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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.
Don't put hard gates on profession levels
Syraleaf
Member, Alpha Two
in Artisanship
Currently the system limits the amount of skills you can level up to journeyman etc. I'd like to propose that gaining those skills get exponentially harder instead, removing the need for a hard lock.
Let me break down why:
Currently the system has a hard cap which means that, once you hit it, you'll lose the satisfaction of gaining experience and potentially leveling up. Once you finished your final profession you'll be "done". You cannot improve anymore - ever. This feels bad.
The lock is a design decision:
Now, I can hear the keyboards rattling in the background telling me that they're limited for a reason! And you'd be right! I agree actually. I'm specifically not asking for those numbers to be reasonable. Call it a leveling fantasy. It doesn't need to be real. It just needs to give an excuse to keep the fantasy of leveling going. The very worst case scenario here is that several years after we start someone might have 1 extra profession 1 step higher. I think that'd be ok if they're dedicating that much of their time to the system. In the same way that mayors can be a bit special with dragons, our most dedicated artisans can be a little special with their extra leveled profession level.
Please note that I'm deliberately avoiding numbers here. There are various ways in which you could implement a system like this but I'm not interested in discussing the how's. I'd much rather discuss the why's instead.
Let me break down why:
Currently the system has a hard cap which means that, once you hit it, you'll lose the satisfaction of gaining experience and potentially leveling up. Once you finished your final profession you'll be "done". You cannot improve anymore - ever. This feels bad.
The lock is a design decision:
Now, I can hear the keyboards rattling in the background telling me that they're limited for a reason! And you'd be right! I agree actually. I'm specifically not asking for those numbers to be reasonable. Call it a leveling fantasy. It doesn't need to be real. It just needs to give an excuse to keep the fantasy of leveling going. The very worst case scenario here is that several years after we start someone might have 1 extra profession 1 step higher. I think that'd be ok if they're dedicating that much of their time to the system. In the same way that mayors can be a bit special with dragons, our most dedicated artisans can be a little special with their extra leveled profession level.
Please note that I'm deliberately avoiding numbers here. There are various ways in which you could implement a system like this but I'm not interested in discussing the how's. I'd much rather discuss the why's instead.
1
Comments
Probably shouldn't tell you that freeholds are the only way to get past Journeyman so even if they did remove the hard cap there would still be a hard cap.
*sounds of despair*
That's fair input but doesn't change my stance :P This also depends on if there will be other ways to progress past a certain point. If there won't ever be then I can imagine a large portion of the community being turned off by the current implementation once the game comes out. It'd be like being locked at level 20 while some players can keep leveling their characters.
There isn't. I spent 3 days on testing different stuff in Artisanship because I enjoy being self sufficient in MMORPGs which includes crafting your own stuff sometimes. After the 3 days I went to the wiki page to make sure most of the stuff i was going to talk about wasn't place holder systems for now.
They made it pretty clear that they don't want anyone to just craft the highest level stuff. They want it to be heavily restricted. But maybe I missed something.
The link:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Artisan_classes
Edit: I would like to say that I agree that putting hard caps in a game like this is not only a bad idea, but unnecessary. Especially with the level of complexity the professions have already.
I totally understand that their plans right now are different. That's exactly why I'm making this post. I'm hoping to change their mind on this specific aspect of the game. To me, that's the point of the testing phase. To give feedback on the systems that we think do and don't hit the mark.
I fully support the system encouraging players to work together to create items and tools! I'm not playing an MMO only to solo all my professions. I simply would like to avoid having systems say "No" and instead say "Maybe?" with that maybe being a very indirect no.
If a node did lumber milling and carpentry and the other did weaving/tailoring for example i would know i need to bring my wood to sell to the lumber town and the lumber town knows they can take wooden boards and sell at the weaving town since they need the boards to make bolts of cloth but as of this moment the processing benches are going up across the map from the crafting benches resulting in alot of running :P
100%. I'm totally with you on this. I also don't want players to be self sufficient! It's easy to miss but I'm asking for the fantasy of endlessly progressing as opposed to coming to a sudden stop. I'm specifically not asking them to make it so that one player can do everything. That'd totally break the MMO part of the game ^^
also, yes, so much running atm :P
The system in Albion online is no limit, and economy is all good. It took some years of testing to get it up running, and now its 7+ years since release and still going.
If AOC keep the system with those hard limits, and no in game zinks, my guess is that the servers will be ghost towns pretty fast after release.
I mean if they keep the hard cap of 2 max professions and removed the Free hold restrictions it would take a person 4400 hours to get 11 characters to max level to even be able to be self sufficient. Hell even if they remove the Free Hold restrictions and the hard cap, your still looking at something along the lines of 2600 hours to max out every profession. So 6 hours a day every day for a year and two months, at that point not only should you be able to craft whatever you want, you should get a medal for most patient person on the planet. Which still doesn't let you be totally self sufficient due to some mats coming from dungeons and Raids.
@Syraleaf I'm fine with people becoming self sufficient, so long as it takes a long time. Which even removing the 2 most restrictive the game still takes over a year to become mostly self sufficient. Even then it would take OCD levels of commitment that even the most devout girlfriends would have trouble dealing with.
Personally if someone wants to spend 2ish years becoming Yarrik, Merchant Lord of the Riverlands, more power to them.
to be fair when u think about it the crafting progression is a rather long path, it get skill points eventually in phase 2 so you have to hit 50 in it then u need full grandmaster gear and then fully enchant it to +20 which will take awhile since it will break often only then u would be maxed but i doubt very many people will ever hit that tbh
11 character is 3 accounts btw atm, freehold restriction for processing i dont think will ever change they were pretty adamant on freehold making best processing (so master/grandmaster benches) and Nodes get master and grandmaster crafting benches.
maxing professions levels is one thing however actually maxing the profession is another thing all together that would involve getting +20 to grandmaster crafting gear as i mention above no one will hit that most likely so it will be an ever ending push to get there