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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
I don't see how being a master Tailor and a master Weaponsmith and a Master Arcane Engineer is better than being a master Miner and a Master Metalworker. In terms of immersion I'd rather my character have professions that actually go together thematically.
Intrepid might prove me wrong, but, considering all of the planned design so far, I somehow doubt that.
The purpose of this type of design is to increase the investment required, and make it something that you have to specifically go out of your way to do. This type of barrier to entry allows the developers to limit the type of player who isn't interested in bringing up a whole series of alts just for crafting (which will be most players) to only mastering a certain number of crafts. This limits a specific anti-social behavior.
It is good for the type of player who really likes crafting to have many alts and master many crafts. It is bad for the type of player who just wants the convenience of doing things themselves to be able to level many crafts. This system makes both sides work properly. The type of player who is only interested in the convenience is discouraged by the 'inconvenience' of leveling crafting alts. The type of player who really just likes to craft is not as discouraged by needing to level alts.
However, I’m ok sacrificing this for the sake of building a broader crafting community & economy.
They said themselves lower tier resources are used in higher tier crafting. And the game would have to basically be a barren wasteland to prevent those from being farmed by guilds. Idk how you can even argue that having more people doing something isn't useful.
Yeah that was my point. I'm talking about the people who do have time. Why force them to use alts when you could just make it harder for them to do it on one character. If the argument is that it should be harder or a bigger time investment why not just do that for a single character. Instead of 500hrs on two characters why not 1000hrs on one character.
Because of the power of incidental activity.
Task switching, character switching, inability to 'just suddenly grab something when you see it', they all matter.
So IF a player is not ON their Master Mining character and happen to come across something great, they have to log in, bring that character all the way there, etc.
If they see someone in Node asking for a sword made, that they could make, or another could make, and their Weaponsmith Alt is somewhere else, someone else gets that sale first.
This additional cost in time and focus is what tilts the balance for a lot of people, and therefore is a decent deterrent.
Actually this is a great point but for a different reason. There might be legendary resources in a raid or something that requires the character to actually be participating, you wouldn't be able to switch and join the raid. I like that idea.
The biggest example of this that I know from experience is several different crafters that I knew by name in L2 because one of them was only crafting mage gear, one was making phys gear, another weapons and another one jewelry. And if their stalls weren't online it'd usually mean the player themselves were online, so I'd just PM them and ask to craft smth. I expect to do the same in Ashes for different services.
This kind of approach distributes money to more players and promotes communications and socialization. People who have the alts could still make stuff for themselves if they need to, but that's where the usefulness would mostly stop.
Also, having gathering professions on your alts would allow you to avoid guild wars standing in the way of your farm. This also comes from personal experience. If I wanted to just go gather some resources in L2, I'd just have an alt that wasn't in the main guild which was always at war with several other guilds. If I could gather resources on my main - I wouldn't be able to do that.
if everybody can make everything, why would someone asks you or someone else to craft the sword then? because any1 can make it...probably only because their skill level is not enough, in which case, they would ask a guildie and wouldnt have to pay the crafting fee..maybe just a tip.
if everybody can make everything, then you see too many items on the market, more supply than demand, and the items lose value, everybody would start undercutting each other. why would you buy my iron ore for 1 gold if the guy next to me is selling it for 0.99? etc etc so its harder to make money but the price of the gear stays the same or increases since they are more rare. this also helps new players catch up.
if people can only contribute with 1 thing, they become more valuable since not everybody can supply that, less supply but same demand. sorry its inconvenient that you cant mine something if you are a hunter...just hunt then and do leatherworking
if everybody could do everything, then the material sink would need to be ridiculous to keep people buying stuff.
Oh, to be clear, I have a really simple wish for Ashes, I don't think they will do it, but I hope they do.
2 Characters per Server.
That's it.
Though I feel like we'd see way more of "having accounts is p2w" posts
The ironic thing is that, economically, in NEARLY EVERY CASE, a player loses money in a game with a proper economy if they do this.
Now, most games have REALLY terrible economies, I'm still literally reeling from BDO's latest nonsense.
But just... the way economic factors work in general, you absolutely do NOT want to be able to do everything on your character, the opportunity cost is almost always too high even once you start specialization. It's only crappy games (again, mostly BDO) where 'saving time by logging to your alt instead of traveling home' is at least a reasonable economic incentive for having crafting alts.
This is separate from 'I can play on both these accounts at once because crafting is easy' or such. If the economy is even 'above average' design wise, there are definite reasons to have 'Crafting Alts', but nearly none that aren't basically just antisocial, in which case you've probably 'paid money so you don't have to interact with someone else'.
Yes, I would like this @Voxtrium
Could be linked to the freehold.
And players can have only one freehold. If they make one on a server, they cannot make one more on a different server.
Players must depend on each-other. Creating alts for the purpose to be self sufficient defeats the intention of the game to bring players together.
Not only danger, need to defeat bosses or defend against PvPers should make players stick together but also the production chain.
Having 10 alts who can produce everything helps those who want to avoid cooperating with other players and say "please help" or "thank you for helping me".
Alternatively, if you kill a gatherer, you get no services from him anymore
But the game lets you make alts that can do that. So people will do it. That's all I'm saying.
I'd kind of like it to be more restricted then. Like not to an artisan class but to a single profession. Mainly because I'd feel like I'm wasting my characters potential not mastering everything they can.
And I am saying that the game should prevent that. Not that it will but it should.
And hopefully apartments and freeholds have limited capacity and cannot accommodate production means for all kind of professions.
yeah that would be nice too. or your artisan skills are account wide, so if you are a miner, all your alts are miners until you reset and pick somethign else
Ew. Don't make alts "all the same person". They have different lives and different skillsets. What even is the point of alternate characters without that? Is "all your alts are Cleric because your main is" next?
i guess you are really into RP
look, you cant reset your race or main class, so alts make sense if you want to play something different. the playstyle literally changes. artisans are a bit different since they affect the economy more. but really whats the gameplay difference from pressing E on a forge and crafting an armor, or pressing E in your shop and tailoring an armor? or pressing E on a tree vs pressing E on an ore. aside from the routes i guess. probably hunting, fishing and animal husbandry will be a bit different though. but afaik, you can always reset your artisan class and level up a new one. so if you are bored of mining ores, you could reset and chop trees. you cant do the same with your adventurer class and your race.
it also promotes player interaction. if you can craft everything an anything by using alts, whats the point of a design focused in player interaction? adventure classes are different since no matter what class oyu have, you will still another 7 dudes in your party to do the dungeon ;3
A lot of people say they'll just create 5 alts and do everything themselves but they really don't, the work of managing all those alts gets to be too much. It always has a new years resolution shelf life to it.
Once most people stop making a million alts you get specialists and people trying fill a niche because that's the path of least resistance. Then you can hopefully create scarcity and interdependence and wind up with a real economy.
Imagine you have just spent THREE MONTHS leveling up your Herbalism. Now you can pick the best and prettiest flowers in the land. Well, now I want to use those flowers to make stuff. Now you probably have to go pick the shittiest flowers AGAIN (because you may have sold the first batch to get better gear and such), and engage with processing which likely will be net-negative for very low-skill crafts, as most of the value in those early materials will be in leveling the class itself. Rinse and repeat until you have a craft leveled.
In all that time, you could have just continued to pick herbs and made bank. Meanwhile, there will be others who did just that, and those who focused on the craft from the beginning and are way ahead of you in terms of knowledge. In a game where it isn't just a couple days to do another thing, these advantages matter.
Let's now say you've done the grind on an alt character or account, and now you don't have to trade at all! .... Great, but you aren't saving yourself any money. If it takes you 1 hour to gather the materials worth 10g, but you could have bought those materials and crafted something worth 11g, you might as well have saved your 1 hour of gathering and just bought the materials and crafted the item and took it right to market. If you want to, you likely will be able to do that 10 times and earned your 10g profit much faster than 1 hour.
These concerns about restricting artisan classes IMO are borne out of games like WoW, where it takes about 1 day to level up a crafting profession from 0, and people were dinging 450 in classic WOTLK about 1 hour after it launched. Also, its not possible to pick Silverleaf without actually committing to Herbalism, whereas in AOC you will be able to pick and craft anything from the early levels no matter what you decide to focus on. In this way, its not such an inconvenience to say "I'm going to pick all the early herbs, but I'm going to bank them up and focus on Alchemy and the rest of the processing tree."
Anyways, totally against this... I have to milk you master armorers with my master metalworker, so I can pay the master miners, and then we both can affort buy the armors you make.
But that's not what this system actually does. This system incentivizes everyone's main character to be a gatherer, and for their alts to be processors and crafters. Sure early on the system works great, but after a few months every high level player is going to have at least one or two alts that can replace other players.
My issue is that if you're going to let people do it on their alts, why not just let them do it on their main.
They have specifically described a system where you start the game with the ability to try all artisanships. It is likely that new players will be able to gather everything in the early node stages at a low overall level. The decision is made LATER on what to focus on.
They kind of said that the highest tier of resources would be in like raids and stuff.