I encourage everyone who has seen the Feb 4th stream to post questions for the best Dave Nephele in this thread so that people who are interested in crafting see it instead of hiding it all in News and Announcements!
Now, my questions from last night! I understand that a lot of this stuff is still TBD, but if you want to give an opinion on some of these things I won't hold you to it.
Regional cooking: Every race will apparently have regional foods, but how far does this go? Will the explicitly cannibalistic Skar be able to harvest meat from fellow Skar? If they do, would other races be able to eat the resulting dishes or would they be Skar exclusive? Is this something you want to include, but may not be able to due to the ESRB?
Will every region have the same stat profile from their local foods, or will there be some regions that lack a specific stat bonus from foods entirely? Will there be any overlap in Alchemy and Provisioning ingredients, some spices or seasonings that also make potions?
With many regional ingredients, obviously eventually people will attempt to combine ingredients from very different locations. Do you think that design should encourage this by giving these dishes an extra bonus, discourage this by making them weaker, or reward the player for experimentation by making them combine the same as any other food, with synergies arising naturally from the mechanics?
Alchemy: Since the crafting of potions are free-form, is the design going towards potions with multiple, weaker effects being possible/preferable or do you think Alchemy will be more about distilling or stacking similar ingredients to make a stronger effect instead?
Fishing: We brainstormed some ways to make Fishing more viable, but a thought occured. We know from your comments on Spider Eyes that skinning will not only be for leather but any animal product you can get off of a mob. The corollary, of course, is that Fishing would not be that and that Fishing will be for more static nodes.
The place where this gets tricky is places like Syronai's Rest, where a large amount of the area is underwater. Would a Dark Myr Skinner be harvesting from underwater creatures, like giant crabs or armored serpents? Would they be prying enormous shells off of large molluscs to supply their Blacksmiths with materials for plate armor? Or are they going to go another way, where Fishing is used to gather a bunch of clams to make ceramic scaled armor? Is Fishing going to gather that eel-leather hide for Outfitters? Are the Dark Myr jewelcrafting with Fished oysters, or are they Mining enormous coral deposits?
Woodcutting: You've mentioned before that you wouldn't be opposed to giving the crafting of spears and other pole arms to Woodworkers instead of Blacksmiths, but that no decisions had been made on that front. Has there been any decisions made since then?
What about watercraft? Summoners can make a raft, so logically there should be a crafted raft as well. Is it just going to be a heavy inventory item that someone drops in the water, or will getting it to the body of qater in question be a more involved process?
Has the team decided anything about arrows? Games vary on how much they care about arrows, will finely crafted artisanal arrows be a recurring source of business for the Woodcrafter or will arrows be largely interchangeable and unimportant stat-wise? Or are arrows not a game item at all and all bows come with a free bottomless quiver of arrows? Will finely crafted quivers be an Outfitter recipe? What about crossbows, will the canny Humans be toting around crossbows instead of more traditional weapons? Will there be thrown weapons crafted by Blacksmiths (and Outiftter-crafted bandoliers to hold them and replace those sweet bow stats?)
Inventory: You've confirmed that the primary driver of inventory management will be Weight. This obviously leads into another question: Will the Strength stat be the primary factor in encumberance limit, or will it be some other, non-statistic based metric? Will Ogres get some sort of bonus to weight capacity regardless? Will worn armor be lighter than carried, innately or by use of a passive ability for Warriors with a smaller starting Strength? Will weight of worn armor directly impact avoidance or movement speed? Will weight give any substantial penalty to Monks or Rogues before you reach your encumberance limit?
Weight reducing bags seem like an obvious thing the game will have (though if they will completely reduce weight or not and at what levels they are available are clearly up in the air), but are there any other methods to mitigate weight for aspiring Miners and Woodcutters out there, like carts or beasts of burden? Have you considered a field Smelter specifically to address the concerns of Miners? Has there been a decision made on whether coin will have weight or not?
Jewelcraft seems like a narrower field than Blacksmithing or Outfitting. Will they be tasked with a larger quantity of subcombines to compensate? I have made comments in the past about studs and buckles being made by Blacksmiths, but is such delicate work more in the realm of Jewelcraft? Will they have the job of crafting runes for acclimation? It's been mentioned that Alchemy and Provisioning, the two consumable professions, cary widely from the four 'finished item' crafts, so will Jewelcrafting take up the slack when it comes to adorning permanent items with additional bonuses instead of Alchemy? The Cohh stream had poisons directly enchant weapons with temporary bonuses, will there be 'oils' made by Alchemy that do similar things to non-Rogue weapons?
I might have more, but at the moment that's what I remember. I'll add more to the thread later if I think of them!
Sounds like a plan. I'll tweak mine a bit.
1) What form will the crafting progression take? Will we be doing writs kind of like Vanguard or straight crafting items for XP?
2) Will there be ways to specialize your specific profession to differentiate it from someone with the same profession and if so what form might that take?
3) In one of the livestreams (I believe it was Joppa) stated that there was an anvil with a fabled dwarf inside a scorching climate within the frigid climate of Amberfaet where only certain things could be forged for crafting. How many areas will there be like this and how large of a roll will they play in crafting?
4) Will the Perception system have a roll in crafting?
5) (The guild system hasn't been discussed hardly at all yet so this might be reaching on this one.) I was wondering if the crafting system might have some sort of play in it like writs for faction or some other guild system function (See EQII and Vanguard as an example)?
6) Will we have the chance for crafting criticals and critical failures? If so can you explain how that will work?
7) How will we carry our crafting materials? Will we have a big ol crafting resource bag like Vanguard or play juggle the inventory like many other MMOs?
8) Will there be anything akin to a crafting epic quest, a quest akin to class epic quests from EverQuest but for crafters? (Example: Blacksmith has to complete a long epic quest to acquire a fabled smithing hammer that has a chance to proc x effect during the crafting process and slightly enhance the item.)
9) Will we be able to craft armor dyes?
10) Can we craft boats?
I'm sure I'll think of something else about the time I hit submit, so I'll update later if so.
Boy there's a lot of good questions and ideas here.
On the off chance that the questioners don't know a couple of details that have been revealed elsewhere, I'll add them here.
Darchias said:Has the team decided anything about arrows? Games vary on how much they care about arrows, will finely crafted artisanal arrows be a recurring source of business for the Woodcrafter or will arrows be largely interchangeable and unimportant stat-wise? Or are arrows not a game item at all and all bows come with a free bottomless quiver of arrows? Will finely crafted quivers be an Outfitter recipe? What about crossbows, will the canny Humans be toting around crossbows instead of more traditional weapons? Will there be thrown weapons crafted by Blacksmiths (and Outiftter-crafted bandoliers to hold them and replace those sweet bow stats?)
Jewelcraft seems like a narrower field than Blacksmithing or Outfitting... Will they have the job of crafting runes for acclimation?
The Cohh stream had poisons directly enchant weapons with temporary bonuses, will there be 'oils' made by Alchemy that do similar things to non-Rogue weapons
The Woodworker spec of Boyer is defined as "focuses on the creation of ranged combat weapons and the ammunitions they need." How specialized one can make arrows hasn't been addressed, but with different body types being susceptible to different types of damage, I think VR would be missing the boat if they don't allow specialty arrows to be made. Currently 3 classes are listed as being able to use crossbows, Ranger, Rogue and Warrior.
I don't believe VR has decided if Runes will be made by crafters or not. If so I think runes are likely to be made by a Scribe, which is very UNdefined so far. But anything is possible. Edited after re-watching the Stream. Scribe seems to be gone at this point.
Alchemy lists Elixers and Toxins as the 2 specs, so presently I'd say you're right on that. Rangers also can make their own weapon coatings, and I don't think it has been stated whether the Rogue/Ranger items are bound to the creator or can be given to others. (I'll wager they are NOT sellable to vendors)
Kratuk said:2) Will there be ways to specialize your specific profession to differentiate it from someone with the same profession and if so what form might that take?
4) Will the Perception system have a roll in crafting?
Every school of crafting has been stated to have 2 specs. However in a recent post on the forums, Neph has indicated that he'd like to have more variety of specs in a school. One example given was a Blacksmith specializing in Breastplates. No details of how many specs per craft yet.
In the Crafting stream yesterday, in the live chat on Twitch, someone wondered if Perception skill might help gatherers in finding nodes (or possibly in finding nodes with exotic resources, I just barely caught it before it scrolled out of sight). Joppa answered "How perceptive of you". Maybe a joke, maybe a clue?
Thanks for starting this thread everyone :) I took a few hours this afternoon and tried to post answers to all of the questions that were submitted before the stream. If there are any new or followup questions, let's please post those in this thread so that we can have them all in one place! I'll try to get through them this weekend and get you all any answers that I can.
Nephele said:Thanks for starting this thread everyone :) I took a few hours this afternoon and tried to post answers to all of the questions that were submitted before the stream. If there are any new or followup questions, let's please post those in this thread so that we can have them all in one place! I'll try to get through them this weekend and get you all any answers that I can.
Thanks Nephele. Just started reading it. Appreciate the answers boss.
Darchias said:I encourage everyone who has seen the Feb 4th stream to post questions for the best Dave Nephele in this thread so that people who are interested in crafting see it instead of hiding it all in News and Announcements!
Now, my questions from last night! I understand that a lot of this stuff is still TBD, but if you want to give an opinion on some of these things I won't hold you to it.
Regional cooking: Every race will apparently have regional foods, but how far does this go? Will the explicitly cannibalistic Skar be able to harvest meat from fellow Skar? If they do, would other races be able to eat the resulting dishes or would they be Skar exclusive? Is this something you want to include, but may not be able to due to the ESRB?
Honestly, it's just TBD at this point. This is a decision we'll probably make when we are much further along in development than where we are right now.
Darchias said:Will every region have the same stat profile from their local foods, or will there be some regions that lack a specific stat bonus from foods entirely? Will there be any overlap in Alchemy and Provisioning ingredients, some spices or seasonings that also make potions?
This isn't really something we can pin numbers to just yet, but if you think in terms of continents, most stats will be available on each continent. The mix of those may vary however, and each continent will definitely have some unique ingredients to find. If you break things down even further to regions on the same continent, the differences will be even more pronounced. There's a balance we have to achieve here between diversity and usefulness of the food and potions that get made. As far as overlap between ingredients, it is entirely possible, but that generally be rare, because we don't want food and potions to compete with each other too much. Each type of consumable will have their own distinct usage profile.
Darchias said:With many regional ingredients, obviously eventually people will attempt to combine ingredients from very different locations. Do you think that design should encourage this by giving these dishes an extra bonus, discourage this by making them weaker, or reward the player for experimentation by making them combine the same as any other food, with synergies arising naturally from the mechanics?
There are benefits to "min-maxing" your items, and we want to encourage people to seek out ingredients from around the world and see what combinations they can come up with. However, players may find that focusing on a single stat or effect isn't really the best way to go in every situation.
Darchias said:Alchemy: Since the crafting of potions are free-form, is the design going towards potions with multiple, weaker effects being possible/preferable or do you think Alchemy will be more about distilling or stacking similar ingredients to make a stronger effect instead?
In between. How useful a given potion (or any consumable item) is will really be a very situational exercise. In some cases, having a very strong effect may be preferable. In others, it may be more about secondary effects or even duration.
Darchias said:Fishing: We brainstormed some ways to make Fishing more viable, but a thought occured. We know from your comments on Spider Eyes that skinning will not only be for leather but any animal product you can get off of a mob. The corollary, of course, is that Fishing would not be that and that Fishing will be for more static nodes.
The place where this gets tricky is places like Syronai's Rest, where a large amount of the area is underwater. Would a Dark Myr Skinner be harvesting from underwater creatures, like giant crabs or armored serpents? Would they be prying enormous shells off of large molluscs to supply their Blacksmiths with materials for plate armor? Or are they going to go another way, where Fishing is used to gather a bunch of clams to make ceramic scaled armor? Is Fishing going to gather that eel-leather hide for Outfitters? Are the Dark Myr jewelcrafting with Fished oysters, or are they Mining enormous coral deposits?
Skinning will generally be used for the corpses of animals that you must engage in combat to defeat. This is true even if we're talking about an underwater animal or a sea monster of some kind. Fishing, on the other hand, is something you use a specific tool to do - like a fishing rod, or a fishing trident, or a net. Right now, we want to make surface fishing a "nodeless" exercise where you just have to be near an appropriate body of water with the correct tool. As for how it might work underwater, that's still TBD, and something we'll be able to dive more deeply into once we are further downstream in the implementation :)
Darchias said:Woodcutting: You've mentioned before that you wouldn't be opposed to giving the crafting of spears and other pole arms to Woodworkers instead of Blacksmiths, but that no decisions had been made on that front. Has there been any decisions made since then?
Nope, that's still TBD.
Darchias said:What about watercraft? Summoners can make a raft, so logically there should be a crafted raft as well. Is it just going to be a heavy inventory item that someone drops in the water, or will getting it to the body of water in question be a more involved process?
This is still TBD. It's one of the things we will be working out (in terms of whether and how we want to do it) once we get more of the basics in.
Darchias said:Has the team decided anything about arrows? Games vary on how much they care about arrows, will finely crafted artisanal arrows be a recurring source of business for the Woodcrafter or will arrows be largely interchangeable and unimportant stat-wise? Or are arrows not a game item at all and all bows come with a free bottomless quiver of arrows? Will finely crafted quivers be an Outfitter recipe? What about crossbows, will the canny Humans be toting around crossbows instead of more traditional weapons? Will there be thrown weapons crafted by Blacksmiths (and Outiftter-crafted bandoliers to hold them and replace those sweet bow stats?)
This is an area where we're still discussing different options, so there's not much more that I can say just yet. We want to make sure that whatever we do, we don't put a "tax" on certain classes where they are forced to spend a lot of money on crafted consumables over time just in order to use their abilities.
Darchias said:Inventory: You've confirmed that the primary driver of inventory management will be Weight. This obviously leads into another question: Will the Strength stat be the primary factor in encumberance limit, or will it be some other, non-statistic based metric? Will Ogres get some sort of bonus to weight capacity regardless? Will worn armor be lighter than carried, innately or by use of a passive ability for Warriors with a smaller starting Strength? Will weight of worn armor directly impact avoidance or movement speed? Will weight give any substantial penalty to Monks or Rogues before you reach your encumberance limit?
There are two ways to control how many of something a player can carry - weight, and stack size. We'll be leveraging both. As for how encumbrance will work, that's something we'll talk more about in the future when we can show some real gameplay examples to go along with it.
Darchias said:Weight reducing bags seem like an obvious thing the game will have (though if they will completely reduce weight or not and at what levels they are available are clearly up in the air), but are there any other methods to mitigate weight for aspiring Miners and Woodcutters out there, like carts or beasts of burden? Have you considered a field Smelter specifically to address the concerns of Miners? Has there been a decision made on whether coin will have weight or not?
All TBD. We want to be careful not to overuse weight reduction or it will trivialize any encumbrance system we put in place, but we're sensitive to player concerns about limited inventory as well. As far as refining in the field, this is unlikely. What's more likely is that we'll make sure there are some crafting and refining stations in most places where you can find intelligent NPCs (although not all of those places may be safe).
Darchias said:Jewelcraft seems like a narrower field than Blacksmithing or Outfitting. Will they be tasked with a larger quantity of subcombines to compensate? I have made comments in the past about studs and buckles being made by Blacksmiths, but is such delicate work more in the realm of Jewelcraft? Will they have the job of crafting runes for acclimation? It's been mentioned that Alchemy and Provisioning, the two consumable professions, cary widely from the four 'finished item' crafts, so will Jewelcrafting take up the slack when it comes to adorning permanent items with additional bonuses instead of Alchemy? The Cohh stream had poisons directly enchant weapons with temporary bonuses, will there be 'oils' made by Alchemy that do similar things to non-Rogue weapons?
Jewelcrafters will probably make high-grade subcomponents for other professions to use, as well as finished accessories of their own. We want to try and have a high degree of synergy between the different professions so that it's to your advantage to team up with others. As for alchemy and the items it produces, that's something that we'll be able to speak to in more detail later on.
Kratuk said:Sounds like a plan. I'll tweak mine a bit.
1) What form will the crafting progression take? Will we be doing writs kind of like Vanguard or straight crafting items for XP?
There will be several different ways that you can progress as a crafter, including making items for players as well as doing NPC-driven content. There may even be other ways... which route you choose to take is up to you.
Kratuk said:2) Will there be ways to specialize your specific profession to differentiate it from someone with the same profession and if so what form might that take?
This is the current plan. We'll be able to provide more details about this when we get further along in development.
Kratuk said:3) In one of the livestreams (I believe it was Joppa) stated that there was an anvil with a fabled dwarf inside a scorching climate within the frigid climate of Amberfaet where only certain things could be forged for crafting. How many areas will there be like this and how large of a roll will they play in crafting?
Legendary crafting stations like the forge in Amberfaet will exist in different locations around the world. They won't generally be involved in the creation of normal items, but if you're making something very special, you may find a need to journey to one of them. There may also be other reasons to go there, but we can't talk about those yet.
Kratuk said:4) Will the Perception system have a roll in crafting?
Indirectly. Becoming a keeper may allow you to learn information or find secrets that have bearing on crafting, but it will probably not give you any bonuses during the crafting process itself. We don't want players to feel like they are required to become Keepers in order to be effective in other areas of the game.
Kratuk said:5) (The guild system hasn't been discussed hardly at all yet so this might be reaching on this one.) I was wondering if the crafting system might have some sort of play in it like writs for faction or some other guild system function (See EQII and Vanguard as an example)?
We'll be able to talk more about guilds and the types of things that guilds can do together at a later date.
Kratuk said:6) Will we have the chance for crafting criticals and critical failures? If so can you explain how that will work?
TBD still, but probably not in terms of the result of your crafting (so, probably no "high quality" versions of items that you get by random chance). We'll be able to talk more about this when we get into how the crafting gameplay will work.
Kratuk said:7) How will we carry our crafting materials? Will we have a big ol crafting resource bag like Vanguard or play juggle the inventory like many other MMOs?
Right now, the plan is general inventory. We don't really want to do things like crafting material bags, because those tend to push player behavior in the direction of hoarding and mass production, which are things we want to try to avoid.
Kratuk said:8) Will there be anything akin to a crafting epic quest, a quest akin to class epic quests from EverQuest but for crafters? (Example: Blacksmith has to complete a long epic quest to acquire a fabled smithing hammer that has a chance to proc x effect during the crafting process and slightly enhance the item.)
Maybe :)
Kratuk said:9) Will we be able to craft armor dyes?
TBD.
Kratuk said:10) Can we craft boats?
See my answer to Darchias above.
Thanks again, Nephele. Would it be easier on you to have Kilsin merge the other thread from the stream or should we compile all the info into one post and open things up for more questions if the time presents itself. I know you're busy and bouncing threads would drive anyone insane.
Nephele said:I'd love to use this thread (here in the crafting forum) moving forward if we can. Most of this is a selfish desire on my part to see the forum used for discussions by the community, as well. :)
Then you should exercise your awesome DEV powers and close that thread in announcements, including a link to this post.
(or have Kils do it, if your DEV powers aren't quite that awesome)
Kratuk said:
7) How will we carry our crafting materials? Will we have a big ol crafting resource bag like Vanguard or play juggle the inventory like many other MMOs?
Nephele: Right now, the plan is general inventory. We don't really want to do things like crafting material bags, because those tend to push player behavior in the direction of hoarding and mass production, which are things we want to try to avoid.
One thing I would like to point out Nephele, when you are in "craft progression mode" and collecting mats to do that, you will (presumably) want to collect a lot so that you can make significant progress when you start crafting. As it is likely you are going to have to kill mobs as you go about collecting your materials, you dont want to end up in a situation where you must choose mats over loot, or would that the intention?
What are the current thoughts on progression rates of crafting against adventuring? Roughly the same? Independent?
One more Nephele. When we go to craft if we're in a city crafting area, will we be able to craft from the station and use the items in out bank or will we need to physically go get them and bring them back to the area with us? I've seen this done both ways and am just curious if we know which Pantheon will use yet.
Kratuk said:One more Nephele. When we go to craft if we're in a city crafting area, will we be able to craft from the station and use the items in out bank or will we need to physically go get them and bring them back to the area with us? I've seen this done both ways and am just curious if we know which Pantheon will use yet.
Honestly TBD still. A lot of this will depend on our final strategy for NPC services like item banking and storage, as well as the crafting gameplay loop itself. This is something that we'll probably lock in later in Alpha once we've got those other systems in a good place.
Although I understand that we want to get as many specific answers as possible from the devs.
Many of the above questions deserve their own thread on the crafting or harvesting forums.
A lot of things are yet to be defined by VR, so the best thing we can do as community is initiate discussion on threads with each their topic and bring forth pro's, con's, concepts, ideas and remarks.
If we poor in all our thougts into discussion threads, VR might find it easier to investigate and locate how and what the community thinks about things.
They might find things we thought of/bring to the table that they have not yet considered. And possibly redesign things based on our input, rather than us doing the opposite namely: trying to milk the cow until it's dry.
I hope we don't forget our part and the importance of it in this. :)
Still thanks Nephele for your efforts. I'm sure you understand what I'm saying here.
I like that you can combine anything and get something from it like with food and I hope with drinks, too. I feel this is an element of play that is important. By play I mean the concept of play and not gameplay. Anyone with children between the ages of 4-8 will know how they like to play with their food, or if at restauirants, will make concoctions with various ingredients. I have seen pepper packets, jelly packets, different colored sugar packets, mustard and ketchup packets intently emptied and combined in a half empty drink glass and then offered with a mischievious grin to a respected adult that has been watching, amusedly.
I like the concept that from this intuitive behavior one will learn how things combine and benefit the individual- like medevil naturalist medicine: Brewing tea from the dried flowers of the foxglove weed will calm the overly excited (FoxGlove, named Digitalis Purpura. Digitalis derived form it, being a heart arythmia medicine) or the common, chewing on the root of a willow tree will aleviate headaches. Rabbit tobbaco, etc (for some reason a naughty Peter rabbit comes to mind- lol).
Will there be joke combinations? and will there be suprise yucky combinations? like putting an egg in an oven alone causes it to explode, or combining rats eyes, blob gorp, and spider legs creates....a 5 second clicky chittering insectile homunculous that runs screaming for 5 feet before fizzling into fluff.
Manouk said:Will there be joke combinations? and will there be suprise yucky combinations? like putting an egg in an oven alone causes it to explode, or combining rats eyes, blob gorp, and spider legs creates....a 5 second clicky chittering insectile homunculous that runs screaming for 5 feet before fizzling into fluff.
Maybe not to that extreme, but I wouldn't be surprised if gnomish eggnog had a bit of a kick to it (just as an example of what might be) ;)