Unpopular opinion/question from a wannabe Master Crafter

Asokka

Why isn't combat considered the forth Parent Path and why does crafting already sound boring? I can understand pairing combat with gathering or processing but I cant see a master crafter being as equally skilled in combat and vice versa. People are already going to have multiple characters so dedicated crafters should be a unique breed. Also the idea of no RNG gear creations and the acquisition of patterns being the a crafter's primary goal means there wont be anything to distinguish a dedicated crafter versus a dedicated pvper who gradually grinds the crafter Parent Path. Its not about skill but all about getting the materials to craft set patterns... boring. I am still waiting for a game that will give crafters a spotlight because there is never a crafter ranking system or a crafting area (not sure what that would be exactly). Pvpers always get the spotlight whether their reputation makes them famous or infamous based solely off their combat skill. Take a poll to see if people would want to focus their experience in AoC around crafting, I would like to see the community's opinion on the matter.

With all of the things combat oriented players can do from zone questing and development, open world pvp, guild rivalries, naval warfare, allowing specialist guilds to be hired to protect caravans and enabling guilds to specialize in attacking caravans, city node and castle sieging, not to mention dungeons, raids, world bosses, areas, battlegrounds ect ect... Why would you limit crafting to getting the base skill, materials and pattern be all there is to gear creation? It borderlines sacrilege for such a ground breaking game with unlimited potential. That's 13 potential pvp paths and yet crafting barely has any ingenuity put into it... Enough beating the dead horse.

Leroher

I've already posted something in this line and got sadly hardly ignored XD.

I hope this thing gets more attention this time.

My post here anyways:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/45674/profession-as-a-quasionly-play-style#latest

Beekeeper

Asokka wrote: »

Why would you limit crafting to getting the base skill, materials and pattern be all there is to gear creation?

It clearly isn't limited to just that. For one, the numerous specializations and branching skill trees that are promised should give some meaningful choices as you're leveling crafting, and when you make gear you can also change how the gear looks and what bonuses it has.

Asokka

From what I've gathered and by this quote from the Wiki "Within each of the three parent artisan paths (Gathering, Processing and Crafting) there are different professions. A character may only ever master one of these parent paths." This implies you can master a Parent Path, mean everything in that path. It doesn't say one branch in the parent path but parent path as a whole.

Leroher

Asokka wrote: »

From what I've gathered and by this quote from the Wiki "Within each of the three parent artisan paths (Gathering, Processing and Crafting) there are different professions. A character may only ever master one of these parent paths." This implies you can master a Parent Path, mean everything in that path. It doesn't say one branch in the parent path but parent path as a whole.

I think OP, in someway, tries to say something I said in my post a few weeks ago: we want the professions to be more relevant, being a way to enjoy the game. At least is something I get reading the post.
(Edit: spelling error)

Jahlon

Asokka wrote: »

Why isn't combat considered the forth Parent Path and why does crafting already sound boring? I can understand pairing combat with gathering or processing but I cant see a master crafter being as equally skilled in combat and vice versa. People are already going to have multiple characters so dedicated crafters should be a unique breed. Also the idea of no RNG gear creations and the acquisition of patterns being the a crafter's primary goal means there wont be anything to distinguish a dedicated crafter versus a dedicated pvper who gradually grinds the crafter Parent Path. Its not about skill but all about getting the materials to craft set patterns... boring. I am still waiting for a game that will give crafters a spotlight because there is never a crafter ranking system or a crafting area (not sure what that would be exactly). Pvpers always get the spotlight whether their reputation makes them famous or infamous based solely off their combat skill. Take a poll to see if people would want to focus their experience in AoC around crafting, I would like to see the community's opinion on the matter.

With all of the things combat oriented players can do from zone questing and development, open world pvp, guild rivalries, naval warfare, allowing specialist guilds to be hired to protect caravans and enabling guilds to specialize in attacking caravans, city node and castle sieging, not to mention dungeons, raids, world bosses, areas, battlegrounds ect ect... Why would you limit crafting to getting the base skill, materials and pattern be all there is to gear creation? It borderlines sacrilege for such a ground breaking game with unlimited potential. That's 13 potential pvp paths and yet crafting barely has any ingenuity put into it... Enough beating the dead horse.

So being a dedicated crafter is a thing

There will be things you have to do in order to be the very best master crafter, above and beyond just grind 50 levels worth of crafting xp to max.

You will have to experiment, you will have to rise through the ranks of a social organization.

Now, if you are talking about why can't you play through the game as a crafter and ONLY a crafter, well, that would be a daunting tast to do. FFXIV tried to do just that in their original version of 14, and it didn't work well

The problem is while crafting can be a meaningful profession for the time you do it, it is very hard to do so that there is a full days worth of playtime for a crafter every today.

I will say though, form your post, you haven't deep dove into the material we have on Crafting.

Leroher

Jahlon wrote: »

Asokka wrote: »

Why isn't combat considered the forth Parent Path and why does crafting already sound boring? I can understand pairing combat with gathering or processing but I cant see a master crafter being as equally skilled in combat and vice versa. People are already going to have multiple characters so dedicated crafters should be a unique breed. Also the idea of no RNG gear creations and the acquisition of patterns being the a crafter's primary goal means there wont be anything to distinguish a dedicated crafter versus a dedicated pvper who gradually grinds the crafter Parent Path. Its not about skill but all about getting the materials to craft set patterns... boring. I am still waiting for a game that will give crafters a spotlight because there is never a crafter ranking system or a crafting area (not sure what that would be exactly). Pvpers always get the spotlight whether their reputation makes them famous or infamous based solely off their combat skill. Take a poll to see if people would want to focus their experience in AoC around crafting, I would like to see the community's opinion on the matter.

With all of the things combat oriented players can do from zone questing and development, open world pvp, guild rivalries, naval warfare, allowing specialist guilds to be hired to protect caravans and enabling guilds to specialize in attacking caravans, city node and castle sieging, not to mention dungeons, raids, world bosses, areas, battlegrounds ect ect... Why would you limit crafting to getting the base skill, materials and pattern be all there is to gear creation? It borderlines sacrilege for such a ground breaking game with unlimited potential. That's 13 potential pvp paths and yet crafting barely has any ingenuity put into it... Enough beating the dead horse.

So being a dedicated crafter is a thing

There will be things you have to do in order to be the very best master crafter, above and beyond just grind 50 levels worth of crafting xp to max.

You will have to experiment, you will have to rise through the ranks of a social organization.

Now, if you are talking about why can't you play through the game as a crafter and ONLY a crafter, well, that would be a daunting tast to do. FFXIV tried to do just that in their original version of 14, and it didn't work well

The problem is while crafting can be a meaningful profession for the time you do it, it is very hard to do so that there is a full days worth of playtime for a crafter every today.

I will say though, form your post, you haven't deep dove into the material we have on Crafting.

That's what I thought, to make a "combat" game like usually MMOs are, also a good crafting game like some Nintendo thing, it's not an easy task, since it would try to be as ambitious as Star Citizen, which tries to embrace everything, making an MMO also a good car racing game, for example.

Asokka

Stars Wars Galaxies had an amazing model for crafters until they pissed off all of them by removing durability from armor, weapons and other crafted items but I digress. Thanks for your input guys.

CaptnChuck

Asokka wrote: »

From what I've gathered and by this quote from the Wiki "Within each of the three parent artisan paths (Gathering, Processing and Crafting) there are different professions. A character may only ever master one of these parent paths." This implies you can master a Parent Path, mean everything in that path. It doesn't say one branch in the parent path but parent path as a whole.

Yea I don't think the wiki is right about that. Steven has mentioned several times that you can only master one profession.

Beekeeper

I'd understand it as picking out a "parent path" at the start, like smithing, and then when you advance, you may be able to pick weaponsmithing, but with lots of time and dedication, you can also master armorsmithing. Or maybe even more specialized, a sword specialist vs an axemaker vs a helmetsmith

Noaani

Jahlon wrote: »

I will say though, form your post, you haven't deep dove into the material we have on Crafting.

This is what I was going to say as well.

@Asokka

Look up more information on crafting - as good as the wiki is, it isn't always up to date.

bigepeen

Since when is crafting in mmorpgs not boring? Combat and crafting are two very separate mechanisms. Not everything needs to have an action component, it's better to keep them separate so you pvp when you want adrenaline and excitement, and you do crafting when you want more downtime. Hardcore pvpers and hardcore crafters are just extremes of what kind of content they prefer and only focus on one thing. If the idea of crafting doesn't appeal to you, then don't endeavor to become a master crafter. It just might not be for you.

Sussurro

As someone whose interested in crafting, I'm intrigued by the "Dial system" the wiki alludes to. It sounds as though the fruits of our efforts will be analog as apposed to the digital outputs in most other games. I imagine interacting with a UI that resembles an old timey TV volume/channel knob*, pointing it at particular stats and forsaking others. I would enjoy such a deterministic and tunable way of crafting the gear; I'm also excited for the market such a system would create. I feel the renown of a crafter could be tied to their ability to tailor-make a piece or set of gear for a multitude of classes and playstyles.

*This isn't what they suggest, simply what I imagine

Adaon

I think I've only ever seen "dedicated" crafters back in UO, and someone still had to gather the materials, but it was a pretty fleshed out crafting system, and all the craftables were in pretty high demand - and players ran all the shops. There were also systems like "Bulk order deeds" which you could turn into towns by crafting items en masse, and you would get endgame craft boosting items as rewards(runic hammers), which would let you make above and beyond the normal crafted equipment stats.

UO was all skills, no levels though - so you had 700 skill points to spread across like 100 skills, so you tended to focus on specific builds with a given character. But seriously, that game was like twenty years ago now, and it hasn't been replicated in just about any modern game lol. Creativity/real estate/player housing/crafting, it did all those things incredibly well. People would make fish tanks, out of stacks of cloth, with sea shells stuck to the side of the stack of cloth, and it would literally look like a fish tank, in their house lol. Now we have neatly constructed carbon copy housing - in any game that bothers to even try, with minimal cosmetic relevance.

I don't know that dedicated crafting will happen in just about any game, but I do think highly emphasized crafting is possible, and not a throw away system with auxiliary benefits at best(like WoW's approach) would be possible. EQ2 also had a fun minigame for "aptitude" within crafting, which was basically simon says - as in, you craft the item, you get prompts, you have to do different things during crafting with abilities, heat the furnace, cool it, change the location of the metals, blah blah, and succeeding at that would end up with a superior product. Seen it done a lot of ways, but won't know with this game - till actually getting to play it. As always, lowered expectations are for the best

Asokka

I have nerve damage in my fingers which is why I cant pvp as well as other people. Crafting has always been a hobby of mine so I'll just check all out come Alpha 2 test group. Thanks for everyone's input.