Before tactics comes strategy.
With a well formulated strategy, it is always easier to have a well formulated tactics so I will elaborate a bit as to the why I am asking this question. I am a crafting player and during my long experience of MMOs starting with UOL in 98, through EQ, EQ2, Lotro, Vanguard, WoW, TESO ... and finishing with FF14 in 2020 I have noticed that in every game there is a sizeable community of crafters. Crafters are people like me who play an MMO mostly for the pleasure of creating and crafting. This doesn't mean that we don't do some questing, fighting and raiding this means that we choose an MMO with crafting being the first parameter of choice.
By contrast non crafters are players who look at crafting from a "nice to have when there is nothing else to do" perspective to a "useless and ininteresting time sink which should have no impact on the game play" perspective.
Obviously as reading any forum about crafting abundantly shows, these 2 categories of players have a very different point of view about how the crafting system in their favorite game should look.
Crafters want to differentiate and have an added value. They do not want that everybody can craft everything easily. They do not object to a good dose of grind (well, EQ was sometimes a bit over the top), to difficult crafting quests, to exotic components and rare recipes. I would say that TESO is a good example of a crafting system that was created for crafters and I spent probably 2/3 of my playing with other fellow crafters in crafting guilds to look for components and to craft. I readily agree that most TESO players who were not much into crafting hated the system with passion and therefore spent little to no time in crafting activities.
Non crafters either don't care at all or want in contrary a simple system where success in crafting is available to everybody, doesn't need grind or complex recipes and allows to craft everything that might be useful or powerful.
That's why I wanted to ask here what the Pantheon strategy is. A system tailored for crafters or a system tailored for non crafters?
Finally I would add that my personnal opinion is that a system that would try to please to both categories would be the worst possible choice because it is very probable that nobody would be satisfied. Non crafters would find it too complex and time consuming and crafters would find that it trivializes the time investment they put into this activity.
Let's see. Simply from an in-game economic slant, your "Crafters want to differentiate and have an added value." sounds like a perfect way to broaden the base upon which the game rests upon. Myself, I craft in games to simply gain whatever advantages I can if the time investment does not eclipse what I prefer to be doing, whether it be monetary or performance related. I do not wish to pursue a crafting purist's path, but I do want to associate with them, being as symbiosis can go a long way. If there are people choosing to fully embrace crafting, that can only be a win for the overall robustness and health of a game.
Very well said @Thunderleg, and very insightful breakdown of the extreme personas that exist in the crafting communities of MMOs @Deadshade. With that said, I'd like to add (I think to thunderleg's point) that there is a spectrum of incentives for crafting (and harvesting) and I believe PRotF is trying to appeal to many across that spectrum. I don't believe that it will cater exclusively to the casual crafter and will in fact have aspects that encourage a player that typically would never craft in a game to at least attempt crafting (by implementing combat and exploration incentives like the acclimation system for instance), while also making crafting beneficial (monetarily and utilitarian) for those that enjoy crafting more than exploring/raiding. The opposite also applies (for those that would rather never leave the city and just craft), that the crafters will be encouraged to explore to obtain/gather the best crafting resources. So to directly address the O.P. I don't think PRotF is being designed to cater to a specific crafting persona, but instead being designed as a game to "encourage" exploration for crafters and vice versa without discouraging those that choose not dedicate their whole time to one aspect or the other.
Hello,
I have never been quite a crafter... but what I noticed in the many games I played over the years, is that crafting, to have success needs to have a purpose. What does not work is when crafting is in direct conflict with raiding or simply gear grinding from hunting. Either the raiding gear is better than crafting gear and then nobody cares about the armor produced by the crafters, or the crafted gear is better and then... you get it.
The question is, beyond making crafting interesting (and I won't go into this, because I will probably not be able to answer), where does the crafting fit into the overall game :
- crafters may be able to make unique items: climbing gear is specialized, technological stuff and not necessarily what you'd expect to find in a chest. Paragliders, mining picks, hammers for smithing, ...
- I could envision that crafters can create magical items that my be not as good than boss items, but that are may be more versatile. When a raid gear may have +5 STR, a craft gear may have +2 STR, +2 AGI...
- We could even go beyond that... I found it always strange that snakes or rats would drop armor pieces in EQ1, but then snakes could kick so... But with enough snakes skin or rat fur, you can craft your chest piece... see where that goes. The problem there might be that the typical non crafting adventurer does not have the immediate kick of having the new gear..
- Another possibility, is that you need crafting to insert enhacing gems into gear or upgrade it. Upgrading armor could also enhance the duration of gear over levels. Guys without access to a great crafter could then simply grind their gear to get to the next level of gears, while the guys with a crafter could enhance the gear up until the next raiding/aventuring gear is available to them, smoothing out the combat/gear level path.
Just a couple of thoughts...
I find almost every MMO has crafting for the crafters or crafting for end game boosts. I hope pantheon can break that trope by not forcing levels on people. Let people craft AND adventure.
In virtually every MMO players have to decide between crafting or dungeons or exploration or questing, etc. If harvesting gives players xp or we gain tons of xp killing mobs around nodes then we often must decide to be a crafter at the expense of actually using the armor and weapons we craft for anything beyond harvesting materials.
While I personally want a stop leveling button/mastery slider. I think we really need to think about if being a crafter should give adventuring levels as it does in almost every game.
With regards to end game crafting. I really dislike the boosts. Needing to level up blacksmithing to have more hp for tanking is just bad design. It pushes the meta choices. Give us options to save money by being a crafter if you feel you need something passive. A blacksmith repairing his own metal armor to save money rather than going to a vendor is bland enough to not matter but a nice simple bonus. An apothacary having an auto refilling potion weaker than the highest quality ones is great to just use in non critical situations. A black smith simply being mechanically better tanks is just bad design.
Grobobos said:Either the raiding gear is better than crafting gear and then nobody cares about the armor produced by the crafters, or the crafted gear is better and then... you get it.
VR has told us of several ways they will try to avoid this problem. First they have downplayed the idea of 'best in slot' gear, focusing on situational gear for some significant % of fights. Sometimes a raid piece will be best, sometimes a crafted piece will be. It will be a balancing act, as are many of the mechanics in a great game.
crafters may be able to make unique items:
As Nephele implied, we should see some unique items from crafters. Hopefully a good number that can't be gotten from vendors or ever loot drops.
Another possibility, is that you need crafting to insert enhacing gems into gear or upgrade it.
Nephe has told us in the past that 'enhancing' gear that already has been crafted/looted is not going to be a part of Pantheon. (of course, anything could change before release)
But, VR has said they hope to design some top tier items that require both a particular component that is dropped by a raid boss and the skill of a master craftsman to create.
This post could go a long way, personally for me I dislike crafting in most games because its to time consuming and honestly hard to understand. that being said i have crafted in a few games what if it were up to me i would prefer a 1/2 and 1/2 let the basics be basic. but if you wanna dig deep into makeing awsome stuff make it more complicated. the only reason i say this is because in quests sometimes you need a crafting skill level of ??? to complete a part of the quest, well thats what got me started in crafting and i hated the thought of it, thankfully it wasnt terrible ( i didnt have to max out or anything) but since then i like to "dabble" in crafting but never took it serious. long story short i think there should be a someone who crafts level of crafter, and a crafter that gets the credit they deserve, who put the time in and makes awsome stuff.
Sarim said:Indeed, a great way to bring adventuring and crafting together would be to have items craftable from raid (or high end group) drops.
Very true. Of course, the question is whether bringing adventuring and crafting together is a good idea or a bad idea. If a few good items can be made with drops - good idea, I agree. If one cannot be a useful crafter without doing high-end adventuring (which I hope will be group content not raids but that is a different issue) beyond terrible idea. Many of us like to craft but do not want to have bleeding edge adventuring characters. If the drops in question can be sold to crafters so we don't need to do high end content just pay through the nose to those that do - bad idea but not terrible. Personally I prefer a system where very rare harvested materials can be used to make some of the better items - so a good crafter/harvester will be quite viable and add value.
