Age of Conan

So I have been hanging out on the test server forums the past week or so even more and following the game new Crafting Tzar developer 'Ilaliya', who has been keeping on top in communicating with the community there in relation to plans pencilled in the short and long term future of the game. I would like to post some of his comments as some here may find it interesting as it offers good insight into when these changes come in conjuction with server merges and how FC is covering lots of bases in improving tradeskills in this area.

IIaliya was posting on a thread asking about some loot changes and a bug found. His replies are as follows;

"Again, there was a technical issue with drop rate you are referring to. I won't go into the details, but it has been fixed, and that fix is scheduled to go out with patch 4. As a side note, all the metallurgy recipes (alchemist recipes that make an alloy) are necessary to craft the culture armors and weapons, which are better than same level blues by design. If there is demand for culture items, there will be a demand for the recipe you found.

Just a note about risk v reward, since malric83 was speaking to that. As an artifact of the current itemization, the "reward" side of the equation is currently limited by the overall power of items in general. We are increasing the item budgets (making items more powerful). That will give us the ability to increase the reward, which in this case is the item's power.

With culture recipes specifically, there are two main considerations with the drop rates. One is the boss giving the drop -- the time necessary to clear the dungeon to that boss, as well as the difficulty of the encounter, which gates accessibility. Risk v reward also ties into server populations (it's harder to find groups on low population servers), and server merges will make content more available to all players. Some of the bosses with culture recipes can be farmed multiple times an hour, with a good group. There's also the desirability of the dungeon absent the recipe -- basically whether non-crafters would ever run that dungeon anyway.

The other component is that culture items should get more powerful (relative to other items, and in real terms) after the item re-balance. Having those the recipes with a high drop rate now would be a gating factor to any potential buff we could give them with the new budgets. The current drop rates of culture item recipes, and recipes for resources needed to make those items, were designed with the expected effects of both the server merges and item re-balance in mind. But the drop rates are not set in stone. The right time to tweak them is close behind the server merges and the item re-balance. There will also be a point where many crafters are set up to start cranking out these items, and there will be a demand for the dependent recipes - weaving, skinning, alchemy, and the base items. What the economy looks like at that time will drive tweaking the drop rates of those component recipes.

Do players want more powerful items that are harder to get, or less powerful items that are easier to get? We made the determination that what the crafting system needs most in the short term is the more powerful items. Long term, yes we need both.

To be perfectly honest, I prefer a mix of random drops and token-like systems. And collect 300 leather is indeed a token system. I think it best to give players a concrete goal they are guaranteed to get (which might be a moderate reward), and then supplement that with rewards on a random drop chance that may be found when working towards the concrete goal. Implementing this won't happen overnight. As frustrated as an armorsmith might be, we also need to improve the game experience for gemcutters and architects, for example. A lot of it comes down to organizing and prioritizing the upgrades to achieve the greatest improvement in the shortest time, and also ensuring every profession is covered.

We are working on gem revamp. I can tell you that stacking cut gems is something that will be investigated as part of the design. Especially because one of the goals is to reduce the number of unique gems (both cut and uncut), and inventory space is a factor in that goal."

About Culture Armor:

"The main pieces (head, chest legs) have 3 inherent mods and 2 gem slots, while the accessories have 4 inherent mods and 1 gem slot. This is how we organized the 2 recipes for each set. Just as a comparison, I'm sure you've noticed by now that a dropped blue will generally have 3 inherent mods (and of course no gem slots).

The accessories don't use base armors, but they do use the new crafted leathers / cloths.

So why only 1 gem slot on the accessories? One of the reasons the gem nerf had to happen was because crafted armor alone granted 24 gem slots. After analyzing it, we felt that was neither a robust system nor particularly interesting. Part of the goal of the planned gem upgrade is fewer, more powerful gems. All new crafted items were created to be compatible with that goal."

About Skinning Craft: 

"We have certainly evaluated skinning as a process effect, but there are no plans to go forward with it at this time. This was for a variety of reasons I can't really go into. The new skinning recipes (and for that matter, weaving) were introduced to give players who invested time in obtaining those feats something useful to create that is consumed elsewhere in the system. I can't really go into details about future plans, other than major upgrades to skinning (and I see any sort of skinning 'process' as a major upgrade) will definitely have to wait until architects and gemcutters get their first round of improvements. And maybe until after other professions, such as alchemist, get their second round of improvements. But we're still looking at minor upgrades to skinning in the short term."
 

About Gem Crafting:

"As for gemcutters, they should be one of the next professions to see major treatment. We feel gemcutters suffer from similar issues that had afflicted alchemists, which for that profession resulted in the massive change to alchemist mats and recipes in patch 3. Simply put, there are too many gems in general, as well as too many gems that have effects of dubious usefulness. And it's clear that players feel the random element absolutely compounds those issues. We are evaluating some drastic changes to gem mechanics that I think players will be very pleased with. I plan to go into detail for that in a stickied post when the time is right. "
 

About Architects:

"In some ways, I think architects need the most improvements out of the five crafting professions for the simple reason that there is currently no benefit to having more architects than guilds on a server. Architect is probably the least-friendly profession for solo/casual gamers, and the least rewarding on a personal level. But I also think it has the most potential for compelling and interesting gameplay. I can't give details, but it is the goal that architects will have much more to do than making plans for city buildings.
 

"There have been a couple of questions about our plans for architects (no pun intended), since I touched on that in an earlier post.

In a general sense, I think future improvements to architects fall into three basic categories: improvements that tie into resource and building playfields (this could include sieges, cities, and/or resource gathering), improvements that add some sort of group utility, and improvements to increase the personal/solo value of being an architect. We're evaluating ways to accommodate each of these, but I can't say anything about time-frame or specifics other than in all probability it will occur after the planned overall item rebalance which itself is a major priority. Although as demonstrated with the recent patch, there is plenty of room for improvements to be made in crafting until that rebalance is rolled out.

I think it's important to remember that while players only see the state of the game as it is on the live servers, or test-live servers, we have plans in various stages of fulfillment built out for many patches in advance. In many cases, plans are subject to some adjustment to either contents or scheduling, based on incoming feedback on the live game or suggestions from the community. Other times, there are dependencies on larger initiatives occurring within the company. Many of the planned upgrades to Gemcutting and Architect falls into that category. Fortunately, those sorts of larger initiatives (which show up in posts from Silirrion) are of high priority, which means players won't be waiting any longer than necessary for features which depend on them being in place."

On Inventory Space:

"I have to be careful when answering inventory space questions, because to be honest it's not my area. However, I see a lot of these types of threads on the crafting forums so I didn't want to leave the issue unaddressed.

First off, inventory space ends up being a database constraint. In a game without a concept of weight or item 'size,' there is rarely any compelling design reasons to restrict it (maybe one could construct a couple of very specific cases, such as when it makes the interface unusable, but I suspect that's it). But there are always very good tech reasons. I can think of a number of MMOs that had severe server lag issues that could specifically be attributed to over-generous or unlimited inventories.

Is it possible to throw technical personnel at the problem? Certainly (but that's way outside the scope of crafting!). Also consider that's technical personnel not addressing other, more pressing issues.

What we have been doing to alleviate the "not enough bag space" concern is reducing and optimizing existing resources so players have to spend less bag space to achieve the same effect. This was a factor in the decision to massively streamline the number of alchemy mats, which happened in update 3. Gems, for example, will also get a similar treatment, when that profession gets upgraded. We've also moved some items from the resource bag to the main bag, and increased stack sizes here and there.

I think that if we can get around technical limitations through employing better design, that's generally the way to go. Hopefully players will see crafting increasingly move in that direction. Suggestions in that realm are always welcome."

Will we see some of these Major changes happening before the end of the year?

"Let me try to answer this in a way which satisfies you and covers me.

The gem cutting changes are heavily intertwined with the up-coming item rebalance. If everything works out, players will see both of these in the same patch. However, if the item rebalance is ready to go out to players and gem changes are not yet ready, those changes will have to wait to the following patch.

To put it another way: the gem-cutting changes rely on the item rebalance being in place, but the item rebalance doesn't rely on the gem-cutting changes. It's a case of the feature depending on the system.

I can't talk about when architects should see some love, because we haven't made any detailed official announcements about massive PvP, city building, or any of the systems which currently affect (and are affected by) that profession. Also, I think architects need a systemic change, whereas gem cutters will always cut gems as their core mechanic. But if architects only make plans, the profession becomes marginalized within the entire scope of Conan, especially as the game matures. Just realize this means any architect change will be more involved than what's going to happen with gems. And that is why it's difficult to talk about right now"

This are just some replies from the Crafting guy who seems to have his head screwed on right and is gaining some good credibility in keeping in touch with the community when questions arise. Something with which I think is good to share here too.

I like the fact that they are looking at what happens when populations increase on server when the merges happen in conjuction with the economy and the desire and frequency of items that can be obtained in the world by many methods.

It seems things are turning around. I'm going to wait for this next patch, but I'll definitely be getting this game =)

I re-subscribed to Lotro, But  AoC is still on my desk waiting...i will be playing AoC for sure, probably in a few more months, the game is truly awsome, just needs some time and work...few more months should make it that much better..cant wait.

Thanks Avery, this is some awesome info.

But what is all this crapola talk about architects ?????

Just put in player housing so the architects can build player houses, and furniture so they can make some furniture for the player houses and the guild cities. This is the stuff we are interested in, why so much useless talk about this class? We still don't even know if the important things aka player housing and furniture are planned or not (the devs said player housing was planned 2 years ago (-> it's in the wiki), is it still going to happen?).

Originally posted by BigMango

Thanks Avery, this is some awesome info.

But what is all this crapola talk about architects ?????

Just put in player housing so the architects can build player houses, and furniture so they can make some furniture for the player houses and the guild cities. This is the stuff we are interested in, why so much useless talk about this class? We still don't even know if the important things aka player housing and furniture are planned or not.

sorry to burst your bubble, but I think fixing crafting, adding more PvE content, adding more PvP content, and getting subs back is more important than what curtain matches your epic couch in your livingroom of death and destruction. Don't get me wrong...I like player housing, but from the sounds of it Funcom should definitely be focusing on the things that I stated.

Originally posted by Jackthecat

sorry to burst your bubble, but I think fixing crafting, adding more PvE content, adding more PvP content, and getting subs back is more important than what curtain matches your epic couch in your livingroom of death and destruction. Don't get me wrong...I like player housing, but from the sounds of it Funcom should definitely be focusing on the things that I stated.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but just dropping a line 6 months after release to let the player base know if features that were advertised before launch are still planned for the future of the game or not, won't prevent them from fixing the things they need to fix, will it?

I reckon that when they do some more stuff to guild cities then maybe craftable furniture and decor will come then. Suggestions such as a 'sand pit' for practicing one Vs one has been forward a few times and the dev's are serious looking in the social side of cities and keeps more which would include all the extra crafting goodies. I think it is safe to say though that this is quite a way aways. Architects do need some love big time, costs for essentials has come right down but more needs to be developed with them.

Gaute did say at one point you can "sit in a chair" in the guild cities.

The new crafting guy is doing a good job in feedback and has his head well screwed on.