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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.
My One Issue with Trade Skills
ClintHardwood
Member, Alpha Two
First of all, let me say how much I love the ideas in AoC. Gathering is fun and exciting due to a chance of getting ganked. Nodes leveling as people gain experience in their trade skills is great. So on and so forth.
However, there is one issue that I foresee with both gathering and crafting: you're locked into mastering only a handful of either. I believe that if a person puts in the time and effort, they should be able to level as much as they want in any way they want without the concern of arbitrary limits.
Now, I know why skill levels are limited. It's so one person can't do everything on their own. And this is the wrong way to go about it in my opinion. When people play MMOs, they like to see the potential for infinite progression as if their journey will never end. However, by limiting how much they can progress, there is a sense of an invisible wall that makes it feel like they're burning through content and that there won't be anything to shoot for anymore. Even if a player never masters a single skill, they want to feel as if they could master them all with effort.
I suggest that instead of artificially limiting progress, introduce soft balancers that allow the mastery of multiple trade skills. For example, if I have mastered blacksmithing, siege weaponry crafting, and alchemy, I should be able to master a forth skill but at a large cost.
Here are some potential ideas of how this can be applied:
1) Make mastering each skill require a guild license from a metropolis. The first license can be free, but with each skill you master, licenses become exponentially more expensive. This discourages mastering many skills, but also provides a massive goal for the dedicated so they don't quit once they hit an arbitrary maximum. You also have the benefit of a currency sink to prevent inflation for whenever it eventually comes.
2) With every trade skill mastered, other skills on the road to mastery receive exponentially less experience. For example, if I have mastered mining, to master felling as well, I'd need to spend three times as long as someone without a mastered gathering skill. This provides a massive wellspring of 'content' for those who enjoy grinds.
Any thoughts?
However, there is one issue that I foresee with both gathering and crafting: you're locked into mastering only a handful of either. I believe that if a person puts in the time and effort, they should be able to level as much as they want in any way they want without the concern of arbitrary limits.
Now, I know why skill levels are limited. It's so one person can't do everything on their own. And this is the wrong way to go about it in my opinion. When people play MMOs, they like to see the potential for infinite progression as if their journey will never end. However, by limiting how much they can progress, there is a sense of an invisible wall that makes it feel like they're burning through content and that there won't be anything to shoot for anymore. Even if a player never masters a single skill, they want to feel as if they could master them all with effort.
I suggest that instead of artificially limiting progress, introduce soft balancers that allow the mastery of multiple trade skills. For example, if I have mastered blacksmithing, siege weaponry crafting, and alchemy, I should be able to master a forth skill but at a large cost.
Here are some potential ideas of how this can be applied:
1) Make mastering each skill require a guild license from a metropolis. The first license can be free, but with each skill you master, licenses become exponentially more expensive. This discourages mastering many skills, but also provides a massive goal for the dedicated so they don't quit once they hit an arbitrary maximum. You also have the benefit of a currency sink to prevent inflation for whenever it eventually comes.
2) With every trade skill mastered, other skills on the road to mastery receive exponentially less experience. For example, if I have mastered mining, to master felling as well, I'd need to spend three times as long as someone without a mastered gathering skill. This provides a massive wellspring of 'content' for those who enjoy grinds.
Any thoughts?
1
Comments
If you can master all skills, basically becoming 100% self sufficient, what is the point of a social based economy?
Sell 1000 potion stacks for 1g less than the cheaper guy around?
Sell 1000 meals 1g less than the cheapest guy around?
Sell 1000 runes 1g less than the cheapest guy around?
Have you never played a game before where people NEED other players?
Ideas like that have ruined economies and lowered the value of gold to the point where it's replaced by many many alternative currencies and their 'stores', forcing you to collect them by doing narrow and repetitive tasks.
As for your other suggestions, personally I play video games for the adventure. Not to simulated a medieval tradesman.
I dont want to spend all my time in a town, 'upkeeping' my blacksmithing.
There are many mmos out there where with 1 character you can craft everything.
If that is your thing, how come you arent doing it alrdy, but instead you seek AoC to help you with it?
Really?
If everyone has the potential to do something, everyone will do it, as to not fall behind. It's how things work.
I dont want to spend my time doing ESO again.
Exp decay for skills, required licensing, and exponential exp requirements for additional paths learned does not sound fun. Sure, I don't have to do these things and I can simply stay in my own lane but that's not how my brain works if it's in the game. I will feel the need to do it all and I don't want my focus to be on that, I want it to stick with building relationships, alliances, growing as a guild and being the "go to" for what path I choose.
Not to mention, adding the possibility of mastering several professions or "everything" just devalues those players who have mastered what they want to learn. Community = WE, mastering everything = I. I vote no even if it forces me to pay the next guy for a job.
Even if you don't want to play a medieval tradesman simulator, there are many players who do enjoy 'maxing' skills. Just take a look at Runescape. The most successful sandbox game of all time allows every player to level every skill without limit, and many high level players remain engaged to do so. Part of the reason New World is successful is because you can level your gathering and production skills without limitations.
Also, if you think people won't just get around these arbitrary mastery limits with alt accounts, you're in for a rough time. Have you played a game where people needed other players? Alts are what happen. By providing a soft balancer for trade skill masteries, discouraging yet allowing them to happen on a single account, you can prevent the mule crisis that plagues most games with arbitrary limitations like those AoC intend to introduce.
Then again, maybe the devs wants alt accounts for the additional subscription money, and with the large sums invested into AoC, I don't blame them.
I don't think alts should be used as a counter to this argument. You want to make an alt that can master additional paths? Go for it. I commend you for spending the time and keeping the game going with fresh characters and being able to explore new classes. I plan on having an alt myself even though I never played an alt in any MMO before. Summoner just sounds so fun.
Yea, the argument I see constantly of "Just don't do it if you don't like it" to various mechanics in gaming is so disingenuous
Is that so? In Albion, very few players specialize in more than one trade skill even though they can master them all because of the difficulty involved. Hell, I haven't engaged in a single production skill even after years of playing. However, if the game limited me to a single skill, I'd feel demotivated to play because I know there is an arbitrary limitation that I will eventually reach and never exceed regardless of effort. It's not much of a sandbox game if I'm limited to one corner of the sand pit.
RuneScape is basically a single-player game. It barely counts as an MMORPG.
You are totally right. I like MMORPG for this neverending journey my characters do, improving in different way.
But the second M is for "multiplayer"
WoW, FFXIV are for me "false" MMORPG because there is no need to interract with other players... i mean in FFXIV you can even do some dungeons with... NPC, you can't even do MSQ as a group due to all "solo instanced" quest...
And FFXIV/WoW are not the only one...
On, FFXIV you can do all craft, i know, i did it, and did craft for free for the whole FC and friends. Because was the only one masochist enough to get the top-craft stuff. So what ? i didn't need anyone to do what i needed.
On wow, doing reroll is not hard, easy to get all gathering/craft and again, play without anyone else.
With AoC limit. (1 tree per character, and then, freehold 1 per account) we will have to buy what we can't do ourselves. Even more, in guild, it will be a guildwork. Some will gather, other will process, and last will craft, each one will do its part. and will depend of the other, making bound between guildmate stronger and force to see guild for more than just "people i do bosses with"
The spirit behind this idea is making people work together also about craft.
I understand frustration for you to not be able to do "always more" of all these, but it is to make you even more in need to work with other.
Never played wow but I feel the same for eso and ff14.
I never cared to make friends or join guilds.
I could craft anything I wanted solo and for dungeons and trials I would use groupfinder or join randoms from zone chat.
100% single player experience. All the players felt like npcs to me.
I couldnt chat with enemies to fan the flames, and nobody needed my help with PvE or crafting. Just like I didnt need anybodys help.
I wish AoC becomes more like L2 and less like eso.
Why shouldn't alts be a counter to this argument? We all know that community-based approaches to the economy never work in the long-term because of alts. People will realize as soon as they step foot into the game that alts are the most efficient way to make money, eliminating the need for middlemen in terms of crafting. In fact, I almost feel like I am forced to make one. Why should I lose money from my gathered products if I have to hand them off to a crafter when I can just use an alt instead and, not only reap increased profits, but also the experience that comes with the crafting process? Doing this also allows me to level my node and produce whatever I want without having to rely on others.
The only plausible argument against my point so far in this thread was that allowing one account to master every skill will make some players feel like they have to master every skill. However, is limiting other people's sandbox experience so that you could feel better about yours the way to go? Is that what the sandbox experience is about nowadays?
We already know the trade skill limitation system won't work because of alts. All the most-renowned crafters in the game will have their own gatherers and processors. The only ones being left out are those who can't afford alts or don't want to juggle half a dozen accounts. Imo, the only feasible way to prevent this is to allow every account to master every skill but have soft balancers in place that make doing so extremely difficult.
For example, in Albion, you can master every single weapon, armor, and trade skill tree. But I bet there's not a single person who has because of how expensive and time-consuming it is. However, the mere possibility of being able to master every skill tree provides a sense of long-term playability and content that artificial limits do not. You never feel trapped into a decision you have once made.
I understand that people want this game to feel community-based, yet common sense dictates that won't be the case despite our best wishes. Hell, I want a community-based economy too, but a realistic look at the efficiency-driven mindsets of players dictates that won't happen with the current plans.
We need a better system than artificially blocking off leveling paths for people. You can take my suggestions, or you can come up with your own. All I'm saying is that the system will flounder as it is now.
The system will not flounder. You just won't like it.
If you want to spend the time making a bunch of alts to get them to max level in several Artisan professions, that's great.
I do like the system AoC has in mind, but I don't think it'll work. If you want to tell me why you think I'm wrong that's fine, but just saying I'm wrong doesn't prove your point and only solidifies mine. Good intentions do not make good game systems. We need failsafes in place to keep the economy community-driven. Artificial skilling limits do not accomplish that.
I feel that the guild or node structure is designed to assist with this community feeling, and improving your skills by doing them can help offset any profit concerns. If I gather herbs, I get xp for that. I can hand those herbs off to my processing friend, or nodemate, or guildmate, and they can get their xp from processing it and handing it back to me. I don't have to sell it to them. The processor gets their xp. I can take those processed items and visit the node/guild mate to turn it into something useful for me. That craftsman gets the xp, and I get an item.
So you'll have the soloers that will have to login separately to do each step, the node/guild structure that will distribute those steps amoungst members, and then open market folks that will look for the players that just want coin for their stuff and turn a profit. All 3 ways should be viable, but at different scales. I'm ok with that.
So if you want to alt it up, great! I don't think you'd need more than 2 accounts to do so. But to get to scale you'll need acquaintances, and I think that is what the game is shooting for.
Then, if alts are fine and inevitable, why should we limit accounts to specific skill trees? Doesn't it become a pointless limitation at that point?
The devs will know how to do that to the degree they desire with the system they have in place.
But, if it comes down to limiting how many professions one character can master v community driven economy, it's going to be limiting how many professions one character can master that wins out.
But, the two are not mutually exclusive.
Specific skill trees are not limited by account.
However, correct me if I'm wrong, you will be able to reach a certain level in every trade skill, but only a couple of them will each character be able to master. That is, for instance in gathering, the same character will be able to cut trees, mine ores, go fishing and harvest plants, however only one of those will you be able to master.
With what we have from wiki, it seems it will be this.... but a little more complex
You will go or gathering, or processing, or crafting.
then mainly with freehold, you will have to chose one specific thing in it. for example, for animal husbandry, you will have to go "process" and then turn your freehold into stable . And other gather/process/craft also needs the freehold.
Because you are limited to 1 freehold per account, you can't do all without changing all time your freehold purpose
Yep, what the mayor chooses to develop for city services is definitely going to be a huge topic for crafters due to this. It is one of the things that excites me most about the current plan to make crafting community centric.
Tangent:
I can't help but wish that to sign up for games it would require your Real-ID like in South Korea. Issues like what Archeage had wouldn't even have become a problem, same thing with WoW, specifically talking about multi-box bots. Whales is an entirely different discussion. But it would lock players out of being able to play or even have multiple accounts in any way and also make banning players who break TOS/EULA way more impactful.
The tangent was exactly that, a tangent.
I wouldn't worry too much about the Freehold limit. Not to say that it won't be worth it to some people, but there are so many negatives and dangers involved, not to mention citizenry situations, taxes, 'salty people who aim to tear down the entire node because you do this', that it's probably fine at least to some extent.
Intrepid has left multiple paths open to themselves, to step in and try to handle players who pay for 6 subscriptions so as to get 6 freeholds, without having to take that into the realm of 'explicitly preventing people from having multiple subs' and risking issues within families.
No guarantees, but as you said tangent...
/me flies off at 90 degrees perpendicular to the current radial axis.
Honestly, I never even thought about that! I would absolutely be the type of person who would get a large group together to delete a node solely because there was a multi-boxxer at it... Hmmm.... Yup, no longer concerned. Thanks!
Huh, that's a bummer. I wish I could do a bit of everything (gathering, processing and crafting) if I wanted to, but I understand it values each profession even further, so it's all good.
I asked some people and apparently you won't be able to have level 1 characters blacksmith masters. You'll need to level up and progress in quests and societies to become a master in a trade skill, i.e. spend a lot of time.
So, if some dude spent 500 hours in each character on different accounts to become a master without breaking the rules set in place at some trade skill, as much as I dislike it, I guess he deserves it.
You will only be able to master one artisan class, that being Gathering, Processing, or Crafting, but you will be able to master multiple within the class you choose. However, you will also be able level up the other classes to a determined level, but not master them. At least that is what we know at the moment.
People would have to be bringing that Master Artisan resources.
Artisan and Social Org quests don't necessarily progress Adventurer levels.
You are correct that you will be able to dabble a bit in all of the Professions if you wish, but the more you do that, you decrease the ability to be a Master in any of them.