The Crafting & Game Economy in Age of Conan Update!!

AmazingAvery

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Crafting & Economy in Age of Conan - Feb 01, 2008 It's time to take a better look at the crafting system in Age of Conan, and how you can make a bit of money on something that does not involve killing people! Ask any adventurer journeying through the lands of Hyboria for advice on how to survive the brutal realities of the world, and they'll tell you to get a good sword as soon as possible. If it's not demons haunting you at night, clawing at your back ready to rip out your eyes, it's the treachery of man you must defend yourself from. Unarmed you will not get further in Hyboria than the nearest graveyard. But there is one thing that can be just as persuasive as the sharp end of the sword: cold cash. Tin, copper, silver and gold – they flow through the cities of civilization like blood flowing through the heart of man: the Stygian merchant, whose commodity is death, hiring assassins to slay his competitors for a few pieces of gold; the Aquilonian noble fuelling political conspiracies with the promise of silver; the Cimmerian chieftain trading his last copper pieces to feed his starving tribe. For you, as the player, there are numerous ways in which you can acquire some currency. You can head out into the great unknown to perform quests for people in need. You can murder innocents and loot their bodies for valuables. Maybe you would prefer hunting for game and selling the skin? Either that or you can pick up a trade – a craft – using your hands to make something others want! Becoming a craftsman In the world of Hyboria there are certain locations where craftsmen (and women!) congregate to form societies where they can practice their trade. These are commonly called resource and gathering regions as they are areas with a special abundance of resources needed for crafting, and here you will also find many who are more than willing to learn others how to practice their trade. Upon reaching the required level needed to start crafting (which is currently set to level forty, but that might change during the beta process) you need to seek out a crafting trainer who can teach you his or her trade. This will be your mentor on the long road ahead, sending you out on various quests where you need to prove your worth as a crafter. The important thing to remember is that you can only have one crafting profession, so choose wisely before dedicating yourself to your mentor! Here are the different crafting professions in Age of Conan: Weaponsmithing: Picking up this trade allows you to craft various types of weaponry, from swords to staffs, from daggers to crossbows. Everything needed to kill your opponents! Armorsmithing: If you wish to go the completely opposite route from the weaponsmith, try picking up the armorsmithing craft that allows you to craft various types of armor pieces. Alchemy: Do you enjoy mixing things into vials and seeing how the result affects people? Then you should try your luck at alchemy, allowing you to make various types of potions. Architecture: City-building is an integral part of Age of Conan, and you will need someone skilled in the arts of architecture to draw up the plans needed for the different buildings. Gemcutting: Monsters tend to drop rough gems that the gemcutter can turn into powerful enchantments, and these can be placed into other crafted items to make them more potent. We have tried making it so that crafting is as intuitive as possible, while still maintaining the level of challenge that makes progression so entertaining. When you’re ready to start crafting something, all you do is bring up your recipe book and click on what you want to create. If you have the required resources in your inventory, the item will be created for you. There are certain exceptions to this, as some of the top tier recipes will require that your guild is in possession of certain types of structures within the guild city. Some of the top tier alchemy recipes will, for instance, require your guild to have an alchemist’s workshop constructed within the guild city. Once you have chosen a crafting profession you will start out small, with little knowledge of how to create anything at all, much less anything of real use! Now it’s time for you to prove your worth to your trainer, allowing you to craft more and more advanced items over time. (click HERE for a larger version of this image) Collecting resources Integral to crafting is, of course, resources. It’s what you have to pour into anything you create, whether it is a basic sword or an entire tower structure for your guild city. In order to collect a specific type of resource you will need to learn how to master the resource gathering profession that is associated with that resource. Note that you can master all of these professions at the same time. Here are the different resource gathering professions you can master: Mining: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as copper, tin, iron and more. You can also find rare ones like aurichalcum and blue iron. Prospecting: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as silver, electrum, gold and more. You can also find rare ones like illustrium and platinum. Skinning: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as different types of leather, some of which are rare ones like the grained leather and the whorled leather. Stonecutting: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as sandstone, granite, basalt and more. You can also find rare ones like adamant and obsidian. Weaving: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as cotton, wool, flax and more. You can also find rare ones like bloodflax and cottonwisp. Woodcutting: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as ash, yew, oak and more. You can also find rare ones like soulwood and amberwood. The alchemist doesn’t actually go out and gather resources for his potions. Instead the different ingredients required will drop from defeated enemies, just as with the gems used by the gemcutter. One of the reasons why we are doing this is to create a certain level of dependency between crafters and adventurers, making it a bit more interesting for everyone involved! Another way we’re creating dependencies between the two is making it so that only crafted items can have gems embedded, so the adventurers will be running back to the crafters with the gems they just picked up in some dark dungeon, asking the weaponsmith to make a weapon for them and the gemcutter to put the gems in! Using gems you can customize items, while dropped items can’t be customized. One central element of the resource gathering system is the rare resources. When gathering a resource there is a small chance that you may collect a rare version of it. Using rare resources when you are crafting will allow you to make a special version of an item. These items will have additional bonuses, such as allowing gemcutters to put more gems into them. This allows crafters to make some incredibly potent and unique items by using several special gems and rare resources! The primary reason for us allowing you to master all resource gathering professions is because of how important resources is to so many different aspects of the gameplay in Age of Conan. As an example you will need to pour resources into your guild city in order to pay for its upkeep! Progression In stark contrast to similar games out there, progression within your chosen craft is not done by simply producing items or gathering resources over and over again until your skill improves. In Age of Conan you do not have a numerical crafting skill listed somewhere – instead you progress through different quests whose rewards allows you to craft better items and gather more advanced resources. This means that progression is entirely tied up to quests that you do for your trainer. Progression is split up into tiers. You start with the first tier, involving basic items/resources, and you will have to be a certain level before you can move onto the next tier. Each tier consists of various quests that will reward you with new recipes for items to make, and resources to gather. As an example, when you first start out in the alchemy craft your trainer will teach you how to craft what we call crude remedies. One of the first quests requires you to make a set of crude remedies for your trainer, and in return he will show you how to make common remedies. Within the first tier, currently starting at level forty, you will learn how to make crude and common potions. As you reach level fifty you will be eligible for tier two quests, rewarding you with refined potion recipes. It’s the same with resource gathering: the stonecutter will start gathering sandstone while he’s in tier one, but will quickly move up to adamant and basalt when he complete quests in higher tiers. One of the reasons why we have chosen to make progression quest-based is to eliminate the feel of going through a grind. Instead of producing one hundred basic potions just to learn how you make something a bit more interesting, you will actually progress through a storyline that will also reward you with a healthy amount of experience points which will count towards your next level! Hard work pays off Sooner or later once you have started to master a crafting profession (and/or resource gathering profession) you will want to get paid for the hard work. There are several ways to flog your items (and resources collected). You can stand in front of Conan’s castle in Tarantia, screaming your lungs out for someone to please buy your wooden crossbow – or you can seek out the tradepost. Tradeposts are Age of Conan’s equivalent to the auction house that you find in most other games of this genre. Tradeposts can be found in cities and player cities, and using them brings up an interface that combines your bank, your mail and a marketplace where you can buy and sell items. To sell something you have crafted you simply put it on your bank and tag it for sale with the appropriate price. Someone in need of it will eventually come along and buy it from you. One important aspect of the tradepost is actually that it is not an auction house. There is no auctioning, there are no bids. You put something up for sale with a set price and either someone purchase it or not. It certainly makes things interesting and the market much more fast and furious! At the end of the day you can finally head home with a few gold pieces in your pocket, proud of the fact that you once again managed to make a solid living – without cutting off someone’s head!

 

After reading it over a few times, seems like its going to be not too bad a system to me.

Might give Skinning a go first time around 

What do you guys think?

Baio2k

I'm dissapointed tbh.  They went from the Prestige system where Crafters could take on mulitple crafting professions but still only master 1, to a system where everyone can only be 1.   Also the being able to craft anywhere, and the resource gathering zone I think are pretty silly.   

I also worry that the quests for progression will be easy to do very quickly with the correct resource accumulation. this could lead to crafters and small groups to become more self sufficent and master many professions over time when certain needs arise.

Now these are mostly baseless fears, but the possibility arises with this type of system

I also do not understand how resource gathering progression works if not used by your crafting profession.  It sounds like you have to be going through the quest training of a profession to be able to collect those specific materials in higher tiers.  Am I missing something?

AmazingAvery

Originally posted by Baio2k


I'm dissapointed tbh.  They went from the Prestige system where Crafters could take on mulitple crafting professions but still only master 1, to a system where everyone can only be 1.   Also the being able to craft anywhere, and the resource gathering zone I think are pretty silly.   
I also worry that the quests for progression will be easy to do very quickly with the correct resource accumulation. this could lead to crafters and small groups to become more self sufficent and master many professions over time when certain needs arise.
Now these are mostly baseless fears, but the possibility arises with this type of system
I also do not understand how resource gathering progression works if not used by your crafting profession.  It sounds like you have to be going through the quest training of a profession to be able to collect those specific materials in higher tiers.  Am I missing something?

I can really understand your concern's as a crafter in other games.

I think even though if you take all the other mmo's out there and gave everyone the ability to master all types of crafting you would still pretty much see those games the same as they are, with the same people doing the same things in them.

Crafting is something people do mainly for the love of it, they like to make and maybe merchant too.

The amount you could learn as a crafter in the old system was never set in stone, but its still only mastering one like it is now. About being able to craft anywhere, I reckon will just have to wait and see. Im used to running back and forth from bank to anvil in other games, this might make a welcome change.

You can still master all of those Resource Gathering things though and aren't limited to one just one.

Yep it sounds like quest progression for everything, including the resource gathering types learnt.

"Progression is split up into tiers. You start with the first tier, involving basic items/resources, and you will have to be a certain level before you can move onto the next tier. Each tier consists of various quests that will reward you with new recipes for items to make, and resources to gather.

As an example, when you first start out in the alchemy craft your trainer will teach you how to craft what we call crude remedies. One of the first quests requires you to make a set of crude remedies for your trainer, and in return he will show you how to make common remedies. Within the first tier, currently starting at level forty, you will learn how to make crude and common potions. As you reach level fifty you will be eligible for tier two quests, rewarding you with refined potion recipes. It’s the same with resource gathering: the stonecutter will start gathering sandstone while he’s in tier one, but will quickly move up to adamant and basalt when he complete quests in higher tiers.

One of the reasons why we have chosen to make progression quest-based is to eliminate the feel of going through a grind. Instead of producing one hundred basic potions just to learn how you make something a bit more interesting, you will actually progress through a storyline that will also reward you with a healthy amount of experience points which will count towards your next level!"

I like it, seems deeper and more complex than before in some small ways.

emikochan

Hmm, I'm really looking forward to crafting in AoC, but I'm worried about this "starts at level 40" business, now that seems like quite some time of grinding just so I could do what I find enjoyable.

Crafting is a really relaxng break from all the levelling, so I'm not exactly thrilled about being stuck without it for a long period.

I'm really hoping they reduce the level requirement a lot (I'm a big fan of support style characters)

Other than that it sounds really interesting, specially liking how crafted items will be better, or more unique at least, than dropped ones.

BryanBoitono

Yet again avery, you astound me. If we wern't guildees, Id assume you where on the funcom payroll as an advertiser.

 

 

But this definatly makes me happy, I think that system has some serious potential.

Finwolven

Meh, I lost interest in the economy side of AOC when I saw it was going to be YAVE (Yet Another Vendor Economy) and with this crafting -> quest -> level linkage system, even crafting is going to be just another PITA to do to grind money at higher level making the best cures and other usables by the bushel...

Sad, really. Why, oh why, can't anyone do a decent player-run economy aside from EVE Online? Why must every crafted item be infinitely inferior to the stuff that drops as loot or as quest rewards (LOTRO problem), and why must making soup be somehow magically tied to how good I am at beating monsters over the head with a hammer?

Oh well, once again I see that the only way to get it right is to do it yourself.

At least AOC will still have a fun combat system and a lot of lore/world content that I can go roam through. Too bad it won't last for too long, though.

Kyleran

It all seems pretty standard fare, and unfortunately, I can't help think that I'm going to feel forced to become a crafter in order to compete economically. We'll have to wait and see.

The statement I didn't like much was:

"Some of the top tier alchemy recipes will, for instance, require your guild to have an alchemist’s workshop constructed within the guild city."

Which once again reinforces the fact that you'll need to be a member of a large, strong guild to really prosper in the end game.  Smaller guilds need not apply. I actually plan on being in a large, city building guild, so no big deal, but I know many people who prefer less structure and like playing with just their friends.

Gemcutting seems to be the most important profession, so I expect to see tons of them.  Architecture seems to once again really only matter to city building guilds and probably will be more of a money sink than a money maker. (just guessing of course)

Finally, while I like gathering materials, and appreciate being able to gather them all, I wonder if it means we'll all be scrabbling like crazy for them.  Especially when they said large quantities of resources will be required to maintain our cities.  I hope my guild isn't forced to tell me to bring in "X" amount of resources weekly and it starts to become a chore.

eugam

Originally posted by AmazingAvery








 





 
After reading it over a few times, seems like its going to be not too bad a system to me.
Might give Skinning a go first time around 
What do you guys think?

It sounds ok.  Need to see how resource gathering works. Worst case would be overfarmed areas and on PvP server gathering might be a hard business. The quest driven progression is nice. No mater how stupid a quest probably is, always better then grind. Yeah, i miss the prestige class Crafter, but it cant be helped.

Selling from bank is nice. I have no real plans yet. It all depends. Need to see what a gemcutter is able to do, need to see what kind of remedies are craftable.

Although i am still waiting for a game where i can play a self-sufficient man from the mountains (craft all armor and weapons  i need myself) i am looking forward.

Xulox

From what Avery posted, I'm a disappointed. Perhaps I've interpreted the original post incorrectly, but it seems pretty much like a standard crafting system... meaning  "X"  resource + "X" resource = this item. Not very creative at all.

I was hoping for a crafting system that was a little bit more robust and left the crafter to experiment. Where it gave you a general recipe/schematic, but you had choices as to which resource you used. For example it could call for a wood but not a specific wood. You could take time  to experiment with different combinations of woods and metals and even a wild card slot to see what would make the best product.

 

As far as how you go about becoming a crafter, I think that the idea of doing quests for schematics , or getting them as drops is a pretty interesting concept. Better than the grind.

ste2000

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

 About being able to craft anywhere, I reckon will just have to wait and see. Im used to running back and forth from bank to anvil in other games, this might make a welcome change.

Welcome change?

In WoW you can do exactly the same, it's just the same re-heated soup

Falfeir

i did have my doubts about crafting but this article convinced me that it will be good. looking forward to it. will be a armorsmith most probably.

i only wish that they dont allow all resource gathering professions available to a single character like it says in the article.

safwd

I also have to say that i think the system sounds just ok.

I have no problem with them changing the Prestige system, although i thought the ability to craft everything was kind of cool, everybody getting to chose 1 is fine with me.

I think they have to change the level of crafting to 20. I believe they said that they want a player driven economy where crafted items were amoung the best, and i dont see how well that will work if nobody is crafting these items until level 40.

I also dont care for the creation of items anywhere. No problem if you can carry around the tools to make arrows, or perhaps even bows, but i really dont see how it is possible to create a full set of plate armor out in an open field. I understand that they are trying to do something different but i dont think anyone really has a problem with having to go to a forge to craft armor or steel weapons. The resource areas i have no problem with, although rare items for crafting should only be found out in the world.

 

Thanks again to Avery for giving us the info, keep it coming, i know you will.

ShotgunJoe

Heres my take off what they have told us and keep in mind I am excited about AoC for the combat, gritty open world pvp and Conan lore...not for crafting. SO I have a very simplistic view on the crafting system.

Pro's:

-No crafting 300 of item X to get to Item Y to craft 500 times to get to item Z.

-Quest based leveling, not macro infront of a forge to level

-Crafted Items are better for pvp then loot drop items

-Items can be customized and enhanced by other crafters

-Players are dependant on each other for crafting complete items

-Alot of items to play with...over 1500 armor sets?!!! Sweet baby Jesus, SWG had about 25?

-Resource quality matters (this adds a very important strategic pvp and rp aspect to resource nodes in the BK)

-You can actually gather and harvest everything you find, you are not pigeonholed into one type of gatherer.

Con's:

-Not the SWG system level of crafting complexity

-No coloring or dye options spoken of for armor and clothing

-Players are committed to only one crafting class

 

 

Askatan

Originally posted by Kyleran


 
The statement I didn't like much was:

why don't they just use EVE's crafting system and anyone could take part...

miagisan

i have to agree with most of the posters here. The crafting system is very meh....generic of most crafting systems.

AmazingAvery

Ok I can see how alot of people here have been used to maybe more substantial crafting systems in other games. To be honest on the face of it so have I.

I do know though Funcom have said not to expect SWG style complexity for launch and they have been reiterating this for a while. I mean even with SWG player cities were't even in for launch but came some time after.

I took in the info a while ago that they said the crafting system wont be uber complex, so Im not too dis-heartened with the extra info thats layed out on the table recently and the stuff I saw first hand.

The main focus for me is the combat style with the game, but they do listen to feedback take this post for example on the official forums: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=53590 sprung up after reading some feedback the fans gave.

I think that it wasnt so much as an afterthought, but pretty much not  so complex from design. Saying that I think the game in places will seem a little complex for people.

Just an update too here are some recent quotes:

LordOrion vbmenu_register("postmenu_1354544", true); Product Manager Funcom     Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Norway   Quote: Originally Posted by Blackcoat Crafting anywhere in the world without ANYTHING needed? WTF are you thinking? Seriously, that is probly the dumbest idea I have EVER heard of in my entire life in reference to crafting. At least make it like SWG, you require having a kit or something in your inventory for MINOR craftable items. Complex crafted items should require a specific place. Some items will require a kit or some kind of instrument to make them. Some of the armor requires a sewing kit, for instance. __________________

 

LordOrion vbmenu_register("postmenu_1355339", true); Product Manager Funcom     Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Norway   Quote: Originally Posted by AeonCH Gathering and crafing look pretty easy to understand, also because they follow the canon. What I'm wondering about is: How do the Border Kingdoms fit into it? We were supposed to have conquerable mines and other resources nodes, etc... Good question, and this is something we will explore in a future update. For this one I wanted to keep it as short as possible -- this is a pretty "heavy" subject matter already! ;-)

 

 

LordOrion vbmenu_register("postmenu_1356796", true); Product Manager Funcom     Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Norway   I'm a big fan of only having access to one crafting profession. It prevents the market from being too flooded by player-made items. I think this combined with the fact there there is no bidding at the tradeposts will make the market very fast and furious. There might not be too many of one item available, and they may get ripped away right away as people can't bid but have to make up their mind there and then whether they want it or not. It will be interesting to see how the player economy shapes up.

 

LordOrion vbmenu_register("postmenu_1356832", true); Product Manager Funcom     Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Norway   It is correct that right now you can craft anywhere at any time, provided you have the resources and possibly the instruments required (like a sewing kit). We simply decided we didn't want the time sink of having to travel across the world to craft. I can confirm, however, that we are looking into changing this a little bit based on all the feedback we've been reading on the forums about crafting (we always listen to constructive feedback from you ladies and gamermen!). I am not at all promising that anything will change, but we're playing around with different ideas. One of the ideas is to have crafting of higher tier items restricted to certain areas, such as the guild cities. In the current system we have today some item recipes do require certain guild city buildings for the players to be able to use those recipes, but you can still craft it anywhere you want in the game world as long as your guild owns that building in their city. One thing we may or may not add is requiring the player to actually be near that building in the guild city in order to actually craft that item from that recipe. This is one of the ideas we're playing around with, and we may or may not decide to change the system. We'll see how we progress through beta.

 

LordOrion vbmenu_register("postmenu_1356888", true); Product Manager Funcom     Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Norway   Quote: Originally Posted by Robertknight Is it my imagination or is the way that I read the info sheet saying that your crafting skill it tied entirely to your adventuring skill level, even after level 40? If theres no crafting level, and they say that at level 40 you can do tier 1 stuff, and level 50 do tier 2 stuff....it basicly reduces crafting to clickable feats, right? At level 40, you do your set of quests, get your recipes, which let you craft your tier 1 stuff, but then you're done til you adventure up to level 50, at which point you can do your tier 2 quests, get your tier 2 recipes, etc, etc. This basicly eliminates crafting as anything vaguely resembling a 'class' and means that you cant 'become a crafter' at level 40, you become an adventurer with a side job. Unless Im reading that wrong. That's basically what we want for Age of Conan. We have always been very up front about the fact that Age of Conan is not an economy simulator. Crafting is something you're doing on the side. This is not Pirates of the Burning Seas where you can spend an entire character's life staring at the auction house and looking at spreadsheets (don't get me wrong, I'm playing Pirates of the Burning Seas right now and I'm really enjoying it -- it's just not the sort of game Age of Conan is). By hooking your crafting progression up to your adventuring progression, you will also prevent people from grinding quickly through the crafting quests. Instead you will end up with tiers of crafters on each server, each tier making things that is valuable for the tier they find themselves in at the moment. Kicking crafting off at a later level will also prevent people from making low level crafting alts, grinding quickly through it, and spamming the market. We're trying to make crafting more organic, and less of a crazy grind.

 

 

LordOrion vbmenu_register("postmenu_1356926", true); Product Manager Funcom     Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Norway   Quote: Originally Posted by Blackcoat Thank you for this information. I like the fact that you are listening to the feedback. That alone says a lot and I say, 'Thank you". I have a suggestion in reference to the player city required building. There is a HUGE flaw in this. Let's just say I want to solo play and just be a crafter and so on... I will not join a guild and will not have a city. How will a crafter such as myself then be able to make higher tier items? I am being forced to join a guild basically. (I am not saying I won't join one, cause I will be in the best guild in the game ;p ) But given some people won't want to and be freelancer's. They will be shafted in the sense of not being able to make higher tier stuff. I think you guys should really take a page out of the crafting system that SWG used. They had the best system out of any game ever made. Get some ideas from it and consider them. There should be some forge or blacksmith that you can maybe rent or something in a NPC city to make items. That would even be awsome, like setup a little shop or something. NPC citys should have a place where you can rent a shop and what not (Pay monthly or weekly or something). That would be pretty awsome, and you could have your wares setup there on a vendor or something. Just some little iteas that might help.. But come on LordOrion, making swords and heavy armor in the middle of the woods or mountains without an anvil/forge? You and I both agree thats pretty stupid. And we both know travel is instant so how is there any MAJOR time sink involved? Yes, if you want to craft certain higher tier items, you will need to be in a guild who is in possession of a guild city. Certainly not all higher tier items, but some. We feel that it adds to the enjoyment of being a crafter, and that it also makes guild gameplay a more enjoyable, interesting and sociable thing. We want guilds to be more than just chat rooms, and we want to bring people together to cooperate with each other. You are quite right that being able to create a sword in the middle of the woods without an anvil is quite unrealistic, but so is killing fifty feet tall yetis with bolts of fire coming out of your fingers. It's all about balancing between realism, accessibility and fun. Our current design allows for crafting anywhere as long as you have the required ingredients and instruments on you. I'm sure we all have our different opinion on what would be best, what be most realistic, what would be most fun and so on. We all value your input greatly! Remember that we are still in development, and things might change in the months ahead!

 

 

LordOrion vbmenu_register("postmenu_1357119", true); Product Manager Funcom     Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Norway   Quote: Originally Posted by robb75067 While your taking constructive feedback I have some thoughts for you. 1) It would be nice if the architect was not soley a service craft and could have viable means of profit. buildings in a box sold in tradeposts or something to that effect would be great. 2) make the higher tiers an effort to achieve so that your craft means something. I know you guys plan to cater to casuals and thats great but you have to find a balance. Maybe add some rare recipes as raid quest loot or something. 3) Incorporate a mechanic that will bring outsiders to your city for a purpose. Hopefully that can tie with crafting. Maybe offer a discount for going to pick up the purchased item from the city. You could also have rare NPC venders (fireworks or snowballs doesn't matter) in different cities which would make each city itself rare. Also you could have travelling bazarres or faires that stop at random cities for a few weeks. 4) Have crafted items worth while to carry. I know you guys have said you are doing this and I understand that crafted items will be narrow in scope but potent at its job. Just make sure that happens and is not gimmped compared to high end raid gear. thanks Thanks for all your constructive feedback, you can rest assured that the "right people" reads it. As for number four, I think the gem system will definitely make things interesting here. Gems are dropped from enemies throughout the lands, and these can only be incorporated into crafted items. This will allow you to truly customize weapons to a much larger degree than you can with drops.

 

I know they read here too! So if you have additional feedback or thoughts, have your say!

If you have read this far then I think its fair to assume that people shouldn't assume its the finished thing now, especially after the re-vamping going on from feedback. Just hope people bear that in mind.

Xulox

 Originally posted by AmazingAvery

I know they read here too! So if you have additional feedback or thoughts, have your say!        

 

 

I really hope they do read these posts and use them constructively.

That said...

SWG was the most fun I've EVER had as a crafter.  I enjoyed it so much that's its all that I did. I even had extra accounts that I only used to house more factories and harvesters.

I've since stopped playing SWG (for other reasons - NGE?), but direly miss the crafting system which I have been unable to find in any other game (believe me I've tried 'em all). 

Though I will still try out Age of Conan, and am looking forward to it... I hope they will strive to make a crafting system as encompassing, challenging and engrossing as SWG's.

 

 

 

spbrooke

I am really looking forward to trying out the quest based leveling of the craft skills, it should be something different to try out, instead of making like 50 of the same item just to get one more level.

I think I am going to be trying out alchemy, looks interesting.  I am a bit dissapointed that there is no herb gathering skill, instead I would need to kill mobs for them to drop the right materials.  If they use that method, you would hope they make the drop rate resonable.

And, one question...  with alchemy, can they only create potions for someone to drink, and get a certain buff from it, or can poisons, etc be made also.  Would be cool if you could!

eugam

I think many people overreact. Put aside the process of crafting. The true meaning depends on only one thing in a mmo. Either items have hitpoints and leave the game or not. If not, any armor and weapon crafting is meaningless very soon. It is not like there will be an endless stream of new players for every year the game is online. We all know that the current policy of raiding wont allow hitpoints without repair on items So why bother about sewing kits ?

It doesnt matter if you need a sewing kit or a complete workshop with working tables inside. The essence of crafting lies in its position within the big picture of gameplay. A "deep" crafting is also not a vanguard crafting or any other "complex" process of production. A deep crafting has access to many, many resources. Each resource with different stats on them to experiment with. Rare vs. common raw is not much, there have been games with 20 different  wood and 50-100 different bones to craft a hilt with.

 

In the text about crafting it was mentioned that people bring their dropped gems to a gemcutter and the polished gems to an armourer. If so i am pretty sure this will be patched out soon. It will be that gemcutters are able to buy raw gems at broker and sell polished ones at broker. It will be that armorers and weaponsmiths will sell crafted items with empty slots on the broker. It will be that every player will be able to combine items and gems on his own.

 

The crafting in AoC is mainly about gems and maybe about the look of an armor or a weapon. I wouldnt neccesarily call this crafting, but it seems to be a good system to build customized items. And this is a good thing to me. It might be a bit different for architects and maybe for alchemists.

 

Just for the records: A deep crafting is based on a gazillion of availabe raws. Each raw has multiple stats that are interacting with the stats of the other required raws. (It took crafters in SOR more then a year to find the optimal recipe for magic amplifier gloves) Each item has hitpoints and there is no rapair and there are only crated items in game. Solo, group or raid mobs only drop raws, never a ready to use item.  Harvestable nodes have probaly seasonal spawn timers and place and time of item creation might have an impact on the quality or hitpoints of the item. Like forging metal on a certain mountain at fullmoon at midnight. Really just for the records i am abolutely aware this would clash with the current paradigm of phat lewt.

 

Finwolven

Well, that's one way to 'deepen' crafting, for sure.

IMO though, really deep and immersive crafting comes from two things: The variety you mentioned, and the binding of crafting into a complete economy.

The variety has one problem: While materials can be added so that you'll need to find the optimal composition, better balance and more durable a system can be achieved by assigning both positive and negative values to a raw material, creating items that have one or two superior aspects but also one or more inferior aspects to 'baseline' item. Certainly, 'level' of quality can be added: A metal sword is always better then stone sword, no matter what stone the sword is made of, etc.

Having the above, you still have items that player needs to aquire only once, and that may be only a repair-money sink or even completely indestructible afterwards. To have a truly interesting crafting system you need, yes, a way for the items to leave the game permanently, and thus create a player-driven economy. An item sink, so to speak, and an involuntary one.

EVE uses item and ship destruction in PVP and PVE as the way to remove stuff from the game. It works, but many people complain about the death penalty and its harshness.

AoC, or another 'future fictional MMO' could use simple item durability as the sink. As an item is used, it wears. When it has worn enough, its efficiency degrades. This gives demand in the economy for more items, to replace worn items. Consumables will always have demand, because they are consumables. However, this also means there will be many producers, since anyone with half a brain realizes they're the only thing truly worth producing.

Also, this requires that the items aquired as quest rewards, raid rewards etc. are not overpowered compared to the crafted items. If this is not corrected, there's no reason to expect anyone to do any real crafting where it's not required to do a quest or to 'twink' a lower-level player who can't yet aquire quite so good gear.

I'm not expecting AoC to go this 'smart' route though, since it requires more effort and monitoring from Funcom, to keep inflation, deflation and supply and demand in blance during AoCs running life.

daryosh

all in all the biggest fault is to do an ah in the game. some may say, it isnt an ah, cause you dont bid. but thats not the core of it. the core is, that you dont have to contact a player, to get your things. and contact a player is all about rp. so again the next game not realizing that.

latest news are also disappointing: possibility of taking prestige classes out of the game. they limit your choice of crafting, yes. but they are strong rp- elements and its great if not everyone can do everything. class- choice, prestige-class and crafter-class choice are the core of character building in aoc. maybe that's been for the logest time.

my pledge is, not to do the same mistakes as many others again and listen to all the WoW- whiners who do beta and disappear latest after 3 months after launch leaving a destroyed game behind...

i've seen enough of it... so AOC, PLEASE BE AN ALTERNATIVE!!!

 

Brynlath

Here's a crazy thought. Maybe guild cities can utilyze a 'recycler' that would melt down used equipment and then turn it into a by-product that could only be launched from a seige engine.

eugam

Originally posted by daryosh


all in all the biggest fault is to do an ah in the game. some may say, it isnt an ah, cause you dont bid. but thats not the core of it. the core is, that you dont have to contact a player, to get your things. and contact a player is all about rp. so again the next game not realizing that.
 
If your roleplaying depends on contacting a crafter then do it. Nobody is preventing you. But why force everyone ? Roleplaying never depends on mechanics. Roleplayers have to build a friendlist to interact with, exactly like an adventurer has to. If you are in a rp guild that is building a player city your guild mates will contact you anyways if they need something crafted. However,  AoC wont be UO where you could run a flowershop if you wanted to.




latest news are also disappointing: possibility of taking prestige classes out of the game. they limit your choice of crafting, yes. but they are strong rp- elements and its great if not everyone can do everything. class- choice, prestige-class and crafter-class choice are the core of character building in aoc. maybe that's been for the logest time.
 
They are out. I am a bit sad too, but thats how it is.
 
my pledge is, not to do the same mistakes as many others again and listen to all the WoW- whiners who do beta and disappear latest after 3 months after launch leaving a destroyed game behind...
 
Uhm... bit harsh, isnt it ? I guess you dont want people to call you crafter-whiner. Do you think a company that is going to spent something like 40.000.000 bucks into something will only listen to beta whiners ? That would be quite unprofessional. You bet they also do some analysis of the market. Most companies try to stay true to their game. However, if the analysis tells them that nobody buys noodles anymore, then they wont try to sell noodles.



i've seen enough of it... so AOC, PLEASE BE AN ALTERNATIVE!!!
 
Your alternative ? No offence, i want an alternative too. Like a few thousands or tens of thousants out there. Poor Funcom... time for /godmode. We need a Messiahs

 

Shamius

Originally posted by Brynlath


Here's a crazy thought. Maybe guild cities can utilyze a 'recycler' that would melt down used equipment and then turn it into a by-product that could only be launched from a seige engine.

If this is put into the game, we are going to need a landfill crew, a recycling plant, and a place to drop off our aluminum beer cans. Come on... Robert E. Howard's world didn't have recycling.

Dameonk

Being forced to join a hardcore guild to craft the best items in the game?

"Gathering areas"

Crafting anywhere?

No crafting until 40?

All I can say is thank god I had no desire in the first place to craft in AoC because I think this announcement would have turned me away from the game entirely.

Shamius

Although the harvesting and crafting may seem a bit lack right now for Age of Conan, I guess on positive terms, it can only get better!  Hopefully the other aspects of the game are so good that I don't even have to resort to crafting, I will leave that for the die-hard crafters and just buy the stuff off of them!