Goblin Squad Member
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And while were at it, it would be awesome to give crafters the ability to name their wares, so you don't have just a generic "Longsword" but "Goblin-slicer". Longsword is simply the weapon type in the description field.
Please implement something like this. Even though it is cosmetic it goes a long way towards removing the immersion breaking cookie cutter feel of everyone having a "factory built" longsword +1.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And while were at it, it would be awesome to give crafters the ability to name their wares, so you don't have just a generic "Longsword" but "Goblin-slicer". Longsword is simply the weapon type in the description field.Please implement something like this. Even though it is cosmetic it goes a long way towards removing the immersion breaking cookie cutter feel of everyone having a "factory built" longsword +1.
Maybe each crafter can add their own personal insignia (was mentioned somewhere already?)?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe each crafter can add their own personal insignia (was mentioned somewhere already?)?And while were at it, it would be awesome to give crafters the ability to name their wares, so you don't have just a generic "Longsword" but "Goblin-slicer". Longsword is simply the weapon type in the description field.Please implement something like this. Even though it is cosmetic it goes a long way towards removing the immersion breaking cookie cutter feel of everyone having a "factory built" longsword +1.
I do like the insignia idea, but it's much harder to implement a graphic design on an item than a text field. You could choose from a list of designs, but it doesn't really work as a unique identifier when you may have thousands of crafters in game.
As for personal naming, perhaps you could only allow an individual to rename an item when they own it. You go to a market, and you buy a Cold Iron Longsword mad by Bob the Swordsmith. Other than Bob's maker' mark and the fact that it was made from cold iron, it just a Longsword when you buy it. But if you equip it and thread it, you can rename it to "Demon-bane", "Blade of the Daywalker", "Pig-Sticker", whatever. If someone examines you, they can see the name, but if you trade it then the personal name is dropped and it goes back to being just a "Longsword" until the next person gives it their own name.
What is the expected motivation for new harvesters to start harvesting after the game has fully started? Will there remain a market for level 5 swords after several years, when I suspect that it will have been completely edged out by the production of level 50 swords for the same price?In addition to the points brought up by Randomwalker above, I made a plea for the Devs to consider using all levels and types of raw material, which is then refined, in all skill levels of recipes.
As an example, here's a fictional recipe..
Level 1 long sword
8 copper ingots
3 leather stripsAnd a fictional sword of a higher level..
Level 20 long sword
20 copper ingots
8 leather strips
1 sword guard
4 iron ingots
2 steel ingots
1 twisted wireTotally made up, thus not proportional. But you can see where I'm going with the idea. Eve uses this system and it really helped me as a new player because my noob mats were in demand. This gave me a revenue stream right away, as opposed to a system like Wow uses where once I level out of copper I never need it again unless I want to make a low level item, which is almost never.
... Except that under the currently described system, you would need level 20 copper to make a level 20 sword, and a level 1 miner cannot produce any level 20 copper.
Perhaps a fourth cap is needed- higher quality equipment does you no good unless you have the skill to use it. To a skill 50 swordsman, there is no immediate benefit to using a quality 100 sword as opposed to a quality 50 sword.
Sorry, I've been without power since this morning. What I meant with my fake recipes wasn't level 20 copper, it was 20 copper ingots and I didn't list the quality. I intended to show that even a level 20 item would require the lowest level ore.
That would keep the lowest gatherer in demand by even the highest level crafters.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You're assuming that everyone will want/need QL 300 items. Unlike other MMOs, I think the skill levels of the character base will be wide and varied, which means a wide QL array of items will be required.I would agree if the scale was measured in a metric like size and not quality. In EvE something bigger does not mean that it is automatically better for the job you want to accomplish or better overall.
I fail to see how on a scale that is literally measured in "quality" something higher is not better?
Hmm, I had assumed there would be another mechanic where only characters that had trained up a specific skill could use certain QL items. For example, Chert the barbarin has trained his generic axe skill to level 50, he can now use QL50 axes.
Perhaps a fourth cap is needed- higher quality equipment does you no good unless you have the skill to use it. To a skill 50 swordsman, there is no immediate benefit to using a quality 100 sword as opposed to a quality 50 sword.
Or this would be another way to go about it. Chert gets his hands on a QL100 axe, but for him right now, it only acts as a QL50 axe.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hobbun what is the issue? Are you merely intent on being completely independent so you don't have to rely on other players?
Not sure if you are trying to be snide or not, but in answer to your question, of course not.
As I've made it clear in other posts, I plan on being a dedicated crafter, but in doing so I am going to be sacrificing my adventuring side. I won't be using weapons with any sort of proficiency, I won't be casting any spells, I won't be able to track anyone, pick any locks, or do any sort of adventuring with any real skill. But most of all, I won't be able to attain my own supplies to craft. I will be completely dependent on others to do that, or at least dependent on those to attain any worthwhile components.
So to answer your question, no, I do not have any illusions to do everything on my own.
I want to craft, and that's all I want to do. So I will need help from others to get the medium to high end supplies I will need to do so. And I am completely ok with that. And really, I am pretty sure I won't even be able to 'do it all' for just crafting, as most likely each specialty will have it's own 2 1/2 year program. At least from the impression I am receiving.
But what I do want, and feel should be the whole package of a crafter, is an ability to enchant items, and shouldn't require it's own 2 1/2 year program.
For those who want to make magical armor, weapons, wonderous items, etc. I feel that should be part of their specialty path. Who is going to want to be able to only make masterwork swords, armor after 2 1/2 years? No, crafters are going to want to be able to attain in making magic weapons and armor, and not take 5 years to do so. I feel that you are limited as it is with your specialty path (Weaponsmithing, Blacksmithing, structural crafting, etc) is plenty enough limitation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No, I wasn't trying to be snide. However I come off, I do try to not be snide.
You've been pressing for the ability to enchant while you craft for quite awhile now. I don't understand why you think you wouldn't be able to pick up enchanting skills from the wizard line of training to supplement your crafting skills.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The key question here is: "what is the difference between q50 axe and q100 axe"?
0. the only thing we know for sure is that the higher quality weapons generally require more threads to bind!
1. earlier blogs mention a relatively flat power curve. Higher quality weapons will have more keywords rather than huge generic bonuses to hit and damage.
2. blog mentions "minimim quality required". Maybe they meant skill level, but maybe this means something like hand axe has minimum q1, battle axe min q40 and dwarven waraxe min q80. Maybe from q1 mats you can only make clubs, shivs and slings?
3.blog mentions bonuses if the quality very significantly exceeds the required quality. The example given is q200 for a q100 weapon which may give an additional keyword. This may mean that all handaxes q1-100 function the same, all battleaxes q40-140 function the same, etc.
remember that the extra keywords are useless unless you have the right abilities. A battle cleric would prefer a normal greatsword over one that also allows sneak attacks (and requires more threads); a maul that doubles the effects of power attacking is not particularly useful to anyone not strong enough to train power attack.
Since unbound gear is easily lost, I imagine i will have an assortment of gear at different qualities for different purposes. Sometimes I will choose low q gear because I can afford binding, sometimes I will choose low q gear because I can afford not binding it. I expect low level gear to be consumed much faster than high-level gear, and many players wanting to replace their lost low q gear with new low q gear.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Hobbun, I respect your point of view, but I disagree. I belieave that enchanting has just as much right to be it's own skill tree as any other crafting skill, and it should. I am not sure if they will break up armor smithing and weapon smithing, but I think they should. Maybe have a joint low level skills, say up to 100 or something, but then split into a focus. Or leave general blacksmithing as more of a refinery style skill, smelting ore and making bolts/nuts/ect. and leave weapon/armorsmithing as 1-300 skills.
The reason I feel enchanting deserves to be its own 1-300 skill instead of being fractured into every other crafting skill is because it requires different skills and talents to magiccraft. In PnP, most cases you need to be a caster, and also, think of it practically, weaving arcane power into a weapon is completely different from hammering a weapon into existance from a block of iron.
I feel high skilled smithing should skills involving better use of low quality materials (Copper/Iron/steel) making them better (masterwork) and stronger, maybe even use less materials for the same quality of weapon, in addition to the use of high level materials like mithril/adimantine/other rare and exotic materials. So in essence, I am proposing a 300 skill smither could make a high quality iron long sword that would be masterwork (weighted better, balanced, sharper, ect) and/or for less materials (only 1 iron bar instead of 2 required) and also will be able to craft mithril longswords. This way, he shows his skill at improving the lower level stuff and learns new things as he levels and grows the skill.
Enchanting would be simular. (As it's own tree) Learning to manipulate each of the different schools of majic to different degrees, higher skill would allow for permanite enchantments as well as more powerful enchantments. For example, at skill 300, an enchanter could permantaly enchant a weapon with the effect of up to a 3rd or 4th level spell, or could create a +5 perma enchant. Lower level skills can only do temp enchants, simular to useing a scroll on your weapon/armor, with a first perma enchant at 100 or something.
I hope this explains better my thoughts and view on this matter. Again, I respect and understand your view as to why it should be combined, but I disagree. I don't think at skill 250, you can now make +1 longswords as a smithy. if you do it earlier then you lose the point of making the higher skilled materials, for example if you could craft a +1 iron long sword at skill lvl 100, and a +2 at 150, but at 150 skill you just begin to learn mithril skills, which would people want, a +2 iron long sword, or a non magical mithril longsword? Cause remember, if enchanting isn't a seperate tree, I can't buy your mithril sword and take it to an enchanter to have it enchanted. I would have to wait for you to get high enough elvel to enchant it, and by that point, you will be making +5 iron long swords, or a +2 mithril long sword. (Again, I am assuming that is how it will work, I could be way off.)
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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My current expectations: higher quality materials are always at least as good as lower quality materials for all practical purposes, and it will not take more time to gather materials at a higher skill level;
There will be no need for low-level characters to grind out production, and they won't consider their time significantly less valuable than higher-skilled characters harvesting the same nodes.
It will take the same time and sunk costs for a consortium of ql25 characters to build a ql25 sword as for ql125 characters, assuming that the nodes can support it.
The goal is for the market price of ql25 equipment to be much lower than ql125 equipment.
Given those assumptions, the only conclusion I can draw is that higher quality material will be much harder to get to at all, and the stuff that can be reached easily or with significant difficulty will be low quality. Only the largest expenditure of coordination and effort will deliver top quality raw materials, refining, or construction. Expect no one organization to reach top level in more than one of those, and only a handful to reach top level in each. Ever.
I'm seeing enchanting as different then just crafting a sword with magic properties. Based on past experience (yea I know), a crafter would be able to craft a broadsword, or they could craft a broadsword of giant killing (+3 vs. giant type creatures). Then either sword could be enchanted to have say +2 to hit or a bonus to fire resistance.
I'm not sure if GW intends the word enchanting to mean any magic applied to a weapon, meaning a crafter can only create "normal" weapons of varying quality which includes masterwork pieces and any enchantment, even +1 would have to be done by someone with appropriate enchantment skill?
Or do they intend enchanting to mean additional bonuses over and above what comes with the item?
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I don't think enchanting will make a weapon better at what it already does. I think enchanting will add keywords regardless of the fact that they ordinarily conflict.
For example, an enchanted rapier could be durable, fast, and light; any normal weapon that is both fast and light is fragile in this example. A hammer could be enchanted to be sharp, which would make it usable with abilities which require a sharp weapon to use.
The advantage comes from allowing increased flexibility of options; parrying a heavy weapon with an enchanted rapier, or hamstringing someone with a hammer that can also ring their helmet.
I don't think enchanting will make a weapon better at what it already does. I think enchanting will add keywords regardless of the fact that they ordinarily conflict.
For example, an enchanted rapier could be durable, fast, and light; any normal weapon that is both fast and light is fragile in this example. A hammer could be enchanted to be sharp, which would make it usable with abilities which require a sharp weapon to use.
The advantage comes from allowing increased flexibility of options; parrying a heavy weapon with an enchanted rapier, or hamstringing someone with a hammer that can also ring their helmet.
Ah, I recall their mentioning keywords but didn't understand what that meant so skipped it. So keywords don't have any numerical value, just, well are words added to the item?
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Goblin Squad Member
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So questions become-
Is enchanting a weapon another leg of its production (harvest, refine, craft, enchant = magic weapon) or is enchanting a weapon a matter of quality (harvest QL300, refine QL300, craft QL300 = magic weapon)?
Is there a QL50 magic sword and a QL300 non-magic sword and if so, how do they differ?
And while I agree the best way to craft stuff is to go from specialist, to specialist to specialist, will it be the only way? Can there be a way for me with my QL300 skill to make a QL300 item from QL100 materials by taking 10 times as long and using 10 times as much?
Will it be impossible for my character to build a lone hut near a harvest point and then refine and craft items on my own? Or will it merely be hard, slow and incredibly dangerous?
Colour coding quality seems okay- I see the need to stick with old tropes and make the most common quality white. Instead of reinforcing old tropes to new players, why not take the opportunity to standardise a new simple system. Say ROYGBIV, or just ROYGBP, with White still as the most starting standard.
Or lose the colours and have descriptors. I got tired of having +1 to +5 weapons and instead called them Eldritch, Mithral, Vorpal, ??? and Adamantine. Surely the community can come up with half a dozen descriptors meaning lightly magicked to KABOOM! :-)
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Ah, I recall their mentioning keywords but didn't understand what that meant so skipped it. So keywords don't have any numerical value, just, well are words added to the item?I don't think enchanting will make a weapon better at what it already does. I think enchanting will add keywords regardless of the fact that they ordinarily conflict.
For example, an enchanted rapier could be durable, fast, and light; any normal weapon that is both fast and light is fragile in this example. A hammer could be enchanted to be sharp, which would make it usable with abilities which require a sharp weapon to use.
The advantage comes from allowing increased flexibility of options; parrying a heavy weapon with an enchanted rapier, or hamstringing someone with a hammer that can also ring their helmet.
That's what I think of as keywords; basically, the descriptors in the table (reach, slashing, disarm...) plus a few more. It makes sense that there are abilities which require equipment with an appropriate keyword, and it makes magical sense that an enchanted dagger can do things that a normal hammer can do instead of doing the same things a regular dagger can do better.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree completely with the idea expressed by others that every harvested material should have uses all the way up through the most difficult craft recipes. This will ensure that low level materials still have a value.
Also (and I may have missed it if it was said elsewhere), I would like to see on-the-spot crafting available. That is, crafting where the crafter makes an item on the spot rather than placing it in the "machine" and waiting for it to be produced. I think the Eve-style crafting process is fine for mass production or longer process items, but being able to make one item at a time on the fly is very helpful at times. For instance, being able to craft singleton items while-you-wait, such as making commissioned items at a player-run market, adds some realism and increases player interaction.
I would also like to see hands-on time spent by the crafter having an affect on the final product - if unseen apprentices are doing much of the grunt work in the process, then spending your time as a player "tweaking" their work should have some benefit. If you're willing to forego the convenience of not having to be present for much of the process, then there should be some reward for your being present.
Finally, I am very happy to see salvaging. I love to be able to find junk items on mobs and turn them into something useful, even if it's only their component raw materials for resale.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Looking good.
I was originally a bit skeptical of how what are effectively separate PvP and PVE games on the one server would work, however the crafting system and the range of weaponry is making things a bit clearer.
I think the resistance to the combination of the two styles comes from the older style games were your character walked around wearing effectively a small nations national treasury worth of gear and it was a complete disaster if something was lost, stolen or sundered.
Instead it seems the gear is important but replaceable and their will be lots of it.
Which means being killed in the PvP will be no different to be killed in an FPS or shot down in a combat flightsim - were death is an annoyance but no big deal.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not positive, but I thought that just referred to skills, abilities, spells, etc. But I thought I remembered them saying before something like you definately wont be able to kill high "level" players with a newbie sword. So if that is the case, then that makes me think that the power curve on abilities and what not might be shallow, but the power curve on gear is a bit more significant. Just my best guess based off what I THINK I remember (could have pulled thatout of the air though, so many games to keep up with).
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Goblin Squad Member
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After reading some of the posts I have to agree, the quality of the finished product should be the average of the three stages, not the quality of the lowest.
As has been said already, if it remains as is, there will be no market for low quality resources and low quality crafters will have no market for their skills.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Players enslaving peasants as a part of the game? I wish I knew that before I gave any money.
Using slave labor or raising the dead are severally punished in PFO, with the Heinous Flag. This doesn't mean some players won't do it, but the game does need an evil foil for the do Gooders running around.
If you don't want evil role playing, perhaps role playing games aren't for you?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not positive, but I thought that just referred to skills, abilities, spells, etc. But I thought I remembered them saying before something like you definately wont be able to kill high "level" players with a newbie sword. So if that is the case, then that makes me think that the power curve on abilities and what not might be shallow, but the power curve on gear is a bit more significant. Just my best guess based off what I THINK I remember (could have pulled thatout of the air though, so many games to keep up with).
I think it's been mentioned item differences will be in the 0.00% difference zone [check]? So therefore there may be a wide range and very small incremental increases of "better quality" items as you go along. [Edit: A lower level player can have a better quality item, but as mentioned it uses more threading]
I think you probably CAN kill a high-level player with a newbie sword, if they stand and take it! But that's just it: With a maxima power-level difference of about x4/5 + item quality + skill of the player (experience of player AND character) ==> you'd need a posse of lowbie players to actually really challenge x1 top level (aka 2.5 yrs play time difference).
I think that is more or less along the lines of what has been said. Conversely, that's an extreme eg: Of the proportion of the population from T=0 to T=2.5 yrs of the game. And what the hell would a lowbie be thinking taking on such a high level player in the 1st place... Run! I've had occassion to play a team sport with a former professional - and it's like prof > adult > child !
Looking good.
I was originally a bit skeptical of how what are effectively separate PvP and PVE games on the one server would work, however the crafting system and the range of weaponry is making things a bit clearer.
I think the resistance to the combination of the two styles comes from the older style games were your character walked around wearing effectively a small nations national treasury worth of gear and it was a complete disaster if something was lost, stolen or sundered.
Instead it seems the gear is important but replaceable and their will be lots of it.
Which means being killed in the PvP will be no different to be killed in an FPS or shot down in a combat flightsim - were death is an annoyance but no big deal.
This is one of the main points I try to get across to those people who come onto the forums without doing research into what PFO actually will be, and complain about the player looting aspect and full PvP.
Although I believe mot of those people's problem isn't with PvP so much as its a personal fear of someone taking something that belongs to them despite the monetary value. Even if these people can be made to understand that in reality they are loosing the equivalent of pocket change when they lose gear in a death (for the most part). Ultimately I believe that most of these people won't be happy in PFO, but you can't just tell them all to bugger off because some do take the time to understand what GW is doing. I was one such person although I didn't voice my concerns in a thread. I guess that's why I try and give these people a nudge toward looking into the game before just passing judgement.
TL;DR. Stop drop and roll won't work in hell.
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Goblin Squad Member
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After reading some of the posts I have to agree, the quality of the finished product should be the average of the three stages, not the quality of the lowest.
As has been said already, if it remains as is, there will be no market for low quality resources and low quality crafters will have no market for their skills.
While that is true, we don't know how long it will take for crafters to level through the "low quality" zone to something that will be useful in the long term. We already know that GW wants adventurers to rise up out of "newbiehood" relatively quickly and get into the meat of the "heroic adventuring" power range. I imagine they plan to do the same for crafters, refiners and harvesters as well.
One possibility is that the low quality stuff is mostly be consumed by NPCs as tools and other mundane items, until the crafters (etc) are skilled enough to make something useful for adventurers. Besides, if your first few attempts at swords look like this, who's gonna want them? ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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After reading some of the posts I have to agree, the quality of the finished product should be the average of the three stages, not the quality of the lowest.
As has been said already, if it remains as is, there will be no market for low quality resources and low quality crafters will have no market for their skills.
I don't see that. The quality should be something that can be improved on some resources such as metal, but with a cost. If my skill is high enough I should be able to refine low-grade ore into high grade metal at the smelter by refining more of the ore and extracting less of the pure metal. So if it takes a hundred pounds of 100QL ore to produce ten pounds of 100QL iron, if my smelting skill is high enough I should be able to extract five pounds of 200QL iron from that 100QL ore. But once I extract that 200QL ore that is what the weaponsmith has to work with. Now, it might be possible that if the metalsmith's skill is high enough he can further increase the quality of the end product by fusing some adamantine into his blade and tempering it with a higher carbon content by using rarer fuels at the forge coupled with advanced techniques and materials in quenching the metal but I have no idea how involved the developers want to get.
An evil craftsman might imbue the metal with attributes by quenching the red hot blade in a good creature's blood, for example or a good craftsman by quenching it in holy water.It all depends on how they want to take it.
Eve is already considering something along the lines of what Being is saying, calling it "alchemy" last I heard.
In short, if you get enough veldspar = crappy iron ore, you can process it in a way that eventually results in some zydrine, megacyte and morphite = mithral, adamantine and [other skymetal].
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm on the fence about how raw materials should be handled. I would like to see that a node of iron produces iron, regardless of who digs it up. I think the skill of the digger should influence how much of the vein they are able to get out of the node, but to alter the quality of the iron based on your digging skills seems unrealistic to me and greatly penalizes lower skilled harvesters.
For instance, a low skilled miner might miss some of the ore due to his less experienced eye, might do a messier job at digging it out, might not be as good at following a vein through the rock, etc. Likewise, an amateur woodcutter might cut down a tree, but do such a hack-job that he wastes quite a bit of wood by making poor cuts, might split logs in such a fashion that he costs himself board-feet of lumber, etc. However, in both cases, the end product is still iron and wood, but their low skill costs them some of that end product compared to a more skilled harvester. I can even envision a more skilled miner passing a node that a low skilled miner has "finished" with, and using his more advanced mining skill, still has the opportunity to remove the ore that the less skilled miner missed or couldn't reach. Instead of and all or nothing approach to nodes, it would be a case of "as much as you are skilled to get".
My fear of attaching skill to the quality of the material you remove from a node is twofold. First, Two years into the game, who is going to want to buy a new player's iron if it's lower grade than anyone uses anymore? Sure, the new player could sell to newbie refiners and crafters, but that greatly limits their market for sale. On the other hand, if his low harvesting skill only affects the quantity he gathers from a node, that new player still has a market...he's just not going to mine as much or sell as much at a time as a more experienced miner can.
My second concern deals with storage. I found in SWG that having different quality ratings of the same material meant that you had that many more stacks of raw materials to clutter your bank since different quality mats wouldn't stack with one another. In that game, the quality of the mat depended on the node you found, not your harvesting skill, but the end result - a cluttered bank - is the same. Perhaps refiners might be able to boil different quality mats together to make one stack (extracting enough better material from a poorer stack to merge it with a better one), but if you're a harvester who doesn't refine, you're still stuck with the same problem.
My suggestion for making higher harvesting skill level valuable would be to allow them to harvest better grade nodes with their elevated skill (as is the case in most other games). If you're happy only mining copper nodes, then you don't need to gain any more mining skill. However, if you want to mine iron, you need to practice more. An amateur miner just wouldn't have any clue how to deal with the more difficult or exotic metal without making a complete mess of it (i.e. no measurable gain from a node).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or you could apply quality at the expert level instead of the resource gathering commoner level. Poorly refined ore could yield poorer iron ingots, but iron ore should occur in high medium low concentrations. Rare materials would just be more rare, and the commoner skill levels determine whether the player character can actually gather it.
Similarly with outher resources. A Lavender plant will yield the same quality of plant: where skill comes in is at the distillation level.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My post above stresses my hope that raw materials don't have a quality score. However, if they do, then I agree with Being's post above which deals with refining. If the plan is to have grades of the same raw material (quality 100 iron ore, quality 200 iron ore, etc.), then I would hope that refiners of higher skill could extract smaller amounts of better product from a lower quality bulk supply. In this way, a skilled refiner who might be lacking any quality 200 iron to sell to his crafting customers could take a bulk of quality 100 iron ore and refine it down to a much smaller amount of quality 200 iron. Certainly, he would rather have quality 200 iron ore to begin with (he would get more 200 quality iron out of it), but if none is available, this still gives him an option. The trade off, of course, is quality for quantity.
In this scenario, the low level miner I mentioned above might still find a market for his low quality raw materials. They may find that high skilled refiners buy it up to refine into smaller quantities of higher quality ore.
For those who would worry that this will rob the higher skilled miners of a market, I doubt that would happen. If with your elevated skill, you can produce far more high quality iron and in greater quantities, you're not going to suffer. What it might do is allow low skilled miners to sell to more of a market than a few low level refiners/crafters. I can envision a higher skilled refiner scanning the local market for all the low level miners' goods and snapping them up for his rainy-day stash when the higher skilled miners are out of stock.
(edited to keep up with Beings posting pace. By the time I wrote this, his "last post" was no longer his "most recent" post)
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I'm on the fence about how raw materials should be handled. I would like to see that a node of iron produces iron, regardless of who digs it up. I think the skill of the digger should influence how much of the vein they are able to get out of the node, but to alter the quality of the iron based on your digging skills seems unrealistic to me and greatly penalizes lower skilled harvesters.
For instance, a low skilled miner might miss some of the ore due to his less experienced eye, might do a messier job at digging it out, might not be as good at following a vein through the rock, etc. Likewise, an amateur woodcutter might cut down a tree, but do such a hack-job that he wastes quite a bit of wood by making poor cuts, might split logs in such a fashion that he costs himself board-feet of lumber, etc. However, in both cases, the end product is still iron and wood, but their low skill costs them some of that end product compared to a more skilled harvester. I can even envision a more skilled miner passing a node that a low skilled miner has "finished" with, and using his more advanced mining skill, still has the opportunity to remove the ore that the less skilled miner missed or couldn't reach. Instead of and all or nothing approach to nodes, it would be a case of "as much as you are skilled to get".
I agree with you. It makes sense that the harvesters skill is a factor in the amount of material they gather from a node as opposed to the quality of material. The quality of material seems like it would be more a factor of the refiner.
My fear of attaching skill to the quality of the material you remove from a node is twofold. First, Two years into the game, who is going to want to buy a new player's iron if it's lower grade than anyone uses anymore?
If they enable all types of material being needed in crafting all levels of item, a system similar to what Eve uses, then this problem will pretty much never surface because so much of it will be needed that even the lowest quality material will be in demand. Just for clarity my suggestion is to require all levels of material be necessary for all recipes with the higher levels requiring more lower level material as the recipe level increases.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Pinosaur,
The storage issue was by far the more minor of my concerns. Actually, I can see game designers not being very worried or even liking the problem this causes, since it would force players to be pickier about what they store.
Valandur,
I totally agree with you about having even the lowest skilled raw materials having a role in even the highest crafting recipes. Otherwise, harvesting, and crafting in turn, become a race for the top, with the low end mats becoming useless to all but the newest players. At that point, these low skill raw materials become grind-fodder and little else.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If low quality materials are needed in vast quantities every time a settlement upgrades there need not be a lack of demand for some resource types. For others it might be that QL5 herbs are needed for a 5 hit point healing potion and QL300 herbs are needed for a 300 HP healing potion. If level 1 players only have ten hit points there should always be about as much demand for low quality herbs as supply.
Other kinds of resource are more difficult to predict out here but would likely be obvious to the designers.
I see the same concern raised over and over: "who would want the lower skilled miner's ore? "lower skilled miners are at a disadvantage"
...Well shouldn't they be at a disadvantage? Apply the same skill over time to crafting. Would it be fair for a newbie crafter to be on par with someone who has put two years into training? - Heck no.
But just the assumption that low miners can't compete still seems like folly to me:
-If players need raw materials for buildings and upkeep of settlements, I highly doubt they'll be in need of 300QL materials for that. Most likely they'll need quantity over quality. Which is actually advantageous to the lower quality market; if QL is not an issue, than players will seek out the lowest price on stone/wood/etc.
-low level miners won't be '2 years behind' vets if it is anything like EVE's system. Every type of ore had it's own specialization. Both for mining and refining. Meaning a new player could effectively compete rather quickly by specializing in 1 type of ore. It wouldn't take 2 years to master copper for example. Much more likely it would take a few weeks. The archetype mastery in PFO would be a complete mastery of every type of ore. The new player can still be competitive in one or two categories, just not all.
-There's also an assumption that 300QL ore is even going to be the standard once players level up. I still don't see any evidence that this will be the case. 300QL will be rare. Because of its uncommon nature, and the process involved in making a completed 300QL item; I suspect the price difference between 200-250QL and 300QL will be so large that only players who are serious about crafting 300QL can even justify spending the money on it.
I understand why some people wouldn't like QL on ore. In a way, it doesn't really make sense. Can you have different qualities of an element? Isn't all iron or fundamentally the same? Deposits might be rich or poor, but that determines how much you can get out of the ground, not the quality of it. But what about non-element resources? Diamonds certainly come in different qualities. I'm guessing the same could be said for silks, wood, stone, etc, so the QL should remain. Maybe in a real world scenario it doesn't make sense, but for simplicity sake in a game, I have no problem with it.
Low level miners are quite a bit behind compared to seasoned EvE miners, for a combination of reasons. A newish miner gathers ore at about a tenth the rate (more or less) of a seasoned miner. This does not account for refining inefficiencies and - in a few cases - a complete inability to gather the ore at all.
PFO will have a MUCH broader "ore base" that will be gathered/harvested/mined.
I can't believe that it would be *that* difficult to make different resources' QL points apply at logically different points in the process depending upon the resource and process.
Examples: ore smelting is the QL point - but ore is BULKY too; gems are simply determined by vein as far as initial QL with the gemcutter's skill being the second 'half' of the final QL for gems; animals and similar creatures - and by extension animal products such as wool, leather, meat, sinew and bone among other things - reflect their breeder's AND trainer's skills; agricultural items (grains, veggies, many herbs, fruits, livestock, hemp, silk, cotton) are two fold in that both the skill of the 'raiser' and the skill of the 'processor' are very, very important in the final result.
The one thing that should be absolutely predictable is the end result when steps a+b+c are followed for a given item. If a character maximizes, say, lumberjack -> carpenter -> cooper their barrels should be the very best possible for the type of wood (pine, oak, teak, ironwood). If the cooper also masters 'general' blacksmithing and similarly uses ore -> smelting -> blacksmithing to fashion the iron bands for his barrels, that quality should be reflected. And so on.
One thing that is a pet peeve is that when you've become the best that the system allows for that you DON'T get those kinds of results because it was decided that their *has* to be a money/time sink element. If this is the case, simply alter the quantities of materials consumed and/or the amount of time required to perform by/for the process. It's utterly frustrating to perform the steps to craft sets of "Sandcrawler Surprise Breastplate Armor" only to find that the developers feel that there is too much money in the game, so they decided to make only 1 set in 4 successfully complete for a character with maximum / near-maximum capability. If this is the case, just x4 everything and be done with it. Adjust as necessary.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Clynx,
I'm all for giving those who have invested the time the appropriate advantages and benefits. Perhaps I'm simply basing this on my experience in the only other true sandbox game I've played - Ultima Online - where new harvesters spent an inordinate amount of time grinding through lower skill mats that no one used anymore in their attempts to reach high skill mats that everyone desired. If Being's and Valandur's suggestions that lower mats might always be needed for things like settlement construction or higher level craftables, then I'm happy.
What I would like to see is more experimentation in refining and crafting. Some games - GW2 for example - has implemented an experimentation element into crafting, where players, by mixing and matching materials, can unlock new bonuses that weren't in the original recipe product. At that point, you could sell this new recipe to other crafters or be the only producing the new end product...at least until someone else discovered it as well.
I'm no expert, but if low-quality material can be made high-quality, doesn't that make a risk-free way to acquire "max-levelled" equipment? There should definitely be a cap to the increase.
Players enslaving peasants as a part of the game? I wish I knew that before I gave any money.Using slave labor or raising the dead are severally punished in PFO, with the Heinous Flag. This doesn't mean some players won't do it, but the game does need an evil foil for the do Gooders running around.
If you don't want evil role playing, perhaps role playing games aren't for you?
I believe My Little Pony Online is accepting beta testers :p
Wait, where am I? I was told this was the subforum for the My Little Pony FPS... >_>
I'm no expert, but if low-quality material can be made high-quality, doesn't that make a risk-free way to acquire "max-levelled" equipment? There should definitely be a cap to the increase.
"Risk free" only insomuch as - in PFO terms - your character knows about the end result.
Let's say that Sammy Supersmelter knows all about adamantine but his groupies (company members) can't be bothered to escort him to where the adamantine ore can be mined up. Or worse, Sammy's company disbanded and he's all alone for a while. Being a Supersmelter he can fairly easily go out a little ways and set up a camp that can handle the local kobolds while the minions toil away and load up several wagonloads of iron ore. Sammy's caravan returns to Boringtown, he pays the minions their wages and he sets up his piles of iron ore in his smelting place.
Due to Sammy's skill in all things Smelting, he knows how to smelt every ore known to the River Kingdoms. He even knows that deep in the iron there is a smidge of adamantine - and it's really inefficient. If he was able to Sammy would MUCH prefer to smelt adamantine ore.
Sammy smelts and smelts and smelts some more, then a bit more, say working iron -> mithral -> adamantine. If normal iron ore produces a tenth of its weight in useable iron, it might produce a tenth of that in mithral and a tenth of THAT in adamantine. Not at all efficient - and it is highly unlikely that it would be actually profitable to use this process.
TL;DR: just because you can extract two+ tiers higher metal from a common ore does not mean that it is worth the effort. Market forces alone if nothing else will dictate this.
I think we will see a need for 'lower level' ores. Your example of what happened in UO is a very theme-park way of implementing such a system - despite UO not being 100% theme-park... probably because it was a leading pioneer in the modern MMO and those concepts hadn't been perfected.
I stand by my EVE analogy. Yeah, vets could strip mine the crap out of asteroids, but quantity isn't what we're arguing. We're talking about the quality of the ore and the demand for the ore. I'm suggesting that the demand for the ore the newbie brings in will be just as high as the vet. If the newbie can only mine 1/10th of the vet, then he's making less money, but by no means isn't edged out of the market. He'll make money relative to his character's development - The strip mining vet also had to start out small.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The quality ratings for raw materials and the deployment of gathering installations remind me of Star Wars Galaxies, which was one of my favorite crafting systems of all time. I remember scouring planets for the highest quality minerals to make top quality fishing poles.
The fact that the node, the installation, and the gatherer's skill all limit the quality of the raw material should produce a system where new harvesters and seasoned vets will have their own niches, which is nice.
Edit: Looks like I was late to the party on some of the above. To expand on one of my points above, differing QLs should allow new harvesters to gather their low-QL resources without having veteran harvesters constantly bearing them to the punch. In theory, low-QL nodes simply wouldn't be worth the time investment to veteran harvesters. If low-skilled harvesters simply can't harvest QL 300 resources, then the veterans shouldn't have to worry about the newbs "wasting" them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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When you salvage, collect, harvest, or gather, your skill bonus (or in the case of salvaging, the quality rating of the field salvage kit) sets a cap on the quality of the components recovered. A character with a 150 bonus to his mining skill reduces a higher-quality vein to quality 150 ore, but would get the full 100 out of a quality 100 vein.This relationship of quality to skill bonus continues throughout the later steps of crafting...
So, a new player with lvl 10 mining skill, can only get lvl 10 iron ore from a lvl 300 iron ore node. Right?
So a new player can ruin a rare ore node turning it into trash?
To this work, must be a minimum skill lvl to mine a node, for example, to mine a lvl 300 ore node you will need have at least lvl 280 in mining.
Other idea is to be able to increase the lvl of an ore. For example, a refiner with lvl 100, can turn lvl 50 iron ore in lvl 100 iron ingot. But to this work, it will have to cost more than if you get lvl 100 ore.