Goblin Squad Member
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A common theme in MMO's, especially Sandboxes, is the desire for detailed crafting systems. I've seen developers claim that they have them, only to discover their 'deep' crafting system meant 'Wow's crafting system'.
This is a short list from me of things I would love to see included as, either skills in their own right, or specializations of skills.
Blacksmithing, Weaponsmithing, Macecrafting, Axecrafting, Shieldmaking, Armoursmithing, Runesmithing, Enchanting, Golemancy, Alchemy, Gemcrafting, Bowyer, Architecture, Farrier, Engineering, Bookbinding, Scribing, Jeweller, Chef, Brewer, Shipwright, Breeding, Butchey, Masonry, Carpentry, Clothmaking, Weaving
And also skills or means of gathering materials..
Mining, Banking, Panning, Hunting, Herding, Herbalism, Farming, Fishing, Lumberjacking, Alchemical Chemistry, Summoning, Quarrying, Planting, Harvesting
Skill in gathering determines what can be gathered, and also what quality the materials gathered are(because absolutelly materials should have quality, its something that SWG got right).
Materials should have a construction process that should be discoverable but not known by anyone to start with. The process should be guarded by players, because it has value and allows people to corner markets (and the ensuing raiding and spying that goes on as people try to reverse enginner discoveries).
Every construction process should have voluntary modifiers that can add to or detract from construction. With risk comes reward, sure once a thing is know you can make it, but can you improve it without ruining it?
These are my ideas (and I may be too late to the party, these choices may well have already been made) but they are definitely things I would love to see in crafting. What about you?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Materials should have a construction process that should be discoverable but not known by anyone to start with. The process should be guarded by players, because it has value and allows people to corner markets (and the ensuing raiding and spying that goes on as people try to reverse enginner discoveries).
If the discovery process can be repeated by following instructions from the internet, then there will very quickly be no more mystery. If, however, the discovery process remains truly abstract, with bonuses to discovering it if you are cooperating with someone who already knows it in-game, then it should remain somewhat rare.
I've always wanted to see crafting broken out into multiple mini-games that are easy to learn and very hard to master. So, you know, it's debatable whether master blacksmith Steve produces more consistent work than master blacksmith Matt.
Both of them being considering masters because they are crazy good at the mini-game associated and have very high character skill levels...instead of them both being considered masters because they watched a progress bar fill up over 9000 times and occasionally make RNG based masterwork items.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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What would this minigame be like? In what manner will it be fair to players with higher latencies? How would it be fair to players who perform it unaided, a opposed to people who cheat?
I like the idea of something to do instead of watching a bar fill up, but I hate the implications of making it significant.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One person's tedium is another person's content. The trick is to find someone who enjoys doing what you consider tedium.
On the minigames: "easy to learn and very hard to master" seems to make it heavily based on the player's abilities, not the character's skills. I'd like something based more on the character, but a minigame is definitely preferable to watching a timebar fill.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One person's tedium is another person's content. The trick is to find someone who enjoys doing what you consider tedium.
This is true, and I need to be reminded of it occasionally, but it only gets you so far. Would SWG's economy have been anywhere near as vibrant if an actual player had to stand there clicking a resource over and over, even if there was some kind of mini-game to keep them from losing their minds?
I would really like the things that get glossed over on the tabletop with "Ok, you spend two weeks doing that" to be the kinds of things you can devote offline time to in PFO. Obviously, travel is going to be a bit different, but I think it would work very well for things like keeping a storehouse stocked up or working in an iron mine.
Honestly, I believe this is inevitable in some game, and once that door's broken down, it will become the standard.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon, I'm not sure what is best, but I'm omptimistic to see GW try to make a sandbox game in the fantasy genre.
If we have NPC harvesters, and NPC guards, then we might as well have NPC crafters, and NPC wizards in our guard force, right? Where does it end? I'd rather dispense with the NPCs, or rather, let the players' offline characters handle the tedium in their settlements.
- You find mining to be mind-numbingly boring, so log off at the settlement minehead to accumulate ore during your downtime. Someone else enjoys mining, so he actively mines during game time, and collects ore at a much better rate than you do offline.
- Marou_ plays a merchant, but logs off at the market so he has a trader active there overnight.
- My smith logs out at the blackmith shop to form chain links, the precursor for mail armor, which he will shape during game time. I choose whether to actively mine, mine when logged out, or buy metal from you...
etc, etc. It might not be the direction PFO heads, but it would let players pick which tedium they get to bypass. ATITD (A Tale in the Desert) let players do a lot of their farming offline.
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Goblin Squad Member
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f we have NPC harvesters, and NPC guards, then we might as well have NPC crafters, and NPC wizards...
Not sure where that came from. I'm definitely not proposing NPC harvesters.
- You find mining to be mind-numbingly boring, so log off at the settlement minehead to accumulate ore during your downtime. Someone else enjoys mining, so he actively mines during game time, and collects ore at a much better rate than you do offline.
That is exactly what I'd like to see.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Given how they want a symbiosis between settlements, crafters, and adventurers, I would suggest that crafting recipes for new high end equipment be introduced without any announcement and through loot found in high end, high risk lairs or dungeons. Adventurers would then be able to take the recipe back to town and sell it to a crafter who would in return sell the finished product.
To prevent people from simply posting to the internet, the recipe itself, as an in game object, could be one of the requirements - not consumed in the crafting process, but it should be in the crafter's inventory to proceed.
Whether or not recipes can be duplicated in game is another matter: I'd suggest yes, but at a cost. And the cost for high end equipment recipes should be quite high.
What would this minigame be like? In what manner will it be fair to players with higher latencies? How would it be fair to players who perform it unaided, a opposed to people who cheat?
I like the idea of something to do instead of watching a bar fill up, but I hate the implications of making it significant.
Something as simple as tracing patterns would make crafting outcome far less random, not be latency sensitive, and would be harder to cheat than a captcha. Definitely far far harder to cheat than just click and go AFK gathering/crafting. That's just a loose idea. Looking at some of the casual games on Bigfish could supply plenty of ideas.
Player skill is already involved in every aspect of the game, whether it's decision making, character planning, or reflexes in combat. Crafting and gathering should be no different.
The fact that we expect these things to be idle progress bar filling tedium a bot can do much more productively than a human speaks volumes about our horribly low expectations. Such a system wouldn't be acceptable in a single player or flash game, and is why I generally tend to avoid crafting in most MMO's.
Offline gathering I imagine will (not) be possible on account of the fact that's it's a sandbox PvP oriented game. How can you keep someone from stealing your resources if they can do it invincibly from offline? Since you are going to be devoting play time to these activities instead of offline time, they must be more interesting than click & go afk.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd prefer that crafters unlock high-end recipes through "Eureka" events while actively crafting. Basically, the crafter gains an insight into her craft that allows some item to be fashioned, but the crafter can't explain it, she just knows it. So a non-tradeable drop for the crafter, less predictable than the merit badge that he's working on.
Now, if an actual recipe is found in the wilderness, it should be able to be absorbed by a crafter *if* she has a requisite understanding of the craft. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense. Such a recipe could be able to impart knowledge to some random number of crafters, but the requisite skills should not be discernible by anyone but someone skilled in that craft.
(The thief looks at the papers for a while. He says, "I think it has something to do with blacksmithing, but beyond that, no idea.")
Found recipes and "Eureka" events could both exist and be different paths to the same thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How can you keep someone from stealing your resources if they can do it invincibly from offline?
Who said invincibly? I'm talking about your character being in the game world while you're logged off of the game.
I'd prefer that crafters unlock high-end recipes through "Eureka" events while actively crafting.
That's a great addition to the list of ways to gain recipes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How can you keep someone from stealing your resources if they can do it invincibly from offline?
The way I envision it, when Nihimon logs off at the minehead, he leaves the world. When he logs back on, he has ore in his inventory. He might be limited by inventory space or weight, or any excess ore might be in the minehead storage. He can be attacked when he logs back in, but not when he's offline.
Destroying the minehead would of course destroy any ore in its storage area. It might mean that Nihimon has no ore when he logs back in to the space the minehead used to be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually, I posted a thread about it some time ago, but I would be absolutely thrilled for all characters to be in-game at all times, regardless of whether their players were logged in.
Personally I like the character being an NPC at all times. Namely due to a few benefits I've gone over before and may go over again in this post
One thing worth noting the pro's and con's of nihmon's idea here, are identical to the pro's and cons of a minehead, He's talking about the character essentially coming an NPC, being killable, robbable etc... and most likely only able to defend itself as well as an AI can handle, which in most cases will likely be far worse then his actual self would, more or less the same as a minehead except with one less perk. A minehead can be left when you are offline, or if you are off defending your town or running dungeons. Items/NPCs that are not tied to your character, allows you infinite actions simultaniously, while turning yourself into an NPC allows only 1 thing at a time per character.
Now I do admit, this system breaks down a bit when you factor in free accounts. Essentially you are looking at the possibility of 500 bots actively mining on throw away accounts. Of course that is also an issue with mineheads as well. The only actual prevention of that I can quite envision, is a certain level of mining skill being needed to do so, say 2 months of mining training to auto gather the cheapest resource, and then another month of mining training for every resource above that, or possibly a required time to have been invested in something else to enable the auto gathering etc... Something to ensure that a character doing automatic actions, has also been doing active actions and is indeed a playing character
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Goblin Squad Member
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... this system breaks down a bit when you factor in free accounts...
If you re-imagine Skill Training Time as Character Advancement Time, and make training skills one of many things that you can do with that time, then that solves this problem nicely. Ideally, you'd be able to segment the time so that you could advance your skills at 80% rate, and be 20% effective at mining (for example).
It might be simpler to keep them totally separate though, so that Skills always advance at a constant rate, but you've got an additional pool of Character Advancement Time that can be used for offline activities. Subscribers would get a set amount, and we'd be able to buy more and trade them in-game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... this system breaks down a bit when you factor in free accounts...If you re-imagine Skill Training Time as Character Advancement Time, and make training skills one of many things that you can do with that time, then that solves this problem nicely. Ideally, you'd be able to segment the time so that you could advance your skills at 80% rate, and be 20% effective at mining (for example).
It might be simpler to keep them totally separate though, so that Skills always advance at a constant rate, but you've got an additional pool of Character Advancement Time that can be used for offline activities. Subscribers would get a set amount, and we'd be able to buy more and trade them in-game.
What I strongly dislike of that idea, is that greatly kills many of the key advantages to the skills being time based system.
1. A group of friends starts at the same time, Now they have to select the same rates, and then it also falls appart because how often each one is online is a factor (since nobody is going to suggest that you gain resources while playing, but skills you gain regardless of if you are playing.)
2. Nolifers not gaining skills significantly faster then active players. Since nolifers will be gaining resources items and money. They will have no reason to devote a significant amount to gathering.
Okay, I realize that I'm jumping on this bandwagon a little late, but I just want to give my input here. I personally love the idea of having offline characters act as NPCs, but I think there are a couple major problems with this. I would hate to log back on, only to find my character is dead. Okay, so the character can fight for himself? There would have to be limits on that kind of thing, so you didn't go on vacation, and come back to find yourself in a totally different part of the world. Also, I can totally see a form of Griefing being trolling offline characters.
Finally, I have no idea how to combat a billion bot players mining ore. Maybe a limited number of people in mines? Or a limited amount of time you can spend doing something offline? Again however, that guy on vacation just sits there and monopolizes the mine.
I think the idea is fabulous, but it needs some more discussion. (And I love how the players are getting input - at least somewhat - on this whole thing.) Thoughts?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd say that that offline crafting and gathering should be possible only with characters that have subscriptions or are otherwise using skill training time. Non-paying accounts shouldn't be usable as offline bots.
Also, any offline activities should be tied to online achievements, not just to skill training. So Nihimon would need to get the mining skill, then do enough of the mind-numbing mining in game to earn some merit badge or other flag, *then* he can delegate the mining to an offline action.
In answer to Darkrunner, ya, I think that mines should have limits to offline and online use. Otherwise, why would anyone use more than one mine (of a given mineral) per settlement?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Okay, I realize that I'm jumping on this bandwagon a little late, but I just want to give my input here. I personally love the idea of having offline characters act as NPCs, but I think there are a couple major problems with this. I would hate to log back on, only to find my character is dead. Okay, so the character can fight for himself? There would have to be limits on that kind of thing, so you didn't go on vacation, and come back to find yourself in a totally different part of the world. Also, I can totally see a form of Griefing being trolling offline characters.
Finally, I have no idea how to combat a billion bot players mining ore. Maybe a limited number of people in mines? Or a limited amount of time you can spend doing something offline? Again however, that guy on vacation just sits there and monopolizes the mine.I think the idea is fabulous, but it needs some more discussion. (And I love how the players are getting input - at least somewhat - on this whole thing.) Thoughts?
Well the idea of your character dying I see no flaw with, Every decision has consequences, the penalty for death is more or less just what you've earned since you started an action, so essentially you lose, what you've been NPC mining if you are killed, and sign back on with an end result more or less the same as if you hadn't been mining at all. Possibly with a bit of wear and tear on your equipment, assuming ware and tear is going to be a factor for gear (a proposition I consider likely but has no official word to confirm or deny).
I agree on the limited time of being an NPC, possible added subscription costs, etc... as potential balancing factors for it being overdone. Limiting quanity of people to an area at a time makes the problem worse, now you not only have too many perma mining bots, but now they block out legitimate characters who only want to use it occasionally.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Harvesting hazards: These are opponents that are generated randomly as an effect of harvesting certain resources.
It seems they're planning the gathering minigame to be fending off generated monsters. The most efficient way to gather will be to get friends to help you fend off the monsters while you mine.
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I would like to see a system whereby each Recipe has its own Skill. Skills would be unlocked by Recipes, or by studying under someone who already knew the Recipe. There should be a significant cost to teaching someone else a new Recipe, in time and resources.
Halfway through reading this thread, but I just had to throw an idea out there...
If you have blueprints (physical items in-game) that allow you to craft certain items, what if you could earn a merit badge for crafting X many items of a specific type that allows you to craft those items without a blueprint as a prerequisite?
In EVE there are BPO (blue print originals) and BPC (blue print copies). The only difference between the two is a BPO never runs out of uses, whereas a BPC can only be used to make X many items before it is destroyed in the creation process. If all blueprints in PFO were BPC, crafting 100 greatswords might unlock the merit badge that allows you to always be considered to have an "on hand" blueprint of a greatsword. This could be a way to reward dedicated crafting characters (reducing the amount of gold required to craft an item by eliminating the BP component).
Okay, THAT is freaking brilliant.
Okay, THAT is freaking brilliant.
Que?
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Your system that you have there with the blueprints. It needs some refining, but I think that it is brilliant. That's all.
Your system that you have there with the blueprints. It needs some refining, but I think that it is brilliant. That's all.
Oh, cool.
I thought you might have been commenting on one of the other posts (I don't get positive feedback on a regular basis, so when it occurs I am caught a little off guard).
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I thought you might have been commenting on one of the other posts (I don't get positive feedback on a regular basis, so when it occurs I am caught a little off guard).
"Forum praise: +2 ego boost for 6 rounds."
It's like no one's heard of EQ2...
It's like no one's heard of EQ2...
I bought it and played for about a week before removing all my personal information and reselling the account. I was at the time left with the overwhelming perception of "Why would I play this instead of WoW? It has all the same major design issues.".
I have heard of course that the crafting in it is "better", however I'd be making stuff up if I acted like I remembered any of it. Crafting in a theme park style setting is equally meaningless to me in all games since the best stuff is constantly a new carrot in a raid/arena/battleground/etc. As a result the only tradeskills that tend to hold long term viability are utility/consumable crafting.
Not exactly on point, but I like the idea of certain crafted or harvestable items providing benefits to settlements.
If each settlement (be it NPC or PC run) had resource bars for Defense, Food, and Morale aspects of the settlement, these resource bars could deplete at a steady rate (or an exacerbated rate if the settlement is under attack or siege by enemy forces). These rates could be set by the settlements location as well. Refilling the resource bars would require PCs to gather or craft certain items and donate or sell them to the settlement (possibly earning rep or gold from that settlement). The items will be put into an inaccessible local storage that refills the resource bars depending on the item in question.
The Defense resource bar could be filled with weapons, armor, and gathered wood or metal to maintain buildings and other infrastructures. The Food resource bar could be filled with harvested or crafted food items, raw materials suitable for cooking, live animals, or tools used in farming or harvesting. The Morale resource bar could be filled with cheer items, like ale or luxury items.
In essence, non-consumable goods (such as weapons and armor) become consumable commodities that will always be in demand to enhance the health and strength of a community. What do you do with 20 short swords you crafted when the market is flooded with them? Donate them to your local community for reputation gains and the knowledge the NPC defenses of the settlement will be able to thwart attacks by PC bandits and NPC monsters for a little longer (thanks to you).
Unfortunately, we don't know if crafting in PFO will provide those who specialize in a particular craft a special buff that only they can use.
While we don't know exactly how gear is going to be handled, it will probably not use the same level tierd methodology as WoW. I foresee there being mundane, masterwork, and magical weapons and armor, but without a need to craft "leveling" gear, the WoW skill design isn't going to be very effective.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure that this is the thread for it. But, I may have just had an idea about the UI for crafting.
I think, hopefully, that the right balance can even preserve the spirit of the Pathfinder crafting system.
Crafting in this idea has mini games that are entirely optional. If one opts not to play*, then the character 'takes 10' and produces average product and skill advances modestly. If one opts to play**, then the minigame results count similar to a d20 result modifying the character's skill and advancing skill a tiny bit faster.
I realize that this is an advanced goal. But this is the time to set them.
Someone tell me if this needs to be broken out separately, please.
* no 'ah hah' moments
** allows for'ah hah' moments
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not a bad thread to necro tbh plus I always liked Southraven (May the feathers on his bill never fall out!) and even thought of naming my avatar Northraven for laughs, when I first joined the forums!
There's some recent commentary from 2 devs here: Stephen Cheney comment/link
I'm to be honest the last person to comment on crafting as it's never been my bag.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Basic rule of thumb:
If you say something is "entirely optional", then it means that most players will not do it, and the effort to make the system is mostly wasted.
If you say something gives a bonus, even a tiny marginal bonus if you do it, it means that some large number of people will feel that they must do that thing, no matter how boring and repetitive it becomes, because getting anything other than the absolute maximum value from their actions feels wrong to them. It is not "entirely optional" anymore.
If you have a game system where you get a random bonus, you will create a skinner box where a certain number of people will feel trapped - they have to do the thing to get the maximum advantage, but they can't control if they get it or not, so they have to keep doing the thing until they get the max bonus. If you give them the max bonus 5% of the time (20 on a d20), you're asking them to waste 95% of the time they spend doing that thing.
These are variants on the "wouldn't it be cool if "X" means nobody does "X"" problem. If you give a mechanical advantage to people who are willing to strap on the skinner box and waste 95% of their time, you discourage most people from ever bothering with that game system, which means that the resources you spent to make that game system are disproportionately allocated to a small player population.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Nihimon
One thing that I dislike about your idea (assuming that I grasp it fully) is that the more things (crafting for instance) that are done offline, the more people will just assign them to ALTS. Here is a game where crafting might be a whole independent "role" for some people to play, rather than a side skill that anyone can tack on and lose no effectiveness in other "roles".
I do not really care much for a set and forget approach either. It seems pretty similar.
Do you think that idea would make crafters pretty common, and so kill any joy that they could have gotten from this approach of nearly all items finally being player crafted (rather than dropped as loot)?
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Goblin Squad Member
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One thing I appreciate from back in the beginning of this thread was Urman's and Nihimon's suggestion that two crafters, one on-line and one off-, would have different rates of "productivity" or "efficiency", reflecting whether the player chose to play that character whilst it processed. I can see that being a factor allowing various folks to conduct themselves as they choose.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A few thoughts and ideas.
Speculation: I think that some official post somewhere mentioned that resource nodes would be finite, so you could only mine/gather it a set number of times before it expired. It could respawn, but not completely sure. (My memory is hazy, so this might actually be a fantasy on my part.)
Comment: Methods to incentivise others to do tasks we consider mundane should be part of the "meaningful interactions" that GW are looking to promote.
Opinion: Resource gathering and collection should be 100% in-game because this allows in-game actions to be taken to help/hinder collection, storage and transportation. Taking any part of resource gathering offline would "cheapen" the act of in-game collection efforts.
Opinion: There have been many useful suggestions about how some mechanics can work and some of the rationale behind it. Having "how" and "why" are ideal because it provides context to debate the how more thoroughly.
Opinion: I particularly like the idea of trying to keep in-game knowledge more valuable and useful in-game. The OOC and metagame with the internet (I do love you internet) makes meaningful discoveries and progression more difficult, so the rarity of useful information in-game would become a huge motivation for meaningful action. Study under master X, blueprint Y can be used by a master of Z level, etc are all great ideas from that perspective. I am not sure if this is aligns with GWs current thinking, but great ideas nonetheless.
Idea: So if we frame the OP problem in a design context, how can we crowdforge a crafting system that is meaningful for crafters, gatherers and distributors so that a significant part of the community engage with the system to provide a robust interactive economy in Pathfinder Online?
The answers are many and varied as are the metrics for supporting this line of thinking.
TL;DR - What is the problem with the crafting system and how can we fix it?
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's some recent commentary from 2 devs here: Stephen Cheney comment/link
Yup, that is what I was reading when I had this particular brain dud ( :
These are variants on the "wouldn't it be cool if "X" means nobody does "X"" problem.
Ooh, so you're going for a design without any random reward systems out in the open?
P.S. shouldn't that be "wouldn't it be cool if "X" means nobody does "Y""?