Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I love the scope and ambition of Ashes of Creation. I particularly love the innovative Node system that will allow players to have more influence over the game, have novel replayability when players reach the end-game and the gathering systems. I agree with maximising player interdependence and community where possible.
I like the gathering systems especially and I created an extensive document over the past months (have a background of producing GDDs) which goes into gathering and currencies in detail specifically covering Gathering and Currencies in AoC.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11cubd2Jr8B1gafF3uojxCsMyCz643E997NQyPSEK6Ns/edit?usp=sharing
I think it could be worth a read despite its length for the dev team. Nice job on the gathering so far, the physics and UI look great!
I want to be rewarded for exploring, looking under bridges and behind waterfalls. I want incentive to travel to far off biomes to get exclusive resources. For gathering, I essentially want it to both reward and motivate an exploration-based play-style.
How do you feel about the interaction between the surveying and gathering system?
I don't really like the idea. It is still difficult for me to picture it exactly so I'm open to trying it but in general, I am quite sad you have decided to move away from the visually cued gathering that was initially proposed. I think the surveying system described would be a nice fit in some mini-game sort of situation with the spawning of super nodes for group gathering (proposed by some forum threads) or could be implemented in temporary, randomly generated islands for a fun excursion but to have to interface with it all the time sounds terrible.
Gathering to me should both promote and reward exploration, the surveying system seems to turn the process into mini-map sniping. You go survey somewhere and snipe the little dots that pop up, like how WoW gathering was (not sure if it has changed since TBC which is when I played). The visually cued version of gathering initially proposed was brilliant as it rewarded exploration and having a keen eye, and if you went out with the primary goal of gathering you'd find more stuff than what you may otherwise stumble upon while adventuring. I feel very strongly about the missed opportunity about the visual cueing and will likely make a thread to dive in deeper there...
What are your thoughts regarding the land management system?
Absolutely not please. It is incredibly difficult and un-rewarding for individual players to interact with this system. How are they supposed to know what everyone else in the node is gathering and why are they expected to change their play-style based on others? When this system punishes, it will feel bad, when it rewards, it will go un-noticed. Individuals would simply require too much information to make use of this system. Again, it feels better suited for a mini-game or to run the eco-system of randomly generated temporary islands.
I agree with this some sort of cavern, cave or mine that you can stand in the same spot mining would be relaxing or it has many places to mine rocks in the same area would be also be fun and relaxing. I’m not sure I’d want to walk around all day looking for rocks. Isn’t mining usually done at a certain spot like a wall of a mine in reality? Not sure about that but I’ve definitely played games that let you stand in the same spot mining it just runs out of resources eventually and you move onto the next part of the wall. This could be improved on.
First lemme answer some of your questions, then I would like to expand on a suggestion on some features I have seen in another game that would fit AoC's vision perfectly.
1. What aspects of the gathering system are important to you?
The most important part of gathering systems in games to me are their depth and impact. I have noticed games that have healthy in-depth gathering systems tend to live longer, and have a more dedicated player base (BDO, Dofus, FF14 etc..). And personally, I tend to get turned off games with shallow gathering-crafting systems.
So to go back to the question, having a diversity of resources to collect within a same branch (different types of wood in different areas, the seasonal produce introduced in the video etc..) but also for crafting, having lots of diversity in items crafted. Not just having 1 heavy, 1 medium, and 1 light equipment set for each tier of crafting for example, but having lots of items with different stats and purposes and set bonuses makes crafting engaging, the economy alive and creates build diversity (instead of everyone within a class wearing the same minmaxed gear). Dofus is a great inspiration for such a crafting system.
Also, I don't know if you're already planning on it, but have, like, gathering skill trees would also be amazing for adding specialization and diversity in gatherers' orientation
2. How do you feel about the interaction between the surveying and gathering system?
I feel like that's a really great initiative and an amazing idea ! I want to comment on something I saw on the video. My first thought when hearing you don't know what ore is contained within a node until you mine it, made me wonder if you may find an end-game resource in a random node and anyone being able to gather it. It might be okay if it has a very low chance of happening, but my suggestion would be that players not be able to gather resources above a certain rarity if it hasn't been surveyed yet (and maybe not reached the prerequisite level to gather it too). Like sure this particular node contains gold. But if I am a low-level miner, and haven't surveyed the node, if I mine it, I wouldn't gather gold, but just stone or some low-grade metal, and I'd have to put effort into surveying first to be able to receive gold from it.
3. What are your thoughts regarding the land management system?
I was so happy and delighted learning about this ! It is such an immersive and wonderful idea giving players more agency and impact on the ecology. If you wish to push it further, I do have a suggestion I have seen in another game implemented amazingly giving players total control over the world's ecology. I'll expand on it in the next question.
4. Are there examples of gathering systems in other games that you feel are done well? If so, in what ways?
The game I am planning to quote is Wakfu, and here is a short video explaining their ecology system. Briefly, the game allows (and encourages) players to alter the ecology of the land while still having systems in place to encourage and reward keeping a balanced ecology. Firstly, resources don't respawn automatically, for a tree to grow, it needs to be planted by someone in a suitable area for a tree to grow. So when you gather, there is the option to just gather the resource, or gather seeds to replant that resource.
The same goes for creatures. For them to respawn, existing creatures have to breed (they have an animation for that). And as such, if they are killed at a faster pace than their respawn rate, they respawn slower and slower until they might get exterminated. There is a profession though specializing in gathering resources from creatures (like wool from sheep, milk from cows etc..) and one of the resources they can gather from them is their seed that they can 'plant' to spawn the creature.
Tied to these systems and to avoid their abuse, is a karma system. Basically, when you take an ecologically harmful action, you lose 'karma', and when you take a beneficial one, you earn it (and even citizenship points when the ecology is imbalanced). It can tie to certain bonuses / maluses to incentivize people to balance the ecology, although outliers still happen: players who simple don't care and just gather / kill creatures, there are also players who derive an immense sense of accomplishment in 'saving the ecology' by helping endangered creatures to breed, reintroducing plants/trees that have been over gathered etc..
Zones also have different bonuses and maluses to experience gain, rare loot drop rate and gather yield depending on the balance of the ecology. There is also a political position within cities called 'minister of environment' whose job is to enact policies / quests / rewards / gather taxes to keep the ecology within that city's zone of influence balanced.
Also on another direction, would awesome to have unique resources or rarities of each type or rarities. For example an exceptionally good quality iron ore that has 0.5% to spawn (or green blue purple and yellow rarity iron ores that boost the quality of the crafted item, and with higher level gathering, the higher chance of obtaining rarer materials due to being less clumsy and more expert in gathering that material)
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the gathering system?
I am extremely excited by the progress and potential of what has been shown and how it can evolve with player feedback! looks like the studio is planning on having very in-depth gathering-crafting systems and for them to be a core part of gameplay instead of a boring activity like it's the case in so many games. And I can't wait for Alpha2 to test it out. Keep up the amazing work !!
Land management is a great idea and sounds like it can bring a lot to the table, this will need a ton of balance, and very possibly allow mayors to put "No Chopping or Harvesting" orders for a specific date to ensure the stability of the node eco system.
As there almost certainly will be players and or bots who will NOT care about the node and only want resources, and damned the consquences to the rest of us. If you let the Mayor do his job, then open season could be declared on thses "Criminals of the land"
There can be a warning when entering a area where they can harvest big letters on the screen saying "This Land is forbidden to take resources off of until such date "
This is going to be a great way to find out real quick which gyuilds and community members care about your node and which do not. Outsiders should be killed as well but recieve fair warning before attacked as they might not know.
Really love the update, graphics, sounds, direction all looking great.. now LET US IN!
I've been a gamer all my life. Starting all the way back at the first PC virtual chess games, moon lander, 100-in-one handhelds, amiga, Sega 8-bit with Alex the kid. Zelda/Mario/Track and Field NES, SNES, Sega Mega Drive, N64 etc. I'm one of those old school dad gamers who has binged most if not all of the single player RPG you can think of. I've played numerous MMO's; The 4th Coming, Runescape, BDO, Mortal Online, Diablo 2 hardcore WoW, ESO, NW. You get the idea. I've seen my fair share of all the good and bad that comes with online and offline play. This is probably the first one where I've actively made the choice to engage with development however.
Lets start with visuals.
I love the impact towards ground mechanics of the trees and it is indeed the first time I've seen that depth of physics. And as stated in the video, taming the physics of it, is a tough cookie.
I love the swings and sound of impact from them. As mentioned, echoes and environment is worked on for it, which is something I praised New World for a lot. It felt authentic, where the sound of birds went away as more trees were chopped down, echo from a mountainside, what have you.
Few notes I made during the video though is that a 90 degree branch of a tree's upper side when fallen, simply fell to the ground without the branch actually snapping off and almost rubber banded back into position rather than it feeling like a sway of the branch from the force. I know it's a WIP of course, but it is something that bugged me. Although the sound effect was satisfying I didn't get the feeling visually or sound wise that any branches snapped. Also, there was a point where a tree fell on a stone and went straight through a standing tree trunk which was an oops for me.
This is nitpicking as I absolutely loved the snow and dust kickup from the fallen trees but in the event of snow where a tree falls there would also be a disperse (almost parting of the sea sort of speak) where the trunk slams the ground and forces the snow to the sides and the crown would be creating more of a wave pattern as the branches impacted the ground.
Something I also noted and which is where I was also very negative, was that two seemingly identical tree's gave different resources. Although I would understand why from a gatherable perspective, with the nuance of surveying, it also felt bitter tasting. Simply because, you'd know if a tree was a birch, oak, maple or a redwood just by looking at it, even at a distance and you knowing very little about trees. How you would leverage that towards surveying being useful for that gathering profession, is not something I have a good idea for. Hardwood and softwood of the same tree family? But then it also impacts a lot of other professions and we're going down the rabbit hole.
Sound
I'd say it is really good but missing a couple of snaps and minor things for that sweet spot. Do you account for what type of material it slams into, whether it is snow, water or a lush forest bed? It creates a more intense feeling of where the tree actually falls but it could also create a whole bunch of code in terms of what material hitting what, breakage as an outcome of that dependency and what sound it would make as well as falling location code connectors that is another rabbit hold you might not want get into
Resource frequency
Although I love the move to "Harvest what you can see", it is noteworthy that it can also break economy if a resource is far too readily available in a player driven economy (read: I played new world). To the point where trade for it became basically non-existant because everyone would just go out and find it for themselves, or if bored, you could buy thousands of every resource for virtually nothing.
Which is where I think you are spot on in terms of gatherables diminishing and harming the flow of resources in areas where it is farmed to greedily. Meaning that the interaction of surveying actually has weight over the "grab it all" and is not just another cumbersome task in the profession, but actually matters as a whole.
Be careful however, in restricting X resource of value to too few areas. Although you want player driven PVP to happen due to scarcity, you don't want 10+ guilds all fighting within the same area because that's the one and only place for it. I know that this is something you've already thought of but I wanted to say it none the less.
Although I do love the New World gathering feel, the overall impact it had on the economics of the world made it tainted for me. The spawns for rare materials always occured on the exact same spot, meaning bots overcrowded the area, and flooded the market, which would be the same even without the bots. So that's also a fear I have in terms of the move towards "Gather anything". Will the diversity of spawn positions make surveying viable or will the mithril always be pertained near that one greedy guild. So that people trying to move up in the world are able to benefit off of trade after finding that scarcity in a place where noone else thought to look for it. Otherwise you will not be able to contest the larger alliances of those four guilds closest to that one resouce and therefor caravans won't matter and sea freight won't matter, because everyone will go to the area where the biggest player already has the monopoly and pay an arm and a leg to be able to craft X item.
I know there's a lot of talk about the PVP / corruption system and how good or bad it will feed into griefing in terms of player killing. But with land management also comes the potential of griefing where the corruption system may in fact help the griefer. Lets say you want to hinder progression of an area (that greedy guild alliance I was talking about), and you just go ham at every resource you can find there, essentially throwing the land owners value into the dust, creating scarce resources for them, which would lead the owner to having to kill you to make you stop gathering in the area. How are you able to counter-act that. It wouldn't take more than ten players gathering at separate hours of the day to cause turmoil in a region if they are dedicated to that cause. And the corruption system would indeed protect them as they are not after the resource first hand but to remove it, and would not fight back.
Unless you can enact policies like a player gaining bounty for harvesting more than X resource in the region. Lets say deer are going extinct in your area or a specific type of flower, should you be able to safeguard that type of resource with bounty on anyone grabbing it. My fear is that contenders for areas will use this instead of the player killing to force the hand of the land owner to kill you.
On the contrary, those same policies could make scarce resources even worse, if land owner X restricts say Mithril via policy except for the hours where the land owners intend to farm them. Meaning, that they hold you accountable for harvesting X in that region and removes it for themselves, making you risk corruption for taking it. It's a fine line to walk and you definitely have your work cut out for you.
I do try to look at the overall picture and view it from every possible angle and hopefully I've made some sense in this post.
I have decided that when I am frustrated with a group I am going to go chop down every tree, kill ever animal and harvest ever bush that I see and leave the items I get from them on the grown. That will be my way to declare war on the node. And killing me will give you nothing but a red tag.
I really like the idea of land management for farms. That sounds more enticing to me
As for the rest, for gathering, I like the change as presented visually and that we can harvest almost anything. However I will say harvesting what you see has become the standard in my mind.
Surveying sounds fun but incredibly tedious. It will come down to whether one survey will give us a persistent area of information or if we have to frequently survey the same area. If the act of placing down cones and whatnot has to be done often it will get very old very quick. The idea of my reward in gaining surveying skill is having to put down my survey cones also does not sound fun at face value.
Overall I really like the direction and can't wait to get in an test some of these things to see how they feel and react.
How do you feel about the interaction between the surveying and gathering system?
- Surveying sounds interesting, but was not fully shown, so will have to wait for more info to be able to comment
.What are your thoughts regarding the land management system?
Are there examples of gathering systems in other games that you feel are done well? If so, in what ways?
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the gathering system?
Whoa - this is a pretty fresh idea, and I appreciate how multiple player-minted currencies could really impact RMT, but I think one thing your document fails to recognize is:
- inter-currency trading is greatly reduced when the transaction process is complicated.
As you pointed out, the learning curve for the entire player population will be steep. Even if the game provides some "hand-holding" here, I'm not convinced that's enough because the sheer inconvenience of the transaction process will create a barrier to use. Perhaps some tool that automatically tracks the conversion rate between currencies is required here.---
@Aika - does Wakfu have any PvP aspects to the ecology?
What stops aggressive players ruining your land?
---
There have been some comments about the sound design and "echos".
I wonder if these players are referring to the acoustic Reverberation Time/Impulse Response of a room or space. You could create these profiles for different areas and then fourier multiply/convolve with all environmental audio - but an audio engineer probably knows more about this.
What would be crazy is if you could generate these audio-profiles from the in-game landscape. But I feel like such a feat would require a dive into materials to be believable.
It does have pvp, it's faction based where you can be a citizen of one of 4 major cities and can pvp people of the other nation. It is a turn based tactical RPG though.
What stops people from ruining the land is actually players. There are some players who try their best to save the environment, they keep some of each seed, and actively replant resources and breed creatures to prevent extinction. Also there are some heavy maluses on the map where the ecology is unstable reducing xp, gathering xp, gathering yield and loot. Seasons, weather and temperature also greatly impact the chances of seeds growing and their growth speed.
I did not suggest AoC copies it, what I suggested is drawing ideas from their tested and successful player driven ecology systems that fit more the direction AoC is going.
The information-release about Surveying was quite welcome news. The fact that there is an option to advance in the skill of pre-detection for materials and spawn-locations provided some insight-with-depth into how the Gathering skills are to function. Not knowing ahead of time exactly what material lay within a resource deposit/spawn adds a bit of mystery/random-ness for awhile - but it's good to know that developable skills will make such tasks easier.
The real questions boil down to: How much travel will be involved in Gathering? How will we best gather AND transport resources from a spawn that is well-outside of our own Node? How advanced do we need to be, in order to gain the maximum benefit from Surveying's detection of material spawns?
1) For me, I would like gathering to feel like it's own "activity." By that I mean, I like the idea of setting out with the intent of gathering, not just gathering on my way to something else. While that should be possible, I would like to see something that encourages bulk gathering over just hitting nodes while going place to place simply because it's efficient.
2) I feel surveying sounds like a cool idea, but maybe only use it for higher tier materials, or maybe have it give a buff so you find more of whatever material is in that area over the generic baseline material (rocks, simple logs, simple plants). If I have to plonk down a beacon *every* time I go to gather that just feels like busy work.
3) I feel the land losing or decreasing its ability to grow back is terrible. On paper, it sounds very cool and like it would be a good addition to a single player game, without a doubt. But given the nature of a multilayer game, trying to get dozens, if not, hundreds of people all to agree not to touch a resource just won't happen. With the materials already taking time to regrow there will already be people looking to snipe fresh growth. Look to OSRS and their mining. You're constantly fighting people for the same materials just to even be able to skill up and it sounds the same with this. That alone isn't a problem, but having excessive harvesting affect growth rates on top of that is just a recipe for miserable players and disgruntled gatherers/crafters. However, I do think having that excessive harvesting effect happen in rarer/ limited/ event-like locations may be interesting. Maybe a "limited time" gathering event happens and those resources are there and will stay there as long as they aren't gathered too much, that way cooperative play is rewarded by extending the duration scenario. Or over harvesting within certain small areas spawns a really powerful and aggressive world boss that would maybe make players rethink their travel paths.
4) I like the Ephemeral Nodes system from FFXIV, I feel having a small mini-game that works with the gathering system to give more/ better/ different rewards is cool.
5) Given we just had a PvP and gathering topic not long ago it makes me very curious how much gathering will actually be able to happen with 20+ players in a given area trying to farm the same/ similar materials, it looked like what was shown would be gathered out by a few people within 10-20m. How long is the regrowth time? How much time does that leave for PvPers to show up and gank? Or combining those questions with the proposed excessive harvesting idea, wouldn't that just kill the free open world PvP that's supposed to create the risk vs reward for gathering in the first place?
After watching the dev-log, I came away thinking the following:
1. If all variations of all trees and rocks, and in each season, are equally animated, than the gathering animations look to be in a releasable state.
2. The visual variation from differing gathering materials, and presumably their correlated professions, is a nice touch that should add a sense of identity to each profession.
3. The proposed land management system, as I understood it, would be incredibly difficult to fine-tune. It may be difficult to keep it relevant while stopping it from being exploited. However, if that balance is reached, I suspect it would reward those who spend more time engaging in the profession system.
It seems that environmental behaviors should drive the player, rather than the player driving the environment. However, perhaps a combination of both would produce even deeper systems. Or perhaps different professions can have their own environmental factors, further binding a link between the crafting professions and the world and it's seasons.
5. The overall visual style of the game is rather grounded, which I appreciate. With that said, the textures and clothing worn by the models appear clear, identifiable, and legible at a distance, which I find more important than style during actual play. Visual cohesion rewards more than loud and disparate styling.
IF there's policies that prohibits havesting something then:
This is PvE and PvP friendly.
We want people travelling, that's why it should be prohibited even for citizens, we don't wan't to discourage travelling. If something was prohibited it's because there's a serious reason about it
Let the carebears steal lumber, they just have to be sneaky, this is engaging gameplay and will bring fun for repetitive grinds.
Let all PvP tree hugging hippies go defend the forests if a prohibition is active.
I cant see how this system can be both meaningful and manageable.
If it only causes a small percentage difference in respawn time or amount harvested, then it wont be meaningful, and will be completely ignored, and there is no point spending dev time on it.
If however it causes a drastic difference in respawn or harvest amount, I dont know how you can expect the system to be properly managed in a game with thousands of players. There have been discussions in other threads about policies around this such as making non citizens flag purple if they harvest in a node, which seems fine, but there is still nothing preventing your own citizens from scouring the landscape.
I have also seen suggestions for letting mayors disable gathering for the sake of the land score, and I absolutely hate that idea. It would be hugely frustrating to just have massive areas disabled for gathering just for the sake of having this system in the game, and it would not promote any kind of player interaction.
I don't think individual players are going to be willing or able to engage with this system. If it is left up to individuals to not over harvest, it won't work. There will always be players who will put their own benefit above an ecosystem, and this system will just punish responsible players by giving them fewer resources than players who harvest everything in sight.
If the answer is to have the mayor just disable gathering every now and then just so the system can exist, that's just going to be annoying and not add anything to the game. If the idea is to pvp to keep enemies from pillaging your node, there won't be anything stopping careless citizens from doing it to their own node.
This seems like an idea that sounded really cool in a design meeting, but didn't get enough critical attention to it's flaws. It feels a lot like scope creep. I don't think this system needs to exist, and I don't think the additional time and resources going to developing it are worth it. If the goal is just to make resources more rare or contested, you can do that much more easily by just balancing the respawn timers in testing, and not put so much effort into a system that seems unlikely to work.
I hope I'm wrong, and that the dev's have an ironclad plan to make the system functional and fun to engage with, but I can't think of how that can be realistically accomplished.
The Harvesting and Gathering looks amazing. I love what I have seen in the revile.
I would like to drop some of my ideas that I have on the Tree gathering to I guess expand up on the system.
1) When the tree has been cut down by a hatchet or a two man saw, it would be cool for the tree to stay on the ground for some time.
2) When the tree is down, additional points of interaction appear along the tree trunk indication points where the player or players can cut the tree apart to yield more resources out of the tree.
Creating a much more immersive harvesting system, then just cutting down a tree and moving on to the next tree.
I would say that this idea could be implemented to other gathering items like mining instead of letting only one person mine a rock but two or three people can come up and assist in breaking the rocks apart. Letting everyone get something out of it rather than the 1st person that runs up to the rock and cuts it off from everyone else. Or maybe keep the group gathering to a party system, so that if you are in a party you can gather together.
That's all I have for now let me know what you think of this idea and if you have anything to add or take away from this.
Thanks!
This would make a lot of sense and only allow players that invested themselves and contributed to node growth to actually occupy such political and influential positions.
But maybe this discussion is better suited for a future node management and politics showcase
Not being able to tell what you are farming till you crack it open is a great idea and i'm super excited for it. I wonder if the chance of getting something good will be increased based on your mining level or if there are certain rocks that have a better chance of being a good ore.
Are strength main stats going to be able to farm lumber and ore faster than int? Maybe int survey's faster? Maybe agi farms herbs faster?
I think it's really cool that you are adding different ways to farm like a gold pan and two person saw. I hope with the two person saw the resources are like 250% of what you would normally get and each person gets 125%.
Lumberjack:
Definitely the best tree falling visually I have ever seen in a game. Would you be willing to make it so the tree comes fractured with destruction and as you hit it chunks of the tree come off like large wood chips? I think I like Rust's node hitting a bit better than fill the bar style. You don't stand there and hit it. You hit sparklies on the node that go in a pattern and you follow it, speeding up how quickly the node is depleted if you hit it accurately. It makes it feel less monotonous playing a minigame, while also rewarding being accurate. (It almost works like a built in aim train to warm up your hand. With each swing being a similar time to the single shot recoil recovery on guns but a bit slower.) Would be cool if it was possible to put those two things together where the tree shows you the best possible cutting positions and as you chip it out accurately it opens the hole more and more on both sides before falling on the last hit. You chop faster on the outside but once you pass the middle of the tree it's slower to chop. If you just hit it over and over in random spots it takes a long time if you ever are able to make it all the way through the tree. Kinda how it would work in real life, you cut a side and then cut the other side till it goes.
Are items going to drop off the trees like fruit, or birds that fly off when it falls?
Fishing:
Fishing in new world is probably the best out of any game iv played. Would be cool to have a net attachment or trap attachment for boats if that is possible. Where you could sabotage other people's traps and nets after they drop them, so when they come back you have already taken or cut the string behind them within a certain time window. The hotspots or cutting pots triggering pvp flag. Making it so the ocean isn't just about moving resources but also harvesting them.
Are there going to be any waterworld style cities? Or any locations like a pirate's cove that corrupt players could hide off the map in?
Keep up the awesome work
The surveying system is interesting, and I don't have much input until I see how it actually works with players involved.
The land management system sounds SO cool. I don't know if it will be fun yet, but if it works it could really differentiate well-organized communities from the rest.
I actually generally liked gathering in lost ark (while the fun lasted.) obviously time-gating how much you can do with energy was horrible, but having other people around to help you chop trees down faster was always fun, and the sounds and animations were satisfying. Of course, there was essentially no exploration and discovery that worked with the gathering (no fun after a while). Most games have pretty bad gathering systems, they tend to be an afterthought.
I'm really excited that even in the gathering system, Intrepid has found a method to encourage community involvement and organization. I didn't like was that the tree pivoted from the center of the trunk instead of the edge, very immersion breaking. I also thought it was strange that the rocks with iron ore didn't have a red tinge whatsoever, rocks high in iron are always red or at least yellow with rust if they're exposed to the elements. Other than that, the animations and art were great and I'm looking forward to more
Look at how Rust or New World do long-distance audio, you can hear player activities from a long distance, and this makes the world alive, and also adds to the gameplay to know where a fight is happening or where players are gathering
the sound echo from new world is what sets it apart, it's not the sound effect by itself, hopefully, Intrepid can look at this and really boost the distance of the audio coming from player activities not only for gathering but for combat as well, a meteor skill from a mage or a powerful shield bash from a tank should be heard from long distances and echo through the battlefield, as well as the sounds of mining rocks or cutting a tree.
Things to improve:
- Rougher cut of the trees where chopped instead of a straight line cut.
- A stump left after tree is cut to give other players an indication of other players in the area recently
- Polish the branch physics when it falls.
Things to add (Ideas)
RARE GLOWING TREES to cut down, maybe even add some corrupted trees that can be cut but also irritates the corrupted area and sends a corrupted signal and spawns corrupted saplings or corrupted tree monsters that you have to fight after you have cut those rare trees down.
Mining corrupted stones spawn corrupted rock monsters but also yield rare loot
Harvesting Corrupted plants turns into corrupted plant monster but if killed yields rare loot drops
Love the idea of co-op gathering as well as pan sifting for gold in streams
member of Gray Sentinels
Whenever a tree got cut down in the showcase, the height it split at was completely different from where Steven was hitting it. Example:
Although a few feedback comments mentioned it, I expected way more representation for this issue.
Many of the other issues I can think of will probably be fixed just by iteration over the existing mechanics (hence I didn't talk about them), but I believe making the split location dynamic would be more of a new feature that still needs to be implemented.
I really hope this can be changed, because to me, it is even more important than the falling tree being rigged and responding to physics. (Although that was really cool, great work!)
* Lack of monotony while gathering. Falling asleep while logging in NW is not fun. Surveying may help with this
* Not needing to gather for hours to get skillups. Surveying may help with this too if hidden gatherables grant extra craft xp.
* Not going somewhere to gather and having that trip be a total waste of my time as I run around for an hour and don't find much. ie, the area is gathered out but I had no way of knowing that before getting there.
How do you feel about the interaction between the surveying and gathering system?
* I don't think we know much about the surveying system. What we've heard is that you will use some gathered materials to create a survey device, and that device will give more information about gatherables in a certain area as well as highlight some hidden gatherables. That all sounds good, but mostly brings up more questions. Are these hidden things instanced to the player? If not, and someone else just surveyed the area an hour ago did I just waste a survey?
What are your thoughts regarding the land management system?
* I like the idea of Land Management as a mini-game for node leaders, as an extension of things like keep/city management or economy management.
* Land management is not possible without there being some control systems for the managers. Even flagging gatherers purple doesn't mean much if someone decides to clear-cut an area at 4am.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the gathering system?
* Will we be able to switch our chosen mastery (IE from gathering to processing) if we don't like the first choice?
* With the current harvest speed and slower regrowth rate, there is a real danger of areas being clear-cut in no time. NW had 15min respawns and 2 dedicated loggers could clear to the horizon before respawn.
* I very much prefer vertical integration for crafting. IE, I mine the ore, refine that ore into metal bars, then craft that metal into a finished product. That doesn't mean I shouldn't need large amounts of cross-craft materials (wood/charcoal and alchemy for smelting, refined leather/cloth/wood for weapon/armor crafting, etc) for trade interactions. But man, I hate the idea of being completely dependent on the AH to get anything out of my craft. The current setup is going to force me into at least 2 crafting alts. Note that I plan on being part of a guild where we diversify crafts. But the market always looms over even in-guild interactions.
Like chopping the tree down on road and use it to block it...
-discovery
-developing familiarity with an area
-risk/reward with dangerous monsters nearby
-rarer than normal drops on an ordinary gatherable
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the gathering system?
-surveying and how it works, intriguing to me
-people suggesting 'glowing' or 'glaringly different than normal' gatherables, i say keep it subtle, it always is more fun that way