feeling and it definitely kills motivation to want to keep playing.

#3

Sounds like how everyone started. Even EK at launch went through the same stuff (minus pvp of course). We discovered everything, put in the effort to make potions and gear up etc. It’s the new player experience

Edit: New players have both an advantage and disadvantage. All the recipes are known and online, so figuring out how to make potions takes no effort. The wilds are usually playerless so getting ganked isn’t as common as the forums make it out to be.
A disadvantage is definitely the already-made guilds and groups that can feel intimidating to interact with. It’s not easy forming guilds and meeting a lot of consistent players.

Second Edit:

Fresh 20s don’t enter shards. You run Tradu mines for gear and THEN start shards. To do higher shards you need low tier gear (t5 gear to do t8 content, etc). Potions aren’t needed for most shards if you’re skilled enough. That’s not me being elitist, it’s actually true. Dodge aoe, pull properly, learn/master boss strats and master your class. There are a lot of steps to endgame.

1 Like
#4

I understand the frustration but the people who have dram have it because they grind for it. That is hours and hours of bore.
The stalls are avalable to everyone. It’s not crazy spendy to get one.
You can not pay your way through end game. I don’t care how many pots you have. You have to have the lv and the skill. Period. The pots will help and will make a differance if you are on the edge but will not buy it for you.

3 Likes
#5

While I appreciate the time spent and thought put into this treatise, I believe there are several strawman arguments being set up to be knocked down, despite not being reflective of the current state of the game.

  • Invisibility potions play into the trickster chest about once in every 5-6 spawns I’d say, which means the majority of the time they are not even a part of the interaction. Due to their expense, having several people use them each chest would result in hemorrhaging massive value/dram over time, as the trickster chest tokens are not worth as much as several (or even a few) invis potions.
  • There are a number of effective ways to make dram that have nothing to do with trade stalls, or in some cases, with trading with other players at all. I’ve personally had a stall once, and barely utilized it. The majority of the hundreds of thousands of dram I’ve made/burned-through have come from non-stall actions, sometimes deliberately and sometimes incidentally. A group of players coordinating together can generate a lot of dram very quickly, plenty to pool together to purchase a stall, or a set of potions.
  • Unless you are defining end-game content as exclusively the second half of hard mode raids or T6+ shard dungeons, there are a lot of opportunities, even for fresh 20’s to participate. Normal mode raids do not require potions, and even if a team is having difficulty with the later bosses, they are still getting about 1 luck drop per kill along with everyone getting 1 token per kill, which leads to T5 gear very quickly.
  • There are no encounters which rely on spamming non-stop health potions to defeat, and I honestly have never heard of that strategy being employed by us, or any other fellowship. Most boss encounters in Orbus have an insta-death mechanic for failure, so health potions rarely come into the picture.
  • Trickster chest battles aside, 9 times out of 10, going into a random wilds at a random time, even for a fairly extended period of time, is not going to result in a pvp encounter, so farming the materials is safe the vast majority of the time.

No matter what kind of mechanics you employ, there are always going to be the “top guilds” on any MMO, and that is almost always going to be a result of time and energy invested by the members of those guilds. As Logan pointed out, there are pros and cons to being the first through the door, and there are pros and cons to coming after, but everyone has the same opportunities.

Orbus does have the additional issue of a particularly small playerbase (though who knows what the future may hold) so finding a guild that suits your preferences is a little trickier than in other games, which may contribute to some of this sentiment some players are feeling.

I also think educating newer players on what is involved in the game, and even fresh 20’s on what content is out there and how it can benefit them would be of value. There may be opportunities for the community to help spearhead that.

1 Like
#6

Apparently I didn’t get my point across clearly enough. I am one of the top players, I’ve done and continue to do the grind. I’m not discounting anyones effort. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t have to grind dram/mats for hours to play EVERY aspect of the endgame, yet in the current state it is required or near-required for high level shards, raids, and PvP. My whole point was to look at this from the perspective of someone who isn’t an expert at the game, who needs the potion boost to make up for it (or other members of their party/raid). I’m not suggesting content be made easier, I’m suggesting the reliance on time-intensive consumables be lessened in at least some areas, or that some other area of the end-game is opened up to people who don’t want to grind mats. If I were to make a suggestion for an easy way to start addressing this, it would be to put some of the power of consumables into base stats of characters, such that consumables are somewhat less powerful, but the total damage done when using consumables remains the same. Releasing a battlegrounds type pvp where consumables are disallowed would also address this by opening an avenue of play that doesn’t require mat farming. Of course you can nitpick my posts for oversimplifications in what I am saying, but the fact remains that Orbus has serious difficulty maintaining a large playerbase and I’m pointing out one reason for that.

I am not asking for the need to grind to be removed.

3 Likes
#7

I got what you were saying, I just I don’t agree that the above statement is accurate. Grinding for dram/mats/potions for hours is strongly advised for hard mode raids, but not really anything else.

  • PvP: I’d say maybe a small handful of invis and healing potions are consumed per week fighting over the trickster chest.
  • Raids: Potions are not needed for normal mode raids, even for relatively fresh 20s.
  • Shards: Potions are not needed for most shard runs, even for relatively fresh 20’s, for at least the first half of the shard tiers if not more.
#8

Apparently it’s just a day for long philosophical game design discussions, haha.

I’m always interested in hearing other perspectives on the game, and especially when someone says something that goes against my own natural instinct, I try to make sure that I stop and parse what they’re saying, because that’s how you learn and grow.

I think there are a lot of interesting points that you brought up, and I’m going to try and parse them out into a few different main areas.

Regarding PvP Participation

The main points/problems seem to be that at least in regards to the Trickster Chest (and to a lesser degree Open World PvP in general), it’s going to be very hard for a newer or more casual player to participate in a meaningful way or have a chance at winning. I totally agree, and I touched on the need for a factions system to address this in my earlier post today.

I also think one of the main problems we have right now on the PvP side of the game is that it’s basically impossible to feel like you’re “progressing.” Either you are winning the Trickster Chest or you aren’t, for example. I think a Battlegrounds system helps with that in a number of ways, because you can participate in it even if you aren’t in a top-tier Fellowship, you can earn rewards (e.g. cosmetic, honor points, reward tokens, etc.) which allows you to have progression, and as noted earlier we can eliminate some of the gear disparity and potion disparity to make it a more fun, even playing field. So yeah, I’m on the same page there.

I will note that as others have noted, the Wilds are much, much less dangerous in general now than they were when the game initially launched and the Aberrations were actively farmed for gear by a large part of the playerbase, so I do think from a mats-gathering standpoint, a newer player or Fellowship actually has a pretty easy time there in terms of gathering things if they want to.

Regarding High-Level PvE and PvP

Throughout the thread there seems to be an underlying discussion of how it would be very hard or impossible for a new player/group to do high level shards or raids. Such as that strategies aren’t easy to come by, or there is a high potions requirement, etc. On the one hand, no one is more interested than me in getting new players into the game and keeping them playing. That’s how we pay the bills, after all. On the other hand, I’m not sure that it’s a flaw in the game design that a new player is facing a multiple-hundred-hour journey to go from Fresh 20 to Hard Mode Raid. When you compare it to the lengths that the veteran players have gone through to get to that point, it’s still way, way easier and more straightforward. Less RNG-dependent, a more streamlined process, no wasted effort, etc.

And honestly, if I were a new player, I would welcome that level of content. But maybe that’s just me, and I can see how that would be a personal preference thing. I can definitely see how some players might want to be able to come onboard, and within 50 hours of play time be all caught up and doing the latest and greatest content there is.

I think one confounding factor of that, though, which we need to consider is the size of the player base and new player rate. If you have 10,000 new people a day joining the game, then cohorts will naturally form and there’s plenty of new players to join in with and be active with and take that journey together. However, with a smaller MMO population, the problem you may run into is that it’s hard to find other people to go on that journey with, and so you’re running into the problem of how you go on that journey when everyone has already done it.

Something we are definitely looking into is how to bridge that gap and make sure that even players with 1,000 hours under their belt have an incentive to play with new folks so that they both benefit. And of course, when we start the next full content cycle, that’s an opportunity to hit the “reset” button on the gear progression and allow people to start off on a much more even playing field again, which is something every MMO does.

Finally, I think it’s important to be clear that while I am fine with the journey being long, I don’t think there should ever be a point where you hit a wall. So it’s fine to me to have a new player need to put in time to get to the max level stuff. But I wouldn’t want it to be a situation where they are unable to get through T5 Shards because they can’t get the Trickster’s Chest which only top-tier players can get, etc. And I don’t think we’re doing that in any of our mechanics, but if I’m wrong on that please let me know.

Friendliness to Casual Players

Another point throughout seems to be, how friendly is the game to the casual player, who might only want to play for 5 hours a week. E.g., the amount of time it takes to farm up potions and whatnot to progress is just too boring and long.

I don’t think that the game is balanced to require that outside of max-level raiding/shards, but if I’m wrong on that and there are players out there trying to do low-level shards and hitting that wall, please let me know. Because that is not the situation we are going for. We want you to have to do that level of grind if you want to be on the bleeding edge of the content, but then we are trying to go back and make the path smoother for those folks who are catching up, essentially. Once the road is paved over, it should be less bumpy.

Anyway, as I said, always interested to hear other perspectives, and I think making sure the path for new players is smooth is something we always need to work on doing better.

8 Likes
#9

I think it’s very commandabke that you’re willing to see another point of view in the matter. It is true that the end game content is basicly aimed at 2 or 3 guilds in this game and the rest are basicly left behind. Its funny that you mention tier 5 thats basicly the max gear i have and probably many people from my guild also u less they ran shard dungeons with the other 2 or 3 guilds. I never bothered with the wild chest nor did my guild as far as i know. Why bother with something thats ruled by and timed by 2 or 3 major factions for rewards thats basicly out of reach for you anyways. Hard raids… we can barely finish a normal one… now we got expert too… why for 2 guilds … really ?

I rather have that development time put into something thats for all people. Some of my guildies cant even play because of the ridiculous amount of lagspikes.

I also agree a lot on what you’re saying here but tbh i’ve been telling for months that for such a small community orbus is very elitist one(i saw this a long time ago already when guilds datamined files and kept info to themself). Ofc if you’re part of the elite most people don’t care what’s beneath them. Thats another thing when u do join said guilds to run high lvl shard they expect top A performance from you too… no hand holding or steady learning there. The shard system isnt a good one for new players either as you lose shard (well -2 is as good as a loss)if u do not complete it in time while if you’re overpowered and min max to the bone u get +2 . The system has maybe so ehwat to do with skill but much more at min making runetile set and Potions

More damage = less time = more +2 shards. Now add in some luck potions…

#10

I’m going to leave aside the stuff about the Trickster chest, because I feel like that’s been covered thoroughly today and I already have said multiple times that we long-term need to make some changes to PvP to help it be more broadly appealing.

On the PvE side of the game, the idea is supposed to be that you can jump into Normal Mode Raids if you are up to T5 Shards – are you able to do those successfully at this point? Or is that blocking you? I guess what in general do you think we need to do to allow you to progress? I’m definitely open to suggestions/feedback on that.

Finally, I just want to point out that in regards to:

We literally just moved our entire networking operation to a new datacenter, have put out a new patch today with some networking changes, and have a total overhaul of our networking system that’s in QA testing right now in case the new patch doesn’t work today. So while we are definitely putting out content for high-level players, I would hope it’s clear that fixing bugs like that is a very high priority for us.

#11

As someone from one of the top guilds- the only time I’ve used potions is on launch day for shards, launch day for normal raid, and hard mode raids. Maybe 2 luck potions my entire time playing this game and I’ve never seen anyone use an ability reset potion.

(Aka never used potions in high level shards or any normal raids after the first time and same with my parties)

So much of what people seem to think is the case about people using potions is just plain wrong.

#12

Ny opinion on the pvp chest is that if u bring a full non raid group of lvl 20s with a healer no matter what gear level u are, u have a fighting chance. I can’t remember the last time I used potions for a trickster chest before yesterday, as almost no one ever shows up. There are usually 3 people max from atleast one, maybe two guilds going for it, so if u have a full group and have just practiced increasing your personal dodging skill, you stand a real good chance

1 Like
#13

Okay so you can stand a chance against the same old 2 3 people from the same guilds if you organize a full raid group to fight against Them? What a great plan i will remember that next time i go for the wild chest…

#14

if u look in my post above i specified

meaning 5 people

#15

I know i didn’t want to seem ungrateful i do apreciate all the work and great effort you and the developers put into the game. I know its a lot of choises to be made and even more people to keep happy is a complicated thing. It’s just when u barely got enough people to start something and that one or two key players can barely play it Can be frustrating for many. I hope the lag for the one who experienced it is a thing of the past.

2 Likes
#16

5 people with trademine gear and hardly any pvp experience vs 3 people who pvp a lot and pots and tier 10 epics and legendaries. well good luck with that.

Just admit that th chest isnt really worth going for for the vast majority of the player base…

1 Like
#17

You would be at a disadvantage in that situation, but imagine multiple groups like yours. The chest is designed for lots of groups to fight over it. Ideally 3 groups of 5 TM geared groups + 1 group of 3 T10 gear would be a good fight.

Edit: Free for all style. Not 15 vs 3. That would be silly.

#18

It’s much easier to assume how things will go than try.

#19

I think the comments here point out exactly the divisiveness I am discussing. All the members of the top guilds outright refute all my points, while players from elsewhere completely agree. This is a very broad topic, so I’ll focus on one area here. Yes, if you have a skilled enough team you can do most content without potions, ESPECIALLY if you have cleared that content previously and are no longer progressing. The problem is, as Riley touched on in his post, that the player population isn’t big enough to support a large number of players going through that middleground of progression (between low shards and raids/high shards), so players there HAVE to play with some less skilled players, and so to make up for it, it feels like they need potions. As a result, that small population becomes even smaller because people don’t want to farm for potions. Potions provide a very significant boost whether you think they are needed or not, a boost that has nothing to do with skill. As I mentioned, I think moving some power out of potions and into baseline would make for a healthier environment for progressing players, without making the content or skill requirement any less.

Also let’s stop talking about the trickster chest please, as Riley has mentioned there are already plans to deal with such issues.

2 Likes
#20

You requested varying viewpoints and everyone who has replied has done so without toxicity and provided specific examples and details to support their position.

If polite disagreement counts as divisiveness to be excluded, all you end up with is an echo chamber.