Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Absolutely, time will tell I guess.
We don't know whether specific tools will play a factor - in the same manner that specific weapons will play a factor in combat.
A whole lot of stuff we don't know about crafting - we don't know enough to assume that maxing all the sub-paths of Master Gatherer makes all Master Gatherers the same... as it might do in WoW. Seems unlikely that will be the case, though.
More likely that racial progression, Node progression and social progression will also be significant factors that make individual Master Gatherers unique. Probably gear will make a difference as well.
It is safe to assume all Master Gatherers will in fact be fundamentally the same once they’ve maxed every profession in the line. Maybe not crafting, but gathering, there’s not much you can really do with it.
As it stands, someone who specializes purely into armorsmithing can never compete with someone who’s played long enough to have mastery in armorsmithing, weaponsmithing, and jewlerycrafting. There’s no reason for a guild to give recipes to the first player rather than the second. There’s no reason to go to the first player for crafting when the second can do everything they can do and more.
At least there would be trade offs if specialization was required in any of the artisan trees.
Having these three crafts spread so far apart, or caravan PvP really takes off, and access to these needed materials becomes scarce, I think a lot of people would be unhappy. I wouldn't be able to make a boat, my character would know how, they just wouldn't be able to smith the nails or snip the sails.
However, being able to craft armor, boats, wagons, and weapons seems like too much.
I honestly don't know how to feel about this (not sure if post makes sense either).
I don't know what the point would be to stop at purely master Armorsmithing.
From what Steven says, one character could possibly be a Master Gatherer and also a Master Armorsmith. But, one character cannot be both a Master Gatherer and a Master Crafter.
I don't know that I expect a character that is just a Master Armorsmith to compete with a character that is a Master Crafter. But, it's feasible that both will be equally good at Armorsmithing in the same way that all max level Guardians are equally good at tanking. That doesn't mean that all Guardians will will be using the exact same abilities or that they will be wearing the exact same gear. And doesn't mean that a raid would want only one Guardian.
Just as I expect a Vek Guardian from a Military Node to play significantly differently than a Py'Rai Guardian from a Religious Node, I also expect a Vek Master Gatherer from a Military node to play significantly differently than a Py'Rai Master Gatherer from a Religious Node.
Sure, I guess guilds will also be able to give recipes to their Crafters, but the vast majority of a Crafters' recipes will not be something gifted by guilds.
That being said, whatever assertions and speculations we make, we need actual confirmation from the devs.
You cannot be a Master Armorsmith (Craft profession) and a Master Miner (Gather profession).
You can be a Master Armorsmith and a Master Weaponsmith, and a Master Clothier, and a Master Alchemist, and a Master Blacksmith, and a Master Carpenter all on one character.
It’s nonsensical at best, and it certainly doesn’t encourage specialization. It encourages you to grind out every craft line or else your worth is a Crafter is minimal among a larger group.
What's been said is that you can't be a Master Crafter and a Master Processor.
You can only ever master one parent path.
We still need clarification about whether you can be a master of a sub-path within two different parent paths - but what he has said so far does not inherently preclude that.
He specifically said you cannot Master more than one path. That’s a rather clear statement you cannot master part of gathering and part of crafting, because they are lumping the entire path together. If you master a Crafting profession, you’re a master Crafter. If you master a Gathering profession, you’re a master Gatherer.
On the other side it will be locked to a node(economic or relegion)/location where you can mine it.
This will bring more variety.
Like say the dwarfs can't mine the gems on a ore.
But then the elves can.
So that means for this purpose you want to have an elf master gatherer.
Also notice that the crafting system is open for changes.
It will be tested in A1 and maybe changed, all depend on the feedback.
Right now, we just don't know.
However, what we do know - and what seems to be missing from this thread - is that unlike other games, in Ashes one challenge in crafting is in getting hold of the raw materials. Sure, someone with too much time on their hands may well master all the crafting professions, but that doesn't mean they have access to large quantities of the raw materials for all those crafting professions.
To me, it seems unlikely that a player that sets themselves up in any one location will have easy access to every raw material they need - even if they are in an economic metropolis. All of the materials not found in the node that crafter is set up in will need to be bought in via caravan.
Based on this, while that player may well be a master of woodworking and weapon smithing, if they are by a forest and have no access to ore, I'm far more likely to get my sword made by the crafter that is only a master of weapon smithing, but is set up next to an ore mine.
"Gathering is a parent artisan path, along with processing and crafting. Within each of the three parent paths lies different professions. You may only ever master one parent path. But you may spend time mastering each profession within the parent artisan path."
--- Steven
What we don't have specific confirmation of, AFAIK, is whether or not we can master a profession in two different parent paths.
But...
We have skill points to spend on the crafting skills.
It sounds like we will have just enough skill points to max all the professions in one parent path.
Or we can spread the skill points out among professions in two or three parent paths - including being able to max some professions in more than one parent path - but we will never be able to max all the professions in multiple paths.
But, again, we need specific confirmation on that. AFAIK we don't have a dev quote that covers that much detail.
The devs want race to be meaningful, so I expect racial progression to have a significant impact on artisan professions.
Maybe Elves think harvesting hearts is revolting while Orcs love harvesting hearts - so hearts are more likely to drop for an Orc Master Gatherer than for an Elf Master Gatherer.
Maybe the way a Human cuts down a tree results in a better quality of wood than when a Dwarf cuts down a tree. But, Dwarves mine better quality gems than Humans do.
I also expect Node progression to have a significant impact on crafting.
We know that some recipes will only drop from a specific Node (in some cases, Stage and dominant Race may also determine which recipes drop from the quests associated with that Node).
I expect something similar to be the case with all of the Artisan types.
So, it may be that Master Gatherers from a specific Node get a bonus to the amount of opals that drop from an opal mine because citizens of that Node are especially good at handling opals, while Master Gatherers from a different Node get a bonus to the amount of amethysts that drop from an amethyst mine.
I don't think anyone will be locked from mining or harvesting based on race or Node citizenship, but I do expect bonuses for drop chance, amount, quality, etc.
Same for religious and social organization affiliation.
While the new information is somewhat of a departure from the information we have had for 2 years now it will take some testing to see just how it fleshes out. Let us get our hands on it and provide the feedback to make a system that is fun yet engaging to play with while also feeling rewarding and hopefully providing the interconnection we desire as gatherers/processors/crafters.
Let's hope we get our hands on it sooner rather than later.
As I said on discord, we will be testing this heavily during alpha and betas. And it may occur that the profession masteries become limited as well.
❤️
Profession: ex Weaponsmith|Miner|Skinner|Leathertanner etc
Path: Gathering|Crafting|Processing
"Only master a profession" is in stark contrast to what was said in that picture.
Am confused on what is what.
One new piece of information 100 new questions thrown up by it.
So... now we need a clearer idea of what we have to accomplish to become a Master of an Artisan parent path.
Thought that was the requirement xD
But it makes sense if its so
We really need to see it in action
I do like the idea that smaller guilds will now be able to sustain themselves with fewer people. As far as the long term effects on the economy... I've found most MMOs I've played aren't full of people that focus on crafting enough to go through the "long and labor intensive feat". Heck, most of the people I play with don't even like crafting.
In FFXIV you could master all professions (combat or crafting) on a single character, but you had to take the time to level ALL of them up. Not everyone did that even though it was an option. I don't see much of a difference between doing it on 3 characters or 9. People that want to master them all will have the alts to do it (either with a second account, or buying more character slots, or whatever the mechanic is).
I actually hadn't thought about the possibility for smaller guilds to become competitive in regards to this entire situation. Smaller, more dedicated guilds will now be able to compete, which might actually be good for the game.
I know you were speculating but you won't see more character slots for sale. This was brought up in a conversation about p2convenience and the slippery slope. Steven said that things like buying more inventory or character slots are borderline p2w so would not make an appearance. In a game where the more alts you have gives you more control of crafting and gathering, this is understandable. <Speculation> My guess is 8, but all we really have to go off of is the "a comfortable amount" quote.
People romanticize specialization way too much. You want to have a single player only capable of specializing in bronze elven swords? Sounds cool but it really isn't fun. Depending on the meta, your specialization may be useless. Without a global market your pool of potential buyers is small. Similarly, your suppliers are limited by those in your local market and those who will supply you via caravans and if you're so freaking unique, you provide little demand for people to send caravans your way. If by chance there is 1 other bronze eleven sword specialist in your area, your "uniqueness" just turned into redundancy and competition in the only freaking thing that made you unique. You get the point...
Well said!
This is a common assumption which I think is super unwarranted. Interaction won't die just because individual toons can "master" more. People are lazy and with local markets, no fast travel etc there will be demand and reason to trade/interact. The nature of a dynamic world also prevents stagnation of trade routes and supply chains. We need an alpha or beta to see how all of the other game mechanics impact the economy to have a better idea on how the economy and crafting supply/demand looks like, currently such claims are unsubstantiated imo.
Thank the lord, this was something I thought was the biggest weakness of the crafting system as I originally understood it. If someone wants to focus on crafting as Azathoth says, they should not be forced to create dozens of alts.
Although this has pros and cons itself, if the devs don't want it to be this way there are easy solutions. Perhaps group crafting can be utilized to enhance the quality or quantity of resources gathered from individual nodes/mobs.
Personally I'd like the crafting to utilize a similar system to the augments. People seem to love horizontal progression for combat, why not for crafting too? You can augment your mining to increase mineral yield or increase chance of gems found. Or enhance skinning to bias probability of getting one type of leather over another etc. Maybe you can only have some small number of augments to share across all of your gathering skills so you can focus on being mining augmented amongst all the gathering profs. In such a system, being a "master" gatherer for example means you can gather all materials if you have the right tools but you can still do some things better than another "master". Also, you can lock these crafting augments behind reputations, guilds, nodes and all the other places that combat augments are locked behind too, further increasing inter-dependence of various types of character progression.
I am convinced it's not really a bad thing any more.
However, that will depend on how "difficult and time consuming" it will be to master everything.
Too easy and I will still have an issue with it, so we can only wait till we can actually playtest these systems
Thanks for helping to explain your points to me.
Your points of view are greatly appreciated.
Im not that active on the forums and people even messaged me to take my question down because it was all explained in the wiki, they said... i didnt and now im even more pleased to see all of you geeking over my love that is artisanship.
In "Know your nodes: Scientific node type" we learned that in a level 5 (city stage) scientific node, you can qualify for your artisanship mastery. On level 6 (metropolis stage) you can qualify for the profession mastery. Steven also mentioned that we can achieve mastery through other ways but it would be considerably harder. Just to remind you all that that is a thing.
Pushing a node to metropolis level will be a the first big hurdle the player base will have to take. Or will some players rush around the obvious path and obtain mastery even before?
Im also guilty to glorify/romanticize a super deep specialization. maybe because i also played Albion only and crafted Plated Boots for days.
also about the argument that you can "only do so much with gathering design", the devs mentioned that they liked the resource gathering system in star wars galaxies. That includes one more variable that is quality. so we have:
Node type
Landscape (mountains, forests, barren land,...)
Resource quality
Player Race
All will influence gatherable and gathered resources. I wonder if the Library in the scientific node will not only state -Locations and last known quantity of gatherable resources- but also who gathered it and if there is some kind of tool that tells me who that person is.