leveling, drops, gathering, crafting - We can do better.
leveling, drops, gathering, crafting - Im just going to riff on my testing experience and how I think these interconnected systems can be improved because they are pretty busted atm. This is just my perspective after joining mid Phase 2. If yours was different, please share.
Let me first highlight a few past and current correlated points. I know some systems are still placeholders but I think even with that in mind my comments are still fair.
Leveling/drops: Prior to recent changes, getting green or blue item drops was quite easy and they were strong. They could be obtained all the way to level 25 making progression feel rewarding and gave you decent gear to reach level cap. The problem was it was too easy which was why I think Intrepid reduced drops so dramatically. However the item void it left was huge.
Drops/crafting/leveling: When we were getting drops, they were abundant and relatively strong. There was no reason to craft during leveling since it could be done comfortably with just drops. It didnt help that low level crafting was generally too expensive to justify. It wasnt until level 20+ where crafting was really pushed since that was the artificial end game. This is excluding Alt progression since most had abundant resources at that point so they were crafting strong level 0 and 10 gear right away for alts.
Gathering/crafting: From early to mid server life, quite a few gatherables were consistently hard to obtain which was another deterrent to crafting while leveling. It turned the focus to just blowing through levels and ignoring other systems. As the server matured, farming slowed as players gathered enough resources over time and surplus on the market reduced the cost to the point where crafting mid to high tier items in all artisan categories was very doable. The two system were in relative support of each other. There was still scarcity but overall an abundance gave way to more system being utilized. Then on fresh start came the recipe input changes. Now most craftables were absurdly resource intensive to create, all for the sake of slowing progression. It single handedly killed the crafting market and player gear progression. Gatherables were increased slightly after the fact but scarcity was already an existing problem and this bump did relatively nothing.
TLDR: Drops too frequent and strong, then over rotated on; early gathering was a pain so better to focus on level and crafting wasnt needed to progress to level cap; for a brief moment gathering and crafting was good.
I think there is a major disconnect between these systems in an attempt to slow down progression. Im all for controlling progression and adding value to all the content along the way. Its always bothered me in games when low/mid level items never got any attention since players were able to blaze through leveling and only focused on end game gear. But changes I saw didnt control progression, it just made it messy.
I like the idea of what Intrepid did with drops for fresh start, reducing them to the point where crafting should have become necessary. However the bottleneck for obtaining resources and the massive increase in input per items rendered crafting pointless. Players are again back to finding ways to obtain items, this time through quests, sometimes even repeating quest on alts to gear out their main.
Here is what I would like to see in phase 3.
Resources should not be scarce. This will be the bedrock so dont cheap out. If low to mid rarity resources are abundant, crafting while leveling will be an easy sell and with high participation. Griding crafting levels will also feel less like a waste since you could crank out lots of low level gear that will be purchased by players, rather than just finding the most cost effective item to xp farm and vendor. This also impacts gathering and processing. Instead of just vendoring common, uncommon and rare resources as was the usual, gathering and processing now adds more value and increases the supply in the entire system.
Keep drops rare. Dont make it easy to fully gear out a player with just drops but give them some good key pieces to reward progression. This will support the assembly line of gathering, processing and crafting to be the primary source of items regardless of the rarity. Ascension and tempering both require lots of completed items to deconstruct so having healthy system of resources will ensure these progression paths are viable.
Keep drops generic. By generic I mean no set pieces. Set pieces are generally better but not in all instances. Removing these items as drops will encourage crafting and at the same time keep drops in the game, increasing the number of items in circulation.
Increase leveling XP I know XP requirements already feel high but I think we still have some flexibility. To start, the current leveling path hasnt accounted for all the XP the full quest system will bring so increasing XP per level isnt that unreasonable. This game isnt about fast progression so just make peace with that point. I believe there is room to increase the time between levels giving players more of an opportunity and reason to invest in the decently crafted gear. One where investing in gear strongly improves the time to level so it becomes the natural path to follow. We've all played MMOs where level progression was super fast and it has the same result, no one cares about their gear till end game. Adding yet another incentive to crafting will continue to support the entire system.
Artisan gear. Gathering and processing gear should be as essential as crafting gear. The ability to do more with less will make it essential for all artisans to invest in their gear and be rewarded for it. It will also give new life to low/mid level mats that were previously vendor junk or low end crafting as servers mature. There should also be a sense of progression in artisan gear like your combat gear. First you craft your grey or green set, then as you continue to invest in your gear you see a return in the form of higher resources which will be used to support crafting or sold on the market. I feel much of this is in the works and we may see some of this soon but I feel its too important not to mention.
Maybe all of this is the plan, I just dont see it yet. Again, this is just my experience and what ive come to realize after play testing with many people in and out of my guild so I dont think what I have to say is that unreasonable. That was long so I appreciate anyone who made it through all that.
