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Crafter's Roundtable: What’s a Neph gona do?

    • 1315 posts
    November 23, 2020 6:42 PM PST

    For the first Crafters Round Table post Nephele getting a pink coat of paint we are going to stick with the pick on Neph theme just a little while longer.  So by PantheonCrafters.com consensus I give you this week's Crafters Round Table. 

     

    "What do you think Nephele's biggest challenge will be when attempting to implement the crafting and gathering systems into Pantheon?" 

     

    Shamelessly jumping in here with my own answer. 

    One of those scary hidden challenges that I fear will spring up is “Where do I put all this stuff?”   

    Thus far Pantheon has been going with a cut and paste early EQ style inventory system.  8(12?) bag slots with a max of 8 slots per bag.  That’s going to max you out at 64 unique items.  64 may sound like a lot of items for adventuring loot but it is really just a drop in the bucket when you consider the raw number of unique ingredients that each craft will desire and the fact that all materials are supposed to stay relevant. 

    After considering how many ingredients a dedicated crafter prefers to have on hand I am reminded of how much of a trial it is to clear a “work space” bag for crafting results and mid steps to sit in while working on leveling a craft.  There is only so much bank space to move your adventuring gear into in order to switch over to crafting mode and it ends up as one of those sliding square picture puzzles to make sure you have moved everything around to get at what you need with enough slots to actually work with. 

    Coming up with a workable solution that still holds to choices of what you pick up while adventuring matters is going to be a challenge. 

    A few ideas (of course Trasak has some crazy ideas) 

    1)  Have a “home” crafting station almost like a bind point but for crafting.  That station can be built up for your character as a form of progression.  One of the major functions of that station is a large amount of storage for raw materials, fuels, crafted ingredients and partially finished products.  The inventory of that station can be directly accessed when working station along with a work table space so there is no need to shift things around.  Lots of things you could do with the personal progression of your home station like increasing its quality, elemental aspects and maybe your characters view of an otherwise public workstation.  Access to player stocked vendors could also work through that progression. 

    2) Have bank or warehouse storage be significantly larger than your adventuring storage space so that you can easily put away your adventuring bags and gear and just grab your crafting bags without the Tower of Hanoi process. 

    3) Talk Joppa into switching to a Mass/Volume list-based inventory system that is much more crafter friendly in that it can handle 100s of small unique items without clogging bags as lists are easily sortable. 

    4) My personal favorite, all of the above. 

    • 39 posts
    November 23, 2020 7:34 PM PST

    I am a fan of Number 1. or allow for the crafting system to pull materials from your in game bank. so you dont have to move stuff to your bags, but you may need to returnt ot the bank to drop off stuff you make.

    • 1992 posts
    November 23, 2020 7:37 PM PST

    Trasak said:

    "What do you think Nephele's biggest challenge will be when attempting to implement the crafting and gathering systems into Pantheon?"

    The Players!

     

    (and their expectations)

    • 24 posts
    November 24, 2020 12:08 PM PST

        In BDO We had player owned homes for crafting. I could buy a inventory box from warehouse manager. Giving me access to every thing in that city warehouse that I owned. I could sit in that house for weeks and months leveling and I did. All I needed to do was run to a vendor from time to time and get X. Your cook stove, alchemy station and all other tools would  have XXX combinations then you made or bought another to continue. Made guru 11 in a few months from master level 3. Put in ingredance, check health of tool, calculate time and click start Y. Yes there was gathering involved as is the path to crafting. You could also just buy your way through the levels if you had the cash on hand.

       In GW2 had community stations with vendors at each of the stations. Black Lion Market P2W and bank not to far away. Not one stop shoping but made it easy, stream lined. Could hold hundreds of items and crazy amounts weight. Again could put W, X, Y and Z into tool at station half hour to a hour later. You would pull out your legenary Bow, sword what ever months of quests, gathering and very little time crafting. Leveling was so easy as well. In BDO just keep leveling. Think I heard of one that was Guru cook level 50 +.

       I like 4) Have open discussion on meaningful topics. Then let the Developrs, the VR Team /cheers, work through the posts. Then gather and harvest those gems and pearls that best work in bringing Pantheon to life. Thats just my opinion.

       We all know Nephele as a community leader, respected by all. He will continue to move forward giving his all to the game and community he loves. Grats again Nephele. /Cheers

                                                                      Till next time, take care of each other and be safe. Peace.

     

     

     

    • 1479 posts
    November 24, 2020 2:07 PM PST

    I do not encourage a split inventory system or auto storage for Pantheon. Localization, Economy and scarcity of ressources are too important to be made trivial by such systems.

     

    While I agree bags are an issue with crafting mats and partial crafts, I do not think making it irrelevant is a solution either. A non slot based bag with grids ala Diablo would be a better way to be able to hold all thoses materials hilts, blades and such.

    • 902 posts
    November 26, 2020 3:05 AM PST

    You have to be careful about making it too easy for a player and making it too difficult, especially in the realms of "quality of life" choices. 

    In the games I have played, it is very easy to run out of bag space because you are adventuring and getting raw mats along the way. In EQ2 (for example), your bag space can be increased, but running out of space can still become an issue and you have to start making choices between destroying loot or raw mats you are not to concerned about. Now, in a solo run, this is fine. You can just port home, clear your bags and get out again. In a group, this could cause friction. If you are deep in a dungeon and run out of space, then the time taken to destroy items, can slow the game down for those not getting mats. Or worse, if a party member decides that they want to clear their bags out, you either have to wait for them or get a new player into your group. Both choices are not ideal.

    I dont see an issue with keeping the storage of these game items, separate; bags for loot and (one or more) bags for raw materials. Items cannot be moved from one type of bag to the other. This doesnt solve the issue of running out of space, but it is easier to get rid of items from a loot bag if all it contains is loot. There is still a space restriction, but the quality of life is a little better.

    I also advocate separating bank space for loot from warehouse space for raw mats. Just organises things better. 

    As for partial items (blades and quest items, etc.) then these are loot. I would say the material bags should only contain raw materials or refined materials, anything else is loot.


    This post was edited by chenzeme at November 26, 2020 3:14 AM PST
    • 3852 posts
    November 26, 2020 7:45 PM PST

    We want to keep in mind that one objective is to have a lively world - not people off in personal houses or guild houses (when and if such become available) with communal areas deserted. Thus, a home crafting station as suggested would not necessarily be good if it wasn't in a central crafting area where other people would be expected to craft. 

    I also note that with slow travel if you just had one "home" station it might often be *really* inconvenient to get to.

    Not objections to the idea but things that need to be considered.

    My own favorite solution would be a crafting bag taking up one of your bag spaces that would hold more crafting items than a normal bag. Either more unique types, larger stacks or both.

    I am not sure that pulling crafting items from a bank is an awful idea as long as it is a local branch the materials are in. Localization, as MauvaisOeil correctly noted.  


    This post was edited by dorotea at November 26, 2020 7:45 PM PST
    • 3016 posts
    November 27, 2020 9:40 AM PST

    I remember the "communal crafting stations" in Vanguard...couldn't get near the stations you needed AND it was laggy to the extreme.  In EQII we had our own crafting stations,  with no interference from some folks who like to sit on those stations 24/7.    Choices are good,  you want to endure the competition for the crafting stations..go for it.   You want your own stations where you have access when you have the time to log on...allow that choice too.

     

    Cana

    • 768 posts
    November 27, 2020 9:25 PM PST

    Inventory management, meaningful housing system, access to crafting locations.

    Those are all factors that can be very complex. And I wish VR all the best to test out and figure out what works best for their setting.

    Terminus should still feel like a world with an active and visually present population. 

    I've already said many things related to those topics, so I'm not going to repeat myself here. It will require some bold out of the box thinking to stay clear of the path well traveled. 

    Or at least see the possible consequences of following those familiar pathways.

    Access to worksstations can be earned, rented, communally shared, temporarily payed for,.... But most importantly, they should not be kept inside away from the public. At least try to keep the active part of the "residence" as open as possible. Even if it's just allowing players to view someone else crafting.

    @Cana there was an abundance of workstations in the cities at first. Only few lagged. Most people would swarm around 1 location, but other public crafting areas remained available.  So what you're experiencing is the way how people responded to the 'lay-out' of the city and it's crafting stations. The convenience of nearby hotspots (questhubs, transportation methods, other facilities, most played racial homes etc.) The communal crafting stations did not lag because they were communal, rather because the above mentioned response of the player population.  So with that in mind, VR could try and anticipate on how those groups of people would shift from one location to another. Or attempt to spread the populations as best as possible. 

    Crafting with resources that are not present in your own inventory bags, although convenient, leans more towards automated systems. It doesn't aid with taking the player into the crafting experience. In a way the player is not required to focus as much. I can imagine over time, you'd have players with bulking banks that mainly would craft from their bankingsystem. So you're kind of skipping part of "what it takes to craft". Also the familiarity or perceived value and ID of the product is tempered.

     

     

    • 189 posts
    November 28, 2020 5:41 AM PST

    I don't know what Pantheon's system will be like in terms of bag space and weight. But if weight is going to be heavily involved, it's going to make looting and making money a lot more difficult for those who have to travel into mountains or further into zones and come all the way back out just to make a living. I've never really had a problem with bag space in my games. It wasn't a make or break unless I just didn't have enough room. Warhammer was the worst for this, because your crafting bags didn't have enough space for the different types of ingredients you were going to be holding onto.


    Should weight be a major thing in Pantheon - maybe they could add a "Bag of Holding" type item. 1 bag that only weighs a certain amount, but allows for holding of many and multiple or stacks of items. 1 bag with 42-68 slots, whatever they go with, won't be game breaking. If anything, people will organize that bag a lot more, keep the heavy items and large stacks of items in there. This bag could allow for harvesting runs, dungeon runs, raids, fishing, etc without forcing people to go back and sell off every 10 minutes or empty valuable contents just to be able to hold more items.

    As far as what Neph might have some difficulty with? Balance. You can try to plan ahead and figure things out as much as you want, but people always find some form of a loop hole for things. I haven't seen much information added on crafting, so I'm assuming they have little to nothing added into the game yet. Which means balance is going to be even tougher to try to prepare for and manage because people aren't actively experiencing crafting and giving feedback.

    7 Days To Die is a zombie survival game, and it's currently in Alpha 18? or 19? I can't remember. They've redone their crafting and skill perks so many times, but each time it's only gotten better because of player feedback. Originally the game had molds for everything. Molds for guns, molds for melee weapons. Those molds were to be kept in a safe because they could be reused over and over. This wasn't an ideal system, so they just turned it into crafting books and blueprints. This was too much RNG for individual players to be on the same playing field, so they added the ability to craft the item locked behind skill points and levels. Every aspect of this game has only gotten better with player feedback and a small dedicated team.

    • 334 posts
    November 28, 2020 6:13 PM PST

    Trasak said: A few ideas (of course Trasak has some crazy ideas)
    1)  ... a “home” crafting station ... That station can be built up for your character as a form of progression.  ...
    I also see some potential here.
    maybe not in all cases per se, as a personal station (npc crafter guild dwellings containing higher level default stations in game?), but evolving\progressing (insert quest lines) your personal station could be a step in creating higher level products. ... aside all previously afore mentioned benefits. Maybe even inventing (discovering first) signature items ("Gecelin me fecit" look that up), due to station configuration.
    ... maybe a player could offer access to their evolved station for a fee too, like wizards\druids can offer a port.