Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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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?
It can be scaled up to incorporate the higher grades easily since it is just a linear graph.
Droppable weapons are marked with gray as to not leave out feelings from either side.
For drops into the higher than radiant tiers, I think They should be limited to something, but I am entirely unsure how to work that in.
Maybe a system where the higher than radiant leveled items are damaged(stat dampened) upon receiving, and a corresponding crafter of the relevant level can only repair them if they have those specific materials in a 20% of the recipe cost.
Or a global event that locks Radiant crafting into a location but further allows for the increase in higher than radiant drops?
Because the droppable gear at common of the final level bracket will far out perform Initiate and Adept level ranges. Any hardcore pve guild will just push all the way to level cap, and start destroying crafting cities to further gear lock players from crafting.
https://discord.com/channels/256164085366915072/1411044986463457451
it's been nice to go recipe hunting and I have felt really useful for my guild as it's leatherworker.
I feel important, useful and when I give out gear to new players I feel like I am providing a service.
I felt none of these things in phase 2 when it was easier to grind for gear. so, so far I feel like phase 3 made a change for the better and it's a good direction.
the new cost of crafting makes it feel like I am investing in something and it feels like it gives me good justification for putting a price tag on my craft.
if I had to give any negative criticism I would say that you spend a good amount of time crafting in novice tier. it would be nice to have some variety things I could craft at this level. with everything needing grem skin it get's a bit monotonous.
What I Like:
1. Enchanting System: The player base enjoys enchanting gear, but the current nerf feels excessive. A balanced “Goldilocks” ratio—not too extreme, not too weak—would enhance the experience.
2. Simple Money-Making Loop: The Glint farm → Caravans → Gold loop was straightforward and effective, making earning gold accessible and engaging.
3. Material Farming: Previously, material farming was simple and intuitive, though recent changes have made recipes overly complex.
4. Player-Driven Economy: This core principle is key to keeping players invested and should remain a focus.
5. Phase 2 Stat Lines: The stat lines in Phase 2 were easy to understand, with clear 3:1 or 1:1 ratios. Returning to this “Keep It Simple, Stupid” (KISS) approach would improve clarity.
What I Dislike and Suggestions for Improvement:
1. Convoluted Stat Lines: The new stat lines are confusing and less intuitive, even if they’re easier for developers to balance. Instead of overcomplicating, adjust the simple ratios using decimals for finer tuning.
2. Static Rarity Spawns and Timers: The reliance on static spawns and timers introduces too much RNG. Dynamic systems would feel more engaging and less frustrating.
3. Recipe Costs: While rare items should require more materials, the current 10x material requirement for gear is excessive. Start with a 3-4x increase from Phase 2 and evaluate from there.
4. Hunting System: The hunting mechanics need urgent fixes to restore functionality and player satisfaction.
5. Bag Size Limitations: If RNG procs from materials like basalt and granite are part of the game, bag sizes must be increased to accommodate the additional inventory demands.
6. Material Clusters: High-rarity material clusters should vary in composition rather than being uniform, adding depth and excitement to gathering.
7. Diminishing Returns (DR): Hitting diminishing returns by level 25 feels premature. DR should be reserved for max-level players with decent gear to maintain progression balance.
8. Proc Sets: Random activation of proc sets is frustrating. Instead, introduce an activation button with a 70% chance to trigger within a set timeframe, giving players more control.
These points reflect my thoughts on the current economy and stat rebalance, with suggestions to improve player engagement and streamline systems.
1. Experience, to level up your character most power players will calculate that to xp per hour.
2. Money, you always get something from critters cash wise
3. Loot, treasure, gear or junk loot to sell
4. Group activity or solo, you can play either way
5. Faster advancement which takes you to higher levels and advances your Avatar
6. Collection of unique items from rare spawns or drops
Benifits of crafting:
1. Fairly safe don't have to worry about competing for spots.
2. If you like to solo for resources crafting is the way to go
3. You will explore alot more of a realm if you craft, hunting rare resource nodes will take time.
4.Crafters and makers like to make things, a world that allows them to do that
5. Sometimes you get to sell things.
The problem is there is no real benefit to crafting unless, you like to make things for bragging rights, you won't make money compared to grinding, in fact you will have to grind to make cash just to process your materials, this is the gold sink. The Grinder doesn't have that problem, they will cause inflation and even a low-level piece of gear will cost gold to get it. to make crafting work you need to answer the following:
First, How do we establish a monetary system? Example gold, silver, platinum)
Second, Establish a clearing house to buy and sell goods (Current system is used for emergency storage). No taxes but a pure way for folks to sell off either grinded goods or crafted goods.
Third: Grinded goods will always be at least one grade lower than crafted goods.
Fourth: Grinded goods can be upgraded by crafters to their current level. Apprentice=green, journeyman=blue
Fifth: crafters can tear down grinded goods for resources.
Sixth: Crafter have secondary outputs they can sell for cash.
Seventh: XP has to be comparable to group grinding.
Eighth: Crafters need a reason to exist other than I like to do it.
Hope this helps, I want a realm other than a Korean grinder with "Boby physics"
Luck and good hunting
After reaching level 7, I noticed a strong imbalance between crafting and mob drops. By that point, I had received only two drops — both the same light armor hood — while I was able to craft a full light armor set for myself with far less time investment.
This shifted my gameplay away from mob grinding for XP, and instead toward gathering glint to sell for silver, just so I could purchase mats, refine them, and craft gear.
Resource Availability & Spawn Timers
Some materials felt disproportionately scarce.
The issue wasn’t lack of spawn locations, but rather long respawn timers.
After server maintenance, I jumped back on quickly and suddenly found plenty of the same materials I had been struggling to find before — reinforcing the spawn timer bottleneck.
Longer respawn times make sense for higher-tier resources. But for novice crafting mats, the required grind is excessive — e.g., needing around 40 threads for basic gear felt punishing, especially when competing with other players.
The Loop Problem
To progress gear-wise:
Grind mobs for hours to build up silver.
Use silver to purchase mats.
Run wide loops farming respawns, competing with other players.
Repeat.
The system currently feels like it forces players into crafting if they want to gear up — even those who might not enjoy that playstyle.
Suggested Adjustments
More Reliable Low-Tier Drops
Mobs should drop a wider pool of common/uncommon items, even if not class-perfect.
This creates marketplace liquidity: players who don’t want the drops can list them for sale, while others can buy what they need.
Keep Crafting’s Relevance at Higher Tiers
Overland mob drops should stay limited to common/uncommon tiers.
Crafted gear should dominate rare+ tiers, making crafters the backbone of the economy while still giving non-crafters viable paths to progress.
Adjust Resource Timers for Novice Materials
Reduce respawn times or increase node yield for entry-level mats.
Keeps early progression smooth without undercutting the importance of crafting later on.
Conclusion
Right now, progression feels bottlenecked by crafting requirements and silver grinds, with very little gear reward from actual combat. Balancing drop rates and resource timers would create a healthier loop:
Drops → Marketplace liquidity.
Crafting → Endgame and economy driver.
That way, both playstyles — grinders and crafters — can feed into and sustain the game’s economy, rather than forcing every player into the same loop.
It is fun to really put in the work gathering and getting all the parts for an upgrade. Gathering is like a fun slot machine when there are not static nodes around.
I am pissed static spawns still exist. Rarity should be random and determined at the time of harvest based on a roll with the players gear and luck. Get rid of this static horse shit.
Orange and enchanted gear feel like they are not worth it anymore. Just seems like a waste to have it.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
recipe for a simple SINGLE adept bow (forsaken spell bow):
25 bow refining mats ( baught from vendor)
10 riverland essence (dropped by mobs like 1 in 100 mobs, if you want more than one item its still a lot of grind ... im lvl 14 now and still only got about 25)
20 emblems of the specific item set (there are several sets f.e. Forsaken blade emblem/dropped by mobs like 1 in 10000... yes its that low might even be lower)
!!>>>105<<<!! ash boards ... (first you need to get 105 wood form ash trees 2-5 each tree/ then you have to process it into timber for a lot of money with additional mats that you have to buy from a vendor/ and then you have to process it further with ANOTHER mat from the vendor into boards) so to even get one of these you have to pay the vendor multiple times and have to spend crafting tax multiple times)
60 daffodil bols (similar to the boards/first you make threads and then bolts out of deaffodis)
and then 35 fish oils from largemouth bass ... how anyone could get a legendary fish let alone 35 within their journey from 10-19 is beyond me .... just laughable ....
FOR ONE FREAKING ITEM !!!!!!
AND THAT DOESNT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THAT YOU HAVE TO LVL UP YOUR CRAFTING PROFESSION WITH 100s OF CRAFTS FOR A LOT OF GOLD IN THE FIRST PLACE TO EVEN BE ABLE TO LEARN THE RECIPE ....
and then the RARITY ISSUE ..... there is stuff you just cant get in a high rarity ... like fish and animal carcasses ... ADDITIONALLY you cant just find 105 legendary ash wood ... im lvl 19 in lumberjacking and found !!!>>>>>5<<<<<!! legendary ashwood so far ... so even if you go with white standart items ... you need to invest dozens of hours to just get this one white item if you ever come across enough emblems that is ... if you want it in higher quality ... you need to invest 10000s of hours ... if you do it in a guild with 100 people ... ok yes ... you can pull it off to give like a few people good lvl 10 gear ... but for normal people in normal guilds ... its unoptainable ... AND THIS IS EARLY FREAKING GAME ;;;;;;...... WHAT THE HELL ..... WHAT DO WE NEED TO DO FOR LEGENDARY LVL 50 GEAR ="?!=?!!=!=!?=!"=!?=?!=!!=!ß invest multiple generations of my lineage ???????? ffs
crafting is so broken its laughable in this state ...
In short, whatever benefit there was has been 'put out to pasture' and the Econ/crafting aspects of the game are, as of this post, even below BDO and New World.
If not for you all at Intrepid, who I can watch make these same sorts of terrible implementations in real time and know that you are not making any money from it, I might be pushed to believe the same sort of jaded nonsense that most players say:
"The Devs don't care" and "This must somehow be another way to make money."
But thanks to you all, I am able to be patiently aware that these things take time and apparently are incredibly hard(?) so I can at least give them a few more months to find out if they really did just decide to give up.
Please let people know clearly if you decide to give up, Intrepid. Paying attention to your efforts takes time, and we're with you for as long as you still want to try, so don't leave us in the situation TL is putting us in now.
Now unless you are someone who has found and is happy farming/hoarding a static gathering node that is producing legendary/epic, you are basically cut out from the economy as a gatherer alone. This should in theory be viable, i think part of the goal with making recipes so complicated was making it so low tier mats were required right? I don't think that is working at all, I hear over and over again from people in discord when anyone is asking for advise on gathering and trying to make silver/gold for gear, just to vendor or delete materials lower than epic.
Nearly every system in this game tends to function as a funnel for everything valuable to go to those who already have the most. I am 28 mining and 21 lumberjacking. I would love to be able to make a decent sum selling some of those rare mats to buy better gear, etc. Move up from the bottom rung of the economy. Instead I can sell even the most rare things I find for generally super small amounts, often less than a silver even for epic rarity. We can get an apprentice gathering tool, for approximately 1 gold, but after that it becomes insanely imbalanced. An apprentice bag and apprentice gathering gear, cost at least 20 gold each. In what world does it make sense for apprentice items like this to cost more than an entire starter set of level 20 (current endgame) gear? There is a similar gold barrier to move up to a journeyman tool, currently there are very few even available, but they are 25-30 gold each. So I am almost to master mining, but can't afford apprentice bags or journeyman tools
So all of my rarest materials are just going for pennies to hardcore players who got out first and no-lifed to get their levels first, or were funded by a guild, and the rich get richer. And that is to some degree even as intended. I have no problem with people who are willing to put in a ton of extra work early from getting rewarded from that, but here the funnel that is built into the economy is so hopeless, I think the causal player of the game is just being pushed out of meaningful participation in the economy altogether.
There is a funnel kind of like that in all aspects of the game. I fear the feedback has been so much from the most hardcore players, and they have the loudest voices also - are more likely to give consistent loud feedback for their own desires, that the game is right now catering too much to hardcore players. The leveling grind is insane for the standard casual player. The economy is certainly inaccessible to the average casual player in the same way. The current crafting system with so many components, which I think in theory at least was to give an economic need for low level basic crafting components, is completely ineffective in that regard. The advice I hear over and over from players I consider very knowledgeable is go vendor everything lower rarity than epic. I think some of the most dedicated gatherers just drop everything from their bags that is not heroic or higher. This is especially the case because larger bags are effectively nonexistent for the vast majority of players.
- Only basic starter gear or very few unique pieces should drop from mobs.
- Mobs should drop a wide variety of crafting materials that you can only get from killing them and specific to each POI/mob type.
- Materials from mob drops should contribute as much as the gathered mats, but not every recipe should be 50/50, depending on the item it could be 0% or 100% but between all the recipes it should tend towards it.
- Remove the drop chance tied to level.
- Introduce a cooperative crafting system similar to the one in Dofus:
In workshops next to the crafting benches there's a book where people can register to be listed for other players to see when they interact with that book so they can be contacted and it shows their crafting level.
ASo if you want to craft a potion you would go to the alchemy station open the book and contact someone who has the level required for the craft.
Then you meet at a crafting bench, a window open where the customer can put the materials needed for the craft and the amount of gold the crafter asked for, on his side the crafter can add the missing materials if need be and a rune to sign the item.
Once the customer put in the agreed amount of golds the item is crafted and goes into his inventory.
The crafter gets money + xp and the customer gets to craft the item he wanted without having to risk to trade all the mats to the crafter or just buying a complete item from the market.
Its a brilliant system that promotes social interactions and is a really good money maker / source of xp for crafters. It brings a way more engaging way to make money rather than waiting for items to sell and it helps crafters build a reputation.
Everyone is happy.
I am the JM Weaponsmith, and even I don't have a JM Pickaxe
Firstly, you need to actually level it and gain the XP.
Secondly, you need to Promote the Profession at the NPC.
Thirdly, you need to create a new Tool, or you can't collect the newly accessible resources.
Just seems a little overly complicated, when the promoting-NPC could just hand you a crude Apprentice Tool when they promote you to Apprentice. Maybe it has no stats, or only allows you to gather Common/Uncommon and nothing above it, but it's something to feel like you haven't just had to run all that distance out of your way just to click on an NPC.
Crafting the tools could then allow for better Tool stats, or to allow for the collecting of higher rarity resources. They'd still have an important in-game use, but the system wouldn't be quite so locked down and inaccessible.
Either that, or just remove the promoting-NPC step, and have it like a Skill Selection screen where you just click to promote it when you've earned enough Artisan XP.
Didn’t even realize this, hogwash.
Crafting:
Over all I like the current crafting, I will act like this is the baseline right now for all other artisanships…
The only two things I don’t like about the current crafting is the over use of some materials while other are useless and high amount of materials that are hard to get (like any hunting materials).
Processing:
Processing has 2 main player bases. The first are players who buy raw materials to process and craft with or sell. The second are gatherers who want to increase the value of their wares.
currently there are problems with each of the arc types that I laid out. Processing is expansive, extremely so, buying raw materials and processing them to sell at a higher price is not worth it because the profit margins are too low. So you might ask, "why not increase the price of processed good?" and this is a good question that we will get into more details later, but the short answer is that we don't have enough money in the market.
Ok, driving prices up doesn't work, so processers need to buy the martials at a cheaper price which hurts the amount of gold flowing to gatherers.
The second type of processers doesn’t exists in the game, at least not really. Players who gather do not have the money to process materials themselves because processer can't pay a dissent price for the raw materials.
Gathering:
Why would you want to do that? The only reason that you want to go collecting materials is because no one else does that and you want to craft a high rarity item. Well putting jokes aside, there is no real value, economy wise, to gathering. Yes you need the materials but converting it to gold that will translate to character power is not a real option. Right now you need to get really lucky and get a legendary material when it is in demand or try and sell bulk to processers for stupidly cheap (the latter cannot be done in the market because of the taxes and registration fees that spick the price and failing to sell within the time limit cost so much gold that you don’t have). "For that you have the crate system" I hear you say… and in theory yes you are correct, but how are u going to defend yourself if all you are doing is gathering? You are under geared, under leveled and do you don’t have gold to fix it.
What is the solution then? Go farm mobs, or in other word, don’t gather.
(there are many other problems with gathering but most of them are bugs, I hope, or static rarity so I will ignore them for now).
Killing mobs:
The best way to get player level, weapon level, gear and the only real way to get gold. With all that upside, why would you do anything else? The answer is sad because there is no reason to do anything else. When you have the money you set the price, and you don’t have enough money to feed the artisanship cost so grinders drive prices down.
So, what is the problem? The problem is that money doesn't flow between players, money is in the hands of the PVE grinders and them alone… Crafting stuff for the players with money is impossible because the artisans of the game have no money to do so. What will happen? Over time grinders will have enough money, gear and levels to stop grinding and start crafting stuff for themselves, trying to sell the extra stuff that they created to players that never had money to begin with.
Unfortunately I don't know how to fix this problem except lowering the price of processing (which will probably cause other problems) or increasing the gold amount in the game (which will probably just cause an inflation in the market).
i liked how pax dei has the durability and a lifetime meter so that it keeps you having to go back to a crafter to get items again.
you can have a vendor that sells basic equipment but leave the higher qualities to crafting and mob drops. don't you already have recipes that are tied to the crafting levels but you are now making it that to make an epic piece you no longer have an epic crafted from material level at the apprentice or is it going to now only be that you can craft an epic level item at grandmaster level with epic materials?