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Animal husbandry reveals: comments and concerns
neuroguy
Member
I thought I'd write my comments and feedback to the animal husbandry mechanics described in today's livestream. Feel free to write your own feedback or reply to mine.
One major concern I have with the described system is the amount of RNG with the mendelian genetics. I think there is appropriate amounts of RNG that could be included in professions and game mechanics in general, however you don't want it to be a wealth gate. What I worry is that only extremely wealthy players can roll the dice enough times to get a valuable but unlikely outcome. Having jackpot moments is great, but to have them be very uncommon has 2 consequences: 1. few people will roll the dice enough times to get lucky and 2. the number of dice that are rolled that don't end up 'perfect' as intended will flood and devalue the market for others engaging in the profession (you see this problem clearly with crafting in PoE). I'd rather have mounts be more temporary and drive demand up than to have super low supply due to 'realistic' mendelian genetic mechanics.
Edit: please do not create a profession system that requires constant alt+tabbing to some spreadsheet...
With regards to complexity, I think if done well the proposed system could be very good. I say this from the perspective of having experts in the 3 categories of gathering, processing and crafting. In the proposed system, the tamed animal, the breeding statistics (mendelian genetics) and the trained outcome are the 3 points where players can impact this system. Being an expert should have a significant impact at all 3 stages of this process. Expert gatherers can tame higher lvl/stat wild animals. Expert processors should have some impact on what features/stats from the parents are extracted (perhaps increased probability of choice stats). Expert crafters will then be able to train up the mount/pet/... to have the desired stats. This sounds great and should be the level of complexity for any final product from gathering to crafting: 3 points where the outcome may be impacted by the expertise of the player(s) involved. The only thing that could go wrong is the complexity of any of these pillars requires too much time investment for an outcome.
That being said, I have one very big concern with these 3 pillars of gathering, processing and crafting that people can specialize in, in a mutually exclusive manner: they are potentially too dependent on multiple parties to be rewarding. If you are truly only able to (arbitrarily) specialize in one of these 3 pillars, you are heavily dependent on other players for producing final products, this may sound in line with AoC's mission statement but can be done poorly. First, as a gatherer or processor specialized player, you never see a great final product unless you form contracts with others or use the money you earn with your specialization to buy what you want. As was mentioned in today's stream, people want to engage in professions that benefit them somehow. On the flip side, if you allow a player to specialize in mining, smelting and weapon smithing (as an example) it will feel very rewarding for that player to create their own weapon for personal use or sale. Players don't like settling for sub-optimal, so asking them to be expert gatherers but making their own suboptimal bars and suboptimal weapons will be avoided at all costs and players will put in great effort to have optimal outcomes. This may sound great as you are encouraging community involvement but only if this experience is fun.
The dependence on other players does not NEED to be artificially created by specialization limits here, it can be created organically with the other game mechanics like gathering off bosses (which require a group to take down), dropping gathered resources on death etc that encourage and require groups/guilds. I much prefer the specialization locking mentioned within professions (i.e. within animal husbandry you can specialize in mounts, pets, beasts of burden or livestock) than between pillars. I think each player should have the option to specialize across pillars to experience rewarding crafting from gathering to 'optimal' finished product. Players are gated by their time already and it is much less efficient to mine your own ore, smelt it and craft it than to buy smelted bars to craft already, so it should not be economy breaking. I also worry that with too much player inter-dependency, you will spend your time finding players to fulfill the roles of gatherer/smelter/crafter or waiting for them to come online more than engaging with the system yourself. The most efficient and best method will still be players who specialize in only 1 pillar and guild/social networks that support such a pipeline but I think locking out players from being inefficiently capable of running a pipeline optimally is arbitrary and unnecessary. Not sure if my point is clear but essentially: players should be rewarded by party play with increased efficiency but should not be punished for not engaging with the larger community for crafting (by choice or otherwise) by being locked out of experiencing gathering to an 'optimal' final product.
One major concern I have with the described system is the amount of RNG with the mendelian genetics. I think there is appropriate amounts of RNG that could be included in professions and game mechanics in general, however you don't want it to be a wealth gate. What I worry is that only extremely wealthy players can roll the dice enough times to get a valuable but unlikely outcome. Having jackpot moments is great, but to have them be very uncommon has 2 consequences: 1. few people will roll the dice enough times to get lucky and 2. the number of dice that are rolled that don't end up 'perfect' as intended will flood and devalue the market for others engaging in the profession (you see this problem clearly with crafting in PoE). I'd rather have mounts be more temporary and drive demand up than to have super low supply due to 'realistic' mendelian genetic mechanics.
Edit: please do not create a profession system that requires constant alt+tabbing to some spreadsheet...
With regards to complexity, I think if done well the proposed system could be very good. I say this from the perspective of having experts in the 3 categories of gathering, processing and crafting. In the proposed system, the tamed animal, the breeding statistics (mendelian genetics) and the trained outcome are the 3 points where players can impact this system. Being an expert should have a significant impact at all 3 stages of this process. Expert gatherers can tame higher lvl/stat wild animals. Expert processors should have some impact on what features/stats from the parents are extracted (perhaps increased probability of choice stats). Expert crafters will then be able to train up the mount/pet/... to have the desired stats. This sounds great and should be the level of complexity for any final product from gathering to crafting: 3 points where the outcome may be impacted by the expertise of the player(s) involved. The only thing that could go wrong is the complexity of any of these pillars requires too much time investment for an outcome.
That being said, I have one very big concern with these 3 pillars of gathering, processing and crafting that people can specialize in, in a mutually exclusive manner: they are potentially too dependent on multiple parties to be rewarding. If you are truly only able to (arbitrarily) specialize in one of these 3 pillars, you are heavily dependent on other players for producing final products, this may sound in line with AoC's mission statement but can be done poorly. First, as a gatherer or processor specialized player, you never see a great final product unless you form contracts with others or use the money you earn with your specialization to buy what you want. As was mentioned in today's stream, people want to engage in professions that benefit them somehow. On the flip side, if you allow a player to specialize in mining, smelting and weapon smithing (as an example) it will feel very rewarding for that player to create their own weapon for personal use or sale. Players don't like settling for sub-optimal, so asking them to be expert gatherers but making their own suboptimal bars and suboptimal weapons will be avoided at all costs and players will put in great effort to have optimal outcomes. This may sound great as you are encouraging community involvement but only if this experience is fun.
The dependence on other players does not NEED to be artificially created by specialization limits here, it can be created organically with the other game mechanics like gathering off bosses (which require a group to take down), dropping gathered resources on death etc that encourage and require groups/guilds. I much prefer the specialization locking mentioned within professions (i.e. within animal husbandry you can specialize in mounts, pets, beasts of burden or livestock) than between pillars. I think each player should have the option to specialize across pillars to experience rewarding crafting from gathering to 'optimal' finished product. Players are gated by their time already and it is much less efficient to mine your own ore, smelt it and craft it than to buy smelted bars to craft already, so it should not be economy breaking. I also worry that with too much player inter-dependency, you will spend your time finding players to fulfill the roles of gatherer/smelter/crafter or waiting for them to come online more than engaging with the system yourself. The most efficient and best method will still be players who specialize in only 1 pillar and guild/social networks that support such a pipeline but I think locking out players from being inefficiently capable of running a pipeline optimally is arbitrary and unnecessary. Not sure if my point is clear but essentially: players should be rewarded by party play with increased efficiency but should not be punished for not engaging with the larger community for crafting (by choice or otherwise) by being locked out of experiencing gathering to an 'optimal' final product.
3
Comments
As for the Husbandry, training time, Mendelian genetics...
It sounds like it will be about as fun as Chocobo Raising, I wonder mostly about what the time spent in the raising period will be (in Final Fantasy XI it's one month from hatch to full adulthood, but you can ride it after 2 weeks) and whether or not the system is intended to match FFXI's depth for an individual mount (so, just the rearing and training stages).
Can I look forward to this again?
RNG will depend on how many genes are being used for a specific trait, but most importantly since these traits are inherited, you can significantly affect what traits get selected over time. Breeding lets you load the dice by choosing what parents are breeding. So, it won't be crazy amounts of RNG, and I would assume that pregnancies will take some time, so the market won't be oversaturated. Hopefully they'll implement some inbreeding depression, otherwise the RNG will be non-existent. I hope there's a limit to the amount of pregnancies a mount can have as well, and for breeders / trainers to have the option to neuter mounts so they can't be used for breeding by others without having to pay a premium price.
I just really have to disagree with this, it's simply against the idea of players having to interact with one another. You shouldn't be able to just group up with a party to gather boss drops and then do the entire crafting process on your own. You should either join a guild or build a relationship with a master in another artisan class in order to see through the crafting process. It's a social game through all its game mechanics, not just for killing elite mobs.
I find that if implemented well (i.e. most of the traits are indicated visually on the bodies of the parents) this actually works better? Simple Mendelian means that if you find two parents with a visible form of the trait, your chances of getting a child without it is only 25%, which is still frustrating for some, but not terrible?
Similarly if you were seeking a recessive trait, well, you practically know outright if both parents have it, and then it's 'guaranteed' for the lil' one. It would only get complicated at higher levels when you are trying to breed across species and don't know if it works the same or if mutations happen. So I'm not opposed to it, the process of 'finding purebreeds' would take long, but possibly it's supposed to? Are you concerned about trying to get to absolute perfect across multiple breedings?
And the counteropinion, please make sure that any profession system requires at least a level of information that one would want to keep in a spreadsheet. And then give us a better UI for it than that.
We'll have to see what the stat differences are between the sub-optimal products you create ... and optimal ones you coordinate with your guild/node, @neuroguy.
If the Intrepid Itemization Teams know their stuff -- sub-optimal gear, weapons, and combat pets should still work fine for the vast majority of the game's content. The optimal items really only being needed for pushing the game's hardest content (raids, end game PvP).
A lot of players assume they need optimal gear ... but then don't participate in the types of content that actually require that gear.
Bottom Line: Ashes is an MMO. Grouping up with others to complete a challenging task (accompanied by better rewards) is encouraged.
A Master Crafter in Animal Husbandry should have similar amount of control in the results as a Master Crafter in Blacksmithing, Alchemy or Cooking.
We will have to test to see how much of a pain interdependencies will feel. Yes.
This is exactly what I expect the top end of everything in Ashes to be.
While there is no RNG in crafting, there is in enchanting - and gear won't be considered "complete" until it is enchanted up to the level the user is content with.
I've not had a chance to watch the livestream, but a high degree of RNG is exactly as I expect from Ashes in regards to absolute top end.
I'm ok with it in enchanting, maybe because that's always been the explicit design intent with it, but for all professions to end that way doesn't feel very good to me, at least conceptually.
It just depends on how well done this is. It an be very un-fun and annoying if you can't find the right people and being dependent on others and never feeling the satisfaction of taking resources and producing something on your own but of course, if the system itself is designed well it will work great.
I will say though, that 'just group with a party to gather boss drops' is some arbitrary opinion of what is or isn't enough player interaction. It needs to be balanced for fun but why isn't that enough? You need (multiple) groups to farm enough resources, you need groups to protect you while you collect other resources etc. There is tons of player interaction built into the game already, it is important to ask 'how much is enough/too much' and again, all should be balanced around fun.
The interdependence that will be necessary between the players to produce the best of anything will be one of the great things that will set this apart from all the other single player games like WoW.
Leonard Read pointed out that, in fact, no one knows how to make a pencil.
https://ddcolrs.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/why-nobody-knows-how-to-make-a-pencil/
While this is a valid perspective, the way I would look at it is that Animal Husbandry are just doing all of that themselves, rather than getting in someone else to do the last minute enchanting.
I like the idea of differe t professions doi g things different - rather than having it so everyone makes an item then ha ds it over to be enchanted, it's good that at least one class doesn't have that.
I think the idea of solo/social optimisation in professions is subjective (as it is in all areas of gameplay). Personally, I like games with restrictions on specialisation because it ensures that there are a large number of hierarchies available to climb. This lets more players enjoy the feeling of being special and needed. If restrictions are removed, there will be a few players who dominate across many of these potential specialisations, and fewer players overall who feel like they are needed.
As for the RNG of genetic trait inheritance, I think it will work if it is clear how it works, and how to tilt the %chance by selecting mates. It is really just a variation on the %chance of a quality upgrade seen in many crafting systems.
I like the use of knowledge based/discovery based recipes. I had a lot of fun in Zelda: Breath of the Wild cooking up food, and figuring out and remembering how to make things. I wonder how the experience will transfer to a MMO where there is more pressure to optimise and just google these things.
Second, a suggestion for smelting:
I think a good place to use knowledge based/discovery recipes is in the processing/smelting of ore into metal. In the real world there are huge variations in the properties of materials like steel based on low % alloying elements. This process of making alloys would ideally lend itself to a discovery based system with several layers:
1. Depending on the quality of the initial ore impurities need to be removed. This process requires certain minerals and processing plants. Slag is the byproduct. For example, sulphur must be removed from iron, or it embrittles the final material.
2. Alloying elements are added. For example, in the lightweight 8000 series Al alloys used for aerospace, Lithium is added.
3. The material is tempered/worked. This means it is cooled and worked in different ways to get the final desired properties. For example, the edge of a steel blade needs to be cooled rapidly in oil/water as this locks the alloying carbon in place leading to a hard distorted structure, called Martensitic steel. If the cooling is slower, the carbon can diffuse around and you can get different properties.
For some real life ideas take a look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_steel_grades and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_alloy