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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
Like +2 to +3 gives +10 attack and +14 to +15 should also give just 10 attack but all enchants need the same item / the same cost to be done. The only factor should be the risk of destroying your weapon. Because if you raise cost and deminish the returns you will feel frustrated later on. But if you have the same rewards you will save a weapon farm /craft some others and start some enchanting sessions.
I remember the old days in Lineage 2 where we crafted like 10 Weapons and had arround 100 scrolls and sat down in a circle and startet upgrading our weapons haha.
I prefer enchanting systems that add unique effects to weapons or armor, rather than just flat bonuses. Give me a high level armor enchantment that grants a universal damage reduction/crit protection/fire resistance or a flame burst/electric burst/life drain/mana restore effect to weapons. Give me enchantments on jewelry that can be activated like a trinket in WoW to negate CC or act like a potion/healing effect.
I don't just want a system where we slap "Magic Stones" into a weapon until we get to the minimum safe +7 and then pray to RNGsus that our sword doesn't explode when we try to get to +8 or +9. This is not fun, especially in a PvP focused game where we might lose that +10 sword when we die.
If all the best gear in the game is crafted and requires materials to repair rather than a pittance at an NPC, then you can also make high level or unique enchantments require rare and unique materials to apply. If you are looking for a resource drain, make enchantments temporary or have limited number of uses, rather than causing gear to explode.
If that CC breaking enchantment only has 10 charges, that means every 10 uses you either need a backup item ready to use or you need to go find an enchanter to disenchant and reapply it for you.
Are you by chance looking for something like this when it comes to Risk vs Reward?
When anyone ever asks what the enchanting system looks like in BDO I just link this. You're either lucky enough to succeed or you lose all the hours and effort put into gathering the materials to blow up or downgrade your item(s). Of course, in games like BDO backups are a necessity, especially jewelry, but not all players that wish to get stronger can put 6 months of effort into grinding every day, every week, every month only to fail once or multiple times in a row will be able to swallow that and then get back to the grind like nothing happened.
I used to be semi-hardcore player in BDO and tried to stay towards the top. Not top 1% but competitive(10-15%). Enough failures after multiple attempts and grinding that leaves you behind the rest is very discouraging and investing more time into the game instead of my other IRL responsibilities isn't going to fix that. I would run into players I was clapping weeks ago who are now doing the clapping. Maybe they got better? Maybe I got worse? More times than not, they were just luckier to upgrade their gear than I was. That just adds to the frustration and burn out. This is a game, not a second full time job.
I don't understand what's going on in this video, and I'm not watching some streamer play for 30 minutes. I never have, and never will watch someone else play a game for 30 minutes.
I understand that the streamer is upset at.... whatever happened to.... whatever it was that he was doing at about 2:30. However, if it involves vertical advancement/improvement to an item, then an emphatic 'YES' to your question.
The current quote from SS on the Wiki presently states:
When it comes to over-enchanting things, what we're going to do likely is have a safety- and this is something obviously it needs to be tested - but we're going to have a safety period of enchantment you know like in Lineage 2 I think you could enchant plus four or something. And so we're gonna have a similar system where you can enchant safely and then when you start to take risks, that percentage of potentially damaging your item either through the decay system or completely disabling it through the destruction system will be a risk that's present.
THIS sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I would hate any system that entirely removes the risk vs reward factor that Ashes is looking to embody.
Simply put, if you're looking to go past the point of reasonable/needed enhancement so that you have the *BEST ITEM EVER!!!!*, then I do feel it's reasonable for a large amount of time & effort to go into projects. I was the type of player who *loved* Shipwrighting in SWG. Was it a bummer to save the best-ever parts for several months to Reverse Engineer into a near server-best Engine or Ship Weapon, combine them all and get a great product, and then a day or two later find another piece with a better stat that would have made it the best engine or weapon EVER? Sure! But that's the type of risk we took in saving things for months before pressing the button, on a finished project.
Was it the entire game, though? No - of course not. /SPIT on anyone who would quit playing a great game just because of a run of bad luck at a single aspect of the game. I play for 2 reasons: 1) the community, and 2) the quality of the game. Community kept me in SWTOR for as long as I was, after SWG. However, SWTOR's just another shitty WoW-clone, when you get down to examining it. 7.0 was the final straw, and even then I'd previously taken long breaks before that, with other, over-hyped updates/content expansions.
If you have the time for something and it's worth it, then GO FOR IT! If you don't? Then don't bother; Find an alternative, like buying/trading for that upper-shelf "shiny". Don't trash an entire system just because YOU don't have the time to burn, on it. So BDO had/has a shitty system.... Let's just not make it like BDO, then!
It's not a good mechanic and is a relic of the past we dealt with because there was nothing better. It feels good to see that is the general opinion around here.
Another aspect of enchanted items that's important to me is The FX items gain once enchanted. Glows, Ice Fx, Flaming blades, Glowing Eyes, Dripping Blood, and Special Attack Spells added from enchanting should look amazing and add that sense of character customization. Enchanting could also unlock new animations when hitting certain spells and abilities changing the customization of how your character uses that's specific spell for Example ( Maybe you enchant your sword with a fire enchant which changes your normal swing to a Burning swing and when it hits the enemy they burn for a bit.)
I'm excited to see what is involved in this system and what we are required to collect and search for to be able to create enchanting recipes. I'm also excited to see how this customizes every character and gives the player more options on how our abilities change and enhance us.
Another concern is in a lot of previous MMOs enchanting was skipped over by players because it wasn't fun to gather the resources or they didn't learn the enchant skill. I believe as a player we should be excited to try all the skills and gathering and progressions of that skill should be just as fun and rewarding as the in-depth stories of regular quests and lore. Adding in lore and story to the enchanting skill will add depth and enjoyment to that aspect of the game and will help players to want to learn it and experience it.
Having quests, lore, & stories tied to Weapon enchants could be fun. For EXAMPLE: having a quest that helps you learn an enchant for a sword would be fun. Learning the history of that rumored power sword would help turn your normal sword into a legendary Excalibur so to speak.
member of Gray Sentinels
But there should always be some sort of progression even when you fail/destroy your gear, either reduce the requirements for the next enchantement or raise the chance of success. Also possible to get some good items when you fail too many times, which you may use in other aspects of the game.
There are also other ways to make it a little bit less frustrating, e.g. give titles for a certain amount of fails or materials used, etc.
> Diverse Choice: Diablo had diverse viable builds because gear had unique effects that augmented your skill tree - these items would be "core" items that defined a build. Other gear slots were filled with complementary "flexible" gear. This made balancing easier, because certain builds that got out of hand could be nerfed from the "core" without affecting other builds (usually). OTOH - balancing "flexible" gear has a lot of ripple effects on many builds, so their "cores" would have to be buffed/nerfed in response. Such a system gives players choice with strong identity, and flexibility on less-important gear - it creates a playground of possibility.
> Permanent-Choice Rerolling: One of the best mechanics introduced was the ability to pick 1 stat-line per piece of gear to reroll into another TYPE of stat. This is SO MUCH better than simply adding an extra line of enchantment because this choice locks in all the other stats types on that piece of gear permanently, making the choice meaningful with significant impact, because the other slots could not be changed afterward. This also functioned as a forgiveness mechanic, allowing players to make use of gear that was "almost" what they needed.
> Downsides: the compounding of so many layers of effects causes HUGE power amplification - though this can be balanced by expecting all players to have builds consisting of compounding effects. Diablo's defensive options weren't very creative.
> Flexibility: In order to gain the effects of an enchantment, players needed to stack points from enchantment slots until they surpassed certain threshold numbers in order to enable the enchantment's effect. This allows for highly customizeable builds, where players choose a trade-off between a gear's inherent stats vs how many slots the piece of gear has. The same enchantments can be stacked on multiple pieces of gear to invest into deeper levels of an enchantment, or they can be spread out. This is really good for preserving gear identity and supports strong horizontal design.
> MY FAVOURITE OF ALL TIME HANDS DOWN: I've made a diagram because I loved it so much
What makes this system so good is: The choice to disenchant your weapon is IN THE PLAYER'S HANDS, There is no backwards progression (minimum roll is still positive progression) - the players choose to disenchant if they are not satisfied with the enchantment (greed). Economically, this creates a huge market for materials used to enchant AND disenchant. The materials are easily distributed according to player level: Tier1 mats drop mainly for new players, Tier2 for end-game players, Tier3 from significant group content. This causes a healthy flow of cash from rich players to newer players because the demand for T1 mats is always high. The risk of this system is in the balance between how efficient it is to craft a new base weapon vs disenchanting a weapon you're not satisfied with - if it's too easy to craft clean weapons then the market gets flooded with half-enchanted gear because it's not worth disenchanting. I love this system so much, no other enchantment system has come close to the dynamism and freedom of this system; it becomes somewhat easy to generate a decent end-game weapon and yet the longevity of pursuing a weapon with perfect stats requires serious dedication.
> Chaos enchantments: High Risk High Reward option - extremely rare material, randomly shuffles all stats on a piece of gear by a large amount for better or worse.
> Diversity: The diversity of weapon enchantments in DnD is really cool! There isn't really one-enchantment-to-rule-them-all. It would be cooler if the enchantments had a little more depth, but then it's risky to invest deeply if you're going to be replacing your gear.
> Transfer: in Lost Ark, +15 gear can be transferred into a free +1 on your first enhancement on gear in the next tier. This isn't much, but it helps you take your first step on your next piece of gear and achieve some sense of closure.
> Tripod System: Tripod enchantments directly influence the effects of specific abilities in your skill tree. These are interesting lines that help diversify enchantment options.
Important aspects of the enchanting system to me are that there is a wide variety available, such as +10 movement speed on boots, + 10 lockpicking gloves etc etc, I also think enchanting mounts or their armour would be interesting, just a thought ☺️
I would also love to see versatility in what the enchanter is able to create, for example Runes that will buff the player for a short period of time like a steroid but will then cause fatigue afterwards for an equally short period of time, these could be extremely useful for making those last pushes into a castle!
Personally feel like Places of Power have been really under utilised aswell, particularly when performing high level enchantments, think the dark iron anvil in BlackRock depths in WOW. These places of power enchants could take you to the highest mountain or the depths of the curelean grotto, taking alot of concentration and therefore take a good amount of time to perform correctly, if disturbed the enchanter may lose some of their materials. These places could be a hotspot for skirmishes between players trying to get their BiS enchantment on their brand new gear!
Are there Enchanting systems in other games that you feel are done well? If so, what makes Enchanting in those games good?
I personally have -always- loved the Skyrim / Elder Scrolls enchanting minus the exploits ofc... The level of the enchantment is based upon the quality of materials and recipe obtained rather than the amount of times you enchant a weapon over and over. This also leans toward enchanters or guilds incentivising certain activities, for example killing world bosses for materials, gathering the blood of their enemies or delving into the deepest dungeons to retrieve the rarest scrolls that lead into attunement quests for them to unlock the ability to perform the enchant.
In my opinion the type of enchanting that rewards RNG disrespects the time the player has spent gathering recipes & materials. If you're going to make the enchantments have tiers of power, make it so that the enchanter has to unlock these tiers, rather than being gated behind "luck" again my own opinion, but for me "luck" based enchanting get stale pretty quickly and feelsbadman.
Is there anything, in particular, you’re excited or concerned about regarding the Enchanting system?
I am particularly excited to see if there are mini systems within the enchanting skill such as disenchanting, transmutation, essence crystals and the interaction of these with other skills.
My biggest concern is that enchanting will be linear and that RNG will take precedence over "hard work". I also hope that utility style enchantments aren't left to the wayside. My final concern is that enchantment is so often funneled into being an endgame skill, I'm desperate to see enchanting used at all levels.
Sorry if this is posted on your post, I didn't know how to make a post so I quoted your post.
If the vertical enchanting does not become the power cap or must have iam alright with it.
Ok I finally got the time to check out the videos. Your initial assertion was: that killed the games.
That's not really what he is saying for Tera, L2 and Aion. It was several things, and P2W was an issue, for sure, but not THE main thing. For Archeage, the change in the cash shop after the game released was probably what killed it. It was like a bait and switch tactic that rightfully pissed people off.
A lot of people don't have a problem with some P2W aspects, even in the west. Buying gold, items or services for RL money is very popular in many MMOs, and that is also a form of P2W. Here is an article straight from one of the sites selling those services: https://g2g-blog.g2g.com/blog/top-mmorpg-for-gold-farm-in-2018/ It's still a very big industry, apparently. It was estimated to be around a billion dollar industry 15 years ago. I don't have any current numbers.
For me, and everyone I have talked to about it, it's the RNG aspect that makes it really bad. It's gambling, with the potential to lose EVERYTHING you paid/grinded for by the roll of a die. All four games you listed also had a huge grinding component to the game, but whether you spent RL money or many, many hours grinding, it's the RNG that could take it all away. It's similar to loot boxes in some ways. Loot boxes are banned in some countries now for good reason.
It's one thing to grind for days or weeks, or to open your wallet and pay for an advantage. I would guess a majority of MMO players in the west dislike those mechanics, and it's bad overall game design for the western audience I think. However, as long as players get to keep what they paid or grinded for, I think there is a western niche market for such a game, as long as the rest of the gameplay is good. But if they also add RNG elements that can completely remove any gains from the grind or cash shop, I'd wager the game will die real quick.
If over-enchanting in Ashes has a mechanic where days or weeks of grinding and farming can be nullified by unlucky RNG, leaving the player with nothing because the item blew up, that will have a huge negative impact on the game. To repeat myself, it's just really bad game design. That kind of system belongs in a casino, not in Ashes.
The games i mentioned in the comment of the quote "in reality it was mainly their P2W cash shop intertangled with the enchanting system literally selling power." where BDO and AA.
As for Tera, L2 and Aion, they had way more conturbated reasons other than just P2W, Like Lawsuits and NCsoft pression over Tera, NCsoft leaving L2 on the side and focusing on L1, Huge reasons that weren't simple RNG.
Aren't we all sinners?
"Meaningful choice". I hope most enchants can be viable and have their situational advantage in high level gameplay. The last thing I'd want to see is "meta" / "must have" enchants like those in some versions of wow.
Are there Enchanting systems in other games that you feel are done well? If so, what makes Enchanting in those games good?
Guild Wars 2's runes and sigils did ok in the variety / meaningful choice department. Different rune sets / sigils can synergize very well with different builds / tactics.
GW2's system's downside being there are just way too many runes & sigils, to the point that a player often doesn't even know that a certain rune / sigil that synergizes with their playstyle even exists, and some runes/sigils with more generic / straight forward effects (e.g. flat increase to dps) became highly sought-after and overpriced
Is there anything, in particular, you’re excited or concerned about regarding the Enchanting system?
WHO will be creating the enchants? A specific "enchanter" profession? Or would it be a system that different professions can create different enchants? (e.g. armorers can "reinforce", weaponsmiths can "sharpen", alchemists can "coat" items with chemicals, scribes can "inscript runes" on items, and an enchanter / artificer profession to handle magical enchants ...?)
That's what GW2 did and it's great. You have to do a lot of things to get materials. You can buy weapon from someone in-game if the who crafted it hasn't used it. You can get game currency by using real money, so you can P2W it, but someone still had to put in the effort in making it.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_weapon
https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/a~0!b~1!c~0!d~1-74155
I think GW2 did a lot of thing good with the game. It's a one time purchase to get full game and everything you can get with cash, you can also get by playing. It also has great action combat free aim option or a deadbrain tab-target, if that's your thing.
It requires some effort from game devs to make all that content tho.
I have no idea how it worked in L2, but I'm having a PTSD from these RNG +ilvl upgrade mechanics.
Endless + upgrading of gear, from +1 to +15, +20, +25. You feel 0 impact in getting from one ilvl to another, you waste hours of grinding for nothing, for absolutely 0 impact on your gameplay. But you have to do it to unlock new content, because otherwise you are stuck doing the same thing forever. It's a constant treadmill.
That game has almost ruined the genre for me, because apart from the combat, everything about it was awful.
I've recently started playing GW2 properly, and honestly I like the gear progression there (or lack thereof). You can grind some exotic sets pretty quickly once you reach the endgame (or even buy them off the Auction House, provided you have the gold), and you can do all types of content in that gear. There's next level of gear which is Ascended, and it does give you some power increase (although not a very big one). Finally there's Legendary, and it's on the level of Ascended, but with some great QoL stuff, and a unique appearance. Apart from that, there's really no vertical progression.
What aspects of the Enchanting system are important to you?
Feeling rewarded for the time spent. Rewards are looks, impact on gameplay, etc. - Just enchanting for the sake of enchanting and having more stats is just bad.
Are there Enchanting systems in other games that you feel are done well? If so, what makes Enchanting in those games good?
Can't think of any, I generally dislike these types of systems, as they are rarely done well.
I would prefer having a system where you would spend materials to upgrade the item in terms of rarity, going from Epic to Legendary. So for example, usually you'd get Green/Uncommon gear as random drops, with a smaller chance of Rare/Blue gear. Some harder activities like Dungeons for example, would guarantee you Blue/Rare gear drops or mats, maybe even a small chance of Epic/Purple in some harder tier content. You would work on upgrading said gear to higher tiers, Epic/Purple, Legendary/Orange.
Is there anything, in particular, you’re excited or concerned about regarding the Enchanting system?
Excited? Honestly, not at all.
Concerned? Very.
In my opinion, if you are already set on this system, there should be a soft cap and a hard cap to enchanting. Let's give an example.
You just upgraded your final piece of gear to Legendary. You're pretty strong now, among the top players. Now the enchantment system comes in, where you can further increase your power.
There definitely shouldn't be so many + levels, like in Lost Ark for example (I think it goes to +25, probably way past that, but nobody has gotten there yet, not sure). I'd say it should go to +4, after which you have a soft-cap, where that "Over-enchantment" comes in. You could get to +5 if you are lucky and grinded a lot, +6 at the most if you are extremely lucky or grinded the hell out of the game. If you are +5 or +6, you are one of the top people - (and it should probably stop there at +6 with a hard-cap). But here's the thing, enchanting should have minimal impact on your overall power (5% or less difference in power when comparing Full Legendary @+1 vs Full Legendary @+6, 1% difference between a +4 and a +6). So you really aren't compelled to push that itemlevel, you are still very competitive even if you aren't +4 or above. You don't have to push over that soft-cap aka "over-enchant". If you do, great. You are slightly more powerful, but where it really should give you the sense of reward is the appearance (glows, etc.).
This avoids having that awful feeling of grinding tons of mats to just waste it all on a failed upgrade, or even worse a broken piece of gear. If you don't want to waste mats and have your gear broken, just don't upgrade past +4, it's easy. There's no real benefit from it, other than a more shiny and beautiful looking glow/color, etc.
Something else that could be added are glyphs/runes, that could be inserted into gear for some additional effects. I'm not talking about straight up stat boosts. Again, something similar to GW2, where they have Runes for armor and Sigils for Weapons (They often do just increase your stats, but in a lot of cases they do have some unique effect to them).
Example: Superior Rune of Scavenging - The 5-piece effect gives you nothing but stat boosts, but the 6-piece gives you +20% Poison duration and Converts 7% of your Vitality (HP) into Condition Damage (DoT).
A similar system can be employed, where you'd insert certain runes into gear, and have them increase the bleed duration, or decrease fire dmg taken, etc. Just slight boosts, amplifications, or even unique effects.
These are just some of my thoughts, it doesn't need to be anything like this for me to enjoy the game, but if it goes in the direction of Lost Ark, BDO, or even Archeage, then I seriously doubt I will enjoy it.
Turns out no enchanting profession, confirmed by Steven
So, I would say there are a few Enchanting professions, rather than none.
Enchanting should give bonus effects, not just flat out base stats, elemental stats are okay though (to an extent). For example, instead of just a boring +10 bonus armor, you can do: ''Every third auto attack applies burn/fire'' and ''+16 Fire/Burn damage'' this would be a good bodypiece for a firemage, but not very good for an ice mage. People who do enchanting as a profession, can decide what type of enchant is put on a piece of equipment.
and IF you're going to add RNG to it, please don't make it so that the piece of equipment is ruined just because you got a wrong roll.. that's frustrating gameplay.
Are there Enchanting systems in other games that you feel are done well? If so, what makes Enchanting in those games good? Albion online has a decent enchanting system, excluding the fact that it just makes the equipment stronger by adding flat bonus stats.
Albions system works as followed: Through adventuring and killing mobs and opening chests in dungeons you find 3 different kinds of materials: Runes, souls and relics. Runes being the most common, relics being the least common. You find them in different tiers, for example you use tier 4 runes to upgrade tier 4 equipment.
Let's say you find a bunch of tier 6 runes, souls and relics. The runes are used for the first enchantment, upgrading the tier 6 item to a tier 6.1 item (Tier 6+1 enchantment) the souls are used for the second enchantment, upgrading the tier 6.1 item to a 6.2 item and the relics for the third one, turning it into a 6.3 item.
Is there anything, in particular, you’re excited or concerned about regarding the Enchanting system?
RNG, i dislike RNG a lot, especially if its a core mechanic of a game.. many games play into RNG so much, that you spend days or weeks chasing a good roll for a specific item.. which is just free gambling and im not a fan of that. New world for example, you just loot chests over and over till you get the stats you want on your weapon, not a fan personally.