Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
This reminded me of something I 'forgot to specify' for the usual reason.
So, just in case...
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Goblin_Mask
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Goblin_Helm
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Yagudo_Necklace
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Antican_Robe
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Antican_Pauldron
Etc.
The cavoite is that mobs that do produce items worth value are often over camped and farmed by both players and bots. The hard balance is making specific items dropped from mobs rare enough to have value, but not limited to a point where you have players and bots over camping. This is especially true for items dropped by mobs that are used for cap-level crafting.
Given the vast array of crafting specializations within Ashes, this may be achievable so long as each specialization has a diverse list of useful craftables in the level set. This should be done with both regular drops and rare drops from mobs found only in different regions of the world.
For cap-level crafting, recipes should require rare drops from mobs and cap-crafted items from other crafting specializations.
I have to clarify a bit.
If the purpose is to prevent groups of players to monopolize a resource by holding farming spots, it is a good idea to leak a small amount of these powerful items in different places, also to random players.
I would not mind such events to happen more frequently when prices are going up, being controlled by a small group which provides the items.
Various "rare" loot could be added to all regular mobs at an extremely low drop chance just to add some excitement to the loot pool. What I don't like is when end game activities include farming a specific mob because of its special drop chance. For example, in New World everyone will farm X named enemy to get his bow or whatever and the gameplay boils down to, kill said enemy, wait for respawn, repeat. A system that was more engaging for me was way back in Arch Age after just reaching max level my friends took me to a large area with a lot of mobs that all had an equal chance to drop a token. You needed like 500 tokens and then you could trade them in for a powerful item. Although both systems take you to specific spots in the world, one incentivizes you to kill 1 guy while the other lets you tear up an entire zone with your friends. It's been awhile since I played either game so I might be misremembering exactly how the systems work.
rare items as random world drop is great I think it was called conquer online or something? that dropped dragonballs and it was a fantastic way for casual people to get a bump in gold to buy something shinny. I think the best item in a game like ashes would be something that's needed for higher end items to be crafted to help keep the spread wealth what casual people need is vastly different then top end people need and helps keep all items hold some value. as far as drop rate if your a high end crafter you there should always be someone selling in the market but not 1000's of them so they have no value (I know hard balance, maybe some unrelated sink so they are always valuable). as far as where to drop it should be global everything has a chance but I would say things that are inefficient have a higher drop so more fall into the hands of casual players.
general drops I think should be a mix of mats, rare mats and rarely gear(rare so they aren't completely worthless) but the gear shouldn't be the best better then what you craft with normal mats but worse then what you craft with rare mats.
this is a mmo with a focus on crafting so I don't think great items dropping is a good idea as why go though the effort to work on crafting if you can get the best stuff without it unless its very very rare (more time to farm for a drop then farm the mats to craft it) and/or they have a limit to how much use they can get.
The most important thing is that everything that drops has value it shouldn't matter if I'm off cutting wood for an hour or grinding some mobs an hour of play should fill my pocket with something or it feels like I'm forced to do something else instead of doing what I find fun the value of normal loot should be much more related to how many other people are killing in an area/mob type or activity then it just being "junk" loot
I think looking at other games is great way to see real world data on good ways for things to look in my eyes a mark of a good item economy is when there's very little you cant buy at any time and very few items are worthless 2 good ones are runescape and albion online doesn't really matter what you do your time has value. 2 games of the other end is wow and ff14 both are very popular games but there's a ton of things that ether noone is selling or isn't even worth picking up
I also agree with Liniker, there should be reason for artisan system. Grinding mobs should enable the player to purchase upgrades from other players.
In addition to dropping mats, perhaps potion ingredients or mats that further the player's ability to progress and enable their activity. Some basic gear may be necessary.
And it doesn't hurt if the occasional valuable mat drops, something that can be used, traded or sold - livens things up.
Regardless of what drops, if valuable stuff does drop and mobs are level specific, then there should be a distinct drop-off as player level exceeds mob level - ie: higher level players shouldn't benefit from farming low level mobs.
xoxo
LFG: Open World, tight knit coordination, multiple roles, will travel.
The era when an MMORPG could captivate players solely through constant grinding has passed, now players need content, not grinding.
Also, in case of random loot, most players, this can cause game tiredness and a sense of unfairness to more fortunate players.
This is definitely not the type of content I would want to see as the main or even a side part of Ashes of Creation.
Furthermore, the random drop of items feels more like a feature of Korean gacha games.
I've rarely encountered someone who was happy with a random system over a clear, logical one.
But if there is going to be a chance-based item drop system, there should also be a mechanism that allows less fortunate players to obtain the item.
For instance, if there's a 5% chance to loot a weapon from a dungeon, players should also receive a special item for each completion of the dungeon. Collecting 20 of these special items could guarantee the weapon. After all, some might get the weapon on their first try, and it can be extremely frustrating to not acquire it after more than 100 attempts.
Kind regards
marquis
I think creatures should drop things that they could really be carrying or hoarding. I would limit drops to:
a) items and/or valuables carried by adventurers the creatures actually killed,
b) items and/or valuables that the creatures can produce, harvest, collect, grow, equip themselves.
Creatures that would keep their valuables in a den/nest/home rather than in their pockets/backpacks/inventory etc could "drop" a track or clue as to where you can find their hoard, offering a mini-quest for a bigger payout.
If it is too challenging technically to keep track of everything that an individual monster could have looted from adverturers they killed, perhaps a compromise could be managing it by monster type.
The probability of a weak monster dropping a very rare item that is only crafted by adverturers is therefore proportional to the probability of one such monster killing an adventurer who was carrying it.
Most preferred: item drops, that come from world bosses and their ads, I would not mind get a separate form of gear types for head, arms, legs, feet, hands.
I guess I would ask myself why, what, where, when, how questions when incorporating armor and weapons for crafting. should having a max armor smith equal the world items? Should having a max weapon smith equal the world weapons?
Each mob has a loot table based on item value.
Basic loot: 90% chance - basic glint/mattress = 1 gold (I'm using gold but that's just for the example)
Common loot: 60% chance - common glint/mattress = 3 golds
Rare loot: 10% chance - rare glint/rare mattress = 10 gold
Rare loot ++: 0.1% chance - anything (weapon/glint/mattress/preparation) = 20 gold
The idea is that each mob has its own table, depending on its type and biome.
Common mobs will only give rare++ items with a low % and the stronger the mobs, the higher the % and the higher the quality.
The earning curve needs to be controlled: the more mobs you farm, the more money you can earn.
But it has to be as interesting as the other features that allow you to make money so that players take part.
The risk aspect must also be taken, as it's dangerous to farm for long periods of time in the same area. The longer you stay in one place, the more a PK can find you and come and kill you for 20% of your glint farm.
(And when i talk about rare/common/etc item, is not the color, its about the value. Even a common sword can be on "rare loot table" because its a full item who need craft/time. So if you need 3h to craft this common sword, you need also 3h farm (so like 10% of loot) to get it....i dont know if i'm clear
Hahahahaha, I wrote something similar in a WoW related YouTube commentsection once.
I wrote that when you completed an instance or a raid and you did not get an item, the item's droprate gets doubled each and every single time, until you got it at least once.
A 1% drop becomes 2%, then 4%, then 8% and even up to 100% if necessary.
If you recieve the item, it resets again.
Which means mounts with a droprate of 1% and which are locked behind a +20 to +30 minute run, which you can only do once in a week, like the infamous Invincible mount of Arthas the Lichking for example, this too would get at some point "farmable" without having to kill your soul.
Then again it is the Lichking hahahahaha.
Maybe the design was spoton here, that it kills your soul!
Well - the suggestion was ill recieved. A lot of stockholm syndrom players who still play WoW absolutely loathed the idea cause - as the balding Lord Asmongold said - too many people today view their wasted lifetime as a badge of honor and they love the abuse that they have grown accustomed to.
You can't free them.
They live comfortably in their chains.
Plus they know with their tiny-Wiener-Ego's that if they actually even "ONCE" in their Life get something that others might not get in +SEVEN. YEARS. of constantly playing every Week regarding Raid-Drops like some Mounts and Stuff,
they have something that others might never get to see and have.
It's pure, incredibly petty Disfavour and Enviousness towards other Players they don't even know.
This is why i say : Nobody and i mean "NOBODY" -> should care about the many, self-proclaimed "Kings". They care about Nobody else than themselves and hence, Nobody should care about them.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
Animals
One of my pet peeves in a lot of MMOs is how many animals they make you kill to get a decent amount of crafting materials. Take WoW for example - you need to choose skinning as one of your two professions in order to procure skins and pelts. Fair enough, at least it lets you skin every relevant animal. But what then after that? You only get a meat drop once every 2-3 kills, which is absurd, and when some does drop, you only get one usable piece. How about the bones? The offal?
I think it would be a great opportunity to include some extra functionality to whatever gathering profession will include skinning, and just call it something like Animal Harvesting. Perhaps this simply falls under the Hunting profession - I could see a system in profession skill trees that makes you split your primary path of learning towards a specific purpose. When you hit a certain point, perhaps you need to choose whether to specialize in breaking down and retrieving crafting materials from higher level creatures, or taming.
If you take that path as a Hunter, or at lower levels before you split off, when you fell a beast, you can decide how much to gather of its bones, meat, organs, and skin, and how much to leave behind. This can then interact with the local land management system. If a player leaves some meat behind, whether trained in animal harvesting or not, the meat and skin left behind will feed other omnivores and carnivores in the local area and slightly increase their spawn rate. If you leave the bones behind, one could argue they'll eventually fertilize the ground and perhaps the spawn rate of flora gets a slight increase. A very slight bump every time some of this stuff is left behind, so it doesn't overwhelm the system. This way the system isn't truly wasting anything that should theoretically be there, even if you don't want it or run out of bag space.
As you increase in level, your ability to determine meat, offal, pelt, and bone quality should go up, as well as your ability to minimize waste while breaking down the animal, unlocking the ability to procure higher quality gatherables more often.
Larger animals that are able to defend themselves well should be able to actually put up a decent fight - wolves, bears, etc. This should even out the increased amount of resources collectible from those larger corpses for those trained in animal harvesting. For a quantity of lootable goods example, a player that doesn't train any of these things, or out-levels their knowledge level, could expect random fair-quality and the occasional uncommon-quality gatherable to drop from corpses at a rate of around 0-2 pieces of random loot per corpse depending on the size of the creature, while someone highly trained in animal harvesting could get 1-6 pieces of meat, 1 assortment of offal, 1-3 pieces of usable hide, and 1-3 piles of bones depending on the size of the beast, all at various qualities, increasing on average as their animal harvesting skill increases.
Meat and offal would obviously be used for cooking (assortment of offal could just be a generic recipe ingredient applicable to multiple specific organ recipes), hide would obviously be for tanning, and the bones could perhaps be sold to weapon and armor crafters, or alchemists for potion recipes / to processed into fertilizer. Base item quality obviously determines the processed and crafted item quality.
Humanoids
When it comes to common enemies, I really detest a wide array of garbage loot that clutters up your bags. If I wouldn't realistically pick up the shoddy armor they're wearing or the weird trinkets they're carrying, just leave that junk on the ground. I understand that this was originally put into MMOs to make the money the game is trying to give you for killing enemies more believable (not every random humanoid subrace uses your currency) but I would suggest making up for this by having common mobs occasionally drop higher value items instead, that actually appear cool and interesting, or could be used for crafting. This way, our bags don't get cluttered up so much, the idea that we'd actually loot those items off their corpses is more believable, and we get more useful loot off mobs instead of useless junk.
I also like really low drop chance items that start short quests or spawn short-term public group event chains similar to the dynamic, multi-stage, compounding events in GW2 that result in boss fights, temporary jumping puzzles, or other challenges that grant unique cosmetic or toy rewards for the people who happened to be there at the right moment. I really detest the belief that every item in the game should theoretically be attainable by any player at any time. I prefer a bit of chance, awe, and wonder in my games. There can be plenty of these items in the game to keep people from feeling like they'll never experience one, just as long as they don't drop often enough to feel common and repetitive. Like... Seriously, rare. Enough to the point where people might not believe that it actually happened because they tried to recreate the event for so long after you told them about it that they gave up. The events shouldn't be realistically farmable, averaging a spawn maybe once a month per server, and perhaps only occurring in certain seasons or certain times of day if relevant for the item drop that spawns it all.
Items of power like weapons, armor, or high level crafting materials should be reserved for higher level enemies. That being said, very rare recipe drops to craft unique and relevant cosmetic or functional armor and weapon pieces would be a great option for common enemies. You have to kill a goblin craftsperson, cook, or alchemist every once in a while, right?
I like it when mobs drop some small items I can sell and on rare occasions something unusual that is not a full piece of gear. Especially if it is something that turns into a quest. Examples:
On very rare occasions would I actually want to find a piece of gear directly and even then I'd enjoy it more to find a weaker version of it, that an artisan can improve for me with the right materials.
I like the fact that glint make a lot more sense that looting gold off of some random cervid, and I enjoy having some logical direction on where and how to find specific looking gear and other items based on who and what I'm fighting. Example, it would be very cool to be able to pick up a weapon with similar looks to the Goblin Sapper weapon FROM the mob that actually uses it. I feel like the rarity of drops should scale with the difficulty and level of the mobs as well as the level of player skill in applicable artisan professions.
A basic cow should drop leather either in rarity poor, common or uncommon. A Wyvern should drop leather either in rarity rare, heroic and epic. And a dragon either in rarity epic, legendary or for world bosses even artifact.
The chance to drop high rarity loot should be affected by the level of the individual mob. A level 10 Wyvern should only rarely drop epic leather and a level 50 Wyvern should drop it significantly more often.
A cow shouldn't drop full gear. An armored orc should drop it, by chance.
Apply that to all mobs and you have the best system in my opinion.
Of course, rare mobs should have a chance to have lucky drops. Normal ones? Well, maaaaaybe, but only if you can prevent bots from having free farm.
I have and have had many problems with regular mobs dropping powerful items. As such, my primary problem is "forced" farming.
If the rare item is valuable enough to be wanted by enough people then those mobs will become required hunting. Sure at discovery, the drop will only be considered the lucky drop the few got lucky enough to get the cool rare item, but as time passes that item will become more and more required. It will go from, "wow, cool item you got where you get it?" To, " wow you don't have RareDrop_X, I can't group with underequipped losers."
Sure you will still get this with boss mob drops, but for a rare item off some random nothing mob that I will have to invest a massive amount of time to farm or a massive about on money to buy, that will never feel good.
In addition, having RareDrop_X added into a normal mob's drop pool means it will attract players to kill the mob that might not even be looking to acquire the normal drops or would normally never be in that area farming that mob. So now, I am not only trying to not get PKed from rando wanderers, and competing for mob kills against players that also want the drops I want, but I am also competing against players who, are way over-leveled for the farm, who just want the rare drop. And who could also easily turn into a PKer whom I stand no chance against. That just ruins a day.
Instead, I feel the "rare drop" should just be increased drop amount. Planning out an hour to go farming for some item off regular mobs and getting done earlier than expected will always feel good. In addition, it will incentivize only the people who are looking for that particular drop to be your competition for farming that mob.
As far as for what items and upgrades in particular, as long as the items keep the economy balanced I don't have any strong feelings.
enhancement materials (like + 7 fire damage or +5 range etc)
could add a xp item so people that play alot can help there friends/guild mates level
gold
broken/bad weapons / broken/bad armour (could be used as materials) could be used as coastmetic
(note: normal materials should be obtained from artisan )
Do you feel good when regular mobs have a rare chance to drop powerful items?
for the nodes/guilds
I still prefer crafted items to retain the best stats. world drops with unique/niche effects is always fun.
I like this system for a couple of different reasons, it isn't the item but rather a way to buff your current gear. Also, some people chose to go for cards that would increase agility while others wanted the vitality cards. It also gave super high value to the ultra rare MVP mobs that could also drop their card at the same rate as the normal mobs. I feel this system was better than just rare items dropping.
Adding now:
Gemstones usually lose their meaning in games fairly early, though there is no specific reason this needs to be so, especially since Gems can be inset into the hilts of various weapons, wands, and armor. If Gemstones are, then in turn, treated as the 'enchantment slot' items, and Scribing is used to create Magic Schema which can be infused into Gems, the 'slot system' appears.
This makes sense in almost all fantasy worlds, since Gems specifically have crystalline structures and one can always reason that the specific crystalline structures they contain are what allow for certain forms of magic. Gems can also be reasonably pried out of gear that a player obtains from a humanoid or 'beastman' mob's gear, without having to reason that we can in any way wear the armor.
I wouldn't advise having Scribes or anyone else 'need to encounter or check or use every gem to get the idea of how', that's a pain point. Just leveling and practicing would be sufficient.
This also ties well enough to the 'distinction of Summoners pre-25 by Rings'.
Beyond this, the huge Materials discussion response comes back. Mobs generally should drop their materials at between 50 and 35% droprate when approximately at-level. Would suggest 'three levels above' droprates to be 50% if the mobs are strong/slow, resulting in a mob falling every 30s, and a player therefore obtaining 30 items in a session, which is a manageable economic inflow. Adjust for 'Glint' vs 'meaningful, non-Glint drop', with rarities as described above.
With the current solo TTK design mentioned offhandedly in another thread, droprates would have to be too low, or swingy, but if this design is vital to appeal to some player type, Glint should be the only thing that drops from these, and then need to go through that painful '10x of White Tier to get Green Tier'.
Strange herbs, roots, etc, that can only be obtained from Goblins/Minotaurs, make sense because of their very different lifestyles, and people having no good reason to devote time to what are essentially inferior or less flexible products, when they can simply be collected from monsters that will need to be culled anyway.
This then drives ecosystem design a bit better than most games.
Group game in an open location - white - green items and consumables.
Group game in a dungeon - white - blue items and consumables.
Dungeon raid - white - gold items and consumables.
World bosses - white - purple items and consumables.
There must be levels within the quality of an item, the highest level can only be crafted
Something like this, although I am against monsters dropping items, I would like all the items in the game to be created by crafters
Normal mobs drop up to uncommon.
"Mob leaders" (I don't mean world bosses, just mob leaders like mini bosses if they are going to be a thing) drop up to rare.
Dungeons, world bosses, exchanges for some form of currency (the PvP or the religious currency, for example) in high-level nodes drop/give Heroic and Epic items.
Craftable items range from Poor to Legendary, with Legendary items requiring ingredients from all seasons and different biomes, only gatherable by max tier gatherers as well as fully upgraded crafting stations.
Special server events or great achievements yield Artifact items. These are very rare, once per server items, or maybe a weapon as a reward for the number one arena spot every month (that changes every month unless the same player is number 1 again in the next month. I'm not saying introduce a new artifact weapon into the server every month for the top arena player).
The better gear should not be attainable by just grinding basic mobs for hours. Maybe an artifact cape for the first player to slay like a million mobs would be fun, but not just dropping an epic weapon off a wolf or something like that. While it does feel great in the moment, in the end, it brings down the value of the item since your story with this item is really just "I've put a playlist on and farmed mobs for 8 hours".
For the more rare items, it should be a whole story in itself to attain them, having to explore different areas for materials, working together with people to get all the refined materials or to clear dungeons or fight wars or spread your religion. When you look at your epic armor or your epic sword or whatever, these are the things that you should remember, not just "this dropped from X if you want this too, farm X for a couple of hours".
Giving legendaries to crafting instead of dungeons, etc., is a design choice that values players working together over players separating or soloing. I think it's the better way.
Artifacts are there because they are a huge part of world-building and giving character and writing stories. The biggest part won't benefit from them directly because they are so rare, but just having them be a thing and having the actual chance to get one if you really work for it and have a little bit of luck makes the world much more immersive and interesting.
All mobs you kill will drop glint depending on the quality of the mob killed, which is good. It also means you don't have to have mobs drop gold directly unless it makes sense for the mob. So no more wolves with pocket money.
I would like weapon and armor drops to make sense as well. If you want to farm swords, kill swordfighters; if you want to farm bows, kill rangers; if you want to farm wands, kill mages. This can be somewhat ignored for some mobs and especially bosses, but in general, I think it adds a lot of immersion and it just makes sense.
For immersion purposes, I expect regular mobs to drop items that are relevant to who they are and what they are. If I am fighting a skeleton with a sword/shield, I expect the ability to loot something relating to a sword/shield. It doesn't necessarily have to be a COMPLETED version of the sword/shield, but let it be something related to it. "Damaged shield, shatter shield, sword hilt". It would feel odd to go through an entire goblin camp, kill 75 goblins and then come out with glint.
Why is it when a player dies they actually drop non-glint related items, but NPC's don't. It's just an odd break in immersion for me there.
As a player of the Souls franchises, I really enjoyed fighting specific mobs in an attempt to acquire their entire armor set, or their weapon because it looks awesome. Being able to see a group of minotaurs with an awesome axe and then farming them fort he raw materials to create that axe would be fun. However, since currently they drop glints right now, i could just go farm a rapid spawn of weaker rabbits and take their glint. Convert it to gold and then buy the materials/axe from players and never once did i have to interact with the minotaurs to get it.
In my option, I could either A) farm anything for money and then buy it or
Going back to the earlier discussion referencing the Souls like games, I think as long as the item is "relevant" to the creature type, the region or dungeon I think it would be fine. For any WoW Classic/Vanilla players that were agility based, I am pretty sure most everyone remembers the https://www.wowhead.com/classic/item=1718/basilisk-hide-pants. It was weird that a beast had these pants on them, but made sense based off the basilisk hide. However, people farmed the crud out of these mobs because the pants were bananas! that caused a lot of conflict in the area too because if you had 4 people farming it, people had to make the decision to PvP them and face the ire of the other people and cause a mini war or just spend even more time hoping to get mobs you need.
I can see that being frustrating for others, but that is just one aspect I enjoyed when it came to "Rare drops" from "Regular mobs". I don't think every mob or mob type should contain such things, but having them exist in general can introduce interesting dynamics.