Crafting: Not fun

Please no mini games for crafting. That'd get even more boring and frustrating than drag and drop an item at a time. (Depending on the mini game.) I don't like good games ruined by having mini games thrown in at stuff you end up doing somewhat frequently - especially where there are different mini games you have to try to figure out and master. (These are my opinions about mini games, others will have their own.)

 

Just wondering... will you end up crafting somewhat frequently?

 

My current character concept is to make a the highest quality taming collars available. And to use them. So yes, I expect I will be crafting frequently. Though I plan to acquire my own leather materials and up my skill levels to get the highest quality and highest enhancements that I can. Aside from leather materials and trade tools, I don't know enough about gathering the rest of the materials needed.

One thing to know about recipe discovery is that there are patterns to them. If you look at the armor sets you can make in tailoring, the recipe for a leather helm or a cloth helm is about the same, just change the base materials and bindings. Same for chest, legs, arms - which usually are a variation on the quantities used. I did not gather enough data on metal armors, but I suspect it is similar. When a new ore comes out, you can basically repeat existing recipes by swapping out iron for the new ore. You may need to find a different binding (something other than leather straps for really nice metal armors).

Some of the discovery process won't be that bad, but there will always be the outlier recipes and the less-obvious ones.

 

Sounds like you are an EQ II crafter.

 

I played EQII, along with many other games...Always been a crafter

 

Just FYI: Lord British just happen to be the chat tonight so I threw this at him...

For what it's worth, he replied: "Drocis, agreed!"

 

Mega thanks for that Drocis! I've never been lucky enough to speak to Richard! (green with envy )

 

That dude is really cool. I wasn't fan of his before following this game. But I've watched just about every video and read just about every interaction he's had regarding SOTA and he just comes off as very genuine, good intentioned, and always looking to push the envelope of the design.

Of course, this doesn't mean that crafting will change...it just means that RG seeems to understand the spirit of your concern.

 

That's how I see Richard as well...But I've followed him since I was a kid hahahah

 

The problem that I see with "1 hit is too little, 3 hits is too much" is that the fun is all front-loaded. Sure, it's going to be fun to figure out all the recipes and how many times to whack each component of the recipe. But once you're in business selling longswords to the warriors of the realm, it's just going to be repetitive button clicking. There is no variable, nothing to keep things interesting. Compare this to combat, where the experience is going to be randomized based on which cards you draw in which order.

Perhaps this idea could be a bit more dynamic, kind of like Blackjack, but combined with the "deck" type approach. Let's say that in order to make a perfect sword blade, you need to apply 21 units of "something". The unit of "something" represents hitting the ingot into shape, precision cuts to the cloth, etc. When you start crafting, based on your crafting skill, you have a certain skills available that will add a various amount of "something" to the product. The basic crafter can only add 1-10 units per click. As you advance in crating skill, you start being more precise and add 1-8 units per click, then 1-6 units per click, etc. The new crafter can still get lucky and hit Blackjack with a perfect 21, but the more experienced crafter will be more likely to hit Blackjack by adding 1-6 units each time...resulting in less chance to "bust". It's late here, so I apologize if I'm not making much sense.

My goal is to find some system that will add dynamics to the crafting process so its still fun after the discovery phase is completed.

 

Yea i think the crafting system was frustrating to. If something or anything for that matter is frustrating right at the start the more likely the person would give up and move to something else. That being said I think the crafting system should be unique and not like any other game. There should be basic, intermediate, and advanced items. The thing that seems to be missing in most games is customization. If you create a dagger for example every dagger is the same and looks the same this is fine at a basic blacksmithing level. At advanced would be nice to see a high degree of customization to "improve" that basic dagger and make it stand out at the same time. Now you can take that dagger with the right tools and make the blade curved, jagged, or straight making the dagger do more damage. Not only that you could lets say add some bones you found laying around and make the dagger hilt out of bone making it lighter allowing you to attack faster. Even can choose what type of guard to add or pommel (maybe you want a skull for the pommel). Can even go further and allow guild emblems or decorations on the blade itself. The sky is the limit really but it adds your own customization to the weapon.

That should be the difference basic being plain basic sort of items and armor. Intermediate having some customization and Advanced having high customization. This being said as you level your skill things will get more challenging and even frustrating but it should be gradual.

Note: I happen to collect real swords for a hobby so everyone knows the hilt is the handle and the pommel goes on the end of the handle.

 

Hello All,

First posting here, plan many more.

As to crafting, I have a few questions...

Will there be crafting bonus items (think EQ epic/master level crafting tools) or SW:Galaxies with the exceptional tools?
In SWG ALL resources had multiple values. Quality, durability, etc with values from 150-ish to 1000 (the mythical uber resources that brought millions of credits in the auction house)...

Is there a skill to "reverse engineer" an item? Such as, make a skill test and break that "magic dagger" down to its component parts? Possibly learning the recipe this way?

I always wondered if the crafting DB could handle something like that? The SWG was HUGE because of all the variable resources.
Every crafter in SWG was unique with different tools and stats. So it was nearly impossible to duplicate items. The only way to make perfect items was trial & error. Then you stuffed X Y & Z into your factory with the perfect recipe and away you go.

Could you just imagine in SotA if every crafter is different (hidden stats like luck, or racial differences)? Two crafters making the typical Bronze Dagger. Both create masterpieces which have different characteristic.
One crafter being an Elf, his racial focuses on improved speed
The other is an Barbarian, who focuses on durability

Now, the barbarian "reverse engineers" the elf's Bronze Dagger, successfully learning the recipe. Now he makes that recipe with the enhanced speed. But when he crafts this new recipe his racial affinity automatically applies.
So now he has an entirely NEW recipe melding both racial foci.
Now, this should only ever be allowed on magic/super high quality items, and should only allow 3 additional "traits".

This would create an extremely powerful auction house, much like we saw in SWG.

The items created this way should NEVER exceed MOB dropped items and mob dropped items should have extra penalties to "reverse engineer".


JUST MY $.05 worth

Look forward to your replies (mmathat@gmail.com)

 

I'm x-posting my thoughts on crafting.

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. ​

 

Well I can understand the point of a discovery being awesome and fun...Which I agree...but still looking for more in crafting than just hope you chose the correct ingredients to create something...and then boom the light goes on and you can make it...There doesn't seem to be anything there except for guess...Not too exciting to me really

I'm hoping there is much more to the system that what we are seeing now. I'm very greatful to Drocis for the bug in Richard's ear to make our crafting more interesting than this...I hope it comes to our game...

Also, we do know that everything ends up on Wiki's...so the discovery process will probably be null within a few months no matter how complex the receipes are...I have seen unbelievable things figured out on games within small amounts of time...People are pretty smart hehe

 

Starr's important comment on crafting at this stage

This just to make sure everyone's on the same page!
This is not the final form of crafting you are seeing.

 

That's promising info. Thanks for that! Hopefully it will have more interactive features coming our way.

 

Ok, noob question time.

There are supposed to be multiple races, and I have read there might be racial languages.

This sounds like a great way to limit crafting as well. If your character doesn't have the ability to read/write Dwarven, you cannot learn their recipes!

Also this would support racial recipes, like Elven Cloak & Boots, with very high level tailoring (and suitable magical components).

Perhaps a Dwarven Axe would weigh more than the Human version but have more damage/durability/__insert variable__ etc...

Are my suppositions valid?

 

The crafting system should provide direction in a way which enhances immersion. Perhaps you do a crafting quest for a "Master" who wants you to make 10 ingots. Then he gives you something harder, recipe for arrow heads.

Then, as you gain $CRAFTINGSKILL you then get to hire an NPC to put together stacks for you on the table. The game automatically puts the stacks together via the NPC you hire. Maybe the cheaper the are the slower they are at stacking. They could even apologize constantly if they don't keep up with your clicks. You have extra money to pay them, they are better. They could even be freelancers. This guy Bob is a great assistant. I'm hiring him off the market for Tuesday. PC's could even serve the function and learn crafting from other players by hiring themselves out. Maybe a game where you stack stuff for a master crafter.

The bottom line is this: the automation in the game comes from the reward of increasing your crafting skill. You shouldn't get it off the bat, you should apply yourself. Tedious at first, sure, but the reward should be in sticking to it.

You could even script NPC advice, like "Go to this town and talk to Barry about getting the best schematics for a nasty arrowhead." Or something like I say to the NPC, "I hate stacking these materials" and the NPC says "Go to the job board and hire an assistant."

 

Well I thought they said there won't be dwarves and elves in game...I don't think they even want to have those class types in existance for our game..just a new world of different races...But good thoughts. We could have some armor and weapons based on races from our world too...Fun thoughts!

 

I like the idea of a discovery process where you can stumble across new recipes; if it's done well it really would be fun. However the worst possible implementation would one that encourages me to go to wikis instead of staying within the game; researching wikis is not fun. Here are some ways that I think SotA could encourage people to stay within the game instead of spending time on wikis:

• Better hints within the game. As suggested above, if I'm close to something give me a hint -- especially for more basic recipes. For example, I tried smelting a bar of iron today and I reckoned I had what I needed: smelting tongs, a bar mold, some coal and some iron ore. I couldn't craft it though, and after alt-tabbing to read the release notes I discovered it's because I didn't have enough iron ore. I should have been told in-game something like "that's not enough iron ore to fill the mold".
  
  
• Basic recipes: when I opened the game, my recipe log was completely empty. I had no idea where to start and I tried for maybe fifteen minutes on various crafting tables without crafting a single thing. I had to go research the forums and release notes to learn. I would have liked the most basic recipes to be in there by default... like making a bar of iron ore. How can a character know how to use a smelting table but not know how to make the most basic bar or ingot? How can a character know how to use a milling table but not know any use for a log of wood?
  
  
• Partial recipes: I'd like some hints about where to go next or what to seek out to extend my crafting, in the form of partial recipes. These would identify one or two things I need for a recipe so that I have something to start with and I use intuition and experimentation to complete it. The partial recipe would be logged in the recipe log just like complete ones. Maybe an NPC tells me that if I can find mould X and mould Y then I can make a particular helmet... that's not enough to let me make a helmet but it inspires me to go looking, Maybe mould X is called a 'Kingsport Visor Mould' so I might head off to Kingsport to see if I can find that component...
  
  
• Have some recipes that can't just be made by reading a wiki. It's reasonable that you can read a wiki to learn how to craft the basic stuff. But if you can craft everything in the game just by going to a wiki and finding the thing you want, it's not much fun. If there are requirements for recipes other than just input items then it's going to more fun -- for example, you must complete a quest to learn a skill that's necessary.
  
  
• Tell us when we've discovered something important. Mystic points out how this system allows people to stumble across new items that other people don't know about. But unless I'm spending a lot of time researching wikis, then I probably won't know this item is unusual and that maybe I should craft it and sell it... or just strut around showing it off. I don't want to have to refer to a wiki after every new thing I craft to find out if it's valuable or unusual. The first few people to discover an item should be told in-game that it's new; maybe my character says "This is new, I don't think its like has been seen in the Vale before. I could make some coin from this!"