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AC-esque fishing and gathering

arsnnarsnn Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
edited May 2021 in General Discussion
So my little brother and me recently booted up Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch again and i gotta say we were pretty hooked again for the last few days.

A huge part of that was the fishing and insects catching system, since a new season started the spawn table highly differed and we currently try to get all of the once that are avaible.

While AC is not a mmo i feel like this kind system could be a huge addition to the gathering profession and would bring life skill gameplay one step closer to be a viable play path to pursue exclusively.
So the gameplay loop in it self is pretty darn good as it builds a lot of anticipation when fishing and catching, but that´s not the component i want to focus on.



I want to have a look at the system behind it, that makes it really exciting imo and can create an interesting component to the economic dynamics.
So firstly when you find a fish the only thing you can see is it´s outline, which comes in like 6 variations and serves as an indicator which size of fish you are catching, from very small to very big.
What really sets the system apart though is the depth of dependencies and the spawn table when those fish and insects spawn.
There is a total of around 80 fish i think, a big part of them you can catch pretty much all the time. But the more rare and expensive once have a variety off prerequisites to find them in the wild.

1 prerequisite is the day time, there are actually insects that only can be caught at night for example. Since the game is actually bound to real time, this means you have to stay awake until midnight to catch em. (Which comes with a whole different set with complications as you cant sell them at night, since the only shops that buys them is closed. Storing them over night at your lawn and having a huge sell off on the next day is kinda funny.)

Also the season or months change the spawns throughout the entire year, which actually means you will have to play this game for an entire year to catch everything. In the context of ashes this would mean 1 month, since seasons last 1 week as for as we know.
To make this post a bit more dense i´ll just list the rest of the depencies, which are : the location (river, sea, waterfalls etc.), the fauna, the weather, rarity and some items.
If you want to have look at the spawntable there is a wiki article for it here: https://animalcrossing.fandom.com/wiki/Fish_(New_Horizons)

I think this kind of deep profession could very well feed into crafting as well and some of those dependencies are already kind of confirmed for mining, lumbering and other gathering professions, so i dont think it would totally out of scope.

A crafting recipe that uses the scales of some ultra rare fish could make up for a nice tank armor, or give you increased swimming speed in water for naval combat. Cooking would also be an obvious application.
Insects could be used for alchemy, but also for jewelry that a uses the gold of a scarab or to boost the strength of the cannons explosion.


All in all i think dependencies for profession could create interesting nieche playstyles for many people and ultimately also increase the interdepencies of the player base as not everything is accessible all the time and professions can reach a depth so that you can´t do everything alone to achieve your goals.

What do you guys think? Too deep? Not necessary at all? Any other ideas to make life the life style player path an interesting choice?

Comments

  • DygzDygz Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Looks like the Ashes devs want to go with sparkles to identify fishing spots, but...
    It's Alpha and we know next to nothing about Crafting or how in-depth the devs wish to go.
    Seems likely that however in-depth the fishing is, the other gathering mechanics would need to be similarly in-depth.
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