crafting - please make it more interactive

as this is a sandbox game, there are going to be people who are just consummate crafters who will focus on this, or leave the game if it isn't fun. in my guild, i personally know 12 that are like this, as well as a few of my very good personal friends, too. describing the current system has caused them to not even wish to pledge yet.

every one of them want minigames, not just a click click done interface. something that actually involves skill (and not just a skills system, but thats part of it.) so they can have a sense of accomlpishment, other than just getting the item and moving forward.

please, for the longevity of the crafting system, do something to incorporate that.

 

Well the current crafting system are more or less a place holder and hardly no develop times have been spent on it. I'm in a guild of 300 players and I know at least 10% of those will be pure crafters (as soon as they have completed the main story at least) and most of them are pretty disappointed of the lack of development.

But minigames? No! Its all about the character, how good I'm behind the screen should not factor in how the characters results are. Add to that the huge lag problems there is so for some there would be impossible to have any kind of game that have to do with timing and I think that is what you are looking for.

 

I completely agree ThurisazSheol. I love crafting. It is what I will do most in the game.

I believe the crafting system is not complete. We do not yet have events, quality, quantity, enhancing etc. I would hope and guess that events will create the need to interact with our crafting. This is the feature I am most looking forward to. As it stands now, clicking the recipe in the book and clicking craft is pretty dull. I played Vanguard...in that game you had an operation for each part of your crafting and a set amount of points to spend sparingly in order to get enough quality to make a good final product. Events could happen to hurt your progress and require you to spend time fixing a fire, a spill or an injury...And lets not forget about crafting gear you could wear! I love these things. But I guess it's not for everyone...

I'm hoping for a rich crafting system...A rich fishing system too!

 

having a "timing" system as you called it, Morkul, is a very rudimentary way of creating a minigame. - i'm not talking about that. i'm talking about threading the needle, actually using the loom, chopping the celery, tap tap hitting the anvil and dunking it just right, pulling a flask off JUST before it boils, all based on the visual queues. - now, that shoudln't make just one though. it should make a small batch instead.. the more detailed, the more advanced, the more...well..everything... the recipe is, the more risk there is in making it - and the more reward too.

while cooking for 60+ people in the real world, if something happens and something isn't done juuuust so...that entire entree could be ruined if you can't compensate for that screwup fast or well enough.

one thing i liked personally: eq2 crafting. while rudimentary, they were still fun. there's so much more you can do with technology these days, why not bring the devil of the details back into a rich and immersive crafting engine?

i WANT to be able to slow cook, or take my time brewing something, and make it VERY well. i WANT to be able to put some finishing touches on every weapon i make, and make it my...master craftsmans mark. i DO NOT want to click click click CRAFT six times and make a guillotine. that is just not cool.

 

I love me some in depth crafting. Have high hopes here just from watching the billion hours of dev chat video.

 

Thing is that threading a needle are "timing" from a computer point of view. If I have the eye if the needle that I'm trying to hit with a thread and the location of my thread are not in the same coordinates on my screen as they are on the server we have a timing issue due to lag. Same thing you can say about everything you mentioned above. So I do not actually mean a clock! When devs can do is to make the game completely client sided but then you have open up for scripts instead that so that is not a solution.

But the big thing is still why should my character become better at something just because the player can properly time thing with their mouse?

I see no problems what so ever to have a option to make things faster than normal with increased risk of poor craftsmanship (inferior items) or make things more slow to and get a increased chance of good craftsmanship (good quality item). But in the end it must be my characters skill that are of importance not my mousemandship.

 

It could be a quicktime event! If you lose then you destroy the material, if you win then you craft something. It could be best played with a controller

 

heard of mad bad sad files with sierra? essentially, encrypted files to deter file editing by the player. there are also ways to lock down the memory blocks in RAM from being hijacked via a "trainer" type app too, but no need to get into that here.
the computation on the workstations could be made for the 'timing' of threading the needle, then pushed to the server. the files that hold the settings and results etc could be encrypted (hopefully md5), client side.


as far as using toon skill as opposed to player skill - i think it should be a combination of the two, with emphasis on toon skill..and this is coming from a person with very advanced cubital tunnel in their mouse hand, who can't even hold a cup of coffee, and has a very hard time hitting specific keys on the keyboard when typing.

of course there would have to be a fudge-factor implemented too, giving a 'buffer zone' where you aren't exactly in the eye of the needle but close enough, as an example, for those of us who have medical issues but just can't not craft by nature. *chuckle*

 

None of those measures never work because there is always workaround most scripting never touch the RAM or any encrypted files... If you want to do it the hard way you just hijack the IP traffic and since the game have no control over the computers network you can easily make your own driver and the game can't do anything about it. The easy way is how ever so simply script the mouse depending on what happens on the screen and again this is inserted at driver level so there is nothing the game can do about it. Well to be fair there is ways to make driver insert harder, but not impossible, under Windows but no way to prevent it for Linux users.

For a system with mini games to work there must be a skill that determine how easy the players can thread the needle. Let's say the higher your skill the steadier your hand is and the less the needle moves and therefore easier to hit. Without a skill like that you would completely remove the roleplaying aspect of crafting but there is still problem with this approach. Those with good computers, low latency screens and a good ping will need less in the skill to make the same job. Another problem is that once you are able to thread the needle with a certain probability you will stop develop the skill in question because you get enough "hits" any way and while those with not so good computer system, screen and internet connection must put more into the skill. Worth to note that the screen, and computer system latency are still in question even if you are running the game locally.

This is after all a roleplaying game not a sim, skills of the character must matter and also be the thing that limits the actions of the player. I think there is other ways to increase the immersion for crafters (the type of game you are talking about will break the immersion for me) an example would be to make small alteration in the recipe depending on the ingredients quality, if you get the right mix you get a small benefit on your skill roll. How ever nothing lost if you simply click okay.

 

I agree that Crafting is pretty simplistic and rudimentary currently, but it's barely been implemented. You lay out the ingredients or double-click and poof you have an item. That will certainly change. Your chance of success will be based on a lot of factors, not just the not yet in the game skill tree. And even if you do make something, the quality can be quite poor if it's the first time you've ever made one.

The idea of mini-games sounds interesting, depending on how they're implemented, but overall, I don't think that would appeal to me. Like others, I'm looking forward to Crafting, but I'm not sure I'm on board with the chance factors you're describing. I much prefer the idea that you have to make a certain number of items to get better at making them or XP for making certain items or other "minor" influence on the outcome, but I don't want crafting to be a game unto itself. Should I be able to make Chainmail when I haven't even made Leather Armor? No, there should be progression. But threading a needle or lining something up physically with the mouse would feel distressing to me.

You have an interesting idea, just not sure how that can be implemented and still made entertaining.

 

Not exactly. You would add skill points to your "threading" skill and over time, the more points == more steady needle and/or more steady hands and/or quicker to push thread, or reflect that skill in a "virtual" needle-eye getting larger, thus easier to thread...etc...

You combine the skill of the player, with the skill of the player character, allowing EVERYONE, regardless of skill level a CHANCE to be able to do something.

Just like real life.

That also doesn't mean that the quality (controlled by player character's skill) would be good, even if you did say sew a textile or bake a loaf of bread. It could even be worse than if you had not wasted those resources to try.

But that attempt would also gain you "skill xp" for your player character as well (miniscule, but...)

As for how to stop people from "Macroing" it? Some you can, some you can't. Random window locations is a good start, but even then, all I gotta do is script something to keep moving the mouse left-right to "thread the needle". So STOP TRYING to do that at a ridiculous level, and make a FUN game.

 

anything created by man , can be circumvented by man. and it goes full circle, anything circumvented by man can be re-secured by man too. - this is and has always been an ongoing battle with computing no matter what specifics you look at. even driver insertion can be detected by the game itself, and anything done with the hacked drivers just doesn't register, or the player gets banned, or it forces you to redownload that section of the game as if it were a patch. or any combination of those. bottom line, someone is going to figure some way to hack the system, abuse it, and get banned, then countermeasures will be created, and someone else will then start the cycle all over again.

i don't see why allowing for player skill to come into play is a bad thing - it just shouldn't be the primary focus of the minigame - hence the fudge factor. especially with crafting which is supposed to be based on the skills you acquire and cultivate to your liking/needs. someone with worse hand-eye coordination, or nerve issues on their mouse hand (that woudl be me) woudl have to spend more points on the steadying skills. and i'm willing to do just that. i do not see it as being docked or screwed over in any way, i see it as yet another obstacle to overcome to be as awesome at it as i know i can be.

it reminds me of school back when i went and now when my son is going.. when i went, just about everything was a competition. if you were dum, or slow, or below average, you didn't get the prizes. you weren't being left out, you just didn't try hard enough. - nowadays everyone gets a price just for showing up. there is zero competition, and there is no need for kids to strive to learn and better themselves, their communities, and their countries anymore. - the real world is a competition of competitions. you lose you lose. you win you win. you don't win just for showing up...

i disagree that the character skill is all that matters. player skill MUST be a part of it, or there's no benefit to it at all, and certainly no sense of accomplishment once you do something.. i do NOT want player skill to have more weight to that equation, or even weight either. but it needs to be PART of the equation. i'm thinking, if i have to put a number on it, 35-40% of the equation, if it is only a question of player vs character skills.

here's why: how did the character obtain the skills in the first place? by the players skills of course. nothing is free. earn it.

your idea is good, it isn't a fix for all, but it would be a good addition to the system.




lastly, i'm curious about something. you said it would break immersion for you - because immersion is subjective to each individual player, i want to know DETAILS on how it will break it for you. for me, it enhances immersion when done right.

just whatever you do, port, do not put the combat deck into crafting!

 

But as I said before: That mean that some player will spend less skill points in "threading" because they get it right frequently enough.

I will for one make a script ASAP if mini games becomes the reality, immersion is gone anyway and I do not see the FUN in them and why should players that do not like it be punished? On top of that I will save skill points in "threading" and use on something I actually think is FUN.

 

non issue - they chose to. they didn't have to. player choice, not dev requirement.

i don't see a problem with that. i won't make one, i won't use one. see we both win then. again, player choice.

 

I do not have time to comment on everything you wrote but I just have to comment two things.

No there is no way you can make the game detect what driver I'm using, yes you can get a version number but that is easy to fake. Circumvented and re-secured, yes BUT the one that will have the last word in that chain is the one that are in the possession of the hardware that the client are running on.

Then one can wonder if it's worth hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dev hours to even try to make something scripter unfriendly just to add simple mini games? Devs can do other things with that time that would have better impact on the game.

I have slots for 6 characters but think I only will by use 3 or 4 of them. For me it's all about the role playing, after all this is a role playing game. When even my character talk I think about what the character actually would say and not me as a player. I make sure every action are made are suitable for the role the character have in the world and not because I necessarily think it would be fun, if there is something fun I really need to check out I make sure I get a character online that will be suited for the occasion.

For me: The most important of all in role playing is that the skill of the character is determining how good the character are performing. If we start adding player input in crafting successes you will soon get it in every aspect of the game and it will no longer be a proper role playing game.

 

I feel that you made my point more clear =p

Some people are inherently good at some things. Why pay for things you are good at, natively? That system I mentioned allows for both, that is the point.

And it is also the point that if you feel the need to script something to game the actual game system, kudos.

So long as it does not infringe on me and does not diminish my fun, or my investment, again, kudos.

 

This all went above my head.. i just want crit chance to mastercraft at high crafting levels >.>

 

I dunno, I originally always wanted something like this bit but the more I think about it the more I think I would get tired of it very quickly. If you needed to playing Cooking Mamo for every Leather Strap that needs to be crafted... yeah I dunno.

 

yeah, agreed. thats why i said small batches of items, instead of a single item.

 

If mini games are introduced you need to play 8 of them to manufacture a simple short sword as recipes are today and that is not included if you are farming the ore your self. I think that even those really enthusiastic about mini games realizes that it would be quite boring to repeat same/similar mini game that many times just for a simple sword.

Then we have the question about how many gold you need to get for the sword to make it worth the job.