Attempted crafting with an open mind, results here

Hi,

Although I have commented in a couple other threads about my very bad first impressions of the crafting system, I decided to provide hopefully some more complete and constructive feedback here.

I just logged in again for a bit to specifically try and look past my initial impressions of crafting and really play with it. I looked at the molds in the chest and picked out a mace head mold and decided I would attempt to 'discover' how to build a mace using everything provided in the Owl's Head crafting area. I had the wiki recipes bookmarked but decided I would only use it as a last resort, and only to get past one step and not just to rush to the end product. I wanted to give a fair go at making the system work for me within the game. The process (and thought process) went as follows:

- A mace is pretty simple, a mace head, and some sort of wooden handle should be what i need to gather.
- Lets start with the mace head. Open up smelter, put on smelting tongs. Ok, i'll probably need to use a bit more iron than smaller items, since a mace is a pretty big chunk of metal.
- Decided on 10 as the upper limit, and tried combinations of ore and coal up to 10 each with the tongs and mold. Nothing. Ok, that was annoying and my hand hurts from dragging already, obviously I cant just melt the metal into this mold, though I don't understand why not... isnt that the purpose of the mold? moving on..
- Look in the chest, ah, ingot mold! I suppose i'll make ingots and then turn that into the mace head, that makes a little more sense, that is how UO worked.
- Make 10 ingots (lots more annoying dragging, why cant I melt stacks of ore into stacks of ingots again?), using that as my upper limit again, a basic mace head shouldn't be more than 10.
-Back to the smelting table, try all the combinations of coal and ingots with the mace head mold, up to 10 of each. Still nothing.
-Well, i'm frustrated already and confused about why I cant do something as simple as melt ore or ingots into a basic mold. Better go check the wiki. Oh, I need bars of iron and not ingots? really? ok...
- Pull out the bar mold, try combinations of coal and ore until I get the right amount for bars. I make enough for the mace head since I already saw the number on the wiki and didn't feel like trying yet another huge range of combinations.
I use the bars to make the mace head.

-Ok, now i'm sure i'll need some sort of wooden handle for the mace, since there is no metal handle mold.
-Mill some logs into timbers and boards.
- Double check that I can't just use the boards with the mace head, nope, didn't think so, off to the carpentry table!
- Grab all the tools that look woodworking'ish from the chest. Open the carpentry table, and proceed to try every combination of tools + boards then every combination of tools + timbers, using 1, 2, and 3 boards and timbers (even though I thought it would be ridiculous to need 3 boards for one handle.) Nothing. Well, that's annoying. I'm totally stumped and don't see anything in the chests that would make any sense to combine with boards or timbers to make a handle.
- Off to the wiki! Oh, I can't just make a wooden handle, I need to make a wooden pole first. Ok, but having already tried all the combos on the carpentry table and come up with nothing, that means..*checks wiki* off to the milling table.
- Play around with combinations and quickly find that the rasp and a board gives me a wooden pole.
- My first instinct would have been to attempt to use the wooden pole at the smiths table with the mace head to try and build the mace, but since I saw already on the wiki that the pole makes a handle, I skipped that step and went to the carpentry table.
-Quickly figure out that rasp+pole makes handle (wouldn't have thought that a tool could be used on multiple tables, that's good to know, because it increases the already huge number of possible combinations even more)

Finally get back to the smith table to combine the handle and mace head to get my mace. It took me a good 25-30 minutes, and I now have exactly 1 finished mace to show for my time and effort.

In conclusion: There was NOTHING FUN about this process past the first 5 minutes of experimenting. It was frustrating, tedious, non-intuitive, and to top it all off, 90% of my 'discovery' process was me checking the wiki in frustration. This was with the mindset of doing my best to figure it out on my own, as a new player, using my experience in crafting from other games like UO. And further, this was for a basic item. I cant even imagine going through this all over again with something more complicated. I feel very bad for any new player that has no experience in crafting in UO who tries to pick up crafting in this game.

Now because I don't like to criticize without offering some suggestions, here are some of my thoughts (using primarily smithing and smelting as my examples because that's my interest):

There absolutely needs to be the ability to use stacks of items. If I want to smelt all my ore down into ingots or bars I should be able to put a stack of 20 on the table, with the mold and tool, and just keep clicking craft. Or even better, if I have a stack of ore on the smelting table with an ingot mold and tool, and I already know the recipe for ingots, I should have a Craft All option that just does the whole stack.

If I have ingredients on the table that would fit multiple recipes that I know, give me a popup or menu option of some sort that asks me which of my known recipes I would like to craft. I could check off the one I want, and then either hit craft to make one item, or hit craft all to make the max amount with the resources I have stacked. There is simply no reason to have to continue to use exact numbers of ingredients and craft items one at a time when I know a recipe.

How would the above suggestion fit in with the 'discovery' and 'experiment' aspect of crafting if you could just put stacks of items? Simple, if you want to experiment and try to discover new recipes, you try different combinations of items, and you still need the exact amount of the right ingredients to discover something new. If you play around with ingredients and tools and find one that lights up the craft button, then great! You discover whatever new recipe you just made, it gets jotted down in your book, and is now something that you can craft all or choose to craft when you have stacks of ingredients on the table, as per the above suggestion. Putting stacks of items onto the craft table will not get you any new recipes, but it will make the ones you do know a lot easier to deal with, especially when you need to make lots of items. So the discovery and experimenting process is still there, but its something you as a crafter will CHOOSE to spend time on, with the reward being that once you discover something, it is easy and intuitive to make that item from there on.

As far as making the initial basic items less confusing and frustrating to discover in the first place, I think one thing that needs to be done is to make a certain amount of start recipes already known by anyone (or perhaps anyone who takes the first point in the applicable craft skill). Not all recipes need to be spoon fed to the player, but a select few basic recipes for each craft should be given with the following goals in mind.

• Gives a new player a starting point of reference, i.e. one or two basic components which they can then start playing with to make complete items.
• Gives a new player an idea of what sort of recipes they should even be looking for. The recipes that you start with should be indicative of the type of process you should expect for a lot of the other recipes in that craft. For example if you start knowing how to make a wooden handle, you can see the idea that even a simple item like a handle requires more basic components like a pole, and so that is something you can keep in mind when trying to discover new recipes, the idea that even a basic item might be able to be broken down into simpler components. It gives you an idea of what kind of crafting process to expect and attempt.
• Gives new players an idea of what the tools are used for. In particular a few starter recipes should show the general types of items that tools are used for and also the fact that a tool could be used on multiple tables.
• A new player should be able to look at a couple of starter recipes and use some creative thinking to figure out how to make similar items. If you start with the recipe for a basic dagger, you can see the process used to make it, the basic components and the process used to make those, and you can then apply that process towards discovering a sword recipe. You are not being spoon-fed everything, but at least you have a point of reference to start off with.

Thanks for reading, I love crafting and really hope this system can be made to work. I like the ideals behind it and I think just a few tweaks to the implementation could make it truly great.

 

I had a similar experience at start.
I think many of your concerns will be fixed for R3

 

I saw those comments, I just worry that they will only put in npc instructions like "you need exact amounts of materials to make an item" or things like that, without actually addressing the other points I (and many others) bring up.

Let's face it, we need a lot more than just more "in game instructions for crafting", and that is all that they have really committed to so far.

 

In my short time of crafting in this release:
(just the examples in the email they sent out - after a bit of fruitless experimenting before that and then after as well - I actually thought I could make something/anything without looking it up in the email or here/wiki.. but nope..)
I felt a spontaneous urge to consolidate some crafting tables - there are too many..

And having to drag the tool onto the table.. I didn't like that step, it should be enough to have it in my inventory, for ease of gameplay.

I wasn't fond of having to use the exact amounts of stuff to make a discovery either, I think Guild Wars 2 solved discovery better in this modern age
In my opinion, just slapping down stacks of the right material combinations should be enough to be able to make a discovery, and that could mean if you use the same combination again it could lead to another discovery.

 

I can see some basic recipes being given / purchased as a start. However, one of the point of crafting specialization is the capability of discrimination of skills and production.

While I am certain that many recipes will be available and found in the game world (merchants, drops, books, etc) there has to be some mystery, especially for the harder recipes not only in the crafting difficulty, but in the difficulty of discovering. Just because Wikis are going to be written and allow some to take the easy road does not mean that the game should give it all away, or make it easy to discover the rare stuff.

One of the goal of the game is to return to roots, and part of that goal is to promote experimentation and specialization. To have everyone become top "crafter' in all crafts will in the end just cheapen and diminish the impact of diversification of skills, and by extension diminish the game.

<edit> And in the end, crafting should be something for folks that really try and persevere at learning the crafts.

 

My experience was similar to AdamZax, except I didn't have his level of patience and consulted the wikis earlier. Based on the current interface, I won't be doing much crafting. This significantly weakens the case for needing a house: no crafting means I won't need the advantage of an untaxed vendor.

I echo the suggestions about mass crafting. Please don't force me to select the number of items once I know a recipe. Just drag iron, coal, smelting tongs, and appropriate mold then make the items in a desired quantity (up to the limiting number amount of iron or coal in my possession).

Suggestions not previously mentioned, and beyond the scope of R2.

1. Make recipes teachable between players. Consider having the learning player have a threshold level of skill to learn. Alternately, the recipe can be learned without minimum skill, but high likelihood of failure/error when using recipe. The player should be given an indication of what items are beyond his skill to make.
2. Have NPC's provide training and rare recipes that cannot be acquired by experimentation. Powerful recipes can be quest objectives.
3. Discovery should be a function of skill. I understand that for R2, skill is not a factor. However 1 point in carpentry should probably not allow me to make a podium, wardrobe, plate armor, or any advanced result. Discovery success should be the calculated based on the likelihood that the character can make the item if that character already knew the recipe + a penalty for not already knowing the recipe.

 

Perhaps you should be able to see somehow which materials and tools can be used in each working station. They could add visual hints actually into the tables, but you'd still have bring your own tools or there could be "public manuals" on the stations... "READ THESE BEFORE CRAFTING.... BRING YOUR OWN HAMMER"

Today I was crafting stuff pretty fast, when I knew what I was doing. I have to say I enjoyed it much more than at the first time when it felt so mysterious. It took me probably 30 secs to make 4 ingots and turn them into something with a mold+ turn that into a weapon was pretty fast too, even with wooden handles... It was pretty much mass production! I made a set of handles for example, and a set of 2-handed mace heads and went on to make 4-5 at the same time. I was probably 10 times faster then the first time

 

I'm also in UO where crafting got easier and easier over time from simple use of tools and ingredients in your pack made one at a time ... to a huge pop-up menu that appears when you d-click your tinker's tool; the menu includes a list of all possible items along with what ingredients, sub-components, etc are needed. So I think the two extremes of the crafting methodology are

1) UO model: the "full menu, large scale production" method that UO uses, and
2) SotA model: the "discovery, single item" method that SotA currently uses.

I'm a bit more for the discovery side personally. Being a real-world crafter/carpenter of sorts, I have to learn the tools and what they can do. I also have to learn the materials. Perhaps in SotA, there could be good training or descriptions of what the tools do, e.g., what a rasp does, which takes out large amounts of wood at a time usually in rough cuts. To make a pole, it makes sense to use a rasp. To make a handle, one could make it directly from a board with a rasp, but it seems a pole is an intermediate piece of wood that can be "finished" into several other items. Yet I know what people would say... I didn't join SotA to learn the intricacies of carpentry or blacksmithing.

The UO model makes crafting simple, yet does not require much thought or education about the materials or tools.

The SotA model makes crafting harder, yet does not allow for quick production of even simple items without trial and thought. Yes... I tried crafting too and the discovery was hard. But once I discovered a few recipes, and sort of learned how to use the molds, it got a little easier. I hope the Devs don't make the recipes too hard or weird, like needing bark to make string - http://www.wikihow.com/Make-String-from-Natural-Sources

I would like to see the SotA model tested more and adapted as needed. I would like to see crafting be hard enough that not everyone wants to do it. It should be a trade.

 

I absolutely agree that a sense of discovery should remain for finding new recipes. I think that giving a few starter recipes, and doing it in a way that follows my goals listed at the end of my original post removes the barrier to entry without removing the discovery and experimenting part of further recipes.


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I actually like the way crafting is currently setup. For starters, the way the crafting is set up currently I don't think macros could be used, as you need to drag items from inventory onto the crafting stations. With no macroers/scripters, the economy will not inflate as quickly. The fact that crafting is done at a slower pace, means that players will have to concentrate on a select few skills due to time restraints. If someone where to mine, smelt then blacksmith they really wouldn't be able to get much done. It would be better to let someone else mine the ore then the ore could be sold to a blacksmith whom then would smelt then be produced into an item. I have to admit trying to figure out what the recipes are, is not exactly the most thrilling fun thing to do. I was able to figure out around 30 recipes, before I cheated and looked at wiki. As others have mentioned, this I am sure will be revised over the coming months.

 

I like the way the crafting is set up currently too, although I would appreciate a way to make multiples of base resources. I enjoyed sitting down with a stack of things and trying to figure out what I could make. Most of the recipes weren't that hard once you learned the basics, like you always need a piece of coal on the smelting table. I hammered out what I think is all the smelting recipes in pretty short order after figuring that out. The hard part was simply making enough iron bars to keep up with the rate I was going.

 

As a full on crafter, I actually am really enjoying the lack of instruction when it comes to this. It gives us as crafters our own little world of discovery by not knowing exactly what items will make and that we'll have to learn through trial and error. I believe Violation said he had about 82-90 of the 100 or so recipes that were put into the game listed now on sotawiki.net which to me is incredible that people have been able to figure out the majority of them on their own in a matter of 3 days, but to know that come launch there will be recipes available that people might not figure out for months or even years.

Plus, think about it, this could also give crafting an edge. Say that 5 months after launch, you happen to stumble upon a recipe that no one has found before. You are now the only person who has the ability to make this item in the entire game and the only one who will be able to sell this object until someone else is able to reverse engineer the object which depending on how complex some of the recipes become and how many ingredients there are, could very well never happen. That is very exciting to me as a crafter/merchant even though I'd likely never figure it out myself.

 

I agree with most of what has been said. I think crafting is too tedious and not very intuitive. It seems a bit too hardcore and will turn off the casual crafter. Although I was able to craft a few items I quickly got fustrated and bored. Still some work to be done here IMHO.

 

I would have to agree with your post completely. If the system is made to easy then it becomes a secondary skill that anyone can do and devalues it. It should have difficulty and take time and patience to be a crafter. Just as it would be for other types like warrior and mage types. If its easy and everyone can do it, then it will devalue it and not make it a viable playstyle. The first couple years of UO had this, then it was simplified over time and devalued, next thing you know everyone had a crafter alt and it was no longer a viable play style. Of course Trammel release also played a big role as there was no longer any risk vs reward. I only played a crafter for the first 1.5 years of playing the game, I enjoyed it immensly, especially the community forge aspect.

I'd like to see makers mark on those who've mastered the skill like UO did though, but I'm sure those specific stats will be figured out over time.

 

I dont think that we really need a mass production system in game.
I believe that is enough to be able to click on the recipe and that the game puts the resources for that recipe on the table (if we have them), then we could add an additional ingredient if needed or only push the craft button.

 

Sorry Mystic, but I totally dis-agree with this philosophy. I admit experimenting is cool, and I'm glad your able to do it BUT. The knowledge should be in the game somewhere, either in a book or through a conversation your having with a Smith or Barkeep or Innkeeper, there should be bread crumbs for players to follow to discover the knowledge through adventure, not solely from stumbling across the right mix of ingredients or Goggling it (wikiing it), the game should provide these things, to me that would be fun, not stumbling across it. There will always be websites that spill all the beans and tell all the secrets.

If I were to be able to de-engineer an item so that all it's ingredients could be known, then that's another story. But to my knowledge there is no such skill planned for in the game, so as you say, some recipes will take years to stumble across and some my never be known, I think that's a pity. Why would anyone deliberately design a game like that?

I don't think a crafting pavilion is a great idea, I really expected a blacksmith shop, a tailoring shop, a butcher shop, a herb shop, and an alchemy shop, these things make sense to me, and I would be asking each grand-master for answers, I don't want any one GM to have all the answers, but they should have their part plus clues to where to get more.

Hopefully that's how all this will end up since this is only pre-alpha.

 

I think the ability to figure out components from an item should be a part of high level crafting skill, and not include everything. Because honestly once you spend that much time working up a crafting skill you can pretty much look at an item and picture at least some of the components, but giving you all the items needed to recreate something would kind of cheapen the discovery of finding that great recipe.

 

I think the discovery part is already cheapened by the blindness with which it happens. Slapping together raw materials and seeing what pops out gives me no sense of accomplishment or discovery. It's also so far off reality as to be somewhat immersion breaking. After all, in real life you don't just throw together some boards, nails, and glue, start hammering away and end up with a dining set.

Im not sure on any one overall solution, of course I think my suggestions above are a good start. I think the discovery and experimenting aspect could be kept through finding different styles or modifications to items rather than discovering the items themselves.

For example it doesnt make sense to me to throw some ingredients together and accidently discover i just crafted a sword, however if I am using my skills to craft a sword, and decide to experiment with some different or extra ingredients, maybe i will discover i can make a sword with a curved blade, or a different style of handguard, or some magical property, or whatever. That would be a much more fun use of the experiment and discover mechanics in my opinion.


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I was able to make an axe with no wiki access. within the first 30 minutes of experimenting. How? I looked at the recipes they provided to us in the R2 release notes, and they tell you how to make bars and ingots and blades, I took the same concept of the blade and used it to make the axe head, that was the easy part. It was easy to recognize from the few blacksmithing recipes that you only ever need 1 coal. The hardest part for me was making the handle, and the tough part with that was I made the handle and didn't see it, so I was trying all sorts of combinations and nothing was working anymore because the handle was on there. I saw it when I set something next to it and noticed it laying there.

They added the glowing stuff later.

In R3 I believe NPCs will help more.