Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
An assessment of the artisan system as it stands
donnybravo
Member, Alpha Two
in Artisanship
Hello Friends,
I have spent a few days focusing on the crafting system and I have some feedback. We may be a minority, but there are people like myself who would like to focus on crafting and wish to interact with the game in a more cooperative way. I am in favor of the PVX system and still see value in making deaths feel impactful. The potential loss of resources makes adventuring feel like it matters and that decisions may have consequences.
With that being said, the economy needs some refinement. If this world is supposed to be one made by and for the players then players need to feel like they can interact with it in the way they feel they can be the most impactful. I'm descent at pvp and pve and enjoy combat as it stands for the most part. What i do not enjoy is the fact that i feel i must further my adventuring level by focusing on combat in order to continue focusing on crafting. For example i spent 2.5 days mining and grinded the "rivers" of basalt near Myraleth. This left me at mining level 22 which felt good. What does not feel good is when i decided this was a solid point to go and try to find veins of zinc and copper for 2 hours traveling across nearly the entire Riverlands only to end up with with less than two stacks of each in my bags. I took the zinc and copper and refined it into fragments so i could craft my armor. This allowed me to make two pairs of boots leaving me around level 1.2 armor smithing.
I then check the market to see that some people clearly know the good spots and are selling common zinc for 5 silver a piece. Now this is what it is, it's a resource and people farm it, that's just going to happen. I take a look at my two gold and do some quick math to find it would take likely 50-100 gold to get my armor smithing somewhere around level 10 given i will need more xp to level per level. Now i've run a few caravans and those can take anywhere from 20 minutes to over and hour depending on how far you are going with a base caravan. I ran them in the middle of the night as to stay away from prying eyes and with a green and white commodity heading from Myraleth to Halcyon which seemed like a solid value proposition considering the time it takes and the % i was gaining on my initial glint investment. This netted me a little over 1 gold per trip with let's say a conservative 40 minute time investment.
To break this down if i need zinc to craft base armor that has almost no resell value just to be able to make level 10 gear i need to sink 35-50+ hours of SUCCESSFUL caravan running including the time it may take to farm the glint to make the gold. It's that or farm the matts myself which i would opt to do if i could find more than a stack per hour. Let's say i have some luck and can farm a stack of 20 zinc in half an hour with an average of 3.5 zinc per vein i would have to find a vein every 7 minutes for about 12 hours. 12 hours of farming time not including trips to deposit materials in storage to get the raw materials that i then have to refine for another 14 hours aggregate to make gear at level 10 and this is with very conservative quick math. Even if i refine all the zinc in separate nodes which would take over an hour to possibly 2 in travel I'm realistically looking at 18+ hours of farming and refining materials including a conservative travel time estimate. I got to adventuring level 10 in about a day.
All this time investment to attempt to make gear that is only one tier up from base and is at my current level. Additionally, i gained maybe 3/4 to possibly over 1 adventuring level (i wasn't tracking across my initial few days playing) from 11-12 with my mining at 22, lumberjacking at 11.9, carpentry at 3, stonemasonry at 16 and metal refining at 7 from the veins i randomly found adventuring and from what my friends could spare.
If the idea is to have crafters make "the best shit" and the economy be player driven, why not either increase the vein density to drive prices down and availability up or include some sort of resource tracking system so people who truly just want to be crafters and will ultimately drive the economy be able to realistically do so. What if there was a persistent amount of veins across each node, one spawning randomly somewhere else when one gets gathered, so that no matter how many people are farming there is always some to be found. This would drive scarcity and prices down and not reward those monopolizing the veins since they would simply make less money and be less incentivized due to lack of scarcity. Adding in % rarity scaling as it pertains to gathering level would also benefit the crafters as they would be able to make higher quality gear based on their efforts with artisan gear bein an additional boon they receive based on interacting with the economy and acquiring the gold to buy it. If my refining gathering and crafting levels for a particular pathway (weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, carpentry etc.) are all level 10, in my opinion my adventuring level should also be close to that based solely on the crafting i have been doing so i can continue my journey to more dangerous places with higher tier resources. My weapon level would be low so pvp focused bandits will still have the upper hand offensively. Otherwise i am forced to put my tools down and pick up my sword to grind out adventuring levels just to continue to do what i want to do which doesn't feel great.
I have spent a few days focusing on the crafting system and I have some feedback. We may be a minority, but there are people like myself who would like to focus on crafting and wish to interact with the game in a more cooperative way. I am in favor of the PVX system and still see value in making deaths feel impactful. The potential loss of resources makes adventuring feel like it matters and that decisions may have consequences.
With that being said, the economy needs some refinement. If this world is supposed to be one made by and for the players then players need to feel like they can interact with it in the way they feel they can be the most impactful. I'm descent at pvp and pve and enjoy combat as it stands for the most part. What i do not enjoy is the fact that i feel i must further my adventuring level by focusing on combat in order to continue focusing on crafting. For example i spent 2.5 days mining and grinded the "rivers" of basalt near Myraleth. This left me at mining level 22 which felt good. What does not feel good is when i decided this was a solid point to go and try to find veins of zinc and copper for 2 hours traveling across nearly the entire Riverlands only to end up with with less than two stacks of each in my bags. I took the zinc and copper and refined it into fragments so i could craft my armor. This allowed me to make two pairs of boots leaving me around level 1.2 armor smithing.
I then check the market to see that some people clearly know the good spots and are selling common zinc for 5 silver a piece. Now this is what it is, it's a resource and people farm it, that's just going to happen. I take a look at my two gold and do some quick math to find it would take likely 50-100 gold to get my armor smithing somewhere around level 10 given i will need more xp to level per level. Now i've run a few caravans and those can take anywhere from 20 minutes to over and hour depending on how far you are going with a base caravan. I ran them in the middle of the night as to stay away from prying eyes and with a green and white commodity heading from Myraleth to Halcyon which seemed like a solid value proposition considering the time it takes and the % i was gaining on my initial glint investment. This netted me a little over 1 gold per trip with let's say a conservative 40 minute time investment.
To break this down if i need zinc to craft base armor that has almost no resell value just to be able to make level 10 gear i need to sink 35-50+ hours of SUCCESSFUL caravan running including the time it may take to farm the glint to make the gold. It's that or farm the matts myself which i would opt to do if i could find more than a stack per hour. Let's say i have some luck and can farm a stack of 20 zinc in half an hour with an average of 3.5 zinc per vein i would have to find a vein every 7 minutes for about 12 hours. 12 hours of farming time not including trips to deposit materials in storage to get the raw materials that i then have to refine for another 14 hours aggregate to make gear at level 10 and this is with very conservative quick math. Even if i refine all the zinc in separate nodes which would take over an hour to possibly 2 in travel I'm realistically looking at 18+ hours of farming and refining materials including a conservative travel time estimate. I got to adventuring level 10 in about a day.
All this time investment to attempt to make gear that is only one tier up from base and is at my current level. Additionally, i gained maybe 3/4 to possibly over 1 adventuring level (i wasn't tracking across my initial few days playing) from 11-12 with my mining at 22, lumberjacking at 11.9, carpentry at 3, stonemasonry at 16 and metal refining at 7 from the veins i randomly found adventuring and from what my friends could spare.
If the idea is to have crafters make "the best shit" and the economy be player driven, why not either increase the vein density to drive prices down and availability up or include some sort of resource tracking system so people who truly just want to be crafters and will ultimately drive the economy be able to realistically do so. What if there was a persistent amount of veins across each node, one spawning randomly somewhere else when one gets gathered, so that no matter how many people are farming there is always some to be found. This would drive scarcity and prices down and not reward those monopolizing the veins since they would simply make less money and be less incentivized due to lack of scarcity. Adding in % rarity scaling as it pertains to gathering level would also benefit the crafters as they would be able to make higher quality gear based on their efforts with artisan gear bein an additional boon they receive based on interacting with the economy and acquiring the gold to buy it. If my refining gathering and crafting levels for a particular pathway (weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, carpentry etc.) are all level 10, in my opinion my adventuring level should also be close to that based solely on the crafting i have been doing so i can continue my journey to more dangerous places with higher tier resources. My weapon level would be low so pvp focused bandits will still have the upper hand offensively. Otherwise i am forced to put my tools down and pick up my sword to grind out adventuring levels just to continue to do what i want to do which doesn't feel great.
0
Comments