Crafting Specialization

Eve Online - 15 years and still going.

In fact just got bought for nearly half a billion dollars i think it was.

 

Right you are, i stand corrected! But we both agree that EVE cant be compared to SOTA for so many endless reasons

 

And this is where I don't agree. As I have said (i think) earlier in this thread, The problem is a economic problem not a crafting problem, and player run economies are player run economies (just supply and demand). The reason you can not sell anything is not that people can make everything. It is that there is no demand for second rate items, and in general little demand for anything (except from crafting characters grinding XP and selling to the vendor rather than to selling the end product to other players).

I have also said this many times, almost all crafting problems disappear when they add more consumption of goods to the economy. A reason for players to consume any and all goods (regardless of quality), beyond selling it to the vendor (as that is not a player run economy and generally just creates hyper inflation).

This way gear is a special case that no one worries about, it is not how you make money in the profession on a day to day basis. My hope is that episode 2 adds some mechanics to the game to do this. This is not something they can just change in a release.

 

This is kinda my point. Specialization will only hinder the "most people" - not those who are willing to make as many accounts as necessary to maintain their self sufficiency.
You are correct in that most games do add arbitrary restrictions to number of tradeskills a single character can do. And in every single one of them, those who want to be self sufficient simply level the number of characters required.
Sota is in many ways a breath of fresh air compared to the traditional 'restrictive' MMO, and I'm opposed to turning it into "just another one of those." Strongly opposed.

Most of them are pretty niche. How do you define success? Revenue? Playerbase? The fact that they are still online after 15+ years? Almost all survival type games allow this. Games like Ryzom, Runescape, Istaria, (plus a lot of more obscure ones!)- heavy crafting games, mind you - you could do it all, eventually - but the cost of doing so tended to funnel people into one specialization or another in order for their trade to be more profitable. This "arbitrary restriction" thing is most prevalent in the big themepark titles, and in every single one of them, the restriction is overcome by making an alt, 100% of the time.

Even here in Sota, with the lack of restriction we have now, in order to get the skills high level and "good" you need to focus your attention somewhat. While I -can- make leather armor, if someone's looking for a high end piece I refer them elsewhere, as that is not my main focus. However losing the ability to do it AT ALL - which is exactly what "no rng if not specialized" will do - just means that I can't help out lower level players anymore, players for whom gm-level is sufficient - because it would cost them significantly more materials due to the RNG. Is that going to drastically change the game for me? Not really. But it does make it a lot harder for people to a) gear themselves or b) find a crafter who can help them out. I'll be turning away everyone, sending them on a goose chase of "find this peron then that person" which, with timezones and playtimes and casuals just makes getting gear done a mess. I don't see what benefit we're getting for all the added hassle.

Maybe you don't fathom just how much XP it costs, or how much time, it takes to get crafting to a high level. I've been working on my enchanting for nearly two years now, and a lot of people come to me for enchanting because I've got a better success rate and higher potency. The costs and diminishing returns system we have now is already creating the "uniqueness" you speak of. If they add an exorbidantly expensive passive in enchanting, I'll absolutely level it, because that's my main trade. But because we have diminishing returns (unlike the restrictive themeparks you're comparing us to), there comes a point where further upward investment is not as beneficial as expanding laterally into other things for greater versatility. That's just the reality of our skill system. When it gets to the point where for the price of levelling my enchanting a single level, costs more than grandmastering an entire other school of crafting, then you can guess which one I'm going to do. Am I going to be as good in it? No! Will people looking for high end items seek out the best of the best? Yes! But because the difference between a 2 year investment into enchanting and a 2 month investment is something like 2% success chance and +0.1 more to a stat, people can absolutely be self sufficient with the current methodology and many choose to do so at the cost of "marginally better" gear. This system would essentially remove that capability completely for anyone who doesn't make alts to mitigate it.

Is this system perfect? Nope. Does it need a lot of improvements and/or overhaul? Quite possibly. But using specialization as the gate to between making a skill viable, or not, is (in my opinion) the wrong direction. Limiting specialization to 1 tree again, is just encouraging alt creation, not cooperation. Are we a classless game, or not? If I want to spend another 2 years developing carpentry to go with my alchemy, what difference does it make in the end if I do it on the same character or on another?

 

You and me are on the same side. i am 99.9% crafter, and only do adventure stuff when forced to. We just dont share the same road to the destination.

My final note on this topic is: Specialization as described so far is not perfect, but we need some kind of change to the crafting system, because everything need a hard cap or soft cap . Combat has this, as its based on gear and combat decks. Crafting has no such limits, and it makes absolutely no sense. How to do it? Well we are far off, so once more solid ideas come forward from port on this, i´ll jump on this discussion again. Until then:

Thanks for a constructive discussion, and hope you have a great day!

 

Ultima Online is a class-less Game.

Classless doesnt mean restriction-less, a class is a pre-set character with pre-set skills and abilities.

 

It's an interesting point. If there were ways to increase consumption of mediocre gear, it would greatly alleviate the need for more control over making fantastic gear (and keep fantastic gear a little less common). Like, if you had the choice to take a piece of mediocre gear and make it 'disposable': that is, give it really good stats, but with 5 durability and no repair allowed. People could buy it for that one battle they need it for and throw it way. Or, like make mediocre gear get a 24 hour stat bonus the first time it is bought off a player vendor. Something to give these items short term value and moving out of the economy.

 

Short of completely changing the way gear crafting works, i would leave players using the items as gear out of the solution. Just make it that you can give crafted X weapons and/or armour (regardless of quality) in to gain Y.

Defining Y is the hard bit. Maybe rare one time use recipes, one use pattern, time limited crafting buff. There is many things, but there needs to be a demand for that Y. Its why i said the castle sieges could be option, having to have Z crafted weapon/armour/potions/poisons/bow/food before you can start a siege.

 

Note from my side:
I rarely buy gear. Because I can make it myself and because good gear is expensive (to cover the mats, reasonable).
However I buy a lot of food - main reason is that the prices are low (but still allowing a profit for the seller) and I consider it too tedious.
I am able to cook myself and have also done it, but prefer to buy.
In order to get a healthy economy for gear I think the current way for gear would need an update in the direction of food.
E.g. (just some ideas, not a complete list)
- less durability (which I personally hate)
- lower costs to compensate for the durability loss
- enchantments and masterworks should be less random (the options you get)
- make fails more predictable (if a crafter crafts a gear for a friend/guild mate with given mats and fails 5 times in a row then he wont get new orders)
- mats have to be adapted for less or predictable fails (e.g. you need more basic mats for additional MW/enchant)
- find a way that crafters can repair gear "better", the repair costs should be relative to the original costs. At the moment I have hundreds of looted repair kits, why should I visit a crafter?
In short make gear cheaper but less durable....

 

I think max durability should decrease only when you repair and repair skill affect by how much.

For specialisation is question how many chars should be needed to be able to make all types of crafted items best possible.

Food not that found of having 2 food buffs, if want more than 1 split it into 3 (protein, carbohydrates , fat) and have the food give buffs to the categories that fits best.

 

I hate durability loss. But after spending 4 hours (at all GM) crafting some meteoric plate chest pieces (10) I got an exceptional. First masterwork at 95% failed 6 times in a row. So much for the 4 hours work. I can't bring myself to sit down and do it again. So in spite of hating low durability or rapid decay of equipment, I opt for it if (and only if) masterworking and enchanting are always 100% chance of success with some massaging as to options to choose from the pool loosened some. Good equipment will be more common, but there will be a replacement economy at least and the cost of production for crafters will be much less. Let the gear flow !

 

I think they should remove that limitation as well and allow us to specialize in all the combat areas.

The difference is this, however, if I want to switch combat spec, it's possible to spec within a day very quickly. For one thing you get back a bunch of the XP from a previous spec, and you can farm millions of spec quickly without needing very many resources. That isn't true for the crafting skills. Going from 0 to 100 mastercraft in a day, I don't even know if that's possible. Even if it is, it's going to be extremely painful and expensive.

 

I wanted to like this twice. It's also an excellent way of illustrating how we already have TRUE specialization gated by time and resources. If someone wants to spend a decade to really master all of them, they should be able to, it really won't affect the economy at all for so many reasons.

 

it wouldnt be specialization, it would just be another skill... But i see your point, i just disagree.