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Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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.
Comments
There is one thing I would like to address yet again though:
New Tiers
The new tier names with Initiate, Adept, Radiant etc feel like a wasted chance on an actually more structured crafting and gear system.
Steven explained it in the stream the following way:
Within each level bracket, for example 1-9 which you need Novice crafting for, there will be different tiers so Initiate, Adept and Radiant WITHIN the 1-9 bracket, adding a new comprehensible layer of gear progression, where the lowest tier within each level bracket will be much more accessible than the highest tier, without making any of them useless.
THAT is the way I was hoping to see this change being implemented, now it just adds another layer of words that people will in the end still refer to as level 10+ gear because that's what it is in the end, nothing more nothing less.
Please please please reconsider this, I really really loved the idea. It felt like an actual addition, more progression, more content and more context for all the gear and level brackets.
If the devs are worried about that, they should opt for high-information, but if they opt for low-information, they just have to commit, and not let it restrict development decisions.
What? Why would it drop straight-up completed gear? You have the chance just to drop components that players and crafters need to combine in order to allow crafters to create gear. Why would you just hand out the gear?
If we're talking about the first 30 levels or so, I'm not opposed to this, since I personally like the idea of crafting being something you have to intentionally specialise into because you like it, instead of making every player do it with dailies, taking away their personal agency and prioritisation. But why would you just hand out gear and continuously make crafting obsolete?
Why not encourage players to trade, and make their progress dependent on a personally chosen balance between investing time spent directly on grouping, adventuring, and levelling, versus time, resources, and potentially artisanry progression invested into gear progression when the player deems it necessary?
- Instead of spoonfeeding players automatic gear progression?
This question leads into the topic of levels/enchantments/rarities:
There should be open communication about the end goal.
What percentage of players should own the strongest gear? How about advanced, average, and below average?
Personally, I'd say roughly 3%, 25%, 50% and 22%, respectively. (For context, I would expect myself to be in the average group.)
But this distribution should only be reached after a year or so of server lifetime. Before that, the strongest and above-average gear should only be distributed VERY slowly, as more and more players find time to spend on artisanry.
And how strong they'd be?
I'd say up to +30% for the strongest gear, +15% for above-average, +0% for average, -10% for below average. As a measure of total effective power (differential relative to each other, not relative to unequipped characters, which is an irrelevant stat.)
To repeat: I am talking about overall power increase, not value increases for each individual stat, which would amount to massively stronger total power increases on items that offer many stats.
I actually think the numbers should be slightly higher (think another +5%) for the peak of each bracket, but I'm rounding down to make them less controversial and more representative of the curve.
In order for these numbers to be fair and achievable, the 3% group and 25% group, and even the 50% group should have to sink more and more significant deliberate effort into gear progression.
Think: An average player might spend 10% of their time refining their gear. An above-average player might spend 3-5. A 3%er either spends most of their time being a crafter themselves, or they're a high-ranking guild-member, or playing the game so much that their percental time investment becomes secondary, because even 10% of their time is more than most other players would spend on gear acquisition.
The benefit here is clear: Players who prioritise fighting and levelling get better at fighting and levelling. Players who prioritise crafting, economy, and diplomacy/soft power get access to better gear, improving their fighting chances regardless of fighting skill.
Everyone always has an option to contibute and improve something by identifying where their existing strengths and open potential lie.
Keep in mind when you look at these distributions:
- A player who invests 1000 hours into fighting and none into crafting will probably still have stronger gear than a player who invested 100 hours into crafting - because his community will value him enough that they'll readily supply him with trading opportunities and rewards.
- A player who invests 1000 hours into crafting and as little extra time as necessary into fighting might still fight better than a player who only has 100 extra hours invested into fighting.
The gear difference will ultimately mostly level the playing field.
- A 50%er might sometimes beat a 25%er who has played the game for the same amount of time, due to said 50%er's dueling skill being significantly superior. But they will still feel the disadvantage of their inferior equipment, and succumb to it regularly. Rendering both player's efforts meaningful.
On the one hand, these significant medium-high strength increases encourage players to invest large amounts of time, effort, and resources into individual growth and artisanry skill development.
Contrastingly, the high costs that lead to this small distribution of the best gear also means that players have to make more deliberate decisions:
The further your numbers deviate from a system roughly corresponding to these guidelines, the more these decisions become automatic. More automatic decisions mean less player agency, less individual involvement with the game, less interesting community dynamics...
This needs to be simple to learn and understand.
In endgame it needs to be challenging of course, but it can still be a challenge, while its simple and logical to follow.
I'm super glad to see this, not because I care a lot about the specific numbers, I know those are flexible, but because it so clearly demonstrates to the unfamiliar that things like this can be really easily changed.
I think this ratio is also a really good start point because players are supposed to move in groups of 8, so 'getting into a party and grinding for 1 hour' sounds like it will be rewarding now in a way that fits my personal understanding better.
Obviously this is a really difficult thing to explain in short-form, so my group continues to appreciate all the effort being made despite that harsh difficulty curve, Intrepid.
Let the further speculation begin!
My group will speculatively/tentatively interpret that 1:7 ratio roughly as follows:
Those are the 'baseline assumptions' being used by my group in having the 'thank you Intrepid, this is a positive change' response.
A few speculations/hopes based on those assumptions:
As a 'sales pitch' it would probably be summed up as:
"Dive into dungeons or climb mountains with your allies to bring back rare items and materials that can be crafted into gear and supplies for taking on powerful enemies, or relax and help build up the various Organizations in and around your Node Home to support the Adventurers wandering into the Wilderness... and the Catacombs...'
(and yes, to us, changing from 4:4 to 1:7 really does change the 'vibe' from 'what are we even doing?' to that 'sales pitch' above, even if it's inaccurate to the intended reality of the game).
What aspects of the current crafting system do you like and dislike?
- I like using rarer components for higher level gear. I dislike the arbitrary feel of input rarity to output rarity. Not needing all Legendary ingredients to make legendary gear. Zerging for gear drops to invalidate crafting killed a lot of fun for the game. The leveling system not being only large groups farming PoI will also help crafting since sometimes its impossible to reach nodes surrounded by high level enemies and no way to level up enough or get gear reasonably with a small group of players. It also made commissions feel unreachable with higher level enemies being slow and painful to kill.
What makes a crafting, gathering, and vendor system fun for you? What kind of scenarios would you like to see included through the system?
- I like filling inventories of resources and watching numbers go up. Gaining levels in gathering and crafting skills while getting a fat coin pouch is very fun to me. I dislike that it is very difficult to determine the economic value of the resources you have and the vender value for rarer resources being negligible. Vendors should be competitive with the market so I don't have to spend half of my gametime figuring out prices and finding buyers. I don't know if the economy is supposed to be slow bartering for balance or if there are plans to make more quality of life buy orders and pricing discovery.
- I would also like to see each profession bring its own power like being able to make legendary crates to turn into a 1-man mini caravan or cooking legendary meals be worth it for insane power boosts or profit to sell your finest food with stats no one else is making to the most competitive guilds. Let me make brew rarity increase potions and scrolls to grow Heroic tomatoes. I like ridiculous minmax grind to work for dozens of hours to find a few points here and there.
- My favorite crafting system ever was in Tree of Life where it used the resource rarity but it was uncapped and scaled based on the resources. A Legendary weapon wasn't always the same stats, if you used more legendary materials and quality buffs it would have a higher rarity value and be stronger. Rarity was a range of quality based on inputs for stat variance. Maybe using rare fuel gives a boost to quality.
I would like to see rarities for mounts have more impact on stats or ways to grind to make a significantly faster mount if I tame a heroic drop.
How do you feel about the timing of material gathering? Do you feel each biome is unique with what materials spawn?
- Material gathering time is hit or miss. Find a fresh spawn of higher level nodes and you don't have enough inventory for it all or wander for hours not finding the node you are looking for.
Do you feel the rebalanced stats on gear and gear levels has improved? Do you like the changes? If not, why?
- I like the rebalance.
well, how many items can we make (or one person) in 1 hour of crafting? 1 low/mid/high pants or weapon? 3? 5?
what if i just buy everything and hit craft?
i suppose you mean one hour of gathering? but till need processing
What stat rebalance? The article doesn't talk about any stat rebalance as far as I saw.
But no, none of the itemization changes have impacted a key flaw IMO in how combat works, which is that that Power is better than Speed
I wrote about it earlier, https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/66995/1-to-1-ap-rating-as-rating
Since writing that post, diminishing returns have been added to AP rating. (I haven't collected data to try and determine if it is the same formula as AS rating diminishing returns). But that still does not address the base issues that make AP better than AS. And when gear gives a choice, the better choice is going to be AP Rating nearly all the time (unless you are really pushing the AP Rating diminishing returns and not the AS Rating diminishing returns)
The way the combat system works, if a character had 0 Attack Power they'd do 0 damage no matter the attack speed.
If you double your attack power (easy at low values of Attack Power/Attack Power Rating) you double your DPS. You'd need to double your Attack Speed to double DPS, which is impossible at low AS Rating (maybe impossible at high AS Rating? I think it used to be the limit of what you could do before the stat changes)
The conclusion from that is there is some base AP Rating/AP needed, before you get to the point where adding AS Rating improves DPS by a larger % than adding the same amount of AP Rating.
You could do the math to figure out what that base number is. Except it involves the diminishing returns formula, which players aren't informed of (and is a PITA to collect the data samples need to reverse engineer)
Even when that minimum AP Rating number is hit, after investing some into AS Rating it is again optimal to invest into AP Rating again. Which means the optimal stats for DPS is always weighted towards power which both reduces build diversity (an AS rating focused build will never be as good as an AP focused build) and reduces optimal gear choices. Longbow is virtually ALWAYS the better stat stick choice over Shortbow, etc. Flayer's Fleshripper is stupidly good.
Along with just the base DPS math, Power is additionally better than Speed because
2.5 system? Not much, it was really broken. I only scratched the surface because it just wasn't fun. The UI was hard to manage, not being able to mix different tier materials, the count of materials needed for crafting didn't make sense. The good of the system is its potential of real depth and meaning for the crafter.
What makes a crafting, gathering, and vendor system fun for you?
Gathering: I like the 'survival' like skills, hunting, fishing, farming ect. The more those emulate reality the better for me. Currently Hunting is boring, it's a means to an end. Fishing is an afk activity, so that's boring. Farming is just a UI menu clicking. So far they are not fun. If they stay this way I'll just do what the Guild needs for as long as I can tolerate it. Things like mining, logging, herbalism are not bad imo. The availability of the nodes was high, so you could basically ALWAYS find something that you needed, maybe not copper, but you could find a lot. As long as I have stuff to harvest I'll go harvest it, I HATE running around for hours and finding basically nothing of worth. When that happens I find it hard to go back to gathering or even care about it.
Crafting: I like finding recipes of gear the mobs are wearing. That's great. I don't like the UI for the crafting. IT's just too many clicks and not smooth enough. It's like an engineer designed it lol
Vendors: NPC vendors? Nothing really to say here. It'd be nice if they had stores and were not just standing outside like statues. It's okay if vendors sell common items, but nothing higher. Anything crafted should ALWAYS be better than anything from a vendor. even if it's common vs common. I would like to take orders from a vendor as a quest to deliver items or provide materials.
What kind of scenarios would you like to see included through the system?
Not sure what 'system' you mean. Player stalls where they sell their goods is basically a node wide auction house. It's a way to sell goods, but wouldn't a way to sell services be good too? A blacksmith for higher? or something like that. Lets say you're a blacksmith quite a few recipes it'd be nice to have a way to advertise that in the same way goods are at these auction stalls.
I'm looking forward to the changes in P3.
How do you feel about the timing of material gathering? Do you feel each biome is unique with what materials spawn?
Depends, some stuff was easy to get, which is good, other things were basically impossible to get in a high enough number to level your craft.
Do you feel the rebalanced stats on gear and gear levels has improved? Do you like the changes? If not, why?
Still aiming for a "power" level or "gear score". With a game that has so much depth and complex systems it's surprising to see such a basic stat/attribute system.
EDIT: This article has been updated. In general, players can expect that roughly one hour of crafting will yield comparable progression to about seven hours of mob grinding - though outcomes will still depend on player knowledge and skill
I'm a little confused by this. 1 hour of crafting will be comparable to 7 hours of grinding? So a crafter will level 7 times faster than someone killing mobs? Or the will the crafter gain 7 times the gear? What is progression here?