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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
We're talking about a skill line, stick to the discussion at hand.
As others have pointed out, this is wrong.
People will be able to go out and finish leveling without a group. They won't be able to participate in group content, but they can finish leveling.
That is not what freeholds are preventing people from doing. If they were, I'd be fine with it.
What a freehold should be (and likely will be, 12 months after launch) is something you need in order to craft specific items or process specific materials. These items and materials should not be key to leveling each given profession, they should be an aside to that leveling process.
This is again missing the point.
Crafting needs others simply due to it's nature. You need people to harvest the materials you want to process, and you need other people to purchase them. That is a dependency akin to what you are talking about here.
In terms of how you make decisions on what inter-player dependencies you have in a game, it's quite simple. If a player can start a path (leveling process, quest chain etc) solo, they should be able to finish it solo. If you want to add a dependency to that realm (such as group content), you don't make it a requirement to finish that path that players could start solo, you make it either a shortcut, or an optional extra.
If players can start the path of leveling up as a processor in a node, they should be able to finish leveling it up there. If you then want to add some scarcity on top of that using freeholds, have at it.
no, we are talking about leveling and artisanship being immersive. you stick to the discussion at hand. if anything, limiting artisanship is more immersive. imagine you are in a middle age village, there are 10 blacksmiths in that village but only one furnace. 9 blacksmiths will have to find something else to do.
anyways, back to aoc, the point isn't a skill line. the underlying argument is requiring other players to access things in the game. you also ignore dmy example of not being able to stun someone since I need someone else to stagger them first. this is also a skill line. should I simply not get the ability when I level up or should I find people to play with? you can say the same about max level processing.
also, processing serves a function. i get it, there are people who wanna rp and farm tomatoes. you just have to farm t1-t4 tomatoes, not t5 tomatoes. you are still rping farming tomatoes. or join a guild and get a fh to farm tomatoes. restricting processing is there for a reason. intrepid has all the info about the game, not the players.
Your example is irrelevant because it has absolutely nothing to do with skill line progression even if you type out the words to make an obviously empty claim that it is. Of course I'm ignoring it.
The underlying argument is that it makes zero sense that in every single other aspect of the game, you can prevent someone's progress only by competing with them, fighting, beating them to the punch in the open world, where all the best rewards are.
This is true of Gathering, which is done in the open world and you CANNOT gather top-end materials in your safe zones (Freeholds), and in fact requires going to Lawless lands.
It's true of Crafting, which requires raiding and clearing dungeons for the best recipes, or a ton of gold that you have to earn by playing the game in the open world, and you can only craft those recipes in a high level node. You cannot passively acquire these things within your safe zones (Freeholds) or craft them there.
The only artisan path that proves the exception the this idea that players shouldn't get the best rewards from safe zones is Processing, and in this case the best rewards only come from those safe zones in this current design.
That's on top of how shortsighted it is to even have the potential that the inaction of other players could put a hard stop on the progress of a skill line.
You really want me to acknowledge your irrelevant example? It would only be remotely similar if you couldn't unlock the Ultimate of your imaginary 'Stun' skill line unless you got someone's permission first, and then you'd lose at their whims.
beside it doesn't even matter. not everything has to be equal. you can simply trade for the mats you need and craft your gear. fh are going to be very contested. the point of the artisan professions is to help you get items. the point is to get the item, doesn't matter how you get it. rping as a tomato farmer is something extra.
Again, in my mind, this is simple. If an activity is solo - such as crafting - it shouldn't require other people to access it.
Freeholds are as safe as you could possibly be in the world.
See again:
This is the discussion. Not gear, not stuns, those quotes right there are the topic.
Skill line progress shouldn't ever be gatekept based on needing permission from another player to advance.
This goes for artisan skill lines. It goes for combat skill lines. It goes for social organization progress.
Not a single one should ever demand you have to get permission from some other player just to complete progression in a skill line.
Like when can use "Nets" for fishing deeper than throwing just a bait on a fishing Cord into the Water - and use simple fishing Rods for - well - fishing on the Surface.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
sure, but crafting isn't a solo activity in ashes. they turned it into a group activity. you can't make a sword without the materials provided by other people. you need people to farm those mats and give them to you. ashes is built around group play. crafting isn't inherently a solo activity, it was made like that in some games...even in real life, manual labor workers have assistants or other workers helping them.
also, what is the purpose of crafting? to get items to become stronger. what if you can get the items without crafting? this is the same as buying a drill. you don't care about the drill, you care about the hole in the wall. but you don't really care about the hole in the wall, you care about the nail in the hole and the painting you can hang. but you care about it because of how it makes you feel when you or others look at it.
Yes it is.
Sure, you need other people to gather, process or finish a product - which ever you aren't doing yourself. This is the same in most games - Ashes is not unique at all in this.
However, you don't need those people to be directly involved. You can simply purchase the materials and sell the results. The bulk of crafting in Ashes is still a solo activity, it is just that part of the processing professions that require a freehold that aren't.
If Ashes want crafting to be an actual group activity, then they can do what other a handful of other games have done - require multiple people to be involved in the actual item creation process at the time of the items creation.
That is the purpose of crafting to an adventurer.
The purpose of crafting to a crafter is vastly different to this.
I understand that the main point here is player access to a system required as progression for professions should not be able to be gatekeeped by other players.
But
I don’t particularly see an issue with the current design, part of the design ideas that I have seen from intrepid is exclusivity, and large achievement should require group effort, your complaining that the top 5% of processing/crafting shouldn’t be gatekeeped by other people but realistically only the top 5% of guilds will even have access to those mats from world bosses a solo player was never going to get access to those mats in the first place.
In the side of player experience earning your way into a freehold should feel like an achievement and should be achievable with effort but I still lean to the side of freeholds should be group owned. Always in node housing for casual players… which I will be
Exclusivity is fine, but not for levelig. There is a reason most games keep leveling distinct from any content designed to add exclusivity to a game. There is a reason you don't need to raid to level up in WoW, for example.
We are talking about Skill Lines. We aren't talking about the mats.
Processing shouldn't be treated differently than quite literally every other skill line in the game.
Imagine if you couldn't hit level50 without getting some waiver from a player, or you couldn't unlock a skill from your social org without getting a waiver from a player, or you couldn't fish in a particular zone with a waiver from a player.
Skill line progression should never be reliant on getting a permission slip signed.
And again, freeholds are as safe a space as you can possibly get. There is no risk to processing in them for a guild, cuz it's going straight to their base or their castle or to the player's personal storage or to a crafter to make gear that can't drop.
It's no more risky for them than the Processor who was denied entry to use their forge to finish the leveling process for their artisan line.
Journeyman is as high as you can get in processing without a freehold, and that tops out at level 30 - as in, you are processing items for up to level 30 gear.
It isn't a case of needing a freehold to process rare materials or anything, you need to it produce the base tier processed materials for basic tier gear for the last 20 levels of the game.
Saying it is about exclusivity is saying you think level 50 players should be using level 30 gear as standard, and only those with access to exclusive components and such should have access to level 40 or level 50 gear.
The whole thing is stupid, and all of you know it.
Edit to add; completely out of character for me, that last comment was aimed at some specific Intrepid staff as much as posters here.
You seem to be assuming their is no trade, and that only people who can make a thing will ever be able to get and use it. This is nonsense strawman argument of the highest order. Anyone who is processing at their Freehold will be selling the resulting processed materials to the Nodes because this is where both the customers and markets are, so the Mats become available for crafters to buy and craft with who would logically put their crafted products on that same market for sale.
Every Artisan is going to be gathering/processing/crafting more then they can personally consume and the physical seperation of all three activities (Wilds, Freehold, Node) is all to discourage vertical 'solo' play by individuals or groups. The system is designed to punish the player who stays exclusivly in one location without trading with the level cap, THEY are the ones who are stuck at level 30. It sounds like you just don't want to be capped and feel you should have the ability to make max level gear as a solo hermit, well tough luck the games designed to prevent that and it is right to do so.
What evidence do we have that a player can't raise their skill level higher then the station or material levels they are using? For all we know grinding a bunch of tier 3 mats at a tier 3 station can get you to skill level 4 or even 5 (all be it slowly). Maybe your achivable skill cap is what ever is highter the station or the materials, maybe it's capped at what ever is lower, maybe their is no cap at all. As far as I know for the character their is only the cumulative artisan level caping. That character cap makes it wastefull to get a skill level above the station/materials you have access too, but it donsn't make it impossible.
And what would be the point if they did? I could foresee possible mechanical advantages, like faster crafting of items below your max skill level, maybe more efficient use of materials etc. If such advantages exist then their will almost certainly be the ability to skill up above the station level.
Refer back to my same comment. There should not be any case in which progress is limited just because you can't get 'permission' from another player.
This is not competing over an area, or PvPing to reach a raid first, or engaging with the open world systems of risk. This is groups plopped down in the safest spots in the game being permitted to deny access to the highest end processing to the wider population, not through active competition, but just because they didn't tick a permission box in the UI settings.
Let high level Processing stations be a default building in high level nodes and this issue goes away, but as is, Processing is the ONLY aspect in which you're rewarded for having less risk.
No I'm not - not even close.
My assumption is limited to the notion that a player that starts off leveling a profession should be able to level that profession to the point where they can perform the function their profession performs for basic tier gear for players at all levels of the game.
Are you saying that you think this shouldn't be the case?
I am perfectly ok with not everyone being able to max out their chossen artisan skills, elite craftes get to be elite, they have earned it. If that involves actually interacting with other players for materials, stations etc that is GOOD. Agian you just seem to view reaching the top tier of craft skills as like reaching level 50 in adventuring when it is not. It's instead like taking down thouse open world boss fights, you need to earn it by being better then other folks, and yes that involves team work, no one takes down a world boss alone.
The only concern I might have would be economy wide issues like scarcity, the top crafted products being too expensive/rare but this looks highly unlikely in my opinion.
And lastly my own estimates are that their will be enough Freeholds to accomadate 1/3rd of the whole player base living on and accessing them, which should match up with everyone who has a GM processing skill, so their is unlikely to be any significant number of unsatisfied processors that your so worried about.
Note that I intend to be a Gatherer, as I like to move around and explore rather then stay in one spot. If I came in here and said "I should be able to max out my gathering without ever going somewhere that other players could kill me" because that woud "letting somone else gate my artisan progression" you would rightly call me a fool.
The second partner agree with, the first part is objectively wrong.
Being able to level to the point where you can craft basic tier gear for a level 50 player (or the components for it) is not elite crafting - that would be being able to craft best in alot gear.
If this restriction were placed on being able to process materials used for best in slot gear, it would be a great system. That would be elite crafting.
The problem is, that isn't what it is. It is a restriction on allowing people to process basic materials for the last 20 levels of the game.
Reaching the top tier of crafting absolutely is like reaching level 50 as an adventurer - the two are literally in parallel.
You say you want to be a gatherer, great. You are mistaken in your comparison here though - this isn't akin to people wanting to level up as a gatherer in areas where people can't attack then.
Rather, it would be akin to if you needed my (or someone just like me) express permission to gather any materials past level 30.
It isn't even remotely like that, and that you compare the two shows a distinct lack of understanding.
You go out into the open world, and if players are already harvesting what you want to harvest, you have the opportunity to fight them and take that spot for yourself. With Processing, you do not have that option of competition to finishing leveling an artisan line.
The closest comparable you could possibly get to frame it in terms of Gathering is if there were some item that could be placed down and then it bars anyone from harvesting a particular plant unless the person who placed it signs a permission slip to allow you to. You obviously wouldn't want that to be the case where you literally could not ever touch that plant right in front of you because the other player said 'no' with no risk on their part. They don't have to fight you over it, they just have to not say 'yes' to you.
How is it 'exactly the same' when you quite literally do not have an option to fight them for access? Are you really trying to compare group v group fighting in the open world to the resource investment of a full siege? And then on top of that the resource and gold investment still needed to win out in the bidding for a Freehold after the dust settles around a lvl0 node?
You can cry 'strawman' all day long, but your yelling and juvenile insults doesn't make the denials any more compelling.
The issue is, very, very simple: Players should never be denied progress based on someone ticking a box in the UI.
Players can't turn off people's ability to attack them to gain resources off them.
Players can't turn off dungeon doors to keep other groups from entering them to fight for it.
Players can't turn off their caravan's PvP area to keep people from attacking it.
Players can't turn off others' ability to harvest in an area.
But for Processing only, players can just turn off your ability to compete for use of a forge. Players can get the highest value items without contesting. Players can deny your ability progress using nothing but the game UI, rather than their groups coordination, their individual skill, or through taking risk.
That isn't the argument though.
You say we are using strawman arguments, but you are the one arguing points we are not making.
Sure, someone can prevent you from farming an area, but there are other areas where you can progress, or you can just come back later on when thst person has moved on.
If you don't have that freehold though, you are locked out. There are no other areas, and you can't just come back later.
It is very much you arguing against points we are not making - which is what a strawman argument is.
ok its 4 am, so I'm not sure if I got what you meant but...we saw that you can craft items with lower level mats, so you could craft level 50 items with level 30 mats then upgrade later using level 50 items. it wont be the same as crafting it with level 50 items, but it will definitely be stronger than a level 30 item. maybe 80% of a full t5 item.
the same happens for a level 30 item crafted with t5 mats. it will b stronger than a level 30 items crafted with level 30 items but not as strong as a level 50 item
see it always goes back to that. that's the root of the argument and you can apply that to everything. its also silly to try to remove that on a game with open world PVP and scarcity.
if I'm farming an open world dungeon and you need to farm it, I'm there, I'm going to kill you and take the mobs. if you wanna farm you need to ask for permission (or use force). its the same thing.
caravan runs? same thing. castle siege, same thing. freeholds? ask for permission or use force and take the node and the fh. this is ashes.
what a player thinks should or shouldn't happen might or might not be a good fit for a specific game. just because something is one way in one game, doesn't mean it must or should be like that in a different game.
now you are changing the argument. you are talking about time now. ok lets do it. what if my guild camps a rare herb for a month and your guild cant beat us in pvp? you can always come back after a month and get the herb, sure, but I can say the same thing about freehold. you can always come back later and siege the node then take the fh then process, the difference is the time of the day and scale of the battle.
Yeah, but that still isn't acceptable.
why not? this isn't an instance based game where everybody wins. you gotta fight for your stuff. the game is designed with friction and scarcity in mind. its not a bad design, it might not be your cup of tea though.
this is aimed at players who like fighting for their stuff. eventually, people will have their t5 weapons, it might just take a while for some. you could just farm something else and buy the t5 mats then craft.
if I cant make a red herb, ill just make blue herbs, sell them and buy the red herbs. its just pixels on the screen.