Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

What is the least appealing crafting profession from past MMOs?

    • 334 posts
    January 12, 2021 11:28 AM PST

    I believe the least appealing crafting professions tend to be those that aren't profitable in some way. Giving each crafting class some way to be uniquely profitable is a good idea. EQ2 did an okay job of this, most professions had a way to make money. The two that were least appealing were weaponsmithing and armorsmithing since they didn't really have a place in end-game, so finding ways to make professions like that relevant in end-game in Pantheon would be a good idea.

    • 99 posts
    January 13, 2021 6:51 AM PST
    My problem with crafting has always been you lvl up a armor craft or weapon craft to make certain pieces and then next patch those pieces become irrelevant. So i always leaned to enchanting, alchemy because you always use consumes. there is a constant need for them in the market. The problem with consumes is your botters, farmers will be doing the same thing and manipulating the market value almost to where if your not grinding mats for 5,6 hrs a day your no longer profitable in the market. So at the end of the day they are all my least favorite atleast in the way they have been designed in previous games.
    • 3852 posts
    January 13, 2021 7:30 AM PST

    Wobels - I don't disagree at all. Consumables often wind up selling at commodity prices and weapons and armor become outdated very rapidly. But two design features of Pantheon should ameliorate if not prevent this from being as much of a problem.

    Firstly - the intended focus on a slow leveling process with "endgame" taking a long time to get to. When one expects to take a few months to get from level 30 to level 40 (choosing numbers almost randomly) it makes more sense to craft e.g. level 30 and 33 and 37 gear and for people to buy it. Since they will not be at level-cap in a week. Or a day.

    Secondly the difficulty - if the game is harder than current MMOs - and it can hardly be easier - people will need high quality gear more. To survive not just to cut half an hour off of the time to get to maximum level.

    As to commodity pricing for food and drinks and other consumables. Yes that will happen. But if there are a variety of types of consumables and some take exotic materials to craft it won't be as bad as if almost everyone uses one or two foods and one or two drinks.

     

    • 178 posts
    January 13, 2021 8:19 PM PST

    Pottery in EQ1.

    I only did it with my rogue for vials for poisons - which were fun!

    And posions were rather useless. So much effort to produce a one-time hit (if it wasn't a miss or resisted) for an amount that made very little difference (except for immediate aggro - which for a rogue was a death knell). But damn, did I go far and wide for as many varied ingredients as I could to make as many potions as I could. That was fun!

    • 690 posts
    January 13, 2021 8:52 PM PST

    muscoby said:

    Pottery in EQ1.

    That's me too.

    Don't get me wrong, it's a cool idea to have tradeskills that only benefit other tradeskills as their main effect.

    But..Pottery was expensive and there was nothing at all exciting about leveling it.

    You'd just save up a bunch of money, look up a guide, buy what it tells you to, click to make stuff, repeat, until you are max level.

    Then, at max level pottery you really didn't significantly use it for THAT much stuff.

    Honestly, I don't even remember what I used pottery for. I just remember that horrible grind.

    • 252 posts
    January 13, 2021 9:21 PM PST

    Sicario said:

    I believe the least appealing crafting professions tend to be those that aren't profitable in some way. Giving each crafting class some way to be uniquely profitable is a good idea. EQ2 did an okay job of this, most professions had a way to make money. The two that were least appealing were weaponsmithing and armorsmithing since they didn't really have a place in end-game, so finding ways to make professions like that relevant in end-game in Pantheon would be a good idea.

    IIRC there was a time in EQ2 when crafted weapons and armor were decent entry level PVP gear, better than the PVE gear that dropped in dungeons. So people would use the crafted gear until they started getting their PVP gear.

     

    Probably not better than raid gear, but I wasn't much of a raider.

     


    This post was edited by Ruinar at January 13, 2021 9:22 PM PST
    • 287 posts
    January 14, 2021 5:11 AM PST

    dorotea said:

    Secondly the difficulty - if the game is harder than current MMOs - and it can hardly be easier - people will need high quality gear more. To survive not just to cut half an hour off of the time to get to maximum level.

    This can be terrible, too.  Take early DAoC (I didn't play the expansion(s)).  Gear had both quality, durability and condition.  Weapons had a base damage, a maximum potential, that was reduced by all 3.  Quality was static once crafted but getting a 100% quality item, a "masterpiece", was extremely time and resource intensive. Durability and condition always started at 100% but as you used the weapon, and it took very little time, condition would decrease. As you repaired the condition back to 100% the durability would go down accordingly and could not be returned to 100%.  In competitive PvP you were dependent on your gear being in peak condition (quality * durability * condition) which meant that you were replacing your weapons rather frequently and your armor almost as quickly.  You always carried a full set of masterpiece gear at 100/100 for times you needed to quickly swap out and go slaughter some worthless Hibernian.  Your game life revolved around farming materials to keep trying to craft your next masterpiece only to fail almost every time rather than actually playing the game and hunting down scum from opposing factions.

    Granted, it's not just the crafting aspect that caused problems in DAoC but it was still awful.  Nobody could afford to pay a crafter over and over and over only to fail to get the masterpiece quality you required. Most of us became crafters ourselves just to speed the process up and bring the cost down.  Most players were master craftspeople in multiple disciplines who spent 90%+ of their time farming materials, 9% crafting those materials and less than 1% actually playing the game. 

    On the other hand, I was extremely wealthy from selling my unwanted crafting skills to other players who had not yet maxed out their own crafting.

    I became convinced that DAoC stood for "Dark Age of Crafting" and finally quit playing because I'm a raider, not a crafter, though I end up crafting in every game.  If crafting produces something that is essential at endgame then crafting itself is essential and can easily become the focus of a game.  If PRotF is to be a crafting game then fine, let's say so and move on.  If not then I don't envy VR's job here in trying to satisfy crafters, raiders and everyone in between.

    • 334 posts
    January 14, 2021 5:18 PM PST

    Ruinar said:

    Sicario said:

    I believe the least appealing crafting professions tend to be those that aren't profitable in some way. Giving each crafting class some way to be uniquely profitable is a good idea. EQ2 did an okay job of this, most professions had a way to make money. The two that were least appealing were weaponsmithing and armorsmithing since they didn't really have a place in end-game, so finding ways to make professions like that relevant in end-game in Pantheon would be a good idea.

    IIRC there was a time in EQ2 when crafted weapons and armor were decent entry level PVP gear, better than the PVE gear that dropped in dungeons. So people would use the crafted gear until they started getting their PVP gear.

    Probably not better than raid gear, but I wasn't much of a raider.

    EQ2 crafting system was much more complex originally before being watered down. You had crafter interdependency, crafting "pristine" quality consistently was somewhat challenging, and the crafting community was huge/helped each other. I remember there being dedicated crafters who did little adventuring.

    Before the crafting revamp, if you found rare ore you could get mastercrafted armor that was amazing. It wasn't raid-tier, but it was certainly very strong armor. Getting rare crafting mats took much longer in that era, too, so if you wanted a full set it took a bit of effort to get it. Very popular for PvPers of all tiers.

    • 86 posts
    January 17, 2021 6:02 AM PST

    For me ithere's no specific profession. I have tended to like all of them. It's basically any crafting profession where the time investment is not worth the rewards. I did most of the professions in FFXIV because there was some specific clear benefit to be had from levelling them - be it profession synergy or specific class (or profession) related weapons and tools.  However leatherworking in classic Wow, ouch; and blacksmithing, all that time to getting hit capped with dark iron only to replace the armour almost instantly on raiding. Very annoying. 

    Secondly gathering is traditionally a big barrier to people getting into crafting - chinese farmers everywhere; bad itemisation (e.g. camping what seemed to be the only 3 frikkin sheep in the entire FFXIV world with kill steal frustrations etc.). 'Difficult' is one thing but if it gets to a point where you just laugh at the obstacles then the fun stops.

    The crafting process itself should be interesting - Agree completely with Sicario "EQ2 crafting system was much more complex originally before being watered down. You had crafter interdependency, crafting "pristine" quality consistently was somewhat challenging, and the crafting community was huge/helped each other. I remember there being dedicated crafters who did little adventuring." FFXIV did this even better than even EQ2 original, by a wide margin the most deep and sophisticated crafting system I've seen in any game. Theorycrafting and having to craft your own gear and tools to help make better quality items - even down to crafting your own - colour customisable - 'endgame' crafting gear, which also *looked amazing* too - wonderful.

    (btw Dyeing, iirc was also a mini sub profession in itself, people wanting to dye their gear and weapons was a market in itself; had to gather and craft the dyes with some needing some hard to get reagents - led to trading and also allowed some individuality.)

    The FFXIV system was so broad that one was never sure whether to chuck away trash, just in case it was 'rare' trash that may have been fantastically valuable for some in demand recipe. Managing banks in that regard was frustrating, but a good frustrating.

    Extending the crafting system to continue to be relevant in top endgame is important - but this needs thinking through carefully too. Again here FFXIV did this best (imho), with AF2 level weapons needing reagents from raiding (having reagents valid for several end game weapons/armour also helps with the 'omg not another staff of doom' raiding disaapointment and also invovles crafters. Quest weapons from old AQ40 in wow where one had to obtain raiding reagents, go on series of hard quests, involve lots of crafters - fun journey (although ultimately not worth it given by the time you'd finished you'd likely had got a better boss drop, or very soon after).  There's a balance to be struck ofc because although I haven't played DOAC I also agree with Ruinar  "DAoC stood for "Dark Age of Crafting" and finally quit playing because I'm a raider, not a crafter"


    This post was edited by Idrial at January 17, 2021 6:21 AM PST