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Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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.
Fundamental flaws in the current econ design
ButtercupClover
Member, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
in Artisanship
I'd like to take some time to discuss things that seem to not work as a whole. I'm not going to be discussing current balance, but rather things that have consistently not worked since phase 1. Things that seem to go against what we've heard from past live streams and through responses during testing.1
Let's start with the biggest thing that pretty much every artisan has a gripe with:
I understand wanting drops to exist for people farming mobs, but in a functioning economy the crafters rely on the farmers for customers and the farmers rely on crafters for the gear they want. Right now the crafters do rely on farmers to be their customers, but the farmers have cut out needing crafters by just farming in spots with drops.
I know it's been said drops aren't going anywhere, but I feel like they temporarily need to disappear until something new can take it's place. Flawed versions of the item as a drop that have it's stats reduced by 50% or something steep in order to keep crafters relevant during all stages of gear progression. Non repairable, low durability gear as drops. Something that isn't just "Here's a fully crafted item."
"Hold *" while hovering over an item to view what actual changes you will see on your character sheet would go a long way. Something similar to "+10 magic power" or "+3% crit chance".
The point on wanting people to travel will come naturally. X settlement has your profession focused and leveled, and it provides the most bonuses to a craft. The draw of what a settlement could offer based off building choices should be the reason to travel, not some arbitrary requirement just to make the item. It makes those regional materials next to worthless outside the region they are gathered in. It also makes the mayor choices of what professions to focus less impactful. Who cares if you have grand master armorsmithing and quality bonuses in your town if the BiS choices come from another region? This also says that in order to craft everything in one profession, you'd have to hope that EVERY region has your profession at grand master.
The issue comes with the materials chosen to get there. The mistake of multiplying costs through the processing steps is harsh when you think about the amount of gathering needed for most crafts. A level 10 sword takes 28 copper ingots which becomes 84 copper ore... With how gathering metals works, the rng may tell you that it will take a full day to gather that much common copper or just an hour. The biggest gripe here is back when you compare it to how hard it is to farm higher rarity and level gear. Common gear should be... common. Easy to make and mass produce.
The balancing of costs will come, but I'd highly urge you to consider keeping material cost low and level appropriate for the crafts. Apprentice level should be taking mostly apprentice materials as well. A Fleshripper taking 93 copper ingots and 4 tin fragments is heavily skewed towards the apprentice level mats. I understand the intent to keep low level materials relevant in all levels of crafts, but that's easily done through alloys like brass and bronze or some kind of equivalent with the other gatherables. Make it a component of a higher tier process, not the focus.
Ideally the results should look something like "Thornbound Greatsword: 1g total processing and vendor material fees before taxes, 10 copper ingots, 5 ash planks." or "Flayer's Fleshripper: 2g total processing and vendor material fees before taxes, 10 tin ingots, 5 copper ingots, 7 ash planks."
(That said I see it as a placeholder system and hope we can get something similar to custom alloys that let us test out different inputs to get unique material outcomes.)
I'll also preface this part by saying I haven't successfully run a caravan from point A to point B without a whole horde of people helping me out. I think out of the ten caravans I've ever ran, two made it to the destination either due to bugs or getting ganked by a zerg out of nowhere.
The main philosophy on most things in this game have revolved around risk vs reward. Caravans were a huge part of that, needing a decent defense force to try and deter attackers from stopping your goal of getting gold. Being able to run commodities without a caravan means there's no event for people to flag for pvp. If you see someone with a box on their back, you most likely have to go red to get it. That coupled with the fact that if I was going to run a caravan with defenders, I might as well just not and hand each of them a box to run with me. Smallest risk for the same reward as a caravan.
Tetris isn't fun and having to choose to throw something away just because it's rarity is off from the very same item doesn't make sense. They are both copper, they both take up the same space, why won't they fit? I mean I get why code wise, but it seems like it would make more sense to have a weight based system that allows for more gathering to occur in an outing as well as letting players over farm for a de-buff that might incentivize a player to go red on them. Carrying 110% your weight capacity would slow you down giving other players something noticeably different that shows you are carrying a lot of resources. Risk of over farming vs the reward of making it back safely. Bags could be restructured to increase weight limit and reduce the weight specific materials like mining resources -45% weight or something similar.
Also honorable mention to processed items not stacking in bags meant for their raw version. a batch of 100 timber is nightmare fuel for the Tetris goblin.
Gathering on the other hand feels like a crap shoot. You put your quality stat at 1k and it doesn't feel like it makes much of a difference. You can't tell if your stats made the node a high rarity proc or if it was a naturally high rarity spawn. Maybe pylons might play into this later, but I feel like the rng aspect of the gathering stats don't make you any better at your job of gathering but rather just slightly luckier instead.
Why do we have grades now? Initiate, adept, radiant, etc is just the same as calling them novice, apprentice, journeyman isn't it? Feels needlessly confusing adding the grade names when we already have a title for the tiers of gear.
Node storage options have been ignored for what feels like too long. There's no reason to choose any other storage type beyond generic as the stack sizes are atrociously small compared to the space lost. Maybe try setting stack sizes to 99 in those storage types and tuning it down later if it seems a bit much.
Consider turning the cost of things down to an extreme level for the sake of testing. It's hard enough to craft one recipe, so trying to afford crafting every recipe to find the bugged ones feels impossible. (Also doesn't help that 90% of recipes won't show up because they don't have a region set for their bench requirements, but that is a bug and not really a flaw in the design.)
While I understand the process behind new processing costs and gold sinks, I think it's good to also keep an eye out for things that don't fit well within a blanket update like this. For example apprentice bags will cost about 13 gold and 12ish hours of processing to make while most other crafts within the apprentice tier stay well under 5g.
It's time to take away flying mounts... from the vassal mayors at least. The end goal is that only max level settlements get one, so it would make sense that with the addition of level 4 settlements the goal post on who can acquire one is also moved. Maybe add in some of the extremely rare, unique, time limited flying mounts to the world to make up for how many flying mounts that would be taken out of the world.
It might be a good idea to let the mayor toggle whether node resources are hidden to citizens or public. There's currently no way for a citizen to know how close to finishing a node project they might be unless they manually track buy orders or the mayor is online and sees them ask.
Let's start with the biggest thing that pretty much every artisan has a gripe with:
- "Crafters make the best shit" isn't true
I understand wanting drops to exist for people farming mobs, but in a functioning economy the crafters rely on the farmers for customers and the farmers rely on crafters for the gear they want. Right now the crafters do rely on farmers to be their customers, but the farmers have cut out needing crafters by just farming in spots with drops.
I know it's been said drops aren't going anywhere, but I feel like they temporarily need to disappear until something new can take it's place. Flawed versions of the item as a drop that have it's stats reduced by 50% or something steep in order to keep crafters relevant during all stages of gear progression. Non repairable, low durability gear as drops. Something that isn't just "Here's a fully crafted item."
- Gear level matters more than quality
- Gear stats are confusing and convoluted
"Hold *" while hovering over an item to view what actual changes you will see on your character sheet would go a long way. Something similar to "+10 magic power" or "+3% crit chance".
- Region locking crafts
The point on wanting people to travel will come naturally. X settlement has your profession focused and leveled, and it provides the most bonuses to a craft. The draw of what a settlement could offer based off building choices should be the reason to travel, not some arbitrary requirement just to make the item. It makes those regional materials next to worthless outside the region they are gathered in. It also makes the mayor choices of what professions to focus less impactful. Who cares if you have grand master armorsmithing and quality bonuses in your town if the BiS choices come from another region? This also says that in order to craft everything in one profession, you'd have to hope that EVERY region has your profession at grand master.
- Material costs of items
The issue comes with the materials chosen to get there. The mistake of multiplying costs through the processing steps is harsh when you think about the amount of gathering needed for most crafts. A level 10 sword takes 28 copper ingots which becomes 84 copper ore... With how gathering metals works, the rng may tell you that it will take a full day to gather that much common copper or just an hour. The biggest gripe here is back when you compare it to how hard it is to farm higher rarity and level gear. Common gear should be... common. Easy to make and mass produce.
The balancing of costs will come, but I'd highly urge you to consider keeping material cost low and level appropriate for the crafts. Apprentice level should be taking mostly apprentice materials as well. A Fleshripper taking 93 copper ingots and 4 tin fragments is heavily skewed towards the apprentice level mats. I understand the intent to keep low level materials relevant in all levels of crafts, but that's easily done through alloys like brass and bronze or some kind of equivalent with the other gatherables. Make it a component of a higher tier process, not the focus.
Ideally the results should look something like "Thornbound Greatsword: 1g total processing and vendor material fees before taxes, 10 copper ingots, 5 ash planks." or "Flayer's Fleshripper: 2g total processing and vendor material fees before taxes, 10 tin ingots, 5 copper ingots, 7 ash planks."
(That said I see it as a placeholder system and hope we can get something similar to custom alloys that let us test out different inputs to get unique material outcomes.)
- Running crates on foot
I'll also preface this part by saying I haven't successfully run a caravan from point A to point B without a whole horde of people helping me out. I think out of the ten caravans I've ever ran, two made it to the destination either due to bugs or getting ganked by a zerg out of nowhere.
The main philosophy on most things in this game have revolved around risk vs reward. Caravans were a huge part of that, needing a decent defense force to try and deter attackers from stopping your goal of getting gold. Being able to run commodities without a caravan means there's no event for people to flag for pvp. If you see someone with a box on their back, you most likely have to go red to get it. That coupled with the fact that if I was going to run a caravan with defenders, I might as well just not and hand each of them a box to run with me. Smallest risk for the same reward as a caravan.
- Bag space woes
Tetris isn't fun and having to choose to throw something away just because it's rarity is off from the very same item doesn't make sense. They are both copper, they both take up the same space, why won't they fit? I mean I get why code wise, but it seems like it would make more sense to have a weight based system that allows for more gathering to occur in an outing as well as letting players over farm for a de-buff that might incentivize a player to go red on them. Carrying 110% your weight capacity would slow you down giving other players something noticeably different that shows you are carrying a lot of resources. Risk of over farming vs the reward of making it back safely. Bags could be restructured to increase weight limit and reduce the weight specific materials like mining resources -45% weight or something similar.
Also honorable mention to processed items not stacking in bags meant for their raw version. a batch of 100 timber is nightmare fuel for the Tetris goblin.
- RNG gathering
Gathering on the other hand feels like a crap shoot. You put your quality stat at 1k and it doesn't feel like it makes much of a difference. You can't tell if your stats made the node a high rarity proc or if it was a naturally high rarity spawn. Maybe pylons might play into this later, but I feel like the rng aspect of the gathering stats don't make you any better at your job of gathering but rather just slightly luckier instead.
- Honorable mentions
Why do we have grades now? Initiate, adept, radiant, etc is just the same as calling them novice, apprentice, journeyman isn't it? Feels needlessly confusing adding the grade names when we already have a title for the tiers of gear.
Node storage options have been ignored for what feels like too long. There's no reason to choose any other storage type beyond generic as the stack sizes are atrociously small compared to the space lost. Maybe try setting stack sizes to 99 in those storage types and tuning it down later if it seems a bit much.
Consider turning the cost of things down to an extreme level for the sake of testing. It's hard enough to craft one recipe, so trying to afford crafting every recipe to find the bugged ones feels impossible. (Also doesn't help that 90% of recipes won't show up because they don't have a region set for their bench requirements, but that is a bug and not really a flaw in the design.)
While I understand the process behind new processing costs and gold sinks, I think it's good to also keep an eye out for things that don't fit well within a blanket update like this. For example apprentice bags will cost about 13 gold and 12ish hours of processing to make while most other crafts within the apprentice tier stay well under 5g.
It's time to take away flying mounts... from the vassal mayors at least. The end goal is that only max level settlements get one, so it would make sense that with the addition of level 4 settlements the goal post on who can acquire one is also moved. Maybe add in some of the extremely rare, unique, time limited flying mounts to the world to make up for how many flying mounts that would be taken out of the world.
It might be a good idea to let the mayor toggle whether node resources are hidden to citizens or public. There's currently no way for a citizen to know how close to finishing a node project they might be unless they manually track buy orders or the mayor is online and sees them ask.
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