Loko Loki's page

Overall, the game seems to be following other games down the same path and the decisions GW makes do not seem to conform to the official blog statements.

There was always talk about there would not be consequence free ganking and PvP would be meaningful. Then they institute the WoT with consequence free PvP and now reducing the Rep hit for murder to a menaingless level (apparently the gods forget about little things like murder after a few hours). The PvE is nothingness and the whole game plan is based on PvP which isnt really even implemented (I expect ever so much ganking once husks are active).

The initial blogs described a robust responsive crafting system which is not what we have. We have a cookie cutter system that is not much different than standard themepark games. Default input = Default output without variation, planning, or meaningful decision. Worse, the way they have used Keywords bound between the crafting system and skill system means that they have extremely limited any future flexibility. IMO this is really shooting themselves in the foot. Whether one likes or dislikes the crafting system, the restricted ability to expand or alter it in the future is huge. But even when the crafting fails to draw players, they will not be able to adjust because then they would have to redo all the skills and balancing again. Such a big change is not going to happen and crafting is left as an alt activity (even if a fully subbed character with full xp to stay at the top, its still just an alt).

The previously described / planned settlement mechanics were a big draw of my interest (plus the pipe dream description of crafting). But real settlements are apparently many months away and a large number of people are not going to put up with the above just waiting. Especially given the overstatements and lack of follow through that I have seen with the features already implemented.

In conclusion, the game seems to be spiralling around the PvP gankfest route that other games have already followed. It was supposed to be differentiating itself from such with consequences but that has been abandoned in practice. It can not compete with PvE of themeparks (lack of money and lack of will), crafting is nothing special (and will not be due to the hardcoded limitations), and company / settlement mechanics are too far away to hold people (assuming they even manage to get those done well).

@Loko Loki - the problem with the suggestion of making the act of crafting "more interesting" is that it does not scale.

If you want to be a meaningful economic participant, that is, you intend to make logistics (and crafting is a part of logistics) your thing, you are not going to make one sword. You are going to make thousands of swords. Multiply that by all the items in the database.

In theory spending time to make an item "different" sounds cool. In practice, it turns into a repetitive, easily macro'd or bot'd process that robs the system of value and is despised by those who are forced to use it.

Over time we will iterate on the crafting system and add more interesting things to it. We are not going to add "minigames" or anything that requires the player to interact with the system continuously in order for it to function, but we might add things like occasional work stoppages that require a player intervention to resolve.

The "meaningful choices" in crafting are legion. You have to decide what to craft, where. You have to decide what to pay for the inputs (recipes, raw materials), and how to time your crafting jobs. Once a job is finished you'll have to decide where to sell the output and how to get it to that market.

Just within the question of how to craft an item you have to decide which materials to use - what combination of refined resources vs. scavenged loot, what "+" values to use, etc. Within a given category of item you have choices: Steel, cold iron, silvered, adamantine, etc.

I was not referring to minigames. I agree that would quickly get annoying.

The things you list are all important for being successful as a crafter / business. Managing costs will be important, but the end result is the same exact item with the same keywords. The competition is all about price and nothing about quality or function. Outside of apothecary I havent seen much difficulty selecting mats (use the iron, copper, hide, hemp etc which have 1 use before the salvage that has 2). I was thinking more of the old star wars galaxy style crafting where making good choices in the above recipe / mat selection would result in a better item. You obviously have a clearer view as to what is planned to be implemented vs what can never be fit into the existing system. In the end we probably just have different perspectives.

Duffy wrote:

what else are you going to do on your "main" crafter besides manage your queues every few hours at best?

The people in EVE who spend their time focused on economic concerns spend their time searching for pricing arbitrage - looking for places to buy low and sell high.

Because warfare between corporations shifts locations and tactics continuously there is no stead-state in the economy. The thing "everyone needed" last week might fall out of demand, and something new will take its place. So the economic masters are never able to just reach a point of "perfect economic capability" and go on autopilot. They are continuously updating their information and using those updates to change their logistics chains.

Arbitrage and economic schemes are fine and will have a place. However, they do not require any crafting, recipes, or XP spending. Thats a human feature not a game feature. For a crafter I would like an engaging / meaninful experience from the actual crafting. Currently everything is the same and there is no "meaningful" choice in crafting. There is no producing a better item than the competition. No seeing that a certain "element" attack is underdefended and producing that item or corresponding producing a armor to counter the current "element" favorite. With the way feat / equipment keywords are locked in, I dont know how much choice can be added in the future (obviously alpha and not everything planned is implemented). My understanding of the resource quality feature is that its basically a effect of encumberance and will still have to effect on final item quality (unless things have changed).

The current system pushes towards crafting as an alt in my view.

Currently I see each lvl of refiner / crafter getting access to learn new recipes and faster production.

What effect does gathering progression have currently or what should it have down the road? Currently it seems that gathering lvl 1 and lvl 6 get the same type of resources and the same ammount. Faster harvesting of the node has minimal benefit as most of the time is spent running around to get to the hex, find the nodes, fighting the mobs near the node (especially if your XP is spent on gathering / refining / crafting) and back to town. It seems like I should only take lvl 1 and permanently stop unless I plan to dedicate running straight up to lvl 7. Then again having a choice to stop at lvl 7 for the same reason?

Thoughts? Is the gusher system going to really make you train more lvls if your not already planning on dedicated gathering?

I will pay for a subbed adventurer main and a subbed crafter (the crafting system is not deep enough to occupy a main / there are no meaningful choices in crafting). But I do not like the not logging statement for non-XP alts.
There should be strong incentives for subbed. NonXP characters could have reduced efficiency in mats, in production time, que / AH slots, skill lvl available or some combination for crafting/refining. NonXP characters could also have reduced dmg, resistences, drop rate, emcumberance or some comibination when adventuring. Also, could say no achievements, Rep progression without XP.

There are plenty of negative effects that could be placed with non-XP characters to get people to sub them. Not logging in to even see what recipes you already know / are holding, get the existing refined / raw mats off them, see the adventurers equipment / feats, etc seems a little too harsh. I would see more people subbing a otherwise reduced alt because they see the advantage while logged in with him than I would an alt that is nonloggable and has no perceived use / value.

Oh, I know gathering and pve will be an integral component. But that doesn't mean that it will be FUN.

Yes there is different + lvl recipes and I did figure out how the system avgs each stack before avg the stacks for the final +. So I would still refine +1,+2 resources for times when +3 in one or two stacks wouldn't gain a final + and is not worth wasting components and refine time. But the end result is the same armor / weapon with the exact same keywords. I was hoping for something closer to SWG where individual planning and resource management yielded better results.

It could all still work out as the EE progresses and more things get implemented or changed. The only one character will mix things up. No alts with their separate crafting que will slow things down. It may reduce the initial bandits.

I had planned on a smelter metalworker but with the alpha system broken, I couldn't even test it really. It seems less complex than I had hoped. The initial description of gathered resource quality seems lost. I had envisioned learning keywords and being able to customize your crafting, but instead everyone produces the exact same thing. They seem to have built in a lot of interdependency between the fields which is good, but I just don't see enough depth to occupy a full time crafter.

As I am not big into the PvP, adventuring may have problems. A loud portion of the forums seem actively hostile to pve and from prior goblinworks statements / decisions with the WoT, pve does not seem like it will get much developer attention for a long time.

I will still go the smelter metalworker route at launch. How long that lasts is unknown.

If reputation is purely character based (assumed at this point) then hiring low rep CE characters will not really be necessary. My current understanding of Reputation and Alignment suggests there will be a dichotomy of low rep activity not a real reduction. People will have high rep main character(s) and separate low rep character(s) to do the dirty work. IMO

I would envision that most of the loot bandits and murderhobos get will be quickly shifted to their high rep main character to use / trade / stockpile. Having starmetal hexes as FFA does not seem necessary, pvp will occur and it will take a group effort to acquire it by gathering or looting. A party that provided cover for the high lvl gatherer to mine the node is not going to send the gatherer back to town alone.

Ive read the vlogs and many posts, but there are too many posts to fully search. I had greatly liked recently released info about crafting and the settlement podcast at gobbocast, but now I feel I am lacking info or am out of date. If previously answered, a reference would be appreciated or a up to date offsite FAQ.

Towers are controlled by one company. That company pledgesnto a settlement, which accepts, the company-members becoming settlement members. You can only join one company (at launch), so your skills are based on that settlement. A tower / its benefit CAN NOT be gifted to a second settlement by the company or the first settlement. All of a settlements towers are pvp at the same time frame. <--My understanding.

a. Can a company control more than one tower?
b. Does the tower advance all settlement training by 1 or select one school?
c. Settlements time zones, ie europe and US? A large company off time zone by 6hr (say the pvp frame falling at 3am or even 9am) can not defend a tower, even though they can conquer one/more and could defend during their prime time. Are they useless for tower mechanics?
d. A uncontrolled tower has the entire Hex as rep free pvp 24/7?
e. NPC towns still have training / craft buildings up to early Tier II?
f. How many towers are needed to surpass the NPC town training?
g. When are the settlements going to announce their roles selections?
h. You still have to be within one alignment grade of the settlement during WoT?

A reference to a good offsite FAQ would be appreciated for standard info on:
Multiple characters per account but is reputation character based or account based. Can you have a low-rep griefer without penalty to a second high-rep main character? You can presumably put characters into very different companies and settlements? The number of characters? or accounts? in a REAL company / settlement once implemented determines influence / DI?

To Craft fine armor and weapons will take training the respective skills and acquiring the materials. By making PvP the only input into advancing the available training, it selects for PvP. Your example of 1/2 party with 3 times as good gear, it does not match the parameters. To get the skills to make the better gear would require already being significantly larger than the opponent.
Its a king of the hill reward system, the process protects those on top and ensures they stay on top. Obviously, the large group wants better equipment sure. But, if the system ensures the smaller challenger can not get even equivalent equipment, then better equipment is not really necessary. "Rocks and sticks" WILL work if the opponent does not have them. (Not that it will be that bad, but the concept is valid)

This tower proposal is completely idiotic. Not only are they destroying the plans for anyone but the top 10 settlements, they are relegating gathering and crafting to alts only and low skill ones at that. With PvP determining training only, the only trainging will go to PvP. Then the economy fails because no one can gather resources, no one can train gathering / crafting because its not available, and the people who were interested in primary gather / crafter choose not to play. So then it will go the route of the MMO and switch to monster drop equipment or purchased with PvP "Points". I was really looking forward to EE launch even with the limitations of prebeta "minimal viable product". Planning on my gatherer with some future ranger aspirations has just died.

I am fine with open world PvP. Its a basic of a good economy and the cheapest time/money investment for a small company. BUT it must be balanced by equivalent rewards for the gatherer / crafter types. Even before this I could have been regularry ganked while gathering resources, but would still have been able to progress up my skills and helped to build up a company / settlement. Now it sounds like a suck fest and the mentality created will just continue after the fact.