Crafting and Upcoming specializations

This is the fundamental problem, and it is as you describe, twofold. 1: Everyone can make it 2: Nobody wants it. However we've got a bit of a unique situation here in that while everyone CAN make it, doing so is completely up to the whimsy of the system. So it could cost player A 10000 gold to make an item and player B 500,000 gold to make the same item. Yes, those are accurate examples of how the RNG currently works. This leads to a pricing nightmare, in that you can never hope to recoup costs particularly if trying to make something specific. Removal of the RNG would fix this problem and honestly, its pretty basic. Tying it to specialisation is a bit of a face slap, and unnecessary. There's no reason to have this RNG to begin with.

I'm not in favor of skill caps, because it just further encourages making alt accounts if you want to actually be able to make a finished (gear) product. And if specialization makes making gear outside your chosen category pointless, as it seems will be the case with the information we have, the skill cap becomes even less necessary since there'd be no reason whatsoever to invest in masterworks/enchants without the appropriate specialisation as well.

For some insight, the "only reason" I've levelled tailoring, for example, is because at my level in my more specialized trade, I need 40 million XP to see any improvement. For less than 5 million, I can grandmaster tailoring, tailoring masterwork, and both the cloth and leather specialities and add versatility to what I can do. Its a no brainer. This gives me additional versatility to help outfolks new players or if I decide I wanna play around with a cloth set. If I want NICE armor, I'm absolutely going to go next door to my friend Mresta's house who has cloth masterwork at obscene levels and collaborate. But I don't have to for the day to day. Specialization would essentially make me doing lesser stuff 'myself' a non-starter due to the extreme waste of materials.

If you actually saw tangible benefits for raising skills higher, specialization would occur organically on its own and you'd see people naturally gravitate to their preferred trades.

I'm a crafter because I want to be able to make my own stuff. I don't wanna have to spend hours running around checking vendors, or wait for people to be online/available/willing to sit and make stuff, we simply don't have the market tools or population to make this a non-frustrating endeavour. Adding more obstacles to getting stuff done will not improve the situation, I'm afraid. Especially when said obstacles will only be obstacles for people unwilling to simply make more accounts.

I look at it this way: I play my main character, I go mining/harvesting/killing/whatever, I get producer XP. I don't understand why there is perceived value on making me split my time over two characters to be able to actually craft a piece of gear, when the end result is going to be exactly the same. Its still me playing, still spending the same amount of time/money, except with the added 'log onto other account' step for certain parts of the process. This is nonsensical.

 

I would like the option to be able to craft gear for a adventure level range (adv level 0 <= 25), (adv level 25 <= 50), (adv level 50 <= 75), (adv level 75 <= 80), (adv level 80 <= 100) and so forth.
With stats increase based on for which level you are crafting. Making high level crafted gear more powerful then the lower crafted gear. Also based on which crafting skill levels you have, you can only produce for a specific level range. And introduce gear based on adventure level requirements.
This of course also will take more crafting items to produce a higher level item, and lower items for a lower level item.

 

@kaeshiva so you recognise one of the fundamental problems is that everyone can make everything but regardless of that think removing or making the ability for everyone to make everything harder a bad idea or even non-sensical?

 

Yes, because you wont actually be removing the ability for everyone to make everything. Even if you put a skill cap limit or a specialization hard limit, it is easy circumventable by those who wish to circumvent. I consider it a misguided effort in that regard, yes, if not an outright waste of effort. The imposed limits will just frustrate the non "hard-core" crafter making them even less able to complete.

Instead, I'd focus on how to bring resource consumption more into play. We're not going to get away from the desire for self-sufficiency, not in a game where solo play is so focal.
I think we need more things that crafters can make that people will want - there's a lot of opportunities in consumables, but the problem is that the recipes are poorly implemented.

For example, crafting a repair kit costs significantly more than buying one from an NPC. There is no reason to craft one, ever. Even if they didnt drop for free off mobs. If player-made repair kits were somehow better, or had a 'chance' to restore a point of max durability when utilised along with grandmaster repair skills, or something, then they'd be a highly desired commodity.
Other games employ other such kits, like weapon damage mod kits or armor reinforcement kits that consume resources and would be desired by everyone.
Food's another example - other than the 3 or 4 foods that everyone eats, the rest don't even compare. Making these better and more varied would create a market. the problem is food created by a level 20 cook is the same as a level 100 cook. Same deal with potions. The only potions really worth using require rarer creature drops and have short durations, or don't heal for enough to bother with. There's no market because the items don't add any benefit to gameplay, certainly not enough to subsidize the cost of using them.

The problem isn't that 'everyone can make it' so much as 'there's no reason for anyone to make it'. It usually boils down to simple mathematics. If the cost of using the consumable doesn't improve your performance sufficiently enough to recoup the cost of the consumable, don't use it. That's just economics 101. A simple example would be, lets say you make 5000 gold coins in an hour of fighting. You could spend 10,000 coins on a potion that 'doubles your gold gain' but what would be the point?

These are the issues that have plagued crafting since day 1, it lacks recipes that add clear benefit, or for those that do, the costs are all out of kilter and are uneconomical to make. Crafting must be subsidized by adventuring revenue and has no way to earn money from the faucet on its own.

Limiting an avatar to raising one, specialized crafting skill isn't going to accomplish much, except create obstacles into actually getting anything made, as it will have to pass through at least 2 sets of hands. How does this help matters? Its still going to be sold by whoever's materials it was, you're just adding a delay in production. Which means waiting for someone to be available, and having half-made stuff until you find an enchanter, for example. Oh, they aren't online. Or they're busy. Or they have no incentive whatsoever to help you unless you pay them, but if you're trying to craft gear to sell, selling it is so dubious it doesn't make sense to invest even more money in the creation process against an unlikely sale. The easiest solution that keeps jumping into one's face is, make an alt, do it yourself.

As an aside, one thing that -might- be an option would be to change enchanting so that the enchanter instead of modifying the gear directly instead infuses runes or gems or whatever that could be applied as consumables to the gear. This would make enchanting standalone seller of runes (whose potency is stronger based on enchanter's level), and it would allow the blacksmith, carpenter, and tailor to create "complete" products, inasmuch as they could be completed. Specialization makes a lot more sense in this sort of setup, but, it would be a pretty substantial overhaul.

Personally I'd hate to see crafting become a "bucket brigade" of, in order to make this item, person A does this bit then finds person B who does their bit then finds person C ....the "alt army" people will always have a leg up in this situation.

 

So I think the everyone can make it stems from skill affecting a very limited amount of crafting. Currently, enchants and mw are basically it for improving the quality of things. So those skills are the only ones that have a discriminator of level to quality. Amount of time invested into those specific skills are what makes a crafter more famous. There are people that ask to pay a premium for one of those people to perform a service or make something.

A cook with minimum requirements can cook bear surprise just as well as a grandermaster cook. A smelter can only make basic ingots that have the same effect based on skill level.

If there were benefits to the final output at each turn of the crank then that would provide rationale for greater specialization. If a player with a high blacksmithing skill could make more durable and higher damage weapons and more durable and higher defense armor, then there is more rationale to raise that as opposed to masterworking. If exceptional materials add scaling effects to the final product, that gives a reason for grandermaster refiners. Example. an exceptional ingot adding +x based on skill level to the durability of the product it is used in.

Fishing, if trophy fish started supplying bonuses to existing food based on quality, then there is more reason to put points there. While people can keep accruing points, if there is more meaning to specialize in more crafting skills then there will be more reason for diversity. Time and focus already do cause people to stand out. Adding more meaning to the rest of the crafting skills will increase that diversity. Then the next milestone would be level of trust between players. That is something that is specific to players to accomplish.

 

No to this. This is FUNDAMENTAL change to the game, this moves the game from diminishing returns as you level to exponential power growth as level. Each time you get to a level where you can use higher level gear you get a step increase in power. So level 25 -> level 26 is worth much more rather than less than your power increase from level 24 -> level 25.

Regards
Spung

 

This is not my experience, i agree that not everyone bothers to learn how to craft in other games, but the players that do in the games that have this type of restriction NEARLY ALL had alts. The convenience of not having to rely on other players being online makes it better to just create alts. This was even in games that had MUCH easier ways to find thing to buy in the player market than this games has (ie had a global search for items being sold).

I would refer you to a earlier thread when this was first mentioned
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/crafting-specialization.141279/


Regards
Spung

 

I think you misunderstood, or my explanation is just crap lol. English is not my main language and sometimes its hard to exactly explain what I have in my mind.
What I meant with those ranges, is that you can craft an item with a random level as an outcome. So if my crafting skill is high enough and I want to craft an item for a level range 25 - 50. The outcome of the item will be a random gear level item between 25 - 50.
The stats should not be huge improvements anyhow, just a little bit higher then a lower item.

And still a adv level 25 character, should only be possible to equip gear with a lvl requirement 0 - 25.

 

Yup i understand. My point still stands.

The outcome of the item will be a random gear level item between 25 - 50.
The stats should not be huge improvements anyhow, just a little bit higher then a lower item.

So when the buyer, not the crafter hit level 25 he now has access to gear a little bit higher than he could get at level 24. Therefore with every adv level you gain you get the stats increase for the adv level AND access to better gear.

Currently the only difference is the stats increase. A level 1 can use just as good gear as a level 100.

 

Ah ok. Sorry, I thought I was being vague again.
I think with all the mmo experience I had at least. I was always happy to level up and finally equip that nice higher lvl gear that was sitting in my bag or bank.
Being a lower level toon and equipping the same gear as the higher ones just seems wrong to me.

 

That other thread is just the same conversation we are having here, in every game people have alts but not always for crafting, I have 3 in this game nothing to do with crafting, 15 in UO at the time 1 was a crafter. My point is only the hard core crafters will bother with an army of alts, meaning a whole load of non crafter focused gamers buying more in the economy rather than being self sufficient as most are now. I do see @kaeshiva point of view where people will create alts to get round it I just have a very different idea of to what extent that will happen.

In general I think we are all aligned on better recipe focus, loot drops, changes to RNG etc. I don't think specialisation offers much unless some of this other stuff is resolved also, including a central item finder of some description.

 

Basically that's what I plan on doing. If I have to select MW or Enchanting specialization, One account will MW and the other Enchant.

I don't see the benefit. Hopefully someone will show me the light

I already have a few alts. The XP / Gold to level up isn't a restriction at this point either.

 

I don't mind the idea of skill caps. Unlimited skill growth tends to favor the few who play the game endlessly and would lead to actually requiring decisions be made about character development. You wouldn't have crafters who were GM+ in everything. We already have additional character slots in game and free accounts, so it would only really be the adventure XP that would have to be divided between alts.

Making crafting a little more deterministic wouldn't be bad either. Instead of making 10 things hoping to get one good thing, how about a way to just make one good thing? It could be more expensive to make, perhaps in XP, but you could get what you wanted.

 

Having this applied so late in the game is gonna have very odd consequences. Its gonna really push the bar on what level you need to craft the best stuff when people with 10 GMs unlearn all but one and pile all the exp into a single skills...so 120-140 will be the new GM and getting alts that high seems pretty daunting to me.

 

People already have 120-140 in crafting skills. There's also the fact that reallocating that experience will require materials.

 

materials are CHEAP(pop a scroll and things fly if your pool is HUGE). And only gonna get cheaper if they remove the gotta make a million to get the one I want with specialization. Are there people that already have both enchants and 5 MWs aall 140? Thats crazy if its true..but I guess thats exactly why it'd be true. Regarless, just change my comment to 160 is the new GM if its already 140. Point is to take what a lot of people already have and push it into the 1 spec and that is the new "gotta have or it sucks".

 

Yeah, you don't have enough XP in all your crafting skills to get just one to 160.

 

I could get 1 to around 157-158

 

I stopped at this response because I echo it, now if only the ones in charge of crafting actually understood it .. and not going to a supply bin of ore. I am sorry but I don't feel one dev has gone out and harvested all the required materials to MAYBE get one exceptional then MAYBE not fail on MW and enchant .. I think I posted a similar opinion in another forum.

Thumbs UP

 

This i really like the idea of. Can complete my armour without having to wait, as I don't enchant.
Though no reason you would not do the same for masterwork as well so it work both ways.
With both it allows someone to make their own weapon without either MW or ENC just by buying the effects consumables off a MWer or ENCer.


Regards
Spung