Post by Azherae on 2023-12-11 19:22:06
In the end, I couldn't figure out how to answer this question properly relative to Ashes, and for that, I'm sorry.
What follows here is basically just going to be 'stuff the team is probably already doing' because it is 'The Feedback we were going to give NCSoft about how to fix what we presumed was their placeholder Crafting system'. I'll skip the explanation of the TL 'crafting system' since I'm confident that anyone at Intrepid working on this already knows how it goes.
Working backwards from the Bosses/Elites therefore:
Queen Bellandir Skin is Purple Grade, or should be, or she drops a Purple Grade 'Leather'. This should always be a special leather with a specific property that differentiates it from 'regular Purple Grade Leather', and adds some semi-consistent property to Leather Gear when it is used to make it.
There shouldn't be just one 'regular' Purple Grade Leather either. If you wanted, you can make it so that Queen Bellandir Skin isn't a specific item, but like, 'Epic Tier Flexible Skin', and then there's lower tiers of Flexible Skin that drop from things like 'weaker Worm mobs', and whatever else. BDO manages this much, they just do little with it.
You need at least four of these per material type and they can't transform into each other, but they can be substituted to change the properties of the gear you make with them. So, to focus on Drop Rarity. Ashes 'Giant Scorpion' mob should drop some kind of Blue Tier 'Scorpion Shell' or 'Arthropod Shell' basically 60% of the time. The other 40% of the time, maybe it drops 2, maybe it drops 1 and a recipe (I tend to think of these as 'being able to look at the mob and the way it fought and took damage and get a new armor idea), maybe it drops a Venom Sac, maybe it drops some other thing.
The Recipe drop should have a system that makes it so that this specific recipe can alter some stats for the product you make with it, similar to the base gear crafting in Legend of Mana (see below). It takes up a space in the recipe book (I can't remember if this recipe book thing is 'my' idea or an Ashes idea that was mentioned sometime, and not breaking flow to check...)
So a "Light Flexible Armor" has "Slashing", "Piercing", "Blunt", "Magic Defense" multipliers, and a Sheep Leather has like, "Hardness", "Thickness", "Cushioning", "Resistance" Properties. But Boar Leather has different ones.
So "Boar Leather Light Armor" and "Sheep Leather Light Armor" might even be almost the same, but they get created with some underlying properties that affect 'how their stats increase when enhanced' or change which sockets or abilities they get.
It isn't really about any need for separate Slashing/Piercing/Blunt resistance on the armor itself, but moreso like 'high blunt resist values increase certain CC resistance'. Same for weapons. Ashes should probably not go as far as Mana does and let you make Sheep Leather Swords, though.
Go here and read section 9.5 "Material Properties List" if for some reason this isn't clear/sufficiently equivalent to whatever you're making now based on SWG.
So, I say give the 'single party encounter' Rares and Elites drops that fall into Blue Tier, and change three specific things based on how rare or difficult the mob is:
If the mob is part of the normal ecosystem, spawns often with minimal conditions, then if it's a thing that WEARS armor or uses a weapon, let it drop some component or damaged deconstructible version of some armor it wears or weapon it uses. If it's a 'natural' mob like a Tiger, it can just drop 'Blue Grade Tiger Hide'.
If it is limited enough to appear only during a certain season or under some special condition, and it is made to be fairly unique but not difficult, then have it drop similar things to above, but with higher chances of special Recipe drops. You fought it under a condition, you probably learned something. Don't care if you need to bring a crafter to the fight.
If it's limited in the above way but actually strong, or some other setup (long quest, Pop item that you have to wrangle, rare story triggered condition) then go up to Purple Tier. Start making the specialized stuff here, but if it's just 'a stronger version of a mob that already exists', guarantee some Blue quality drops maybe. If it's a unique mob let it drop a fitting Unique Material (Blue Tier is fine, whatever balances right). It's already rare due to some limit condition, and it's hard to fight, but Unique Blue doesn't wreck things economically as much as 'Consistent Purple'. I think rare spawns of hard mobs can drop Purple Mats if you bring the spoiler though.
If it's a semi-unique or entirely unique mob, it's probably hard (but I've played games where these have an easy version that is just 'testing the waters content that there isn't then any reason to remove). If it is hard, it should drop Purple Unique obviously, or even 'legendary'. If it isn't intended to be particularly hard, it can drop Blue, and if it's a humanoid, it can drop Purple but not Unique, like "Damaged Purple Grade Sheep Leather Light Armor" that you then deconstruct. A good way to fill out simplified item tables where there IS no 'Purple Grade Sheep' out in the world for you to kill to get that, only from Animal Husbandry, per se, and rare even there. But you can throw these on Humanoid enemies. Immersion!
If you don't want a market flood of 'receiving something on every kill' for these (I don't see why, this is Ashes, I'd figure you need the 'Queen Bellandir's Hide' to repair the 'Bellan Leather Armor' main part) then again tweak the drop options to be like "Purple Material, or Blue Materials, or sometimes Recipe only since the fight destroyed the material but gave you a really good idea of how it should be used when you get it".
If you want a pity drop system, I say make it a 50/50 thing where it drops 'Giant Desert Scorpion Combat Notes' which you CAN sell, and this is an item that makes it so that if you activate it during the fight with the enemy, it guarantees better drops. Bonus because people who specialize in hunting it can save these up and then join parties who want to fight it, mercenary style, if they don't want to just sell them off or whatever. If you want, these could even be the "Bind on Pickup" style item, because one could reasonably say 'well the notes are helpful but without the person who was actually there watching the fight they're not effective'.
As always, please weight this structure according to however much faith you have in my Econ Design input. This one took about 4 days to develop from the TL side and about 2 more days to 'convert to Ashes and smooth out the kinks'. I dropped a lot of 'potential pain point' aspects though, since I still don't fully understand the target audience desires for this game.
Good luck, Itemization and Balance teams! I hope this helped even a little. Looking forward to Talon Daggers and Wyrmscale Cloak and all that!
What follows here is basically just going to be 'stuff the team is probably already doing' because it is 'The Feedback we were going to give NCSoft about how to fix what we presumed was their placeholder Crafting system'. I'll skip the explanation of the TL 'crafting system' since I'm confident that anyone at Intrepid working on this already knows how it goes.
Working backwards from the Bosses/Elites therefore:
Queen Bellandir Skin is Purple Grade, or should be, or she drops a Purple Grade 'Leather'. This should always be a special leather with a specific property that differentiates it from 'regular Purple Grade Leather', and adds some semi-consistent property to Leather Gear when it is used to make it.
There shouldn't be just one 'regular' Purple Grade Leather either. If you wanted, you can make it so that Queen Bellandir Skin isn't a specific item, but like, 'Epic Tier Flexible Skin', and then there's lower tiers of Flexible Skin that drop from things like 'weaker Worm mobs', and whatever else. BDO manages this much, they just do little with it.
You need at least four of these per material type and they can't transform into each other, but they can be substituted to change the properties of the gear you make with them. So, to focus on Drop Rarity. Ashes 'Giant Scorpion' mob should drop some kind of Blue Tier 'Scorpion Shell' or 'Arthropod Shell' basically 60% of the time. The other 40% of the time, maybe it drops 2, maybe it drops 1 and a recipe (I tend to think of these as 'being able to look at the mob and the way it fought and took damage and get a new armor idea), maybe it drops a Venom Sac, maybe it drops some other thing.
The Recipe drop should have a system that makes it so that this specific recipe can alter some stats for the product you make with it, similar to the base gear crafting in Legend of Mana (see below). It takes up a space in the recipe book (I can't remember if this recipe book thing is 'my' idea or an Ashes idea that was mentioned sometime, and not breaking flow to check...)
Legend of Mana uses a system where a gear TYPE has a set of 'multipliers' that are applied to the PROPERTIES of the material used to make it, to get the final stats.
So a "Light Flexible Armor" has "Slashing", "Piercing", "Blunt", "Magic Defense" multipliers, and a Sheep Leather has like, "Hardness", "Thickness", "Cushioning", "Resistance" Properties. But Boar Leather has different ones.
So "Boar Leather Light Armor" and "Sheep Leather Light Armor" might even be almost the same, but they get created with some underlying properties that affect 'how their stats increase when enhanced' or change which sockets or abilities they get.
It isn't really about any need for separate Slashing/Piercing/Blunt resistance on the armor itself, but moreso like 'high blunt resist values increase certain CC resistance'. Same for weapons. Ashes should probably not go as far as Mana does and let you make Sheep Leather Swords, though.
Go here and read section 9.5 "Material Properties List" if for some reason this isn't clear/sufficiently equivalent to whatever you're making now based on SWG.
So, I say give the 'single party encounter' Rares and Elites drops that fall into Blue Tier, and change three specific things based on how rare or difficult the mob is:
If the mob is part of the normal ecosystem, spawns often with minimal conditions, then if it's a thing that WEARS armor or uses a weapon, let it drop some component or damaged deconstructible version of some armor it wears or weapon it uses. If it's a 'natural' mob like a Tiger, it can just drop 'Blue Grade Tiger Hide'.
If it is limited enough to appear only during a certain season or under some special condition, and it is made to be fairly unique but not difficult, then have it drop similar things to above, but with higher chances of special Recipe drops. You fought it under a condition, you probably learned something. Don't care if you need to bring a crafter to the fight.
If it's limited in the above way but actually strong, or some other setup (long quest, Pop item that you have to wrangle, rare story triggered condition) then go up to Purple Tier. Start making the specialized stuff here, but if it's just 'a stronger version of a mob that already exists', guarantee some Blue quality drops maybe. If it's a unique mob let it drop a fitting Unique Material (Blue Tier is fine, whatever balances right). It's already rare due to some limit condition, and it's hard to fight, but Unique Blue doesn't wreck things economically as much as 'Consistent Purple'. I think rare spawns of hard mobs can drop Purple Mats if you bring the spoiler though.
If it's a semi-unique or entirely unique mob, it's probably hard (but I've played games where these have an easy version that is just 'testing the waters content that there isn't then any reason to remove). If it is hard, it should drop Purple Unique obviously, or even 'legendary'. If it isn't intended to be particularly hard, it can drop Blue, and if it's a humanoid, it can drop Purple but not Unique, like "Damaged Purple Grade Sheep Leather Light Armor" that you then deconstruct. A good way to fill out simplified item tables where there IS no 'Purple Grade Sheep' out in the world for you to kill to get that, only from Animal Husbandry, per se, and rare even there. But you can throw these on Humanoid enemies. Immersion!
If you don't want a market flood of 'receiving something on every kill' for these (I don't see why, this is Ashes, I'd figure you need the 'Queen Bellandir's Hide' to repair the 'Bellan Leather Armor' main part) then again tweak the drop options to be like "Purple Material, or Blue Materials, or sometimes Recipe only since the fight destroyed the material but gave you a really good idea of how it should be used when you get it".
If you want a pity drop system, I say make it a 50/50 thing where it drops 'Giant Desert Scorpion Combat Notes' which you CAN sell, and this is an item that makes it so that if you activate it during the fight with the enemy, it guarantees better drops. Bonus because people who specialize in hunting it can save these up and then join parties who want to fight it, mercenary style, if they don't want to just sell them off or whatever. If you want, these could even be the "Bind on Pickup" style item, because one could reasonably say 'well the notes are helpful but without the person who was actually there watching the fight they're not effective'.
As always, please weight this structure according to however much faith you have in my Econ Design input. This one took about 4 days to develop from the TL side and about 2 more days to 'convert to Ashes and smooth out the kinks'. I dropped a lot of 'potential pain point' aspects though, since I still don't fully understand the target audience desires for this game.
Good luck, Itemization and Balance teams! I hope this helped even a little. Looking forward to Talon Daggers and Wyrmscale Cloak and all that!