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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Throttling on Crafters
I have a question in regards to something that was touched on a few months ago but haven't found a specific answer to. Why is there going to be a throttling system in place on crafters?
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I am even ok with rng involvmenet with base items crafting instead of limiting crafting with some kind of labor system which is is just annoying.
Please, for the love of god, do not put useless time sinks and pauses in this game.
Yes, I do want a simple system - click a button and craft something almost instantly or in a few seconds - but getting to that point should be the fun and difficult part!!
Waiting 3h on an item to get done is not difficult, it just eats away from my subscription time for nothing.
Of course, instead of the simple click some nice mini games could be made to craft slightly better stuff (e.g. crafting puzzles, hidden recipes, experimentation with different materials, etc). I think "The Repopulation" did some good things in terms of crafting.
I personally mean by time, that time you spend before the final crafting. Ok first items does not need to take ages to craft and should contain just some common materials. What it comes to higher level items i would like to see more complex crafting. You need more rare and/or different kind of materials. Some can be found from open world, some from dungeons, some from raids, some from open world bosses, some from rare drops from mobs, some from gathering, some from crafting, some from trading, some from salvation etc. etc. .. Just pointing out that there can be lots of variations.
Maybe something needs to be done to some ingredients before you can use them to craft the final piece. That can be related to crafting too. So it is better if you need to see some effort to make the crafted items. That will also give your product some real value and it is easier to sell those forward with less competition. So that you can craft 1 sword instead of 10 is always better option. You can still get same xp and at least same amount of money if you sell 1 valueable sword than 10 mass producted.
It is important to avoid easy mass production at any cost. That will only have negative effect to markets, because then those will be overflooding the same products with no value. Mass production style also open spossibility to guilds centralize all materials to few alt characters to progress instantly to end game gear f.e. This is where i want devs to pay attention.
So IS devs should think this through wisely. One thing which will help for sure is if there will be good amount of different resources and one specific node has just few of them. Now balancing this can be a nightmare. Systems needs to work so trading is really needed maybe about half of the craftable stuff. Some products should be possible to do easily with local resources, some after effort and some cannot be done without ingredients from nodes at distance. I guess finding balance between these is the key to success.
Yes exactly. Economic node treaties and such will be built upon mutual dependency. If a node can get everything they need...there is no need for mutual dependency. So collaboration is not required, although it doesnt prevent collaboration. Which means the game would probably decay into the typical all out war and kill what moves scenario. But it depends if the player base supports civilization (collaboration) or the law of the jungle (competition).
The problem is the bigger the node gets....the more space it covers....so the less dependent it becomes. Which means it could potentially wipe out all the smaller nodes that dont have any option but to work together to have any hope of creating a comparable resource bank.
I was very pleased to learn that Intrepid has someone with a PHD in Economics as a part of the team. I'm optimistic that they know what they're doing when it comes to building an economy, but like @Rodzor said, it's still very early in development. Testing will be a huge part of it.
- Sikuba
You can give people the choice to grind, explore or trade.
More importantly, trade what you grind through trial and error.
You can of course keep recipes secret in such a system for mama johns secret baked pies and such.
You can sell the product of a recipe rather than the recipe for the product.
I'd rather avoid the whole progress/durability reaction system from EQ2. After a decade of crafting there, it just felt so time-wasting and monotonous. The combining of items itself doesn't need to be a mini-game in order to make crafting engaging. I might consider instead a system like ESO, where much of the time spent at the crafting station engages us in the process of breaking down items to discover new recipes and enhancing the items we've made.
The notion of automated mass production is something we should maybe reconsider too. I think it's actually a good idea, but only if it's balanced with significant item decay and eventual destruction. That is essentially how SWG worked. I understand they've suggested already that we'll have automated harvesting within a zone of influence of our home nodes. I might assume that could come in the form of maybe like a hired npc dwarven mining crew or peasant farmhands or things like that. It naturally follows that we could maybe hire artisan npc's to automate crafting - like little crafting elves helping the cobbler make his shoes.
That being said, I'm okay with having to wait on certain things. It makes total sense to craft something in a game that has a 10-hour cast bar - at least I can do other things in the real world while that's going on. On the other side, I really don't mind if it's an instant cast ability, but it requires a couple days of down-time to simulate the effort involved, or the physical toll it takes to make something super nice.
I'm someone who would love to focus on crafting. I would even love to be the best at it - or have some of the rarest recipes. But I also understand there's other parts of the game I need to explore and do in order to get access to the crafting things that will make me the best.
In short adventures shouldn't have enough free time to be master craftsmen.
I've always envisioned a system with build times and other logical constraints where adventures can have crafters of various types on retainer that do the labors for them, these NPCS would be attached to a specific player, perhaps in a home instance or even as a world NPC and level as they are provided the materials and time by their master PC. They could even possibly build up a team of blacksmiths or other crafters and open a shop, etc.