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Should crafting be dynamic and complex? Or should it be grinding proficiency like traditional MMORP
benseine
Member UncommonPosts: 293
Found this on the Behind The Scenes section of GV FB page and got quite excited about this:
General Information
The previous month has been a momentous occasion for Gloria Victis with the launching of the Pre-Alpha.
I am pleased to say that Gloria Victis was met with widespread positive feedback from our testers and. As well as
the launch of our Pre-Alpha comes our Website and Facebook revamp (albeit slightly off schedule) but more content
is guaranteed to come. Although April was a very important month for Gloria Victis, May will be a truly historic
moment for Gloria Victis where we will be writing with players our constitution document outlying our principles,
vision and mission statement. It will be a truly important month where we gamers and developers come together to
outline the principles that will shape Gloria Victis, a unity of gamers and developers into one single entity. We believe
gamers own the game as much as the developers do and as such our goal to develop a game “by gamers, with gamers
and for gamers” will be able to be truly realized.
As this is the first “Behind the Scenes” I will now explain briefly what this is. Behind the Scenes will
be posted from today on the first day of each month and will contain the following four core
sections: General Information, Game Update, Let’s Talk and Player Contributions. The first
two sections are quite self explanatory so I will only explain the second two. “Let’s talk” is a
section that describes a current game mechanic our plans and goals and
we would like to invite player discussion and suggestions regarding that concept to fulfill
the “with gamers” part of our goal, when submit concepts automated feature is implemented,
the concepts suggested by you guys will be integrated into this section as well. “Player Submissions”
will be related to contests during the month and the winning submissions. Furthermore,
on the 15th of each month, voting will begin relating to the concepts discussed and
issues raised in “Let’s Talk”. These are only the four “core” sections, depending on the
month and content available there could be a few guest sections such as videos, interviews
or other announcements.
Let’s Talk - Crafting
Crafting will play quite a central part in Gloria Victis, we plan for crafting to be sandboxed with
near infinite possibilities and like the combat system not a matter of who has spent more time on it,
but a matter of who is the more skilled. As such we will divert from traditional grinding of proficiency to
add immersion to the crafting process as well as hopefully imparting general knowledge to our players.
The player for instance would have to watch the colour of the coal, or the vigour of bubbles when partaking in
brewing to get just the right mix. Below is an example of what crafting system we plan to have.
“To brew a fine beer that will be the pride of a tavern the player must obviously have brewing
facilities in place these can range from home-brewing in the kitchen or several rooms equipped
with cutting edge equipment to aid the process or using public facilities. The brewing process will evolve:
- Cause the grain to germinate by soaking in water
- Encourage sprouting of the grains by providing warmth in the form of heated stones
- Transfer to germination floor and turn frequently for “green malt”
- Kiln dry the malt to desired specification (different durations result in different brews)
- Transfer dried malt to crushing mill.
Mashing - Then the malt will be once again be soaked in water along with other grains where
the malt will breakdown the grain enzymes and convert it to sugar. The player if he has a furnace
to heat the tubs can speed up this process.
Lautering - The player must now separate the mash, residue grain from the clear liquid
called the wort.The wort can now be allowed to cool to a favourable temperature
for the addition of yeast and the fermentation process.
The player can either keep the wort as it is or add other ingredients such as high quality
hops to produce possibly a master brew or simply cask the wort as is and sell it as homebrew beer.
It would be wise to keep some residue from a successful brew in an attempt to use the same
yeast culture in order to maintain a specific quality.After this long tiring process you do
deserve a nice cold beer to relax, but do not drink it all! You can sell the alcoholic beverages
to other players, inns or save it for a later date to drink yourself to gain temporary attribute bonuses.”
Considering everyone has different tastes, we plan on having the option of delegating these
actions to chance in more traditional styles of crafting, but obviously taking over the process
personally would yield higher (or perhaps lower) results depending on your skill as a player.
So what do you guys think? Should crafting be dynamic and complex? Or should it be grinding
proficiency like traditional MMORPGs?
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gloria-Victis/352162408142252?sk=app_238209546324293&app_data
Comments
I put I've got a better idea, but I don't really, I just don't like either of the choices and think there's something in between.
I'm a big fan of mini-games to craft, but I would like better games than what they've done in the past. I'm not sure if you can steal games, but what I think of is stealing some of the elements of say tetris, just slightly changed to be visually appropriate to some form of crafting for one type of craft. Then maybe steal guitar hero type game for another.
I'm not saying just play those games on your screen, but the concept of hitting a key at a certain time, maybe to the ring of the anvil or something. You could make it fairly realistic if you tried and the quality would depend on your results.
Then again there is something nice about sitting down and mindlessly combining mats while you chat.
I'm not really a crafter so I'm not sure I should even get a vote.
Asdar
I see that it's complex, but what's dynamic about this? Every time you craft an item, you're still going to go through that same series of steps every time. Whether it takes you a little bit of experimentation or simply looking up a how-to video, nothing changes once you've got the steps down. The question is a bit loaded because the crafting described here is complex but not dynamic.
I admit I didn't fully read that wall o'text fully yet,..
but
"Should crafting be dynamic and complex? Or should it be grinding proficiency like traditional MMORPGs?"
Of course they shouldn't be grindy!
This is somewhat related in spirit,..but I absolutely loved the 'Diplomacy' mini games in Vanguard.
If we can apply that strategy style outcome to crafting,..I think it's a start.
EQ2 had some decent crafting if I remember..too..
and of course, our favorite SWG,..omg,...you could make seven of the same items each with different stats,.and Name them whatever you wanted! Admittedly it did start to feel like a full time job,..albiet the most involved that wasn't brainless (A+B) * 1000.
akk,..double post,..bleh,..
SWG had the best, most in-depth, and rewarding crafting I've ever seen in all my years of gaming.
It was complex as hell, and deep....however it wasn't "dynamic".
By Dynamic are you saying that it's a challenge while you're crafting. Like you have to react during the process to improve the quality as opposed to just place items and pick stats and hit combine?
Asdar
Both. It depends.
Is your game crafting-centric? Then create a system elaborate enough to involve a lot of dynamic outcomes based on skillful player decisions.
Is your game combat-centric? Then simple one-click crafting is fine (and certainly adds value over not having the system.) The time you save from not going overboard on a side-feature (since your game is combat-centric) will allow you to to make the core feature that much stronger because you'll have time to focus on it.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I hate that style. EQII was worse crafting I ever came against. It is still grinding but you are forced to pay attention to the boring process. Btw I always read how wonderful SWG's crafting was wish I had played the game to find out what people are talking about - no one seems to explain it well.
This thread is not loading right on my PC. Not sure if it's the adds or what. It's taking forever to come up and I had to close out of my art programs.
I'm not reading your spiel either. The opening title question means more to me. Crafting needs to be quick, easy, CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP *I'm a little tweedy bird today* and crazy simple. It needs to be widely varied, come with a mini game pattern maps, schematics, color, and meshing program where we-the-people can design ourselves what we are going to craft, and what we make is not already in the game. No damn leveling up. Skill ups, skill ups, skills ups. Screw levels forever!!! The auction house needs a three digit limit so nothn made gets over expensive. No personal shops. No time limitation or fee.
I agree with Axehilt. It all depends on the focus of the game and the purpose of crafting within it.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
In SWG, resources would spawn randomly on planets and have varying stats. These stats would then affect the crafting process. A skilled crafter would mix and match resource types to get the final item to have the desired stats. There were trade-offs in what you could achieve and required the crafters to know how to optimize the production process for the desired outcome.
The part I found intolerable was the crafting UI and the crafting level up system. In order to get access to recipes you had to get crafting XP which you got by grinding building items. This meant that during the leveling process your goal was to craft the cheapest possible items in the fastest possible time. In WoW this process involves clicking on a Create All button and waiting a bit. In SWG you had to click the same series of buttons for hours. I gave up after my mouse hand cramped up and hurt for the rest of the day.
Essentially, SWG had very detailed and complex end game crafting but stone age crafting leveling system.
If I was to implement crafting in a game I would:
-have the standard subset of common recipes
-No skill levels, but the more you craft of a type the better stats/protections it would provide, up to a maximum of a certain type.
-Introduce different varieties of crafting recipes, some more rare than others. These may be guarded by monsters or hidden around the world. The recipes would add different components (some rare, some common) to the process.
-Some recipes will be legendary, meaning there is only one and it is unique.
-Ability to be an apprentice to a crafter to learn the different recipes that the master is willing to teach.
This is what I would LOVE to see in a game.
Well the game wil have normal guilds and crafting guilds. Each type can build guild cities with different kind of buildings. Crafting guilds can build the structures that give you acces to the best gear. So ppl with different interests can be in different guild types (I also believe you can be in two type of guilds at once).
https://www.facebook.com/FUtilez ||| https://twitter.com/FUtilez ||| https://www.youtube.com/futilezguild
Now all the comments I've read in the past make sense. Thx. *thumbs up*
Due to the NDA, I can't get into detail. But Square Enix polished the crafting from FFXIV in FFXIV:ARR and let me tell you... I have played over seventy MMORPGs and I have NEVER enjoyed crafting up until this Beta. I think all crafting systems should be identical to this one.
UNCONFIRMED: I have NOT played Vanguard but some people say that it is more complex yet similar.
Crafting should be complex like Mortal online's where a different variable of material effected the general outcome of the weapon quality, yet it should be engaging that you don't feel like its a grind with extra steps. If they make it have interactive with rewarding consequences and in a game where crafting is not the primary focus, but an option for those dedicated to the art, then I think it will work.
I believe it would work if the game wasn't a stickily pvp game, but one that equally focused on PVP, PVE, Crafting, and Exploring. The game would have to have a skill cap that included both combat and crafting together so crafters have more limelight.
MurderHerd
The problem with that approach is if a game has too many focuses it ends up doing everything poorly.
And it can work sometimes. Skyrim tries lots of things, but just about all of them are ruthlessly mediocre (except their graphics programmers who are actually pretty damn impressive.) But most players appear unhindered by the fact that so many of Skyrim's facets are shallow at best, and broken at worst. I worked with a lead designer from Oblivion who referred to this as "dog's breakfast" feature design, because they basically threw bits and pieces of any game feature they could think of into the game.
So personally I like to see games focus on fewer, but higher-quality features. Those are the games I enjoy best, they're most likely to also be deep games I can play for a long time without tiring. By creating fewer features a team is able to pour more polish, love, and game balance into them to make them more fun to play with.
So for me it's not much of a selling point to explain there are both combat- and crafting-focused guilds, because it weakens my expectations of both.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
This. There has been no better system!
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
Considering many of the same elements that would be used to contribute to the complexity of combat would be elements you can establish in crafting, I don't think the two are all that divergent. Quite fairly, it's part of why crafting is such a common companion activity.
The thing to achieve is balance. Salem is a game focused almost entirely on crafting, but a lot of people are not particularly enthused by the game. An issue that comes to mind is the controls are a bit on the abnormal side, and the time required to do stuff is dragged out rather long.
But as for the crafting itself it's in part too complex. There are other games that might be a better example, but the more steps you add the more you are taking it away from a mechanic people will be able to remain invested in.
Parting out the elements of crafting so that they have a basic level of component assembly, component fabrication, and resource management tends to be the most complex a system needs to be. The task is wrapping that up in a manner that doesn't alienate or annoy others.
Taking your brewing example, it means there's a few more contained parts to crafting, and less of the activity like transfers and lautering. A cleaner process that approximates, but contracts the experience is a good goal, and siding it with more visual elements makes people more likely to be accepting of the process.
I'd break the process down into cultivation, preparation, and assembly.
Cultivation - This can be one of two things. If kept simple, it's the ability to select certain types of resource nodes that respawn at a set interval, basically small automated farm patches you can construct in town to produce the resources you desire. As your place gets bigger, you can level up the resource nodes so they give more resources, or build more within your guild's town.
Alternatively it can take on a Harvest Moon approach of you going through a planting, tending, and harvesting phase. Designating a section of town to be a farm lot that you can freely alter the resources you are producing.
Preparation - This step is a paired down for of the fabrication process. Taking raw resources and using them in some combination to produce a 'part'. The type of resource(and possibly quality) dictates what the contributing stats of the final product will become.
This process is largely one that can easily be handled by a menu that you just slot resources into, though it you wished it to be interactive you could blend it with a minigame.
Assembly - This step is more or less the task of plugging things into one another. In the Preparation step, one of the components created would act as the base, and the other components are things that you plug into that in order to create the whole.
For something like cooking, that's a one way task, you select the base component, and plug in the extra bits, then poof, the final product with all stats mushed together.
Equipment can be designed so that it can be dismantled though. Being able to open up the final product and remove a component so that you can replace it with a different one, either to change the stats, or maybe introduce an entirely different stat (like say replacing a piece of a weapon to imbue it with an elemental attribute).
Crafters similarly could take the extra step of breaking down components to gain back resources.
The town itself then has two main building types that you'd be possessing. Node production facilities and preparation facilities. Each one could have tiers associated with them that as they level, unlocks higher tier resources and item quality achievable via harvesting and crafting.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
As hand-in-hand as Gathering (or cultivation as you call it) and Crafting goes, I do not consider Gathering to be a part of the Crafting process; simply because the two systems are completely different. For example; You can have a great gathering system but a horrible crafting system, like Firefall for example.
Somewhat true, but the point of a gathering system is to provide a part of crafting, so I don't exactly consider it a separate element.
I mean, you can have gathering as it's own thing, but unless you do something with those resources, it's not really an activity leading you anywhere. Even Harvest Moon your resources were always going towards making or achieving something, so gathering is itself naturally a component of another system.
In this case, crafting.
You can remove it too from the crafting scheme, but then you're place in the predicament of what you're doing with resources, because without a limit, people are just making whatever whenever. Unless it's a 'creative mode' style game where you're just freeform making things, it takes away from the pacing, challenge, and reward you get from following through the system.
It can be a bad or a good component, but it's still a component.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You seem to have the perspective of a woman of crafting experience. Personally, as I previously stated, I have never been much of a fanatic for the crafting aspect of MMORPGs until I began beta testing for 'Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn' so I can only hope to learn more in this field that I have neglected so.
I agree having 5 crafters in that game from launch on up til 6 months before closure. Many cities on Intrepid were made from my structures and I always kept a guildhall stocked with vendors packed with items. It was fun and i loved the business aspect, something no other game has made me feel.
But to say pre-nge crafting, that is total BS. The NGE didnt change crafting other than change the professions around. The crafting basics and style were the exact same minus the removal of creature handler. because 90% of the items i made before the nge i made after and the exact same way.
Only thing later added that sucked was removing "upgrade" items like krayt tissues and acklay bones from crafting/game.
Matter of fact crafting after NGE exploded and we had tons of new stuff, especialy DE's (making 12 new styles of droids). Adding super BER harvesters was great. New house style and tons of new decor.Dont really see the hate for after nge crafting.
Until the player based economy and crafting were uprooted by the konsole kiddies and their loot based system that LA fed them like candy.