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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
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.
Static resource nodes
gforce99
Member, Alpha Two
Static resource nodes are awful. The players that obtain the resources only have to play 30 minutes a day and some are collecting hundreds of gold for half hour play. This also tells the bot teams that farming these boxes are easy and great way to strip the community of gold... easy for resale value.
Please stop this insane talk that static nodes promote fights. The resource is gone 10 seconds after spawning, it's impossible to know it was a legendary willow. And it's bad karma to randomly kill people after at possible down point. Also gives corruption.
The entire idea is awful. And it's the one, biggest problem this game is now promoting. Please reconsider a better path that gives EVERYONE an opportunity at achieving better tools and items.
Please stop this insane talk that static nodes promote fights. The resource is gone 10 seconds after spawning, it's impossible to know it was a legendary willow. And it's bad karma to randomly kill people after at possible down point. Also gives corruption.
The entire idea is awful. And it's the one, biggest problem this game is now promoting. Please reconsider a better path that gives EVERYONE an opportunity at achieving better tools and items.
5
Comments
Raptor spawns near Steelbloom are the biggest indicator of that. Multiple wars were fought over those respawns, which is a great driving force for conflict and PVP. Now imagine what that could look like if that extended to most valuable resources in the game.
Now, I am not saying their current implementation is good. The fixed spawn and rarity for things like wood and minerals are badly done. Currently, you can't fight over those as you don't know where they are and when they are respawning.
Is the solution to switch to fully randomized respawns and rarities? I'd argue no. I agree with the devs that doing so would remove any chance for players to compete over these resources.
Now, I think the solution is something that they are already kinda implementing. The clusters of resources pooled together and more reliable spawning locations are a good start. But I think we can go further
Suggestion
As we saw in the showcase back in 2020 something, they intend on implementing resource obfuscation. They plan on doing that by having regular rocks on the outside, and possible other resources on the inside (Like a basalt rock being broken and rubies being collected). The second step would be to have static respawns for a small duration (let's say something around 2 hours) on an entire cluster. To finalize, we add surveying (which we already have, but could be developed to be more like Star Wars Galaxies surveying), which would allow the players to track and create a heatmap of what resources are located where and in which time slot, even if the resource is currently gone because someone took it.
Additional suggestion: Reduce the timer of the node spawn and reduce the amount each node gives of a resource, so players can go there and fight over a longer period of time rather than just every 2 hours like how it happens with named mobs. Timers closer to the raptor spawns but maybe a bit longer would be ideal
Example:
We have a basalt cave. That basalt cave, at time X spawns let's say 60% rubies, 20% copper, 10% iron, and 10% rividium (or whatever). Those spawns will remain there until X+2 hours. Whether rarities are fixed can be debatable (maybe static respawns are not enough to incentivize the conflict and a big pool of epic resources could cause a massive conflict). Doesn't matter if you go by the cave and everything is looted. You and your group survey the areas, find the resource heatmaps (maybe even with spawn timers), and then proceed to go there. Other groups are doing the same thing and now you guys fight over that area for the next 2 hours. Once the 2 hours go by, the respawns are reset and other things spawn and you now have the choice of keep fighting there or go look for the next cluster.
This way, we remove the problem of things being camped without any chance of competition while keeping the incentives for players to fight over the resources.
TLDR: Fixed spawns (and maybe rarities) for a limited amount of time coupled with proper use of surveying could create an interesting gameplay loop where players can fight for resources without them being camped to oblivion.
Fixed rarity has nothing to do with the raptors scenario due to there only being 6 spawns at that time, all in a small grouping in one area. Thats manufactured conflict, like king of the hill there was a more or less singular zone/objective to fight for to be rewarded.
The problem with fixed rarity is that resources that aren't scarce in numbers or are spread across large areas is that anyone can just find one legendary of the resource, and then sit a character on it with a timer preventing any other player from even knowing about it.
The way to fall in line with what the devs are aiming for (conflict) would be to do like Steven Suggested where higher rarities only spawn off of visually distinct resource nodes, or off of pinged events. My other suggestion for how its currently implemented would be to ping on the map any legendary resource that gets gathered. So when someone finds it, everyone else now knows about its location. These promote conflict.
The con to these foused event and pinged suggestions is that unless there is also some RNG non-fixed rarity drop potential outside of them, nobody will even bother farming the masses of resources due to lesser rarity.
I feel like you haven't read my post, as I pointed out how surveying can be used to fix the issue you pointed out and do what you suggested.
Yes, the raptors don't have fixed rarities. And again I also said that the benefit of fixed rarities would be creating different levels of conflict, as more people would turn out to a place knowing for instance a high rarity of a good material is being spawned there.
I agree with your con though. If we know the rarity beforehand it could cause lower-level rarity resources from being collected. I'd say that could be fixed by requiring bulk resources (as node buy orders do, white low-value materials are very useful for completing those and also used for leveling professions). As long as they have utility they should be worth picking up. If they are not worth picking up, then they shouldn't be there in the first place. Maybe the world manager should control these types of things
But that's the debatable part I added. The important part of the feedback is keeping the fixed spawns and adding the clusters as they suggested, coupled with surveying to fix the issue of materials being camped without players knowing they are there and when they spawn.
I dont think you really made any bad suggestions, however I would say that even with the surveying bit, youd still have people finding and basically hiding resources from others if fixed rarity is a thing. Personally I dont even like the resource rarity route due to power imbalances of same level tier gear which is very apparent right now regarding TTK, but thats a whole other rabbit hole.
Generally though, if conflict over resources is truly what Intrepid wants, just have a players character faintly glow the color of the highest rarity resource item they have on them. That right there would give allllll of the conflict they could ever want, even with corruption. But as for wanting conflict in specifically gathering, you have to have some sort of "carrot" to guide that conflict. And any sort of static rarity where the locations arent discernable in some way to allow for the consideration to fight for it, that just doesnt cut it for promoting conflict.
- fixed timers means players either create alts to farm to the second, or players limit their game experience by making sure to hit specific nodes at specific times. People didn't explore new content when released because they felt obligated to guard leg nodes also resulting in less effective testing of new content.
2) there is no 'contesting' over them
- people can't contest what they don't know about and doesn't exist for more than 1 second
- can also be camped by invisible rangers making it even harder to know
- even if can be contested, advantage goes to a few classes essentially limiting a major gameplay loop
3) incalculable advantage goes to a very small few
- those who can log in immediately on server up find the leg nodes; odds of finding a leg node of any major interest (Braidwood for example), is essentially zero for everyone else
- major guilds who have players on all the time can thus 'soft-lock' progression by simply hoarding all the resources necessary for gear upgrades
Simplest fix until long-term vision in place: set the 'move high-rarity-location timer from w/e it is now to just 1 or maybe 2 respawns'. Changing one number and impact is minimal since same resource-generation rate is maintained.
Edit: even though I'm not a fan of only having coal available randomly, having it as a random chance while hitting other stones is actually good in my opinion. Having high rarity only available this way would be great if you can manage a similar intro rate as current.
Going to be making an official thread on this topic very soon. I'll merge this thread into the official one when it's posted
To be frank, it seems like everyone hates it the way it is now...Especially the newer players joining phase 2, who simply cannot compete with kitted out gatherer's on 180%+ speed mounts. Which sucks, because it's something that quite easily drives people away.
I've been benefiting from it quite alot once figuring it out...but I still absolutely hate it.
Yeah we're testing/playing an alpha...but we're also trying to have some fun, testing said alpha.
Possibly the easiest short-term solution conceptually...would be to just randomize spawn timers for rare+ static resource nodes. As to how difficult that actually is to do in UE5 engine, I do not know...but surely it's doable, because it's already being done with huntables like Gryphons....which is why people have to camp them, if they want that constant supply...And having to camp a resource with an unknown spawn timer, means that it can be contested...Or, it can be more easily found by random passer-by's.
If you know the resource is coming back at exactly "x" time...then you can simply come back to it a minute before that time and make it disappear quickly again. Having to meta-game just to get the resources you need to explore the crafting systems, is just dreadful...even if it *is* just a placeholder system.
And you mentioned invisible hunters...but it's even worse than that. Take big guilds, and add alts...1) They have a much easier time using large numbers to actually find the rare static spawns faster/more reliably than anyone else...And once located, they can simply park an alt on each node with the required harvesting skill, and then log it off.
Then log it back in 30s to 1m before the timer is up, hit whatever node it is...log back off again. There's a high probability that nobody else will even know that node is there for the next 24h cycle...Though, I have caught glimpses of it while roaming around.
And my wager is...if they end up having to leave for whatever reason...they simply hand off that location and it's time to the next interested party within the group/guild...Nobody else will ever get to see that resource again, or have a chance to compete for it until the next rarity/spawn re-shuffle.
On the plus side however...it at least means that higher quality ingredients are making their way into people's hands / the market...so high end gear can be crafted/tested out. If tree gathering, was anything like hunting...Then there'd simply not be enough trees to support the sheer ungodly number of trees you'd have to statistically chop down, just to get 5x legendary.
And most JM equipment items seem to require 20x processed braid-wood.
The Idea about expecting ppl to fight over spawns is a joke. If they want ppl to small scale fight over rss, do it somehow else.
Could be NPC caravans, random events like the already have etc. easy to figure out better ways, just dont ruin it for the gahteres with static nodes.
Even some of the legendary gatherers in my guild are saying they're not going to bother in P3 if the current system stays the same.
It sucks... It is a quit point for many people. Gathering is supposed to be a core part of the game.
Where is @Dygz?!?!?! Ashes is supposed to be dynamic, not static!
More systems where the rich get exponentially richer and poor fall futher behind. Great for player retention, really...
No one - including I - ever claimed that Ashes would be dynamic during Alpha. ALPHA
We don't even have Stage 4 Nodes yet or Node Sieges - and you are complaining about the lack of dynamic content.
Alpha isn't about player retention. Alpha is about testing.
If you are bored testing Alpha Phase II - take a break.
Hey @Vaknar it's been a week, when should we expect the official thread to be created?
Alpha alpha alpha, blah blah blah, no one cares... gathering is a core part of the game loop on which node stages and sieges rely on, if gathering is broke or unbalanced the nodes and sieges will be too. So why was it built like it's 2006? Is this static location/time spawn intended, an oversite, a bug? We don't know for sure @Vaknar said they're going to make an official thread for it, but we're still waiting. If they did a poll for it than the only people polled will be those still following, which would alienate others that have walked away or holding out for the next phase, beta, or release. And could potentially tilt the poll towards those that are benefitting from the static asshattery, since they're still playing. Many people care more about 'winning' than playing a good game.
Correct! We'll be posting a Dev Discussion on this very soon. I just finalized all of the work for it, so putting it onto the calendar is the next step
I'll merge threads like this one into the official one once it's posted!
If you guys really wanted us to test things, you'd give us the resources necessary to test them.