Gathering gear was introduced in the last iteration of beta . Many of you are probably thinking, "So what? That's a good thing" - but I'll explain what I mean. Gathering gear hampered a lot of solo and small scale fights that would occur naturally from contesting resource nodes. Before in beta, I enjoyed many skirmishes with people because we had a reason to fight each other seeing as the victor would get to gather the valuable resource. When people wear gathering gear, they are encouraged NOT to fight because the gear is generally more expensive than fighting gear and it doesn't provide combat stats - you're essentially risking more monetary loss with a greater chance to lose the fight. This is why 95% of gatherers won't ever fight and just run away, there's legitimately no reason to defend resource nodes while wearing gathering gear. Seeing as how gathering is mostly a solo activity, it destroyed a lot of consenting pvp action for solo and small groups. Gathering gear was another example of catering to casual players by encouraging people to not fight each other.



. Many of you are probably thinking, "So what? That's a good thing" - but I'll explain what I mean. Gathering gear hampered a lot of solo and small scale fights that would occur naturally from contesting resource nodes. Before in beta, I enjoyed many skirmishes with people because we had a reason to fight each other seeing as the victor would get to gather the valuable resource. When people wear gathering gear, they are encouraged NOT to fight because the gear is generally more expensive than fighting gear and it doesn't provide combat stats - you're essentially risking more monetary loss with a greater chance to lose the fight. This is why 95% of gatherers won't ever fight and just run away, there's legitimately no reason to defend resource nodes while wearing gathering gear. Seeing as how gathering is mostly a solo activity, it destroyed a lot of consenting pvp action for solo and small groups. Gathering gear was another example of catering to casual players by encouraging people to not fight each other. The single biggest mistake Albion made in beta was the addition of learning points and it's affects with alts . No-one wanted this, no-one asked for it, and people were extremely upset upon hearing of it's addition to the game. So much so, that SBI had to make a thread on the forums just to compile all the different topics about how horrible LP is for a game designed like Albion. LP was in opposition to one of Albion's biggest appeals, which was hardcore progression based grind - but SBI claimed that they needed a way for casual players to stay competitive with hardcore players saying this:



Korn schrieb: The goal of the learning point system is to narrow the progression gap between normal players and hardcore players.



Korn schrieb: A side effect of the learning point system is that that encourages creating multiple characters, each with their own specializations, in order to be able to progress in different activities simultaneously.



Korn schrieb: an alt character, from an economic point of view, is pretty much the same as an extra player, taking part in the economy.



JonahVeil schrieb: It's about the fact that LP inherently HURTS the game.



It promotes;

Playing Less

Not going into the world

Hardcore Players multi accounting/multi character LP spamming

Having zero character diversity since we all can craft/gather/refine/use everything, by ourselves.







Without LP, and with a character limit, CRAFTERS and REFINERS would be a thing. Something they specialized in, spent a lot of time on, and could sell their services as a commodity, you know, like a player driven economy this game boasts yet doesn't actually posses?



However, they failed abysmally at recognizing that the LP system did not help anyone "catch up" but rather it expanded this gap with how LP interacts with alternate characters. For example, a casual player will gain 20 LP per day with one character, while a more hardcore player will gain 60 LP per day with three characters. When LP was initially added to the game, there wasn't even a threshold amount of fame required to progress to before being able to use LP. You could log in, throw premium on an alt, and just wait until you had a bunch saved up and be maxed in whatever you wanted to with zero effort. The fact that this was possible, even in beta, goes to show how little thought was put into keeping the integrity of the progression system. SBI knew how much LP would push players into creating alts when they said this:Needless to say, many veteran players saw this as a blatant cash grab by introducing this predatory monetization system that heavily encouraged alternate characters. The only way to accrue LP was by having a premium active on a character, which effectively doubled or even tripled SBI's income per player. We all know game services needs to make money to keep the servers going, but this route with LP was at the cost of their own game's success. Not only did it severely hinder trade as many hardcore players were able to be completely self-sufficient through the use of multiple alts, but it also led to one of Albion's longest running issues in regards to how gvgs play out. Every character is limited to one gvg per day by design, but alts were a way around this lock for teams and it's been an ever-present issue for gvgs because of this. Alts were also a way around portal locks too, but it's not as severe comparatively. In retrospect, the most substantial effect LP had was sowing a monumental amount of distrust from the player-base, a vast majority of which don't play the game anymore.In response to the heavy criticism of how LP negatively impacts the economy, SBI had this to say:I can't even put into words how asinine that comment is. Saying this is like the internet equivalent of an open-handed slap in the face to your players. Not only does it attempt to down-play the role of alts, but it's not even factually correct. Instead of having a real profession system based on skills we specialized in, we just have alts - none of which needs to interact with anyone else but the one player playing them. Any resources gathered on alt#1 gets sent to alt#2 to refine and then to alt#3 to craft, and the end product is the only thing that enters the economy. Quoting a long time veteran and streamer of the game:If you're thinking, "Oh well I like LP because it helps make the grind faster", let me explain that the amount of fame required for leveling any particular thing is designed with LP in mind. If they had removed LP, they would have just balanced the fame values accordingly and it would still be the same exact progress rate. I highly encourage you to read through the threads on LP that I linked above so you can get a better understanding for yourself, as there's hundreds of pages and posts that I can't possibly summarize all of it in a few paragraphs. There's so many different viewpoints from numerous players - most of which are no longer around, but you will find that the majority of people saw LP for what it is - a cancer on this game - and they were not wrong.