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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five 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.
Artisanship Team: You're Working Too Hard (02/25/25)
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
in Artisanship
Idk how to keep this short, but I'll try. Econ/Artisan team, you're working too hard (unless you're using AI models to generate this in which case you're working exactly hard enough at this stage, ignore this whole post and carry on). Everything from here is based on my experience only and should be treated as opinion by anyone else who reads it. If you find yourself thinking 'provide proof', just ignore it.
Disclaimer: I'm using Ashes Codex for some stuff I don't remember since I can't log in and the wiki is about as accurate.
Basically, you need to have a formula somewhere to make this not a slog, and the combat team might not be far enough along yet to give you what you need to create that formula, but creating things even in Alpha that can end up being 'Legacy', especially things that don't make sense, will only hurt you in the long term.
This is because players hate having to remember certain things or use Codexes or 'constantly check recipes to make sure they remember everything', but at the same time you can't stop them, so they'll do it, and then hate it.
Let's take 'Forge-Fired Beef and Barley Stew'.
This recipe has Pork in it, it lasts 1 hour, and raises 'Metalworking Rarity' and 'Physical Block Chance Rating'.
If you made this a lot, you'd surely remember there was Pork in it. If you didn't, that's fine, someone would ask for it and you'd check how to make it and notice. "Metalworking Rating' might be a little confusing to some considering how Processing works, but Physical Block Chance Rating is pretty clear in what it does, at least.
Quick compares with the Roasted Giant Bullywog which gives only 1/3 as much of the Physical Block Chance, and it makes sense, but all this makes sense primarily 'in isolation'.
When we think of Ashes as a game with Regions, and Regional items, we can start to 'see why this ends up being sold by the Metalworking Vendor'. I'll skip the detailing on that, I'm sure you've had meetings about it.
Similarly, the combination of Bread with its 243 Health, and the Grilled Beef Steak with its 49 Physical Power Rating, into the Beef Steak Sandwich with 36 Physical Power Rating and 121 Max Health, implies that your system, wherever it comes from, is 'working as if the limitations on number of food buffs active (1)' is a direct intent, but since apparently the Beef Steak itself and the Sandwich are the same level to craft, there's no ladder here, and this applies to many things if you look through it (for random readers, don't latch onto this too much by assuming that this is 1+1=1, that's super easy to tune).
That's actually a good thing since upscaling and downscaling of effectiveness in Crafting 'ladders' leads to really terrible outcomes even in games with Auction Houses. Treating the Processing time as an opportunity cost for this is throwing off something.
Similarly, your level 25 Potions look like BDO ones, in terms of their effects and the materials required to make them, but then they look like TL(Maybe L2? Idk, I assume one inherits from the other) in terms of their duration and effort to make. The problem here is therefore that it's totally unclear which it's going to feel like and therefore which problem it will cause when you tune the 'amount of final result you actually get'.
And I'm not talking about the balance for 'how much power you get out of making a Surging Might Potion'. One can easily balance 'how many seconds of power one wants a player to get from this potion'by changing the amount they make, but what is harder to change with the current system is 'how much exp/time it takes to supply a single character and therefore reach market saturation'.
From the relatively uninformed outside perspective, you're 'Working yourselves to system-death' the same way the BDO people and to some extent the early New World Econ team did.
BDO people learned their lesson and basically junked the whole thing down to the point where it's a Facebook game with a high(but steadily decreasing!) barrier to entry. New World learned their lesson and took control of the economy in a way that makes that side 'satisfying if you don't actually care that much about interconnection', (or you're one of those people who knows that in a game where 80-90% of players have no incentive to care about crafting, you get to be a shopkeep NPC and make money that way).
Ashes doesn't have either option, as I see it, based on everything else going on, even if the combat stats get adjusted (and as a person who is biased against Ashes combat, I don't think my feedback on the fact that they should be, should hold any weight really)..
I used Food and Potions for this rant because I've had the most time to think about them, and Consumables illustrate the 'thing I think is an issue' better, but the same applies to gear.
Anyway, as noted, if this is being done by the equivalent of 'having an AI assistant follow a formula and maybe grab ideas from other games', you're fine, you'll just have to do more work later, but that was going to be my suggestion anyway if this was 'manually done'. Until the Combat team is clearer on the Numbers and the drop tables, please stop working so hard, you're digging a hole you can't get out of. One look at the Accessories truly evokes deep feelings of sympathy in me since you can't even 'respec the cooldown to balance it' like you can with the potions.
Maybe I'm just overthinking it. Good luck.
Disclaimer: I'm using Ashes Codex for some stuff I don't remember since I can't log in and the wiki is about as accurate.
Basically, you need to have a formula somewhere to make this not a slog, and the combat team might not be far enough along yet to give you what you need to create that formula, but creating things even in Alpha that can end up being 'Legacy', especially things that don't make sense, will only hurt you in the long term.
This is because players hate having to remember certain things or use Codexes or 'constantly check recipes to make sure they remember everything', but at the same time you can't stop them, so they'll do it, and then hate it.
Let's take 'Forge-Fired Beef and Barley Stew'.
This recipe has Pork in it, it lasts 1 hour, and raises 'Metalworking Rarity' and 'Physical Block Chance Rating'.
If you made this a lot, you'd surely remember there was Pork in it. If you didn't, that's fine, someone would ask for it and you'd check how to make it and notice. "Metalworking Rating' might be a little confusing to some considering how Processing works, but Physical Block Chance Rating is pretty clear in what it does, at least.
Quick compares with the Roasted Giant Bullywog which gives only 1/3 as much of the Physical Block Chance, and it makes sense, but all this makes sense primarily 'in isolation'.
When we think of Ashes as a game with Regions, and Regional items, we can start to 'see why this ends up being sold by the Metalworking Vendor'. I'll skip the detailing on that, I'm sure you've had meetings about it.
Similarly, the combination of Bread with its 243 Health, and the Grilled Beef Steak with its 49 Physical Power Rating, into the Beef Steak Sandwich with 36 Physical Power Rating and 121 Max Health, implies that your system, wherever it comes from, is 'working as if the limitations on number of food buffs active (1)' is a direct intent, but since apparently the Beef Steak itself and the Sandwich are the same level to craft, there's no ladder here, and this applies to many things if you look through it (for random readers, don't latch onto this too much by assuming that this is 1+1=1, that's super easy to tune).
If that 1-food buff limitation is eventually going away and moving more toward Throne and Liberty style, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by making some food that has a few ingredients and is simple to make but has a negative effect that can be canceled out by another food/gear if the player cares, a TL example would be if they let us use Solisium Carp to make, say, 'Steamed Moat Carp' with only some spices, but then had it lower some specific CC resist or Accuracy that you could make up for (while giving a good chunk of something else, I'd say Health or similar but that's not usually what their Fish do). Also works as a way of 'redistributing gear stats you don't need for certain combat' and this works fairly well on most people I know, because players seem to have the awareness of 'I have an unnecessary amount of X stat relative to this content' but also don't usually want to go get a whole new gear piece to swap out, especially if they will lose a set bonus.
That's actually a good thing since upscaling and downscaling of effectiveness in Crafting 'ladders' leads to really terrible outcomes even in games with Auction Houses. Treating the Processing time as an opportunity cost for this is throwing off something.
Similarly, your level 25 Potions look like BDO ones, in terms of their effects and the materials required to make them, but then they look like TL(Maybe L2? Idk, I assume one inherits from the other) in terms of their duration and effort to make. The problem here is therefore that it's totally unclear which it's going to feel like and therefore which problem it will cause when you tune the 'amount of final result you actually get'.
And I'm not talking about the balance for 'how much power you get out of making a Surging Might Potion'. One can easily balance 'how many seconds of power one wants a player to get from this potion'by changing the amount they make, but what is harder to change with the current system is 'how much exp/time it takes to supply a single character and therefore reach market saturation'.
From the relatively uninformed outside perspective, you're 'Working yourselves to system-death' the same way the BDO people and to some extent the early New World Econ team did.
BDO people learned their lesson and basically junked the whole thing down to the point where it's a Facebook game with a high(but steadily decreasing!) barrier to entry. New World learned their lesson and took control of the economy in a way that makes that side 'satisfying if you don't actually care that much about interconnection', (or you're one of those people who knows that in a game where 80-90% of players have no incentive to care about crafting, you get to be a shopkeep NPC and make money that way).
Ashes doesn't have either option, as I see it, based on everything else going on, even if the combat stats get adjusted (and as a person who is biased against Ashes combat, I don't think my feedback on the fact that they should be, should hold any weight really)..
I used Food and Potions for this rant because I've had the most time to think about them, and Consumables illustrate the 'thing I think is an issue' better, but the same applies to gear.
Anyway, as noted, if this is being done by the equivalent of 'having an AI assistant follow a formula and maybe grab ideas from other games', you're fine, you'll just have to do more work later, but that was going to be my suggestion anyway if this was 'manually done'. Until the Combat team is clearer on the Numbers and the drop tables, please stop working so hard, you're digging a hole you can't get out of. One look at the Accessories truly evokes deep feelings of sympathy in me since you can't even 'respec the cooldown to balance it' like you can with the potions.
Maybe I'm just overthinking it. Good luck.
"I blame society."
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
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Comments
Potions were suuuper limited, especially in earlier versions of the game, and cooking didn't exist. The game was all about buffs, so you could have several potion effects at the same time as long as they provided different effects (run spd, atk spd, etc).
So Ashes is far beyond any of that and I assume TL is as well. Here's a list of pots ~3 years into L2's release
https://l2j.ru/test/index.php?p=2&t=6&ty=potion
On the main topic itself, the system definitely seems insanely huge and is destined to only become bigger, considering we still have several tiers of artisanry to go. And the design is definitely all about "you are either THE maker of food/potions or you're a buyer who has no damn clue how those things even appear on the market".
I've never really looked into alchemy in Ashes, but holy hell 15sec effect on a potion that requires several professions to make is definitely crazy. In the context of insanely low ttk, that kind of design screams to me "only burst counts, so you pop this once in a fight and if you didn't win - womp womp".
My L2 bias is pretty much explained in the first part of this comment, so I got nothing more to say on my opinion of the current Ashes design of this feature.
I have various reasons to say it is actually considerably worse even in core implementation, in terms of 'fitting to the game's form', but I can't tell if my Alchemist bias and Econ Design bias are mixing together. I'll just give the usual 'this is a massive red flag for me if you also want me to care about Artisanship in your game'.
As usual, Throne and Liberty 'example'.
Right now, TL potions last the same duration as Ashes Potions as of this post.
They require 3 of a specific Green Grade Gem Ore and some Natural Essence (a drop from Dungeon mobs).
They cost only a tiny bit of time to make, and while I don't really 'believe in drinking ground up gemstones', I'm choosing to deludedly believe that they were trying to 'copy' FF11 and look enough like L2 at the same time. so their four types of Gem are just FF Crystal Drops to me.
So for FF players (confirmed that I did not have to tell people this for them to get the same view), this is 'Natural Essence, but processed using different methods' (Powdered, Heat Distilled, Compressed, etc).
So from that example, this is easy to work with. Those 'Crystals' are easyish to get, but interestingly not exactly. They are handling their 'Econ slots' well enough, and just once again 'making sure easily confused people don't care about too many names'.
There is Rubrix Ore (used for this and making Upgrade stuff), Rubrix (used for Weapons but can be used for Upgrade stuff but not for this, and no way to convert it back to Ore) and Polished Rubrix. They started from Rubrix, worked out the Econ slots, and adapted their items.
So when I see my Amitoi bring me back '25 Green Rubrix Ore', even though I have hundreds of Blue Rubrix Ore, I'm still a bit happy. A low level player who doesn't have the option to easily farm Blue Rubrix Ore, or a busy Dungeoneer, are also happy.
FF11 Equivalent, those people who would just try to grow the Crystals they needed with Gardening because they didn't need food ingredients as much as they needed Crystals.
I don't know what the Econ slots in Ashes are, I know my biased opinions of what they are, and because I have such a clear idea of all that, I shouldn't talk about it, probably.
But I can definitely say that the Surging Might Potion slot, for Ashes of Creation, is sus.
The 15-30s Stat/Buff-similar-to-stat slot is separate from the 5 minute one, and different again from the 15 minute one (in my experience, the Itemization team can get away with treating the 15, 30, and anything higher potions as all one slot, and the Econ team only needs to split those three into two categories, at their discretion of where the 30 min one goes).
So much data... but it's useless to spend time thinking and not typing, so...
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."