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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.
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.
🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Economy and Stat Rebalance
Dev Discussions are an opportunity to join in on player discussions about topics that Intrepid Studios want to hear your thoughts on. This is less about asking us questions, and more about us asking YOU the questions! If you do have questions about Ashes of Creation, keep an eye our social media channels for our monthly livestreams, check out the Ashes of Creation community wiki, or try the #questions channel in Discord!
In this thread, we’ll be discussing:
Dev Discussion - Economy and Stat Rebalance
Please see this Economy and Stats Forged Anew article for additional context about our plans, and then join the discussion.
- What aspects of the current crafting system do you like and dislike?
- What makes a crafting, gathering, and vendor system fun for you? What kind of scenarios would you like to see included through the system?
- How do you feel about the timing of material gathering? Do you feel each biome is unique with what materials spawn?
- Do you feel the rebalanced stats on gear and gear levels has improved? Do you like the changes? If not, why?
Please don't feel limited to the thought-starters above! Feel free to share any thoughts, concerns, or stories regarding gathering with us in this Dev Discussion.
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Comments
I'd like to take this chance to echo a sentiment I've seen around that the game might need some ingame information repository (even if it is only in a Node) of what-drops-what because if you don't have it, you'll end up with that terrible MMORPG fate of 'not wanting to change what something drops because of not being able to communicate it to the playerbase', and then leaving legacy cruft because of that.
What aspects of the current crafting system do you like and dislike?
Things I Like
Compared to:
FF11 - I like the effort being put in to ensure that Crafters have continual reasons to craft even when it's gear.
MineCraft - I like the effort being made to have different tiers of gear relative to open world drops.
Black Desert Online - I like the implication that crafters will not all be the equivalent of BDO's serf-like Workers (but I may be imagining this).
Throne and Liberty - I like the idea that in the future, Crafters will have some control over the outcomes of their efforts.
Things I Dislike
Compared to:
FF11 - I don't like the Artisanship categories and this rebalance reminds me of how the current ones are getting in the way of a good Econ experience. I'm a Processor, in 'your' model', and this kind of sucks, actually.
MineCraft - I don't like the pathway that leads to less integration and over-reliance on non-intuitive/low-discoverability information (rare gear drops in open world).
Black Desert Online - No comparison here, nearly anything is better than BDO...
Throne and Liberty - I don't like the dual gear grading concept at all. This is probably huge bias but Ashes really seems like it should have a more TL-like system (where you combine two instances of the item to improve its traits) instead of trying to find some other solution to balance both 'gear drops in the world' and 'relevance of crafters'. Maybe I'm not creative enough yet but seriously can't see how TL's implementation doesn't blow any potential outcome on this path out of the water for both Crafters and Customers.
What makes a crafting, gathering, and vendor system fun for you?
CRAFTING:
Compared to:
FF11 - I enjoyed knowing how to make things and those things being part of the economy consistently, FF11 had good Econ Slots after about 2 years and the Devs made consistent effort to improve them right up until Econ 'end of life' (Abyssea Expansion). I like having 'Crystals' and similar reagents to think about relative to the world.
MineCraft - Crafting is fun in MineCraft when you add something like the Create mod with multiple steps and capacity for combination, specialization and improvement that isn't just 'plug and forget'
Black Desert Online - There's basically nothing enjoyable about crafting in BDO (as of 2022 when I gave up even studying it), Farming is nice for reasons given above, but I don't count it.
Throne and Liberty - Have to wait and see if/how badly they fudge the Housing Update's Crafting flows/incentives, but the massive improvements to Cooking have really helped me feel more connected to the world, even if we still lack certain specialization points.
GATHERING:
Compared to:
FF11 - I really like Chocobo Digging, and Fishing. I found other gathering to be too unrewarding because the game uses not only the same tools for all tiers, it also doesn't really spread out the outcomes well other than for Mining. Both Chocobo Digging and Fishing are about preparation and understanding of the world's dynamism, particularly weather and time of day/moon phase.
MineCraft - I absolutely love gathering rarer resources for my group in MineCraft, exploring to know where to find deposits, and bringing them back for builders. Ironically, I hate the Mining aspect and don't like being underground in that game, but I will do it for the team! So my love of gathering rare treasure trumps my dislike of the biomes I sometimes need to go to. This does not apply to Wood.
Black Desert Online - I find it difficult to enjoy Gathering in BDO mostly because of the constant looming knowledge that it's all a Ponzi scheme and they care almost entirely about playtime metrics rather than fun, but the act of actually running around from tree to tree or checking if the rare mining spots in the caves are active is still kind of nice. Fishing is okay... barely (other than the aforementioned).
Throne and Liberty - Again, mostly have to see how the Housing Update turns out, but I can predict based on the above that if they prioritize 'accessibility' and 'simplicity' over dynamism and knowledge, I'll be disappointed in the Gathering aspect of that update. Right now, Fishing is really working well for me, and I have some gathering loops based around getting bait and food ingredients that I enjoy a lot. I am hoping for more variety in gathering [b[paths[/b], e.g. I don't mind that they reduced 'number of types of Mushrooms you can get' (assuming/hoping that even rarer ones will come later) for what I assume was simplicity, but I do hope for things like Gold and Silver to appear, or different Seeds from different areas if they ever add Farming, because this would not overcomplicate any given path's requisite knowledge. Also, their recent change to make your gatherables inventory separate from other inventory is nice, reminding me how much I like this in Ashes.
VENDORING:
Compared to:
FF11 - It's treated as a price floor. An integral part of the economy that you hope to never have to interact with. When buying things from Vendors... in FF11 this was basically things that were too cheap for anyone to even care about wasting AH slots on. So technically another 'price floor'. We didn't do much with Vendors in FF11 as serious Artisans, Vendors are there for non-Artisans.
MineCraft - Did you know you can mod Villager Trades to whatever you want to enhance your own game loops? I've been having fun with this for months. Further detail is unhelpful.
Black Desert Online - Obnoxious.
Throne and Liberty - Provides Sollant, the game's 'character progression currency'. Really, really good as the way to sell duplicates of special items and cosmetics. Currently also acting as a stand-in for sources of things that might eventually come from Farming? I actually quite like the 'vibe' of interacting with Vendors, mostly it's just unfortunate that the 'legacy' Vendors of certain things like White Grade gear don't have any 'purpose' now. Due to how Ashes works, this comparison is only relevant because I can say with certainty that I am going to continue to prefer the separation of 'character progression currency' from 'Trade-enabling currency'. I am not looking forward to your many battles with RMT in the future, Intrepid.
What kind of scenarios would you like to see included through the system?
Compared to:
FF11 - I want to go back to the days of seeing someone shout in chat for a Crafter that can do what they need, of knowing that people are making trade deals for wholesale suppliers for their Ingots and Beeswax, and I want to see the return of 'do this crafting work for this NPC to gain a bit of prestige or reputation that can rise or fall/be spent instead of just the stupid 'do this until you cap out a number and then feel good because number went up'.
MineCraft - Ever watched HermitCraft? Shopping District.
Black Desert Online - Surprisingly BDO actually did have a slightly cool aspect to this, because you could get control of a Workshop that produced a specialty item that you could then put in your Wagon/Caravan to travel across the world. Was this fun as it was actually implemented? No! Was Bartering any better? Absolutely not! Would a proper implementation of this be awesome? Absolutely.
Throne and Liberty - This is moreso a combination of an unprovable FF11 concept, TL's world structure, and 'imagination'. TL's Sanctum of Desire contains four elemental Altars. They don't serve any serious purpose right now. FF11 has six of something similar. They serve a purpose that is only related to Crafting if you believe heavily in the effect of Elemental Weather infused/assisted Crafting. But people did it. People making big ticket rare items did travel all the way to the Cloister of Wind to craft certain things there for that extra % chance of a High Quality result. Ashes will have some of this in Nodes, I want to see it in the equivalent of TL's Elemental Altars and Laboratory rooms and Steam Forge areas which are in Dungeons/POIs.
How do you feel about the timing of material gathering? Do you feel each biome is unique with what materials spawn?
Compared to:
FF11 - Seems okay. As a Chocobo Digger it's hard to feel it by comparison, but I bet this will be true no matter what you do. Chocobo Digging is, by nature, the most diverse gathering aspect of the game, for better or worse. Just keep doing your best with the Econ Slots and the biomes will handle themselves, I'd think.
MineCraft - Once again, basically okay. It requires a mod or two to change MineCraft to actually have biome-dependent material spawns when it comes to 'basic rocks' instead of Ores and such, but obv for everything else it manages, that's what the game specializes in, after all. More mods like to add more gems and such, which is nice. Hope someone on staff likes Geology!
Black Desert Online - I think BDO actually wins out here, surprisingly. Sure, it 'feels' terrible for reasons mentioned in previous comparisons, but they really did put in quite a lot of effort for this and their placement of such things is probably the reason the game became so well known as having a 'cozy lifeskilling' path even though the Econ aspect of it was terrible for long stretches at a time. This could be my bias too, somehow the lack of different 'lanes' just feels suffocating after a while, and they keep making everything shallower and easier to compensate, but if you were to put Ashes' intent on top of BDO's foundation it would probably be slightly better than what Ashes has now, which makes sense given that this is Alpha.
Throne and Liberty - Housing update again mostly, but actually, TL has a lot of attention paid to items that obviously can be changed to act as unique biome materials (Cacti, sleep herbs, Coral, some other plant and tree models that actually don't have a gatherable associated at all), and at least equal attention to detail as BDO for 'where certain things spawn'. I absolutely enjoy the timing of material gathering in TL at the moment, with a nearly perfect spread of players gathering vs items they want during the middle period. If anything my disappointment here is with the lack of Gryphons in Talandre's mountain ranges. This may seem minor but it actually affects the feeling of Material Gathering quite a lot. You need other ecological uniqueness to go with the gathering points or you get 'the spots in BDO that are so bad that no one goes there'. It's just too 'boring' to run up the same hill and see the same enemies as everywhere else or to just have one huge biome with minimal mob variety even when your goal is not the mobs. There are areas that are quite good, and then there's Quietis' Demesne... (that area is acceptable for a different reason, but it does only get me to go there during Events and half of that is because of the stuff that only appears because the whole zone freezes over)
Do you feel the rebalanced stats on gear and gear levels has improved?
No, I don't like the stats in this game, but in this case I don't consider it worth comparing. For why I don't feel like they improved as a whole though, I will reiterate the 'I think y'all just want to use TL's method or something close' observation above. I see the Stat design and the Crafting design as contradictory and the new approach to gear and gear levels as even more contradictory than before.
I'm not saying it's bad, I'm saying that if you increase contradiction between the two halves, one of them is going to 'give'. If Crafters are supposed to be important and that pillar 'can't give', then I think this approach to gear and gear levels is categorically worse and will lead to what I've seen most people say they don't want.
Do you like the changes? If not, why?
Now for personal opinions...
This is a PvP game when it comes to gearing. We can call it a PvX game but in terms of gearing, PvX only lasts as long as an undergeared/underleveled person's HP bar.
There are so many flaws (for me) in the very concept of 'gear that has both a level component and a rarity-power' component that idk where to start with my 'complaints'. Why do we even need this? So people can 'see number go up'? I'm not even against gear progression, not one bit, but at least make it a little more 'intentional'. To be clear I am saying that I will take the TL traiting-style advancement over this in every case but even if that is a no-go, there's still something I can contribute maybe:
There are so many paths you could take to make gearing formulae that makes low level gear still good at mid-level and mid level gear still good at high level and 'balances out the advantages of absolutely top gear relative to high level'. I will hope to see something on the tier of TL's "Ok so blue gear gives lower defense but higher offensive cantrips like attack speed" and "T2 Purple tends to be very straightforward while T1 Purple is often creative or esoteric and therefore doesn't actually even outright replace Blue in every situation" which then leads to "If the esoteric aspect of T1 Purple is really good for your build you might not even replace it with a straightforward T2 Purple" and all the other cool and complex interactions they can branch into from there.
How about Lower level gear gives access to Augment-like skill options early before you can probably unlock the advanced version of the skill, for example? I want playstyles, not numbers, from those Level 15 Rares.
I think I kept it under 2500 words. I hope that this was somehow close to what y'all are looking for.
Sounds unnecessarly complicated.
New players will have to take college classes in order to get what basic crafting of gear is about.
When this post was announced in Discord, it was accompanied by a link to an article on the main Ashes website, which lays out the rebalancing plan that you're referring to. Without that context, people won't be able to give relevant feedback. Was this a mistake?
If you're intentionally not linking the article, you should probably delete this thread altogether, because you're not going to get much good out of it...
Anyway, reading the article didn't tell me all that much, so this post is a placeholder until I get more information.
The way it’s currently described suggests that gear drops will become readily available, which could result in certain equipment tiers being skipped entirely in the crafting process. This approach risks undermining the sense of crafting and material-gathering progression that was highlighted in the game’s earlier presentations.
In my opinion, adventurers should not receive full equipment drops simply from playing and leveling up. They should receive rewards, of course, but not gear above Uncommon rarity. Higher-tier equipment should be available only through crafting, ensuring scarcity and maintaining consistent demand for crafted items.
If gear drops remain as described, entire stages of crafting progression will be bypassed and ignored. Crafting will likely become relevant only after adventurers have completed their leveling journey, instead of being an integral part of progression from the start.
I'm just wondering if that's an error in the writing that needs to be corrected or expanded.)
Looting = Full character XP + drops glint and other things, does not grant crafting XP (but who cares if you don't need crafting?!)
Crafting = Very little character XP, does not drop glint or other things, does grant crafting XP (which apparently we don't need)
This is one (big) pass of many for something that will be tinkered with until--and beyond--launch. Obviously the article is very general, and people will need to get into the game to see these systems to actually comment on them.
Otherwise, it seems like Ashes' gathering is catching up to Minecraft's.
"Vendors will also now offer low gear for all grades"
Both points are very concerning as written, running counter to a crafting driven economy. If crafters are meant to be the backbone of the economy, then why remove so much of the need for them? Why even bother crafting if grinding nets the same rewards for gear, plus any additional XP , glint, and non-gear drops.
Adding back in the vendor gear particularly screws over newer crafters, basically removing the beginning of the whole pipeline. The pricing for the vendor gear is an additional concern, unless it has been dramatically increased compared to the P2 prices, then player crafters are totally priced out of the market just by the processing cost, never mind the cost of the actual materials.
"Caves now contain more metal and gem nodes!"
I'm curious to see what this looks like in relation to the recently tested mining changes. If it means you're keeping the metals and gems as extra drops for "regular" mining, along side having the pure metal and gem nodes available in caves if you're willing to risk it - then I think that could be a good balance between the two systems, if the risk/reward is correctly tuned
I do feel that the presentation presently is complicated. May need flowcharts and examples to help people understand how the 3 levels within a gear bracket compare. And how rarity of the materials plays into that. Heroic T1 gear better or worse than common T3 for a level 15 Helmet? And not actual numbers, but the design goal here. We know values will be tinkered with.
Gotta agree with Ronin that you can't have NPCs selling basic gear for all levels and expect crafters to be valuable during the leveling journey. Unless you have a sub common or ultra sub common level of gear that vendors sell, strictly worse than the worst thing a crafter can make, it creates the issues Ronin talked about.
I'm also struggling with adventuring versus world progression as an end state. For example, is Steelbloom supposed to be there from minute 1? Is is supposed to be level 1-10 mobs when everything is wilderness, and the enemies get tougher the higher the node is pushed? That would mean adventurers would have a vested interest in node progression. It would also make the node lockout more interesting, as lower nodes would have lower PoIs to give adventurers a reason to visit while leveling, but still have competition for the max level node and PoI.
Overall gotta see details and test this. But if the design goal is for adventurers to need crafters at each stage of the leveling journey, even 1-10, then I don't think we're hitting the mark.
Perhaps this... You must understand that Crafters and Adventurers serve different purposes within an economic structure. If you do not, you will eliminate the difference and remove the need for crafters altogether, whether you intend to or not.
1. I like the complexity of the gear and gives more variants for different builds, ability for skill to shine in pvp, and not a single set or piece being "BIS" or "Meta". However, there needs to be a overlap of gear power for the time for crafted gear to be worth the investment over the "same rate of progression as grinding". I.E. - A T1, Highest Grade, crafted piece shouldn't ever be worse than the basic T2 piece. This will just cause the standard race to the finish-line style of MMO.
2. It was stated from an early state that crafted gear is meant to be the best gear. There is a risk/reward system needed for focusing on crafting over grinding and vice versa. A crafter shouldn't be punished for trying to provide the best gear for himself/herself and their guildmates by being out-leveled and left to grind by themselves. Likewise, it should not reward grinders to race to the finish, to have the best gear handed to them by mobs (see point 1) which leads to bullying of materials and gatekeeping areas/materials. This is always bound to happen, but allowing an alternative way to combat the higher levels with better lower level gear makes for more interesting and competitive pvp, over the blanketed equalizing.
3. Gear needs to impact character power, but in a less guaranteed way. As of now, the vision is to only have pvp being dictated by 5 main points.
I. Gear - The main source of determining who wins an engagement at this time, which is why gear is a hot topic and obviously being focused on by the development team.
II. Levels - a character that is higher level, simply is stronger and 90% of the time dictates the outcome of an encounter.
III. Numbers - which is a separate issue based on the direction that guilds development has taken.
IV. Class - which has not been flushed out yet as we don't have all 8 classes, let alone the overarching 64 "final" classes. The rock-paper-scissors aspect is still underdeveloped with there just being better classes to pvp with.
V. Skill - this seems not to be as useful in the current state of the game. There is an obvious need of skill to play competitively in pvp, but it does not currently have much impact in deciding the outcomes of most scenarios. I.E. - You can not outplay a higher level character or better equipped character.
4. Gear is one of the main drivers of the 'player-driven' economy. If gear that is farmed by grinders can easily replace crafted gear, the niche market that would give the crafters an edge over grinders falls back into the hands of the grinders and makes crafters obsolete. The market is driven by what the players provide to it. If the only valuable assets are gear that is dropped (again, this all hinges on point 1) then that makes the crafting of lower level gear a waste of time besides leveling to vendor and make the final tier of gear.
5. Lastly, my final opinion is just from my personal experience of playing MMO's for the last 20+ years. I feel that gear progression needs to be rewarding and incremental. The feeling of finishing a set of gear (grinding or crafting) to have it easily replaced, nerfed, or out-meta'd by a new standard feels bad. There is plenty of punishment that occurs in Ashes with material drops, exp deficit, stat dampening, corruption, etc. that having your small accomplishments of rare gear that you crafted or found in the wild that helped you escape the humble beginnings of an adventurer be easily replaceable by just powering through to a higher level feels bad. It takes away from the journey and fun of adventurering, exploring, and taking risks at lower levels when you subconsciously know that it is all for nothing, as everything you are experiencing is just going to be replaced by the cookie-cutter equalizer gear of max levels.
Again, this is based on this article and comments I have heard from my own guild members and others in the community. The fact Intrepid is reintroducing a new gearing/crafting system means that they are listening and pivoting from their initial layouts based on community/player feedback. I am hopeful that Intrepid continues along the path of making the best game and are showing they are not locked into a specific lane. We're here to continue to provide feedback and help them create the next adventure of our lives. Let's let them do so and give them the support they need to provide us what we want. (Now, fix the corruption system please!)
Leader of the Knights of Shadowhawk
What aspects of the current crafting system do you like and dislike?
What makes a crafting, gathering, and vendor system fun for you? What kind of scenarios would you like to see included through the system?
Do you feel the rebalanced stats on gear and gear levels has improved? Do you like the changes? If not, why?
I haven't tested the PTR since p2.5. From reading updates though with this econ update and live stream commentary on how open-world mob grinding loot is being changed to I have some short and long-term concerns.
Is the long-term game design shifting to having all combat grinding of mobs or elites in open world or POI's not be rewarding or have loot that motivates players to log in for? The changes for phase 3 appear to be again devaluing actually playing the game and pushing more emphasis on RMT to swipe and skip the game to buy crafted items off the market and why bother grinding because grinding doesn't get you good gear anyways?
How are these changes viable when RMT has not been addressed and solved? Especially now that you can level just by gathering materials, why even bother doing combat? Just farm coin and buy gear? Why are you switching the game to a Survival RPG model? This is not well thought out. The player base will fall off again without valuable gear drops to grind for. This idea that screwing over gear drops to prop up crafters will result in good game design is not well thought out. Ruining the experience for +95% of the players (both pve and pvp) to make crafters feel special (<5% of the player population that will engage with it at a deep level either in testing or at live launch) makes me wonder why would the bulk of players continue to play when there aren't content or drops to play for? This P3 model is set up for failure again imo with the gear drop changes and econ changes.
Just on its face, how is changing gear drops for combat oriented mmo players to only award them low tier junk gear viable in your eyes as a dev team? Hey guys, keep grinding for junk out there! What? Who is motivated to do that either as a tester or for live launch to play that model of game? Okay, yeah you pleased crafters who, in my experience are selfish and could give a fig about having a healthy circle of game loops (they just want to make money off of others and feel special as one of the only crafters on a server willing to put up with badly designed convoluted systems).
Every aspect of game play loops and type of player interest should have highly motivating rewards and content, and have engaging loops. Please stop ruining one (pve or pvp combat grinding) to prop up another (Crafting (I want to feel special player)).
Mob grinding is horrible. It is watching paint dry. Now the game is shifting to asking players to do brain off mob grinding ad nauseum but for no rewards worth grinding for? C'mon that's not engaging. Crafters can make 'the best' gear without ruining drops for combat. I think we're mixing up 'crafters make the best shit' with crafters make the only shit worth wearing and all other playstyles are 'Gear Broke'. If you don't value each player types time equally the players' time who you don't respect will not engage with or play your game. Why would you use a model that devalues combat mmo players' time? That's not sustainable as a model.
If combat doesn't reward drops that are worth using, then combat isn't worth doing as a grind activity. You have to fix this flaw in your game design for P3 and beyond. The bulk of players aren't going to engage with AoC if you don't value their time and only value crafters time. Please stop with the game design elements that pick favorites. Make every type of game loop your favorite and make each feel highly rewarding, viable, engaging. If you favor crafters, who let's be real, there are only a couple per guild that will be funneled all mats, what do you expect the rest of us to engage with? I don't want to play another survival game as a guild. Go collect mats and drop in our after-hours drop off location. Who wants to be a gathering bot/drone and not have engaging things to do that are fun and rewarding at an individual level?
How is a MMO going to be sustainable without rewarding combat oriented content? Its literally the most common activity done. By making it unrewarding, that's going to be a death knell if adhered to up to launch.
Second, it gives real meaning to crafting. If gear drops are too common, crafted gear loses its value. But if the frequency of obtaining gear by drop is low, artisans become a core part of the economy and progression.
So, instead of removing gear drops entirely, just make obtaining gear through drops much less frequent
The item's grade simply indicates the level range. This is useful for quickly figuring out from the name (once we get used to them) whether the item is useful, or is of a low grade, or higher.
Within each grade, there are three different tiers of items, with tier 1 being the easiest to craft (because they require abundant materials) and tier 3 being the most complicated to craft using scarce materials. This seems more like an internal designation; I don't think the recipes indicate the tier, as we can clearly see it based on the resources they require.
This paragraph, based on balance, can be worrying. Whether a mob drops a higher or lower-grade item doesn't matter to me. It makes sense for a level 35 mob to drop Divine-grade items (30-40), but for all mobs? Balance plays a key role here. It makes sense in a dungeon; with 0-star mobs around the world, it shouldn't happen. The same thing happens with tiers and item rarity.
I don't find it worrying that vendors offer "gray" and low-tier items of all grades. It would be more of a tool to avoid really bad luck in a player's progression, or to be able to equip a minimum amount after losing their items due to corruption.
But we return to the same key as above: balance. If a gray piece of the next higher grade of your gear is better than your blue and enchanted item, it wouldn't make any sense.
I think the biggest problem with this Dev Discusion is the lack of clear examples so players can get a better idea of the changes. These may sound good in theory, but until we see concrete examples and/or can test them, I think we're likely to give inaccurate feedback.
I like that there are now biomes for each resource, with caves being where you'd expect to find metals and gems. It something I've advocated for, and I am glad to see it.
What I am less fond of is how hands off and slow crafting is. Other then putting everything in and letting it cook, there is no gameplay here. If it is going to be a simple crafting system, I'd prefer it to be quick and easy. But since time is a commodity, I'd at least like the act of crafting to be in any way engaging.
What makes a crafting, gathering, and vendor system fun for you? What kind of scenarios would you like to see included through the system?
As far as gathering is concerned, I like natural bread crumbing where you bounce from one node to the next, in an area that intuitively you would expect that material to be found. Flowers in a field, trees in a forest, ore in a mine. Essentially clustering nodes together in specific biomes.
Personally I would like mini-games built into crafting, something simple to learn but hard to master, with different games for different types of crafting. I wish there was skill involved in crafting, rather then just be one long waiting game.
How do you feel about the timing of material gathering? Do you feel each biome is unique with what materials spawn?
Looking good so far. I like the idea of rarer materials being specific to certain biomes. Which forces players from outside that biome to either fight for or negotiate in order to gain access to. Players should have conflict over resources.
Do you feel the rebalanced stats on gear and gear levels has improved? Do you like the changes? If not, why?
Can't say I was terribly fond of the previous system, so I'm not sad to see it go. Just about anything would be an improvement. From what I've read, it seems like a sound system. It's probably a bit too early to tell until we can spend time with it and put it through its paces.
I've literally been saying this since P2
Loot drops negate the real use for early game crafters at all.
The most rewarding systems respect your time. In an artisanship system, not everything should require a huge time sink or constant reliance on others. Common gear should take as long to make as it’s worth—which usually isn’t much. Right now, too many systems treat all items the same, forcing every step through the same lengthy process. Processing times should scale with the item’s rarity and level; turning a common ruby into dust shouldn’t take as long as refining a tier-four gem.
Early game artisanship should feel like a quick, satisfying preview of the full process (from gathering to crafting) so new players can learn which artisanship skills they actually want to invest in and players feel they are being rewarded for their time invested like the rest of the game is designed.
An additional note
Gear tiers should simply match the crafting level (ie novice crafting makes novice-tier gear and so on.) Adding extra naming conventions creates unnecessary complexity in a game that’s already deep where it needs to be, and this isn’t one of those areas - especially for new players.
I also don't understand why the devs are insistent that gear should be dropping from mobs, instead of just equally as rare crafting materials that crafters will want to use anyway. Do you just want crafting to be pointless? Why spend 4 hours working on professions when you can spend 8 hours grinding mobs for experience AND get acceptable gear to boot?
World of Warcraft is an incredibly outdated economic model. Drop this nonsense. Let crafters be the ones providing every bit of necessary gear that an adventurer wants.
Even then, processors should be the one's providing a majority of crafting-materials.
Why are devs struggling to come up with an economic solution when you have successful economic models in other games like Albion Online or EVE? Both provide sensible economies, even if EVE is a tad boring.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel here.
Mobs dropping gear frequently (including high tier stuff) - awful.
Naming scheme - awful.
Recipes requiring only a certain regional material - bad.
Lootboxes as rewards - bad.
Full gear as quest rewards - bad.
Still 0 info about the gear scaling across grades - bad for giving feedback about the system.
Recipes requiring specific mob mats - great.
Local spots having proper spawners for gatherables - great (depending on the execution of course).
Now for some explanations for those marks.
Vendors selling gear AT EVERY GRADE sounds like the most counterproductive thing ever thought up, considering you're trying to have crafters in the game. Who, in their right mind, would participate in the super complicated crafting system (the complexity is good btw, and could even go deeper at higher lvls) when they can literally buy shit?
We also have no clue how hard the PvE will be, but considering its state right now - it sure as hell is not hard enough to warrant spending countless people-hours to craft a few items, instead of literally just buying the low tier item of your current grade and boosting yourself through the lvls.
"4h of mob grind is ~= to 4h of crafting". I got no god damn clue how this equation is supposed to work out. Whose 4h are we counting here? How are we counting them? Is it a party grind vs party crafting situation? How exactly is that calculated? Is it "4h of pure directed mob grind vs 3.9h of gathering and 0.1 of clicking on processing and crafting buttons?" or is it something else? How do you count the gathering hours? Is it "all 8 people gathering and then offloading it to a guild proc/crafter"? Is it something else? Does this only apply to party-power mobs? What about soloable ones vs trying to craft solo?
Oh, also, what about the glint that you get in those 4h? Does that count towards the equation? Cause that glint could be then sold and the money used to buy items directly. And with gold being tradeable - that's 8 people pooling money to buy items after their 4h grind.
In other words, how exactly is 4h of mob grind (the most direct activity in the game) supposed to be equated to a complex activity of "crafting", while also somehow matching its pace?
Oh, and, considering we can get lucky and drop high tier stuff from mobs - is that rng included in the "average 4h grind"?
This then brings me to a jump over a few other points for better context. Full gear for quests. Is that also a "4h equivalent"? What about repeatable quests? What tiers of gear are we getting for quests?
All of this just yells to me "CRAFTERS ONLY MATTER AFTER LVL50".
Naming Scheme. I know that people love their fantasy names and stuff (shout out to all the "Tank" haters), but having 2 completely different names for craft lvls and items crafted at those lvls is just needlessly convoluted. I'd bet money, if I had any, that people will just stick to a single side of the naming scheme and will only use that. And what's even more likely is us using "G2T3" scheme in all our communications. And the likelyhood of that happening has gone up as soon as you said that the naming schemes for this stuff will be separate. If it was just "apprentice lvl artisans make apprentice lvl things" - way more people would be way more likely to use "apprentice" to reference the whole process.
Recipes and regional mats. I consider this to be a bad thing because the article made it sounds like you CANNOT craft an item in a desert recipe w/o using desert mats. I had thought that we'd something close to "item A will have 3 fire attribute if you use desert mats, but will have 3 earth att if you use anvils mats". The economic push of "maybe people here want different stats on their gear, so transfering local mats to that location is viable" is still there, but people who don't care about that can use the recipes at any point on the map.
Lootboxes... I just hate what their existence implies and what I've seen it lead to. It should've been under awful, but I'm giving you the slightest benefit of the doubt.
W/o knowing about gear scaling it's impossible to assess how valuable the crafters will be before lvl50. We've already seen that hardcore players can boost their lvls with insane speed. Even if you slow down leveling even more - they'll still always outpace node progression (let alone node building progress). If those players can then easily just replace their gear with mob loot (god forbid basic vendors can sell each grade w/o proper node buildings being built up) - why in the hell would they waste time on crafting? And if even the hardcore players don't care about crafting - why should casuals (obviously outside of people that simply love crafting)? If anything, for a casual player who's just fighting mobs at their lvl of slightly below - they wouldn't even need better gear than the low tier of their grade. And when they can just drop it or buy it - why involve themselves in a super complicated system that also requires either very good social connections or a long active search for a proper proccessor/crafter at the correct node?
The scaling of this question is mostly this: how much stronger is a Low Tier Grade 2 item than a High Tier Grade 1 one? Because if it's even exactly the same - there's no damn reason to try and craft that high tier item. The "4h to 4h" thing goes out the window immediately, because I'd sure as hell imagine that crafting a single high tier item will not take 4h, while dropping a low tier item (most likely several) is exactly what you've just promised in this article.
As for great stuff. Specific mob mats are great, because it creates directed goal-based grinding gameplay, instead of just "farm mobs for glint". And proper logical gatherables spawners are just a basic thing that should've been in from the start, but I assume it was hard to implement, so it's great that it's finally coming.
P.S. what I'd prefer.
1. Combat focused players will farm mobs, those mobs will drop glint. That glint can be vendored or caravaned and then vendored and it turns into coin.
2. Crafters will gather resources, pay coins to process and craft those resources, and then try to sell the finished pieces to the combat players.
3. The combat players will laugh at the crafters for asking any reasonable prices and just buy the low tier gear from the vendor
4. The crafters have sell their gear to the vendor for a fraction of what it's worth, probably barely covering the processing costs, and completely disrespecting the time it took to gather materials
5. This will continue until the combat players have reached max level and can now justify paying more for an armor set that's not just vendor trash and that they won't out-level in a week. The economy can now begin, but only for the medium and high tier maximum level gear, low tier gear will still be useless and low level medium and high tier will still be useless
6. The crafters will have spent hundreds of gold leveling up to reach the point that the market values them and we will either see hyper inflation as crafters demand high prices to pay for their labor, or the crafters will be poor second class citizens far behind the coin value of combat players
In short, we should execute all NPC vendors via firing squad immediately, and any mobs found in possession of gear drops shall be subject to heavy fines from the artisanry union!
But seriously. We need to value artisanry at all level not just at max. We have a great idea in the low medium high system we should run with it. Make all gear require a player to craft it, make it super easy and cheap to craft the low tier gear, and give the mob drop tables the special reagents to craft high tier gear that can then be brought to a crafter to make a fancy upgrade. If it's easy to make then the prices for low level gear will be cheap because you need to make it to level and selling it for anything is better than vendoring it for a pittance. If we want to invalidate that aspect of the market with vendors than we need vendors to sell that gear for a much higher price than a player would ask of it, any item a vendor sells has an immediate ceiling to it's price forever, and the processing cost gives that price a floor, so it will be good to keep inflation somewhat in check but it can't be sold for too low nor can the processing fees be too high or the economy is DOA.
Also, getting a "Eureka" drop from a monster doesn't have to be a fully formed piece of gear. Like I said earlier let it be a crafting reagent, recipe, or maybe a broken item that needs to be repaired. In 2.5 we learned that players will grind a mob for 12, 20, 100 hours before they even consider crafting that drop manually, just don't give them that option, make player crafting valuable.
"Higher altitudes support gatherable like Acacia and Agave. Water-rich regions now encourage the growth of trees like Weeping Willows, Date Palms."
Agave grows best in arid and semi-arid regions, while similarly date palms also grow in places that are have warm, dry climates with long, hot summers following winter rain. Both of these would be more suited to the Desert biome or something along those lines, than "higher altitutes" and "water-rich regions".
If I am in the game and I need agave, or dates, the first place I am going to think of is desert biome. So please, for the sake of immersion, please make sure to put plants in their correct places that you would expect them to naturally grow.
Gathering -
herbalism - exploring and hunting for what I need. The spawns while they make sense for plants are scattered and random among themselves.
mining - the new RNG system only is a problem it needs more of the background intended systems to be online before we hide all the materials away like this.
Fishing - no comment
hunting - like the rarity values we should use these for everything at phase 3. Make legendary rarity legendary for the rest.
Lumberjack - the way forest look is really nice, I wish we had some more bigger scale trees in this magical world of vera. The spawning mechanic (land health) not being in makes lumberjack boring to me personally
Processing - the change to requiring a vender bought material for all processing is not good. It being a time sink is fine and the added flexibility with rarity is a good addition.
Crafting - The UI is now worse finding the recipe you are looking for is terrible. the ability to select materials once and if you have more just press craft is such a Qol improvement. Need something more then put materials in press button. The logistic aspect is fine but both crating and processing feel like they are missing something.
What makes a crafting, gathering, and vendor system fun for you? What kind of scenarios would you like to see included through the system?
crafting - the current iteration is only fun because of providing for the community. The fantasy of being a crafter and making something interesting and unique isn't there. We are very limited on the recipes we have and the materials needed for them are very stringent.
gathering - Mining got a heck of a lot worse for me. Making a change like this into a worse feeling system for the reasons of people having trouble finding and it will get better when more systems like pylons come online is not an excuse. You should bring it online to he live server at the time these other systems are available. As for the others they are also very placeholder so currently fine IMO. The things I wish for each gathering system to feel unique to it's aspect. The landscaping aspect of lumberjacking, for fishing the different ways to fish in different water ways, the tracking of a moving animal and befriending or slaughtering it for it's materials for hunting, the learning of knowledge for the climate of how a flower grows in herbalism, and mining the prospecting and discovery of a new precious metal/gem vein and brining it home.
vender - unless you are venders are for a trading across nodes they shouldn't be used unless the economy absolutely needs it. they should be a last resort for any general shopping, the reagent sales is not something I'm in favor of.
How do you feel about the timing of material gathering? Do you feel each biome is unique with what materials spawn?
I think we currently have decently well developed biomes the amount of plants in particular is great. The correlating problem is with crafting in it's current state it can't make good use of them. Even looking at the recipe's added to the PTR the only viable biomes to be a crafter is going to be the riverlands and the Dunzenkell mountains. And even then with the riverlands being more complete most will still be stuck there draining all the resources.
Simple suggestion from my side would to be getting Dunzenkell and maybe one other biome into a semi functional state like the riverlands for artisans. Then working on the intended background systems like land management and recipe XP because the artisan changes a little at a time is going to be a shake up every time it happens.
Do you feel the rebalanced stats on gear and gear levels has improved? Do you like the changes? If not, why?
No, there is some good things like the multiple gear sets on gear piece's but the lack of reasons to visit other area's then the riverlands isn't good. The proc set's from the stats I saw also need a work to be tuned in line with other pieces.
The Big one venders and gear drop's present a problem of as players level why use a crafter when you can adventure out and do fine without ever interacting with the system. That also feels adverse to the game genre called an MMO where player interaction such as combat players buying from crafters should be encouraged.
A concession easing players into systems like acquiring gear should be done. For buying gear we could let venders and drops exist for level 0 and drops exist for level 10 as well. With the caveat that the grade and rarity of them remains low. People above have very good arguments for why limiting drops is important and reiterating again isn't doing much with this already long post.
I also think the current stat balance on how powerful a level 0 high tier legendary item is terrible. Similar to Ludullu's idea we need to make it so these piece's match up with higher level gear. I actually would prefer a more drastic power level given the amount of trouble making this gear will eventually be. Here:
As for the processing change with the addition's of the reagent. The reagents themselves are fine the way you acquire them isn't. The main way to get reagents should be something else. honestly you could turn processing into a two part choice where one gets you reagents with other rare materials and the other get's you the you the material you need for crafting. examples being wood begetting charcoal and using that into metalworking. If you somehow make a circle of processing that could be neat. Metal could lead to a carving implement for leatherworking and so on.
Last thing an idea for easing into crafting which seems to be the same level of difficulty almost all the way through level 0 to level 20 gear. You really only should be processing and combing two things for the level 0 low grade gear. At medium or high grade add a third material to the crafting itself. Then as we get to level 10 add the reagents into processing. For medium tier we can add the reagents for crafting. here's a basic chart
I really appreciate your image; I think it helps a lot to understand the power jumps between items.
I'd like to add something important. In my understanding, the reason for the existence of grades is because the Node and the surrounding Mobs level up together. This means that depending on the node's progress, the same Mob could drop a Grade 1 or Grade 4 earring.
I'd also like to point out something very important: these comparisons between Grades are between the same item (for example, Lumadon Earring Initiate vs. Lumadon Earring Divine). The differences in stats between different items of the same Grade should be smaller.
That said, I've adapted your table:
Due to the difficulty of obtaining a heroic item, the jump between T1/T2/T3 items should be Rare-Common. This way, if you've invested heavily in a Tier 1 item, it can compete with a basic Tier 2 item. On the other hand, the jump in quality from a G1T3 item to a G2T1 item should be smaller, since Tier 3 items are much more difficult to craft, so a basic, abundant item shouldn't be much better.
Player item progression is very important, but it's also very important that the items we craft have value. This way, I think it would incentivize the use of crafting skills without fear that the next piece that drops from a monster (or when you gain a couple of levels) will make all that investment worthless.
We also have to remember the existence of enchantments, which could close the gap even further.
You state "To help ensure crafters and adventurers stay in sync, mob drops have been tuned to be similar to crafting progression. In general, roughly four hours of mob grinding should yield comparable gear progression to four hours of crafting - depending, of course, on player knowledge and skill."
However, adventurers also gather glint and therefore gold, while crafters have to spend this resource both for processing fees and the vendor-purchased components, while adventurers also gaining significantly more experience to progress through the game.
How, then, does this change "help ensure crafters and adventurers stay in sync"? Indeed, if equipment drops are comparable between the two activity streams, what is even the point in crafting? I may as well just go off adventuring, get the equipment, use the gold I've gathered to buy extras from other players who have also adventured, and forget about crafting entirely.
Vendors selling gear is also odd, given your earlier statements of a player driven economy. It further negates the point of crafting; if I can buy stuff from a vendor that's 'good enough' for levelling, why would I bother spending the time and investment to make it myself? Why would another player buy a crafted item from me, with one or both of us needing to make a significant journey in order to do the trade, when they can just pick it up off any Tom, Dick or Harry NPC and have it instantly? And if this extends to consumables like food, we're returning to phase2 for these crafts, where player-made food was in incredibly low demand because any player could buy 'good enough' food from a vendor for both a fraction of the price and a fraction of the time that it took a player to craft.
Having adventurers and crafters stay in sync cannot be about making sure the outputs are the same. This is the path to a very poor game. The outputs MUST be different in order to make both streams of activity be worthwhile time investments. Ideally they should also be interdependent, so that both communities, both styles of play, interact.
Have mobs drop broken gear, or components, that require a crafter to fix. The end quality of the items depends both on the traditional rng of the loot drop but also the crafters skill. This is the only way to make a player-driven economy that values both styles of play. The detail is just noise until you have this basic fundamental principle in place.
First, the cost and time to craft a quality item is high. It can literally cost more in time and resources to craft something than for what it can be sold. This can be fixed.
Second, people are greedy. That can't be fixed.
There are a lot of comments about how NPC vendors and loot drops can negatively impact crafters. However, the reality has been that players simply can't afford to buy items sold by others. Their only viable option for getting appropriate gear is via NPC vendors/mob drops. (By the way, it should take time and effort to acquire money, definitely not saying otherwise).
I've read that there will be Player Stalls and an Auction House sometime down the road. Not sure how those will work - seems redundant to me. And it seems like they would eliminate the need for the Marketplace. In the mean time, though, crafters and adventurers are going to be frustrated. Crafters because they are competing with NPC vendors/mobs, and Adventurers because they can't afford crafted items.
Solution: One, keep NPC vendors/loot drops. Two, make crafting much more cost effective resulting in the ability to craft affordable, superior items. Three, make it easy for players to compare prices on the Marketplace.
It's feeling more and more like that, isn't it. Whoever's making the decisions about the Artisan side of Ashes doesn't appear to be someone that actually uses the Artisan features. Which is indeed concerning, as you say.
You can have the most amazing crafting and gathering systems, but, if they are not well balanced with other systems, specially drops, NOBODY WILL USE THAT AMAZING CRAFTING SYSTEM.
Right now, the way PTR is balanced, if it goes to P3, everyone will skip crafts and just drop stuff. Only the Radiant grade (once we have workbenches up) will be crafted.
example. if it takes me 10 hours to go from adventuring levels 1 to 10, it shouldnt take me 20 hours to make level 1-9 gear, or even 10 hours. it should take me 2-3 hours, and then, because now im stronger, leveling from 1-10 shouldnt take me 10 hours, it should take 5-8 or so. right now, crafting low level gear only seems to be useful for people who want to gear up an alt right after making it, or just to get profession exp...it should probably also be cheaper than vendor gear, or at least better.
if it takes me 5 hours to go from 1-10, crafting lvel 1-9 gear to help me progress shouldnt take me 5 hours...it should only take 1 or 2, then leveling with the new gear should only take 2-3. same thing for the rest of level tiers, otherwise, why would i spend 10 hours crafting, when i could have spend that time leveling and be in the next gear bracket already. and even if you argue that it still helps you because you level up the crafting profession, remember you will need multiple higher leveled professions the next gear brackets to make gear .-.
also...
For the people complaining about getting roughly the same amount of gear from killing mobs and crafting in the same time period, remember that you arent getting the pieces you want. for example, i got 3 of the same pants last week in about 1-2 hours of killing stuff. if i had been crafting, i would have crafted pants, chest and helmet, for example. crafting 3 of the same pants to help me level up would be silly
player run economy. crafting isnt (and shouldnt be) the only way to have a player driven economy. farming mobs and selling or trading the loot you dont need is as valid. also, buying gear from an npc in a place with low taxes and selling it to players at another node with high taxes for a profit is also valid. remember that traveling in ashes takes a long time and not everyone wants to take that trip. its also a risky investment, so i dont see the problem with it. crafting will still yield the best gear anyways.
What you're saying seems incredibly important to me for the system to function properly.
One of the most annoying things about crafting systems in MMOs is that their progress is slower than your character's leveling. This means that everything you're creating is junk, because most players will be in the same situation as you. As you've said, the only way to use these items is through alts.
This causes players ignoring the crafting systems, trying to level up as quickly as possible and, once they reach the maximum level, making it easier to level up their crafts.
I think the TIER system is really important for this. At the beginning of a Crafting journey, being able to make common tier 1 items gives the player a sense of usefulness. This way, they can parallel their leveling with crafting.
If, during your adventures, a mob drops items needed to craft a Tier 2 or Tier 3 item, the player will have an incentive to search for the rest and continue crafting.
It's essential that both systems feed into each other so that the player wants to engage more deeply with both. Otherwise, players will be on autopilot, doing the most basic things while ignoring many of the game's mechanics.
This is an interesting point, but it can lead to long-term problems.
A single player farming may suffer from RNG and not obtain useful items. But when many players are farming at the same time (especially in the early stages of realms), finding the pieces you want at auction will be easy.
I think the Item Quality stat would be an interesting way to compensate for this. An item dropped by a mob won't be in its best condition. This could be represented by low (or 0%) quality and/or damaged durability.
Much of the discussion is focused on item crafting, but the Artisan system is and can be much deeper.
A gunsmith not only knows how to make weapons, but also how to repair them. Why not integrate this into the Artisan system? This way, players could find items dropped by mobs and still have an incentive to find a craftsman to improve their item.
This could also create a different gameplay for players who love the crafting system, where they would buy items in poor condition and upgrade them to resell.
In short, the Artisan System should be desirable for players, but not mandatory. (As you said before, to help them progress, don't slow them down.)