Forums » Crafting and Gathering

The Rarity of Skilled Labor

    • 219 posts
    March 2, 2017 6:50 PM PST

    I believe that basic levels of crafting should be something that just about anyone can do, but that higher levels require a lot of dedication, and master crafters have to specialize (e.g. a Blacksmith specializes to Axesmith, Swordsmith, Macesmith, Platesmith, Scalesmith, Chainsmith, etc.) in order to access the highest recipes.  I also think that low level, easy recipes should be something you can buy from skill trainers, but high levels require either research or exploration or raid drops to get (but they shouldn't ALL BE RAID DROPS - that's stupid).

    In this way, most anyone can pick up a trade (like in real life - contrary to the OP, the lowest levels of skill in most tradeskills are actually relatively easy to learn and attain), but midlevel and high level should be much more difficult.

    I also believe that people should have SOME limits to how many skills they can pursue, and definitely how many specializations they can have.  Say you can train 2 gathering and 2 crafting professions or 3 gathering and 1 crafting, or 4 gathering, AND say you can only have 3 specializations, but they can be in the same area.  E.g. you can specialize in a specialization of Miner AND Blacksmith AND Alchemist, or if you're a Blacksmith, you can specialize in Sword, Axe, AND Plate, or you could specialize in Axe and Plate while specializing in your Alchemy skill as a Transmuter specialist.

    I think that gathering professions should be more flexible (e.g. my example above reserving 2 spots for gathering by default), but that crafting is more limited: Like the OP said (and I agree with on the mid and higher end), tradeskills are hard.  There's a reason that it's very rear to find someone who is simultaneously a master auto mechanic AND master plumber AND master carpenter AND a doctor.  You just don't see that.  BUT you do see people that learn a little bit about electrician work and a little bit about plumbing and a little bit about carpentry that are able to do easy to moderate difficulty jobs around their house.

    .

    Perhaps a better way would be to allot a character 500 possible skill points where it takes 100 to get a profession to the point you can go on a quest to specialize, and 50 points to max a specialization.  In this way, a person could have 50 points in 10 crafting/gathering professions OR they can max out AND specialize 3 (450) and then have 50 left to play with, meaning they could get 3 professions maxed and then a total of 4 specializations between them, or could specialize and max ONE while having mid levels of training in 7 others (350/50 = 7)

    It could also be where the first 10-20 points in a profession are easy, the 30-50 point mark is harder, the 50-90 is harder still, and the last 10 are really difficult AND you have to get to 100 before you can get a specialization in that profession, at which point you now get to grind 50 more hard levels to become the top end in that specialization, but this doesn't mean you can make legendary Axe AND legendary Sword...not unless you grind out 50 more levels in the other specialization as well.

    .

    I'm not sure, in the end, what makes the most sense.  The point method allows the most flexibility and the most "true to life", although it should be noted that "in real life" people have different amounts based on effort, determination, and natural ability.  So in this way, it should maybe be possible for a person who spends all 500 points to gain more, but should require some kinds of efforts (quests or whatnot) to show true dedication in order to push themselves to the next level.

    .

    Just spitballing, but...yeah.

    Low level = easy
    Mid level = moderately hard
    High level = hard
    Specialization = insane

    That's how it should go.

    • 184 posts
    March 6, 2017 7:08 AM PST

    I think we can all agree; time spent/risk should equal the greatest reward. With that said, unless they make it an unruly grind/misery to level of tradeskills, I honestly don't see any other way around creating rare, "hardcore" Grandmaster Crafters in our community without limiting people 1 master profession per character. And that specialization (or the ability to allow you to level to a grand master) should only be attainable through an epic quest or something akin to such a time requirement/challenge.

    There are a multitude of possibilities with the weather systems; certain nodes spawning at certain times of day, during certain inclament weather, etc. That rare flower you have to camp for days like Lodi/Phoenix for the Ranger epic perhaps only spawns every other full moon or whatnot. Just thinking outloud, but I really hope they don't sell out on the Tradeskills. There is a disparity of information in this regard, so I hope it doesn't fall by the wayside or not be innovative/dynamic.

    • 2 posts
    March 6, 2017 9:48 PM PST

    Back in the days of EQ, I was a tradeskiller. I had played for 10 years, I invested a lot of time into it since materials were harder to come by. It was more fun for me in that era

    than the nowadays systems where you can max out a skill in a couple of days. But there is a trade off, there are pro's and con's to each side of how you look at it. Personally I

    prefer the challenging, tedious and grinding system, it is what makes you as a player a valuable commodity.

    • 4 posts
    March 12, 2017 3:07 PM PDT

    I think crafting should be a huge time and resource sink, producing though some of the top goods in the game. There is nothing worse then spending all the time and finding out what you're able to craft is undesirable and inneffective. If you put the time in you should be able to reap the rewards. I don't have a problem with a single toon being able to master multiple crafts, I just think it would be maybe too much effort.

    • 57 posts
    March 12, 2017 4:57 PM PDT

    Greetings,

     

    I liked how in EverQuest, you could be as many crafting / gathering professions on one character. Reason for me is I prefer spending the majority of my time on one character then mutiple alts to craft. I actually maxed out all those tradeskills in the time I played but hated how it was a random combine. When I went to EverQuest ][, it was one crafting and two gathering professions per character but when you crafted you had the chance to make items better or worse and even die from the combines if you failed your counter. World of Warcraft had two crafting and three gathering proffessions and Star Wars: The Old Republic had one crafting and two gathering professions per character however you didnt have much input in how things combined. Also I found certain crafting professions are in higher demand in these last three games I listed. I know in the last game I played, when they introduced the ability to conquer planets every week my ability to dominate entire guilds by myself having 24 characters to craft war supplies made people just give up on trying to compete againt the guild I was in.

     

    Sincerely,

    Robert A. Frederick Jr.

    • 1618 posts
    March 12, 2017 5:02 PM PDT

    Not sure if I am in favor of multiple harvesting abilities per toon. Each additional one you allow is another chance for my tank to die because my healer wife is off harvesting in the middle of a fight.

    • 3852 posts
    March 16, 2017 9:03 AM PDT

    As usual Beefcake hit the important point, and quite succinctly. What Pantheon needs is polygamy. Or maybe that wasn't the point ((looks puzzled)).

    Crafting in many "modern" games takes a lot less time and effort than it used to. But the reward is far less. Heck the reward per minute spent is far less. Either crafting is useless until maximum level or it is useless at maximum level or both. Yes I'm exaggerating by useless I mean not very useful.

    My vote is make crafting highly useful at lower levels. If my tank spends half her time harvesting ores and learning to smith let her be able to make BETTER armor than a person standing on the street asking people to kill 5 orcs has available. And damn sure let it be better than the stinking low level orcs have. Now killing gnomes or dwarves might be another story ((evil smile)). This is a stop and smell the roses game where we are expected and desired to spend most of our time working our way up - crafting should make it easier every step of the way. Just as in real life.

    No that comment isn't off topic - if crafting is going to actually let us produce useful items that make it easier to go through the content it shouldn't be trivial to make them. You don't become a skilled smith in an hour, or 10 hours, or 10 DAYS and the skill to make a set of chain armor better than the orcs wear may not be as great as the skill needed to make plate mail for a king but it isn't trivial either. Maybe if I want to spend most of my time killing this won't let me also craft. Good - better than good. Life is about trade-offs. You can't be one of the best crafters if you spend most of your time adventuring. Makes those that stay in the shop and make the other choice about how to spend their time more valued. That cooperation/socialization thing again. If it takes too much time to do both - adventurers NEED crafters. And crafters NEED adventurers.


    This post was edited by dorotea at March 16, 2017 9:04 AM PDT
    • 77 posts
    March 25, 2017 8:09 AM PDT

    dorotea said:

    Life is about trade-offs. You can't be one of the best crafters if you spend most of your time adventuring. Makes those that stay in the shop and make the other choice about how to spend their time more valued. That cooperation/socialization thing again. If it takes too much time to do both - adventurers NEED crafters. And crafters NEED adventurers.

     

    Love this.

    As a machinist shop owner IRL. I need my customers, as much as they need my skills, however if I'm out at their site all day I'm not honing my skills/products for those customers. THus I hire others to be out there so I can focus all my attention on making the best fabrications/threadings/couplings/tool repairs.

    • 80 posts
    March 25, 2017 12:21 PM PDT

    What do you guys think about my "merchant class" idea? https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5667/-/view/post_id/101701

     

    It touches on how it helps with rewarding those who work hard at thier given skill.

    • 1468 posts
    April 9, 2017 1:05 PM PDT

    My feelings on crafting are a little bit complex. I'd like to see crafting being much more than EQ. If you analyse the EQ tradeskill system it was actually pretty poor. Put items in inventery, put items in item to combine them, hit combine, success or failure. There was nothing difficult about it. It was just time consuming. Remember something being time consuming doesn't make it hard.

    Vanguard was much better but even that could be improved upon. What you want when it comes to crafting is not an instant success / fail after working on an item for a couple of minutes. I'm thinking it should take at least an hour to craft a sword or a piece of armour. The rate of progression would be the same as say leveling from 1 to 50 in a crafting skill in Pantheon but each item would take about an hour of work to complete and it would be possible to fail to make that item at multiple points within that hour long progress (although it should be possible to pause that process just in-case you need to take an AFK during it) which would make crafting truely hard to do.

    Even Vanguard wasn't that hard to level in. It was just time consuming which I repeat does not make something hard. I want something where making a sword might take multiple tries and might take multiple hours. That would really make it hard.

    If you only takes a couple of moments to make an item and you know your skill level makes the combine trivial where is the difficulty in that? You can't fail.

    In my system you would always be able to fail as the whole crafting system would be based on player skill rather than a random number generator that says whether something is a success or a fail.

    • 72 posts
    April 13, 2017 7:55 PM PDT

    kelenin said:

    I mostly agree with this, getting to lower levels in trade skills may be ok, but higher levels of trade skills should take dedication.

    I was just thinking about this topic while reading another players post.  Crafting is a specialized role that often appeals to older, more experienced Players.  When I first began my venture into the MMO genre, I did not care for crafting at all.  I was far more interested in adventure and gettingn out there and living the RPG dream, bairly making it from level to level as I scraped from the bottom of the barrel to scroung up some armor and equipment to progress myself further.  

    As I grew older, I found myself more inclined to develop a trade that did not require me hundreds of hours of mining Gusgan for that sweet sweet Darksteel Ore.  I still get a glorious chill down my spine every time I see the word Darksteel.  Ahh memories.

    Simply, Crafting should not appeal to everyone.  Just like every class in game should not try to appeal to everyone either.  That's what makes a role feel unique and special, when you can identify with it, and feel proud for playing that class or grinding out that professional skill.