Equipment Crafting and Npc's Shops

savarage

First let me say I like the direction your team has went with crafting and soul bound items.
But I have a few questions does this game have alchemy (creating potions out of rare or common plants or beasts). Does it have spell components used in magic i.e. most beginning spells have common components but high level spells have rare components that cost some cash but the spell is so strong or useful to be worth the cost.

Does it allow the player to wear any weapon not soulbound regardless of their training in it. An example is can they weild a sword when before they only trained in and used axes however they just can't fight as well with the sword compared to a axe in their hands.

How do you get mundane equipment buy from shops, pick it up, craft it yourself, collect, or buy the materials to get it made, or all of these or only some of these options.

Do Npc shops remain useful when compared to loot you pick up what I mean is are Npc shops just vendors to sell loot or do they sell useful, effective, and helpful equipment i.e. a npc shop sword is good enough to compare to a sword collected from a quest but the quest sword is usually only slightly better not wildly better.

I also want to know what other players hate about current crafting systems and how they feel they should be fixed in their opinions. 

skipeth

Info on crafting can be found here: http://www.citadelofsorcery.com/questions/questlist.php?Q=8

"But in CoS you can create any object you wish, as long as you obtain the correct Mundane object first, improve it through specific adventures and/or obtain any pieces you wish worked into the item."

My take on this is that presumably you could then turn water into wine(or other drink) given the Mundane object of water and the correct adventure(s). I could see doing this for producing a batch of pots, but it may be a lot of work to create consumnables one at a time.

My dislikes in crafting are repetitive process, crappy economic models and scaling of equipment produced to equipment attained through slaughter/quests.

CoS removes the repetitive process by making an adventure out of improving a mundane item. No more repetitive harvesting and mini-games to make the large quantities of crap needed to advance crafting skill. Without the need to produce large quantities of crap, the economy isn't flooded with said crap. Since CoS has made "questing" an individual story, the links between specific quests and associated uber gear vanishes. I'd guess that the best gear in the game will be the stuff you take the time to get to a status of soulbound.

A follow up question for Jatar relating to the question of NPC vendor shops being an infinite dumping grounds to sell loot. Has the team considered a dynamic economic model that takes into account supply/demand of both gear(including cost of base material) as well as monetary supply?

This leads to the question, "What is the purpose of banks in game?" In current games, a bank acts in the simple capacity of being a player's mule. That's really kinda lame, just like packing around thousands of minted coins. If you have a bank it should perform banking functions, charge for safe storage, pay interest on deposits, and make loans. A point of interest is that convertible paper notes have been used since the 600s. Therefore it would be quite conceivable to turn in quantities of metal coins to a bank which would then give the player a convertible note for the amount (or for the amount + interest convertible at a later date).

savarage

I agree that the quest system will remove the problem of immediate inflation of items (meaning lots of powerful or useful weapons not used) the system of taking one attribute from soul bound equipment while destroying the item also reduces this problem further but i hope they pay special attention on makeing a effective economy because that can draw in lots of players and lasts as a metagame till the end of the mmo if done correctly.
One really good thing is that players can't really farm for gold or epic items but can produce an awesome almost soul bound weapon and then sell it for lots of gold but the market can't be flooded with chinese item or gold farmers effectively.

Additionally I hope they stay away from skill based crafting and just let us hire a blacksmith or armorer to make our equipment for us but made to our preferances.

Another thing that really annoys me is when you have to harvest massive amounts of resources just to get one basic weapon without any real reason for it except as a time sink I don't mind having to get the super rare mirthil from the depths of the earth but when i just have to go outside the town and pickaxe a few nodes a hundred times to get the rare mirthil it just isn't the same.

Jatar

Well, there are a lot of questions in your posts, I'll see what I can do to answer some of them.

First off, Alchemy… certainly we don’t have alchemy in the way you are describing. Just like our system for improving items, we do not want players forced to spend time running around to collect ingredients. This would include plants to use in alchemy. You will be able to create your own potions, but that involves a different system of which we haven't released much information yet. 

Abilities (including spells) will not have that kind of 'cost' either. Normal abilities use a self replenishing system (not mana), and the more powerful the Ability, the greater the cost. However, there will also be some extremely powerful abilities for special occasions that have a different kind of cost (sorry, can't release the details of that yet).

Anyone can use any kind of weapon or armor. There are no character classes in CoS, and therefore, no class restrictions. However, just because you can use an axe or a sword or a bow, doesn't make you great at it. You will need to practice and study whatever you wish to excel in when playing CoS.

Mundane equipment is found while adventuring, both from drops and from treasure. You can also quest for a specific item you wish to obtain, though you have to gain the knowledge of something in order to quest for it. This means you cannot look up some item on a web site that someone else got and quest for it, your character has to gain knowledge of it during game play in order to quest for the item (more on that later).

You can buy magical items from shops, but not mundane. Just because it's already magical, doesn't mean you can't improve it though. To improve a mundane or magical item you collect things from quest rewards, or purchase them from other players or from shops. However, you do not stand around and craft the item; instead you take it to the proper artisan and decide what you want made. There is a cost to have the work done, but that's all there is to it. No standing around for hours doing any repetitive 'work'. This is a game, not a job. We are all about in depth interesting and enjoyable quests, not repetitive grinds or time sinks.

NPC shops will sell equipment that you want (at times). The reason for this is simple; players will be selling equipment they find on quests to the shops. There are rewards for this, which will encourage players to sell good stuff to the shops. Players will then be able to purchase that same equipment from the shops. In addition, the shops will occasionally sell special items to players that have built up a good rapport with them, items not sold to the shop by players.

We are spending a lot of time and effort to make a good game economy, yet add some new elements while also cutting back on the typical outside farming that happens in many games. The exact system we are using to stop some of this is still being kept under wraps, but I will tell you that there are economic elements of the game that cannot be farmed, purchased, traded or otherwise abused by outside forces. We want the players to excel in the game because they play the game.

 

penandpaper

I love the idea you guys bring of questing for an item that you've discovered through interaction within the game.  Great job at being innovative.  Keep up the great work. 

 

amusedmonkey

This is a HUGE plus for me. In addition to being unique and fun it also indirectly gets rid of the problem of bot companies farming game currencies. Finally a game that has an effective core content to limit that kind of behavior instead of constant battles and anti-bot measures that hinder the players' experience.

DeadagainBob

Is this really true?  Can we quest for items we want to obtain?  This is pretty neat, but won't all players then go after the same things?  If there is a really cool helm, for example, won't everyone go quest to get that helm?