Goblinworks Executive Founder
|
I think part of the point of the 'player pack' is to jump-start the economy, without having a permanent equipment faucet.
If NPCs turn equipment into coin (buy equipment) without limit, it sets a floor on the price of player-crafted equipment of that type. If the turn coin into equipment (sell equipment), it sets a ceiling on the price. If the price of basic equipment cannot vary outside of a narrow range, then there is less room in those markets for interesting things to happen.
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My one big request for crafting is to allow players to "deconstruct" items.
If you are more of an adventure type and want to go out and fight monsters instead of hunting for resource nodes. Then you should be able to break down those daggers you got off the goblins for metal and such so you can then work on your blacksmithing.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I dont mind floors and ceilings on some equipment. for example, lets take a steel sword or a long bow. Does it matter if there is a floor or ceiling with those? not really, they should be super common anyone can make them and anyone can get without any issue.
No take a +1 sword, that should NOT have any NPCs buying or selling that, however mundane common everyday adventuring gear, no reason why you cant buy that from an NPC if a PC doesnt have it avalible.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Thats a philosophical view
Bodies are machines, whether you want to make yourself believe there are ghosts controlling them or not.
Also flipping a coin is 50% which is alot more likely then below 1%
What you're asking for is more like flipping a coin until it lands on its edge. That's far, far more frustrating, and content that shows up so vanishingly rarely is a waste of dev time. I'd rather they spent their time making a system that has a lot of choices and room for experimentation that isn't fouled by a RNG.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I have very little experience with crafting in games, and none for MMOs. But I hope crafting will be more along the lines (not necessarily the same system) like Kingdoms of Amalur.
In that game, forging items is based on your components and skill level and it will come out the same each time. You can also break down an item into components.
I would really hate a system like Star Ocean 3, where you can spend hours trying to forge one item because of the randomness involved.
Wurm was a very cool concept, but everything took far to long to accomplish. I wouldn't mind a similar system, but the time would either need to be scaled way back or the player able to go do other things while stuff is being made.That really kind of defeats the purpose which is that some people really like crafting to be a hands on process, where in EVE, you take a blueprint tell the factory how many times you want it to create the item the blueprint is for and then it just handle's everything for you.
Some people really like to just craft. They want to take out hammer and anvil, or bread dough and rolling pin, or knife and wood and just make something. Those people will be put off by a system that is all menu management and number crunching with no actual player involvement on the assembly line.
I think in the eventual system, that there should be mass production crafting items, and ones that require a high degree of player involvement.
For instance, your blacksmith shop produces 20 steel longswords and hour on it's own, but you can go and work in your blacksmith shop and create a steel longsword +3 in half an hour in addition to those 20. Or your bakery produces 100 loaves of bread an hour, but you can go and produce 5 gourmet loaves of bread in an hour.
Whatever the player involvement is, it should be something difficult for a macro to do for you, and designed to be fairly engaging for the player. If you don't want to invest that time into crafting than fine. Your bakery and smithy still make those 20 steel longswords and 100 loaves.
As long as the market makes demand for both cheap and expertly crafted items, than the system can work. That allows the number crunchers to never pick up a hammer, and the hands on crafters to do what they love most.
This would be really cool, coupled with a mini game type system for master craft items, better gear. Also the more skills you gain the better quality stuff your shop can mass produce. That being said, at no time should you be able to mass produce really powerful stuff. Master craft items should require hands on crafting.
Btw.. I LOVE how the resource nodes don't just repop in the same place every time! That in its self is awesome!
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Keovar
Your entitled to your opinion, but thats the point. For there to be rare content that can only be gained by those that put the time into their characters to make them truely great. After all if it takes two years to get a capstone ability then a item of such power should pop up as often as well. I would expect when those legendary items do pop up for only the most rich and powerful to be able to have a chance to gain them, by whatever means they choose. System wise it will take far longer to create recipes for crafters then to create what is a very minor system sense it would only effect a fairly small part. Those endless choices will take alot longer and likely be an ongoing process done over time, not thrown in all at once.
@Being
I agree but would say more like a signature. Putting the alignment may cause problems for the user sense in PF having a item opposed to your alignment may not always be safe or without punishment. xP
@Valandur
Mini game sounds good but nothing to overly complex sense at higher levels losing most or all of your resources because you fumbled on the game kinda hurts. Not to mention you should not work so hard to get your skill up just to be thrawted by a mini game your ill suited to. Maybe have them act as bonuses to success rates. That way your rewarded for being good at them but not punished. ;)
Aw I just remembered something that drove me nuts about crafting in some games. When you failed you got lump of metal/clay/dirt etc etc. Nothing makes you want to go out and kill monsters like having half your bags filled with that stuff. Talk about twisted jokes, please dont have that in PFO.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Masterpieces should bear the hallmark of the maker that appears when assessing the item. Possibly the alignment of the maker should be included.
I think it's come up before, and the general attitude was that people would like Masterwork items to have a maker's mark that, when examined, would give the crafter's name and home settlement. The settlement part would make it difficult to create forgeries.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Forgive me if someone already stated this...sometimes my eyes glaze over when reading page after page of text.
My one wish for crafting (which I don't tend to do much of personally) is not so much for the crafting itself, but for the raw materials required. I very much hope that the designers make certain that even the most common raw materials are needed all the way up though the most advanced crafted item. In far too may games, the common resources are only required for the most common crafted items and become useless later in crafting. This tends to create a whole collection of raw materials with very little purpose. Certainly, such common materials would never be as valuable as rare raw materials, but they could still retain some value, such as being used in crafting components for more advanced items.
Retaining some value for these common materials provides starting players with at least a meager form of income, since even the greatest of craftsmen still has a use for them.
I'd like to see crafting that makes use of all materials in the world at the high end. Similar to EVE - all materials remain relevant throughout the game, and away from games like WoW where copper ore is reserved purely for low levels for example. Seeing that copper put to use even for forging crafting tools, moulds etc. would be better than it being reserved simply for new players.
As for minigames, has anybody played Jacksmith by Armor Games? For those who don't have the time to give it a try - it's all about blacksmithing. You smelt the ore, pour it into the mould, hammer the iron, position the pieces, and ultimately see the results in use. Long term, something along these lines would be fantastic in my opinion with the quality of effort affecting the end stats.
PS. The game is slightly addictive and proof of crafting being a fun venture. Play at your own risk xD
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
My one big request for crafting is to allow players to "deconstruct" items.
If you are more of an adventure type and want to go out and fight monsters instead of hunting for resource nodes. Then you should be able to break down those daggers you got off the goblins for metal and such so you can then work on your blacksmithing.
This is especially important in a game with Open World PVP. Everyone likes different item types. Sometimes what you get will be useful. Sometimes it won't. In Darkfall I hated sorting loot from PVP kills. I would generally ask for weapons and consumables, then let everyone else sift through the armor and try to piece together their suits from it. I always smithed my suits custom tailored to my needs from materials I gathered myself.
This is even more true with threading, and looting someone only giving us a random assortment of things they actually had.
Probably 90% of what I find on people I kill, I am going to want to break down into components and re-forge into something I actually want.
I'm fine with taking a loss in value to do so. Just like when you refine modules in EVE, but scrapping things should be included in the game.
You could making scrapping/recycling it's own profession. I always really thought the "Junkers" from Freelancer were one of the coolest factions. People who make a living off of sifting through debris from old battlefields and such. No reason you couldn't apply that concept to a fantasy setting. Especially when we are just south of Numeria.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
This would fairly remove 'vendor trash' from the game. The utility of vendor trash has been at lower levels in other games where new players have to have some way to generate in-game money.
So if we make all drops recyclable we should ensure there is another way for players to gain coin. One way that I can think of would be to ensure coin drops are not so excessively penurious as they have historically been.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Andius, as I've mentioned to you before, I used to run a character in UO who made his entire fortune by recycling people's cast-offs. Being able to smelt down people's tossed swords and armor was a very lucrative (and safer) way to produce iron ingots.
Doing that game's system one better, I totally agree with your suggestion that we should be able to break items down into their component parts. Perhaps there should be a chance of loss, perhaps based on how much skill you have in the skill that was required to make the item, since you're likely to have some damage caused by the "tear down" process. But definitely, salvaging should be possible, and for some, might become their main source of income.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Andius how could GW realize this recycling activity in game in a manner that does not violate the spirit of the game? Would the decomposition of items into resources occur when camping? Would it be something you can do while walking about?
We know that you manage operations where NPC's convert raw materials such as iron ore, grain, and timber, into resources used in crafting such as iron ingots, flour, and wood.
I would simply make a similar operation where you throw in finished products and it spits out a portion of the materials used to create them. Obviously this would depend on what makes sense a bit. So you could throw in a pole-arm to get back metal and iron but you could not throw in bread to get back flour.
The nice part about this, is that it would encourage player interaction. An adventurer group goes out and kills a bunch of orcs and few players. They sift through the drops, take what they want, and then sell the rest as junk. Someone who deals in junk might run a pawn shop and a scrap processing operation together. They take what they think they can sell for a profit and put it in their pawn shop. Then they break the rest down into materials which they sell to various crafters or maybe even back to a smelting operation / lumbermill to be refined again.
Towns with a lot of adventurers and few scrap processors might actually trade junk to towns with more capability to process it. And junk processing towns set up near major PVE hotspots like The Emerald Spire will surely do well.
@Andius how could GW realize this recycling activity in game in a manner that does not violate the spirit of the game? Would the decomposition of items into resources occur when camping? Would it be something you can do while walking about?We know that you manage operations where NPC's convert raw materials such as iron ore, grain, and timber, into resources used in crafting such as iron ingots, flour, and wood.
I would simply make a similar operation where you throw in finished products and it spits out a portion of the materials used to create them. Obviously this would depend on what makes sense a bit. So you could throw in a pole-arm to get back metal and iron but you could not throw in bread to get back flour.
The nice part about this, is that it would encourage player interaction. An adventurer group goes out and kills a bunch of orcs and few players. They sift through the drops, take what they want, and then sell the rest as junk. Someone who deals in junk might run a pawn shop and a scrap processing operation together. They take what they think they can sell for a profit and put it in their pawn shop. Then they break the rest down into materials which they sell to various crafters or maybe even back to a smelting operation / lumbermill to be refined again.
Towns with a lot of adventurers and few scrap processors might actually trade junk to towns with more capability to process it. And junk processing towns set up near major PVE hotspots like The Emerald Spire will surely do well.
Love this idea. It would introduce new player operated business opportunities into the game and place a value on things that were previously left to rot.
Player encumbrance will play a part in this, but what I used to do is wait till I'm almost ready to head back to town, then load up on such items to fill up my bags, or hit my encumbrance limit. It would be nice to be able to reprocess the junk into usable material. Being a crafter, this whole idea is appealing to me.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Personally I don't like the EVE crafting system much overall. I like the *complexity* of EVE crafting, but ultimately the process of crafting in EVE is simply a time sink which requires training your character in particular skills. There's NO player skill involved, and many players simply have "industrial alt" characters. You can't excel as an industrial character in EVE, everyone who has the same character skills can do exactly the same thing. (Choosing what to build, on the other hand, requires some small ounce of intelligence, but besides the point.)
So I'd like to see a crafting system that challenges the PLAYER to be good at whatever the crafting mechanic is in order to craft the best stuff, so that skilled crafters who can produce items of high quality are actually valued and not merely relegated to "alt character" status.
Personally I don't like the EVE crafting system much overall. I like the *complexity* of EVE crafting, but ultimately the process of crafting in EVE is simply a time sink which requires training your character in particular skills. There's NO player skill involved, and many players simply have "industrial alt" characters. You can't excel as an industrial character in EVE, everyone who has the same character skills can do exactly the same thing. (Choosing what to build, on the other hand, requires some small ounce of intelligence, but besides the point.)
So I'd like to see a crafting system that challenges the PLAYER to be good at whatever the crafting mechanic is in order to craft the best stuff, so that skilled crafters who can produce items of high quality are actually valued and not merely relegated to "alt character" status.
I don't think anyone is advocating an Eve like crafting system.
Here's what's been said about it so far...
Crafting
At the top of the production system are the crafters. These are characters who have the ability to utilize a crafting facility to convert components into finished goods that can be used by other characters to accomplish useful work. Weapons, armor, meals, potions, wands, repair kits, construction components, kit and tack, tools, and many more products will come to market from the crafter's workshops.As a crafter, you'll need to seek out knowledge to ply your trade. You'll be searching for the training needed to master skills and earn merit badges associated with each type of product you wish to produce. Over time, you'll learn more exotic variations and ways to fine-tune items to meet specific market needs. Good crafters are a combination of scholar and smith; you'll learn by doing, and will constantly seek more knowledge to expand your skill set.
Input and Output
The crafter needs to purchase a wide variety of intermediate components produced by processors. Each type of good you wish to make will require a variety of components. The more complex the final product, the more complex the ingredients of the job. Substituting lower-quality components may work, but the result will be less valuable than the average example of that type of good. Likewise, finding ways to use higher-quality components may lead a crafter to producing exceptional work that will carry a price premium.
Once the necessary materials are assembled, you'll engage the services of a workshop to complete the job. These workshops are buildings found in settlements, and they are staffed by common folk. Unlike processors, who may be able to operate many jobs in many locations, crafters will need to be present and engaged with the task of production to ensure that it is successful. From time to time during the crafting job, you'll be informed that your assistance is needed, usually in the form of acquiring and supplying unanticipated components—which may be available only in distant locations or may be derived from the bodies of various esoteric beasts or rarely visited locales! There may be more active engagement with the crafting job as well; we envision many sorts of "mini-games" that crafters will participate in to ensure their jobs are completed.
If you're not available when a crafting job requires your attention, work will be halted until you're able to unblock the logjam. Operating several crafting jobs simultaneously will require crafters who are able to juggle many overlapping demands on their time effectively!
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
It sounds to me as though they may be removing part where players have to come in and fix the logjam in the initial crowd-forger release.
This makes sense as it will likely be the most difficult part of the system to make.
As long as the EVE crafting system is being used as a starting line and not a finish line it's a good system. If it's being used as a finish line I 100% agree with Tuoweit.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I don't think anyone is advocating an Eve like crafting system.Here's what's been said about it so far...
Crafting...
I did read the blog on Crafting, though thanks for posting the relevant stuff. However, aside from mentioning "mini-games" it doesn't really touch on my point. I mentioned EVE because it was mentioned throughout the thread as an example of good crafting (plus it's fairly obvious to anyone familiar with EVE that large portions of the game design as proposed in the blogs are analogous to how EVE Online plays).
I realize that what I'm actually asking for, ideally, is a set of game mechanics that's as interesting, fun, and challenging to play as adventuring. That's an awfully tall order for something most people consider a minor hobby within the game, at best, something to do in between slaying dragons, or a means to an end (i.e. a way to get better gear, for slaying dragons).
But if the developers want to consider crafting (and building, for that matter) to be an equal partner with the combat/adventuring professions, then that's what actually needs to happen - otherwise it's just a sideshow for the main event, IMO. Will that kill the game? Hardly; but let's call a spade a spade, and not put crafting up as one of the core roles of the game meant to appeal to those who enjoy crafting when it's just really just Bejeweled Online (though even that would be an improvement over most MMO crafting, frankly).
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Tuoweit,
One of my hopes is that the use of such automated mechanics as auction houses is kept to a minimum and that crafters will actually be spending some of their time sell their wares to the community. It's an aspect of crafting that's pretty much disappeared since the advent of AH's in MMOs. It's a part that I would very much like to see return in PFO.
As for the mechanics of the crafting itself, I like Andius' idea...Eve-style for the bulk work and hands-on for the masterworks style goods.
I would also like to see an element of experimentation, whereby a crafter can make substitutions in a particular recipe as long as the ingredient was similar enough. If you could unlock/discover a new variation on a recipe, then you could keep it and produce (at least for a while) truly unique items, or sell the recipe to others. For that to be really engaging and challenging, I think you would need to be able to not only substitute ingredients, but modify steps in the process. If you heat the metal this way instead of that, for instance, you get a different result.
Vanguard had an extremely involved crafting process - a true minigame - but that would be the other end of the spectrum. For as many who would say EVE crafting has no entertainment value, you would probably have an equal number claiming a Vanguard style crafting system is too much work. A little of both is likely the best. If want to crank out regular swords to fill your guild's armory, bulk order it, but if you're willing to sit there personally and monitor/tweak the process, then you should reap the rewards with a higher quality good.
Hobs
The Empyrean Order
http://www.theempyrean.org/teboards/index.php
I liked Vanguards crafting system. Even if they created a hybrid system borrowing some of the mechanics Vanguard uses I think people would be ok with it.
I also really like the idea that you can experiment with recipes and create different stuff. Also having the chance to create exceptional items is lots of fun.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I like the idea of recipies calling for certain classes of materials rather than specific ones, so you could substitute things in.
For example, say you're crafting a greataxe. You'd need ingots of metal, but whether you're working bronze, iron, or adamantine isn't specified. You'd need wood for the haft, so you might use oak, ash, mahogany, or any of the dozens of wood types available. You'd need fuel for a forge, but that could be more wood or coal, or even a gem that gives you the service of a fire elemental for a time. You could quench the metal in water, oil, or blood of various creatures. There would also be a selection of oils and other treatments to stain and finish the haft. Finally, you might have regular weaponsmithing and woodworking tools, or masterwork ones. You might use Ulfen or Dwarven axe-crafting techniques. Each choice would alter the outcome in small ways, often with trade-offs.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned SWG they had a pretty great crafting system from what I remember. I'll have to see if I can dig up info on it.
Yes SWG did have a good system. I don't know if its how the devs are wanting this system to work, but I wouldn't mind a similar system.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
On collecting "drops" for recycling, my memory says that only a percentage of non-threaded equipment is lootable after a PvP kill. I'm not sure where monster equipment sits in this.
@Keovar, having specific recipes that can be modified by the crafter would be a great enhancement to crafting masterwork items, but maybe a simplified one for common items.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Vanguard's crafting was the classic "mini-game".
While you were crafting, you had access to a limited selection of abilities that you would need to use to solve problems that cropped up. Various problems would crop up during crafting, and if you didn't solve them, then the final grade of the item would be reduced. If you failed enough of them, you would produce a worthless piece of junk.
If you want to know more, check out Vanguard Crafting Guide : The Basic Process.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
IIR, EQ2 did this as well.
Recycling would be great, but disenchant on the field was kinda silly. Hauling it back to be processed imo offers better immersion, which also the presence of recycling itself is a no-brainer.
Customizable recipes would be most amazing.
As would the ability to simply experiment. Resources would be required, time would be expended, but it would make a great deal of sense from the sandbox perspective. Particularly so if recipes are built in a logical fashion that a clever individual with enough experience and understanding could puzzle out the next step with some trial and error.