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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.
Why the endgame progression feels bad and what to do about it
bangerade
Member, Alpha Two
Let me start of by explaining this i am a level 25 ranger who has just started playing this game (ill be it really hard) when phase two launched. I am a vet to the MMOs and particularly Archage where this game has a lot of influence from. with that said ill get to the issues which i will list the top 3 reasons then explain later. I know this is an ALPHA but in an alpha these thing can be addressed and resolved if they are brought attention to.
1.) gearing right now is really stagnate more so for physical DPS than any other class
2.) gold making feels irrelevant for those that don't care to go into a crafting profession
3.) Some of the professions are completely feel useless when they should have a very real place in the market.
Ok now to the why for these top issues
1.) Bloodrunner drop has to be broken. I spent at least 20 hours if not more in the 4th floor of carph with 1/4 of that time in the best spot uncontested. i have got 3 pieces. If you play on Lyneth you have probably seen me spamming global for the last 6days trying to buy it as well i have not got a single whisper. i also have a page on the Lyneth discord trying to buy it that has been up for 3days no replies. i will admit that the other sets of gear have a much higher drop rate. will farming carph mid i got my tank a set in a around 4 hours. while grinding steel bloom i got a mage a set in around 2. I have also seen heroic pieces of mage set. the level 20 sets are only half the problem though. since you cant craft level 20 stuff and still wont for at least 2 weeks or so i have heard. one might consider running level 10 stuff in the mean time which in all honestly would be amazing from a progression stand point that you would need to upgrade your level 10 stuff before moving to lvl 20 stuff. However this isn't even a relevant route atm due to a number of factors with the crafting systems atm.
1 cont/2) the crafting gear rout doesn't feel like an option because there is basically NO resources above common (particularly taking about hunting the most). I have made easily over 150g (this is just from glint and caravans as i store/use or donate to friends all of my resources). However the only thing that I have used gold on is leveling up my scribing because i cant find any of the materials I would want to buy for upgrading gear ie bones/ hides above common and things like flowers or certain ores above rare. so it feels completely useless to make gold atm since i cant really buy anything to progress my character in a meaningful way. I am only doing scribing because i wanted something to burn gold on and it seemed interesting.
3.) I start by saying this one is speaking from a bit of an ignorance stand point as i have not gone in to all to the professions and some are obviously more relevant and flushed out than others at this point in the game so i will mostly be talking about scribing. the best way to put it is it is 1/8 professions and you can literally buy everything that you would WANT a scribe to make for you off the merchant at this point in the game. Maybe later you might want things like specialty enchant scrolls but right now you don't need them and the profession feels dead and a wasted gold sink. Let me tell you this profession is a huge gold sink to. as a side note lynth has decided to not upgrade to a journeyman arcane engineering so that profession is dead just because everyone knows there isn't going to be one so why do it i guess. I am told as well that Jeweler feels terrible as well because there good are way to cheap and there mats are far to expensive because of the need from other professions.
Now i will never raise a complaint with out thinking of solutions to them. I do not do any type of coding or game dev so i dont know the extent of work behind these fixes so bare that in mind.
1.) fix drop rate of bloodrunner should be easy enough. I also think that it would be good to reduce the drop rate of heroic gear as i do like the idea of crafting being VITAL. Give the people who want grind buy killing mobs something else to do than just farming the spots the drop the gear by adding things like carcasses to the drop table of animals that are used in crafting. (this would also require there to be spawns of high level mobs like wolves and bears to be able to get loot from since loot is reduced when over 4 levels and completely disappears when over 9 levels.
2.) increasing the ability to buy the resources i want and be able to pay the crafters that have leveled up those professions will dramatically increase the economic experience of the game. currently there is so many people playing in a server and so littler resources to get around that i been looking for days for heroic wolf/ bear carcasses in Every town i go to. and i haven't even found 1 yet. I think that a large part has to do with the fact that the marketplace system is really ROUGH there are far to many people to have it the way it is currently. i have seen something like this work in ragnorok but that game had it to where most of them congregated to one place on the map and there was way less people. there needs to be a better search function. The other part of this is that there just isnt drops so how to fix that
a.) faster spawn rates for huntable mobs/ as well as stagnate spawns.
b.) increase the rarity drop rate
c.) allow for the hunted animal that drops the beast to be slaughtered for its carcass
d.) add in to a professions the ability to increase the rarity in an efficient way. I know that in some crafting you can
increase the rarity by adding 2 tiers map when processing ie a common can go it a uncommon with the use of a
rare. but realistically the stated conversion is the only one that would ever be used noone is going to use an epic
to make a rare a heroic because there just simply isn't enough epics or even rare to do that with.
e.)as previously stated allow for the killed mob to drop carcasses.
3.)Scribing can be fixed by removing everything from the merchant. and adding a basic even below novice version of the buff scroll to there market. Arcane in this example could be fix by implementing a long quest chain form say a "lost monk" that allows you to do higher level crafting at a remote area that could be in a pvp zone like north tropics for carp or deep desert for armor as examples (except for the monks house is a small safe zone ) high risk for a high reward isn't that what this game is all about :P. Lastly i think changing the way that nodes spawn ( like not allowing iron to spawn when literally no one can mine it so it take the spots of where copper can spawn there fore reducing copper amounts.) or simply changing the recipes might help. also allowing for us to dismantle gear into component for a cost is a good gold sink as well as a good way to get low level resources into the game.
thanks for reading and i look forward to playing as the game progresses if you have any conflicting views or added info for making these systems better please comment!
1.) gearing right now is really stagnate more so for physical DPS than any other class
2.) gold making feels irrelevant for those that don't care to go into a crafting profession
3.) Some of the professions are completely feel useless when they should have a very real place in the market.
Ok now to the why for these top issues
1.) Bloodrunner drop has to be broken. I spent at least 20 hours if not more in the 4th floor of carph with 1/4 of that time in the best spot uncontested. i have got 3 pieces. If you play on Lyneth you have probably seen me spamming global for the last 6days trying to buy it as well i have not got a single whisper. i also have a page on the Lyneth discord trying to buy it that has been up for 3days no replies. i will admit that the other sets of gear have a much higher drop rate. will farming carph mid i got my tank a set in a around 4 hours. while grinding steel bloom i got a mage a set in around 2. I have also seen heroic pieces of mage set. the level 20 sets are only half the problem though. since you cant craft level 20 stuff and still wont for at least 2 weeks or so i have heard. one might consider running level 10 stuff in the mean time which in all honestly would be amazing from a progression stand point that you would need to upgrade your level 10 stuff before moving to lvl 20 stuff. However this isn't even a relevant route atm due to a number of factors with the crafting systems atm.
1 cont/2) the crafting gear rout doesn't feel like an option because there is basically NO resources above common (particularly taking about hunting the most). I have made easily over 150g (this is just from glint and caravans as i store/use or donate to friends all of my resources). However the only thing that I have used gold on is leveling up my scribing because i cant find any of the materials I would want to buy for upgrading gear ie bones/ hides above common and things like flowers or certain ores above rare. so it feels completely useless to make gold atm since i cant really buy anything to progress my character in a meaningful way. I am only doing scribing because i wanted something to burn gold on and it seemed interesting.
3.) I start by saying this one is speaking from a bit of an ignorance stand point as i have not gone in to all to the professions and some are obviously more relevant and flushed out than others at this point in the game so i will mostly be talking about scribing. the best way to put it is it is 1/8 professions and you can literally buy everything that you would WANT a scribe to make for you off the merchant at this point in the game. Maybe later you might want things like specialty enchant scrolls but right now you don't need them and the profession feels dead and a wasted gold sink. Let me tell you this profession is a huge gold sink to. as a side note lynth has decided to not upgrade to a journeyman arcane engineering so that profession is dead just because everyone knows there isn't going to be one so why do it i guess. I am told as well that Jeweler feels terrible as well because there good are way to cheap and there mats are far to expensive because of the need from other professions.
Now i will never raise a complaint with out thinking of solutions to them. I do not do any type of coding or game dev so i dont know the extent of work behind these fixes so bare that in mind.
1.) fix drop rate of bloodrunner should be easy enough. I also think that it would be good to reduce the drop rate of heroic gear as i do like the idea of crafting being VITAL. Give the people who want grind buy killing mobs something else to do than just farming the spots the drop the gear by adding things like carcasses to the drop table of animals that are used in crafting. (this would also require there to be spawns of high level mobs like wolves and bears to be able to get loot from since loot is reduced when over 4 levels and completely disappears when over 9 levels.
2.) increasing the ability to buy the resources i want and be able to pay the crafters that have leveled up those professions will dramatically increase the economic experience of the game. currently there is so many people playing in a server and so littler resources to get around that i been looking for days for heroic wolf/ bear carcasses in Every town i go to. and i haven't even found 1 yet. I think that a large part has to do with the fact that the marketplace system is really ROUGH there are far to many people to have it the way it is currently. i have seen something like this work in ragnorok but that game had it to where most of them congregated to one place on the map and there was way less people. there needs to be a better search function. The other part of this is that there just isnt drops so how to fix that
a.) faster spawn rates for huntable mobs/ as well as stagnate spawns.
b.) increase the rarity drop rate
c.) allow for the hunted animal that drops the beast to be slaughtered for its carcass
d.) add in to a professions the ability to increase the rarity in an efficient way. I know that in some crafting you can
increase the rarity by adding 2 tiers map when processing ie a common can go it a uncommon with the use of a
rare. but realistically the stated conversion is the only one that would ever be used noone is going to use an epic
to make a rare a heroic because there just simply isn't enough epics or even rare to do that with.
e.)as previously stated allow for the killed mob to drop carcasses.
3.)Scribing can be fixed by removing everything from the merchant. and adding a basic even below novice version of the buff scroll to there market. Arcane in this example could be fix by implementing a long quest chain form say a "lost monk" that allows you to do higher level crafting at a remote area that could be in a pvp zone like north tropics for carp or deep desert for armor as examples (except for the monks house is a small safe zone ) high risk for a high reward isn't that what this game is all about :P. Lastly i think changing the way that nodes spawn ( like not allowing iron to spawn when literally no one can mine it so it take the spots of where copper can spawn there fore reducing copper amounts.) or simply changing the recipes might help. also allowing for us to dismantle gear into component for a cost is a good gold sink as well as a good way to get low level resources into the game.
thanks for reading and i look forward to playing as the game progresses if you have any conflicting views or added info for making these systems better please comment!
1
Comments
yes and yes!
I don't think this will be necessary if they just address your point, 2-b
2.d.)
true but better to give options as well as maybe new ideas.
I don't think this is the case, based on first and second-hand experience. There are quite a few dedicated gatherers in my guild and I am also one of them. I have leveled multiple gathering professions to apprentice-journeyman in both phases (my mining is almost master level) and have been seeing a lot less frequency of legendary and epic mat's than in phase 1 and have also not been seeing very many of these from any of the other gatherers in my guild either.
I've also been attempting to dive into being a scribe, but as the OP mentioned, it is just a huge gold sink for seemingly no reason.
Is crafting intended to put value into items? or is it intended as another grind to keep the economy moving?
If someone gets to the master artisan level, can they actually up charge for the items they make? or will the raw materials still be worth more?
I really want the artisan system to feel good at all levels, but so far it leaves a lot to be desired.
It's mostly placeholder.
People sometimes ask 'why make placeholders?'
It helps to train devs to think about problems in efficient ways, sometimes. I'm not saying that something like the below would be implemented but it's a simple example:
If you have placeholder NPCs in approximately the locations you want, doing nothing, then if you wanted to test 'quest hand-ins' of a specific type, those 'blank/placeholder NPCs' are the ones you can test with. For example a 'Valentine's Event' often uses this NPC type well.
Stuff like that. Developers can gain experience with how to efficiently think about the design of their game by 'constant exposure to placeholder systems'.
Sometimes, in poorly managed projects, the little 'extras' that they build eventually 'become the actual game', but recently, those types of games just never launch so I am not worried about it in Ashes.
Just thought I'd actually mention it today... not really specific to anything you said,