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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.
Missed Opportunities for Inter-Player Experiences in the Artisanship System
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
in Artisanship
I am now able to condense my group's complaints down thanks to Throne and Liberty making the same mistakes as Ashes, so I believe this might now be helpful despite my inability to playtest much personally.
1. Excessive Processing Times lead to tunnelvision
By implementing a form of Processing that is not meaningfully visible to other players, occurs in one targeted physical place and for the players engaging in it, occurs in a menu that 'takes up the whole screen', and involves play sessions primarily dedicated to it, the normal player's brain switches to pattern-matching mode, and this is moreso reinforced if they are a 'casual'. My group experienced a considerable reduction in interpersonal 'communication' in game even between each other in the TL implementation, and an almost complete lack of interaction with other players (also encountered in gathering, but that is a TL-specific flaw because unlike Ashes which has 'clusters of gathering nodes and then some scattered, TL removed a lot of its 'scattered'.
2. Simplistic 'Bloat' Recipes lead to Reduced Interaction
Recipes (and gathering spots) overfocused on multiples of singular materials amplifies the tunnelvision effect and triggers the feeling that we believe is the usual source of the complaint of many players about how gathering feels and why they don't like it/consider gatherers to be non-interactive, 'bot-like' players. 'Casuals' often want multiple gathering nodes in one place or to be able to make items 'immediately' without needing to obtain or interact with systems outside of the crafting because it makes it easier for their playtime to be tightly focused, but for people like my group and many others we know, it's actually 'painfully' isolating. A lack of interaction with others during the crafting process warps the game's capacity to feel like an MMO, and we prefer 'small chances to be given options or items with/for friends or community interactions, even if friction can occur.
An example of a place this feeling already happened/was possible is TL's early dungeons where gathering points are available. There is a small but meaningful aspect to 'chill' groups discussing who should gather at these points, and in Ashes this is equivalent to just standard 'rare gathering points' out in the world, within a group of explorers (note that if checking reference, TL's update has removed this, even if possibly inadvertently, those low level dungeons still have the gathering points, but they were 'missed' in the update and can be interacted with but only grant exp and no items, not even White Grade. There is ofc a possibility that this is just me 'glitch-farming' and finding a bug, it is not worth my group's time to verify at this point, and higher level instances also mostly don't have this)
Ashes is doing better (slightly) here if you only consider PvP 'spot defenders' and 'basically solo PvE artisans'. Unfortunately it is very hard to both 'define the player type you are still not managing for', and to explain in short form 'which Interaction type your design is cognitively suppressing, all I can do for now is assure you that the player type exists, and their usual response to this is to burn out and quit the game even if they are succeeding at the mechanical aspects. I believe/hope you now have enough data to back up at least this much of my 'claim'. Success at the production is not enough, it's not even the highest psychological incentive (you can equate it to the feeling of running instanced dungeons or group arena battles with other successful players that you don't like interacting with, if you're the type who goes by gut feelings over things like psych incentives and telemetric data gathering).
3. Excessive per-Material Demands Amplify the Above
This is making a tradeoff of 'interactions per outcome' to achieve... I assume... 'dev control over outcomes and player behaviour'. I'm aware that you can respond faster to negative player behaviours by giving them very long tasks/commitments toward creation of single products, but even aside from doubling down hard on both the issues above, there's a separate concern.
For the context of the similarity here please assume that the Currency Cost of Processing/Cost of Gathering Tools and Bags in Ashes is paralleled by the lack of ability to transfer excess or opportunistic materials in TL, not the Sollant processing costs nor the Processing Queue.
In both games, reaching the point of 'making something satisfying' requires repetitive behaviours that are a filter against the types of players who are just always pushing everything forward. In both games, this filter causes 'initial pain' to those doing their first path who know what they want. We would prefer that this is not fixed by 'making your first path easier' as all it does is frustrate people who don't know what to choose early or 'realize they chose wrong'.
The part of this which is therefore 'valid to fix' is almost entirely the fact that in both games it would be better if the materials needed for early crafting were items viewed as an 'excess' by early crafters and players. In TL where material exchange is impossible, that 'excess' can come from Events, to mostly-equalize time spent at all player levels. If we look at the parallel, in Ashes, it becomes difficult because Currency and Glint 'farming', though a time function, are also level based and bypassable.
In FF11 experience this is solved by the Crystal economy (how Crystal drops work, basically). In Ashes Commissions and Events would be equivalent. Obv the Econ Team should decide if this is within their goals.
4. Disconnection Between Player-Character Action and Outcomes affects Immersion
We understand that implementing on-the-spot Crafting in most PvP games is both difficult and affects bot behaviours, yet still consider this important to bring up. In both games there's a feeling (relative to FF11) that ends up 'missing' as a result of the implementation type.
It may be bias, but there is a definite good feeling to 'working in the field'. FF Crystal Crafting can happen anywhere so you can 'go into the mines with 2 stacks of Fire Crystals' and come back with Ingots, not a pile of Ores. This turns it into an adventure/trip instead of an optimization of running back to town. We understand that Ashes 'cannot' implement this for certain options.
But it's skewed. In TL if you are out fishing you can make more bait on the spot. If you are Dungeoneering you can open Contract rewards, dissolve drops, etc on the spot. Even Material Transmutation, a function that is explicitly not currently being used for 'Crafting', can be done on the spot.
In Ashes the feeling is even odder. A Gatherer feels their 'payoffs' and the resultant 'adventuring interactions' wherever they are, even if it is annoying to some (Bag Tetris). A Dungeoneer/Adventurer gets their outcomes similarly (trade, loot drop rolls, etc).
4b. Inflexibility in Artisanship Location affects the Enjoyment for Multi-Stage/MultiDisciplinary Artisans
Processors in both games (in TL there is currently no such thing as an Artisan that isn't also a Processor) have their Adventures locationally affected by the need to run back to a Crafting Station. If the complaints people have about 'having to run back and forth' haven't been making sense, or seem like something that is unavoidable, this is where they come from. It's not unavoidable. Bots can be dealt with by either spreading out deposits a bit more or reducing the respawn rates for larger 'veins' (Ashes already seems to have this, TL is basically on day 2, and as the aforementioned 'Dungeon gathering points don't even have drops' implies, might still be in first-pass in many zones).
I do not personally know anyone who hates running around during the gathering so much that spreading out the gathering points is a huge negative (and if so, you already have problems, Intrepid), but the need to interrupt this to run back to town to start a new Processing Queue is the thing we (possibly failed to articulate that we--) didn't like as much about your first showing off of your A2 Artisanship.
f either the Design Document or Actual Implementation of this Crafting/Econ pass was influenced by AI, please be aware that AI does not have the underlying data to do this yet, if we discount FF11 and to some extent ArcheAge, you are pioneering this within MMOs of this subgenre that are commonly discussed. Other games do it, but they do it in the way that leads to the same types of complaints you are getting now, and there would be no 'literature on how to fix it' because almost none of them do actually fix it and when they do, there is often no detailed discussion of it that is publicly available enough to be picked up as coherent reference sources (or in the case of some games they started so much worse that their fixes only bring them to where you are, which... well, y'all know how you got here better than I).
I will continue to provide what I can, for whatever it is worth, but even if you don't believe in me directly, please don't believe in LLMs more at this point of implementation.
Just had to bring that up, in case.
1. Excessive Processing Times lead to tunnelvision
By implementing a form of Processing that is not meaningfully visible to other players, occurs in one targeted physical place and for the players engaging in it, occurs in a menu that 'takes up the whole screen', and involves play sessions primarily dedicated to it, the normal player's brain switches to pattern-matching mode, and this is moreso reinforced if they are a 'casual'. My group experienced a considerable reduction in interpersonal 'communication' in game even between each other in the TL implementation, and an almost complete lack of interaction with other players (also encountered in gathering, but that is a TL-specific flaw because unlike Ashes which has 'clusters of gathering nodes and then some scattered, TL removed a lot of its 'scattered'.
2. Simplistic 'Bloat' Recipes lead to Reduced Interaction
Recipes (and gathering spots) overfocused on multiples of singular materials amplifies the tunnelvision effect and triggers the feeling that we believe is the usual source of the complaint of many players about how gathering feels and why they don't like it/consider gatherers to be non-interactive, 'bot-like' players. 'Casuals' often want multiple gathering nodes in one place or to be able to make items 'immediately' without needing to obtain or interact with systems outside of the crafting because it makes it easier for their playtime to be tightly focused, but for people like my group and many others we know, it's actually 'painfully' isolating. A lack of interaction with others during the crafting process warps the game's capacity to feel like an MMO, and we prefer 'small chances to be given options or items with/for friends or community interactions, even if friction can occur.
An example of a place this feeling already happened/was possible is TL's early dungeons where gathering points are available. There is a small but meaningful aspect to 'chill' groups discussing who should gather at these points, and in Ashes this is equivalent to just standard 'rare gathering points' out in the world, within a group of explorers (note that if checking reference, TL's update has removed this, even if possibly inadvertently, those low level dungeons still have the gathering points, but they were 'missed' in the update and can be interacted with but only grant exp and no items, not even White Grade. There is ofc a possibility that this is just me 'glitch-farming' and finding a bug, it is not worth my group's time to verify at this point, and higher level instances also mostly don't have this)
Ashes is doing better (slightly) here if you only consider PvP 'spot defenders' and 'basically solo PvE artisans'. Unfortunately it is very hard to both 'define the player type you are still not managing for', and to explain in short form 'which Interaction type your design is cognitively suppressing, all I can do for now is assure you that the player type exists, and their usual response to this is to burn out and quit the game even if they are succeeding at the mechanical aspects. I believe/hope you now have enough data to back up at least this much of my 'claim'. Success at the production is not enough, it's not even the highest psychological incentive (you can equate it to the feeling of running instanced dungeons or group arena battles with other successful players that you don't like interacting with, if you're the type who goes by gut feelings over things like psych incentives and telemetric data gathering).
3. Excessive per-Material Demands Amplify the Above
This is making a tradeoff of 'interactions per outcome' to achieve... I assume... 'dev control over outcomes and player behaviour'. I'm aware that you can respond faster to negative player behaviours by giving them very long tasks/commitments toward creation of single products, but even aside from doubling down hard on both the issues above, there's a separate concern.
For the context of the similarity here please assume that the Currency Cost of Processing/Cost of Gathering Tools and Bags in Ashes is paralleled by the lack of ability to transfer excess or opportunistic materials in TL, not the Sollant processing costs nor the Processing Queue.
In both games, reaching the point of 'making something satisfying' requires repetitive behaviours that are a filter against the types of players who are just always pushing everything forward. In both games, this filter causes 'initial pain' to those doing their first path who know what they want. We would prefer that this is not fixed by 'making your first path easier' as all it does is frustrate people who don't know what to choose early or 'realize they chose wrong'.
The part of this which is therefore 'valid to fix' is almost entirely the fact that in both games it would be better if the materials needed for early crafting were items viewed as an 'excess' by early crafters and players. In TL where material exchange is impossible, that 'excess' can come from Events, to mostly-equalize time spent at all player levels. If we look at the parallel, in Ashes, it becomes difficult because Currency and Glint 'farming', though a time function, are also level based and bypassable.
In FF11 experience this is solved by the Crystal economy (how Crystal drops work, basically). In Ashes Commissions and Events would be equivalent. Obv the Econ Team should decide if this is within their goals.
4. Disconnection Between Player-Character Action and Outcomes affects Immersion
We understand that implementing on-the-spot Crafting in most PvP games is both difficult and affects bot behaviours, yet still consider this important to bring up. In both games there's a feeling (relative to FF11) that ends up 'missing' as a result of the implementation type.
It may be bias, but there is a definite good feeling to 'working in the field'. FF Crystal Crafting can happen anywhere so you can 'go into the mines with 2 stacks of Fire Crystals' and come back with Ingots, not a pile of Ores. This turns it into an adventure/trip instead of an optimization of running back to town. We understand that Ashes 'cannot' implement this for certain options.
But it's skewed. In TL if you are out fishing you can make more bait on the spot. If you are Dungeoneering you can open Contract rewards, dissolve drops, etc on the spot. Even Material Transmutation, a function that is explicitly not currently being used for 'Crafting', can be done on the spot.
In Ashes the feeling is even odder. A Gatherer feels their 'payoffs' and the resultant 'adventuring interactions' wherever they are, even if it is annoying to some (Bag Tetris). A Dungeoneer/Adventurer gets their outcomes similarly (trade, loot drop rolls, etc).
4b. Inflexibility in Artisanship Location affects the Enjoyment for Multi-Stage/MultiDisciplinary Artisans
Processors in both games (in TL there is currently no such thing as an Artisan that isn't also a Processor) have their Adventures locationally affected by the need to run back to a Crafting Station. If the complaints people have about 'having to run back and forth' haven't been making sense, or seem like something that is unavoidable, this is where they come from. It's not unavoidable. Bots can be dealt with by either spreading out deposits a bit more or reducing the respawn rates for larger 'veins' (Ashes already seems to have this, TL is basically on day 2, and as the aforementioned 'Dungeon gathering points don't even have drops' implies, might still be in first-pass in many zones).
I do not personally know anyone who hates running around during the gathering so much that spreading out the gathering points is a huge negative (and if so, you already have problems, Intrepid), but the need to interrupt this to run back to town to start a new Processing Queue is the thing we (possibly failed to articulate that we--) didn't like as much about your first showing off of your A2 Artisanship.
f either the Design Document or Actual Implementation of this Crafting/Econ pass was influenced by AI, please be aware that AI does not have the underlying data to do this yet, if we discount FF11 and to some extent ArcheAge, you are pioneering this within MMOs of this subgenre that are commonly discussed. Other games do it, but they do it in the way that leads to the same types of complaints you are getting now, and there would be no 'literature on how to fix it' because almost none of them do actually fix it and when they do, there is often no detailed discussion of it that is publicly available enough to be picked up as coherent reference sources (or in the case of some games they started so much worse that their fixes only bring them to where you are, which... well, y'all know how you got here better than I).
I will continue to provide what I can, for whatever it is worth, but even if you don't believe in me directly, please don't believe in LLMs more at this point of implementation.
Just had to bring that up, in case.
"Save us, Jake Song!"
1
Comments
I've been pretty busy with fighting games, so I didn't have a chance to try Throne and Liberty's gathering update until now. One of the things I like most in that game is the mushroom gathering loop:
Because these points are all global (interactable by all players) and can only be interacted by one player at a time before being consumed, this inherently has interactions with other players in the region that are also gathering mushrooms. I don't run into people here often, but I do run into them, and this also happens in Quietis' Demesne. It helps me feel connected to other crafters in this game even if I can't directly sell them materials or anything.
Now that I've gotten to try the new gathering, I'm really upset about it because they seem to have completely broken the system they already had. I've been mining in Abandoned Stonemason Town (I naturally gravitate toward the desert), and the gathering points spawn in great concentrations, and respawn almost faster than I can mine them. If I get distracted whacking nearby mobs, I'll see the rock I just mined come back to life before my very eyes. This feels very demotivating, even if I'm sure some "casual" is happy about being able to get materials fast without having to learn the entire area, just a spot.
I don't expect I will run into anyone mining here or competing for these, because the concentration isn't very limited either, there's other blobs of it further up the mountain than where I am mining right now, too. I already can't interact economically with other crafters by selling them gathering materials, now I am unlikely to even see them ever.
The thing I enjoy most about gathering is getting to relax and breathe in the feeling of the area I am in, and I don't achieve that by running back and forth within the same ~50 meter radius. Setting the respawn time value too low, and the gathering points too close to one another in combination, makes it feel cheap. If either respawn timers were much longer, or the points were further apart, I wouldn't feel so bad, but the combo is pretty awful, and I hope Ashes doesn't get pushed to drive both of these variables to the extremes I'm seeing in Throne and Liberty.
If you want to make gathering enjoyable, you want either high concentration but long respawn times, or short respawn times and high dispersion. Anything else, and you get sad gatherers.
If you want to start people making Furnishings for their house and you want it to not just be Woodworkers, the first thing everyone other than Clothcrafters should make is Flowerpots.
Because you can make Flowerpots out of Wood, Clay/Ceramics, 'lowest level metal generally used in game', and whatever else.
Because most players decorating a newbie house will not be sad that they 'have to' make 6-10 flowerpots to level up, if somehow leveling up is important.
Because most people will not feel super weird putting that many flowerpots in their houses, and will be fine having more in reserve for other, later houses.
If your AI output for 'early Furnishings' comes up with something other than Flowerpots, don't trust it.
2. Using Azherae's reference doc the there is lack of intent being fulfilled through the current high incidence and heavy flow in most of the gathering: Mining, herbalism, lumber.
This leads to the bot play style that you can only really grind out what you are gathering for. Having no change in incidence for materials in areas everything is in the same spots and respawns quick enough that there's no conflict between players. I'm very interested in gathering with shifting resource spawns across the world but right now everything is so botable it's not even fun. Ashes has mentioned land-health, mining veins so there's hope but without them gathering isn't for me. Depending on implementation they could even lead PvP over contested spots of gatherable more then they have right now.
3.The excess material and gold cot right now to me is a product of gear permanence and/or lack of variety and need of variety. With you making something and never needing to loss it or make something for a different situation, the high costs are a product of the end game situations. Leading them to have even the novice level crafting be impacted by the impractical mat and gold requirements. They really need to dumb down the novice and apprentice levels of crafting and build up as we get JM and higher stuff going.
I also think we need to be wary of keeping all levels of crafters relevant since the slot system they have for artisans. Otherwise everything but gathering is pretty useless unless it's in the two GM slots.
4.I do think they need certain changes for on the spot processing I think, They could probably tune it to be worse then most any station's ability but works in a pinch. We also need a storge update for something like that because bags are terrible right now. There's a few posts about that, one I've seen that's interesting is digressing mats from their rarity and having a separate rarity modifying material for processing and crafting. Which then gets a separate bag.
4b. There is a lot of processing alts. going on and I don't know what they want to do to solve this maybe introduce an upkeep mechanic to lead to better results. One of the biggest issues with processing and crafting right now is they are just UI clicking through menu simulator. So I'd like to know the intended gameplay involved.
Please be very careful with it, because of the same reason. An LLM that has gathered a lot of information on 'modern' games will skew most of its information toward BDO and while BDO's gathering is actually not terrible for that game, it's part of a wholistic system that I guess someone out there must enjoy.
But of course, LLMs hallucinate, and even when they aren't hallucinating, when they are attempting to compile information based on human 'preferences', especially for games, they trend toward what is discussed the most, not necessarily what is enjoyed the most.
A simple example is that since BDO has no restrictions on Gathering levels, and no aim for interaction or meaningful economic benefits/flows relative to most Gathering, an LLM might find complaints from people about having too many gatherables. Because BDO doesn't need as many as it has. But by contrast Throne and Liberty needs more, and Ashes needs even more than that.
Let's take the example of a combination of "Lumberjacking" and "Low Grade/Quality Trees".
If the standard busy/overworked designer is looking for a 'Low Grade Tree' to add to the world, and sensibly searches for a reasonable 'tree that doesn't grow tall', they'll end up at Dogwood. Specifically Cornelian Cherry Dogwood, probably.
This will often combine with the basic idea of 'when you level up your gathering you should be able to gather both better items and more items from a given gathering point, because again, mostly BDO.
But if Ashes or TL were to implement this, it would be wrong for their game. In TL it would actively cause trouble, in Ashes it would at minimum be very annoying. Both those games have tighter distributions of items and/or a need to keep low level crafting relevant. Using the BDO approach here would squash low level players and possibly also inconvenience higher level players.
Whereas the 'correct' answer for that game family would be to only implement the 'can gather higher rarity gathering points', or to keep the 'gain' within a clamped rational value for the point in question.
i.e. if you gathered Dogwood at Novice Gathering, you might get 1-5 Dogwood, and at Journeyman you might get 3-5, but nothing much more, no big deviation from 'High Novice', no 'I get Blue Tier Dogwood a lot just because I am a good Lumberjack'. This is a type of huge problem in games where lower levels can't sell their Materials to higher level players easily, but that's also affected by a ton of other factors like 'is the 10<->1 conversion system in it?' (it shouldn't be, moreso pointing this out as an error that an AI would probably miss).
It's not that you can't do that too, it's a complexity problem. It would be fine to do that if the game was set up such that in certain dangerous areas you 'occasionally find some Dogwood at the edge of a Poplar grove', or even 'find more Dogwood because the World Manager has let the Dogwood take over due to overharvesting'.
Usually an AI assistant will not catch this because 'base principles' of MMO economies are rare online. By that I mean that it isn't too hard to 'copy something that is established', but you have to copy the whole thing. I still don't know if anyone is actually gaining benefit from me talking about them, but I'll continue to try to do so, even if it starts to feel like shouting into the wind.
On that passing-note then, Intrepid...
It's Dogwood and Maple at the bottom tier, together. One is decorative/toward sap and cooking, the other is for 'general use of wood that isn't good enough for quality Furniture or structures'. In my reference 'sheet' these would be AdvP1-Wood and AdvP1-DecorWood, and they would also occasionally grant ArtC1-Bait (worms, grubs) and ArtC1-Sugar_Source (or you can use different gathering tools to get these).
I believe you will regret going 'straight' to Oak and Ash, quite a bit, later, since those are better in certain games as ArtC3/AdvP3-DecorWood and ArtC2/AdvP3-Wood respectively. You can push Oak down to ArtC2 alongside Ash, but if I remember right, these two don't actually grow in that way, and depending on your ecology it's Birch that you put at ArtC2-DecorWood slot.
Well, I'll continue to hope for the best.
You should change the word 'family' here to 'type' as it will cause the LLM parser used in sentiment gathering and community data parsing to go into a weird tangent about either ashes' family system or a different string for guilds and gathering that is unrelated to what you were discussing.