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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Labor System
Consider using Labor Point system. Every hour, online or off, your character accumulates labor points, required to mine ore and craft armor etc. The fastest way to level each skill would be spending labor in short leveling bursts, and then doing other things (IRL or IG) while your labor regenerates.
- eliminates binge-grinding: no more mining for as many consecutive hours as necessary as fastest way to reach skill cap.
- allows the use of offline time to level in-game skills: a cool and appealing sentiment.
- sense of efficiency: every time you spend all your labor, you know there is nothing else you can do at the moment - might as well let your labor regenerate and go do something else, online or off. no-one is gaining advantage over you by binge-grinding because that is impossible.
- Extends IRL time before you can reach Max level: adds value AND fulfillment to being max-level in a skill
Disclaimer: This is straight out of ArcheAge. I really like the labor system there.
- eliminates binge-grinding: no more mining for as many consecutive hours as necessary as fastest way to reach skill cap.
- allows the use of offline time to level in-game skills: a cool and appealing sentiment.
- sense of efficiency: every time you spend all your labor, you know there is nothing else you can do at the moment - might as well let your labor regenerate and go do something else, online or off. no-one is gaining advantage over you by binge-grinding because that is impossible.
- Extends IRL time before you can reach Max level: adds value AND fulfillment to being max-level in a skill
Disclaimer: This is straight out of ArcheAge. I really like the labor system there.
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Comments
People should get what they put in. if someone grinds gathering for hours they should reap the benefits of doing so.
plus one of the reason archeage had the labour system is so that they could profit off the labour pots in the store.
For me the labor system in Archeage was horrible, you need labor for everything. After using up all my labor, I can't craft, work my farm, fish or even do trade runs to make money. It just limits game play and promotes using the cash shop to buy labor pots or buy apex so you can sell it for gold and buy labor pots from people.
Veteran run away and power gaps. The longer a game goes on the less new players will join because they cant compete and can never catch up. New players simply wont tolerate being veteran dog food anymore.
People leave. If they aren't replaced the game dies.
Problem 2.
Rationing player progress is extremely frustrating when they pay a subscription charge and have time to spare. You cant take peoples money and then say...'hey sorry, you cant play at the moment.'
Solution.
The only way to square that circle is horizontal progression.
You can progress and evolve sideways as much as you like whenever you like.
But you don't leave everyone behind with a massive progress or power gap created by vertical progression.
You in effect wrap lots of small vertical progression within optional but limited horizontal options.
So you can ever expand your skill base with an ever growing pool to choose from in an unrestricted way.
You become more unique, versatile and adaptable (within the confines of maintaining uniqueness), rather than ever more powerful.
New players can max out skills just as quickly and be rapidly competitive, but their pool of options is far more limited.
eg
1000 skills can be unocked and all have ot be levelled to be effective.
Progress enables you to unlock more and more skills.
BUT, you can never use anymore than 7 skills at a time.
You can of course change which of your unlocked skills you desire to use.
Because no one can ever use anymore than 7 skills, new player can rapidly be competitive.
Because veterans have unlocked 100s of skills they can adapt to any situation more readily and be more suited to overcome any obstacle.
Think of yourself as a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. New players can only adopt one shape and only fit in limited places (which shape and place is defined by their initial choice). Veterans can morph into any shape they like and fit in anywhere.
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Oh, there haven been multiple reasons why ArcheAge wasn't as successful as it should have been. The publisher did its fare share, in all honesty.. Sadly, such a wonderful game!
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Back to the OP.
I am also strongly against any kind of implementation of that sort.
Players, or I at least, shouldn't feel any kind of restriction. I absolutely hate games in which you either have to be online all the time to make contributions, gaining anything which yield effective towards level progression, or can't progress forward because of said missing points/currency yada yada.
If I enjoy grinding I should be able to do so. Or let's not say enjoy but if you invest your time in something, you should be able to benefit from it.
Furthermore, that's exactly how you create a divide between those that are willing to pay, pay more, and those that aren't.
Casual gaming will be almost impossible that way. I Love my games with both Elitist and casual gamers.
If you disguise it at "Energy" or "Stamina" or something that fits the fiction, it makes sense your character can only expend so much of it before some rest and recuperation is necessary.
And when you think of that, start thinking of entertainers, artists, musicians, cooks and others who can work your "senses" to help you recover and ready-up faster - healing for the soul, maybe :)
This is a big social interdependency that I think has great potential!
1) this was one of my biggest complaint with ArcheAge.. it wasn't meant to do anything more than provide an easy cash cow to milk player's money through labor potions in a broken cash shop.
2) Why punish players who can't play every day by making them lose money if they don't login? They already get punished enough for being casual in an MMO game without adding a mechanic like labor which serves no purpose in a p2p game with no p2w cash shop.
3) Steven mentioned that crafting will be something that players can entirely dedicate themselves to doing in AOC. There's a lot of players who want to specialize in gathering the best resources, or processing theses resources or crafting stuff out of them. It was mentioned in Cryy's interview that it will be very time consuming to do all 3 and that players will likely have to specialize in one of the three. With a system like labor, you would force players to do things they don't want to do because eventually they'd run out of labor and have to do something else. Likewise, you'd force players who want to play a certain way to play in a fashion that does not interest them , because they would feel like they have to spend their labor every day before doing anything else.
4) As awesome and as much fun as I've had playing ArcheAge.. labor made me feel obligated to do things I didn't want to do. Like farm coin purses or play farming simulator.. 90% of my time was spent doing stuff that made me want to rip my eyes out of my sockets.. (like single planting corn seeds) but I did them anyways because I needed gold for gear so that I could enjoy the 10% of the time I actually did fun stuff.
Stay away from labour. Players who want to dedicate themselves to non combat roles should not be told they can't do that anymore cuz they ran out of a fictional resource. It wouldn't even make sense if it was called energy or stamina cuz why the hell can you not gather or craft but can still fight monsters??
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Because energy or stamina would effect combat, too :)
This should be a character-wide resource that affects everything to different degrees. IMO, of course!
I know in a book I read they had a system where stamina was used to determine your combat efficiency and people needed to eat food to recover your stamina. Once your stamina hit zero you started losing HP, although I think a system like this would be better for a survival type MMO.
On a side note, here is a link to the book:
http://www.novelupdates.com/series/a-certain-middle-aged-mans-vrmmo-activity-log/
There is a comic version and a novel version and it has lots of great ideas for MMOs.
Archage is a horrible p2w example, literally everything is used to get you to buy from the shop. It's Laborsystem in it's worst form. I liked BDO a bit more, it felt more like a currency you spend and trade, and tried to manage to get the most out of it in the early phases, later on it was basicly dropped.
I don't know the exact reasons, but that's why I can say it like this: In the end it was a good thing it was dropped and gave me more freedom, but it felt like invaladiation of the work people put in. Why the fuck was it even there in the first place.
It's just a terrible timegating mechanic in a genre where you usually binge a few hours a day and might not come back for several days. You have no energie on that character? Make a toon.
You all have to many toons, we need to make labourpoints harsher to make them something with an effect, why else did we introduce them?
No, thanks I hope we will not see that, I want to decide when I put my time in and how much I put in. I don't want to be gated by an estimate of the average player who plays 1 hour every 8 hours.
If your looking for gating mechanisms, there are better ways. Crops take time to grow as an example, and that length could be factored regardless whether your online, or offline. Unless of course they are magic beans you bought with a cow.
I trust Intrepid to strike the proper time balance based on what I have seen so far, and their stated goals.
Locke
– eliminates binge-grinding: no more mining for as many consecutive hours as necessary as fastest way to reach skill cap.
– allows the use of offline time to level in-game skills: a cool and appealing sentiment.
– sense of efficiency: every time you spend all your labor, you know there is nothing else you can do at the moment – might as well let your labor regenerate and go do something else, online or off. no-one is gaining advantage over you by binge-grinding because that is impossible.
– Extends IRL time before you can reach Max level: adds value AND fulfillment to being max-level in a skill
Disclaimer: This is straight out of ArcheAge. I really like the labor system there.
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This is not a crappy P2W MMO. No need for a P2W Labor System, if you like that go play AA.
This is not a crappy P2W MMO. No need for a P2W Labor System, if you like that go play AA.
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No offense, but there are some really asinine replies in this thread, like the one above.
There are very good reasons to use a "labor" type system that have to do with constraints and fostering player choice - do this "or" that - as part of the game design. Not gating for the sake of gating.
Not saying a AoC has to have this, not saying it can't. But to dismiss it out of hand simply exposes lack of understanding of why it exists.
This isn't archeage. If a player wants to binge out on the game, let them.
I hate these artificial restrictions and generally imposed to limit playtime in countries like Korea.
Every game developer should always remember that when you place a wall in front of the players, they will always find a way around, above, beneath or even pass right through it.
[/quote] Constructive criticism
Archeage have many flaws (Trino implementation) but Labor Points is not one of them. If you quit the game it was not because of Labor Points System, was Either P2W, Alts,Hackers and boring must do tasks which has nothing to do with the Labor.
Labor System = Allows Casual Players to remain close to competitive in the game and prevents hunting bots, unfortunately this only work in Korea because there is no alt characters to exploit it and that is where EU/NA implementation fails. Buying Labor is a negative factor, but again "implementation" that is why they restricted in "fresh start servers"
Without some sort of "Labor System" you will have bots that will run 24/7 and claim the end game content without any competition because even if you are a no lifer you will be left behind.
Also forget about casual player in the game because they will quit a couple of months after.
Conclusion, I would rather have something similar to Archeage then similar to Lineage 2 bot Fiesta.
People should get what they put in. if someone grinds gathering for hours they should reap the benefits of doing so.
plus one of the reason archeage had the labour system is so that they could profit off the labour pots in the store.
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I am with you on this. I can't stand this idea. I found myself immediately enraged while playing Archeage. It's a system that intentionally gimps people with the ability to remove that constraint with $$$.
If you don't gather a lot...well, then make a friend with someone that does. We need a game that creates social connections again. That actually remembers that MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online. Be social. Make friend.
Take the most glaring example: Archeage. I could blow my labor points in an hour, plus use pots. Then if it wasn't PVP night, I logged off or went AFK to build labor back up. It took me out of the game. It actually made more sense to log off, go to my job to make money to buy labor pots than it did to actually play the game.
Why put something in your game that limits how much they can play or how much they participate in the community or economy? It really diminishes player satisfaction to hit walls like this.
Some of you understood that the first time around, others didn't. maybe I could have been a bit more clear. sorry :)
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/labor-system/page/2/#post-4660" rel="nofollow">Helzbelz wrote:</a></div>
This is not a crappy P2W MMO. No need for a P2W Labor System, if you like that go play AA.
</blockquote>
No offense, but there are some really asinine replies in this thread, like the one above.
There are very good reasons to use a “labor” type system that have to do with constraints and fostering player choice – do this “or” that – as part of the game design. Not gating for the sake of gating.
Not saying a AoC has to have this, not saying it can’t. But to dismiss it out of hand simply exposes lack of understanding of why it exists.
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No there is NO reason to constrain a player in a P2P MMO. Crafting systems in MMORPGS existed without fail long before ArcheAge AND WOW. Crafting then also took months to years to master and be the best at. Take SWG for example, I was a weaponsmith but my best weapon I sold was a rocket launch. I was known on my server for my rocket launchers nothing else because the effort that went into collecting the right mats and craft the right parts for the Rocket launcher. It didnt need not god dam labor system to constrain me, the mats that changes daily and the time that I needed to spend to figure out what mats that I needed to go after is 100 times more enjoyable than the gay ass system that ArcheAge put in. So no ArcheAge labor system is the stupidest system that was ever designed, it was only designed for you to part with your hard earned real money to craft in the game.
Some of you understood that the first time around, others didn’t. maybe I could have been a bit more clear. sorry <img alt="?" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2.2.1/svg/1f642.svg" />
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Have you ever done any crafting in an MMO Pre-WOW?
A labor system is basically a cleverly disguised fatigue system that limits how much you play and how fast you move through content. Ask Square Enix how well fatigue systems work (original release of FF14).
Would a restaurant tell you "sorry, you ate enough, you need to come back tomorrow to get dessert." If they did, they are actively pushing people from their restaurant to go find other restaurants who do let them have dessert, and never coming back.