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.
Artisanship Design issue
RedLeader1
Member, Alpha Two
The is a basic problem in the design of artisanship, which I believe needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.
I get that we are currently testing the "basics", but that is just the problem. If artisanship and the economy, isn't part of the "basics" now, you are never going to get it really integrated into the game. The flaws in the Artisanship system are already apparent.
1. Anyone who is taking gametime to gather, process and craft, level far slower than power-leveling. (that isn't a problem by itself)
2. The Nodes are leveling, due to the power leveling. Now gathering solo becomes a problem and gathering in a group even slower.
3. If the gatherers are not gathering then there isn't enough material being gathered, to craft enough gear for the adventurers. So we put in a whole bunch of vendors and drops, to keep them happy. Now you just have a PvP game.
4. Currently Artisanship is irrelevant, in Ashes gameplay; it just hurts you. All the mobs in the nodes have got too high and there are so few spots to gather at level 9, you cant even level your Artisanship any more.
Intrepid have to slow levelling adventuring or speed up levelling artisanship, or both, right now. Artisanship needs to be Alpha2 ready and it isn't. Right now crafting in AoC is by many measures worse than in New World. I cant even now go back to playing the power-level game because I am so far behind the curve. I'm more or less done until the wipe.
I don't know if it is feasible to have a PvX game that appeals to PvE players and PvP players, but I am certain I know be best way to find out is not to design a good PvP game and then band-aid the PvE game on afterwards.
I'm probably being a bit harsh, but Intrepid have a testing problem in that a lot of people who paid to test are hardcore PvP players. In all honesty, they are not particularly difficult to satisfy. They will always be happy slaughtering inferior players.
The reason New World failed is because they did EXACTLY what Ashes of Creation are doing in principle. Tennis is not dying in popularity as a sport, because it is less fun for the players on the Tennis professional tour. It is dying as a sport, because it doesn't appeal to the masses. It isn't rewarding enough for the average player. New World spent so long catering to good players, that the vast majority of players, the average and below average players, gave up.
Artisanship is there so the average player has some incentive to play, other than be a target for the PvP player. That needs to be there at the start of the game. It is critical to success. If you cant integrate PvE and PvP to make PvX at levels 1-10, then how can you do it at end-game?
I get that we are currently testing the "basics", but that is just the problem. If artisanship and the economy, isn't part of the "basics" now, you are never going to get it really integrated into the game. The flaws in the Artisanship system are already apparent.
1. Anyone who is taking gametime to gather, process and craft, level far slower than power-leveling. (that isn't a problem by itself)
2. The Nodes are leveling, due to the power leveling. Now gathering solo becomes a problem and gathering in a group even slower.
3. If the gatherers are not gathering then there isn't enough material being gathered, to craft enough gear for the adventurers. So we put in a whole bunch of vendors and drops, to keep them happy. Now you just have a PvP game.
4. Currently Artisanship is irrelevant, in Ashes gameplay; it just hurts you. All the mobs in the nodes have got too high and there are so few spots to gather at level 9, you cant even level your Artisanship any more.
Intrepid have to slow levelling adventuring or speed up levelling artisanship, or both, right now. Artisanship needs to be Alpha2 ready and it isn't. Right now crafting in AoC is by many measures worse than in New World. I cant even now go back to playing the power-level game because I am so far behind the curve. I'm more or less done until the wipe.
I don't know if it is feasible to have a PvX game that appeals to PvE players and PvP players, but I am certain I know be best way to find out is not to design a good PvP game and then band-aid the PvE game on afterwards.
I'm probably being a bit harsh, but Intrepid have a testing problem in that a lot of people who paid to test are hardcore PvP players. In all honesty, they are not particularly difficult to satisfy. They will always be happy slaughtering inferior players.
The reason New World failed is because they did EXACTLY what Ashes of Creation are doing in principle. Tennis is not dying in popularity as a sport, because it is less fun for the players on the Tennis professional tour. It is dying as a sport, because it doesn't appeal to the masses. It isn't rewarding enough for the average player. New World spent so long catering to good players, that the vast majority of players, the average and below average players, gave up.
Artisanship is there so the average player has some incentive to play, other than be a target for the PvP player. That needs to be there at the start of the game. It is critical to success. If you cant integrate PvE and PvP to make PvX at levels 1-10, then how can you do it at end-game?
1
Comments
" Artisanship needs to be Alpha2 ready and it isn't." - Alpha 2 will be running for another ~2 years, can't really say it's not ready, when we're at the beginning of the testing. And they've already stated that it's mostly a bare bones/placeholder system until they flesh it out fully.
It had everything to do with who they catered to. There are a set of new-game junkies that just play a new game, win it and move on. The actual mechanics of the game are irrelevant. And they tend to be mostly PvP players. The joy is in competition. They are going to be gone in 6 months, just like New World no matter what.
My view is getting that balance of gating success in PvP behind PvE, and success in PvE behind PvP, is far harder than anything else they are testing. And it is going to necessitate a whole bunch of changes down the line, if they don't sort it out now.
They have to somehow figure out a way to make the artisanship symbiotic (not necessarily equal) with adventuring. That is a basic high level conceptual design problem, not a coding scheduling problem. It should have been worked out long before the start of Alpha2 and needs to be tested every step of the way, even if a lot of it is a stub.
For example, it is easy to tell that you need at least 10 times as many working artisans as working adventurers to keep them supplied purely via a player economy, how the heck is that going to happen? How are you going to have a working economy, just based on scale? Even if you say adventurers and artisans are the same people, that means every player can only spend 10% of their time adventuring.
Somehow, you are going to have to get the system to work on a PvP server, where artisan players are outnumbered 10-1 by PvP players and also on a PvE server where PvP players are outnumbered 10-1 the other way. How does that work?
It is so far out of whack it is clear that the designers haven't thought logically about it.