Gear progression and game longevity

Rare's plan as far as we know is to keep the game skill based. new players and players with 100 hours will both have pistols that do the same damage. The same can be said for all other equipment and your ship.

Personally i like this as i hate the pletera of games on the market that have pay to win or give players an edge with a gun that does slightly more damage or a card pack that boosts there XP gains.

I think skill is enough to make you a better shot with your pistol.
I think experience is enough to give a crew an edge is ship to ship combat strategy.

The longevity will come from regular updates which will change the world keeping it fresh.

@uberkull Play for fun

Get gold to unlock more fun missions
Get gold to take your friends on missions to get the items they want

Get gold because in the process you get skills to give you the same advantages a sword that swings 0.00124% faster would give you

If there is a "better" sword, then at some point you are forced to choose it because it is better, not because it is the look you want. Now we all have to use the same sword.
That is dumb. Rare is being less dumb. This game will have longevity because it is INSANELY fun to play. Those other games can keep their "+1 vs red chickens" blunderbuss. I'd rather not have to grind for it anyway.

@lc475
Combat and weaponry will be normalized, so no advantages for being legendary aside from looking like a p**p. That said, some of the other non-combat equipment look like they will have perks associated to them the more you progress, which is a good thing. They can (and probably should) differentiate gear by label color just to satisfy a certain crowd, but no combat/statistical advantage plz.

@uberkull said in Gear progression and game longevity:

@spykus Sure, new content always keeps things fresh, but why do it or if you do, you burn through it and then move on?

Basically, why treasure hunt for gold if you dont get progressively better gear to spend that gold on?

Or put a different way. Lets say you really like your pre order outfit. Then you played just enough to get the guns and swords you want, and now decide you love the look of your character. Why continue to get treasure or pvp to steal treasure chests?

Or the other extreme, say you amass so much gold that you are able to buy all the vendor gear sold? Then what?

Didnt i read somewhere this was a 10 year IP? Without some form of progression, is that possible?

For me it's the playing with friends. I hate games where I have to grind before I can play with my friends only to be left behind by the next time I get to play.

I have more but struggling to put it into words.

@natsu-v2 said in Gear progression and game longevity:

What if you have every single cosmetic in the game, you have beaten every single PvE quest/opponent a thousand times, and you have been in thousands of ship fights.
The people who don't see this glaring issue don't seem to be the types of gamers who will play one game for 5,000+ ingame hours.

Then you've played for a very long time, had a lot of fun, and gotten way more than your money's worth. The expectation that a person should receive 2/3 of a year's worth of entertainment in exchange for half a day's work at a fast food joint is absurd.

@natsu-v2 said in Gear progression and game longevity:

@lucid-stew But that's the normal expectation for an open world pirate game with emergent player interactions. The game is simply not meeting its full potential otherwise. Why do you want the game to not be that addicting?

So the normal expectation is absurd. That's a completely unsustainable model. Every game that ever attempted it would have to be a hit just to break even. There's a reason game developers are constantly going out of business, you know. Why would I want to waste away my entire life in front of a tv or computer and manage to accomplish nothing else with my spare time is what you're asking? Why would I want to be ADDICTED to anything?

@natsu-v2 said in Gear progression and game longevity:

Pretty much all interactions in SoT rely on gold. The problem is, from a long-term standpoint, what is gold actually for? Gold is the driving force of the game, but there still isn't any reason to care about it long-term. The people who don't see this glaring issue don't seem to be the types of gamers who will play one game for 5,000+ ingame hours. ... You're instead trying to rationalize your different gameplay habits onto others. I'm not interested in that. I would like an open world pirate game that is THE game that you just play for the rest of your life.

This is comparing apples to oranges in terms of game genre, but it's the same concept. Why play CS:GO, Battlefield, or even PUBG for thousands of hours on end just for wins and skins? Because it's FUN! The guns in each game only have so much variation as the guns in this game as they specialize in different distance encounters. I've been playing these types of games for years and still go back to them because of the amount of replay value they have even though there is no point in progression. Levels and Battlepoints don't mean a thing in those games, the experience and fun does.

As for rationalizing different gameplay experiences of yours onto others, you contradicted yourself and did the same exact thing by stating "I'm not interested... I would like".

@uberkull said in Gear progression and game longevity:

Questions on ‘gear’.
Going to use the pistol as an example, but this can apply to the rifle, shotgun, sword, etc.

If you buy the white ‘text’ version of a pistol from a vendor, will there be a green, blue, purple, gold version of that pistol at some point in your journey to legendary pirate?
If you buy the white ‘text’ pistol, will the only difference between pistols be cosmetic? Or, does the Admirals pistol do more damage than deckhands pistol?
Followup question on that. If I buy the white ‘text’ pistol, why buy any other one in the game if they all do the same damage?
Basically it comes down to, what is the ‘hook’ to play the game after the initial honeymoon feeling wears off and you are just buying gear that looks fancier that the last piece of gear you bought?

These are questions to help me understand the longevity of the game. It is not intended as a compliant or auggestion to improve. This game already has a great ‘hook’ to keep you pkaying, but after sometime of doing similar tasks in a game, the novelty can wear off if there isnt a goal to shoot for.

This game is based on visual/appearance upgrades. Your goal is to unlock outfits and look different so that you stand out in a crowd. Everyone starts the game with the same baseline, generic looking gear. Rags mostly. You get more colorful and interesting gear the more you play and earn gold to buy it.

That's it really, which is fine for most people. But if you want a multiple option end-game, like an MMORPG, this is not the game. This game is for people who want to PvP with other people on ships for the most part. That's the meat of the game from what I've seen.

You won't get statistically better with more gameplay or unlocking new gear. You'll always do the same damage with guns or swords or cannons. The only thing that changes is what your guns, swords or cannons might look like.

@natsu-v2 I just think your imagination far exceeds the capabilities and resources that Rare could possibly expend on the game for launch. Sure some of your ideas may come to fruition in the updates down the road, but you have to be realistic in terms of expenditure, time, resources, etc. The Witcher 3 is still spoiling me with how a game is treated for content, story, and gameplay, but that's such a special case.

As for the PUBG comparison, that would be cool, but again, that's a lot of resources and server manipulation to have to turn each instance back and randomize where stuff is.

@netherscourge said in Gear progression and game longevity:

If you want a multiple option end-game, like an MMORPG, this is not the game. This game is for people who want to PvP with other people on ships for the most part. That's the meat of the game from what I've seen.

Agreed with the MMORPG part as Rare already stated it's a SWAG (Shared World Adventure Game). As for who the game is for, that is not the case at all. I prefer to go exploring and searching for treasure and AI to duel. The PvP is real fun and satisfying when you destroy people and take their loot, but by no means is the game just for them.

@haiafang Just because someone likes the cosmetic over grinding/stat progression doesn't make them casual. You get that progression in games such as CS:GO and Halo in the form of skins. I would say I'm a hardcore gamer as I spend more time a week playing games in a competitive nature than I do anything else and I am a backer of this progression as it's a nice pace change from grinding. This game is not an MMORPG, so it should not have the elements of a grinding MMORPG's form of progression. Just because you don't like the way the game is being developed, doesn't mean it's the wrong way. I'm sure they know a whole lot more statistics and information on infographics and what players want than you do. The game isn't even out, so you can't really talk about longevity. For all we know, there will be a lot of new content in the form of their regular updates after launch.

@haiafang I just flat out disagree. Does SoT adhere to the MMO definition? "A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG, or more commonly, MMO) is an online game with large numbers of players on the same server." No. It does not. It technically can't even be defined as a true RPG as RPGs are defined as this video states: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpFuj4t5pkM .

TL;DR of it is: An RPG is a game in which there is a sprawling living, breathing world, and you play in a perspective of a defined character. There is a story that is defined by tough choices, where you are forced to go through the world having to make and choose between some form of tough moral choice.

Now as a SWAG (Shared World Adventure Game), which is what Rare states this game is, I see it as what it is: An open world adventure game where more than one player, but not more than a set amount, is in the sever with you.

For your concerns of progression, that's your opinion. I'll take that as a valid point. However, I still disagree because the way this form of progression is set up, it allows people to pick up the game and come and go as they please. They can't be handicapped for deciding they have to focus on real life issues, ie. they'd come back and find everyone they're facing is 20 levels higher and destroy him without allowing him to have a fighting chance. That there is how you lose player base as it separates the casual from the hardcore. That's why I also like the idea of no DLC as that's another way to split player base. The idea of horizontal progression allows for this game to last as any new person can pick it up and immediately have fun.