Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Look real close at that statement. I'll assist you by highlighing the other important part for you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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
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.
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
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?
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Because of how Citizenship itself works.
You'd have to clarify how you think they should overhaul that, too.
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?)
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.
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.
This is not really a valid point to bring up right now, as there has been literally zero attempt at balancing this so far, and in fact the developers have outright said that they made crafting harder for the 2.5 build than they intend it to be.
In other words, the 'issue' you have here was already a non-issue before the build was pushed to the alpha server.
Ah yes, good points. Thanks for taking the time. Damn I thought I was on to something there.
Would this alternative work: Cap player level by the highest level node on the realm? No citizenship required.
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The fact that the initial notion you put forward has flaws doesn't mean the core idea isn't valid.
As to the second idea you've put here, the games design has a softer version of that built in.
Content is supposed to be tied to node state eventually. When this happens, there won't be any higher level content until there are higher level nodes. No higher level content, no way to level to higher levels.
Your above post makes it appear as if you said the things I said, and I said the things you said.
Actually yes.
I was also in Apoc, and pre alpha testing.
Those tests mean nothing. The current test is no indication of how things will be tuned on live, it is simply a test for functionality.
The developers have said things like time to level and such have not had much work done on them.
So, if you make the assumption that we do not know how long it will take to level up crafting, and we do not know how long it will take to level up adventuring, what is the issue you have?
Now, discussions like this are still valid, but keep in mind that we currently just don't know the intention, and Intrepid probably don't either.
We don't know if the intent is that players can maintain their crafting with their adventuring level in order to be able to make their own equipment. This may be the intent, but it may not.
We don't know if the intent is that adventuring can be leveled faster than crafting, in order to hinder those that are griding out of the gate due to a lower availablity of gear until crafters catch up.
We don't know if the idea is that crafting can be leveled faster than adventuring so that een the pointy end up players leveling up have access to player made gear.
RIght now, we just don't know. We don't know because Intrepid currently don't know. That is what testing is for. Expect some tests where leveling crafting is easier, and some where it is harder. That is - again - what tests are for.
By all means discuss these things, just be aware that these are tests, they are not necessarily indicative of what the live game will be.
That is my point.