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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
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.
Comments
A level 1 blacksmith may not have the ability to swing a hammer to make anything decent, but in the process of leveling up to become a level 50 blacksmith, they would obviously gain that ability - this is exactly what the leveling process simulates.
Incedently, your argument here is as much an argument to restrict professions based on combat class as it is an argument about anything else. The whole concept of needing to level up your combat class in order to be able to swing a blacksmiths hammer kind of falls apart unless you say that only strenght based classes can be blacksmiths.
It's not like a character spends a whole lot of time building up their muscles while leveling up as a caster.
“Real game” is the overall narrative, which may or may not be tied to combat. Granted it mostly is, and people mostly ignore it.
You conclusively state most games don’t have a level gate requirement. I disagree. Most MMOs I have played, which are all older, do have that requirement.
And there are no presumptions here. Everyone can carry their own burden of proof.
The only argument for it seems to remain “cause I want it to be easy”. I made an argument that level gating it creates a barrier to entry which will be helpful to the economy.
Virtue is the only good.
I'm not sure what the economy has to do with any of this. After all, WoW has crafting progression gated by the character level and yet the economy in that game is a complete mess. On the other hand, Old-School Runescape doesn't have any such gating requirements and their economy is a lot healthier than WoW's.
To me, removing gating like this isn't about making is easier or harder, it's about allowing people to play the way they want to. Nobody is saying that you should be able to be a master Blacksmith right at the start, but that you should be able to become that master Blacksmith without needing to become a master fighter too.
So far the only argument I've seen in this thread that crafting should be gated by combat/character level is "level 1 alts are bad".
No, that’s how you’ve erroneously framed the argument, which is really just “non-combat gameplay that has its own demands shouldn’t be arbitrarily tied to combat gameplay”
What good would a level gate do? You claim it’s helpful to the economy to not allow players to be good crafters until max combat level, but Steven has already made it clear he doesn’t want the “real game” to be reliant on maxing your combat class, and you offer no reason WHY an arbitrary gate would benefit anyone on a larger scale. Why should a jewelry crafter have to be a maxed out Tank before they’re allowed to make anything useful?
We already know crafting will be recipe based, so anyone who wants to make good items will have to put in a lot of time or currency to get the recipes they need for their artisan class. Some recipes will come from mobs, but many will come from social organization quests and being part of a node’s leadership. We also have potential that the crafting process itself may be skill based, but regardless it likely won’t be a click-and-done type thing.
You, and others, seem to be working under the impression that the crafting in Ashes is being designed as shallow and low-effort like some games. They want mastering a craft to be difficult and rewarding. If someone can make that work with a level 1 alt because they’ve spent copious amounts of time learning how to play the market on their main, why not let them.
Virtue is the only good.
I already told you the barriers of entry that are actually part of the crafting system and not arbitrary unrelated aspects of the game.
You need to actually use your own words to explain why you believe artificial, unrelated gating that has no logical place, is required in addition to the sensible, logical requirements that crafters acquire and learn recipes they wish to use. Crafters will have to acquire steady sources of materials. They will have to maintain a space to store those materials. They will have to maintain a good income to maintain their ability the reliably acquire those recipes, materials and maintain that storage space.
What you’re asking for is basically requiring a Masters degree in accounting before someone’s allowed to be certified in carpentry. Or requiring someone to visit ten different countries before they’re allowed to be a real estate agent in their state.
The barriers of entry cannot be totally unrelated from the area of gameplay they’re meant to be gating. It makes no sense and just wastes people’s time.
Virtue is the only good.
Wow, are we really doing this? Ok, I guess we are. Fine. Let's go back over all the posts you've made in this thread and see exactly what your "argument" was.
The first thing you said in the thread was:
To which I replied "Why are level 1 alts bad?"
Your response was:
So, you believe that self-sufficiency in an mmorpg is bad. I can kind of get behind that but as I said before, the only way to stop self-sufficiency entirely is to limit players to 1 character per account.
You then try to make an analogy to crime which went absolutely nowhere, before stating:
Which not only is irrelevant to the discussion but also:
1. Why do you want to keep the "casuals" away? (what even is a "casual" to you anyway?)
2. How does keeping the "casuals" away stimulate the economy?
But sure, you're right and we're wrong......if being "right" in your eyes means making absolutely no sense at all.
You gave an “argument” (putting it generously) that was based on the false premise that leveling crafting is going to be an easy and straightforward thing.
If you’d like to actually clarify any point besides “I don’t want “””casuals””” to succeed as crafters” then by all means, but so far you’ve just presented yourself as someone who wants to gatekeep for the sake of gatekeeping, without any actual reason behind it.
All you have now are various piles of rubble that are not in any way connected, let alone supporting a capstone.
You want a barrier to entry on the crafting process in Ashes, yet fail to address how resource acquirement, which includes the caravan system - and thus PvP - is not a sufficient barrier to entry.
Even if a low level crafting alt did rely on the players main character to get materials, those materials still need to be physically transported to that alt character, and in Ashes, that is not easily done.
It may well prove yet that it is harder to get hold of the materials to level a profession to the cap than it is to level a combat class to the cap - and if not actually harder, it will still be one hell of a challenge. A challenge that absolutely would be considered a barrier to entry.
I will spell it out for you. Level gate increases the barrier to entry. Increase barrier to entry leads to decreased supply. Decreased supply gives power to the sellers. More power to sellers benefits casual players who only have time to master one craft.
The argument really is that simple, and I've said it from the beginning.
If you disagree, I’m not looking to argue with you. Besides, we’ve already determined that I’m right, and you’re wrong.
Virtue is the only good.
I had the same question about warehouses vs house storage/chests.
The way Steven describes it in this livestream 'seems' to indicate that gathered materials and processed goods won't be transferable between characters, even when using personal storage devices (i.e. in freeholds/housing) that use permissions.
At 1:23:31 -
Sure, you can still trade normally. I think the restrictions are to encourage player cooperation and interaction in the economy.
You could pass gathered / processed materials through intermediaries, but that would still require cooperation with a third party. It's quite the hurdle for those who want to setup alt empires that can do everything for them at any time without relying on other players.
We know there will be at least two ways of moving raw materials from one character to another (PvP and selling). Since players will be able to use these mechanics to move resources to what ever character they want, it makes no sense to not have a system in place to be able to do this more easily (character to character trade, or in house storage options). Players will end up with their resources on the character they want them on regardless, just potentially with more annoyance if a streamlined system isn't in place to perform this basic and expected function.
The two things that should never happen with resources in Ashes though, are that they should never be instantly teleported, and should always be in potential danger. Since character to character trade and in house storage both keep both of these things in tact, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't allow for it.
There are several ways the comments in the clip above could be taken, but as the question was around bank/warehouse storage, and as this seems to make the most sense from a game design perspective, I am taking the answer as being applied only to that.
The problem with this is that barrier of entry only applies to a specific group, it is not a barrier that is applied to all players equally.
There are many players out there that prefer combat over crafting, and as such they will have many max level combat characters. To them, the need to level up your combat level in order to level up your profession is not a barrier to entry at all.
On the other hand, you have players that prefer crafting over combat. To these players - the players you want to be crafting - the need to have a max level combat class is a significant barrier to entry.
The notion of a barrier to entry for crafting is in itself sound. However, this barrier needs to apply evenly to all players.
As such, the notion that this barrier of entry should be combat level is not sound.
I completly agree with you. One strong argument why level req for professions might be bad is that nobody benefits from having these level req, they are just artificial and exist to force people to do content they not always want to do.
By having no level requirements, you open up this game to thousands of people who are interested simply for the crafting and economy of the game. You also add more supplies and materials in the economy which makes it cheaper for people who simply dont want to do crafting to play the game.
With level Reqs, who wins on it? Who benefits? Sure, people who are dedicated and spend a ton of time levling to max level and max artisan level will have an advatage and a greater reward. But is this worth losing tens of tousands of people over?
Wait, what do you mean, dunno how that adds up.
1. Level gate increases the barrier to entry
2. Increased barrier to entry leads to less people participating in the economy
3. Less people participating leads to lower supply
4. Lower supply increases prices of everything and in the sellers having more control and power over prices
5. Higher prices results in casual players having a lesser ability to participate in the economy if they dont want to craft or use professions
In what way is this beneficial to casual players? Ashes wants as many players as possible. Based on that 50% of runescape players only play the game by crafting and ignoring combat, we can assume there is a massive chunk of potential players that will be lost if we dont give them the option to play the game without combat. What do we actually loose by having less players participating in the economy?
If I can just master everything on three seperate characters, then I will not need my guild or friends to help me gather the materials I need to craft something useful and that takes part of the MMO experience out of it, at least for me.
With the shared storage system across characters on freeholds, I could also see people just clearing raids on their highest level character and sending it over to their level 1 crafter to make a crazy strong piece of gear which the level 1 character is not even able to kill on their own.
Idk, this is just my personal take on it. I also do understand why people would want to only do crafting but perhaps a solution could be that crafting/gathering/processing things gain exp. That way the player would be able to choose how they progress.
Artisan level is going to be entirely separate from Adventure level, that’s already established. Please look into the central designs behind crafting before forming an opinion on the technical possibility of vl1 master crafters. I suggest the Crafting and Economic Node pages on the wiki, or visiting the Ashes101 website.
Crafting will be recipe based in Ashes, obtained through mob drops, questing, and social organization progression. This means a lvl1 crafter character will either be empty of meaningful recipes, or copious amounts of currency will have to be used to supplement that character from other players.
Keep in mind there is no server-wide marketplace. At best there will be shared listings within an Economic Metropolis and it’s vassal nodes, and even then you are still required to travel to the node it was listed from in order to retrieve it.
So, again you’ll have to do a metric ton of traveling to actually get those recipes to your house and to your crafting character.
Additionally, if you intend to master every crafting profession, you will be disappointed. While technically possible, it would take so many skill points and so much time, you would have to play that character frequently to have enough to progress significantly into every path, and even more to progress far enough to make end-game gear in every path.
TLDR: While it will be technically possible to have a lvl1 master crafter, it’s neither financially feasible, nor a quick process.
The only time I can imagine reasonably seeing a lvl1 master crafter would be if a guild funneled all their resources into one player.
My apologies. I'm usually well kept up with AoC and didn't realize that this had already been discussed by the devs. I think the solution presented seems like a good compromise and as long as hard work and coorperation is needed to proceed in professions, there shouldn't be an issue.
Okay, that makes sense.
I don't care, either way, because I'll be leveling combat 🤷🏼♂️
As will I.
However, if the games combat or content doesn't appeal to me (which is still very possible) being able to play the game as a crafter could keep me in the game for several years.
This happened in Archeage - the combat was boring, and the content almost non-existent, but the farmung and crafting system kept me in for a fair few years.
Players must choose a path in the artisan skill tree for each character.[7] Within each of the three parent artisan paths (Gathering, Processing and Crafting) there are different professions. A character may only ever master one of these paths.[8][9]
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Artisan_supply_chain
Yes, as I said you can in thoery have a master Crafter that has mastered all Crafting professions, but it will take momentous amounts of time and resources. (capitalized the "C" since I'm assuming you interpreted master crafter as being a master of every artisan path)
Although there seems to be some conflicting info from Steven on how he expects a crafter to allocate their skill points, it is safe to assume players generally will have to decide between depth or breadth as they progress into their artisan path. To what degree remains to be seen, but I'm just hoping they do double down on interpersonal dependencies in the community, rather than going for the lowest common denominator and letting everyone be a master of all.
My pipe dream hope is branching paths along the lines of "Crafting" into "Equipment Creation" into "Metal" into "Jeweler", or "Crafting" into "Alterations" into "Enchanting" into "Protective Sigils", or "Crafting" into "Consumables" into "Alchemy" into "Poisons"
I'm much more fond of high depth systems where it feels like your choices have very clear and direct outcomes, and MMORPGs are a pretty good place to dig into those more typical RPG systems. Steven already intends to have different types of packs that benefit specific player categories (the Adventurer's backpack holding only gear and consumables for example), so this is definitely the sort of system I can imagine seeing in a game that's going to have quite a bit of RP flavor built into the mechanics.