Taking to the Chronicles of Elyria blog, Soulbound Studios' Jeromy Walsh talked a bit about how its resource and gathering mechanics will work in its upcoming sim, Kingdoms of Elyria.
The new blog post details the philosophy behind the way gathering resources works in Kingdoms of Elyria, and how it differs from the MMO itself, talking about the pitfalls of many other MMOs and the "one-man economy." As such, while players in Chronicles of Elyria will be gathering materials themselves, in Kingdoms, due to its nature as a sim game and not an MMO, AI will be directed by the player to gather the resources needed to build up the kingdom.
However, the Chronicles of Elyria developer notes that they are taking parts of what are traditionally seen in crafting skills in other MMOs and splitting them apart in an effort to drive more meaning and "depth of trade-skill rather than breadth."
Per Walsh in the blog post:
"One thing we're doing differently in CoE and KoE in comparison to other games is splitting the role of collecting and processing primary and compound resources into usable materials from that of producing components and finished goods. We're doing this to emphasize depth of trade-skill rather than breadth. We’re aiming to create an environment where characters can prosper by doing a handful of things well, rather than feeling like they need to do everything."
The post also talks about the different forms of gathering in Kingdoms of Elyria: extratcting, harvesting and destroying. Extracting will be how players gather a single resource from a target, be it picking apples from a tree and such. Harvesting is a bit different as it involves obtaining more than one resource with one fell swoop. The example given is harvesting a tree branch which can be processed into leaves, fiber, more fruit and more.
Destroying is when you take the resource node and convert it to stacks of resources to be collected, at the cost of that node not developing more resources down the road. Cutting down the tree might net you wood, but you'll no longer be able to harvest from that tree ever again.
You can check out the full details on the Chronicles of Elyria blog on how gathering resources will work in both KoE and CoE.
For those who haven't been following the Chronicles of Elyria saga closely, recently the studio behind the crowdfunded MMO announced it was focusing its development on its stand-alone kingdom sim, Kingdoms of Elyria. While the development of Kingdoms has taken the focus of the team, Walsh has stressed in its recent Inside Chronicles of Elyria video series he's been publishing monthly since December 2020 that development of KoE will directly feed into CoE's development. Backers will also be receiving the stand-alone Kingdoms of Elyria as part of their pledge. This is all with the backdrop of the studio facing a class-action lawsuit from backers following the news last year from Walsh that Soulbound Studios was closing and development on CoE was ceasing, though Walsh walked much of it back a few weeks later.
