Crafting Reward system not Punishment Idea.

Discussion in 'Archived Topics' started by Lace, Feb 12, 2019.

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  1. Lace

    Lace Avatar

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    While our quantities to refine, craft etc have seen different upticks over the years, we all know refining is like watching paint dry. Eventually to get +50 durability on items, they no longer had to be done one at a time which was a godsend. We all still want higher refinement rates on the subs like bindings, boards etc based on our refining gms etc ... but in the meantime consider the following ...

    There have been many suggestions about how to make crafting more engaging. The GMing and specialization will surely help combat the RNG nature of crafting in a game that touts the best gear is crafted by players when that is clearly about 1 in 1000* attempts which is completely unrealistic in many cases and the playing field will never be level on a person playing 3+ years versus someone just starting. (that is okay for the most part with other changes the game has undergone via potions, mentoring and more producer xp readily available but still completely unequal to hunting)

    However, one way for new crafters to be able to make a prideful piece of gear is to implement the reverse of anti botting crafting systems. In games like EQ2, FFIV there were always reactionary keys that had to be hit to 'save' what you were making. These are clearly a punishment system for those botting or who happened to take a sip of beer spill it on keyboard and miss the reactionary key hit.

    Why not instead make a reactionary system to give a boon? Let Sota be different. It could be an icon that appears on the screen in some (randiom?) position that when struck, notifies the system the person is there and grants a boon to the item being made. This may sound tech heavy but I really am not sure it is more so than changing targets and calculating a hit or miss. IF you hit .. then x action happens if you miss well .. nada. This could grant boons like, you make additional refinement items, your armor creation automatically becomes +50 durability we all seek, you get a crafting buff of xxxx for xxxx amount of time which does yyyyy.

    So in a nutshell if we implement mini games for crafting, making them positive anti bot crafting, not negative ones like every other game out on the market.

    (thanks to my alt that reminisced on these other games in universal for making me think of this)


    EDIT: heck why couldn't it be both punishment and reward? thought I hate the punishment part as repetitive in so many games when you try to squeeze in a pee on a refinement run, but perhaps compromise.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2019
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  2. Vladamir Begemot

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    Definitely DON'T want to have to be at the screen when refining in order to avoid punishment, but the possibility of a boost might keep me at the screen a little more.

    My normal refining time is click button, stand up, drink water, do a dish, sit back down. Click button, stand up, dig out dumbells. Lift them a bit. Click button, stare out window. Click button, go outside. It doesn't really matter if I'm gone ten minutes to me, at least the 50 timber batch will be done.

    Although if there's something fun minigame I'd be in for it, but it would need to be really engaging. Just clicking somewhere on a the screen, not a fan of that. I'd only be doing that when reading something on the other screen.
     
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  3. Proteus Tempest

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    Gear creation will eventually be linked to the alignment of the planets and such.

    It's been a while since it has been talked about but I think it's still on the books.
     
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  4. Vladamir Begemot

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    Ooh I'd play a planet aligning puzzle. I like the puzzle box.
     
  5. Jason_M

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    Here's a thought: time consumption is not a deterrent to botting but an encouragement. Mind-numbing repetition is proof that the development team hates us and wants us to play a different game. (Sorry for being rude, but, if it isn't fun and it doesn't prevent cheating, then what could the point be?)

    Refining batches should be larger and faster. You're going to make that leather - it's got to be done - but the true question is How much should it suck?

    Before anyone else says it: Suck shouldn't be optimized or maximized according to player tolerance. It should be minimized. Perhaps repairing the tool and additional fuel prompts could be the randomized feature that disrupts bots. (With higher refinement quantities, those would aurely occur much more often.)


    PS: Wood pulp. Come on.
     
  6. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    i don't think this would be tech-heavy; there's already the dialog to save failures (though that doesn't show on much) and the dialogs for enchanting/mw, so they're already prepared to stop in the midst of a craft and ask you something. they would just need it to time out and go to the next in the batch if you don't reply quickly.
     
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  7. Katu

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    Gamedevs should NOT try to make it hard to bot, it almost always makes it harder just for the legit players.
    Bots have 100%, legendary levels, super patience. Things that take long and are tedious, mean nothing to a bot. So, making stuff take long and being tedious, is obviously calling for botting.
    UO had stupid stuff to prevent botting, like moving UI elements if mouse just keeps clicking in same position. Solution? Mouse mouse a bit, with natural movement and everything was fine.
    Remove tedious clicking stuff and use statistic analysis for bot detection. Question the player, face to face in game if necessary. Making game hard and boring, because they are afraid that economy sinks ( even more?) Is lame excuse.

    This game screams for bots and they will come, sooner or later ( and to some extend, are here already).

    I scripted UO for 10 or so years, there for I have somekind of knowledge about this subject ( freeshards, where it was allowed).
     
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  8. Spungwa

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    For the refining side, and in fact everything up to but not including a final finished product, I would rather just do away with the "at screen" time sink.
    Just make it that you stick the stuff in a hopper set the things you want to make and come back (regardless of online/offline time) the calculated amount of hours later and pick up all the stuff done.

    This get rid of the boring activity, keeps there being a time lag for moving from one stage to another, eliminates botting at a stroke (as there is no activity to bot), and opens up crafting to more casual players.

    Allows players to go do something more fun than watch a bar go up. I don't bot, but the ONLY reason I got an alt was to have him stand at a table doing crafting where quality did not matter to the end result, while I did something more fun on my main.


    Regards
    Spung
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2019
  9. Katu

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    +1, that would work.
    I have read and heard that thats exactly what people are doing. Second account, constantly mining, crafting, smelting, while other account is used to actually play. This kind of behaviour should be huge red flag for game designers, that "we have done something wrong here"..
     
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  10. Spungwa

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    I would not put the mining in the same category, gathering should be an "at the screen" time sink. As this is how the supply is limited.
    But automating the refining and component production does not increase the supply because the gathering activity is the bottle neck before that activity.
     
  11. Lars vonDrachental

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    A more complex possibility could be to really use the crafting stations and reagents but maybe still with some guidance to make it not too complicated.
    E.g. you start crafting a sword and can see at the left side of the screen a description of the working steps and the tools/items needed.

    Starting to craft
    The needed materials are automatically and visually placed on the crafting table.

    Heat up the sword sheath
    You drag the sheath into the fire and depending on the position in the blacksmith’s fire the sheath starts to glow red -> yellow -> white more or less fast. Starting to forge with a red or white glowing sheath will reduce the quality and depending on your skills the yellow state will be reached faster and stays longer.
    Maybe as long as the sheath has not reached white glowing you can restart the process by simply taking the sheath out of the fire and let it cool down.

    Connect the hilt and heated up sheath
    You take the glowing sheath and drag it into the hilt that automatically rest on the anvil. In this step to angle between hilt and sheath is important and that you use the hammer while the sheath is still glowing yellow. With higher skills it is easier to place the sheath in the right angle and again the yellow glowing last longer. An oblique or a not anymore yellow glowing sheath will reduce the items quality.
    Again you might be able to restart as long as hasn't used the hammer to fix the materials or hasn't reached white glowing in the fist step.

    Doing everything perfect will always create an exceptional item but earliest at GM the helping mechanics will make this a regular outcome. Failures in term of perfection maybe create random…maybe fixed changes that do not have to be always bad. E.g. an overheated and malformed sheath may create a weapon with lower durability but higher damage or you create a different item (e.g. you wanted to create a longsword but in the end it is a scimitar)
    Of course such a mechanic would need some time to create but it would keep the crafters busy while crafting and most important the crafter would have influence on his product and could visibly see in his actions why the item is not exceptional.
     
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  12. that_shawn_guy

    that_shawn_guy Bug Hunter

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    for botting and economy reason, gathering and production should be time consuming and require periodic interaction. overall, the main issue i have related to refining is the time input required for outputs that are relatively useless outside of production.

    i really like the idea of auto-refining solutions like in other games and i do think we will get there eventually. however, i think we should concentrate on solutions that take the least amount of work to solve the peak pain points. ideas that take the least amount of work by the least amount of developers are far more likely to get done sooner.

    i think the simplest fix for refinement is:
    - all items have the same batch limit (i.e. all skill based)
    - with a GM in swift refining, each item takes no more than 0.5 seconds to create
    - when refining, the quantity should auto set to your batch limit

    example:
    in the smelting tree, your skills allow for a batch size of 60 and 0.5 seconds to create. put the required materials on the table, hit craft. 30 seconds later you're done.
     
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  13. Spungwa

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    While I agree Shawn, this is the quickest (and probably least dev consuming solution), you have to be careful with that approach.
    If the game ALWAYS takes the quick and simply solution then overall quality of the game is not necessary improving with each change. Putting a plaster on a severed limb may help the bleeding, but wont help the patent in the long term.

    But in this instance it probably is the best/easiest solution in the short term and put something in the backlog to revisit.


    Regards
    Spung
     
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  14. kaeshiva

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    Agree with the above sentiments. There's simply no reason why refining should take as long as it does. In every case you need gathered materials, there is nothing you can craft with NPC-only components that is both useful and not a huge money sink. Even with the double xp rate, the xp gain on all refining is a complete joke for the time it takes. Early on, when I realized I was spending more than 50% of my playtime (well over 20-30 hours a week!!!) staring at a bench, I made a second account just to deal with it. The refining "skills" are not relevant enough to encourage me to do this myself, nor is the experience gain.

    If I made decent xp/hr smelting, I wouldn't mind smelting so much. But as it stands is unnecessarily tedious, and anyone with a lot of it to do finds some other game they can play while doing it, or some show to watch, or household chore to do.

    I don't mind investing xp for it. If "batch speed" added say, 200% at gm instead of a sad, barely noticeable 20%, we might be on to something. On top of that, I'd totally buy a refining speed coto potion - but not with the values as they are, because its still going to be an afk activity. I like Spung's suggestion to put it in the hopper and go, many games do this, though I expect that's a more complicated solution and container permissions will get tricky for public crafting stations. I'd love to be able to craft a "furnace" which functions like brewing casks. Make the thing, put ore in it, come back tomorrow and its done. But they'd have to be personal somehow. I dunno. I bet it could be done.

    I like Lace's initial idea of boons during the process, but then I'll feel compelled to sit here and watch the slow inexorable progress bar go by. This does not sound fun. Refining a thousand ore is not interesting if you add an additional click in the process. More lucrative with boons yes, but still not interesting.
     
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  15. Jason_M

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    Brilliant! That would be a great starting point. Including wood pulp. Please.
     
  16. Vladamir Begemot

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    Nothing is more exciting to me than things working while I'm gone. In games that means little builders building (Virtual Villagers) or learning and constructing space ships (Eve).

    Let me throw 1000 animal hides in the leather maker and I'll be thinking about it all day while away, satisfied in the knowledge that however wrong the rest of the day is going, at least I'm making leather.
     
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  17. Dartan Obscuro

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    They could create a crafting bar exactly like a non-locked combat deck where skill cards randomly popup and if you hit them you get bonuses. Then combat and crafting would have similar systems.
     
  18. Rowell

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    Simple answer would be, just before you log off, load your character up with resources, set up a queue of items that you want made offline (like 100 Maple Timbers, 300 Silver Ingots, 200 Pine Boards, etc), the system tells you "It will take 45 minutes to complete this task", then log off. If you come back before the 45 minutes is over, you get a partial complete list of items. If you come back after the 45 minutes, you get everything you wanted to make.

    Refining Resources into components is tedious and NOT FUN. If a system is so mind-numbingly boring, it's a flaw in that aspect of game design.
     
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  19. Vladamir Begemot

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    I agree. It doesn't need to be 45 minutes either, I would be fine waiting a day, or over night.
     
  20. Lace

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    I can see many sides to this ..but lets talk about creation side.. that is separate mechanic from gathering

    We all feel the time to refine with gms is bs
    We all feel that the lack of subcomponet batch size is an issue (brought up more than a year ago) and told it was had to regulate based on the new skills versus the machines performed on .. AKA yo get the batch size and speed on smelting station, but turning ingots to bindings with gm smelter produced no batch size increase because it was diff station and you had no proficiency there. I understand their explanation in the programming sense, but not in a game development sense .. It feels lazy or lack of foresight when the new batch speed were introduced as an appeasement to the time synch of crafting.

    They left out 1/2 of crafting..To me personally , crafting gets 3rd chair to mobs scenes etc ...when this game touts best gear made my crafters os a joke.

    Not the first to cry foul,it just goes on deaf ears to the cries of pvp etc.

    Crafters need love and not Chris going well I don't work on that so cannot say .. someone needs to pony up and stop passing the buck to bzus who doesn't read the crafter comments on what he builds .. No offense, but you do not, or just choose to be aloof and frankly its getting old. Sorry to bust chops but its been literally years on some things.

    We need a crafter dev like @Chris tha gives us some inf0.. Again I know all do what they are told but I feel let down by Bzus more often than not and likely through no fault of his, please don't take this wrong way .. I am sure you are directed and your higher ups need a sanity check.

    Real Crafter Deve in 2019 like Chris (that's you Bzus lobby for it love)
    Give us good data like Chris does.


    Flame me now ..just saying how I feel.
     
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