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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.
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Dynamic Recipes and Rarities
Taiisien
Member, Alpha Two
in Artisanship
Hello fellow Crafters,
So since there is currently an ongoing update / rework of the crafting system, I feel like now is a good time to share my ideas and ask questions to the developers.
Currently in Ashes there are 4 biomes out of the planned 18 or about 22%. There is currently a max of 3 tiers of crafting out of 5 so about 60%. Currently a max of level 25 out of 50 (50%) with gear at levels 0, 10, and 20 again approximately 50%. These are numbers most people are aware of. Currently recipes require very specific materials to craft. Lets look at Long Spellbows for just a moment. There are currently 9 variations of the long spellbow 15 versions of the physical longbow. All of these bows require wood from the riverlands to craft. Eventually we should expect to see bows and recipes for bows utilizing woods from the other biomes. If caravan chassis is the example of how this will be implemented then there will need to be entirely new recipes and items to keep in a database for each type of wood in those biomes. For caravan chassis there are 10 different T1, 4 T2, and 5 T3 versions of the chassis (this includes the metal reinforced versions). Now take that the riverlands has 4 T1 types of trees, Desert has 2, Tropics have 2 and Jundark has two, for T2 its Riverlands 1, Desert 0, Tropics 1, Jundark 0, and finally for T3 Riverlands 1, Desert 1, Tropics and Jundark 0.
Now thats a whole lot of numbers to throw around, and thats kind of the point. If bows (and everything besides caravan parts) follow the model set forth by the caravan parts, there will be thousands if not tens of thousands of items due to each biome creating its own pool of items. From a database management perspective that is going to be hell, especially if there needs to be balance / distribution / any other form of sweeping changes as each one of those items will need to be updated. We can already see where things fall through the cracks and are not getting updated with the amount of items currently in the database (all desert, tropics, and jundark wood caravan pieces are a direct copy paste from ash caravan pieces including the T2 dragonwood wheels and chassis even though they are T2 [singular exception is the dragonwood carriage, it matches willow]).
My suggestion then is to make the recipes dynamic. Instead of having Oak Caravan Chassis, Ash Caravan Chassis, Hemlock Caravan Chassis etc, have Novice Caravan Chassis. Instead of forcing us to use Oak let us instead use any T1 wood. Instead of a range of hp, have them be static based on materials used. This customization / user freedom has been discussed in the past over several livestreams in fact, the most recent being Nov 23. Now is the time to make this change, when you are already reworking thousands of recipes and before the model of caravan parts is implemented across all other crafted items.
This would also be a good time to implement recipe xp (if this is still going to be a thing) where the more you craft an item the better the results (mentioned in the same livestream from Nov 23). Additionally if the Star Wars Galaxies crafting mechanics or similar mechanics are still being planned this could be a good opportunity to add those (from livestream Feb 21).
My final thought would be to reduce the number of rarities for gatherables, craftables and items. I know it is needed to an extent, but realistically we have too many. It makes inventory management and bag space a nightmare, it causes people to farm nodes and leave mats on the ground that are not high enough tier, because their bag space is limited and players only want to purchase legendary items. Common and Uncommon are used to level up on then often rare, heroic, and epic are not used because no one wants to buy those materials or crafted items (there are some exceptions but the majority of the market is for lego stuff only). Maybe reduce everything down to only Common, Rare, and Epic then have an extremely low chance that when crafting an Epic item it could proc to legendary. This also frees up vast amounts of items that have to be stored in a database as you wont need to maintain the other rarities.
@Roshen , @Vaknar , the rest of the dev team, and everyone else,
Thanks for reading.
So since there is currently an ongoing update / rework of the crafting system, I feel like now is a good time to share my ideas and ask questions to the developers.
Currently in Ashes there are 4 biomes out of the planned 18 or about 22%. There is currently a max of 3 tiers of crafting out of 5 so about 60%. Currently a max of level 25 out of 50 (50%) with gear at levels 0, 10, and 20 again approximately 50%. These are numbers most people are aware of. Currently recipes require very specific materials to craft. Lets look at Long Spellbows for just a moment. There are currently 9 variations of the long spellbow 15 versions of the physical longbow. All of these bows require wood from the riverlands to craft. Eventually we should expect to see bows and recipes for bows utilizing woods from the other biomes. If caravan chassis is the example of how this will be implemented then there will need to be entirely new recipes and items to keep in a database for each type of wood in those biomes. For caravan chassis there are 10 different T1, 4 T2, and 5 T3 versions of the chassis (this includes the metal reinforced versions). Now take that the riverlands has 4 T1 types of trees, Desert has 2, Tropics have 2 and Jundark has two, for T2 its Riverlands 1, Desert 0, Tropics 1, Jundark 0, and finally for T3 Riverlands 1, Desert 1, Tropics and Jundark 0.
Now thats a whole lot of numbers to throw around, and thats kind of the point. If bows (and everything besides caravan parts) follow the model set forth by the caravan parts, there will be thousands if not tens of thousands of items due to each biome creating its own pool of items. From a database management perspective that is going to be hell, especially if there needs to be balance / distribution / any other form of sweeping changes as each one of those items will need to be updated. We can already see where things fall through the cracks and are not getting updated with the amount of items currently in the database (all desert, tropics, and jundark wood caravan pieces are a direct copy paste from ash caravan pieces including the T2 dragonwood wheels and chassis even though they are T2 [singular exception is the dragonwood carriage, it matches willow]).
My suggestion then is to make the recipes dynamic. Instead of having Oak Caravan Chassis, Ash Caravan Chassis, Hemlock Caravan Chassis etc, have Novice Caravan Chassis. Instead of forcing us to use Oak let us instead use any T1 wood. Instead of a range of hp, have them be static based on materials used. This customization / user freedom has been discussed in the past over several livestreams in fact, the most recent being Nov 23. Now is the time to make this change, when you are already reworking thousands of recipes and before the model of caravan parts is implemented across all other crafted items.
This would also be a good time to implement recipe xp (if this is still going to be a thing) where the more you craft an item the better the results (mentioned in the same livestream from Nov 23). Additionally if the Star Wars Galaxies crafting mechanics or similar mechanics are still being planned this could be a good opportunity to add those (from livestream Feb 21).
My final thought would be to reduce the number of rarities for gatherables, craftables and items. I know it is needed to an extent, but realistically we have too many. It makes inventory management and bag space a nightmare, it causes people to farm nodes and leave mats on the ground that are not high enough tier, because their bag space is limited and players only want to purchase legendary items. Common and Uncommon are used to level up on then often rare, heroic, and epic are not used because no one wants to buy those materials or crafted items (there are some exceptions but the majority of the market is for lego stuff only). Maybe reduce everything down to only Common, Rare, and Epic then have an extremely low chance that when crafting an Epic item it could proc to legendary. This also frees up vast amounts of items that have to be stored in a database as you wont need to maintain the other rarities.
@Roshen , @Vaknar , the rest of the dev team, and everyone else,
Thanks for reading.
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Comments
On the server side I don't think they have an issue with their database being able to handle all this. For crafters you're going to need to use a spread sheet, use a tool someone makes, or make your own. I expect there to be some cool tools people make to streamline their guilds crafting.
I'm not for simplifying the crafts in general. I see your point on the caravan chassis, but I see the unmixable material tiers the bigger issue. Just reducing the 10 (current) possible caravans down to 5(one for each tier?), just reduces the number of caravans you can make. I think this would go against the design, we want people expanding out and gathering in different zones to get materials. If each zone becomes too self suffiecent there's no need tension. Someone from the Tropics can has one wood type they can make for T1 right? But the desert doesn't? I don't see this as an issue, the desert will have other resource that make that zone valuable. I think it's important to not over balance the distribution of resources and to not over simplify the recipes.
Inventory management is hellish right now, I think the balancing they plan to do soon will help with that. But there will always be choices you have to make on the loot/materials you want. Hopefully crafting becomes more accessible for people to actually make gear as they level, that'll put those rare, and epics to use. Lets us mix those tiers too (if they haven't done that yet). I should be able to use a epic copper and common copper to make a dagger, and give a little stat bonus or a chance to get a higher quality or something.
The 'life skills" in the game are half the reason I'm here. If they're too simple they'll be boring, they need to be more than just a means to an end. Getting to that end needs to be fun and engaging.
I see your point as well, but If Ash is roughly equal to Oak, Larch, and Hemlock (riverlands trees) which is roughly equal to Acacia and Date palm (desert trees) which are roughly equal to Plumeria and Coconut (Tropics) which are roughly equal to Coconut and Banyan (Jundark) then it defeats what you are saying. To have that tension the materials need to be different where as right now pretty much all the woods give roughly the same stats for T1 so there is no need to get Plumeria from the tropics and take it to the desert.
I agree with your comment about life skills, they are also my focus in the game and I want them to be robust, engaging and enjoyable, at the moment they are none of these things.
Wiki: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Recipes
Yeah I re-read through that article before making the post so I could add all the footnotes. Good looking out though, thank you.
I see your point as well, but If Ash is roughly equal to Oak, Larch, and Hemlock (riverlands trees) which is roughly equal to Acacia and Date palm (desert trees) which are roughly equal to Plumeria and Coconut (Tropics) which are roughly equal to Coconut and Banyan (Jundark) then it defeats what you are saying.
I think I'd need to see all this in a table to understand it better lol. If I'm understanding right the Desert has a two types of trees. Which are roughly equal to trees that can be found in all other zones. If this is limited to the tier one trees than it's fine to me. Some will have more tier one resources like ores, trees, flowers, ect than other zones.
It should be okay to build a caravan with different wood types as long as they are the same tier level. Which ever wood is used most should dictate the mesh/texture (how it looks). And you should be able to make stuff with mix quality levels!
I'm under the impression phase 3 we'll be getting some major overhauls to the crafting systems. At least I'm hoping so. Some things are progressing quickly, some things seem frozen in time.