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.
Artisan Feedback and Suggestions
Taiisien
Member, Alpha Two
in Artisanship
Hello All,
A couple of things up front... Thank You to Intrepid Studios for this project, even though there are growing pains and a long way to go until complete, I can see where it is headed and I am excited. Second, I understand what a true alpha is as I have been a part of quite a few over the years and understand the differences between that and beta / early access. Third, I am aware of the ongoing and upcoming changes to the crafting systems, this is my feedback as the systems are now and areas I see issues as well as some proposed changes that could help mitigate them.
Ok, with that out of the way, here we go.
I would like to propose separating the mount part of the quest out of "the sweat of your brow" questline. I have seen and heard many complaints of persons that want nothing to do with crafting (or questing really) but are forced to go through the questline to get the free mount.
Next I would like to see the introduction to gathering, processing, and crafting be more extensive. First I would divide the quests into each of the gathering professions that way if someone wants to be a lumberjack but not a miner they are only required to do the questline that pertains to logging. Then I would like the quest parts be more in line with the actual processing and crafting instead of the single item and short time-frame. Have the quest require several pieces of wood, to be processed into several pieces of timber at the actual processing time, then craft the crude tool with metal given in the quest. By expanding the quests like this you set more realistic intentions of how the crafting system works as well as making it harder to create bots to gather mats. Added to the first suggestion about the mount being a separate quest and now you have people that actually want to gather/process/craft doing the quests and gaining the abilities versus anyone with a mount able to collect any T1 resource they want.
Ok, this may cause a little contention, but bear with me till the end. I believe that gathering and processing professions should not count towards your number of professions you can acquire. I feel like everyone should be able to gather and process you just have to do the quest mentioned above to get the initial skill to do so. I know that for previous guilds, we asked our people that didn't want to be crafters if they could do the processing since it requires not skill or time commitment really other than being given mats, pressing the process button, and coming back when its done. To make this feasible, I would also like to see Animal Husbandry, Alchemy, Cooking and Farming all moved from processing to crafting since they create final products. This would leave 5 gathering professions, 5 processing professions, and 12 crafting professions. With this change I feel that we would need to reduce the number of crafting professions a character can attain. I believe that the correct balance would be to only allow 3 crafting professions above the level of novice and maxing out at 1 grand master, 1 master, and 1 journeyman. With this reduction in the number of professions allowed combined with the interwoven connection to other crafts Intrepid would still maintain that no one person will be able to "do it all", not even in a single profession past the novice skill level. (a little more on this later)
Quick one here, I feel like people with the hunting profession should gain a skill called skinning. This skill would allow harvesting from mobs killed by the character / character's group / character's raid and they would receive hides (or scales, carapaces, feathers, etc) for the tanners and carcasses. Carcasses should only be processed by cooks to acquire meat, fat and bones, Tanners will only process hides into types of tanned hides / leathers.
And finally, make skill levels and tiers matter, more so than just gaining access to a new level of mats. As a master lumberjack I should not receive the same materials when chopping an oak tree as someone who just picked up their axe for the first time. Either I should have an automatic increase in quantity or rarity or both. The same applies to processing and crafting as well. As a novice weaponsmith a person would have just started on the road to becoming a craftsman, recipes should use very few and very common resources and they should not need more than maybe one other profession to assist them. To facilitate this we need actual novice recipes like say basalt hand axes or granite spears. Both could use ash, oak, hemlock, or larch wood (not timber, just the wood) and shaped stone (granite and basalt weapon molds, that can be made by weaponsmiths. stonemasons should be for building blocks, freehold components and siege weapon ammo). As a person increases their tier additional professions can be intertwined such as a T3 spear needing a dried joshua wood haft from a carpenter combined with the iron spear head the weaponsmith makes. At T5 its even more interconnected needing spiritbloom spear binding from a tailor, weapon oil from a cook, polished ironwood haft from a carpenter and a blued truesteel spear head. As previously mentioned this still prevents the one person doing it all and still interconnects the professions together, but in a way that makes more real world sense.
Thank you all for listening.
Taii
A couple of things up front... Thank You to Intrepid Studios for this project, even though there are growing pains and a long way to go until complete, I can see where it is headed and I am excited. Second, I understand what a true alpha is as I have been a part of quite a few over the years and understand the differences between that and beta / early access. Third, I am aware of the ongoing and upcoming changes to the crafting systems, this is my feedback as the systems are now and areas I see issues as well as some proposed changes that could help mitigate them.
Ok, with that out of the way, here we go.
I would like to propose separating the mount part of the quest out of "the sweat of your brow" questline. I have seen and heard many complaints of persons that want nothing to do with crafting (or questing really) but are forced to go through the questline to get the free mount.
Next I would like to see the introduction to gathering, processing, and crafting be more extensive. First I would divide the quests into each of the gathering professions that way if someone wants to be a lumberjack but not a miner they are only required to do the questline that pertains to logging. Then I would like the quest parts be more in line with the actual processing and crafting instead of the single item and short time-frame. Have the quest require several pieces of wood, to be processed into several pieces of timber at the actual processing time, then craft the crude tool with metal given in the quest. By expanding the quests like this you set more realistic intentions of how the crafting system works as well as making it harder to create bots to gather mats. Added to the first suggestion about the mount being a separate quest and now you have people that actually want to gather/process/craft doing the quests and gaining the abilities versus anyone with a mount able to collect any T1 resource they want.
Ok, this may cause a little contention, but bear with me till the end. I believe that gathering and processing professions should not count towards your number of professions you can acquire. I feel like everyone should be able to gather and process you just have to do the quest mentioned above to get the initial skill to do so. I know that for previous guilds, we asked our people that didn't want to be crafters if they could do the processing since it requires not skill or time commitment really other than being given mats, pressing the process button, and coming back when its done. To make this feasible, I would also like to see Animal Husbandry, Alchemy, Cooking and Farming all moved from processing to crafting since they create final products. This would leave 5 gathering professions, 5 processing professions, and 12 crafting professions. With this change I feel that we would need to reduce the number of crafting professions a character can attain. I believe that the correct balance would be to only allow 3 crafting professions above the level of novice and maxing out at 1 grand master, 1 master, and 1 journeyman. With this reduction in the number of professions allowed combined with the interwoven connection to other crafts Intrepid would still maintain that no one person will be able to "do it all", not even in a single profession past the novice skill level. (a little more on this later)
Quick one here, I feel like people with the hunting profession should gain a skill called skinning. This skill would allow harvesting from mobs killed by the character / character's group / character's raid and they would receive hides (or scales, carapaces, feathers, etc) for the tanners and carcasses. Carcasses should only be processed by cooks to acquire meat, fat and bones, Tanners will only process hides into types of tanned hides / leathers.
And finally, make skill levels and tiers matter, more so than just gaining access to a new level of mats. As a master lumberjack I should not receive the same materials when chopping an oak tree as someone who just picked up their axe for the first time. Either I should have an automatic increase in quantity or rarity or both. The same applies to processing and crafting as well. As a novice weaponsmith a person would have just started on the road to becoming a craftsman, recipes should use very few and very common resources and they should not need more than maybe one other profession to assist them. To facilitate this we need actual novice recipes like say basalt hand axes or granite spears. Both could use ash, oak, hemlock, or larch wood (not timber, just the wood) and shaped stone (granite and basalt weapon molds, that can be made by weaponsmiths. stonemasons should be for building blocks, freehold components and siege weapon ammo). As a person increases their tier additional professions can be intertwined such as a T3 spear needing a dried joshua wood haft from a carpenter combined with the iron spear head the weaponsmith makes. At T5 its even more interconnected needing spiritbloom spear binding from a tailor, weapon oil from a cook, polished ironwood haft from a carpenter and a blued truesteel spear head. As previously mentioned this still prevents the one person doing it all and still interconnects the professions together, but in a way that makes more real world sense.
Thank you all for listening.
Taii
0
Comments
We'd literally have the current copper/zinc issue, but at all stages of progress and for all people in the game. And I'm gonna be a crafter, so this doesn't even affect me rn, but I'm still against letting everyone gather everything (processing as well, but that's mostly an afterthought).
Just clarifying this one point. A Master gatherer *would* get more/rarer/faster results than a novice. Your should have higher level tools and shirts for example that affect this.
But thats the thing, without the tools or gear a master gatherer wont get more/rarer/faster results. Sure you will have to create the tool at a minimum to be able to harvest T4 resources, but again if chopping oak you could still use the T1 axe. What I would like to see is an automatic increase (even a small one) in the chance to speed/rarity/quantity based on gathering skill level.
Why would you want this, considering the length of the progression path in the game?
To me it feels more logical to have the more common and non-named component crafted items (especially in the first few tiers) to be more lenient and much faster to process and craft. It makes sense, promotes exploration early on in artisanship, and it would help create a pace to be more in step with leveling groups. I realize leveling is intended to be slower but I can't imagine a game where leveling is slowed to the progress of current artisanship. I love a good grind but that extent worries me.
An example I'll use is crafting a scroll to buff a stat while you level as a scribe. Presently it requires ruby ink, magical dust, and paper. Instead have the recipe be gemstone ink (where any tier one gem will work) and magical dust and paper.
Tier two of scrolls you could require blue gemstone ink (where it requires half the gems used in the recipe to be halcyonite but the other half any combo of tier two gems) and the rest of the recipe the same.
Then in tier three you require sapphire ink where it requires all sapphire gems specifically to make the ink.
That way the crafting feels like it has a progression in difficulty through specificity of resources. It also allows players to more easily dabble in artisan gameplay at the outset. To this end, I would also recommend significantly cutting down processing times below tier three.
Do you all feel the entry point to artisanship is good right now? If not, what challenges are you having with it? Does it line up with what describe above? If not, could you share?
When I played a few months back, the artisan system in general seemed to be in rough shape. I know it hasn't been their focus yet, but I'm hoping they can make something great. Here are some of my thoughts on the entry point to the system.
I would say that all of T1 artisanship needs to be extremely accessible:
- allow players interested in gathering to refine and/or sell their goods at special low tier markets.
- allow players interested in crafting the ability to purchase from those low tier markets to easily try out the different crafts.
- even introduce some of the more advanced things like enchanting within this low tier ecosystem.
This can essentially be all its own small economy mostly separate from the rest of the larger artisanship economy. But the reason for it to exist, is to get players interested/familiar with the artisanship gameplay loop without them needing to invest 100s of hours. Get them excited for that future time investment, rather than making it feel like a chore before you "get to the fun part".
I've been waiting to hop back in to alpha to test the next big iteration of crafting; that hopefully includes the first iteration of whatever their "manual crafting" will be. I really hope that this system allows players to become actual crafting specialists via skill and/or knowledge. Similar to how there are good tanks/healers/dps, there should be good artisans (that reflects more than just the time they put in).