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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
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.
Crafting - are you kidding me?
Sylverthane
Member, Alpha Two
The state of crafting is atrocious! Been trying to craft novice gear such as axe and pick and need copper. No copper to be found - the forums are full of posts about the lack of it. But yet months have passed and nothing fixed/changed. No new spawns for change of availability. Ok, so I give in and I buy some copper from the marketplace. Now I need to break it down to fragments. One copper = 1 fragment? WTF? If I have a piece of copper and make fragments out of it shouldn't there be multiple fragments? Nope. One fragment. Ok, I'm about done with this whole shit crafting system. I had high hopes for AoC crafting but the current state is absolutely stupid. Please tell me that this system is a placeholder for something better?
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Comments
The "only a few masteries" will push people to interact with the market and other player. Even right now at the basic lvl of crafting I've already used the market to just buy a few mats that would've taken me too long to get myself. This will only be more true, the deeper we go into crafting tiers.
As someone who was a guild crafter in L2 - I like the current system quite a lot. Will like it even more once they finish adding all the promised features into it.
I have spend around 3-4 hour trying to get materials for novice pick/axe and just gave up. Been around novice zone and 2 other nodes searching through mountains. Only fuking basalt and granite everywhere or other mats you can't extract yet.
You really need to be absolutely 12 year old or jobless in real life to get anything in this game at it current stage. I can't imagine how many hours of your life you need to waste to get into higher apprenticeships.
Game is supposed to be fun, not a running simulator which is at the minute, we have already a running simulator and it's called DayZ.
I do not understand this thing with shopfronts in a marketplace either, instead making it WoW/Albion Online like... a tested already well working feature they try to come up with Ultima Online like vendor style(instead of vendors on street you have a shit long list of personal shops you have to go through, ultimately like in UO where you have them standing on the street and have to visit each one and check), which is so difficult to operate it's beyond belief. Why not to lean towards something that already work. Trying to be "original" it's not always a good idea and this game at current stage a great example how being original absolutely sucks.
That is the plan. It's simply not implemented yet.
It's also not about being original, it's about not simplifying the system to such a point that economy is simply built on "look at a filterable list, pick the cheapest item, buy".
You do realize this is just a place holder? This will be nothing like the finished market system.
You are correct, crafting sucks right now. That is because crafting has not been implemented and the current systems are placeholders.
Also remember that we are not playing a game, we are helping test something that will become a game. Testing these systems and providing feedback to IS is vital to getting to that wonderful game we want.
I honestly don’t know if we’re playing the same game, or if the issue lies more with the player who just refuses to open their eyes when looking for resources.
Saying “I can’t find any western wood for my axe”... well, aside from not knowing the spot where there are literally entire forests, not making the effort to ask or look it up is just a fact.
As for the rest: resources spawn dynamically on the map, and when you head towards rivers, beaches, or mountains, you’ll find zinc, copper, tin, and even diamonds in perfectly reasonable amounts—especially for a server with such a high population.
Coming here to complain that “I can’t find anything” compared to Alpha 2 (where yes, there was a real issue) seems ridiculous. I actually think the current mix of static and dynamic respawns is working really well.
Now, I’m excited to see the upcoming random dynamic respawn system they’ll be introducing in the next few weeks. And I’m also looking forward to the crafting revamp that’s expected within one to two weeks.
But when it comes to gathering, unless you expect to walk three steps and pick up 200 copper, get moving, explore a little you’ll find what you need.
And the goal is to have a balanced game. I spend time farming resources, and I simply don’t understand how people can say "there’s nothing on the map" when, on a single run, I manage to gather all types of resources regardless of the time. The point isn’t to make the game easy, which is why I’m surprised. I keep seeing complaints about difficulty 24/7 on Discord and nerfs happening all over the place. It makes me wonder if the feedback is actually legitimate, or if some people just want a game where you walk out of town and bam you find every resource in abundance, all conveniently grouped together. Kind of like what you see around Miraleth with the stones and flowers.
Also, saying we’re in the same situation as Phase 2, where a tree took 4 hours to respawn and a rock 2 hours, and where only a handful of farmers knew the timers and took everything, just isn’t true anymore.
As for the crafting quantities yes, I agree it’s not balanced. But they’re currently working on a new plan that should be released within the next two weeks, so I won’t comment further on that for now.
And 18 Forsaken Blades Emblems that drop very very rarely?
All for one piece of gear.
I would imagine the majority of people would just give up on crafting altogether. Which for those masochistic enough to push through the mindlessness would give them a huge market share. But I'd imagine that Intrepid aren't actually wanting to push people away.
Blown past falling sands…
In regards to market, yes I went to the market. But due to high demand and low supply due to the nature of respawn of these items. Prices were obviously very high, 3 silver to 21 silver per copper shard (which you require 1 copper ore to produce) it will take ages to generate enough silver to purchase these and these are just starting items.
I don't know if developers realize and you, that vast majority of people playing will be adults (if not the largest group), people often with jobs and responsibilities. And this is due to monthly fee to play.
That means majority of us will not have a time to play running simulator, goof around and look at every shop on the list/street for items we require. People with less time want to do quick shopping, get their gear and f-off on the adventure/grind/quest whatever you call it. Visiting every different shop, looking for stuff is simply causing frustration, delays the fun. And the games are supposed to be about fun, entertainment.
Pie chart of group age generated by gpt based on average of 11 different resources.
In terms of mining, current system is very bad. I'm wandering who comes up with this stuff. Like those little rocks spawning on the ground. In which world do they spawn like this? I think in Rust, but not in real/fantasy world.
Mining belongs in mines.
I saw a great system once in one of Ultima Online shards. There were dedicated mines placed on a map, you could go inside them and there were like "tiles", you simply used pick on a tile and tile was either "exhausted" or had something in it. I believe there was percentage drop system per mine. So imagine you go to the mine, click on the floor tile, you start digging and than you have percentage chance to drop.
Mine 1 (beginner focused):
- 10% copper
- 10% zinc
- 5 % iron
- 75% nothing
Mine 2(I don't know, tier 1 or whatever):
- 5% copper
- 5% zinc
- 15% iron
- 10% silver
- 65% nothing
If you need rocks, you go to quarry. If you need ore, you go to mines. On top of that you could have a chance to drop some ruby or something. Is that easy.
I can't swallow it when I see those stupid rocks everywhere on the ground. You can find ores in the forest and on the beach, in the valley, on the meadow. Who comes up with stuff like this.
Make mines, make quarries, where players go, they meet, they mine together. Put some mobs in spawn to keep AFKers and botters in check and that's it, it's fun again. Don't be lazy.
Devs and majority of people who has followed the game for over a few years know that the game will be niche.
Also, instant gratification is not the only way to experience fun in a game. It's definitely A way and one that the masses prefer, because masses never know what's best for them, but it's not THE way.
Seems like half the mmo audience are still young people. And those usually got part-time work and live with parents, due to how fucked up global economy is right now. And if they skip one run to the fastfood or a few eggs here and there - they'll have money to pay for the sub.
I played Lineage 2 back in mid 00s. I played with dudes with jobs and families who LOVED the game. And that shit was waaaaaaay grindier than what Ashes is planning to be. People these days just forgot how to enjoy a game w/o being super optimal and "the best" in it.
I play current A2 5h a day. I've barely lvled and have instead just run some quests, done some gathering, crafted jewelry for myself, and even ran a super fun caravan that I also ended up losing. Out of my ~40h of gameplay I've grinding mobs for maaaybe around 5-6h. I've gotten a few gold out of that and enjoyed the process immensely, despite being faaaar from number one in leveling or moneymaking or artisanry or literally anything in the game.
Learn to enjoy the little stuff. This skill helps with enjoying life more as well, btw
And it kinda will be. We'll have locations that are more in line with logical spawns for materials. We'll have survey pylons that will help gatherers farm those locations in a more optimal and beneficial way.
A shitty placeholder system is in fact shitty.
The game under Jeff was a vastly different game (or at least was communicated as being vastly different) to both what we see now, and how the game is currently being communicated.
Some people (like you) would be happy with this. The game is looking far more at it's L2 influence, and far less at anything else. It is ignoring the fact that the L2 gameplay model simply can not support the kind of economy Steven wants in Ashes (which is why Archeage had to tone down some aspects of PvP, specifically).
Again, the game has systems that are conflicting with each other - as I have been saying for years (almost as if the game was designed by someone with absolutely no background in gaming or something).
Another example of this is your very next point in the above post. Ashes will be niche. However, it will be niche with servers needing 25k+ populations in order to feel even half full - and has promised servers in regions that absolutely can not support that level of population in a niche game. In order to meet the requirements Intrepid have set out for the servers they have said they will have, this game would need to be top 5 most popular MMO's of the decade, and yet we all know it is niche as fuck.
Some would say this sounds kind of like a scam - however, I am of the opinion that you shouldn't attribute to malice that which can be better explained by incompetence.
I thought AOC devs are after creating massive world with it's own economy. Then it can't be niche, because monster of this size will need to be feed with large quantity of players to be playable and economy to be sustainable and functional.
I wasn't talking about instant gratification in game, but c'mon mate grinding 5 hours for 20 copper(4 rocks mined) which is not enough for pick and axe that it's kind of ridiculous. This doesn't give you any impression of progression, you can still make things for longer run but more enjoyable.
In regards to masses never know what's best for them. It reminds me of communism a bit, where few run the show for the masses and I'm wondering where that worked out well. The prettiest girl is always chosen by the public in Miss competitions and to be honest never saw prettiest one being chosen by few judges. Bit belief in masses, they will be backbone running the show, paying the bills and without masses you will have an empty world full of few people who like to spend 40 hours a week running after few copper rocks, it will be full of players like Life Is Feudal: MMO is now. Too much time for gratification is also not good.
It's also about learning from history, what worked well and what not. Behind your back there is a cemetery of MMO's, would be wise not to repeat their mistakes.
I would call it a quarter. Anyone from 0 to 23 year old will most likely won't be the bill paying backbone of the whole thing, and in the end of a day this is a business.
Finger crossed that this will be resolved in good fashion.
PvP.
In a sense I agree, there should be balance. A great example of games that have this balance and full-player driven economies are EVE and Albion. These games have abundance of resources for crafting, they give you good feeling about progression, where you have to collect a quite a bit of resource to build/craft something but to achieve better things you have to build more of this stuff which you can either sell or use your-self. On top of that these games have great destruction loops, where in EVE you have ship destruction at massive scale and in Albion death item drops, these destruction loops balance the economy.
The idea here is that you have abundance of resources, you can do it crafting all day without stopping and don't get me wrong, you are not conquering the world doing so and crashing the economy. There is liquidity, there is supply and demand, there is fierce competition.
Where right now you can't find a fuking rock to do mining pick for yourself xd.
Most of these MMO's that I think you mention did not failed directly because of fast progression but they failed mostly because of lack of content after reaching maximum level and slow content updates compared to initial progression like you have also mentioned. Eg. New World, Tera, Blade and Soul. What would be ideal is balanced progression towards max level and then fine tuning through gear upgrades, legendary collectible items, crafting, exploration, housing, wars, pvp, farming you name it.
You just can't make people manufacture simple tools for 5 hours straight and still not getting there, this is neither balance neither enjoyable. This is definitely not effort that brings value, this is madness.
I get that hardcore players have an advantage here if things take longer but so what…. Everyone doesn’t get a trophy. If you want to be the best you have to put in the work.
PVP don’t block your path of progression; It paves it—with your bones as cobblestones.
To me the solution is more low level mats that are used throughout the crafting journey and less high mats that you get really excited when you find them.
What do you get, though? If you don't get ahead in PvP in Ashes, what can you actually 'have'?
Well I think the world will be big enough where you will be able to find your little slice if you want. Also I don’t truly believe that if you are slightly behind means you can’t compete at all.
That's what makes you able to have fun and slow down and enjoy the game.
For those who can't compete when they're behind, the reality is different, and that's why they refuse to slow down.
EDIT: Clarifying to stay on topic, we're talking about crafting, and incentives, in my mind.
If crafting doesn't help in PvP in a game where you are always subject to PvP and often can't interact with entire systems if you're being suppressed in PvP, then it's harder to enjoy crafting.
If Crafting helps in PvP, but only when you have crafted more than your oppressor, then your options are either 'push to keep up with that oppressor' or 'do something else that helps with that', since, if you can't keep up in Crafting, you probably shouldn't pump hours into it to only get to 50-60% of whatever they have.
Since the PvE doesn't really require the Crafting, or if it does, it's probably being controlled by those who PvP better, the Crafter doesn't have any reason to go slowly. They have an incentive to find a guild of players who will push them to the top of Crafting quickly.
Ya in a way this can be true. It will be hard to balance that but what is the solution? A game that is too easy/fast is boring. There is no value in those things. Again, the only things worth anything are hard to obtain.
I wouldn't say that fun being easy to obtain makes it lack value. Though there are some people that can only have fun when they are 'above' others and some that can only have fun when they are being constantly entertained with less challenge.
I'd say the solution is to not worry about those types of people as much if one is committing to having crafting in a game.
But the point of the recent threads has mostly been that the crafting itself isn't fun. And when the gameplay is generally 'gather/plan, then make thing', it's probably fair to say that if you don't get to actually plan, or only very occasionally get to actually make a thing, it's not very fun.