Alchemy with real experiment feeling

Many-many years ago, when I did not have internet access, I played with Might&Magic. (Lot of people probably know it.) In this game, there were alchemy in different way what we have nowadays. You did not have recipes. You had to buy flasks and mix the herbs. If you chose wrong components, the mixture exploded and your characters damaged. After you had some basic potions, you were able to mix them. If you mixed them wrong, the explosion coming. To find out all possible potions, you had to make lot of experiment with them. Unfortunately, the internet killed these 'mini-games'. You just google the recipes and you can make it immediately. So I thought about it lot, how can make this feeling live again.

My solution is personally generated unique recipe for everyone. But how can we implement it?

First, we set the herbs into level categories. We have multiple herbs with same level category for example we have 5 type of lvl 1. Herb.
We can have multiple type of flask, with multiple level. lvl 1: glass flask or crystal flask, lvl 2 enhanced crystal flask, for example we have 2 type of lvl1 Flask.
If necessary we can add a third type of component for example catalyst.

The alchemy skill determine how difficult experiment can you prepare. For example:
Level 1. Basic potions experiment:
2 pieces lvl1 herb + 1 lvl1 flask.

If we use the example numbers, we can see that we have 50 unique combination of herbs and flasks. But we only have 5 available basic potion. So the rest 45 experiment can cause some trouble for the alchemist. It can be health damage, can be durability damage, experiment tool disintegration or a longer debuff etc.
if we want to decrease the possible combination, we can set it to specify a flask or specify that need to use different herb. With this 2 restriction, we have only 20 combinations.
If we would like to increase the combinations we can add more necessary herbs. If we increase the need to 3 pieces of lvl1 herb, the combination increase to 250. This probably an overkill, so we should integrate the catalyst. If we have 2 type of lvl1 catalyst, it just increase the combination to 100.

Once you have a successful experiment, you receive the potion recipe forever.
A the beginning you will not even know what kind of potions are existing, but late you will know at least where you should search for what you needed.
For you the minor health potion is 1 blue berry and 1 red grass, but for somebody else, it needs 2 red berry. So you will not be able to find the recipes on the internet, you have to make experiments.
This also cause that even if the community use only a few type of potions the raw material demand will be equal within same level thanks to the unique recipes.
(The different ingredients for the same potions is a little bit immersion breaking, but I think we can live with it.)

Other thoughts with same topic:
-Alchemy skill level can increase the power of the same potion
-We can have items what increase the alchemy skill
-The high level potion recipes can have extreme amount of combination if we integrate recipe fragments as loot. (for example the recipe fragments tells that the dragon power potion needs at least 1 mandrake or the dragon power potion will not need blue components.)
-if we would like to decrease the time till the alchemist discover every potions, we can use a special debuff. Failed experiment cause random (0-5 stack) stackable 24h debuff. If the debuff reach 5 stack you will not be able to do experiment again.

What are your thoughts?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Damokles

I still like the Skyrim alchemy system the most tbh.

Ghoosty

I have never played with Skyrim, but now, I read about its system a bit. From other perspective it is also good system that you can combine the ingredients depend on what you want, but my main issue is also there, with a fast search you will know the effect of each components. Maybe this is just my fad.

Dygz

Can't really prevent players from using Google to log which resources have which properties and the results of reagent combos.
Really depends on how many reagents there are and whether race, skill, time of year, etc, play a role in the final products.

Get off my lawn!!

Ghoosty

Dygz wrote: »

Can't really prevent players from using Google to log which resources have which properties and the results of reagent combos.

If you are talking about Skyrim system, probably you are right.
If you talk about my system, I prevented it. There is only a minor use of Google in my system. You just able to google out what can a result be, but you will never know exactly how can you achieve it. You must do experiments to find your own receipts.

Dygz wrote: »

Really depends on how many reagents there are and whether race, skill, time of year, etc, play a role in the final products.

This is just fine tuning. We also can add some boost element what does not have affect for the experiment, but can enhance the final product.

Dygz wrote: »

Get off my lawn!!

Is this some kind of 'meme'/'joke' what I do not know? It sounds very offensive, but I did not do anything against you.

Dygz

For Alchemy, the properties of reagents need to be reliable. Otherwise, it's really just wing and a prayer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_kids_get_off_my_lawn!

Ghoosty

@Dygz I do not really understand you or you do not understand me. Nearly 90% of the games I played the crafting is simple and boring. You buy or receive the recipe from the trainer and you see you need 1 herb and 1 another herb. After that you can just create exactly same item as many as you want. (Some cases there are chance to create a better one.) (WOW, RIFT, Neverwinter Online, Pillars of Ethernity I, etc)
I just modified this system that you do not receive the recipe, you need to experiment it. After you found a recipe everything work as same as the other games. If in these games the reagents are reliable, in my system they will be as same as reliable.

I read that wikipedia article, but I still do not understand. Why the alchemy is your field? If you mean the "trivial or petty complaint" part, I do not complain, I brought an idea what I found more interesting than the other I met recently.

Dygz

I'm actually coming from the KOA: Reckoning perspective - which appears to be close to the Skyrim system for Alchemy.
If the reagents are reliable, the results will make their way to Google - I know because I was one of the people adding that info to the KOA: Reckoning wiki.

You stated that the results should be a personally generated unique recipe for everyone... that is not an example of reliable Alchemy.
One of the ways to keep the discovery fun is for the devs to keep adding new reagents, but... new reagents will also appear with the rise and fall of Nodes and the buildings we develop in the cities/metros.

Get off my lawn means - it's not that it's your own personal fad - you're just old... so you hate Google.

Ventharien

Well there already is a game that uses something close to what you're searching for. In Life Is Feudal, each player spawns into the game world with a personalized set of alchemy effects. In other words, every ingredient does something different for you than it does for someone else. While this does keep up that personal experience of finding what works, it breaks any sort or reliable market, and doesn't allow for any measure of rarity. As soon as their is any reliability to the system, people will fill the wiki with what makes what, how long it takes, how much, and even how valuable. This isn't something you can ever stop, without making it a completely randomized system, which has it's own pretty heavy drawbacks. Unfortunately, genie is out of the bottle, you're never going to have that experience you once did.

Azryil

I don't think it makes logical sense for different players to have unique requirements to make potions. Herbs should have specific properties that you can combine into a potion. It doesn't really make sense for a red berry to have the healing property for one player and a mana regen property for another player.
I agree that players should have to experiment with different herbs to learn recipes rather than learning them from a trainer. I also don't like the idea of having level ranges to herbs, I think a better system would be to explore the world looking for different herbs to experiment with, this could vary from server to server since how the world develops will be unique to the server which would reduce the prevalence of online guides since where to find these herbs wouldn't be universal.

Ghoosty

@Dygz I am not that old and I like the Google very much. I also use it day by day. While I wrote this comment, I used it at least 4 times to check the spelling, the correct meaning of some word, what system are somebody else talk about. Just sometimes we should not use it. In a single player game I have no issue with it. I use it only if I have to, I do not care about others. But an MMORPG is competitive. If I do not use it, but others does, I will have disadvantage.

I used wow's alchemy as base. It has very simple craft mechanic. The ingredients itself does not have any effect, only the prepared potion has effect, but each created potion is the same. I just want to hide the recipe what can reveal with experiment. The online databases ruins this so I had to found out the random recipe. In this system each ingredients are reliable. They are raw material for potions every time you use them, you will have same result. So if this system is OK for wow, a same system with a little upgrade should be OK as well.

@Ventharien When I read about Skyrim like alchemy my first thought was that it also can be randomized, but my 2nd thought was that it makes the market very difficult.
That is why in my system I talked about standardized ingredients and standardized potions. You can buy the same as everybody and sell the same as everybody so the market can find out the price.

"doesn't allow for any measure of rarity." We can talk about rarity. There can be powerful potions what need rare material what even is loot from hard enemies.

@Azryil You are right it is illogical. But in each game there are lot of illogical things. Multiple head looted from bosses for quests. If you need to loot teeth, you find only 1/animal. To your bag, you can put multiple amour. You can swim in full plate armour etc. We do not notice them, because we used to it.
If you do not like the level, we can categorize them differently like mountain flower, forest leaves etc. The importance is that we have to reduce the number of the combination, because it can skyrocket fast.

But I like your half solution.

Noaani

Ghoosty wrote: »

For you the minor health potion is 1 blue berry and 1 red grass, but for somebody else, it needs 2 red berry.

The major issue with things like this is that they only work in a single player setting.

If I am making and selling a health potion that uses 1 blue berry and 1 red grass, and you are selling the same potion that only uses 2 blue berries, if I am able to get red grass for less than the cost of blue berries, you will never be able to sell one of your potions for a profit.

Ever.

This system basically makes the viability of your alchemist 100% tied to RNG in terms of which recipes you are given, which I don't onsider a good system.

On the other hand, if effort is made to mitigate this by making all alchemy materials equal in terms of cost (time to forage, time to grow etc), and are also all able to be used in all potion recipes depending on RNG, the question then becomes, why even bother? If all materials cost the same and can be used the same, why not just have a single "generic" alchemy ingredient, and leave it to alchemists to decide what effect the potion will have?

Personally, I prefer the Elder Scrolls system. That said, I'd love to see an Elder Scrolls system where each individual craft only makes 1% (or less) of an actual usable potion, with alchemists then setting up machines like in Opus Magnum to make potions automatically.

That would be a good MMO alchemy system.

voidshadow

noaani wrote: »

Ghoosty wrote: »

For you the minor health potion is 1 blue berry and 1 red grass, but for somebody else, it needs 2 red berry.

The major issue with things like this is that they only work in a single player setting.

If I am making and selling a health potion that uses 1 blue berry and 1 red grass, and you are selling the same potion that only uses 2 blue berries, if I am able to get red grass for less than the cost of blue berries, you will never be able to sell one of your potions for a profit.

Ever.

This system basically makes the viability of your alchemist 100% tied to RNG in terms of which recipes you are given, which I don't onsider a good system.

On the other hand, if effort is made to mitigate this by making all alchemy materials equal in terms of cost (time to forage, time to grow etc), and are also all able to be used in all potion recipes depending on RNG, the question then becomes, why even bother? If all materials cost the same and can be used the same, why not just have a single "generic" alchemy ingredient, and leave it to alchemists to decide what effect the potion will have?

Personally, I prefer the Elder Scrolls system. That said, I'd love to see an Elder Scrolls system where each individual craft only makes 1% (or less) of an actual usable potion, with alchemists then setting up machines like in Opus Magnum to make potions automatically.

That would be a good MMO alchemy system.

^ This. As much as i'd love for an organic world where my recipes are my own, the only way this is accomplished is if people arent posting tested recipes on the internet which wont happen. Kind of like being that slimy merchant that sells trash at exorbitant prices just because said trash has never been seen before in the market or because no one has knowledge of it. Unfortunately this can't happen because as soon as something is made, it will be on the internet the next day and everyone will know the recipe and the quality and price of ingredients required. Still i understand where OP is coming from and wish for something similar.

Dygz

Ghoosty wrote: »

@Dygz I am not that old and I like the Google very much. I also use it day by day. While I wrote this comment, I used it at least 4 times to check the spelling, the correct meaning of some word, what system are somebody else talk about. Just sometimes we should not use it. In a single player game I have no issue with it. I use it only if I have to, I do not care about others. But an MMORPG is competitive. If I do not use it, but others does, I will have disadvantage.

Sometimes, you just have to go with the joke.

I think in Ashes, we will be distinguishing ourselves with access to unique/rare reagents and skill levels. Tools might also be a factor - that is included in the design for Chronicles of Elyria but, I doubt to the same degree in Ashes. I think we will still be able to have some unique/rare recipes. And, I expect race to have some factor, even if it's just racial recipes.
But, we shall see.

Ghoosty

@noaani
"If I am making and selling a health potion that uses 1 blue berry and 1 red grass, and you are selling the same potion that only uses 2 blue berries, if I am able to get red grass for less than the cost of blue berries, you will never be able to sell one of your potions for a profit."

That is why I included the level of the raw material. I expect that the availability of same level raw materials will be the same. So the price should not be very different.

"This system basically makes the viability of your alchemist 100% tied to RNG in terms of which recipes you are given, which I don't onsider a good system."

You have the possibility to get all recipes, but if you are unlucky, you will need more experiment. But to reduce the 100% RNG I brought up the recipe fragment as loot. So if you hunt for them you will need much less experiment. If you spend more time with experiment or with recipe hunting you will have more recipe. So it is not 100% random.

"On the other hand, if effort is made to mitigate this by making all alchemy materials equal in terms of cost (time to forage, time to grow etc), and are also all able to be used in all potion recipes depending on RNG, the question then becomes, why even bother? If all materials cost the same and can be used the same, why not just have a single "generic" alchemy ingredient, and leave it to alchemists to decide what effect the potion will have?"

Because this is a minigame in the game and I found it interesting. Why should we walk to the entrance of the dungeon, when we can teleport there? Why should I talk with others when we can have automatic LFG system? If we remove all these "minigames" from everywhere, we will get the idle games category.
But as nobody wrote that it would be fun, probably only a few person would find it enjoyable.

"Personally, I prefer the Elder Scrolls system. That said, I'd love to see an Elder Scrolls system where each individual craft only makes 1% (or less) of an actual usable potion, with alchemists then setting up machines like in Opus Magnum to make potions automatically.

That would be a good MMO alchemy system."

I did not play with the Elder Scrolls series. I wanted to like them but their skill progression system and the thing that the enemies become stronger when I level up caused that I was not able to enjoy it. As you are not the first who mention it as a good example probably it has good system.

Damokles

I have to say, that it is an interesting system for a SINGLEPLAYER game. Mmorpg gamesystems chould never be rng at the very beginning. People dont like being forced to grind something that is given to other people for free.
Imagine:
You had bad and got a REALLY bad roll on late game recipes, while someone else got lucky and got good ones. Now you have to grind those recipe fragments, while the other person doesnt.

I think that skyrims system is the best for an mmorpg, where you have to experiment.
You could find out the necessary ingredient properties in four ways: a 10% chance to learn it ny eating them, 100% chance by reading about them, learning about them from a teacher or through monster loot.
With monster loot, i mean for example a ripped page from an old tome, where its different reaction with other reagents.

The late game spect would be, that there are no teachers to tell you what they do, and the ingredients aretoo precious to eat them. You would have to either find old books in old tombs or castles(maybe even siege an enemy node to obtain their books) or get lucky and get the information from specific rare mobs (like a max lvl corrupted undead alchemist).

Ghoosty

Damokles wrote: »

You could find out the necessary ingredient properties in four ways: a 10% chance to learn it ny eating them, 100% chance by reading about them, learning about them from a teacher or through monster loot.
With monster loot, i mean for example a ripped page from an old tome, where its different reaction with other reagents.

The late game spect would be, that there are no teachers to tell you what they do, and the ingredients aretoo precious to eat them. You would have to either find old books in old tombs or castles(maybe even siege an enemy node to obtain their books) or get lucky and get the information from specific rare mobs (like a max lvl corrupted undead alchemist).

This would be a great system, I do not even bother with my system if there were not online databases. But in these databases you will find the information which ingredient do what. So you never need to eat for the 10% because google know it for 100%. Once somebody post the rare material effect to the internet everybody will know it.
Azryil mentioned a good idea to make the ingredient effect unique by server so the databases will not be general, but this just a half solution.
The other solution is unique effect for everybody, but this was also mentioned that it cause trouble in trading.

Damokles

Ghoosty wrote: »

Damokles wrote: »

You could find out the necessary ingredient properties in four ways: a 10% chance to learn it ny eating them, 100% chance by reading about them, learning about them from a teacher or through monster loot.
With monster loot, i mean for example a ripped page from an old tome, where its different reaction with other reagents.

The late game spect would be, that there are no teachers to tell you what they do, and the ingredients aretoo precious to eat them. You would have to either find old books in old tombs or castles(maybe even siege an enemy node to obtain their books) or get lucky and get the information from specific rare mobs (like a max lvl corrupted undead alchemist).

This would be a great system, I do not even bother with my system if there were not online databases. But in these databases you will find the information which ingredient do what. So you never need to eat for the 10% because google know it for 100%. Once somebody post the rare material effect to the internet everybody will know it.
Azryil mentioned a good idea to make the ingredient effect unique by server so the databases will not be general, but this just a half solution.
The other solution is unique effect for everybody, but this was also mentioned that it cause trouble in trading.

The thing is that you cant just learn the reaction for the ingredients from the internet.
I forgot to write it in my other post:
You can only use ingredients in brewing, where the character already knows what they do. That way you cant just read it only, but rather have to also find a way in the game for your character to learn it.

Wandering Mist

I'd like to point out that just because you can google search for shortcuts doesn't mean you have to. If you want to do things the old fashioned way there is nothing stopping you from doing so. However, there are other people who want efficiency, to get the best results by the fastest method, usually as a means to an end. If I make an alt character that I specifically want to use for raiding, and need to make my own potions for raiding, the last thing I want to do is fumble around for hours with ingredient combinations when I could just look up the answer in 5 seconds.

I'm not saying you are wrong in wanting to discover things on your own, but at the same time you shouldn't try to deny people who value efficiency.

Oh and as a side note, true creativity and experimentation in an mmorpg is an illusion, since every single combination needs to be first thought up and implemented by the developers.

Ghoosty

@Damokles I like this solution, this probably better than my idea.

Ghoosty

Wandering Mist wrote: »

I'd like to point out that just because you can google search for shortcuts doesn't mean you have to. If you want to do things the old fashioned way there is nothing stopping you from doing so.

In a single player game I agree with you. But an MMORPG is a competitive genre. If you want to earn good money from your product, you have to be efficient. But if you do not use the available information, but the others do, you will be in disadvantage.

Wandering Mist wrote: »

If I make an alt character that I specifically want to use for raiding, and need to make my own potions for raiding, the last thing I want to do is fumble around for hours with ingredient combinations when I could just look up the answer in 5 seconds.

If you do not want to deal with crafting, you can buy the potion from crafters. If a raider alt can be as good alchemist as they do not need to buy potion, in this case the whole crafting system is not a meaningful thing. Lot of game use it and lot of people like it, but if I understand well the goals, intrepid wants to make the crafting system meaningful.

Child Item