Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
How to keep tradeskills relevant?
Nightbringe1
Member UncommonPosts: 1,335
The problem with tradeskills has been seen time and again in MMO's. Crafted gear starts out really useful when the game launches, but quickly becomes irrelevant as the game ages.
What types of crafting would people like to see? What ideas do people have for keeping crafting relevant over the long term?
A few of my ideas:
- Crafting resources dropped from group and raid content
- Rare harvests in each tier (solo, group, raid) that allow crafted items approaching the quality of the next tier
- Consumables (potions, clickies)
- Appearance gear (instead of selling in a cash shop, has the advantage of being level agnostic. i.e. even a max level character has a use for low level appearance gear)
- Bind on Equip: sad but necessary to prevent market accumulation.
Two of the ideas I posted require further explanation to clarify my position
- Crafting resources dropped in group and raid content could type several different forms. The first would be crating materials used to produce items with superior base stats. Rare alloys, exotic gems, etc. A small quantity of rare crafting materials that can be used to produce appropriate tier weapons/armor/jewelry for any appropriate character with the sills to use the material (or use a commission system similar to EQ2). While the majority of drops would remain specific item, crafting materials could replace the token systems found in so many games today. Tokens don't make sense, they are simply alternate, no-trade currencies. Exotic crafting materials are a much more natural solution and require character interaction and development.
- The second type of drop could be a resource that adds a specific special ability or proc to a crafted item, regardless of tier. For example: a Soul Gem obtained from a fire elemental lord might be used to add fire damage to a crafted sword or fire resistance to crafted armor. Such items would, of course, be bound to the person crafting them. We are dealing in souls, and provides a simple, natural solution, in game explanation to how players obtain gear from opponents that can never be traded.
- Rare harvests in each tier (solo, group, raid). How many hours of effort should a solo player have to invest to equal a single piece of gear that could be obtained in a group? ~8 hours of actual play time harvesting? ~16 hours? ~24 hours? The same question can be asked again for a person running group content finding a rare drop that can craft raid equivalent gear. Raid dropped rares could become one step in the process of obtaining BiS items. (Certainly not the only step, just a starting point.)
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Comments
Some good suggestions. I actually discussed this with another Pantheon fan just yesterday and the only 1 thing we knew for sure was that tradeskills must be fundamentally different from what they are in modern games if they are going to work. In every other mmorpg, tradeskills provide a viable method of solo item progression. Pantheon is going to be based on tenets like group play and the need to work together to survive in a dangerous world, so its of paramount importance that tradeskills also work in similar fashion.
Aside from perhaps at very low levels, there can be no solo farming materials for crafting. If crafted armor is going to be on par with dropped items, it must be equally hard to obtain the necessary resources and materials. That means the materials will either come straight from mobs themselves, or the nodes will be found in areas that are nearly impossible for someone to harvest without a group. Either way, I think its good to have at least 1 component from every combine to come from an elite type mob that can only be killed by a party of the same level. That has to be established first and foremost.
Beyond that, I don't think the crafting system has to be anything overly fancy. I like the idea of crafted items providing a wide variety of armors and weapons. Especially in a game where particular sets of armor will be necessary to survive in certain environments, crafting would be a great way to fill the gap for particular stats and resists.
Mechanically I'd like the crafting process to be similar to Vanguard. Its was one of the more beloved parts of the game, even by those who didn't particularly like the rest. I actually enjoyed the mini game enough to craft for fun in my downtime.
Its hard to speculate further about different possible tradeskills because it may just be beyond the scope of what Pantheon currently is. I'd love to see more than just your standard forms of crafting down the line.
This is the only part I disagree with.
Even in Everquest, most of the common components for crafting could be farmed during downtime or even vendor purchased. If anything, tradeskills in EQ was something you worked on when groups were unavailable.
What I am advocating is specific drops in group and raid content that keep tradeskills relevant at all levels of play. A strictly solo player would have no more access to these higher tier drops than he would have access to group or raid level gear.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
WoW does every single one of these, as does generally most other AA+ game. Yet i'm sure most people would still say crafted gear started out really useful but quickly became irrelevant in them.
So, to point, none of your ideas changes anything since they are already common in pretty much all games with crafting(again, in relation to AA+ mmos).
Also, as for your last point, BoE does nothing to prevent market accumulation. Since we're talking about crafting here. So long as you have the mats(market accumulation) you can make the item. Regardless if the item made is BoE or not, people would simply acquire mass amounts of the mats and rarer ones, and you still have to deal with market accumulation. Unless i'm misunderstanding what you mean by market accumulation.
Quality of crafted gear, within a specific tier, must remain high enough to be desirable. Time/Risk vs. Reward must also be a factor. Easily crafted equipment should be equivalent to easily obtained quest gear. Crafted items using multiple rare drops from end-game raid bosses should be competitive for BiS.
Simply making a option available is not the same as making the option viable.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Market accumulation is when crafted items never leave the economy. No new items are ever crafted because the market is flooded with items for sale below production costs.
People are not going to spend time farming common mats when the cost of common tradeskill items decays to or below production costs. Rarer items would require significantly more time/effort to farm and/or require the assistance of a group to obtain. No different than any other item in the marketplace. Certain group drops and all raid level crafting materials should be no-drop, requiring the end user to be physically present to obtain the material.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
In Everquest, crafting was almost irrelevant except for a few pieces of resist gear (note, when I talk about EQ I refer to classic EQ up to Velious). When they started to finally put good crafted armor sets in at the end of kunark and through velious, the components to make those armors were extremely hard and time consuming to obtain (as they should be). Also, most people didn't even know about that armor because it was made so seldom.
I'm not saying you can't craft when you don't have a group, but if crafted items are going to be relevant, ie. on par with dropped gear, the process of acquiring the materials must be as challenging to obtain. If you allow anyone that can solo to farm and craft rare items it will induce the same solo progression that we see in every other game, and that will pretty much be the end of Pantheon for me.
Permitted an individual has the money, they could always buy the materials from people and craft when they don't have a group. If people want to craft solo, they should have to do a lot of grinding easier mobs to farm cash in order to afford the materials. Thats all I'm saying.
The discussion isn't about how to replace dropped items with crafted, its about what forms of crafting to implement and how they work in conjunction with dropped items.
I don't think they'd let you perform in a school for special kids.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
This is part of what I was trying to say as well. I don't won't crafting to be a faster or easier way to obtain gear. I want it to be an alternate means to obtain viable gear at any given tier of play.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Shadanwolf, no offense insteded, though why would you bother to post that here? Were you not sure about it at first and just now realized what type of game it's going to be?
On topic, I liked the crafting in VG, though I would agree that most crafting for in most games is pretty useless later on. The only professions that usually make out in the end are the ones with consumables.
NIIEN I apologize for wasting your valuable reading time. As for why I posted my comments.......that is my business,not yours.
Sorry my apologies, as I said I didn't intend my message to sound rude and you certainly did not waste my time. Everyone has an opinion and they are free to share it. I was just curious how a lone wolf found their way to an mmo website and felt like posting that they were a lone wolf and didn't like grouping. Though in your defense you did say forced grouping. I just wanted to know what your thought process was though again it's your right to not state it. I was just curious.
Oh no! "Forced grouping." I sure hope for your sake you won't feel oppressed next time you attend a movie with "forced seating" or play a sport with "forced running."
Drop it.
Pantheon is not intended to appeal to every player. If someone realizes they do not fit Pantheon's target demographic, let them go. No need to mock them simply for having a different play style.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Night, I would agree, however I was just curious why a solo player that doesn't like grouping created an account for an MMO-RPG site and commented on an mmo forum. I meant no offense. I just thought it rather odd.
Exactly. It had attitude all over it, so my mocking was warranted.
I don't expect Pantheon to appeal to all players, and I respect peoples opinions, but when you come into a thread talking smack, I will respond in kind.
I think its just the whole "forced grouping" thing. No one is forcing anyone to group, because no one is forcing anyone to play. Its one of those passive-aggressive labels people use that imply they've been oppressed like they are lobbying for MMORPG affirmative action. The only thing actually being forced, is their opinion upon other people.
I remember in Everquest that when I could not find a group, I would often go out and work on crafting. I think in Pantheon, crafting should fill a similar role.
There are many mechanics that can be implemented for a robust crafting system. I think it makes sense to create a world in which different strains of silk, drops from different kinds of spiders ect... On top of that, you could have a system similar to Star Wars Galaxies, whereby, hundreds or thousands of different kinds of ores, minerals, rare earths, gases, ect... are cycled in and out of the game and logically found in different parts of the world, based largely on climate, seasons, altitude, weather cycles, ect... The materials could have a large variety of statistics, similar to how they would cataloged in SWG, which would provide for an almost endless variety of crafted items. This in and of itself could be a very rewarding and long term game for someone to participate in.
As far as the actual mechanical process of how goods are produced, I liked Star Wars Galaxies and also found Vanguard to be very innovative. I think if they can come up with something even more innovative whereby you are just not clicking on a combine button, they will have something really special.
Hiring an economist to help setup the in-game economy would be a great idea. We all know how gear inflation, too much currency, too many goods, ect... can ruin a game.
So in summary, if your core game is going to be an interdependent group based MMORPG, then you also want to provide some meaningful systems that people can work on, for times in which they cannot find a group and/or just do not feel like going out and hunting in groups. I think we all had times in EQ where we just did not feel like grouping and instead spent some time working on some other aspects of our character's progression.
That was the charm of Everquest, there were so many different kinds of things to devote your time to, you never got bored.
Id like to see wurm onlines Quality system done right.
Quality 1-100 on items, Crafters can craft items in their school of specialty and improve their quality of the item up to their current level. Say a level 40 blade smith can make any 40 quality bladed item by slowly improving it from its base with craft materials, 40 quality might be 40% stat increase from base of the item or how ever the devs would want to scale it.
You can then have all the adventuring characters find resources and crafting items to sell to crafters/traders all while they beat there gear up in battle and over time lose quality on their gear then they need to pay a craftsmen to improve it back up to what they can afford or how high the crafter can go. You can also add good rare items that can be found out in the world at 1 quality, say you find a rare ring well now you gotta find a jeweler that work on it and improve it to what you would like or can afford.
This leaves it so there will always be work to be done crafters need the adventures to find and gather mats needed and crafter will always be making and improving upon the items players have.
And all this can be done at a slow pace to where actually finding a level 90-100 crafter and getting them to improve your gear to that amazing tier could be a very rare and prestigious thing.
I can pretty much guarantee you that soloing will be possible. If that offends anyone then this might not be the game for you. (see what I did there?)
That said, obviously grouping will be superior. It always is.
Not sure what this has to do with tradeskills.
Devs already said limited soloing will be viable in the open world (non-dungeons). They also said its risky and that you will need the right mobs and gear to do so. Also that it will be more viable for some classes than others.