Goblin Squad Member
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Greetings and well met!
Earlier today, while spending some sacred time at the Ivory Throne, I was thinking about crafting and how it could be made more cooperative. So if you have some spare minutes, this is my idea
Tandem Crafting
The central idea behind this is that, just like players can get together to fight monsters, they could get together to craft. Usually, we see games handling this by a method of handing over materials to a crafter in order to get a particular item made. Tandem Crafting is about making this proces a bit easier.
First, you need to get into the same party with one or more players, and then send them a Tandem Crafting request (such as clicking from a drop-down list on the character portrait or something). Multiple people can be sent this request, so long as they are both within the party and within a short distance of each other. The other players get a message asking if they want to accept (with a cooldown to avoid spamming), and if they do, the Tandem Crafting window opens.
The screen would show a series of parallel columns where the players would be able to input materials, while in the lower part a drop-down menu (or maybe a drag-and-drop method with icons) each player would be able to select the particular crafting skill they'll be providing. Then there is a "Craft" button for each player; to start the process, everyone must have clicked.
Now, here would be two things: Singular Tradeskills and Cooperative Tradeskills.
Singular Tradeskills are those that need only be done by a single person. For example, let us say a Copper Sword. All it takes is for one player to input it and starts crafting, and all the materials added in tandem will then start being converted into copper swords (so Player A can provide the copper ingots and Player B the hilt, both being counted as the same material pool). If other players also have the same tradeskill, then they can also input them for additional benefits, such as faster crafting, better material efficiency, or perhaps some chance for an improved result. If two or more conflicting tradeskills are selected, the "Craft" button can't be pressed until they have been sorted out.
Cooperative Tradeskills, on the other hand, and those that can be combined to get a certain crafting done. It could be reserved for more powerful items, or used for some item categories that would require multiple types of knowledge. For example, let's say Alchemical Silver, requiring two Cooperative Tradeskills called Silver Smelting(also used for smelting down silver ore) and Alchemical Treatment (also used for imbuing other materials with alchemical properties). So two different players add the skills, provide the materials, and press "Craft". If more players can also add those tradeskills, they could get an added benefit as in the previous case.
Crafted items could be placed into a temporary "Common Bag" from which players pick them up, maybe on a Free-for-All method or following a certain rule (such as the party leader taking them or designating who takes it), or go directly to the backpack of the person determined by the same methods.
The idea here is that crafters would have an easier time putting their skills for hire, taking out two steps from the process (the handing-over of the materials and then giving back the results), while also promoting in-situ trades as players could get together to craft in group. It would also allow for particularly important items to require direct group work and players sharing their tradeskills, promoting groupwork and the building of trading ties.
What do you think?
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Goblin Squad Member
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My first impression is that I'd prefer to do everything, but I ease off that position after a little thought.
A Tale in the Desert used different cooperative activities for two of its resource collecting activities, digging for stone and quarrying marble. For stone the group got more and larger stones than they could digging alone. For marble, the foreman got instructions on how the marble had to be raised from the quarry and had to communicate that to the other 3 people, confusion/failure meant the piece of marble was lost.
Both mechanisms allowed for resources that were non-trivial to get, so were valued by the player economy.
I would think it would be useful in PFO to have some cooperative actions, for resource collection and crafting. The simplest form would be to allow multiple craftspeople gain efficiency when working on one large item, like a suit of mail. So maybe it takes 20 minutes with one smith, but 5 minutes with 3 smiths.
The more complex form is items that take multiple players and players need to work in a particular way to create the item. I'm thinking of rituals requiring multiple casters to bind power into a sword, for example. It could certainly make some magic items non-trivial.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Like the rest of PFO, I'd like crafting to be fully functional by yourself, but become more useful/powerful in a group, and even moreso in a community.
This is mainly done by allowing specialized harvesters/crafters to trade materials/crafted items, but as for actual cooperative crafting... Wow. That would be awesome. Plus, it would solve the problem of "Hey, I'll totally make that sword for you. Just hand me all of that shiny, shiny, valuable metal there..." that many other MMO's without Auction Houses run into.
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Goblin Squad Member
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as long as it doesn't involve one person doing all of the quality work and another pumping the bellows. Usually you see a master craftsman and grunt laborers.
Tandem crafting should be a system where one person shapes, one person treats, one person decorates, and another enchants. Or one person that has completed a lot of training does it all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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it would solve the problem of "Hey, I'll totally make that sword for you. Just hand me all of that shiny, shiny, valuable metal there..." that many other MMO's without Auction Houses run into.
I don't really see that as a problem that trust and reputation matters. I means I don't need to have the best crafting skills on the server, I will still get business because people trust me more.
I've had strangers come up to me (in MMOs), asking to hold their epic crafting materials for them while they switched to their alt - simply because my guild had sterling reputation.
In PFO I would not mind if those that are known to be trustworthy get more business than strangers. It creates a good incentive to socialise.
(off topic1: maybe there should be a mechanism that lets you 'loot back' all items/money you have recently given to someone)
(off topic2: confront scammers in-game, then post screenshots and chatlogs on the forums.
on topic: cooperative crafting, yay! Random thoughts:
-If a recipe requies different skills, a team uses the best skills.
-If recipes use a single skill, assistance adds your effective skill level, cuts down crafting time, etc.
-Mass production? If crafting several identical items (whether components or finished goods), a group should have significant synergies.
-Some crafting actions may require cooperation, such as building a house. Some actions are just too hard for one person (such as raising two beams at the same time). Other tasks are just too large (building a fort one brick at a time).
Vanguard had a process where a group of players could tap a single resource, be it plant, animal, or mineral, and garner a larger amount of that resource than could a single player operating solo, with increased chances for unique items coming along. This did not require the other players to have more than a tool used for the skill and no skill was required, they were simply providing labor and not expertise.
As far as a group of players working together, I could see that when looking at things like houses or ships being built, even a quilt, but most items in MMOs are small in size and can't really be shared for crafting: too many smiths spoil a sword and all that. In the case of large orders of small items, that I can see, as it would save time at the least. 20 swords in the time it takes to make one would be a huge advantage if you could have 20 smiths making them.