Hi everyone! I wanted to throw out another question for the community here.
If you think about the process of choosing tradeskills for your characters - Would you prefer to have to select a profession (or potentially two professions) and be locked into that choice, or would you prefer to start off as a generalist, able to try a little bit of everything, and then over time specialize in the things that you really want your character to do?
What are the pros and cons of the two approaches? Do you think that one approach or the other might be better for players who are new to MMORPGs or are new to crafting?
As always, there are no right or wrong answers here. There's no ulterior motive for this discussion and there's no design decision that hinges on it or anything like that. It is simply a topic that I would like to hear everyone's thoughts on. So just talk about how you feel. Which style appeals to you more?
Interesting. At first I would have said I'd prefer to choose a tradeskill and be stuck with just that one. Maybe have the option of dropping that skill and starting fresh with a new one. Then at some point if I thought "nah, I really did enjoy that first one better" maybe have an option to switch back to it again but have to re-learn some of the stuff I had already known. I'm not sure about that idea, just brainstorming.
Maybe as a new to MMO's player being able to dabble in multiple crafts and then narrowing it down as I improve would be good. The only reason that option doesn't really appeal to me is because I normally know what I want to do before I even start playing the character. But, I don't think I'd have a problem with the idea of starting off as a generalist and then specializing in one...as long as the generalist stuff isn't very valuable. I really wouldn't want every character to do all the crafts if it meant crowding the market with all the low level stuff and making them all worthless...or flat out worthless because every single person could do/make them.
I have played MMO's where you pick one subclass like cooking, mining, or gathering - and then your main crafting class like tailoring or leatherworking. I think most people get the general idea of what they are looking to get into and what to expect. I dont think a leather wearing class would be like "Hey let me get into tailoring and not leatherwork!". Most people play IMO have a generalization of what they might wanna get into.
I have also played a game FFXIV where you could learn all the crafting classes cooking, leather work, etc. It just depended on what you wanted to focus on, but you did have to change gear and they went VERY HEAVY into crafting.
Me personally I would love to see one sub class and one main class to focus on crafting wise!
I liked alot about how project gorgon approached tradeskills. You largely started by dabbling in areas that you ran across and interested you - each tradeskill has some crossover perks in game typically, whether it is food from cooking, or actual combat benefits from anatomy for example. From there they built on each other until you ended up specialized, ie cheesmaking for example. Or some exotic ice/sorbet/etc. This largely meant that your ability to specialize was unlimited technically, but practically limited by the immense time and energy it took to take each one to progressively higher ranks and then mix them for the specialized stuff. Despite that, you typically had a couple that you would rank up appropriately as you were leveling and that would assist you in game, whether by having things to sell to raise cash, having in game benefits, ie food, etc.
I would be in favor of that sort of mechanic combined with a surmountable technical limit. Ie, to steal from EQ, maybe you could hit a basic level in the base skills, ie 100 skill points, and a journeyman level in 2, ie 200 points, then a mastery level in 1 using those 2, ie 300 points, and finally pay a few mastery points or do an involved quest to master a sub speciality. Ie, cooking to 300 and animal husbandry to 200, then you unlock cheesemaking. That may not be the best actual structure - I would refer you to project gorgon for more inspiration there - but you get the rough thought. Mastery points could then be used to unlock more, with the costs adjusting based on the level of specialization and how many tradeskills you already have unlocked potentially. I will note that what I feel made project gorgons tradeskills so good vs traditional mmos, was how easily they sort of flowed and were integrated as you leveled, you started dabbling in a few naturally, and it sort of branched from there. They were also linked to actual character gameplay, ie anatomy ranks in a mob type had in-game implications when fighting that mob type. In many games, tradeskills were largely their own parallel in game system, but in project gorgon they are more linked. I mean, there are poetry reading sessions in that game and you can collect artwork...and its not weird and not silly, its fun and has in game benefits, and it all feels natural. Its hard to explain without experiencing it.
I like the idea of picking ONE ‘trade’ or one craft / gathering profession per character.
Reasons:
RP - If you RP then it would make sense for a person in the world to have some knowledge of a craft or gathering profession. Either from lineage or their time before becoming an adventurer. (Your character starts as an adult)
Bloat - As far as game design goes, every player will be able to have multiple characters, meaning that the crafting systems get bloated as one person can do, theoretically, every profession. When this is the case, as in many MMO’s, then it reduces the need to involve others in crafting. Gutting social aspect tied to it. “You can make that? Cool so can everyone else in the guild on an alt, good luck trying to sell it.”
Demand - Supply and Demand is something that is needed to keep Trade skills viable. No demand and people will not bother. Too much supply and everything you make is worthless, other than using it on your own alt. ONE trade per character will help curb this, and hopefully there will also be a cap on characters per realm. People might not like it but it would be healthier for the game in the long run.
Selecting and Changing Trade Skills:
There should already be a limit with having one skill per character. So I do think you should be able to change skills. The classic penalty is always the perfect incentive too. You unlearn a craft and start from the bottom with the new skill.
Reasons:
Balance - Being able to learn and unlearn may feel a bit cheesy, but it’s good for the realm economy. Players will be able to drop Skills that are in low demand, and pick up something that they and others would find useful.
Woopsies - Not being able to change would be paramount to re-rolling a character for any individual that plays the game with a crafting or gathering focus. Maybe someone chooses something and finds out that it’s hard to make use of it for their character class combo, people are smart but we all make mistakes.
Reset- With a reset penalty there is no reason to fear realm economy going completely wonkie, as the character would have to start completely over. What this would do is have someone have to go through old materials and things that might not be used anymore and put them to use. Drop items in MMO’s tend to end up as vendor garbage so reusing those to re-level could help pull them out of the market, and put them to use. Even crafted things would end up valuable for people with Alts going through the leveling experience.
The Generalist to Specialist Viewpoint
This is a pretty middle of the road way of doing things in my opinion. Anything that ends up in the Generalized category would have no value. Everyone would be able to make them so there would be no need for trade on these items.
On the other side of that coin people that do specialize in crafting could reap all of the benefits for their specific specialty. Which is pretty awesome! As long as you were limited in what you could specialise in then it would remain healthy and profitable, if what you made or gathered where needed in current content.
Pro’s Vs. Con’s
Personally I think that Pros and Cons won't really be apparent until there is a working system in place. I would need a system that has hard data ( Numbers of crafted items, sales on a market, etc) to compare. Even a crafting system that looks great on paper can be totally horrendous when implemented inside of a world where real PEOPLE are controlling it.
Instead
I would like to see a Crafting system that can hit these points and not budge on them, doing it in a fun and engaging way!
1. All materials remain in demand (even if low level stuff is a very slight demand)
2. Crafted Items are mostly consumables or breakable. Allowing craftables the need to be replaced.
3. Gathering to be more intuitive, or risky (i.e. ore in back of cave filled with Hostiles)
4. The Need to leave a city. Either to craft or find a rare mineral. Crafters should not just stand around a main city or trade hub all day
I would like to take this time and offer up another choice for ‘trade’ skills. There are a lot of people who play a game to go out and kill stuff, so I would like there to be a ‘Bounty hunter’ as well. Mobs could have a drop item, like a dog tag or just a paper ticket (insert lore here) that you loot and need to turn into a vendor for rewards.
Bounty Hunter points
Mobs, and drop items, could be different over periods of time.
It would be a loot item, susceptible to being left on a corpse if you die
The reward could be a minimal amount of currency, rep with a faction that you turn them into, or a small amount of other gatherable materials.
IF there are crafting line quests or somethig for milestones on trades, a sub or mini boss in a dungeon, and even a world rare could work for a nice challenge
To conclude; This just touches things briefly and probably all sounds off. I don’t want to go into too much detail or I would be writing pages, so I hope it all makes sense! I say all of this out of love and mean no ill will or negativity in anything written, so I do hope that it can help along or create new talking points. I want nothing more than to see Pantheon Thrive and even though a lot of people don’t like it, I believe that a Game economy that has items that are destroyed or consumed as the majority is the only real way to a healthy system no matter the approach.
So here is my suggestion
Crafting
Up to Lv 5-10 let us change crafting class with out cost ------ why so new crafters can look around and discover crafting And so new MMO players can also craft all starting stuff to there beging of the journey in Terminus.
Make it possible to have 2 craft proffesion and later have us decide to go with 1 or 2 if 2 never be able to do the end game stuff and if 1 make us be able to get to Master crafter ----- why so we can chose as some or even many never get to the end game or dosn't care of end game.
Resourses
Let us be able to gather everything But if you choose Master way make us also be Master harvester for that main rescours of that trade class
Let us refine resources in some way and maybe make it cheaper with groupe refining option as in multiple players ------ danger here for a box player crafting thing.....
That is from the top of my head
I have alot of confidence in Nephele in any case and also in Convo
Onward and Upwards fellow Terminus Crafter's
Everquest 2 did the 'Generalize, then specialize, then specialize again' thing. They got rid of that for a few reasons, but the most important actually turned out to be a non-obvious one.
Oddly, probably due to the garbagefire that was Provisioning or the UI in general, starting off as a generic Crafter class actually confused newer players more than helped them. Yes, it gave them a halfway decent chance at knowing what each of the specialties were, but they had to learn all.... I wanna say 6? All 6 crafting tables right out the gate, along with the trio of clicky abilities associated with each one for crafting failure/success. It sort of shoved everything down your throat at the same time, and then at level 10 you had to toss out 2/3 of what you learned because you had a specialty to pick. I think Everquest 2 might have had a better system if they started out selecting one of the three broad specialties then specializing in one of the three subspecialties, but the '1 into 3 into 9' was baked in pretty solidly as a theme considering their adventuring system and they wanted to have them match. It was an experiment that didn't really work out.
So, like Everquest 2 did not do, I think splitting the difference might be best. Have three or four broad Crafting classes that you specialize out of instead of letting people start with everything. Let people freely reclass between the four broad ones, but when specialization is forced restrict reclassing. (say a 50 level system is introduced. First 15-20 in the broad category, then from 20-30 let people reclass between the specialties within one broad class, but it's locked in from there. Numbers might be too generous, and dial it back to 10 and 20 as breakpoints) While I'd imagine (through the false consensus effect, possibly) that most people have a good idea what tradeskill they want to use from the get-go, this one allows for less decisive people to try out the system and make their choice later.
The most important thing when making a generic 'craft anything class' that everyone has to go through first to specialize, if we decide to go that route, is to not force people to make everything. Everquest 2's 'new craft bounty' system gave enormous amounts of experience to the first time you crafted something. In practical terms it forced everyone to craft a large variety of things in order to advance out of the class. This was emotionally taxing to people who already knew what kind of crafter they wanted to be, particularly ones who cared about roleplaying. "I will become a master bowyer... so I need to finish this axe, dagger, sword, spear, mace, and hammer so I can level up." To its credit, the amount of experience was large enough that someone buying ingredients off the auction house could get out of those first ten levels in just a few hours, but it wasn't an enjoyable few hours.
So this was a lot of words to say I would, presonally, prefer to specialize out the gate, but if you really wanted to start broader then specialize I hope you can learn a few things from the way Everquest 2 changed their crafting system over time.
Does it really matter which VR chooses? If you lock us into 1 or 2, people will just run alts/multiple accounts to cover the tradeskills they want to do so they do not have to pay the, usually, ridiculous mark-ups many people love to charge for their 'hard work'. The cry for the interdependency between players will not be solved by limiting us to just one or a couple of tradeskills. So, Nephele, just pick a side and get on with it already.
I don't see a downside to allowing people to touch a bit of every craft lightly, and then choose to specialize into a smaller number of crafts for high end or speciality crafting. Restricting crafts in games but not restricting the number of characters per account just ends up with the people who really want to craft making a bunch of crafting mules to circumvent this restriction anyways. And the people who might only be slightly interested in crafting are more likely to not engage with it at all because it's seen as too much of a hassle.
Letting everyone dip their toes into everything like in FFXI or other games with the same approach always felt like more people engaged with crafting overall, while the specialization system still ended up with crafters of a certain caliber being high in demannd. Increasing player engagement with the system overall while still maintaing a value to people who eventually dedicate themselves to a particular school of crafting seems like the best outcome imo.
I am comfortable with a traditional system. You pick a craft and start to learn it. Let's face it - in real life learning the basics is very time consuming. People do not become smiths by working for half an hour, then go off to kill a few wolves, then head over to the loom for half an hour, then off to the cooking area, then the next day another half an hour at the forge. It takes weeks or months or even years to learn a basic familiarity with the craft. You certainly don't go from apprentice to journeyman in less than years.
I could argue that you should never be able to pick another craft. The game probably will not let you decide that you want to go from one adventuring class to another if you hit level 5 and regret your initial choice. Sure you could "roll" a new character if you decide to go for a different adventuring class but you would lose out on any crafting progress, reputation gains and the like. Well, why should you be able to start fresh as a crafter and keep your adventuring progress? Strikes me as rank discrimination. If changing adventuring class requires a "reroll" changing your crafting profession should require a "reroll".
I say this somewhat whimsically because I know things are simply not done this way - but why not? If we want to allow crafters to start over - and we should - why not suggest to your colleagues on the adventuring side that adventurers should be able to start over the same way?
The EQ2 system let you do everything until skill level 9 when you could narrow things down to three professions. Then at skill level 19 you picked a final profession. As far as I know it still works this way but I haven't played recently. Whereas for adventuring the system of having you start as a generalist, pick a specific class by doing a quest, then pick a specific sub-class by doing a quest is long gone. I was comfortable with that system too but given a choice I would rather pick a profession and learn a bit and if I want to dabble around unlearn it and pick another profession and dabble around.
Biased OPINIONS below, tl;dr at the end..
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Three methods that might work for Pantheon, in order from most fun/easy to least fun/easy, in my opinion:
- No limit of max-tier tradeskill professions per character, maybe another loop required
- Soft limit of 1-3 max-tier tradeskill professions per character, maybe another loop required
- Hard limit of 1 max-tier tradeskill per account
What this comes down to, as HemlockReaper has said, is what the public design goal is, for launch, regarding number of tradeskill professions per character, player, or account. Is the goal to force, slightly encourage, or strongly encourage social contact and/or interdependence in a, some, or all of the non-adventure loops?
Limits placed on a character are trivially bypassed by the player.
Limits placed on a player are trivially bypassed via multiple accounts.
Ultimately, the only limit (in any modern sense) must be enforced at the account level to have any validity, merit, or actual effect in practice.
The most significant consequence of this design is that to be effective, you must limit the number of concurrent active subscriptions a single individual can have.
From my perspective, given part of my RL job is to support a business that uses the philosophy of the latter for secure transactions, I'm familiar with the implementation challenges and solutions that work today on the Internet. Having said that, I'm not sure it's worth the trouble for a video game that claims to have 'fun' as a goal.
Put another way, as there are multiple different methods to strongly encourage or require social contact for any game loop (adventuring, non-adventuring) I don't personally see the need to go down the account-enforcement route. However, if that's an actual possibility for Pantheon, I'm happy to share the last 10+ years of experience in that online space.
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Returning to the three initial methods summarized above, I'll provide further details here..
I'm going to describe some implementations with the following scenario:
3+ Alts per server, no IP concurrency limits, no account concurrency limits (like most MMOs today)
Given that scenario, whatever attempts at social/interdependency will simply be bypassed by creating however many alts are required on however many accounts are required.
So, if there are 9 total tradeskills, and I can create 3 Alts + 1 main, I could have 12 total max-tier tradeskills if each character can max out 3. (4 chars/server * 3 tradeskills per char = 12 max, out of 9 required)
While opinions will vary as to the effectiveness of such a design, it's been tried before and players play it, and subscribe. It doesn't burn down the Internet, cause a reality implosion, end all life on earth, or even 'cause the game to fail'. Same with most of these designs & implementations. ;)
Of course, if there's no limit of max-tier tradeskill professions per character, then Alts are simply not required, and it's all done with one character.
However, there are two possible implementation details here that are seen as positive from a subscriber retention point of view, in my experience.
If the amount of additional experience required, per max-tier tradeskill profession, is more, or increases for each additional, this can drive positive emergent behavior.
Specifically, let's say it takes, as a random number, 10000 experience to reach max tier in a tradeskill profession. If each subsequent max-tier tradeskill profession required 15000 experience, or 20000 experience, or same value up to 30000 experience, each time, this would likely be punitive enough for some people to be satisfied that the punishment fit the crime of wanting to have a single character do it all.
Similarly, it could require the previous value, plus more. So, it would be 10000, then 15000, then 20000 (+fixed value, per), or 10000, 12000, 14400 (+% per), and so on.
If you wanted it to be a fixed time investment, obviously, a fixed value would be part of your implementation. If you wanted to to require an increasing time investment, a percentage value would satisfy that requirement.
Obviously, you could also have no punishment beyond the normal time investment required, and you simply require 10000 experience per additional.
A note regarding multiple loop requirements..
Some game loops can be designed so that they are self contained. Some can be designed so that there is forced cross loop requirements.
A good example of this is that if everything in the entire game can be acquired via the Adventure loop, the non-adventure loops are optional.
Yet, if you want players to consume content outside the Adventure loop, then you have two choices; Make it required or make it optional.
Making it required would be something like.. Adventure loop consumables for all classes must be and are only crafted by players, and cannot be traded. So, in order to get those, you have to make them yourself, which means everyone must be a crafter.
Similarly, if NPCs sell everything required for the Adventure loop, and players can craft the same items, then multiple loops are optional.
Where this becomes challenging is considering the perspective of requiring the adventure loop for non-adventure loops, rather than the typical 'direction'.
If you require the Adventure loop for any non-adventure loop, that is, Adventure required for Harvesting, or Adventure required for Crafting, it limits player choice. I mean, that's obvious, because it's a requirement. If it was optional, the player could choose the option.
This becomes particularly difficult when you mix and match solo and group content across loops requirements (or not).
In the past, the following has been tried, used, implemented, and paid for:
- solo adventure, solo harvesting, solo crafting, solo +more
- solo/group adventure, solo harvesting, solo crafting, solo +more
- group adventure, solo harvesting, solo crafting, solo +more
- group adventure, solo/group harvesting, solo crafting, solo +more
What hasn't been tried: (that I know of)
- group adventure, group harvesting, group crafting, group +more
Where group or grouping means live no-box concurrency.
Now you can start to see the trends. Of the three types of cross-looping, there is:
- self contained (Adventuring, typically)
- other requires adventure (Harvesting requires Adventure)
- adventure requires other (Adventure requires Crafting)
- other requires other (Crafting requires Harvesting)
And of course, each of these has serious gameplay and subscriber retention consequences.
The decision making process for these is pretty straightforward; You either start at the desired emergent behavior and work backwards to the required mechanics, or you start with the desired mechanics and move forward to the emergent behavior.
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tl;dr
In my OPINION, if it was my system to design and implement, I would use these guidelines:
- permit any single character multiple concurrent max-tier non-adventure loop goals, with appropriately punitive sinks to strongly encourage the desired player behavior.
- all loops have both solo and group content, including adventuring, crafting, harvesting, and many many more loops.
- extraordinarily encourage grouping for all loops, via rewards and efficiency, so that it's perceived as the "only" or "default" choice.
This approach would, in my opinion, satisfy both MMO veteran players as well as those new to MMOs and new to crafting, by offering fun and flexibility to the entire target demographic.
As always, it depends.
If you look at trade skills as a list of recipes that you have access to, then I guess the only real option is to pick which list you want. This tends to lead to a very boring and usually economically infeasible crafting system of grinding one recipe to unlock others. These systems are often also very easy to master and much more money (see mountains of raw materials burned and results vendored) dependent then skill or time dependent to level.
If instead you look a trade-skills as a web of interrelated technics and knowledges that you have mastered then things get a lot more interesting and are no longer linear in progression. Recipes could then require specific knowledges and technics at a specific mastery levels in order to complete rather than a specific crafting class. Those required masteries could be from completely different areas within the mastery web. Nodes within the web would have prerequisite masteries before you could unlock and begin training them. That web could be VERY complex and interlinked.
While a mastery web might sound like allowing someone to master everything it is much more limited than that but more flexible than ridged crafting classes with set recipe lists. You limit a player’s ability to master everything in two ways. First is by setting an amount of game time to unlock a node, advance the node from novice to the point of being able to continue on the web, and advance a node past the minimum master to move on up to true mastery of the node. Secondly by having mastery points to both unlock nodes and master nodes be earned on a diminishing returns scale such that under reasonable game play limits you can only unlock a quarter of the web and under unhealthy limits only about a third of the web can be unlocked, it’s a math thing.
The key to making choices matter in the mastery web system is by tying it directly into the actual crafting process. In addition to required masteries a recipe could also have a list of recommended masteries. These nodes would grant access to specific crafting actions and reactions. A recipe then requires a certain list of successful actions completed in a row. The action itself costs crafting mana that regenerates over time. Within the action some form of skill check is made and an opportunity to succeed, respond to a possible failure with a crafting mana costing reaction, boost a result, repair previous failures, fail and return to an earlier step in the crafting process or fail outright and destroy the materials.
Any time you use an action or reaction both the action and any knowledges tied to the material or recipe gain some amount of progression on mastering their node. Successfully completing an item gives a further reward to all required skills and knowledges.
The skill checks would be based on the mastery of the action node, the combined mastery of the required knowledges, effects of crafting equipment, effect of any crafting mastery title, and a bonus from nodes that are recommended but not required. Reaction skill checks within an action would follow the same pattern for player results and the difficulty rating. The Difficulty Rating will be a value based on the sum of required masteries with a multiplier on the target quality level. The scale of the bonuses and DR will be set relative to a desired statistical distribution of results (ask Saicred for what that means).
Player interdependency comes in by sharing out the crafting mana costs and fulfilling the crafting action requirements of a specific recipe that are not practical or possible for one crafter to have all of them. If each crafting attempt also has a startup cost in both resources and crafting mana each time you want to continue working on a specific item then having a larger group pool of crafting mana to draw from will increase the odds of being able to complete an item in one pass before you run out of crafting mana. This would make group crafting more energy and material efficient, but you would be dividing the progression gained. It could still be possible for a single crafter to make what is typically a group crafting recipe if they went after very specific masteries but that would leave them ultimately with a much smaller number of recipes that they can complete solo.
Harvesting skills will have their own area on the master web.
TLDR:
1) Skill Web that is 25-33% master-able on one character.
2) Recipes requiring Web nodes unlocked to craft, and some recommended for reactions or synergy bonuses.
3) Recipes are a list of actions dependent on materials used and final desired material independent item type known.
4) Crafting startup, crafting actions, crafting reactions, crafting repairs/reworks, and crafting boosts all take crafting mana but can be shared by participating crafters as well the node and item type progression.
5) Harvesting skill nodes are on the mastery web.
I won't be so verbose as others and keep it short for the most part. :)
1st off, and I will always start with this, till you or Convo actually do something about the lack of current and updated info on the direction of crafting and harvesting these conversations are not as helpful. You need to give us some of the fundamentals of where you both are thinking about crafting/harvesting going. These generalize questions are so open ended as to not be as useful as they could be. New VR should be giving the foundations of both crafting and harvesting to us, so we can offer info that is more relivant.
Now on to the discussion:
I am not a fan of learning more then two for a very simple reason, to become good at any one crafting tree line should take months or a year or more and then maybe more with branches. For example if you learn breastplates, you might start with Iron (can take any branch you want at the start), and go to the top of that branch, then decide to spend more points in the Silver, Steel whatever there are for other types. This way even if you can only learn 2 crafting skills, there should be branching to allow you to continue to expand and maybe be added branches with future expacs.
If you let people learn everything on one character, then you are going down the casual road of wow and other horrible games for both the crafting and the economy. We don't want to see Casual Pantheon, we want to see a game that pushes achievements and the feeling of success of finally reaching a certain plataue. We want people to be known for having a high crafting skill in say "Silver Breastplates". Allowing people to eventually get all the skills, means you have designed a casual crafting system that is too easy and will become boring over time with an economy swimming in duplicate items at every regional market.
Spof
vjek said:
In my OPINION, if it was my system to design and implement, I would use these guidelines:
- permit any single character multiple concurrent max-tier non-adventure loop goals, with appropriately punitive sinks to strongly encourage the desired player behavior.
- all loops have both solo and group content, including adventuring, crafting, harvesting, and many many more loops.
- extraordinarily encourage grouping for all loops, via rewards and efficiency, so that it's perceived as the "only" or "default" choice.
I mostly agree with what @Vjek has here, but I think that a player should only be limited by the amount of time and effort required to learn a profession. If it takes 600 hours to max blacksmithing and 600 hours to max woodworking, then a player who wants to commit 1200 hours in order to have them both maxxed on the same character should be able to do that. Why make people create alts just to have another high-level tradeskill? If you want to make crafting classes and have people choose between adventuring classes and crafting classes, then sure. That's not happening here, though. I tend to think that a master swordsmith would focus on making swords and spend all of his time doing that, but we see in our lives that many people master many things. Multi-hyphenates. Those who want to dabble in everything before committing to any trade should be able to do that. Obviously it will take them a lot longer to reach mastery in anything than it would take a person who focuses on one trade, which is similar to how a player who plays one character will reach max level in an adventuring class much sooner than a player who has five alts right away.
I like @Trasak's technique idea here. I think it's pretty neat. Rather than actually choosing specializations, you could choose which technique to learn next as you level. Learning techniques would cost certain amounts of experience or whatever, and when you learn one, it opens up a bunch of recipes that use that technique. What you can make would be determined by the techniques you know. There would also be techniques that have prerequisite techniques that must be known before you can learn them. I think this would be pretty great. You could also have techniques become more expensive as you learn other techniques so that you'd need to be extremely dedicated and committed to learn them all. Then, of course, these techniques could all be used in an active crafting system so that we don't have any situations where people are just gathering materials in bags and running a bunch of autocombines.
So, that's how I think characters should learn tradeskills: one technique at a time.
I am not a fan of limitations on players around harvesting and tradeskills. I strongly believe if someone wants to be a master in all harvesting and tradeskill professions on a single toon, they should be able to. This is not to say that doing so should be a trivial task. Becoming a master in any single tradeskill should require a lot of effort but if someone wants to put that effort into each tradeskill, more power to them. I am very intrigued by Trasak's tradeskill web idea. But we do need to know more about the direction VR is heading with tradeskills to make any discussions meaningful.
I cant say at all that id like to see tradeskills limited to any specific number, although... they should not be master at all at the same time. its not impossible for one man to learn multiple trades, shoot he might even be master at 3, with a little bit of hard work and dedication... a good tradesman should also know the jobs ahead and behind his craft and has an understanding of the other trades. the bowyer knows the smith who knows the tailor. a tradeskill union, or colleges that assign and teach thier trades amongst the other tradesmen. so even if a character starts out "limited" to 2 or 3 trades, they can still expand thier knowledge and skills.
a trade mastery point system, set up in tiers or tree type. where the players place the points as earned.. they can never "max all" but can still set themselves of for a more broad and basic tradeskilling overall. let the players pick wether they are grand master of 2 trades or apprentice of 10 trades....
i would almost hope for a "perception-like" concept, where the players who are interested to follow the quest lines or "Tradeskill pings" that lead them eventually to the said " tradesmen college " or "union"
A level 10 character can not dabble in CC, healing, DPS, tanking. Why would we change what Pantheon is about for crafting and not for combat. You either need others or you don't. We've already been told, in both your combat faction choices and in your Perception choices, they matter and have long lasting effects. And that goes with mats as well. If I need to group to lvl beyond level 10, I think is what we've been told they are shooting for, why would we be able to solo crafting beyond.
If it is done this way, early crafting recipes which we generally try to blow through making stacks of mats for early crafting levels now become necessary throughout your whole time crafting, not just at the start. Others now have to have your own skill choice for your level 5 craftable widget for their level 39 doodad. If they can buy that OR make it themselves since it's low level, what good are low level recipes? Theyre a time sink with little purpose.
Don't give us what we WANT, give us what we NEED!
I think there should be two tiers of crafting. The every day crafting stuff such as fishing, cooking... etc you should be able to get all these and level them if you like (these crafting skills arent game changing but more quality of life things). then another tier for the tradeskills you would like to master with a cap of 2 that you can master. These would be tradeskills that are more involved and require a good amount of work to get to the top of your trade. I also think you should be able to change your trades but I think it should take time for the process to go through, and that you would have to pay your old trade guild a hefty compensation for it.
benonal said:A level 10 character can not dabble in CC, healing, DPS, tanking. Why would we change what Pantheon is about for crafting and not for combat.
They're different. You don't choose your tradeskill when you create your character, but you do choose your adventuring class. I'd prefer it if you had to choose between adventuring classes and crafting classes, but it doesn't look like this game is going that way.
I think choosing your skill at the beginning. I would think most people know what trade skill they want to learn before they start the process.
I don't see the necessary to have a general skill to see which works better because they shuold all work the same, with just different ingredients/materials.
If you have a general skill, then there will be so much of those products being produced, it will probably just all end up ad vendor trash if 1000 people can make the same thing.
Even though most people would know what their desired trade skill is for each character they play, I think there should still be a mechanism in place that allows a character to "test" each profession. Afterall, we are all going to have a starting point where we don’t know how the profession works, so a testing ground might be a good idea just to get a feel for each one.
I don’t mind a character having one profession or two and I don’t mind having the profession locked.
I like the idea of an overall skill that branches into specialisations (e.g., woodworker -> bowyer), however I would like to see the specialisation only come into effect when we are talking about the higher quality items. It makes sense to me that a crafter that specialised as a bowyer for instance, could still make a decent stave or a table, but to make a legendary item, well that’s where the specialisation comes into play. Each profession would be able to create any basic item from that profession’s tree, but the higher the quality being attempted, the more specialised the crafter needs to be.
I would like to see cooperation between the professions that created stock items that could be bought and sold to each other. So, an item would be made up of several different components from different professions. These components could be bought and sold in the usual manner and the final product could be crafted by a craft specialisation. A woodworker could make a handle. A leather worker could make a grip and a smith could make a mace head. A character with the smith profession could make a basic mace, a character with a weaponsmith specialisation could make a good mace. A weaponsmith with a blunt weapons specialisation (along with a few rare materials and recipe) could make a great mace, and so on.
This way, levelling would be primarily done by created subcomponents that are useful to others and not just vender trash. Each profession needs items crafted by others to create usable products. So you end up having a market for raw materials, subcomponents and equipment.
This thread has been promoted as part of my CM content, please continue the discussion while adhering to the forum guidelines.
"Developer Feedback - How do you think that players should learn tradeskills? Have your say on the official thread: https://seforums.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/12570/how-do-you-think-that-players-should-learn-tradeskills #MMORPG #CommunityMatters"
It is pretty much a given that anyone who wants to have access to all the tradeskill professions will find a way. Maybe by alts or maybe via multiple accounts. That has been my experience over multiple games. So instead of designing a system in which you can only have 1 or 2 tradeskill professions per character or account, I would propose allowing any character to have access to any and all professions.
The entire game of Pantheon should be challenging, interdependent, and complex. Every time you start a new play session, you should need to decide how to invest your time.
A few examples:
1) Maybe you join a group to explore a dungeon or camp a rare mob.
2) Perhaps you work on your adventure level or make progress on a quest.
3) Or maybe you decide to make progress on a faction you have determined is important.
4) Or maybe your short on coin and decide to go out and harvest items to sell to crafters.
5) Or maybe you decide to advance your tailoring skill so that you can make a larger backpack to increase your amount of storage.
6) Or maybe you are in a raid guild and tonight is a raid night which precludes you from having time to do any of the above.
So my point is that there should be so much to do in Pantheon, that you will not be able to be a master of everything. You will need to rely on others who have focused on the paths you have not had the time or desire to invest in. That is how you reinforce the interdependent social structure of the game.