Beginning your journey: Fight or Craft?

ArchivedUser

The question I want to discuss:
How would you feel about:
 (1) starting with the decision whether you want to first learn how to use weapons or how to use tools? And
 (2) that fighting and crafting are both viable, similarly rewarding ways of playing AoC?

Thoughts on this: Playing MMOs for me was always about dealing more damage and killing stronger mobs... and to be honest, I loved it. However, recently I found myself enjoying the crafting side of gameplay much more than the fighting(/grinding) side. Hence, I wonder why players never have the opportunity to playing the game as an artisan on an equal footing with a mob-fighting adventurer? It always starts in the first few minutes of the game: you get thrown into the world with a weapon in your hand and learn how to fight. But this spoils so many of the opportunities of MMORPGs - the saying "when all you've got is a (war)hammer, everything looks like a nail" fits the picture quite well. Crafting often comes into the gameplay later on and is usually merely a means to support fighting - why not make it have value of its own? I would love to not be told that I should spend most of my time wielding weapons. In AoC e.g. the progression of a node might benefit as much from the availability of high quality furniture, as it does from eradicating monster camps. You could even go so far as to not be able to upgrade a node until a certain number of wares (let's say building bricks and papyrus) is reached. I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this!

(Former discussion title: Starting (and developing) your character without weapons)

ArchivedUser

We have already been told that you are a hero from Sanctus coming through the portal. That you would be coming unarmed is a little much unless they make it like Terminator where you arrive naked. And since we have quotes about how functional and good looking they want the starting gear to be, not likely to happen.

ArchivedUser

Grumple said:

The question I want to discuss:
How would you feel about:
 (1) starting your character without a weapon, so that you first need to decide whether you want to learn how to fight (get a weapon) or how to do artisanry (get a tool)? And
 (2) that both fighting and crafting are both viable, similarly rewarding ways of playing AoC?

Thoughts on this: Playing MMOs for me was always about dealing more damage and killing stronger mobs... and to be honest, I loved it. However, recently I found myself enjoying the crafting side of gameplay much more than the fighting(/grinding) side. Hence, I wonder why players never have the opportunity to playing the game as an artisan on an equal footing with a mob-fighting adventurer? It always starts in the first few minutes of the game: you get thrown into the world with a weapon in your hand and learn how to fight. But this spoils so many of the opportunities of MMORPGs - the saying "when all you've got is a (war)hammer, everything looks like a nail" fits the picture quite well. Crafting often comes into the gameplay later on and is usually merely a means to support fighting - why not make it have value of its own? I would love to not be told that I should spend most of my time wielding weapons. In AoC e.g. the progression of a node might benefit as much from the availability of high quality furniture, as it does from eradicating monster camps. You could even go so far as to not be able to upgrade a node until a certain number of wares (let's say building bricks and papyrus) is reached. I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this!

Nodes do in fact require resources to upgrade

ArchivedUser

UnknownSystemError said:

We have already been told that you are a hero from Sanctus coming through the portal. That you would be coming unarmed is a little much unless they make it like Terminator where you arrive naked. And since we have quotes about how functional and good looking they want the starting gear to be, not likely to happen.

I don't think that should be a problem. Sanctus has low technology, and people start as expeditioners from there. What one would expect from expeditioners might be something to defend themselves, yes, but just as logically some tools to survive. And then you could choose whether you want to main your weapons or your tools. (I should accordingly change the topic of the discussion)

ArchivedUser

@Grumple I think that is indeed the case. Progression in game seems to be very heavily node-level dependent. You can earn XP for your node through combat and crafting so you can already be viable/valuable as a player by focusing on crafting.

That being said I think one of the goals of the game is to make its different systems organically involved with each other. Sure you can focus on crafting but if you want to gather more or different resources, or need to defend your crafting home from invading monsters, you have to pick up that warhammer. You can choose to be super exclusively non-combat crafting focused but it will just cost you a bunch of money to get things combat players get and you'll be at the mercy of your local economy :P.

ArchivedUser

Security comes through shelter as much as force of arms.

There is crops and food and transport of the bestial kind.

There is nodes and their services that will require materials to maintain and exchange.

Essentially, construction is equally as critical as destruction. So you are in the right place.

Perhaps placating the gods will minimise natural disasters. So shrines and such will also be a necessity.

ArchivedUser

I think a viable full time crafting game venue needs a intensive crafting interface.  If each step of crafting a good requires player skill and attention then I'd love to see artisan Crafters, but if it is just watching progress bars once you have the mats and gaining exp and becoming an "artisan" that way it's a hard pass for me.

ArchivedUser

I love this idea as I am not much of a PVPer. I would love to be able to master other aspects besides fighting.

ArchivedUser

For me, the most important is the story, the Lore, yes, even in a MMO. Everything else serve that purpose.
Crafting to have more efficient stuff to explore the World, or more money, to have more resources for exploring, etc.
I don't like daily quest or things you have to do the same, everyday day... Seems like work. So crafting or fighting are secondary for me but important.
Questing is my path. #TeamJeffrey

ArchivedUser

Would be nice if there was a way for people to focus more on crafting and lose on fighting so they can craft items that fighters even with maxed out crafting skills won't be able to make them. Otherwise crafting will always be something secondary that you max out and then craft things for you or for money. (This is just a idea from a novel where there are adventurer players(you know what that is) and Lifestyle players (focus on crafting and stuff)).

ArchivedUser

@Tsimo
I think the philosophy is that there will be too many things to do in game. You can't treat something as secondary and be as good as someone who focuses on it as their primary goal/objective. So I think your concern is resolved by having systems with enough depth where you could sink all of your time in trying to master any individual aspect of the game therefore you choose how much you want to invest and how much reward you thus reap from said investments.