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.
Artisan Feedback before its too late
Falleni
Member, Alpha Two
in Artisanship
Past 4 weekends I've been dabbling in Artisan skills whenever I had chance and I could spot few problems.
I realize most of Artisan related stuff are placeholders or at least I hope so. So this post mainly focused on principles or choices how artisanships get implemented down the line.
Premise for my feedback is that players are extremely good at optimizing fun out of games and MMO players even more so.
Artisan gear
I love idea of undergarment artisan gear but with 22 Artisan classes this brings problems. Even though you can only specialize into few of them how lower tiered items are needed on later items as well you wan't to dabble in most artisan classes.
Lets take example: Player wants be supplier of all sort of gatherables and Improves Mining, Herbalism, Hunting, Lumberjacking and Fishing to Apprentice 4 of those to Journeyman and so on.
Now they go farm some materials and there are herbs, wood and veins nearby each time they gather something they "have to" change their equipment to maximize profit. This will get tedious really fast but its optimal so many players will suck it up and do it.
Now to combat this problem I see two choices. (Ofc there are more but I can't think of
)
- Combine artisan gear to one. Gathering speed=Artisan speed, X material Quantity=Artisan Quantity and so on. I think this is boring option and market for artisan gear would die fast.
- Let us equip all of the artisan gear at once keeping the requirements ofc. So in example case Player could equip novice equipment for all crafting and processing while better equipment for gathering ones. This will open artisan gear market even more than current one as not everyone is going to bother with multiple sets of artisan gear if they have to change em. But many more will wan't to equip something on empty slots. There is ofc the problem with artisan gear providing combat stats as well but either remove it or make it so only 1 counts.
Bags
I love idea of different material bags with tetris like system but currently there is imbalance between them. When comparing Mining bag to herbalism bag base versions Mining bag has 4x4 slots while herbalism has 4x2 slots so thats double the space. I don't know how to balance that but should get looked into. Also hope there are going to be more bag slots. Lets take our example gatherer player before he would really want to equip at least 4 different material bags+general one.
Tools
I was really disappointed when I upgraded my tools and old ones disappeared. This removes one interesting market from game and discourages players to craft intermediate upgrades as its going to lose them money when they upgrade. If problem is people having multiple tools to avoid repairs. Repair kits are planed and you could even restrict changing them outside of town.
Also crafting tools is way too gated I understand nodes are important part of the game and their progress currently isn't representing final game or even later stakes of Alpha. But in my opinion T1 station should be able to craft T1-T2, T2 station T1-T3 and so on. Could even make it so T2 tools crafted in T1 station would get slight penalty encouraging people to upgrade node and their tools once possible.
There is also imbalance between tools and their material requirements. T2 tools should all need only T1 materials but at least fishing needs T2 materials to craft. Also current artisan quests are in imbalance some require you just to gather while others remove materials you gathered like fishing quests.
I realize most of Artisan related stuff are placeholders or at least I hope so. So this post mainly focused on principles or choices how artisanships get implemented down the line.
Premise for my feedback is that players are extremely good at optimizing fun out of games and MMO players even more so.
Artisan gear
I love idea of undergarment artisan gear but with 22 Artisan classes this brings problems. Even though you can only specialize into few of them how lower tiered items are needed on later items as well you wan't to dabble in most artisan classes.
Lets take example: Player wants be supplier of all sort of gatherables and Improves Mining, Herbalism, Hunting, Lumberjacking and Fishing to Apprentice 4 of those to Journeyman and so on.
Now they go farm some materials and there are herbs, wood and veins nearby each time they gather something they "have to" change their equipment to maximize profit. This will get tedious really fast but its optimal so many players will suck it up and do it.
Now to combat this problem I see two choices. (Ofc there are more but I can't think of
)- Combine artisan gear to one. Gathering speed=Artisan speed, X material Quantity=Artisan Quantity and so on. I think this is boring option and market for artisan gear would die fast.
- Let us equip all of the artisan gear at once keeping the requirements ofc. So in example case Player could equip novice equipment for all crafting and processing while better equipment for gathering ones. This will open artisan gear market even more than current one as not everyone is going to bother with multiple sets of artisan gear if they have to change em. But many more will wan't to equip something on empty slots. There is ofc the problem with artisan gear providing combat stats as well but either remove it or make it so only 1 counts.
Bags
I love idea of different material bags with tetris like system but currently there is imbalance between them. When comparing Mining bag to herbalism bag base versions Mining bag has 4x4 slots while herbalism has 4x2 slots so thats double the space. I don't know how to balance that but should get looked into. Also hope there are going to be more bag slots. Lets take our example gatherer player before he would really want to equip at least 4 different material bags+general one.
Tools
I was really disappointed when I upgraded my tools and old ones disappeared. This removes one interesting market from game and discourages players to craft intermediate upgrades as its going to lose them money when they upgrade. If problem is people having multiple tools to avoid repairs. Repair kits are planed and you could even restrict changing them outside of town.
Also crafting tools is way too gated I understand nodes are important part of the game and their progress currently isn't representing final game or even later stakes of Alpha. But in my opinion T1 station should be able to craft T1-T2, T2 station T1-T3 and so on. Could even make it so T2 tools crafted in T1 station would get slight penalty encouraging people to upgrade node and their tools once possible.
There is also imbalance between tools and their material requirements. T2 tools should all need only T1 materials but at least fishing needs T2 materials to craft. Also current artisan quests are in imbalance some require you just to gather while others remove materials you gathered like fishing quests.
0
Comments
However, for what you mentioned in the rest of your post:
I think its purposefully 'tedious'. The whole mantra of Ashe's development stems from opportunity costs or risk/reward. The tradeoff for artisan skills is making sure to have to right tool for the right job. Now, to your point, *needless* tedium makes 0 sense. I don't know a kosher way to improve the artisan clothing swaps but, currently, my "bandaid solution" is to keep the ones I use(fishing, herbalism, mining) on my hot bar. You can just quick select it without having to open your inventory. Its a small QOL, but it works.
As far as the bags go, yes, the mining bag seems like the "best bang for your buck" from a purely all around tetris kind of way. However, the key to how the specialized bags work is they increase the load of their specialty. Aka, I could have a mining bag, but it doesnt compare to the fact that I can hold 63 Flax in a single slot. This is less important at novice level, but Apprentice, Journeyman, and beyond, and the variety of harvestable resources + their rarities splitting up bundles... You need the specialized bags. For me, I run 1x mining and 1x herb, because I am level 10+ in both of these skills.
The game has a lot of learning curves, artisan skills being the highest(imo). I think a guide of sorts will be helpful in future Phases of the Alpha, but also players in the community coming up with guides.
Founder and Guild Leader of -Providence-
Regarding bags. Yes I agree upgraded ones with stack limit increases make designed bags better. And in general I do like how bags are different and nothing stops you from swapping them around according to what you farm. So yeah I should've phrased my critique to mainly speak about low level bags.
Guiding starters to right direction is important I can imagine it would be easy for starting herbalist to look at novice bag and change it to mining bag because losing 8 slots isn't worth slight increase in stack size.
My general point with this post was to raise awareness to problems that stem from optimization while its still in infant state.
I'd rather have more specialized items that I swap in and out, rather than a blanket default 'gathering' stat.
I'm a gathering main. I enjoy wandering around and collecting bucket loads of resources. And giving me gear and items I can play around with adds to the enjoyment.
Combat classes have fun gear with lots of different possible stats and categories they can build into their kit... Why shouldn't gatherers get to have the same?