Now that we've seen VR hiring on a specific person to head the Crafting in Pantheon (Congrats Nephele) I have been pondering a bit about the subject and so had a few things I'd like to bring up.
It's obvious that whenever you have Crafting you inevitably need Harvesting, and in many games these things are paired up. For example:
Leatherworking / Skinning
Smithing / Mining
Alchemy / Herb gathering
Tailoring / Cloth gathering
Jewelcrafting / Gem gathering
Cooking / Fishing, Meat and Herb gathering
etc...
But... what if Crafting was not about the Material you use, but rather the type of items you are crafting. So instead of Leatherworks who work with Leather and Smiths that work with Metals; we instead have Armorcrafting and Weaponcrafting. In both of these professions they may use different materials including Metals, Leathers, Cloth, Stone, Gems, etc... They may even need special oils coming from Herbs.
Crafts like Jewelcrafting may also require all sorts of different materials. Different metals, stones, gems, oils, and maybe bones or horns or even silk from various animals.
There could be a Craft like Toolcrafting or Gadget Making that would include things like Backpacks, Lockpicks, Lanterns, Vials, keys, Screws, Nails etc... Again this craft could require items across the spectrum of Harvesting.
Alchemy could make things from Potions to Poisons and require all sorts of odds and ends like: Meats, Bones, Venoms, Minerals, Oils, Eyes (of Newt?), Teeth etc...
If we grant that all these different Crafting skills require a full gambit of Harvested materials, I think that Harvesting skills should all be lumped together as one skill. You don't have specific things like Skinning or Mining. Rather you have a Harvesting skill that you can use in all sorts of various ways.
If you use your Harvesting skill on an Ore or mineral pile you could get things like Ores, Stones, Minerals or Gems.
If you use your Harvesting skill on an animal corpse you could obtain: skins, meats, bones or other assorted parts like eyes, legs, Silks etc...
If used on a Humanoid corpse you could find things like: Cloth, Bones, Hair, Ears, or Teeth.
Herb nodes could have a choice between: Leaves, Berries, Flowers, Oils, Stems, or maybe even thorns.
This also allows for Crafting to use various types of things from the same type of resource. So you might have Rose Petals for a Healing potion, but need Rose Thorns for a poison. While Rose Hips (berries) are added to flavour up some soup. While Rose Oil could be part of tempering that Bone blade from a weaponcrafter.
I would also suggest that these things should be choosable when you Harvest. For example, if I'm on the hunt for some Spider Eyeballs and I go kill some spiders, I should expect to be able to harvest eyeballs and it shouldn't be random what I get. I shouldn't kill 20 spiders and get frustrated because all I can find is Silk and Spider Legs when I really went out trying to find Eyeballs. In the real world if I'm out harvesting Eyeballs I'm going to get Eyeballs.
One of my pet peeves in MMOs is something I call the 'Plastic Bears' phenomenon where a quest tells me to go collect bear meat and I kill dozens of bears who don't seem to have any meat. Are all the bears made out of Plastic? Now quests aside... when it comes to collecting things for Crafting, if I want to cook some Bear Meat Stew, and I go out and kill some bears, I should be able to focus and get some Bear meat.
When I use my Harvesting Skill on a dead Spider Corpse, I should get a popup that allows me to choose which item I'd like to harvest. So perhaps I could choose: Eyes, Legs, Meat, Silk, or Venom. And I get to choose only 1 of those. When I use my Harvesting skill on a Bear or Wolf corpse I might be given the options: Skin/Pelt, Fur, Meat, Eyes, Bones, Tail, or Tooth. Again choosing only one thing to harvest from any given corpse. Perhaps if I become a very high level master Harvester there could be a chance to get a second item from a Harvest. My skill also could effect the quality of said item I harvest. Do I get High or Low Quality Pelt? Do I get a 'Tender Bear Meat' or do I get a 'Tough Bear Meat'?.
Depending on how Crafting works, maybe either could be used in the recipe but could effect the chance of the result. So a Bear Meat Stew combine might end up with 3 possible results: Hearty, Filling, or Meager Bear Stew. So if you use Tender Bear Meat you have a higher chance at a 'Hearty Bear Stew' but using 'Tough Bear Meat' you might have a higher chance of a 'Meager Bear Stew'. Whereas at a very high level cooking skill, perhaps you are such a master chef that even Tough Bear Meat will always end up with a Hearty meal (Trivial combine). Thus you can buy the cheaper Tough Bear Meat and still always end up with a good result, whereas lesser Cooks need to shell out for the expensive Tender Bear Meat to get their Hearty meals.
Having Harvesting work in this way not only allows Crafters to target the type of item they need for what they are looking to craft but it allows other players the ability to target Harvest specific types of items in order to sell to Crafters based on demand. If you notice that there seems to be a shortage of Spider Eyes being sold in town, perhaps you focus your Harvesting on these eyes and suddenly you are getting some nice sales. If Spider Eyes are in huge supply, perhaps you don't bother Harvesting those and instead grab the Silk or Venom.
If you notice Crafters looking to buy Iron Ore you could decide to visit that cave you found earlier in the day and search out some nodes to harvest. If instead it's Stone that's in short supply you focus your harvesting on the stone instead of the Ore from those nodes.
This would also mean that these kinds of items wouldn't be part of normal looting. So when I kill bears and loot their corpse I don't have a chance to see Bear Meat. This would be something I need to use Harvesting to obtain. Looting corpses should be about items they might be carrying like weapons, armor, coins, trinkets, ('You no take candle!') etc... Harvesting would then focus on the types of things that all corpses would have if you take the time to harvest them. Like the meat or bones or eyes... etc...
Anyway... just some thoughts.
In every MMO I have played I at one point or another pick up crafting. When I do it, I know it will not make me money, fame, or even anything I will use that I could not get with far less work another way. But Something about crafting appeals to me. But reading your post it speaks volumes at just how much room there is for improvement. I love you harvesting eyes and meat analogy. I do not have time to add any deeper thoughts other then I really enjoyed reading your post and felt a lot of what you had to say ringed true to me.
Love reading your thoughts Goofy! It probably won't be completely even across the board, but I can confirm that all crafting professions will leverage resources and materials from multiple types of gathering - as well as resources and materials that are found in other ways in the world.
Liked your post. In my opinion, the more complicated the crafting/gathering, the better.
((One of my pet peeves in MMOs is something I call the 'Plastic Bears' phenomenon where a quest tells me to go collect bear meat and I kill dozens of bears who don't seem to have any meat. Are all the bears made out of Plastic? Now quests aside... when it comes to collecting things for Crafting, if I want to cook some Bear Meat Stew, and I go out and kill some bears, I should be able to focus and get some Bear meat.))
Over the years this has so often proved enormously frustrating, Not so much the extra time for the player but the sheer *waste* of needing to kill 10 large bears to make one stew.
If I need a truly perfect bear corpse for a taxidermist to be able to make a beautiful trophy - as in LOTRO - that makes sense. But it boggles the mind to think I can't get enough hide or flesh from one bear to do something useful. Unless I kill it with the Blade Cuisinart (old, OLD. Wizardry reference).
Complex harvesting is good I agree. Interelationship with crafting is good in the other direction also. Not just harvesters getting materials for crafters but crafters making gear for harvesters that lets us harvest faster or better.
dorotea said:((One of my pet peeves in MMOs is something I call the 'Plastic Bears' phenomenon where a quest tells me to go collect bear meat and I kill dozens of bears who don't seem to have any meat. Are all the bears made out of Plastic? Now quests aside... when it comes to collecting things for Crafting, if I want to cook some Bear Meat Stew, and I go out and kill some bears, I should be able to focus and get some Bear meat.))
Over the years this has so often proved enormously frustrating, Not so much the extra time for the player but the sheer *waste* of needing to kill 10 large bears to make one stew.
If I need a truly perfect bear corpse for a taxidermist to be able to make a beautiful trophy - as in LOTRO - that makes sense. But it boggles the mind to think I can't get enough hide or flesh from one bear to do something useful. Unless I kill it with the Blade Cuisinart (old, OLD. Wizardry reference).
Complex harvesting is good I agree. Interelationship with crafting is good in the other direction also. Not just harvesters getting materials for crafters but crafters making gear for harvesters that lets us harvest faster or better.
On this note, I would say it may make sense if meat did drop but maybe its TAINTED, POISONED or something which makes it unusable for say a stew, but then maybe a alchemist could use it? Same with Hides, maybe you can get a good hide for mking armor, or a tattered hide, that can be used for straps. Just as long as something drops that would make sense. Because less face it you may not get perfect items every time.
Sagrada said:I now envision dorotea's avatar as a (british) queen's guard bearskin hat...dorotea said: ... 'Plastic Bears' phenomenon ...... but maybe its TAINTED, POISONED or something which makes it unusable for say a stew, but then maybe a alchemist could use it? ...
Hello. Vanguard had one of the better (at the time) harvesting system. Though i did like when you were mining rocks/minerals, the screen game shook, the trees you chopped, fell and made the falling tree sound. The higher the next tier of metal you needed was usually guarded or roamed/patroled by creatures/animals. At times you needed a small group to venture to certain locations to clear it so you could harvest said resource.
Would really like to see a container/bag type only for harvesting and or crafting. As a crafter and a harvester, i end up with a lot of raw materials/resouces that takes up regualr inventory space. That said, if the only way to get one is from crafting, that would be great. Adventuring, questing, explornig and loot from mobs, animals will take up a lot of inventory spaces overtime. Having raw resources makes it harder to decide what to keep/destroy.
Troupy and taxidermist would be nice if player housing were added later on. What i dont like from some games, is the fustrating RNG (random number generator). RNG on rare mining, rocks, metal, gems, etc. Granted is is a rare item, rng is fustrating. A bear corpse/meat should feed a lot of folks, but seems you get one meat from a bear. though its not a survival game, still would like to see an animal of its equal size/proportion to drop the desired amount of meat, instead of one.
While the pre alphas get the first crack of crafting/harvesting, rest of us will have to see and test it ourself to get a better feel of the harvesting system. Other then what the pre alphas are able to tell is. Cant wait to see a vid on the crafting system and harvesting system next year.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:“I would also suggest that these things should be choosable when you Harvest. For example, if I'm on the hunt for some Spider Eyeballs and I go kill some spiders, I should expect to be able to harvest eyeballs and it shouldn't be random what I get. I shouldn't kill 20 spiders and get frustrated because all I can find is Silk and Spider Legs when I really went out trying to find Eyeballs. In the real world if I'm out harvesting Eyeballs I'm going to get Eyeballs.”
If I go out and kill 10 spiders with my sword. I will have 0 eyeballs. I adapt my harvesting skills/tools. So that I trap a spider, catch it and dissect it to obtain eyeballs. This resonates a bit to your suggestion about having 1 main harvesting skill. I’m just not going to be that successful skinning a deer with my pickaxe.
Isn’t it also a bit similar to an adventure's loottable. You kill goblins and expect to get goblin eye balls all the time? And if you want goblin toes, you magically get only toes instead of eye balls?
If you want you resources required for different classes to have a communal origine. Than you can’t just present all those resources with each kill. That bear would offer: nails, eyes, skin, meat, oil, fat, bones,etc. Every single time? What’s the point of it all then? You might aswel decrease the load on the loottable and call it all bear-stuff. And every class requires ‘bear-stuff’. I get what you’re saying. Perhaps instead of the pop-up choose-your-resource message. The result of your “harvest” is defined by the tools you use when you do the harvesting? This could mean that you have a wider array of harvesting tools. You want eyeballs? Be sure to equip your eye poker when harvesting a defeated creature.
I wouldn’t touch on getting a second harvest. Its one of those things that just leads up to devaluation of resources and negatively influences the longevity of the balanced economy.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:“Having Harvesting work in this way not only allows Crafters to target the type of item they need for what they are looking to craft but it allows other players the ability to target Harvest specific types of items in order to sell to Crafters based on demand.”
I get the idea behind it, but with your suggestion here, there is no demand. Since the you’ll always get what you want. The only time there would be a demand is when people are not bothered to go out harvesting. And overall, I don’t see to be the common case here.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:“If you notice that there seems to be a shortage of Spider Eyes being sold in town, perhaps you focus your Harvesting on these eyes and suddenly you are getting some nice sales. If Spider Eyes are in huge supply, perhaps you don't bother Harvesting those and instead grab the Silk or Venom.”
If you continue here, you’ll notice that what you’re effectively doing is saturating every corner of the market as soon as possible (or noticeable by the players). I doubt that this is really something you want happening in the game. There will be fluctuation, but instead of having things that are rare and others abundant, you'll shift the graph to the middle and have all/most resources commonly available.
It's a fun topic however and I'm just another player who enjoys thinking about these things.
Barin999 said:*snip*
If I go out and kill 10 spiders with my sword. I will have 0 eyeballs. I adapt my harvesting skills/tools. So that I trap a spider, catch it and dissect it to obtain eyeballs. This resonates a bit to your suggestion about having 1 main harvesting skill. I’m just not going to be that successful skinning a deer with my pickaxe.
*snip*
LMAO, good Saturday morning chuckle at the mental image of Barin running around in the woods trying to "catch" spiders with sword and cursing repeatedly every time he just squashes them to paste.
"If a Barin smashes a spider in the woods and no one is there to see it, were there any harvestable eyes?"
To the point of the thread though I think we are hitting on some of the supply and demand issue inherent in a material limited crafting leveling system vs a time limited progression system.
I personally hate having the “time dependency” of progressing in crafting being 90%+ harvesting time. That’s not crafting, it is harvesting. Also part of the reason I am in favor of crafting writs either rewarding or providing mundane crafting materials as part of the process.
To that end harvesting simple mundane materials should be pretty easy and consistent, at least with the right tools and skill level (no farming tiny spiders with swords). Yes it will flood the market with the simple ingredients to the point that they will always be available for the crafter to purchase at a low price.
Where harvesting can and should get its value from are rare nodes or rare typed resources (edit see exotic in place of rare or chance of secondary harvests). For example you are not looking for a tiger’s eye, you are looking for the intact eye of a shadow tiger at least level 30. You are not looking for a backpack full of iron ore, you are looking for iron ore in areas known to also contain frost crystal (my made up exotic ingredient to make dwarf steel from raw iron).
Putting value in bulk mundane raw materials pushes us down a bad path both crafting and harvesting wise. I do like the opportunity cost of needing to pick from a list of things you are trying to harvest and your skill dictating how many choices you can make. Mimicking the concept that if you want to harvest one part of the body cleanly you need to kill or get to it through other areas destroying their usefulness for anything other than bait or sausage.
This thread has become rather entertaining - good job both of you.
Trasak - you advocate for normal harvesting materials being plentiful, easy to get and cheap. You understand, of course, that this means that items crafted from such will also be plentiful, easy to get and cheap unless severe bottlenecks are built in to becoming a crafter or getting crafting recipes.
Implicit in this is that crafters will craft to gain skill not to make money when they use mundane items. Crafters will barely get by until they reach the point when either there aren't many of them (because it was such an unbearable grind to get there), recipes are very scarce so whoever has the recipe will have little competition, or all or most of the better recipes will require exotic materials allowing the crafter higher margins.
Harvesting will be similar. Little or no profit to harvesting mundane materials. The profit will come from exotic materials which may take better gear, greater skill or higher adventuring levels to reach.
My opinion is surely obvious from the foregoing. I agree, of course.
Barin999 said: "Isn’t it also a bit similar to an adventure's loottable. You kill goblins and expect to get goblin eye balls all the time? And if you want goblin toes, you magically get only toes instead of eye balls?"
Well harvesting body parts is very different than a loot-table. A loot table is the list of items that the target "could" be carrying; such as a sword, a shield, armour, trinkets, gems, etc... Not every Goblin will be carrying every item it 'could' carry. Yet with Harvesting you are taking from the body something that every one of that target type would have; unless they already lost it due to previous injury; maybe Goblin lost his toes to frostbite, but this would be an exception rather than the norm.
Yes I totally expect that if I kill a Goblin and want to extract his eyes and take them with me, I should be able to choose to get those eyes. If I want to instead spend my time cutting off his toes for my Goblin Toe collection, I should be able to always get toes. There is nothing Magical about the idea that every Goblin has eyes and toes and I can choose which one I want to Harvest. As mentioned, it would only be a rare situation where a specific Goblin killed doesn't have any eyes or toes.
It goes back to my 'Plastic Bears Phenomenon'; It would only be 'magical' if I found a Bear walking around that was NOT made of meat that I could harvest if that's what I was looking for.
Barin999 said: "Perhaps instead of the pop-up choose-your-resource message. The result of your “harvest” is defined by the tools you use when you do the harvesting? This could mean that you have a wider array of harvesting tools. You want eyeballs? Be sure to equip your eye poker when harvesting a defeated creature."
I totally accept the idea that specific harvesting could require specific tools. So you only have access to eyeballs if you have the eyeball remover tool. But if they decide to do something like this, I wouldn't want these items to need to be 'equipped' manually every you do a harvest in order to choose which item your going to harvest. It's one of those 'quality of life' things when you control your character. If you had several different harvesting tools available in your bags, your harvest ability should just pop up with the choices of things you could harvest.
It's similar to when a spell might have a reagent component when you cast. You wouldn't expect the spell caster to manually need to open his bags and pick up the reagent on his cursor to 'hold it in his hand' in order to cast said spell. It just adds tidious complexity. Instead the game just quickly checks to make sure the caster has the required component in his bags and then consumes it when the spell is cast.
So when harvesting I should be able to choose 'Harvest Eyeballs' and the game should check to make sure I have the eyeball harvesting tool in my bags and if true, I attempt to harvest the eyeballs. If I select 'Harvest Toes' the game should then check to make sure I have whatever item is required for Toe cutting (perhaps could be anything with 'slashing' type) and then if true I attempt to harvest the Toes. Ideally the Harvest ability should display only the things I have the tools to Harvest.
This would be better than having it list everything harvestable and 'grey out' the choices I don't have the tools for, since they may want to have some very rare harvesting tool that you could find in some exotic place that when you have it it opens up a very specific harvestable resource that most people won't know about until after they found said rare harvesting tool.
For example, maybe they have a very complex high level quest line from a hard to reach Master Medic who can make you an apparatus that allows you to extract Blood Plasma from Animals that is used in some really rare Alchemy recipie for a potion that makes you immune to a very specific toxic atmosphere where is found some raid boss.
You wouldn't want just every newbie player to know that 'Blood Plasma' was even a possible harvestable resource, but rather keep it a mystery that is unlocked only when you find said Master Medic and complete his long and exciting quest.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:So when harvesting I should be able to choose 'Harvest Eyeballs' and the game should check to make sure I have the eyeball harvesting tool in my bags and if true, I attempt to harvest the eyeballs. If I select 'Harvest Toes' the game should then check to make sure I have whatever item is required for Toe cutting (perhaps could be anything with 'slashing' type) and then if true I attempt to harvest the Toes. Ideally the Harvest ability should display only the things I have the tools to Harvest.
This would be better than having it list everything harvestable and 'grey out' the choices I don't have the tools for, since they may want to have some very rare harvesting tool that you could find in some exotic place that when you have it it opens up a very specific harvestable resource that most people won't know about until after they found said rare harvesting tool.
Yep, sounds very good. I like how it's the player's choice to carry certain harvesting tools if they expect to be harvesting certain nodes.
dorotea said:This thread has become rather entertaining - good job both of you.
Trasak - you advocate for normal harvesting materials being plentiful, easy to get and cheap. You understand, of course, that this means that items crafted from such will also be plentiful, easy to get and cheap unless severe bottlenecks are built in to becoming a crafter or getting crafting recipes.
Implicit in this is that crafters will craft to gain skill not to make money when they use mundane items. Crafters will barely get by until they reach the point when either there aren't many of them (because it was such an unbearable grind to get there), recipes are very scarce so whoever has the recipe will have little competition, or all or most of the better recipes will require exotic materials allowing the crafter higher margins.
Harvesting will be similar. Little or no profit to harvesting mundane materials. The profit will come from exotic materials which may take better gear, greater skill or higher adventuring levels to reach.
My opinion is surely obvious from the foregoing. I agree, of course.
I do think mundane items, made only with common materials, should only be good for practicing your skills and fulfilling NPC writs. Maybe with a modest increase in trade value over the trade value of the raw materials. (Does not need to be in cash if the materials are not purchased with cash)
Pantheon does not have a decay mechanic and has the publicly stated goal of wanting each upgrade to be memorable and significant. There is absolutely no way that crafters can expect to sell their bulk wares to other players. There will be negative demand. Even if VR chooses to go with “it takes 10 minutes to complete 1 item” and you need to craft for 3 hours per progression marker then that is still 18 items per progression marker, that no player will buy. If they leave it at 15 seconds, 1 minute, even 3 minutes to craft an item we are talking many many more negative demand items.
If we guess that each server can support 3000 players and crafting classes are one per character and evenly distributed then you need to sell all your wares to effectively 5 other people, while buying 1/5th of each of their wares. There may be some in the 3000 that don’t craft but the few players that actually do buy low level items will turn around and sell them when they get an upgrade. Trying to design around the idea of selling everything you made in order to progress your crafter to other players is just polishing a turd. No matter how hard you try it isn’t going to happen.
The only real way for crafting to make sense as both an independent game play loop and a source of player wanted items is to split recipes into two categories; cheap progression recipes and expensive powerful recipes. You use the cheap recipes to raise your skill level. You only touch the rare and exotic materials when you have already mastered the item, otherwise you are just throwing away expensive materials on a gamble. It could even be the same recipes but with an optional slot to add the exotics to the same mundane recipe or swapping a mundane material for an exotic.
I would put in a special NPCs that accept the common raw materials and also gives out crafting writs. Harvesters can get contracts from the NPCs or trade the materials in bulk. Crafters can either buy the raw materials or go through the writ process and be provided the materials or some form of trade voucher for more materials.
I still would rather see Hunter and Gatherer be two different professions that are exclusive with all other professions or take their own mastery points on a mastery web. Having everyone be a harvester will also just flood the market with materials anyway. Keeping bulk harvesting valuable by having crafters consume bulk raw materials is just passing the poor design buck from harvesters to crafters. The only way to keep materials in somewhat demand is through the opportunity cost of needing to give up on crafting to be a harvester and only half the harvestables at that.
To add a little bit more. In preindustrial age the skilled labor to unskilled labor in a given village was at least 10 to one with only one of each craft for between 100 to 1000 people depending on how specialized or commonly needed the craft was.
In a game world without item decay many of those commonly used items will only be needed once be a given character for its entire play loop and posibly only once per account. Permanent items will have very low demand from players for personal use if they only keep the very best stat item per slot and maybe a favored appearance item for each slot, another negative side effect of slot based inventories. The only items then that will have value are those that fill either the best stat or favored appearance for characters. There for the only harvested items that will have post usage value are those that enabled making an item that retains value.
All other permanet items are destined for the salvage pile or the pawn shop if there is not an artificial demand as there is no way to make players want something they dont need.
Trasak said: ... if there is not an artificial demand as there is no way to make players want something they dont need.
Correct. Which is why I'm a strong proponent of donation/sacrifice to obtain SC, and SC required for all crafting fuel, and only NPCs trade SC for crafting fuel, among other features.
This mechanic, by itself, creates the infinite/artificial demand, and doesn't contribute to inflation at all as it's not based on currency, even in a hybrid implementation.
I have no illusions that VR will even consider this solution, but it is A solution to the problem, among many.
It also addresses the root causes of "Trying to design around the idea of selling everything you made in order to progress your crafter to other players","Having everyone be a harvester will also just flood the market with materials anyway.","There is absolutely no way that crafters can expect to sell their bulk wares to other players." and similar concerns. Happy to discuss those root causes further, but in the harvesting context, Players should be supplying the infinite demand from NPCs, and other players need to compete with that. That's A way you can create the appropriate positive emergent behavior and retain subscribers.
@vjek
And this is why its great to have these threads. We have more or less identified that harvesters need a demand for their mundane materials in addition to what player crafters might consume. Their real player to player profit comes from exotic materials and chance finds in mundane materials. I would even still include a non player demand for exotics and chance finds so that there is a minimum value to those so that once the end product is no longer wanted there is something to do with the materials.
The fuel idea is also the right direction. Something that must be earned through effort rather than by just dumping player trade currency into a currency sink. Starts adding another time component to crafting progression that cannot be bypased by spending adventuring rewards on power leveling crafting. The exact manifestation will be dependent on the implementation of the crafting process. Could even be that the only way to regenerate your crafting mana is through "customer satisfaction" gain by completing an order and not just completing an item.
@vjek I agree that in order to perceive a value for your product, there needs to be a demand which is higher/continuing than only the fluctuating demand of the player-based community. Designwise it's artificial but there is room to write your way around it. If that content however does not appeal to the player, you've failed in your initial designgoal, as players will primarily focus on the pc demand (if any) and their road to advancement. How do you provide continious appeal for such content that can last throughout expansion and extra tiers?
@Trasak interesting concept "customer satisfaction". It would have to be fleshed out with a decent entertainment factor to it or you might risk that people would just not touch it, since they don't want the feeling of going to work or being trapped with low mana due to not being 'succesful'.
To bring this back to GoofyWarriorGuy... Little to no profit from harvesting mundane resources. Being able to harvest all resources.
If you're allowing all resources to be harvested, how would you obtain that rare 'intact shadow tiger eye'? Aren't you pushing the problem just a few levels higher here? At level 30 you'll be able to harvest everything, right? So that would mean also everything that Shadow Tiger has to offer.
When you maintain the idea of The Shadow Tiger should always offer everything it has to offer. It should always offer that 'rare' item aswel.
A reply to this could be: "Well, you don't have to, just put some harvesting requirements on it, like a specific harvesting tool." If you continue here, this would end up in; If you're level 30, be sure to have this and this in your bags. So when you kill Shadow Tigers you can always harvest that 'rare' item. Those spiders however are not rare mobs. It's still early in the morning at the time of typing, but it's not easy trying to get out of that circle. Unless you accept the concept of not having every possible item being presented to you. Or you'll have some really rare mobs walking around on Terminus. It's an interesting idea for such extreme rarities to be out there in the world. Something that cannot be saturated within 1 session or 1 week. But where you truely have to hunt, scout, explore to encounter that rare mob/resource derived from harvesting that rare mob.
The concept of mundane and rare resources is a discussion on its own. If spider eyes are the mundane resource, and shadow tiger eyes are rare, that can be fine. But it's likely that rare would generally mean, less abundant than spider eyes, but still available to some degree. Extreme rarity/rare mobs however are something aside of that. If you have those less abundant shadow tigers walking around, the rarity is not defined by the resources coming from the mob but by the abundance of that mob itself. How this translates into ...
Just to be clear, I'm talking about killing mobs and harvesting what ever they offer. I'm not (yet) talking about harvesting nodes themselves and how rarity is implemented in that part of the game.
*needs editing after some parenting time
Barin999 said: ... How do you provide continious appeal for such content that can last throughout expansion and extra tiers? ...
That's the easy part, and where designers can shine.
As a simple & grossly overpowered example; If, by completing a non-adventure-loop task, work order or donating/sacrificing enough, or acquiring and then spending sufficient social currency, you can get a 20% crit chance buff that lasts 4 in-game hours, would that appeal to those consuming content in the Adventure loop? Likely.
If that's good enough, then any/many/some tune-able rewards would fit into each respective loop where desired. Place when and where in whatever tier you wish.
Of course, it doesn't have to be cross-loop, but it can be, if you want to encourage that kind of emergent player behavior.
Barin999 said: "If you're allowing all resources to be harvested, how would you obtain that rare 'intact shadow tiger eye'? Aren't you pushing the problem just a few levels higher here? At level 30 you'll be able to harvest everything, right? So that would mean also everything that Shadow Tiger has to offer.
When you maintain the idea of The Shadow Tiger should always offer everything it has to offer. It should always offer that 'rare' item aswel.
A reply to this could be: "Well, you don't have to, just put some harvesting requirements on it, like a specific harvesting tool." If you continue here, this would end up in; If you're level 30, be sure to have this and this in your bags. So when you kill Shadow Tigers you can always harvest that 'rare' item."
Well there is a few things to unwrap here... What you are basically saying is: If the animal is common, but the tool (to get the exotic resource) is rare, once you have the tool (you are assuming level 30 but why can't some rare tools be max raid level difficult to obtain) you can always harvest the exotic with impunity on this commonly occuring animal, thus flooding the market with the exotic resource.
There are a few ways to deal with this.
1) The Rare Tool could have charges.
This would mean each tool could only obtain a set number of the exotic item before you would need to go find (quest | kill rare named | find rare chest | whatever) a new one. The downside to this, is it forces Harvesters to tediously repeat past adventures over and over in order to consistantly harvest said exotic resource.
2) The Rare Tool could have a cooldown.
This would mean that even with the animal being harvested being common, the exotic resource could only be harvested at a defined rate, thus preventing market flooding. The downside to this is players may feel forced to have multiple characters each with one of these tools and switch characters every cooldown cycle to maximize their rate of exotic harvesting.
Points 1 and 2 could be combined as well...
Both charges and cooldown. Perhaps the Tool has charges, but recharge naturally at a set rate; Say it starts with 8 charges and regains 1 charge every 20 minutes. This means you can still Harvest 8 of the Exotic Resources in a short time without needing to wait. But after this, it slows you down so you can't flood the market. Players who do this quickly may still feel the urge to have seperate characters all using this tool, but the average player may not push the charges refresh rate too much. VR can then balance the starting charges and cooldown in order to effect how rare the items are in the market.
This kind of system could motivate players to move on to other things rather than spending all their time just harvesting. So if you go out and harvest for a while until you hit the charges limit, then you are free to go adventure with your friends in a dungeon for an hour or 2 while you wait for your harvesting tool to recharge and then go back to harvesting later after the dungeon crawl.
3) Tie the Exotic Resource to a Disposition.
Since Pantheon has a system causing some targets to have different dispositions, you could make it so that you could only harvest an exotic resource from an animal that has a specific disposition. This would be a version of a 'Rare' of said animal walking around that you would need to find in order to Harvest from.
4) Tie the Exotic Resource to a secondary Effect that the player could through effort cause to effect the Target animal.
Let's imagine there are several different nodes of different coloured weeds. You can harvest these nodes to collect the different coloured weeds. You then combine specific weeds together (Mortar and Pestle requried) to create a specific coloured goo; Different weed combinations create different colours of Goo. You then combine the Goo with some rabbit meat (that you can harvest from said rabbits). This creates a special infused rabbit meat you can then plant on the ground near a Shadow Tiger, who will be drawn towards it to eat. Once eaten it causes a glow effect of the specific colour combination you created to be on this Shadow Tiger. Once you then kill the Tiger, and if you have the correct tool, you can then Harvest the specific Exotic resource that is now available since the Tiger was under that specific effect from the goo you fed it.
The type of exotic resource available to you could then be tied to the Colour of the Goo. So let's say you have a Rare Tool that allows you to collect animal Blood as an Exotic resource. So the different colours could be tied to a specific part of Blood.
Purple Goo = Hemoglobin (the part of blood that carries oxygen) - Used for Anaerobic (lack of Oxygen) Acclimation potions.
Orange Goo = Platelets (the part of the blood that causes clotting) - Used for Wind Shear Acclimation potions (clotting small skin cuts from the wind).
Red Goo = Plasma (the liquid part of the blood) - Used for Potions that reduce the duration of Bleed type Damage over Time effects.
Blue Goo = Lymphocyte (One of the White blood cells used to fight infections) - Used for Toxic Acclimation potions.
(obviously other crafts might use these different types of blood as well... was just using Potions for example)
These Goo colours could effect other types of resource harvesting as well. Sharpness / Hardness / Length / Density of Harvested Claws. Fluffiness / Length / Tensile Strengh / Shininess of Harvested Fur. Size / Shape / Colour / Squishiness of Harvested Eyeballs. Etc...
Players who choose NOT to create special Goo bait before killing Shadow Tigers can still collect the Shadow Tiger Blood (if they have the Rare Tool that they need) but without the special coloured effect it will just be normal Blood which is only used as part of basic Healing potions rather than the more exotic potions.
Figuring out all the Colour types and what effects they have on the different resources you harvest could then be part of the fun and complexity of the system.
VR can then manage the rate at which players can Harvest these Exotic resources by tuning how often the various weed types spawn (some colours of Goo would be more rare to make), or even by tuning how often the Rabbits spawn (for the bait meat). Some weed colours may also spawn in specific locations NOT near the animals you'd use them on. Causing you to do a dungeon run to get a few of a more rare weed colour.
These weeds and Rabbit meat may also have an expiry duration or disappear if you log out, so you can't just farm weeds and rabbits for a few days to get a stockpile... which leads us to the next point...
5) Exotic Resources could have Expiration or Decaying Potency timers.
This could mean once you Harvest the Exotic resource, it must be used in Crafting within a set time period before it spoils and is no longer useful. Or perhaps the usefulness itself changes based on the freshness of the Resource. So if used within 5 hours it makes a Potent healing potion. If used after 5 hours but within 10 hours it creates a Moderate Healing Potion. If used after 10 hours but within 20 hours it creates a Minor Healing Potion. If used after 20 hours but before 42 hours it creates a potion that increases natural regeneration rate for a few minutes. After 42 hours it becomes useless... but may still be combined with booze to give some extra zing! and flavour.
Players who are Harvesting to sell rather than use themselves, would then need to get those Exotic resources to town for sale within a specific time period in order to get the best prices, since as the potency goes down so does the value. While Crafters themselves may then be motivated to go do their own Harvesting since it may be uncommon for Exotic resources to make it into town for sale within the most Potent time period (especially at non-peak play times).
Obviously once the item is Crafted it does not have the same expiration. The deadline was only for the resource itself and not for the finished product. Although this doesn't mean that some Crafted items may not have their own Expirations. VR could decide that potions don't last forever and you can't stockpile 500 healing potions in your bank that will last you months, since they only are good for say 2 weeks, before you need to go buy fresh ones. This can also combat the tendency for some players to avoid using their potions very often because they are always 'saving them for that rainy day when you really really need them'.