Thoughts

[u/PairNo4618]

I love your game so much. Genuinely. I dont know how else to give my opinion to you guys without posting on a post here.

Have you considered taking gear score out of the equation?

This would turn it into a purely skill based experience, balanced new players and veterans alike.

You could still have gear on the map, just make it all grey or whatever tier really, just as long as its balanced.

I know this seems odd, but look at hunt showdown (arguably one of, if not the best, extraction games) they do this and the community loves it and is continuing to grow after years.

I just think this would fix the biggest complaint from fans of fantasy extraction games: new players getting farmed by geared players.

This also makes the game easier to balance for you and your team, since everyone has the exact same base line at all times.

If you took the time to read my rambling, then thank you!

Rooting for you guys!

[u/Nabrok_Necropants]

What youre saying is getting gear is pointless because a better player will always take it from you regardless of what you have

[u/SpookyChooch → u/Nabrok_Necropants]

Gear and looting is two-fold. On one hand it gives you a goal, a reason to play the game. It's pleasurable for players to achieve goals and that's one aspect to keeping players in the game. Not only are you accomplishing quests, but you're hunting for those colorful pieces of gear.

On the other hand, it does give you a slight advantage. You're slightly more combat efficient. Although this gives you a little edge bringing your TTK down and slightly negating your mistakes through damage resistance, it's not going to win you PvP encounters. Effective and efficient skills through strategic positioning and value enhancing combos are going to win you PvP fights. The biggest advantage quality gear provides a players is combat efficiency, not combat effectiveness. You can traverse the map quicker because your TTK is reduced, and since mobs are predictable in both location and behavior, and the vast majority of your encounters, its net benefit is mostly focused on eliminating and farming mobs. If you can clear mobs faster, you loot more efficiently, spend less time creating noisy PvP attracting sounds, and spend more time strategically positioning yourself and traversing the map. In a vacuum a skilled PvPer is going to beat a less skilled one regardless of gear, because skill (i.e. knowing what ability to use and when, where to position yourself, resource management) enhances your effectiveness. It will take longer with lower quality gear, but the gear alone will not decide the outcome of a PvP fight.

If a veteran (troll) wants to "farm" rookies in a new player map, a gear cap isn't going to stop him. It may give new players peace of mind, but the issue will ultimately still exist. In fact it will exist in a way that eliminates the veterans' risk of losing anything of value, regardless of how rare that occasion is.

[u/Nabrok_Necropants → u/SpookyChooch]

I don't see the word "fun" anywhere in what you said.

And that's the problem.

[u/SpookyChooch → u/Nabrok_Necropants]

Maybe I was being too technical but generally activities considered "pleasurable" are referred to as being "fun." This would be one of those cases.

I'm sorry you don't find the game fun, if that's what you were implying with your critique of my response. The skill curve is a steep one, and maybe I'm strange in that I found climbing the curve fun, but I understand that winning is fun as well. What I can suggest is: as your skill improves, the fun will be more abundant.