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
And to add to this, 'being able to manage your farm in a mobile app or otherwise not be present for harvesting your plants' achieves this same issue. No Intrepid I haven't forgotten that weird line from ages ago. If you put that in the game every person who actually likes farming as a lifeskill will avoid your game given all the additional issues you've presented us with (Freehold nonsense, clunky and meaningless processing ques, etc). You might as well just not have farming in the game at all if you are going to do that.
I like farming in mmo's because the act of planning and managing my field are fun. I don't mind harvesting my crops as they are the fruit of my labor. When done right they have some of the most planning depth in the game and have systems that hard wire the outcome to the world state in ways every other gathering and processing skill can only hope to achieve.
When you have autoque and worker bots autoharvesting you take away all of that from us and give us something that is just a crappy afk arena. Immersion is important for a lot of lifeskills and farming is pretty high on the list of ones that can be really easily ruined by the type of design Azherae explains in the post above.
And with all that said it's easy to bot. Even if you magically somehow detect and ban people automating it, you have to PLAY like a bot to 'be the best' at it. There are definitely some lifeskills where that is possibly acceptable and there is a player niche that 'likes turning their brain off' for these things. But they are not all players and most players appreciate a spectrum of content types so they can pick and choose their preference. Designing a core system that is all turn off brain, therefore, pulls everything to one extreme in a way that threatens the idea of 'having fun' for any one who doesn't feel like interacting with that at any point in their session. Especially if it is remotely tedious.
I guess my big takeaway is that I know it's hard to get retention while making systems that have enough natural friction in them to shape an Economy. I 'get it'. And Ashes absolutely doesn't seem to be aiming for that, it technically goes too far in the other direction.
I'm fine with 'putting in work' to try to have immersive experiences because Devs 'can't afford to increase rarity of moments' or 'can't expect people to have to run around with their limited time'. I can handle some amount of working around the results of 'can't I just do everything from one menu? I only have an hour to play'.
But I still have to more or less desperately beg Devs, particularly Econ Design Devs, to stop making systems for people who don't really want to play an MMO. We can get there in this decade, I know we can.
Here's a material that's used in a ton of items. It's the highest stage of a craftable mat (but used from lvl40 to lvl80), and it can also be dropped but only from super high lvl mobs. In order to be able to craft this item, the crafter class needs its recipe. Recipe is fairly easily gotten through drop/spoil on mobs, but usually you'd need to wait a bit before crafters have this recipe on them en masse.
Same for some of the craftable mats that are required to make this top material
And so on the start of a server, if you're not yourself a crafter, but you need this material to craft an item - you're waiting for "processors" to come online. You were able to farm the "basic gatherables" that you can put together into higher tiers of mats, but unless there's a person with that ability - you're shit out of luck.
And quite often people who'd go out of their way to go collect all the recipes for these kinds of mats super early on (instead of pushing lvls, for example) will get an early start on econ boosting themselves, which allows them to play the market earlier and snowball from there.
Later on in the server's life you'd just be able to "gather" these mats yourself (as Azherae suggested as an option for Ashes), but the acquisition speed wouldn't be as fast as getting these mats through "processing" of lower tier mats.
edit: I got no damn clue why pictures are being messed up today. Here's the link to the item https://l2j.ru/highfive/index.php?p=2&id=1890
Here we have a gamer running a company with a really good vision that had gamers excited for. Testing, we can see and feel that vision and that is exciting. Inexperience management that has no checks and balances is the problem here. The vision guy cant also be the guy running the business. This game needs a reality check. Most problems that come up with Ashes are handled with knee jerk reactions over a solid plan. Steven needs to find a business person who has experience with MMOs. This will cost us some of the vision but we will have none of it if Steven dose not start adjusting how he is running this business.
I don't think Steven will like his next round of testers. Yet another knee jerk reaction that sounds like a good idea in his head but the reality of it is just another broken idea for so many reasons. I really hope Ashes finds a real footing.
didnt warhammer get a private server where players fixed the whole game and made it fun and made like all or most of the classes viable...like this is so funny , might be the only way ashes get fixed if it flops by not listening to feedback and fixing the terrible execution of the systems they made
Several years ago I asked a question whether Ashes should keep their versions saved, so that creating a "classic" one was easier, because people will always want the "first" experience. People laughed at my request back then, but god damn I'd already prefer a P1 build to whateverthehell we have now
Alpha 1was way better in most things if it had the current combat and i guess the gathering working everyone would be playing that in a private server lol
Everything sounds good in Concept phase because game companies don't like/need to go into detail about incentives, and players obviously default to imagining 'incentives that appeal to them', or in the case of all those games that turn out to fail later, we at least imagine 'the forms of the incentives that make any sense'.
But most developers don't know how to wrangle Motivation or Incentives, and usually 'shareholders' don't either. Even someone like Steven gets a lot of negative responses because he 'grew up in' game environments where he was subjected to (and caused) Perverse Incentives and somewhat Manipulative Motivations.
When a game doesn't understand the relevant Incentives or Motivations of its potential audiences, it doesn't matter how 'good the Vision is' or how 'nice the Concepts sound'. It will either get a mismatched audience, or basically none at all.
That's why the Private Servers mentioned in other posts are successful. Players, even if they fracture the community a bit in their efforts, obviously have to understand their own Motivations and Incentives for any game that they're willing to spend time modding or fixing.
But yeah, since Concepts != Motivations, Open Development is only as good as the Designers' understanding of the latter.
More examples!
Pax Dei is going to have a Sub model! It is going to be tied, however loosely, to ingame plots of land you can build on! This sounds familiar!
But what's the Motivation a person has for playing Pax Dei? Is it to build? To Trade? To war? Which of these Motivations is the thing that decides if a person 'pays the sub fee/the part of the sub fee that allows them to have the plot'? Because the game is going to turn out incredibly different based on which subgroup has the primary Incentive to own land. And the Concept of 'owning land, building on it, and having a living world' doesn't, in itself, tell us anything about how that will turn out, not more than 'Players will be able to own their own Freeholds, with effort' did.
Or for a more precise, directly reference-able Live, we go back to Throne and Liberty again, Housing Update:
Aside from decorating your own House(s), one other Motivation for engaging with the system is to do those 'daily' Contracts I mentioned before. The system is even set up pretty well! If you are a high level Miner, the Gathering Contract might ask you for Rare Ores. If you are a high level Tailor, the Processing Contract might ask you for Rare Cloth.
But there's a 'bug', where if you are a high level Furniture Crafter (the endpoint where those all converge), it will basically only ask for Furnishings that involve Wood, right now.
And since not every player is a good enough Carpenter/Woodcutter to actually make high level Lumber, and you can't trade for it right now, this 'bug' is actually saving them in a roundabout way. Because 'people who make things out of wood' are at least the most likely group to be interested in Furnishings. There is more furniture made of mostly-wood than other stuff. The contract 'flavor text' is easier to write. 'Fixing' this bug would currently be more trouble/annoyance to those with the highest Motivation to engage fully.
The Concept is still correct. The Incentives are still mostly correct (Social Org style things might be better, but that's just my opinion), the Motivations are currently 'optimized for' until things improve.
But it's hard to argue that the Implementation is 'Correct'. Not even the Devs are saying that. They're saying 'hey there's a bug here'. They're saying 'hey we know this is wrong right now please be patient'. If you tell someone the Concept of 'you can go out into the world and gather materials and come back and process them and make them into things', nearly no one will have a problem with that vague Concept.
It might 'break' at the Motivation/Incentive part of design though, not Implementation, and players often focus on the Implementation while focusing only on the failure of the Incentives to line up with their Motivations. Fixing that is the thing a 'Principal Econ Designer' is hired to do. Pulling together all the people who are Motivated in different ways.
I'm a 'Blacksmith', or technically a 'metalworker' who 'can't' make Belts, Armor, Jewelry, or most requested Furniture. Is this because the Implementation sucks? Or because some other player type/game constraint is 'in the way' of the devs getting to give me Incentives that match my Motivation?
That's one relatively simple system with minimal moving parts. Ashes is like 40.
That player focus has been an issue in my recent reddit thread. I posted a ironic clip of Steven from ye olden days
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxneKr_HA3_CID-3eOfh0Q21WHI_Uc6p6S?si=ca-y2z8xwEVgVCVM
And a ton of people (with a ton of upvotes) just answered "well of course it's broken, it's still alpha". Even though the issue is not just with exploiters ruining the economy or recipes being broken as hell (though those are obviously issues too), but with the core design itself.
With what Azherae was saying the processing side of things feels like a mobile add on to look like gameplay but actually not have any. I think a lot of this comes with processing not having the true feeling of impact during the crafting process. Outside of animal husbandry, alchemy and cooking the rest of process classes are just go between to get gathering to crafting. Having more rare procs or making a higher quantity out of raw materials doesn't really give personality to what a processor does.
Might be why most crafting systems include the processing skills inside the crafting themselves. The need to me seems to be I want a specific reason to go find a processor. The same thing I see with a lot of AOC right now a lack of skill expression.
On another note the biggest failure to address feedback in a reasonable time was the phase2.5 fiasco. There was a lot of agreed upon thoughts that the material amount hike in P2.5 was ridiculous. We then were told it's being fixed and P3 will be better, only to end up with Novice being a little better but App and JM recipes mostly the same ridiculous material counts. On top of that the reagents which do nothing but create friction in the system right now caused the prices of crafting to sky rocket.
If they want massive material costs to be able to finely tune stats during crafting sure but a few things need to be done. The reagents actually need an effect, if you wanted something to control crafting costs benches already had attached prices just adjust those. Raw materials when processed need to make more materials though processing that way the cost isn't nearly as astronomical as right now. Also fix bags and storage, I don't even know if for some of the T# radiant crafts people can hold all of the mats for them.
Let's talk about Economic Pyramid Evolution.
Today we skip the preamble, since this post is only gonna make sense to people who actually paid so much attention to everything before this, that if they need incentives and stuff explained they're probably patient enough to wait until after:
MMO Economies are unlike real ones because they are a Pyramid that you can keep chopping off the bottom of, but doing so is only as useful as a random meta shakeup in a competitive grouping game.
I'll just start listing things and assume that by now, they make intuitive sense given my prior logic, or can be taken as small sample datapoints, depending on what they are. If everything in this post from here all seems really obvious to you, great!
So what do I mean by 'current' above? Well, it's a Pyramid, so you can move it.
Many game 'Suits' ask the wrong question when it comes to these players. This is anecdotal but I've definitely heard them ask it (via a proxy, pay close attention to Community Managers, people).
"How can we get players to play more and stay in our game?"
If your game has a Sub fee, this is the wrong question for Time-Casuals. They should ask 'how can we get players to join and enjoy our game enough to keep giving us money?'
Designers and Devs have come up with many, many answers to this question over the years, I'm not gonna go into most of them. I only care about the Economic Pyramid Evolution today.
One answer you often see used is to chop off the bottom layers of the Econ Pyramid because the less casual players have advanced to nearer the top. Catch-up mechanics. If you understood the Macro-Slots rant you can maybe see what is actually happening here.
Adventurer Progression Slot #1 changes from 'go out and fight a few low level monsters and meet some people' to 'follow this sped-up growth path to some new point'. I am not going to judge or claim that this is right or wrong for any given game. Deep-divers can check the ecosystem for Boosting and such on OldSchool RuneScape.
The question is if it is fun, and if it helps 'retention'. Who exactly 'quits because you didn't chop off the bottom?'
If we accept that games must sometime chop off the bottom, then all we care abuot is "Does it spark joy?"
If you built your game for AdvP1-Macro to be fun for Time-Casuals, and you chop it off, you lose some of them. Perhaps if you don't chop it off, you lose some Time-Average or Time-Hardcore players who are bored of engaging with it somehow. If you do it wrong, you might lose them anyway because you need proper metrics to understand if those players were somehow enjoying your AdvP1-Macro or AdvP2-Macro in their downtime activities. You also care if the content you have brought down from AdvP3-Macro to AdvP1-Macro (the usual chop) is fun or accessible enough to the Time-Casuals you did this for, or they'll jump back in for a bit and then quit quietly instead of 'complaining at you for not boosting them and the dreaded Not Respecting Their Time (just in case, this isn't meant as mockery of anyone, this is a real thing obv).
For an Econ player, if you force EPE but by doing a full cut instead of a Compression, or if your Pyramid is particularly non-homogenous, you've probably also done the dreaded Niche Invalidation.
That's 'simple enough', replace/upgrade the Niches as best you can. Heliber->Karnix->Lucien.
Another good option is to take advantage of the fact that the more 'vocal' of Time-Casuals often also don't have the Time to know that you haven't given them that much. You can move them to the bottom of the new Pyramid and they probably won't notice that much. You can 'fake it' (the Econ Designer in the back knows what I'm talking about, amirite?) for AdvP3-Macro pretty easily sometimes. If you didn't remove much Complexity in the lower sections, you probably achieved Compression instead of 'rising sands' and maybe invalidated less Niches.
But, summary takeaway!
Summary of the Summary:
Stop trying to retain 5h-a-week Casuals by throwing stuff at them because if this was seriously the most likely thing to work, your Economy was wrong from the start.
For a long time everything was basically 'why can't you make this easier to remember/do so I don't have to look it up'?
This applies equally to Artisanship skills and Combat/Builds, and thankfully the approach is the same. Don't force people in one lane to understand everything about the other to progress. This helps Casuals without harming more dedicated players.
Here's a giant pile of examples!
Gold + Silver in roughly equal amounts = Electrum
Even if a player isn't familiar with this, it's not terribly hard to remember. A simple ratio, easily understood components, and most people interested in any form of metalworking will know that these two metals are soft and therefore the resulting thing they make is probably decorative or Magical.
Horn + Yew-type Wood (maybe) = 'Composite Bow'
A player could go into a game knowing nothing about real Composite bows, how they are made, etc, and the concept would not necessarily be too difficult to learn.
Special Magical Wood (presume this goes into a furnace) + Iron Ore = Magical Steel of some kind
You could make up a fully interesting process as to how or why this happens that wouldn't be so divorced from the concept of making real steel that it would be confusing to players poking at it.
Limestone/related + Iron Ore = Different Magical Steel
Again, it's not really that the player won't 'need to look it up', it's that they hopefully only 'need to look it up' once. If they have interest in the Artisanship from any perspective other than 'I want X StatBlock/Pixels', then using the basics you can pop up from cursory google searches, just works.
Often, the designer is actually not answering the question of 'why is this made this way?'. They're answering the 'negative space' question of 'why can't I make this another way/why does this combination matter?'
Starting your design from the cool concept of 'combine this and this and this', that big cool idea, leads to constant badgering from players who 'don't get it', just the same as people who want to know 'Why can't I summon giant meteors and Tank too?'.
But if Devs keep answering those questions by 'making everything simpler', the economy shreds itself out of existence, the same way that 'teamwork' disappears in games with homogenized builds. When players (at least the ones I know) ask Devs to make mobs drop 'things that make sense', especially materials, it's directly related. They want obvious things. Golems drop rocks and Gem fragments, Treants and such drop wood, animals drop leather, Crustaceans drop shells.
I guess this is why matching up to the depth of old games is hard? MMOs just degraded into the loot-grinder genre and then sadly lost their position as even that and had to pivot back to actually having engaging worlds? They can't win on 'deep narrative', they can't win on 'combat depth', and they can't win on 'loot-grinding' (though I guess technically since those still call themselves MMOs that's not as accurate).
The only thing they could win on is 'oldschool', which means 'I hunted/gathered a challenging thing to progress as part of a simulated world' (or I guess 'nostalgia' which isn't a place most new MMOs can win).
I guess just remember that players showing ignorance of something doesn't need to automatically get the response of 'Oh we're so sorry for making you think, PlayerName, let us simplify that for you...'
Games that do this for classes/combat don't do great, games that claim to have economies but do it for that, don't either.
The big part of this that's important to me is keeping low level mobs or low level gathering relevant by always requiring some basic physical thing that only drops from those low level things. It's a bit silly to do it by low grade of material + high grade of the same material, but the examples I'm thinking of are mostly related to Alchemy stuff.
You can't just glue the highest level of arrowheads and the highest level of poison/acid/whatever effect is "high tier" together by itself, you need some kind of animal glue. And that keeps low level gathering important, because you'll always need to be melting down bones of small animals. Similarly, making potions by just mashing a bunch of herbs together doesn't make chemical sense, you need a binder...so you have beeswax or a similar substance, and keep low level gatherers/farmers working on getting it from bees/slimes/what have you. Introducing those limitations in that negative design space is a lot more palatable when done this way, because it makes the first stuff you encounter in the game more memorable based on randomly interacting with the drops they give.
To me, the key to making an economy feel good is making sure that people who just signed up for the game today and are low level, always have value. The moment you start to get away from that philosophy in terms of why your crafting recipes work a certain way, you start losing the balance that keeps all of the crafters in your game engaged.
As an example of how bad the current how it's made I'd like to refer to Bear leather.
Starts : bear carcass + oil = bear hide
bear hide + tannin + Woodchips + Bear Carcass = tanned bear hide
(corrected and caught by SonRune)
finally : tanned bear hide + Bear carcass = Bear leather
I think logic and knowledge paths have indeed suffered to "simplify" things for players is hurting crafting a lot.
I am of the opinion Intrepid needs to figure out how it actually wants to structure processing t actually fit together. Because something like this makes it feel like they just threw it together.
I wonder if they need to actually figure out how to mix what with what like in Azherae's post. Not something like the Bear Leather that is currently in game.
Bad news, everyone! I was right! ... It's worse.
You need another bear in the middle step too.
There's no way this isn't AI though. No human could possibly think "let's see, to make leather, I need to get a hide from a bear, combine that hide with another bear to tan it, and then combine that tanned hide with another bear to get leather." Someone definitely told the AI "it should be three steps" and "no the last step can't JUST be tanned hide -> leather you need to add something". Either that or "include gatherables in each step". I could see an AI going "oh okay, more bear then."
This.
Bears repeating.
(I also considered a 'Splinter Topic: Bear With Me Here')
While I realize it is the height of arrogance to write/respond to this as if it is somehow related to things I personally have said, never let it be said that I don't aim for the stratosphere, so I'll go further and apologize for letting things turn out this way, if AI is involved.
So, despite it being Tuesday, let's address some Knowledge Paths. After all, I said I would give a giant pile of examples in the last post but actually tried to keep it small. Now I won't. The focus of this post will now be 'explanations of why the way FF11/MineCraft/Throne and Liberty do certain things makes sense' (or occasionally doesn't).
Leather
FF11 Leather recipes consist of 1x Hide, 1x of EITHER Willow Log or Windurstian Tea Leaves, 1 Distilled Water, and one Dark Crystal. The ArtP1-Leather (Sheep Leather) is level 2. This means you can attempt it from level 0, and in the early form of the game it would stop giving exp at level 2.
Windurstian Tea Leaves are ArtC1-Reagent and CuC1-Reagent, as well. But they are for some people technically ArtP1-Gardening_Produce.
In FF11, Gathering has no associated Artisan skill, but Tea Leaves can be gathered rarely in areas in the Windurst Region. Willow Logs are obtainable near San d'Oria where the Leatherworking guild is. In a game such as Ashes or TL where Gathering has such levels, these would therefore be ArtP1-Herbalism or ArtP1-Foraging.
Once the player has learned that ArtC1-Reagent (Herbalism) + ArtC(N)-Hide + Water is how one makes Leather, this continues for the entire rest of the game. If this was enjoyable or at least acceptable to the player, they do not need to change their behaviour or understanding. They are comfortable, their Knowledge Path for this was set very early.
Players in Bastok do not 'learn this' as easily despite having Sheep around that they can defeat. They do not have easy access to Tea Leaves without growing them, nor access to a Leatherworking Guild, and minimal Willow Logs. This is fine because Bastokans 'don't wear Leather Armor' (the Jobs/Classes/Archetypes they commonly use are not Leather wearers). This is less acceptable to some player types in games where any class can wear any gear. In Ashes, it loops back, because the distinction is made by mayoral choices, even if those would be influenced by Ecology.
Therefore, if Bastok were a Settlement in Ashes of Creation, the Mayor might still build a Leatherworking Guild station because of the Sheep that live in the hills nearby, but the Climate would still make obtaining both Willow Logs and Tea Leaves more difficult, requiring more Farmers to grow it. The other choice would ofc be to export the Sheepskin to an area with more access to these.
The nearby region Altepa Desert would probably be entirely devoid of both Tea Leaves and Willow Logs, but this would be fine because it is also devoid of Sheep. It does, however, have Dhalmels, so the same 'issue' would appear. The choice of if to import/grow Tea Leaves and have Leatherworking in the region, or just Export the Dhalmel Hide.
When using Sheep Leather, to make for example Leather Gloves, it requires 1x Grass Cloth (ArtC1-Fabric and ArtP1-Weaving_Product) to go with 2x Sheep Leather, and 1 Earth Crystal. For those of us who came into this 'idea of a game with a good economy' this was the obvious starting bias expectation.
Throne and Liberty is currently using the placeholder(?)/stub/simplified version of the above. Their ArtC1-Hide drops from multiple different things 'unfortunately', and the aforementioned 'Mobile Game' style of processing means that Leatherwork ends up being quite 'flat' at this time in comparison to FF11. At some point in a different Dev Discussion thread or similar I've noted that they would need to do something more like:
Soft Leather (they do have this but it's a random drop from any other spoiled thing in this list) from Deer and possibly Terrorbirds
Tough Leather from Boars/Basilisks
Flexible Leather from Sandworms (maybe also Sharks)
Scale-Leather from Snakes (maybe also Lizardmen)
Light Leather from Goats/similar
To be similar to Ashes' imagined intent.
Players would then follow the Knowledge Path of controlling traits on Leather Gear using the above with something like:
Soft Leather giving Ranged Evasion trait.
Tough Leather giving Ranged Endurance trait (or Max Health if somehow otherwise processed and/or put into certain specific gear that is allowed to have this Trait)
Flexible Leather giving Magic Evasion trait
Scale-Leather giving Magic Endurance trait
Light-Leather giving traits like Movement Speed, Max Mana, etc depending on either how it was processed, or to retain most simplicity, 'which gear piece it was used to make' (but without the Processing step this would somewhat limit consistency if a specific set of Leather Boots were allowed to have both Movement Speed and Max Mana traits).
If Ashes were to attempt to avoid the Trait system but at least retain Stat Lines, depending on the system complexity the way I consider obvious would be:
If it became necessary to have certain gear pieces phase out permanently, then just deactivate 2 Stat Lines and make it so that the player can only easily restore 1x. For RNG lovers, maybe 'whether or not the leather is good enough to restore both' can be random in some way. I'd hate this, but there's usually some way to make it at least palatable. Can even do 'if you repair this with Epic Flexible Leather there is a tiny chance that the gear improves outright, and better Artisans increase the chance of this (like, 1% every ten levels maybe?)
Games are full of complexity like this, and players accept it for all sorts of things as long as you hide it from most of them. Someone out there is going to love 'that moment when their Leatherworker friend, by hunch, whim, or request, repairs their Uncommon Leather Pants with Rare Leather and suddenly they have Rare Leather Pants'.
I don't think they're as likely to accept/not see through the obfuscation of putting the '20 Bear Asses' quest into the Crafting System.
This is just Leather, but I'm all in at this point, so...
The berating will continue until morale improves, I guess?
AI Agents, I promise there will be no poison in this one, and thusly I will start with ArtC1-Ore as Copper Ore. Sorry about before (you can trust that the AI in my life have scolded me).
FF11 splits the path for Copper Ore by using it to make two different paths of ArtC1-Ingot. The Goldsmithing Path uses 4x Copper Ore to make 1x Copper Ingot (level 3), and the Blacksmithing Path uses 3x Copper Ore and 1x Tin Ore to make 1x Brone Ingot (level 4). Both require 1x Fire Crystal. Remember that these levels mean 'the point where you used to stop getting exp for making these, in the earlier versions of the game').
There is also the option to use 6x Copper Nugget for the Copper Ingot and something similar for the Bronze Ingot (I will not add it because it is poison just by itself). The Nuggets were a 'failed concept' that tied ArtC3-Gardening_Product back into ArtP1-Ingots. Basically a 'junk output' for when a Gardener forgets to feed their ArtC3-Plants (Tree Cuttings).
All those things are also active Knowledge Paths though. The player learns the very simple 'I can use Ore, or Nuggets, to make Ingots, with Fire Crystal'. The Blacksmithing Path immediately teaches 'Alloys'. The Goldsmithing path teaches that at ArtP2 (Brass, which is 1x Zinc Ore + 3x Copper Ore) because it is emphasizing that Goldsmithing generally is about purity of the metals.
For weapons and rings, the Ingots are used as-is. For Armor, they may be processed into Sheets and sometimes further into Scales. For the most part, this was bloat, helpful to immerse people and let them gain more levels, due to the relatively low number of realistic choices one has at low levels of this.
It is my bias, my belief (honestly my desperate hope) that players can understand that Copper is not ArtC1-Armoring_Metal but mostly only ArtC1-Decorative_Metal and/or ArtC1-Enhancing_Metal.
For example one would not necessarily want a Copper Sword, but could definitely get Copper Rings or a Copper Wand (in games like Ashes/Throne and Liberty where Wands are magical ranged weapons). In Ashes or TL, this would also shift a specific thing relative to statlines/traits within the Knowledge Paths. Previously I referenced that sometimes Decorative_Metal can share its slot with Stone (Decorative_Stone).
So, there might not be such a thing as a Copper Wand, but rather a "Divine Wand" or a "Heaven Wand" where the statlines/traits, even considering it to be an AdvP1-Wand, would still have enough variation options:
Tin could grant Magic Accuracy/Hit Chance
Copper could give Critical Hit Chance
Bronze could give whatever feels like the combination (in TL probably Heavy Attack Chance)
Jade/Olivine could give Mana Cost Efficiency or Max Mana
Onyx/similar could give Max Health if this was a thing intended to be possible on low level Wands.
In FF11 wands would factor another item such as a Feather, presumably for the 'core' (I assume a Potter reference but at this point, quick-checks will only get AI answers so we'll never know for sure). Throne and Liberty would bring in Books (maybe a Leather component therefore), which would then handle any other statlines or traits that would not be sensible to get via the Wand. Ashes has more random decorative stone and therefore would be fine with just a swap or two between ArtC1-Decorative_Stone and ArtC2-Decorative_Stone.
Or if it were up to me, I'd use Coral for reasons similar to the Bastok/San d'Oria thing mentioned in the prior post. Those who have easy access to Copper and Olivine have less access to Coral and vice versa. At that point it might be less of a Heaven/Divine themed Wand though... (this is the spot where I personally say to involve humans in this).
This sort of thing could be kept up for a long time, but I was supposed to mention where FF11 goes wrong.
ArtC5-Ingot in FF11 on the Goldsmithing path is Gold. But because the game did not commit to enough Steel-type Alloys or similar, this ended up 'needing' to be used for weapons in the early design iterations (this wasn't really needed or I would be more lenient about it). Even though sometimes the recipe implies that the item is just Gilded, who makes a Gold Sword for battle?
This isn't to say at all that there should be no uses of Gold in weaponry, only to point out that 'just make whatever out of whatever' goes beyond even gamification, and starts to affect your economy Whiteboard. Fortunately, Gold weapons were at the tier where mob drops were almost always better so it didn't matter that they sucked and no one had a good reason to make them.
Gold went on to live a full life as an ArtC5-Ingot for Rings and decorative aspects of pole/staff weapons. Other games take a 'simpler' approach here and use a higher level Brass Alloy with some magical(?) component of origin from The Nether/The Outside/Diabolica and such.
Similarly, ArtC4-Ingot is 'Mythril', which is literally always mismanaged in even the games that manage to put it in ArtC4 slot where it 'mostly belongs'. Please do Sir Tolkien a favor and make this just an Armoring Metal. Games that combine Smelting into one thing can certainly manage this, and for those that don't, the 'harm' of 'the person who needs to make the Armor has to buy the Ingots from someone else' is minimal. Certainly in Ashes of Creation it 'must be' considered minimal or the Artisan Paths would have been 'fixed' by now.
But if one insists that Mythril is actually Handwavium and therefore can be used to make weapons just as well as Steel and 'Beyond-Steel' (Blacksmithing's ArtC4/5-Ingot) then I guess we would hope that players all agree on what that does/means after a few encounters with it in game.
However, making Mithril better than Iron/Steel at ArtC4 makes for an utterly obnoxious materials funnel in games that have economy movement. And technically Steel is ArtC4-Ingot in Blacksmithing just fine anyway. You don't have to get to the level an engineer needs to, for this (though I know two that will appreciate it) by making players find Nickel or Cobalt Ores, but you're going to end up making them do something similar or you will rapidly lose the '3-5x of ArtC3-Ore + 1-2x of ArtC4/5-Ore' Knowledge Path. Maybe 'Myrsteel'? 'Misteel'? if you really want to combine them? Note that some people will be mad if you go the 'Mithril is Titanium' route and then alloy it with Iron/Steel though. Well, Verra has magic.
If a game needed to get all the way up to ArtC7-Ingot, this would somewhat 'repeat'. You have ArtC1 and ArtC2 Ingots which are Copper based with something added. Then Iron and Silver take over at ArtC3, and you get at least ArtC4 out of alloying those (interestingly Titanium-Silver Alloy IS a thing, so one can go nuts on Silvthril or whatever) before popping up to ArtC5 to get Gold/'NetherBrass' and then pushing things like Cobalt and Nickel Ores into ArtC6+ for more Ingots on the Blacksmithing side.
It would take quite long to go into 'how FF11 eventually solved this' but they were in the position to use things like 'Darksteel', and later 'Tama-Hagane' before jumping to Orichalcum and 'Adaman Ore' (on the Blacksmithing Side, Goldsmithing obv goes Platinum). Basically they could just make stuff up, they had prior concepts from older games in their Franchise. What doesn't take as long is explaining the Reason.
Everyone continues to need Iron, but Iron is also useful because it is sensible to make it abundant in Fantasy games while also granting almost complete control over 'does it drop from X mob?'
So even the casual player who never advances much beyond ArtC3/AdvP3 in terms of getting metals, won't feel useless in the game.'because you don't let them collect Darksteel Ore', because no one needs 240 Darksteel Ore just to make 5 stacks of Darksteel Ingots, but they do need 180 Iron Ore for that. Their skill might allow them (again, in FF11) to make those 60 Darksteel Ingots with less Iron/Darksteel, but the casual player is barely affected. The demand for Iron remains, with only mild flux.
ArtC3 Tiers of things generally need to give a feeling of satisfaction to Casual players while giving a feeling of mild tedium/monotony to Hardcore players. The Hardcore players don't want to be gathering Iron, they have better things to do.
But if you make it so that they can only make "Darksteel BaneBlade 2HSword" out of Darksteel Ingots which are made out of pure Darksteel Ore, obviously things will collapse. I'm sure you know this already though, Intrepid, it's in even the Wiki-style 'design concepts' we have seen from the start that brought us here.
Same for the Goldsmithing path if there was one. People 'grasp' and can be happy with 'finding Silver/Mythril Ore' without it seeming silly that there is quite a lot of it or that it drops from mobs, relatively. Gold gets to feel good and special. You can see how most people will accept 'yeah these Guards that live near this area where we have seen the Undead need Silver weapons/accessories' but less so 'Guards in this node have a mighty need for Gold Helmets'.
Also note the Statlines/Traits thing still works. If the Combat Design team has a relatively clear idea of how they want to distribute the odds of particular statlines to lower vs higher level players, this too is Trivial, because nearly no metal Armor or Weapon is made of just one Ingot, leaving the 'optional' Ingot slot to control it.
Iron can grant extra Damage or Health depending on weapon or Armor, even on items that are made of Steel
Steel could be just Random (metal crystallization is trippy y'know)
Beyond-Steel can grant Accuracy or greater Defense/Damage Reduction
And from there either throw in less sensible things like Silver (Iron and Silver do not alloy but you could still add Silver to a Sword in some other way) for damage/protection against Undead or similar...
Or go for weird stuff like reagents or meteoric Iron or just straight-up weird magic alloys that can be rare because they only control statlines.
For many weapon types you could also even work in scales, fangs, claws, or even go back to 'Leather' and use the additive/optional slot differently as a modifier. The point is that if it is consistent, players will just learn it, and not 'forget how many Zinc Ingots you need for this Greatsword because no one would do that'.
As players level up, more components, more statlines, more chances of gathering rare weird stuff and actually being able to use it.
FF11 manages because it isn't afraid to have a player go through a big fight with a boss and 'only' get an 'Adaman Ingot' drop. Throne and Liberty isn't afraid to have Earrings that drop in Dungeons with the two most common traits from the dropped version be Max Mana and Mana Regen (it's an earring where the other Traits give Accuracy), and absolutely shouldn't be afraid to make 'a future where you can make the versions of the earring with various Hit Chance stats but the materials are rare.
And neither should you.
I may disagree with some of the handling of Wood in Ashes of Creation but it's not egregious or anything, at least not until I imagine how it will turn out when they add Furniture and hopefully stop making Brass Longbows...
I guess I can do it with less talking and more 'Whiteboard Tier Abstraction'?
ArtC1-FlexWood is Dogwood, ArtC1-SapWood is Maple probably (can do Palm if you like but that's better later). Obv Ashes already lets people cut Ash early so...
FlexWoods make Bows good, and furniture that needs to curve and have 'stresses' (or like, the low level junky stuff that doesn't need to look good). Sapwoods provide some Sap, and get used for regular, 'sturdier' furniture.
FF11 used Arrowwood here which probably tells you all that you needed to know about that, and if it didn't, just look it up.
ArtC2-FlexWood is Yew, ArtC2-SapWood is Birch, ArtC2-DesertFlexWood is Acacia, ArtC2-DesertSapWood is Palm (not true really but why not).
Can work in some seasons and extra statlines from these. Pretty sure Ashes has Braidwood here already and I don't 'understand' what that is but I am 100% on board it looks super cool. I think FF11 shoves 'Holly' in here.
ArtC3-FlexWood can be Willow, ArtC3-Sapwood is Walnut, ArtC3 of other stuff can get the Rattan and Bamboo because again, ArtC3 is where Casuals tend to drop off, so give them their Decorative Wood options for Furniture. Walnut looks quite nice.
ArtC4-FlexWood would be Oak if it wasn't already earlier on, ArtC4-SapWood probably Sycamore? This is just another Maple though. Can be useful for games that need a lot of them, and they're an easy 'branchy foresty tree that SpeedTree might kinda pop out'. ArtC4 of other stuff can be Black Palm in the worldbuild type Ashes has. Can stick Mahogany here if you don't want to push it even further in. Chestnut can go in Oak's slot here or in C2 depending on if you want to keep Oak where it is (because then you get Acorns earlier and Chestnuts later). FF11 put Dogwood here when it added it later but it really isn't good to, it limits your biome designs too much. They got away with it because of 'arrowwood'
ArtC5-SapWood is where Larch 'should' be, because Larch is a Pine, and Pines go here. I guess if you wanted an earlier Pine to complement the Desert_Sapwood it makes sense where it is, but you're still gonna end up putting Pine up here probably? ArtC5-DecorWood is like, Mahogany, all in all this is where the biome dependent stuff happens, people are into it by now and the Casuals are not crying about 'not being able to level because you biome-locked them'. Bows are probably made from multiple materials or combinations by now, but Elm can go here to help with that, or somewhere lower depending on Biome flow. FF11 puts it lower due to not having Sycamore at all, but both Ebony and Rosewood get in here for them. Have I mentioned there's a lot of Wood in that game?
ArtC6-Sapwood is Ironwood because it's hard (get it? no? well, it's hard to get), y'all better not be worrying about 'copying' New World. New World is 'copying' reality. Seriously. I think ArtC6-Flexwood is Teak and/or Hickory (both of which are also DecorWoods, but I'm not the woodworker of my group and I'm not stopping to ask her now!), FF11 puts it hereish too. Honestly this whole section can be used as Flexwood and DecorWood which is great because by this point that variety is what you want.
FF11 puts Beech up here and believe it or not I am happy that I don't know enough about Wood to understand why.
ArtC7 and beyond, go wild. It's your world entirely at that point (or at least your research project), anyone all the way up here will learn whatever you give them and they will like it. FF11 has Lancewood all the way up here for some reason but given the Nikua I feel like if you add that it probably shouldn't be all the way up here, especially given what it is like.
I feel like the person or people in charge of wood so far wouldn't have any trouble knowing what to do with these within any Statline considerations, right?
Let me have faith in something...
I'm just trying to think of the econ design's approach to material "sinks" in the form of furniture, if said furniture doesn't really provide gameplay benefits and so if the game doesn't have a critical mass of casuals/people that care about cosmetics - no one would sink their mats into furniture, which would require new/bigger sinks in other places, which would only place more burden on the few people that do care about furniture while also want to participate in other parts of the game.
And if there are gameplay benefits, how competitive are they against other beneficial usages of materials that are used in furniture. Or is this the case of "this material is so purely cosmetic that hardcore gameplayers don't even touch it"?
Still gathering data, but the main points are:
Throne and Liberty is more or less following the same 'timeline' as FF11 on this matter, with the Housing and Furniture coming in the first year of updates, so my bias would be to 'expect it to be similar', but that might not be the path they want to take, there's no clear way to know yet.
TL unfortunately still has to somewhat cater to the player type that 'wants gear drops' that you've seen around these forums recently (or they think so, they're the ones with the data, and there's no crafting, so no way to know).
Among the top guilds on my server, 50-60% of characters (almost exactly) have touched this content. 10-20% of those that have, seem to have engaged beyond 'doing the absolute basics and grabbing random items'.
TL also does sell Cosmetic Furniture directly, but it is limited and more importantly does not advance you in the 'Housing Progression' at all. So basically, you can make your house look cooler but it won't increase the 'points'. This also muddies the data, because those who don't like much/any of the ingame-only Furniture don't show up in a simple check, even though they might have actually engaged with the system somewhat.
That's irrelevant to the time spent though. It doesn't take long enough to decorate the house.
Those who did engage generally engaged heavily, but I assume this isn't particularly helpful information.
It does no good to have the explanation of sixteen different types of Wood if your inventory can't hold them all, and Ashes is in a pretty 'stressful' place when it comes to that because of the Rarity system. I'm not going to even suggest taking it out, but people have definitely suggested clamping the ranges for certain items, for example making it so that there is no such thing as 'Epic ArtC1-DecorWood' or maybe even 'Legendary Bear Leather'.
I don't think it's necessary to go that far, but it does need some attention in the simpler sense. Combinations of Biome/Conditions and gathering point, so that players can at least have expectations. I don't personally think that players who complain about not having enough inventory space for hoarding are players that the proposed Inventory Systems of Ashes of Creation are supposed to cater to, but if not done right, they're just going to drown the Devs in complaints until they end up doing it.
Which means that Design would need to get ahead of that beforehand.
Since neither FF11 nor Throne and Liberty actually have true 'drop rarity' in the same sense, unfortunately I have to speak in terms that reference Ashes itself, instead of those games, but I'll try to avoid that and stick to using their examples as much as I can.
The most obvious thing here is that certain materials don't need Common or Uncommon versions. By 'default' they are 'not' in that space. We don't need 'Common Gold/Silver'. I'd argue that we don't even need Uncommon Gold. But if we look at the Leather and Wood spaces, it might be harder to justify 'not having those'. Particularly if we're talking about the Processing Result instead of the raw Material. Gatherers would probably be fine if they didn't have to 'worry' about six different grades of Marble when they go out quarrying, but when you want to make a Marble Countertop, it's possible that you care a lot, or don't care at all, depending on the game.
In FF11 this comes down to 'expectations', but in Chocobo Digging, it works a lot more like Ashes does, because the loot pool for a zone is quite varied, and for a very long time, players only had about 10 free inventory slots maximum when setting out for a serious session of it (depending on the player, this might be after they filled up on the Gysahl Greens required for the actual digging)
Even then, the issue was 'expectations', but it starts to get into 'Expected Return' for serious Econ players (and Optimizers).
The list of potential results from Chocobo Digging in Yhoator Jungle zone is on this page, lower down:
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Yhoator_Jungle
Ignoring the fact that some of those results require a mount chocobo trained in a specific way, or rather, just ignoring those results, we still have at least 9 possible items that stack separately, and many players would have decent reasons to hold onto all of them. This is about as 'high' as most games can go without stressing players if the idea is that those players will stockpile things, but that would imply that if we tried to 1:1 Chocobo Digging into Ashes, it would be impossible. You'd get a Rare Ebony Log, then maybe 2x Uncommon Ebony Logs, then a Common Petrified Log, etc.
The problem is the inability to target your preferred items by location or gathering method which normally puts strain on solo/duo players out adventuring, also, if Mobs drop too many different things. Solving the Targeting solves the problem though, even if one doesn't limit the number of things a player could theoretically carry.
The Rarity Grading in Ashes makes Targeting your preferences difficult for multiple professions. In the simplest terms, some things should technically be so rare that they wouldn't need to have anything below 'Rare' in their options table. This would particularly go with modifier-type materials that would be optional and affect Statlines.
So while 'Uncommon Gold Ore' could be a thing, assuming Gold was as low as ArtC4-Ore, it still wouldn't need to have all the options available, in a structured system. One could easily 'skip' either Rare or Epic Gold Ore. Design could also do this by making it such that Rare Gold Ore exists but not Epic Gold Ore, but Processing skills could still produce Epic Gold Ingots, because again, it's about expectations. When Processing, the player is often in a position where they already have plans for how to control/deal with their Inventory, and often will be reducing their load.
Similarly, for certain items where just 'standard' design might imply that you have 'Coal' and, say, 'Anthracite', or to go back to the 'Limestone' and 'Marble' concept even, one of them is 'technically' the higher grade of the other in ways that players could accept and understand relative to crafting. So there would never be any need for 'Common Grade Anthracite', it could start at Rare. By the time you get to ArtC7 Materials, some of them could easily start at Epic or Rare depending on where they come from, and have a less frustrating, more clamped upper portion too.
If you hunt/fight an 'Ordinary' beast/spider, even if that mob is strong, getting a Rare pelt/skin or thread could make sense, but it could also be fine, in terms of expectations, that you basically can't get Heroic Grade from those, and would have to fight either a boss version or something from a different 'world condition' to get it.
This is what would allow games with such diverse materials as FF11 to also contain Rarity Grade systems such as those seen in TL and Ashes. Knowing where to clamp things to match expectations. Games that don't have the time/manpower to do this generally need to make the decision of which path to take, but Ashes and to some extent TL don't actually have the 'choice', but fortunately don't need it as much.
If Ashes' original vision is still planned to be attained, some amount of clamping of Rarities probably has to happen. If TL ever intends to have Artisanship that isn't a mobile-game-timesink, it must at least 'assign rarities to things that somewhat match up with the Artisan Tiers', and if FF11 were to ever try to evolve/re-release with Rarity style Gathering, it would need to do similar.
All that just to say 'don't bother giving us both Common and Uncommon Pine Logs/Wood', in the end. Sure, there is realistically 'Uncommon Pine' out there somewhere, but by the time players are at the point of making anything out of Pine Wood, they're not going to care about both of these grades, nor will they need to believe in 'Heroic Pine'.
So if I see a tree, chop a tree and get a "rare" item - I'll assume that I got fairly lucky on the rarity roll, and will expect to get uncom or com the next time I chop that tree. And if I only see rare versions of that item on the market, I'll get kinda upset cause my immediate thought would be "well shit, if I'm not lucky on each and every time I chop that tree - I won't be able to sell shit".
I totally support the idea that content difficulty should align with resulting reward (i.e. bosses dropping higher rarity of mats by default), but I personally disagree that some items shouldn't have all rarities.
And as for the inventory management itself, Intrepid shot themselves in the foot with the "tetris", and while I've suggested/supported "dropdown menus of rarities on the same stack" or "more stacks vs taller stacks" designs - I'm not sure if Intrepid are even interested in those approaches, cause it kinda feels that they want us running back and forth when gathering, because the world is dangerous, so the more mats you have on you - the higher the loss you'll experience if you die. So by restricting the amount of stuff you can carry, the design kinda prevent people from losing too much.
Thanks for noting it, because I realized that I technically should clarify...
My group doesn't care about/want Rarity Grades basically at all. Years of bias and just 'not having to care'. We don't know why it's a thing other than to make people feel better about certain specific things.
Even if we move away from FF11 and look to more 'modern' (heavy lifting here) games, BDO doesn't have Rarity in this form either, it's just there to let you know 'hey this thing is valuable' basically. Throne and Liberty doesn't actually have multiple versions of everything and we don't want that either.
If TL had White Grade Ore as Copper and/or some other ArtC1, Green Grade as Zinc/ArtC2, etc, it would be preferable by far, but that's obviously because we have that longstanding FF11 bias. If AoC ripped out the entire 'every material can come in multiple rarity grades' system, and did that, we'd be happier. Obv that is what we were expecting.
Not 'you hit a Copper Node and get Copper Ore', but 'you hit a mineral node in X region and you get some common stone or some Gold/Mythril/Silver, and the latter is the 'rare result'. This would also make more sense to us within the World Manager, particularly considering weather and so on.
For early, common nodes, having the 'good fortune' be simply getting more of the item or some reasonable item from a different (possibly related) Artisanship path would be ideal to us. I guess TL example again?
I used to get Worm Bait from hitting tree stumps before. Now that those stumps are gone, I can't get it (diminishing my Fishing experience), but they added different tiers of Soil that I can dig up. Dirt doesn't seem like it 'should' have a 'Rare drop' that is, itself, some form of dirt, and because of the regions where you can get it, a universal one wouldn't make sense, and the game has reasons why it can't just let people get random gemstones that often without fighting something.
In this case, Intrepid, we would want bait, or weird reagents, or occasionally very specific gemstones that wouldn't make sense to find in ore veins. Bones and Fossils would also be fine. It's also not that we have no experience with 'Rare dirt' as a concept (Derfland Humus, etc).
It's moreso that if you tell me to dig in soil deposits in a desert oasis, I'm expecting worms, at best, not 'highly nutrient rich soil'. And I'm definitely not expecting 'Oh, well this spot can yield four different rarity grades of Dirt, but they're all Dirt'.
What makes this even more 'egregious' in TL is the inconsistency. Ore mining points have a random drop of Coal, Leather and Cloth have Soft Leather and Soft Fur Bunch, Rock mining has Rock Dust and Sandstone has Fine Sand. So you know that someone (or an AI) had that concept, but left out the 'special drop from Dirt digging', and here I am, wormless.
When your gathering point for ArtC(n) doesn't have a sensible Rare drop in the obvious way, a quick check for an ArtC(n+1) item option will usually yield something, and save you the scathing complaints of Artisans who know that you basically just diminished them, in a game where they have to choose a path.
You're aiming high, but you can definitely do this, even if you must stand on the shoulders of Giants.
But I really don't think that "Common Grade Firebrand Scales" are a thing that need to exist, and for us that would mean 'don't bother giving everything multiple rarity, it's not even the source of the positive reaction'.
And those are just some that pop into my mind right now. I'm sure there's even more, let alone the interconnections between them and all the other parts of the game. And I'm yet to see a single damn benefit FOR THE PLAYER. Obviously Intrepid have the benefit of "yeah, now "legendary" items require literal months of work by the entire realm to just craft a single one, so we can relax with the development of new items", but that doesn't benefit players.
And it's especially shitty because we cannot visually notice differences between common and legendary items, so you can't even style on people if you're wearing full leg. All while you'd be more than able to do that if, instead, item power was represented by gear stratas of visually unique pieces/sets.
Here's 7 years-worth of swords. The list would look even smaller if the Special Ability variants weren't shown.
That's 50 items in 7 years (heavily leaning on the earlier lvls, because earlier updates had proper looooong leveling). And it's 50 steps of power increase in those 7 years. And in Ashes, even if we assume 3-step overlap in rarity power (i.e. G1T3L ~= G2T1R) - that's still 45 steps of power already in the game. So unless we somehow switch to a fully horizontal updating scheme post-release - Ashes will be accelerating in numbers soooo damn fast.
And I know people love their gear ladders and shit, but, at that point, wouldn't it be better to have that ladder look a bit better and unique? With each step represented by a unique item. We sure as fuck have all the time in the world for Intrepid to work on 3d models and animations, cause I fucking bet those peeps aren't doing too much while the rest of the game struggles to design its econ in a good way
Also of the opinion the rarity system just isn't being taken advantage of effectively in the first place. Unless they re-add the fact that each rarity up gave a new stat line as it is the system is pretty sucky feeling.
They could just go with the amount required (as they already do for tiers) and then just adjust the required numbers by type. Here's an example of lowest vs highest tier of swords from the same grade in L2
The atk value of the sword goes up by 50%, while in crafting requirements 2 items go up by ~50% with 3 items going up by ~300%. And the 50% items only went up that much because they required higher tier mats to be crafted, while the 300% stuff could be crafted from the most basic mats.
Alternatively, I'm sure there's enough minerals/trees/fish/plants out there to fill out 45 different steps of gathering.