Artisan classes & Professions

elucve

Can we finally have a game where these mechanics are not monotonous? Do a mini-game each time you want to make a potion or gather some hide from an animal. Something like among us tasks.

MMOs should be engaging in every aspect, I've seen too many friends gather and farm on a second monitor nearly falling asleep while watching Netflix or something. Then he would complain if someone came and killed him while he was relaxing :'D

These mini-tasks would also bring scarcity and keep the market from overflowing.

I think the concept of these professions is outdated in all MMOs since all you need is to grab a tool and farm until durability goes wack.

elucve

I don't know why pressing F to gather an Iron Ore and wait for a load bar is appealing to people

Herodotus

Personally, I think the progress bar is fine, there are many ways to make it less "repetitive", like having larger stacks, a "craft all" button, and other ways of gaining crafting XP beyond just making things, like quests or consumables dropped by enemies, etc. Not saying that Intrepid will do any of this, but having mini-games for crafting is the wrong direction in my opinion. Crafting should just be something you do to make things or level up, it shouldn't take that much effort. You click a button and your thing is crafted with RNG to determine certain risks. Maybe it's just because of what I am used to, but my initial reaction is to not be in favor of it.

elucve

Thank you for sharing your view on this! Nice quote from Herodotus, greetings from Greece

Warth

Repetitive skill-based crafting mechanics, such as mini-games, are not an intended part of the crafting experience.[1][2]

We did discuss that type of a feature where the skill of the crafter would grant a greater window of skill-based type crafting. So the higher master level you have of crafting a certain item, the greater your potential to impact the quality of that item might be... The concern obviously that we have when going into developing this type of system is that we don't want what is a fun - you know for lack of a better term - mini-game to be something that becomes repetitive and kind of makes it monotonous... If when we start to flesh out the crafting system and we take a look at that interaction of melding crafting, the actual activity of making something, there is room in the design sheet for different iterations of that particular action; and we may see something come about that can be skill oriented, but that's something that's going to require a lot of testing and different iterations from a design standpoint.[2] – Steven Sharif

elucve

Yea that's great! Hope they consider something like skill oriented task when the crafting system is finished. It might also be something like "You wanna have better chances of higher quality equipment crafting? Do this or don't it's up to you".

Scarbeus

The first thing that came to mind when reading this is if anyone else has played Dead Island, do you remember what you had to do to break a door down? That bar that would go up and down and you had to press a button when it reached that key point in the middle to do damage to the door.



Now imagine doing that when cutting down a tree or mining, once you reach a high enough skill to get a type of tree or ore you have to do this, but the area to press this button is small as you character isn't very familiar with gathering this material. When your skill increases it gets bigger as you become more talented.

Once you reach max level when you go for a basic started resource this area would be huge and almost encompass the entire area as you are now highly talented and beginner resources are very easy to collect.

elucve

That's a cool idea! Exactly why I shared my thought. Even if nothing like this will ever be implemented I gain great ideas from you people

Sengarden

I like the concept of each mini-game getting easier as you progress. Something that might be nice is the ability to "skill out" of doing these tasks for the majority of crafts/gathers as you gain experience. Taking a very simple system like the one @Scarbeus brought up from Dead Island, let's say there's a bar like this for tree-cutting, maybe it represents you swinging your axe in the right place or something. As you level up and cut down more of those trees, the margin for error shrinks and the game becomes easier. At a certain level, right about when the mini-game gets to become a chore, you skill out of it entirely and can just walk up, watch an animation, and cut the tree down. Exceptions to this might be the highest level gatherables and crafted items. For those, you could gain better proficiency, but there should always be a chance, however slight, to screw it up.

Instead of introducing a ridiculous array of stat changes for each crafted item depending on how well you did, maybe "screwing it up" for crafted items could instead result in you being returned your base mats, but losing a small percentage of what you tried to work with? Sort of like, "Oh no, I started adding the Kingsblood to my health potion too soon, gotta scrap whatever I put in so far and start over."

So if you're trying to craft a steel sword that takes three steel bars, a bundle of leather straps, and a piece of hard wood, and you don't quite hit your marks well enough, you get returned all those mats, minus one steel bar. Something like that.

Overall, I feel you though. I detest oversimplification of crafting systems. It was part of the reason I never got much into crafting in WoW, it always felt like a boring chore. Almost every system in the game was primarily focused on just getting stat boosts for combat, not so much on the process.

Scarbeus

As gear has durability I'm going to assume tools do (and they should if they don't), if you mess up the crafting minigame you get less resources and acquire more tool durability than a standard collection.

elucve

@Sengarden I like that!

BaSkA_9x2

I'm on the opposite side of this. Imagine if you need to craft a thousand swords to reach max level weapon smith. I definitely hope that you don't need to do the mini-game a thousand times.

Scarbeus

That's why you keep them simple, short and easy. It's not like you're going to do 1000 swords all at once.

elucve

@BaSkA13 To reach max level should take tons of resources, money, and time. Months of time. So doing 1k tasks over the span of half a year should only leave you feeling actually strong in the end.

BaSkA_9x2

Even if a crafting minigame is "simple, short and easy" it still means it requires clicks/keystrokes and attention and I do not enjoy this at all, similarly to how I would not be a fan of having a minigame in gathering to chop down trees, mine ores, pick up herbs, etc.

I definitely hope they do not add any sort of minigame in any repetitive profession, but in the unfortunate case they do, I hope that it's optional and that it somehow rewards people who choose to do the minigame but do not force everyone to do it.

chucksticks

Mini-games like lockpicking or fishing the resemble the real thing and match the context would be fun.



I wouldn't know how mini-game activities like chopping trees, picking herbs, mining rocks, and crafting should be like. I don't like mini-games like those in Black Desert Online though.

Scarbeus

I really love Bethesda lockpicking and the fishing in New World was cool. When I say 'mini game' I really do mean something that takes only a few seconds to do, about the same time as clicking on a resource. But Risk vs Reward is part of this game, out some effort in why don't you?

Sengarden

I think the benefit of having mini games for professions should be simply getting more for your effort. If you’re farming something cheap, maybe you can opt out and cut down 2 or 3 little birch trees for the same amount of wood you’d get for doing a mini game on one? Would encourage use of the mini games on rarer resources where you can’t just do it the easy way and find another 1 or 2 nearby to make up for it.

If we had to pick and choose which professions get mini-games, I suppose I would agree that the professions which most people consider “leisurely” (primarily fishing and cooking) should be the obvious choices. Those could easily be turned into (actually) fun little games that have an opportunity to make the experience more interesting rather than just grasping at straws for immersion.