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.
Artisan Critiques from a Passionate Crafter
Kesarakk
Member, Braver of Worlds, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
in Artisanship
Like many players, my passion in MMOs is spending several hours gathering and crafting. Part of the appeal is not a simple "Make something better than I have" or even a "I could make a good profit off of this", though these are both certainly factors. I would argue that Artisanship, and the desire to gather and craft in general, comes from the appeal of survival games. Ashes of Creation is bringing us back to the roots of the MMO genre, which in many ways is an older cousin to the survival genre. Our desire to spend large amounts of time in the wilds searching for resources or shaping iron into weapons and armor runs as deep as another player's desire to crush enemy players and traverse the long darkness of discovered dungeons. With that in mind, here is what I (and I believe many other crafters) would like to see:
Simplified Crafting
As it stands, Artisanship has too many hands in each other's baskets and needs to be toned down, at least until a player reaches a Journeyman or higher level of skill. Case and Point: Weaponsmithing. If I want to make a sword, this is the current process:
1. Mine ore
2. Mine stone
3. Gather wood for fuel
4. Use stone to make weapon mold
5. Refine the gathered ore into fittings
6. Craft sword
At face value, it doesn't look complicated. However, this is not friendly to anyone who is either new to MMOs or wants to try their hand at crafting. In total, you have 4 Artisan Classes touching a simple sword (Mining, Logging, Stonemasonry, and Weaponsmithing). That's way too much and too complicated, especially since one player won't be able to do this on their own (allegedly). This is wrong. As it stands, there's too much friction with crafting that makes it not fun and more tedious than it should be.
Here is how it should actually look:
1. Mine ore
2. Refine Ore into fittings
3. Craft sword
Half as many steps to achieve the same results. There's an argument to be made with including other classes in crafting but not when a player is first trying to get their feet under them and learning the system. Ease players into it. Don't throw it at them all at once.
I'd also like to add my disapproval with adding fuel to crafting stations. I get it, it gives Loggers a way to make some coin, but it just feels dumb. Especially since there's a "tax" to use the crafting stations. Please, remove one or the other. If the design is that crafting is a way to fund a node, I'm fine with that. Just don't expect me to pay a tax to use a station after already paying another player for some wood (Which is also going to be taxed). If I'm a citizen of a node, it should be a benefit to use said crafting stations tax free since I'm already paying citizen taxes. Whatever the case is going to be, I pay enough taxes IRL, I don't have them added to my video games.
On weapon molds: I want to say, I actually like this. However, the mold should only be used to give the weapon aesthetics and should be optional AND should be something smiths can craft. Stonemasonry should be reserved for player housing and node construction. If I'm a Kaelar, I'm already being "trained" in how "we" make our weapons and armor. However, if I like the look of the Dunir or the Vek, then having molds makes sense to achieve that look. I believe ESO has a similar system with their runes and that was fun to use.
Crafting Timers
These take way too long. A minute to craft a single piece of anything is just plain annoying. To make matters worse, you can only do a single craft at a time. Sure, you can leave the crafting station and let it "cook" but a minute is too short to do anything. This gripe is about efficiency, and I think most players agree this needs to change.
If you want to have these timers at crafting stations, I would like to suggest the following updates:
Each craft is 5 seconds long. Adding more crafts to the queue also adds time. As an example:
1 healing potion takes 5 seconds to craft. If I wanted to craft a stack of 10 healing potions, then the timer is extended to 50 seconds. Additionally, this timer can be reduced based off how I am allocating my points in the artisan skill (when those come online).
With this example, I can go out into the world and quest, dungeon, do caravans, or whatever else. Gather what herbs I come across and at the end of my activities in the world, I can come home and start crafting those herbs. Once I set the queue, I am free to do other things like repair, sell items, visit the market, and visit the local inn to get my buffs ready to go back out. Then, I can come back to my crafting stations and collect my potions for my next outing or take them to market.
Having long timers is not a sin but having long timers make sense is divine.
Resource Scarcity
In the Alpha, the allocation of resources is completely backwards and certainly needs to be addressed. What I should be finding is more Copper and Tin rather than Iron or other types of ore. All I've heard on my server is complaints that no one can progress their crafting because they can't find enough Copper but there's plenty of other nodes out there that they can't even touch yet.
My assumption is that the resources are tied to a Node's development. As the nodes are already at stage 3 we are running into more stage 3 materials than stage 1. This needs to be adjusted. At stage 3 it should be "easier" to find things like iron than copper but copper should still be in abundance.
Final Point: I would also like to see a resource tracker added to the game. It's nothing more than a quality of life but I'd feel more comfortable traversing through the dangerous wilds if I had an icon on my minimap telling me about a nearby resource that is worth the trouble of me going off the road.
Farming
Disclaimer: Yes, yes, yes. This is an Alpha and there's a lot of things that haven't been added and what not.
However, I must point out my disappointment with Farming. When I think of farming, and I believe others do too, I'm thinking of a plot of land where I have to till the soil, plant my seeds, water as needed, and then reap the harvest once its matured. Relegating Farming to a crafting station where you magically turn seeds into produce is not fun at all. I'm sure Intrepid is already aware of this and has plans but still want my disappointment heard.
Animal Husbandry
Something I'd like to see added here is a "Breaking" mechanic. For those that are unaware, horses don't like people on their backs. They must first be "broken in" and tamed before they feel safe enough to allow a rider on them. I would like a similar system added to the game. Ark: Survival Evolved, has a version of this when taming creatures like a Unicorn and it's pretty fun. I think adding this into the game would be pure gold. And to clarify: The "Breaking" mechanic should apply to both wild caught creatures and those bred in captivity. The principal is the same.
Final Note
The biggest red flag I've seen so far with Ashes of Creation is the unfriendly approach to newer players and alts. The game is designed with the belief that servers will have their "max" number of players at launch and those players will remain static through the game's life. This is the wrong assumption and could spell disaster for such a beautiful game.
Players will come and go, and new players will want to join, especially as the game gains popularity. The quickest way to ruin their experience is not having a path for them to follow in the early levels. If the nodes have developed to the point where the resources, creatures, etc. are too high level for them, they won't stick around long enough to immerse themselves in Verra.
Likewise, for those of us who enjoy playing alts, it will be an equally rough road to go down. There needs to be a static base to this game so that new players and player alts have the same chances to level and experience the game that we in the Alpha are having right now. This note is a much broader point but even in the context of Artisanship, there are issues with the design.
Simplified Crafting
As it stands, Artisanship has too many hands in each other's baskets and needs to be toned down, at least until a player reaches a Journeyman or higher level of skill. Case and Point: Weaponsmithing. If I want to make a sword, this is the current process:
1. Mine ore
2. Mine stone
3. Gather wood for fuel
4. Use stone to make weapon mold
5. Refine the gathered ore into fittings
6. Craft sword
At face value, it doesn't look complicated. However, this is not friendly to anyone who is either new to MMOs or wants to try their hand at crafting. In total, you have 4 Artisan Classes touching a simple sword (Mining, Logging, Stonemasonry, and Weaponsmithing). That's way too much and too complicated, especially since one player won't be able to do this on their own (allegedly). This is wrong. As it stands, there's too much friction with crafting that makes it not fun and more tedious than it should be.
Here is how it should actually look:
1. Mine ore
2. Refine Ore into fittings
3. Craft sword
Half as many steps to achieve the same results. There's an argument to be made with including other classes in crafting but not when a player is first trying to get their feet under them and learning the system. Ease players into it. Don't throw it at them all at once.
I'd also like to add my disapproval with adding fuel to crafting stations. I get it, it gives Loggers a way to make some coin, but it just feels dumb. Especially since there's a "tax" to use the crafting stations. Please, remove one or the other. If the design is that crafting is a way to fund a node, I'm fine with that. Just don't expect me to pay a tax to use a station after already paying another player for some wood (Which is also going to be taxed). If I'm a citizen of a node, it should be a benefit to use said crafting stations tax free since I'm already paying citizen taxes. Whatever the case is going to be, I pay enough taxes IRL, I don't have them added to my video games.
On weapon molds: I want to say, I actually like this. However, the mold should only be used to give the weapon aesthetics and should be optional AND should be something smiths can craft. Stonemasonry should be reserved for player housing and node construction. If I'm a Kaelar, I'm already being "trained" in how "we" make our weapons and armor. However, if I like the look of the Dunir or the Vek, then having molds makes sense to achieve that look. I believe ESO has a similar system with their runes and that was fun to use.
Crafting Timers
These take way too long. A minute to craft a single piece of anything is just plain annoying. To make matters worse, you can only do a single craft at a time. Sure, you can leave the crafting station and let it "cook" but a minute is too short to do anything. This gripe is about efficiency, and I think most players agree this needs to change.
If you want to have these timers at crafting stations, I would like to suggest the following updates:
Each craft is 5 seconds long. Adding more crafts to the queue also adds time. As an example:
1 healing potion takes 5 seconds to craft. If I wanted to craft a stack of 10 healing potions, then the timer is extended to 50 seconds. Additionally, this timer can be reduced based off how I am allocating my points in the artisan skill (when those come online).
With this example, I can go out into the world and quest, dungeon, do caravans, or whatever else. Gather what herbs I come across and at the end of my activities in the world, I can come home and start crafting those herbs. Once I set the queue, I am free to do other things like repair, sell items, visit the market, and visit the local inn to get my buffs ready to go back out. Then, I can come back to my crafting stations and collect my potions for my next outing or take them to market.
Having long timers is not a sin but having long timers make sense is divine.
Resource Scarcity
In the Alpha, the allocation of resources is completely backwards and certainly needs to be addressed. What I should be finding is more Copper and Tin rather than Iron or other types of ore. All I've heard on my server is complaints that no one can progress their crafting because they can't find enough Copper but there's plenty of other nodes out there that they can't even touch yet.
My assumption is that the resources are tied to a Node's development. As the nodes are already at stage 3 we are running into more stage 3 materials than stage 1. This needs to be adjusted. At stage 3 it should be "easier" to find things like iron than copper but copper should still be in abundance.
Final Point: I would also like to see a resource tracker added to the game. It's nothing more than a quality of life but I'd feel more comfortable traversing through the dangerous wilds if I had an icon on my minimap telling me about a nearby resource that is worth the trouble of me going off the road.
Farming
Disclaimer: Yes, yes, yes. This is an Alpha and there's a lot of things that haven't been added and what not.
However, I must point out my disappointment with Farming. When I think of farming, and I believe others do too, I'm thinking of a plot of land where I have to till the soil, plant my seeds, water as needed, and then reap the harvest once its matured. Relegating Farming to a crafting station where you magically turn seeds into produce is not fun at all. I'm sure Intrepid is already aware of this and has plans but still want my disappointment heard.
Animal Husbandry
Something I'd like to see added here is a "Breaking" mechanic. For those that are unaware, horses don't like people on their backs. They must first be "broken in" and tamed before they feel safe enough to allow a rider on them. I would like a similar system added to the game. Ark: Survival Evolved, has a version of this when taming creatures like a Unicorn and it's pretty fun. I think adding this into the game would be pure gold. And to clarify: The "Breaking" mechanic should apply to both wild caught creatures and those bred in captivity. The principal is the same.
Final Note
The biggest red flag I've seen so far with Ashes of Creation is the unfriendly approach to newer players and alts. The game is designed with the belief that servers will have their "max" number of players at launch and those players will remain static through the game's life. This is the wrong assumption and could spell disaster for such a beautiful game.
Players will come and go, and new players will want to join, especially as the game gains popularity. The quickest way to ruin their experience is not having a path for them to follow in the early levels. If the nodes have developed to the point where the resources, creatures, etc. are too high level for them, they won't stick around long enough to immerse themselves in Verra.
Likewise, for those of us who enjoy playing alts, it will be an equally rough road to go down. There needs to be a static base to this game so that new players and player alts have the same chances to level and experience the game that we in the Alpha are having right now. This note is a much broader point but even in the context of Artisanship, there are issues with the design.
1
Comments
I will mainly add my two cents to your paragraph about simplified crafting:
I really like your idea to gradually increase the need for other professions at later stages of the process to make it easier for less experienced or complete genre beginners to get into the Artisanship system. Your example for weaponsmith strikes true, I chose this as my profession and the experience with it is abyssmal so far. I think weaponsmithing is the only profession that doesnt craft anything which others need right now, which is frustrating. Not as much as the Copper Crisis, but almost. Besides that we usually craft one or two pieces per character, instead of 3/5/8 armor pieces or even 5 for jewelcrafting.
I agree that the system as is is way too complex for inexperienced players to get a grasp especially with how rare tutorials and hand holding is. I really dont mind and like it, but your scenario about the development of the player base is realistic, so we should try to incorporate such player types into the system early on.
When you are talking about Simplified Crafting, I would like to propose Skill Based Crafting. With how much effort you have to put into gathering and processing it feels very unbalanced to have a one-click-solution for the actual crafting (which takes 2 seconds, mind you, the processing is what's taking so much time).
I would really like to see to have some form of skill based mechanic that you can change the crafting outcome with. Make it optional, so that if you just want to grind some XP out you can let random chance decide, but if you want to put your heart into it it should be possible to get results on the high end of the stat variance. So I am really looking forward to the future design of the crafting system.
So I don't have any problem with crafting being complicated and requiring multiple disciplines. Crafting time I do agree could be addressed, but I would prefer it to be more diegetic rather then quick and easy. Somethings should be quick and easy, where as others I would prefer taking much longer. For example, weaving thread is something that should be quick to produce, but you often need a lot thread for any given job.
Where as ore smelting and weapon/armor smithing I could see taking as much as 30-60 minutes per job, maybe longer at higher levels.
I think crafting time should be context sensitive, rather then once size fits nobody,.
Fuel likewise should be diegetic and context sensitive. Combustibles for fire related activities, like smithing, oils for tanning, water and/oil for cooking, fabric for weaving, etc.
Resource scarcity is very much an issue. Likewise I'd prefer it to be much more diegetic, where you find most ores and stone in mines and caves, rather then laying around the surface for no good reason. So you'd have actual copper mines and iron mines, etc to fight over.
Everything else is obviously incomplete and not fully implemented, so I don't have a lot to say about it.
come up with a new system besides arbitrary time gate
I posted my own thread, but my view is that you shouldn't have to mine the ore to level processing, and you shouldn't have to process the ore to level gathering if you don't want to. On the 3-level crafts, gatherers just sell mats to the processors. If they want to every one of the gatherers has a 2-stage craft (cook, jeweller, etc.), where the profession has a material that affects the final product.
Each profession needs to have a fixed province. I don't think you let gatherers "Own" the processed article through processing. Gatherers should IMHO get a straight cash reward for dropping raw materials off at the processor.
A person who wants to level processing buys the ore or fibre or wood etc. (that has been dropped off at that processor) as part of the fee, and then walks off with the processed good, to sell to crafters.
Right now every gathering profession is a prerequisite of every processing profession, which is a prerequisite of every crafting profession. It is completely unworkable. There has to be a free market economy implemented to allow specialization.
Now, this may be where they are going with it, but are just prioritizing.
Overall I feel like all crafting is pretty much in a state of only being a placeholder and that the true crafting will be implemented at a later phase when they want us to test that, but I am also hoping that the developers are reading these forums and at least taking note of what the current issues and ideas are. With that in mind these are my thoughts.
While I do understand the intent of no one crafter being able to "do it all" I feel that the current level of interdependence is too high. @StevenSharif has stated that it will be quite the accomplishment to become a Grand Master in any one of the artisan skills and that person will make a name for themselves since there will be very few Grand Masters on each server. And there's the rub, if you have interdependence on 3-5 other grand masters for your own ability to be a grand master, you then have to hope / wait for those grand masters to appear on your server and hope that they are in an area where you can commit the travel time to them to work together.
Lets look at Jewel Cutting for example. From my limited testing so far, I will need a minimum of a miner to gather gems and metals, a metalworker to process the metal into usable metal (currently fragments), and then the actual jewel cutter to make the necklace, for now I can chop a few trees as a novice to use a fuel but not sure if this will change. To make that necklace at GM level (and supposing it does not need more ingredients from other crafters), then all three of these professions will have to be at GM level, and of course as a player I can only be a GM in two making me reliant on no less that one other player. Ok thats not too bad, now lets say I'm attempting to be the first GM Jewel Cutter on the server, but there is no GM Metalworker, Ok, I forsee this and as I was leveling JC I also worked on Metalworker, it's poised to be GM soon too, now I'm reliant on the Miner. Ok there are 10 - 15 Master Miners on the server, and say 6 GM miners. The closest GM Miner is 3 hours of travel away from where I'm based (the total map is supposed to be ~800ish square km on land, currently Riverlands is ~55 square km or 1/15th the total map). We strike up a conversation and he has the skill but not the resources I need since they dont spawn in his area. I find another GM Miner and they are 4.5 hours away but they do have the mats I need. Now if I am lucky they will be willing to meet me half way, all while avoiding being killed and dropping the materials, or I have to make the whole trip, collect the materials and then realize that the nodes in their area dont have high enough crafting stations so I have to transport it back to my home, again while avoiding being killed and dropping the materials. Finally I make it back to my home node and I am able to craft 4 items cause thats all the mats the miner had. Tomorrow, rinse and repeat.
What if there are no grand master miners on the server yet, or what if i have not made it to grand master metalworker. Then my crafting is stagnant until someone else spends the drastic amount of time to level to the grand master level, and then I will have yet another crafter that could be hours away from me that I will have to work / trade with. There is also the chance that no one on a given server will want to spend that amount of time and there will not be nor never be a grand master in some professions.
I am terrified that this is how the scenario will play out. This is possibly the most basic example I can think of, but I think that at the top tier there is going to be many more ingredients required to make the item, and many more inter-dependencies. Using the sword example from the first post thats 4 professions (Mining, Metalworking, Stonemasonry, and Weapon Smithing). Leatherworking is even more complex with Hunting, Farming, Weaving, Tanning, Leatherworking. With the vast distances and the cap of only two grand master professions per person the sheer amount of professions required to craft is massive. I feel like one of the two of these things has to give, either reduce the amount of required professions per item, or allow characters to grand master more than two.
Another issue that I see is that with the current (as far as I have been able to research, still looking for confirmation @Roshen ) methodology of Grand Master also taking up a Master slot, and a Journeyman slot, and an Apprentice slot, this means that in total you can have only 5 professions above the novice level with 17 professions that are at novice. Because of this, you have to pick your professions quite early on in the game, otherwise you stand to lose progress.
For example, lets say I don't want to go into a specific profession until I am max level of 50. While going through the world and gaining my xp I decide to gather since I am passing all these nodes anyway. So along my journey to level 50 I gain 19 levels in lumberjacking, 13 in mining, 17 herbalism, 16 hunting, and 12 fishing. Now I am level 50 and decide I want to become a jewel cutter. Ok, that should not be a problem, I have been mining. Ok, looks like I need to demote fishing so I can advance jc, not an issue, I don't really need fish anyway. Now I also need to drop hunting as well because I need to melt the metal I have been mining, it was almost journeyman level and will have to drop back down to 10 or, maybe drop lumberjacking instead since I probably won't need wood for anything in jc, but its even closer to journeyman and would still have to drop to 10.
If each tier of professions did not also count as the tier below it this would result in 8 professions locked at novice, 5 at journeyman, 4 at apprentice, 3 at master and 2 grand master. This does not allow one crafter to "do everything", you will still be reliant on other people and professions to complete the top tier items, but it allows people to at least provide lower tier items and materials and not be pigeonholed into 17 novice skills out of 22. By having 14 skills above novice it actually increases players working together because more people can provide goods at tiers below grand master.
I think some of your concerns will be the driving factor behind caravans and merchants, that's the intended system to distribute high end materials throughout the world to make sure they get where they are needed. With the current state I suspect we will see dedicated merchant guilds that are focused on moving stuff around for profit, either by request or by opportunity.
So the master metal worker 4 hours away won't be selling his stuff to you, he will be selling it to someone else and as a crafter you will probably benefit massively by establishing connections with those merchants.