10/08/25 Feedback/Discussion: Rings and Ring Feelings

I finally found something simple to compare in the three games I like/have hope for, that doesn't rely on a huge amount of prior knowledge. This is an illustration of my complaints and concerns, and also speaking for the other Goldsmith/Jeweler in my guild. Here we go.

FF11, Throne and Liberty, and Ashes of Creation all offer players 2 Ring Slots, and about the same number of craftable rings.

None of these games usually provide Rings as things the player can just buy from Vendors, at least not 'good' ones (TL has added an option or two recently). None of the 3 games offer Rings as a constant, easy targetable/controllable drop, so I think we can consider the sourcing circumstances to be the same for all of them.

"If you want this Ring, you probably can get it faster via making it or buying it from someone who makes it."

Throne and Liberty, and FF11, have methods for adding bonuses to these Rings.
FF11's method is random, doesn't work on all Rings, but works for 'all levels of Rings', i.e. there is always a Ring at any Level where you have the option to Augment/Trait your Ring. The Method is not important.
TL's method is Trait system, and Runes (but Runes are changeable and don't work on all levels of Ring. You probably can also wear any ring at any level (I haven't checked this, it would probably be better if it was true, but it doesn't matter much).

If Ashes of Creation was to add a method for adding Bonuses/additional stat lines to Rings, via Materials, as implied(?) by previous mentions of Crafting (SWG, etc), this would be superior to both those games (TL could match or surpass it by doing the same, but Ashes' Gathering and Materials being better would 'win' here).

Materials for making Rings in FF11 result in entirely different Rings. The materials have intuitive influence on the stats granted by these rings, if you are familiar with basic world-lore of the game.
Green Rocks -> Craft into various types of Green Gemstone depending on skill at cutting them + Randomness, these different types of Green Gemstone fit into MicroSlots (ArtC1 to ArtC5-Gemstone, approximately). All Green Gemstones, when used to make Rings, give AGI stat on those rings. Assume there are 7 more Gemstone Colors related to elements, and that it all makes sense.
There are currently no distinct Materials for making Rings in Throne and Liberty anymore as of this post. All rings use exactly the same materials except the Lithograph (Recipe). This is obviously suboptimal by far, for my Guild's Goldsmith/Jeweler.
Ashes of Creation Rings require too many Materials, to the point of it being referred to as 'literally insane' as of this post. So we have the contrast of:

Throne and Liberty Band of Brutal Agony
Required Goldsmith Knowledge: "Where the original drops because there is no other way to craft one" or "how much the Lithograph costs on Auction".
Goldsmith Influence on Product: Nil
Profession Specialization on Traits/Properties of Product: Nil
Material Effect on Traits/Properties of Product: Nil
Total Material Requirement: Lithograph, 20 Precious Magic Powder (again, universal), Noble Polished Crystals (universal)

Goldsmith not happy at all.

FF11 Sun Ring
Required Goldsmith Knowledge: "The Fact that Red Gems give STR on Rings", "Which specific Metal can be combined with this specific Red Gem"
Goldsmith Influence on Product: Minimal (skill level defines a tiny thing other than success/fail)
Profession Specialization on Traits/Properties of Product: Nil/See above
Material Effect on Traits/Properties of Product: Minimal/See above
Total Material Requirement: 1 Sun Stone, 1 Gold Ring or 1 Gold Ring+1 (a High Quality Gold Ring, which raises chances of the best possible result (Victory Ring +1) from around 1% for most people to around 10% (Goldsmith Influence on Product). Gold Rings require 2x Gold Ingot, Gold Ingots require 4x Gold Ore or 4x Gold Beastcoins, so total '9 items if startinng from scratch'.

Goldsmith is happy during the creation phase but not the economic phase. FF11 has no Gear Decay and no Trait system, so later in the game, nearly no one needs these. Probably one specialist per Server (Specialization in this is economic/related to choices of farming/gathering target, not actual Artisanship compared to any other Goldsmith of sufficient level ).

Ashes of Creation Ring of Invocation
Required Goldsmith Knowledge: "Existence of Invoker's Gem", "Recipe requirements"
Goldsmith Influence on Product: Unknown to us, is this system technically in yet? Assuming not for now .
Profession Specialization on Traits/Properties of Product: Nil? Presumably coming.
Material Effect on Traits/Properties of Product: Nil? Presumably coming
Total Material Requirement: 1 Invoker's Gem, 1 Steel Ingot, SIXTY-ONE ZINC INGOTS (cannot be stressed enough), 8 Emeralds, 27 Rubies, 22 Ring's Final Touches, 25 Riverlands Essence. Not even gonna do the breakdown of what it takes to get the Ingots...

Goldsmith is unhappy during all Phases.
It's not simple, and by comparison above that he does not want 'TL simple', he doesn't even need all the way down to FF11 Simple, but the above is, again, literally insane .
It's not feasible within any amount of time that one would care about it (it's literally impossible for Rings to give the levels of bonuses that would justify the above, we'll get back to Ring Stats later).
It's not fun without the influence options for statlines, materials, or Trait control.
It's not intuitive (where are you even putting the 27 Rubies, Intrepid Crafting Recipe AI Agent?)
It's not economically viable with that specific spread of materials even to feel like repairing it is sensible (one would near-desperately hope that it required 1 Steel Ingot until it had been restored a few times and only then would require a new Invoker's Gem, but desperate hope is often the solace of the fool).

It 'only' gives the following stats:
36 INT
54 WIS
420 Mag. Power
280 Mag. Crit Power

Let's normalize for comparison to TL and FF equiv rings (moreso 'as if it was in those games' not 'there is a ring that is being used for comparison)

FF11 Forme:
4 INT, 5 WIS, +4 Magic Atk. Bonus, +3 ??? (probably Magical Crit Chance)
HQ Version: 5 INT, 6 WIS, +5 Magica Atk. Bonus, +4 Magical Crit Chance (being generous).

Throne and Liberty Forme:
4 PER, 5 WIS, 42 Heavy Attack Chance, 28 Critical Hit Chance (these seem most likely because their balance/gearing is 'better')

Presumably in Ashes these could be Enhanced. In TL such an item would be at least Epic I tier, probably Epic II, so enhance-able up to +9 or +12. Most likely final stats in TL Forme:
7 PER, 8 WIS, 90 Heavy Attack Chance, 80 Critical Hit Chance (no Runes applied, no Traits applied)

FF11 player gets one in their character's lifetime, takes it to Fields of Valor (the aforementioned Random Augmentor option), gets Augment (let's go for a totally average) of +2 DEX, -1 WIS, +2 Blind Resistance, +18 Darkness Resistance.

Final results:

FF11:
"Unhappy", or "Buys another to retry RNG augment with minimal chances of significantly better outcome" so statistically 'still unhappy'. Could just not Augment at all though. If just a Goldsmith, sells and hopes that other unhappy people out there are determined.

Throne and Liberty:
Embark on journey to enhance and Trait this item. Goldsmith probably makes at least 2 more instances of it for the Traiting process. Can afford to make more just for Traits sometimes if the Lithograph is cheap some random day (or using pity mechanic option, for some). Happy if you like Trait progression as a fun game loop ( separate from Artisan happiness).

Ashes of Creation:
Y'all have data on the response to this already, my Guild's Goldsmith will just not. 'Literally insane'. Theoretically could be happy if most of the system brought online (and what is currently online is changed to at least be closer to FF in terms of materials/Artisanship and TL in terms of Incentives/Economy).

Optimal:
1x ArtC3-Gemstone (with an obvious connection/reason to its source/drop which implies this Gem will make a 'Mage Ring')
2x ArtC2/3-Ingot (maybe one of each? optimally can just substitute different ArtC2-4 Ingot options )
2-5x ArtC2-Reagent/Consumable tool (etchers? pliers? Fairy dust? who cares, just make it make sense)
1x Art-C3-Stone_Ring_Mold (not really necessary but probably works for Ashes better if y'all are insisting on interdependence here)
0-2 ArtC2-Gemstone (optional secondary statline/Trait controller)
0-2 ArtC1-3-Magic_Enhancer_Whatnot (there's that fairy dust again... optional tertiary statline/Trait controller)

Not going into Optimal Results because 'Throne and Liberty bias' will come through, ironic considering that they're not there yet either, but at least with them you can see how they can/intend to get there .

Now for the utterly selfish Empyrean Decree...
You should not be trying to make something for people who will only be happy with TL's gutted braindead drop-only-specialization-based Crafting, Intrepid, but you shouldn't be trying to make the damned Antikythera Mechanism for every Ring either.

What you do about the fact that the above 'Optimal' sounds like it might actually be achievable in less than a week is up to you, since Ashes of Creation is not for everyone.

Here is "G2T1" (out of 4 possible rings in this grade) from L2. You can wear it at lvl40. First 2 mobs for the full drop are open world bosses.



https://lineage.pmfun.com/?s=Aquastone+Ring&x=0&y=0

By lvl40 you will have dropped all of those crafting mats from normal mobs or you'd 100% be able to buy them on the cheap from players.

This ring can be enchanted for more m.def. The only stat it has is 26m.def. On private servers of later versions you could augment it to have a wide variety of additional substats by using stones that are also used to augment weapons for even better substats and even passive/active abilities.

This would pretty much be a "lvl20" craft equivalent in Ashes. This is why I say that L2's crafting is super simple, but felt amazing because literally everyone could craft the stuff they needed. You just play the game, get the general mats along the way (or on the free market) and then, when you know what exactly you need - you can do targeted farming for said item.

Even the above is a little ridiculous though in the sense that if an inexperienced designer or AI were to look at it and apply it to Ashes we would moreso get what we have now, rather than what we need .

The 'issue' is that L2 would be expecting your inv to fill up with drops to make that, and the game was about grinding, largely.

If you put those same recipe requirements in Ashes, where you have to explicitly Gather them all, care about quality, process them over time, have the crafting skill, etc, that's where the problem comes up.

This is entirely a matter of something that I don't know how to explain other than touching on it in this exact post. There's 'this is fun because I was doing something fun and incidentally became able to get or make this other thing', and there's 'I have to set out to make this thing through effort'.

So yes, I am aware that when you say 'L2 Crafting is Simple', you kinda sometimes mean 'L2 Crafting is Incidental'. And FF11 Crafting is usually also Incidental (slightly less). My group are all hoping for Throne and Liberty Crafting to become more incidental (but they have constraints due to needing the systems to fix the problems that come up in L2 via people being able to grind forever) but still have some depth.

TL and Ashes both need the same thing:
"Please let mobs drop Artisanry Materials I can use or go through some limited process to sell some of."

I hope that helps, Intrepid, if your instructions from the top have resulted in these types of numbers because of L2 Nostalgia, the core issue is that the game doesn't provide the component items in the way L2 does.

I will absolutely accept 'Needing 12-24 Spider Silk to make a Robe Of The Seven' or whatever, but you can't then tell me to put 12 individual Spider Carcasses in my inventory by Hunting-Profession gathering of occasional Hunting-Type Spider Spawns and then buying a dozen 'Spider Silk Spoolers' for 1s60g each and spending 48 Silver and 12 minutes to process it all and then needing another 20 'Robe Finishing Touches' and 25 'Riverlands Essence' even if the latter drops from mobs. Why?

The only way I'm finishing something like that in less than 3 hours of targeted grinding is if you let the Spider Silk be spoiled from and/or drop from just... Spiders that I or someone else regularly kill. Then sure, I'll do it, but even then, understand that I'm an outlier who will 'put up with' L2 style as long as the mobs are cool.

That 'Robe of the Seven' better not be level 15 and 'require me to actually get 24 Rare Spider Silk to make it worth making', either...

But technically I was supposed to be talking about Breeze Rings and such...

So the tl;dr I guess is:
Ludullu's Aquastone Ring example is still unacceptable because even as someone who would do it, especially in L2 where it's incidental and role-defining, that is still altogether too much targeted work for something that would, in the same example, 'drop off an Open world boss'.

The only thing my Guildie had to say about this that is relevant to this post would probably be:
"I do not understand why MMO games find it so difficult to make me happy in this way." with a strong implication of 'even other genres manage this better'.

Did... did no one on staff even play Monster Hunter?

Azherae wrote: »

Did... did no one on staff even play Monster Hunter?

I'm finally covering some of the games I've been meaning to play, so I think I'll play Worlds after I'm done with Nier.

As for accidentality of L2's loot. For general mats - 100% the case, with some market gameplay on top. For Item Parts though - that's usually fully targeted, because unless you're going for some popular item - the chances are, people are not selling the mats and you gotta go farm correct mobs.

I like that combo of random and targeted gameplay. I see Ashes, in a way, as that. It's just that the targeted part is much bigger here. Though, ideally, the general mats are supposed to be just buyable, because they are general and the gatherers/processors should be specializing in mass producing them. And this mass production is supposed to bring the prices down.

The issue with that is the abscense of a central martking hub, due to how nodes and biomes work (at least right now). Which then creates a searching problem for a normal player, which then wastes their time with "you either gotta go around each and every node to look for what you need, or you need an alt in each node OR you need a 3rd party site that has compiled the markets".

And that issue applies to the sellers as well, so it's much harder to have a proper price adjustment across the game. And with the economy being in the absolute fucking shitter every damn phase - sellers just look at how much money everyone else has and say "yeah, I gotta sell this shit for insane prices". Obviously the P3 prices on crafting DID NOT help this situation.

I think the "best-fitting" solution here is economic nodes that would have connections within their node family and would have good benefits for the sellers, so that they become the local hub for trading, and they should also have market npcs in each node in the family that would show you what's available on the entire market net, but you'd obviously still need to go there physically and get the thing yourself.

And we definitely need muuuuuch better gold sinks. Putting the only true gold sink into the crafting cycle is dumb as hell, because normal players can't afford it, while rich players move on from it super quick cause their gear doesn't go away. All while we have gotten an even easier way to multiply money at scale in the form of crates

Ludullu wrote: »

As for accidentality of L2's loot. For general mats - 100% the case, with some market gameplay on top. For Item Parts though - that's usually fully targeted, because unless you're going for some popular item - the chances are, people are not selling the mats and you gotta go farm correct mobs.

I like that combo of random and targeted gameplay. I see Ashes, in a way, as that. It's just that the targeted part is much bigger here. Though, ideally, the general mats are supposed to be just buyable, because they are general and the gatherers/processors should be specializing in mass producing them. And this mass production is supposed to bring the prices down.

I should put another somewhat unrelated observation here, actually, since it's not quite a thing I consider enough of a 'principle' to put in my other thread, it's more of a preference thing (you can see it in Throne and Liberty right now but it's a little difficult to see there):

That whole flow of 'low level items that mid-level crafters need, to do some of their work', that they are theoretically supposed to buy from lower level players, has a specific 'requirement' in my mind.

Those materials have to be incidental enough (but much lower chances) at rising levels (around the time the player is hitting AdvP3-Macro so that they get them but never 'would go out to do that same activity with the goal of getting them'.

It's a behavioural thing. If you tell a player 'You need 20 Zinc Ingots to achieve your goal today', and they are focused at all, they are going to go out and get those Ingots themselves a lot of the time. This has a very low Economic Velocity. They often go get exactly the amount they need and come back, and they don't usually 'throw a few extras in the stall' because most players are goal oriented in that specific way.

You'd need a situation where somehow they happen to have like 17/20, and then they do things like search the Auction House or player stalls or yell for the last 3, which are then provided by random people who also 'happen to have a few', or newbies who 'expect to be collecting more anyway and sell off some'.

I'm not sure that applying the 'you continue to need lower level mats as you rise' works properly without low 'random source of small amounts of them' (this isn't just a mobs thing, it's also a distribution thing in a game with travel or mixed gathering points).

Simple example is that in FF11, no one would go out to fight Worms just for Ore, usually, but people would still sell the few they got. Whereas in TL I basically can't do anything in ArtP2-Blacksmithing without going out to gather a relatively large amount of ArtP1-Ore which is 'only in a big gathering point cluster'. Once I start to need that, there is no 'oh maybe I'll pick some up in passing' anywhere really, all sources (that I know) are clustered, and 'out of the way', so if I am going, I always plan/commit to it.

This doesn't spark the failcase in TL because you can't sell them to others anyway, so it only hits the 'ugh I only need a few of these but I might as well gather them for a while even though I hate this area' or at least the 'I better use this other area where I can soft-gather a bunch of things at once'.

The latter doesn't work well because TL also set their numbers too high (specifically from the perspective of needing White Grade Iron Ingotx4 to make Green Grade Iron Ingot x1 for some reason). Obv this is pretty tedious/adversarial atm, hopefully it won't cause the 'you're forcing me to do this in order to sell speedups' reaction.

Ashes wouldn't get that reaction, it would get the 'this game is for grinders/hardcore only'. They're both the same thing, the normal player's reaction to the Mobile Game design type.

Azherae wrote: »

It's a behavioural thing. If you tell a player 'You need 20 Zinc Ingots to achieve your goal today', and they are focused at all, they are going to go out and get those Ingots themselves a lot of the time. This has a very low Economic Velocity. They often go get exactly the amount they need and come back, and they don't usually 'throw a few extras in the stall' because most players are goal oriented in that specific way.

If you remember our old discussion about progress-restricted gathering - this is partially why I wanted that.

The "low artisan lvl character can gather G2 mats, while a high art lvl char literally cannot gather those, but can gather G4s that can be made from G3 that are made from G2s" (or at the very least the amounts gathered are related to lvl, so you get more of G1 stuff at low artisan lvl and get waaay less at high lvl). And the gather pacing/prevalence of any of those should be dynamically controlled by the WM. So that, if you're trying to do some high lvl crafting, you think to yourself "I need 10 G4 mats, which would take me 1h to gather cause a ton of people are looking for them, so lets check out the market for G3s or 2s", and the lower grades should be quite abundant because they not only spawn more frequently and in bigger quantities, but they're also picked up only by the people on the lower stages of progress. But those people pick up so much that it's way more beneficial to sell them.

And if we're talking straight mat drops rather than artisan sourcing - imo, that shit should take even longer, exactly because it's mostly accidental, even if you're farming a specific mob that drops that general material.

So here's an example from this video of L2's early market on a server
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcfVdMpaIIE


Coal, Charcoal and Cokes can all be dropped and spoiled. First two are "T1" mats and Cokes is T2, cause Cokes can be made from the first two (upper left pic is a player crafter service where you can craft them yourself, using 3 of each for 1 Cokes).

The top 4 pics are buy orders in the starter village. The prices on items are low, because newbie players wouldn't know the econ on this server, but they would pick up these mats while leveling. Though, as you can see, even here there's already price competition, where one buyer has Coal at 100, while another has it (and Char) at 120.

If we assume the 120 cost, that means that to make a single Cokes from that particular crafter you'd need to spend 820 (price of craft is 100, as you can see in the top left pic). And so the other buyer with a Cokes order is buying them at 520, cause if some newbie got lucky and looted a few Cokes along the way, and haven't checked all of this econ stuff - they might just sell those real quick cause they need money for early gear (which is sold both in shop and by other players, as I show in the video a bit).

And then the lower pic is a sell price in the first non-starter town. If you watch the video, you'll see the scale of the market there. And they're selling Cokes for 1k. So a high lvl player that couldn't be bothered to wait for buy orders to fill out could just come to that seller and buy Cokes for 1k, while the seller could, in theory, set up those buy orders from the above pics and make some nice profit in the long run.

All while newbies with accidental drops can make a bit of money and newbies playing spoilers (or in Ashes case gatherers/processors), who would be collecting mats in a targeted manner would make much better money AND would be able to play the market, if they wanted to.

Like, I just went through the video a bit more and didn't notice it before, but there's a person selling Charcoal for 90 in that non-starter town. So I could've played the market a bit, run some buy-sells between the two locations and made some early money.

This is what I had hoped Ashes econ would be. Accidental players can make some money. Targeted players make more money. Market players make EVEN MORE money. And just pve grinders spend their money on everything that they didn't accidentally get, because spending it is much more beneficial, time-wise, rather than trying to get those things yourself.

And Steven's approach to artisan professions of "you can't be every profession" seemed to have supported that kind of design, because if you're a high lvl lumberjack - ya ain't mining high quality stone. And if my suggestion from earlier in this post was implemented - ya ain't farming low grade trees either. But you might need both/either of those - which means you gotta spend some money to support the economy. You can still spend time by making an alt, but that's always an option and would only apply to hardcore grinders, so imo it's kinda unavoidable.