Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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 III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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
Geology is the most 'complex', 'game dependent' one, but basic geology Gameplay design would dictate that Riverlands would be largely sedimentary rocks.
This wouldn't be correct, what they have now is just as correct or even moreso. The reason one might use design differently is because of player intellect limitations. I definitely have friends/group members who won't 'understand why igneous rocks could be commonly available in specific sub-areas in the Riverlands'.
So rocks are more usefully deployed/used as things that are different between nodes, than things that are hugely different in availability between biomes, imo.
From the Econ Design perspective (according to my mental model of it, anyway) the thing you care about for sorting Rocks is 'which of the three types of Rock' and 'how hard is it to work with' and then you just pile them up, literally, by 'difficulty of work', into ArtC(N) categories. The design language of 'Grey', 'White', 'Red' used in Throne and Liberty is actually quite good as a shorthand for rock types even if it isn't quite 'right', at least for me, a person who has only ever studied Geology for exactly this purpose (World Design stuff for gaming, and I definitely think players shouldn't need accreditations in Chemistry to know where to find rocks).
Basically there's no clear answer, but if I at least throw out what I have for the other things above:
ArtC1: Sandstone, 'Red Clay', Limestone, Gabbro (this is the non-volcanic mountains one)
ArtC2: Shale, Calcite/Dolomite, Granite (mountains again)
ArtC3: Diorite, Marble, Bauxite, maybe Basalt
ArtC4: Slate, Andesite, Mica, definitely Basalt if not used before
etc. From there you'd have to get more specific by far, and 'by far' I mean 'more than most games would ever do'. If I was asked to 'somehow make a pathway for Stonemasonry that was equal to other Artisanship Paths', I know I'd end up spending most of my time trying to find rocks that most players would recognize by name, and then I'd be counting on the popularity of MineCraft and the various mods it has, to carry the Knowledge Path through.
BDO tried but the reason BDO manages is that it doesn't focus too much on the actual rocks you get from hitting rocks, instead it focuses on what ores you get.
There are a bunch of additional complications that come in from the way Ashes handles Artisanship categories but I don't want to use this post as yet another club in the bludgeoning my group 'wants to do' relative to that, so instead, to keep within the standard method:
So there are multiple ways to do it, one could take some thing similar to the above, skip the Evens, and 'cap Casuals out' at Shale and Granite, thereby making Marble something 'special' and making Basalt 'a tier of thing required for higher grade molds and such' (to withstand higher melting temp metals).
One could just make up names for commonly found rocks (that's pretty much what geologists did for a century) and fill them in however you like as long as you have a rough idea approximately what rock the name represents (if you're being serious about this I think it actually requires more knowledge, because you are slapping new names on things like 'silica undersaturated foid-bearing pyroxenite'). This seems like a good path for Ashes, imo, 'Halcyonite' and such. This would be sufficient to fill in the 'Evens'.
One could look through a ton of historical rock names/uses and pick out whatever sounds good, as long as you know the classifications. I think this one takes the least 'real effort' but is prone to 'mistakes', and idk if AI would be helpful, or detrimental, to this one. This is imo the riskiest relative to Knowledge Paths since it can create friction between 'people who actually know what/where a rock is supposed to be, and those who don't', whereas the previous moreso 'boosts engagement'. I don't know what Wyrdstone is, but trying to work it out, assuming that the designer had some real concept of it (i.e. that the visuals somewhat match something they got from whatever composition they had in mind) would probably be more 'fun'.
One of those things where 'the best approach' is decided by your staff, as most things in MMOs should be, assuming you ever want to launch it. Players can give a rough idea of how they want something to turn out, and certainly what they don't like, but it's the Designers/Devs that know things like "I can save 20 man hours by just putting Marble as a rare drop from Limestone/White Rocks in canyons/deposits and nowhere else".
There will always be players that are pedantic enough to not respect Developer time even when they're trying, it's just something Devs unfortunately have to live with. On the other hand, though, starting the bottom layer of Stone stuff at Basalt and Granite may come back to bite them later just on a design level.
tl;dr - ArtC1: Sandstone, 'Red Clay', Limestone, Gabbro, split up by location/node rather than trying to ensure that it's particularly biome-specific
And because I'm told I need to target this down even further, using a hypothetical example that only applies to Throne and Liberty, yet again (multiple ESL friends/guildies):
If I hit a White Rock and get Calcite (just Calcite) and in the visual language of the game, Calcite is in the 'Green Grade' box, but doesn't have 'Quality' in front of it, I personally will assume that all Calcite is Green Grade, and if I hit the same White Rock and get Marble and it is in the 'Blue Grade' box, but is just 'Marble', not 'Rare Marble', for me, this works.
I can see how 'not knowing which Rarity Grades were skipped' in Ashes would be a pain, because the only 'language' being used is the box border. So to be as clear as possible:
FF11 - Kaolin is incredibly rare to get, but there is no indicator of this, a player could randomly get one, assume it was junk, and toss it (less likely because it's on the Chocobo Digger Knowledge Path and diggers would assume 'I've never seen this before in all my digging it must be cool')
BDO - IF there were such a thing as 'Legendary' Kaolin in that game it would certainly still be called just 'Kaolin' and would come in the Yellow(Orange? idk I don't play anymore) border, but you'd know it was important
Throne and Liberty - Growing pains. It doesn't work like the BDO above for materials but probably should (I think this one isn't just 'our preference'), because it works like this for food ingredients and Fish already, but it also puts Quality, Rare, Precious names on things that have the up and down conversion options (this is about to get confusing because Noble <-> Precious conversion doesn't currently exist). Basically I'd expect just 'Kaolin' in the 'Noble' itemborder/box and it would be used to make some level 30-40 vase or something by high level 'Artisans' (those who do Firing, and therefore process Clays).
Ashes of Creation - Growing pains? Everything my group believes was covered in some prior post, I think. If they need Rarity Grades (can totally see it), they have to weigh 'the confusion of skipping some' against 'the mess of Inventory management and Econ Design paths caused by not doing so'.
I guess we can try to collect some data on 'people who definitely think it is good to have every Rarity Grade', because right now I only have data for 'people who would be okay with skipped Grades to fix the issue' and 'people who would be frustrated by skipped Grades but would be ok without any rarity grades for items at all'.
In my mind I'd just put it in the same basket as this kind of "nesting doll" of a material. All of the mats in the picture can be acquired directly through drops/spoils, with varying chances.
So if I'm farming a relatively easy to kill mob and it drops DMP - I'll just know "oh, I could make use of this knowledge". But with rarities it's all just "grind this shit until you get a rarer version of it". And obviously the underlying principle is the same - you just farm until you loot it, but, to me, the feeling of looting a "unique" material is soooo much better than just looting a rarer version of something that I have literal thousands of already.