Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Best Of
Re: TTK changes and impact on dodge
I agree that Dodge needs to be heavily nerfed.
Dodge jump covering a big distance + dodge increasing 80% evasion + stamina replenishment is way too much. Add that to the existence of CC breaks, CC immunity, and a longer TTK, and this can become problematic, as it could create awkward situations of people getting away too easily without requiring too much skill on their part. Dodge should be a big skill expression part of combat, and spamming it and flying 10 meters every dodge is not a good way to do a skillful dodge.
My suggestion would be to:
1. Remove the inertia mechanics from dodge or nerf it like 90%
2. Add a small cooldown before being able to dodge a second time
3. Use the light/medium/heavy gear system to make dodge more/less mobile depending on what average gear type you are using.
4. Remove the universal dodge skill tree and add dodge-related passives in the archetype skill trees instead (could also do this for sprint and block).
Dodge jump covering a big distance + dodge increasing 80% evasion + stamina replenishment is way too much. Add that to the existence of CC breaks, CC immunity, and a longer TTK, and this can become problematic, as it could create awkward situations of people getting away too easily without requiring too much skill on their part. Dodge should be a big skill expression part of combat, and spamming it and flying 10 meters every dodge is not a good way to do a skillful dodge.
My suggestion would be to:
1. Remove the inertia mechanics from dodge or nerf it like 90%
2. Add a small cooldown before being able to dodge a second time
3. Use the light/medium/heavy gear system to make dodge more/less mobile depending on what average gear type you are using.
4. Remove the universal dodge skill tree and add dodge-related passives in the archetype skill trees instead (could also do this for sprint and block).
Imnotkio
1
Re: TTK changes and impact on dodge
I don't know about that. Dodge adds to combat and I don't particularly want it to be totally gutted, because melee classes want ranged class to be a free lunch. There is a certain level of game knowledge to the movement system in the game atm and I like that.
What Intrepid might do is prevent the stamina regen on every hit when dodging instead just on the initial hit, and see how that changes things. This is what is fuelling the excessive stamina regen and allows you to essentially barrel roll when hit by rapid fire, low damage per hit weapons like shortbows etc.
Despite all the complaints from the crowd which woke up to their power gains getting squashed by the last patch, the pvp feels better. People are still dying, you still get punished for over extending in group fights, pvp actually allows for more skill expression across all archetypes. Tanks and fighters don't get instantly deleted when trying to use their kit, and can build up their class resources. Over-nerfing the dodge would hurt those classes in group pvp, as you are destroying a movement mechanic which actually adds some dynamic play to the basic combat.
What Intrepid might do is prevent the stamina regen on every hit when dodging instead just on the initial hit, and see how that changes things. This is what is fuelling the excessive stamina regen and allows you to essentially barrel roll when hit by rapid fire, low damage per hit weapons like shortbows etc.
Despite all the complaints from the crowd which woke up to their power gains getting squashed by the last patch, the pvp feels better. People are still dying, you still get punished for over extending in group fights, pvp actually allows for more skill expression across all archetypes. Tanks and fighters don't get instantly deleted when trying to use their kit, and can build up their class resources. Over-nerfing the dodge would hurt those classes in group pvp, as you are destroying a movement mechanic which actually adds some dynamic play to the basic combat.
Re: 📊 Gear & Stat Tuning Feedback Thread – Help Shape Phase II Balance
I like the new direction of TTK, despite some complaints I keep hearing from people who simply got used to deleting other players under 3 seconds, this direction actually means you use your whole class kit. Both small and larger scale pvp feels good, focusing a target in group pvp still deletes people pretty quickly, higher level play requires some coordination with CC, shields etc. I could see TTK increasing "slightly" towards the 300 power direction, but not if that means an excessive gear stat treadmill, mostly locked away for the 1% of the game population.
Dps classes no longer 2 shot you with a fart, tanks and fighters actually serve a purpose in group pvp now and can stay in melee. PvP now is more about pressing 2 buttons, you actually have to use your class kit. Good support players can really make a difference too, whatever thats heal, CC, shield or other buffs.
Also I'm surprised how well the current diminishing returns play out. I heavily dislike massive gear stat differences as it removes the players skill from the game. Gear can still offer a substantial advantage, but you are no longer a god walking among mortals, who have no chance against you, and that is a good thing. Also the smaller power gap means you can focus more on playing the game instead of constantly chasing the next stat upgrade, and opens up those game features which are about pvp, to more players. Less gatekeeping, player "skill" and group coordination > gear stats, sounds good to me.
The reality is that those hardcore enough to always push for the best stats, can still do it and WILL do it, because they want that competitive advantage, however small it is.
Also slower TTK / other changes you have introduced mean that other stats actually MEAN something. You can at least TRY to build towards more tanky, evasion or lifeleeach etc. I hope gear variety is expanded so we have more build diversity in the long run for all classes.
Dps classes no longer 2 shot you with a fart, tanks and fighters actually serve a purpose in group pvp now and can stay in melee. PvP now is more about pressing 2 buttons, you actually have to use your class kit. Good support players can really make a difference too, whatever thats heal, CC, shield or other buffs.
Also I'm surprised how well the current diminishing returns play out. I heavily dislike massive gear stat differences as it removes the players skill from the game. Gear can still offer a substantial advantage, but you are no longer a god walking among mortals, who have no chance against you, and that is a good thing. Also the smaller power gap means you can focus more on playing the game instead of constantly chasing the next stat upgrade, and opens up those game features which are about pvp, to more players. Less gatekeeping, player "skill" and group coordination > gear stats, sounds good to me.
The reality is that those hardcore enough to always push for the best stats, can still do it and WILL do it, because they want that competitive advantage, however small it is.
Also slower TTK / other changes you have introduced mean that other stats actually MEAN something. You can at least TRY to build towards more tanky, evasion or lifeleeach etc. I hope gear variety is expanded so we have more build diversity in the long run for all classes.
TTK changes and impact on dodge
HI there!
With the recent gear adjustment and the increase of TTK, its becoming clear that current implementation of dodge mechanic is flawed.
Prior the changes, dodge was the only mechanic that extended the TTK and it was not that obvious how flawed it is.
After the changes, dodging implementation is so ridiculous, that it breaks the entire PVP system.
Dodge is used as traversal ability, which I think is not the intention, instead of it being defensive ability.
With current stamina tree that recovers stamina upon successful dodge is translating to characters being able to traverse 50-80 meters in 2sec while taking no damage due to dodge spam.
What I think could help mitigate this type of use are following suggestions:
1.) completely remove or reduce the stamina regeneration upon successful dodge, so that dodge is limited to 2-3 uses instead of 5+
2.) reduce the distance that character travels when performing dodge, especially from elevated positions (jump+dodge combo has very long travel distance)
3.) any combination of above
With the recent gear adjustment and the increase of TTK, its becoming clear that current implementation of dodge mechanic is flawed.
Prior the changes, dodge was the only mechanic that extended the TTK and it was not that obvious how flawed it is.
After the changes, dodging implementation is so ridiculous, that it breaks the entire PVP system.
Dodge is used as traversal ability, which I think is not the intention, instead of it being defensive ability.
With current stamina tree that recovers stamina upon successful dodge is translating to characters being able to traverse 50-80 meters in 2sec while taking no damage due to dodge spam.
What I think could help mitigate this type of use are following suggestions:
1.) completely remove or reduce the stamina regeneration upon successful dodge, so that dodge is limited to 2-3 uses instead of 5+
2.) reduce the distance that character travels when performing dodge, especially from elevated positions (jump+dodge combo has very long travel distance)
3.) any combination of above
Trubi
4
Guild, Craft, Citizenship should be account-bound, not character-bound; account should have 8 slots
Let me elaborate, all 4 suggestions are kinda interconnected
Account character slots
During alpha i've seen a ton of people who were trying different classes and had to delete old characters, thus i think there should be as much character slots as classes
Positive outcome for players:
- no need to delete characters in order to try new other classes
Negative for the system (without implementing other suggestions from this post):
- crafting system limitations will be disbalanced (with 6 extra potentially maxed out professions)
Negatives for the game:
- players will not buy secondary accounts in order to try new classes
Account-bound craft
Initial idea, as far as i understood, is about that 1 character can max only 2 professions, so you can max only 10 profs per account (5 character slots); with 22 total profs this means you need 2.2 accounts to max everything (considering latest mention of crafting refactoring - i guess might be even more)
I guess goal here is to force people to interact with each other, so there would not be self-sufficient accounts.
But in this case dedicated people can just buy 3 accounts and thats it, they will still have to spend same amount of time&effort as if all of these were on the same account (but this is side-topic)
In this case adding more character slots will break this idea, but if craft is account bound - it doesn't matter.
Currently if you want to max JM profs you need 22/4 = 5.25 characters, where 1 can do gathering, and other chars are just staying with citizenship in nodes with dedicated stations.
Which yet again doesn't make much sense, because it feels like its the same as just having access to everything from one account.
The only difference is that you cannot use, for example, JM scrolls on character below 20 lvl.
So if Steven's goal is to maximise your (player) time in the game (which makes a lot of sense in MMORPG), the its fine; but after you reached 50lvl on all characters - thats it, now its 100% the same as having crafting profs account-bound.
So current profits for the system (MMORPG):
- player has to spent more time in the game (lvling up characters in order to use prof' scrolls, but not necessary)
Profits of account bound craft (for players):
- no need for mandatory twinks just to lvl up profs
Account-bound citizenship
This one already brought couple of exploits into the game, which will just increase with time.
Example of bad actors:
1) On Lotharia (EU) there were 2 situtations where one guild, utilizing the fact, that each twink on account counts as separate citizen, did 51% attack on Joeva node, taking mayor place.
2) After taking mayor place they declared war on every node in the game (current fix is that only 3 wars per 3 days is possible)
3) All crafters, who were citizens of different nodes, basically closed the game for the day, because it was impossible to play for they - they are not battle oriented. Moreover a lot of people in general were not battle oriented. It lead to situation where people were, basically, feeding themselves to the "agressor" just to "skip the war and get back to enjoying the game"
I know wars are part of the game and i like it. I don't like that attack-51 is possible with twinks.
There was another situation with same guild with same tactic in same node, but this time they just decided to destroy one of crafting stations, creating abundance of craftable materials in advance in order to make profit.
I like the fact that it can be done in the game. I don't like the fact that it can be done with attack-51 with twinks.
Side effects of proposal
- Player will not be able to gain per-twink profits from citizenship, which will make it harder to upgrade professions. But can be fixed with "secondary citizenship". If current system allows creating 5 characters in order to have 5 citizenships - why not have account-bound citizenship with 1 primary and 4 secondary citizenships in order to gain crafting advantages?
Profits for players in case this is implemented:
- No abusing of election system (only 1 "vote" per account, only on "primary" citizenship)
Negatives (if secondary citizenship will not be implemented):
- cannot gain variety of crafting buffs from different nodes
Negatives otherwise:
- nothing on top of my mind
Account-bound guild
This one is pure QoL - annoying to juggle with characters between "main" and "twinks" guilds.
I guess "character-bound" guild idea exists for the purpose of "sending spies to guilds" situation; but i think you can achieve same result with account-bound guild membership.
Another potential issue will be that will be that currently there is idea of "battle guild" "crafting guild and "zerg guild".
But from my experience people tend to stick to "either battle or craft" on account level, so should not be a problem.
Side-note on guild skills: I understand that "battle" branch is for lvling up & guild wars. I somewhat understand "member branch" - for guild wars. But i don't udnerstand the goal of crafting branch - it does not really realte to any significant guild-bound activity to be honest, because again
battle - guild wars
members - guild wars
crafting - ???
feels like crafting can be excluded from "guild skills" into different category
Account character slots
During alpha i've seen a ton of people who were trying different classes and had to delete old characters, thus i think there should be as much character slots as classes
Positive outcome for players:
- no need to delete characters in order to try new other classes
Negative for the system (without implementing other suggestions from this post):
- crafting system limitations will be disbalanced (with 6 extra potentially maxed out professions)
Negatives for the game:
- players will not buy secondary accounts in order to try new classes
Account-bound craft
Initial idea, as far as i understood, is about that 1 character can max only 2 professions, so you can max only 10 profs per account (5 character slots); with 22 total profs this means you need 2.2 accounts to max everything (considering latest mention of crafting refactoring - i guess might be even more)
I guess goal here is to force people to interact with each other, so there would not be self-sufficient accounts.
But in this case dedicated people can just buy 3 accounts and thats it, they will still have to spend same amount of time&effort as if all of these were on the same account (but this is side-topic)
In this case adding more character slots will break this idea, but if craft is account bound - it doesn't matter.
Currently if you want to max JM profs you need 22/4 = 5.25 characters, where 1 can do gathering, and other chars are just staying with citizenship in nodes with dedicated stations.
Which yet again doesn't make much sense, because it feels like its the same as just having access to everything from one account.
The only difference is that you cannot use, for example, JM scrolls on character below 20 lvl.
So if Steven's goal is to maximise your (player) time in the game (which makes a lot of sense in MMORPG), the its fine; but after you reached 50lvl on all characters - thats it, now its 100% the same as having crafting profs account-bound.
So current profits for the system (MMORPG):
- player has to spent more time in the game (lvling up characters in order to use prof' scrolls, but not necessary)
Profits of account bound craft (for players):
- no need for mandatory twinks just to lvl up profs
Account-bound citizenship
This one already brought couple of exploits into the game, which will just increase with time.
Example of bad actors:
1) On Lotharia (EU) there were 2 situtations where one guild, utilizing the fact, that each twink on account counts as separate citizen, did 51% attack on Joeva node, taking mayor place.
2) After taking mayor place they declared war on every node in the game (current fix is that only 3 wars per 3 days is possible)
3) All crafters, who were citizens of different nodes, basically closed the game for the day, because it was impossible to play for they - they are not battle oriented. Moreover a lot of people in general were not battle oriented. It lead to situation where people were, basically, feeding themselves to the "agressor" just to "skip the war and get back to enjoying the game"
I know wars are part of the game and i like it. I don't like that attack-51 is possible with twinks.
There was another situation with same guild with same tactic in same node, but this time they just decided to destroy one of crafting stations, creating abundance of craftable materials in advance in order to make profit.
I like the fact that it can be done in the game. I don't like the fact that it can be done with attack-51 with twinks.
Side effects of proposal
- Player will not be able to gain per-twink profits from citizenship, which will make it harder to upgrade professions. But can be fixed with "secondary citizenship". If current system allows creating 5 characters in order to have 5 citizenships - why not have account-bound citizenship with 1 primary and 4 secondary citizenships in order to gain crafting advantages?
Profits for players in case this is implemented:
- No abusing of election system (only 1 "vote" per account, only on "primary" citizenship)
Negatives (if secondary citizenship will not be implemented):
- cannot gain variety of crafting buffs from different nodes
Negatives otherwise:
- nothing on top of my mind
Account-bound guild
This one is pure QoL - annoying to juggle with characters between "main" and "twinks" guilds.
I guess "character-bound" guild idea exists for the purpose of "sending spies to guilds" situation; but i think you can achieve same result with account-bound guild membership.
Another potential issue will be that will be that currently there is idea of "battle guild" "crafting guild and "zerg guild".
But from my experience people tend to stick to "either battle or craft" on account level, so should not be a problem.
Side-note on guild skills: I understand that "battle" branch is for lvling up & guild wars. I somewhat understand "member branch" - for guild wars. But i don't udnerstand the goal of crafting branch - it does not really realte to any significant guild-bound activity to be honest, because again
battle - guild wars
members - guild wars
crafting - ???
feels like crafting can be excluded from "guild skills" into different category
Re: Lawless Areas Should Exist
Having lawless zones with best loot (otherwise there's no point in them) would go against the risk/reward design of the game. If a strong/zerg guild can just dominate a single location by killing anyone they see in it - they'll snowball into an even bigger/stronger guild and will then dominate all the pvp events and get to a point where others can't even touch them.
Having those zones would also immediately completely remove any other type of player from that content, because, again, they'd simply be sniped by the hardcore players w/o any issues.
Moving all of lawless pvp stuff into well-designed guild/node wars would be a much better approach, because the risks would go up (due to war declaration costs and potential loss consequences) and the reward would be appropriate (getting the content against a proper enemy and the win reward of the war itself).
It would also make the whole situation an opt-in design, rather than a forced one, all while there's still the ability to just PK your opponent, if you believe that the loot is worth it. And I believe that PKing should also be properly rebalanced, where it's still a viable choice of action rather than a near-useless feature.
Open seas will already fuck over way too many people, who might've otherwise been interested in that kind of content. I don't want even more people getting fucked over in even more locations.
Having those zones would also immediately completely remove any other type of player from that content, because, again, they'd simply be sniped by the hardcore players w/o any issues.
Moving all of lawless pvp stuff into well-designed guild/node wars would be a much better approach, because the risks would go up (due to war declaration costs and potential loss consequences) and the reward would be appropriate (getting the content against a proper enemy and the win reward of the war itself).
It would also make the whole situation an opt-in design, rather than a forced one, all while there's still the ability to just PK your opponent, if you believe that the loot is worth it. And I believe that PKing should also be properly rebalanced, where it's still a viable choice of action rather than a near-useless feature.
Open seas will already fuck over way too many people, who might've otherwise been interested in that kind of content. I don't want even more people getting fucked over in even more locations.
Ludullu
2
Lawless Areas Should Exist
I have been playing since the beginning of alpha 2 phase 1 and have played a lot of hours. The main reason I wanted to make a post was to talk about the lawless areas in the game. Since the beginning when I started playing the main lawless areas have been the tropics and desert. I have had in my opinion the most fun and the best pvp in both of those areas and have had a lot of "end game" interactions around those areas specifically mob grind spots that ended up being the best in the game (tropics goblins/desert minotaurs/desert snakes). With the new update everything has changed and I'm worried about the future.
In the most recent update Djinna and Squall's End have been added as their own separate nodes down in the desert. What has come with that is the removal of the lawless area in the rest of the desert and has made it so the tropics are the only lawless area left. I have had a lot of fun experiences in the desert fighting over farm spots and overall think its worse for the game to have less and less lawless areas. I have been told that the overall plan is to have the ocean stay as the main lawless area on the map (not sure if true someone can correct me) with little other areas on land and I wanted to make this post to argue that some land areas on the map should stay lawless.
There are a lot of merits to having lawless area's in my opinion.
1. Farm spots that are in lawless should be great and incentivize fighting for, adds more pvp content and rewards group's that are able to win the spot with better experience. This also spreads leveling groups across the map so less areas are as crowded and leveling groups can decide to go to decent farm spots that aren't lawless versus really good experience farms but they are in lawless and more dangerous. This also will add more spice during leveling and more fun.
2. Not everyone wants to pvp in the ocean all the time. The ocean is definitely fun and I look forward to what else they add in the future but having a variety of pvp area's in my opinion is good for the game and breaks up the monotony.
3. Having more lawless area's spreads out the pvp, if there's only one central location then everyone will hang around there. Not all pvp needs to be large scale guild vs guild or 8 man vs 8 man, and having more lawless area's would help spread people around so you could potentially find more small scale fights.
4. There are times where I want to pvp but don't want to take the time to war declare on another guild or start up/find a caravan. Lawless zones are the perfect place to find small scale fights without needing to involve your guild or run a caravan.
5. They can have farm spot's stay lawless but keep the node's town safe. I'm not sure if its a technical limitation but let's say for the current Djinna node, you can keep the town itself and some area safe and then when you reach a certain distance away there should be a border where it turns lawless so certain POI's like the snake cave can be fought over. There's ways to make this better but overall I don't believe it should be this node is all lawless and this node is all safe, I'm sure we could find a good in between.
I'm worried once the Jundark area gets added and more nodes are added around the Turquoise sea even more lawless area will disappear. The most fun I have had in this game usually takes place in the Lawless area and I hope they stay and add more in the future, not just the ocean.
In the most recent update Djinna and Squall's End have been added as their own separate nodes down in the desert. What has come with that is the removal of the lawless area in the rest of the desert and has made it so the tropics are the only lawless area left. I have had a lot of fun experiences in the desert fighting over farm spots and overall think its worse for the game to have less and less lawless areas. I have been told that the overall plan is to have the ocean stay as the main lawless area on the map (not sure if true someone can correct me) with little other areas on land and I wanted to make this post to argue that some land areas on the map should stay lawless.
There are a lot of merits to having lawless area's in my opinion.
1. Farm spots that are in lawless should be great and incentivize fighting for, adds more pvp content and rewards group's that are able to win the spot with better experience. This also spreads leveling groups across the map so less areas are as crowded and leveling groups can decide to go to decent farm spots that aren't lawless versus really good experience farms but they are in lawless and more dangerous. This also will add more spice during leveling and more fun.
2. Not everyone wants to pvp in the ocean all the time. The ocean is definitely fun and I look forward to what else they add in the future but having a variety of pvp area's in my opinion is good for the game and breaks up the monotony.
3. Having more lawless area's spreads out the pvp, if there's only one central location then everyone will hang around there. Not all pvp needs to be large scale guild vs guild or 8 man vs 8 man, and having more lawless area's would help spread people around so you could potentially find more small scale fights.
4. There are times where I want to pvp but don't want to take the time to war declare on another guild or start up/find a caravan. Lawless zones are the perfect place to find small scale fights without needing to involve your guild or run a caravan.
5. They can have farm spot's stay lawless but keep the node's town safe. I'm not sure if its a technical limitation but let's say for the current Djinna node, you can keep the town itself and some area safe and then when you reach a certain distance away there should be a border where it turns lawless so certain POI's like the snake cave can be fought over. There's ways to make this better but overall I don't believe it should be this node is all lawless and this node is all safe, I'm sure we could find a good in between.
I'm worried once the Jundark area gets added and more nodes are added around the Turquoise sea even more lawless area will disappear. The most fun I have had in this game usually takes place in the Lawless area and I hope they stay and add more in the future, not just the ocean.
Chase
7
Re: Subject: Feedback on Recent Stat and TTK Changes
RaspberryHeaven wrote: »SmileGurney wrote: »I'm sure soon enough we will know how broken the new base stat system is, and if can be as easily abused as pre-patch P1 and P2 era. So take a breath, and enjoy the incoming P3 for what it is.
There won't be a need for P3 unless they revert this abomination of a patch. I have seen the active development excuse countless times but this time they made all the wrong changes at once, surely it's not because P3 is right around the corner
Never been more excited for a higher TTK, more builds, more variation, higher skill ceiling and requires higher strategical and tactical acumen on all fronts.
Solvryn
1
Re: Subject: Feedback on Recent Stat and TTK Changes
This was a bad change FOR YOU. I've only gotten more hyped for P3 testing exactly because they released this patch.RaspberryHeaven wrote: »There won't be a need for P3 unless they revert this abomination of a patch. I have seen the active development excuse countless times but this time they made all the wrong changes at once, surely it's not because P3 is right around the corner
Ludullu
1
Re: Node upgrades for gathering tools
I'll support OP here. This doesn't make sense relative to gathering tools.
It's always a negative when a game introduces a thing that restricts comfort logins and positive feelings for no reason (or fails to add an obvious one). So it makes sense to assume there's a reason, as the two posters above me do.
But that doesn't make sense for this one.
Comparisons:
Elite Dangerous
Colonization System, at least it makes sense when you can't build a facility in your colony due to not having the slots, and while it has many flaws related to player behaviour that hasn't been thought through fully, it starts with the capacity to travel to get whatever you want basically as soon as you can engage with the playloop, while still having the regional pressures.
Black Desert Online
Contribution Point Houses and Workers are not community-defined, so even though this is anchored to location, the player still has their own agency in what to do about it, and much shorter travel times. If anything, BDO is the closest to what Ashes is 'in the world the OP is referencing', and therefore doesn't feel so great either, but it shows how small changes like 'the equivalent of Freeholds' flip the player experience. More importantly, it caused their Econ designers to make the obvious mistake of 'letting higher tier tools be more powerful but also simple to get'. This would unfortunately take way too long to explain as usual, a whole history lecture, so I guess I'll just hope someone at Intrepid has the experience enough to explain it on OP's behalf.
Final Fantasy XI
You can just make them yourself, wherever you happen to be, because that's just how that game works. But even if it had 'levels' of these tools and you had to make them at a specific location, this would just lead to stockpiling and trading. That wouldn't be bad in Ashes, but it would probably feel bad. And since gathering tools must obviously count as items that don't drop on death, it creates a huge economy problem where one way to make money is to provide something that is essentially a consumable to people who lose benefit if someone else kills them even after they use it correctly. I agree/understand why players in Ashes can't just do Crystal Synthesis wherever they are, but then we're back to 'Can't Freeholds do this?'
Throne and Liberty
Canina Village specifically lacks certain workstations/vendors despite specifically having the spots/models where they would go. I'm sure most people can understand how annoying that is. (It's probably to affect player congregation behavior or the game originally used this location as the Starter Zone or it's not time to unlock/upgrade that Village yet, dev-wise). Simple extrapolation of adding any Ashes-type implementations on top of what TL is would immediately make this disparity ten times worse. And note I'm not saying 'every player gathering point should have these. Again, this is about world-fit and world design.
TL;DR World-fit MATTERS. I don't wanna see the Intrepid World Design team get screwed over as hard as the BDO ones. Design holes like this can make a good world design feel bad, driving away (subconsciously even, which is way worse) players who would like to be invested, leaving only the echo chamber of those who never cared enough in the first place, which is doubly bad for a studio trying to foster a cohesive team.
Jeremy if this gets to you, plz 'yell at somebody on the Nodes team'. I don't like to 'address Devs directly', certainly not by name, but I feel like letting a colossal fuck-up tarnish your work is really bad. (and ofc if this is your own fuck-up then I'm 'yelling at you' to not sabotage yourself).
It's always a negative when a game introduces a thing that restricts comfort logins and positive feelings for no reason (or fails to add an obvious one). So it makes sense to assume there's a reason, as the two posters above me do.
But that doesn't make sense for this one.
- It doesn't fit the world setting (the types of tools we're referring to are things people would learn to make themselves once they had the processing required to make the good materials).
- It doesn't actually apply if Freeholds can do any Crafting (moving the control to a different set of people, but not to actual politics or geography)
- It doesn't foster drama the way many other systems claim to, or maybe just not the good kind in my opinion (bringing down a Node because of it having the wrong building for the tools?)
- It changes the way players congregate in what is technically an artificial way (yes, even though they can choose what to build, the ability to make stupid choices isn't so important here)
- It's not going to end up being about anything other than resources anyway (this is back to world setting sorta, though).
Comparisons:
Elite Dangerous
Colonization System, at least it makes sense when you can't build a facility in your colony due to not having the slots, and while it has many flaws related to player behaviour that hasn't been thought through fully, it starts with the capacity to travel to get whatever you want basically as soon as you can engage with the playloop, while still having the regional pressures.
Black Desert Online
Contribution Point Houses and Workers are not community-defined, so even though this is anchored to location, the player still has their own agency in what to do about it, and much shorter travel times. If anything, BDO is the closest to what Ashes is 'in the world the OP is referencing', and therefore doesn't feel so great either, but it shows how small changes like 'the equivalent of Freeholds' flip the player experience. More importantly, it caused their Econ designers to make the obvious mistake of 'letting higher tier tools be more powerful but also simple to get'. This would unfortunately take way too long to explain as usual, a whole history lecture, so I guess I'll just hope someone at Intrepid has the experience enough to explain it on OP's behalf.
Final Fantasy XI
You can just make them yourself, wherever you happen to be, because that's just how that game works. But even if it had 'levels' of these tools and you had to make them at a specific location, this would just lead to stockpiling and trading. That wouldn't be bad in Ashes, but it would probably feel bad. And since gathering tools must obviously count as items that don't drop on death, it creates a huge economy problem where one way to make money is to provide something that is essentially a consumable to people who lose benefit if someone else kills them even after they use it correctly. I agree/understand why players in Ashes can't just do Crystal Synthesis wherever they are, but then we're back to 'Can't Freeholds do this?'
Throne and Liberty
Canina Village specifically lacks certain workstations/vendors despite specifically having the spots/models where they would go. I'm sure most people can understand how annoying that is. (It's probably to affect player congregation behavior or the game originally used this location as the Starter Zone or it's not time to unlock/upgrade that Village yet, dev-wise). Simple extrapolation of adding any Ashes-type implementations on top of what TL is would immediately make this disparity ten times worse. And note I'm not saying 'every player gathering point should have these. Again, this is about world-fit and world design.
TL;DR World-fit MATTERS. I don't wanna see the Intrepid World Design team get screwed over as hard as the BDO ones. Design holes like this can make a good world design feel bad, driving away (subconsciously even, which is way worse) players who would like to be invested, leaving only the echo chamber of those who never cared enough in the first place, which is doubly bad for a studio trying to foster a cohesive team.
Jeremy if this gets to you, plz 'yell at somebody on the Nodes team'. I don't like to 'address Devs directly', certainly not by name, but I feel like letting a colossal fuck-up tarnish your work is really bad. (and ofc if this is your own fuck-up then I'm 'yelling at you' to not sabotage yourself).
Azherae
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