A crafter's gathering conundrum

Over the last couple of years I've waited patiently for crafting to get some love, and truth be told there have been major strides in the last few releases.

But .... wait for it .... here's the problem.
In order to make progress as a crafter you need to accumulate xp points - which isn't going to happen at the crafting table. Up until now, that meant going out and gathering ... especially mining. With the changes in R33 that's no longer really an option unless you take a group of mid to high level adventurers with you.
Geometrically progressive slime spawns in Crag level 2? Really? Our group spent a while dealing with an ever increasing number of slimes trying to get into the 3 mining areas on the lower part of level 2 until we were literally overrun and had to fall back to the relative sanity of level 3 with it's respawning ghosts and liches.
And while we're on the topic of respawning ... and this isn't limited to Hilt or Crag ... why do the beasties and baddies spawn at a far faster rate than the ore nodes? According to the patch notes, you limited the initial nodes but if you stayed in the mines they would spawn significantly faster. It's not happening.

I'll cite both Hilt and Crag as examples.

In Hilt, we cleared the ghosts and the slimes in the hidden silver mine, collected the nodes that were there and then waited for the respawn. The slimes spawned far faster than the nodes ... killing them, trapping them, nothing seemed to slow them down while the nodes were painfully slow to regenerate.
Moving down to the obsidean forge area, after an initial pass collecting nodes and clearing elementals, there was almost no node respawn while we reset the elementals several times.

In Crag, the 1st level ghosts, skeletons, and npcs were'nt a real problem, but they respawned far faster than the nodes in an of the 5 mining areas.
Level 2 I've covered ... the slimes are ridiculous and the nodes are limited and slow.
Level 3 the nodes weren't awful but you had to spend most of your time fighting the spawn.

Was is your intent to make solo mining impossible below adventure lvl 80? It seems like it. From what I've seen as of patch 478, the only way to mine successfully is in a group ... which limits the ore you can collect and the xp you can gain.

I'm just sayin'

 

Where do you think the balance should be, Silvanus?

I personally think that a solo miner should be able to mine, but should they be able to mine all of Etceter Crag Mines by themselves? I hope not. (even at level 80+!) If that happened we'll be over run with gold and silver, wouldn't we?

At the same time I understand that people want to play solo, and have an expectation of playing solo. But that doesn't mean that they should get to do it all solo. (i.e. be a one man crafting band)

I think the smart players will combine efforts to go out and mine together. It sounds like you're doing that. But there has to be a reasonable "take" from that adventure. Just standing around farming the nodes doesn't help the economy, it punishes it. I hope Portalarium is looking for ways to make one man mining bands much harder to achieve and it becomes a group effort the more you wish to mine.

For me I think the reasonable standard would be if you're mining for your own stuff (i.e. making an axe for yourself) you can do that solo. If you're mining for an entire guild or to sell 100's of stuff to strangers, that should require a group to gather. Right?

 

are you not getting producer XP from low tier harvest nodes? TBH this has never been a problem for me.

 

I would love to see scenes added that allows crafters to gather materials, without having to engage in any combat at all. It's bad enough that crafting is a gold sink (a crafter can't play doing their preferred activity and earn gold from the game the same way that combatants can). I think it's a shame that crafters also have to be proficient combatants.

It would be wonderful to see scenes that require crafting to get into. Specific recipes or quests could be given by NPCs that would allow crafters to do crafting to achieve some result that would allow them access to a scene that would provide resource nodes without having to engage in combat. As your crafting skill continues to increase, different scenes open up to you that give access to 'better' resources.

At any rate, gathering should be possible to do at all levels without having to engage in combat.

 

This entire concept cracks me up. I've played games where mining was going out and planting a harvester on the ground that would literally pull hundreds of thousands of ore and other raw materials (including harvesting) over a day or two. The game initially had decay in it and that was eventually scrapped. So here was a game with the ability to mine millions of units of ore and other raw materials while offline to create automated batches of near top of the line weapons and armor that sold for a relatively stable amount of credits throughout the life of the game (prices dropped after decay was removed), so instead of 600K-1.2M for a set of armor it was 100-300K (decrease demand reduce prices). Nope most armor didn't bind but with new and different armor needed based on ever changing your profession or wanting a different look demand remained consistent.

Yet it is argued here that without medium-high decay and resource scarcity our crafters will never succeed (COTOs are seeing to that). Many players have turned to the model of building their items themselves and the crafters are stuck (just like the other game) with tons of worthless items they can't sell for a profit. I would say that the goal of elitist crafting has been achieved and over time we will have far fewer crafters than we had hoped making the loot drop idea using crafted items nothing but a fantasy that will be tough to achieve.

It doesn't have to be this way and it shouldn't. Crafters should be able to sell their junk crafted items for a small profit to NPCs and the NPCs should be reselling to players ONLY crafted items or sending those items to the loot drop pile and destroying what is needed to ensure a healthy economy. At least in the other game there were junk resources that sold very cheaply because, again, it was easy to obtain tons of it...

 

I agree that mining was too easy in previous releases. The fact that almost anyone could spend the entire day in Crag on the top 2 levels at little or no risk made no sense ... but the devs have seemingly taken the same heavy handed approach to adjusting things they did with taming. At the very least they have to rebalance risk reward so once you fight you way past the initial spawn you're rewarded with a reasonable take not just endless battles.

In Hilt I've spent time playing hide and seek with the ghosts in R32, but now the slimes spawn as fast or faster than the nodes so solo mining isn't really an option.

I haven't been to the other mines this release, but listening to some of my guildmates on teamspeak as they deal with waves of kobolds and satyrs it seems the situation is very similar.

Given the high level or ore required for any of the alloys to make plate or chain, I really hope that some rebalancing ic in the cards in the VERY near future.

 

Fishing works well for this.

 

I don't know what balancing needs to be done. But I do know that I'm not able to buy anything, so I don't know why people need to be selling things.

I see a lot of crafters making things for the sake of making them. I don't see where the demand is requiring them to make things. Do you see my point?

A miner should go to the mine to get ore because people want to buy it. A miner shouldn't go to the mine to get ore just because they want to, or just because they're a miner. There should always be a reason for why all this is happening.

Right now I can't really afford to buy gold ingots, so I'm not wasting all my time saving up tons of money to buy gold ingots. If I had the ingots I would raise my skill level up for enchanting, but since I don't have them, I'll just find something else to do that's more profitable (like killing things). Meanwhile the price of gold ingots continue to go down. What used to be 1500 an ingot is now more like 975. In a week it will probably be 900. A month from now it could be 750, who knows. But there's more to this game than just endlessly crafting or mining or fighting.

In a closed economy like WOW, where the players don't really matter as much as the loot drops, supply and demand is controlled by the developers adjusting the loot drop dial. In Shroud of the Avatar we have some of that still (unfortunately) but really it's about players grinding. The devs are making it hard for a reason, a good reason, we have a low population and we have guilds farming that stuff day and night. Want it to be easier? How about you guys (I mean the general population) stop farming the hell out of anything not bolted down to the ground?

 

I don't understand why people are so hung up on this idea that mining has to be 'dangerous'.

Why does it?

Why can't a player just be a gatherer/producer?

If you want to spend 8 hours fighting and selling loot for gold, vs. you want to spend 8 hours mining ore, what difference does it make? If anything I'd say that the piles of gold entering the economy are more worrisome than the piles of ore, considering the hundreds of ores it takes to make anything, the additional hundreds of ore it takes to enchant/masterwork things to a nice level and the punitive breakage rate of items on top of it all. Let's not forget the tens of thousands you'll spend in fuel costs refining everything on top of that. You can't make a profit at it, so you already have to fight just to finance crafting. I see no needs to add fighting as a requirement to get ore.

If a player wants to spend their time mining, why is this a problem?

If the ore is too easy to get? Everyone will get it, price goes down. If price gets too low for people to bother, less people will do it, or maybe crafters could actually afford to buy some of that ore. I though that was the whole reason to have a player economy so we'd have these fluctuations with regard to what is a more beneficial use of your time.

At the moment, this is a fighting game with some extremely frustrating crafting on the side to get yourself some nice gear. That you can then repair forever for real cash.
I'd personally prefer to see a game where you could choose your own path - be a gatherer, be a crafter, run a business, whatever. At the moment, its 95% fighting.

 

I don't think I see your point. People choose to play games for enjoyment. They're incentivized only by activities which lead to more enjoyment over time. If people enjoy making things, then demand is irrelevant, as they aren't incentivized to match their supply to some external demand. People will always maximize their own selfish interests, which in a game like this, is going to be enjoyment over time.

I'm playing this game for enjoyment. I enjoy mining. I don't enjoy combat. I go to the mine to get ore because I want to, as the result of that is time spent doing something I enjoy. Sadly, the game design currently penalizes people like me, which is people who play for the enjoyment of the activities involved in-and-around crafting.

 

The beauty of this game is that people can play how they want for whatever reason. That is not to say that the profitability of all play styles is the same, nor should it be.

I have never made a single item that was not intended to sell to a player, and never sold any crafted items to a vendor. The whole point for me is getting my goods into player's virtual lives. It is a little like a job, but its rewarding when I login and see the items sold, knowing that they will be used for some time by other players.

 

I'd shamelessly quote your entire post, as every developer should read it every single morning until the crafting system is made enjoyable. /cc @DarkStarr

Crafting should not mandate combat. Also, there's no reason why someone spending all of their time doing crafting activities shouldn't be able to make a little gold by selling to NPCs. At the very least, they shouldn't be losing gold they way they are today.

Very early on Garriott made a promise that the dedicated crafter would be a viable playstyle. I suspect this promise is going to be broken (but would love to be proven wrong). If a combatant can make a few hundred gold per day, then I don't see why a crafter shouldn't be able to earn the same amount in the same amount of time by playing the activities they most enjoy.

 

Yes, if it's not fun then it's not fun. I get that. But if it's just a bunch of button pushing for unlimited wealth and resources then how much fun will that be over a long period of time.

Crafting should be enjoyable without combat, I agree. But you do realize that if you're JUST crafting all day (sitting at a crafting table pushing the submit button) then that's not much of a game right? Even if you're just going out and gathering resources and then sitting at the table, it's not much of a game. If that's the only challenge level you're looking for, I just don't see how this game can support that AND have a viable player driven economy. This isn't supposed to be a second job where you just spend all your time mining ore and then making as many items as you possibly can. It can't be that simple, even if that's what you enjoy, because it's going to ruin the economy. You're going to have to do MORE to get that ore than just go to a location and double click a node.

 

Nor should it be a second job where you spend all day grinding trivial mobs for junk loot to vendor for endless amounts of gold to afford to do absolutely anything else....
And yes, I know you can do the 'business management' thing and 'watch the market' and all of that, but not everyone wants to do the economic sim routine, either, just to be able to do the bits they enjoy.

Gathering, Fighting, and Crafting should all be profitable / enjoyable in their own way.
At the moment everything revolves around your combat capabilities.

 

Common ground is a great thing to find .

Is there really any difference between pushing the "craft" button and pushing the "<some combat skill>" button/glyph. This game is played on a computer it's all about pushing buttons. What people tend to get out of it depends on what they themselves put into it. Don't project your own bias and preferences onto other people, different people will put different things into the game and get different things out of the game.

Although, I would like to see activities around crafting get more complex. I'd love to see a lot of quests built around crafting (maybe getting that poor Owl's Head guard some new armor). I'd also like to see crafting mechanics get more complex too. I.e., instead of just waiting for the progress bar to complete, you'd actually have to respond to events during the crafting process (not as real-time as combat, but something similar). (maybe this is what you mean by 'challenge' below).

I'm not sure what 'challenge' means in this context, or what it's got to do with this thread.

If you want an economy to work then you have to find a way to incentivize people. But, this is a game, people are only incentivized by things they enjoy. All I'm looking for is more enjoyment. At the moment, I cannot enjoy crafting as it requires a lot of gathered resources, which requires a lot of (not-enjoyable) combat and it requires a lot of gold, which requires a lot of (not-enjoyable) combat. I want to be incentivized to do more crafting, and less combat.

As far as the economny goes... if it's in influx of gold that you are worried about, no problem, I don't care about gold. I just care about enjoyment. Although, today, I need a lot of gold to do any amount of crafting.

How does "just" double-clicking a node to get ore ruin the game, but spamming glyphs on a mob to get gold doesn't ruin the game?

 

Well stated, @kaeshiva and I agree completely.

Forcing everyone to be a fighter in order to be a gatherer/crafter is and will continue to be a turnoff for a significant portion of our population. A better balance is needed between what is required to harvest nodes (fighting skills) and having resources that are too easy and too cheap. Right now it's weighted a bit too far towards the fighting required for decent harvest returns.

We all want a thriving, balanced economy - but more than that, we want to have fun.

Yup, I agree @Gravidy

 

The nodes spawn lightning fast after a while, but not if in a party. You have to go mining alone.

 

I do both combat and craft, and in my experience, yes, crafting is far far easier in terms of button pushing skill compared to combat. I've never once had an iron node murder me.
Also, consider that economies require disparity; some things need to be rare in order to have value. If everyone has everything with no effort then there is no reason to do anything. So, unlimited gathering and unfettered crafting skills leveling leads to everyone having access to crafting max level equipment in a short period of time.

However, your idea of crafters being able to level skills through quests is awesome. Like, producers getting quests with mats to make 10 pieces of something at a time/per quest to slowly level up their skills without combat would be great (just limit the per quest mat allocation so that it can't be exploited; as in you can only get mats for the next 10 things if you turned in your first 10 things).

 

From what I gather, no pun intended, the op issue on this thread is about gaining xp. That being said I will chime in on the tangent. Every player is afforded the opportunity to gather without combat. Fishing, owls head mine( after you sprint through the spiders) and random encounters are a few examples.
So what I am hearing is that people want to enter a zone full of unprotected nodes. And I am guessing you all will want to do this in single player online so you don't have to compete with other avatars but will still be part of the player economy. Further more I am guessing that you will want those nodes to have the chance to drop rare materials. Is that what you want or am I misaken? Hmmmmm I wonder what would happen

 

That's the issue as I see it. It's too expensive to buy from adventurers and I spend more time fighting off mobs then actually crafting. Respawn of mobs is way too high even when I can clear an area. Crafting is way subordinate to adventuring and that's just not right.