"Professions are not for everyone"

I gotta say I really hate this take. Whenever I complain about the professions people say "The idea is that the professions are not for everyone".

What they mean by that is that the professions are purposefully made convoluted and monotonous IN ORDER to disincentivize players from engaging in the system. Only the most elite people will bother wasting their lives trying to "discover" how to use them...

This is probably the stupidest idea for a game I ever heard. Might as well make a game called, "Lets stab ourselves in the face!" - Look, no one else is doing it! Aren't we so elite?!?! Hey how come this game has a hard time getting new players? Bunch of crybabies, we don't want them anyways!

Games are supposed to be fun. Activities in games are supposed to be fun. Gathering should be fun, so should processing and crafting. In fact, all of the systems in the game should be so fun that it is hard to decide what you want to do. Not, "I'm only doing this stupid activity to get X result". That shit is lame as hell.

They managed to do a good job in the class design and fighting styles. I love my bard. IT IS FUN!

Please continue to iterate on the professions and find some way to make them pleasing and appealing. Right now its like we are being given a bowl of raw carrots for dinner.

Yes, it's alpha 2. So... cook this shit.

Or is the "professions are supposed to suck" design idea going to last to launch?

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BackgroundDust

Xeeg wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

You're not really saying what you think is bad about the current system, other than it sucks, it's boring and convoluted. Some specific examples would help.

I don't know what to say exactly, but here was my experience:

I tried to do a play through with a fresh char and see what it would be like to craft my own stuff instead of mob grinding for gear, which i already did on my main. Around level 8 i figured I should start working on the idea of trying to craft a bow for level 10. I had no idea what kind of materials i needed to craft a lvl 10 bow, so I went to Ashes Codex. It said there should be a brass bow using beeswax, brass ingot, western larch, and bluebell thread.

These materials appeared to be a mix of novice and apprentice level. I figured that brass is usually copper and zinc, and western larch i had seen already at novice level. Bluebell was apprentice I think, i had seen it in the open world. At any rate, if I wanted to make a bow at level 10, it seemed that I could go gather a bunch of western larch, some copper and zinc, and then buy the rest of the materials from someone else.

No point making just a common bow as that can be store bought. Uncommon, you can get from monster drops easily... so I was hoping to get rare or better. At this point my goal at level 8 was just to gather a bunch of copper/zinc and western larch and see how long it would take me to get enough rare+ mats for the bow.

Now my experience progression completely stalled. I spent probably at least 10 hours or more at level 8 trying to farm this western larch. I mean, it wasn't the worst game play i ever experienced, but it really wasn't that great. For most of the time i spent chopping trees, I was pretty bored, just hoping it would be over soon. Trying to avoid monsters as most of them were above my level, and besides, if i died i would lose 1/4 of the stuff I spent gathering so why risk that?

Sure, I could quit, and go do something more fun, but then I might as well start leveling again and then why even bother with this system? I was here to test this shit and so i was determined to keep going!

As I am doing this, my storage starts to fill up. I also realized that since lumbermilling is a timed duration thing, I should be lumbermilling 50 stacks while i go out farming. OK thats fine, good synergy, im ok with this. However, it costs money every time i do this and i am broke as hell. So now I start solo mob grinding again just to get enough glint to sell to do the lumbermilling. OK, again, this is also fine. I like that we need to do a mixture of activities, no problem. Still, it was pretty slow going. Only critique here is that both the lumbermilling and carpentry items were completely useless. Crafted like 100 boxes that i didnt give a shit about.

I hit level 9 trying to get glint and then decide to quickly do some commissions to get more glint. I ended up killing some named mob with a group that was doing commissions in the same area and got a level 10 uncommon Flayer Fleshripper (2h phys) randomly. Sweet, now I had a weapon for level 10, but it still wasn't crafted and further proves the point of this post.

Around this time my storage is so packed and I am so broke that I just decide to grind out mobs to level 10, make some glint and become a citizen so I can get some more storage space. Find a few level 9s nearby and quickly mob grind it out to 10.

OK, finally, level 10 and still somewhat broke. I had just a few more trees to go to hit apprentice with lumberjacking. Finish that up and straight sell the wood because of storage space. Realizing that I cannot get my carpentry to level 10 and lumbermilling to 10 without some serious cash, I decide to run a caravan. I was in New Aela at the time, and I saw that Winstead had the Apprentice level carpentry station. Hey, lets kill 2 birds with one stone, I can load up the caravan with glint stuff and carry the best copper/zinc/larch I had at the time in my materials bags. Something like 10 rare larch, 5 rare copper and 5 rare zinc, a bunch of heroics and some epics, and the rest uncommons.

My Plan: Take the caravan from new aela to winstead, become a citizen of winstead, upgrade my lumberjacking, and finish getting my carpentry to 10 so I can craft the bow.

I do the hour and a half trek and LITERALLY right at the end, 5 mins from winstead, some rando starts attacking the caravan. He cant do shit. He starts mage balling it, and the AOE is hitting my char! He kills me and I drop my stuff, I lose all my heroics and epics. Apparently 50% of 2 epics is 2, so I had nothing left and the guy took it all. He didnt even go corrupted because of the caravan. Its about 12:30am and time for bed, I was pissed tbh. Felt like total ass, reminded me of why this game might not be for me...

In the morning I decide, fuck it, at least make this damned bow so I can see what it takes. I prolly dumped like 20 hours into this project from level 8-10 at this point.

I get to Winstead, go check out the apprentice carpentry and see that I cant craft a brass bow....

I can only craft a tin bow..........

Honestly, this is the stupidest game play I have ever experienced. I aint doing this shit again. Fuck that. 20 hours to "explore" the game and find out everything I did was fucked and none of it worked? All because the only way of planning anything at all is relying on Ashes Codex? So fucking dumb. Maybe people are right when they say this game isnt for me. All i felt was like total ass after this experience.

The worst part about it was, I wasn't having fun for that 20 hours. If I was having fun the whole time, then whatever, you win some you lose some. But almost all of that time was just hitting trees and traveling, not exactly fun, really.

Compare that experience to my level 23 bard that I did a big mix of mob grinding, finding parties, soloing, duoing, trios, 8 mans, the works. Had a blast all the way to 23.

TLDR; You made mistakes on each step of the way and mad because game didn't give you everything on silver platter only because your grace logged into the game.

Pal, what I'm reading here is it is not a bad system but you wanted to craft knowing nothing about crafting and failed. Did't bother to ask around, instead, you went to an external website that is not finished or you didn't see the requirements for the bow you want to craft.

On top of that you didn't want to craft just any bow, you wanted to craft higher rarity. Do you expect to get level 15 in one hour? Why do you expect to make a good bow and not put any effort into it? You know that you won't get candy just for logging into the game, right?
I don't see how mindless grinding is fun and mindless resource gathering is not fun, if anything then spending a lot of time doing either of them would yield the same result - you want a break and that is what you should've done.

You mentioned a few times that you were broke and couldn't do stuff. Well yes, again, bad planning. Why you didn't start gathering resources right after killing 3 sickly goblins, why wait till level 8? Besides, I don't understand how you became broke when you actually make money chopping trees, each adult tree yield 20 copper(after repairs), chop down 5 and you got a silver coin. But since you wanted western larch and they are not adult your axe is breaking a lot faster, plus you only getting 2 wood instead of 5.

Then you decided to run a caravan, completely unrelated to crafting but okay. I should say I ran a caravan multiple times and luckily didn't get attacked other than once by lowbies, except for last weekend when I loaded 12 packs and was lucky my guildmates were close by and they were able to save me last minute. It's a very unpleasant feeling when you get attacked and realize you will lose hours of work to bandits, it's as exciting when your caravan is saved and you PK those bastards.
Here, you didn't make a mistake running a caravan; you made a mistake running it with a whole bunch of resources on your back. You are a target already. You should know that there is a high chance you will get attacked, so why would you take rare resources? It's a big mistake.

Bad planning or luck thereof lead to a failure. It's not a bad system. Find a guild, find friends, learn a bit and try again.

PS
I would rather chop trees than grind mobs sometimes but you don't see me complain about a bad system. Don't force yourself into something that is not for you.

Grabba_the_Butt

I don't like that artisan gear has stats on it, such as +health, which affects how a player chooses to play AoC.
A crafter can choose not to do dungeons or pvp but an adventurer cannot choose to not to do any life skills or they'll be at a disadvantage

Xeeg

BackgroundDust wrote: »

TLDR; You made mistakes on each step of the way and mad because game didn't give you everything on silver platter only because your grace logged into the game.

I prefer "Your Majesty"

BackgroundDust wrote: »

Pal, what I'm reading here is it is not a bad system but you wanted to craft knowing nothing about crafting and failed. Did't bother to ask around, instead, you went to an external website that is not finished or you didn't see the requirements for the bow you want to craft.

Should be able to "learn the system" easily enough on my own. I understand that "doing the system" is expected to be time consuming, and i don't have a problem with that.

BackgroundDust wrote: »

On top of that you didn't want to craft just any bow, you wanted to craft higher rarity. Do you expect to get level 15 in one hour? Why do you expect to make a good bow and not put any effort into it? You know that you won't get candy just for logging into the game, right?

Well i didnt expect to get 2 levels in 20 hours and still not be anywhere near crafting a bow that i could get in 20minutes of mob grinding.

BackgroundDust wrote: »

I don't see how mindless grinding is fun and mindless resource gathering is not fun, if anything then spending a lot of time doing either of them would yield the same result - you want a break and that is what you should've done.

When I "mob grinded" with my bard to level 23, I was rarely in the same spot or fighting the same mobs for more than 2 hours or so. The whole experience was filled with lots of variety in combat, grouping, roaming, changing skills and builds, looking for new spots to fight etc.

BackgroundDust wrote: »

You mentioned a few times that you were broke and couldn't do stuff. Well yes, again, bad planning. Why you didn't start gathering resources right after killing 3 sickly goblins, why wait till level 8? Besides, I don't understand how you became broke when you actually make money chopping trees, each adult tree yield 20 copper(after repairs), chop down 5 and you got a silver coin. But since you wanted western larch and they are not adult your axe is breaking a lot faster, plus you only getting 2 wood instead of 5.

I thought about going out earlier but I couldnt farm the larch until i got a few more levels. I was broke by trying to process the wood and craft into boxes to try and get both processing and crafting up.

BackgroundDust wrote: »

Then you decided to run a caravan, completely unrelated to crafting but okay. I should say I ran a caravan multiple times and luckily didn't get attacked other than once by lowbies, except for last weekend when I loaded 12 packs and was lucky my guildmates were close by and they were able to save me last minute. It's a very unpleasant feeling when you get attacked and realize you will lose hours of work to bandits, it's as exciting when your caravan is saved and you PK those bastards.
Here, you didn't make a mistake running a caravan; you made a mistake running it with a whole bunch of resources on your back. You are a target already. You should know that there is a high chance you will get attacked, so why would you take rare resources? It's a big mistake.

Definitely a big mistake. Didn't really understand how those systems worked yet. And I got completely fucked for it. Sure, my bad. But after 20 hours of mindless wood chopping and messing around with the clunky system, it just put me over the edge. I was pissed off man.

BackgroundDust wrote: »

Bad planning or luck thereof lead to a failure. It's not a bad system. Find a guild, find friends, learn a bit and try again.

Yeah part of what i was going for was to purposefully play without a guild and see what the experience would be like for someone just checking out the game, and not these people who have been following it for years and have teams already all planned out. I've now given up on that plan and am joining a guild. I feel bad for all the people who check out this game without a guild, think it sucks, and just quit. But I guess that's what Intrepid wants to happen?

Sure I guess some people might like the system as it is. I definitely do not. As much as I think it would be useful to be a gatherer in this game, I probably wont engage with this system until/unless they give it some work and try to make it actually fun to do.

I mean, just imagine if you had a lumberjack ability on some skill tree, where if you hit it on your last chop it SLAMS the tree and charges you forward 20 yards or until you hit another tree. If you hit another tree with it, it immediately takes off 50% of the chop time on the tree you hit and engages chopping. I would find shit like that fun as hell to go chopping. Flying around hitting trees and stuff. Right now I feel like im waiting in line at the grocery store or something. It just isnt my jam at all.

Laetitian

Flashfirez23 wrote: »

I honestly think anrtisan skills are in a really bad state right now to be honest. They need a major overhaul. They also should be easy to pick and hard to master. Right now they are hard to pickup and hard to master.

No. All of you are too prideful to just sell your stuff to the people who want to do the artisanry and use the money to buy your gear, but you're also too disinterested in the artisanry to do the work.
You're just asking for the next WoW/ESO/Guild Wars. Those games all still exist for you to go play right now, if you're so convinced that being able to do it all is so fun. Can the rest of us not get one game that doesn't make every player the same, for a change?

The devs can't solve this for you. If they make it easy for everyone to pick up but hard to master, but the best crafted stuff adds 50% to your stats, EVERYONE is going to master it anyways. Then you'll complain that you put all this work into mastering the artisanry but now no one's buying your amazing crafted equipment.
Because they can all do it themselves.

If players can't learn to focus on the niche they like and accept the shorter end of the stick in the other parts of the game, then the players are the problems, and any solutions the devs choose will just create problems in other parts of the game.

The correct choice is to keep everything difficult, and make players learn how to focus on the parts they can do best and enjoy the most, and appreciate the cooperation with others who focus on other elements of the game.

And to make sure that players can be successful in their part of the game and translate it into other parts without having to do it all. That's what makes the formula work so well in games like Eve. You can mostly do PvP, or mostly do trading, or mostly do PvE, and your wealth progression can be equally successful, allowing you to further ground the efforts of your ongoing operation, or to reach out into other parts of the game.
(Obviously PvE and PvP are tied together in Ashes, so those will have to appeal to every player of the game to a sufficient degree, but the principle applies to other elements of the game.)

Hardly any fantasy MMOs make this properly possible. You always have to do everything in almost equal proportions to stay relevant. Because of tedious daily caps/rewards and boring account-binding, etc.
In that setting it would make sense that you'd be afraid of disliking artisanry; you'd be forced to do it, so your time in the game would be worse if you don't like it.
But in a game that allows you to engage at a minimal capacity with the crafting and instead provide services and money to a crafter, you'll be fine skipping the parts of the artisanry system that you dislike.

Its_Me

Xeeg wrote: »

I'm not fine with convoluted and monotonous in order to weed out the player base.

I do not know of many (any) games where at least one of these items (monotonous) is not a part of the crafting system. 🤔

I also think adding a bit of convolution removes a bit of the monotony. 😉

novercalis

Zehlan wrote: »

The profession system is pretty bad whoever made it obviously is stuck in 2003 it is tedious to do. The gathering system is fun although adjustments to resources need to be done. With the idea of player made stuff is the best to have they have put too many hurdles for crafters to keep pace with levelling unless your in very large guilds and the attitude of "maybe this is not for you" is fine until your down to one server and it closes because Steven can't afford to keep it open.

A few simple fixes would change the experience

When crafting make it that you can preload a stack of items i.e, a stack of 10 boots more like with processing making it not such a grind in crafting.
Get rid of the stupid "you need a apprentice level axe to chop apprentice level trees" bullshit! If i wanna take twice as long with my legendary novice axe to chop down an apprentice level tree that's my business. This one thing bottlenecks crafters not allowing them to preload items for the next stage while waiting for a node to be able to process them.

The one biggest problem I see will be at the top no one will be a grandmaster of anything because too many hands are involved. If i am a grandmaster armoursmith then I should be able to make the entire suit on my own but that is impossible and not just for one component but multiple. So to be a Grandmaster Armoursmith you would need to be a GM miner, GM hunter, GM Tanner, GM Metalsmith, GM Stonemason and GM Armoursmith but you can only have two! What makes this worse is you can't use lower material to higher end items making master level worthless for contributing to you chosen GM profession. Now if they have it set that when you become GM in your crafting profession that all feeder professions can obtain GM too then forget this whole last paragraph because that would solve the entire problem.

gosh, it's like you gotta work with a community to get something.

Car manufacturer needs GM Steel Makers to provide mats for their car. Needs GM Chip Maker for their system, needs GM Aluminum for the body, needs a GM Tire maker for their wheels.

Once they got all the mats and pre-assembled stuff, then General Motors GM Car Maker can finally make a car.

Xeeg

Its_Me wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

I'm not fine with convoluted and monotonous in order to weed out the player base.

I do not know of many (any) games where at least one of these items (monotonous) is not a part of the crafting system. 🤔

I also think adding a bit of convolution removes a bit of the monotony. 😉

Yeah but the "convoluted" part only removes the monotony for the FIRST time you learn it, which isn't monotonous by definition. AFTER you learn the system it becomes monotonous.

The learning phase is only a few days. We are planning on playing this game for years. You can't base the game design on the "learning and discovery" phase being the most important, when the day-to-day gameplay needs to be the most important or people will play other games after a few weeks.

As to some of the other points people are making. The crafting and professions aren't really that complicated at all. It's just the format that the information is presented in is cumbersome and annoying to deal with (hopefully just an alpha issue)

I'd rather have a truly deep and complicated system, but have the information presented beautifully for the players to research, understand, and plan. This is why people turn to 3rd party websites and guides, they just present the information in a better way than the game devs managed to do.

Its_Me

Xeeg wrote: »

Its_Me wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

I'm not fine with convoluted and monotonous in order to weed out the player base.

I do not know of many (any) games where at least one of these items (monotonous) is not a part of the crafting system. 🤔

I also think adding a bit of convolution removes a bit of the monotony. 😉

Yeah but the "convoluted" part only removes the monotony for the FIRST time you learn it, which isn't monotonous by definition. AFTER you learn the system it becomes monotonous.

As to some of the other points people are making. The crafting and professions aren't really that complicated at all. It's just the format that the information is presented in is cumbersome and annoying to deal with (hopefully just an alpha issue)

I'd rather have a truly deep and complicated system, but have the information presented beautifully for the players to research, understand, and plan. This is why people turn to 3rd party websites and guides, they just present the information in a better way than the game devs managed to do.

This is alpha, you are not seeing the system, you are seeing a rough draft of the system that is not even the focus of this segment of testing.

You missed my point regarding monotony. Almost everything we do in game is repeated. Everything from killing a world boss to killing NPCs to repeating a dungeon. Crafting in any game I have ever played is based on repetitive steps.

I am sure that the crafting system we see in a couple years from now at launch will be much different than what we are seeing in this early crude alpha testing stage and the changes we see might very well come from the constructive feedback we give during this testing so I would recommend you provide constructive feedback under the A2 feedback section.

LordManmode

Xeeg wrote: »

I gotta say I really hate this take. Whenever I complain about the professions people say "The idea is that the professions are not for everyone".

What they mean by that is that the professions are purposefully made convoluted and monotonous IN ORDER to disincentivize players from engaging in the system. Only the most elite people will bother wasting their lives trying to "discover" how to use them...

This is probably the stupidest idea for a game I ever heard. Might as well make a game called, "Lets stab ourselves in the face!" - Look, no one else is doing it! Aren't we so elite?!?! Hey how come this game has a hard time getting new players? Bunch of crybabies, we don't want them anyways!

Games are supposed to be fun. Activities in games are supposed to be fun. Gathering should be fun, so should processing and crafting. In fact, all of the systems in the game should be so fun that it is hard to decide what you want to do. Not, "I'm only doing this stupid activity to get X result". That shit is lame as hell.

They managed to do a good job in the class design and fighting styles. I love my bard. IT IS FUN!

Please continue to iterate on the professions and find some way to make them pleasing and appealing. Right now its like we are being given a bowl of raw carrots for dinner.

Yes, it's alpha 2. So... cook this shit.

Or is the "professions are supposed to suck" design idea going to last to launch?

What do you mean? With the exception of processing being locked to certain numbers such as 1-5-10-25-50 and so on, the gathering and processing was a lot of fun for me. No idea what you are on about mate.

Xeeg

Its_Me wrote: »

What do you mean? With the exception of processing being locked to certain numbers such as 1-5-10-25-50 and so on, the gathering and processing was a lot of fun for me. No idea what you are on about mate.

Well the gathering for one. You just go up, click a button, and wait. Most of the people that "enjoy" it, say they are listening to podcasts or doing other things with their time because this play loop is not interesting enough on its own.

The only possible excitement is potential PVP, which is the whole point of the PVX game. Problem with that, is the last thing people "relaxing and listening to podcasts and barely paying attention to the game" want to do is be disrupted by a group of people that come, insta kill you, then kill their buddy and res him to shake off corruption. Then 1/2 of their gatherables drop and they begin to question whether they are really having a "relaxed time" with this game and if this is what they should be doing with their life.

This is one of the core time sinks in the game, it'd be much better if the gathering aspect was actually as fun and interesting as the combat. Sprinkle in some gathering only skills/abilities (abilities with movement involved are always a good way to add "fun") Make the gathering skill trees (not in place yet) interesting with multiple branch choices for various player styles. Make the gatherables THEMSELVES have various mining methods/efficiencies based off of player skill trees, item use, and clever gameplay.

If it is a fun thing to do, then the end result (amount of mats) is not the only reason to do it, and so losing these mats is not as frustrating. It will also attract the type of player who is more likely to enjoy the PVP aspect when it does happen. People always say "Ashes isn't for everyone", well here you go.

Processing is fine, I guess. It doesn't need to be interesting because it isn't a time sink, you can do other things with the processing time window.

The crafting also isn't currently designed as a time sink, just takes a few seconds to craft something. The annoying part right now is "batch" crafting, crafting useless items, and the lack of UI to see what is even craftable in game so that you can plan things. Running from shop to shop or spamming global chat to see what can be built for what mats and how everything links together is tedious. The craftables themselves are pretty boring, compare them to the Engineering Profession in WOW and then tell me how cool AOCs crafting is.

Freya

yeah i gotta agree with this, the cross dependency on mats is awesome however the crafting, gathering and processing is not. its all just click a button and thats that, wish it was more active and they made each profession unique

Solvryn

The crafting system is pretty easy and straight forward. It’s meant to be apart of the long leveling portion of the game and to bolster meaningful economics and trade.

The archetypes and combat are decent, for an alpha. They have a long way to go.

Loch

I think it will be super fun to explore professions. I cant wait to craft my own gear.

Lodrig

I see

Azherae wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

I dont really like the current idea of upgrading lumberjacking equipment to decrease the time it takes to chop the tree. It's basically admitting that this part of the game is boring and sucks and is only there to waste time.

For clarity this is what I meant by going full BDO, and they're already halfway there, much to my distress. But all this stuff could be easy placeholder, I think an AI could make the system we have now, at least, based on my experiences in Quinfall...

So to be a bit more helpful with this if you care, the issue here is simple enough. Different people have different subsets of the interaction matrix that they enjoy, and a game with a sufficiently robust artisanship system should leverage this correctly.

For you, chopping trees is not matching your preferred interaction matrix, so you would, in a fleshed out game, probably be a Processor of timber and occasionally a crafter of wood things, rather than a Gatherer of wood. You would then ask CROW3, who has the matching interaction matrix, to gather wood for you, and in turn, offer to handle the part of it that doesn't match.

Everyone wins.

Trying to force your interaction matrix preference into CROW3's gathering will make someone unhappy.
Some examples below:
Fishing: Preparation, Pattern Matching, Reaction (small)
Lumberjacking: Visual/Scouting, Discernment, Preparation (small)
Mining: (depends on game but usually) Awareness while Moving, Route Planning/Optimization, Preparation
Woodworking (processing type): Visual Timing, Goal/Priority Selection, Reaction (small)
Herbalism: Memory, Preparation, Route Planning (small), in some games Visual/scouting
Alchemy: Sequencing, Memory, Visual Timing

There are tons more of these, most correspond loosely to real life analogues of the activity. Classes/Archetypes can often be similarly sorted by playstyle, that's why there's often correlation between a dedicated 'main' of a particular class and their Artisanship.

I see Three main types of Gathers/gathering gameplay designs.

ABNEGATION (exapmple Raft and Salem), in such a system resources are neither scarce nor challenging to collect. They are super abundant and the player is mostly deciding WHAT to collect from the in some cases literal flow that is generated in real time or from the land scpe which resets almost as soon as the player walks away, their is never a barren landscape that has been picked over. If their are character skills they act to make higher teir resources visible to the player for collection but do not otherwise change gameplay which is highly realaxed and passive, the main mental effort is just seeing the resources and to a degree prioritizing what should be collected. Such styles often employ little 'nitches' which need to be opened like little loot boxes, but the niches are also ubiquitous, in Salem every object in the landscape, every tree, every stump can be opened and always contain some random things like a shiny beetle or a smooth pebble and occasionally something of higher value. The rate of resource collection/value creation is low but steady and player skill has minimal impact. The player moves (or is moved) but the direction of that movement is irrelivent so wandering without a destination is possible and even desirable for such an experience. Grouping is neither benificial nor or detrimental to this style, as their are sufficient resources for multiple players (up to a point) but theirs no need to interact either.

TREASHURE HUNTING (example EVE wormholes), in this paradigm the player is hunting for a specific thing and expects to search for it with a possibility of failure proportional to rarity and difficulty of the sought resource. The focus is entirely on the finding process and the time and skill involved in that, the collection step at the end is usually trivial, and might involve just collecting valuable knowlege not trangible resources. Their will generally be systems to detect/generate 'traces' 'trails' 'pings' etc to guide one towards the prize and some level of player skill in employing these systems. In the most barebones systems the player simply needs to sweep large areas hoping to spot what they are looking for. Their may also be systems in place that 'gate' seeing or collecting the prize to only thouse who are activly searching for it, this is almost always the case if the game has actually generated the prize when the player started the seach as a kind of private 'instanced' search for them, alternativly the player may find the start of the 'trail' which is public, but upon starting it the trail becomes private to them, or it may be an explicity race against a group of competitors. Such systems generally disincentivize grouping, atleast with another person who is activly DOING the same searching as the clues/traces/pings don't need multiple players to be seen or interpreted. At most a bodyguard COULD be along for protection but they would not be an active player in the hunting gameplay and will likely be keeping their eyes pealed for threats while ignoring the resources.

PINATA (example CrowFall) In this system the resrouce is concentrated, stationary and their is little or no searching for it, the collection is the focus and is an explicitly group oriented activity. Either the resourse location is permanent on the map the same way a dungeon or mob spawn is (actually being IN dungeons is a viable option), or if it depletes and respawns in new locations it dose so in such a way that finding it is the domain of other players or group members (the aformentioned Treasure hunter) who then call in Pinyata player for the actual gathering a bit like a live random raid boss fight might occour in the open world. The focus is on what happen AT the resource, mostly hitting the loot Pinyata efficiently and effectivly utilizing combinatory skills, teamwork and reactions to 'bleed' resources drops from it. Basically treating gathering as a mob fight and activating the same gameplay experiences that are tried and true for PvE. This system is obviously most rewarding of grouping, effectivly mandating it to be efficient or to get anything at all in the most extreme cases. This system essentially blends directly into just having raid boss monsters drop body-part materials which is just conventional PvE gameplay and not really gathering. To still be gathering their generally need to be a seperate set of gear and skills employed exclusivly for it and the loot piñata dose not deal damage back at the player.

So far Ashes dosn't seem to know which paradigm to use for gathering. Theirs a vague promisses of the Pinata system implied with 'group gathering' but not enough details of how it will be implemented, and to do it well will require a considerable amount of work. Meanwhile the current herbalism, minging and lumberjack gathering systems are in an akward state where it looks like a design that assumes easy abnigational gathering, but with resource scarcity levels that would be appropriate for a hard treasure hunt style of play. And a seperate explicity treasure map system which looks designed to satisfy that itch but which is still clearly incomplete. Fishing being totally afk-able seems the only thing that is a solid fit for any one paradigm being perfectly abnigational gameplay.

What I would really hope to see is that ALL gathering types use ALL THREE paraadigms. The resource types (metal, wood, herbs, fish, animals) could all be gathered in each different style. For example their's been speculation that the existing fishing can be add (without replacing) with a more interactive 'fly fishing' style which could be more of a treashure hunt as the player both moves and tries different flies and probing techniques to get that specific fish they want. While a group fishing boat with nets could act as a collective pinata as they 'attack' a school of fish that they are over. I don't think we need or want to create a 1:1 relationship between the type or resource gathered and the type of gameplay that gathering is. Ore can be found in large mines which are ideal for groups, or you can pan for gold in a solo search. Sticks can be picked off every tree to make generic stick-bundles for fuel, while teams with axes cut down mighty trees and then haul huge logs away using sleds and wagons.

The specifics can and should vary a bit even within the same gameplay paradigm, mining should be identical to tree chopping even if they are both group activity (the use of beast of burden to pull logs vs ore being baggable is an example), avoid one size fits all, lowest common denominator systems that we have now where trees/rocks/flower are all basically identical to gather.

Azherae

I feel like we're talking about different things, which is no problem to me, I'm just unsure if you meant to quote me as a direct connection to the things you actually said.

Of those three, I guess I lean most toward Treasure Hunting, but I have a different view of gathering systems, and I don't entirely agree that Ashes 'hasn't chosen', because the BDO/New World style is also a 'choice'.

It might not be a choice that suits their game, and therefore might be subject to change, but that's entirely opinion from my end. I look forward to seeing how they will try to make both gathering, and Crafting, feel good at the same time, within their current direction (it's so much easier to say that while just running around hitting Startrees and not 'desperately wishing for a new MMO, I say this because I know that they will look for what their playerbase enjoys).

Gizban

Gathering in AoC is one of the most boring and uninventive forms of gathering that exists.

Games 20 years old did better.

I can't recall the game but every swing/chop you had a bar with a red portion, this portion changed based on node, and node 'difficulty'.
You had to lmb in the red portion to get higher yields. I think this would be a nice addition.

Another game had two rings, one inside the other with a small distance between them. A shaded circle would appear over the double ring and shrink, you had to lmb when the edge of the shaded circle was inside the gap between the rings.
This double ring gizmo would would change position on your screen for each swing/chop.

Lodrig

I also personaly lean towards the Treashure Hunting style (and will be extensivly doing the Treasure maps in wave 2 seeing if they are up to snuff). But this might mean that they feel they do NOT need any kind of similar gameplay in the gathering systems, or if it's implemented well they might realize that gameplay has it's place in gathering as well.

I'm most hopefull that they have atleast the Piñata paradigmn planned as they have said for the longest time that group gathering would be a feature and that sounds like it will need a whole new 'jumbo' node of some kind to justify.

Zehlan

novercalis wrote: »

gosh, it's like you gotta work with a community to get something.

Car manufacturer needs GM Steel Makers to provide mats for their car. Needs GM Chip Maker for their system, needs GM Aluminum for the body, needs a GM Tire maker for their wheels.

Once they got all the mats and pre-assembled stuff, then General Motors GM Car Maker can finally make a car.

I had a good laugh at this ty. So lets expect 20th century industry in a medieval setting. Back then people weren't as useless as most are today they had to know how to do a lot of things. The way AoC has things setup if driving a car wasin game you'd need four players to do it and it would still be so tedious people would still rather walk!

Lodrig

@Zehlan A three step chain is perfectly reasonable in medeviel industy. They had a LOT more specialization and a division of labor then you seem to think. Also modern industry can have DOZENS of layers of suppliers, again you seem to under estimate how deep modern supply chains are.

CROW3

pyreal wrote: »

Gathering in AoC is one of the most boring and uninventive forms of gathering that exists.

Games 20 years old did better.

I can't recall the game but every swing/chop you had a bar with a red portion, this portion changed based on node, and node 'difficulty'.
You had to lmb in the red portion to get higher yields. I think this would be a nice addition.

Another game had two rings, one inside the other with a small distance between them. A shaded circle would appear over the double ring and shrink, you had to lmb when the edge of the shaded circle was inside the gap between the rings.
This double ring gizmo would would change position on your screen for each swing/chop.

This sounds familiar - wasn’t this how Vanguard worked?

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