I write this knowing that [Edit] I -- WE ARE [End Edit] the minority. I think that crafting, or in the broader sense 'trade skills' should be something along the lines of specialized labor. Crafting should not appeal to the vast population playing the game. It should be hard. It should be a pain. and the difficulty of learning a trade skill should 'weed out' a big bulk of the playerbase.
Too often nowadays I am seeing MMOs come out where they try to get every single player trying to master a trade skill. That should not be. Crafting should be a hardship that people seek out, not a fun sidequest. Analagous to real life, most people do not know a trade -- because learning them sucks. The real life economy is driven by supply and demand. If you need a service, you hire someone who specifically preforms that service. If the market is saturated with supply, then demand plummets and people can not make a living off of said service. Obviously, Pantheon and other MMOs are not real life, but the in game economy does follow certain parallells with real life.
I think that the safer bet for crafting success would be to limit the crafters by way of difficulty, instead of saturating the market and playing the balancing game.
I have to say I'm a part of that minority. I loved how a tradeskill back in EQ were something you had to spend countless hours on to max - and once you had maxed a tradeskill there wasn't 40 other people in your guild capable of producing the same items as you.
Also I liked the option of maxing ALL tradeskills. I understand why most present MMO's have a limit to how many tradeskills you can work, seeing as they're most often maxed just by levelling your character and picking up whatever crafting items you come across. But I'd much rather have my number of tradeskills limited by difficulty and how much time I have to play the game - much like in real life.
Agreed completely. Crafting should be hard. Hard doesn't mean not fun nevertheless. In Vanguard, crafting was hard, complex, confusing, yet fun and rewarding. I'm totally burn out on crafting systems that are click done with no interaction with the project. I miss cutting my finger and burning myself during my project. I miss having to actually think of how to make the project succeed. I miss having to know which ingredient I need to add for which feature.
I love crafting, and the harder, the better, the funner :)
Also part of the minority. Being a master crafter should be as hard and time consuming as being a master geared raider. Pretty sure almost all crafters want it that way...the people who don't really craft or only do because it is a BS easy mode system that everyone does don't usually want to craft or care, but they do it because it's a time waster instead of a serious, well developed separate and integral sphere of the game.
I say this for like the 1000th time...just remake VG crafting by and large and we are good. Crafting stats, crafting gear, crafting quests, crafting factions and connected recipes, rare and ultra rare dropped materials and recipes, interactive crafting with crafting skills and abilities, crafting levels the same as adventuring levels, crafted gear being the basis of all gear and equipment, interdependent crafters requiring pieces from other crafters to make high level and/or complex pieces, customizable gear with dusts and crystals to add special effects, procs, stats, etc, deconstructable gear for materials and dusts/crystals, etc etc etc.
Soulrend crafted her way through the Everquests, Vanguard, ESO. Where all of these crafting systems eventually failed was
i))when the devs 'made it easier' to level, apparently responding to player comments...i.e. those players who could not be bothered to sink real time into crafting.
ii)when the level cap was raised but the items that could be manufactured did not rise in parallel and match the expectations of the highest level players
So fix the above.
Add a wider selection of ultra rare raid and small group/single player drops or similar, as recipe elements to create enhanced crafter only 'spells' (was that EQ2?..I cannot remember) and items with very specific attributes
.....and most importantly have a server wide trading system for individuals that actually works and allows competitiveness from a pricing point of view.
.....and this minority might be happy bunnies again....
Soul
I love the idea of making a crafting system that is difficult. I shudder that it is based on the idea of creating 1000 items of x to progress a level. Make it difficult, not tedious.
I do believe that there should be some training or practicing involved (i.e. repetition of base elements, but not overly so), but tie the real difficulty with the game mechanics. Make progression something to do in the wide wild world.
When you get to a certain point in your abilities, require that character to go somewhere else to progress; to talk to a character, to do something for that npc that proves your ability and they then show you their secrets. More practice follows to master the new technique and/or materials. Player plateaus again, then off to find the next expert.
Each of these sub parts would be involved and require adventuring to get specific items, knowledge and/or materials. These training articles would required a group to retrieve, naturally slowing down progress and using game world mechanics instead of having something that (to me) has always felt bolted on and not a part of the game world.
So, a fletcher who is good at their trade hits a plateau. Through a rumour heard via awareness, faction, trade skill and race (etc.), they hear that there was a npc that knew how to make a hardened, recurve bow (for instance). The narrative states that the individual was based in Halfling territory or Elven territory, not sure which. The crafting system could branch at this point, so either path would lead to progression, but the equipment style would be different.
A journey is then made to one of these areas where they eventually pick up rumours of the person living nearby. They visit that NPC and must earn their trust, prove their skill, collect required components and, when everything is in place, they are shown the secrets of design and material, and thus progress. This learned style, would then be applicable to all items craft-able by the player’s trade and now they must master each of the items and the mundane part then kicks in again, but because of the length of time involved with the questing side, the tedious, button clicking side doesn't have to be as long.
I think skills should be focused on race styles and abilities to use raw materials. The styles would be chosen by the crafter; the raw materials dictate the ability of the equipment made.
I do feel that the techniques (style and materials) should be learned through game play, the repetition side being reduced because of the length of time in questing the progress, thus making crafting that bit more enjoyable and feels like a natural part of the game. I would love a system that made progression a part of normal game play, it really doesn’t have to be all about clicking buttons and waiting for a progress bar.
I know that this will be a minority view, but I don't see why crafting should be separate from general game play.
I like the idea of the grandmaster being a rarity vs the norm. PoP era tradeskills in EQ was really the height of challenging tradeskills, with a few forgotten expacs and then the waterdown of easy recipes to max them all out.
I loved the bartering with supplies for areas I was weak in or tinkered items I made for someone elses specialty.
Also, any thoughts of mastering one skill causing decay of other skills based on your focus..or is that a step to far ?
I like the idea of the highest levels being difficult for sure, maybe make the lower 10% of each crafting skill easy, and ramp it up as they get higher level. So people can craft the common stuff, but rarer stuff or higher level stuff needs people who have actually dedicated time and skill to crafting.
I will always do crafting. I am a completionist. I like to experience all of the game that I can. I also like to provide service to ,y friends and guildies.
If only a few of us become the top levels, the more in demand I will be. If everyone is a high level crafter, there tends to be little reward for the work involved to gain the skills.
The lower to mid levels should be easy for everyone. But, make the higher levels hard to achieve and worthwhile.
Prostadamus said:I write this knowing that I am probably in the minority here. I think that crafting, or in the broader sense 'trade skills' should be something along the lines of specialized labor. Crafting should not appeal to the vast population playing the game. It should be hard. It should be a pain. and the difficulty of learning a trade skill should 'weed out' a big bulk of the playerbase.
Too often nowadays I am seeing MMOs come out where they try to get every single player trying to master a trade skill. That should not be. Crafting should be a hardship that people seek out, not a fun sidequest. Analagous to real life, most people do not know a trade -- because learning them sucks. The real life economy is driven by supply and demand. If you need a service, you hire someone who specifically preforms that service. If the market is saturated with supply, then demand plummets and people can not make a living off of said service. Obviously, Pantheon and other MMOs are not real life, but the in game economy does follow certain parallells with real life.
I think that the safer bet for crafting success would be to limit the crafters by way of difficulty, instead of saturating the market and playing the balancing game.
I wouldn't say you're in the minority. I'm hoping the crafting system here will be involving to at least the degree of Vanguard's system, hopefully better. For a long time in Vanguard I was one of the few high tiered blacksmiths. During that time there wasn't a day that I'd log in and not have at least 10 people trying to hire me to make boat parts. It was nice to see a good tradeskill system and econonomy like that. And part of what made my tradeskill so useful was that it literally took just as long if not longer to level up your crafting sphere as it did your adventure sphere. And then there was the crafting minigame, which you could excell or fail horribly at.
Despite that game's many flaws, I don't feel the crafting was one of them. And I hope Pantheon will be just as difficult and involving a system to master.
The one thing I hope it isn't is one of those lazy click-it-and-forget-it crafting systems. I loathe those.
seilun said:I have to say I'm a part of that minority. I loved how a tradeskill back in EQ were something you had to spend countless hours on to max - and once you had maxed a tradeskill there wasn't 40 other people in your guild capable of producing the same items as you.
That is an interesting view point. When I read the OPs message I don't think what he descibes is EQs tradeskills. I would think they would have to be much, MUCH, more difficult than EQ tradeskills if you agree with what the OP says when he states:
"It should be hard. It should be a pain. and the difficulty of learning a trade skill should 'weed out' a big bulk of the playerbase."
It seemed like just about everyone had 1 tradeskill maxed in EQ at the high end ...though maybe they made them more difficult after I stopped playing it after 04ish? Did that happen?
I agree with the rest of you that being a master crafter should be more difficult than it generally has been in games. I think you end up with so many crafters because tradeskills are just another part of everyone's character. In a lot of games, it's expected that every character masters a tradeskill or two, and leveling them can be almost automatic. Sure, I guess you can just make it require a ridiculous amount of time and energy to get to that highest level, but I think what truly makes the masters rare is having characters that just craft. Or maybe if there aren't crafter classes, then you could require some sort of sacrifice to reach that highest level. Maybe you give up some of your power as an adventurer in order to excel at your chosen trade. I dunno. I wouldn't be a crafter, but I have buddies who would be, and they struggle to find games where crafting is meaningful.
philo said:seilun said:I have to say I'm a part of that minority. I loved how a tradeskill back in EQ were something you had to spend countless hours on to max - and once you had maxed a tradeskill there wasn't 40 other people in your guild capable of producing the same items as you.
That is an interesting view point. When I read the OPs message I don't think what he descibes is EQs tradeskills. I would think they would have to be much, MUCH, more difficult than EQ tradeskills if you agree with what the OP says when he states:
"It should be hard. It should be a pain. and the difficulty of learning a trade skill should 'weed out' a big bulk of the playerbase."
It seemed like just about everyone had 1 tradeskill maxed in EQ at the high end ...though maybe they made them more difficult after I stopped playing it after 04ish? Did that happen?
He may have meant earlier EQ. Back in the earlier game it was pretty hard to get all the crafting mats to skill up. But the system itself was mostly just throwing it all in a box and clicking a bunch. The most involving part was tracking down all the mats. The process was a bit dull. It was the click-it-and-forget-it style but with extra clicking.
I get what he's hinting at with tracking down the items to amke it harder to craft, but I'd prefer instead a harder system to master that challenges the player a bit with the process of assembly. I'll point to something along the lines of Vanguard or better again, where crafting had it's own leveling system and process. It was not perfect but it was a decent minigame crafting system that engaged with the player and was fairly difficult to master.
Tradeskills, where when I burn my arse on the forge I need heals from the cleric.
Have a governing force like OSHA. Need safety manuals, and 300-300a's in the forge type of thing.
Morr said:I agree with the 'master level crafting should be hard' contingent. Perhaps such things as cooking and alchemy should be relatively non-difficult, but for master smiths and such, make that hard. Crafters who attain such exalted levels should make a name for themselves.
Alchemy/and cooking are one of the biggest money makers in most games im not saying that they should be harder but definately should be just as hard, and another thing is that i think certain tradeskills make wanted materials for other tradeskills that way they're is a constant wheel turning between the tradeskillers to make themselves better, like blacksmith could make utensils for the cooking tradeskill, enchanting would make something for alchemists, and so on and so on, that way they cant level themselves up just all by themselves they have to still depend on other people to process like they do in another tradeskill that supports their own.