Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
The archetypes and combat are decent, for an alpha. They have a long way to go.
I see Three main types of Gathers/gathering gameplay designs.
ABNEGATION (exapmple Raft and Salem), in such a system resources are neither scarce nor challenging to collect. They are super abundant and the player is mostly deciding WHAT to collect from the in some cases literal flow that is generated in real time or from the land scpe which resets almost as soon as the player walks away, their is never a barren landscape that has been picked over. If their are character skills they act to make higher teir resources visible to the player for collection but do not otherwise change gameplay which is highly realaxed and passive, the main mental effort is just seeing the resources and to a degree prioritizing what should be collected. Such styles often employ little 'nitches' which need to be opened like little loot boxes, but the niches are also ubiquitous, in Salem every object in the landscape, every tree, every stump can be opened and always contain some random things like a shiny beetle or a smooth pebble and occasionally something of higher value. The rate of resource collection/value creation is low but steady and player skill has minimal impact. The player moves (or is moved) but the direction of that movement is irrelivent so wandering without a destination is possible and even desirable for such an experience. Grouping is neither benificial nor or detrimental to this style, as their are sufficient resources for multiple players (up to a point) but theirs no need to interact either.
TREASHURE HUNTING (example EVE wormholes), in this paradigm the player is hunting for a specific thing and expects to search for it with a possibility of failure proportional to rarity and difficulty of the sought resource. The focus is entirely on the finding process and the time and skill involved in that, the collection step at the end is usually trivial, and might involve just collecting valuable knowlege not trangible resources. Their will generally be systems to detect/generate 'traces' 'trails' 'pings' etc to guide one towards the prize and some level of player skill in employing these systems. In the most barebones systems the player simply needs to sweep large areas hoping to spot what they are looking for. Their may also be systems in place that 'gate' seeing or collecting the prize to only thouse who are activly searching for it, this is almost always the case if the game has actually generated the prize when the player started the seach as a kind of private 'instanced' search for them, alternativly the player may find the start of the 'trail' which is public, but upon starting it the trail becomes private to them, or it may be an explicity race against a group of competitors. Such systems generally disincentivize grouping, atleast with another person who is activly DOING the same searching as the clues/traces/pings don't need multiple players to be seen or interpreted. At most a bodyguard COULD be along for protection but they would not be an active player in the hunting gameplay and will likely be keeping their eyes pealed for threats while ignoring the resources.
PINATA (example CrowFall) In this system the resrouce is concentrated, stationary and their is little or no searching for it, the collection is the focus and is an explicitly group oriented activity. Either the resourse location is permanent on the map the same way a dungeon or mob spawn is (actually being IN dungeons is a viable option), or if it depletes and respawns in new locations it dose so in such a way that finding it is the domain of other players or group members (the aformentioned Treasure hunter) who then call in Pinyata player for the actual gathering a bit like a live random raid boss fight might occour in the open world. The focus is on what happen AT the resource, mostly hitting the loot Pinyata efficiently and effectivly utilizing combinatory skills, teamwork and reactions to 'bleed' resources drops from it. Basically treating gathering as a mob fight and activating the same gameplay experiences that are tried and true for PvE. This system is obviously most rewarding of grouping, effectivly mandating it to be efficient or to get anything at all in the most extreme cases. This system essentially blends directly into just having raid boss monsters drop body-part materials which is just conventional PvE gameplay and not really gathering. To still be gathering their generally need to be a seperate set of gear and skills employed exclusivly for it and the loot piñata dose not deal damage back at the player.
So far Ashes dosn't seem to know which paradigm to use for gathering. Theirs a vague promisses of the Pinata system implied with 'group gathering' but not enough details of how it will be implemented, and to do it well will require a considerable amount of work. Meanwhile the current herbalism, minging and lumberjack gathering systems are in an akward state where it looks like a design that assumes easy abnigational gathering, but with resource scarcity levels that would be appropriate for a hard treasure hunt style of play. And a seperate explicity treasure map system which looks designed to satisfy that itch but which is still clearly incomplete. Fishing being totally afk-able seems the only thing that is a solid fit for any one paradigm being perfectly abnigational gameplay.
What I would really hope to see is that ALL gathering types use ALL THREE paraadigms. The resource types (metal, wood, herbs, fish, animals) could all be gathered in each different style. For example their's been speculation that the existing fishing can be add (without replacing) with a more interactive 'fly fishing' style which could be more of a treashure hunt as the player both moves and tries different flies and probing techniques to get that specific fish they want. While a group fishing boat with nets could act as a collective pinata as they 'attack' a school of fish that they are over. I don't think we need or want to create a 1:1 relationship between the type or resource gathered and the type of gameplay that gathering is. Ore can be found in large mines which are ideal for groups, or you can pan for gold in a solo search. Sticks can be picked off every tree to make generic stick-bundles for fuel, while teams with axes cut down mighty trees and then haul huge logs away using sleds and wagons.
The specifics can and should vary a bit even within the same gameplay paradigm, mining should be identical to tree chopping even if they are both group activity (the use of beast of burden to pull logs vs ore being baggable is an example), avoid one size fits all, lowest common denominator systems that we have now where trees/rocks/flower are all basically identical to gather.
Of those three, I guess I lean most toward Treasure Hunting, but I have a different view of gathering systems, and I don't entirely agree that Ashes 'hasn't chosen', because the BDO/New World style is also a 'choice'.
It might not be a choice that suits their game, and therefore might be subject to change, but that's entirely opinion from my end. I look forward to seeing how they will try to make both gathering, and Crafting, feel good at the same time, within their current direction (it's so much easier to say that while just running around hitting Startrees and not 'desperately wishing for a new MMO, I say this because I know that they will look for what their playerbase enjoys).
Games 20 years old did better.
I can't recall the game but every swing/chop you had a bar with a red portion, this portion changed based on node, and node 'difficulty'.
You had to lmb in the red portion to get higher yields. I think this would be a nice addition.
Another game had two rings, one inside the other with a small distance between them. A shaded circle would appear over the double ring and shrink, you had to lmb when the edge of the shaded circle was inside the gap between the rings.
This double ring gizmo would would change position on your screen for each swing/chop.
I'm most hopefull that they have atleast the Piñata paradigmn planned as they have said for the longest time that group gathering would be a feature and that sounds like it will need a whole new 'jumbo' node of some kind to justify.
This sounds familiar - wasn’t this how Vanguard worked?
I know, for example, that I shouldn't give too many opinions because I actually do chemistry, cooking, some metallurgy, and so on, while also having the 'programmer/designer' career path from math and linguistics stuff.
My wife is an artist-designer-UX Engineer yet chooses Cooking in most games because it normally fits into the same 'spot on the chain' and often has similar mental requirements, in contrast to Alchemy.
While it's good if things are enjoyable for people like us, to Zehlan's point, there's a lot more benefit to letting people dabble, 'community' or not.
At some point, you have to try to make the above poster happy too. And it's not asif this is impossible, it just isn't ready yet, we don't even have a 'consensus' on Fishing.
I seem to remember one chip manufacturer (TSMC) causing massive shortages world wide for all kinds of products including graphics cards your DOZENS of multi layer suppliers where were they at? It took what 2+ years for that to sort out.
If it was a simple 3 step system that would be ok but really it's not. To be able to make a GM level spellsword you would require at least 8 steps to make it. Meaning you will need at least four people dedicated to make that one sword remove one of those people and for whatever reason your going to have a huge problem. Sounds way to fragile a system for what AoC wants crafting to be in the game.
Um, again your really not well versed on modern supply chains. A high number of layers is not the same thing as having a large number of competitors IN each layer that can substitute for each other, TSCM has a near monopoly on the most advanced chips in the world, and they produce them on machines made by a Dutch company which has a monopoly on the machine because they are considered to practically be state-secrets. And infact having more layers and division of labor make the kinds of delays and supply chains more brittle and slow to fix. Hundreds of companies and skill sets feed into the supply chain to make something like a microchip.
Four people making a sword (from ore to blade) is hardly a deep chain and is probablly much shorter then a REAL medevil chain would have been. They do not all need to work the item at the same time and bulk trade in ore, metal, billets etc would have allowed them to produce the sword without ever meeting or going into buisness together (the upcoming trade stalls in nodes will help do the same) Likewise their would be ample competition along the way, no one person would be been irreplacable because the skills for mining, smelting, forging would be super common in real history and in the game where theirs only ~25 Artisan skills and people can have multiple ones. Remember medievel guilds were not 'companies' like we think of them now, they were groups of independent buisness people all competing with each other.
Unless your under some impression that every 8 person family of characters or micro guild should have full access to sword making. But that is not healthy game play for Ashes or a realistic depection of the middle ages. You have to go back to the Stone age for division of labor to be that low for everything know to be made inside just a single family unit.