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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Diegetic Crafting and Gathering
Yoh
Member, Alpha Two
Crafting and gathering in Alpha 2 is a bit of a mixed bag. While the core concept and mechanics are quite interesting, the details are where it falters in my humble opinion. It is obviously incomplete, so I'm not going to be too harsh in my criticisms. However, one issue I frequently had was how non diegetic a lot of it was.
For instance, while I can understand how you would burn wood as fuel for a fire to smith or smelter ore, why the bloody hell are you using wood as fuel to weave fabric? Personally it rips me right out of the experience, and reminds me that I am not in fact in the world of Verra, I am playing a video game..... that's in early alpha.
It's not exactly immersive.
So, I would like to make a few criticisms and suggestions regarding the diegetic nature of crafting and gathering, so that by launch that we might have a system that is both engaging and immersive. The main areas of concern are timers, tools, fuel, and gathering locations.
Timers
The current approach to gathering and crafting timers is a one size fits nobody approach. All gathering takes either a small or larger amount of seconds, and most crafting takes various intervals of 1 minute. I would prefer a more context sensitive approach. Where some jobs are almost instant, where others can take 30 mins or longer.
For gathering, I can see that harvesting a bunch of daffodils, bushels of grain or berries, or other similar jobs that require gathering and cutting a lot of stuff, taking 15-30 seconds at least. Picking a single flower or herb on the other hand, should take at most a second.
I'm reminded of The Witcher 3, where you could easily pop from resource to resource, just grabbing things as you go. It's something I really enjoy when gathering. While I don't mind occasionally stopping to smell the preverbal flowers, doing it every time you want to do anything is a chore.
Where as some jobs like lumbering, should arguably take longer, but yield more resources per tree.
Crafting should likewise be similar. Weaving I could see being something I could see being somewhat quick, but requiring a lot of resources to crafting anything. Ie, each unit of thread or material doesn't take long to make, but you needs quite a bit of it to craft even a single piece of equipment. Where as on the opposite end of the scale, would be something like smithing and smelting, which doesn't doesn't require that many units of material, but does take a long time to cook. Where each step to smelt an ingot, then smith that into a weapon or armor piece is going to take 30 minutes each, at a minimum.
As such, I can see each artisan professions requiring differing amounts of time and dedication. Some can be reasonably quick, where others should be quite time consuming.
Different strokes for different blokes, as it were.
Tools
These I found to be overly gamey. Where you need certain ranks of equipment to gather with certain materials. I'm walking around with a god damn great sword, and your saying I can't cut the stem of a plant? It really rips me out of the game, when for all intents and purposes you should be able to gather something, but can't for arbitrary reasons. I've always hated when games do this.
I understand from a gameplay perspective why it is the way it is, but narrative and immersive experience it just plain doesn't make any sense.
So perhaps something more of a compromise then? Where you still have tools and ranks/quality, but your not barred from gathering anything. Instead, using the wrong tools for the job will A: greatly reduce your tool durability. B: have a non negligible chance to make a hash of it, and ruin the resource your trying to gather.
For example, a novice lumbering axe/saw is fine for young and soft wood, but if you try to cut hard or old wood, your probably going to destroy your axe before you finish the job, and even if you manage to cut the tree down, it's not going to be in a state the is much good for anything other then fire wood or wood chips.
Where having the right tool for the job reduces risk and improves quality.
But if all you want is firewood, well then just about anything will do.
Fuel
Speaking of firewood. Why in the blood hell is it used for everything? I can understand why crafting would want to use a resource for the processing of materials, but way is it just all combustibles?
That makes sense for fire related activates, but not for anything else. As such I think that each type of crafting should require it's own particular fuel, if it even makes sense for it to require it. And maybe not call it that.
Such as oil for tanning, water/oil for cooking, combustibles for smelting and smithing, reagents for alchemy and scribing, not really sure what you'd use for wood making, maybe not have fuel for parts of that.
For example, to tan some leather, you'd need oil. You get oil as a biproduct from plants and animals. So cooking or milling will get you oil, but for them you need water. Which you can get from a well or drawn directly from a river or lake.
So when you turn a carcass into skin, you also get bone and fat/meat. You'd need water for this first step.
The fat/meat can be proceed and produce oil, which then can be used to turn your raw skin into tanned leather, that can then be used to craft leather goods.
Where each step in the process it makes sense why a raw resource is being used to fuel the process. Some can be made a biproducts of other processes, some of which can feed back into itself, but where all eventually can be found as easily renewable resources like water or wood.
And some processes might not use any resource. Such as turning lumber into wood shouldn't require anything more then the raw materials, and should probably create saw dust as a biproduct.
Gathering Locations
The last issue I had was the placement of certain resources. Namely ore and certain plants. The current implementation is to sprinkle ores and resources all over the map, with little rhyme or reason. So there ends up being way too much of some resources, like gemstones, because nobody can actually gather the damn things. And far too little of others, like copper being damn near impossible to find. Which is a bit of a problem when is a basic material required for low level crafting.
Resource scarcity issues aside, its placement doesn't really make much sense. I don't know why MMOs do this, it is the least immersive implementation of resources. Minecraft is more immersive. Funny how mining for ores is more immersive.
I think the game would be better served if the majority of ores, gems and stone, were found underground in mines and caves. As actual points of interest to be fought over. Historically, mines and resources were often a source for conflict. Which seems to be Ashes of Creations bread and butter. So I am surprised something like this hasn't been implemented yet.
As for plants, I have a similar issue. Just being randomly placed individuals, rather then clumped together as a species. So what I would like for both ore and plant resources, is them to be better clumped together. Where you can find fields of the same plants, or mines of the same ore, with sprinkles of other materials mixed in. Where you find 80% of one resource, and a smattering of others mixed in for the last 20%.
Currently, the placement for daffodils and snowdrops is quite good, and I'd like more resources to be placed like it.
For instance, while I can understand how you would burn wood as fuel for a fire to smith or smelter ore, why the bloody hell are you using wood as fuel to weave fabric? Personally it rips me right out of the experience, and reminds me that I am not in fact in the world of Verra, I am playing a video game..... that's in early alpha.
It's not exactly immersive.
So, I would like to make a few criticisms and suggestions regarding the diegetic nature of crafting and gathering, so that by launch that we might have a system that is both engaging and immersive. The main areas of concern are timers, tools, fuel, and gathering locations.
Timers
The current approach to gathering and crafting timers is a one size fits nobody approach. All gathering takes either a small or larger amount of seconds, and most crafting takes various intervals of 1 minute. I would prefer a more context sensitive approach. Where some jobs are almost instant, where others can take 30 mins or longer.
For gathering, I can see that harvesting a bunch of daffodils, bushels of grain or berries, or other similar jobs that require gathering and cutting a lot of stuff, taking 15-30 seconds at least. Picking a single flower or herb on the other hand, should take at most a second.
I'm reminded of The Witcher 3, where you could easily pop from resource to resource, just grabbing things as you go. It's something I really enjoy when gathering. While I don't mind occasionally stopping to smell the preverbal flowers, doing it every time you want to do anything is a chore.
Where as some jobs like lumbering, should arguably take longer, but yield more resources per tree.
Crafting should likewise be similar. Weaving I could see being something I could see being somewhat quick, but requiring a lot of resources to crafting anything. Ie, each unit of thread or material doesn't take long to make, but you needs quite a bit of it to craft even a single piece of equipment. Where as on the opposite end of the scale, would be something like smithing and smelting, which doesn't doesn't require that many units of material, but does take a long time to cook. Where each step to smelt an ingot, then smith that into a weapon or armor piece is going to take 30 minutes each, at a minimum.
As such, I can see each artisan professions requiring differing amounts of time and dedication. Some can be reasonably quick, where others should be quite time consuming.
Different strokes for different blokes, as it were.
Tools
These I found to be overly gamey. Where you need certain ranks of equipment to gather with certain materials. I'm walking around with a god damn great sword, and your saying I can't cut the stem of a plant? It really rips me out of the game, when for all intents and purposes you should be able to gather something, but can't for arbitrary reasons. I've always hated when games do this.
I understand from a gameplay perspective why it is the way it is, but narrative and immersive experience it just plain doesn't make any sense.
So perhaps something more of a compromise then? Where you still have tools and ranks/quality, but your not barred from gathering anything. Instead, using the wrong tools for the job will A: greatly reduce your tool durability. B: have a non negligible chance to make a hash of it, and ruin the resource your trying to gather.
For example, a novice lumbering axe/saw is fine for young and soft wood, but if you try to cut hard or old wood, your probably going to destroy your axe before you finish the job, and even if you manage to cut the tree down, it's not going to be in a state the is much good for anything other then fire wood or wood chips.
Where having the right tool for the job reduces risk and improves quality.
But if all you want is firewood, well then just about anything will do.
Fuel
Speaking of firewood. Why in the blood hell is it used for everything? I can understand why crafting would want to use a resource for the processing of materials, but way is it just all combustibles?
That makes sense for fire related activates, but not for anything else. As such I think that each type of crafting should require it's own particular fuel, if it even makes sense for it to require it. And maybe not call it that.
Such as oil for tanning, water/oil for cooking, combustibles for smelting and smithing, reagents for alchemy and scribing, not really sure what you'd use for wood making, maybe not have fuel for parts of that.
For example, to tan some leather, you'd need oil. You get oil as a biproduct from plants and animals. So cooking or milling will get you oil, but for them you need water. Which you can get from a well or drawn directly from a river or lake.
So when you turn a carcass into skin, you also get bone and fat/meat. You'd need water for this first step.
The fat/meat can be proceed and produce oil, which then can be used to turn your raw skin into tanned leather, that can then be used to craft leather goods.
Where each step in the process it makes sense why a raw resource is being used to fuel the process. Some can be made a biproducts of other processes, some of which can feed back into itself, but where all eventually can be found as easily renewable resources like water or wood.
And some processes might not use any resource. Such as turning lumber into wood shouldn't require anything more then the raw materials, and should probably create saw dust as a biproduct.
Gathering Locations
The last issue I had was the placement of certain resources. Namely ore and certain plants. The current implementation is to sprinkle ores and resources all over the map, with little rhyme or reason. So there ends up being way too much of some resources, like gemstones, because nobody can actually gather the damn things. And far too little of others, like copper being damn near impossible to find. Which is a bit of a problem when is a basic material required for low level crafting.
Resource scarcity issues aside, its placement doesn't really make much sense. I don't know why MMOs do this, it is the least immersive implementation of resources. Minecraft is more immersive. Funny how mining for ores is more immersive.
I think the game would be better served if the majority of ores, gems and stone, were found underground in mines and caves. As actual points of interest to be fought over. Historically, mines and resources were often a source for conflict. Which seems to be Ashes of Creations bread and butter. So I am surprised something like this hasn't been implemented yet.
As for plants, I have a similar issue. Just being randomly placed individuals, rather then clumped together as a species. So what I would like for both ore and plant resources, is them to be better clumped together. Where you can find fields of the same plants, or mines of the same ore, with sprinkles of other materials mixed in. Where you find 80% of one resource, and a smattering of others mixed in for the last 20%.
Currently, the placement for daffodils and snowdrops is quite good, and I'd like more resources to be placed like it.
1
Comments
While it's all good to give your feedback and such, it is worth mentioning - even though you acknowledged this is still an alpha stage - that all of these things are just placeholder at this stage.
There is no intention for coal to be used as a fuel for weaving, but (from what i can see) the weaving mechanic isn't in game yet so they basically just took the mechanic from a different craft and applied it to weaving so that people could make items.
There is no doubt there will be a time when they ask us to test out and provide feedback on the crafting system. Ensuring it is less dietetic (great word to use to describe it as it is now, by the way) is something that would be great to secure then.
It being alpha and all is why I don't think there is much sense in getting all butt hurt about it.
This is more for me to formulate and write down my thoughts as I have them, because I will damn well forgot about it in a few months time when they do start asking for feedback.
And there isn't anything wrong with discussing it ahead of time.