Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Current Alpha 2 Fishing is Afk, and it should stay that way.
Sathrago
Member, Alpha Two
Now before you get the pitchforks let me say my piece. I have played just about every mmo that I could with fishing in it as I really enjoy taking up the role of a provider and love to fish irl. Sadly as the time has passed more and more games have gone really hard on creating elaborate systems to make sure fishing is not botted to oblivion. These systems can be fun for a time, but after a couple hundred hours I just dont want to do it anymore. This is not just the mini games fault so let me explain.
In games like Albion Online or Mortal Online 2, you have to play a mini-game to catch fish. The valuable ones are often found in contested zones where you can lose everything upon death. Ashes of Creation is only dropping materials, but fish are classified as such, so in general, you'll be looking over your shoulder for PvP while fishing. Having to also play a mini-game in these zones feels like too much, and I don't care for it.
On the flip side, players using AFK fishing won't be as safe, making them prime targets for those looking to score easy kills. This promotes active engagement from players to deal with PvP, while not holding them hostage to a repetitive mini-game just to catch standard fish.
In most games, fishing becomes less impactful after the first month of a release or expansion. In Ashes, I hope we can break fishing into different parts to create progression that adds value to what we catch, even with an AFK fishing option.
First, regions should feature unique fish that correspond to regional recipes. For example, a special oil made from fish in a desert river or a hearty meal made from ocean fish. This creates local specialties that can be exported to other areas for profit.
Next, we could break "sports fishing" (using ArcheAge as a model) into two parts. The first would be standard ArcheAge fishing, where players search for seagulls or feeding frenzies to catch large, valuable fish through a mini-game. The second type would be "mob fishing," where special bait is used to spawn valuable monsters to kill or tame, based on local wildlife. These monsters would offer good experience, loot, and an engaging challenge, allowing fishers to spawn fights for themselves and their friends.
This gives us three types of fishing: AFK fishing, active mini-game fishing, and mob fishing.
Anyway I could ramble on this topic for hours so I'll end it there. Let me know what Ya'll think!
Edit: For afk fishing I would propose add fishing nodes (in fishable water) every 30 yards or so that have a finite amount of fish. The land management system will most likely cover this. You will need to move, and the more people fishing your spot the faster you will need to move. What I want is not to have to constantly play a mini game for the basic fish every 10 seconds. let me take my hands off the keyboard and chill for a few minutes assuming the fishing node is full. I would say it takes 5 to 10 minutes to fish out one of these areas by yourself.
In games like Albion Online or Mortal Online 2, you have to play a mini-game to catch fish. The valuable ones are often found in contested zones where you can lose everything upon death. Ashes of Creation is only dropping materials, but fish are classified as such, so in general, you'll be looking over your shoulder for PvP while fishing. Having to also play a mini-game in these zones feels like too much, and I don't care for it.
On the flip side, players using AFK fishing won't be as safe, making them prime targets for those looking to score easy kills. This promotes active engagement from players to deal with PvP, while not holding them hostage to a repetitive mini-game just to catch standard fish.
In most games, fishing becomes less impactful after the first month of a release or expansion. In Ashes, I hope we can break fishing into different parts to create progression that adds value to what we catch, even with an AFK fishing option.
First, regions should feature unique fish that correspond to regional recipes. For example, a special oil made from fish in a desert river or a hearty meal made from ocean fish. This creates local specialties that can be exported to other areas for profit.
Next, we could break "sports fishing" (using ArcheAge as a model) into two parts. The first would be standard ArcheAge fishing, where players search for seagulls or feeding frenzies to catch large, valuable fish through a mini-game. The second type would be "mob fishing," where special bait is used to spawn valuable monsters to kill or tame, based on local wildlife. These monsters would offer good experience, loot, and an engaging challenge, allowing fishers to spawn fights for themselves and their friends.
This gives us three types of fishing: AFK fishing, active mini-game fishing, and mob fishing.
- AFK fishing would yield farm fish, bulk-processed materials, and region-specific materials for local recipes. It would be the primary method for leveling fishing skills.
- Active (sports) fishing would provide rare materials, region-specific materials, rare farm fish, and trophy catches. This would be where high-value materials come from, including materials for mob fishing.
- Mob fishing would focus on adventurer experience, rare material drops, monster tames/eggs, and potentially unique boss fights. This content is more group-oriented, allowing fishers to lead fishing trips that spawn monsters ranging from soloable to world boss level. Whether this is RNG-based or uses crafted recipes, both could be tested to see which feels better.
Anyway I could ramble on this topic for hours so I'll end it there. Let me know what Ya'll think!
Edit: For afk fishing I would propose add fishing nodes (in fishable water) every 30 yards or so that have a finite amount of fish. The land management system will most likely cover this. You will need to move, and the more people fishing your spot the faster you will need to move. What I want is not to have to constantly play a mini game for the basic fish every 10 seconds. let me take my hands off the keyboard and chill for a few minutes assuming the fishing node is full. I would say it takes 5 to 10 minutes to fish out one of these areas by yourself.
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Comments
It's gathering a Resource, for crying out loud. I really hope there is no mini-game.
sure fishing doesnt need a minigame if u need to run around and fine fish spawn locations to click on.
Reason fishing tend to get a mini game is due to u can macro it if it doesnt compared to other gathering nodes where u need to find said node to harvest.
that being said archage deepsea fishing plz
processing as a whole will be afk. is that gonna suck?
For me yes. To me it means i am refining huge amounts to gain very little (make 100 chairs for 1% to the next crafting tier for example). But i am wondering how this all works with a small bag (as i understand it).
The point of making it afk is that it isnt considered abuse to use it freely. They already plan to crack down on bots and gold sellers. If large amounts of bots are being made to set a fisher up then that's a fault of their bot defenses and game design. Afk fishing should never be as profitable as active fishing. We can all agree on this. With the combination of open world pking and making it so that you need to move ever 5 or 10 minutes to different locations you should have a balanced system. The last thing I would do in order to stop any nickel and diming bots, is to make it so that fish that comes from the afk form of fishing cannot be sold to vendors for pennies. I would honestly expand this to all raw materials to be honest. If bots are out in droves gathering the sale to vendors will cause a massive inflation of coin in circulation. Which makes everyone's game experience worse.
for sure. though this made me giggle because that means every obnoxious person is going to train mobs onto fishers.
But built-in AFK fishing sounds a lot like built-in AFK mob farming that also brought out the pitchforks against Throne and Liberty. It sounds like fishing progression will take longer because of it. IE, now I need to find a safe place to AFK fish overnight rather than just fish manually for an hour. Or worse, fishing rewards are actually good, and everyone has to fish all night to keep up.
Rather than do that, why not have an optional fishing minigame that provides bonus xp, but no extra rewards? IE, you minigame while leveling for 5x xp per cast. This could work into a regional specialization of fishing (saltwater, river, lake, etc) that may come in a later content release as a separate skill grind.
Then, once you cap fishing xp, you stop minigaming. Possibly have a small bonus to fished quantity (not quality/rarity) for playing the minigame, like 10%. That makes it skippable, but rewards those who like the game a little.
The ironic thing about the throne and liberty bot is that they removed the bot that let you farm endlessly, and didnt boost drop rates to compensate. so grinding open world mobs manually is the most insane thing you can do in that game. But people are forced to do it for certain BiS items and its just awful gameplay.
But I digress. It seems like your option is similar to what BDO currently does, right? The main reason I was hesitant to follow that path is that I want the truly valuable fish to come from sport and mob fishing, as per my suggestions. The AFK fishing should primarily yield bulk goods needed for leveling up processing/crafting professions and for creating lower-tier items. That way, it’s fine for there to be a large supply on the market because the real value in fishing will come from the other two methods.
Afk fishing will have always have a role but I also dont want a situation like New world where iron ore is more valuable than orichalcum ore. (t1 metal vs t5). So a balance will need to be found.
@topic, while I personally would love having something to do while reading a book, I don't think it's healthy to have AFK farming in MMOs.
Yes.
Nearly any where a mob has an actual wander range and Rogues have the ability to escape them. Also since Fishers don't move, pulling any enemy with AoE that you know you can live through or heal through, onto an AFK player who will also be hit by the AoE, counts.
Maybe there are very few games like this anymore and I just happen to prefer them, though.
Making me feel like a white knight now but, just in case...
This isn't true, the droprates are changed (obv for at least some people, grinding certain open world mobs that have good droprates is not 'awful gameplay', but that's just the design space of the game).
This applies to Fishing also in many ways but I am only engaging on behalf of someone else rn so:
"Fishing Minigames are great but since TL's Fishing is great, my group's fisher only hopes that Ashes doesn't use AFK fishing so that she will want to actually play Ashes."
And as for me...
I'm surprised I have to even mention basic MMO design like 'why games with proper economies should never have afk fishing', but I 'know' that the minigame is just not implemented for Ashes yet. This topic doesn't really 'mean' anything, unfortunately, for that reason. Intrepid's staff are veterans, supposedly. They're not going to leave afk fishing in this game.
"processing is afk" sure, sort of? It still requires the player to feed resources into that process. Where with fishing you can just go fish in water, as far as I understand.
Not to mention I bet the fishing resources market gets completely inflated if everyone just fishes when they are afk.
New World and T&L fishing are where its at.
Variety. This is the keyword for many decisions to come. The more variety the better. AFK fishing to cook some mediocre food to help leveling and save a bit of money on vendor food? Good idea.
AFK anything that has any impact? Probably not a good idea.
AFK fishers will be killed a lot, so that's always fun too.
So will they be adding a mini game to every rock and tree as well? Its the same concept really. I would much rather the regular fishing work the same as the rest of the gatherers. the only difference would be that instead of moving after every rock or tree, you fish for like five or 10 minutes in a spot before needing to change spots. if the zones you fish in have a finite amount of fish that everyone can fish from, you would quickly need to move if more people fish that exact spot. This also ties into the node's ecosystem health. overfishing could cause events like everything else. So it might actually be of great interest for a node to police their waterways for over zealous fishers.
I understand the aversion to afk fishing, but there are ways to make it valuable, viable, and non-exploitive. Region specific materials, limited fishing in a single location, potential for loss through pvp, and making sure the true value comes from the other active forms of fishing that I suggested.
The thing about the mini games that TL and new world have made is this, they can and are being botted anyway. In ways that their devs either do not care or do not know about. If intrepid are actually committed to dealing with bots then it should be ok to make a more relaxed version of fishing. Because the only thing required for that sort of botting would be the intrusive control of moving the character across the map. This will be much easier to track and ban for than a macro that perfectly replicates all the movements needed to play the mini game.
keep me engaged, if you want autobattlers and absent farming stick to gaming on your phone...
I for one would love to see some of the gathering forms seen in Salem 'nooks and crany' gathering I called it. Basically as you walked around their were lots of little objects like rocks and stumps that were just little openable inventory that have a chance to contain random things like acorns, worms etc.
I'd imagine these items are not primary components in recipies, but are mostly 'bonus' options like you could add a worm to the fertilizer recipie to make it a higher tier. Gathering skills might not even be needed at all to get them, or if desired you need a certain level to see certain item types.
Same could be said for crafting...
I understand some players just want to zone out when playing.
However some players want more than just float clicking, hit start and wait and press (f) on a thing "gameplay'
I am hoping for fishing to indeed be a mini game that isn't just a bar/window slider. Where snapping a line matters and if you don't have the correct bait at the correct place during the right time and season you aint catching nothin.
at this rate only fishing will be a mini game so are you suggesting mining, lumberjacking, harvesting, and hunting also get mini games everytime they interact with a node?