What is the LEAST gear dependent mmo?

[Cryomancer]

I'm sick of endless gear farming. from WoW and its clones. I wanna know games that does it differently than wow and its clones. I want my char to become stronger and more powerful not to find stat stickie items that "make" him more powerful. I'm sick of everyone being a clone and the unique difference being its gear. This is not a RPG, is a Barbie dressing game/Diablo 3 clone.


In single player RPGs, is not uncommon to highly skilled players to beat Diablo 1/2 naked, to beat souls like naked, etc. With mmos, the unique mmo which I can solo stuff naked that I know is Dungeons & Dragons Online and Shadowbane. In DDO, I can solo quests in Reaper difficulty NAKED. I also have heard about Mortal Online 2 but not that sure. Most of the power is knowledge that is maintaining in your char even when(not if) you die and lose all gear. Kotor 1/2 is not very gear dependent mainly for Jedi Consulars but swtor is.

 

[The Nameless One]

You basically answered you own question. If you want to be farmed like a yellow drone for time and money, you play an MMO. If you enjoy fun, you play a proper cRPG.

I really wonder why there's an MMO subforum in the first place....

 

[Poseidon00]

City of Heroes, easily. Gear doesn't even exist. There are minor and optional upgrades to abilities and that's it until you are like max level, then you get one more layer of complexity.

 

[Cryomancer]

If you want to be farmed like a yellow drone for time and money, you play an MMO. If you enjoy fun, you play a proper cRPG.

There is mmos that play more like proper CRPG. In DDO for eg, you don't spend 99% of the time at lv cap farming gear.

You reincarnate your char and experience the low level content with another build or play new expansions which are rarely launched for lv cap.

City of Heroes, easily. Gear doesn't even exist. There are minor and optional upgrades to abilities and that's it until you are like max level, then you get one more layer of complexity.

Yep. Amazing recommendation.

So sad that the best mmos, all are dead. I want to play Shadowbane so much. I miss it when Played on steam.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

"reverse 1999" is a gacha rather light on monetization with no gear. there's very little character development in general, focus is on story and content itself. and it's a treat to watch and listen.

 

[Poseidon00]

If you want to be farmed like a yellow drone for time and money, you play an MMO. If you enjoy fun, you play a proper cRPG.

There is mmos that play more like proper CRPG. In DDO for eg, you don't spend 99% of the time at lv cap farming gear.

You reincarnate your char and experience the low level content with another build or play new expansions which are rarely launched for lv cap.

City of Heroes, easily. Gear doesn't even exist. There are minor and optional upgrades to abilities and that's it until you are like max level, then you get one more layer of complexity.

Yep. Amazing recommendation.

So sad that the best mmos, all are dead. I want to play Shadowbane so much. I miss it when Played on steam.

CoH is officially "dead", but it has active servers where finding groups is easy. Sometimes, to try a new build, I hop in and join a group within a few minutes.

 

[Cryomancer]

CoH is officially "dead", but it has active servers where finding groups is easy. Sometimes, to try a new build, I hop in and join a group within a few minutes.

I have no access to my gaming PC only a old notebook right now. But I think that I will try a private server for CoH and for ShadowBane soon.

 

[markec]

In Guild Wars 1 you do have some itemization but most of the game is all about collecting skills and choosing what skills to utilize. As you can only use few of them at once, also the level cap is small so even leveling not a issue.

 

[VerSacrum]

While it was gear dependent, in DAoC (second last prestigious MMO before Blizztard took a shit on the genre) you got it from player craftsmen and the abilities from RvR/expansion grind. Former didn't really feel like a grind.

Pity the Uthgard classic server died.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

ACE Online/Air Rivals. IIRC most of your stats came from the level up points you invest into the attributes on your character sheet. The time required to level up started ballooning massively around the level 70 to 80 range. I remember my dad would spend a whole evening levelgrinding in the asteroid level and his EXP bar would barely move like 5% of a level. So most veteran players maxxed out at around level 70 or 80ish before abandoning levelling entirely and just focusing on the faction war PvP. There was a level leaderboard and only like a small handful of players managed to get to high 90s or the 100s or whatever the max level range was. There is gear, but for PvP IIRC most people just used the best NPC shop gear and enhanced that. Only a few would bother farming the world bosses trying to craft the boss armors. Private servers give massive exp boosts (like 500%+) so you finish out your levelling fast and jump into the faction war PvP more quickly. Victory in the PvP boiled down to 1. who was the more skilled player with their abilities and flying their jet, and 2. which faction coordinated better (ie killing enemy healers, bombarding enemy tanks, M-gears healing or summoning in players in the backlines, etc).

Eve Online: while there is a large ship tier progression system of frigates < destroyers < cruisers < battlecruisers < battleships < carriers < dreadnoughts < motherships < titans (and several ships having alternate versions with better stats), this is a game where when your ship blows up, it actually blows up and you lose almost everything invested in it. So for regular PvP, most people instead just buy a lot of backup basic frigates and destroyers (and maybe Cruisers) and outfit them with cheap modules and ammo and then fly out to have some fun, and if they blow up then so what? You have a warehouse of more so you can jump straight back into the action. So for the PvP, the only real character progression left is their character's skills, which are not levelled up through gameplay but rather they are scheduled to be trained in real time even while the player is offline. So it can take years of being subscribed for your character to max out the skills, which is why there was such a big secondhand market for buying other people's accounts that had characters with lots of high skill in certain areas, though IIRC this market was then officiated by the devs and you can now legally trade characters. Traditional gear progression of buying bigger and better ships and equipment only really applies to players who focus on PvE missions (often mocked as "carebears", and are often a target by PvPers out of petty spite).

 

[Caim]

Runescape, both RS3 and OSRS (the latter being less gear reliant)
Sure, in the early game you'll be on the treadmill for increasingly larger numbers, but once you start making it out of the mid game you will get an increasingly large number of options. In Runescape you have access to all combat styles and skills on one character, so you'll be expected to swap to whatever tools you need for the situation at hand. While there has been a significant increase in powerful items over the years, that does not mean that old gear is now obsolute. Barrows equipment for example has been in the game for 20 years now and it still has a place for certain activities, whether it's the self-healing abilities of one set, or the potential to deal truly massive damage with another. Getting new gear is like getting new puzzle pieces, allowing you access to new styles of play and new approaches to combat. It's also worth noting that almost all gear, including endgame level gear, is tradable so even if you don't have the skill or luck to obtain things on your own you can grind for money to get them. You also don't need to always wear your best gear: if you're doing less dangerous activities you can get away with cheaper gear that is still more than enough to deal with the situation at hand, and it might very well be cheaper since a fair chunk of higher level gear degrades with use so you'll need to pay to repair it.

Guild Wars 2
Ever since the release of GW2 over a decade ago there has been no increase to the level cap or statistical maximum for player characters. While there have been introductions of new stat combinations, new legendary items and recently the new relic system (it used to be where if you had a full set of armor upgrades you'd get a proc effect, but a year and a half ago these two systems were decoupled so you can now get said proc from a specific item type), if you had a full set of gear that increased damage/crit chance/crit damage your character is still as viable as it is today. This remains true to this day: once you have your gear you are ready for the rest of the game. This gear can be very cheap to purchase in-game, so once you hit level 80 you're ready to go. This gear you can buy on the cheap is also only 5% below the statistically best gear in the game, so you don't need to worry about getting better stuff for 95% of the game's content. Only if you're getting into high difficulty 5 or 10 man instances you'll need the best gear to succeed, and in the massed World VS World mode the extra stats might be useful as well. Once you hit the level cap you gain access to Masteries: upgrades to your entire account which allow new ways to interact with the map, access to legendary gear that can change stats with a few clicks, new and improved mounts or other ways to make traversing the maps easier. Your attacks come from whatever weapons you have equipped: find the weapons that suit your playstyle best and focus on getting the best of that type.

 

[Cryomancer]

I will never understood why so many people mention a game which you can't even use any skill without gear like GW2 as "low gear dependent"...

For me, the least gear dependent mmo is ShadowBane and the second is Dungeons and Dragons Online.

 

[anvi]

In EQ only really the melee characters need any gear at all. I remember seeing people who rushed a Necro to level 50+ with fear kiting, and all they wore was a few pieces of cloth they found early on. Although I assume they camped Journeyman Boots.

 

[Cryomancer]

Talking about EQ, and EQ clones like Pantheon? I'm considering testing it.

 

[anvi]

Pantheon sounds very barebones :/

 

[Caim]

I will never understood why so many people mention a game which you can't even use any skill without gear like GW2 as "low gear dependent"...

Because in this case I read "gear dependent" as in requiring a grind to keep up with the game instead of owning an arsenal of one-time purchases to allow you access to a variety of combat skills.

 

[what am i doing]

Guild Wars is mostly not gear-dependant, although for optimal loadouts there may be a bit of grinding involved due to how skewed some of the automatic trader prices for certain modifiers have gotten. But that's for optimal loadouts, not "good enough" loadouts. Good enough loadouts are pretty trivial to set up.

 

[ADL]

When I hear "gear dependent" in the context of MMOs I think of a gear treadmill. Guild Wars 1/2 definitely aren't that. Since they don't raise the level cap in either game it's a one time purchase unless you're min/maxxing to an obscene degree.

Guild Wars 1 it's all just a one time purchase except for cosmetics (1.5K armor/15K armor/Obsidian armor; all same stats). My Droknar's Forge equipment from 2005 was still considered endgame equipment when I finished Eye of the North in 2009.
Guild Wars 2 the legendary items are a negligible boost over standard items. For all intents and purposes, a pinnacle chase and I'm pretty sure they hand those out like candy in the living story now.

 

[GamerCat_]

MMORPGs in particular are kind of screwed here since the more of the game plays out on paper the less room there is for anything but big numbers to matter. And frankly I don't see how a stronger character isn't basically the same thing. Smash guys together and then numbers resolve.

EVE online is mentioned here, and that's the type of "mmo" this works in. EVE inspired Escaoe From Tarkov, which I maybe won't recommend, but it's an "mmo" of a kind where you can really kick ass without "gear". And your relationship with your "gear", like in EVE, is very tenuous. You'll be losing stuff constantly. Gear is a power-up that lasts until you die. Then you're back to some cheaper baseline. But even more than EVE your cheap baseline doesn't hold you back. I don't know if a Frigate can threaten a Titan in EVE, but in Tarkov I've shot a guy through his bulletproof ballistic mask with the cheapest handgun in the game while he was trying to take me out with a rifle firing individual rounds more valuable than my gun.

If you hate gear dependency, what do you want? If you want to feel powerful is getting good at a skill-based game out of the question? Again, building stats feels like the same thing as items to me, only they're items built into your character bought with time.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

MMORPGs in particular are kind of screwed here since the more of the game plays out on paper the less room there is for anything but big numbers to matter. And frankly I don't see how a stronger character isn't basically the same thing. Smash guys together and then numbers resolve.

EVE online is mentioned here, and that's the type of "mmo" this works in. EVE inspired Escaoe From Tarkov, which I maybe won't recommend, but it's an "mmo" of a kind where you can really kick ass without "gear". And your relationship with your "gear", like in EVE, is very tenuous. You'll be losing stuff constantly. Gear is a power-up that lasts until you die. Then you're back to some cheaper baseline. But even more than EVE your cheap baseline doesn't hold you back. I don't know if a Frigate can threaten a Titan in EVE, but in Tarkov I've shot a guy through his bulletproof ballistic mask with the cheapest handgun in the game while he was trying to take me out with a rifle firing individual rounds more valuable than my gun.

If you hate gear dependency, what do you want? If you want to feel powerful is getting good at a skill-based game out of the question? Again, building stats feels like the same thing as items to me, only they're items built into your character bought with time.

I think it is about presentation. While yes, at the end of the day whether it is the numbers on your "character" or your "gear" going up it's effectively the same thing, I think the problem with "gear" is that it feels unimmersive and arbitrary to be constantly acquiring and equipping new chestplates simply because they have numbers attached to them that make you arbitrarily more powerful. Multiply that x the number of equipment slots (helmet, gloves, boots, legs, belts, rings, claoks necklaces, etc), and it becomes even more fakey. You are not emotionally invested into your chestplate which you are going to replace shortly. Whereas people are invested into their character, and gaining higher stats or skill proficiency because you levelled up feels more natural.

 

[GamerCat_]

I think it is about presentation. While yes, at the end of the day whether it is the numbers on your "character" or your "gear" going up it's effectively the same thing, I think the problem with "gear" is that it feels unimmersive and arbitrary to be constantly acquiring and equipping new chestplates simply because they have numbers attached to them that make you arbitrarily more powerful. Multiply that x the number of equipment slots (helmet, gloves, boots, legs, belts, rings, claoks necklaces, etc), and it becomes even more fakey. You are not emotionally invested into your chestplate which you are going to replace shortly. Whereas people are invested into their character, and gaining higher stats or skill proficiency because you levelled up feels more natural.

I get that. And I really tend to dislike video games making you a snappy modular mech-man. But something I find funny is how From Software obviously got their ideas on a warrior's relationship to equipment from making 'Armored Core'. Swapping in and out, becoming another type of fighting machine to meet a new situation. But at the same time they seem to understand this attachment and appreciation for gear as things. So they both make everything look really nice, make different pieces of gear (weapons especially) behaviouraly distinct rather than tiered iterations of each other, and the upgrade options available allow for taking your starter gear all the way to the end of the game (I enjoy doing this).

In Demon's Souls and Dark Souls your armour has statistics and is important, so you may cycle it around a bit. I don't see this as a failing. It's obviously something they like. The idea of dressing for an occasion. The 'Evergrace' games were entirely about this. But then they went and seemed to experiment the other way with Bloodborne, which only has negligible statistics tied to clothing. So you can just dress as you please all game if you like with no disadvantage.

You can make a game about constantly swapping out what you're wearing without undermining the idea that these pieces of gear are real things with their own characteristics and presence in the game world and on your character. But MMOs tend to reduce everything down to the barest progression markers and novel iterative powerups.

Tarkov has the advantage of being a very physical and tactile action game. Armour is felt and appreciated because it's behaving as armour. It covers what you see it covering. Your helmet isn't you buying HP. It's a thing sitting on your head that can deflect pellets of buckshot (bad luck if they hit your face).

This is a rare thing for western games to get right. Let alone MMOs.

 

[Cryomancer]

Because in this case I read "gear dependent" as in requiring a grind to keep up with the game instead of owning an arsenal of one-time purchases to allow you access to a variety of combat skills.

I think of a gear treadmill.

Now I understand. You understood differently. IMO low gear dependency mmo would be like DDO. Where for eg, your fireball scales more with your caster level than your gear. Or like Shadowbane where training skills is extremely more important than gear.

For eg, one of multiple traits which you can pick in char creation, can give +10 INT, the full set of warlock gives +5 INT ( Warlock_Regalia - wiki ) other traits can give ability to see invisibility, bonus from gear quickly reaches your attribute cap. You drop your inventory on death and stuff can break. And some types of gear also come with drawbacks. I like it.

Pantheon sounds very barebones :/

I know. But is early alpha.

I imagine that till launch will improve a lot. The question is. How many years if not decades till the early alpha ends? 7d2d took over a decade in early access.

The game seems to have attributes in char creation. A huge plus imo.

Was the most basic RPG aspect but sadly in MMOs, is a huge plus.

Tarkov has the advantage of being a very physical and tactile action game. Armour is felt and appreciated because it's behaving as armour. It covers what you see it covering. Your helmet isn't you buying HP. It's a thing sitting on your head that can deflect pellets of buckshot (bad luck if they hit your face).

Yep. Also, armor is not like FL3/4. Where it absorbs by percentage, don't matter if is a .22 LR or a 14.5x114mm round. It works like armor IRL ie - even the best in game is worthless against the .338 LM rifle with AP rounds but can easily deflect smaller cartridges.

I think the problem with "gear" is that it feels unimmersive and arbitrary to be constantly acquiring and equipping new chestplates simply because they have numbers attached to them that make you arbitrarily more powerful.

Also, what if I can't find a good piece of gear? What if my gear breaks? I want be powerful, not have powerful equipment.

Magical gear should do magical stuff. A mace magically enchanted to be more effective against undead makes sense in lore in most fantasy settings. The same mace by no reason making my muscle mass larger, my reflexes better and increasing my IQ makes no sense in most settings.