New Worlds Gathering/Crafting system is "S Tier" and should be replicated.

I wanted to start a discussion about the influences that AoC should be taking from to develop and implement regarding their resource gathering and crafting system.

Background: I first began playing MMORPGs in 1997 and have had time in most every major/minor MMORPG to hit the market since then. I have NEVER enjoyed resource gathering nor crafting. This displeasure also bled over into most game market/trade systems.

Disclosure: I don't love New World. If you pull my steam profile, I have only amassed 62 HRs of play time.

My point for discussion: When first playing New World's beta, the thing that stuck out the most to me was their gathering and crafting system. I genuinely ENJOY this part of the game for the first time. After 62 hours, I still have not maxed out my one character. I have only done a group "dungeon" once. And have only had a few open world PVP encounters to speak of. Still, I like playing New World because the gathering and crafting systems are so engaging. FOR ME, a game that gets my play time because of those systems truly means they must be "S Tier." Below are a few of the systems that I believe AoC should not only tale influence from, but possible just straight up copy.

GATHERING
1. You can gather/harvest almost everything you see/kill.
2. The number/type of resources (logging, mining, harvesting, skinning, fishing) is complex enough for robust crafting, but minimal enough to remain enjoyable.
3. The resource gathering action is enjoyable. The animations are well thought out. The resources don't just disappear when consumed (ex: trees falling when cut is really fun).
4. The time it takes to gather a resource is well balanced.

CRAFTING
1. The UI is immediately recognizable and user friendly.
2. Access to "recipes" comes based off of skill tier and is not tied to open world exploration/loot generated.
3. Everything you need to be a "good crafter" is outlined within the crafting station. All information about how and what you will gain as a result of crafting is in a one stop shop.
4. Crafting randomization is present, but much of it can be "tuned" out by including additional tweaks/pumps of resources to get what you want reliably.

I am curious as to the communities thoughts on the direction AoC should take for resource gathering/crafting and what other game's systems you feel should be heavily influenced.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Sathrago

Sapiverenus wrote: »

WHIT3ROS3 wrote: »

Sapiverenus wrote: »

Potato salad is worth 168 thousand silver? What?

That is a poorly designed game.

How much benefit does it give you? You don't know. You have no idea about the game, its systems or mechanics which are far from perfect. All of that is irrelevant anyway. It was an example of a game with a thriving economy with over a million active accounts that has trees that you can chop down.

It's lazy design. Laziness isn't random, it's systematic. So yeah it can go in the bin and burn! Far from perfect as you say: NO SHIT!

I really don't understand where you get the confidence to say that this random item in a game that you seem to have never played is overpriced and lazy design. Every single food in that game has just as much importance save a very small group of outliers. Also, the video is wrong. Potato salad (Tier 6) is normally between 3-4k silver a piece. The salad it's talking about is Potato Salad Tier 6.3. an item that requires an extremely high quality and quantity of ingredients to make. The decimal number effectively equates to upgrading the item by an entire tier in effectiveness. Meaning a Tier 6.3 Potato Salad has an effectiveness of a Tier 9 item in a game where T8 is the highest baseline you can go.

You really need to chill the hell out with all the sass. You foam at the mouth at almost every opportunity in these discussions and it's honestly getting old.

WHIT3ROS3

Sapiverenus wrote: »

Over a million accounts includes every botter, every alt, and possibly exaggeration by developers to make themself look better
[because who gives a fuck just add some #s on there Bill; and no you shouldn't believe such exaggeration is rare and choose to be more suspicious of business # claims that are easy to lie about].
Developer Bots are not uncommon either lol; even if you don't believe it there's often no way to know either way unless you are rather good at figuring these things out. The less likely they are to be found-out the more likely they are to be there.

What are you talking about? Barely legible nonsense.

A million active accounts that have directly engaged in full loot PvP content are numbers directly from an employee of SBI. The game is run on a single mega server and has clocked concurrent highs of nearly a quarter of a million players. It's a low-fidelity game that is completely cross-platform and incredibly popular in mobile charts. There are over 10000 registered guilds and dozens of mega alliances with thousands of players each. However, this isn't about Albion Online and was only mentioned by me as an example of an MMO that would be good to look at for ideas in regards to Gathering/Crafting.

(It's also interesting to note many of the similarities. Albion was a Kickstarter project launched by a small group of devs tired of the state of full-loot MMOs. Since launch, they have gone from strength to strength and have recorded significant player increases each year since launch (which is incredibly rare in the MMO space)

As Steven said in last month's Dev Steam. "Graphics don't make a good game, systems do." Albion has some amazing systems which I would recommend anyone who is a fan of MMORPGs to check out. Like most other popular MMO's it has good things about it and bad things. I'm of the view that there can be lessons learned and ideas and inspiration taken from all types of different games.

Finally. Your aggressive shitty tone is incredibly tiresome to see smeared across the forum.

Sapiverenus

Sathrago wrote: »

Sapiverenus wrote: »

WHIT3ROS3 wrote: »

Sapiverenus wrote: »

Potato salad is worth 168 thousand silver? What?

That is a poorly designed game.

How much benefit does it give you? You don't know. You have no idea about the game, its systems or mechanics which are far from perfect. All of that is irrelevant anyway. It was an example of a game with a thriving economy with over a million active accounts that has trees that you can chop down.

It's lazy design. Laziness isn't random, it's systematic. So yeah it can go in the bin and burn! Far from perfect as you say: NO SHIT!

I really don't understand where you get the confidence to say that this random item in a game that you seem to have never played is overpriced and lazy design. Every single food in that game has just as much importance save a very small group of outliers. Also, the video is wrong. Potato salad (Tier 6) is normally between 3-4k silver a piece. The salad it's talking about is Potato Salad Tier 6.3. an item that requires an extremely high quality and quantity of ingredients to make. The decimal number effectively equates to upgrading the item by an entire tier in effectiveness. Meaning a Tier 6.3 Potato Salad has an effectiveness of a Tier 9 item in a game where T8 is the highest baseline you can go.

You really need to chill the hell out with all the sass. You foam at the mouth at almost every opportunity in these discussions and it's honestly getting old.

facts of life.
patterns are patterns and giving everything the infinite benefit of the doubt has nothing to do with wisdom but some kind of masochistic mercy (or simply complete passivity).
If developers want success then there has to be standards. If they succeed with spotty 'good enough' standards then that's fine I guess but it doesn't create a great game or game designer/ team.
EDIT: changed "without standards" to "spotty 'good enough' ".

That's just what standards are about and being lax on it helps no one. Sending the wrong tone is all it does and I don't really care what friction I create; people's passivity and tolerance of poor or arbitrary design as things scale into multi-multi-million dollar enterprises is not how you fucking do things or create a better environment.

Adding progression to every little thing is fine but not 1 game I am aware of has the discipline to keep design focused on a meaningful premise.
Adding "over-powered" progression is a symptom of lack of focus and depth missing elsewhere.

Why are these boons not tied to Alchemy instead? Some for food, others for Alchemy? "There are" Why are things overpowered?

Variation can be shotgunned; with thousands of permutations; but that all reaches a bottleneck and the path is narrow.

tl;dr: Something gimmicky like superfood and hyperinflation of economies suggests a lack of discipline or evolution in the design department. I'm not a saint and the game ain't that good.

If yall love this game then too bad I guess.

Sapiverenus

@WHIT3ROS3

Naive faith in businessmen simply because they played MMOs and decided to make one is a smear I wish to see washed as well.
If you need faith in these people to play their game then I am betting such businessmen know this and will do their best to keep their image PRIME.

WHIT3ROS3

Ok. No more engaging with you.

Sapiverenus

I don't think Gathering Guilds collecting 1, 000 tier 1 trees will be a problem if you have to Transport stuff like literal physical Stuff.
Bots will be more obvious probably too; dunno. Depends on implementation.

Given you don't chop down what you don't need because of the time waste and difficulty involved (especially if physical stuff increases Hunger thus requiring more Resources) then Low Level Player Importance will increase.

If you have to physically store stuff or it will begin to rot when left in the elements for a month/ 3 weeks or something (reducing yield at least) then that also helps solve the issue.
The scarcity of resources, difficulty of transportation, expiration without [Storage] all contributes to New Player Relevance. It improves the value of MANPOWER.

Improve the value of unskilled/ low level MANPOWER and game will be more fun for everyone.

Liniker

Yea, S tier, like in "SHIT" Tier

Kreinster

Now, the process of gathering and crafting in NW is indeed quite enjoyable. I still remember how good it felt to strike a tree and hear the echo bounce through the quiet, charming autumn forest.

But the unbelievable amount of grind it required to get anywhere kinda ruined the whole thing for me.

Also, I like having to search for recipes, what are you talking about it's great.

Heliux

Interesting thread!

Right now we have many MMORPGs like example with really good mechanics that work and now AOC can see and take good of them and make a beautiful masterpiece for professions and crafting.

All your ideas are very good (almost all

)...just we musts hope the best intension of AOC's team in this way.

Volgaris

New Worlds gathering and crafting system was flawed. At best I'd say B+ or A- tier. Allowing a player to do everything makes crafting less appealing. You'll find that one player that can do everything. We had a guy in our company that made everything. No one else needed to do anything. I'm okay with everyone being able to make/gather all low level stuff.

NW gathering was fun and addicting. The high level crafting needing SOO MANY low level materials was annoying. The value of iron in the game was just crazy lol.

Child Item