why are you putting the cart before the horse?

so I'm kind of a filthy casual and a gatherer/crafter that has very limited hours in the game and I'm kind of scared for the future of ashes.

because of changes to apprentice needing 2x some things, and with people surging to L20 with L20 drops actually a thing, crafting really is useless. as long as people can power level to 20 and get ANY type of L20 drops (full items) no one cares about crafting until we get to Journeyman and by then the power levelers will be at 20 and up their crafting skills and even then its's just gonna be wiped in a month so us casuals who don't care about PVP and only care about the gathering and crafting of the game....well we really are useless and don't really matter. why would anyone buy a L10 gear that took me 4 hours to gather and craft when someone can grind Carphin for 40min and have a L20 item that is so much better? you wouldn't.

With the Caravans breaking and the large guilds PVPing everyone out of existence there is also no way for a casual to make gold needed to level up crafting, you almost HAVE to be in a big guild to matter at any level and if you aren't by the time you level then the big guilds crafters can out pace you every day of the week.
Don't get me started on Farming and Cooking, I have spreadsheets on this and Steven really I could present to you how complicated it is and why some things going to needing 2x the needed materials makes things 3-5X more expensive so its really hard to start these professions.

I get it, because of the wipes you have lost alot of testers but right now the game is a PVP grind to 20 and then PVP. the whole leveling thing through quests (that still don't work half the time and take WAYYYY too long to complete for the reward because of disappearing quest markers) and gathering and crafting...well unless its an Epic or Legendary and even then large guilds will have a Carphin drop or one of their guildmates make it there really is no point to leveling nodes for Journeyman stuff when you can just have L20 gear drops.

if you really want to test the "crafter is king" stuff Steven says...well put the horse before the cart...and this will piss off alot of people
1) NO COMPLETED ITEM DROPS, ONLY THE RECIPIE AND MAYBE 1 SPECIAL THING NEEDED TO CRAFT, THATS IT. (people who power level to 20 can deal or help raise the node so we have Journeyman crafting before they get past starting Novice gear.
2) seriously go after the hackers and RMT people, its easy to see who levels faster and who has more gold faster, you have 3 versions of resets and can see who power levels the right way and who is hacking
3) make Cooking a Craft not a Process. (seriously i have spreadsheets and graphs on this Journeyman level cooking is complicated and the having to have everything the same rarity and now 2x some things make it a nightmare i am willing to talk to whomever does Cooking programing because honestly its well thought out and designed but in practice of playing i can tell yall had unlimited gold and storage space when internally testing)
4) SEROUSLY FIX THE QUESTS SO THEY COMPLETE OR WE CAN ABANDON AND TRY AGAIN AND COMPLETE THEM
5) I hope this is fixed with gathering trees but the random rarity shouldn't be a thing, the higher you go in gathering, the better tools and the better specs you have in your tree should determine rarity. the better gatherer you are with better cloths and tools the better stuff you find. same with processing and crafting, the better you are and the better stuff you make the more likely you can upgrade things.
6) there needs to be biome substitute for things (say Fish can be used as droppings in farming recipes, or Acacia wood can be substuted for Oak in tools. Otherwise to do alot of things people HAVE to stay in the Riverlands which prevents people from spreading out into the world (also each Biome should have L1-30 creatures, the Desert and Jungle are pretty much end game places but as a nonL20 i can still gather and be out there....but why would I when none of my tools or cloths or anything can be used to upgrade my gathering tools???)

I really hope P3 changes alot and yes im even saying this as someone who is tired of wipes but we need another wipe.
Make the Nodes STATIC FOR NOW. Figure out a good this goes here, that goes there up to Journeyman and allow us to gather and craft. make the spawns fast and rarity easy to obtain, you dont want to get to Pre-Launch and find out that if I make a copper sword out of all but 1 Legendary part but because of my crafting level the sword is still Legendary but because of the code and that 1 common part I now have a +99999999 to everything and even hit nothing but constant Artifact rarity stuff when gathering by simply having it equipped. Or if i take my caravan off this specific cliff it crashes the server.
Testing Economy and balance is good when ALL SYSTEMS ARE IN PLACE, until then Gold and Rarity on gathering should be useless things (its just gonna be wiped anyways) and we need to make sure if we ride our cats into mountains or bridges we don't clip through (gee wonder why i got specific there). I honestly LOVE Ashes, but it feels you are catering to the Hardcore PVP guilds because they are the majority of testers, and testing a game and playing a game are 2 different things because you can call it an Alpha all you want but right now it just seems like a PVP grindfest with seasonal content and occasional wipes.

Again I LOVE the idea of Ashes, its why I backed the Kickstarter in the first place, to own my own tavern, but the more I play the more it seems the large PVP guilds are what will end up owning the game and the casual gatherer/crafter will just not play at all.

Kala Silverheart,
Head Chef of the Legendary Two Tailed Fox Inn/Tavern

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Comments

Noaani

Volgaris wrote: »

But you jump in a say it's a waste of time to test what they did.

No I didn't.

I said it is a waste of developer time to try and balance things now. I never once said it is a waste of their time to test it. I did point out that any testing they do now won't see the kinds of changes the OP was looking for for a while - that doesn't mean it is a waste.

I have also said to you in another thread that any testing done now will be more for your own benefit as a comparison for when Intrepid iterate on the economy next (which seems may be sooner than I thought, which is great).

WHat I never said was that testing is a waste of time.

It goes back to that whole "words have meaning" thing. I generally make a point of using the words I mean, in the order I mean them.

Noaani

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

To keep the conversation going:
If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?

@MargaretKrohn

A better question, in my mind, would be for you to ask yourselves - how much developer time are you willing to spend on making alpha crafting feel more rewarding, knowing that it won't benefit the end product?

The reason I say this is basically to repeat what was said in the livestream on the economy. Things like harvesting is crowded right now, and that is causing a major issue with crafting. However, harvesting is crowded because you have a large number of people in a small area - because only a small portion of the world is online. When more of the world is online, those people will spread out more, meaning harvesting will be less crowded.

You guys could manipulate the "feel" of this all you want via increasing the respawn rate on harvest nodes. The problem then becomes - what is being tested? We are suddenly moving away from testing how harvesting will feel for live (not that this is able to be tested now anyway) and are now only testing how it feels in this iteration of it that will obviously never see a live server. This would set tester expectation off in a bad direction.

Essentially, in my mind, that means you guys spend developer time now to implement something you have to undo later, and while it is in that state on test players can't test how crafting will function for the live game.

Please feel free to point out if I am missing something here, if I am incorrect in my reasoning. However, that is why the better question, in my mind, is how much time are you guys willing to use to do something that has no direct benefit to the live game?

If you only want to put a small amount of effort in to try and have a positive outcome, but that can be easily undone when it is determined to not be needed, my suggestion would be an NPC that gives a handful of a requested crafting material to players, with a limit of perhaps a handful every 3 hours.

Make that "handful" about what you would expect players to be able to harvest in an hour long harvesting session when the game is live.

This NPC is essentially mimicing an auction house or market from the perspective of players crafting.

It means you aren't getting any worthwhile data or feedback on harvesting (not that you really are now), but it means you can get some data and feedback on crafting.

Andi

Why not have normal mobs drop white items liberally, more so for 1-2 star, and 3-star and bosses drop greens?
The higher qualities (blue+) would then be from crafting.

"Key mats" dropping from mobs could then be a thing for special items from bosses - not your bog standard wand or light armour chest, but a named sword, mace, bow.

Crafting also needs to be simplified a lot. Cut out some of the steps. Having to have components from 3 professions to make a lvl 10 item isn't a great idea. It will drive prices up and cause inflation, and incentivise people to buy gold.

Volgaris

Noaani wrote: »

Volgaris wrote: »

Are you saying that is intended?

I'm not saying it is intended.

I am saying it is not balanced.

You are saying it is not balanced (despite you saying that you are not saying it is is not balanced). The item takes too many materials to craft is a balance issue.

One could argue that it is an obvious balance issue - and I'd agree with that. However, it is still a balance issue.

We can all look at that and know without a doubt that it isn't going to be like that when the game goes live. What we don't know is if that change is going to be in lowering the materials needed, increasing access and capacity of materials needed, increasing yield of the recipe, or increasing the quality of the item the recipe makes.

All are valid, none are guaranteed, and it is most likely that the eventual answer will be a mixture some or all of the above.

Since the item being made isn't exactly essential, there is no real need for any developer to spend any time working on it - given they have no idea where the balance point will eventually end up.

Any time spent on this is time wasted. This is my point.

As so many people have said, this is an alpha - things aren't supposed to work.

This is one of quite a few instances you said it was a waste of time. Or time wasted you word cop you. You'll probably something like "that's what I'm was saying, I was saying the balancing is a waste of time", or trying to pull some more dualist logic to justify the words you wrote. That's fine it's expected now. I don't expect you to say, "oh, man oops, I didn't really mean that, here's what I really met." but even a hint of humility for you is a foreign feeling.

Volgaris

Andi wrote: »

Why not have normal mobs drop white items liberally, more so for 1-2 star, and 3-star and bosses drop greens?
The higher qualities (blue+) would then be from crafting.

"Key mats" dropping from mobs could then be a thing for special items from bosses - not your bog standard wand or light armour chest, but a named sword, mace, bow.

Crafting also needs to be simplified a lot. Cut out some of the steps. Having to have components from 3 professions to make a lvl 10 item isn't a great idea. It will drive prices up and cause inflation, and incentivise people to buy gold.

I like the idea of basic items dropping more often, but they should be weaker than "common". Something like damaged copper sword (this was brought up before). I think we could increase the drops on starred and boss mobs too. And have them drop key mats at a higher rate than gear for sure.

People also floated the idea of being able to break down gear to learn the recipe or get materials. I've been parroting it, because it's a cool idea, an alternative way to getting some materials vs mindless gathering. Gathering should be the more efficient way though.

Don't simplify crafting though, for the love all that is tasty don't dumb it down please! The UI and the players process of having to setup the craft and click through all the menus needs to be streamlined. But having an item rely on multiple other crafters is what ties it altogether. I think it's a core pillar the crafting is (planned to be) built on. But I do concede if low level crafts (1-10) aren't AS dependent on others it wouldn't be a bad thing, it'd open up that first tier of crafting more, making it more accessible to people testing and could work as kind of the tutorial tier to ease people into crafting before it does get more complex.

Noaani

Volgaris wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Volgaris wrote: »

Are you saying that is intended?

I'm not saying it is intended.

I am saying it is not balanced.

You are saying it is not balanced (despite you saying that you are not saying it is is not balanced). The item takes too many materials to craft is a balance issue.

One could argue that it is an obvious balance issue - and I'd agree with that. However, it is still a balance issue.

We can all look at that and know without a doubt that it isn't going to be like that when the game goes live. What we don't know is if that change is going to be in lowering the materials needed, increasing access and capacity of materials needed, increasing yield of the recipe, or increasing the quality of the item the recipe makes.

All are valid, none are guaranteed, and it is most likely that the eventual answer will be a mixture some or all of the above.

Since the item being made isn't exactly essential, there is no real need for any developer to spend any time working on it - given they have no idea where the balance point will eventually end up.

Any time spent on this is time wasted. This is my point.

As so many people have said, this is an alpha - things aren't supposed to work.

This is one of quite a few instances you said it was a waste of time.

Look real close at that statement. I'll assist you by highlighing the other important part for you.

Noaani wrote: »

there is no real need for any developer to spend any time working on it - given they have no idea where the balance point will eventually end up.

Any time spent on this is time wasted. This is my point.

I have told you several times that when I have said anything to do with wasted time, I am talking about the developers, not you.

This is because I care if the developers waste their time, I don't care if you do.

Volgaris

@Noaani I really don't care, your predictability has made this boring. Maybe you walk away with some positive growth whether you admit it or not, or you don't and you continue your forum/testing policing.

Noaani

Volgaris wrote: »

Noaani I really don't care, your predictability has made this boring. Maybe you walk away with some positive growth whether you admit it or not, or you don't and you continue your forum/testing policing.

That is a really weird way of you appologizing for being blatantly wrong, and banging on about it for far too long without ever clarifying why it was you thought I said something I had to tell you multiple times I did not say.

Caww

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

To keep the conversation going:
If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?

I really feel the actual 1 minute per item processing time is just nuts for early, low level materials, maybe scale the time required as the material level increases.

RonDog98

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

First off, thank you all for the detailed, passionate, and thoughtful feedback. Posts like these are exactly why we love this community. You're not just pointing out issues—you’re helping us pressure-test systems from all angles, and that’s invaluable in an Alpha environment.

@KrystalKitten, huge shoutout to you for laying out your experiences as a gatherer and crafter with such clarity. From apprentice bread woes to caravan chaos to spreadsheets on cooking—your love for the game (and for seeing it improve) is shining through. We know some of the current tuning feels rough, and yes, power-leveling and drop pacing are still under review. Testing the foundation of crafting and gathering while progression systems are still in flux is messy, but it's part of getting this right long-term.

We’ve reported folks' feedback on early game itemization, quest polish, artisan balance, and yearning for more testing direction. These are absolutely things we want to refine as we move forward. Your point about timing—especially when different systems come online—is well-taken.

To keep the conversation going:
If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?

I think having the first tier of crafting be for level 5 and not level 10, and make it slightly easier to craft, might incentivize more early game crafting as player May feel like they are wasting their time less.

Uboon

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?

Cap a character's level to the tier of the Node they are a citizen of, so that crafters have someone to sell their stuff to.

You want to ding 20 and level up? Then level your node up. The node can then support this higher tier of crafters; making their activities more rewarding each tier.

- This aligns with higher tier nodes providing higher level content.
- This prevents players bypassing main gameplay loops in the rush to 50.
- This makes levelling like climbing a ladder instead of an express elevator to boredom.
- This helps to reduce level imbalance in PvP.

Noaani

Uboon wrote: »

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?

Cap a character's level to the tier of the Node they are a citizen of, so that crafters have someone to sell their stuff to.

I can't stress enough just how much of a bad idea this is.

KrystalKitten

Noaani wrote: »

Uboon wrote: »

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?

Cap a character's level to the tier of the Node they are a citizen of, so that crafters have someone to sell their stuff to.

I can't stress enough just how much of a bad idea this is.

Because instead of a living dynamic PVX world of gathering, crafting, questing and lore people want *checks notes* a PVP grind/gankfest.....
Go play Call of Duty or something then, this is an Alpha of a MMORPG and Crafting is always the endgame of those

KrystalKitten

[quote="MargaretKrohn;c-504096"
To keep the conversation going:
If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?[/quote]

first..
OMG SENPAI NOTICED ME!!!!!!!! *dies*
*Resurrects*
ok breathe. breathe.....ok

How would I change early game crafting....See that's a complex and complicated answer. There are many many factors contributing to why it's not worth it. People can power level to 25 in a weekend (yes I was in Overlord and did this) and alot of the guild didn't care about the crafting because they could grind in Carphin for an hour and have L25 gear, this was also me, I was in a group and we leveled to L25 in a weekend I was the 6th person of a 5 person group meaning once everyone was outfitted in BIS that they wanted I would get whatever was dropped and STILL by the end of that weekend the L25 full set of Caprhen gear was enough to carry me through the rest of the playthrough before the reset. I never had to worry about gear after that anything that was dropped I either passed to guild members who were lower level or I just sold on the market or gave it away.

Quick answer, (this applies to me and Farming)
to make Novice Farming rewarding I would make one recipe in Farming that doesn't require droppings but uses fish to make fertilizer or uses poop to make fertilizer to be used in mulch((yes i know its another step but its something) I'm gonna compare it to say Lumber milling, I can EASILY raise up Lumber milling? why I can go chop trees and in an hour have 500-750 trees to process. or Alchemist, I can go pick flowers and in a hour have 500-750 flowers to process (same for Cooking, the Aelan Spice must flow) for Stonemason I can bang rocks and have 500-750 Granite to process but Farming doesn't have the equivalent, you need Poop for EVERY recipe and depending on your level its sometimes hard to impossible to gather (I have spend an hour and maybe gotten 20 poop) Leveling Novice to Apprentice should be Easy but for Farming it's super hard so I would say have a recipe that turns Fish into fertilizer (just like real life i have a farmer husband and he used fish sometimes in place of manure) Novice crafting for any profession should be easy to do (it is novice Afterall) and I can easily level Apprentice Cooking and Farming way easier then i can Novice (but I can raise cooking more then farming because I can fish and have a recipe i can use to level. (and no "Just make a L1 character and go kill grims/wolves is not an option, the FIX for everything cant be "roll up a new character, grind for an hour, transfer mats and delete the character" there must be a viable option at any level) or make higher level stuff drop tons more (a L0-20 animal has the same number of drops, where a L0-5 could drop 1-3 poop a L5-10 drop 6-10, a Level 15-20 could drop 20-50) im going by Icarus logic, at the beginning you are chopping trees and gathering stuff, you might get 1-5 worth of stuff, but at endgame (L4 stuff unlocked) you chop 1 tree and get over 100 wood. the Higher level and harder the enemy is to kill the more it should drop.
But easy answer add a recipe in cooking that turns any fish into fertilizer at Novice level (ya can even call it Kala's quick fix fertilizer)

Long Answer. (the important one)
Novice Crafting to be rewarding needs to mean something and right now since you can level to 25 in a weekend and have L25 gear that can carry a gather/crafter like myself throughout a phase (3 times at this point) it doesn't.
Stop having fully dropped gear, maybe have a "rusted" or "broken" version of the gear that a crafter (once up to L10 Apprentice or L20 Journeyman) could fix. it has weaker stats then the common version of the item, so then they have an incentive to make Apprentice or Journeyman crafting happen cause until then they have a slightly better version of a common novice or apprentice maybe just as good as an uncommon (so a rusted L10 item is better then a common or uncommon L0 maybe on par with a Rare but not as good as say a Heroic) same with a L20 item. This way Grinders have better items but not as good as say a Heroic crafted item (most guilds only care about Heroic or above).

Long Term Answer (old woman rants at cloud)
I get it We need to be able to easily test crafting, you don't want to be at Launch and have a recipe that if you use Lego parts all but one common and end up making a Artifact item that has 9999 and breaks the game, or another horse incident so i understand we need to test items, but that is for the PTR or down the road, right now with the wipes and how broken some recipes are (64 Willows and 12 Cows for 1 sandwich? really?) the over all problem is we can have L20 gear in 72 hours of a wipe and Journeyman crafting...what over a month? and again that's with 2 days each week with a low server presence. Since yall are wiping (and i played Icarus at Launch, wiping doesn't mean anything Ill still make a L4 base on a L1 map) but the nodes can not keep up with the grinders, so either you need to limit the grinders (make higher level things only accessible at higher nodes) match leveling with nodes (you can't level past L9 (since L10 is when the item breaks happen) until the node can make Apprentice stuff, and i mean like ALL apprentice stuff) ((no one will like this)) or at a wipe start all the nodes with Journeyman crafting (there are enough nodes yall as programmers should be able to plan this) along with enemies in different bioems being able to be all level (not just L20+ in the Desert and L30+ in the Jundark, which is REALLY limiting people going out into the world (also biome equivalent recipes for items ((right now, it takes 51 Oak Timber, 32 Copper Fragments, 21 Linen Thread and 3 Basalt Molds to make a full set of Novice Tools, these are all Riverlands items, if the Desert only or Jundark, (or any other biome) only stuff doesn't have an equivalent, people will not "go forth into the world and explore" we will stay in the Riverlands (yes i have a spreadsheet to breakdown tool making as well))) so either Novice needs to be MUCH easier to obtain (say 1 wood (Oak, Ash, Western Larck, Eastern Hemlock, (biome exclusive equivalent) 1 ore (biome exclusive equivelent) ect ect you get the idea. There is no reason to do that when Apprentice will be up in a week and doesn't take much more then that to make the items. Either the players need to be locked behind content which no one likes, or crafting L0 needs to be MUCH easier because when people can level to 25 and have L20 gear in 72 hours....well yea crafting is an endgame thing at that point why bother with low level stuff?

Just answer the dang question (where was I again)
So if i could change 1 thing to make Novice crafting easier/more rewarding, have a Novice Farming fish to fertilizer (droppings) recipe.

KrystalKitten

Uboon wrote: »

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?

Cap a character's level to the tier of the Node they are a citizen of, so that crafters have someone to sell their stuff to.

You want to ding 20 and level up? Then level your node up. The node can then support this higher tier of crafters; making their activities more rewarding each tier.

- This aligns with higher tier nodes providing higher level content.
- This prevents players bypassing main gameplay loops in the rush to 50.
- This makes levelling like climbing a ladder instead of an express elevator to boredom.
- This helps to reduce level imbalance in PvP.

I agree with alot of this, remember L25 is only half way, at launch they were talking about L50, so whats gonna happen, people will now Grind to L50...probably in a week, and have L50 dropped gear (this is Grandmaster level) it takes about a Month to get Journeyman gathering to happen (let alone crafting) so think about it, a week after Launch (as the game stands now) we will have fully equipped L50 geared people running around, which makes crafting 0-10 gear....well worthless and non-existent needed as people can grind the lower level spots and just sell the gear on the market where gathering/trading/selling would take more time then just standing in a spot killing this 1 mob that drops it for an hour

Uboon

Noaani wrote: »

Uboon wrote: »

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?

Cap a character's level to the tier of the Node they are a citizen of, so that crafters have someone to sell their stuff to.

I can't stress enough just how much of a bad idea this is.

You make a lot of good points in these forums, so I'd like to know why this is a bad idea.

As far as I can see you can still race to max level, you just need to level your node with you. When your character hits 50 you will have access to max crafting too - which is a win all around is it not?

Azherae

Uboon wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Uboon wrote: »

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?

Cap a character's level to the tier of the Node they are a citizen of, so that crafters have someone to sell their stuff to.

I can't stress enough just how much of a bad idea this is.

You make a lot of good points in these forums, so I'd like to know why this is a bad idea.

As far as I can see you can still race to max level, you just need to level your node with you. When your character hits 50 you will have access to max crafting too - which is a win all around is it not?

Because of how Citizenship itself works.

You'd have to clarify how you think they should overhaul that, too.

KrystalKitten

Uboon wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Uboon wrote: »

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?

Cap a character's level to the tier of the Node they are a citizen of, so that crafters have someone to sell their stuff to.

I can't stress enough just how much of a bad idea this is.

You make a lot of good points in these forums, so I'd like to know why this is a bad idea.

As far as I can see you can still race to max level, you just need to level your node with you. When your character hits 50 you will have access to max crafting too - which is a win all around is it not?

The only bad idea i think this is is it takes about 72 hours to hit L25 with a full set of L20 gear it takes well over a Month to get nodes up to Journeyman level and even then not all crafting is available (currently we just have mining i think we still don't have Lumberjack) so people dont want to wait for L20 gear because we still wouldnt have it and people have already gotten like 5 L25 with full gear Characters, me, im just happy at L20 and just a few L10 gear....now I die quick to things that are l20 and can't PVP for my life (which...a PVP would hate...so maybe that's bad?)

Andi

Locking player level to a node won't even work. People have freedom of movement, and not everyone will be a citizen of any specific node. Citizenship is voluntary and can only be achieved at 10, and that's a good thing.

Imagine how people would play if their progress were gated by their node. They'd level to their current cap, drop citizenship, log out for 2 days, log back in and run to the highest node available.

This would be antithetical to the goal of building communities around nodes.

Noaani

Uboon wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Uboon wrote: »

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

If you could change one thing about early-game crafting that would make it feel more rewarding right now, what would it be?

Cap a character's level to the tier of the Node they are a citizen of, so that crafters have someone to sell their stuff to.

I can't stress enough just how much of a bad idea this is.

You make a lot of good points in these forums, so I'd like to know why this is a bad idea.

As far as I can see you can still race to max level, you just need to level your node with you. When your character hits 50 you will have access to max crafting too - which is a win all around is it not?

There are a number of reasons, but they won't become apparant in game until much later on.

With what the alpha test is now, I'm sure it would make some sense to do things this way - but changes should be made (and suggested) with an eye on the final game, not just with an eye on the alpha test as it stands today.

With the live game though, not every node will be able to be bought up to max level. If your neighbor node hits level 4 before you do, your node becomes a vassal of that higher tier node, and you are unable to level up your node any longer. This doesn't mean players should abandon their node, as there are perfectly valid reasons for wanting to be in a given node as opposed to being in a metropolis tier node.

Not every player will want to be a citizen of a node at all, let alone a metropolis node. There is no specific need to be a citizen of any node if a given player isn't after any of the specific perks that come with citizenship.

It may well also be optimal for some people to be in a city level economic node that is next to a metropolis level scientific node.

Additionally, there are reasons players will want to spend time in more outlying areas (resources, for one), and so they would probably want to be a citizen of an outlying node.

These players are valuable members of the larger node cluster community, but your suggestion would see them needlessly capped - something that would be absolutely horrible for these specific players as they would be more reliant on caravans getting the resources from those far flung parts of the world in to the metropolis nodes for consumption.

Basically, a change as drastic as limiting your characters level to the node you are a citizen of would change the game completely, and would require redesigns of a large number of systems just in order to make the game function.

There may well be a reason that is important enough to warrant making a change like that, but doing it just so that crafters have a market is not that reason - there are plenty of other, better ways to achieve that without gutting the game as a whole.

And that is without even getting in to the notion that this change wouldn't have the desired effect at all, if anything it would probably be the opposite.

If a change like this was made, players would do one of two things. The first is that they would all just move to what ever node was the metropolis - Intrepid would need to make changes to the games design to allow for this otherwise people will simply play a different game (an open world PvP game where you are prevented from leveling to the cap is simply not viable).

If this happens, it has no change at all on crafters.

On the other hand, the other possibility is for players to stay in their node and sat at the level they were stuck at. I don't see why any player would do this, but lets look at what they would do if they did.

The first thing that would happen if players did this is they would stop upgrading their gear. If I am level 20 nd can not progress, that means crafters just lost the ability to sell me level 25 gear, and level 30 gear, and level 35 gear. I just have no need to buy it off of them. I have my level 20 gear, and I am stuck at level 20, so no need for me to be a customer of theirs any longer.

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