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.
Massive adjustments needed before Dec 20
Obamanizer
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
At current, Artisans are completely ignorable and a waste of players time and investment. its a very negative feeling to spend your time on when you can be grinding mobs, getting levels, earning money, getting better drops, for 1/10th the time investment you put into artisans.
this is a rant post, because ive spent 2.5 weekends leveling artisans and it feels BAD.
Nodes at current take weeks to unlock the ability to craft level 10-19 gear, meanwhile you can level to level 15 in around 15 hours.
it feels incredibly bad when you grind your way up to skill level 10, like the game tells you to, upgrade your skill, go to the tier 2 gatherable, and then it tells you that you need a weapon that the server cant even make.... you absolutely should be able to gather it with your NEW SKILL PROMOTION.... all be it, maybe with 2-4 extra hits, AND some extra durability damage on your tool within reason.
Crafting higher rarity gear only accounts for the most used resource rarity. So, if you need wanted to make a Hunting bow, that needs 20 wood, 1 metal, and 1 thread, if your wood is green, and your metal is legendary and thread is legendary, you are still getting a green bow..... cause 20 of the 22 resources is green. HATE this.
the metal resources in the world are astronomically to scarce.... Resource spawn locations share spawns. So if you mine a copper and then come back later, it may be a Basalt, or a T2 or T3 resource that now blocks the copper spawn. A solution to this would be natural decay timer on resources like metals where if its not been interacted with for 6-12 hours, it will de-spawn and re-spawn something else. or something similar to prevent this from happening.
The stats on Tools like gathering quantity does NOTHING. feels extremely bad.
The cost to create and profit to sell processed goods is a break even or net loss. wtf? complete disrespect to peoples time.
37 exp per node gathered might as well be zero. it would take 16,000 gathered resource nodes, or around 135 hours to level from 16-17 doing that, which may as well not exist at all, meanwhile the world is moving on without you while you are wasting your time.
The tools you make override your old tool and destroy it, its soulbound and inventory bound.... this feels REALLY bad. i want to test the stat differences between my gray, green, blue tools. id even want to be able to make better tools and give to guildies or sell. There is ZERO reason for these to not be physical items in the game other than bad design choice.
even if mayors where doing everything they could 100% maximum speed to get new upgraded stations up and working, people level WAY beyond apprentice level crafts quite quickly. this needs massive reform.
this is a rant post, because ive spent 2.5 weekends leveling artisans and it feels BAD.
Nodes at current take weeks to unlock the ability to craft level 10-19 gear, meanwhile you can level to level 15 in around 15 hours.
it feels incredibly bad when you grind your way up to skill level 10, like the game tells you to, upgrade your skill, go to the tier 2 gatherable, and then it tells you that you need a weapon that the server cant even make.... you absolutely should be able to gather it with your NEW SKILL PROMOTION.... all be it, maybe with 2-4 extra hits, AND some extra durability damage on your tool within reason.
Crafting higher rarity gear only accounts for the most used resource rarity. So, if you need wanted to make a Hunting bow, that needs 20 wood, 1 metal, and 1 thread, if your wood is green, and your metal is legendary and thread is legendary, you are still getting a green bow..... cause 20 of the 22 resources is green. HATE this.
the metal resources in the world are astronomically to scarce.... Resource spawn locations share spawns. So if you mine a copper and then come back later, it may be a Basalt, or a T2 or T3 resource that now blocks the copper spawn. A solution to this would be natural decay timer on resources like metals where if its not been interacted with for 6-12 hours, it will de-spawn and re-spawn something else. or something similar to prevent this from happening.
The stats on Tools like gathering quantity does NOTHING. feels extremely bad.
The cost to create and profit to sell processed goods is a break even or net loss. wtf? complete disrespect to peoples time.
37 exp per node gathered might as well be zero. it would take 16,000 gathered resource nodes, or around 135 hours to level from 16-17 doing that, which may as well not exist at all, meanwhile the world is moving on without you while you are wasting your time.
The tools you make override your old tool and destroy it, its soulbound and inventory bound.... this feels REALLY bad. i want to test the stat differences between my gray, green, blue tools. id even want to be able to make better tools and give to guildies or sell. There is ZERO reason for these to not be physical items in the game other than bad design choice.
even if mayors where doing everything they could 100% maximum speed to get new upgraded stations up and working, people level WAY beyond apprentice level crafts quite quickly. this needs massive reform.
4
Comments
and i kinda am at that point myself i spent my first 2 weekends trying to see if i could get enough ores to level arcane engineering, and had like maybe 20 copper, someone said it was like 1k copper before and then they made it take longer so it went to bonkers numbers needed.
ignoring all this i spent 2hrs in a humanoid npc grinding camp [highwayman] and in a party of like 7 or 8 i still won [green+] and found [grey tier] like 10 items in 2hrs or something crazy
if say that is the intended gear drop rate there is 0 reason crafting takes thousands of potential hours to get to even remotely the same tier
but system is severely imbalanced and it feels like just a few numbers changes on crafting in general would help a lot for just trying it out, even if a lot is incomplete
also a node buy order may be like 1200 of a resource [usually 1 in 4 things they need to craft a building] but thats an entire node+anyone who goes to the node if they want, not one person who needs like 2-4k items
It is also going to need a wipe to test properly, because right now, I cant see anyone doing it at all. I sense incoming salty tears, wailing and a gnashing of teeth. If you thought the guild drama and ganking drama was bad...
Then cam the non swappable bag space issues...
Ok so i though i'll go do some crafting now...
I did 1 work order of 50 logs...from 1 stacks of logs but the processed item were 3 stacks of 20. No Space in bags...
if this is what making 1 basic refined material is like and I cant shuffle bag space to be able to make anything, I'm not going to bother with crafting at all...
I was spoiled be GW2 Crafting. All stations are within a similar proximity. Personal Bank access was possible at any work station.
Look I understand why Ashes is doing the space constrained Inventory system for caravans...And why each player cant be Titus holding up the earth with materials in their backpack.
But Some QOL needs to be applied. At least give crafting work stations a player work space/material inventory space.
The EXP from resource gathering was poor/pathetic. i'm not sure if crafting give XP...but why would you bother when the material gathering is this unrewarding...
I haven't even considered taking crafting further so my grasp of what more motivated crafters are saying is just going over my head at this point...
I ended up just vendor trashing all my resources.
Looks like i'll be picking flowers and fishing at this point...
Carpentry, for example, is a clicking simulator that they didn’t even bother adding a quantity slider to. T2 items crafted from 5 wood yield the same exp and have the same processing cost as items crafted from 10 wood which obviously makes no sense.
To be frank, I’m not even all that worried about this because I’m running under the assumption that the real implementation of artisanship will be vastly different than the one we’re seeing. IIRC, the next phase of A2 is where we’re supposed to start seeing systems like this a little more completed; so hopefully next phase changes things quite a bit.
In order to provide feedback going forward:
I Agree with all points made.
I however only spent a few hours trying to progress a bit of crafting because I thought, oh I'll try a spell bow on my bard.
Where to begin ....
The crafting tutorial at the start, get rid of it entirely and re-do it. I understand the point, I get it, however the games gathering is so complex as it already is, don't include "waste resources" to the mix, just give us the actual resources, or a display of what nodes to look out for to make something useful.
I get that you want to have different stats and combinations through types of materials. But my gosh, I think I chopped like 4 different types of wood? All with their own rarities? If you want the world to visually look different, fine. But just make wood - wood! If you want to have varying stats on crafted items, well that's what alchemy or other arcane are for. In my opinion it's far too complex, and for a game that's supposed to be entirely reliant on it - like Albion online, it needs streamlining. Where their different types of wood came through tiers solely, like 1-10, 11-20 etc..
The rarities I kind of like, it works in Albion, although those nodes had a visual representation so you knew what you were actually getting. But sifting through my bag to process them was a headache in itself.
Which brings me onto interface. GW2 has been mentioned already, probably one of the best crafting interfaces in all MMO's...
Your crafting interface is quite frankly dreadful.
I have to bring up my inventory, look and remember what it is that I have, or flick through about 8 tabs looking at what type of wood I have, and then what type of rarity. Then another tab to set up how many I want processed, which is locked to a set amount... And then select a fuel?! What? Just let me process wood logs into timber, like a normal game, while we're here, just get rid of that nonsense!
My suggestion would be:
I go to a processing table, similar to GW2 it shows me what I have within that window, and tells me what I can make and how many of - highlighted from the list of recipes, and there's a button / slider that allows me to either select a specific amount of my choosing (not the games), or just a "process all" of that type, and the time taken is just calculated per item being made. And get rid of the fuel, please get rid of the fuel.
After looking at all this I just thought sod it, I may as well just grind mobs and buy the spell bow from the dude stood right next to me.
It was so much squeezing, and no juice, at such a dynamic stage in the game where I could've spent my time just levelling past it.
It all seems way to complex and the time invested at that stage in the game for very little, or certainly a very temporary reward before you out level it, it all just seems pointless.
Which finally takes me to the exp. If we are going to be doing this, at least make it worth our time... A flat 0.5% for resources gathered or something? So it scales with levelling, it's an incentive to go and do, hey it might even promote friction as you want if someone is taking your resource. I don't know, just a suggestion, GW2 you can entirely level to end game from crafting alone ... For your idea to work, you're going to need people who dedicate their entire gameplay to this, like in Albion, or the markets won't work, so give people the reward for their time! ... but currently it makes me just want to stick to grinding packs of mobs, because in that time I just tried crafting, I could've made a whole new character and levelled it to the next tier of fear that I could just buy.