Let me preface : I wish intrepid the best, I hope you get to complete your vision. I wanted to check out your game, I feel a bit bummed that it appears not to be my cup o tea as they say, because ashes was that last beacon of hope left in the mmo space.
If you do an overhaul of the crafting system at some point, I will check it out, if you don't mind the read I'll talk about what the game misses in my pov, I just don't have a good solution for it myself, and I doubt you will invest time into creating a different vision, but that's fine, I will share my thoughts just because I feel like it.
I did enjoy breeding a tapir and contributing to the node development of dhurgrum or whatever it's called. That part was fun until it became pointless due to the lack of hunting resources blocking progress, and me not fully understanding just where and how I could obtain them without needing an escort that would rather go hunt in a dungeon to farm xp.
First off I do feel the current crafting system is lacking, I don't know how much of that is due to it being ea, but I talked about the crafter bags for example, I do like the base idea that you have craft specific bags, I do like the fact that bags seemed to have a tier/quality level. However, not sure how final this design is, but currently all bags and craft gear are made solely of flax, completely rendering all other plants useless. Crowfall and mortal online 2 had these systems where you had to combine resources and depending on which resources you combined, you got different results. I feel like aoc was aiming for something similar but dropped the idea along the way or just didn't have time for it yet, whatever it is after 9 years of cooking i fail to understand why but the system is lacking. Second, the way your system is now, a green bag only gives +4 carry capacity and guess what, so does a blue bag. I dunno, maybe it's rng based, maybe some bags actually do have more slots, I really really can't be bothered to bore myself to death looking for more flax until I have enough blue ones to test this. If I were able to craft bags with other resources, and flax would be the magic resource that increases the chance for extra capacity I could live with that, but not the current system.
Talking about crafting, as a crafter, just like in every other mmo, you get to be the loot pinata for every other pvp'er out there, and where it takes hours to gather precious resources, it only takes a minute to get ganked and loose said resources to a guy who now has them and only invested 1 minute into obtaining them vs the hours you spent on them. This in my opinion is the intentional design flaw in the crafting system just to feed the pvp'ers, and I ain't playing that game. I think that as a crafter, the game should have a mechanic where you as a crafter can start a gathering event that rewards fighters to join you as an escort, both to clear the pve dangers and the pvp dangers, at least until you get zerged by the pvp guilds anyway. I always loved how in guild wars 2 groups form naturally around a leader on the map, and you get rewards participating naturally by beating bosses. Fighters don't want to escort crafters if it doesn't get them xp and loot, whatever the mechanic around escorting crafters should be, it should make up for said lack. If as a crafter you were to go around the map and trigger spawn events along the way that are unique to crafting events, fighters will join them and you have a game loop that in my opinion makes sense. But yeah creating said system raises problems, specially on a shared map where mobs are already present. I dunno, maybe the event spawns extra mobs around those existing spots that need to be cleared witihn a certain time before they despawn again to keep the train going, which sounds like an interesting mechanic to explore.
That's how I imagine the node system in my head, instead of running around like a chicken with no head hoping someone didn't gather the resource before you, a person initiates a gather event, appears on the map, and triggers events running around within the node, and the more you are linked to the node, the better the rewards. And if the first group is full, a second event opportunity appears on the map. This unites crafters and fighters in an event where both parties benefit and actually pose a more interesting target for the real pvp'ers, and would make the game great.
Yes more scope creep and you prob don't have the resources to achieve it with ashes, that's fine, but I ain't paying a sub for a game that doesn't even try to get into that general direction, and that ain't a complaint, it's a fact I share with you in text just to convey my impression of playing the game. If ashes in it's current form is your jam, I ain't stopping you from paying your sub and playing the game, it's just that I don't know if that will be enough to keep your aoc online after it's launch. And it could be so much more in my opinion, the problem is at this very point aoc is catering to much to that very loud vocal majority of players who want to go around the map ganking crafters untill said crafters get fed up with it and leave the game, starting that spiral that will drain the game of players over time. right now my dream mmo would be mortal online without the pvp, that game has such an amazing combat and crafting system, I would really enjoy paying a sub for a mortal online pve server. But it ain't gonn happen. I'd enjoy a aoc where crafters don't end up getting the short end of the stick for once, but it ain't gonn happen. You can call me a dreamer, a scope creeper and get annoyed at the fact that deep down, the words in this text might make you feel that aoc is lacking and as a result lowers the amount of people playing the game because I am shining a light on it's flaws while the game ain't finished yet, but lets be realistic here. I did not start this song, this swan song was triggered by aoc entering early access on steam, and I get what people were saying : the game just wasn't ready for that yet, and I agree. It's not, and that's not my fault. You can hide behind the excuse that the game ain't complete, well here I challenge you : prove me wrong. How final is the design of the crafting system for the novice level? Is it all placeholder? Do yo plan to make bags have different quality levels that gives them more capacity at some point? Is the gathering system final, besides tweaking some percentages left and right? Will gatherers just be loot pinatas with no protection? And I don't mean guesses from the community, I care just as much about your delusions as you care about mine, I am talking an official statement of intrepid to give people like me an idea of what's going to happen to the crafting system specifically that might give me an incentive to keep following aoc till that point, or I just wave farewell and let you be.
As for the title, playing aoc wasn't a complete waste for me, you may think I'm simply dissatisfied and you prob didn't read all this text, but I'm good. I was working on a lil project myself, basically recreating colonization but with a cookie run kingdom inspired ui, but I was lacking something novel to set the game apart. Playing aoc and the vision of the node sytem actually gave me some great ideas to explore in my game, so thas where I'm heading off to next, launching ue, solve my save bug where I left off, and then start working on my new mechanic. And I am greatfull for that, I was partly annoyed at myself for failing to come up with some novel mechanic, and it might have influenced my enjoyment of aoc negatively a bit initially, reagrdless I really tried to get into the game, reflected in my 73 hours playtime which was partly afk fishing and the launcher just being open, but the lackluster crafting just killed it for me. And part of me still wished it didn't.
