Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
A new player's thoughts on artisanship
Crawen
Member, Alpha Two
in Artisanship
As a new MMORPG player I've played the past few weekends where the last two weekends have focused mostly on artisanship and helping build up the node (Halcyon in Shol-EU). Here is some feedback based on my experience being a mostly artisanship focused player:
The good:
Recipes — I know these aren't a revolutionary concept, but I think they're a great component in the artisanship gameplay loop. It gives a player who may want to get something crafted but doesn't have the gold to pay another means of trading with me. Secondly, being able to own recipes that I cannot yet use because I haven't got the appropriate certification yet gives me a very clear goal to work towards.
Can't master all — The current grindy nature of artisanship skills makes it really quite tough to master all artisan skills. I like this! Now, grind alone will not stop someone, somewhere from ultimately mastering all skills so I would go a step further and impose additional game mechanics to prevent someone from being to master all artisan skills. IDK if such mechanics are planned, but to me a significant part of the value of pursuing artisan crafts is the ability to really specialize in a niche and becoming the go-to guy for a very specific need. The whole value of focusing on artisan skills as a player leans very heavily on this concept, so I hope the game will reinforce this idea of having to make hard choices about what artisan skill you try to specialize in.
Cross-crafting — I like cross-crafting because it plays into the idea of not being able to master all artisan crafts and instead having several players focusing on their own niche. It creates meaning, social bonds, a mini player economy at both a guild and city level.
Complexity — Coming from a new player: please for the love of god don't dumb systems down "for new players" I have never before played an MMORPG and I loved learning about the various crafts and skills and how they interconnect. Dumbing systems down will rob me of that experience, please don't do it!
I see a lot of this in discussions about various systems: veteran players invoking some imaginary new player and making the experience simpler for them. I know it's coming from a good place (wanting to offer new players a smooth experience) but in the process of doing so, a lot of the joy of discovery is sucked out.
I'm all for having good, solid onboarding and in that area, Ashes can certainly improve, but this should never come at the cost of appealing to the lowest common denominator. Solid onboarding: yes, dumbing down: please god no.
What could be improved:
Diegetic gatherables — The placement of most gatherables does not seem to follow any kind of apparent logic or systemic rules. Mineable resources are the worst offender. I couldn't tell you what to look for if you're searching for copper or rubies. The best I can do currently is look in an area that I know has many mineable nodes and hope for the best. What should happen instead is that these resources are distributed throughout the world following some kind of underpinning logic. For example: copper is most likely found near bodies of water, rubies & other gems are most likely found near cave entrances, and so on. Same goes for flora: I'd expect flowers in the meadows and maybe other plants only grow in the shade of such-and-such a tree.
Having such rules removes "luck" from the equation when you're looking for a specific resource and replaces it with a player's intrinsic knowledge & understanding of the game world. Trees do seem to have a resemblance of a guiding ruleset with larch trees found more frequently high up north above Windstead and oak and ash being more abundant down south.
Importantly, I don't want to be explicitly told any of these things as a miner, but I want to discover and build an understanding of them myself. For example: after a long time of hunting for rubies I seemed to notice that I get much better rarity drops when I mine during the night. Maybe that was just luck, but that is the kind of stuff I want more of! Those kind of things are knowledge that someone who focusses on mining will discover by themselves and gives them a genuine edge over players who don't typically bother with mining. Being able to build up this intrinsic knowledge is a huge part of what makes pursuing artisanship skills valuable to me.
Higher XP rewards for rare crafts — When I finally got the resources together to make my first Epic necklace, I was a bit disappointed to see I barely progressed at all on my jewelry skill. It took a lot of time to gather all the necessary resources so I was really expecting to advance my skill much more. It makes no sense to me that I get the same amount of XP making a common ring as making a highly valuable epic ring.
Currently, I'm going to have to craft hundreds upon hundreds of copper rings or ruby necklaces before I can get to apprentice jewelry which is quite the grind, especially because the current crafting UI makes it a clickfest to craft every single one of these one at a time.
Slider & stepsize for processing a batch — Give me a slider instead of a dropdown for batch size. I don't like being limited to 1, 5, 10, 25, 50 etc set amounts of batches. This feels unnecessarily restrictive to me. At the very least I would much rather have a slider with a step size of 5, so I can go 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, etc. Better still, I just have fine-grained control over my batch size with increments of 1 (1,2,3,4, etc).
The reason is that if I can finely control my batch size, I can time when a batch size will be processed more finely. This will allow me to strategically plan a processing batch, go out on a mining run, and have that batch be exactly completed when I get back. To me, being able to plan this and letting me be efficient with it is part of being artisan focused. Where a combat-focused player might spent time sweating over maximizing their DPS, I think I should be allowed to sweat over my time management and getting my processes timed in such a way to maximize my production.
Running into gatherables I can't yet gather/ — The description basically says it all. I am constantly running into saphires, emeralds, wyrdstone and insane amounts of iron, none of which I can mine. I wouldn't have minded a bit of this, but it happens so often that it gets annoying. I can be running around looking for copper and find iron, slate and saphire instead and this can go on for tens of minutes.
I can think of two fixes: one, only have those higher-tier resources show up when there is a higher-tier workshop in the vicinity. In other words: don't spawn apprentice-level mineable resources if there is no apprentice stoneworks anywhere in the vicinity.
Fix number two is to have those diegetic rules about where certain resources can be found in place. That way, once I get a bit experience as a miner, I will know where to look for the things I need and can therefore avoid running into the resources I am not looking for.
The good:
- Recipes
- Having to focus on a few artisan skills in order to progress (can't master all)
- Cross-crafting
- Complexity
Recipes — I know these aren't a revolutionary concept, but I think they're a great component in the artisanship gameplay loop. It gives a player who may want to get something crafted but doesn't have the gold to pay another means of trading with me. Secondly, being able to own recipes that I cannot yet use because I haven't got the appropriate certification yet gives me a very clear goal to work towards.
Can't master all — The current grindy nature of artisanship skills makes it really quite tough to master all artisan skills. I like this! Now, grind alone will not stop someone, somewhere from ultimately mastering all skills so I would go a step further and impose additional game mechanics to prevent someone from being to master all artisan skills. IDK if such mechanics are planned, but to me a significant part of the value of pursuing artisan crafts is the ability to really specialize in a niche and becoming the go-to guy for a very specific need. The whole value of focusing on artisan skills as a player leans very heavily on this concept, so I hope the game will reinforce this idea of having to make hard choices about what artisan skill you try to specialize in.
Cross-crafting — I like cross-crafting because it plays into the idea of not being able to master all artisan crafts and instead having several players focusing on their own niche. It creates meaning, social bonds, a mini player economy at both a guild and city level.
Complexity — Coming from a new player: please for the love of god don't dumb systems down "for new players" I have never before played an MMORPG and I loved learning about the various crafts and skills and how they interconnect. Dumbing systems down will rob me of that experience, please don't do it!
I see a lot of this in discussions about various systems: veteran players invoking some imaginary new player and making the experience simpler for them. I know it's coming from a good place (wanting to offer new players a smooth experience) but in the process of doing so, a lot of the joy of discovery is sucked out.
I'm all for having good, solid onboarding and in that area, Ashes can certainly improve, but this should never come at the cost of appealing to the lowest common denominator. Solid onboarding: yes, dumbing down: please god no.
What could be improved:
- Diegetic gatherables. More rhyme and reason as to where certain gatherables can be found (systematic rules).
- Higher XP rewards for higher rarity crafts
- Slider & stepsize for processing batches
- Running into gatherables I can't yet gather
Diegetic gatherables — The placement of most gatherables does not seem to follow any kind of apparent logic or systemic rules. Mineable resources are the worst offender. I couldn't tell you what to look for if you're searching for copper or rubies. The best I can do currently is look in an area that I know has many mineable nodes and hope for the best. What should happen instead is that these resources are distributed throughout the world following some kind of underpinning logic. For example: copper is most likely found near bodies of water, rubies & other gems are most likely found near cave entrances, and so on. Same goes for flora: I'd expect flowers in the meadows and maybe other plants only grow in the shade of such-and-such a tree.
Having such rules removes "luck" from the equation when you're looking for a specific resource and replaces it with a player's intrinsic knowledge & understanding of the game world. Trees do seem to have a resemblance of a guiding ruleset with larch trees found more frequently high up north above Windstead and oak and ash being more abundant down south.
Importantly, I don't want to be explicitly told any of these things as a miner, but I want to discover and build an understanding of them myself. For example: after a long time of hunting for rubies I seemed to notice that I get much better rarity drops when I mine during the night. Maybe that was just luck, but that is the kind of stuff I want more of! Those kind of things are knowledge that someone who focusses on mining will discover by themselves and gives them a genuine edge over players who don't typically bother with mining. Being able to build up this intrinsic knowledge is a huge part of what makes pursuing artisanship skills valuable to me.
Higher XP rewards for rare crafts — When I finally got the resources together to make my first Epic necklace, I was a bit disappointed to see I barely progressed at all on my jewelry skill. It took a lot of time to gather all the necessary resources so I was really expecting to advance my skill much more. It makes no sense to me that I get the same amount of XP making a common ring as making a highly valuable epic ring.
Currently, I'm going to have to craft hundreds upon hundreds of copper rings or ruby necklaces before I can get to apprentice jewelry which is quite the grind, especially because the current crafting UI makes it a clickfest to craft every single one of these one at a time.
Slider & stepsize for processing a batch — Give me a slider instead of a dropdown for batch size. I don't like being limited to 1, 5, 10, 25, 50 etc set amounts of batches. This feels unnecessarily restrictive to me. At the very least I would much rather have a slider with a step size of 5, so I can go 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, etc. Better still, I just have fine-grained control over my batch size with increments of 1 (1,2,3,4, etc).
The reason is that if I can finely control my batch size, I can time when a batch size will be processed more finely. This will allow me to strategically plan a processing batch, go out on a mining run, and have that batch be exactly completed when I get back. To me, being able to plan this and letting me be efficient with it is part of being artisan focused. Where a combat-focused player might spent time sweating over maximizing their DPS, I think I should be allowed to sweat over my time management and getting my processes timed in such a way to maximize my production.
Running into gatherables I can't yet gather/ — The description basically says it all. I am constantly running into saphires, emeralds, wyrdstone and insane amounts of iron, none of which I can mine. I wouldn't have minded a bit of this, but it happens so often that it gets annoying. I can be running around looking for copper and find iron, slate and saphire instead and this can go on for tens of minutes.
I can think of two fixes: one, only have those higher-tier resources show up when there is a higher-tier workshop in the vicinity. In other words: don't spawn apprentice-level mineable resources if there is no apprentice stoneworks anywhere in the vicinity.
Fix number two is to have those diegetic rules about where certain resources can be found in place. That way, once I get a bit experience as a miner, I will know where to look for the things I need and can therefore avoid running into the resources I am not looking for.
2