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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.
Game Design Issues
Lark Wyll
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Played Alpha 2.3 yesterday a good amount. Here are some issues and/or questionable decisions I have with the game design direction presented:
a) Why is the game being pushed to a hyper grindy survival craft co-op? Pax Dei was a complete joke and that's the direction this game is being pushed towards. Why? Why make the game for a tiny niche player type block? The game design choices are alienating the bulk of mmo players.
b) Why is the vision of the game shifting so drastically in what's presented to testers? Is the current grindy survival Pax Dei crafting vibe game implemented just for testing to give us something to log hours doing or is this your new intended direction for the live game?
c) Why remove adventuring / combat loot when the bulk of the players play mmo's for group oriented combat activities? You're killing your own player base and game health. This is not viable for a mmo.
d) "Crafters make the best shit" has morphed into crafters make the only gear available in the mmo to do combat with. How did this garbage get past the drawing board? Honestly, how do you expect to grow an mmo without loot worth doing combat activities for that excite players to log in and do? How is this a viable live game launch model in your eyes as a dev team? Oh boy, I'm excited to log in and get schematics as loot that are BOUND, and I'm not a crafter. Sweet loot, 100% jacked to get a piece of paper the only thing I can do with is vendor for a pittance.
e) Why are Processing costs completely absurd? This devalues gathering mat values as processing is a major cost sink. Processing requires a metric ton of mats and high coin cost and high time cost. Ie. very few will pursue Processing because it is such a major cost, ie. markets will be flooded with gathered materials selling for very little. Lower tier/grade gathered materials will be unused except for bulk crafters power levelling because the processing costs are too exorbitant.
f) The game's direction seems to be a game designed for no one to play. The game design choices are alienating, where they should be made accessible and fun for all. If you want everyone to do the survival crafting loop don't make it insanely cost prohibitive to do.
g) This is the second phase in a row where combat player loot has been crippled and now removed nearly entirely. Unless you want to play this game with the only seven other players on the server fix combat loot. This is a dead game design without loot worth player time to pursue. If you think building a survival crafting game is going to sell well, why wouldn't players actually just go play true survival games. Hell, New World's is light years ahead. What is the vision for this game now? Its going off the rails in what is presented to testers.
Feedback suggestions that are simple:
1) Restore gear drop rates to Alpha 2 phase. Feeding crafters and starving combat enjoyers makes for a DOA game. Find a way to balance this without fucking over one side or the other as harshly as has been done the past two phases. These phases are not worth even testing for game design. This would be a non-starter for me for a live launch, I would not play these systems for gear, loot, econ as is.
2) Get rid of the first node phase where there is no storage. Advance straight to the tier where there are NPC's and storage and town board combat/artisan missions. This is the most frustrating pain point I encountered this phase. We have to keep running back to the starter towns of Sam Hope and Lionhold, etc. to bank our materials. 100% every node needs a storage and town board and repair NPC vendor at the very start. This is horrible design currently, making everyone keep returning over and over and over and over to the damn starter towns ruining the new player experience for everyone because the servers are stressed with us all in consolidated towns.
Spread the player base out by putting storage, Repair NPC, and town board missions at every node so players can immediately spread out on the server and level up nodes. Forcing everyone to do town board missions only in the starter towns pre-determines which nodes will be levelling and congests server performance issues with lag, rubber-banding, desync, etc.
3) Crafters can make the best items. There still needs to be fun and frequent drops to motivate players to play the game and do combat. Please stop listening to the selfish idiot crafters who ask for there to be no drops for combat in the game so that they can get wealthy. THE GAME WILL DIE IF YOU LISTEN TO THESE IDIOTS THAT DON'T CARE ABOUT GAME HEALTH, THEY JUST WANT TO MAKE A QUICK BUCK AND DON'T CARE IF THE GAME IS A DUMPSTER FIRE AS LONG AS THEY ARE WEALTHY IN IT.
If you only make a game for crafters, that's the only player type you will have playing your game. You don't need a massive world environment for a gathering, processing, crafting sim. Why make this massive world with no loot worth chasing for? What was your team smoking when you decided let's make a vast empty world with no drops and have everyone buy our game to play Pax Dei artisanship grind as the core game play there is?
4) Stop developing place holder garbage systems and especially economies. Work towards the actual products with sound game design loops and economy for all player types. Make artisans excited to play their loops without fucking over combat oriented mmo players that like good loot to chase and gear progression via combat activities.
If you ask someone how should I build crafting in our mmo we're developing and they respond 'fuck over the combat players and remove all of their loot'. Obviously you shouldn't listen to players that only care about their own self-interest in making money in the game at the expense of others. That this needs to even be said makes me lose respect for your dev team and faith in the direction of the game. Fix your shit. Mob grinding for glint is not a sustainable mmo model.
a) Why is the game being pushed to a hyper grindy survival craft co-op? Pax Dei was a complete joke and that's the direction this game is being pushed towards. Why? Why make the game for a tiny niche player type block? The game design choices are alienating the bulk of mmo players.
b) Why is the vision of the game shifting so drastically in what's presented to testers? Is the current grindy survival Pax Dei crafting vibe game implemented just for testing to give us something to log hours doing or is this your new intended direction for the live game?
c) Why remove adventuring / combat loot when the bulk of the players play mmo's for group oriented combat activities? You're killing your own player base and game health. This is not viable for a mmo.
d) "Crafters make the best shit" has morphed into crafters make the only gear available in the mmo to do combat with. How did this garbage get past the drawing board? Honestly, how do you expect to grow an mmo without loot worth doing combat activities for that excite players to log in and do? How is this a viable live game launch model in your eyes as a dev team? Oh boy, I'm excited to log in and get schematics as loot that are BOUND, and I'm not a crafter. Sweet loot, 100% jacked to get a piece of paper the only thing I can do with is vendor for a pittance.
e) Why are Processing costs completely absurd? This devalues gathering mat values as processing is a major cost sink. Processing requires a metric ton of mats and high coin cost and high time cost. Ie. very few will pursue Processing because it is such a major cost, ie. markets will be flooded with gathered materials selling for very little. Lower tier/grade gathered materials will be unused except for bulk crafters power levelling because the processing costs are too exorbitant.
f) The game's direction seems to be a game designed for no one to play. The game design choices are alienating, where they should be made accessible and fun for all. If you want everyone to do the survival crafting loop don't make it insanely cost prohibitive to do.
g) This is the second phase in a row where combat player loot has been crippled and now removed nearly entirely. Unless you want to play this game with the only seven other players on the server fix combat loot. This is a dead game design without loot worth player time to pursue. If you think building a survival crafting game is going to sell well, why wouldn't players actually just go play true survival games. Hell, New World's is light years ahead. What is the vision for this game now? Its going off the rails in what is presented to testers.
Feedback suggestions that are simple:
1) Restore gear drop rates to Alpha 2 phase. Feeding crafters and starving combat enjoyers makes for a DOA game. Find a way to balance this without fucking over one side or the other as harshly as has been done the past two phases. These phases are not worth even testing for game design. This would be a non-starter for me for a live launch, I would not play these systems for gear, loot, econ as is.
2) Get rid of the first node phase where there is no storage. Advance straight to the tier where there are NPC's and storage and town board combat/artisan missions. This is the most frustrating pain point I encountered this phase. We have to keep running back to the starter towns of Sam Hope and Lionhold, etc. to bank our materials. 100% every node needs a storage and town board and repair NPC vendor at the very start. This is horrible design currently, making everyone keep returning over and over and over and over to the damn starter towns ruining the new player experience for everyone because the servers are stressed with us all in consolidated towns.
Spread the player base out by putting storage, Repair NPC, and town board missions at every node so players can immediately spread out on the server and level up nodes. Forcing everyone to do town board missions only in the starter towns pre-determines which nodes will be levelling and congests server performance issues with lag, rubber-banding, desync, etc.
3) Crafters can make the best items. There still needs to be fun and frequent drops to motivate players to play the game and do combat. Please stop listening to the selfish idiot crafters who ask for there to be no drops for combat in the game so that they can get wealthy. THE GAME WILL DIE IF YOU LISTEN TO THESE IDIOTS THAT DON'T CARE ABOUT GAME HEALTH, THEY JUST WANT TO MAKE A QUICK BUCK AND DON'T CARE IF THE GAME IS A DUMPSTER FIRE AS LONG AS THEY ARE WEALTHY IN IT.
If you only make a game for crafters, that's the only player type you will have playing your game. You don't need a massive world environment for a gathering, processing, crafting sim. Why make this massive world with no loot worth chasing for? What was your team smoking when you decided let's make a vast empty world with no drops and have everyone buy our game to play Pax Dei artisanship grind as the core game play there is?
4) Stop developing place holder garbage systems and especially economies. Work towards the actual products with sound game design loops and economy for all player types. Make artisans excited to play their loops without fucking over combat oriented mmo players that like good loot to chase and gear progression via combat activities.
If you ask someone how should I build crafting in our mmo we're developing and they respond 'fuck over the combat players and remove all of their loot'. Obviously you shouldn't listen to players that only care about their own self-interest in making money in the game at the expense of others. That this needs to even be said makes me lose respect for your dev team and faith in the direction of the game. Fix your shit. Mob grinding for glint is not a sustainable mmo model.
4
Comments
This change is better than the bs "mobs drop a ton of items" stuff.
We just did no gear drop starvation in a2.5.
If it is placeholder grind while they develop the game that is fine to a degree for artisanship if they informed us, but that's not how Intrepid is pitching the econ changes they opted for.
Crafters love it when everyone is forced to buy their products. How much of the server pop is going to hang out for months waiting for artisanship to catch up to finally get gear and buy your stuff? How much of the pop will quit when they realize there's little to grind for other than schematics? A server can't survive without a population and running the pop away from the game to satisfy crafters desire of a no loot drop mmo game will doom the game. If Intrepid keeps this direction the game will be DoA.
Intrepid kinda promised no grind in the past, but that broken promise is far from the first and will definitely not be the last.
The pacing issues can be resolved in other ways, other than just giving people free gear and completely making crafting useless until deep into lvl50 progression.
If you think Crafters are happy right now, you're clearly not a Crafter.
1. Crafters are by far not being feed in the current change if anything we are severely starving. Our ability to even make what is the simplest weapons is encumbered by having to sell 3-4 times the material it requires to make it. And with bags and storage the way it is taking those trips outside the starting zone then heading back are long and dangerous.
2. While I agree they need to spread us out not until after we hit level 0 and the current nodes not all being even levels at the start also doesn't help. But completely getting rid of wilderness or the crossroads level ,not sure which your proposing by your phrasing to get ride of, lacks understanding on how the game is supposed to feel when nodes start rotating in growth. Having swaths of land with no friendly NPC's at all will promote a lot of player driven desire for how we affect he growth of the world. If done right nodes next to each should have influences leading to some unique scenes and mechanics. I'd love a node hitting level 4 starting a blizzard that covers the wilderness nodes next to it in snow changing the mobs and terrain.
3. Right now we can't even make basic butt gear let alone the best gear in the game. The fact that drops that still happen no matter how infrequent can be any tier within the grade is utter bullballocks if you actually looked at the recipe requirements instead of screaming give me my toys back you can see they crippled both systems.
4. I would say the systems themselves aren't the issue the problem is the math attached doesn't work in a suitable way. An example the reagents if you had it so in apprentice level processing you required reagents to make apprentice materials when adding in novice mats you could do something neat. On top of that if the combat players could acquire said reagents in the world as drops instead of freakin buying them at the vender then you have a nice interaction from both type players sides.
The economy though is pretty messy right now, they have a bunch of gold sinks for little apparent reason, There's no immediate easy way to make gold, and my biggest issue we still have no gear sink. even with this shite long time to make gear we will eventually stagnate when gear oversaturates the market because it never then leaves the market.
Now that out of the way I want to ask people what would be a workable limit to having full drops in game. I will Gladly be wrong on this but seems early game in ashes is rough enough that something needs to give.
My proposal they limit full drops to first only being up to apprentice so level 10. This then prevents the race to level 50 down the line and the most friction point of server start between the types of players calms down. Then by the time we get nodes up to village level progress leveling should have slowed to the point that nodes are stable with adventure progression.
The other two restrictions are that we should only see T1 of each grade as drops seeing a T3 full drop in the current system is right now is ridiculous when you understand what it would take to craft it.
The other is what rarity should show up and really uncommon on regular mobs with named and bosses having rare. This should go hand in hand with turning mat rarity down because as an artisan picking up leggo mats at basically zero progress in my progression path also sucks. I should not be able to get so many heroic + mats so early that Lionshold is already full.
Overall I disagree with basically all of this.
Obviously you want more loot drops. There are loot drops, but they are rare. So craft. If you don't want to craft get materials and trade them for gear from a crafter. If you go about this solo it'll be hard, it's not met to be solo'd. I'll agree there should be a type of common gear dropped a little more frequently by mobs, a 'damaged' common. So you can still progress. That's something I'd like to see. Even so just join a guild, make a plan, get on board, and feed your crafters. If that's not fun than don't play test, vote with your feet.
The reason the drops are as they are is so crafting isn't just a max level or end game activity. If I can gear well enough to reach 25 or 50 without having to even think about crafting I will. Most players do. If you don't want to craft you'll need to rely completely on other players. This drives you to the market. Other wise we're playing the same old game that has been re-release a hundred times over the past two decades. And there's plenty of those to play. So is this niche? No to me. I don't mind crafting, and it can be enjoyable, I don't mind grinding mobs for gear either, or dungeons.
I'll agree on storage and a repair vendor at a minimum for the node. That make sense, a little quality of life will help the nodes in the early stage.
As far as the clumping of players. There are two starting zones now, and this start was WAY better than the last one. Also I'm pretty the main goal for the devs right now is testing the server meshing, so they needed us clumped as much as possible. This is just a test..
4) Stop developing place holder garbage systems and especially economies.
requires a metric ton of mats
You obviously didn't craft much before this. Can this be tuned more? Probably but they won't know until they get info.
My suggestions.
1. Mobs drop more frequent 'damage' common gear. (still fairly rare). That isn't as good as common. So anything the crafter makes will be better. Maybe the pendulum swung too far here, and gear drops by mobs should exist, rarely, because they are rewarding. Also you don't want to completely stop someones leveling progression, slow it down with trash gear drops fine, but not stop it. The balance to keep will be ensuring there is value to the crafters as they level up so crafting isn't just an end game/max level activity. Just an idea of loot rates for the 1-10 levels, these will need to change as leveling slows.
2% drop rate for 'damage' common (1 out of 50 kills)
1% common (1 out of 100)
.5% and lower for the rest. (1 out of 200 or more, progressively getting rarer.)
Devaluing a large group of mmo players time and enjoyment in the type of game play they log on to mmo's for (group combat) to make artisans happy will kill the game. I'm not asking for artisanship to not be profitable. All activities must be engaging, rewarding.
Albion Online already has a system for this exact dilemma. Every gear item in the game is player crafted. But the items created also serve as loot drops in combat activities for players that aren't artisans so everyone is happy.
This idea that game developers have to neuter one player activity type to make the other happy is stupid and it keeps being peddled by people sadly. This has already been solved. Just use Albion Online's gear system.
Davey, I've started an econ play through for this phase as I was bored of mob grinding from past ones. I'm not a crafter normally but I did craft myself some starter gear. My point wasn't that artisanship is well designed now, but the direction of changes made to combat enjoyers isn't sustainable.
I agree the game systems aren't designed well for any player type. I'm tired of running back and forth between the woodshop and the smithy as an intended dev time sink for us, and back to Lionholf or Sam for storage management. Processing costs are untenable. Crafting material requirements are ludicrous for low level items. I did mention Pax Dei to encompass this.
Regarding my input being divergent from the game design intent I'd say the devs themselves are changing the shape of the game so rapidly that players need to provide the sort of feedback I am to help keep the game from going in a direction that we don't want to engage with it, especially when it would be met with a live launch negative feedback bombing from casual players. As testers one our main functions is to help provide feedback that steers the game towards a successful launch.
The dev's recently eliminated one of the six node stage/tiers as they thought it was redundant. I'm suggesting to remove the low end and go straight a stage that has the basics (storage, repair npc, town boards). I'd call it like a pilgram stage. A settler encampment w/NPC's around that say 'hey we'd like to build a settlement here, will you help us? Here's what we need help with to establish one'.
There is player agency and dynamics when you allow players to spread out on the map and choose where they want to start their character journey. If someone or a group or a guild wants to run straight for Jundark, the Desert, or Tropics and start building up a node there immediately after getting their mounts, they should be able to do so and have basic functions as I described, available to facilitate an open ended sandbox player experience. By funneling everyone back to Sam Hope, Lionhold in Riverlands the population cannot spread out, cannot level up nodes of their choice, cannot freely explore and bring resources back to level up any node of their choice. They are tethered by storage, npc availability, repair npc, town board availability. They're missing the sandbox element in their design. I rode all the way to Winstead early to store my mats I gathered there and start building up that node, but I couldn't as there was nothing where the node was. You'd have to gather and not pick up all of your mats. This is not viable game design.
Also, for combat enjoyers you aren't interacting with nodes to level them up. You're simply grinding a farm spot that happens to be in one. I'm a combat player and I never even consider what node the POI levelling spot is in. I choose POI's to combat grind in that have good loot and are suitable for my level for difficulty. What I'm getting at is there is no interaction between nodes and combat players (as the player). The node gains xp from your activity but there's no engagement or interaction. There needs to be basic functions available at the node at the start of server launch that give missions, storage, repair npc vendor and the node advances from activity from there. That would allow guilds and the player base to spread out and make the node system truly alive BY PLAYER CHOICE, not by dev's funneling us where they want. A sandbox game needs to have player choice, not be on rails. If a guild wants to rush out and race to level up Sandfoot in the Tropics that needs to be viable. Can't take grandma out there to the woods and say, sorry gram's no restroom facilities here. The very start must facilitate node advancement equally and have player choice freedom supported. By forcing everyone to remain near the starter crafting stations and storage in Lionhold/Sam Hope the player base can't spread out.
I don't understand how someone is paid to create such a junk system. This is elementary and any critical thought at all would have fixed these issues long before now. Its literally just copy and paste the darn NPC stations throughout the world and stop placing them miles and miles apart. Put them all in one cluster and make them available to all regions along with the other amenities I mentioned.
Part of me thinks they're doing this to stress test their server network bandwidth and performance but it makes for junk game design. The game legitimately is worse to play than Alpha 1 in nearly every way. I don't understand how so many years later and the game is so much worse than Alpha 1 player experience. The game was very raw and combat was jank, but it wasn't constipated like Questing, Artisanship, and combat loot design, and architecture/art assets are since. We also had big pvp nightly sieges way back then that were fun that still haven't been introduced since. I'm getting off track with UE5 gripes so I'll end here.
Going to try and boil down some of your arguments together. In general you argue that bad systems, that will kill the game on launch, are okay because they are slightly better than they were in previous testing iterations. This isn't good enough as an expectation. They are rapidly advancing in development stages towards live launch and the game is getting worse, not better from a systems stand point.
Does the current game design choices (econ, combat loot, questing, node development, entry character experience) feel good? Is it designed well or is everything still junk tier unplayable that will kill the game if launched in this state of game design?
If a game design philosophy would kill your game at live launch because the gaming mmo community does not want to engage with your system than it needs to be corrected now. A major overhaul and change in philosophy and direction needs to occur now. Their response to A2.5 economy player feedback and sentiment was to knee-jerk and destroy combat loot even more than was experienced in A2.5? How is that even defensible? This type of game design will drive the masses away from the game. Be realistic, people aren't going to sub to this type of junk systems that disrespect their time.
Regarding removing combat gear/loot drops to prop up crafting viability and profitability from the start of the game, this is a self-interested argument that is self-serving and not functional for a healthy game. The game must encourage all player types to enjoy the game from start to finish, not kill one off to make another happy which is literally the meme gif that floats around with the parent in the pool holding up one child while the other drowns, and another is a skeleton at the bottom of the pool. This junk argumentation is not helpful to the devs. They clearly don't know have a grasp on how to make enjoyable game play loops. Its a major struggle for them currently. Obviously.
Albion Online has fixed this issue AoC is shitting the bed with.
In Albion Online:
-Crafters make every item in the game.
-Every gear piece has a Crafted By Player Name tag on the item.
-Players can take crafted items they made, collected, or purchased to a Black Market NPC in Carleon to sell to the NPC who runs a reverse auction of sorts. The NPC buys every gear piece available in the game at ever increasing prices until someone sells the item to the NPC which resets or lowers the offered price they will buy the next one of that item sold at.
-Items sold to the Black Market NPC become the loot pool available in the game's combat activities (PVE). Pve players gain loot from doing pve and what they receive are randomized loot rewards from the Blackmarket gear other players sold (that was crafted by yet another player).
-When you die in full loot pvp your gear drops and the other players who killed you pick up your gear.
-There is a gear destruction chance when you die in full loot pvp zones which fuels crafting to resupply demand.
This is a healthy example of game design for artisanship and combat enjoyers both pve and pvp. Ashes of Creation has no clue what they're doing with their economy clearly. Artisans aren't happy, gatherer's aren't happy, combat (pve) and especially pvp aren't happy. The systems are dysfunctional and they're making them progressively worse because there appears to be a lack of sensible direction or competence.
I have been crafting this phase and doing an artisanship play through. Its still junk. The game can't force everyone to do a survival crafting co-op play style. I am in a large guild, see my tag on my posts? Think of the game from the stand point outside your own preferences. Will others want to play a game where there is no loot? Will others want to play a game where you grind and run around in circles for hours because the game disrespects your time this much? Will others put up with standing in one place shooting mobs for hours with nothing to show for their time?
Game design can't be made to satisfy >5% of the mmo player base and run off the 95%+ that would sub and keep the game alive and profitable.
And to another point, every single effing game that releases now in literally almost every genre is a fucking gathering, processing, crafting sim. Ruining combat in a mmo to prop up the most vanilla activity in all of gaming (go gather a node and process and craft widget with it) that is experienced in every other game is a very poor design choice by Intrepid. Their artisanship design is not going to surpass other games in the market. The combat, both pve and pvp, must stand out to make AoC worth playing. If they screw over combat, they are screwing over their own game.
Pax Dei and Dune Awakening both flopped when their design went to elements of game play where artisanship was the only thing to do. Dune Awakening's Deep Desert pvp zone boiled down to a travel sim, gathering sim, more travel sim, process sim, make something. There was no pvp, there was no pvp loot. There was not combat content. Game died past Hagga Basin. That's where AoC's game design is right now. It looks like the Deep Desert of Dune Awakening. Its that level of poor design. It needs a complete overhaul. The place holder systems, feedback on the place holder systems to tweak in small ways will lead to the game flopping.
Intrepid must find game design systems that make all player types want to engage with their game. Their current game play loops discourage players from engagement. They're going in the wrong direction in all content types, at least for what is presented to us in testing. What player type would play this mmo on launch with their current direction? What player type would think this mmo is better than other mmo's currently on the market? Who would the current game design loops appeal to to leave a positive review about the game besides white knight fan boy's aside?
LMAO! That's what my response was attempting to do. But your og post basically boiled down to "no gear loot = shit game design".
You're a loot goblin lol. I started typing a reply and then it hit me. You are a loot goblin. Or a munchkin XD XD XD.
I basically disagree with everything you said.
Could they pull some stuff from Albion? Sure, the crafter tag is neat. The Full Loot, I'd be okay with that, but that'd make the game more niche, which is odd you bring that up but complain Ashes is too niche. So your solution is to make it more niche with Full Loot mechanics? (O.o)
I'd be fine with full loot, but no I don't think they should adopt that element. Some form of gear destruction would be fine if gaining gear was as simple as in Albion Online.
Sandbox mmo's need to be progression and loot based because the systems tend to be quite raw. Questing certainly doesn't look like its going to prop up the game, nor will instanced content. Loot and group pvp in open world are the draws. There's little pvp and there is little loot ie. what type of mmo player is the current direction of game design for? And are there enough of them to support a mmo?
Is it okay for an Elite mob to only drop gear 20% of times it is killed?
There are definitely people who basically go 'no it should drop the gear every time otherwise I'm wasting my time killing it', but it's not clear where you actually stand on this, from what I see (maybe both my parser and my reading comprehension failed in which case, sorry, but please point it out).
Yeah that's true enough. There does need to be loot, lets not devalue it. But it should be rare, I think we could agree on a fair balance between obtaining gear via drops and via crafted methods. Is that balance perfect today? I don't know, I've been stunted by basically zero resources to gather lol.
So the pillars of the game would be.
PvP - Caravans, wars/sieges, open world
PvE instanced - 20%, I have no idea how this will look, which is what has held back a bunch of my players from my normal group.
PvE open - POI grinding, Quests?
Gathering - a mindless activity mostly
Processing - UI activity
Crafting - UI activity
The game loop currently at least how I've seen it
Gather resources
Kill mobs as you gather resources
Craft some gear
Join a Node, maybe? And contribute when can/want
Kill some stronger mobs
Gather more resources
Have no money
Run Caravan or Raid them
Craft more better gear
Gather resources
Kill mobs
Get a freehold? Farm some potatoes or something I guess
How it was.
Do the starting quests for the starting gear
Grind poi
Be max level
run caravan or raid
get bored
pk pk pk
granted the economy was broke and the caravans were broke too so it could have been more fun, but that wasn't fun. And I do enjoy POI grinding or dungeon grinding, but I need other stuff to break it up.
so will there be enough players to support this mmo? we just don't know yet. that's just the nature of alpha. You may not like it, i may not. This has been one of my questions from the beginning. "What is success for Ashes?". I think dungeons and instanced content is under leveraged. I think there needs to be more options for balanced pvp. Arena isn't a good answer to that. If the game leans to heavy into PvP than it'll lose a LOT of PvE focused players, PvE players don't tolerate PvP like PvP players tolerate PvE. So, who knows. I'm hopeful but realistic about it.
The upped the drop rates
I don't think of drop rates as a % occurrence. I'm sure there must be a % rate in the background but as a player I would say that what matters is that gear progression must be married to character level progression in a way that feels good. Currently in testing character levels and gear progression are extremely disjointed and this is highly problematic for all elements of game loops.
As a character levels they need to feel that they are gaining power and receiving rewards that keep up with their character advancement. Being level 25 with starter gear is non-viable for a mmo audience. Combat players should not be forced to rely on gear progression solely from crafters.
For the same reason NPC's currently sell tons of schematics for crafters is the same reason from a design stand point that doing combat activities must reward gear advancement that keeps up with players progress as they level. Getting to level 20 with starter gear is obviously not a great experience.
Wish they would divulge the % increase as its so vague. They could say increasing the drop rates and its a 0.0000000001% increase rate. Disclose the % increase so we can test.
Storage is rough for sure. I sell everything below rare. I hear some sell all below heroic.
I did my first group grind last night for aroun 90 minutes at Oakenbane at level 13. I picked up two white drops off the ground that were vastly superior to the items I crafted for myself. We had an afk player so maybe their drop they didn't collect for party to roll on or bugged. And I saw one rare necklace and was lucky to win the roll. I didn't have any jewelry before going there. The necklace is very nice.
Crafting needs a full revamp. I agree with others who feel that there are elements of their game design that feel like they're utilizing AI to create some of the systems incorrectly, and that artisanship appears to be one of them. Idk how any human would think some of the early crafting costs and time sinks make sense.
I crafted a mixed mat tier Mist Daggers yesterday that came out as Rare quality. It took a lot of time gathering and buying mats in trade chat over previous game sessions to get rare or better 22x copper and 18x zinc and 8x ash wood to process and then craft and run around to Aven's area multiple times and the woodshop area then back to nodes and storage management to do all that. It doubled my physical weapon power rating from 200's to 400's. Okay nice on paper. In testing vs mobs though it appears to be nowhere near a 1 to 1 power to damage ratio. Maybe closer to 15-20 power = 1 extra point of damage? I didn't test enough but plan to. It helps but 200 power is not huge in actual combat to make grinding mobs TTK feel drastically easier.
I picked up a common great axe from Oakenbane off the ground that came with 1k-1100 power (I forget exactly) and I assume is a level 10 weapon. I got this within 20 minutes of joining a mob grind group. So that was great.
All of the effort I made earlier in the day to craft the Rare Mist (walker?) Daggers was more or less a waste as I was over level 10 when I crafted it but didn't have a level 10 armor or weapon recipe to craft instead. So basically I was spending time and mats crafting a lower level item that below the threshold of being an automatic replacement level item for my character level. And I've only done a couple quests and a bit of solo mob grinding. Mostly I've been gathering and some commission boards to level 13 at the time.
Maybe if trading posts / markets were available in nodes at the start of the server artisanship would be a more viable path for solo player gear progression that is able to keep up with your level. Tbf I didn't solo grind mobs above level 10 much for schematics to drop. I was mostly gathering looking for high tier mats at that point. The higher tier mats are probably wasted on low level gear and should be saved for level 10 and 20 and crafting tools.
There are some good things going this phase but crafting feels very Pax Dei. I guess its not for players like me and that's okay. I prefer crafting systems that don't require a guild or groups to funnel mats to one crafter as the material cost scaling makes it prohibitive for solo players or everyone to rank up their crafting to be self-sufficient.
I prefer self-sufficient gaming, not collectivist gaming experiences for artisanship. There's something nice about exploring and gathering mats and returning to a hub and making something related to gear progression yourself and seeing your artisan levels rise. Being a gathering bot and begging for something to be crafted for you and needing to align your play time and character location with a guild crafter to be online and where they're based out of and trade all of the mats without being able to see the costs (because you're not a crafter, doesn't have the recipe to see the mats cost UI tool tip) so have to guess, ask, or go on ashes codex 3rd party app to look it up....
The latter experience isn't nearly as satisfying as being self-reliant and self-sufficient for artisanship for me.
Another problem with it as a non crafter in a guild is even knowing what the crafter can make. You have to find them on discord, look up their name from an org. Chart, dm them or find them when they're in a v/c, bother them to ask what weapon names they can craft at your level range for your class. Then ask what mats are required, etc. Or look up on codex site. Its all a hassle. Its not fun. And by the time you've went out gathered all of the mats of the rarity tier you want crafted, travelled to the starter zone station npc's to buy the required reagents, done all of the intel for your guild crafter and mats required on ashes codex, and figured out where the crafter has to craft, and travel there...you realize you could have just grinded to level 20 already and skipped all of that nonsense for a single level 10 item craft.
At one point I had thought that AoC's players shops/stalls would be able to do this, but I just double checked the wiki and I think my assumption was wrong. It would've been a real nice thing for the game, cause players would simply be able to buy all the mats they need and then just go to the crafter (who could be offline) and press a button.
Ideally this method would produce a basic version of the item (at whichever rarity the mats were), while an active craft by an active player would have all the dials and customization that were promised previously.
I thought that too about the Ashes's player shops. Right now they're just a micro auction houses. Hoping they add this in or something like it. FF had something similar for just selling items, people could open shop on their characters and sell stuff off them. Had to be logged in, which caused issues with queueing. But still a cool thing.
@Lark Wyll
All of the effort I made earlier in the day to craft the Rare Mist (walker?) Daggers was more or less a waste as I was over level 10 when I crafted it but didn't have a level 10 armor or weapon recipe to craft instead.
This is the current issue.
1. We level too fast from 1 to 10
2. We crafting levels too slow from 1 to 10
3. Not enough resource nodes compounds #2
Suggestion in the discord, More wholly thought out
https://discord.com/channels/256164085366915072/1411167705943380069
Crafters might benefit from a bulletin board system where either they post a material order and a reward to the first player to fill it, or a non-crafter posts an order (with the materials) and a crafter can fulfill it. Just a thought.
That could be cool.