Can we just get rid of boss/monster drops altogether?

The way it is right now, players can just mob/boss grind all the way to max level and never even think about crafting. Crafting is mostly a noob trap time waster.

The only way I can see this game working is if they completely stopped all monster/boss drops and only dropped mats. Trying to grind to max level in starter/novice gear will become such a slog that people will actually be incentivized to stop the leveling grind at some point (high teens?) and instead work on getting the professions up and so that leveling becomes more time efficient.

As long as we can gear up/level up without wasting time on nodes/professions then those things are just a noob trap to slow down players who dont know any better.

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Noaani

Xeeg wrote: »

The way it is right now, players can just mob/boss grind all the way to max level and never even think about crafting.

This is how it should be.

Crafting should be optional.

Using crafted gear should be optimal, but not required.

Xeeg

Noaani wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

The way it is right now, players can just mob/boss grind all the way to max level and never even think about crafting.

This is how it should be.

Crafting should be optional.

Using crafted gear should be optimal, but not required.

Why put it in even? Its just a noob trap. Anyone who tries crafting just falls behind everyone else and can't compete in pvp. Might as well play a different game.

Ludullu

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Loot
Q: Are Alpha-2 bosses dropping full items instead of recipes and mats placeholder?
A: The reward tables are very much in a functional state right now. So, I wouldn't look at these reward tables and say oh this is long-term intended. This is for A2 purposes. However, it is going to be a combination of both. You're going to have full loot drops that are going to occur with world bosses. That is an expectation that should be kept. But, in addition, you will have recipes, you will have unique material components that are used to create those items as well; and you'll also have the ability to deconstruct those items to recoup some of those more unique materials to potentially create more.[13] – Steven Sharif

Noaani

Xeeg wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

The way it is right now, players can just mob/boss grind all the way to max level and never even think about crafting.

This is how it should be.

Crafting should be optional.

Using crafted gear should be optimal, but not required.

Why put it in even? Its just a noob trap. Anyone who tries crafting just falls behind everyone else and can't compete in pvp. Might as well play a different game.

That is an issue with where crafting is at right now - that is what needs to be fixed.

Low level crafting needs to be simple - add that complexity in later. The problem Ashes has now is that they are trying to have nearly end game level complexity with crafting on low level stuff. Low level stuff results in low level benefits, and so should also require low level effort.

ShaggyRyn

Noaani wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

The way it is right now, players can just mob/boss grind all the way to max level and never even think about crafting.

This is how it should be.

Crafting should be optional.

Using crafted gear should be optimal, but not required.

Why put it in even? Its just a noob trap. Anyone who tries crafting just falls behind everyone else and can't compete in pvp. Might as well play a different game.

That is an issue with where crafting is at right now - that is what needs to be fixed.

Low level crafting needs to be simple - add that complexity in later. The problem Ashes has now is that they are trying to have nearly end game level complexity with crafting on low level stuff. Low level stuff results in low level benefits, and so should also require low level effort.

I agree with this. I had one of my friends join this week and one of his biggest complaints is that the game is far from beginner friendly. He doesn’t want the game to be “easier” but easier to follow. We need people to feel engaged and like they are progressing in the game. If they want the game to be more about crafting we need to be able to craft the gear for our level. The way the game is now you will be level 20 before you find enough copper to craft even a full set of novice gear. I think this issue is also exacerbated by the fact you have to wait for the node to level up to even try to craft high level gear.

daveywavey

Xeeg wrote: »

The way it is right now, players can just mob/boss grind all the way to max level and never even think about crafting. Crafting is mostly a noob trap time waster.

The only way I can see this game working is if they completely stopped all monster/boss drops and only dropped mats. Trying to grind to max level in starter/novice gear will become such a slog that people will actually be incentivized to stop the leveling grind at some point (high teens?) and instead work on getting the professions up and so that leveling becomes more time efficient.

As long as we can gear up/level up without wasting time on nodes/professions then those things are just a noob trap to slow down players who dont know any better.

Yeah, I think it would add more interdependence between levellers and crafters. Make it a social game again!

Noaani

daveywavey wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

The way it is right now, players can just mob/boss grind all the way to max level and never even think about crafting. Crafting is mostly a noob trap time waster.

The only way I can see this game working is if they completely stopped all monster/boss drops and only dropped mats. Trying to grind to max level in starter/novice gear will become such a slog that people will actually be incentivized to stop the leveling grind at some point (high teens?) and instead work on getting the professions up and so that leveling becomes more time efficient.

As long as we can gear up/level up without wasting time on nodes/professions then those things are just a noob trap to slow down players who dont know any better.

Yeah, I think it would add more interdependence between levellers and crafters. Make it a social game again!

No, it would add resentment.

Interaction between those fighting and those making should be voluntary, not manditory. People should want to seek out a crafter because they found a rare item they can have made in to something special, or they have saved up enough coin to purchase a specific upgrade - not because they are still using gear that is 8 levels below them with no real hope of finding upgrades any other way.

All of those "wouldn't it be great if MMORPG's were like this again" things need to be done in a way where players feel like they are chosing to do that, not in ways where they feel they are being forced to do that.

Githal

The real problem here seems to be that leveling is done by grinding mobs at 1 spot with hours.

If instead the leveling is by exploring/questing/node commissions - you will be able to gather materials for crafting as you level up. Just on your way to complete a quest you will find some materials that you can just spend 20 seconds to collect.

This will allow to keep up with your profession together with your character level.

Will also be a lot more fun/you will see bigger part of the world and more zones in each biome/You will experience AOC story from the quests/Will interact with different nodes and people connected to it which will give you broader picture of the world in the server you are at so you can choose what suits you best

Also this will give advantage to smaller groups (like 8 man) over big raids (40+ man) since they materials the groups find trough their journey will be split among all party members. Which will be great since the average players wont be able to form that big raid groups, they will be with smaller group of friends and this will allow them to be competitive which will greatly increase the fun they have.
And there are enough places for raid groups to shine. Like world bosses, or dungeons/ Node/guild wars/sieges and ect will all be for large scale pvp

another problem at the moment is that the server is too crowded, which means that the total mats are split among too many players, making leveling professions harder.

daveywavey

Noaani wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

The way it is right now, players can just mob/boss grind all the way to max level and never even think about crafting. Crafting is mostly a noob trap time waster.

The only way I can see this game working is if they completely stopped all monster/boss drops and only dropped mats. Trying to grind to max level in starter/novice gear will become such a slog that people will actually be incentivized to stop the leveling grind at some point (high teens?) and instead work on getting the professions up and so that leveling becomes more time efficient.

As long as we can gear up/level up without wasting time on nodes/professions then those things are just a noob trap to slow down players who dont know any better.

Yeah, I think it would add more interdependence between levellers and crafters. Make it a social game again!

No, it would add resentment.

Interaction between those fighting and those making should be voluntary, not manditory. People should want to seek out a crafter because they found a rare item they can have made in to something special, or they have saved up enough coin to purchase a specific upgrade - not because they are still using gear that is 8 levels below them with no real hope of finding upgrades any other way.

All of those "wouldn't it be great if MMORPG's were like this again" things need to be done in a way where players feel like they are chosing to do that, not in ways where they feel they are being forced to do that.

Hard disagree. But we're not going to change each other's minds, so no point in prolonging everybody's agony.

Noaani

daveywavey wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

The way it is right now, players can just mob/boss grind all the way to max level and never even think about crafting. Crafting is mostly a noob trap time waster.

The only way I can see this game working is if they completely stopped all monster/boss drops and only dropped mats. Trying to grind to max level in starter/novice gear will become such a slog that people will actually be incentivized to stop the leveling grind at some point (high teens?) and instead work on getting the professions up and so that leveling becomes more time efficient.

As long as we can gear up/level up without wasting time on nodes/professions then those things are just a noob trap to slow down players who dont know any better.

Yeah, I think it would add more interdependence between levellers and crafters. Make it a social game again!

No, it would add resentment.

Interaction between those fighting and those making should be voluntary, not manditory. People should want to seek out a crafter because they found a rare item they can have made in to something special, or they have saved up enough coin to purchase a specific upgrade - not because they are still using gear that is 8 levels below them with no real hope of finding upgrades any other way.

All of those "wouldn't it be great if MMORPG's were like this again" things need to be done in a way where players feel like they are chosing to do that, not in ways where they feel they are being forced to do that.

Hard disagree. But we're not going to change each other's minds, so no point in prolonging everybody's agony.

We probably won't change each other's mind, but I want to be clear on what you are saying.

My take is that you think players being forced to use player crafters for every gear upgrade for the entirety of the game will make the game more social.

This implies that you consider purely transactional interactions to be social.

My opinion is that if you want a game to be more social, you should decrease transactional interactions and increase social interactions.

Aszkalon

Xeeg wrote: »

Can we just get rid of boss/monster drops altogether ?

No.

Vhaeyne

I think the drop rates on named mobs are way too high, and the spawn timers are far too predictable. We shouldn’t be contesting spawns down to the second.

I enjoy the world PvP that comes from fighting over these mobs, but I’d rather be fighting for materials to craft items—not for full items themselves.

As it stands, crafters don’t really need to exist.

We could coast all the way to August just fighting over named mobs on fixed timers, never crafting anything, because no one is motivated to push nodes to the level of the player base.

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I think the drop rates on named mobs are way too high, and the spawn timers are far too predictable. We shouldn’t be contesting spawns down to the second.

I enjoy the world PvP that comes from fighting over these mobs, but I’d rather be fighting for materials to craft items—not for full items themselves.

As it stands, crafters don’t really need to exist.

We could coast all the way to August just fighting over named mobs on fixed timers, never crafting anything, because no one is motivated to push nodes to the level of the player base.

I agree with you in terms of the issue you are talking about. I would just go about a remedy in a different manner.

Crafting needs to be made more important than it is now (it will be, it is still only partially implemented even for the level range we have now).

I also agree with you in terms of how bad timed spawns are.

However, I don't believe the answer is in lowering drop rates on named mobs, but rather on switching the drops to items that enhance crafted items.

Actual drop rates (the number of valuable items that drop per kill) on named mobs needs to be high. Killing challenge appropriate named mobs should be the single most rewarding activity in the game. You should want to drop literally everything you are doing when presented with a real chance of killing a named mob.

However, this requires those mobs not have a spawn based on time. It should be a window, or better yet, it should be based on kills of appropriate mob types in the region.

ShaggyRyn

I like the idea of a window. It honestly doesn’t have to be a big window either.id say anything like a 10-20min difference should be fine.

Ludullu

I got no clue how difficult it is to implement all that stuff, but I do find it real damn weird that we've had so much static respawning across the board. Normal mobs should have a +-3min window and named ones should be at least on a +-30m imo. Anything that's valuable enough to attract competition should not be so damn predictable that competition seizes to exist, cause people in the know can simply be there at the respawn time at second 0, get the first hit buff on loot rights and then completely ignore any potential competition completely.

Best L2 contests for content happened during the times when the respawn timer went deep into the + range. With each minute and each failed pvp battle the tension would rise, because THIS one might be the last attempt to remove the competition from the location. And when you did manage to remove them juuuust in time for the respawn - the reward would feel that much better, because it was truly earned.

Noaani

Ludullu wrote: »

I got no clue how difficult it is to implement all that stuff, but I do find it real damn weird that we've had so much static respawning across the board. Normal mobs should have a +-3min window and named ones should be at least on a +-30m imo. Anything that's valuable enough to attract competition should not be so damn predictable that competition seizes to exist, cause people in the know can simply be there at the respawn time at second 0, get the first hit buff on loot rights and then completely ignore any potential competition completely.

Best L2 contests for content happened during the times when the respawn timer went deep into the + range. With each minute and each failed pvp battle the tension would rise, because THIS one might be the last attempt to remove the competition from the location. And when you did manage to remove them juuuust in time for the respawn - the reward would feel that much better, because it was truly earned.

See, this is where the dynamic of spawning them based on mob kills completely changes things.

If you remove the competition, then the rate at which the appropriate mobs are being killed goes down. As such, you kind of what to keep your competition around, as long as they are killing the appropriate mobs.

If you have both in a game (and players know the basics of each), it can create a bigger range of experiences just due to how a named mob spawn is triggered.

Azherae

Ludullu wrote: »

I got no clue how difficult it is to implement all that stuff, but I do find it real damn weird that we've had so much static respawning across the board. Normal mobs should have a +-3min window and named ones should be at least on a +-30m imo. Anything that's valuable enough to attract competition should not be so damn predictable that competition seizes to exist, cause people in the know can simply be there at the respawn time at second 0, get the first hit buff on loot rights and then completely ignore any potential competition completely.

Best L2 contests for content happened during the times when the respawn timer went deep into the + range. With each minute and each failed pvp battle the tension would rise, because THIS one might be the last attempt to remove the competition from the location. And when you did manage to remove them juuuust in time for the respawn - the reward would feel that much better, because it was truly earned.

If this one goes to Live/Release as is, I definitely want to see the 'dev reasoning' video on it, since one of the most curious things to me in modern game Dev is how often a 'well-known' historical method is eroded.

Intrepid may be the first studio willing to tell me whether it was because of inexperience, a logical path to determining it wasn't the best fit for their goals/game, or just a way to appease the 'masses'.

Because one way or the other, it's true that you can generate a lot of bad sentiment when the timer happens to be +enough for some group to have to disperse due to availability of members, especially if the new window is something like 8h+?90m from last death.

Ah, the days of 'pushing bosses into your own favored spawn window'...

Noaani

Azherae wrote: »

Because one way or the other, it's true that you can generate a lot of bad sentiment when the timer happens to be +enough for some group to have to disperse due to availability of members, especially if the new window is something like 8h+?90m from last death.

While I do agree, a key thing to keep in mind with a timer of 8 hours +/- some is that you are unlikely to actually know when the mob was last killed.

A three hour timer you can often do this with, as with a 24, 48 or 72 hour timer. As soon as that timer moves out of your general play time though, you no longer have reliable information on it.

Unless of course the developers do the actual worst thing they could possibly do, and set a despawn timer on the mob of a similar period to it's spawn window variance. If you have this, you know when the mob will spawn today based on its kill time yeterday (to within a window), even though there were two spawns happen in between.

In my opinion, a spawn window should be far longer than the ~20% of the respawn duration in an 8 hour +/- 90 minute spawn. To me, a mob with the intention that this kind of spawn would suggest (one kill per prime time, per day) is better off being something akin to a 9 hour +/-4 hours. This means the respawn window is actually open for 8 hours - enough of a window that it simply isn't worth waiting around unless there is something valuable to do near by.

Vhaeyne

@Noaani

You brought up a good point about how instead of full items the mobs could drop items to enhance crafting.

Without changing crafting too much they could drop enchant scrolls more often. This would make them good for everyone while having the effect of enhancing gear.

Enigmatic Sage

The attention to detail in the game's design is astonishing but what's more astonishing is how a year later these forums still going around in circles so people can metaphorically listen to themselves

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