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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.
creating a good risk vs reward profession/artisan system
Octobluss
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Hello Everyone,
As Ashes wants to be an real mmo that wants to give players as much freedom to play how they want to play i lost many thoughts on how a profession system could look like in a game.
I played many mmorpgs and a bunch of rpgs before, but no a single one realy got to a point where i could say „I dont want to raid or do pvp, no i want to be a blacksmith and on top – i want to be the best blacksmith on the server!“
I’ll take the example of a blacksmith, but you could change this on every other type of profession.
There are some things to consider :
There are things that need to be easy for gameplay reason ( get a non-rare weapon, repair, easy access to
health/manapotions etc.)
The introduction to the profession has to be easy as you want new players to able to start their carrer without being
punished for it.
At the same time it needs a „hard to master“ aspect, so youre able to reward yourself (and others) for your efford.
It has to make sense. Even in a world with magic, things have to follow rules and have some kind of logic behind it.
With all that said, lets see how a System could look like.
´
Blacksmithing:
Lets say you want to forge a „Moomsword“ . The recipe for this sword is a easy one that you’ll find in every blacksmithing workshop . The materials are 1 Moonstone, and 4 ironbar.
Now after you got all the mats for your sword you start forging .
For blacksmithing i like to see a simplified version of real forging .
You put your materials into the forge an have to adjust the temperature (1000°C or some freedomheit units i dont know 😉) and hold it for 15 seconds
After this you need to do i small hammering minigame ( could be points to click as fast as possible, or pressing some buttons in the right order)
And at last you need to quench your sword in a liquid (lets take water for this one)
Congrats! You got your moonsword! But here’s the clue. If you did all steps perfect (as told in the recipe) your moonsword becomes a „better moonsword“ with better stats on it.
the math sould look something like (Hammertime get a additional second for every wrong move on the minigame)
Playskillinfluence on itemquality=(Playerproflevel÷profmaxlevel)-{([[((besttemp-usedtemp))/|usedtemp| ]×100]+[[((bestheattime-usedheattime))/|usedheattime| ]×100]+[[((besthammertime-hammertimeused))/|hammertimeused| ]×100])/3}/100
(aaargg the formular won't show how it supposed to do, i hope you can still get the point)
(Hammertime get a additional second for every wrong move on the minigame)
Now choosing the right materials should be the best way, but not doing shouldn’t stop you from having no chance to craft the desired item (even if you have you accept a lower quality)
Here we need to evaluate the influence of all materials. So lets stay with our example here.
You need 4 Ironbars , 1 Moonstone and the water to quench the sword.
I would rate the ore at 10% influence , the moonstone on 60% and the water on 30%
Now apply these factors to the equation. If the max level you can get in the profession is 100 and your skillevel is 87, your can archive a maximumrating of 87% .
If we set the outcome like this
Below 50% = metal scrap
50-75% = normal moonsword
75-90%= fine moonsword
90-70%= perfect moonsword
You have still a chance to craft a fine moonsword, even if you use 1 copperbar and 3 ironbar.
I also would making a moonsword impossible to craft without a moonstone, even if you do everything perfect (as i said there has to be a logic behind this)
Now we come to the fun part !
All this above would be your everyday crafting thingy, but were not finished yet.
What if we go away from the lame recipes found in every workshop? What about experimenting with different materials or heats?
Now we enter the world of a hidden recipe : The Bloodmoonsword!
The Bloodmoonsword is the close cousin of the Moonsword, but need slighly other treatment.
Insteat of heating it for 1000°C you need 1050°C and you have to quench it in dragonblood instead of water.
On top it has a minimum rating of 90%
So as the curious blacksmith you are, you maxed out you skill to 100 and startet to questiong your life decisions… i mean you start trying new things at the forge, you craft a perfect 100% score Moonsword, but missclicked the quenchingmaterial and used the dragonsblood instead of water, you got a 70% score on the Moonsword – But suprisingly you craftet the Bloodmoonsword, as you unknowingly got a score of 95% on it.
Now it is up to you to see if you find out what step influences the last missing 5% .
It is up to you do keep your secret and be known as the only Blacksmith who knows the secret oft he Bloodmoonsword, or mabye you are the greedy one and sell your knowledge?
Know i think it is clear that you can't just rely on pure luck to find these hidden recipes, so i imagine this would be a good opportunity to place hints around the World of Verra.
How cool would it be to find the first hint of a legendary sword in the corner of a Bossroom, after your guild defeaded a huge dragon .
You haven‘t to be there yourself either, mabye you friends and guildmates keep their eyes open on interesting stuff or you buy information of some adventures that come around buy some stuff of you.
As i said in the beginning, you can apply all this to other professions (i also did some more math on this, and did some examples on other professions, but all my notes are in german, so not translated yet!)
I hope you like my ideas, as for me professions are a importent part of an mmo, and are still handled very bad by most games out there.
Maybe my feedback have some positive influence on Ashes :P!
Love from germany
octo
As Ashes wants to be an real mmo that wants to give players as much freedom to play how they want to play i lost many thoughts on how a profession system could look like in a game.
I played many mmorpgs and a bunch of rpgs before, but no a single one realy got to a point where i could say „I dont want to raid or do pvp, no i want to be a blacksmith and on top – i want to be the best blacksmith on the server!“
I’ll take the example of a blacksmith, but you could change this on every other type of profession.
There are some things to consider :
There are things that need to be easy for gameplay reason ( get a non-rare weapon, repair, easy access to
health/manapotions etc.)
The introduction to the profession has to be easy as you want new players to able to start their carrer without being
punished for it.
At the same time it needs a „hard to master“ aspect, so youre able to reward yourself (and others) for your efford.
It has to make sense. Even in a world with magic, things have to follow rules and have some kind of logic behind it.
With all that said, lets see how a System could look like.
´
Blacksmithing:
Lets say you want to forge a „Moomsword“ . The recipe for this sword is a easy one that you’ll find in every blacksmithing workshop . The materials are 1 Moonstone, and 4 ironbar.
Now after you got all the mats for your sword you start forging .
For blacksmithing i like to see a simplified version of real forging .
You put your materials into the forge an have to adjust the temperature (1000°C or some freedomheit units i dont know 😉) and hold it for 15 seconds
After this you need to do i small hammering minigame ( could be points to click as fast as possible, or pressing some buttons in the right order)
And at last you need to quench your sword in a liquid (lets take water for this one)
Congrats! You got your moonsword! But here’s the clue. If you did all steps perfect (as told in the recipe) your moonsword becomes a „better moonsword“ with better stats on it.
the math sould look something like (Hammertime get a additional second for every wrong move on the minigame)
Playskillinfluence on itemquality=(Playerproflevel÷profmaxlevel)-{([[((besttemp-usedtemp))/|usedtemp| ]×100]+[[((bestheattime-usedheattime))/|usedheattime| ]×100]+[[((besthammertime-hammertimeused))/|hammertimeused| ]×100])/3}/100
(aaargg the formular won't show how it supposed to do, i hope you can still get the point)
(Hammertime get a additional second for every wrong move on the minigame)
Now choosing the right materials should be the best way, but not doing shouldn’t stop you from having no chance to craft the desired item (even if you have you accept a lower quality)
Here we need to evaluate the influence of all materials. So lets stay with our example here.
You need 4 Ironbars , 1 Moonstone and the water to quench the sword.
I would rate the ore at 10% influence , the moonstone on 60% and the water on 30%
Now apply these factors to the equation. If the max level you can get in the profession is 100 and your skillevel is 87, your can archive a maximumrating of 87% .
If we set the outcome like this
Below 50% = metal scrap
50-75% = normal moonsword
75-90%= fine moonsword
90-70%= perfect moonsword
You have still a chance to craft a fine moonsword, even if you use 1 copperbar and 3 ironbar.
I also would making a moonsword impossible to craft without a moonstone, even if you do everything perfect (as i said there has to be a logic behind this)
Now we come to the fun part !
All this above would be your everyday crafting thingy, but were not finished yet.
What if we go away from the lame recipes found in every workshop? What about experimenting with different materials or heats?
Now we enter the world of a hidden recipe : The Bloodmoonsword!
The Bloodmoonsword is the close cousin of the Moonsword, but need slighly other treatment.
Insteat of heating it for 1000°C you need 1050°C and you have to quench it in dragonblood instead of water.
On top it has a minimum rating of 90%
So as the curious blacksmith you are, you maxed out you skill to 100 and startet to questiong your life decisions… i mean you start trying new things at the forge, you craft a perfect 100% score Moonsword, but missclicked the quenchingmaterial and used the dragonsblood instead of water, you got a 70% score on the Moonsword – But suprisingly you craftet the Bloodmoonsword, as you unknowingly got a score of 95% on it.
Now it is up to you to see if you find out what step influences the last missing 5% .
It is up to you do keep your secret and be known as the only Blacksmith who knows the secret oft he Bloodmoonsword, or mabye you are the greedy one and sell your knowledge?
Know i think it is clear that you can't just rely on pure luck to find these hidden recipes, so i imagine this would be a good opportunity to place hints around the World of Verra.
How cool would it be to find the first hint of a legendary sword in the corner of a Bossroom, after your guild defeaded a huge dragon .
You haven‘t to be there yourself either, mabye you friends and guildmates keep their eyes open on interesting stuff or you buy information of some adventures that come around buy some stuff of you.
As i said in the beginning, you can apply all this to other professions (i also did some more math on this, and did some examples on other professions, but all my notes are in german, so not translated yet!)
I hope you like my ideas, as for me professions are a importent part of an mmo, and are still handled very bad by most games out there.
Maybe my feedback have some positive influence on Ashes :P!
Love from germany
octo
1
Comments
- As far as I know, there wont be any crafting minigames. I don't have evidence for this tho, but I believe Steven said this.
- To do crafting, you will be relying on a supply chain to get the materials you need. This will be the challenging part of the artisan system. It will require a lot of time and money to reach the Master level of any artisan skill, and to craft a legendary sword, you will need a Master level gatherer, processor, and crafter.
- Crafted goods will be built of component pieces, and these component pieces will determine the quality and stats of the final item. For example, to make a sword, you need a hilt, pommel, crossguard, and a blade. Maybe you put a moonstone in the pommel and it gives you a + moonlight damage.
I hope it feels really awesome to craft a legendary item. From discovering the crafting blueprints to gathering the materials to the crafting of the item, it would be disappointing if it didn't feel epic.
My problem with that is, that a System that just rely on materials that are hard to get is just a boring timesink.
If you can Buy the materials it is just money and as in every other game, there will be players that find ways to make a ton of money, so in the end they can just buy their stuff.
If i compare this to a game like WoW (classic/bc) your profession is just bound by time you willing to grind, or money you can pump in. I think this is a very lame concept as you cant really "life" your profession. Its just a moneysink.
If you compare it to mastering your class, if you suddenly would be able to change from a tank to a mage you would be as good as all the other mages, cause you lack the classknowlege. If you change from a Blacksmith to a Alchemist, you can just jump to the top if you have enough money.
Steven maybe said that there wouldn't be such a system, but as the game is still in development there a maybe room for considerations.
A System were you gather the stuff your book shows you and in the end you click a button and it is done, is just very common and kinda lame.
I'm not sure if this is wishful thinking on my part, but I like to compare Ashes crafting to the crafting in Albion Online. You will need to craft a lot to rank up, so it's not just a minor gold sink. Also, the more you craft an item, the better quality the item is. So you are disincentivized from switching your profession because all the time and money you spent on ranking up your skill, and the amount of high quality products you make, will be gone to waste.
Also everything is made using the artisan system. caravans, ships, equipping node and castle guards, freehold buildings, node buildings, gear and weapons all come from players. With the high demand, there will be profits to be made for almost any profession you choose.
I Get the point, but still ranking up and getting to the best/highest items is just depending on how much gold you can pump in. This will boost the "gaming" value of gold/ingame money even further.
If you can just buy yourself to the top, Goldgrind/exploits, goldselling etc. will be extremly popular (i hope for the best, but intrepid can't stop everything.)
Ingame Gold/Money is a very important thing and should always be so, but if you can buy something to the max there will be people using it.
When Money can buy you materials, but not nessesary knowledge (exept you buy of a secrect recipe from someone) you have a system that reward players who really immerse them self in their artisanship.
Thats another topic, im totally fine with people crafting their everyday need easily and that they can make a dosh or two.
There has to be a middleground between immersion and gameplay, but i still hope for a system that reward people that really want to dive in the role of a Alchemist, Tailor etc.
This would be a hole new "endgame" for players.
This is fully anecdotal, but a few years ago a played an mmo with a friend of mine and his father. As we reached the endgame, you could see that his father couldn't hold up to us in PvE and PvP, but he really loved diving in the professions. He learned every recipe and did every archivement, but after this it, got boring fast.
After he maxed out everything, there was nothing to do exept for crafting the same thing again and again, so he quited .
If he had the chance to find new recipies that nobody knew of he would have sticked to game.
A System like this would also offers players that not that good in for example fighting a chance to still be a part of a "strong" guild, so would be beneficial to keep the whole community together.
This is a two-decade-old MMO, so what I am going to describe will partially sound dated but look at the basic principles and outcome: focus on that.
A player goes out and finds an item that's intentionally bad, the worse it is, the better. The goal though is to find one that's very bad with higher than average stats (relative to how bad it is). Example: You find a sword that's got 17.5 DPS for Piercing Damage; well, you know that the average for that level and "condition" (this is almost impossible to explain, so I'm just going to use the word condition) is actually 12.0 DPS.
After you've found this item you perform a number of different types of crafting upon. Usually, this would require a team of people (similar to what McShave is talking about). If your goal was to make the best of the best, you'd need the best of the best people to help you get there. What you'd do to this terrible sword is apply materials to it of the absolute best quality. A blacksmith would take Iron or Steel or Silver, etc. depending on the base material of the sword and apply that a number of times. Each time he did so, the sword would become stronger but at the risk of one of those crafts failing and the sword being destroyed.
This system was also able to augment swords further than this: by a lot. So let's say you had the master blacksmith increase the overall DPS of the sword to its maximum amount of times. When I say maximum, what I mean is that if he attempted to smith the sword again, the likelihood of it failing is astronomically high, you just tell him to stop at say... 7 smiths rather than 10 because at 7 he's got an 80% chance of succeeding but at 10 he's only got a 20% chance. Anyway, after this, you want to make the sword even stronger. How do you do this? Have someone else in a different profession apply a different resource to the sword that increases its piercing damage; which in turn increases its overall damage even further. The same chance system applies here where once you hit a certain threshold success is either impossible or very unlikely.
You're not done yet though! You can then go to an enchanter who can take their own materials and augment this same sword even further. You want a sword that does fire damage? Easily done. You want that sword to do so much fire damage that it's like being stricken by the sun? Have that guy enchant it as much as possible until you don't want him to anymore.
Then here's what it gets super neat. There was a system called "Imbuing" which could only be done once and would massively augment what that sword could do. Whenever you're wielding that sword you want it to grant you an extra 15% health? Easily done if you've got the right mats, but there as a catch, Imbuing had only a 33% percent chance of succeeding and cost a lot to do.
So if you ran the gamut of going through three or four different professionals you could take an item that you found and turn it into something wholly unique and extremely powerful if you were willing to risk it all. In Asheron's Call this system led to swords, armor, shields, jewelry, literally being passed down like family heirlooms amongst people over the decades because of how unique each item was and how you could never duplicate them.
i think thats a little bit too much rngesus to most players and is still just a moneysink. You tried too hard and broke that sword? Just throw money and buy all materials again.
An Upgradesystem sounds good, i'm also okay with a chance to loose your item, but would like to see an influence of the professionals skill too.
So if you have all materials to upgrade your weapon it is up to you to pay more on the best blacksmith/enchanter on the server or take the risk on a cheaper one.
Servercommunity feels more alive if you know "Enchantingroxxor13387" is the best Enchanter, "Hammerofdoom" is the best blacksmith and "Idontknowwhatimdoing" is good too but because hes a stoner he sometimes mess up.
For me it is a deeper kind of playing if you not just typing "looking for enchanter with max skill /pm me" , but you have to find the one guy who is in a town on the other side of the world, because he is the one dude that can make this full rare item .
Crafting is supposed to be close to what SWG did way back when. Hopefully they can pull this off and make it this in depth where the tools you use and the items you have effect the final product.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Artisan_classes
I think Star Wars Galaxies had a great crafting system... The resource gathering and the crafting system altogether as a whole really was I think way beyond its time. That's kind of the direction we want to go, where there's choices to be made in the crafting system and those choices change what you end up with... It's not just about doing X recipe to get Y item. You know, there's actually thought involved in it and there is you know a market to be captured based on those decisions.[44] – Jeffrey Bard
It really isn't. You just have to weigh the odds. You know them ahead of time, and it's your choice to try and push for that extra few percent. No one forces you to do this and there's a reason why the items I mentioned before were so coveted and passed along: they were tremendously rare because the odds didn't favor their creation. However there was absolutely nothing wrong with a sword that had been tinkered (this was the catch all term) 8 times instead of 10. It just wasn't quite as good. Think of it like getting a 90/100. You could do that relatively safely with the best people around, but pushing above that was taking a major risk even if it was just for an extra 10%.
Further, the part you mentioned is pure roleplay. A guy who gets high? Come on now. There are going to be people who are all statistically the best crafters in their domain. There's gonna be a lot of guys who hit rank 100 in Blacksmithing or whatever. That's just required. Also, there is nothing stopping you from just getting the mats yourself. No one is telling you that you have to spend money on anything.
It's more of a personal opinion than a game design thing, but I hate hate hate this so much in every game I've played. Maybe because I'm genuinely unlucky (someone's gotta be, probability is weird that way) or maybe I'm just selfish.
But I hate any concept where Person A can 'try something once, end up with a more powerful weapon', and now have something worth 100k gold, but Person B can 'spend 800k gold trying to get the same thing and randomly just end up with nothing.
At least for a bossfight, some people could argue 'I enjoy this bossfight'. But the specifics of the 'process of crafting something like this' sucks across the board, especially when you are getting at the 'it takes a whole guild' level.
Guild A grabs some mats, hits a nat 20, and are now in possession of a Legendary tier server item. Guild B spends months throwing money at the same thing, literally burning through mats, cash, and the time of their many players, and... nothing.
Having only a small incentive to actually do the risky thing helps, but note that my entire annoyance here is about 'the fact that one set of people can succeed a random thing 3x and get way ahead of another set of people who are legitimately trying their best to stay on par and just burning resources for no gain at all'.
If you make the success 'not that important', then people stop burning those resources really fast. If you make it 'good enough that you can feel the difference', people end up in this situation.
I do have one suggestion for it, just as a passing thought. When a high level crafter attempts to do this risky thing, at least have the item they are working on not be destroyed.
Level 8 Sword of Awesome + Level 8 Sword of Awesome, for a top tier Weaponsmith, should have 3 outcomes.
A ) Level 9 Sword of Awesome, 10 less Max durability than whatever it had before
B ) Level 8 Sword of Awesome with 10 More Max durability than before, at the cost of second Sword of Awesome
C ) Level 8 Sword of Awesome with whatever Max Durability it had, with the second converted mostly back into materials used to craft the base version (the fail condition)
At least then you could look at Failure Condition B x5 and go 'oh well, at least it's something' while still getting your item sink, and getting to keep that design of 'hey risk this if you're feeling lucky' while still getting something out of it.
And Failure Condition C... well, just hand off the materials back to your Apprentice so that someone can at least get some leveling skill out of this or something.
That's the brilliant thing about this system, it didn't allow for what you are concerned with. It was really about how much risk you were personally willing to swallow. No one could take or just destroy the item on a whim, it was an informed consent thing that flat out told you the odds. I am also being unbelievably reductive in my explanation, it would literally take the better part of a day to explain how this worked in full and that's why artisans were in high demand. They understood how the system worked and had an entire support network to operate. You're clearly alright with an alternative option but I don't think that the OP even has an interest in coming up with an alternative. Not to be rude to him, but his concern is with gold and time and some people not having enough of it, and for that there is no remedy.
Ah, perhaps I misunderstood. You said 'the sword being destroyed' as a possibility in your explanation, so I assumed it was a meaningful concern.
I'm the sort of person who goes 'Well it says 80% chance so I should be okay if I can afford 3 of these in case I get unlucky' and then fails all three. So when a game tells me 'you have 70% chance of succeeding at this and a 30% chance of losing your items'', I usually end up going 'I'm not comfortable with that, I have a weird tendency to lose my items'.
It's a fun little aspect of probability.
Flip a coin 10 times, chances are it's around 50:50 heads or tails.
Ask 1000 different people to flip a coin 10 times, and there's now a strangely reasonable chance that one of those people never got a single 'Tails'.
Interestingly, this means that people who tell you that there are no lucky or unlucky people don't understand probability (speaking in terms of known outcomes and actual odds, not 'I am unlucky therefore this definitely won't go well). What are the chances, huh?
No no, no RP . If you have to do a minigame thats not so easy to get a 100% score, you need somebody thats not stoned, (well fair point, some players need to be stoned to get it
It doesnt matter to just hit max Skill in Blacksmithing, thats the point. If you can gather knowledge through research, gathering information out in the world, or just trying aimless into the blue because yolo mats, you can stand out.
Still the other blacksmith are usefull because they're needed to keep the economy/gameplay alive.
If hitting max level on Blacksmithing or whatever is the only goal, even if it is hard, it will be nothing more than a thing you to may get gold. In the end it would be nothing more than a grind.
After hitting max level you would log on, do the same thing you do every day and after a month or two it lost all its value.
But if you know there is a chance that you missed some secret out in world, it would offer adventure .
How good something like this can be, you see in WoW. There were some hidden quests/events to get special mount. There is a whole community around this topic with a 20k reddit, discords and a ton of other content on that topic.
It would further offer more then just PvP and PvE endgame. If you not into fighting you can just explore,
Not sure if any devs picked up on that idea though.