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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
For consumables, the sort of related gathering (particularly fishing & herbalism) are very well situated to vary with seasons and biomes while gathering that leads to the creation of gear (namely mining and the leather side of hunting) should be low variability and ~similarly available everywhere in the world for balance.
A really nice way to add flexibility to gear creation from low variability raw resources is to incorporate it into the processing & crafting stages. For example, you can use a variety of resources while making metal bars to instill properties into them. It could be as straight forward as adding optional red dragon scales while you make iron bars to give them a fire resist bonus.
An alternative, slightly more complex system would allow for the addition of optional resources during making of processed materials like metal bars that give some primary stat 'property' (like dex or strength). Then during crafting, crafters can turn this property into more specialized secondary stats on the item. For example an iron dagger made with iron bars that have a dex property will allow the crafter to add +crit chance or +crit damage or other 'dex' secondary stats, while a str property could be turned into +damage or +armor penetration etc.
This would make processing more relevant and important for the crafting process (finding a good processor will be more important than just 'better efficiency'). And from a low to high variability stand-point, it adds as much flexibility in the final crafted item as there are secondary stats. It also provides a very good reason to transport raw resources via caravans instead of processing goods first which may otherwise be a no-brainer if it leads to reduced weight (and similarly, a good reason to transport processed goods instead of final crafted items given that different builds & classes have different preferred stats).
I do want to note that how this is done, in general, is quite related to the surveying system that we still have very little information about.
Some people have already, quite nicely, touched upon what I would call "a wide variety of resources for wide variety of things".
I'd like to build onto that with emphasizing concepts. Sadly I might have tumbled into the crafting hole instead.
Either way, the idea is that by using conceptual resources, you get a system where you can interchange one material for another of the same concept, and it will be much more intuitive to figure out how to get those resources in the game.
In order to put it into context, I'd like to just mention I really dislike the "magic melting pot" crafting many MMO's use, where you just dump stuff in there and out comes whatever item you were crafting.
I much prefer a system where you need to make the bow limbs of the bow, and the string, and place it in a blueprint-ui for those parts to make the finished component.
I'd also like it if what is made, is a function of what is used to make it. So if I want a fire attribute bow, I use some kind of wood with fire affinity to make the bowlimbs.
This thing alone forces a wider range materials, since all the modifers (gems or whatnot) are forced into the base material system. And this could be for more than just items. What kind of wood did you make your caravan from? A light wood for greater speed and less health, or a really high density hardwood for a slow but really tanky one?
If this could be shown visually too I'd probably die from happiness...
Ideally the system should allow me to make parts out of other suitable materials, like bow limbs out of large horns or daggers from large enough claws/fangs instead of metal. With properties derived from that change.
It should probably also allow me to substitute some materials for crafted components. Cant get naturally growing fire imbued wood? Make it through somehow arcanely infusing the affinity from something else into non-affinity wood. Expensive alternative maybe, but if that is all you got?
Cant get a good claw that gives good bleed? Have the blacksmith make a blade with a serrated edge. A really good claw from a lategame boss, might require a true artisan of his craft and the most expensive metals to match.
Similarily, cant get that highly fire affinited herb that makes the best fire resist potions? Grind down that fire imbued wood, boil it in large quantities and arcanely distill it to get a substibute. And lots of woodchips only good for the fire or maybe making paper?
Dont have "iron dagger", "steel dagger" and so on. Have "dagger". And let it's properties be shaped by what made it. Instead add variations for purpose. Stab or cut? Dirk or dagger. 2 different recipes which will inherently use the components used slightly differently. Have optional slots. Like at the end of a bow there can be a hard material to hold the string. Wrapping for the handle? Allow them to be empty for a simpler bow, but let players add suitable materials to increase the tier/quality of the bow. This also natually adds more spaces for configuring the item if you are willing to input more materials into making it.
Make crafting skill affect what tier of materials you can work effectively with, instead of unlocking new variations of recipes you already have. Can still have some new recipes for things that were just too complex to make at lower levels.
Dont have health or regen potions. Have vitality potions, where the finer details of components used decide how much hp and over how much time. With the right mix of secondary ingredients, you get all the hp now. And with another, it's spaced out over a minute.If you could get your hand on truly legendary materials for how much HP it restores, you might get an "immediate heal all" potion, or a "fakes a decent healer" regen potion. But it might cost you an arm and a leg...
Also, if you want to split the resources down the middle to make a "mana and vitality restoration potion", wouldnt that be nice?
When it comes to rarity, I think that in order to encourage grouping, most of the rare materials should be materials that are hard to get to and dangerous to be around, not things that might drop 1 in a million if you are lucky. If you get a group going and manage to get through all the mobs(and other players?) to get to that mountain where the tree that has fire imbued wood grows, you should find more than just a single tree there.
The effort should be in getting there and not dying while there, not scraping the mountain for a few pieces of wood.
The only downside to what I describe above is that not every combination will make sense or be good. But allowing someone the creative space to make really bad things might improve the appreciation of good things.
i would like a wide variety of crafting mats that could be used for various things, or perhaps even upgraded with other crafting mats using the processing system. like for example to craft a certain legendary item you need the crafting mats to be of a certain purity (like 45 carat gold). If you have gold ore of lesser purity you would need to refine it.
Or perhaps you could have a crafting mat that would need to capture the essence of something before it could be used to create a specific item.(you would have to take it somewhere and slay something in order to capture that essence)
Having a wider veriety of crafting mats should not create inventory issues!
crafting in other games:
Final Fantasy 14 has a system where crafting has a mini game added to it (like gitar hero striking the hammer at exacly the right time). I don't like it but hear many other people do
In Elder Scrolls Online you need to do research in order to advance your crafting. The way they implemented it is increadably borring. Just a cooldown before you can research the next thing. So much more could be done with this.(like visit a place to do the research or collect many of the same mats in order to learn more about it)
There should be lots and lots of different materials in the world of Verra.
And I think this would perfectly fit in the existing design concepts of AoC.
"Localized" resources would be resources that can be found in a single, or a small number of regions in Verra.
Let's say Glacial Frost Timber, Northern Desert Cherry Blossom or Swamp Bison Meat.
These specific gatherable materials, and also their products produced in the "Processing" artisan branch, would be used for either specific recipes that require that exact item, or in general recipes where they grant additional bonuses (e.g. frost resistance).
Having localized resources would interact with existing systems and design philosophies in AoC:
- Some materials would only spawn during specific seasons (see timber above)
- Some materials would only spawn far away from you "home node" and encourage traveling to these regions, encourage trading with traveling merchants, or to pillage a different node for the herbs that grow in their botanic institute (etc.)
So overall, this would mean more player initiatives for trading, exploring, and diving into the world of AoC.
I don't see an issue with limited inventory space, as others have described, when there are a lot of different materials. First of all, one wouldn't carry every single item of every artisan branch around all the time. Furthermore, running around with the materials you value would be a great opportunity for PvP players to take them from you.
Materials should be stored in the bank account and be consumed from there when being processed.
This is what I'm thinking would be a good and helpful material system for AoC.
Nevertheless it wouldn't be a huge deal if would be way more generic with way less materials.
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And that an armor gets different properties depending on what material it is made of e.g. chain armor made of steel is heavier but offers more protection and mythril is lighter has less protection but offers advantages for wizard classes.
Something like that I would like to see and also that you can mix several materials so that the part gets advantages and disadvantages of both resources.
I could cut down a tree, turn logs into planks, and create a storage chest. Or, i could do that, and require a smith to make me hinges, nail, and a handle.
I could take a hide and craft some armor. Or I could also require needles and thread, padding, oil, and maybe turn hide into leather as well.
Each component, if master crafted, could add to the chance of creating a better quality product. Master quality components used in crafting by an amateur will still only be of average quality. A master crafter, with shoddy components would be the same. A master crafter, with master quality components has a chance to hit that eureka moment, and creat a masterpiece.
Generic components used for multiple things is just lazy.
Crafter-types can spend anywhere from 10% to 50% of their time gathering / crafting with meaningful return. Remainder must be filled with transport, trade, or monster hunting to continue their interest.
Adventurer-types shouldn't have to spend more than 10% of their time gathering / crafting to get a meaningful return. To many, those tasks could feel grindy / more of a burden.
As long as that rule is applied, devs can be free to identify how to handle inventory management, material categorizations / mixes, recipes, crafting proficiencies, etc.
So the design questions then become:
1. How do we design inventory management so that it is convenient, highly readable, and functional?
2. How do we make all materials have sinks, both economically and in terms of use value?
For question 2 the most important aspect is use value of materials, because if a material isnt useful it will lose economic exchange value fast (outside selling to A.I. merchants)
My other thought relating to materials is: given Ashes is now going for a "everything you see is gatherable" approach, this creates a two fold nature to the enviromental design of the game, as if you want to add in a object for visual or enviromental reasons, it also need to respect the use and exchange value of materials within the game system and economy.
One of the best ways I can think of to keep materials useful is for them to have both general and specific uses, in accordance with their biome.
For example you may have Tropical Hard Wood, and Tundra Hardwood. Certain crafting methods may have these materials express their unique properties; disease resistance, higher base damage + lower attack speed.
However other crafts may take all hardwoods as equal.
Say for node buildings, and their maintenance.
Providing a good sink for large quantities of the more visually and therfore numerically abundant materials in the game world.
This could still mean Hardwood is difficult to come by in the dessert and therfore in higher demand, but materials dont become too niche in their use value, and there fore
their markets oversaturated.
Similair could be done for other large volume material sinks like Ships and Caravans. (with maybe certain upgrades expressing the differences of regional materials)
Then, when it come to less visually abundant and higher level resources within the respective biomes, these materials can have a more prenounced effect on what end products you can craft. Either by hardlocking certain items behind specific regional materials and their recipes, or item *Regional Axe* takes on the properties of the materials that contitute it.
So as above the important design questions remain here, but rephrased:
1. Can players conveniently interact through inventory and crafting menu's with our intended complexities, with information being readible, and interface not turning into a click-a-thon.
2. How do we make all of both our materials and their corresponding visual objects in the enviroment (which we require for a lively immersive world) have use value as items for players, and sinks within the economy which help maintain the materials value for exchange.
If the above questions remain front of mind as the world of Ashes of creation is filled out, I think it will achieve its design goals and be a great game.
From a traders perspective, having too many mats to keep track of, in multiple regions, would require spreadsheet levels of admin.
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Good to have system message when some player loots rarest materials. Like "Eley has got Ancient Demon Soul" for everyone on server. So, guild congratulates me, other people ask if I sell it and for which price. That is fun.
Wide variety, with general use
To that I mean, as an example, I'd like to see: oak, maple, beech, mahogany, pine, etc for types of woods. Lots of variety, and available only in certain biomes/seasons/conditions etc.
BUT
I want to be able to use ANY of them as "wood" if my project calls for wood. It should be my choice which to use, and IDEALLY each wood would carry with it some unique set of properties as to WHY I would choose to use that wood for a given task.
Want a lighter chair? Choose pine. Want a chair that will be sturdy for years to come? Choose Maple. And so on...
But there should also definitely be specific recipes that call for specific resource types, such as "maple" for a "Maple Cabinet".
And then it's up to me as the crafter what quality of Maple I provide to the craft.
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From an economics perspective, the proper amount should be "a bit less resources" than what the players are seeking. For example, what doesn't work (imho), is when its so easy to grab a resource that the town market gets flooded by it and each unit ends up costing 1 gp for eternity because the offer far exceeds the demand. This is a sign there is too much of this resource in the game.
This obviously varies from server to server and region to region depending on what the players do, but as a genereral principle, I would aim for "a bit less resource" than demand, creating rarity and an incentive for people to actually go out and grab it, or even force people to change artisan professions, forcing more variety and increased specialization in artisanery.
On the other hand, you dont want too little resources, because that makes progression way too slow and people unable to do crafting or building.
This could be balanced in real time in-game. A hard task, but can be done. Many different ways to approach the problem: base the available resources on the speed at which node buildings are made, number of players gathering it, volume of the resource being traded or hoarded, etc etc. Tough math problem hehe.
Either way, the newest update on gathering seems MUCH more appropriate than gathering in Alpha 1. Great progress!
Personally, I would you like to see a wide variety of materials that can be reliably used for the same specific things in a wide variety of things. Basically, I would hope that each type of material could have multiple tier levels (vertical progression), multiple types (horizontal progression), and be mix-and-matched by the crafter in a variety of recipes (player agency/customization).
For example if AoC has gems, there may be crude, cut, polished, pristine, etc. gems (vertical progression). Then there may be fire rubies, ice sapphires, lighting topaz, etc. (horizontal progression). Then I can add any gem to any recipe that requires a gem so long as my crafting is high enough level. So a crude fire ruby could add a minor fire damage boost to a sword if used on a sword pommel, or make a fire staff. A crude ice sapphire could be used in the same recipe for a minor ice damage boost, or a pristine fire ruby for a major fire boost. This way there could be a relatively large variety of different materials in the game, but artisans would be able to intuitively understand how to craft items for situations, and give an added layer for custom orders based on play style and build.
So materials were divided into 4 groups: Weapon, Armour, Jewellery and Common.
The largest pool of these were the common materials that were used as a part of crafting of all 3 equipment groups. Then there were specific materials:
Enria - used to craft all of weapons
Asofe - Used to craft all of armour pieces
Thons - used for Jewellery crafting
Then there were things called "Key materials" which were essentially parts or scraps of the item you wanted to craft that would drop usually in a very specific locations. This kept the clutter in check since you did not get 58 different materials in one spot only to force you to pay for extra bag slots. Now even though there were a lot of materials in the "common" group, the drops you'd get were basic versions of it. Most of end-tier materials which were used to craft an actual items had to be processed from the low tier ones. So even though having large variety of materials in general the acquisition of roughly 40% of them was directed by processing rather than pure drop. Meaning if you had 50 different materials in your inventory the reason was 20 of them were actually crafted. And here I believe it's a good way to go. Create large common group of obtainable basic materials with a smaller common sub-group of rare materials which can be rarely dropped, but can be crafted. Then another end-tier of only craftable materials using the combination of 2 lower-tier groups with an additional, easy to understand key materials (eg. Forlorn Sandal part needed to craft Forlorn Sandals) for respective items to create certain bottleneck areas where people would compete for them in order to finish the crafting process.
I think that a larger number of "uncommon/rare" materials would be good, as long as the materials required to make higher quality items are useful in many different crafts
For example:
It takes the basic materials of iron and leather to make a common sword. It takes a good crafter (or a good crafting roll/mini-game result) to make an uncommon quality sword. To make an even higher quality sword you need to add a rare ingredient. Adding Pure Carbon makes a rare-quality sharpened sword. Adding Essence of Fire makes a rare flaming sword. Adding Essence of Shadow makes a rare lifestealing sword. Etc.
But, those same rare ingredients are used for other crafts. Essence of shadow is used to make a rare cloak that makes stealth better. Carbon is used for rare metal armor. Essence of Fire for higher quality spicy food dishes.
Making a wide variety of uncommon/rare/epic upgrade materials that are cross-craft also allows for levers by which the value of materials can be controlled. If Ice Essence is BiS for weapons, armor and jewelry and ridiculously expensive for that reason. You can buff jewelry made with Fire essence, making that BiS, which will lower demand for Ice Essence and increase demand for Fire Essence, helping balance prices.
BUT, this ideal goes even further. in many games, every fish you harvest gives you the same end result in a recipe. Shark Fin soup for example would just use "generic fish meat" that you get from breaking down said fish. In reality it should require "shark fins" as one of the main ingredients. so you would have SOME crafted items where you can use ANY material you want, but some recipes/blueprints would require specific materials. Maybe there is an EYE you get from fish, that you can give to alchemists, to grind up into a paste that is used in making potions and salves. Wood from tree's could be used in various recipes and craft-ables. Even "wood dust" in alchemy (or cooking lmao "filler"). This kind of system becomes very dynamic and helps push that player interaction to get what you need if aren't capable of getting it yourself. I have no qualms going to a blacksmith to get some metal to make a specific wand recipe (or my own design). but again, player choice is king. material choice/use should be up to the player. some recipes require a specific item, other times you can just use "any" type of material (fish meat, anime meat, vegetable, fruit) would be example of generic use, while "shark fin" or "ghost pears" would be examples of specific items. maybe you are making a potion and it requires venom of a beach rattle snake. clearly, you need to find a beach and kill snakes.... not as "BASIC" as I just made it sound, but there would be a correlation of items to monsters. and when enemies drop items and loot, it should make sense. a wolf might have swallows coins from eating a human character but a scorpion cannot eat solids and thus would never drop coins. so this ideal should work for finding materials.
imagine there is an event, a dragon is found dead. you start to harvest its body. but its gonna take a long time to harvest it. the more people the better. using skinning and mining to break it down. lets say 10 players were going at it. when the timer ends, the dragon has not been disposed of. people got some materials but mostly "junk" materials. however, because they didn't finish by the timer, the dragon comes back to life and is now something they have to fight. lets say they were able to finish 50% of the mining/skinning portion, now it comes back to life, with 50% less health and stats, making it easier to kill. if no one does the event, the dragon comes back to undead life at full health. these kind of wild events would be sick and great for infusing crafting items into the world when required, as a "rare item event". and of course, there would be an appropriate award for mining/skinning it before timer is up aka 100% completion vs less and fighting it for a singular reward (that all involved would fight over obviously, or even randomized on who gets it). so much could be done.....
I definitely believe that less is more because i think finding new ways to combine materials (like metal alloys) is way more fun than just using one or two types of materials for each craftable. It is important note that it is very important that rare materials should be really rare and work as amplifiers to your craft (to make it easier to craft, reducing amount of materials, or increasing amount of materials that can be used to create a more powerful item, etc) rather than just giving more sats.
By combining different amount of materials for a craft, you will get different properties and also makes crafting more personal since it relies on the players memory/skill in how to mix materials to get a more maximized effect, rather than following a game generated recipe.
Some examples, RaiderZ, WoW, Strife(moba), perhaps even Dark Age of Camelot, the last of which stands out a bit, since you don't actually craft a 'legendary' item, you craft a base item, but then can 'spellcraft' enhancements to that base item, using specialized resources.
I really like the way DAoC, did it, because you start with a base item, which uses base resources, but then perhaps combine this with how WoW makes you run out and gather a spider eye, or some murloc fins, or whatever, to 'enhance' the base item with special properties, that you can customize to your unique build and play style.
This is how I would do it. Then based on the items quality, would depend on how many spellcrafting/enhancement points you can add to enhance the item. So you could still have a poor quality copper sword, or a high quality legendary copper sword. One would only let you add like +1 hp, but the other might let you add +5 hp +2str and a fire proc?
Just throwing ideas out there, but I like the idea of a base weapon + enhancements of your choice, rather than a prebuilt 'template' or 'recipe' that you and everyone else in the world has. Take a close look at how DAoC did it.
As for the actual material variety, sometimes less is more. Players that aren't that big into crafting will find having tons of different materials in their bags to be a hassle. Even if you craft yourself, you will usually specialize in a few things and won't be too keen having to sort your inventory.
But having certain legendary items require special ingredients that you might get from dungeons would be fine in my opinion.
I would like to see a system where we pull in completed crafting items as materials from previous tiers that are combined with new materials to create new items. Lotro does a great job of this when looking at their cooking skill. A LOT of the materials you make at the early and mid stages are required to advancing the cooking skill later on. This set up is a lot of fun. It makes every item meaningful to continue making later one. Scarcity becomes more crafter availability than finding components in the wild.
Each material should also have different levels of quality. With quality of material impacting what can and can't be crafted. There was a game called Novus Inceptio many years ago that did this very well. It adds a another great layer to the crafting process.