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Artisan and Gathering Progress bar style gameplay. MMO's need to stop doing this. (Manual Crafting)
Trob
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
TL:DR Gathering System (Chopping Tree) Progress Bars are old the staple and a boring staple! Most MMO's use it and no one innovates on it. Can we try something new and interactive? What are the design efforts and limitations for development to add interactive gameplay to Gathering and Artisan systems in game on par with combat? Also!!! If Crafting was more like captcha tests, then we'd actually have less bots.
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Comment below if you Do not and tell us why.
Full summary:
Just watched the Alpha video today and it was great. However something stood out that has always been on my mind but i never called it out.
What are the challenges and design efforts needed to improve upon the existing Gathering and Artisan system so that it is more than just a click and a progress bar. Also to be clear I DO NOT mean to do the whole God of War: Kratos style action cut scene thing. While it's better than a progress bar I think we can do better. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kEE911zaf-k
We all love combat and in addition we all know that every MMO has an abundance of Gathering and Artisan Style Systems in addition to the base combat gameplay. And 90% of MMO's have you approach a resource, Click the resource and watch the progress bar go from left to right as the activity completes. The game puts the item in your bag and repeat. Chopping Trees or making swords. its all the same. You watch progress bars from the tree to the iron to the shield.
To be clear I do not mean the leveling bar. Leveling your gathering and artisan progress is a good thing! I mean the literal bar that floats across the screen as your character animates a tree chop....
What is the limitation that makes it so Artisan and Gathering is never as involved as combat. Sure fishing from time to time can be engaging in some MMO's but the buck stops there on 90% of games. Why is it just a progress bar and how can ashes potentially set themselves apart. aside from cool visuals for bouncy tree falling? Love the bouncy tree fall by the way!
P.S.: I'd love to be a crafter/gatherer primary and combat secondary. If crafting was more interactive I'd probably go for it but it never is.
Edit: Steven did confirm in the Artisan full video that manual crafting is being worked on and is also being thought about and approached carefully so as not to make a "minigame" but a meaningful gameplay layer.
Would still love folks thoughts on the post and "manual gathering"
Like if you agree!
Comment below if you Do not and tell us why.Full summary:
Just watched the Alpha video today and it was great. However something stood out that has always been on my mind but i never called it out.
What are the challenges and design efforts needed to improve upon the existing Gathering and Artisan system so that it is more than just a click and a progress bar. Also to be clear I DO NOT mean to do the whole God of War: Kratos style action cut scene thing. While it's better than a progress bar I think we can do better. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kEE911zaf-k
We all love combat and in addition we all know that every MMO has an abundance of Gathering and Artisan Style Systems in addition to the base combat gameplay. And 90% of MMO's have you approach a resource, Click the resource and watch the progress bar go from left to right as the activity completes. The game puts the item in your bag and repeat. Chopping Trees or making swords. its all the same. You watch progress bars from the tree to the iron to the shield.
To be clear I do not mean the leveling bar. Leveling your gathering and artisan progress is a good thing! I mean the literal bar that floats across the screen as your character animates a tree chop....
What is the limitation that makes it so Artisan and Gathering is never as involved as combat. Sure fishing from time to time can be engaging in some MMO's but the buck stops there on 90% of games. Why is it just a progress bar and how can ashes potentially set themselves apart. aside from cool visuals for bouncy tree falling? Love the bouncy tree fall by the way!
P.S.: I'd love to be a crafter/gatherer primary and combat secondary. If crafting was more interactive I'd probably go for it but it never is.
Edit: Steven did confirm in the Artisan full video that manual crafting is being worked on and is also being thought about and approached carefully so as not to make a "minigame" but a meaningful gameplay layer.
Would still love folks thoughts on the post and "manual gathering"
Trob
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Comments
Maybe you could share an example RPG to help us understand.
Even Old School Harvest Moon had you hold the X key down long enough to wind up a strong swing. and improved Axes could be held down longer for stronger faster swings. This is super minimal but more engaging than a progress bar. Nothing convoluted need but a little effort. Is this what you mean?
I could be wrong and I get that you "don't like it" but can you clarify how it's "dumbing it down" and "unnecessary?" If fighting a mob was a progress bar, I don't know about you but that feels like dumbing something down.
Also again. because a progress bar is so minimal and dumbed down it's why bots get away with it so easily. So help us understand why interactive gathering and/or artisan is unnecessary?
bots would still press the right buttons and do it better than humans
anyways the progress bar is a pattern. you have alternatives for sure, but it depends what kind of game you are making. you can have a progress bar, you can press buttons while you gather, or maybe you can run around the tree hitting it (which is pressing buttons anyways).
i personally find the whole artisan stuff boring. just press e and wait, but at the same time, ive played games where you have to press buttons and it can get quite annoying. a lot of of people like gathering or fishing, etc because they find it relaxing. its cool in god of war because you arent doing it 1000 times in a row. im probably going to choose boring over annoying.
Perhaps a better way to say it would be that a lot of developers, for a certain period in MMO history, added little interactive elements as a replacement for the parts of gathering that are interactive (finding the resource points, avoiding danger, managing your plans, payoffs for your knowledge of an area, etc).
Since many bots can do the little interactive parts better than humans easily, and bots for that specific type of thing are difficult to distinguish from really practiced players, this result can be 'dumbing down'. The game added X instead of Y, when X is a negative for many people and doesn't really enhance anything related to Y.
Even if the interaction minigame has a component where you 'do something to avoid a loss or take less time', many people will just find it tedious, and bots would still do it better. There may be some designs where it helps, but many people would never have seen one.
Love it Haha
I am a little facetious when i suggest you walk up to a tree in game and a bot catcha appears for the user to solve. haha. But deterrents are good and changing the gathering gameplay every so often like a captcha may be a healthy way to keep bots out and increase value of items in the economy.
I agree with a lot of what you point out here. There is some interaction in knowing where to find the specific resource or how it spawns. I like that Ashes is adding dynamic event related spawn rates to the resources. a great bot deterrent and great overall fun way for players to stay on their toes and be rewarded for knowing when and where to go get the item.
I can see how turning it into a "minigame" can be negative also especially if there is a reward or risk for doing it right or wrong. But for example. generally the punishment for missing a skill shot on a mob is minimal. you still get the full loot when it's dead right? I think this is what i mean comparatively to gathering. I don't even engage with the tree other than a single click. The reward should not change but the gameplay is dull.
bruh bots can solve captchas better and faster than humans. i cant imagine how annoying it would be to solve a stupid captcha everytime you click a tree or a mining node...and on top of that, if you miss, not just you dont get what you wanted, you also lose something. you might get kicked or temp banned...
But... combat also has progress bars in the form of Health meters.
Including a hotbar for "Chopping Skills" would be horrible and unnecessarily tedious.
HAHAH. So extreme. There's a middle ground here somewhere lol I don't have the answer by any means. But A captcha that that boots you if you don't solve it is not what I'm suggesting. Something more involved than a progress bar is.
A health bar is a sort of progress bar I agree. Again there is a healthy medium somewhere between a single click and the mob/tree dies and a full raid combat sequence with mechanics for a single mob/tree. I'm not at all suggesting a hot bar or a raid fight for the tree in any way shape or form. haha But something more than the loading screen of the tree going down....No? Starting to feel like it's just me? I do appreciate everyone adding perspective!
It might not be that it's just you, so I'll give you some background (arrogance incoming).
I can write bots. Bots that don't use memory packets, they just use visual histograms to check certain parts of the screen in a similar way to a human and react to the color and configuration changes. Those bots can play entire 2010s-era FaceBook-tier games on their own without my intervention, better than I can do it physically.
So, to a few people on this forum that I've explained this to, I've tried to inform them that 'anything less complicated than that' isn't going to do anything against bots. It's not 'just you', it's a 'matter of degrees' as they say.
I can't think of a Gathering type Minigame that I've ever seen in an MMO that wouldn't be easier to handle than the games I have already written stuff for. Note this is 'writing from scratch', so base detection of it is difficult.
I'd rather that Intrepid not focus on this method as a way of preventing bots.
So say you have 3 abilities that cut trees. Say the tree needs 4 hits to cut down, considering your current gear. You use ability 1 once and see that the tree got hit from the top, so you wanna use ability 3 now. You see that the hit wasn't deep enough so you wanna use ability 3 again. Your animation shows that the axe got stuck for a bit (the time of the hit is the same, but the animation is a bit different), so you now need to use ability 2.
This combo gives you 5 "well-cut" logs.
On another tree you hit it with 1 again, but now you hear a dull sound instead of a proper hit feedback. So you wanna use 1 again. The hit was still not deep enough so you gotta use 1 yet again. Now the axe gets "stuck", so you gotta use 2.
This also gives 5 wellcuts.
You hit the next tree 4 times with 1 regardless of what the feedback was and you get 4 or 5 normal logs.
I feel like this would be similar to fighting a mob, where you gotta react to the change in feedback. But you ultimately don't have to do that, if you're fine with a lower result.
Though I agree with Azherae that this kind of system would definitely do nothing against bots. It just might have some potential as being "better" for people who're interested in a more involved artisanry mechanic.
I would not want to have to do other mining stuff that would prevent me from protecting myself.
With a bit more polish the mining experience is almost at launch quality IMO. (Perhaps a few sparks from the tool on impact)
The lumberjacking is almost there as well, just a bit more work on the tree physics so they don't spin out like they are possessed and the cut point being more in line where the axe makes contact and we are good to go.
The herbalism could have a couple more "cutting" animations thrown in so that you aren't doing the exact same movement each time (to mix it up a little)
The two gathering professions we haven't seen are fishing and hunting, both could offer a lot of dynamism in how they are implemented.
I would like to see animals that could be killed and skinned (providing a range of hide/meat) that leave a corpse or skeleton behind for a duration. It would allow other players to know that there is someone in the area hunting, you could have tracking skills that allow players to track down and kill rare types of animals. Taming as a sub-task of Hunting could also provide some more "in-depth" gameplay, having several stages necessary to tame different types of creatures.
For fishing, it could be interesting to have different types. Have the standard fishing rod and also spear fishing (using action targeting) or net fishing that needs to be cast off boats somehow. Perhaps even introduce traps that could be placed in areas.
Not every single aspect of the game needs to be an innovation. Mining Ore or Chopping wood just needs to be really good examples of what already exists as a concept IMO. Use hunting/fishing to innovate and introduce some new cool ideas and gameplay options.
Progress indicators (bars or circles) are needed for cases where the server does not respond instantly.
Also to avoid making the player to click click click for every tree hit animation.
But if this progress is very long, if crafting something can take 2 minutes, then I don't like this kind of activity automation because it makes the life of players with multiple accounts easier and encourage them to do jobs in background. Basically it is an incentive to pay two subscriptions.
And Steven reinforced his attitude that he has nothing against that.
While the reason can be that they cannot detect those who cheat using scripts, I think the game should not help them and IS should not give up and just allow them.
Typically chopping a tree takes a few hits with an ax. Just as mining typically requires a few swings with a pickaxe.
Even in the Artisanship demo, I think Steven hit that one tree twice and someone else hit the tree at least once.
The progress bar is basically an indicator of how much damage has been done to the tree or to the mineral.
And it's there so you can gauge how long you have to stand there attacking the tree or attacking the mineral deposit.
If I'm playing an Artisan/Crafting Sim, rather than an RPG, sure... maybe I would want the Gathering to be more involved since the only thing to do in the game would be Gathering and Crafting. I think even in Palia it's pretty much the same as it is in New World.
In Pax Dei, there is a progress bar for cutting the tree down to the ground. And then another progress bar for chopping the fallen tree into pieces that go into your inventory. The 2nd progress bar just seems like an unnecessary timesink, even though it is a step closer to real life.
Edit: Interestingly, the games I've played with the best gathering and artisan systems had simple/automatic mechanisms (OSRS, Albion Online, New World) except in designated mini-game modes that entailed a lot more than 'click in rhythm'. For example, Wintertodt and Fishing Trawler in OSRS. Those are fun ways to switch it up once in a while, but I'd dislike it if firemaking and fishing always worked like in those mini-games.
Gathering is not necessarily something that needs its own mini game like crafting and processing does because searching the world for the resource is part of it, surveying will be another, then actually gathering it and returning it to the node. The one exception being Fishing. I would suggest something simple like how it is done in Survival games, Sons of the Forest for example. To me it really doesn't matter how its done as long as its something more than a single click of a button and waiting for the progress bar. Click and hold for continued swings, Continued clicks for each swing with an option of click and hold to charge a more powerful swing, click once and move the mouse to aim your swings in the right spots. This plus the visual feedback of the resource breaking apart/being collected, depending on what it is, would be enough. Here's a good example:
So? There is absolutely nothing stopping different genres from taking inspiration from other genres.
Same with the Economy. Same with Leveling. And... no surprise if the combat mechanics are significantly different.
It's like Football, Kickball, Soccer and Rugby. Expect the gameplay to be signifcantly different.
When I want to play Soccer, I play Soccer. When I want to play Rugby, I play Rugby.
When I want to play a Survival GAme, I play a Survival Game. When I want to play an RPG, I play an RPG.
So, no... I don't want the Tree Chopping in Ashes to be like the Tree Chopping in Sons of the Forest because I'm not interested in playing Ashes as if it's a Survival Game.
But could you define what determines one vs the other?
This is one of those times where your feedback is somewhat unclear. For example, isn't the fact that the Trees themselves disappear, in Ashes, changing line of sight and other behaviours, an element that isn't particularly RPG-like?
Exactly what aspect of what was shown in that video makes it 'more like a Survival Game' in a way that you aren't interested in?
A Survival Game is highly focused on Gathering and Crafting to help the character survive. So we can expect the Gathering and Crafting mechanics to be more realistic because those are fundamental draws to the game.
An RPG is focused on Racial and Class progression via Fantasy magic or Sci-Fi tech.
Gathering and Crafting are not fundamental draws to playing an RPG.
The fundamental draws to paying an RPG are questing and combat that reflects the Tolkien novels, D&D /Roll20 combat mechanics/classes and, hopefully support RP/character-acting. In and RPG, Gathering and Crafting are a developmental after-thought that is really even lower in the design hierarchy than PvP combat.
If I'm playing a Survival Game, I don't necessarily care about the Fantasy/Sci-Fi elements - different Races or seeking magical upgrades. Which means I'm likely to be more focused on feeling like I'm enacting realistic behavior when I'm Gathering and Crafting.
If I'm playing an RPG, I'm not interested in the minute details of Gathering and Crafting. They are basically tertiary activities, at best. I play RPGs to RP my race and progress the Fantasy or Sci-Fi minutae of my Class via my Active and Passive Skills. So, it's fine to press one button and have animations and sound FX that make it seem like I'm doing whatever [Artisan] activity. Fill up my Inventory quickly so I can get back to the primary focus of RPG gameplay.
Alright, thanks, seems to be closer to your usual genre-diminishment response, which means that Intrepid can respond appropriately as per their goals.
Just ofc bear in mind that by your own admission, you're basically not the target audience for crafting related tactile things. Survival games don't have to add them, and RPGs don't have to lack them, e.g. various fishing mechanics.
Some people want logging to be more like what many games do for Fishing. You might not, but the whole 'No that's a Survival game' thing, I doubt you're trolling people, but you've had enough conversations on this forum to know that the response you have is inflammatory at best.
its not laziness... people dont like change, especially abrupt change.
You can expect the Intrepid devs to design Tree Chopping like other MMORPGs rather than have it be as detailed as Sons of the Forest.
I did not say that I'm not the target audience for crafting related tactile things.
It depends on whether I'm playing a Survival Game or whether I'm playing an RPG.
If I'm playing an RPG, I expcting the Crafting mechanics to be like the Crafting mechanics for an RPG.
If I'm playing a Survival Game, I expect the Crafting mechanics to be like the Crafting mechanics for a Survival Game.
I dunno why you mention Fishing mechanics. And I don't know what you mean by "many games". The Fishing mechanics in an RPG are highly likely to be more simplistic than the Fishing mechanics in a Survival Game.
And, yeah, people are going to want Fishing to have at least a rudimentary feeling of Fishing.
Which is going to be a bit different than the rudimentary feeling of Logging or Mining.
Its a bit of subjective take.
"Gathering and Crafting are not fundamental draws to playing an RPG."
They may not be your fundamental draws but they do draw people. And people are either pleased and engage in that content or not pleased and do not engage with that content.
Any of these examples you provided could have expansive or less expansive action in their gathering or crafting the same way their combat could be more or less expansive. It is developer dependent and based on how simulated (Load screen/cutscene) or manual(press x 5 times to chop) they want the realism and/or fun in that activity to be. And it's a clear divide as this thread shows lol
"Massively Multiplayer Online Game" in general as a term and "Role Playing Games" or even "survivial games" don't necessarily equal combat or equal gathering. Conversely "First Person Shooter", "Massive Online Battle Arena", "Action" RPG, or even "Beat em Up", those titles, do lend themselves more to specifically: "HEY player expect combat to be the main focus." I wouldn't expect those titles to have farming or gathering the same way i don't expect the sims or harvest moon to have the main focus of combat. but sims do fight right lol.
Survival Games RP's and MMO's both include combat and "farming". Definitively i don't think either exclusively limits the crafting/gathering systems to be any more or less involved than the combat. Its just as involved as the developer wants or feels it benefits the audience. And hence the thread here I guess.
But you're more than welcome to have the expectation that RPG's you play aren't the ones where development puts effort into crafting/gathering tactile and/or manual gameplay. As a lot of folks have said on the thread. sometimes just searching for the item and fending off the evil doers who want to PK you is enough of a tactile gameplay style for them.
But overall I don't know that anyone can "expect the Intrepid devs to design Tree Chopping like other MMORPGs"
Honestly, from what I understand they are trying to do things better than other MMO's. They are trying to improve where other MMO's fall short. and they are being ambitious and trying new things that the community wants. Which hopefully mean they are designing things not only like other MMO's, but better than other MMO's. From combat to monetization to tree chopping lol.
P.S. I have read everyone's posts also. Thank you for the thoughtful and specific feedback and examples.
It's objective to the design of the mechanics for the game genre. Survival Game, Shooter, RPG, Adventure Game, Sim, Hack and Slash, etc.
Players can individually prefer specific mechanics. And lots of gamers tend to only care about the MMO aspect and ignore whether it's a Survival Game, RPG, Adventure Game, Sim, etc. Some even don't care about assessing the design differences between an MMORPG and a MOBA.
But you can expect the designers to design mechanics according to the genre they say their game is intended to be.
Intrepid is not just making an MMO. They are specifically making an MMORPG; not an MMO Survival Game.
(Also, they have specific mechanics they are trying to innovate on, rather than trying to be innovative with everything just for the sake of being innovative. And... we would like the game to release before 2030.)
Pretty much this I do not want to be playing some mini game while harvesting, need to be scanning for that potential attacker and be ready to react. If they know you are concentrating on some bar or other that you have to hit or time it is more or less a free hit.
Save your mini games for processing/crafting where you will be in safer environments.
To this day Vanguard had by far the best crafting mini games I have ever experienced yet the gathering was just click and harvest though it did have better results for multi person harvesting.
I see that I was playing the mmorpgs for the wrong reason all these years.
But when the reason was good, I stopped playing them.
Now that I learned that, is time to reinstall and play them properly!
But I do that much better in the solo games
What brings an MMO?
If all players do quests, they get money and objects.
Those make sense to be tradeable, creating a market for them.
So players who used to have the role of some warrior or mage now can have the role of a salesman too.
I would say that the D&D rpg is limited because there are not enough players and a trader would not just move to the next town to meet again the same adventurers.
The MMO rpg however is limited because each player want to also be an adventurer and many players get the same story. It doesn't feel like being your story and this way the story becomes less important.
The common thing between MMO rpgs and D&D rpgs played by a few people is that in both cases your role depends on somebody else. If that dependency is very weak in an MMO then we say the player is soloing the MMO content.
And there are different tastes. Some want to solo mmos.
Survival of the node or the metropolis nation or the freehold is the core part of AoC.
Players will die many times killed by NPCs or other players.
Dying of cold during winter or heat in the desert because you are a homeless non-citizen might become a thing in other future mmos.
Developers are running out of ideas how to innovate for players who already played 2-3 mmos so they just mix everything.
But maybe we will see an amazing story system in AoC.