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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.
Profession Relevance
CaptnChuck
Member
How will Professions be balanced in Ashes of Creation? How will each profession be able to be as or close to as relevant as other professions?
For example, how can a carpenter be as relevant as an alchemist or armor/weapon smith? Sure, there will be a decent amount of people that will be interested in decorating their house. But a lot more people will care about their gear and potions and stuff. A similar dilemma applies to scribes as well. So how can a player, that chooses to be a carpenter or a scribe, be as or close to as relevant as other professions?
For example, how can a carpenter be as relevant as an alchemist or armor/weapon smith? Sure, there will be a decent amount of people that will be interested in decorating their house. But a lot more people will care about their gear and potions and stuff. A similar dilemma applies to scribes as well. So how can a player, that chooses to be a carpenter or a scribe, be as or close to as relevant as other professions?
2
Comments
It is true that someone will want weapons armour and potions but combat is just one aspect of a world that is an mmo eventually people will want those things that the non combat crafters will want
The more relevant a profession is the more people are gonna switch to it and it will reach a state close to equilibrium.
Now this solves the economic relevance but not the systemic/perceived relevance.
The later doesnt need to be balanced out. As some professions such as carpentry for example are inherently less relevant compared to others in the very definition of the profession. Forcing something will do no good imo
This is a good question, I'm not sure at this point that it could be answered. Players seem to drive what is relevant and what isn't based off supply and demand. I think the challenge for the devs would be to make a system from the start that offers some kind of path that offers and endgame product or support of an endgame product.
What's the point of having a profession if it isn't going to be relevant? As far as we know, players can only master one profession. So why would guilds even consider picking a carpenter over a master alchemist or weapon/armorsmith? This means that players who pick carpentry or scribing, will be at an inherent disadvantage to other players just because they chose their favorite profession.
So no, I disagree with both of you. All professions should be comparable to each other in terms of relevance.
There is no way to balance the professions at all - it simply won't and can't happen.
I mean, take your example of a carpenter. They will - perhaps - be charged with making house furnishings, wooden weapons like bows and staves, making caravan components, and building ships. No other profession would be able to compete with that.
The way these things tend to balance themselves out in a game is that the professions that are more useful and more in demand tend to have more people practising them, whereas those that are less in demand have fewer.
In my experience, the only time a profession becomes irrelevant is when the devs put in ways of achieving the same result as that profession. For example in ESO, Alchemy and Provisioning (cooking) are completely worthless while levelling because the potions, poisons and food you get from the daily login rewards are just flat out better in every way. I've maxed out both Alchemy and Provisioning on my main and haven't used anything I've made from them. I just create the stuff for the exp and then vendor it.
If this is the case then carpentry won't be as bad I guess. But what about scribing?
Yea but it shouldn't be close to none either. That might happen with scribing. But to be fair, we still don't know much about scribing yet, so hopefully they will make it somewhat relevant.
I hope that a lot of things in the game cannot be obtained but through crafting. I don't think it needs to be required for content in the game but should serve to make content easier. Though being required to have a meta loadout for content would not be a bad position for the mid to end game to be in.
Depends how free the market is honestly. If the game doesn't have anything to keep it in check then people might overcharge the market and people will just make alts to circumvent it with the desired professions. Basically due to the game being new and people not knowing the true value of anything. They might purposely super overcharge the prices so that they get an advantage since it's pretty likely to be the only good profession user of an area. If people do this then no one will buy anything from them and if everyone does it, and if they want it then they will make an alt with the ability to do it. So they can sell it back to themselves even if muling is not possible.
It's probably the only thing in the game as complicated as the node system. Since it ties directly into the economy in the game. It needs to incentivize people to be somewhat fair and crafting needs to always be useful at all parts of the game. Especially with the overall design of the game being so well known. I think crafting will determine if the game fails or not.
U.S. East
Look up scribe on the wiki, it contains everything we know about it. If you read the page, every single thing we know about scribes in Ashes is from a single source - a few seconds of time in a livestream three years ago.
A person asked if there would be scribes to take down information on node histories and such. Jeff responded by saying "books and, yeah", and Steven said "yeah, that's cool, I like that".
There was absolutely no mention of it being a crafting profession. All we really know for sure from that is that the game may have books that players can write in. There was no indication or suggestion that it would be a crafting profession in and of itself - even if it is listed as one on the wiki.
You really should go to the sources listed for things like this. The broken nature of the information we do have on this game means that sometimes they have to kind of guess as to how to present information - that is why it is listed as a possible profession.
You’ve answered you’re own question there, you can only master one profession, or at least mastering multiple is going to be incredibly hard and time consuming, so those that choose to master other professions will come to the player market for things only a master carpenter can make and whatever scribes do if it’s gonna be one.
As I stated before combat is just an aspect of the game, it is a world, with multiple things you can supposedly do, carpenter will probably be used heavily in freehold crafting, but atm we just don’t have all the information, worrying about it at the still pre-alpha phase when there’s so little information is unnecessary for you, this is more of a question for the beta phases if the importance is not shown.
However if it still really concerns you, maybe try submitting it for the upcoming Q&A
This.
But keep in mind that the "relevance" of certain professions is debatable. Sure someone that is making a single use good will have more relevance in terms of items created/sold but this will just make that stuff cheaper than others. AoC will do a good job with item durability and repairs being more relevant than other games but you would not believe how incredibly important housing and decorations are for some MMO players so that someone like a carpenter could be very relevant to these people.
Besides I think the ressource system can make different professions less relevant in certain spots. An alchemist might be very "un-relevant" in the desert because he does not get any herbs, either by himself or because no caravan reaches the nodes he has access to. But in the same region a cook that is able to cook delicious 'greypelt dunewalker stew' might be the most relevant profession you can find there.
The playerbase will decide, what relevance truely means. And some people might actually just enjoy crafting stuff without any relevance needed at all.
Hell, some people paint. Voluntarily. And you ask about relevance...
More people will be Alchemists and Smiths. This means more supply than demand = lower prices. Too easy to find stuff.
Carpentry will be kinda pointless until freeholds and housing happen so there will be fewer players picking this profession. This will likely mean less supply, higher demand = higher prices. Also you will need to travel more to get your furnishings which adds more risk. No one should be fitting a chair or couch in their pockets.
So I expect to see fewer of them, and their products going for a premium.
Love a good story and lore.
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Yes .. absolutelly. you have a rly good point xD and i know you hate my posts maybe, but i'm going to make one for the professions too. haha
Balancing them is rly important ... for this reason i see by intrepid studio too much to do , too many things and overall a rly complex project.
It's possible to balance the carpentry , if the game mechanics are built around it. I don't think that it will be usefull just for cosmetics and decorations. It's going to improve the defense of a node probably ... for a better protection, and maybe ships for the water. I hope that the walls will be customizable and not pre-setted as a static square
Maybe the house made by a carpenter will improve the player stats for a certain period of time ... or some magic statue.
Yes armors and potions are usefull in every situation, dungeons for the most, but when your city already have an Armor smithing there is no need for more usually. If each profession is going to be relevant in game ... it all depends on how they will design it at the end.
I would like to see a tree or a better partition of the professions.