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The Character Defined - Moving up in the wide, wide, world.
jesad
Member UncommonPosts: 882
So I noticed something this weekend during my time in Age of Wushu. As the game progresses I find myself seriously challenged with how I am going to spend my day. Everyone wants to be a great martial artist of course. But what I have found is that by the time I finish doing my daily black-smithing quests, running an escort or two in order to keep the experience clicking in, maybe taking an assassination mission or three just to keep my skills sharp and earn some scripts, mining, and converting what I've mined into a few reasonably upgraded high level weapons.....
I'm done!
There's really not a lot of time left to go and team practice. Definitely not enough time to go on a spying or patrol mission. Not enough time to run through Twilight Village or 6 times through some influence mission, and GCC, Peacock Village? Forgetaboutit!!
I am a blacksmith. That's what's up. And if I want to stay on the cutting edge (pardon my pun) of being a blacksmith, then I need to focus on being a blacksmith as much as the cutting edge martial artist focuses on being a martial artist.
There are a lot of people in the game who have blacksmith alts, chef alts. poison making alts, etc...but none of them can kick out a weapon of the quality and refinement that I am capable of. I believe that this is a good thing too, because it defines my character in a way that makes being what I am, even amongst others who share the same craft, something special.
That's something new for me. Something very non-orcish, and I like it.
In the past I have been able to not only be a high level whatever, but a high level crafter as well. In Age of Wushu I feel more like my guilds blacksmith (who just happens to be able to kick a little butt on the side) rather than my guilds tank, dps, support character, who just happens to know how to make swords as well.
I hope that this doesn't change as the game progresses. As I only just got a few recipes capable of making weapons for characters of realized potential (that's right, most of you are running around using substandard swords and don't know it), I look forward to the days when my characters name will be attached to some of the finest weapons in the land.
Sure, it's a grind, but not the worst grind I've ever been involved in. The daily exp limit makes that grind wider rather than tall, and that allows me to fit in what I need to do without having to spend blood clot creating amounts of time behind the keyboard.
I even like the fact that it takes unbound to create these weapons as well as buy them, because I know it slows down the process for a lot of folk who might otherwise just grind their day away in order to be the best.
In Age of Wushu you have to make your sword, invest in your sword, and either go broke spending real money, or SELL your sword in order to continue on being the man when it comes to making swords.
I can roll with that. It means that yeah, there might be that Hattori Hanzo guy out there in the world, that guy who was willing to spend all of his time and a lot of his money to make the finest blades in the land, but with the time it takes to even make these things, there is still very little chance that he is going to corner the market. He will fit into the world where he fits, making gucci swords for high rolling characters, and I will fit into the world where I fit, making some pretty nice stuff for those who can afford my wares.
I write about this because I find it yet another innovation that this game has thought out that hasn't been as well thought out in other titles. The concept of making it utterly impossible to really play an alt to any level of efficiency without really, actually, and quite literally, burning your life away.
Like I said, a lot of people have Chef alts, but only a real chef can make you the bomb assed food. A lot of people have poison making alts, but only a real poison maker can make you the really good poison.
You simply have to focus. The game doesn't give you any other choice. I think that's pretty tight. It also gives value to having a real craftsmen in your guild because if you have to actually go out and buy this stuff as the game progresses, your guild is just going to get weaker and weaker over time, no matter how much you practice.
Think about that when you are selling off your recipes instead of taking care of the crafters in your guild. Every single thing you sell in this game to anyone other than someone in your guild only makes those other than your guildmates stronger.
But don't let me just make crafting seem to be the focus. The same thing goes for being a great warrior. There are tons and tons and tons and tons of different kinds of martial arts forms in this game, and in order to get your hands on them you have to go into certain places over, and over, and over, and over.
Being a premiere martial artist then takes as much time, effort, and focus as being a top level crafter. It all takes time and teamwork. Thus, the idea of a school or a guild becomes all the more realistic as someone is going to have to take on the roll of the protector and someone else is going to have to take on the role of making sure that protector can do his job.
Old martial arts movies where students travel to other schools to challenge other masters and take their students pop into mind every time I think about it.
Bots of course can circumvent this design, but I really hope that both of these companies (Snail and Gpotato) remain diligent in their pursuance and removal of such cheats. This is because I believe that this effect brings even more life to the game, and helps make it even more like a real environment where each person can have some measure of power based on how much they are willing to experiment with the world.
Age of Wushu, truly is turning out to be the game that is wider than it is tall. And just like a lot of us knew it would be, it is really making the game worth sticking with.
My suggestion to the other companies then is to get your genre straight and study what this game is doing, because although it may not be a WoW killer (figuring that WoW has its own, completely different kind of demographic), it is indeed a magnet for those who like something a little deeper.
Comments
Never seen so much praise on grinding part of the crafting mechanics...
AoW crafting is no different from what you can find on the market and pretty much for all reasons listed is why it cannot play a greater role in a game.
Elaborate on what part?
You admitted yourself that it's a grind.
Random loot recipes is pretty much concept every MMO based on.
Random stats prevent crafters to fill the demand as they have no control of what they are crafting and subsequently hinders market dynamics and competition.
Do you have to do this in every Wushu thread?
Wushu has the best crafting system I've had the pleasure to use. It's a lot like EVE, but instead of making lot's of something you make one of something. No two fully enchanted items are the same. It gives a real hand made feeling to the item.
Furthermore no two crafters are the same. This is one of the systems that defines your character.
I disagree. Although I am not quite sure in which way you refer to "the market", so I'll take on both possible meanings in response.
On the real market, meaning the MMO market, crafting can usually be grinded to the top in a relatively short time using a botting program. This has remained consistent in almost every game I have played with crafting in it, and is the reason people just keep on building bots.
In Age of Wushu, bot or not, you can only get a certain amount of crafting experience per day. Sure, you can build a bot and log it in every day and have it get the max amount of exp, but you still aren't going to pull ahead of the average real person who also logs in daily and performs the same task. In this way it is far more satisfying to become a tradeskiller because you don't have to have the feeling that you are wasting your time away while people who are cheating are making much larger advances than you are.
In the game market, crafted weapons are far superior to anything you can get from an NPC ever. Weapons beyond the basic starter pieces don't even drop, and most of the weapons for sale on the market on the newer servers right now are still, at max as far as I've seen, for characters of first understanding (translated low to medium level characters). Only since people starting hitting Peacock village and above have recipes for weapons of Realized Potential began showing up, and as you well know, a lot of characters are currently at the Flows with Chi level or higher.
This means that keeping on top of your game and your skills can make a great improvement overall to your guild. Because if you and your boys are running around with +10 wooden swords and thinking you are bad, there can always be a crew of guys running around with up to 20% bonus, in addition to defense breaking abilities on their silver swords.
And that's a big difference. And this works for armor, jewlery, food, and pretty much all of the other crafted items in the game. Eating a steamed bun feeds you, but eating graduation party defends you, and other foods do even more.
So yeah, at the end of the day, it's worth the grind. Because at least you know that your grind really does count for something more than just getting to the top level and cranking out one specific weapon all day then calling it quits.
Every day I log in and grind is a day that everyone else has to log in and grind or fall behind. Same thing with fighting, same thing with art. That is unless you want to spend a whole bunch of real life money to catch up. And since it only takes less than an hour to get that max exp, I think that's not only cool but fair.
Also, as far as the randomness of stats go, that's a good thing. I puts the emphasis on the attention of the crafter instead of the process of creating the sword. This, I believe, keeps bots from being able to mass produce one specific kind of weapon and flood the market, and that is yet again a good thing.
I rant about the game because a lot of it's processes just seem very well thought out, and I am impressed.I'm sure he's just working on his post count. That's why I gave him the opportunity to clarify himself, which used to just spout out more empty half/statements which I, in turn, used to do what I really wanted to do also, which was talk about the game.
I'm certain that the people who actually come to this section of the forums know what to believe and what not to though, otherwise they wouldn't come here in the first place. Repeatedly coming here to be negative then is just shenanigans.
Wow! looking at his last 20 or so posts though that does seem to be a ton of posts in the forum of a game he doesn't care for. LOL
You want an even bigger laugh go to the GW2 forums. There have been people that have been posting there since before it's launch that still make sure to check in on every thread to this day to remind us how bad the game is to them.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
[mod edit]
1) AoW or not, it is level based progression with level cap and you get to cap via grind. Daily cap does not changes the formula therefore no difference there.
In this regard, I would say it is even worse than most games since your crafting is completely dependent on your random loot recipes. You have no recipes, your crafting grind is useless(recipe caps hit much faster).
2) A lot, if not most, games have crafted gear being superior to loot - that also includes WoW.
3) It is on the contrary. It is the bots getting massive advantage since crafting 1 decent item equals to enormous labor due randomness of crafting process making the value of those items not dropping in value fast enough(what I have pointed out before).
I am not denying nor arguing your liking and enjoyment, however that cannot be used as an argument and the praise is unjustified since there isn't really any difference, just negligable little differences each game has - like daily cap on crafting. In bigger picture tho, it does not present any major, fundamental difference how crafting works within each game.
AoW is a themepark with all the pros and cons that comes along with it. That is nothing negative, there is no need to pretend and praise it as something that it is not.
For some people Wushu is too big to get their head around. The worst part is that those people then come to the forum and lie, not intentionally, but because they don't know.
It's a kin to looking at a piece of ice floating in the ocean, and thinking that's it, when there is an mountain of ice below, or saying the "the world is flat". In the mmorpgs we've seen over the last 8 years. That ice is just ice, and nothing more, and the world is nothing more than what you see in the first hour.
Wushu, a breath of fresh air. Check out my videos! See for yourself
I'm glad you found your chode. I am downloading the game now, as per your recommendation, to see if it can be mine, as well.
For reals thought, I love coming across posts like this on the forums, even if I don't personally agree with the poster. It means that they have found something special; that rare white dragon which we all chase in an attempt to find our alternate reality. It is a world where, regardless of what we gradually end up achieving, we feel glad to have been a part of. Where what we did and who we knew really mattered, and whose player-made stories we will remember for years.
Grats, dude. Have fun and carry on.
[mod edit]
The game offers no horizontal progression at all. It is a regular threadmill of "max your char and join raids, PVP, w/e.
The combat mechanics are indeed unique and worth checking, the rest of the game is...shallow. It is based on 2005 game design - instances and scheduled events do not work in 2013.
I hope people get the chance to see what you write is untrue. You write as if you are a disgruntle ex-employee. Who are you trying to get back at?
Look man there are plenty of things you can complain about in Wushu. The game is not perfect (just the most innovative we've sen in years) There is no need to make up stuff.
bc are you still playing everyday? I saw your post when you became school leader and such...
I played hardcore the first month. Was on top crafting and was on my A game with dueling. I quit when second internal came out after i leveled it to 20ish.
I can't lie and say it was some of the most fun I had in years on a video game. And I met a group of guys i will probably game with until the end on there. But it didn't hold me for some reason.
The lag was unbearable. I was better than most everyone i dueled and the only reason i would die was 400+MS due to no american side east coast servers...
has that changed?
I also thought it became kind of shallow after a month. Realizing it wasn't as sandbox as I thought. Do my daily crafting. Go mine / chop. do my GCC/TVs. Script steal. Duel. Carvans (which i was extremely limited due to beggar being neutral). And then talk to the guild and log..
It became monotonous. Same routine that couldn't really be changed because I felt it was stuff I needed to do to stay on top and in shape.
Has it changed at all? And if not - can you tell me what you did to maintain the freshness?
I know i sound negative - but it was because I truly thought wushu was one of the best games i had played in years. I bragged to everyone. But it didn't hold me a month in for some reason.
Hey, you have a right to your own opinion, but along the themes of making something seem like something that it's not, I'll take your response by the points.
1. Yes it is a level progression with a cap (as far as we know, the game is still brand new). But I submit that the daily cap does make a difference in the simple old "John Henry" man vs machine way that we all learned in grade school. To elaborate on this I submit that a bot can be programmed to sit up all night and grind to reach that cap, and in this way is, and will always be superior to a human who has to sleep, eat, and do other things. The daily cap, which keeps ANYONE from getting but so much experience per day, completely obliterates this advantage, and levels the playing field quite a bit.
Sure, you still need to log in every day and grind out your daily exp, but so does the bot. And since the daily cap only takes about 20 or so minutes of your time, it is almost pointless to even use a bot as a bot would have to be programmed to either beat the gems games that the game provides humans to allieviate having to collect raw and just sit there and crank out useless items, or if it were not able to be programmed to do this, would have to, on a daily basis, collect enough raw to crank out enough trash to get this experience the old fashioned way.
I'm not using, nor have I ever even looked at a bot and so I don't know how advanced they are, but in this situation it doesn't matter because, from start to finish, the bot is not going to advance any faster than I am unless I take a few days off.
Now if you can show me a system that has done this much to keep a bot from dominating the crafting scene, I would be happy to hear about it as I have not seen and tested everything out there. Of the dozen or so games that I have played though, this seems to be quite an innovative idea, and so it is not me making it look like something that it's not in as much as it seems to be you trying to make it not look like something that it is, which is a good idea.
2. Crafted gear is not superior to looted gear in this game. Crafted gear is the ONLY gear in this game. Thus, the level of the crafter and the quality of gear that they can produce is of the utmost importance. In addition to this, the best items can only be created, once again, via the gems game. So if the bot can't beat the gems game, it can only make you a standard version of the weapon.
3. Every upgrade cost 10L plus resources. So I can not see how the bot, which must now be programmed to make a specific weapon and discard all the others at 10L a pop, has any advantage over the human who must do the same thing. Keeping in mind that the only weapons that take the really good upgrades are made from the gems game in the first place, it seems to me that anyone, bot or human, attempting to make someone a specific sword is just asking for real life monetary trouble.
But this is the beauty of the craftmanship quality of this system. You are a crafter, you are making things for the market, and you make this one, special thing. You have every right then to be elated. Every right to put it up there for a whole grip of cash, and every right to expect to get that cash. Because you know that you just made something that not everyone has.
Sure, the bot can do the exact same thing as you, but no more, and no less, and with no greater expectation of success.
That is unless they are hacking the crap out of the game.
So I think that I have made my case for why I feel impressed about it. What I need from you then is your example of a game that limits to bot to the same standards as the human. Runs a completely player driven economy (no farming gear from mobs).....
Oh wait!! Did I mention that?. Yeah, so a lot of the stuff you need to make your weapons comes from other classes (or bots). But some of the things you need only come from forbidden instances and can only be obtained via the completion to a certain point of those instances. Only standing between you and the mobs that drop those items are real life player character assassins. This means that even if you do have a bot, and it can beat the gems game, and it can harvest, and it can make the fine forged upgradable weapons, and you have the real life cash to do so, you still have to program one that can beat human players of all levels in pvp, which is a whole nother ball of wax.
So seriously? Is it that important to be good at a game that you don't even play?
That's a lot of good ideas all pointed in the same direction, which is to take the edge away from the bots.
So yeah, as I was saying, same standards, player driven economy, and a wide variety of different types of items and system that makes each and every job, from the fisherman right up to the armor maker, important.
And before you herbalists chime in about how you can't sell a pill for good money, I say, wait till later when the cultivation doesn't tick off like it used to, you will be making money hand over fist.
HAHA!! That's called LAW son! Learn it! Live it! Obey it!!
I've been wanting that in an open world pvp game for years.
Plus, how do you "accidentally" kill someone from your own school?
Thanks man, hope you enjoy it.
LOL son you are so padding it.
naZchoco, I know exactly where you are coming from man, and on this I feel like I can speak to you. I am, in a lot of ways, in the same place that you are right now and my simple advice to you is this.....
Put it down for a minute.
We MMO players are historically good for eating through content faster than developers can generate it. In this situation, they have already released the second internal, the third internal, and only just now the mount hua expansion, and we are chewing it all right up. But as I said in some of the earlier posts, a lot of this is being done with substandard weapons, substandard armor, and all around substandard gear.
There is a LOT of upgrading that can be done to just about everything you have and the mount hua expansion is all about labeling the best of the best fighters on the servers. It also introduces Jianghu play, which is yet another aspect of gameplay that I only just finished posting bout elsewhere on these forums "alignment". When was the last time you heard some nonsense like that? LOL Alignment in an MMO?
Ok yeah, I admit right now I am sounding like quite the fanboi, but you know the deal man. When you are enjoying it, you are really enjoying it.
If you are are the man though, don't feel like you need to upgrade your stuff, don't feel like you need to stick with the grind for now, by all means then, put it down. But check back later because things seem to be changing almost monthly.
I keep things fresh by trying to hit the crafting cap on two skills. I am on the top 100 lists in both but I still haven't hit that magic number and so that keeps me logging in. I don't even really have a lot of time to do anything else these days, but that is enough.
The other day I got beaten in a fair fight by someone around my same relative skill for the first time in a long time. Didn't feel good, but it did make me feel like "Dang, I need to get my armor worked on" LOL.
So that's all I can say about that.
You don't need to play it everyday though.
Oh dear...
1) X hours of grind is still X hours of grind, regardless whether you parcel it out among dozens or hundreds of days.
You base your false assumption that crafting daily cap is there due bots, it is not. It is there to keep you playing and paying longer.
Second false asumumption you make is that any botter would be playing same way as a player does - logging every day to play a jewel game to level up.
2) Read my point again, you apparently did not.
3) In order to enchant an item, you need that item first. And that is where enournous labour I talked about comes in. The enchanting process itself is least issue.
This bring us to point 1) when just due crafting labour required, botters will just level up in process of making junk items.
The jewel game is only allowing you to "crit" and produce an item of higher quaility level which you would need a new recipe for otherwise and as far as I know, once you hit cap, it won't do anything since Jade quality is current cap.
And when you say:
your posts get very odd context. Even on newest AoW server, which would be EU closed beta, ppl are for long maxed 1st inner. It takes about a week of casual play getting to FWC.
Your comment about gear is speaks volumes...
Yeah, that is a type of info about the game I had on mind in my previous post - blatant misinformation.
But in all fairness, you write as if you are a current employee, and well paid to boot.
I mean I like MMO's, I've defended my share of them, particularly EVE, but I've never gone out of my way to promote any of them, which you really do for this game. Was always curious as to why people would do this. Entertainment I guess.
Back to the OP, it does sound like one of the more worthwhile crafting systems to come out in a long time, at least since Vanguard or SWG. And I do like the daily cap idea, too often I've felt my contribution in an MMORPG was inferior to those who could afford to spend their lives in a game compared to my 2 hours a day or so.
I actually would have favored a game where no one could play more than 2 hours a day, (to help level the playing field) and in some way this system sounds very much like this.
It's one reason I enjoyed EVE, my skill training goes up the same as anyone else regardless how much I am actually able to play. Probably why I keep going back to it.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
This is so flawed...
How would you like to be 1 shot by older characters for 3 months instead of 2 weeks? Is that how you percieve an equal playing field?
Daily caps do nothing for leveling the playing field. What makes the playing field unequal is vertical progression and daily caps won't change a thing about it, in fact they make it even worse since your period for catching up is extended.
EVE is nothing like AoW.
Crafting is the last thing that is worthwhile in AoW. Horrible(!) trade/market system, UI and other flaws.
Yeah we play two different games. I guess that's part of the beauty of Wushu, you make your own game.
I've never did a spy mission. I have never did a daily, well as part of the tutorial you do a daily crafting thing. Are there more? after 7 months I couldn't tell you where to find one.
This morning, I checked my mail, saw that I made about 500L. Checked the market for skills for the rare set I've been trying to build. Ran into a guildie who asked to duel, he won, I was busy though
. Spoke to a new player about Tangmen for about 5 minutes(my school). Talked to a vice guild leader who's guild for some reason thought I would be a good target. The same guild I made this thread about. I have respect for the VGL, but they can not win against me. Now I'm typing to you, about to craft some enchanting mats. I've been on for 1 hour now.
It's a friday, no telling what the day will bring. I'm a "Super Ninja (tm)" I will be ready though.
After you have explained how you pay 1000 silver for mats so you can make an item that you sell for 700 silver...no one can take you seriously.
I am happy that you enjoy the game but you just provide misleading info...sometimes I even think it's intentional...