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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.
Comments
Like
Dislike (Some of the things I dislike are mentioned as getting changed in the article)
Overall I think the current system does a good job of showing and letting players test and experiment by allowing for high quality gear to be produced. fairly easily and with little effort on the part of the gatherer, excluding hunting, and by processors and crafters.
I hope that with the changes, that epic and legendary materials will be vastly harder to acquire. Requiring either a good skill in surveying or just sheer luck in locating it, but then in addition also require that the player is well equipped to gather said resource. There needs to be a relation between investment in the artisan gear and ones tool, and what you have the chance of acquiring.
Personally I hope there will never be a time, when a legendary resource is guarantied to drop, even from a "rare" spawn cluster, with a level 50, with grandmaster gear/tools of incredible quality grabbing it.
What makes a gatherable system fun for you? What kind of scenarios would you like to see encouraged through the system? An example could be finding a high-level Surveyor to party up with, or a party to lock down a nearby cave full of gatherables.
In terms of gathering, it is all about the chance for me. Going out and trying to find good quality, wood or stone, by hopefully using the surveying, instead of just strip-mining every resource in render distance. Getting high quality things feels amazing, even now, but it needs to be earned. That could be from luck, but preferably a primary combination of chance and effort in ones surveying, artisan gear and ones choice of tools.
I would like to see events, when resources with a rarity+ modifier, but not fixed rarity, are set to spawn.
Having to call in allied or go out in high level groups to secure and even harvest resources due to them spawning in areas with very high level and hostile NPC's, or potentially just a hostile biome or area.
Using that same group to go PvP, forced through an event area, to be the only ones able to gather or harvest resources from a cave.
Are there gatherable systems in other games that you enjoy? What about those mechanics do you find fun?
Two games come to mind:
Crowfall with their co-op gathering. I found it incredibly fun having to literally needing others if you wanted to gather certain resources, even better if those resources were either just high in rarity or vastly higher in quantity than the regular gatherables.
The second, isn't exactly a "gathering" but it comes close enough. Archeage, specifically when a player located sunken treasure. First of all how you needed to float it to the surface to loot it, but more importantly the way, that if you were extremely lucky, and you hit the jackpot, that a server wide announcement would be made, listing what was found, and using coordinates where it was. This enables so much good content, both from the solo player trying to rush to safety to deliver their high value resource, but also for the players immediately going on a hunt for it. To some extent I would love to see this system made for some gatherables in the game, allowing and making it risky but rewarding to get acquire them.
Which of the upcoming gathering-related changes excites or intrigues you the most, and why?
Even though I am loving all the changes and it is not a gathering change, the one I am looking forward to the most is the change to processing. Combining rarities, and customizable queue sizes will be wonderful for the QoL, and even make it so that processing rarity isn't a negative, but a stat you want to seek out.
For gathering it would be the surveying system, I can not wait to see how it plays and how you potentially could become proficient in using it, so I hope there is a player skill component to using it.
Most of the community is asking for a very simple and fair system. Each resource node should default to common and then the player rolls (based on their rarity stat and other bonuses) for a higher quality proc. Legendary spawns should be ultra rare if you have no bonuses. Once you have that foundational system in place, then add other systems with bonuses to rarity, for example: resources inside a lawless zone or pvp event area.
- I love the idea of being able to mix and match rarities when processing as it will keep all rarities relevant for crafting.
- We need our artisan quality ratings to actually have a noticeable impact when gathering, right now its a massive expense for an incredibly minuscule reward, especially in hunting but also every other gatherable where having quantity procs is more important than rarity because all you have to do is find a static node of high rarity. Please make the time and effort required to acquire high quality artisan gathering gear worthwhile.
- We need an artisan tool and clothes bag, it takes up way, way too much inventory space so we could really use a separate bag space for it.
What will happen to rarity on gear and tools?
Why cant we just have a simple RNG based system with random spawn timers where you get better chance at obtaining higher rarity materials based on the amount of rarity you have + artisan skill tree + certificate Level in that gathering?
Why are you adding more and more Zerg pleaseing Meta? this will be same as raptors situation where small guilds and groups will only have a chance of getting them when zergs are done camping them for 1/2 months, now imagine thats somthing else more valuable than raptors situation which cuzed wars over 6 raptor spawns imagine thats iron or rivid or gold or etc this will be another steel bloom raptor spawn which only numbers will wins.
Please stop going around the circle to make weird systems and making things more and more unpleasent for smaller guild/groups and more zerg pleasing.
I understand the idea, but in practice, it's just not enjoyable. I'd prefer each resource node to be random after each harvesting.
Next point is about Lumberjacking. Lumberjacking is fricking horrible. There's no real difference between Novice, Apprentice, and Journeyman. As a Journeyman Lumberjack, I'm still there chopping Ash and Oak, cos there just aren't enough Willows or Braidwoods around. It just doesn't feel different enough.
Take Mining, for example. There are loads of different rocks and gems to mine at each level. Lumberjacking has a single Apprentice Tree. Mining Nodes respawn pretty quickly. Trees take bloody ages.
There's just no real difference between Novice and Journeyman Lumberjacking, cos there are so few non-Novice trees, and they take so long to respawn. It's just not fun.
It would also be nice to have some different skins for the gathered Wood, cos some of them look almost identical. I still struggle between Ash and Willow. And one of the new Desert ones is very similar, too.
Hunting feels pretty lame, at the moment. It feels like there should be a different technique to getting either Trainables or Carcasses. The idea that a trained Hunter going out for pelts would come back with a set of live animals instead, is just weird. And there don't ever seem to be any Carcass Rarities above Rare. I don't think I've seen any Legendary or Epic Carcasses, whereas other gathering types seem to drop them more frequently.
Herbalism and Mining seem ok. There are enough different items to collect to keep it interesting, and they look different enough to tell them apart.
Fishing is just an AFK thing at the moment. Something you start while you're actually doing something else. There was a quote you guys gave a few years back, where you said something like: If someone can still progress without actually playing the game, then we've done something wrong. This is that something.
It would also be nice to have a smoother way of swapping over the Artisan gear. Having the different pieces fly about the inventory trying to fill weird and wonderful slots seems unusual. If I'm swapping out an Artisan Shirt, then just replace it with the Artisan Shirt that I'm putting on. It doesn't need to try and find a new inventory space.
My final point would be that with all these things we collect, in all the different Rarities, for the different gathering branches, and then all that again for each biome type... we need more Storage. Or at least to have you make the Specialist Storage options hold more of that resource type. It would go some way towards helping if you started the cost of the new tabs off a little cheaper.
This paragraph alone shows just how skewed the current Static Nodes system is.
Glad to hear it!
The other gripe I have against this style system is that it really just pushes the divide between the haves and the have nots further apart. The high end guilds already have the gold to buy everything. Letting them constantly lock down all of the high rarity areas so that they always have the good rarities and everyone else can only really hope for the small chance of a mid/high tier roll only grows the wealth gap between the sections of players. It ends up being a 2-tiered system.
I like traveling around the map, never following the same path as I have before. It is quite interesting to simply explore as I gather materials between nodes, and trying to figure out the best path to hit all the static but good quality nodes is not my type of gathering style.
What makes a gatherable system fun for you?
I wanted to use the survey system, but it didn't seem to do any good at the time. I am highly looking forward to using it though, to find the best resources that others may not be able to see!
What kind of scenarios would you like to see encouraged through the system? An example could be finding a high-level Surveyor to party up with, or a party to lock down a nearby cave full of gatherables.
I would like to see team gathering, because it is really fun to run through an area with a buddy and chat about the different level of things you find. It will be even better to be able to say 'Come help me mine this ______ I found!' Though, having caves to explore would be a lot of fun too, and not strictly caves packed with three star monsters. A careful solo or duo would have fun navigating through a cave system while avoiding the few deadly mobs roaming around here or there.
Are there gatherable systems in other games that you enjoy? What about those mechanics do you find fun?
The only gathering I participated in before was wood from LOTRO, and it was kinda weird gathering stacked up wood down in the mines of Moria.... It was not exactly fun.
Which of the upcoming gathering-related changes excites or intrigues you the most, and why?
I love that the gatherables will go into places that make sense. I also love that there will no longer be static rarity resources. I hated the fact that everyone was basically required to go out as fast as possible after a restart to grab and record the best resources, then immediately gobble them up again when their timer was up. Ridiculous. I like all the proposed changes for the upcoming updates!!
What I like currently: I love the variety of species and rarities of T1 trees and minerals (rocks & stones)
I love all of the items you can get to increase your gathering skills (Gsthering short, pants, belt, special resource bags, elixir, food, etc)
I love the idea of the Pylons and that Arcane Engineers can craft them and that they will track harvestables and increase your stats.
I love being able to catch potential mounts.
What I dislike:
I hate the static trees and minerals. For example: This spot will spawn a braidwood that is epic or legendary every four hours at this spot. You’ll NEVER find Willow wood on that mountain. Every four hours, rare zinc will spawn here.
I hate that my rarity skillset has ZERO impact on getting legendary, epic or rare trees. It only seems to impact the quantity and common/uncommon trees.
I hate that someone can come up to me the last tenth of a second I am harvesting a tree and sleep me to take it from me. Perhaps, make it that if you are harvesting it, you cannot be interrupted. So then they have to decide if they want to attack you to slow you down on the way to the tree or kill you afterwards to loot
You and they go purple or red based on if you fight back or not.
I hate that Pylons are broken. Especially the hunting ones which cannot even recognize a huntable animal (even if it is beside the pylon). I also hate that they are NoT tradeable.
I hate that their is ONLY ONE Tier 2 tree: Willow wood
And. oNLY ONE tier 3 tree: Braidwood
Minerals have TONS of tier 2 and tier 3 options.
What would be great changes?
1) make all gathersble spawns RANDOM. Random in both what type it is and what rarity rating it is. If you want to find rarity, then get your skill up and harvest TONS of trees.
2) Fix Pylons and let them be TRADEABLE.
3) make more varieties of T2 and Tier 3 trees.
4) add more complexity to hunting and to fishing.
5) Make your rarity skill level actually have meaning and impact your results.
First of all, I'd like to say gathering is a main gameplay loop for solos/casual players. Locking all that behind group contested resources would be a bad thing for the general playerbase. I would suggest having something like only 10% of the materials intended for the contest of gathering zones and group pvp scenarios, while 90% of materials and rarities remain widely available and relatively easy of access to the more solo/casual players.
1. I am unsure from the way it was framed if the rarities are static for a zone. For instance, if I find a legendary braidwood in that zone, does this mean there will always be at least one legendary braidwood in that particular zone? I understood it won't be on the same spot, but is it static for the zone?
If that's the case, then I think it's bad. it would mean guilds would be constantly camping there and create an unhealthy amount of gatekeeping on a gathering system, which is mostly a solo/casual gameplay loop.
Suggestion
The base rarities should be rotated between zones. In X time this zone has a legendary braidwood, but in X+2 time base rarities are shuffled and the legendary braidwood ends up in another zone.
This also gives time for more solo oriented / casual players to find these new locations beforehand and sneak in a few materials before the large pop finds those spots and dominates it
2. I am concerned about the nature of the base rarity and the ability of gear/tools to influence it. If the rarity is the same regardless of the person gathering it, then your progression as a gatherer is meaningless. Also, if you have a base rarity of legendary materials in the world, how would gatherer progression improve that situation?
Suggestion
Base rarity should be limited to something like rare. There should be no base rarity spawns heroic/epic/legendary. You can only gather rarities above rare if you have proper gathering gear. The gathering gear should also give you a % chance of improved rarity and not guarantee. So for instance a person with white tools and no rarity % increase would get always rare with a rare base rarity. A guy with proper gathering gear would have a higher % chance of those resources being heroic/epic/legendary.
Suggestion 2
You could also have special events that have an increased % rarity chance. Events like goblins flooding a cave and players having to fight the goblin invasion and other players to contest for these boosted rarity materials.
3. Some resource timers are too long to cause a contest. For instance, minerals and wood respawn every 2 hours. There will be no wars over those materials as it is not worth declaring war over them and gathering 1 node worth of resources every 2 hours.
Raptors are a good example of this. Resources spawn every few minutes, so there is enough time for ppl to gather, fight a bit, and then a few minutes later gather it again and go back to fight, creating this gameplay loop. That won't happen with 2-hour timers.
Suggestion
Reduce the timer of materials you want people to fight over, something along the line of every 3~5 minutes would be good. If you need to, severely reduce the quantity dropped and/or increase the required amounts of those mats on recipes accordingly.
I think if the concerns are answered and something like this is implemented we will be in a good spot.
What a HORRIBLE idea.
Also, stop this insane idea of trying make conflict around gatherables. There is enough PvP content already planned.
Based on the article just posted, it reads that rarity is still going to be hard coded into the material spawn and have nothing to do with the rarity stats on gear - so you're just invalidating that entire system. (Ironic given Steven's stance on making a game and invalidating the entire crafting section like other games do).
The rest of the article doesn't address the issue at all and just states that you're going to be giving tools to bot farms to allow them to zero in on the rare node spawns. (The idea is to make it harder for those guys, not easier).
Lastly, the joke about creating conflict is that conflict is now artificial, not organic. This directly contradicts the dev statement of letting the players make their own stories and not have to sit around specific locations making the gameplay loop boring.
If I have a high speed rating, I should gather that resource faster than others with lower ratings.
If I have a high quality rating, I should be able to gather more than 5 stone.
If I have a high rarity rating, I should have a higher chance to score a higher rarity.
Don't make a node spawn with a preset rarity. The player should roll at the time of mining for rarity. So, a node for someone who has beginner gear gets an uncommon resource, but the player that worked hard for a high rarity rating would be way more likely to get an epic or lego from that same node. It should be the player that rolls rarity, not predetermined by the spawner.
The spawner could roll a weighted number or multiplier to all to the player roll for higher chances or higher rarity (so newbs can still score lego, although extremely rare).
You guys continue to talk about the gathering system needing to be contested. No. It doesn't. There should be EVENTS for stuff like that, but ordinary gathering should be a task that you can do leisurely (ish) or have your alt do it without having to level them up to 25.
The contest at a node should be: I have better gear than you with a speed buff, so I'm going to be able to mine this before you finish.
Gathering is a break from the fight grind. Don't make it a fight grind.
There's a lot of good stuff in the post about the changes. I'm looking forward to seeing how it shakes out.
Oh, and the processing changes...just made my day!
The current gathering system technically works, but it's a terrible experience. The only way to properly participate and compete is by turning every gatherable resource into a spreadsheet with timers, and that absolutely kills the fun. Having to show up at a specific spot on a strict schedule turns gathering into a chore instead of something engaging. Chasing timers and turning it into this hyper-gamified system where it feels like I'm playing a browser game? That sucks. It's not fun, it's not enjoyable, and I want nothing to do with it the way it is right now.
If a system forces me to rely on spreadsheets, timers, and Discord bots just to have a fair shot at gathering resources, then I think it's just bad design. It locks out anyone who doesn't have that setup and straight up encourages external tools that give some players an unfair advantage. Gathering should feel natural and rewarding, not like a second job that punishes me for not min-maxing with third-party trackers. And you know what makes me quit games? When they stop feeling like games and start feeling like a chore.
The game should happen in the game, not outside of it. If I have to leave the game to play the game, then something has gone seriously wrong. The more I have to rely on external tools just to keep up, the less immersive and enjoyable the experience becomes. A good gathering system should feel like an adventure, not a spreadsheet simulator.
What makes a gatherable system fun for you? What kind of scenarios would you like to see encouraged through the system? An example could be finding a high-level Surveyor to party up with, or a party to lock down a nearby cave full of gatherables.
A fun gathering system, for me, is one that feels like an adventure, not a rigid, timer-chasing routine or chore. I want gathering to feel rewarding and dynamic, not something I have to manage with a spreadsheet just to stay competitive.
The best gathering experiences come from exploring the world and making meaningful choices, not from being forced to follow a strict external schedule. I'd love to see systems that encourage spontaneous interactions, maybe a rare resource node that requires multiple people to extract, or events where groups need to scout out and secure prime gathering spots before others get to them. Grouping up with others like a high-level Surveyor sounds like a great start, as it would hopefully encourage player interaction in an organic way to create a positiv experience.
If gathering can create real moments of discovery, competition, and teamwork inside the game, rather than rewarding those who track spawns outside of it, then that's the kind of system I'd actually enjoy engaging with.
Are there gatherable systems in other games that you enjoy? What about those mechanics do you find fun?
In Final Fantasy XIV, the gathering system has a sense of progression, where you can level up your gathering professions and unlock new abilities that make the experience more dynamic. It's satisfying to feel like you're getting better at something, and it's rewarding when you get a rare resource or complete a gathering quest.
While I think the system is far from perfect, I do believe it provides a really solid foundation that could be improved upon. The mechanics from the Botanist and Miner Professions, in particular, are a great starting point to take inspiration from.
How does it work in more detail?
Don't worry, I got you - here is a video that explains how it works:
If you haven't played it Final Fantasy XIV before, it might be a good idea to try out the gathering system yourself to get a better feel to what I'm talking about.
Which of the upcoming gathering-related changes excites or intrigues you the most, and why?
Most of it! Gimmie-Gimmie! I'm really excited about the shift from a static system with timers to something more dynamic. I hope this means I can get rid of spreadsheets and third-party systems for tracking, would be a huge improvement. I want to focus on the world, the adventure, and the experience, not be stuck managing external tools. A system that feels more organic and engaging is exactly what I'm hoping for, and I can't wait to see how it turns out!
What I don't like about the upcoming gathering-related changes, and why?
In the Surveying Updates, it states: "Testers will also be able to gain information about gatherables waiting to respawn -" I disagree with this.
I'm all for using surveying to find where resources are located and what they are, but not when they spawn. Let me go on an adventure and discover the general locations of specific gatherables, and let me be excited when I find rare instances of them. But please, don't tell me when they'll spawn. If they haven't spawned yet, they don't exist yet - that's part of the adventure.
The unpredictability is what makes gathering, and exploration, so fun. Revealing exact spawn times removes that excitement and sense of discovery. Keep the adventure alive!
Couldn't agree more. I'm probably in the minority in that the PvP of this game doesn't interest me, I don't PvP in any game (I'm also not a tester, so I'm further invalidated). I think it should be part of the node system and wars, caravans and certain zones and such, but to try and force it everywhere is really off putting and kind of a dumb decision. I know this game isn't meant to be for everyone, but they also don't need to try and make it even more niche lol.
I love chopping wood/carpentry in games. And I would love to clear cut an area, and have to wait to come back 3 days or even a week or so later to find that the forest has regrown in a completely different way with different assortment of trees and different areas of meadow like regions.
Food for thought.
HUGE:
The Good:
The Bad:
Now that that is out of the way, here are my thoughts
We need true randomness for gathering, random location, random times, and random rarity (that can be altered). Any form of static spawn does not breed conflict as desired, it breeds camping / zergs / and hoarding of information.
The rarity needs to be able to be altered from the default spawn rarity, my skill / levels in a profession should mean something, so should the gear that I am wearing. If I am a level 30 miner, I should have a better chance at getting that legendary copper compared to the person that created their character half an hour ago.
In my opinion there are far too many things that push for conflict with other players in game as it is, and I know that PvP is a big foundational pillar of the game, but there needs to be some outlet for the more casual players or players that are not in giant guilds. There are quite a few posts about how limited resources bred conflict (talking about raptors) and I was in a guild of approximately 80 active testers, we had 7 or 8 hunters and could not get raptors for at least the first two months because of two guilds with well over 1000 members being on the server and perma camping the spawns. If we attempted to get a group together, they would get a bigger group and so on until eventually they just had too many numbers for us to even try. This just feels bad as a game mechanic especially when we are talking about this zerg mechanic affecting a gathering profession of all things. With the static spawns my guild does not have people willing to get up at 0500 and find the spawn locations and then track the spawn timers, if we have any form of static spawns this will continue to be the case.
Herbalism: is in a pretty good spot right now. This could be because less people are doing that profession or I am doing it less, I do not know, but I seem to be able to find spawns of each of the available resources and I seem to get a variety of rarities for each. Currently there are 5 novice, 5 apprentice, and 4 journeyman plants to collect. Though two of the novice plants dont really have a use, two of the apprentice plants dont grow in the wild, but overall this profession feels useful and good.
Fishing: This is a total placeholder at the moment and is blah to say the least. In other games I love fishing and I hope that one day I will love it in AoC as well. Keep the afk auto-fishing for the very basic fish that can be cooked to replace rations and thats it, dont even allow the fish collected this way to be sold to a vendor. Once we progress into better versions of fishing what I would like to see is a mini-game to watch the bobber for one style of fishing, for a higher style of fishing i would like the bobber game followed by a line tension / fish stamina style game, then you could maybe expand this to bobber game then tension game then some kind of skill game for an even higher style of fishing.
Mining: This seems the most fleshed out with three categories per tier and often multiples of each category in each tier. There are two major flaws with mining though. First, as described earlier is the rarity, if this becomes truly random then this issue goes away. The second is the extreme dependence on one or two of the materials for practically every crafting profession and the scarcity of those resources. Obviously I am primarily talking about Copper, which is used in Arcane Engineering, Carpentry, Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, and Jewel Crafting. If copper were as plentiful as basalt and granite this would be a non-issue, and this scarcity has been improved in the last few months but I still feel it is incredibly low for the amount needed for all of these professions.
Lumberjacking: First can we please change this name to Logging?? Then, Similar to mining there are some significant flaws with this profession. Rarity and Scarcity follow the same pattern and issues as those in Mining, these issues are then compounded by the fact that currently there is only one usable T2 resource, and only one T3 resource to be gathered. I have an extensive post HERE about lumberjacking and how this limitation of variety affects multiple professions.
Hunting: Again this is an obvious place holder but even as a placeholder this profession has SIGNIFICANT problems. First, this is the only gathering profession where you dont know what you are going to get when you gather it (you can get either a carcass or a tamable animal). As a profession I should be able to decide if I want to kill the animal to collect a carcass or not. The second major issue as I see it is that as a hunter I should also have the skill to collect carcasses from mobs that are killed not just huntable animals. This would DRASTICALLY reduce the issue where there are significantly less huntable mobs in the world compared to the number of trees, mineables, or herbs to pick. I have an extensive post HERE about hunting and animal husbandry.
Final impressions,
First I kind of really like the thought of hiding the type of gatherable until the node has been harvested (as displayed in the gathering showcase, specifically with mining). I am not sure how you would obfuscate a gatherable like a plant or tree but I like the concept a lot for mining.
Second, use of Pylons / Survey Tool. Overall I do not mind the idea of these tools to give a better idea of whats where and even to give an increase in rarity or quantity. My problem so far would be that the area for current pylons is far too small. If you are using one for Lumber it works well as it can contain dozens of spawn points, but for mining or T2/T3 herbalism you are often lucky to have 2 or 3 spawns within the range of the pylon. I would just like to see that the range is large enough to be worthwhile.
Lastly, as much as I hate limiting what professions a player can do, I kind of think that you should not automatically be able to be a novice at every profession (at least not the gathering ones). My reasoning for this is that everyone now knows what copper looks like, and they know it is valuable, so even if they are not normally a gatherer, if someone sees copper they mine it, thus preventing actual dedicated miners from getting it. Since you can only have 5 professions total above the novice level I think that you should be required to get a novice certificate right away and limit this to a max of 6 professions. I understand that people that do not want to do any form of crafting can then choose to do all the gathering, but that happens anyway, what it does however is make you take that extra step and limits who will be the gatherers (thus causing the conflict that Intrepid apparently wants as part of everything).
As an event, in the lawless lands, have a mega-node spawn for various JM level gatherables. Like a giant rock cluster or copse of trees. Make it an event where a team is going to be needed to gather and protect the gatherers from others [creatures or other humans].
It will get the pvp fans something to shoot for and the gatherers would also be interested in.
There could be a buildup phase to let people know that the Active portion is happening soon. Soon could be hours or days.
Spitballing an idea.
Your loyal player,
PaliBaku
If that were the case, you wouldn’t pay any attention to the appearance of the trees at all—you’d just look for the glowing tree... That doesn’t make sense. Maybe in World of Warcraft, but not in Ashes of Creation. It has to be a natural system, just like they made it. People involved in tree logging also need to understand the terrain to be able to cut down the right trees. It’s all about learning the fundamental rules of trees—where they can grow, etc. They did an amazing job with this system.
On my general feedback, to facilitate reading, I'm using a simple color code for the section names:
green: Positive feeling
blue: undecided/mixed feeling
red: Negative feeling.
I haven't been able to organize my thoughts as well I wanted, but I do hope it's clear enough
Feedback on the existing system
Just to replace this comment in the context, with the existing rarity & timer mechanism, here are my thoughts. The static rarity, as some already described, only forces people into two categories: "know" and "know-not".
Locking new players out
Indeed, imagine being a new player, wanted to make their way into gathering, let's say, wood. There's wood everywhere right ? So they should be able to find some heroic, epic, and legendary wood here and there, right ?
But no, they will rarely if ever find some, because the "know" players are already making their rounds, collecting everything that's beyond a certain rarity level. This, in turns, soft-locks new players out of the effective gathering system (since they won't even come across the rare resource). That will really, in time, break the collective aspect of an economy, as only the few "know" players will be able to gather and sell the rare materials.
I think that's a flaw that can lead to the death of a game, as it will slowly starve the game of new players. And we're already seeing this in Alpha2, imho (maybe not exclusively for this reason, though).
Making player experience irrelevant to gathering
When communicating about AoC, I often hear (or interpret?) that it should feel real, engaging, and encourage player interaction.
As previously mentioned by others, this locked rarity & timer only induces players to optimize a gathering path through external tools, watched timers, and collect the resources upon their respawn. There's no adventure in that, no "watch your surroundings" feel, only numb players acting like bots would.
Feedback on the announced changes
Now to comment about the future, and what's coming.
On encouraging contestation over resource spawns
This is a general thematic within AoC, and was mentionned a few times in the gathering system article.
To be honest, I see close to no contestation over resources currently, and I believe that it's due to a few factors:
As such, designing gathering systems with contestation in mind, while constestation is technically non-existent seem to me like a mis-ordering of priorities. If the studio wants contestation to happen, contestation then should be "relatively" safe for both players, thus encouraging these actions.
Now, if contestation is what we're looking for first, I would probably suggest encouraging players to gather as groups, and not as a lone busy-keeping activity, though I have no idea how at the moment. Maybe Surveying is part of this?
Resource clusters ?
That's the one part I'm worried about to be honest. The short description in the article is not speaking to me, I don't understand how it works, nor what it entails or enables.
If this means that rares resources will spawn in groups, in a few specific areas, then I worry we're going to find a similar issue to the locked rarity. People will start identifying these areas, and in time, they'll be visited enough that there will no longer be an "eureka" moment there.
If this means that a "rare cluster of resources" can spawn anywhere, but as a "group", then there's a big potential for "eureka" moments, which I will gladly welcome.
Locating resources in immersive locations
I fully endorse this, as observing the environment would become enough of a lead for players to identify where resources are potentially located. Maybe it would be better that this is more a tendency than a systematic occurrence though, and still have some of the specific resource randomly spawned here and there, keeping this feeling of "Found one there !" when roaming about.
Survey system/job
On this one, I'm very much undecided. While having a Surveying job would be pretty cool, I worry that it would either:
Now, if you tell me that mineral ore nodes cannot be seen without a Survey-job player, and only once surveyed, can the ores be collected in specific areas, then I see a very real interest of interacting with Survey-job owners, and possibly engage in regular cooperation or paid services between players.
Gathering tools as equipable items
Okay. I was hooked on that one, and worried at the same time.
For instance, in the current system, I did like that one character _had_ to be high level enough in a gathering job, to be able to craft their own gathering tool. Which means it's not tradable. the fact that it may not be "equipped", is very interesting to me, as it means that one could switch tools depending on their current need: quantity vs rarity vs speed , for instance. Which I very much like !
Now, having it not being tradeable encourages to keep the infrastructure required to craft it, and we've seen some drama in Lotharia (EU Realm) relative to that recently, which was very popcorn-y for those who were removed enough from it.
Changing the tools to equipable, probably means tradable, though. And this also means that a Node may choose to have the crafting equipement for a day, players would stock up on the tool, and sell it to other when it becomes rare and expensive. I wonder how it'd play out.
Processing updates
Only good to be said here, as all the mentioned updates are things I've been waiting for for a while.
More general feedback on gathering, induced by this upcoming change
On the gathering experience
Currently, one has to collect a node to-the-end, sometimes even waiting one second after the end, before receiving all resources, in the same rarity.
To be honest, there are multiple flaws in there, in term of player engagement:
I've been playing lot of survival games, where rarity is an almost non-existent concept. Here, with the concept of rarity, I lack the feeling that I've been able to influence it through my gear/actions/whatever.
Additionally to this, the fact that stone and ores have been separated in different gatherable nodes feel very artificial. I still remember the Dev Update where gathering was mentioned, with the first appearance of the tree-falling animation. At the point, Steven was gathering stone & minerals from a big rock boulder.
I really felt that this was an interesting way to put forward both surveying (attempting to identify what ore/stone was in the boulder), and lifelike mining (having stones along with the ore). Currently, when roaming around, one often sees basic stone nodes being left, while mineral nodes are over-collected (until the players no longer need it). While our bags are relatively small, I wonder if not being able to identify "what ore/precious stone/stone" is in there would be an interesting twist to the gathering experience, and probably providing "lucky" feels moments.
On rarity as a whole
Clearly, the removal of the static spawn is a very good news. Now, with the mention of the Gatherable Spawn Cluster system, I'm not sure how RNG will come into play, but hear/read me out.
While I was running around, looking for rare resources, I lack this one specific feeling: The Knowledge that this one spot, because of visual impact, has higher chances of yielding rare materials.
Imagine running around the world, exploring for resources. Now, you stumble on what looks to be a huge iron mine, or a centennial Oak tree. As a player, wanting to engage in the gathering of resources, I would expect that some visually distinct resources would have higher chances of providing rare materials. I'm not talking about guarantees, mostly about relative chances. Thus, focusing on these "high-rarity-chance" nodes would provide a globally higher chance of rare materials. And it does not need to be 100% of the collected resources. Only one material from a pack of 5 would already be a huge "eureka" moment, because the player's choice, driven by experience on the gatherable nodes, created this opportunity.
Currently, an "adolescent oak tree" can provide same rarity as an "adult oak tree". I believe LumberJacks should be required to learn to identify Adult oaks visually, and that gathering adult oaks should provide higher rarity chance than an adolescent oak. Unless there will someday be a difference in inherent properties of "adolescent oak" versus "adult oak".
So my suggestion would be manyfold:
Making Gathering a collective activity
I've seen comments on incentivising players to cooperate for some specific gathering activity.
I personally support this idea, as the gathering activity is currently a very-much solo activity, which may, at best, be supported by a "bodyguard" players in contested areas.
Another way to "contest" a resource could be to be able to concurrently collect resources from a gatherable ore, thus "grabbing" a part of the amount allocated to the node.
Well you wanna hear from me lets do this!
You always talk about the economy but it is incredibly broken!
First off, the static nodes (Lumberjack, Miner), someone can find (and they always spawn in the same locations so its just remembering where it spawned) the legendary node for lets say Braidwood and make 20Gold per piece so if they find the 5 node that's 100 gold just for that one chop and then they can camp that all day and every 4 hours get that, so they can easily get 400-600gold per day. They can then pass that info to guild mates who can then camp that spot at night and just rinse and repeat until server reset.
Hunting, the static "petting" mods are about as bad as the lumberjack/mining nodes except they are so rare people camp them. while i get the PVP aspect to it larger guilds can just say "mine" to the 1 or 2 places something spawns and there goes anyone else trying to play/level up their gear.
How about the corpse drop from killed mobs? make the hunting bow available to be the regular bow so that it procs this. have the "pettable" version randomly spawn where the normal enemy mobs spawn. this gives a hunter the chance to get more BOB/Mount proc then just the 2-3 places they spawn in the world.
Fishing, honestly its a nice time off while im at work and not feeling like im doing anything, yes its a place holder but for not having Journeyman Fishing anyway its not a gold maker, no one cares about fishing then us fishers and its a nice relaxing thing until yall get the actual fishing done,
Herbalism, honestly its ok, I just would like to see more random spawns for stuff like Flax,Cotton ect
Overall the rarity should be linked to your level in the gathering profession and tools, yes the very Random chance someone should find a rare node is fun and that should be kept in game, but a Grand Master Lumberjack with gear for lumberjack should be hitting rarer stuff more often then say a novice. there should be a point where gatherers if geared cant even gather common or uncommon but everything they gather is Rare or higher because thats what they specialized in.
Speaking of common...lets talk. Because people can buy things from vendors there is NO REASON to have common in game, its useless and no one cares for it because they can go buy items from the vendor...which brings me to my next point.
I am a Cook....it was my dream in Verra to become Grand Master Cook and make food people want...but why would they come to me? the Journeyman Vendors sell the journeyman food...which they sell for less then the cost of what it takes me to make an ingredient for that said dish (Steven really come chat with me I have spreadsheets on food and how hard it is to make and the fact that something costs me close to a Gold to make the vendors are selling for 40copper is just heartbreaking) Vendors should sell the ingredients (sugar, salt) but finished food? Rations, that's it, common everyday Rations, nothing else. As long as you make it so things are not needed because people can buy from the vendor for cheaper then players can make the economy can not be properly tested because its not showing a true glimpse of what people can do
â—ŹI like traveling to get to better gathering spots. Like going to the open ocean to get swordfish and then some lake to get salmon.
Or the mountains to get rare ore. Going on a gathering adventure is cool.
That is pretty much my opinions atm
I would first like to mention that the processing changes with flexible batch sizes and mix and match rarity of ingredients is awesome and a wonderful much needed change.
It is disappointing however not seeing anything official about hunting rng, rarity, and general issues though. Others have mentioned it, but not intrepid. Now those of us who have been following this game understand that the whole of the crafting and gathering system we have now is a placeholder. The hunting system especially is not at all what is intended but a stop gap implemented because the real system wasn't/isn't ready.
Basically meaning that the current system is a placeholder for a placeholder, simply meant to give us something semi usable. I am therefore trying not to be too frustrated or harsh in my criticisms. It is however one of the most frustrating parts of the game for me currently.
All other professions, regardless of how flawed the static spawn system is (and it is BAD and WRONG), have access to high end materials. Hunting does not (heroics are possible just roughly about the same odds as winning lotto), and this is artificially bottle necking most crafting in the game. The professions are designed to be interdependent and this adds complexity and is overall a good thing. It does however mean that when one part is broken compared to the rest that the whole system is held back.
I do feel that maybe hunting rarity is the only profession in the game that is working as it should? Again getting a rare carcass is is worth cheering for, getting a heroic carcass is a true bragging moment. If the other profession had similar rates it wouldn't feel so bad. I however feel it should be brought up a fair bit, while others are busted down to meet somewhere in the middle. Great stuff should be hard to craft! That difficulty should not however stem from 1 profession being nearly impossible to get rarities matching the others.
No other gathering profession has to deal with the rng of maybe you get a carcass, or maybe you get a live animal. Bears are especially bad for this, it feels like bears are set to be live 75-80% of the time, meaning that not only is your chance of getting a rare+ carcass HORRIBLY low, your chance of even getting a carcass in the first place is really bad! It is almost enough to make you want to tear your hair out sometimes.
The whole thing is extremely frustrating. A hunter definitely has control of if he kills or does not kill whatever he hunts, it makes no sense for it to be random. l feel the best solution would be a toggle in the hunting section of the skill book, to switch between trapping for live, or shooting to kill. Failing that a skill in the hunting section of the skill book to kill and turn into a carcass any live animal you target in your inventory, assuming there is a carcass for said animal.
Please intrepid, PLEASE do something about hunting! It's been almost 6 months since alpha2 started and yet a fairly integral part of the entire crafting system is basically broken, with little to nothing ever being said about it. At worst maybe add hides to maps loot tables? It needs something.
Last point on hunting. The hunting bags do not recognize carcasses as a hunting resource and only allows a standard stack size of 20. Please fix.
While on the subject of bags I would like to add my voice to the few others about processing stacks/bags. There needs to either be bags for processed materials or make related gathering bags allow larger stacks of processed materials. A lumber jacking bag should let you have timber/planks/beams/boards etc in the same stack size as the wood you gather. Mining bags allow fragments/ingots/cut gems/sand/blocks etc. I think people get the idea.
Specialized bags would be preferable, I feel. As it stands currently if you don't level at least 1 gathering profession (and especially mining or hunting) you are basically doomed to pathetically small inventory space forever. At least until there are larger sanctus bag equivalents available to craft.
Ok now my hunting rant is over lets move on to the more common topics of this discussion.
First, I will repeat again that fixed spawns are BAD and WRONG. Many others here have expounded on why this is so. Most importantly because it makes +rarity gear and skill points spent in the trees we are told are eventually coming pointless.
The set areas for types of resources to spawn are good. Being able to know which areas are likely to have good concentrations of mining nodes, hunt-able animals and such rewards people who can pick good routes while traveling to let them get a chance of finding some good stuff. I feel higher tier resources should be less frequent when servers first start up though (talking about after a wipe and/or beta/release). So frustrating to roam during the early days and most nodes you see are tin/slate/emerald/iron/limestone/sapphire nodes that no one can mine.
Nodes should respawn with a random base rarity every time they happen to do so. Then when gathered, a roll based on your rarity rating possibly upgrades it from there. Roll should occur server side to help prevent hacks. This means it's possible but extremely unlikely you get epic/legendary materials without gear, but the gear is extremely helpful and greatly increases your chances of finding good stuff. Maybe limit base rarity to heroic, meaning epic and legendary would require good gear.
Currently when you roam you pretty much know that if you see a node, chances are it's common since no one snatched it as soon as it respawned. Not fun, feels bad.
The set timers are also fine. The set areas and set timers combined can very well lead to conflict because both can be deduced with reasonable accuracy. Having specific nodes always respawn at the same rarity does not. As mentioned by others no one other than the first person to hit the node knows that it's legendary, then they set a timer and organize someone else to take it if they can't. Even if things are changed so the timer isn't completely accurate, and the area it might respawn in is larger much of the problem remains the same.
I however have to agree with the previous posters who pointed out that there are more than enough activities in the game that encourage or require conflict. There is no need to bring it or force it into the gathering system. This is something that would suit a PvP all the time with no penalties type game. Not a game where flagging is optional and you get corrupted for killing people that don't fight back.
I like the corruption system, I am not by any means advocating for a more PvP oriented system! I am merely pointing out that gathering is as mentioned by others generally a solo/casual activity done during down times, while waiting for the rest of the group to log on or traveling from a to b. Any node you find should have a chance to be worthy, at the moment that is not the case.
I feel that not many people are going to be keen enough to flag up and fight over spawns of resources even if they know that that copper vein/braid wood tree/etc is leggo. Why? Because loot drops. No one can return to town and drop stuff in storage every time they get something good, so why would they risk everything they gathered so far by flagging up and fighting someone over a node or 2? Most (well, probably at least a small majority?) of people that gather are more likely the PvE players that aren't that keen on fighting people in the first place.
If you punish people for dying, they will try to avoid dying. Fighting someone over a resource and risk death penalties + they take some of my stuff?! No thanks! Of course if you are gods gift to gaming and sure you wont lose, or maybe you just left town and are empty of all valuables then the story changes. you might get mugged at anytime but at least you can content yourself that unless they have a buddy nearby to kill them they will get hunted down by others in revenge.
Lawless zones and other forced flag areas should have a massive +rarity chance when they respawn due to the danger involved in being there.
Having events spawn at times where likelihood of good materials is high sounds cool. Having events trigger due to someone finding good stuff (the suggested glow comes to mind) or planted a pylon they spent money/resources on sounds horrid. Why would anyone willingly spend on something that is only going to bring a zerg down on your head? No one wants to use up resources to make items that are highly likely to result in benefiting others rather than oneself.
The upcoming changes also mentioned tools will be equip-able items as per normal. i have to wonder if you intend to have them actually work with this change? Some guildies have shown through data mining that currently, at least for rarity, the rating on the gathering tool is never checked, only clothes and food actually affect it. Most of the other stats also seem to do nothing. Tools are not currently worth the materials needed to make them, really hoping this changes!
Gathering in the game currently feels great! Until you find out about the fixed spawns, then feels bad. As for likes and dislikes in gathering, I only really have one thing to say which is please for the love of whatever powers that may or may not be that you may or may not believe in PLEASE NO MINI GAMES!
I have seen some people complaining about fishing being an afk activity, and it's kind of legit. I however feel that any good MMO need a few afk activities. There should be some where you plant in town converting the resources handed in for the buy orders into the commodities they are for in order to gain small amounts of related crafting xp, assuming you meet certain thresholds. At the moment one is basically forced to mass craft novice recipes in order to level because the materials needed to make anything higher are just too many and involve too many other professions. That is a bit off topic but it is certainly an issue that also needs addressing.
Well I feel there is more I wanted to say but I have forgotten it now after typing and drinking for hours. This thesis is likely long enough.
Game is good despite the work that is clearly needed and overall I enjoy it! Keep up the good work Intrepid!
Were they wrong when they doubled down, or what?
Because the latest announcement says the exact opposite.
https://ashesofcreation.com/news/the-gatherable-spawning-system-is-evolving
As I've said before I'm not adjusting my life schedule to catch the reboots to find the super node that always drops super materials. Then setting a time to log back in to grab it again and again and again. That's not fun to do, and it won't be fun to compete with people who have done that. If the game wasn't so damn competitive it wouldn't matter. I don't think I'll sub if this remains or any other mechanic that creates the same issue. Still wish you success, but it simply won't be a game for me.
All the gathering has the same behavior. Race to node, click node, get loot.
All processing and crafting has the same behavior. Click, click, click, through the hardcoded value selector menu. Between growing a plant or tanning a hide there is no difference, I might as well be engaging in the same mechanic.
No gather, process, or crafting is unique in Ashes, it's has regressed in most aspects compared to other games. Processing and crafting is just menu clicking. Gathering is basically like it was in 2000. On top of the static materials. It's like no lessons were learned from past games and nothing was iterated on to be improved. Or maybe this is all placeholder, I really hope so, but generating hope is getting harder and harder.
The life skills in Ashes of Creation are bad.
What aspects of the current gathering system do you like and dislike?
The location of the materials I've come across make sense. If I was finding flowers on the beach that'd be weird. But generally if you're looking for something you can think about where it might be located in RL or in the lore of Vera is good.
What makes a gatherable system fun for you? What kind of scenarios would you like to see encouraged through the system? An example could be finding a high-level Surveyor to party up with, or a party to lock down a nearby cave full of gatherables.
Gathering isn't normally fun, it's normally a tedious process you need to do, to do what you really want to do, or you do it when you're waiting for friends to log in. The only way to make it fun is to actually improve the gathering mechanics. The fishing is Arch Age was a lot of fun. I general I won't compete with a group locking down a cave because the pvp penalties make it not worth it until you're cap'd and don't take exp debt (and balance issues currently). Competing to engage in an activity that isn't fun doesn't make that activity fun, competing for the sake of competing is better done in an FPS. Everything doesn't need to focus on pvp....
Are there gatherable systems in other games that you enjoy? What about those mechanics do you find fun?
1. Arch Age fishing was a TON of fun for me.
2. New world respawn. (Resource would spawn if the area when under an X number.) For example if an area had 100 hemp, once that area got to 25 hemp, it would spawn a new hemp somewhere. So an area would never get depleted. This works great for plant and rock type gatherables.
3. Hunting should be a skill. Like when you press fish, but you can hunt areas and track animals of certain type for that area. The animal gets marks for hunting which allows you to either kill it to harvest it, or bring it's health down to X% to tame it. Trapping could also be used for taming without harming. Petting to death has got to go...
4. Back to fishing. The auto fishing is okay, but drop the success rate and no rare fish. Add in catching monsters to kill afk anglers. Active fishing mini game for catching fish with a normal success rate and rare spawns. Fish should have different spawn rates in different areas. Different spawn rates for seasons and time of day. Sun raise and sun set should be prime times for fishing for certain fish. Add in bait types. Add in fish traps too.
5. Should be more caves for mining, or abandoned mines. Should be other gatherables in them too.
6. Farming. players need a place to farm even if they don't get a freehold or whatever. There needs to be an actual farming mechanic. As it is (last i tried) it's just click through a menu.
7. I could go on and on
Which of the upcoming gathering-related changes excites or intrigues you the most, and why?
I don't know what's up coming. Even if I did I don't think I'd comment on it until I tried it.
I also think it would be good to modify a resource node's respawn rate based on how often it is harvested. If the same trees keep getting cut down 10 minutes after they spawn in, then they should take longer to spawn in.
Also, I like how the trees grow from adolescent to adult over time and increase their yield. I would like to see other resources do that same thing.