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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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Mob drops, coexisting with crafters
GoodSheperd
Member, Alpha Two
I've been mulling over this idea and figured I'd bring it forward as an idea.
Currently when gearing you either hope someone suffered enough to level an artisan skill high enough, are settling for epic and legendary 10s, or are farming mobs for hours on end to maybe get a blue if you are lucky.
The idea I'd like to propose is return mob drops to their pre 2.5 drop rate, or an improved drop rate rather than our current suffering. The only difference is, make all mob drops worse than a crafted piece of gear. If intrepid could make all mob dropped gear cap out at 75% the power of the same piece crafted it would allow people to gear easier while farming and still allow for the need of crafters to make full powered gear.
Currently when gearing you either hope someone suffered enough to level an artisan skill high enough, are settling for epic and legendary 10s, or are farming mobs for hours on end to maybe get a blue if you are lucky.
The idea I'd like to propose is return mob drops to their pre 2.5 drop rate, or an improved drop rate rather than our current suffering. The only difference is, make all mob drops worse than a crafted piece of gear. If intrepid could make all mob dropped gear cap out at 75% the power of the same piece crafted it would allow people to gear easier while farming and still allow for the need of crafters to make full powered gear.
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What we need is a proper bottom-to-top build up of the econ base. Give us muuuuuuch more lvl1 gatherables. None of this "copper is only available once in a blue moon" bs. This will allow crafters to level up faster and start on apprentice crafting sooner.
Way more lvl1 mats would also directly mean that node buildings come online much sooner too, so that apprentice gear will start coming online, most likely, in week one rather than in week 3-4.
Ideally, now that Intrepid are planning to have 3 tiers of items within a grade of gear, we should have the lowest tier of the next grade use mats from the previous grade, with mob materials from the proper lvl. This way crafters can start on their next progression step sooner and crafting pace can keep up with lvling much better, while we wait for nodes to lvl.
TL;DR showering people in gear is not the answer.
Indo agree thay showering kn gear isn't the solution, and that t1 respurces should either be interchangeable or drastically more abundant. I dont think it should take nearly as much effort to make get to apprentice crafting either. Lvls 1-10 are such a small portion of the game, the only reason to high level craft is just two king out a toon.
I still think that dropping weaker gear isn't a bad idea, even if it only dropped gray. This way it still full encourages getting a crafter to make you something better.
1. Mobs only drop "damaged" or "degraded" gear. So a mob would and could drop a copper greatsword, but it'd be a "damaged copper greatsword". The drop rate would still be low though, but higher than it is. Higher tier mobs drop have higher rates and chances to drop higher tier 'damaged" gear. This can persist throughout the leveling process. I'd advocate for very rear actual gear drops. So low, no one actually grinds for them, but have them exist.
2. Material drops from mobs at a low rate, about the same as the damage gear drop or a little higher. This might not be needed if gathering and markets are balanced. But it'd still give that combat focused player an easier in to crafting, or something to sell on the market if they don't want to bother with gathering or crafting. In no way should this be a faster way to get material actual gathering.
3. Gear should be dismantlable for either materials or study it for a chance of or progress towards the recipe. This should include all gear. Such as the rare drop in idea 1 that dropped from a mob, maybe you can dismantle it for a high tier material or study it to learn how to make it. Or you never got that one recipe of that super cool breast plate but now you can buy a number of them and study them to learn it.
These were the main ideas. There are a ton more. I'd like to see a dev discussion on this if there hasn't been one. The ideas above would allow for mob drops but would still hold crafted gear as the best and most common option. There would still be a lot of balancing to make all this feel right. Looks good on paper to me but implemented wrong it could be a mess.
Some of these points are better worded than my approach but cover the same idea.
It woukd benefit everyone without punishing the crafter, nor the grinder
This might not mean they implement that, but they certainly have a high awareness that this is what a majority(?) of players want. From here (the next Economy pass which should occur in August going by the current timelines we have - subject to change) it will probably be a lot more about 'the specifics' and giving our feedback on those specifics.
Or, y'know, a bunch of posts all basically going 'as per my previous e-mail...'
Just hope they acknowledge that a change is needed. Forward is forward.
Obviously we can remove completed gear drops entirely, but I propose another idea
- gear drops should be severely nerfed to 1 in 3000 (or more)
- complete gear drops should have a random durability reduction
- recipes should have a high chance to come from deconstruction kits
- all novice recipes should be **very** simple to make entry into crafting more appealing (example: wooden sword - 10x oak logs)
- there is a quest which can drop the weapon, the ingredient, or the recipe for the Phantom Blade. It does not more than 1 of them. (If deconstruction kits allowed recipes to come from the item, this would not need a critical fix.)
- Progression every 10 levels without recipes in-between feels. . . bad; I hope and expect this will change with future updates.
- Crafting gets out-paced quickly as I become level 20 in only a couple days. This eliminates the need for novice and apprentice items. . . The only solutions I see here are to slow the progress of the player's leveling. Which will cause players to be upset because they will have to get more XP to unlock their abilities... The other solution I see is allowing "Day 0" skill points to boost players to have a level 10 profession.
~ Real Situation Currently ~
Players will get to level 50 and get their gear drops from enemies. Then crafting will never be relevant until Master and Grand Master is unlocked from wealthy players.
why do you have to have crafted gear while levelling? level gear is supposed to be disposable, only there for a short time. you'd craft great lowbie gear for twinks, but not for your main - but you'll invest in better gear when the levelling process slows down to a crawl.
you want crafting relevant for:
- endgame gear
- alts
just drop some white/green stuff and have better gear be craftable. it doesn't have to be all extreme. ashes isn't a survival game.
I really like the idea of recipes from deconstruction kits
Great summary - These indeed are ideas I've seen in the past, and all are interesting thought-starters! The team is currently working on some pretty big artisanship and economy changes that we'll be discussing on the Dev Update Livestream this Friday, so be sure to check that out!!
People already complain that grinding mobs is the worst content in the game. Removing artisanry as an early choice of gameplay would force people to grind mobs. Doesn't sound like a good approach to design to me.
This is not WoW where you can get to "end-game" in a day or two.
During that Pandaria Remixed event I hit max level on a character in like 2~ hours I think? Something like that? I'm no speed runner but I was surprised lol 💀
-Make sure that the dungeon sets and the Named drops are the bis, and let those only drop their crafting items/recipes. Playing and leveling is possible with dropped gear, but all the high end fancy stuff needs crafting. Also lowers the current pressure on the named mobs, which opens up the game more. And at the start of a phase, people can't power level by camping a particular named mob that drops overpowerd weapons.
-Make gear degradable. Dropped gear can't only be repaired X amount of time while crafted gear can be maintained indeffinatly, through crafting. This gives people a window to level with dropped gear but still presures the guilds and even servers to hurry up with getting crafting up.
-Horizontal progression. Earning a full set of carphen gear so you have a change to clear the higher levels of the tower. Same system for all the dungeons. Make them a lot harder as you progress in them and give them a dungeon set that helps you survive there.
-Let crafted gear be promotable through alchemy or someting. Turning one metal into another is a core aspect of that lore for example the legends of the philosopher's stone. So turning a level 10 legendary sword into a level 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 would be possible with enough skill and mats. This would be especially worthwhile if all the enchanting, tempering, sockets, ... get maintained.
-Let only crafted gear be augmentable through echanting, tempering, sockets, ...
TLDR: Crafting shouldn't JUST be an endgame activity.
Just about every MMO does it like you said. It works but players will end up in a singular gameplay loop. Quest grind or mob grind to max level, find the recipes for the BIS, grind the materials, be awesome. On it's face not a bad system, played out, but not bad. Ashes (I assume) strives to create a system that isn't like others, but one that elevates the value of crafters, not just end game crafting, but the crafting that it takes to get to max level. You can't do this if you have mobs dropping gear like pinatas. So a critical balance has to be struck.
This would mean that the fun of dungeon crawls is still there; a reasonable level of gear is realistic for people at lower levels, such as smaller guilds, solo players, and others, to obtain. However, crafters are supported for the "good versions" of gear with enhanced stats.
Giving everyone access to common drops at a sensible rate means players will be well enough equipped to venture into SB, Seph, Church, Carph, and other PoIs to help gather resources, recipes, and cash to support the crafters and meanwhile let them dip their toes into PvP whilst they save/invest/work with crafters to upgrade their equipment to higher levels suitable for PvP etc.
There will still be an active demand for the better versions, however, rewarding the crafting effort.
The exception to this should be named mobs who would still have a chance to drop the rarer versions of named equipment.
Just my 2c at a compromise I think would work well.
Obv as with all other similar posts/threads, I disagree with the above and have behavioural data proof.
I'm only contesting the idea that crafting auto-dies if drops in the world are generally available, not the sentiment that the current system is unpleasant.
And ofc, my opinion is probably also already known to devs. Throne and Liberty has it right, for their game, to the point where they could improve crafting/artisanship if they wanted.
Ashes should be similar (tweaked for their game parameters such as Item Durability), since the original proposed system can be considered to be the same/precursor to TL's system, and lots of people seem to keep suggesting variations of it.
But it's not as binary as 'we must craft everything', nor even 'complete wearables should never drop'.