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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.
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.
The progression issues in one sentance
SmileGurney
Member, Alpha Two
You hit level 10 in a matter of hours, level 20 in matter of days. You might be able to craft level 10 gear in matter of 1-2 weeks, and level 20 gear in matter of months.
This is your general problem Intrepid, also speaking frankly whoever has come up with the current resource costs for level 10 and 20 gear has no idea about the time investment required. 400 metal ingots for a 2h weapon? 200 wooden boards for a longbow? And all of that part of a loooong list of materials, and I won't even go into glint/gold cost. All this also likely translates into terrible gathering and crafting skill progression rates.
I don't care what level you are, but common gear should be ALWAYS cheap and fast to craft from the basic gear sets, which should already provide some variety in playstyle. Stop exclusively catering to Lineage and Archage niche crowd. What happened to "We hate grind" mantra from your podcasts?
P.S.
Why do recipes require MULTIPLE weapon touches and armour "touches"? These are vendor "crafting tax" item. Simplify and streamline this, 1 set of vendor tax is more than enough. Pointless clicks.
The same applies to very limited storage size (stacks size also) and access to basic crafting stations. All crossroads should start with level0 processing and crafting stations. All village size nodes should get level 10 processing and crafting stations for free.
Nothing makes sense here, and for me too much here screams: "we don't respect players' time, deal with it".
This is your general problem Intrepid, also speaking frankly whoever has come up with the current resource costs for level 10 and 20 gear has no idea about the time investment required. 400 metal ingots for a 2h weapon? 200 wooden boards for a longbow? And all of that part of a loooong list of materials, and I won't even go into glint/gold cost. All this also likely translates into terrible gathering and crafting skill progression rates.
I don't care what level you are, but common gear should be ALWAYS cheap and fast to craft from the basic gear sets, which should already provide some variety in playstyle. Stop exclusively catering to Lineage and Archage niche crowd. What happened to "We hate grind" mantra from your podcasts?
P.S.
Why do recipes require MULTIPLE weapon touches and armour "touches"? These are vendor "crafting tax" item. Simplify and streamline this, 1 set of vendor tax is more than enough. Pointless clicks.
The same applies to very limited storage size (stacks size also) and access to basic crafting stations. All crossroads should start with level0 processing and crafting stations. All village size nodes should get level 10 processing and crafting stations for free.
Nothing makes sense here, and for me too much here screams: "we don't respect players' time, deal with it".
My lungs taste the air of Time,
Blown past falling sands…
Blown past falling sands…
10
Comments
We are *almost* at the point where what we are seeing should resemble the intention for live - and if what we are seeing is close to the intention for live, then we have bigger issues to contend with.
"When it feels like we would need to explain every step of the design improvements required instead of asking for a tweak to a minor thing, something's not right."
If you want a working economy, item destruction has to be a thing. Through loss and wear and tear. This way resource requirements could be far lower, and at the same time the economy would require constant supply of resources and labour. Actually creating a self-sustaining gameplay loop.
Blown past falling sands…
This way players can get introduced to the game and when they start to hit a level where things slow down and they care about gear, they can craft or buy gear.
It's obvious that Intrepid will never slow down their game enough to make player leveling stay at the same pace as artisan leveling, so might as well just adjust the system.
I feel like someone at Intrepid (tbh most likely Steven himself) had thought that players will magically split themselves in half, where some of them only do professions from one side and others only do professions from the other side, and then they come together in the center and trade, under a cute rainbow and flying unicorns.
Except, obviously, that will never be the case. Let alone at low lvls when there's 0 fucking trading tech, 0 knowledge of what other people even need at any given moment, and all the desire to just "get this shit done with and go level up already".
And when people hear that leveling to 10 is insanely quick, I'd imagine they'll see all of this running as an even bigger waste of time.
1. You should be able to stack resources of the same type into the same stack. Yes that means, 15 common, 5 heroic, and 1 legendary copper in ONE stack.
2. Personal storage space in nodes should be larger, especially if this silly idea of inflated resource requirements is to continue.
3. Every node should start with a full set of Novice stations at Crossroads stage, and Adept or whatever its called now at village stage.
4. Lower the cost of processing and crafting
5. Lower the resource requirements for item crafting, the current numbers are pure nonsense.
Yet again we are reaching level 20 and the level cap half naked, in level0 gear. As far I can see Intrepid has already gave up and has increased item drop rates to lower our blood pressure, but this isn't a solution.
I also have one question, how is this going to affect crafting skill progression if to craft an item you need far more resources than in the P2? Have they increased EXP gain from crafting? Otherwise this is going to seriously slow down progression.
Also I'm no Medieval History major, but the last time I checked, crafting a longbow doesn't require enough wood to build a ship, and 60 sea bass.
Good luck with finding your Principle Economy Designer, this isn't it.
Blown past falling sands…
This is what I was hoping was fixed in this phase, they did address in the June or July stream.
Lots of great ideas here.
My other complaints.
1. Level 1 through 10 you level WAY too fast.
2. Level 1 through 10 crafting you level too slow.
3. The starting areas needs to be more beginner friendly. No more running the gauntlet between starting crafting areas. Just put a full set of benches on each side and storage there. It's just level 1-10 stuff, who cares.
4. There needs to be more resource nodes to actually allow players to level crafts. Everyone should be aiming to level just about all their crafts to 10. You can narrow that down a bit but since everyone can hit a novice level node... well everyone does... Once you get to apprentice it gets a little better since people have to start choosing what path they're going.
5. (more of a future issue.)No items are BOE, nothing gets destroyed unless it's deleted. There will be gear saturation within a few months. New players will have no need of crafting or gathering for their gear, just for Nodes and guild projects, that takes away so much agency away from the player.
I think wilderness 0 is fine without crafting stations, but returning all construction crates to a Crossroads SHOULD instlal that bench, so that people can then craft and grow the node via crafting xp/have a reason to be there right away
I want gathering and crafting to matter, but this approach delays any satisfaction from levelling and crafting for far too long. Also that never solves issues with items which never disappear from the economy, and gold inflation.
Blown past falling sands…
IMO crafting needs a 100% overhaul. Start by making it fun and intuitive. You should not need to spend hours of reading to figure it out.
Crafting needs to fit the level and pass of progression of the game.
Remove many of the useless steps required. Its not fun and scares away casuel players. I maxed out my crafting in ESO as a casuel player. ESO crafting in deep and meaningful, yet you can learn it without much outside help.