Suggestion: replace quality (common, uncommon, rare, etc) on materials with a Quality Rating stat

We have not received permission from Gimblewald to share the quoted post.

It might be effective at reducing bloat, but I sure as hell disagree with the other 2. Even the current system makes my mind boil when I'm trying to figure out a proper craft cycle for something. Adding hardcore math onto that would straight up make me stop crafting things.

I have to strongly disagree here. The only place I think such a system belongs in is some very high level administrator/spreadsheet type game where you're a manor lord or you oversee a solar system, but not in this or most MMOs. The primary reason is immersion, the aim shouldn't be to make things work more like abstract numers, but rather make the player feel like they're truly mining, truly carrying a basket of eggs and so on.

I'm trying to say this in as nice a way as possible, basically I don't know what kind of game diet the average AoC fan grew up with, but I wish it taught them to love immersion more. I genuinely think the only reason people come up with ways to make MMOs more abstract is because they never really experienced being immersed.

As for the goal of being easier to understand, at least for newbies, I'm afraid this isn't achieved.

Unfortunately I'm caught up today and it's late so I'll just let @Azherae explain.

So, I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think this is the right solution to the current problem.

I don't find that having multiple different rarities/grades of e.g. granite does much for my immersion, and it adds a whole layer of complexity to crafting. Optimally, crafting systems should feel like they make sense within the context of the game's world, but having a ton of different tiers of material just ends up feeling artificial and "gamey". Plus, it makes actually understanding the system harder.

As a point of comparison, everyone's favorite mining and crafting game, Minecraft, doesn't have any equivalent concept. Materials are made more or less rare based on how often they occur in the world, and how much effort you need to put in to get to them. This is a lot more intuitive, and allows the actual crafting system to be very straightforward.

I don't think MMOs really have any innate excuse for having crafting systems which are less functional or fun than single player games, beyond the need for balance.

Ok, essay time I guess.

Rarity Grade in Gathering is actually a design element intended to make certain players feel worse and spend more money/time. So I can totally see why OP would want to remove it.

Most of the more fun games don't have it. They have 'rarer stuff that comes out of the same gathering points', to give the dopamine hit that so many crave. The OP would solve the artificial problem of 'some people feeling so much worse that they stop playing'. But this is really important for MMO designers to get. If they think 'we need this system to make the world competitive and alive', no, it's just 'you grew up on an older Korean-style MMO infused with that aspect of their culture and are copying one of the cheaper ways to cause the feeling'.

If Ashes is doing it for that exact reason, they have no reason to change it. If they are more like Quinfall or Throne and Liberty and they want people to feel good playing even if they aren't hardcore competitive, they could remove rarity altogether.

Most games like that just don't have proper Artisanship and everything is just a blob, because their first target audience is 'people who want to PvP or people who want to play a Massively Single-Player Online Game' and those people don't care about interactions of this type. We assume Ashes cares, so.

Basically you need an amount of realism to be immersive and no more than that. Extra realism gets in the way of gameplay, but ditching it destroys immersion. Walking the line, blah blah. The OP suggestion is a valid solution to the problem of too many bag slots being taken up with Rarity, but it is replacing it with a more complex (and more 'realistic') thing that only even matters if we assume the Rarity Grade is very important. My point in this post is that it isn't. I'm not saying 'it should be removed' but it's nuanced. If the main reason we need Rarity is to make people who 'only get Common Rarity' feel a competitive push, then adding 'granular, complex rarity' fizzles out a lot while also not being very fun.

You can only feel good about getting a Rare until the moment you realize everyone else is also getting the same or more.

Without the specialization and other aspects, it's just an illusion, and we should moreso feel sorry for the people it works consistently on (there are actually very few of these people, in my data). As soon as you start to feel 'disappointed' in 'only getting Common Grade' (or in some games, even Uncommon if you're later in the path), the positive is lost.

The bigger problem is that Rarity Grades make designers more likely to tie progression to that instead of different items. This works to make advancement streamlined , which many MMO players in the convenience age 'need'. The 'no one wants to memorize 50 different materials' problem basically. Except that people do this sort of thing all the time, across many games, if they're eased into it. So it's mostly just 'disrespecting your players' intelligence', and I'm even referring to the ones that aren't very intelligent to begin with.

Adding a Quality Rating wouldn't actually streamline things, or if it would, multiple attempts at reading the OP have still left it unclear exactly how . The best I can guess is that the quality rating is applied to 'the stack' and accumulates or averages out? But then you have 'a number that changes when you get more Granite in your Granite stack, but you don't control? I don't want to put words/systems in OP's 'mouth' so I will leave my guess at that.

Many modern games don't have even the basics of gatherables that people would know just from natural knowledge of history or fantasy world stories, but at that point, who are they really appealing to? It's possible that there is a large number of people out there who really want to play a Fantasy MMO but their reaction to Electrum Alloy (for example) is 'idk why you have all these weird metals I just wanna play the game', but there are likely just as many who wish that you could even find actual Silver in TL.

The OP's suggestion didn't appeal to anyone in my group in any way, and I hope I've explained why, as clearly as possible.

We have not received permission from daveywavey to share the quoted post.

Crates help somewhat. You just gotta account for the unpacking.

We have not received permission from Gimblewald to share the quoted post.

Yeah apologies... wrong vibe to go with, so let's try this.

Your idea is stupid and no one likes it.

There's no logic to it and you don't even describe it in an understandable way so it's worthless.

How's that?

Azherae wrote: »

Your idea is stupid and no one likes it.

There's no logic to it and you don't even describe it in an understandable way so it's worthless.

How's that?

Though I do ultimately agree. I can't quite imagine how exactly would I craft the legendary item that I want, if I have only one stack of the resource that I need and it says that on average I'm at 83.67% legendary quality. Am I supposed to just pray to RNGesus? Cause I sure like to do that, but Steven doesn't want rng in crafting and I agree on that part of the vision.

As for the bloatness of it all. Imo bags should have rarity as well. Each step of rarity adds a double stacking of the same type of item in the same slot at the rarity of the game, with a drop down window.

So, say you have an uncommon novice mining bag and a rare apprentice lumber bag. You're collecting basalt and ash.

• you have a 43 stack of common basalt
• you pick up an uncomm one
• the uncomm basalt creates a drop down window on the com slot
• the window outline is green
• you pick up a rare basalt
• it takes up a new slot

• you have a 60 (or whatever the apprentice quantity is) stack of com ash in one slot
• you also have 20 uncomms in a drop down window of the same stack
• you pick up rare ash
• it goes to the same stack and splits the drop down outline into 2 colors

As for node storage. You can increase its rarity with money, if you're not a citizen, and with node currency if you are (could be optional between the two for citizens, but I'd personally force those fuckers to go work for the node).

Yes, I know, I'm very gifted in terms of drawings and design (and that it's 5 instead of 20 from the example)