Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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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.
Adopting a NW gathering approach and implementing Ashes Node system.
Uncommon Sense
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
So we know New world made gathering ingesting and for the most part realistic by making everything gatherable to an extent..
We also know that the current alpha state of Ashes gathering is lackluster and dated....
During the Kickstarter i was blown away by the perception of seasons ans weather effects and how nodes will set up trades and conflicts...
But the alpha gathering is well....crap. Single sporadic sparkle nodes on timers and likely fixed locations making for gathering loop efficiencies...
I was expecting a far more dynamic system based on supply, demand, scarcity, seasons, access, nodes and environmental impacts/factors.
lets say a new area is mostly filled tier1 resources and mobs....gathering depletes resources but generates more enemy mobs...more mobs makes gathering less efficient allowing resources to regenerate... killing mobs/gathering also levels the node higher level nodes increase higher tier gatherable locations and in conjunction mobs... etc.
Wilderness zones will have the rarer gatherables and mobs but by managing the mob/gatherable dynamic and keeping the area managed then both resources can be harvested. Over harvesting depleting an area can spawn trigger higher level/elite/worldbosees to then reestablish areas that have been mismanaged...basically locking out an area from easy access...
All these things make the world player driven and dynamic and involved...
Starting areas will not be implicated to help keep the new player experience enjoyable.
Just throwing out ideas...
We also know that the current alpha state of Ashes gathering is lackluster and dated....
During the Kickstarter i was blown away by the perception of seasons ans weather effects and how nodes will set up trades and conflicts...
But the alpha gathering is well....crap. Single sporadic sparkle nodes on timers and likely fixed locations making for gathering loop efficiencies...
I was expecting a far more dynamic system based on supply, demand, scarcity, seasons, access, nodes and environmental impacts/factors.
lets say a new area is mostly filled tier1 resources and mobs....gathering depletes resources but generates more enemy mobs...more mobs makes gathering less efficient allowing resources to regenerate... killing mobs/gathering also levels the node higher level nodes increase higher tier gatherable locations and in conjunction mobs... etc.
Wilderness zones will have the rarer gatherables and mobs but by managing the mob/gatherable dynamic and keeping the area managed then both resources can be harvested. Over harvesting depleting an area can spawn trigger higher level/elite/worldbosees to then reestablish areas that have been mismanaged...basically locking out an area from easy access...
All these things make the world player driven and dynamic and involved...
Starting areas will not be implicated to help keep the new player experience enjoyable.
Just throwing out ideas...
1
Comments
Which means systems are as rudimentary as possible for letting players test.
While New World is a month away from launch.
If you would like to see what is being focused on, enter the game and click the question mark at the bottom right of the screen. On the first tab that comes up, scroll down about 2/3 of the way. There is a list of 36 systems written in a white text (as oppose to the off yellow of the main text) that includes Login, server stability, basic harvesting, game security, and 32 other systems.
Hopefully Ashes will make the world generally populated by tier 1 materials with everything tier 2 and above being as rare as needed to generate the appropriate scarcity. This would allow them to make all trees, plants, rocks, etc. gatherable.
Played my alpha experience to the point I lost interest...Australian Time zone/server distancing reasons mainly.
New world just raised the bar that little bit more and perhaps some of the ideas expressed that may or may not have been already thought of might actually trickle into the greater scheme of things.
@FuryBladeborne , true we can only hope for now.
New World gathering moves the general goalpost - we definitely want Ashes to match or exceed that at launch.
So that feedback should certainly be shared.
But, we should expect Ashes gathering to be crap right now.
I can start gathering, get up to take a piss, and when I come back and it's either still going or done, not only does it not require any additional input from me, but I also don't have the option to do more.
The gathering is sleep inducingly boring.
There is no option during gathering to hit a weakpoint for better results, or to be done faster.
It is press one button and then wait for the game to play itself.
Steven mentioned recently that fishing will be drastically different than the current system. I have faith that he recognizes or has already recognized the need for a more in depth crafting/gathering/processing system.
I normally don't like the response "it's alpha 1" but in this case....it makes sense. Why would they work on perfecting a gathering system when their primary focus for the first 15 days of alpha 1 testing was fixing rubberbanding issues and ensuring a solid core version of the game.
Gathering won't have sparkles. That's great!
There will be two types of Fishing systems.
Seemingly one that is Gathering and another that is leisure.
From what I have seen most people who played the NW beta have found the gathering an crafting system to be 1 of if not the most enjoyable part of the game on offer...
Then going form the Ashes Kickstarter campaign, the world of vera was/is going to be dynamic with player driven consequences.
So my OP was mostly about how are/could Intrepid be accomplishing this and expressing some hypothesis/wishful thinking.
So to continue on my train of thought regarding how gatherable resources are tied to mob spawn rates and tiers and then over exploitation of these interconnected assets lead to an event of consequence. (intrepid eluded to something like this in their node system explanation /the dragon from the mountain scenario)
Perhaps this world boss spawn for lack of more information either locks out access to the area/causes major node destruction. Untill 'balance' is restored. Either this entity lays waste or the players manage to overcome the threat they inadvertently created...so there is a risk....but is the possible reward worth triggering this?
what happens when this threat is eliminated is the pent up energy released, I would like to think something like a gatherable bounty event window happens the land is bountiful and mobs are peaceful/unspawned.
This window of opportunity then recedes as resources are collected to 'normal' levels.
Overcoming this threat event is obviously a major whole node population commitment. So triggering this to redeem a net benefit is a massive sever community decision as the consequence of total node annihilation could perhaps be the risk...
Pipe dreams perhaps but epic nonetheless...
So resource management now has another layer. of attack and defense.
How much the world of Vera responds to players interactions will be interesting to see come into fruition.
My hope is that it is a totally dynamic and responsive system. that pushes the threshold of static assets into a dynamic 'living' environment.
You do it faster by crafting or purchasing gear that gives you bonuses. You also gain benefits to gathering speed from your standing in the territory as well as bonuses to quantity if you are apart of the faction that owns the territory. There are also consumables, potions and food, that increase quantity and quality of resources. I got to 200 skinning with a starmetal skinning knife and I could skin a wolf before you could blink.
It's a better system of gathering than anything else out there aside from like FF14 but those are hard to compare.
My bad, drastically different I think I picked up from last months when he spoke about how different the game will be from current form.
Yes, two systems. One will be leisure but will have basic items and the other will be for rare locations and rare materials. Either way, they are on the correct path for what most players are hoping for I believe.
The fact that almost every tree can be felled, every bush can be harvested, most boulders can be mined etc. The gatherables like briar, bulrushes, hemp, herbs etc. are plentiful and clear to see. Better tools improve gathering speed. A steel sickle is much faster than a flint one.
The animations are great too - especially the skinning/field dressing one. Much better than WoW's weird hand twisting thing (OK, OK, that game's 16 years old, fair enough).
Oh, not to mention the fact that I can gather everything. I don't have to choose between mining and skinning, or herbs and wood.
I very much hope the devs look at that and adopt it as a pattern, making improvements along the way.
The fishing's great too.
Later on, if a New World system is implemented, then there will need to be a large demand for the plentiful resources, or else they will just be totally ignored. NW creates a big demand through needing to craft ammo. There needs to be a similar demand in Ashes. Maybe add on to this system by having localized resources specific to each region, that have more value when used in further away regions. It doesn't make much sense in terms of realism, but this would drive up the demand for trade and hence more caravans. Also, have the extremely rare resources in contested zones with no corruption penalty, so that you don't get corruption griefing (this would be intentionally trying to provoke someone to kill you to build up enough corruption for them to be forced to leave).
I think even that can be useful though. Clearly they must be doing something right because the gathering side of things is one of the few things in NW that I hear praised frequently. If there are aspects of it that suck (and what you described definitely does sound awful) then Intrepid has the opportunity to put a system together that takes the best parts of what NW is doing and avoids the bad parts.
I know that's pretty simplistic, and it's possible that what is done in NW just won't work in Ashes because they are very different games. Ashes won't be a survival game like NW. And I'm sure that they have a lot of stuff done on gathering that we haven't seen yet and it might delay things too much to dramatically change those systems, so there may not really be an opportunity.
This early in development, where we have Schrodinger's Game (so to speak) it is fun to speculate.
I would LOVE for Ashes gathering to be just like NW or even pretty close.
My speculation is that Ashes probably won't achieve that, but just fantasizing about how wonderful it would be is sublime.
But, we shall see.
It would be great to have some more details about Crafting.
Seems like the Crafting articles were originally intended to be shortly after the Nodes articles were posted, IIRC.
We won't have to worry about the lack of need for resources. From what we know, almost everything in Ashes will be crafted. Gear, weapons, freehold buildings, furniture, caravans, siege equipment, gathering/ profession tools. In some ways, I hope it is similar to Albion Online's type of crafting, where literally everything is player made, buildings require a lot of resources, and you have to craft a lot of things to level up your professions. Also gear, weapons, and presumably tools will have repair costs, which require raw materials instead of money cost.
I also heavily agree with localized gatherable goods. If i could farm any gatherable item from any location, why would I need to risk moving items around in a caravan? Seasonal goods is a great idea too. Intrepid has talked about rapidly changing seasons, about 1 season per week they mentioned, so you would not have to wait too long for something from a specific season, but it would create a high cost/ demand during the offseasons (which is great, requires planning and understanding of economics).
Localized and seasonal goods could provide different and unique stats when applied to gear and weapons (and presumably other crafted items, just not sure how). For example, a particular flower picked in winter, or in a wintery-type area like high in the mountains, could provide a boost to frost type damage, or provide a resistance to frost damage. The limited resources make the demand for the product high, and lets you play the market to some extent while also making it feel good when you gather some of these limited resources.