Craft System Brainstorm -- (Dev) Replied

@Bowen

I was trying to catch up on some of these threads and when I read yours containing this quote:

"The rules governing quality are up to the dev?s of course. I?m sure it?ll be pretty straight forward. Usuable items reduce in quality as they?re used. I think food items should reduce in quality over time. A possible effect could be to reduce quality decay or halt it entirely in very rare cases."

it brought an idea to mind.

I like the idea of food decaying over time but I think it would create quite an extra dynamic if at certain stages of food in decay, they could be used as reagents in alchemy recipes. This would be akin to basically using bread mold to make penicillin.

 

@LordBruce - Like the idea of food decaying and even when you combine the idea that reagents could be yielded from it. Finally a reason to be a baker!

Another idea I had when discussing full loot PvP today was the idea that when a corpse is chopped skin and bones could be used for crafting.

 

one of my favorite crafting systems in any MMO to date has been the one in Star Wars Galaxies.

i loved that raw materials had their own stats and depending on their "purity" of sorts, would had different effects on the resulting crafted items.

In addition, it had an "experiment" feature that allowed the player to customize specific aspects of said items. Example for a fantasy world would be a sword. By experimenting, you could increase the following: durability, damage output, weight (translates to attack speed and possibly parry chance). You could either keep the sword as is, or drop down one stat to increase another: a sword with high damage, but not very durable so it tends to need repairs more often -or- a very light sword that lets you parry better, but doesnt do as much damage.

There would have to be a "GIVE and TAKE" method, so players couldn't increase all of the stats right away, but after being a crafter for quite some time they could get bonuses that allow you to put in a little more "GIVE" without needing the "TAKE". However, there could also be instances where the item itself comes with its own "take", which you would have to negate via "give".

 

The big thing I'm hoping for from the system is something where crafting is active. I really don't want another "select a recipe from a menu, watch a bar fill" system, nor long periods of time where I just do nothing while my character works.

I really liked the crafting system in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, where you actually had to make choices while crafting to balance out Progress and Quality, without running out of Energy or Durability.

 

I just hope crafting is quick and useful at all levels of the game. EQ2 has a neat crafting system, but it SOOOOOOooooo tedious and slow. It takes so long to craft an item that the time spent getting to level 50 in crafting, you can have 4 other toons at max adventure level of 95 in full raid gear.

 

@Bruce: The idea that decayed food as a potential alchemical ingredient is a very interesting one. I suspect though that it would be something devs might consider post game 1 since that level of depth is well.. pretty darn deep.

 

All good stuff. Few things.

We have certainly discussed catastrophic failure during weapon/armor modification but this is a gentle balance between carrot and stick. I'll fall back on our standard risk/reward equation with a lot tweaks during alpha/beta.

As far as time to craft, I prefer to have the time that goes into crafting an item be based around the acquisition of ingredients instead of a long wait time during crafting. I think we have to be flexible with reality vs fun in certain instances.

You hit the nail on the head @Bowen with saying "same recipe but different materials." This is certainly the direction we are going. I believe this is one of the core elements to Minecraft that we want to emulate.

Decayed food as an alchemy ingredient is a really neat idea.

 

I see this one came back from the dead. Decayed food as an ingredient was a major part of the Dragon's Dogma crafting system, I felt it was fairly compelling but also somewhat of an annoyance since the game only offered you a short window to use the items before they were so far gone that they were no longer of any use.

 

I think you should be able to get to 100% reliable crafting and modification, however you should have the option to take risks. Two things could combine to cause you to have a chance of failure, skill and materials. You can try to skimp on materials, to a limit, when making an item (or batch of them) at the cost of a greater chance of failure. Say you would have an 100% chance of making a sword if you used 10 iron bars total but you could try and do it with only 8 if you're willing to have a 20% chance of failure, or at least it turning out as a lower quality than you were shooting for. You could also have this be modified by skill level. Say a sword has a skill target of 100, but you only have 80. You could try to make it anyhow but have a 20% chance of failure, you can use 12 bars to boost your chance up to 95%, or try it with 8 and your chances go down to 60%. The exact interactions could use some work depending on how you wanted the math to work out. I'd suggest always having a chance of failure if you're below the target skill and skill above it would allow you to use less materials, but after a certain point you'd always have a chance of failure and there would be to limit to how low you can go. For the sword above say even skill capped smith would only be able to go down to 7 bars and even then he'd have a 5% chance of failure.

This could also tie in to making discoveries. Even if you have the right mix of items and techniques trying to make an item you don't already have the formula for will have a variable (likely hidden) penalty to your skill.

As an alternative to failure you could have the quality level be reduced or damage the item's durability or it's max durability instead of destroying it. I think the durability hits would be most appropriate for modifications. You could even combine them so you have a 1% chance of the item being destroyed and a 4% chance that it will be damaged.

The goal, in my mind at least, is to make it so if you get some rare materials you'd be able to make one item for sure, or you could choose to take a risk and maybe get two if you're lucky. Also when you're cranking out arrows, potions or other consumables high skill craftsmen will be able to do it a bit more efficiently and anyone can decide to push their luck to try and save a few coin.