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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.
Proposal for Expanding the Mastery of Professions in Ashes of Creation
Magos
Member, Alpha Two
Dear Ashes of Creation Community and Developers,
I hope this message finds you well. I'm reaching out to discuss the Artisanship system in our beloved MMO, Ashes of Creation. Currently, as many of you know, players can master only two professions. While this system has its merits, I believe there is a strong case for expanding the number of professions a player can master. Here are some reasons why:
Diverse Playstyles and Personalization: Allowing players to master more professions supports diverse playstyles and personalization. This flexibility can cater to a wider range of players, encouraging them to invest more time and creativity into their characters.
Economic Depth: More mastered professions could lead to a more intricate and dynamic in-game economy. It opens up possibilities for complex trade and business relationships between players, enhancing the game's economic realism and engagement.
Long-term Engagement: Expanding the mastery limit can increase the game's long-term appeal. Players would have more goals to strive for, keeping them engaged with the game over a longer period.
Community Collaboration: With more mastered professions, players could contribute more significantly to community projects and events, fostering a sense of teamwork and collective achievement.
Narrative and Roleplaying Opportunities: More professions mean more opportunities for roleplaying and narrative development. Players can create more nuanced and complex backstories for their characters, enriching the game's lore and roleplaying community.
Skill and Mastery Recognition: Increasing the number of professions players can master allows for greater recognition of skill and dedication. It provides a tangible way for players to showcase their commitment and expertise.
While I understand there may be concerns about balance and specialization, I believe these can be addressed through careful game design. The aim is not to diminish the value of specialization but to enhance the overall richness and depth of the game experience.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter, whether you're a fellow player or a member of the development team. Let's discuss how we can make Ashes of Creation even more engaging and enjoyable for everyone.
Thank you for considering this proposal.
Best regards,
Magos
I hope this message finds you well. I'm reaching out to discuss the Artisanship system in our beloved MMO, Ashes of Creation. Currently, as many of you know, players can master only two professions. While this system has its merits, I believe there is a strong case for expanding the number of professions a player can master. Here are some reasons why:
Diverse Playstyles and Personalization: Allowing players to master more professions supports diverse playstyles and personalization. This flexibility can cater to a wider range of players, encouraging them to invest more time and creativity into their characters.
Economic Depth: More mastered professions could lead to a more intricate and dynamic in-game economy. It opens up possibilities for complex trade and business relationships between players, enhancing the game's economic realism and engagement.
Long-term Engagement: Expanding the mastery limit can increase the game's long-term appeal. Players would have more goals to strive for, keeping them engaged with the game over a longer period.
Community Collaboration: With more mastered professions, players could contribute more significantly to community projects and events, fostering a sense of teamwork and collective achievement.
Narrative and Roleplaying Opportunities: More professions mean more opportunities for roleplaying and narrative development. Players can create more nuanced and complex backstories for their characters, enriching the game's lore and roleplaying community.
Skill and Mastery Recognition: Increasing the number of professions players can master allows for greater recognition of skill and dedication. It provides a tangible way for players to showcase their commitment and expertise.
While I understand there may be concerns about balance and specialization, I believe these can be addressed through careful game design. The aim is not to diminish the value of specialization but to enhance the overall richness and depth of the game experience.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter, whether you're a fellow player or a member of the development team. Let's discuss how we can make Ashes of Creation even more engaging and enjoyable for everyone.
Thank you for considering this proposal.
Best regards,
Magos
0
Comments
bruh, allowing people to hit grandmaster in more than 2 professions will literally have the opposite effect in almost everything you said.
1- less diverse playstyles and personalization. imagine everyone could master everything. wheres the personalization? wheres the focus. right now you have to hyper focus on something, which is personalization...sure theres maybe less combinations than if you could become a grandmaster in 3 or 4 professions, but balance > flavor. beside you can make alts anyways (which i dont like). it also slows down the amount of stuff being introduced to the server which is their goal.
2- less economic depth and trading opportunities. why would i trade when i can get it myself and its faster and cheaper? look at eso and nw lol. they mentioned in the stream " become a potion mogul". how can you become the potion mogul of that server if everyone can make potions and is a potion mogul?_? also supply and demand.
3- it doesnt increase the goal or how long it takes you to master all professions..because you dont have more professions. you can just master them on your alts. 22 professions distributed across your alts for example (maybe only 2 processing per account). unless you wanna repeat professions, and people probably wont unless its for rp reasons?
4- less contribution per person, kind of. less mastered professions means people contribute in a way. contributing with a flower or an ore is the same. the only thing that chances is the flavor. also mastering more professions take longer, so you wont contribute too much for a long time? probably will only contribute with your first grand mastered profession. if more people can contribute with the same thing, chances are more people will be left out, because at some point you wont need something (for upgrading nodes, etc) supply and demand.
5- balance > rp. simple. also it makes no sense that a character who spent his whole life making swords (and using them, max adventuring level) is also an expert in making leather armor, potions, etc etc . a blacksmith isnt gonna be as good as an alchemist as making potions,t he same way a cleric isnt gonna be as good dps as a dps, and a dps with a cleric sub isnt gona be as good a healer as a main cleric. but again, balance > rp.
6- on the contrary, back to the potion mogul example. you are more recognized when you contribute in an unique way...
7- they already spent years with careful game design ;3 anyways alpha 2 will dictate if people will master more things, not theory.
8- enjoyable is subjective. no gathering / processing / crafting would be more enjoyable for me. just fight mobs and fight players. sure lets make the game more enjoyable, lets remove the artisan system altogether
I'm not sure if you are fully aware of the recent livestream implications, and there was also some data dropped in Discord by Steven. So, just in case, I'll give some context, if you already know this, please clarify:
Mastery of Professions now seems to be a pyramid. You can be GrandMaster in 2 things, but you can also be Master in 3 things.
There are two ways we could take this. It could be "We can be Grandmaster Armorsmith and Weaponsmith and then also Master Fisher, Master Smelter, Master Miner", or it can be 'We can be Grandmaster Armorsmith and Weaponsmith and Master Miner'.
In the second case, it would be that we're taking those words to mean 'you can take 3 UP TO Master and then two of THOSE to Grand Master'.
I personally don't think they meant the second, because I don't see an economic requirement to do that. Games do fine when there is top level specialization without needing there to be a lot of restriction on the middle tiers.
This would also let you do a lot of Mastering of things and 'expand the time spent' as you mentioned.
Other than that I agree with others that quite a few of your reasonings:
Don't actually result from what you're suggesting, and in some cases, it's the opposite.
So I also disagree with you, but I can see your point somewhat if we get the 'Three at Master or Higher' model and not the '5 total at Master and higher, 2 of those Grand Master' model.
they obviously meant the 2nd one. to become a grandmaster you have to go through master .-.
if you can be a grandmaster in 2 things and a master in 3 different things, that means now you are a master of 5 things ._.
I can't say this is obvious, because in the games I play it would work the first way.
I agree that it is quite possible they mean this, but I can't say 'obvious'. If you consider it to be important for it to work the second way, make sure to let Intrepid know your opinion on that, since your reaction doesn't directly say 'I don't like this'.
My main suspicion is: It slows down the economy significantly. Players would think "this is quite the rare item... why would I sell this for gold when I can store it away in a chest so I can use it myself later?" The more professions you possibly can master the more rare ingredients etc player will hoard. Giving people more choices when the (current) game design doesn't offer a realistic or healthy option to use would make it look like advertising content that is not really achievable. And the possible downsides seem to me more severe and more likely than the possible upsides.
oh ok.
so in the games you play once you get 3 professions to master, then promote one to grand master, a slot opens up to get a new profession to master? o-o
what happens to the stuff you got in the profession you promoted to grandmaster from 0 - master? like skills, etc
Nothing specifically needs to 'happen' to it? I don't think I understand why anything would happen?
I'd take the Artisan Test to raise from Master to Grand Master in, let's say, Alchemy. If I passed, now I would be able to take the Artisan Test to advance from Journeyman to Master in Weapon Smithing.
Would you have a problem with this system? Passing the test doesn't change anything else, it just allows me to level past whatever point i was capped at.
Note, if it matters, I'm not saying 'this is exactly how FFXI works' at all. I'm saying that if FFXI used the more simple system that Ashes wants to use, I would expect the first of the two scenarios I talked about.
i was just thinking how it worked. so it basically frees the slot. the reason i asked what happens is because now basically you are bypassing the limits on how many professions you can get to a certain tier. so in aoc terms, having 2 profs at GM then promoting 2 more to M, means you basically have 5 professions at master. so i was wondering if you lost the ability to craft stuff at master level for the grand master, or lost bonuses like extra gathering speed, etc, and you just used a new set of bonuses in GM.
in other games where previous tiers are basically useless for the most part, its fine. but for example, in ashes the stuff you craft from lower tiers is still useful, so you could basically use 2 sets of grand master materials + 3 sets of master materials (instead of just 1) to craft your stuff and then do a minimal upgrade later (steven explained in the Q&A that you can upgrade later through different means). thats why i said it was obvious, unless intrepid wants you to do this i guess xD
It might be interesting to incorporate some end-game achievements that allow players to unlock the ability to reach a higher level in more than what is currently set out. (I don't think a player should be able to max everything, but maybe reach GrandMaster in 3 or 4 after completing some tough content)
Could you be more specific about this, though?
For example, I have issues with '3 Grandmaster Professions only and everything else capped at Apprentice' for both 'too much available' AND 'too much restriction'. I have problems with '2 Grandmaster, 3 Master, 4 Journeyman' etc in most games because they don't have as many diverse Artisan paths as Ashes.
The OP might like 3 or 4 Mastered professions, which still isn't 'can craft everything' even in most designs, definitely wouldn't be, in Ashes, from what we've seen so far.
Advocating for ways a character can achieve more GrandMaster titles isn't a 0 sum game. I don't think anybody is asking to be able to craft EVERYTHING only that 5,4,3,2 is a little slim when you have 22! different professions.
My assumption is that the limitation about being able to achieve Gradmastery in everything is that we will not have enough points to allocate to everything.
That is how I seen such constraints implemented previously when the start allows "all" but later you specialize.
Such systems can allow to sacrifice reaching the maximum but spread out more on different branches.
Having a wider spread out correlated to
"Gear has approximately a 40-50% influence on a players overall power in the game.[8]"
makes me worry that it can be enough to have Journeyman or Master level on more branches rather than trying to reach Grandmaster level.
And then I can make one more alt and have on that one too only Journeyman or Master to cover as many branches as possible with small effort, because leveling effort is typically not linear but exponential.
Yes, this is what I'm familiar with as well, but we don't know if that 'old standard' implementation is the one that they have in mind. It certainly doesn't correlate to the original claim, so for now I'm personally assuming that we're in the middle. We moved a bit closer to the way you and I are familiar with, but probably not all the way to that 'Distribute A Limited Number Of Progression Points Among Artisan Skills'.
There's also some other aspects of this that are related to how they want the world to feel and what type of playerbase they expect. A game with only 10% of players wanting to seriously be Artisans, is very different than one where 40% of players are seriously Artisans.
But that's just my personal reason for not having feedback related to 'should they allow more or not'. I can understand either path.
3 friends should not be self sufficient.
If the fight is balanced to a party of 8, then crafting should be distributed to an even bigger group.
The one which can cover all 22 is a group of 11, which is just a little bit larger than 8.
There will be guilds with many more players and having a profession in a medium guild can make you insignificant if there are many others with your profession already.
And I doubt all will be busy producing and selling something. The game is advertised as having resource scarcity so the number of artisans needed to process the scarce resources will also be lower than the actual number of artisans. You may end up never doing any crafting because core guild members will do everything.
It can also be that the game will not allow more Journeyman or Master levels by sacrificing the Grandmaster.
Then the system will actually hard limit the number at each level. If so, then the only reason to still be somewhat capable of doing other jobs too is to have options when the supply chain structures break down, due to a war, siege or players leaving.
Nodes will have specializations too and players will have one citizenship only.
Not sure if freeholds will have constraints about the number of processing workshops.
It can happen that even if players can theoretically do more, they will still be constraint by what kind of workbenches they have access too.
So, from that perspective, I'd want it designed so that people can achieve the maximum amount of personal satisfaction without breaking the economic concept.
In my experience, it is very good as it is. I think that it should be possible for a Grandmaster Lumberjack to be a Master Lumber-miller and a GrandMaster Carpenter. I personally see this as 'good for the node', 'good for the player', 'good for their guild'.
This is only because, in my mind, smaller Nodes should exist, and those smaller Nodes shouldn't need to have two "Wood focused players" to produce their niches. I don't see a 'problem' with the outcome that 'a large Node with Large Guilds technically fills up their slots too fast' because the player in that situation has a gameplay choice of 'going somewhere else' that I feel would be in line with Ashes' design.
Basically, I think it's fine if a group of 8-12 extremely dedicated Artisans can be self-sufficient and also resilient, i.e. their economic situation doesn't collapse entirely just because one player can't be online or something.
If that's easier to achieve with 3x GrandMaster than 2x, then I'm fine with it. I don't care as much about '5 at Master or Above' vs '3 at Master or Above' for any other reason, but I do wonder if it will 'feel right' to have Town Nodes with two separate Stables, entire slots in the Node, but only maybe 2-3 players at Journeyman Animal Husbandry, for example.
I'm expecting the '5 Master or Above, 9 Journeyman or Above' primarily because it can help to reinforce Node Identity. If my Node gets destroyed and I have 9 skills to 'choose from' when selecting my next place to live until/if rebuild, then I feel it will be more enjoyable than if I have 4 skills and end up 'wanting to push in on someone else's business'.
I think the number of gatherers will be higher because most players want to go out, explore and fight.
Those who process and need a freehold will be fewer.
Best final crafting will be in nodes and those might also be the combat oriented players and the traders who spend more time observing price fluctuations.
I also think they considered well what they want to achieve when they decided these numbers.
We will be able to predict better when we have more information, also about resource scarcity and sink.
Maybe they even did a simulation like that for the nodes and their ZoI, where they acquire vassals or siege each-other. Such a simulation could help to have a good guess for many balancing values.
If it takes several hundred hours I also think that could be a problem as with so much possible content, it would be a bit of a shame to be gated into only doing one or two types of profession when there are so many different types to choose from. I want to be able to gather and process a range of different materials from across the world and from different biomes. I would also love to try out animal husbandry (which I think will be a very popular profession generally) as well as Carpentry or Tailoring. As the system stands I just will not be able to do that.
I think having the 5,4,3,2 narrowing of choice out of 22 professions is too tight IMO. I don't think people should be able to reach Grandmaster in ALL of them, but I do think it is worth considering for the future, a way players who have capped out their professions to unlock the ability to reach Grandmaster in others.
You’ll be able to do that Day 1 on an Alt character, WHIT3ROS3.
It’s up to you on how many Alts you want to level up, how many professions you want to cover, and what time investment you want to make in that endeavor.
As someone else pointed out, however, Ashes isn’t a single-player RPG.
A limited few Grandmaster professions per character should get players socializing and cooperating together sooner than later.
Not all legendary gear will be crafted, Raven016. Some legendary gear will drop from world bosses, for example.
That distribution will be tested in Alpha 2 of course … but I wouldn’t get too worried about key artisan players that take an extended leave from the game.
So what's the difference then? I'm not a fan of ALTS, why have players log out and log in again on a different character? It's still me. It's still me playing it. Why can't I just have that progress on one character?
I know that Ashes isn't a single-player RPG, which is why I stated very clearly that I don't think you should be able to reach master status on ALL of the 22 professions but it might be something to consider to expand the cap for those who cap out their 2 professions. I don't want to make multiple ALTS in order to experience and explore the game's content.
Of course, things could change if you are only able to have GrandMaster status in 2 at a time and can respec for a cost.
The devs want to encourage social interaction between players.
Pretty much the same reason we can change Secondary Archetype, but not Primary Archetype.
But... expect it to be tweaked during the Alpha(s) and Betas.
whats the diffference? balance reasons and socializing. you might be able to gather different stuff on your alts, but remember you might not be able to kill the mobs around that gathering node because your alt isnt as strong as your main. so you will have to put more time into gearing up that alt or just decide that tis better to socialize and get that material from a friend, or buying it, etc.