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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III 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.
Guild, Craft, Citizenship should be account-bound, not character-bound; account should have 8 slots
hulkmaster
Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Let me elaborate, all 4 suggestions are kinda interconnected
Account character slots
During alpha i've seen a ton of people who were trying different classes and had to delete old characters, thus i think there should be as much character slots as classes
Positive outcome for players:
- no need to delete characters in order to try new other classes
Negative for the system (without implementing other suggestions from this post):
- crafting system limitations will be disbalanced (with 6 extra potentially maxed out professions)
Negatives for the game:
- players will not buy secondary accounts in order to try new classes
Account-bound craft
Initial idea, as far as i understood, is about that 1 character can max only 2 professions, so you can max only 10 profs per account (5 character slots); with 22 total profs this means you need 2.2 accounts to max everything (considering latest mention of crafting refactoring - i guess might be even more)
I guess goal here is to force people to interact with each other, so there would not be self-sufficient accounts.
But in this case dedicated people can just buy 3 accounts and thats it, they will still have to spend same amount of time&effort as if all of these were on the same account (but this is side-topic)
In this case adding more character slots will break this idea, but if craft is account bound - it doesn't matter.
Currently if you want to max JM profs you need 22/4 = 5.25 characters, where 1 can do gathering, and other chars are just staying with citizenship in nodes with dedicated stations.
Which yet again doesn't make much sense, because it feels like its the same as just having access to everything from one account.
The only difference is that you cannot use, for example, JM scrolls on character below 20 lvl.
So if Steven's goal is to maximise your (player) time in the game (which makes a lot of sense in MMORPG), the its fine; but after you reached 50lvl on all characters - thats it, now its 100% the same as having crafting profs account-bound.
So current profits for the system (MMORPG):
- player has to spent more time in the game (lvling up characters in order to use prof' scrolls, but not necessary)
Profits of account bound craft (for players):
- no need for mandatory twinks just to lvl up profs
Account-bound citizenship
This one already brought couple of exploits into the game, which will just increase with time.
Example of bad actors:
1) On Lotharia (EU) there were 2 situtations where one guild, utilizing the fact, that each twink on account counts as separate citizen, did 51% attack on Joeva node, taking mayor place.
2) After taking mayor place they declared war on every node in the game (current fix is that only 3 wars per 3 days is possible)
3) All crafters, who were citizens of different nodes, basically closed the game for the day, because it was impossible to play for they - they are not battle oriented. Moreover a lot of people in general were not battle oriented. It lead to situation where people were, basically, feeding themselves to the "agressor" just to "skip the war and get back to enjoying the game"
I know wars are part of the game and i like it. I don't like that attack-51 is possible with twinks.
There was another situation with same guild with same tactic in same node, but this time they just decided to destroy one of crafting stations, creating abundance of craftable materials in advance in order to make profit.
I like the fact that it can be done in the game. I don't like the fact that it can be done with attack-51 with twinks.
Side effects of proposal
- Player will not be able to gain per-twink profits from citizenship, which will make it harder to upgrade professions. But can be fixed with "secondary citizenship". If current system allows creating 5 characters in order to have 5 citizenships - why not have account-bound citizenship with 1 primary and 4 secondary citizenships in order to gain crafting advantages?
Profits for players in case this is implemented:
- No abusing of election system (only 1 "vote" per account, only on "primary" citizenship)
Negatives (if secondary citizenship will not be implemented):
- cannot gain variety of crafting buffs from different nodes
Negatives otherwise:
- nothing on top of my mind
Account-bound guild
This one is pure QoL - annoying to juggle with characters between "main" and "twinks" guilds.
I guess "character-bound" guild idea exists for the purpose of "sending spies to guilds" situation; but i think you can achieve same result with account-bound guild membership.
Another potential issue will be that will be that currently there is idea of "battle guild" "crafting guild and "zerg guild".
But from my experience people tend to stick to "either battle or craft" on account level, so should not be a problem.
Side-note on guild skills: I understand that "battle" branch is for lvling up & guild wars. I somewhat understand "member branch" - for guild wars. But i don't udnerstand the goal of crafting branch - it does not really realte to any significant guild-bound activity to be honest, because again
battle - guild wars
members - guild wars
crafting - ???
feels like crafting can be excluded from "guild skills" into different category
Account character slots
During alpha i've seen a ton of people who were trying different classes and had to delete old characters, thus i think there should be as much character slots as classes
Positive outcome for players:
- no need to delete characters in order to try new other classes
Negative for the system (without implementing other suggestions from this post):
- crafting system limitations will be disbalanced (with 6 extra potentially maxed out professions)
Negatives for the game:
- players will not buy secondary accounts in order to try new classes
Account-bound craft
Initial idea, as far as i understood, is about that 1 character can max only 2 professions, so you can max only 10 profs per account (5 character slots); with 22 total profs this means you need 2.2 accounts to max everything (considering latest mention of crafting refactoring - i guess might be even more)
I guess goal here is to force people to interact with each other, so there would not be self-sufficient accounts.
But in this case dedicated people can just buy 3 accounts and thats it, they will still have to spend same amount of time&effort as if all of these were on the same account (but this is side-topic)
In this case adding more character slots will break this idea, but if craft is account bound - it doesn't matter.
Currently if you want to max JM profs you need 22/4 = 5.25 characters, where 1 can do gathering, and other chars are just staying with citizenship in nodes with dedicated stations.
Which yet again doesn't make much sense, because it feels like its the same as just having access to everything from one account.
The only difference is that you cannot use, for example, JM scrolls on character below 20 lvl.
So if Steven's goal is to maximise your (player) time in the game (which makes a lot of sense in MMORPG), the its fine; but after you reached 50lvl on all characters - thats it, now its 100% the same as having crafting profs account-bound.
So current profits for the system (MMORPG):
- player has to spent more time in the game (lvling up characters in order to use prof' scrolls, but not necessary)
Profits of account bound craft (for players):
- no need for mandatory twinks just to lvl up profs
Account-bound citizenship
This one already brought couple of exploits into the game, which will just increase with time.
Example of bad actors:
1) On Lotharia (EU) there were 2 situtations where one guild, utilizing the fact, that each twink on account counts as separate citizen, did 51% attack on Joeva node, taking mayor place.
2) After taking mayor place they declared war on every node in the game (current fix is that only 3 wars per 3 days is possible)
3) All crafters, who were citizens of different nodes, basically closed the game for the day, because it was impossible to play for they - they are not battle oriented. Moreover a lot of people in general were not battle oriented. It lead to situation where people were, basically, feeding themselves to the "agressor" just to "skip the war and get back to enjoying the game"
I know wars are part of the game and i like it. I don't like that attack-51 is possible with twinks.
There was another situation with same guild with same tactic in same node, but this time they just decided to destroy one of crafting stations, creating abundance of craftable materials in advance in order to make profit.
I like the fact that it can be done in the game. I don't like the fact that it can be done with attack-51 with twinks.
Side effects of proposal
- Player will not be able to gain per-twink profits from citizenship, which will make it harder to upgrade professions. But can be fixed with "secondary citizenship". If current system allows creating 5 characters in order to have 5 citizenships - why not have account-bound citizenship with 1 primary and 4 secondary citizenships in order to gain crafting advantages?
Profits for players in case this is implemented:
- No abusing of election system (only 1 "vote" per account, only on "primary" citizenship)
Negatives (if secondary citizenship will not be implemented):
- cannot gain variety of crafting buffs from different nodes
Negatives otherwise:
- nothing on top of my mind
Account-bound guild
This one is pure QoL - annoying to juggle with characters between "main" and "twinks" guilds.
I guess "character-bound" guild idea exists for the purpose of "sending spies to guilds" situation; but i think you can achieve same result with account-bound guild membership.
Another potential issue will be that will be that currently there is idea of "battle guild" "crafting guild and "zerg guild".
But from my experience people tend to stick to "either battle or craft" on account level, so should not be a problem.
Side-note on guild skills: I understand that "battle" branch is for lvling up & guild wars. I somewhat understand "member branch" - for guild wars. But i don't udnerstand the goal of crafting branch - it does not really realte to any significant guild-bound activity to be honest, because again
battle - guild wars
members - guild wars
crafting - ???
feels like crafting can be excluded from "guild skills" into different category
2
Comments
Sure, more is always better, for me! Certainly during testing phases, it's cool to be able to test each archetype.
Account-bound Crafting:
Really don't like this one. Sounds too restrictive. Given that each character is a different individual, why would they be held back from pursuing an artisan skill just because another character has done some?
Account-bound Citizenship:
This is coming, it just hasn't been developed yet.
"A player can only claim citizenship to one node per server realm per account at a time."
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Citizenship
Account-bound Guild:
This would severely restrict Steven's hopes for inter-guild espionage. Can't see this one ever happening.
not only test, but be able to be flexible in characters, especially when one of the roles is lacking in the raid
not sure what do you mean by "each character is different individual". Also not sure if you're talking about RP?
Maybe you misunderstood me, but from gameplay perspective it is restrictive in a way, where is does not benefit neither players, nor game.
niceeee
i highly respect Steven and i think he does amazing job. But part of "him doing amazing job" is listening to players and instead of enforcing "his hopes", he tries to do "the right thing" in order to bring game to a better place.
Saying that - i just have not found enough justification for not having it like that (you can always do espionage with separate account, especially when nicks become well known - it does not matter if its same account or not)
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