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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.
Comments
I have not and never will actually advocate for a completely safe upgrade relative to getting exactly what the player wants across the whole item, in an Enhancing/Enchanting system.
My suggestion is entirely based on 'always get something, you can use it anyway, trade or sell the something to someone who is more suited to it, or you can spend the money, junk the 'failure' and do more stuff'.
That retains MOST of what you seem to enjoy while offering more agency than just 'well sucks to be you I got mine'. If I want Ice Resist gear and my Enchantment turns out to be Wind Resist, I can offer it to someone who wanted Wind Resist on the same gear (social), go out there looking for Wind using enemies to grind on for a new experience to get my money back and maybe find out that I like fighting them too/better (experiential) or continue trying the content I needed the Ice Resist for and hope I improve since my new stat is useless but I can keep improving (tenacity).
Any 'heavy item damage equivalent to destruction or destruction itself' system gives me only one of those options. It's the same thing I do now.
Step 1. Never enchant.
Step 2. Continue trying the content without the Ice Resist.
So here's the issue as the 'selfish person', let's assume I'm having a VERY toxic day. I go for my Ice Resist enchant right next to my 'rival'.
They get it first try. I get Wind Resist. I go 'aww FUCK her and her RNG'. Mostly because she's a terrible person who lords it over me and taunts me about it... yeah...
Then I go "I'm not spending 20x what she did, I'll go find some Wind using enemies to fight so I can keep up with her RNG-carried BS. Sheesh'.
OR it goes the other way. I get it first try, she doesn't. Now our cool rivalry is 'broken by RNG' until she can farm maybe 20x more. But I'd also farm 20x more. This just has to happen (or roughly happen) 3x in a row, and now I've lost a rival IF my Rival is a dumbass and doesn't take their 'failure' (-20% Damage Taken Under X Status) and figure out how to turn that into a strength so they can 'keep up'.
But I'm okay with THAT because that's them not seeing an opportunity. That's their failing. In a straight OE system, the only thing they 'failed at' was maybe 'not being cautious enough' or 'not being bold enough' and you know... you can't tell which beforehand anyway.
The people who can't spend 20h on an upgrade should be able to take whatever they GET and go on a new adventure to make what they GET useful. That's the goal of my suggestion.
I literately made a whole giant post on this with page 10 and can make it as long a grind or short as the developers would want to adjust their numbers. It is a full enhancement system and it uses a bit of reverse psychology in an attempt to reduce the negative memory.
if you spend 6 months grinding, 27 hours a week (trying to not make it super high but a decent rate so about 4 hours a day) over 6 months. Which is 648 hours, and you end up with 0 or less gear. You will 100% feel your time has been disrespected over the months of time you have been playing and not getting any kind of progression. I won't even say that is the most extreme case, i feel those hours are low balled for a hardcore players for end game.
I've spent plenty of hours and i defiantly know the feeling of complete time and disrespect. It is one of the most disgusting things and it changes peoples mind sets in the worst of ways.
I cannot say that this is flawed, exactly, I can only say that I consider it an inferior system. So I feel we're at a point where the discussion stalls. I give reasons why I don't think the solution you are on the side of is good ENOUGH and give reasons why I think the one I suggested achieves more positive things for players.
If your aim is to figure out 'is there a way to use a system other than mine, closer to the one you are defending', you haven't convinced me yet, and I can explain why if you consider it worth the time (tl;dr it achieves the same goals but weaker so why do it?)
If your aim is to 'defend that system' as a general matter, I don't have much more interest in engaging on it because:
You reached the point in the discussion where a stance you took boiled down to 'Well some people might not have the time to play so we should continue to reward players randomly instead', which I consider abhorrent (not you, nor you holding the stance, the stance itself).
What is it relying on? That the RNG will 'cripple' all the hardcore-time players and benefit all the casual-time ones? No, that won't happen. It will be random, it will cause some hardcore-time players to suffer despite their efforts and cause some casual-time players to literally never have any chance whatsoever (when choosing to interact with this system).
My verdict would remain: Never interact with this system.
Much better to just make enchant resources scarce/expensive.
Could even make enchants decay over time so they need to be topped up, this way the demand for the resources offers something to farm for those sweaty powerfarmers.
Edit: if players can enchant for other player's, unlocking the ability to carry out a high level enchant should be a feat in itself e.g. charge a frost enchant scroll in the breath of a frost dragon. If both learning how to do the enchantment and the resources taken to carry out the enchantment are hard to accomplish, there is no need for RNG.
Actually a great idea of enchantments getting weaker over time. Maybe not in a way that it works like that as a whole but it could be one of the risk that come up as a negative.
The real question is if reforging the item causes the enchantment level to reset or not. Or delevel. If it resets or de-levels, it's a bullshit system that I don't want in Ashes. If the enchantment level stays as is after the reforge, it's still not my preferred system, but it's not a huge issue to me either.
I tried asking once for a dev stream, but it wasn't picked.
Honestly don't think they should have disenchant. You should have to get a new weapon then be able to hold onto the same one forever. To ensure there is a reason to continue to find gear, trade, buy it off the market.
I also appreciate that a variety of crafting professions are involved in making them.
One thing that would make enchanting intensely satisfying to me, is if it took something out of the character to perform the action. This could be anything from a 5 minute channel, to penalties/curses, or negative attributes on the item. It could be used as a sort of tradeoff system to reduce the chance of failure.
That, and big magic effects that make you feel like a god when you succeed.
Not losing an item for enchanting failure. I lost several high value wands in Asheron's Call because of trying the 10th level enchant. It felt bad every time. So much so, that here I am talking about it, 20 years later. Just don't do it ;-)
When enchanting in WoW first came out, you just had to find someone to enchant your stuff. Then they made it so that an enchanter could create an enchanted velum (of sorts) and sell that enchant on the AH. This was way better than standing around the capital city all night broadcasting an ISO for an enchanter to do a specific enchant. Please consider this method.
I'm excited to see what you come up with, and if it will vary to much from what we've already come to expect in other MMOs.
I would encourage you stay away from things like what happened in World of Warcraft with their corruption system in Battle for Azeroth. Specifically Twilight Devastation. Damage based off HP pool of character. All of a sudden tanks were out performing DPS. That was just silly.
In my opinion, enchants should be used to either more deeply specialize, or, conversely, offer access to something that build / class can't normally do.
thank you!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP31ixSBO7GHKLBefWVcJaA
I stopped to think for a moment and could someone explain to me why the regular, linear, safe enchanting from +1 to +X exists? If +X is what everyone will eventually have, why not just increase the base stats of the weapon to the equivalent of +X?
The safe enchanting system increases resistance to switching between gear. If my sword is +10 and I find a better base sword that is +0, I now have to spend resources to upgrade the new sword before it starts matching my current one. If the utility of the safe enchanting system is to drain resources, why not just make the base item more expensive to craft, so that we have less items floating around the economy to begin with? I also see the resistance to switching gear being detrimental to the economy, since players are less incentivized to make trades for smaller upgrades.
Here's a system proposal that I'd like to hear critique on. It builds on the existing ideas and tries to alleviate the concerns in this thread:
The idea here is that you have a statistical material sink at the very highest power levels, but if people really want to keep their special gear they can spend extra to restore it. Every time an item breaks (whether by enchanting failure or durability) the player has a choice to sell it to a crafter for recycling instead of repairing. The item xp incentivizes the players at some point to start looking for the next set of gear because they are no longer accumulating recycling value, but they can keep using an item if they like it. The item xp also stops crafters from just endlessly crafting and enchanting their own items without the items ever entering the market, because base items don't contribute nearly as much to the recipe process.
The slot machine could be replaced with just the expected cost of the enchant, but I'm not sure if this would produce the wanted player behavior.
Additionally, with careful tuning, the process could be used to produce a natural feedback loop, where crafters slowly over time produce better recipies which produce higher quality enchanted items which in turn make even better recipes. This would result in a natural slow gear threadmill, where there is always slightly better gear that a player can chase as the economy evolves.
"Dont let tanks dps" the next sentence "offer access to something that build/class cant normally do"
Ah.
I get it.
Yep, raw RNG is a horrible experience.
Most enchanting systems are linear dice rolls - with little choice afforded to the player - this is your main enemy?
There is a cool system in Lost Ark worth discussion here: Faceting
Briefly:
- Find "faceting stone" from killing stuff (rare)
- stones have 2 positive abilties, 1 negative ability
- If you like the abilities on the stone you can try to "facet" it to unlock its potential
- select one of the stone's ability slots (12 slots per ability) to facet (consumes the slot to roll dice)
- if successful, next facet is less likely to succeed
- if unsuccessful, next facet is more likely to succeed
- repeat on all abilities until no slots remaining
- ability must be faceted successfully at least 5 times to "unlock" its effect (grade 2 effect at 10 facets, etc.)
- equip if you are happy with the result
The tactic is to try to fail slots on the negative ability to negate its effect, and you'll have higher chances on the other ability slots that you want.Positives: fail stacks are desireable on the negative ability (they have a use), player has agency with tactical significance, you have to have REALLY REALLY bad luck to end up with 0 abilities if you facet correctly, you also have to have REALLY REALLY good luck to facet a perfect stone.
Negatives: entire system is deterministic - lots of calculators on the internet for choosing optimal choices every step of the way. Too easy to produce good stones - hence clean stones have a one-time trade limit.
Key takeaways:
- a system that's partially deterministic (where a chain of enchantment choices affect each other) is more engaging than straight dice rolls
- overly deterministic systems become formulaic
- how often will players attempt enchanting? Will it cause excessive supply in the market?
Levelling up with exp, then breakthrough with the material.
I'm not a fan of RNG so I would hate to keep failing to upgrade something (looking at you Lost Ark).
Also definitely against having the item breaking and starting all the way from scratch. I just think that's absolutely poor.
I feel rng will always be apart of enchanting, generally its one of those systems that try to increase the time before players get a upgrade with a bit of rush is fine. I feel a lot of currency enchanting systems are bad because you are trying to hit like a 5% chance or lower for end game.
If they have enchanting as end game and you can do most content without having the best enhancements between hard and extremely hard, with some content that you need some enhancements and the rights build else it will be impossible. It should be fine. Part of the frustration with those other games is there is no fun of exploring and finding gear, your progression is only tied to rng gambling and you feel you are being held back at time and at the mercy of rng. It gives a bad taste in peoples mouths.
maybe a regress in enchantment level instead, when failing?
If you go to page 10 i had an idea for a system
It is a reasonable approach that enchants can be bind on scrolls or stones/runes/gems which can be then socket to the gear.
Utilizing disenchanting as an item sink is also reasonable from economy point of view. This process could provide players new enchanting recipes (or parts of them) and perhaps some special ingredients used in enchanting as well.
In general WoW handles enchanting and disenchanting well even in my opinion professions have not got enough attention for long time. Enchanting there reminds me a lot what you have planned for Ashes. I would still say that in WoW the enchanting feels sometimes bad because you need to disenchant so much gear to get enough materials only to level up the profession. Therefore, perhaps this is something what could be keep in mind when creating disenchanting feature for Ashes.
Enchanting can be a profession which utilizes various different kind of resources and materials for the enchants. For example, smithing uses mainly metals, alchemy herbs, leatherworking skins, but enchanting could potentially utilize almost anything if wanted or needed. Therefore, recipes can contain enchanting specific materials combined with various different resources. This also helps designers to utilize less needed resources and make them more meaningful via enchanting.