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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.
New Worlds Gathering/Crafting system is "S Tier" and should be replicated.
AmericanSpy
Member, Alpha Two
I wanted to start a discussion about the influences that AoC should be taking from to develop and implement regarding their resource gathering and crafting system.
Background: I first began playing MMORPGs in 1997 and have had time in most every major/minor MMORPG to hit the market since then. I have NEVER enjoyed resource gathering nor crafting. This displeasure also bled over into most game market/trade systems.
Disclosure: I don't love New World. If you pull my steam profile, I have only amassed 62 HRs of play time.
My point for discussion: When first playing New World's beta, the thing that stuck out the most to me was their gathering and crafting system. I genuinely ENJOY this part of the game for the first time. After 62 hours, I still have not maxed out my one character. I have only done a group "dungeon" once. And have only had a few open world PVP encounters to speak of. Still, I like playing New World because the gathering and crafting systems are so engaging. FOR ME, a game that gets my play time because of those systems truly means they must be "S Tier." Below are a few of the systems that I believe AoC should not only tale influence from, but possible just straight up copy.
GATHERING
1. You can gather/harvest almost everything you see/kill.
2. The number/type of resources (logging, mining, harvesting, skinning, fishing) is complex enough for robust crafting, but minimal enough to remain enjoyable.
3. The resource gathering action is enjoyable. The animations are well thought out. The resources don't just disappear when consumed (ex: trees falling when cut is really fun).
4. The time it takes to gather a resource is well balanced.
CRAFTING
1. The UI is immediately recognizable and user friendly.
2. Access to "recipes" comes based off of skill tier and is not tied to open world exploration/loot generated.
3. Everything you need to be a "good crafter" is outlined within the crafting station. All information about how and what you will gain as a result of crafting is in a one stop shop.
4. Crafting randomization is present, but much of it can be "tuned" out by including additional tweaks/pumps of resources to get what you want reliably.
I am curious as to the communities thoughts on the direction AoC should take for resource gathering/crafting and what other game's systems you feel should be heavily influenced.
Background: I first began playing MMORPGs in 1997 and have had time in most every major/minor MMORPG to hit the market since then. I have NEVER enjoyed resource gathering nor crafting. This displeasure also bled over into most game market/trade systems.
Disclosure: I don't love New World. If you pull my steam profile, I have only amassed 62 HRs of play time.
My point for discussion: When first playing New World's beta, the thing that stuck out the most to me was their gathering and crafting system. I genuinely ENJOY this part of the game for the first time. After 62 hours, I still have not maxed out my one character. I have only done a group "dungeon" once. And have only had a few open world PVP encounters to speak of. Still, I like playing New World because the gathering and crafting systems are so engaging. FOR ME, a game that gets my play time because of those systems truly means they must be "S Tier." Below are a few of the systems that I believe AoC should not only tale influence from, but possible just straight up copy.
GATHERING
1. You can gather/harvest almost everything you see/kill.
2. The number/type of resources (logging, mining, harvesting, skinning, fishing) is complex enough for robust crafting, but minimal enough to remain enjoyable.
3. The resource gathering action is enjoyable. The animations are well thought out. The resources don't just disappear when consumed (ex: trees falling when cut is really fun).
4. The time it takes to gather a resource is well balanced.
CRAFTING
1. The UI is immediately recognizable and user friendly.
2. Access to "recipes" comes based off of skill tier and is not tied to open world exploration/loot generated.
3. Everything you need to be a "good crafter" is outlined within the crafting station. All information about how and what you will gain as a result of crafting is in a one stop shop.
4. Crafting randomization is present, but much of it can be "tuned" out by including additional tweaks/pumps of resources to get what you want reliably.
I am curious as to the communities thoughts on the direction AoC should take for resource gathering/crafting and what other game's systems you feel should be heavily influenced.
7
Comments
But just a question for you. You've played a ton of mmos. How many of them you've played for hundreds or thousands of hours? And could it be that you liked the surface lvl of NW's systems (due to you not leveling it to the max) and didn't get to a point where you might've disliked the endgame gameplay of it? And could it be that all those other mmos whose systems you didn't like were the ones that you might've played for much longer and got way deeper into?
Just make it one source lol. What is this Berry Picking design.
I'm no Berry Picker. Or Bee.
well you do that anyway - except its just very scarce.
The reason the gathering nw is good is because it uses all the actual environment and not just some random tree in the middle of a forest that cant be touched and never changes. I do agree that they are two different gathering systems.
Btw archeage used the same a similar system in terms of everything being almost intractable and you clear almost all of a forest in the same manor as nw (since aoc is a spiritual successor)
Having different resources having different qualities and so forth can lead to a richer crafting pool.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Gathering
They ruined the game changing it to play like WoW and not going the way of AoC.
The gathering mechanics are fine in New World thats all...
Making a thorough crafting system is not easy, but I hope that Ashes gets inspiration from many other games and make something truly interesting and not a chore to make gold.
I can't believe people in 2022 want a new "next gen" MMORPG to have 90's mechanics when it comes to environmental interaction. Large amounts of lumber will be needed for the creation of caravans, ships and buildings (all of which can be destroyed so there will be an endless demand). Never mind immersion and feeling like you are in a proper sandbox.
One of the most appealing aspects of AoC is its sandbox element. Other Themepark MMO's don't have great gathering systems IMO because of their railroad story-driven nature. (and the fact they are all running on old engines) New Worlds Gathering was great in many ways and was a strong sandbox element and I think Verra as a world should be as "interactable" as possible.
I don't even really care about player economy, but... the Ashes player economy would be totally fucked with the NW gathering and crafting design.
The amount of "ticks" on a tree would depend on how long it had been standing. You then have different specific types of trees that you can place amongst these trees or over certain areas start to spawn when a Node progresses unlocking higher tiers of tree.
Enchanted versions and rare types of trees would be amongst this base tier 1 "rough logs" There are multiple reasons you want this.
Having the environment be resources is good.
I'd like singular resources be more significant by nature of their volume/ quantity and labor/ processing required.
If it helps; imagine standing on a hill behind a rock and seeing, somewhat far off, a large group of people slowly chopping trees and calling out Timber when one falls; then dragging the thing slowly by Mule and Manpower to the road to be sledded and taken to the Mill.
That's a World. Other MMOs aren't.
Ok, so I have not played Albion, but I definitely like this line of thinking. I hope that AoC can be a combination of the BEST parts of ARK, EVE, Albion, New World, WoW, and SWTOR - all of these have amazing mechanics that should be cherry picked. Either way, I think Intrepid has done an amazing job of showing their willingness to adapt already(i.e. new Map size). I can guarantee you that during Alpha 2, they will listen to feedback and change. I would bet money that Beta 1/2 will be an entirely different game than start of Alpha 2.
Founder and Guild Leader of -Providence-
Only criticism would be the balancing of the quantity availability of those materials, which I hope AoC gets right
Not all resources should be limited. High-value, rare, and enchanted resources should be limited and they should spawn in dangerous and difficult-to-navigate places.
Having base materials for Wood, Stone, Ore, Hide and Flax would give players a choice when it comes to gathering. Do you want to take a broad and basic approach and farm large amounts of relatively common materials? Or do you want to be super selective and search out the rarest examples?
How do people think Ships should be crafted? Ships that can be destroyed and some of which are big enough to hold entire raid groups? The amount of Basic Lumber, Iron and cloth needed for a single ship should be massive.
Then you have caravans, buildings and furniture. (Never mind gear which could use basic materials as well as specialized materials)
You just need to make sure that you have a sufficient matrix of materials that provide interdependencies between different locations. To have a strong crafting economy there needs to be many ways in which stuff can be lost, so there is continual demand.
It's relative. It depends on crafting and refining. If, for example, a single level 1 axe takes 1 wooden plank (refined from rough wood) Then a Galleon Should take 10000+ wooden planks (plus other stuff) to craft.
A tree should give a fair bit of wood cause it's a whole fucking tree. While a single flower is still just a flower. And a single rabbit hide is still just a small piece of rabbit. The same applies to small rock formations.
You could have any of those things be abundant in a few locations, but only rocks could come anywhere near the trees' volume and even then it should require a ton more work to farm an equally-valuable amount of rocks than it would be to cut down some trees. And unless you have exactly as many mines as you have forests or you limit tree respawn - trees would still be more abundant than rocks, let alone ores.
And due to how the gathering system is designed in Ashes, a lumberjack will most likely not be able to mine rocks as efficiently. The alternative could be to let literally everyone to gather t1 resources, but at that point you'd really have to make them all equally valuable and equally abundant.
And if you have 10k people farming overly abundant resources - there's no scarcity. You'll just have recipes that require thousands of basic resources for just one thing, because there'll always be thousands of those resources on the market. And iirc people complained that once players stopped farming the t1 stuff (mainly to level up their gathering faster afaik) - all those recipes that required insane amounts of t1 things became super annoying and tedious.
Having all resources scarce right from the get-go not only shows new players what the endgame gameplay loop will look like, but also introduces them to pvp for resources from the very start too. And it removes the "I need to get several hundred wood to make a sword and shield" situations from the game, which imo would discourage new players from farming things.
And if you can make the priciest most valuable piece of "gear" in that short of a time - there's no real risk in losing it.
Take a look at Albion Online. The game has an S-tier gathering/crafting/economic system in a sandbox PvP (with a little E) game. (In the last 6 weeks the game has had over 1+ million individual accounts engage in full loot pvp and is all on one mega server which has seen highs of 200k+ concurrent players.) You can gather everything and there is always a demand because there are so many sinks.
I'm surprised the game isn't mentioned more in regard to amazing systems. As the games share so many of the same principles relating to risk and reward.
im convinced that new world copy-pastaed the entire crafting/gathering system from albion online and then retroactively ripped out the mechanics that let it function such as full loot pvp.
Exactly! There needs to be significant sinks, otherwise, you do end up with endless amounts of worthless resources. That is the same whether every tree is choppable or just one tree is choppable. If there aren't sufficient sinks, all resources no matter how "rare" won't hold any of their value.
There obviously would be other resources, some of which would be super rare, that would also be needed.
An example for a large ship.
You need 4000 Wooden Planks (refined from rough wood) 1000 Metal Bars (refined from metal ore) and 50 cloth (refined from flax) as a baseline.
Then you would also need small amounts (say x100) of super rare refined metal, wood and cloth as well as special unique crafted parts and items (such as a rudder, wheel and armaments)
That means it would take a coordinated effort of a group of people, from noobs to established players to all work together. A Brand new level one noob can contribute to the construction of their guilds fleet by chopping tier 1 rough logs. The advanced gatherers can focus on getting the rare materials and the crafters on the other parts.
This provides a multi-dimensional, dynamic approach to crafting that allows for players of all levels to contribute and work towards refining and defining their skills over time.
The very first thing I see is this
I finish the video and go into the comments and see this
Yeaaaah... Sounds like an amazing and appealing system.
I was the guild's crafter in L2 for several years back when I was still playing it. I was crafting things for, sometimes, over a hundred people. I never needed spreadsheets and the whole process wasn't tedious. And what's the most important in this context is that I often bought low tier resources from casual players. Especially from lower lvled ones.
You know why I could do that? Because the resource requirement wasn't in the hundreds per item and resource acquisition was somewhat hard even for specialized gatherers. But if you were just a random player farming your own stuff and was lucky enough to drop a few rarer resources - you could always sell them for a good price.
And L2 had resource sinks both in the form of 60% chance of a successful craft on any given gear piece and a 30-40% chance to completely destroy an item during overenchanting, so those resources kept their value throughout multiple game updates.
And Ashes will have even better value generation because you'll need mats for repairs, OE will burn items (at least in the current design), caravans sink mats if destroyed, sieges will most likely be huge sinks and mats move hands through pvp. And with scarce resources all of that will be that much more valuable and even a casual gatherer will be able to sell a bit of their farmed wood for a nice price even if they don't farm for days to do so.
Ashes has a sink in the form of caravans, death, Over-enchanting, and mounts all deleting or using up materials.
A non-combatant (green player) who dies suffers normal penalties, which include:[6]
Experience debt (negative experience).[9]
Skill and stat dampening.[6]
Lower health and mana.[6]
Lower gear proficiency.[6]
Reduction in drop rates from monsters.[10]
Durability loss.[11][12][6]
Item decay does not destroy items, but it acts as an materials sink.[9][3][2]
Zero percent durability will unequip an item, significantly increasing its repair costs.[10]
If you allow it to get to certain stages, or to get to a destructed stage then it requires a lot of material components in order to return back to its former glory.[6] – Steven Sharif
Over enchanting an item comes with the risk of durability loss if a safety margin is exceeded.
Mounts can be killed by players, but can be resurrected after a certain cooldown period.[9][26][33]
Potions obtained from the Alchemy profession can be used to reduce the cooldown.[9][34][26]
Mounts that die a certain number of times within a set period might gain a debuff that requires a different material component to assist with their resurrection.[34]