Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
I think the node system will actually handle this, as the more people you have camping in a node, the more civilized it become, and poof...those wild plants won't grow there anymore.
I always liked gathering as sometimes I found places in larger games, even seasoned players never found.
I think the node advancement system will lead to a very changing world.
What I would like to see, is some ability for the nature based classes, to stymie or maybe even degrade a node (or parts of a node) back to wildness.
For example a group of gatherers picks a lvl 1 node clean over days, causing it to go to lvl 2. Wolves and beavers were hunted or chased off, etc... Along comes a ranger, with seeds and maybe a small pack of wild wolves in tow, and he preceded to fix the damage, replanting the flora that had been over gathered, and releasing the wolves to repopulate. After a few days if a village is not built in the node, the node reverts to lvl 1.
In the case of a lvl 6 node, say they left room around a pond for a city park, and it's well groomed. A druids (ranger/cleric) comes in, with a dozen squirrels, a family of ravens, and some acorns and seeds, and tending the place, turning the park a bit more to wildness. While they could never degrade the whole node, after weeks of time there are deer in the park, and then eventually maybe a branching of beavers or a fair of foxes.
As for crafter situation is similar. I must know exactly which items do I need to craft something and where can I get them from...
1: Costs. So many games the cost of crafting far outweighed the benefits. Want to make that lvl 10 sword that'll sell for 1000g? You'll need some leather, they sell for 1000g each, and don't forget the iron, that's 10,000g per stack. I don't want to have to level up 5 different gathering classes and 3 separate crafting classes just to be able to make a sword without losing money.
2: Benefit: Again seen in too many games. You finally get your max level smith, you craft the ultimate armour you are a god... and then you kill a boss and get a piece of armour that shits all over what you just crafted. All over it. I want to see crafting actually being useful for a change.
3: Crafting minigames? I honestly really enjoyed the crafting system in Vanguard and FFXIV, both had minigames that meant you could increase your odds of making better gear. You could either go slow and steady, or take riskier actions that would make a better weapon... or set it on fire. Likewise if you used high quality components they would result in the grade of the item being higher when you start crafting.
Lets use a sword as an example. Normally you have specific recipes per type of sword. What if instead the sword just required "pommel, handle, blade" and you could use any kind of each to make a more unique weapon.
The same could go for the components. Choose a type of blade to make, its components take "Metal" and "Supplement" or something, where supplement could be venom sack, or ice crystal or something. Certain supplements may have better reactions with certain metals. Or you could find that certain supplements when used together amplify their effects, or reduce them, or provide a new effect entirely.
Using elemental crystals as an example of supplements. Using Fire and Earth might give your sword the keyword lava which deals burning damage over time and a cool lava looking effect. Lightning and Water may increase the effects of the lightning damage. But Fire and Ice crystals together would negate each others effects and give you the keyword "Damp" or something and a negative effect.
In FF14, they made crafting barely equal to token gear from easy current dungeons so that gold sellers would have trouble finding buyers. Since gold was only useful for crafters, nobody wanted it. Crafters had it, others didn't need.
As for endgame gear, they made it inferior to raid because they thought some people just woudn't raid if they could get equal gear from craft, however hard to make, however unsellable. Notwithstanding the fact that some people won't raid regardless (not their thing, not enough time at specific schedule, can't get a good enough constant team).That's a bullshit reason. I didn't like raid, and being unable to craft bis didn't make me like raid more, either. I quit in part because the gear was too secondary, too inferior to bis.
You're talking about ARR right? I don't know what was in FF14 1.0. But that RNG in craft was also a reason for me to leave. Who wants to remember exactly what to press under what condition to get the end result, depending on your luck at getting excellent and great conditions, and god forbid you disconnect because your ISP sucks? In 3.1, I was almost getting cardiac arrest anxiety about failing my 1 million cost in mat recipe, that I wasn't 100% sure would HQ (and non-HQ, you can barely sell it, and nobody wants to use), despite having bis craft gear.
I don't mind RNG in getting mats, but I don't want panic attacks when crafting because I could lose a huge chunk of money to disconnection or not remembering the exact order when I get X condition at step 30. Also, a single craft taking 10 minutes (because you take your time) is absurd. No to RNG during a craft (that's what the mini-game is).Since one person really cant be a jack of all trades, processers are still gonna be a big part of the system and will be the people that builds bonds with both gatherers and crafters to make things run smoothly and buy from gatherers then sell it more expensive to the crafters.
I think it could be really fun
I will say the one thing I didn't like so much about FFXIV gathering was the fact that you had to run to a specific place and just make circles. I loved the BDO gathering system where you just walked outside to the nearest tree and could chop it for wood, or suck the sap out. Then you had chances to find rare things that were just worth cash. I loved that everything was a gathering point.
In both games, crafting was something you could do. You could just do that and have plenty of game for a long time and never see combat. There were guild missions in BDO that were for the guild to gather resources.
If each character is going to have it's own path to follow for crafting (as I've been reading here and there), I really hope that I can level alt characters in only these crafting skills without having to also level their combat class.
AFK / Passive income is always nice. Setting a BDO character to fish while you sleep (Revelation Online also had this) was really nice. Especially if this game will have a subscription fee, I want to feel like I can log in and have the game doing something even if it's background and not using my full attention (so I can read or something between monster raids).
What I would MOST like to see though is the death of tiered resources. Make different kinds of wood do different things in a recipe. Like Ash will improve the magic stat a little, but oak will improve the defense. Otherwise, low level resources like "copper" get replaced by "mithril" and you have no reason to ever get copper again.
BDO was nice that materials stayed important the whole game. FFXIV, not so much. I also played a lot of GW2, but there were so many ways to get gear that crafting didn't really make you any money (other than cooking.... a little).
I want my horde of resources to grow and matter, not throw out 1000s of copper I no longer need because I'm higher level now (It happened... and copper wasn't the only thing I threw away 1000s of... because it was worth more to sell at a merchant than to players)
If what they do can be replaced by something like a boss drop people will put effort into killing the boss instead of giving money to someone else.