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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.
Allow me to tackle the Crafting/Gear Drop(Decon & Tempring)/Certification/Reagents/Static Rarity pro
haelin
Member, Alpha Two
This is my full idea of how to fix everything. I want to do this to just get it out there and get feedback.
First, we will tackle Static rarity. I personally think, if you want to do this the easy way, just make all rarity of all gatherables Common. There is no rarity built into the gathering nodes at all. All proccing of rarity will come from clothes, tools, gear, node buffs, scrolls, elixirs, guild buffs, and lawless zones. Make this true for the whole process including gathering, processing, and crafting. All of it is a long layered process to upproc everything to the highest rarity. Not only will this make people have to work together, but it will also make epic and legendary items far, far, far more meaningful because the server will take months to even see their first legendary, and it allows people to pour all time, money, and resources into their favorite artisan skill that they take pride in. I have also given the idea that when you upgrade certification, your rarity proc for working with things a certification below will also increase rarity proc and the next certification level up increases the threshold for that certification so its harder to proc rarity within Apprentice or Journeyman which allows you to improve your gear even further and continue the chain. This gives incentive to actually hit lvl 50 (allow a completion certification) cause you can proc grandmaster stuff a tad better as well by actually completing the artisan ability. So in theory, if you are grandmaster and you are full artisan geared out, you will be hitting novice rarity like no tomorrow. This is good because how the recipes are setup, you will need 200-300 copper ingots or so with gear. This allows you to actually save up novice high rarity while you need less of the apprentice or Jman materials within the recipe, but they are harder to find of high rarity and are more meaningful. This type of long grind of upproccing will also slow down botting as they will have to level with the server until they get gear.
Secondly, Reagents. I'm okay with reagents in the game, but they need to be changed. First off, novice needs to either not have reagents or you need a universal reagent that is needed for all novice crafts, just to teach new players that a reagent will be needed for their process. Or you can remove reagents all together but have different reagents made for all different crafts and allow reagents to be yet another buffer with quality to upproc things. For example, Alchemists can make woodwooker's oil, to process boards. These will be easy to make things of different rarity to help even further with the process of upprocing and allowing all artisan abilities be needed for everything universally. You can even have it where reagents can be used both in processing and craft stage to allow them more needed for all different artisan abilities which is all within the parameters of the long layered process of upproccing common materials and encourages altruism.
Thirdly, and I think the most controversial Gear Drops. For gear drops, they need to be enabled, they just have to. Crafting and gathering is not everyone's cup of tea and you need to cater to other playstyles that are needed to breed a good supply and demand playerbase in the economy. But here is where my idea comes in. First off, all common loot table droppables are not marketable, but tradeable. What I mean by this is loot from the normal crafting table line that is dropped by most mobs within the world, where certain long timer bosses that have a chance to drop a boss weapon can be marketable.
However, All droppable gear can come in uncommon and rare. I know this is weird when I said that all gatherable are common at first. However, through time owning the weapon, not just using it, the quality (not durability, quality) will degrade and it will sooner or later, degrade to not just common, but crude (less than common). Why? Because when it becomes crude, it will still have two purposes. You can either decon it, which should be useful if they increase the special boss material/common mats in the gear, and it will be another way to retrieve essences from the different biomes. Riverlands, jundark essence etc. So now, decon kits have a good purpose too towards the entirety of the system. Now, people might be asking, why did you say the rarity decrease and not the durability? Because , this is where tempering kits come into play. Because will certain materials and paying the silver, you can essentially temper the item back to its original rarity it was when you found it as a drop permanently (won't degrade), and tempering kits will also unlock the chance for it to be sellable on the market. Not only does this allow 2 systems that are underappreciated to be utilized more, but it also gets people that are into getting drops, to also be part of crafting as well to get gear.
First, we will tackle Static rarity. I personally think, if you want to do this the easy way, just make all rarity of all gatherables Common. There is no rarity built into the gathering nodes at all. All proccing of rarity will come from clothes, tools, gear, node buffs, scrolls, elixirs, guild buffs, and lawless zones. Make this true for the whole process including gathering, processing, and crafting. All of it is a long layered process to upproc everything to the highest rarity. Not only will this make people have to work together, but it will also make epic and legendary items far, far, far more meaningful because the server will take months to even see their first legendary, and it allows people to pour all time, money, and resources into their favorite artisan skill that they take pride in. I have also given the idea that when you upgrade certification, your rarity proc for working with things a certification below will also increase rarity proc and the next certification level up increases the threshold for that certification so its harder to proc rarity within Apprentice or Journeyman which allows you to improve your gear even further and continue the chain. This gives incentive to actually hit lvl 50 (allow a completion certification) cause you can proc grandmaster stuff a tad better as well by actually completing the artisan ability. So in theory, if you are grandmaster and you are full artisan geared out, you will be hitting novice rarity like no tomorrow. This is good because how the recipes are setup, you will need 200-300 copper ingots or so with gear. This allows you to actually save up novice high rarity while you need less of the apprentice or Jman materials within the recipe, but they are harder to find of high rarity and are more meaningful. This type of long grind of upproccing will also slow down botting as they will have to level with the server until they get gear.
Secondly, Reagents. I'm okay with reagents in the game, but they need to be changed. First off, novice needs to either not have reagents or you need a universal reagent that is needed for all novice crafts, just to teach new players that a reagent will be needed for their process. Or you can remove reagents all together but have different reagents made for all different crafts and allow reagents to be yet another buffer with quality to upproc things. For example, Alchemists can make woodwooker's oil, to process boards. These will be easy to make things of different rarity to help even further with the process of upprocing and allowing all artisan abilities be needed for everything universally. You can even have it where reagents can be used both in processing and craft stage to allow them more needed for all different artisan abilities which is all within the parameters of the long layered process of upproccing common materials and encourages altruism.
Thirdly, and I think the most controversial Gear Drops. For gear drops, they need to be enabled, they just have to. Crafting and gathering is not everyone's cup of tea and you need to cater to other playstyles that are needed to breed a good supply and demand playerbase in the economy. But here is where my idea comes in. First off, all common loot table droppables are not marketable, but tradeable. What I mean by this is loot from the normal crafting table line that is dropped by most mobs within the world, where certain long timer bosses that have a chance to drop a boss weapon can be marketable.
However, All droppable gear can come in uncommon and rare. I know this is weird when I said that all gatherable are common at first. However, through time owning the weapon, not just using it, the quality (not durability, quality) will degrade and it will sooner or later, degrade to not just common, but crude (less than common). Why? Because when it becomes crude, it will still have two purposes. You can either decon it, which should be useful if they increase the special boss material/common mats in the gear, and it will be another way to retrieve essences from the different biomes. Riverlands, jundark essence etc. So now, decon kits have a good purpose too towards the entirety of the system. Now, people might be asking, why did you say the rarity decrease and not the durability? Because , this is where tempering kits come into play. Because will certain materials and paying the silver, you can essentially temper the item back to its original rarity it was when you found it as a drop permanently (won't degrade), and tempering kits will also unlock the chance for it to be sellable on the market. Not only does this allow 2 systems that are underappreciated to be utilized more, but it also gets people that are into getting drops, to also be part of crafting as well to get gear.
FAQ about this post
Easy, as you level up, each certificate will need more novice materials, and when you increase your certificate you will need the apprentice level stuff of things. This allows you to proc novice things at rarity and slowly move up the totem pole of gear. You will end up out-growing your old stuff anyways, so new gear will have to be made. But in essence, this can also mean that there will be a pocket of progression, where crafting the legendary lower tier might be more doable than the current tier. Which also will help with tempering kits and making lower level stuff still viable, even for people below your level. This type of leveling will also be less overwhelming right out the gate because the amount of stuff you can craft and different materials from different biomes will be more than enough where we won't have to worry about rarity and will slowly make its way into the world as we progress.How will you get better gear if everything starts at common?
Maybe for some with prior knowledge of how it was. But it will actually make gathering more fun in the long run because it will essentially enable "gathering pure" type behavior where those people are needed. This idea will also be a buffer for botters because botters will need to get the best gear in order to be significant just like players and if the bots get banned it will be more detrimental for them cause they will lose the gear they had. If luck is already implemented in the game at lvl 1, it just breeds botting behavior and they will easily win the rarity war purely by brute forcing gathering regardless of their gear. With this, there is no way around it besides putting in time into the game. This is an unfortunate truth that has to be made with gathering because gathering is at the vanguard for the most entry-level introduction mechanic into the game.Wouldn't this decrease the joy of gathering at the start?
Yes, it would essentially make gathering an actual "artisan" skill, more connotative to the word. Right now, there is no reason not to have a main max out all of his gathering and make an alt to do all the processing and crafting because gathering is so easy to level up and go out and hit rarity for barely breaking a sweat. This idea would essentially create gathering pures that put all their stock into gathering and make gather have as much as an identity as some of the processing and crafting skills.Are there any other purposes for this?
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Comments
As for reagents Intrepid needs to find a way to circulate them in the economy and not just be a vender bought item. Having certain crafts result in reagents is good, the big one IMO is they could have mob drops be reagents to create more reliance between crafting and PvE.
Also I would like reagents do something for the craft not just be a requirement with no added benefit. Like adding stats or rarity to the craft.
I'm also partial to changing the gathering to be more exploration focused. I find the current system of find the spawns run the same route based on the time it respawns most of them for the pure RNG to be boring. Not enough intention on looking for specific materials.
Current system is also Bot haven as the just need to go to the same spots and hit the same trees or rocks and get a similar result to a dedicated gatherer. The other reason for make gathering more intention based is we can cut down on the Lower grade materials needed in recipes like copper. Making it so the radiant gear while still needing some copper needs a more reasonable amount of iron like it was in Phase 2.
I think if bosses drop Uncommon, when Crafters make Rare, it's fine, if Rare versions of gear are genuinely rare. I don't think it's fine the other way around, the reason is simple enough.
If you have a boss in the world that drops Uncommon Armor, even if Rare armor is available, someone will still kill it, and maybe that person will feel good. If that person is a 'casual', even better. If the gear isn't good enough for Hardcore players to 'bother farming it', even moreso.
If you have a boss that drops Rare Armor while it's hard for Crafters to make the Rare version, people will camp it, fight over it, gatekeep it, and then sometimes Crafters will just not make it because by the time they can, most people who could afford it would have camped it.
So I say 'bosses/Elites should drop gear 1 Tier below what Crafters can reasonably make of the exact same gear'. In a long leveling game, with repairs and deconstruction, people will get 'tired of competing for the boss' and 'take the easy route of buying from the Crafter' in this case, but not consistently so if craft and drop are equal.
I think its fine if they drop rare, because with my idea the rarity will decrease over time. So essentially crafters make perma rares, where drops make trial rares and cannot be marketable.