Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Crafting Fundamentals!

    • 221 posts
    December 30, 2020 5:27 AM PST

    Greetings Future Crafters!

    Just wanted to jump in here and talk about some of the fundamentals of our crafting system. I was quietly thinking through our crafting and harvesting system quite a bit this year and even though I don’t consider myself a huge crafter, I didn’t like that it was sitting on the shelf collecting dust. I know how important it is to the game and to a lot of you. So today, I’m excited to talk to you about some of the foundational pillars that came from all that thinking.

    Pantheon’s crafting system is meant to be dynamic so the crafter has the tools they need to experiment and be creative within certain limitations. We want to give you as much of a blank canvas as possible.

    The 2 examples I used the most to prove out this system were Mining and Blacksmithing so it’s only right to give some details on them today. Just a quick disclaimer, I’m laying this out in its most basic form. There is a lot to be discussed on the nuances and advanced features of crafting that will come at a later date. With that said, let’s get to it!

    Mining in Pantheon will center around harvesting clusters of ore from mining nodes which will then be smelted down for Primary Metals, Precious Metals, and rare Celestium Shards. There will also be a rare chance to mine Celestrium Dust. More on some of these materials later...

    Using a real example from our game. A player can expect to harvest Ashenrite Ore from an Ashenrite Mining node. The player will then take their Ashrenrite Ore and smelt it down to discover what metal(s) and potential Celestium Shard(s) it might reveal.  Ore’s are made up of mostly Primary metals such as Tin, Copper, Iron, etc...  You’ll learn which Ore’s smelt down to yield which metals with experience but during the smelting process, you will also have a rare chance to yield some precious metals such as Gold or Silver and an even more rare material called Celestium Shards.  More on those in a future update. Until you have smelted down your Ore, you’re not going to know what the mining gods have in store for you!  You can safely assume you will yield some primary metal, though.

    As a rule.  Primary metals will make bars and precious metals will make ingots.  Primary metals come in chunk form and precious metals will come in nugget form. TBD in testing how much metal you’ll need to make a bar or ingot but we already have our internal starting numbers and for now, those numbers are 3.

    So for this example, we have our 3 chunks of iron which is great because that’s the exact amount you’ll need to make a bar! Now you just need your standard metal bar cast and the forge. Success! Your first Iron Bar

    Any metal bar or ingot you create will have different properties that can change the stats of the items that you are trying to make. The goal is to get you experimenting with different materials as you craft items!

    Speaking of changing properties, this will be a good time to talk about Celestium Dust. As mentioned earlier, Celestium Dust is discovered during the mining process. There will be various types of Celestium Dust found and you will be able to use that dust to imbue a bar or ingot with magical properties that will transfer into an attribute bonus when the material is used to create an item.

    An example of this would be Imbuing your Iron Bar with Celestium Dust of Might to create an Iron Bar of Might. This would add a strength bonus to your Iron Bar which would then transfer to your final item when using that bar in a recipe.


    The final part I want to cover is item creation. Blacksmiths will be using molds that require a certain amount of metal bars and other materials to complete the recipe. This is where you’ll be experimenting with your materials to tailor the final outcome to your needs. Most molds will come with some base stats but from there, it’s up to you to use the various metal bars you’ve created to achieve your desired outcome.

    I hope this write-up helps give you a basic overview of where crafting and harvesting are headed. It was important to nail down this foundational layer to make sure we were able to extrapolate out to all of the professions. There is so much more to talk about with crafting and harvesting in the future and I can’t say enough how excited I am to have Nephale on board to take over the reins of this system.

    That’s a wrap for me. Have a safe and happy New Year!


    Convo

    • 255 posts
    December 30, 2020 6:14 AM PST

    Thanks for the update here. Sound very simular to the way Vanguard did the crafting with adding dusts to them to give stats.

    Looking forward to trying it out.

    • 1921 posts
    December 30, 2020 8:53 AM PST

    My biased and skewed OPINIONS while reading the Crafting Fundamentals! post from Convo..
    --

    No recipes, so the early crafters get to suffer the pain of discovery, it all goes on a/the wiki, then everyone else loses nothing.
    This system is challenging for exactly the first person to 'discover' the combination.
    If you had instead gone with a paper recipe being an ingredient, it would be a more challenging system, and have an ongoing requirement, regardless of the wiki.
    Recipes could go into a recipe book, with timers or not, in multiples or not, recipes could have charges, be temporary, or eventually, be permanent, via a wide range of different implementations. You could also, with a proper recipe system, generate and/or create recipes procedurally PER PLAYER to spread out raw/material demand. Not so with what you've outlined.

    Node based harvesting will suffer from all the historical problems node based harvesting has, in the past.
    Specifically, if the raws have sellback/coin value to NPCs, automated/bot harvesters are guaranteed.   Also guaranteed with dusts, as per what's described below.  Bots will simply run their circuits, process everything, and then provide their dusts to their bot herder 24x7.
    If the nodes are guarded at-level (level 1 node, level 1 guard.  level 30 node, level 30 guard), then they will simply be harvested when the mobs grey out, or when the guards can be trivially killed, up to level 39, or whatever the cutoff point is for green mobs at max tier / launch. In other words, at-level guarding is meaningless when your harvester is higher level.
    A superior system is temporary yet persistent regional adjustment, private or public, with the Environment responding appropriately, and/or harvesting events (if desired) triggered when the harvester goes to pull their yield. You can also ensure that 'guarding' is always at level, when the personal/ally event triggers at yield time, being the level of the harvester instead of the already spawned guard level.  Unless level 50 mobs are going to appear out of level 1 static nodes in the open world, when a level 50 is harvesting a level 1 node.  That would seem to be the least thematically consistent implementation, but I look forward to clarification.

    RNG on smelting. Oh, goody.
    From your brief description, the only thing players will care about is Celestium anything. That's the problem with "rare is the new common" harvesting and crafting systems.
    This is also not the intent of what Nephele described, so that's disappointing. I mean, if we're talking legal-ese, Convo, your description can technically fit into Nephele's description, but now that the precedent has been set, future trust (at least, from me) will be difficult. What am I talking about?

    The description of rare vs. exotic is important. Nephele's description gave the impression that exotics would not be rare forms of common materials. That's technically true, yet.. surprise! Getting exotics is now maybe not part of harvesting at all, but is purely RNG from smelting (or presumably, a wide variety of other processing steps).
    What this guarantees is that the common output will be 'worthless' and nigh infinite, while the thing people actually want or need (for enchanting/customization/enhancement) will be required/desired. This is the opposite of good economic design. Where's the infinite demand for common materials?

    In other words, players will discover the % output/loot tables of Celestium 'whatever' from RNG processing, that will be the item of value, and the rest will be worthless. Similarly, everyone will simply stockpile all ore until whatever affects processing is determined, and funnel all ore through that one person to get the max Celestium output. (if processing is not tied to Harvesting in some way)
    It's unlikely this emergent behavior will be seen as fun or challenging, as either harvesters will be cut out because processing isn't tied to harvesting skill, or they'll be dumping/destroying all their non-dust harvests. I mean, once you get to 1000 or 10000 bars, do you really need more, without demand?
    A superior system would be to have exotics harvested with specific tools, equipment and/or skill in a particular region, if you're going with tier based harvesting. This means to get 'normal' harvests, you use normal tools & equipment, and can do so up until the tier cap for a region.
    To get 'exotic' harvests, you use special tools & equipment, or be under the effect of a skill/effect toggle or buff that changes 'modes' and your skill must exceed the tier cap. This gives full player agency/choice, at least. You could even have normal/exotic node visibility tied to mode, then, although the temporary regional adjustment mechanic above is better, imo.

    Primary Metals. Iron Bars. Oh, joy. 3 = 1. This again. Here's a thought.. How about.. 1 = 1.
    Let me guess, it'll eventually rise to 6 = 1, and then 9 = 1, and whatever other insane number at higher tiers? And what about expansions?
    Yeah, been there, done that, won't be doing it again. 1 = 1 Convo, anything else is just punitive and short sighted.
    Here's a thought: Have it be 1 = 2, or 1 = 3. Or with skill, 1 = 4. So that from a single chunk, the player gets multiple bars.
    All raws, materials, and recipe components should have no sellback value anyway, unless you're guaranteeing economic damage/failure.
    Add in an additional fuel cost if it makes you happy, but anything would be better than 3 = 1.

    Experimenting? There's no experimenting. It all goes on the wiki, as above.

    As mentioned above, dust is the only thing of value.. the rest is (appropriately) worthless dross and will be available, eternally, in such large quantities, it might as well be available directly from NPCs for purchase.
    A superior system is to have crafters produce the base items with no bonuses/extras/similar, but sockets, slots, or improvement 'room' and then have all professions produce enhancement/customization/enchantment widgets (of all kinds) that can be applied to the base item(s). Player crafted value is derived from crafted items having empty sockets, while dropped items always have filled sockets, which may or may not be over-write-able (or not, depending on the emergent behavior you want to see). All professions retain value by being able to produce this e/c/e widgets over time.
    The e/c/e widgets can also be temporary, like procs, poison, or salves, unguents, flavoring to add to food, potions, or similar consumables to create buffs, positive effects, reactive effects, effects on hit, effects on damage, and more.
    --
    outstanding questions..
    Where do molds come from? How many times can they be used? What about visual styles of outputs, is that tied to molds?
    Where do the 'other materials' that using molds requires come from? At what tier is another profession required?
    How many max-skill harvesting professions will be permitted per account, or character?
    How many max-skill crafting professions will be permitted per account, or character?

    Thanks for the info, yet.. I was hoping for something better after almost 7 years, personally. 
    Is this what Corey/Ceythos came up with from Jul 2015 to Oct 2019, or is this something entirely different than his work?

    • 1785 posts
    December 30, 2020 10:21 AM PST

    vjek said:

    My biased and skewed OPINIONS while reading the Crafting Fundamentals! post from Convo..
    --

    Vjek, let me give you some more detail to help flesh out what Convo posted.  I understand the frustration and even the cynicism after following the project for so long, but please understand that all of us on the team are just as passionate about seeing Pantheon release as you are.

    vjek said:

    No recipes, so the early crafters get to suffer the pain of discovery, it all goes on a/the wiki, then everyone else loses nothing.
    This system is challenging for exactly the first person to 'discover' the combination.
    If you had instead gone with a paper recipe being an ingredient, it would be a more challenging system, and have an ongoing requirement, regardless of the wiki.
    Recipes could go into a recipe book, with timers or not, in multiples or not, recipes could have charges, be temporary, or eventually, be permanent, via a wide range of different implementations. You could also, with a proper recipe system, generate and/or create recipes procedurally PER PLAYER to spread out raw/material demand. Not so with what you've outlined.

    So in actuality, the "molds" that Convo mentioned are exactly what you're describing with recipes being ingredients in the process.  For finished item crafting (blacksmithing, tailoring, etc), you will get a mold, pattern, schematic, or so on that will act as a "recipe template" and be consumed when you create the item.  You won't have to remember for example that in order to make a sword you need 2 metal bars, a hilt, and that you can add an optional component - the mold/cast will lay all that out for you.  Instead, you'll be able to focus on which metal bars, hilt, or optional components to use.

    There are a few reasons for this approach but one of the big ones is so that we can better control scarcity on the "fancier" versions of recipes.  For example, you'll likely be able to purchase basic molds/casts to use in blacksmithing from NPC vendors.  However, if you put in the time to raise faction with some NPC groups, they might have different versions that have unique appearances or even bonus stats that you can use.  Likewise, if you're out adventuring in some old ruins, you might find an ancient, rare, or NPC-themed mold/cast that would allow you to make an item that is semi-unique in terms of its appearance or bonus stats/effects.  This system gives us a lot of ways to introduce different recipes to the game while still throttling the rate of production on those items, and also rewarding crafters for leaving the safety of cities and getting out into the world.

    vjek said:

    Node based harvesting will suffer from all the historical problems node based harvesting has, in the past.
    Specifically, if the raws have sellback/coin value to NPCs, automated/bot harvesters are guaranteed.   Also guaranteed with dusts, as per what's described below.  Bots will simply run their circuits, process everything, and then provide their dusts to their bot herder 24x7.
    If the nodes are guarded at-level (level 1 node, level 1 guard.  level 30 node, level 30 guard), then they will simply be harvested when the mobs grey out, or when the guards can be trivially killed, up to level 39, or whatever the cutoff point is for green mobs at max tier / launch. In other words, at-level guarding is meaningless when your harvester is higher level.
    A superior system is temporary yet persistent regional adjustment, private or public, with the Environment responding appropriately, and/or harvesting events (if desired) triggered when the harvester goes to pull their yield. You can also ensure that 'guarding' is always at level, when the personal/ally event triggers at yield time, being the level of the harvester instead of the already spawned guard level.  Unless level 50 mobs are going to appear out of level 1 static nodes in the open world, when a level 50 is harvesting a level 1 node.  That would seem to be the least thematically consistent implementation, but I look forward to clarification.

    I don't know why you think we haven't thought of all of these things?  After all, we *do* read your forum posts (as well as many others!) :)

    For now, let me say this.  No system can ever be perfect.  But gathering nodes in Pantheon will not be as simplistic as gathering nodes that you're used to from other games.  We have indeed planned for many of the things you have mentioned, and we do have some mitigations designed into the system that we think will work.  We're looking forward to getting all that into the game so that we can find the right balance between making gathering a fun gameplay activity while still maintaining a healthy game economy.  But please don't assume that we're not thinking about this stuff.

    vjek said:

    RNG on smelting. Oh, goody.
    From your brief description, the only thing players will care about is Celestium anything. That's the problem with "rare is the new common" harvesting and crafting systems.
    This is also not the intent of what Nephele described, so that's disappointing. I mean, if we're talking legal-ese, Convo, your description can technically fit into Nephele's description, but now that the precedent has been set, future trust (at least, from me) will be difficult. What am I talking about?

    The description of rare vs. exotic is important. Nephele's description gave the impression that exotics would not be rare forms of common materials. That's technically true, yet.. surprise! Getting exotics is now maybe not part of harvesting at all, but is purely RNG from smelting (or presumably, a wide variety of other processing steps).
    What this guarantees is that the common output will be 'worthless' and nigh infinite, while the thing people actually want or need (for enchanting/customization/enhancement) will be required/desired. This is the opposite of good economic design. Where's the infinite demand for common materials?

    In other words, players will discover the % output/loot tables of Celestium 'whatever' from RNG processing, that will be the item of value, and the rest will be worthless. Similarly, everyone will simply stockpile all ore until whatever affects processing is determined, and funnel all ore through that one person to get the max Celestium output. (if processing is not tied to Harvesting in some way)
    It's unlikely this emergent behavior will be seen as fun or challenging, as either harvesters will be cut out because processing isn't tied to harvesting skill, or they'll be dumping/destroying all their non-dust harvests. I mean, once you get to 1000 or 10000 bars, do you really need more, without demand?
    A superior system would be to have exotics harvested with specific tools, equipment and/or skill in a particular region, if you're going with tier based harvesting. This means to get 'normal' harvests, you use normal tools & equipment, and can do so up until the tier cap for a region.
    To get 'exotic' harvests, you use special tools & equipment, or be under the effect of a skill/effect toggle or buff that changes 'modes' and your skill must exceed the tier cap. This gives full player agency/choice, at least. You could even have normal/exotic node visibility tied to mode, then, although the temporary regional adjustment mechanic above is better, imo.

    So the way it actually works is that there are (generally) multiple ways to obtain different materials.

    You can:  Gather raw ore from a node somewhere, and then smelt it.  When you do that, you will get some quantity of base metal (which could be something like iron or even a precious metal like silver or gold, or even alchemical ingredients like mercury or calcium) plus a small chance of an unexpected result.  That unexpected result might be many different things - it's not as simple as just a 5% chance of a single item happening all the time.  This also means that the effective refine rate of any particular material can be whatever we want it to be, even on down to .0001% if we want to take it that low.  The RNG is there simply to add a little chance for something unexpected to the smelting process.

    You can also:  Salvage items and equipment to break them down into component materials to re-use in crafting, again with a small chance of finding something unexpected in that process.

    You can also:  Loot raw resources occasionally from NPCs that you fight, or even find them in treasure chests and so on.

    All of these will be balanced to help make sure that no given resource or material becomes too common, and they'll be something that we can tune based on data.  For example if we monitor the number of celestium shards that are in player inventories over time and see that it's rising way too fast, it's not hard to us to throttle down the rate of celestium shards appearing in the world as a result.  The key with all of this is ongoing monitoring and balancing, rather than just setting it up and never looking at it again.

    vjek said:

    Primary Metals. Iron Bars. Oh, joy. 3 = 1. This again. Here's a thought.. How about.. 1 = 1.
    Let me guess, it'll eventually rise to 6 = 1, and then 9 = 1, and whatever other insane number at higher tiers? And what about expansions?
    Yeah, been there, done that, won't be doing it again. 1 = 1 Convo, anything else is just punitive and short sighted.
    Here's a thought: Have it be 1 = 2, or 1 = 3. Or with skill, 1 = 4. So that from a single chunk, the player gets multiple bars.

    All raws, materials, and recipe components should have no sellback value anyway, unless you're guaranteeare or too common in the world.ing economic damage/failure.

    Add in an additional fuel cost if it makes you happy, but anything would be better than 3 = 1.

    3 to 1 is our starting point.  If we find that this is too high and doesn't feel good in actual gameplay, we tune it down.  If we find that it's too low and there's a massive glut of refined resources because of that, we tune it up - although if it gets to more than 4 then the right answer is actually to go tune other parts of the resource chain instead.  Either way, please rest assured that you will never be asked to use more than 4 of the same thing to make an item unless we're talking about something very large - like say, a wagon, or a ship, or a house.

    vjek said:

    Experimenting? There's no experimenting. It all goes on the wiki, as above.

    As mentioned above, dust is the only thing of value.. the rest is (appropriately) worthless dross and will be available, eternally, in such large quantities, it might as well be available directly from NPCs for purchase.
    A superior system is to have crafters produce the base items with no bonuses/extras/similar, but sockets, slots, or improvement 'room' and then have all professions produce enhancement/customization/enchantment widgets (of all kinds) that can be applied to the base item(s). Player crafted value is derived from crafted items having empty sockets, while dropped items always have filled sockets, which may or may not be over-write-able (or not, depending on the emergent behavior you want to see). All professions retain value by being able to produce this e/c/e widgets over time.
    The e/c/e widgets can also be temporary, like procs, poison, or salves, unguents, flavoring to add to food, potions, or similar consumables to create buffs, positive effects, reactive effects, effects on hit, effects on damage, and more.
    --

    All that dust does in the current implementation is add an attribute definition to a refined resource.  So instead of an iron bar or a coldark steel bar you get an iron bar of might or a coldark steel bar of vitality.  Dust is useful (because attribute bonuses are good) but it does *nothing* for other stats like, for example, the damage of the weapon you're crafting or the AC of a piece of armor.

    I understand your position on after-market item modifications but that's not an approach that we will be taking with Pantheon's crafting.

    vjek said:

    outstanding questions..
    Where do molds come from? How many times can they be used? What about visual styles of outputs, is that tied to molds?
    Where do the 'other materials' that using molds requires come from? At what tier is another profession required?
    How many max-skill harvesting professions will be permitted per account, or character?
    How many max-skill crafting professions will be permitted per account, or character?

    1) I answered this up above, but just so no one misses it, various places.  There will be commonly found versions of molds that you might purchase.  There will be uncommon versions of molds where you might need to raise faction with an NPC group or do other things to get them.  And there will be rare versions of molds that are only found out in the world in tiny quantities.  These are broad categorizations and there will be variations even within those (for example, some molds might be purchaseable but more expensive than others).  The current design is that molds are consumed when used so you will have to go get new ones to make more items.  We might investigate some reusable molds at some point, but only after we have plenty of economic data so that we can project the impact.  Visual style is tied to the mold that you use, which also means that yes, we are envisioning continental, regional, racial, and even factional styles.

    2) Think of a mold like a recipe template - so a mold will tell you that you need 2 metal bars, a hilt component, and that you can add one optional item to use with it.  (Note:  This is a simple example, we can easily make things require multiple components or allow for multiple optional items if we want).  That hilt component is where interdependency between professions might come into play.  As a blacksmith, you might be able to make a basic sword hilt yourself - but that sword hilt will be slightly inferior to one you might get from an outfitter (who made it from good materials using their pattern for sword hilts).  The goal is to have interdependency but not block new players completely on it.  There's a benefit to socializing and working with other crafters.

    3) We're not ready to talk about exact limits just yet, but specialization (per character) will be a thing.  I'll give you more details about crafting and gathering progression when those are closer to being final.  Our focus right now is to get the underlying systems and gameplay loops in place first.

     

    I'll try to keep an eye on this thread (as well as the others) and answer questions when I'm able.  Like I said above, I totally understand the frustration and even the cynicism.  My ask is that you and everyone else keep an open mind and understand that we are not going into this blindly.  Voicing your feedback and concerns is great, and please keep doing that, but just remember that we're all on the same side here when it comes to making Pantheon a reality :)

    • 1273 posts
    December 30, 2020 10:35 AM PST

    Thanks for sharing this info!  I'm so excited to start seeing it all come to life!

    • 13 posts
    December 30, 2020 11:11 AM PST

    Convo said:

    Using a real example from our game. A player can expect to harvest Ashenrite Ore from an Ashenrite Mining node. The player will then take their Ashrenrite Ore and smelt it down to discover what metal(s) and potential Celestium Shard(s) it might reveal.  Ore’s are made up of mostly Primary metals such as Tin, Copper, Iron, etc...  You’ll learn which Ore’s smelt down to yield which metals with experience but during the smelting process, you will also have a rare chance to yield some precious metals such as Gold or Silver and an even more rare material called Celestium Shards.  More on those in a future update. Until you have smelted down your Ore, you’re not going to know what the mining gods have in store for you!  You can safely assume you will yield some primary metal, though.




    This Right here is how it should be! Ore named after the world and enviroment that it resides in. Maintaining that high fantacy feel. Then has to be broken down to get the familiar metals that you would work into items!!
    No more, are the days of mining Gold ore nodes and it not making any sense in relation to currency. Love this! This also perseves the raw ore itself as a point of sale item and it will be sought after for the metals it could provide as well. Good work here!




    Convo said:

    Any metal bar or ingot you create will have different properties that can change the stats of the items that you are trying to make. The goal is to get you experimenting with different materials as you craft items!

    Speaking of changing properties, this will be a good time to talk about Celestium Dust. As mentioned earlier, Celestium Dust is discovered during the mining process. There will be various types of Celestium Dust found and you will be able to use that dust to imbue a bar or ingot with magical properties that will transfer into an attribute bonus when the material is used to create an item.

    An example of this would be Imbuing your Iron Bar with Celestium Dust of Might to create an Iron Bar of Might. This would add a strength bonus to your Iron Bar which would then transfer to your final item when using that bar in a recipe.


    The final part I want to cover is item creation. Blacksmiths will be using molds that require a certain amount of metal bars and other materials to complete the recipe. This is where you’ll be experimenting with your materials to tailor the final outcome to your needs. Most molds will come with some base stats but from there, it’s up to you to use the various metal bars you’ve created to achieve your desired outcome.


    This right here is wonderful! Different ore carries with it different sets of stats. This would mean that things like bone armor or leather or cloth as well could all have different material types for stats! Paladin might be decked out in a full set of a 'type of metal', but the armor a Warrior might wear a set made out of a 'different type of metal!' Both the sets might even be the same just made with different metal to slightly change the stats on the gear. ( Full disclosure: This is just me romanticising the notion I can not say for certain that this will be how it is )


     

    Thanks for this. I have a lot of faith that VR will find a nice balance with the system with this as a base. I think that this is a good foundation to cover a lot of the wants of the people, of corse not everyone will be satisfied it is what it is. Looking good keep it up! Looking forward to the future ! 

     

     


    This post was edited by JonWane at December 30, 2020 11:32 AM PST
    • 83 posts
    December 30, 2020 11:28 AM PST

    So! let me see if I have this right.

     

    Recipes are found in the form of 'molds' or 'patterns', which are a consumable portion of the crafting process that is found in-game. A pattern tells you what to put in it, and the traits of the resultant item is mostly drawn from the materials you use. There are rarer patterns to be found through engaging with the game, but a crafter can be expected to find more basic patterns simply on merchants. A pattern can be completed by the crafter it's intended to be used by, but other crafting professions can make an improved version of some of the subcombines, which adds some interdependency without leaving a crafter unable to work without others.

    Refining ore, which is an undifferentiated resource when harvested and only becomes the various metals after smelting through an RNG mediated process, is pretty basic. Another resource called Celestium DUST is gathered simultaneously with the undifferentiated ore. Refiing the ore can create another resource called Celestium SHARDS. (quick suggestion: if the shards do ANYTHING except add more properties to crafted items, I would suggest not re-using the Celestium word. If they do add more properties to items it's fine, it means they're mechanically similar and using the same name helps inform players of its purpose). Celestium Dust is Pantheon's form of 'enchanting' metals. Dust has a stat associated with it and it adds that stat to any arbitrary metal. That metal gains that stat and will bestow that bonus to any item it is used as a component in.

    So lets saw I want to make a warhammer. A warhammer mold prolaims I need a handle and three ingots, and mentions I could also include an optional component. I don't have anything in my inventory that looks like an optional component, unless it wants more metal or something, so I will ignore this. A handle for a warhammer is something I can make, so I grab a handle pattern and craft one up real quick. Doesn't take anything I don't have on hand or can find on the merchant I got the pattern from. I'm a Paladin though, and I want my Warhammer to buff my Wisdom, since (for the purposes of this example) Wisdom helps the amount of threat I generate with my stuns. I have two celestium dust of wisdoms, so I enchant two of my iron ingots with them to make two iron ingots of wisdom. A warhammer takes three ingots, though, so I use the celestial dust of vitality I also got while mining and add that to the hammer. Normally I wouldn't make an item less than perfect, but I'm in desperate need of an upgrade and this will help me push into a better mining spot past some tough elementals, so I use the lone vitality dust to make an iron ingot of vitality. I throw the three ingots and the handle in the mold and I get a warhammer of decent damage with a small bonus to vitality and a larger, though still mediocre, bonus to wisdom.

    Not a weapon that I would wanna sell on the open market, but good enough to replace this random mace I got from a trash mob. But what if I wasn't in such desperate circumstances? Well, I've done my faction with the Elf city (seriously make Elf Paladins it's the easiest option), so I have access to a more powerful elven warhammer mold. Furthermore, I have an outfitter friend with some decent wood, and he is more than willing to supply me with a better handle... for a pair of iron cams for his elven compound longbow. I Google Paladin builds, and even though the game is young, most agree that Vitality and Strength far outweigh Wisdom when it comes to Paladin tanks. I had to wade through an entire subreddit calling for Wisdom buffs to find this information, but find it I did. Google also helpfully informed me that using the same enchantment on a weapon three times leads to a diminishing return, and for a one-handed warhammer using the same two-one split I used previous was, in fact, the right play. Fairly unintuitive, but I'm happy I learned this without needing to waste precious Celestium dust testing it.

    So I now buy the elven warhammer pattern, enchanting my iron with two doses of strength and one vitality, use my fancy new handle, and stare longingly at the optional component slot. It must have something to do with these Celestium Shards I got when refining the iron... Sadly, I place my components back into my inventory. Tomorrow is another day, and this optional component seems important. A better hammer, with better base stats (from the elven mold), faster attack speed (from the improved handle) and a better stat spread awaits after more research.

    Well that was a journey. Am I about right on the details?

     

    Some other thoughts, since I didn't wanna do this on another post. The resource collection process seems fairly straightforward for mining. I'm actually a big fan of the undifferentiated ore? It means you can greatly increase the variety of resources you get from a single node while not burdening bag slots overly much. I'm pretty leery about this dust though. Yeah, sure, ore stacks to a hundred, but remember to leave six-ten slots for all the different celestium dusts that are popping out. Kind of annoying but you can work around it. Better than six-ten different dusts AND five-seven different metals and stones (Alchemy components, from my ore nodes? It's more likely than you think)

    I'm wondering how you can put this kind of effort into other resource collection methods though. You can't really do the unidfferentiated in the field, split into different resources dynamic for anything other than smelting ore. Can't do it with sawing logs or collecting the various things that can be turned into cloth. The ore nodes are very clearly important to three of the 'classic' MMO tradeskills, with metalworking, jewelcrafting, and alchemy all getting components for it, but you still have to contend with tailoring, woodcrafting, and scribing/runecrafting/the rest of alchemy. I'm excited what I might see later on.

    One last question, and this might be an undecided UI element for now, but patterns. Are they crafting containers in of themselves that become the crafted item (open the pattern, put the objects inside, hit combine, the pattern becomes no-longer a bag but instead an item) or are they a component used inside a larger crafting table-like object? Is it 'open the crafting table, you see a list of all the patterns in your inventory and can open expand them to see the components', or is it 'open crafting table, manually drop a pattern into it which then spits out the information and opens the slots you put the components in'. There's a lot of interesting design space there and I'm curious how it's gonna go. Each one has upsides and downsides.

    With my first example, it means the patterns are self-contained crafting machines and crafting tables are completely unecessary to the process. It also means bag management becomes a huge pain in the ass if I need an open bag slot to make anything.

    With my second example, if I need to make a certain number of things I can just buy those patterns and easily go through the crafting table menu to see what I need for them. Downside is that this could be a fairly difficult UI element to create (if I fill my inventory to the brim with different patterns, will I crash it? Does the number of components in each of those patterns effect this? When expansions and new patches make ever larger bags and inventories, will this crash the crafting table when it didn't before? Asking for a friend)

    With the third, it can become fairly tedious to figure out all of the components I need without tabbing out and just looking up what each pattern needs. It also makes it take a lot more clicks to finish a product, incentivizing automation and helping crowd out human crafters over bots. Regardless of this, I still favor this approach since it feels the most like you're actually a part of the process at every step.

    I understand if this hasn't been decided yet, but it's something I can't stop thinking about! Glad we're hearing so much now.

    • 1785 posts
    December 30, 2020 11:55 AM PST

    Darchias said:

    Refining ore, which is an undifferentiated resource when harvested and only becomes the various metals after smelting through an RNG mediated process, is pretty basic. Another resource called Celestium DUST is gathered simultaneously with the undifferentiated ore. Refiing the ore can create another resource called Celestium SHARDS. (quick suggestion: if the shards do ANYTHING except add more properties to crafted items, I would suggest not re-using the Celestium word. If they do add more properties to items it's fine, it means they're mechanically similar and using the same name helps inform players of its purpose). Celestium Dust is Pantheon's form of 'enchanting' metals. Dust has a stat associated with it and it adds that stat to any arbitrary metal. That metal gains that stat and will bestow that bonus to any item it is used as a component in.

    Let me give you guys some quick lore background on Celestium - that will help explain it.

    Celestium is a crystalline material that can be found all over Terminus.  Sages continue to debate whether celestium is a result of planar collisions that have brought different races to the world, or if it is somehow linked to the cause of those events.  However, what *is* known is that celestium absorbs, and amplifies ambient magical energy in different ways.  The larger the concentration of celestium, the greater the effects.  Larget quantities of celestium have been known to warp the world around them, typically in very dangerous ways.  Since celestium absorbs and amplifies magical energy from its environment, there are many different varieties of the material that can be found

    Fortunately, celestium is relatively brittle, which means large crystals are very rare, and typically only found deep underground or in remote locations.  Far more common in the world are smaller quantities of the material, either in the form of dusts or shards.  Over time, the tradesfolk of Terminus have learned that celestium can be added into various processes to produce items with magical properties.  Some dust added in while weaving cloth, for example, might help to produce an item that provides the wearer with clearer thinking, while a few shards embedded into a weapon, tool, or piece of armor might result in that item having some additional magical properties.

    In game terms, there are several types of celestium that players will interact with in one way or another.

    1) Celestium Dust - as mentioned, this is used during the refining of crafting materials to imbue that refined material with magic (ex:  An iron bar of might, as opposed to a normal iron bar).

    2) Celestium Shards - as mentioned, this is used during crafting finished items to add some sort of magical effect or property to the finished item.  This could be a bonus of some sort or even something more dramatic.

    3) Celestium Crystals - extremely rare, larger celestium crystals can sometimes be used to create special and wondrous constructions.  The quantity of celestium being used is large enough that the item must be built around the celestium, rather than the celestium itself being added to the item.

    4) Celestium Cores - Rumors abound that groups and organizations across Terminus have created strange and massive devices with hearts of pure celestium in an effort to better harness and control the magical power that permeates Terminus.

    5) Celestium Clusters - large quantities of celestium found in the environment, typically deep below ground or in remote locations.  Adventurers are advised to keep their distance as the effect of the celestium on the nearby area can be both dramatic and unpredictable.

    • 1785 posts
    December 30, 2020 12:10 PM PST

    Darchias said:

    *snip*

    Well that was a journey. Am I about right on the details?

    Yes, good summary.  Some of the finer details may still be adjusted but what you have described is very close to the experience we are working to drive.  Well done!

    Darchias said:

    Some other thoughts, since I didn't wanna do this on another post. The resource collection process seems fairly straightforward for mining. I'm actually a big fan of the undifferentiated ore? It means you can greatly increase the variety of resources you get from a single node while not burdening bag slots overly much. I'm pretty leery about this dust though. Yeah, sure, ore stacks to a hundred, but remember to leave six-ten slots for all the different celestium dusts that are popping out. Kind of annoying but you can work around it. Better than six-ten different dusts AND five-seven different metals and stones (Alchemy components, from my ore nodes? It's more likely than you think)

    I'm wondering how you can put this kind of effort into other resource collection methods though. You can't really do the unidfferentiated in the field, split into different resources dynamic for anything other than smelting ore. Can't do it with sawing logs or collecting the various things that can be turned into cloth. The ore nodes are very clearly important to three of the 'classic' MMO tradeskills, with metalworking, jewelcrafting, and alchemy all getting components for it, but you still have to contend with tailoring, woodcrafting, and scribing/runecrafting/the rest of alchemy. I'm excited what I might see later on.

    Some resources will be "refined" (like ore), whereas other types of resources will be "processed" or "treated" (like leather or cloth or wood).  In general, we're trying to make each refinement/processing step "feel" appropriate for the type of resource involved.  You'll be able to leverage dusts in all of those processes, but it should make sense when you do so.

    Darchias said:

    One last question, and this might be an undecided UI element for now, but patterns. Are they crafting containers in of themselves that become the crafted item (open the pattern, put the objects inside, hit combine, the pattern becomes no-longer a bag but instead an item) or are they a component used inside a larger crafting table-like object? Is it 'open the crafting table, you see a list of all the patterns in your inventory and can open expand them to see the components', or is it 'open crafting table, manually drop a pattern into it which then spits out the information and opens the slots you put the components in'. There's a lot of interesting design space there and I'm curious how it's gonna go. Each one has upsides and downsides.

    With my first example, it means the patterns are self-contained crafting machines and crafting tables are completely unecessary to the process. It also means bag management becomes a huge pain in the ass if I need an open bag slot to make anything.

    With my second example, if I need to make a certain number of things I can just buy those patterns and easily go through the crafting table menu to see what I need for them. Downside is that this could be a fairly difficult UI element to create (if I fill my inventory to the brim with different patterns, will I crash it? Does the number of components in each of those patterns effect this? When expansions and new patches make ever larger bags and inventories, will this crash the crafting table when it didn't before? Asking for a friend)

    With the third, it can become fairly tedious to figure out all of the components I need without tabbing out and just looking up what each pattern needs. It also makes it take a lot more clicks to finish a product, incentivizing automation and helping crowd out human crafters over bots. Regardless of this, I still favor this approach since it feels the most like you're actually a part of the process at every step.

    I understand if this hasn't been decided yet, but it's something I can't stop thinking about! Glad we're hearing so much now.

    Honestly the UI for these still needs to be created, and so this may change slightly -  but the concept is that you would get a schematic item, and then you would take that to the appropriate crafting station for whatever it is.  You would then "use" that schematic item with the crafting station and it would pop up a UI window for you to add your materials to.  You could also "inspect" the schematic item beforehand to see what you would need.  So the schematic item isn't a container itself but it sort of acts like one during the act of crafting.  This would also mean that if you find a rare schematic item, you could make a note of what you need to create that item, and then stash it until you're ready to use it later.  We're considering having your codex/journal keep a history of items that you have created so that once you've made an item the first time, you can always easily reference what you need to make that item again in-game (even though you still have to go get another schematic for it.  A lot of that though will depend on the final UI that we land on for the crafting process itself.

    Also, another note here is that consumable item crafting functions differently from finished item crafting.  Consumable items do not have schematics - instead, your tools/stations act as generic templates that limit the number and type of ingredients you can use, and the result is entirely dependant on what you put in.  For example, a frying pan will allow you to combine one primary ingredient (meat/fish/etc.) with up to two additional ingredients, and will (probably) be usable at campfires anywhere out in the world.  A stew pot might allow you to do more ingredients but would only be useable at suitably equipped campsites.  A baking pan or roasting pan might allow for even more ingredients to be used, but would only be useable in a place with full kitchen facilities.  Alchemy will probably work in a somewhat similar way, with different types of tools (alembics, stills, and on up to full laboratory sets) being usable at appropriate locations within the world.

    • 521 posts
    December 30, 2020 12:14 PM PST

    Concerning harvesting nodes, any chance on having mining locations, such as a mine with a cluster of nodes. I remember playing Horizons, now called Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted, that had this and it was a nice way to meet other players

    Mining

     

     

    https://youtu.be/AETaD5HD540?t=3166

     

     

     

    • 83 posts
    December 30, 2020 12:17 PM PST

    Neph officially confirming the shards are one of those sexy 'optional components' instead of being cagey with it like Convo! This is why you're my favorite dev <3.

    So from a player's perspective, there are three kinds of celestium. Dust, which enchants materials. Shards, which enchants items, and Crystals, which are very rare components to high-level recipes (perhaps that coveted 'raid drop component' that can be made into a high end weapon? it's been spoken of before, though only in whispers and conjecture). Cores, on the other hand, are more of a 'this is why this is a raid boss' kind of thing and Clusters are 'hey this dungeon has low gravity because clusters oh by the way the mobs here can toss you across the room because of it have fuuun!' kind of thing.

    I like it! Not a lot to say about it, really. It's good info, it's gonna be underpinning a huge amount of the game, but it's just... the thing. It's the phlebotinum a huge amount of the game will be running on, so it's not something I know how to talk about. Good info though!

    Nephele said:

    Honestly the UI for these still needs to be created, and so this may change slightly -  but the concept is that you would get a schematic item, and then you would take that to the appropriate crafting station for whatever it is.  You would then "use" that schematic item with the crafting station and it would pop up a UI window for you to add your materials to.  You could also "inspect" the schematic item beforehand to see what you would need.  So the schematic item isn't a container itself but it sort of acts like one during the act of crafting.  This would also mean that if you find a rare schematic item, you could make a note of what you need to create that item, and then stash it until you're ready to use it later.  We're considering having your codex/journal keep a history of items that you have created so that once you've made an item the first time, you can always easily reference what you need to make that item again in-game (even though you still have to go get another schematic for it.  A lot of that though will depend on the final UI that we land on for the crafting process itself.

    So it's looking like my third example, so far, with some extra ease-of-use added on. Great!


    This post was edited by Darchias at December 30, 2020 12:21 PM PST
    • 1785 posts
    December 30, 2020 12:23 PM PST

    HemlockReaper said:

    Concerning harvesting nodes, any chance on having mining locations, such as a mine with a cluster of nodes. 

    Not quite the same, but in general:

    When you're out in the world there's a low-ish chance of finding a normal-sized gathering node in appropriate terrain.  Note however that climbing is a thing in Pantheon.

    In addition, you might find larger nodes or clusters of nodes in certain locations in the open world.  For example, there might be a larger mining node or more mining nodes inside a cave.  However, such locations may be inhabited or there might be NPCs there for the same reason you are.

    Finally, the more dangerous or remote a location is, the greater chance of finding something special with regards to gathering.  Whether that's a more exotic type of node, or a larger node, or both.  Gathering opportunities are part of the risk/reward equation for content, in this regard.

    • 273 posts
    December 30, 2020 12:50 PM PST

    Nephele said:

    there might be NPCs there for the same reason you are.

    So, NPCs can gather just the same as players can... should we take this to imply there might be caches of materials that NPC's have stashed around the world? Say, for instance, hidden in random areas, or in camp/fort/settlement stockpiles?

    • 1785 posts
    December 30, 2020 12:51 PM PST

    eunichron said:

    So, NPCs can gather just the same as players can... should we take this to imply there might be caches of materials that NPC's have stashed around the world? Say, for instance, hidden in random areas, or in camp/fort/settlement stockpiles?

    :-)

     

    • 83 posts
    December 30, 2020 12:51 PM PST

    It sounded more like going into a random cave in Orc territory might reveal a random Orc Miner or two, who might be somewhat upset that you look to be jumping their claim. They probably drop some extra ore when killed too.


    This post was edited by Darchias at December 30, 2020 12:52 PM PST
    • 273 posts
    December 30, 2020 1:09 PM PST

    Darchias said:

    It sounded more like going into a random cave in Orc territory might reveal a random Orc Miner or two, who might be somewhat upset that you look to be jumping their claim. They probably drop some extra ore when killed too.

    Considering all of the work VR has put into making factions meaningful, that would be pretty boring.

    NPC factions having their own systems for gathering and stockpiling materials, in direct competition with players, opens up a lot more possibilities. For example, server events where NPC factions go through a process of preparing for war, before ultimately engaging in open combat with each other, or with players.

    At least, that's my dream.

    • 83 posts
    December 30, 2020 1:52 PM PST

    Well, there's a virtue in simplicity at times too.

    Fun idea, but maybe too ambitious, would be for teams of NPC prospectors (with guards) to occasionally set forth from various towns, and eventually when they reach a spot, they start mining. This spawns a bunch of rare nodes that you can either steal (by killing all the guards) or maybe partake in (if you have good faction with the group, they just let you join). Might be fun, but could be too easy to disrupt on accident. Could lead to griefing by disrupting the prospectors intentionally.

    • 768 posts
    December 31, 2020 2:34 AM PST

    It would indeed be a good idea to implement some kind of production memory per character. This will keep players focusing on the game, rather than outside the game looking up datasheets and manuals. Ultimately it's up to the player to decide if they want to look up all the spoilers externally or not. It's near impossible to prevent this. VR will need to balance catering to all versus restriction as a mean of providing challenge and discovery. It will take a certain attitude from the player to restrain themselves from what they've been doing for years. 

    I like the suggestion where refining the harvested materials could be something for starting players, as a way to explore the crafting aspect of this game. Hopefully the ambience style of processing is defining enough to really create a unique crafting class/style experience.

    @vjek I get your concerns. However no need to throw a Vandraad here.  ;-) "RNG on smelting" If you expand the harvesting session, where it's (in spirit) included in the smelting system, how does it differ that much from harvesting in other games? I see this more as a prolonged stage of harvesting although it's not defined as such. Unless you're suggesting that every node should render a predefined outcome? As in A gold node will render only gold ore and no derivatives. The botting scenario really would be impactful here.

    It will be interesting to see how players handle the step between harvest (ex: ore) and raw refinements (ex: metals). If you don't know the yield, how do you put a price on it? There is room for pricefluctuations, that's never a bad thing. As far as I'm reading, there is no class requirement for doing the refining (ex: smelting). I'm also still looking to read that NPC demand, you (vjek) have mentioned several times. Otherwise players will just be banking their raw refined goods. And this npc-demand should be in such a form that it really appeals to players. Perhaps one combo could be: a demand for raw refinements and access to molds in return, is one of the options. For an economy to really work, there needs to be "hunger". Hunger in this scenario could be the constant subuptimal supply of goods of this stage. Afterall, you want to stimulate players to continue going out in the world.

    It will take even a lot more to stimulate players to hand in their processed refinements (ex: ingots). But that's already beyond the biggest "hunger-point". If you're keeping that 3-1 transformation-/distillation-ratio. And you have two seperate parties demanding that 1 transformed item. That's already a good opportunity to remove as much resources possible in an organic manner. But if you are in fact at that stage of processed refinements. You could implement a demand even at this point. 


    This post was edited by Barin999 at December 31, 2020 5:03 AM PST
    • 768 posts
    December 31, 2020 5:22 AM PST

    Nephele said:

    You can also:  Salvage items and equipment to break them down into component materials to re-use in crafting, again with a small chance of finding something unexpected in that process. 

    I'm still not a fan about this. I'm not sure why there is a need for implementing that small chance into the salvaging mechanic. 

    You've mentioned already several opportunities for a player to be surprised. And it's fun, so 'yey!' for that. But why is that not sufficient? What lack are you trying to compensate there? 

    Salvaging on its own, stands firmly. 

    If I construct a metal sword and I salvage that metal sword. Why would I expect anything else coming from that? 

    I'll put it differently. If you have 3 systems that provide that X% small chance of the unexpected. You can lower that % chance, because you have 3 systems. Fewer players will experience that fun-surprise or at least less often. But because it can occur in 3 systems, you're allowing a higher number of players to experience this. If you call this a higher or lower value of this 'surprise' design, time will tell. If you have 2 systems, that X% small chance could be a little bit higher. (Well it sounds pretty simple to me, but I'll explain if needed.) What you do offer is an increase of the 'unexpected-fun' factor in those 2 systems. Those 2 systems are the fundamentals, you're talking about earlier. So it's most important to stimulate engagement in these. When you consider the 3 sizes of playerpopulations that will use (at least 1 of) the 3 systems, salvaging will most likely have the biggest population. No system will be perfect like you said, but if you can slow down the rate at which the "rare becomes the new common", one should indeed consider the impact of having it in this salvaging aspect in the game. The amount of players envolved in salvaging will likely be bigger than the two others combined. And that's bound to have massive consequences.

    By not having it in the salvaging system, you maintain the character/flavour of that design. And if fewer players choose to salvage, more resources will be taken out or they will leave the economy quicker. And this will also have its impact on resourcebalance in the craftingsystem alongside of this salvagesystem. (fewer salvaging - fewer processed goods on the market) When you've chosen to add that unexpected-factor into the salvage design, to spice things up. It would seem you're confessing that your salvaging design is not appealing or worthwhile to stand its ground. (I could be reading way too much into this.)


    This post was edited by Barin999 at December 31, 2020 6:00 AM PST
    • 1921 posts
    December 31, 2020 8:51 AM PST

    More terribly biased and skewed OPINIONS, as the thread has progressed..
    --
    Great to hear that molds/schematics/templates are filling the role of a recipe.
    Will players be able to craft/create molds, or produce schematics, as a profession, or as a part of all professions, or as a result of having participated in any kind of mold acquisition progression/record?

    What impact will tools & equipment have on consumable production? Without molds/schematics/templates, it would seem that tools/equipment are the limiter or enabler here, depending on the context.
    As an example, would the most amazing frying pan of all time fulfill the role of a baking pan, under any conditions, or are they always and forever going to be limited by their intended role? I understand the limits you've outlined, I'm asking if amazing version of the tools & equipment will ever step outside those hard limits, and permit crafting in the wilderness that would 'normally' require civilization?

    Hunger/Demand: To Barin's point, where is the ~infinite NPC demand for PC outputs?
    Without it, there are a ton of emergent behavior problems, demonstrated by other games. It would be nice to know what your plans are in this area, as the community, over the years, has come up with some very creative, immersive, and thematically consistent ways to implement this demand and rewards.

    And also.. where does advancement/skilling-up tie into this framework?
    Will crafting profession skill be limited by Adventure Level, something else, or, if you have all the materials supplied by your guild, for example, could you level a crafting profession from 1-50 while in a city? Is both crafting and harvesting their own loops, or just simply a skill number that increases from use? ' You have become better at Mining(49)! '
    Is it a design goal that particular stats like INT and/or WIS (or any others, or Adventure Class) have any bearing on skill-ups?

    While I understand you don't want to talk about interdependency thresholds, what about profession concurrency? Is it a launch day goal that a single character can be specialized in all of: a Master Blacksmith and a Master Carpenter, and a Master Alchemist? (or just 1 or 2?)
    Similarly, for harvesting, will specialization be a thing, and/or will the limits be similar or more generous/less punitive that crafting profession limits?
    And again, I know this still may be undecided after ~7 years, but what is the current design goal for the number of alts or characters permitted per server?

    As far as Harvesting goes, will tools & equipment have any bearing? Are they involved at all in modification of the harvesting process? Faster vs. increased quantity vs. type of resource? Node visibility, number of uses, anything like that?
    If tools & equipment don't have any/much/this type of effect, what options or effects will increased Harvesting skill offer?

    From the economic side of things, will harvested raws have any coin/sellback value to NPCs?
    Similarly, for refined/process items, will they have any coin/sellback value to NPCs?
    Will NPCs ever provide coin/trade-able currency as a reward for any output of any Player crafting profession? (say, 1cp for a copper dagger)
    --
    My cynicism is driven from seeing the first hand abuse of all of what's been outlined over the past 20+ years, in other games.
    Designers implement systems with a certain intended use, and then players abuse that intended use to great personal 'benefit'.
    It's not that I don't think you may have considered these things, it's that they're not officially stated anywhere outside of this thread, 7 years in, and human nature hasn't changed even slightly in the past 20+ years.  So every time the topic is raised, we/I have to presume we're starting from scratch again, because neither the official wiki nor the FAQ are ever updated by a dev, even annually.

    RNG derived dusts, for example. Once the rate (percentage) is known, it will be used to produce a sufficient quantity of dust to create any and all items.
    The challenge to designers is that unless your algorithm for 'valued resource' generation is personalized and historical, it's mathematically impossible to pick a value that rewards an individual, yet punishes the abusers. Temporally, if it rewards the individual, to the abusers it's a cornucopia. If it limits the abusers, it's a punitive wasteland for the individual.
    I'd be interested to hear your plans for addressing this disparity between Dust Acquisition for individual crafters vs. guilds of 300?  Unless there is no plan, which is a decision in and of itself. (and perfectly fine, from my perspective)

    If a dust is produced randomly as a loot table drop from the Adventuring loop, and its rate is higher than the RNG value from smelting, people will simply farm the Adventure loop for crafting mats. Especially true for salvage, as mobs in a zone (all the mobs in a zone) can be trivially killed and farmed for hours at a time by a determined guild. Even if the drop rates are identical, respawn of mobs is so high (typically) compared to nodes (minutes instead of hours) that again, they become the default choice. I mean, determined humans aren't dumb, they will pick efficiency, given time is the only shared resource we all don't have enough of.
    What you've outlined above has dusts coming from loot tables, salvage, AND smelting/processing. That's why Barin ( I think ) is bringing it up.

    Finally, if there is any hint that Diminishing Returns (ala GW2) is a planned solution, in any form, for any of the above issues, please let us know.

    • 2419 posts
    December 31, 2020 8:52 AM PST

    Nephele said:

    You can also:  Salvage items and equipment to break them down into component materials to re-use in crafting, again with a small chance of finding something unexpected in that process.

    I would expect th at this 'small chance of finding something unexpected' does not apply to player made items.  Because if I've just made a plain ol' steel sword, and I melt it back down, I shouldn't find anything other than steel.  Otherwise you're going to have materials popping into existence from nothing.  How many times could I fabricate-breakdown-fabricate-breakdown-fabricate to hit that 'small chance'.

    Lets not forget that 'small chance', while on an individuals, isnt' a bad thing, but these chances are spread across the entire server so even very small chances can (and quite often do) mean that the rare item is now not rare at all and your economy is farked.

    • 1785 posts
    December 31, 2020 9:45 AM PST

    vjek said:

    More terribly biased and skewed OPINIONS, as the thread has progressed..
    --
    Great to hear that molds/schematics/templates are filling the role of a recipe.
    Will players be able to craft/create molds, or produce schematics, as a profession, or as a part of all professions, or as a result of having participated in any kind of mold acquisition progression/record?

    Not currently, but it's something that we might look at down the line, at least for some items.  We want to start with molds/recipes being NPC/world sourced and see how things work out before we add another layer of complexity.

    vjek said:

    What impact will tools & equipment have on consumable production? Without molds/schematics/templates, it would seem that tools/equipment are the limiter or enabler here, depending on the context.
    As an example, would the most amazing frying pan of all time fulfill the role of a baking pan, under any conditions, or are they always and forever going to be limited by their intended role? I understand the limits you've outlined, I'm asking if amazing version of the tools & equipment will ever step outside those hard limits, and permit crafting in the wilderness that would 'normally' require civilization?

    A frying pan will always be a frying pan, if that makes sense.  A better frying pan helps will help you through bonuses to your effectiveness in the actual cooking process and give you a better chance to succeed, especially if you're using really exotic ingredients when cooking.

    vjek said:

    Hunger/Demand: To Barin's point, where is the ~infinite NPC demand for PC outputs?
    Without it, there are a ton of emergent behavior problems, demonstrated by other games. It would be nice to know what your plans are in this area, as the community, over the years, has come up with some very creative, immersive, and thematically consistent ways to implement this demand and rewards.

    This is stuff that we'll talk more about in the future.  It's not being ignored, but there are a lot of other things that have to be at a level of completion first before we really tackle this one.

    vjek said:

    And also.. where does advancement/skilling-up tie into this framework?
    Will crafting profession skill be limited by Adventure Level, something else, or, if you have all the materials supplied by your guild, for example, could you level a crafting profession from 1-50 while in a city? Is both crafting and harvesting their own loops, or just simply a skill number that increases from use? ' You have become better at Mining(49)! '
    Is it a design goal that particular stats like INT and/or WIS (or any others, or Adventure Class) have any bearing on skill-ups?

    While I understand you don't want to talk about interdependency thresholds, what about profession concurrency? Is it a launch day goal that a single character can be specialized in all of: a Master Blacksmith and a Master Carpenter, and a Master Alchemist? (or just 1 or 2?)
    Similarly, for harvesting, will specialization be a thing, and/or will the limits be similar or more generous/less punitive that crafting profession limits?
    And again, I know this still may be undecided after ~7 years, but what is the current design goal for the number of alts or characters permitted per server?

    Like the economy stuff, we need to get some other things done to a reasonable degree before we make final decisions on progression and how exactly that will work.  Here is what I can share right now though:

    - There will be separate gathering and crafting professions and they will be things you can progress independently of adventuring (so they won't be limited by your adventuring level)

    - There will be some degree of specialization between professions; you will NOT be able to "master" everything on the same character.

    For more than that, you'll have to wait :)

    vjek said:

    As far as Harvesting goes, will tools & equipment have any bearing? Are they involved at all in modification of the harvesting process? Faster vs. increased quantity vs. type of resource? Node visibility, number of uses, anything like that?
    If tools & equipment don't have any/much/this type of effect, what options or effects will increased Harvesting skill offer?

    Tools and equipment will matter for harvesting.

    vjek said:

    From the economic side of things, will harvested raws have any coin/sellback value to NPCs?
    Similarly, for refined/process items, will they have any coin/sellback value to NPCs?
    Will NPCs ever provide coin/trade-able currency as a reward for any output of any Player crafting profession? (say, 1cp for a copper dagger)

    TBD.  We have the ability to do or not do all of those things but decisions won't be made until we are in a position to actually gather and analyze economic data and do some modeling around it.  Any economic decisions and tuning will be data-driven based on our game, not based on our fears from other games (although we'll certainly know what to watch out for).  I also want to stress that economic tuning is a continuous process.  It's not something that you set once during beta and then never look at again.

    vjek said:

    --
    My cynicism is driven from seeing the first hand abuse of all of what's been outlined over the past 20+ years, in other games.
    Designers implement systems with a certain intended use, and then players abuse that intended use to great personal 'benefit'.
    It's not that I don't think you may have considered these things, it's that they're not officially stated anywhere outside of this thread, 7 years in, and human nature hasn't changed even slightly in the past 20+ years.  So every time the topic is raised, we/I have to presume we're starting from scratch again, because neither the official wiki nor the FAQ are ever updated by a dev, even annually.

    RNG derived dusts, for example. Once the rate (percentage) is known, it will be used to produce a sufficient quantity of dust to create any and all items.
    The challenge to designers is that unless your algorithm for 'valued resource' generation is personalized and historical, it's mathematically impossible to pick a value that rewards an individual, yet punishes the abusers. Temporally, if it rewards the individual, to the abusers it's a cornucopia. If it limits the abusers, it's a punitive wasteland for the individual.
    I'd be interested to hear your plans for addressing this disparity between Dust Acquisition for individual crafters vs. guilds of 300?  Unless there is no plan, which is a decision in and of itself. (and perfectly fine, from my perspective)

    If a dust is produced randomly as a loot table drop from the Adventuring loop, and its rate is higher than the RNG value from smelting, people will simply farm the Adventure loop for crafting mats. Especially true for salvage, as mobs in a zone (all the mobs in a zone) can be trivially killed and farmed for hours at a time by a determined guild. Even if the drop rates are identical, respawn of mobs is so high (typically) compared to nodes (minutes instead of hours) that again, they become the default choice. I mean, determined humans aren't dumb, they will pick efficiency, given time is the only shared resource we all don't have enough of.
    What you've outlined above has dusts coming from loot tables, salvage, AND smelting/processing. That's why Barin ( I think ) is bringing it up.

    Finally, if there is any hint that Diminishing Returns (ala GW2) is a planned solution, in any form, for any of the above issues, please let us know.

    I get the frustration.  For what it's worth, I am actually working to get website updates happening so that the information we're releasing in the forum is published there as well.

    For dusts, I get the concern - there is some "secret sauce" there that will help, but for obvious reasons I'm not going to detail that in writing for you guys.  You will simply have to trust us.


    This post was edited by Nephele at December 31, 2020 9:46 AM PST
    • 1860 posts
    December 31, 2020 2:18 PM PST

    Nephele said:

    rest assured that you will never be asked to use more than 4 of the same thing to make an item unless we're talking about something very large - like say, a wagon, or a ship, or a house.

    Wow, that was surprisingly specific and unexpected.

    • 416 posts
    December 31, 2020 3:31 PM PST

    Thanks for all the harvesting/crafting info, definitely is helpful to get a clearer idea what VR has in store for these important mechanics.

    • 768 posts
    January 1, 2021 2:07 AM PST

    vjek said:

    If a dust is produced randomly as a loot table drop from the Adventuring loop, and its rate is higher than the RNG value from smelting, people will simply farm the Adventure loop for crafting mats. Especially true for salvage, as mobs in a zone (all the mobs in a zone) can be trivially killed and farmed for hours at a time by a determined guild. Even if the drop rates are identical, respawn of mobs is so high (typically) compared to nodes (minutes instead of hours) that again, they become the default choice. I mean, determined humans aren't dumb, they will pick efficiency, given time is the only shared resource we all don't have enough of.
    What you've outlined above has dusts coming from loot tables, salvage, AND smelting/processing. That's why Barin ( I think ) is bringing it up.

    Correct, you've described it probably better than me. Thanks for that.

    Primarily it's about the adventure loop providing more (or more frequently) those dusts and the negative impact it might have on the attractiveness of the other two systems. And the overall impact this will have on the abundance of resources aside of the dust.

     


    This post was edited by Barin999 at January 1, 2021 2:12 AM PST