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.
Crafting in Ashes
Hi everyone. You may want to check out the cool article Ziltch posted about crafting in Ashes. It goes over the known information we have (with wiki/official video citations), while also talking about his speculations for the system. It is well worth a read, and feel free to comment on it there or here 
https://www.theaocdungeon.com/threads/a-look-at-crafting-in-ashes-of-creation.291/
https://www.theaocdungeon.com/threads/a-look-at-crafting-in-ashes-of-creation.291/
0
Comments
Quality ratings on resources, always adds more dimensions to the crafting system.
i would totally agree on what Zonned said. Putting quality ratings on ressources and items produced with them could surely add to the depth of a crafting system, the item system, the market and to the system how you aquire the ressources. Gathering can be much more interesting, if you dont run somehwere marked on your map and just click the thing you want, but instead have the players actively look for the stuff and have the outcome in different qualities.
Let me describe the - in my opinion - boring way of an "ACME-Crafting System":
-> Aquire knowledte and recipies by bying them from a vendor or learning them from an NPC (not very creative)
-> Run around on the map over and over to find the needed resources and gather them (very boring timesink)
-> Go to a crafting station, put everything together in mostly lousy a** minigames to simulate "real" crafting work (maybe depends on the minigames, but never worked really well for me or got boring at the 3rd try, if you dont have any qualtity system)
-> Put those single items you crafted togeter to create a part of gear (rather unspectacular, also)
-> Outcome: Have thousands of exact same looking items in the market; People use to create only the "best value" items; Everything else is forgoten or never hits the market
Now let me describe a system, that would comfort me and make me want to be a crafter
Note: A lot of the inspiration is drawn from the crafting-/market-system in "Star Wars Galaxies" - so the developers of this nice game have to be credited for the most part of it.
Professions
Choose your profession finding and visiting a proper teacher (like e. g. blacksmith, a bowmaker, and so on). These people should be spreaded throughout the world and not on a regular place where you find all of them in a "pack". You first have to find your "Master" to become a student... Sounds like a proper way to me and doesn't feel as "unnatural" as having all crafting people hanging around in the same place.
Maybe some classes/races whatsoever are more talented for different crafting professions, than others are (e. g. a Dwarf has bonus on everything that works with metals, while another race has bonuses on alchemy or the like) This could likely add another dimension to a quality-based crafting system, because race/class could also play a (smaller) part in what your crafting results are.
Resources/Gathering
Finding & aquiring ressources would be fare more interesting, if you had to actively search for resources, and if you really wanted to search for them. In Star Wars Galaxies i found the system very engaging. You had to learn a profession about how to find ressources, then visit different places (planets in this case) and actively scan the area for ressources. When you have found a place where ressources where located, you had to "dig them up", to find out about the quality of the ressource (lets say ores, gasses or liquids of a certain quality). It happened rarely that you found resources of very good quality (90%+), but if you did, you where a lucky person and you where able to aquire quite some $$$ by just gathering the high qual ressource and just sell the ressource itself, OR gather the resource yourself and use it to hopefully craft some high quality item and sell it to anybody who wanted a high quality gear and has the needed moneys to do so.
But finding and digging up the ores, gasses etc. was not enough. Star Wars Galaxies even had a gathering system, that was very engaging and fun. Once you have found a ressource you wanted to aquire, you had to actively aquire it by planting facilities/gathering machines (wich you had to buy, craft your own or rent from someone!), have them hooked up with energy, so they can work and you had to manage the flow of resources because your gathering facilities ran out of space. Sure - in AOC you wouldn't plant a ore-mining robot facility - but how about having to set up a temporary mine, where you want to aquire your stuff or something similar...
Production
If you can find materials of certain quality, the outcome (products) could also be influenced by the skill of the producing player and also the quality of the gathered resources. Example: You produce a pickaxe for other players to use in mining. Your smithing skill is mediate, your resources are of a good quality. So you produce a pickaxe (it does not break, because of your mediate skill - this time) and the outcome is a pickaxe one can work with and which would work for a certain amount of time, based on how good the quality is. The amount of ressources you get with this pickaxe also depends on the quality. And maybe the pickaxe breaks under certain circumstances, depending on quality... You get the point.
If you ask me, i dont need no minigame for the crafting process itself. If only the process in getting the stuff and combining is fun it its own way. And of course, if your skill and your quality ressources really matter.
Market
If you would implement a system like that, which depends in pieces on how much time and effort you spend on your actual products and on their quality there would be a lot of bonuses for the playerbase (the market):
a) People care about finding good ressources and willingly invest time in systems like that
b) A lot of diversity on the market for newer and veteran players. Example: Beginners will (and are able to) buy cheap or lower quality stuff from the market, to get started; Veterans go looking for the highly priced high quality stuff or go find a master crafter, who can make it for them.
c) Aquiring a good skill is not for everybody, but for the people who put effort and thought into the process (Timesink). But this one day it will pay and will be a lot of fun for the player, because there is a reward for throwing your time towards a crafting system...
Conclusion
If you implement crafting, please don't do it to simply _have_ a crafting system in game. Love it, or leave it. If you implement a system, please take a close look at what the community wants and make the experience fun and engaging and not another simple gathering/payement-ladder. Pure timesinks with no fun wont drag a lot of people to actually try to be a master crafter or anything.
I know, things can get pretty complex with a system like the one i outlined. But better have something complex and enganging, than something simple, boring, that nobody wants to play actually.
There are a lot more ideas, how you could make crafting engaging and actually fun. Maybe theres more ideas and also contras to what i wrote above. I'm eager to read all the good stuff in here...
Most sincerely,
Savant
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/41092/fluff-from-other-mmorpgs-you-would-like-to-see-in-ashes-of-creation#latest
Quality ratings on resources, always adds more dimensions to the crafting system.
Hi,
i would totally agree on what Zonned said. Putting quality ratings on ressources and items produced with them could surely add to the depth of a crafting system, the item system, the market and to the system how you aquire the ressources. Gathering can be much more interesting, if you dont run somehwere marked on your map and just click the thing you want, but instead have the players actively look for the stuff and have the outcome in different qualities.
Let me describe the - in my opinion - boring way of an "ACME-Crafting System":
-> Aquire knowledte and recipies by bying them from a vendor or learning them from an NPC (not very creative)
-> Run around on the map over and over to find the needed resources and gather them (very boring timesink)
-> Go to a crafting station, put everything together in mostly lousy a** minigames to simulate "real" crafting work (maybe depends on the minigames, but never worked really well for me or got boring at the 3rd try, if you dont have any qualtity system)
-> Put those single items you crafted togeter to create a part of gear (rather unspectacular, also)
-> Outcome: Have thousands of exact same looking items in the market; People use to create only the "best value" items; Everything else is forgoten or never hits the market
Now let me describe a system, that would comfort me and make me want to be a crafter
Note: A lot of the inspiration is drawn from the crafting-/market-system in "Star Wars Galaxies" - so the developers of this nice game have to be credited for the most part of it.
Professions
Choose your profession finding and visiting a proper teacher (like e. g. blacksmith, a bowmaker, and so on). These people should be spreaded throughout the world and not on a regular place where you find all of them in a "pack". You first have to find your "Master" to become a student... Sounds like a proper way to me and doesn't feel as "unnatural" as having all crafting people hanging around in the same place.
Maybe some classes/races whatsoever are more talented for different crafting professions, than others are (e. g. a Dwarf has bonus on everything that works with metals, while another race has bonuses on alchemy or the like) This could likely add another dimension to a quality-based crafting system, because race/class could also play a (smaller) part in what your crafting results are.
Resources/Gathering
Finding & aquiring ressources would be fare more interesting, if you had to actively search for resources, and if you really wanted to search for them. In Star Wars Galaxies i found the system very engaging. You had to learn a profession about how to find ressources, then visit different places (planets in this case) and actively scan the area for ressources. When you have found a place where ressources where located, you had to "dig them up", to find out about the quality of the ressource (lets say ores, gasses or liquids of a certain quality). It happened rarely that you found resources of very good quality (90%+), but if you did, you where a lucky person and you where able to aquire quite some $$$ by just gathering the high qual ressource and just sell the ressource itself, OR gather the resource yourself and use it to hopefully craft some high quality item and sell it to anybody who wanted a high quality gear and has the needed moneys to do so.
But finding and digging up the ores, gasses etc. was not enough. Star Wars Galaxies even had a gathering system, that was very engaging and fun. Once you have found a ressource you wanted to aquire, you had to actively aquire it by planting facilities/gathering machines (wich you had to buy, craft your own or rent from someone!), have them hooked up with energy, so they can work and you had to manage the flow of resources because your gathering facilities ran out of space. Sure - in AOC you wouldn't plant a ore-mining robot facility - but how about having to set up a temporary mine, where you want to aquire your stuff or something similar...
Production
If you can find materials of certain quality, the outcome (products) could also be influenced by the skill of the producing player and also the quality of the gathered resources. Example: You produce a pickaxe for other players to use in mining. Your smithing skill is mediate, your resources are of a good quality. So you produce a pickaxe (it does not break, because of your mediate skill - this time) and the outcome is a pickaxe one can work with and which would work for a certain amount of time, based on how good the quality is. The amount of ressources you get with this pickaxe also depends on the quality. And maybe the pickaxe breaks under certain circumstances, depending on quality... You get the point.
If you ask me, i dont need no minigame for the crafting process itself. If only the process in getting the stuff and combining is fun it its own way. And of course, if your skill and your quality ressources really matter.
Market
If you would implement a system like that, which depends in pieces on how much time and effort you spend on your actual products and on their quality there would be a lot of bonuses for the playerbase (the market):
a) People care about finding good ressources and willingly invest time in systems like that
b) A lot of diversity on the market for newer and veteran players. Example: Beginners will (and are able to) buy cheap or lower quality stuff from the market, to get started; Veterans go looking for the highly priced high quality stuff or go find a master crafter, who can make it for them.
c) Aquiring a good skill is not for everybody, but for the people who put effort and thought into the process (Timesink). But this one day it will pay and will be a lot of fun for the player, because there is a reward for throwing your time towards a crafting system...
Conclusion
If you implement crafting, please don't do it to simply _have_ a crafting system in game. Love it, or leave it. If you implement a system, please take a close look at what the community wants and make the experience fun and engaging and not another simple gathering/payement-ladder. Pure timesinks with no fun wont drag a lot of people to actually try to be a master crafter or anything.
I know, things can get pretty complex with a system like the one i outlined. But better have something complex and enganging, than something simple, boring, that nobody wants to play actually.
There are a lot more ideas, how you could make crafting engaging and actually fun. Maybe theres more ideas and also contras to what i wrote above. I'm eager to read all the good stuff in here...
Most sincerely,
Savant