Crafting, learning from books

Ok going to try and keep this really simple. I would like to see, picking up recipes from books that you can find though out the game just in random places, or for sell. I did a search in forums for this and really couldn't tell if this has been put in here before, but this is what i would like to see.

 

Yes, I would prefer to find recs in places than to discover them using the current system.

 

Well as fun as it is to reinvent the wheel

 

This is an awesome idea Justice309731! It be an actual discovery to find a receipe! I would also add that you would physically have to find it in order to be able to craft it, not be able to create it by having someone tell you the receipe. This is the kind of discovery I like...Then receipes can be truly rare, Wiki'd.

 

Or at least a whole lot of fizzle sticks without a found in game recipe book to add to your recipe book. Sure we can know the ingredients but somehow it just doesn't turn out right most of the time.

 

In fact I just heard them say some place that some recepies will actually be found within books in game. The dev B was the one talking about it somewhere. look up B's posts, and you'll likely find it, because it wasn't more than a week ago.

I may be wrong. Not even IBM Watson can get them all right.

 

Why should you have to find a game object to use knowledge you might already know through other means? That makes no sense.

 

Last post B made was in late March. You didn't hear it from him on the forum within a week. You may be thinking about this post that B replied to in January

https://shroudoftheavatar.com/forum...lity-with-knowledge-sharing.6650/#post-112618

but B only said they were great ideas.

 

Because from an in game point of view, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to throw stuff together based on what you read in an out of game wiki to "discover" it.

I get why you'd have out of game to in game conversion of recs. There's good reason to promote fan sites. It's good viral marketing. You could even imagine some marketing promotion where visiting a booth at PAX unlocks some secret rec. Or obviously, the cash shop. But clearly these should be the minority of recs.

Many games have rare trainers or rare drops from epic PvE. You could imagine a PvP sieged castle giving rare recs. I like the idea of training others or having ways to learn which make have some skill + RNG to them.

 

Could have sworn I heard that some place. Oh well the faulty human mind. Always have a source I guess. However, I use the IBM Watson concept... try to be right about 80% of the time or more... Winning

However to answer your question about "Why should you have to find a game object to use knowledge you might already know through other means?"...

Maybe there are some special recipes that require you to earn it by some other means than trial and error. Say you have to do a quest to get a book and until you read the book you cannot make the item.

Also even if the book contains recipes that you can copy from a wiki, reading the book could automatically fill your recipe log without having to craft it first.

 

The game cannot and should not try to determine where a character (or the player) gets their knowledge. If YOU don't want to learn from a wiki.. then don't read the wiki.

Here's a big problem I have with this concept. Let's say I'm a master crafter and I've "earned" my knowledge strictly in-game. I discover a recipe and low and behold I decide to write it down in a book. Or I decide to take on an apprentice in-game. Why can I not pass on my knowledge through legitimate means? As requiring one to randomly find an game object to learn would prohibit me from doing. Likewise it would prohibit other crafters from learning from alternate.. but otherwise also legitimate means.

If you want to have rarity of crafting recipes, the means to achieve this isn't by artificial restrictions. It's by allowing variations in recipes but even then that relies on people keeping the knowledge to themselves.

Let me use an old cooking idea as an example (which is on the brain since Richard is working on food design now).

All pies are defined by being made a certain way. You have a pie crust and you have filling. (similarly weapons and armor can be said to be defined by their construction as to what they are). So you have a basic pie recipe. Crust + filling = pie. What kind of pie? What kind of filling? Well let's say you have a recipe for fruit pie filling. Fruit + tool + sugar. What kind of fruit? Take your pick!

Well here's where it gets a little more interesting. What I refer to "inactive" or passive ingredients. Things like seasonings you might add to the filling with a variety of results. They don't change the base recipe but rather act as modifiers of the end result.

Now you throw all that together.. say you have 20 seasonings and 20 types of fruit. No wiki is going to list every possible pie recipe. Despite the fact that there really is only 1 base recipe to work from. And that's just fruit pies. What about meat pies? You get the idea.

Now I know for a fact that the current crafting is as it is.. or with small tweaks is more than capable of this level of flexibility. We have yet to see just how far they'll take it though.

 

Who said anything about you not being able to still do the same thing there is now? I thought it would be fun to have a side thing to have to discover cuss I like to explore by all means keep the same, "here's my wiki cheat sheet" that I for one will never use, but that's just me! Whats with the Pies, by all means take shots in the dark to get it right, but it don't hurt to have something defined!

 

That concept started here.

Having to have a physical object/recipe in your possession in order to craft something. Which was later reinforced by PrimeRib's comments regarding people using wikis after I asked why you have to find a physical recipe in order to craft.

That would negate other means of passing on knowledge between players.

 

I agree with that. We should be able to use wikis, and pass on knowledge to our apprentices etc. However, certain enchantments might be magical by nature, and also require a type of revelation to comprehend it. Every game has it's way of handling magic. D&D for instance required magic-users to memorize spells from their spell book each night, and once the spell is cast, the spell is removed from memory.

Using that as an example, say there is a certain item "enhancement" that requires the crafter to do more than just learn a recipe. (although the ingrediance and crafting process may be the same, but for the sake of lore the crafter must find a tome of knowledge (or whatever) to expand his/her mind. In such a case that special enchantment might require aquiring some book, or performing a special ritual before gaining the "revelation" of how to properly craft an item with this enchantment.

So there may in fact be a perfectly reasonable reason for a few special enchantments to be acquired this way. So just because it isn't the norm doesn't mean we need to throw the entire idea out the window. There could still be applications where this method is useful.

EDIT: Also "revelation" is something that cannot be taught to apprentices. Something that is gaind through revelation may be shared, but the spiritual person must also perceive the revelation to truly get it.

 

If people are smart they won't tell people about the hard to find secret recipes.

A master craftsman's secret can earn him quite a bit of gold.

 

Even if they don't use "revelation" type stuff in crafting, it is something cool to keep on the back burner for something, somewhere. I guess.

 

The recipe itself is useless without:
- the tools to make them
- the ingredients to make (or enhance) them
- the skill to make them

So there are already physical items required to craft any and all recipes. It's the rarity of those items that will play a factor into who can craft them, even if you stole the recipe from a master craftsman. And because recipes are a recursive feedback loop, you could have to learn many recipes and craft or obtain other multiple rare items, using many rare ingredients.

I see no problem with someone learning recipes in-game via other books, learning it from other players directly (via some teaching/training system), or even learning it out of game (although it's not officially in your recipe book yet). They still need those physical items to make the recipe.

 

Unfortunately, there are too many people out there who can't keep things to themselves.. or they want to be known as the one who discovered some recipe.. or it's their wiki and they want the information posted etc.

I just don't think there's a good way to enforce players keeping crafting secrets to themselves. I am tempted though to plug some very early crafting ideas (most certainly very expensive ideas) that would ensure a certain level of uniqueness to a lot of crafted items. The basic concept was being able to morph base ingredients in a limited fashion (such as a sword blade or guard).

One of the challenges we face in coming up with ideas is that we simply don't know to what extent Portalarium will take crafting in terms of customizing or augmenting craftables. Another challenge I'm seeing here is the temptation to lean towards an item centric system. Just how much can we do with our weapons? What super secret recipe is there to make that uber dragon slayer sword?

Well if we're in a classless, non-level based system then what makes anyone think we'll be able to craft the ever more powerful items? It's got to stop somewhere right? There's not supposed to be exponential power gains here so how many different secret/rare recipes do we really need?

I think we all (including myself) have a tendency to think we want certain things out of crafting that may simply not be viable. What exactly is the driving design goal here? Is it allowing the crafting of rare items within a very large, community of crafters? Is it allowing a crafter to keep their crafting secrets (again within a very large community). Just some way for crafters to set themselves apart? All very difficult tasks. I don't think there's an easy solution.

I do however think there may be other ways for people to set themselves apart that I'm currently mulling over. I'm not sure how good my thought processes is on it just yet but I think I may have a few good ideas brewing. Good enough to post? Still debating.

 

Thank you, just cuss you may us out of game stuff to find out how to do something, don't mean nothing in game! All I wanted was a way to pop the recipe's into your recipe book before you do something.

 

My point was that it would be nice to be able to find recipes that could NOT be looked up on wiki and would be found knowledge in game. This would make crafting have rewards like I've never experienced.

As a traveler/crafter I really enjoy finding things that are unique like recipes. You could easily make the found recipe for someone but hence couldn't teach that particular recipe. Kind of experienced knowledge rather than looked up knowledge