Goblin Squad Member
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My wife and I have been discussing the merits of a game without combat. She's a pacifist, RL, and has only just started to get enthusiastic about a Pathfinder character who deals whopping, steaming, make the GM cry levels of damage. (Thank the designers for a Halfling Titan-Mauler Barbarian... >.<)
Still, when we played SW:G the thing she wibbled on about for -days- was the ability to get in and play a dancer, or doctor, or engineer, and -never- have to swing a weapon. She wants to do much the same thing with PFO, and it sounds like she -just might- get the chance to do that, playing a cleric of Erastil.
Yes. She's going to stay at home in the kitchen and bake me a pie. ;p
Still, gender-roles and the only chauvinistic deity on Golarion aside, to make a character like that playable, you have to make crafting fun.
One of the very best ways to do that is to give characters the ability to really, really, really specialize. Give basic functionality to anyone and everyone, but make it a 10,000 hour trip to be the world's best platemail crafter. IE:
Jaundaluv Greymantle, the Half-Elven artisan, has set out to be the world's best Full-Plate designer. Our beloved protagonist begins in the neutral aligned nation to start with, betting on his platemail being a commodity all will want, and being basically unconcerned with anything that doesn't begin with comm- and end with -erce. Jaundaluv makes a few friends, a fighter-archetype and a paladin-of-Abadar-archetype, who hope to make use of the craftsman's skills later on.
Hoping for some usefulness in the realm of 'getting the materials I need to craft', Jaundaluv begins with the basic training of the Rogue, learning to sneak and hone his perception, and picking up the weapon skills required to use light weapons. A few hours later, he's already working on his crafting skills, learning basic light armors while Fighter and Paladin trek along beside him, having a merry old time foraging for food, running afoul of some goblins and hobgoblins, and prospecting for decent iron and/or copper. Sure enough, by the end of the day, Jaundaluv has gathered hides, copper, iron, and fiber/cloth necessary to try his first unlocked recipe: leather armor.
Following the clear, large-lettered onscreen instructions with glowing arrows and interesting sound-effects, he places the materials into the forge/bench/widget and creates six leather straps, twenty copper rivets, four iron buckles, a leather armor chest-piece, a leather armor skirt, leather pauldrons, and leather boots. He carries these over to the next widget in the public crafting space, and bangs out his first set of basic, +2 AC Leather Armor.
... A year passes...
After learning all basic recipes, Jaundaluv began specializing in heavy armor. He can master-craft heavy armor out of dragon-hide, mithral, even adamantine. He can stain and lacquer heavy armors in interesting designs and colors, and do chaising in gold and silver. He can theme armor with bats, wolves, crows, bulls, demons, angels, inevitables, fish, flames, ivy, or stags; though he never bothered to branch off and get the themes for butterflies, 'super heavy', 'skimpy', stars, or skulls. Moreover, he can get the most out of his armor well before it's enchanted, making more resilient, lighter armor than most smiths, IF he can get better metal. After seven thousand hours of work, the smith-mark of Jaundaluv Greymantle is known across the River Kingdoms as being the -very- best plate you can buy.
I agree that super-specializing would make crafting more interesting, but I think the act of crafting also has to be interesting. As I have suggested for some other actions, such as burglary, I would love to see crafting not as "put part A in slot 1 and part B in slot 2, click button" but as a series of mini-game style craft checks. Obviously, it'll get annoying to have dozens upon dozens, but if it's a single mini-game or a series of 3 or so, I think that would go a long way to making crafting interesting, especially if crafting is available as a character archetype, as it sounds it will.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mm, makes me wonder what other Careers will be available aside from the few highlighted so far (bandit, soldier, diplomat etc).
Some really deep systems such as crafting, potion-making, spell-creation etc are potential winners: Simple elements -> combine in interesting ways -> creates a new item with different properties for various uses. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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So with the above Jaundaluv example, our crafter goes:
CRAFTING
*Light armor smithing, light weapon smithing, alchemy, cooking, prospecting, or carpentry
Light Armor Smithing >
*Medium Armor Smithing > *Heavy Armor Smithing >
*Light Armor Mastercraft, Medium Armor Mastercraft, or Heavy Armor Mastercraft
As lower tier skills, we imagine at some point that Jaundaluv probably bit the crossbow bolt and bought all of the mastercraft skills. Some customizations and themes that can be used, even on heavy armor, might require moderate to high levels of mastery even in the branch that stems from Light Armor Mastercraft. Like, say, Skimpy from being an excellent Light Armor Crafter, or Elk from being a Medium Armor Crafter (knowing how to do hide armor).
So he's spent thousands of training hours on his crafting skills, and in combat, he's officially like, a Level 3 Rogue, but in practice, he's more like a Level 13 Expert.
But making crafting fun, making it a cerebral exercise, and making minerals valuable, comes more from what we learned from playing StarWars: Galaxies. The game had what was arguably an easily broken into crafting mechanic with -incredible- depth. You need durability for your plates, malleability for your rivets, flexibility for your straps, and no one really -cares-, but ideally you need durability for your buckles, too. Once you're into mastercrafting, you should be looking at the quality of your materials. Any schlub apprentice smith can make a suit of chain mail out of pig iron, but you need to first make steel, binding your nickel, charcoal, and iron together to make it bright and strong. Once you're mastercrafting you should be looking at multiple tiers of mastery. If your armor-training skill goes up to 20 to determine just how good you can be at wearing full-plate, the crafter should have 20 levels of certification for 'levels' of full-plate he can craft, each marginally better than the last, and each requiring that level of armor-training to wear effectively.
Then your master smith goes about the world digging in the ground for highest quality iron, highest quality nickel, and highest quality copper, and returns to mix his reagents in the way that only a wizardly smith can... While any apprentice might have dug the iron out of the ground, he probably can't Appraise it the way a master smith can, and probably can't squeeze the best use out during the smelting process...
This means that your armor stats are dependent on the stats of the hides and ores involved in the making of the armor. The same goes for swords. And if the devs give us just a 90 word limit on descriptive text for an inspected or examined object, we can even tell you what we used.
"Jaundalev Greymantle creates his plates from Stoneforge iron, shipped at great cost from the Stoneforge Delve far to the east. He uses premium leather from Scarrowbridge for his straps, fashions rivets from his own high quality copper mine. This blood-lacquered Wolf-Themed Full-Plate was fashioned for his friend Fighter on Abadius the 14th, 1477."
Maybe Jaundalev gets an apprentice who handles a lot of his lower level work, shaping the rivets and buckles for him. Maybe he purchases the services of a company that ships over his iron. Maybe Paladin and Fighter make the runs to Scarrowbridge twice a week to bring leather back from the cow farms there, where they've taken to breeding cows with really, really tough skin. That armor suddenly has a story, and if Jaundalev doesn't make the best breast-plate in the world, he can at least send some of his custom-smelted breast-plate front and backs to the best medium armor crafter in the world, forming a partnership to make fat piles of profit across the nation!
Still, what I'm saying is, make crafting -deep- and involved where materials are concerned. Armor stats should be more than just 'ACP and Armor Bonus'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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JUST getting to that, Nikita!
The other thing we need to do is look at minigames. It was actually a near miss in the terms of 'fun' with Everquest II. You have a few things at your disposal, via water, rags, stone grinder, and heat. You combine them to deal with 'problems' that come up during crafting... there's only a few problems with this.
Push button, solve problem; and 'dingy interface'.
Give the crafters something to LOOK at! They're going to be staring at the same screen for hours during their play career, and they're going to want something pretty to look at. Tongs that move, big candy buttons, visceral sounds. Solve the dingy interface!
And moreover: When you get into mid-level crafting, you should probably be looking at puzzle games, riddles, solve-the-formulae, or even 'alchemical whack-a-mole', and other kinds of miniature types of 'fun'. Making them mandatory has, for a long time, been a downplay, but perhaps characters can 'take ten' and avoid the gameplay, as opposed to those who are trying the roll with mini-game involvement? 'Take Twenty' should be an option only once you've unlocked a much more advanced version.
You really, REALLY need to give us some cosmetic options, too.
Thank you please.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My 11-year-old stepdaughter says that you should have an 'eyelet hitting game' for sewing. I suggest having a look-see at Rockband. Have the leather scroll past you, and you have to hit the eyelets at the right time.
HAVE ALL MINI-GAMES BE RUN CLIENT-SIDE. You don't want lag to kill your gameplay experience and wreck your materials.
Purplefixer, have you read the blogpost that talks about the crafting system? While its not set in stone, what Ryan describes I fairly complex. You can view the blog post by following the link in the first post of this Thread . The thread it's self has some Dev comments on crafting as well.
I enjoy complexity in crafting, what I've heard so far sounds pretty good
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Goblin Squad Member
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Curious how you would see them address the issue of power gap.
Given how the plan is to have a milder gap between new players and veteran players than in most MMOs, will a 10,000 hour platemail specialist not expect their platemail to be a lot better than anything the new players can afford?
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I whole-heartedly agree that the most vital aspect of character development in a world like this will be the level at which any given character can differentiate him/herself from any other given character who aims to complete similar goals.
For example, there is NO good excuse in a sandbox environment for every front-line warrior in a siege to look just like every other same-race-sex warrior standing right next to them. Even more so when it comes to individual character skills, equipment, magic items, weapons, abilities, flavor, and capabilities. The entire battalion spamming the same power attack skill, cleaving every time the cooldown is up, and throwing acid flasks until they run out is just... boring.
I also think it is an URGENT issue that we as a community should press that players wearing leather armor are not totally gimped in defense compared to players choosing to wear a breastplate, splint mail, or even full-plate. There are a huge number of ways in a fantasy setting to improve your defensiveness, not just how thick your armor is. A character with 22 dex and studded leather armor should be just as sturdy as one with 14 dex and full-plate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also, my wife says "Ololol! Nikita I love you!" (yes, she pronounces Ololol.)
And...
"It should be as complex and entertaining as it is to adventure."
And she's a -doctor-. You wouldn't argue with a doctor, would you?
Depends on the doctor, doesn't it? Doctor of what? If not a doctor in adventuring I should think if she suffered a misconception about adventuring then almost any adventurer might argue with her. Right?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I whole-heartedly agree that the most vital aspect of character development in a world like this will be the level at which any given character can differentiate him/herself from any other given character who aims to complete similar goals.
Exactly. And MORE importantly at later levels than in the beginning. There should be an -order of magnitude- more end-builds than there should of starting points. You may begin with 11 classes, but you should have a choice of at least 121 paths to take within those classes while still qualifying for your capstone. My wife wants to -focus- on administration and crafting, and ideally, there will be support for that. Support that makes crafting and playing the market as entertaining as adventuring. PARTICULARLY if that playstyle supports and enhances others playstyles.
For example, there is NO good excuse in a sandbox environment for every front-line warrior in a siege to look just like every other same-race-sex warrior standing right next to them. Even more so when it comes to individual character skills, equipment, magic items, weapons, abilities, flavor, and capabilities. The entire battalion spamming the same power attack skill, cleaving every time the cooldown is up, and throwing acid flasks until they run out is just... boring.
I quit WoW for this same reason. I am not grinding seventy levels to wear the same set of armor as EVERY OTHER WARLOCK, thank you. Cookie Cutting = Bad. We fixed that with 3.5, let's not go back with PFO.
Back in my day (which was a thursday, in case you weren't there) every fighter was craning to be the same guy. It was 18/00 or go home. You wore plate because that's how it was done at the time. You wouldn't dream of fighting with a bow unless it was a backup weapon. It was sword and board or nothin. You might have had the odd duck now and then with a greatsword, but mostly we made fun of that guy for overcompensating.
A character with 22 dex and studded leather armor should be just as sturdy as one with 14 dex and full-plate.
No. This is wrong. You should be differentiating a bit more, really. Squishy guys should -feel- squishier. Plus, remember DnD: 22 = +6, Studded Leather = +3; Plate = +9, 14 = +2 (maximum of +1) Plate = +10. The plate guy should, realistically, have MUCH better damage mitigation, but move more slowly, and have smaller evasion.
Ideally, out of 10 strikes, each worth a base of 150 damage, the light armor guy should be hit four times for 85% damage (510 damage), and the plate fellow should be hit eight times for 55% damage. (660 damage)
The plate guy should have better HP, and - one would hope - some kind of innate damage reduction or other mitigation. I just read a post about AC and it appears my example is just about correct, but one hopes they've gone more into the math than 5xAC Bonus = DR and 10xDex Bonus = Evasion score. ;p
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Goblin Squad Member
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Depends on the doctor, doesn't it? Doctor of what? If not a doctor in adventuring I should think if she suffered a misconception about adventuring then almost any adventurer might argue with her. Right?
And she's a -doctor-. You wouldn't argue with a doctor, would you?
*mumble mumble mumble...*
What was that?
A DOCTOR OF DEVIANT SEXUALITY IN RESTORATION ENGLAND.
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... ... ...
They're on to me! *flees*
She's a history doctor. ;)
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Depends on the doctor, doesn't it? Doctor of what? If not a doctor in adventuring I should think if she suffered a misconception about adventuring then almost any adventurer might argue with her. Right?
And she's a -doctor-. You wouldn't argue with a doctor, would you?*mumble mumble mumble...*
What was that?A DOCTOR OF DEVIANT SEXUALITY IN RESTORATION ENGLAND.
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They're on to me! *flees*
She's a history doctor. ;)
She cures History?!?! She must work for the Government then! :P
My wife wants to -focus- on administration and crafting, and ideally, there will be support for that. Support that makes crafting and playing the market as entertaining as adventuring. PARTICULARLY if that playstyle supports and enhances others playstyles.
You should check out the guild I'm in, Keepers of the Circle . We are planning on having a settlement as soon as they are implemented, as well as having a heavy crafting presence with trading and market contracts being big focuses as well. Here's a link to more Info
My understanding of the market system is that it'll be non-linked like the markets in Eve Online (Yay!) and will operate with buy/sell contracts as well as standard buying and selling by individual players. The market system in Eve is a lot of fun, at least it is to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Purplefixer, have you read the blogpost that talks about the crafting system? While its not set in stone, what Ryan describes I fairly complex. You can view the blog post by following the link in the first post of this Thread . The thread it's self has some Dev comments on crafting as well.
I enjoy complexity in crafting, what I've heard so far sounds pretty good
I have! But what Ryan is talking about there is fundamentally trade and economics, not craftsmanship. The actual act of crafting should be fun, as well, and should have enough variation that 'a Varandal Sword' should be different than 'this sword I bought out of a barrel of other swords at The Crossing'.
I am going back and reading blog posts though... may as well start at the beginning...
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You should check out the guild I'm in, Keepers of the Circle . We are planning on having a settlement as soon as they are implemented, as well as having a heavy crafting presence with trading and market contracts being big focuses as well. Here's a link to more InfoMy wife wants to -focus- on administration and crafting, and ideally, there will be support for that. Support that makes crafting and playing the market as entertaining as adventuring. PARTICULARLY if that playstyle supports and enhances others playstyles.
I second this, as being a member myself and found myself more than a little bit excited at the prospect of our communities building themselves even before the servers are up and running.
We are working on figuring out who is interested in what aspects of running a charter, settlement, and so forth and getting our way towards helping define what roles we each are interested in playing within our organizations.
For example I am personally looking to vest myself into the divine arts of healing, growth, agriculture, and mercantilism as opposed to the typical "stands in back healing the group" type goon cleric. I am looking to be very deeply involved with resource management, creation, transport and even sales.
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Goblin Squad Member
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HAVE ALL MINI-GAMES BE RUN CLIENT-SIDE. You don't want lag to kill your gameplay experience and wreck your materials.No thanks, I'd rather not be replaced by a script.
You can handle that with a check every random number of attempts by GM poking. Or requiring you to still move between games to prevent idle-logging. And how exactly does a script whack-a-mole? Can a script play Plants vs Zombies? Perhaps I am unaware of the meaning of 'script' in this case?
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You can handle that with a check every random number of attempts by GM poking. Or requiring you to still move between games to prevent idle-logging. And how exactly does a script whack-a-mole? Can a script play Plants vs Zombies? Perhaps I am unaware of the meaning of 'script' in this case?HAVE ALL MINI-GAMES BE RUN CLIENT-SIDE. You don't want lag to kill your gameplay experience and wreck your materials.No thanks, I'd rather not be replaced by a script.
As an example of how complex a script can be for online games I would point to aimbots for shooter games like TF2, like this one. It is 100% handled on your side and is undetectable by the server. These things can be VERY robust.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Curious how you would see them address the issue of power gap.
Given how the plan is to have a milder gap between new players and veteran players than in most MMOs, will a 10,000 hour platemail specialist not expect their platemail to be a lot better than anything the new players can afford?
How do you expect a +4 sword to be around the same value as a regular old non-magical non-masterwork sword? Won't that cost a LOT more than anything a new player can afford?
We've already heard that there will be 'high level gear' (read the article on 'threading') so someone must be able to make it.
The point was to not make the lower level players irrelevant. Unlike actual Pathfinder, six first level characters are going to be able to jump, and injure, a sixteenth level character. My money is still on Sir Smacks-a-Lot though...
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Goblin Squad Member
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You should check out the guild I'm in, Keepers of the Circle . We are planning on having a settlement as soon as they are implemented, as well as having a heavy crafting presence with trading and market contracts being big focuses as well. Here's a link to more InfoMy understanding of the market system is that it'll be non-linked like the markets in Eve Online (Yay!) and will operate with buy/sell contracts as well as standard buying and selling by individual players. The market system in Eve is a lot of fun, at least it is to me.
Yes, we've heard that as well, and we're very excited about it. My wife was making ~2.5mil a week on ToR. She liiiiikes playing the market. I'm likely going to get drafted more for marching cross-country with her than in trying to expand and defend my own settlement...
As for guilding... We intend to start our own:
IC recruitment. IC advertisement. IC interaction. NO OOC ALLOWED. We're going to try and solve 'Guild Drama' the old-fashioned way. By not talking to people out of character.
The first guild I ran (NATION, on Virtue Server, City of Villains) was done that way, and terribly fun. I couldn't get people to challenge my authority with a sledgehammer and an ice-pick... *eyerolls* That's what I get for playing a sadistic telepath while being someone who's terribly good at guessing what you might do next...
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Goblin Squad Member
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My wife wants to -focus- on administration and crafting, and ideally, there will be support for that. Support that makes crafting and playing the market as entertaining as adventuring. PARTICULARLY if that playstyle supports and enhances others playstyles.
I second this, as being a member myself and found myself more than a little bit excited at the prospect of our communities building themselves even before the servers are up and running.
...
For example I am personally looking to vest myself into the divine arts of healing, growth, agriculture, and mercantilism as opposed to the typical "stands in back healing the group" type goon cleric. I am looking to be very deeply involved with resource management, creation, transport and even sales.
I'll be sure to get you guys a message on launch day, assuming someone is around the crossroads ICly talking to people about The Circle when we suit up to head out. Since we're doing everything ICly, I hope you leave someone there to get our coordinates... We're going to be racing off into the woods to start our inn on the ford to one of the nice little rivers out there in the woods, and then try to build a settlement out of it.
Behold the holy mandate of Erastil!
You all sound like a bunch of Abadar devotees.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I guess I don't know what is meant by "mini-games". If the "game" has to do with crafting items then I understand, but it seems like said minigame is just busywork to give you something to do while your thing is being created.
Go download and play Puzzle Pirates for ninety minutes. If you can put it down that soon. In the game, you play a Gems style mini-game in order to rig the ship. The better you do, the faster the boat goes. Your carpenter is doing a piece-fitting game, trying to match up random pieces of flotsam into the holes punched in the deck by the last fight. The ship health increases better depending on how he does. Meanwhile, the ship is taking on water (ALWAYS) and you have people at the bilge-pump stations trying to do a swap-match game to pump out the bilge. If they do too poorly, the ship starts to flounder.
The Smelter
The goal in this mini-game is to remove the impurities from your ore. Starting with -good- ore makes the game harder, and allows for smaller chains of scum, but you have less room to improve to 'pristine iron' anyway. In this game you swap single bubbles on the slush to get impure bubbles to connect to each other. Impure bubbles that make chains of 5 or more are 'scraped', cleaning the ore and leaving you with a better slurry to cool into ingots before you begin your work. The character's 'refining' skill determines how many 'swaps' the player gets to make in the mini-game, and any 'lot' of ore can only be smelted once.
So you can see how easy it is to come up with ideas for games that both impact the forging of equipment as well as entertain the players, giving them something to do OTHER than hack and slash. And since some people don't want to do that, the 'take 10' option should be available after they've tried at least once, or have passed a certain thresh-hold of training.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Aimbots.
That's -insane-.
And -inane-. These people cheat at a skill-based game why?
Well... no... duh... I've been the victim of RPer griefing before, I can certainly imagine ten year olds on their parents PCs giggling with snot running onto their shirts...
It should still tie your client up long enough that you would be better served just -playing- the danged game. >.<
I hope we at LEAST get the option to write our own books and such...
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Goblin Squad Member
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NWN Richterm Perpetual World had a very advanced crafting and mining system that worked exceptionally well. There is not really space to explain it in detail here.
I am also in the Keepers of the Circle and strongly recommend it to anyone wanting a non-aggresive crafting/trading guild that still has the military clout to stand up for itself.
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@ Purple, I would seriously consider looking to join up with a charter before day 1, simply for the fact that there is NO way you are going to be able to start a "guild" that has any reasonable amount of market power without a substantial starting base of players and an organized system of aggregating resources in order to start a settlement or even protect what you DO have.
The kind of system where you can sit in general chat and advertise to noobs is not going to work here, if anything it is going to be more destructive to yourself as you will be attracting attention to whatever you ARE going to be trying to do from the folks that do have the ability to take what you have away from you.
All this is not to mention the fact that starting off, kickstarter chartered organizations will have an immense advantage in that they will very likely start with land, and easier access to resource gathering hexes simply out of sheer numbers. An example of how this works is by looking at how the top level resources in EVE online are managed. A player can't even come close to getting these things themselves because all the powerful corporations literally own and control every single moon where these resources are mined, and accessing them is done through purchasing them at the prices the companies set.
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As for the power gap issue, I think this will be pretty easily resolved by keeping the idea that any piece of equipment will max out a +5 enhancement, and +5 special quality. Of course this leaves out any level of practically negligible difference between individual weapons like masterwork, fine quality, rusty, bent etc, but we don't know how exactly how these will be implemented in terms of item "quality."
As I see it, the devs seem to have the intent that equipment will be recycled, reused, discarded, sold, and replaced VERY frequently.
I also think that crafting quality items and magical equipment should be an extremely substantial character investment, at LEAST the equivalent of being an expert with any given weapon, armor, class of magical casting, minion/pet skills, or even substantial character toughness. This is not to say a character who is a tradesman should not be able to acquire these other skills, but that they should not be as trivial to pick us as they would be in other more mainstream MMOs.
I need more info on crafting items, levels and such really. I do recall Ryan saying that as you gain skill in crafting you will need to either upgrade your buildings or seek out an upgraded facility to unlock higher level skills to train. So it won't be easy as you level up or crafting skills.
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Goblin Squad Member
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All we know is that the power gap will be much smaller than in other MMO's. That still leaves us with a couple of orders of magnitude to work with.
The impression that I get is that the very high end gear that is much better will also be much more expensive so that only the wealthiest can actually afford to own, maintain, and risk losing it. I kind of expect that the vast majority of players will not be using that kind of equipment. Stuff that enters into an approachable price range after about a month of work I expect to be the norm until much more advanced and wealthy. That more medium equipment, which is both effective and affordable will be where the majority of the competition takes place. Expert craftsmen competing to get a little more performance out of their medium equipment without the price jumping will be the norm. The high end equipment would probably be very rare and available only through special order and thus always custom built.
At least that is my vision based on what I have read.
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Goblin Squad Member
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All we know is that the power gap will be much smaller than in other MMO's. That still leaves us with a couple of orders of magnitude to work with.
The impression that I get is that the very high end gear that is much better will also be much more expensive so that only the wealthiest can actually afford to own, maintain, and risk losing it. I kind of expect that the vast majority of players will not be using that kind of equipment. Stuff that enters into an approachable price range after about a month of work I expect to be the norm until much more advanced and wealthy. That more medium equipment, which is both effective and affordable will be where the majority of the competition takes place. Expert craftsmen competing to get a little more performance out of their medium equipment without the price jumping will be the norm. The high end equipment would probably be very rare and available only through special order and thus always custom built.
At least that is my vision based on what I have read.
Yes hopefully we will not see the tedious "do the same instance 60 times so everyone in the clan can get their own copy of the uber-sword-of-awesomeness" you see in some other MMOs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If the best gear is a lot more expensive, but the power gap between it and moderate equipment is "much smaller than in other MMOs", then why spend the coin on it?
And if it's not a lot more expensive, then who's going to invest "10,000 hours" into developing an undervalued skill?
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Goblin Squad Member
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So for the difference between a +4 and a +5 sword, people are going to end up paying a price that accurately reflects 10,000 hours of specialization?
OK, so for roughly 200 days spent on craft sword skill specialisation, my Destiny Twin alt character can now make and sell +4 and +5 swords ?
I will certainly want to make them and sell them. Will anyone buy them? I suspect so and particularly, they might like my Keen Vorpal versions, though that may be another 400 days of crafting down the track before they come online.
If I can finish the Beta selling Vorpal swords with my alt I would regard that as time well spent.
Of course, much like in Kill Bill, I would need to determine the purpose the weapon was to be used for and consult with the other Keepers before selling such a powerful weapon outside the guild.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So a +5 keen Vorpal vs a masterwork, or plain weapon?
And the power gap widens.
I get that you guys are getting all excited about the possibilities of crafting, I just want to suggest you ask yourselves whether your ideas are compatible with the proposed goal of veterans not being too much more powerful than newbs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So a +5 keen Vorpal vs a masterwork, or plain weapon?
And the power gap widens.
I get that you guys are getting all excited about the possibilities of crafting, I just want to suggest you ask yourselves whether your ideas are compatible with the proposed goal of veterans not being too much more powerful than newbs.
To be honest I am not sure that is the real balance issue with weapons. Its guilds handing there newbs the +5 swords that causes issues.
As far as a new character being able to damage a high level one, that already happens in PnP with critical hits automatically hitting. The real question is whether they intend a large group (lets say 5) low levels to be able to kill a high level character, especially one capable of healing.
It's my opinion that if the devs truly intend 4 or 5 new characters to be able to regulalry and reliably kill a high level combat character in PvP they are just inviting griefing by large mobs of disposable new characters.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think are misreading the intent, Blaeringr. The intent of the MMO as I have just read is to have "new characters always be relevant", not to have "minimal difference". I've just read in several places that if you acquired a higher level weapon 'somewhere' that you might, if you are fortunate as a low level character, be able to spend ALL your threads binding the weapon, as opposed to 'all your level appropriate gear'.
It is not: Level 8 guy is virtually indistinguishable from Level 1 guy.
It is: Level 8 guy actually got sneak-attacked by that Level 1 guy and -noticed-, unlike in other MMOs where a discrepency of that level means that you virtually don't exist.
I imagine hitpoints to be in the HUNDREDS, as with other MMOs, not in the TENS, as with Table Top Pathfinder. A sword that does 'plus one damage' is likely to be a very low-end enhancement, as opposed to what we would call a '+1 weapon'.
Handing a newb a +5 sword sounds like a great way to -lose- your sword by a marauder or mis-handled respawn. Remember: No threads, no bind, no sword. Unless they've confirmed that weapons and armor will NEVER be lost on death? I read that you will respawn with weapons and armor, but that was before the 'thread' issue went official.
You're -incredibly- negative, Blaering. Are you playing devil's advocate, or do you really believe that we're all going to be using virtually indistinguishable gear? It -is- still an equipment-based game. It feels as if you're violently defending an untenable position, or fitting over a topic that bothered you. Can you sight the segment that has you up in arms here?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree that super-specializing would make crafting more interesting, but I think the act of crafting also has to be interesting. As I have suggested for some other actions, such as burglary, I would love to see crafting not as "put part A in slot 1 and part B in slot 2, click button" but as a series of mini-game style craft checks. Obviously, it'll get annoying to have dozens upon dozens, but if it's a single mini-game or a series of 3 or so, I think that would go a long way to making crafting interesting, especially if crafting is available as a character archetype, as it sounds it will.
Crafting mini-game/complexity has actually been tried out there, and it isn't half-bad. Both EQ 2 and Vanguard have tried ways of making crafting just a little more than click click click.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...
Are you playing devil's advocate, or do you really believe that we're all going to be using virtually indistinguishable gear? It -is- still an equipment-based game. It feels as if you're violently defending an untenable position, or fitting over a topic that bothered you. Can you sight the segment that has you up in arms here?
There have been indications that gear will scale up as slowly as characters. If a level 1 is to be able to score on a level 5 then not only must the player characters ramp up in power on a very shallow curve, but combat effectiveness altogether, and that suggests the game may not be terribly gear-centric at all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"virtually indistinguishable?" If you're going to accuse me of misreading a reference, and you're not even sure what reference that is, then at the very least don't misquote stuff sitting right under your nose. It makes you look disingenuous and incredibly negative.
And asking a question hardly qualifies as "up in arms". It seems rather that you're projecting your own reaction onto me. And with that said, it's clear why I now tell you that you can do your own searching through dev posts to find what I'm talking about. Or you can not search and be surprised later. I don't care, I'm done now with this conversation which has clearly taken a very hostile turn.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Please oh please no mini-games! In most games, they are just distracting players from the fact that crafting sucks.
To make crafting not suck, it has to be more involving. Crafters need to study markets, manage production, secure material supplies, organize logistics for both supplies and crafted products. You can do it by yourself, with guildies, with contractors. You can do it safely in a trade hub or be more opportunist by risking going to remote places where demand and prices are higher. You can specialize into high-end products with low volume and high profits or generalize into mundane stuff with high volume and low profit.
The possibilities are numerous and doing all that requires a lot more than clicking on a "craft" button.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree that super-specializing would make crafting more interesting, but I think the act of crafting also has to be interesting. As I have suggested for some other actions, such as burglary, I would love to see crafting not as "put part A in slot 1 and part B in slot 2, click button" but as a series of mini-game style craft checks. Obviously, it'll get annoying to have dozens upon dozens, but if it's a single mini-game or a series of 3 or so, I think that would go a long way to making crafting interesting, especially if crafting is available as a character archetype, as it sounds it will.
To me this sounds as if you are asking for crafting to be made fun to those who do not enjoy crafting. My wife and I are primarily crafters, we play a game until we have mastered the crafting system, then unfortunately, there usually is not much to hold our interest. I want to craft for the challenge of figuring out better/different recipes...not to play some minigame over and over.
I would prefer that instead of trying to make different aspects of the game appeal to everyone, insure PvP appeals to PvPers, crafting appeals to crafting, and exploring appeals to exploring, etc...then give us the complexity in each area to allow us to invest time and effort in those we wish to.
Great post OP.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I just want to suggest you ask yourselves whether your ideas are compatible with the proposed goal of veterans not being too much more powerful than newbs.
And with that said, it's clear why I now tell you that you can do your own searching through dev posts to find what I'm talking about.
That's just my game!
From Kickstarter Community Thread: Player vs. Player Conflict
Newbies
When you are a "new" character, you'll be fragile and weak.
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Old Vets
There will likely be a small number of old, experienced, wealthy, well equipped PCs who will be really dangerous. You won't want to cross them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To make crafting not suck, it has to be more involving. Crafters need to study markets, manage production, secure material supplies, organize logistics for both supplies and crafted products.
I'm all for more involved crafting, but NONE of what you suggest is actually crafting, it's logistics and marketing. That can be interesting on its own, but it's not a substitute for engaging crafting.