Odd Crafting-Style / "Game-Layer" from the AMA: Will Crafting be Arcade/Twitch?

When Steven was going over the full, final list (awesome!) of Crafting professions in the AMA, he'd made mention of what they are considering for the 3rd-step of artisanship, which was the act of the actual crafting.

"Hitting the hammer" and other such speech made this sound as though there will be an "arcade" or "twitch" element to crafting stat-ed objects. I'm just not sure how I feel about that. It initially feels out of place - but maybe not. However, it does open up possibilities for things like lag affecting possible twitch-based outcomes, on items.

Is anyone else concerned / caught off-balance by the possibility of arcade-crafting?

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DarkTides

BaSkA13 wrote: »

DarkTides wrote: »

If resources are limited enough, such that you will not produce thousands of meaningless items, and time spent crafting an item is introduced via this method, then crafting something may actually matter.

So what you're saying is for example, to level up in Weapon Smithing, instead of crafting 500 swords that take 30 seconds each, you'd only need to craft 50 swords but each would take 5 minutes each. The total time spent would be the same, you could also increase the resource cost per sword to also keep that constant but the final number of produced items would be 10% of that.

Well, in my opinion, it's actually a pretty good idea . It's very annoying and boring having to craft hundreds of the same items only for the Exp it gives, having to craft less items (while taking the same amount of time and resources) for the same amount of Exp is a nice alternative I never though of, and I don't think I have ever played a game which had this different paradigm towards crafting.

I must say though, and this is only my personal preference, after spending about 8 hours doing a somewhat similar activity in another game, it got boring quite fast.

Regardless of what I like or dislike, I wouldn't mind the mandatory minigame in crafting if the current paradigm was changed to your idea, giving more meaning to crafted items.

Material requirement balance would be important. Don't want to require an unimaginable amount of resources, such that numbers become unrealistic when trying to craft something as simple as a hilt.

The similar activity you are referring to is oldschool runescape crafting?

Fantmx

I am open to it if it is good. We just need to get in and test it. I have yet to find an active crafting component to any mmorpg that felt great long term. Maybe they fix that, maybe they don't. I am excited to get in and test it though.

JROCthaGreat

OuttaQuarters wrote: »

Its a little discerning. From someone that loves the Gathering/Commerce/Crafting part of most MMOs. I would see this as an issue. If this was the only way to succeed in crafting an item.

Why: if you spend numerous hours "mastering" your craft which will probably not be easy as seeing how AoC leveling of a character is going to be intensive. This will not be an easy task. And then spend hours upon end gathering those high-grade materials or some of your guildmates or customers did as the Nodes are going to probably dictate quality or grade to a point and you miss on the twitch mechanic of crafting an item and failing to craft of the item. Then why we would have to level said crafting skill? We would just have to be "good" in some mini-game
I don't see this as something I want in a game for the PASS or FAIL aspect of it. As we will probably already see a type of RNG for crafting high-tier items.

Now on the other hand: if you pass that RNG of crafting said item. if this mechanic was to further improve the item say adding +% against Minotaurs for a Long Bow that you succeed in crafting or +chance of rare items of a gathering node for a tool or Durability increasing. I wouldn't see an issue but if it's "Pass or Fail" on hitting the space bar at the right time to craft that expensive item. Then NO please don't add this to the crafting system.

I doubt it will be pass or fail, but a way to enhance the craft, and I imagine if you do it you will also get more exp, so help with leveling faster.

I'm excited about the possibility, I'm a fan of FFXIV crating, and for this reason, I have said on many occasions that I think it's God Tier because of the mechanics, so something like it, even on a smaller scale. sounds good to me.

BaSkA_9x2

DarkTides wrote: »

The similar activity you are referring to is oldschool runescape crafting?

Not quite. It's a recently added minigame to the game that gives Smithing EXP. The minigame is quite interesting, but became boring after a couple of hours.

Crafting (or any other skill) in RuneScape is dogshit, click intensive and boring, but for some reason I still play that monstrosity.

DarkTides

For example, if you're creating a sword, and you are crafting that sword, you will have an interface- a gameplay layer that you will see and you will begin to hammer actually that sword into an appropriate outline. And your performance there can help influence the outcome of that craft.[15] – Steven Sharif

IF, you need to make lesser items, perhaps after achieving this hammering into an appropriate outline numerous times, you will only be required to do so(manually) for more difficult tasks.

How do you retain the time? There could be a time achievement associated with doing this and for trivial tasks, the game will remember how much time it took you, so you can put trivial tasks on automated mode, and always go back to manual to improve on your time, so you can automate faster by achieving faster times....

And if they do what I suggested above, with less materials required, but more time spent crafting using this method, then that wont change when you automate the trivial tasks, it just does them at the fastest speed you have been able to achieve.

I would assume that this would be required for all higher skill items.

We can also learn from some Sauron smithing lessons!

Silkii

I like the idea of some sort of mini-game or other interactive graphical event when crafting with a pass/fail threshold, and, then, maybe a bonus possibility after that has been met

Personally, I think it adds some flavor & RP goodness to the mundane crafting routine! Also, as someone else mentioned above, I think crafting less items for more xp but the same time cost (50 swords to level vs. 500 swords) would dovetail well with the mini-game idea.

You could have that Conan the Barbarian type music pumping in the background from the beginning of the movie when they are making the sword, the molten steel flowing in, and then your mini-game kicks in

)) Would be sweet!

SirChancelot

As I said on another thread, some sort of puzzle game would probably fit better than some twitch/rhythm game...
Especially with the audience that mains crafting

Happymeal2415

Yeah I think puzzles are much more suited than twitch or reflexes

Summpwner

I had an idea for my pet project game where a crafter would do the minigame for the tier of item that they wanted to craft, and their score could be locked in for x crafts of the same tier or for y time. This way, a player could do a big crafting session with one good score locked in.
I don't know if that's what SS has in mind, but I definitely agree with other people in saying that it could easily become onerous and unfun. They have to balance the fact that people may want to craft A LOT, so the minigame likely needs some sources of workaround.... perhaps a crafter could buy an item from a scribe to help with that...

Azherae

My suggestion is a bit too involved but if I distill it down...

If the game has deconstruction, and you can learn anything from it, then I feel the minigame should be on the deconstruction.

You could still gain levels. You could make something and then deconstruct it. You could put the RNG on the Deconstruction/Tweak/Study without most people crying about it I think?

A bot or a person who is crafting too much won't end up with an oversaturation of product as easily. We would also be able to get a lot 'more' levels out of high level gear without causing this problem. You're literally burning money (or rather, throwing it back into the economy) and depending on how long you do it, taking items OUT of the economy for this.

You could have progress bar advancement for Recipes of 'a weapon or gear piece that was found', so that the Crafter wants to deconstruct it.

Of course, none of this applies to things like Processing anyway, but I don't think people are as stressed about 'RNG quality' for cake/pie.

SirChancelot

Happymeal2415 wrote: »

Yeah I think puzzles are much more suited than twitch or reflexes

I also think you could do some fun things with a puzzle approach too.
Here's what I could see for that...

We want to make a sword, so there is a sword shaped outline with a grid overlay. You want to add so much strength to it, so there are Tetris like pieces that add +5 strength, for you to build efficiently you have to fill the outline as thoroughly as possible.
Higher tier weapons have bigger grids to fill, while higher tier enhancements take up more space or have weirder shapes that you have to try and fit in.

This would be interesting for multiple reasons to me. First it would allow for complete customization of the items (no RNG at all)
Second this would allow for some crafters to actually be better than others and keep their puzzle solutions a secret if they wanted.
Third, this would allow for crafters to tinker with their creations too as they unlock different enhancements and improve on their creations as they level up the skill.

DarkTides

Imagine you are smithing IRL.... upon performing some stage of crafting procedure a magical Tetris machine appears out of nowhere, completely blocking your ability to proceed with your craft. Now imagine how immersed you must feel while playing Tetris or some similar game that has nothing to do with smithing.

*you hear a sucking sound as all the immersion is sucked away*

SirChancelot

DarkTides wrote: »

Imagine you are smithing IRL.... upon performing some stage of crafting procedure a magical Tetris machine appears out of nowhere, completely blocking your ability to proceed with your craft. Now imagine how immersed you must feel while playing Tetris or some similar game that has nothing to do with smithing.

*you hear a sucking sound as all the immersion is sucked away*

Consider it the drawing board design phase. Not the hamer swinging phase.
And I didn't say you play Tetris either...

DarkTides

SirChancelot wrote: »

DarkTides wrote: »

Imagine you are smithing IRL.... upon performing some stage of crafting procedure a magical Tetris machine appears out of nowhere, completely blocking your ability to proceed with your craft. Now imagine how immersed you must feel while playing Tetris or some similar game that has nothing to do with smithing.

*you hear a sucking sound as all the immersion is sucked away*

Consider it the drawing board design phase. Not the hamer swinging phase.
And I didn't say you play Tetris either...

My apologies good Sir, I should not have quoted your text, insinuating that my message was directed at you, but rather have just said my piece.

Tyranthraxus

FF14's system was okay, though I'm sure a lot of us have seen the vast canyon of difference in opinion possessed by members of both the for-and-against camps on the subject of RNG.

FF14's system would largely be fine - what worries me is a literal arcade/twitch reflex-based crafting mini-game, where you have to hit the spacebar when the dancing/back-and-forth blue arrow gets in-between two markers on a bar. THIS is what it sounded like, to these ears.

Spif

BaSkA13 wrote: »

Let's say the Bronze Sword has three "grade" variations: Mediocre Bronze Sword, Excellent Bronze Sword and Perfect Bronze Sword. Crafting a Bronze Sword without the minigame will always result in a Mediocre Bronze Sword.

The way I see it, the tedium could be removed during leveling if playing the mini-game perfectly/near-perfectly guarantees you and excellent sword, but RNG (along with near-perfect mini-game play) is still needed for perfect.

XP/minute as well as XP/material when crafting an Excellent sword would be higher than "auto-crafting" a mediocre. IE, auto-crafting a sword takes almost as long as the mini-game and gives 10xp with the advantage that you can queue up 10 always-mediocre swords and walk away. But game-crafting an excellent sword gives 20xp and a perfect sword is 30xp

Diamaht

I'm hoping to see it be more choice based. You simply make decisions about what direction the craft will go.

Not sure I'm all that excited about a twitch/reaction time based system

Vyril

I still have concerns for crafted gear being BiS, but nothing removing that gear from the economy.

If no RNG exists, and all gear is able to be traded, I feel we'll see a select few high end, guild funded crafters providing all the gear with little variety and a saturated market.

Unlike theme parks where its RNG if your item drops, AoC will just require buying mats from players that gather the mats.

It feels like NW crafting but without the RNG.

Ludullu

Vyril wrote: »

I still have concerns for crafted gear being BiS, but nothing removing that gear from the economy.

Overenchantment can destroy your items and the mats required to prevent item decay will prevent the gear from being super abundant. If anything, I'd assume Ashes will have waaay less gear than your general instanced BoE/P mmos.

Vyril

NiKr wrote: »

Vyril wrote: »

I still have concerns for crafted gear being BiS, but nothing removing that gear from the economy.

Overenchantment can destroy your items and the mats required to prevent item decay will prevent the gear from being super abundant. If anything, I'd assume Ashes will have waaay less gear than your general instanced BoE/P mmos.

I just re-read the enchanting system. Ok that makes more sense.

Thanks

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