Let's talk about crafting in Ashes as it currently works.

TL:DR - Do you believe the crafting system is working, and if not, why?

Most mmorpgs have some kind of crafting system and we can argue back and forth about which game has the best crafting system. But no matter what, it's important to keep in mind why the crafting system exists in the first place. In my opinion there are 3 core reasons:

1. You want to make items that you can use yourself.
2. You want to make items that your friends/guildmates can use.
3. You want to make items to sell to others.

So the question is, does Ashes achieve the purpose of a crafting system? In my opinion it doesn't because by the time you have crafted your first set of basic armour, you would have been better off just power grinding to level 10 and getting the next tier of armour, and beyond. Yes, crafting armour can give you better quality pieces, but is that worth the extra time and effort it takes to make it? And how about the amount of time it takes to make apprentice or journeyman level gear? Not only do you need to get the insane amount of materials required to level up, but then you need to wait for the nodes to have the buildings required to make the gear.

In short, by the time you reach the point where you can physically make level 10 gear, you could have grinded to level 25 and gotten tons of drops from mobs. At which point we have to ask ourselves, what's the point of the crafting system at all?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Songcaller

In no mmo except Ragnarok Online 2 where I leveled 1 to 50 via crafting, have I ever managed to keep up crafting with my grinding passion. The application of my crafting usually comes at max level anyway. By which point I sm rich and craft the best stuff for my twinks. I think the current iteration is fine but more gatherables are required.

Gizban

I really don't like how a player can sink all this time into lvling crafting but then be blocked by node progression.

It doesn't hurt adventure players, and they end up controlling the town. Like the fiasco with Halcyon on Vyra.

Crafters have the tough road and get the short end of the stick.

Caww

My concise, constructive feedback on crafting is.... it sucks

Azherae

No, Ashes does not currently achieve any of the goals of a crafting system at this time, at all, but it's not far enough along to be called a 'system', at this time.

We only just got the most basic change to the way mining works, and both gear and currency drop from mobs in amounts that match and even exceed some single player themepark games.

Building such systems takes long, though, so I'm not sure how to take the discussion any further without just 'babbling about how I personally think it should be done in Ashes given the base state'.

I'd then ask if we think even the base state is currently active, though? Sure, if it were me, I'd design the economic flows first and then use those to place the mobs, but even if that is what the econ team is doing, we wouldn't notice it until probably around April anyway, considering the number of iterations that would be required.

So uh... yes, crafting isn't good right now, but they've only just started, so...

II_Splash_ll

I’ve spent a day getting bits to make a river stalker cloak. It’s took questions in discord and game to figure the flow out, so that could be improved with introductory quests that lead on from “sweat of your brow”’ Coming from ESO I love the complexity and that making even common gear is an achievement to be proud of! Shall be running around it in by tomorrow !

Wandering Mist

Azherae wrote: »

No, Ashes does not currently achieve any of the goals of a crafting system at this time, at all, but it's not far enough along to be called a 'system', at this time.

We only just got the most basic change to the way mining works, and both gear and currency drop from mobs in amounts that match and even exceed some single player themepark games.

Building such systems takes long, though, so I'm not sure how to take the discussion any further without just 'babbling about how I personally think it should be done in Ashes given the base state'.

I'd then ask if we think even the base state is currently active, though? Sure, if it were me, I'd design the economic flows first and then use those to place the mobs, but even if that is what the econ team is doing, we wouldn't notice it until probably around April anyway, considering the number of iterations that would be required.

So uh... yes, crafting isn't good right now, but they've only just started, so...

You're right that the crafting system isn't fully fleshed out yet, but we have the foundations of it and those foundations already have issues, the biggest of which (in my opinion) is having a player's individual crafting proficiency directly tied to node progression. At the start of phase 2 if you tried to focus on gathering or crafting you were just wasting your time. Sure you could get to level 10 in certain professions but then you were stuck until the nodes were developed, whilst in the meantime players who did the power levelling very quickly outpaced you and didn't need anything you crafted anyway.

Even now with the nodes developed enough for journeymen crafting to be available, there's no point. Max level parties are farming the dungeons and flooding the market with drops that are usually far better than anything you can craft.

I personally don't like the fact that apprentice and journeyman crafting can only be done at specific apprentice or journeyman stations that not all nodes will have. It adds extra steps to the crafting that is already very long and tedious. Here's an example:

I am an Apprentice Tailor, Weaver and Tanner and I want to make a Bluebell Cloak (Apprentice-level piece). Let's assume I have all the base materials already (bluebells, river-otter carcass, weeping willow logs) and I'm a citizen of Winstead so we'll start there. To make this item I first need to go to all the way to Sunhaven to create the Tanned Otter Hide. Then I have to travel all the way back to Halcyon for the Weaving and Tailoring stations to to create the rest of the items. That is a huge amount of distance to cover just to craft a basic item.

I don't know, it just feels really off-putting to the point where I don't even want to bother, especially when I can just grind mobs in dungeons and get similar gear there for a fraction of the effort.

Azherae

Right, but that's all obviously just some stuff thrown in for testing.

It's obvious to anyone that having a game where crafters are supposed to be very important but mobs drop usable finished gear is just a mess of hot garbage.

But that's kind of what I'm getting at, the current implementation is so obviously bad and full of holes that the most reasonable assumption would be that they're still just testing other things.

I understand that the thread is about discussing crafting as it currently works, but it doesn't work. It'd be great if they explained why it's like this for the time being, but if they don't already know that it's terrible, there's not much point in having any hope for it at all.

We're probably supposed to just grind in dungeons and run caravans until they overhaul it all. I'd say that I kinda 'don't agree that these are the foundations', because when you have the feedback from literally dozens of players all repeating the same obvious flaws in your systems, practically 'in passing'...

It would mean that whoever is designing it either knows this is temporary, or did not even have the skill to deal with foundational problems that probably a hundred people have told them long before we even got this far.

'Logically', therefore, this is all just gonna be irrelevant entirely in a month or something when someone updates a bunch of drop tables and Node Progression... this isn't 'not fleshed out yet', it's effectively 'not even actually started yet', Crafting made more sense in A1, yet nearly none of that remains. That too, was just 'here have something that looks like Artisanship so you return to town at the right times'.

DannybadFF

Are there any MMO crafting frameworks that you would like to see "inspire" the next iteration of crafting in AoC? I know most people are partial to their first/favorite overall MMO.

I actually really loved the gathering system in Amazon's "New World" which this system kind of feels like, where the nodes are built into the landscape and seem to mesh right into the world. I wonder if with this system you could put in a mini map "tracker" similar to LoTRO for profession specific nodes (i.e. mining you can see on mini map where ore nodes located). It should be said that in LoTRO it is mini map only.

As for the crafting itself I really how Lord of the rings has a base set of recipes at each tier and you can gather rare recipes from mobs or chests throughout the world and they can be either one time (Super rare top tier items) or multi use (Higher than default crafting items, but not top shelf). IDK, but I think Crafting is a big part of the mmo experience.

If you couldn't tell LoTRO was my first and most important mmo i played.

AirborneBerserker

Wandering Mist wrote: »

TL:DR - Do you believe the crafting system is working, and if not, why?

Most mmorpgs have some kind of crafting system and we can argue back and forth about which game has the best crafting system. But no matter what, it's important to keep in mind why the crafting system exists in the first place. In my opinion there are 3 core reasons:

1. You want to make items that you can use yourself.
2. You want to make items that your friends/guildmates can use.
3. You want to make items to sell to others.

So the question is, does Ashes achieve the purpose of a crafting system? In my opinion it doesn't because by the time you have crafted your first set of basic armour, you would have been better off just power grinding to level 10 and getting the next tier of armour, and beyond. Yes, crafting armour can give you better quality pieces, but is that worth the extra time and effort it takes to make it? And how about the amount of time it takes to make apprentice or journeyman level gear? Not only do you need to get the insane amount of materials required to level up, but then you need to wait for the nodes to have the buildings required to make the gear.

In short, by the time you reach the point where you can physically make level 10 gear, you could have grinded to level 25 and gotten tons of drops from mobs. At which point we have to ask ourselves, what's the point of the crafting system at all?

Honestly, IDC I'm a solo player so I am not allowed to craft anything past Journeyman without permission.

You are right though. Probably a result of it being Alpha.

Wandering Mist

DannybadFF wrote: »

Are there any MMO crafting frameworks that you would like to see "inspire" the next iteration of crafting in AoC? I know most people are partial to their first/favorite overall MMO.

I actually really loved the gathering system in Amazon's "New World" which this system kind of feels like, where the nodes are built into the landscape and seem to mesh right into the world. I wonder if with this system you could put in a mini map "tracker" similar to LoTRO for profession specific nodes (i.e. mining you can see on mini map where ore nodes located). It should be said that in LoTRO it is mini map only.

As for the crafting itself I really how Lord of the rings has a base set of recipes at each tier and you can gather rare recipes from mobs or chests throughout the world and they can be either one time (Super rare top tier items) or multi use (Higher than default crafting items, but not top shelf). IDK, but I think Crafting is a big part of the mmo experience.

If you couldn't tell LoTRO was my first and most important mmo i played.

I actually like what Intrepid are going for with the crafting in Ashes, whereby you can get basic gear from vendors or mob drops, but crafting can give you better quality versions of those items. The main problem, as stated before, is the amount of time it takes to make those higher quality items which makes it impractical to do. By the time I've either gotten the mats or gold together to acquire a full set of rare level 1 gear I could have hardcore grinded my character to level 10+ so why even bother crafting in the first place?

Podgnil

The first comment is the inscription. Up to level 10, all recipes require only rubies. And so we collect these rubies with our CP, it costs x5 per scroll, if there is no treasure map. And so I milled 2-3-4 hundred of these rubies. I went to Halcyon (that's where the lab is on our server) thinking about crafting blue scrolls. And what do I see? That the vendor has level 10 scrolls at +16 for 1.2 silver or so... Well, well, I'll go with my rubies

)) and all this collecting boiled down to the fact that this is pumping for the sake of pumping and does not bring any practical benefit. Who came up with the idea of making all tier 1 scrolls only from red stones, tier 2 from green, but tier 3 from stones of different colors?))) and who and why gave the scrolls to vendors for sale? The second comment is that everyone is now crafting level 10 items and sharpening them. I hope that this is just the specifics of the alpha server development and the limitation of level 25. Although of course, all the same, lvl 10 items, even if refined, should not be cooler than loot from the current content. Otherwise, everyone leveled up, upgraded to 25, came to a conditional Belfire or to the top of Carfin, and everyone says why do we need this, we need to go look for legendary bells, that's where the profit is 🤣🤣
And the third comment: who came up with the idea of putting everything in a bag by 20 and processing by 10/25... What kind of genius is this?

Azherae

DannybadFF wrote: »

Are there any MMO crafting frameworks that you would like to see "inspire" the next iteration of crafting in AoC? I know most people are partial to their first/favorite overall MMO.

I actually really loved the gathering system in Amazon's "New World" which this system kind of feels like, where the nodes are built into the landscape and seem to mesh right into the world. I wonder if with this system you could put in a mini map "tracker" similar to LoTRO for profession specific nodes (i.e. mining you can see on mini map where ore nodes located). It should be said that in LoTRO it is mini map only.

As for the crafting itself I really how Lord of the rings has a base set of recipes at each tier and you can gather rare recipes from mobs or chests throughout the world and they can be either one time (Super rare top tier items) or multi use (Higher than default crafting items, but not top shelf). IDK, but I think Crafting is a big part of the mmo experience.

If you couldn't tell LoTRO was my first and most important mmo i played.

The crafting system I like the most is the one they already outlined they will do.

You can find the half-implemented version of that crafting system in some of the 2000s-era MMOs, and a different more advanced, but still half-implemented (maybe 3/4?) version is currently live in Throne and Liberty.

So I just want that, as it is among the cleanest, easiest to understand, yet fulfilling systems that I believe can exist in a persistent modern PvP+PvE MMORPG.

My first MMO has a little of what TL/Ashes are doing, but that game had a somewhat stronger economic focus than TL currently does, and a different economic style than Ashes currently does.

Short version of what I want:
Gear with obvious, visible 'slots' or 'variants' that players can customize.
Optimally 3. Present in TL now, well tuned there. I have nothing to say about this in Ashes at this time. Was implemented in FF11 but abandoned for later gear due to it not being a core system, unfortunately (doesn't even hold much importance on private/Legacy servers).
Limits and 'trends' on those slots to distinguish gear pieces a bit from each other and help with various forms of 'rarity'. Present in TL now, seems well tuned so far. I have nothing to say about this in Ashes at this time. Was also implemented in FF11, loved it there, obviously still love it in TL.
Ability for Crafters to influence the slots using specialized material variants. Not yet directly present in TL (no idea if it is ever coming because they handle this a different way, but looking forward to it), there was at least some mention of this in Ashes. Was implemented in FF11, a bit more strongly, but overall abandoned when that game's crafting-economy fell off. Still meaningful and important on private 'Legacy' style servers for that game.
Careful control of balance using the above by making the 'easy', 'meta', or 'default' stats that go into those slots have various forms of diminishing returns in PvP (and sometimes even in PvE), e.g. making Accuracy more accessible than anything that enhances attack power. This is present in TL now, tuned fairly well in Global version. In the case of Ashes right now I mostly hope that their entire system doesn't stay the way it is because it's terrible for me by comparison. FF11 was a mostly PvE game so this basically didn't matter, and they handled it differently in lategame PvE.
Relatively small increments of growth for effort, focusing on increasing economic pressure on top players and increasing economic velocity when they get obsessive about things. Working well in TL (slowing down now as we go through the third 'rise and fall of guilds' at least on my server). Ashes currently seems to do the reverse so I don't like it as much. FF11 didn't have this type of growth system at all for at least the first 10 years of its lifetime and I didn't care about the progression after that phase (I still play, I just stopped using the progression paths and might as well move to a private server but I just don't).

I don't think I can cut it down any shorter than that, probably. I just want either or both of Ashes of Creation/Throne and Liberty to 'do what TL has done but also give me a bit of a chance to personally craft something like 'a Flamewrought Bindings with Max Health Trait' somewhat 'on purpose'.

I know that for both these games, developing a sensible economic system to give me that crafting option will take some time and effort, so I'm just patiently waiting for the devs in both cases, and I wish them luck.

CROW3

Here's what I don't like: 99% of crafting professions (i.e. armorsmith, carpenter, etc) is sourcing. 1% is a button click to assemble components.

For me, I like managing the whole mats > item flow, so I distributed my skills accordingly to maximize involvement and minimize dependency. But if I only elected to be a crafter to create items - it's boring AF. I think the assembly needs to be more than a button click, maybe not a full minigame, but something closer to EQ2 territory where different abilities & passives can sway the probability of a highly valuable outcome.

I think crafted legendaries need the highest quality mats gathered by the most expert gatherers, processed perfectly by the most expert processors, and crafted perfectly by the highest skilled crafters. We're not even close to that yet.

Azherae

CROW3 wrote: »

Here's what I don't like: 99% of crafting professions (i.e. armorsmith, carpenter, etc) is sourcing. 1% is a button click to assemble components.

For me, I like managing the whole mats > item flow, so I distributed my skills accordingly to maximize involvement and minimize dependency. But if I only elected to be a crafter to create items - it's boring AF. I think the assembly needs to be more than a button click, maybe not a full minigame, but something closer to EQ2 territory where different abilities & passives can sway the probability of a highly valuable outcome.

I think crafted legendaries need the highest quality mats gathered by the most expert gatherers, processed perfectly by the most expert processors, and crafted perfectly by the highest skilled crafters. We're not even close to that yet.

Also, this.

If Ashes does not do something about this and relies on the Caravans thing for 'material specialization', TL will beat them out for most people in one move.

"Boonstones generate specialized materials for their occupying guilds which must then be delivered to a storage by mini-caravan which can be attacked like the Tax Delivery".

Done, instant 'loss' to a more engaging system with 90% of the pain removed. Obviously there should still be a game for those who 'enjoy the pain' and 'live for the thrill' and all that, but I'm mostly pointing out that if Ashes isn't properly delivering on even those points, there would be no difference after just this addition. TL would just immediately be a more solid experience when it comes to crafting content of this type.

Ashes needs to utilize the promised 'variation and types of outcome' at a level we haven't seen in years, tuned better than we have possibly ever seen it, because crafting-econ is one of the few places in games where 'no system of this type' is strictly better than 'a bad implementation', at least for me.

I will absolutely choose a game that 'knew they couldn't do this but did everything else they could properly' over a game that 'tries to do it and screws it up painfully every time' with bottlenecks, fiat monopolies, and lopsided outcomes.

daveywavey

Gizban wrote: »

I really don't like how a player can sink all this time into lvling crafting but then be blocked by node progression.

Yeah, like when the Lumbermilling and Carpentry have both gone T3, but Lumberjacking hasn't. You can't lumbermill or carpent....ise the T3 wood cos you can't chop it.

Hopefully once the systems are fleshed out more, it'll make more sense.

TTNLBTPD

My two cents on this, and feedback I provided to Intrepid is vendors should not sell any item above crude level. It really hurts crafters of all type. From the perspective of a Scribe, the vendor sells scrolls much cheaper than I can make them.

Wandering Mist

TTNLBTPD wrote: »

My two cents on this, and feedback I provided to Intrepid is vendors should not sell any item above crude level. It really hurts crafters of all type. From the perspective of a Scribe, the vendor sells scrolls much cheaper than I can make them.

Yeah Alchemist and Scribes get really screwed over by the vendors. The only thing really worth making with those professions if the guild creation scrolls. Everything else of worth can be bought from the vendors.

Reflet

I don't like the actual crafting system too.
I hate that "put materials in the box" and comeback later to get your processed items and then spend hours click/select/click and get your "crafted" item. Not saying anything about the gather mode intrepid choosed for Ashes (the find the stone/flower/..) ; missing EQ next (where you were looking for veins, etc) , SWG (futurist with harvesters but could different stat from the same sort of ressource, or UO where the stats from your skill works when you gather,...).

I would love to see Ashes's crafting turn to be like the craft in EQ2 or even better like it was in Vanguard Saga of Heroes (your character was able to develop three spheres of game play : adventuing (classes to kill mobs), crafting (if you want a regular item just craft all the parts quickly and assemble it fast or play the mini game to get higher grade parts to assemble them the best way in order to get better stats ; go get some work orders to level up your crafting professions, travel to other lands/culture and do work orders there to get their recipes... You even could grind your 200 levels in crafting without killing a mob if you want), last sphere was diplomacy (to access bigger donjons...).

So the main idea in all that is = I WANT TO CRAFT. If the game wants to craft for me... I just have one thing to tell him : "Game, go buy AOC to play it your self but let me play/craft myself!"

Child Item