Dev Discussion #46 - Materials: Less is More or More is Less?

Jhoren

I am all for many types of materials. BUT, please give us a proper crafting material bag for it we can sort and filter and search, with a good UI. Don't just dump the mats into the general inventory with the rest.

neuroguy

I think it should depend on the gathering profession. Particularly, gathering that feeds into gear creation should be low variety and high flexibility while gathering for consumables should be relatively higher variety.

For consumables, the sort of related gathering (particularly fishing & herbalism) are very well situated to vary with seasons and biomes while gathering that leads to the creation of gear (namely mining and the leather side of hunting) should be low variability and ~similarly available everywhere in the world for balance.

A really nice way to add flexibility to gear creation from low variability raw resources is to incorporate it into the processing & crafting stages. For example, you can use a variety of resources while making metal bars to instill properties into them. It could be as straight forward as adding optional red dragon scales while you make iron bars to give them a fire resist bonus.

An alternative, slightly more complex system would allow for the addition of optional resources during making of processed materials like metal bars that give some primary stat 'property' (like dex or strength). Then during crafting, crafters can turn this property into more specialized secondary stats on the item. For example an iron dagger made with iron bars that have a dex property will allow the crafter to add +crit chance or +crit damage or other 'dex' secondary stats, while a str property could be turned into +damage or +armor penetration etc.

This would make processing more relevant and important for the crafting process (finding a good processor will be more important than just 'better efficiency'). And from a low to high variability stand-point, it adds as much flexibility in the final crafted item as there are secondary stats. It also provides a very good reason to transport raw resources via caravans instead of processing goods first which may otherwise be a no-brainer if it leads to reduced weight (and similarly, a good reason to transport processed goods instead of final crafted items given that different builds & classes have different preferred stats).

I do want to note that how this is done, in general, is quite related to the surveying system that we still have very little information about.

Dhaiwon

First a few separate points:

• I think special care needs to be taken to ensure low level resources remain attractive. Either used even when crafting high level things, or as a part of refining higher tier resources. Or some other way I have yet to think of.
• It's probably advisable if you can get materials for the first few gear-pieces without moving too far.
• Material sinks are important, heavyhanded randomness in eating them up is usually not very fun

Some people have already, quite nicely, touched upon what I would call "a wide variety of resources for wide variety of things".

I'd like to build onto that with emphasizing concepts. Sadly I might have tumbled into the crafting hole instead.
Either way, the idea is that by using conceptual resources, you get a system where you can interchange one material for another of the same concept, and it will be much more intuitive to figure out how to get those resources in the game.

In order to put it into context, I'd like to just mention I really dislike the "magic melting pot" crafting many MMO's use, where you just dump stuff in there and out comes whatever item you were crafting.
I much prefer a system where you need to make the bow limbs of the bow, and the string, and place it in a blueprint-ui for those parts to make the finished component.

I'd also like it if what is made, is a function of what is used to make it. So if I want a fire attribute bow, I use some kind of wood with fire affinity to make the bowlimbs.
This thing alone forces a wider range materials, since all the modifers (gems or whatnot) are forced into the base material system. And this could be for more than just items. What kind of wood did you make your caravan from? A light wood for greater speed and less health, or a really high density hardwood for a slow but really tanky one?
If this could be shown visually too I'd probably die from happiness...

Ideally the system should allow me to make parts out of other suitable materials, like bow limbs out of large horns or daggers from large enough claws/fangs instead of metal. With properties derived from that change.

It should probably also allow me to substitute some materials for crafted components. Cant get naturally growing fire imbued wood? Make it through somehow arcanely infusing the affinity from something else into non-affinity wood. Expensive alternative maybe, but if that is all you got?
Cant get a good claw that gives good bleed? Have the blacksmith make a blade with a serrated edge. A really good claw from a lategame boss, might require a true artisan of his craft and the most expensive metals to match.

Similarily, cant get that highly fire affinited herb that makes the best fire resist potions? Grind down that fire imbued wood, boil it in large quantities and arcanely distill it to get a substibute. And lots of woodchips only good for the fire or maybe making paper?

Dont have "iron dagger", "steel dagger" and so on. Have "dagger". And let it's properties be shaped by what made it. Instead add variations for purpose. Stab or cut? Dirk or dagger. 2 different recipes which will inherently use the components used slightly differently. Have optional slots. Like at the end of a bow there can be a hard material to hold the string. Wrapping for the handle? Allow them to be empty for a simpler bow, but let players add suitable materials to increase the tier/quality of the bow. This also natually adds more spaces for configuring the item if you are willing to input more materials into making it.

Make crafting skill affect what tier of materials you can work effectively with, instead of unlocking new variations of recipes you already have. Can still have some new recipes for things that were just too complex to make at lower levels.

Dont have health or regen potions. Have vitality potions, where the finer details of components used decide how much hp and over how much time. With the right mix of secondary ingredients, you get all the hp now. And with another, it's spaced out over a minute.If you could get your hand on truly legendary materials for how much HP it restores, you might get an "immediate heal all" potion, or a "fakes a decent healer" regen potion. But it might cost you an arm and a leg...
Also, if you want to split the resources down the middle to make a "mana and vitality restoration potion", wouldnt that be nice?

When it comes to rarity, I think that in order to encourage grouping, most of the rare materials should be materials that are hard to get to and dangerous to be around, not things that might drop 1 in a million if you are lucky. If you get a group going and manage to get through all the mobs(and other players?) to get to that mountain where the tree that has fire imbued wood grows, you should find more than just a single tree there.
The effort should be in getting there and not dying while there, not scraping the mountain for a few pieces of wood.

The only downside to what I describe above is that not every combination will make sense or be good. But allowing someone the creative space to make really bad things might improve the appreciation of good things.

MMOAddict

Becoming a succesfull trader is one of my favourite things to do in an MMO, it should be complex enough to make learning about it interesting and to ensure not everyone wants to invest the time to become it.

i would like a wide variety of crafting mats that could be used for various things, or perhaps even upgraded with other crafting mats using the processing system. like for example to craft a certain legendary item you need the crafting mats to be of a certain purity (like 45 carat gold). If you have gold ore of lesser purity you would need to refine it.

Or perhaps you could have a crafting mat that would need to capture the essence of something before it could be used to create a specific item.(you would have to take it somewhere and slay something in order to capture that essence)

Having a wider veriety of crafting mats should not create inventory issues!

crafting in other games:
Final Fantasy 14 has a system where crafting has a mini game added to it (like gitar hero striking the hammer at exacly the right time). I don't like it but hear many other people do

In Elder Scrolls Online you need to do research in order to advance your crafting. The way they implemented it is increadably borring. Just a cooldown before you can research the next thing. So much more could be done with this.(like visit a place to do the research or collect many of the same mats in order to learn more about it)

Manueljf

In my opinion having a large variety of materials makes the game pretty interesting and inmersive . It creates a sense of depth in the world. Some would say it's a burden because inventory space and such, but I think people need to abandon this mentality of easy fast food casual no brain gameplay. I would go rather for complex economy and more inmersive world with a large variety of resources.

Herdo

I think AoC deserves a high variety of "localized" materials.
There should be lots and lots of different materials in the world of Verra.
And I think this would perfectly fit in the existing design concepts of AoC.

"Localized" resources would be resources that can be found in a single, or a small number of regions in Verra.
Let's say Glacial Frost Timber, Northern Desert Cherry Blossom or Swamp Bison Meat.
These specific gatherable materials, and also their products produced in the "Processing" artisan branch, would be used for either specific recipes that require that exact item, or in general recipes where they grant additional bonuses (e.g. frost resistance).

Having localized resources would interact with existing systems and design philosophies in AoC:
- Some materials would only spawn during specific seasons (see timber above)
- Some materials would only spawn far away from you "home node" and encourage traveling to these regions, encourage trading with traveling merchants, or to pillage a different node for the herbs that grow in their botanic institute (etc.)

So overall, this would mean more player initiatives for trading, exploring, and diving into the world of AoC.

I don't see an issue with limited inventory space, as others have described, when there are a lot of different materials. First of all, one wouldn't carry every single item of every artisan branch around all the time. Furthermore, running around with the materials you value would be a great opportunity for PvP players to take them from you.
Materials should be stored in the bank account and be consumed from there when being processed.

This is what I'm thinking would be a good and helpful material system for AoC.
Nevertheless it wouldn't be a huge deal if would be way more generic with way less materials.

Zyrision

I would like it if there are a lot of resources in different rarities and also designed so that different characters can wear different armor or need. E.g. a build can wear light chain armor so he can't wear steel but e.g. mythril or silver or or or....
And that an armor gets different properties depending on what material it is made of e.g. chain armor made of steel is heavier but offers more protection and mythril is lighter has less protection but offers advantages for wizard classes.
Something like that I would like to see and also that you can mix several materials so that the part gets advantages and disadvantages of both resources.

juniorwizzard

The more components/ingredients, the more immersive.

I could cut down a tree, turn logs into planks, and create a storage chest. Or, i could do that, and require a smith to make me hinges, nail, and a handle.

I could take a hide and craft some armor. Or I could also require needles and thread, padding, oil, and maybe turn hide into leather as well.

Each component, if master crafted, could add to the chance of creating a better quality product. Master quality components used in crafting by an amateur will still only be of average quality. A master crafter, with shoddy components would be the same. A master crafter, with master quality components has a chance to hit that eureka moment, and creat a masterpiece.

Generic components used for multiple things is just lazy.

pawza

for a crafter the mat need to be saturated what else the mats cost wait more then the end product ,.. both or a probleme for either end,.. ill vote for more mats,. and top rare mats gatherable ,. not only from the world king boss cause more then 60%of the time gathering,.. 15%crafting,.. 15%playing ,.. at leats for start ,. might be trading the other 30% ,. anyway ,. the end product dont get is much sink in price as the mats when crafting is a pain ,...,.. less mats mean ,.. that ima have to ask for less item drop for a balance ,. so a crafter can have is place when pay double for mats wile selling for cheaper them mats it self to make out,... either way , less mats mean less craters ,. it depend where you wana go with the game ,but since you ask crafting mats should be balance with geardroprate and even more since it might take 400 plus hours crafting when calculating 400hours in a dungeon (or more like the number of second it take too pickup the loot ,.. ahaha) ,. i havent yet played but i a crafter ,. and always end up trader(where i could) cause theres either to much mats or very to little ,.. anyway good luck figuring that one out,.. ..as crazy as it might sound if it could be posible to have a lots of mats and have not only a master weaponsmith but aslo kindof like a smithmaster that could ingrave is lingot with magic sortof ,. for extra bonus and extra space for crafter and product,..anyway TY ,.. have good one

CROW3

If you want a complex, competitive economic environment then more is more.

Tarsupin

There's a lot of opinions on here. Let's simplify:

Crafter-types can spend anywhere from 10% to 50% of their time gathering / crafting with meaningful return. Remainder must be filled with transport, trade, or monster hunting to continue their interest.

Adventurer-types shouldn't have to spend more than 10% of their time gathering / crafting to get a meaningful return. To many, those tasks could feel grindy / more of a burden.

As long as that rule is applied, devs can be free to identify how to handle inventory management, material categorizations / mixes, recipes, crafting proficiencies, etc.

ElCrisp

Given the number of professions, and the intended regionalised nature of materials, I think its unavoidable that Ashes of Creation errs on the side of more types of materials rather than less.

So the design questions then become:

1. How do we design inventory management so that it is convenient, highly readable, and functional?

2. How do we make all materials have sinks, both economically and in terms of use value?

For question 2 the most important aspect is use value of materials, because if a material isnt useful it will lose economic exchange value fast (outside selling to A.I. merchants)

My other thought relating to materials is: given Ashes is now going for a "everything you see is gatherable" approach, this creates a two fold nature to the enviromental design of the game, as if you want to add in a object for visual or enviromental reasons, it also need to respect the use and exchange value of materials within the game system and economy.

One of the best ways I can think of to keep materials useful is for them to have both general and specific uses, in accordance with their biome.
For example you may have Tropical Hard Wood, and Tundra Hardwood. Certain crafting methods may have these materials express their unique properties; disease resistance, higher base damage + lower attack speed.

However other crafts may take all hardwoods as equal.
Say for node buildings, and their maintenance.
Providing a good sink for large quantities of the more visually and therfore numerically abundant materials in the game world.

This could still mean Hardwood is difficult to come by in the dessert and therfore in higher demand, but materials dont become too niche in their use value, and there fore
their markets oversaturated.

Similair could be done for other large volume material sinks like Ships and Caravans. (with maybe certain upgrades expressing the differences of regional materials)

Then, when it come to less visually abundant and higher level resources within the respective biomes, these materials can have a more prenounced effect on what end products you can craft. Either by hardlocking certain items behind specific regional materials and their recipes, or item *Regional Axe* takes on the properties of the materials that contitute it.

So as above the important design questions remain here, but rephrased:

1. Can players conveniently interact through inventory and crafting menu's with our intended complexities, with information being readible, and interface not turning into a click-a-thon.

2. How do we make all of both our materials and their corresponding visual objects in the enviroment (which we require for a lively immersive world) have use value as items for players, and sinks within the economy which help maintain the materials value for exchange.

If the above questions remain front of mind as the world of Ashes of creation is filled out, I think it will achieve its design goals and be a great game.

Uboon

Fewer materials that can be used for a wide variety of things, with a wide variety of RARE materials that can be used for OPTIONAL enhancements.

From a traders perspective, having too many mats to keep track of, in multiple regions, would require spreadsheet levels of admin.

Eley

Should be not so many materials, so people can remember their prices. But enough variety, so each armor piece has some unique material (not full set crafted just from orichalcum ingots and silk fabric, where only count is different).

Good to have system message when some player loots rarest materials. Like "Eley has got Ancient Demon Soul" for everyone on server. So, guild congratulates me, other people ask if I sell it and for which price. That is fun.

HandOfUnity

Within our community, the general consensus leans towards having more rather than less resources to gather, this would allow for both gatherers and crafters to have a more specialised profession and feel that their "craft" has a more unique role / place in Ashes. MMO's with minimal crafting materials usually allows almost anyone to max out various crafting/gathering skills and renders said profession less prestigious. Material variance to a crafter is as important as different character and weapon skills to a regular player, allowing for more materials to be available enriches all the crafting / gathering professions and makes the time involved in mastering them feel more accomplished and useful.

Lethality

Vaknar wrote: »

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Dev Discussion - Materials: Less is More or More is Less?
Would you like to see a wide variety of materials that can be used for specific things, or fewer materials that can be used for a wide variety of things?

Keep an eye out for our next Dev Discussion topic regarding Training!

Wide variety, with general use

To that I mean, as an example, I'd like to see: oak, maple, beech, mahogany, pine, etc for types of woods. Lots of variety, and available only in certain biomes/seasons/conditions etc.

BUT

I want to be able to use ANY of them as "wood" if my project calls for wood. It should be my choice which to use, and IDEALLY each wood would carry with it some unique set of properties as to WHY I would choose to use that wood for a given task.

Want a lighter chair? Choose pine. Want a chair that will be sturdy for years to come? Choose Maple. And so on...

But there should also definitely be specific recipes that call for specific resource types, such as "maple" for a "Maple Cabinet".

And then it's up to me as the crafter what quality of Maple I provide to the craft.

KTHX!

p.s. SWG it.

Dayuhan

I prefer a wider range of materials, or material blending, with each material having its own purpose(s) and quality. Using Earth materials as an example, you may want Oak or Pine for houses, Mahogany or Maple for furniture, and Hickory or Osage Orange for bows. Each material type has a quality and purpose so you could make lower quality items using one kind of material or higher quality items using another or a combination of materials. Using the bow as an example, for a standard bow you might use Hickory, but for a sturdier bow you would use Osage Orange or a combination of materials (e.g. a Horn bow or Compound bow).

Craiken

I recommend starting off with a smaller number of materials. Variety is fun, but you can always add more variety later.

Gui10

The quantity of available resources is very hard to balance without players actually playing because simulations can give very arbitrary results. It has to be tested in real time.

From an economics perspective, the proper amount should be "a bit less resources" than what the players are seeking. For example, what doesn't work (imho), is when its so easy to grab a resource that the town market gets flooded by it and each unit ends up costing 1 gp for eternity because the offer far exceeds the demand. This is a sign there is too much of this resource in the game.

This obviously varies from server to server and region to region depending on what the players do, but as a genereral principle, I would aim for "a bit less resource" than demand, creating rarity and an incentive for people to actually go out and grab it, or even force people to change artisan professions, forcing more variety and increased specialization in artisanery.

On the other hand, you dont want too little resources, because that makes progression way too slow and people unable to do crafting or building.

This could be balanced in real time in-game. A hard task, but can be done. Many different ways to approach the problem: base the available resources on the speed at which node buildings are made, number of players gathering it, volume of the resource being traded or hoarded, etc etc. Tough math problem hehe.

Either way, the newest update on gathering seems MUCH more appropriate than gathering in Alpha 1. Great progress!

SoggyBandaid

For me crafting is always a fun part of any game that I try to master for my own satisfaction and to provide for my friends and guildmates. However, I think it is an aspect of gaming that is rarely done correctly as it takes a back seat to other types of gameplay. I think survival games tend to get this better than mmos because crafting tends to becomes a core pillar of the gameplay loop.

Personally, I would you like to see a wide variety of materials that can be reliably used for the same specific things in a wide variety of things. Basically, I would hope that each type of material could have multiple tier levels (vertical progression), multiple types (horizontal progression), and be mix-and-matched by the crafter in a variety of recipes (player agency/customization).

For example if AoC has gems, there may be crude, cut, polished, pristine, etc. gems (vertical progression). Then there may be fire rubies, ice sapphires, lighting topaz, etc. (horizontal progression). Then I can add any gem to any recipe that requires a gem so long as my crafting is high enough level. So a crude fire ruby could add a minor fire damage boost to a sword if used on a sword pommel, or make a fire staff. A crude ice sapphire could be used in the same recipe for a minor ice damage boost, or a pristine fire ruby for a major fire boost. This way there could be a relatively large variety of different materials in the game, but artisans would be able to intuitively understand how to craft items for situations, and give an added layer for custom orders based on play style and build.

Kaban

I know I can be boring saying this but Lineage 2 did this well I believe it struck the right balance between quantity and usability of materials.

So materials were divided into 4 groups: Weapon, Armour, Jewellery and Common.
The largest pool of these were the common materials that were used as a part of crafting of all 3 equipment groups. Then there were specific materials:
Enria - used to craft all of weapons
Asofe - Used to craft all of armour pieces
Thons - used for Jewellery crafting
Then there were things called "Key materials" which were essentially parts or scraps of the item you wanted to craft that would drop usually in a very specific locations. This kept the clutter in check since you did not get 58 different materials in one spot only to force you to pay for extra bag slots. Now even though there were a lot of materials in the "common" group, the drops you'd get were basic versions of it. Most of end-tier materials which were used to craft an actual items had to be processed from the low tier ones. So even though having large variety of materials in general the acquisition of roughly 40% of them was directed by processing rather than pure drop. Meaning if you had 50 different materials in your inventory the reason was 20 of them were actually crafted. And here I believe it's a good way to go. Create large common group of obtainable basic materials with a smaller common sub-group of rare materials which can be rarely dropped, but can be crafted. Then another end-tier of only craftable materials using the combination of 2 lower-tier groups with an additional, easy to understand key materials (eg. Forlorn Sandal part needed to craft Forlorn Sandals) for respective items to create certain bottleneck areas where people would compete for them in order to finish the crafting process.

SirArrr

The entry resources should come in very big amounts and should be in big variety while those used for high end crafting should be very hard to aquire and should be a smaller variety.That being said if you want to look at crafting look no further than Star Wars galaxies and if you want a great market just look at eve online.

LeoTheElder

As SirArrr notes: 'entry resources should come in very big amounts' and 'high end crafting should be very hard to acquire'. This seems to be a common thought among many of us. Inventory storage has also been addressed as a critical obstacle. To that end, I'd like to see multiple levels of storage capacity. Personal inventory, plot warehouses on my land, guild warehouses, city owned warehouses renting out storage space and finally some marketplace access. A good storage system allows both 'more and less'. Lastly, a pet peeve: I made Master Crafter only to have 'organization' start selling quality pots and foods. Crafting those items became a joke and the time it took to master those crafts was wasted.

Spif

I'm not a fan of every 10 levels having it's own set of materials. The classic copper->bronze->iron->steel->mithril->unobtainium march. And that's even when copper+iron is still needed to make mithril bars. You've just introduced a lot of extra farming when making higher level items.

I think that a larger number of "uncommon/rare" materials would be good, as long as the materials required to make higher quality items are useful in many different crafts

For example:

It takes the basic materials of iron and leather to make a common sword. It takes a good crafter (or a good crafting roll/mini-game result) to make an uncommon quality sword. To make an even higher quality sword you need to add a rare ingredient. Adding Pure Carbon makes a rare-quality sharpened sword. Adding Essence of Fire makes a rare flaming sword. Adding Essence of Shadow makes a rare lifestealing sword. Etc.

But, those same rare ingredients are used for other crafts. Essence of shadow is used to make a rare cloak that makes stealth better. Carbon is used for rare metal armor. Essence of Fire for higher quality spicy food dishes.

Making a wide variety of uncommon/rare/epic upgrade materials that are cross-craft also allows for levers by which the value of materials can be controlled. If Ice Essence is BiS for weapons, armor and jewelry and ridiculously expensive for that reason. You can buff jewelry made with Fire essence, making that BiS, which will lower demand for Ice Essence and increase demand for Fire Essence, helping balance prices.

Mangust747

I would like less materials for different things, so that all these materials would be appreciated and always relevant, because if there are a lot of different materials, some 100% will be of little interest and almost not needed, and some very much. Conclusion it is better to have fewer materials, but again, less does not mean that there should be few of them, catch this thought

namcost

I wanted to add to this. Having more time to think. IF we have various items and a huge list, different animal loot should be different. Wolf fangs should not stack with spider fangs. They should be two different materials. If you skin a poison spider for its chitin, it should NOT stack with a fire spiders chitin material.... they are different materials. which comes down to the dynamic gameplay element again. maybe this specific crafter wants fire spider chitin to make armor. and so you end up killing a ton of fire spiders.... which will probably cause a mini event. I remember early ashes of creation stuff talking about wiping out a forest and then new monsters spawn or rampage towards the local village. so if you over kill and harvest spider chitin, not only will less spawn, but you end up pushing the next tier even to happen. which makes sense in how you guys/girls already stated how some things would work.

BUT, this ideal goes even further. in many games, every fish you harvest gives you the same end result in a recipe. Shark Fin soup for example would just use "generic fish meat" that you get from breaking down said fish. In reality it should require "shark fins" as one of the main ingredients. so you would have SOME crafted items where you can use ANY material you want, but some recipes/blueprints would require specific materials. Maybe there is an EYE you get from fish, that you can give to alchemists, to grind up into a paste that is used in making potions and salves. Wood from tree's could be used in various recipes and craft-ables. Even "wood dust" in alchemy (or cooking lmao "filler"). This kind of system becomes very dynamic and helps push that player interaction to get what you need if aren't capable of getting it yourself. I have no qualms going to a blacksmith to get some metal to make a specific wand recipe (or my own design). but again, player choice is king. material choice/use should be up to the player. some recipes require a specific item, other times you can just use "any" type of material (fish meat, anime meat, vegetable, fruit) would be example of generic use, while "shark fin" or "ghost pears" would be examples of specific items. maybe you are making a potion and it requires venom of a beach rattle snake. clearly, you need to find a beach and kill snakes.... not as "BASIC" as I just made it sound, but there would be a correlation of items to monsters. and when enemies drop items and loot, it should make sense. a wolf might have swallows coins from eating a human character but a scorpion cannot eat solids and thus would never drop coins. so this ideal should work for finding materials.

imagine there is an event, a dragon is found dead. you start to harvest its body. but its gonna take a long time to harvest it. the more people the better. using skinning and mining to break it down. lets say 10 players were going at it. when the timer ends, the dragon has not been disposed of. people got some materials but mostly "junk" materials. however, because they didn't finish by the timer, the dragon comes back to life and is now something they have to fight. lets say they were able to finish 50% of the mining/skinning portion, now it comes back to life, with 50% less health and stats, making it easier to kill. if no one does the event, the dragon comes back to undead life at full health. these kind of wild events would be sick and great for infusing crafting items into the world when required, as a "rare item event". and of course, there would be an appropriate award for mining/skinning it before timer is up aka 100% completion vs less and fighting it for a singular reward (that all involved would fight over obviously, or even randomized on who gets it). so much could be done.....

namcost wrote: »

OH MAN. This is my JAM right here. I am a crafter by heart/soul. I LOVE crafting in games and yet not a single MMO has really gotten it right. Star Wars Galaxies got it pretty good but not good enough.

"""Would you like to see a wide variety of materials that can be used for specific things, or fewer materials that can be used for a wide variety of things?"""

Well, I would like to see a wide variety of materials that can be used for multiple things. I think when you go to craft a weapon you should be able to select which material to use that matches that part. For example WAND crafting (which I want to do in Ashes of Creation). Lets say as simple wand has two parts, the shaft and handle. You would have various materials that could be used for each. Each material would effect its stats in a specific way. The rarer the material, the better the stats. Maybe you get some "fire birch" which is a birch type wood that is infused with fire magic. You use that for the shaft. Then maybe for the handle you team up with your mining buddy and get some metal. Perhaps titanium (was gonna say mythril but come on, that's kinda basic fantasy). Anyway, the combo would effect its overall stats. This way different wand crafters will use different materials. Maybe a north continent wand crafter has more metallurgical wands thanks to the mountains there, while a southern wand crafter would have more wood based wands due to the vast amounts of trees.

essentially every type of material should have a quality level AND stats it effects. you could chop a tree and get QL30 (quality level) birch wood. but another birch tree might give you QL50 birch wood. and they would in fact stack differently. and the QL50 birch would give better stats than the QL30 birch. but the "same" stats just higher and lower. while different materials would effect different stats. so birch might give dexterity boost while redwood might get strength boost. for WEAK example. obviously as the development team, you would have to sit down, hash out all the materials you want to have, what stats they effect, and come up with your own tier list. but I want tons of materials to choose from. and having quality levels for materials means their worth can change from place to place. maybe some mountain town has 0 access to wood, so they have to import it. so FOR CRAFTING you might make more money on lower QL wood by selling to that town, than opposed to selling low QL wood at a town full of wood (and higher QL sales).

I think back to harry potter, wands are generally one or two pieces of wood, and then have a "core" which gives that wand its unique "personality". some wands shoot fire, some bursts of air, etc. maybe you use some magical fire wood and then use a pheonix feather. the combo means boosts to fire damage attack so any spells that use fire will get a small boost. and your auto attack would be a fire attack instead of another type. maybe some water based flower used in alchemy, would also be used as a core for wand, so now that wands auto attack is WATER based and boosts water type magical spells you might cast. there is so much you could do.

I think about armor crafting and weapon crafting. a basic sword has the blade, the guard, the handle, and the pommel. each part could be any material you want. mythril blade, some kind of gold/titanium alloy for the guard, petrified wood for the handle, and then gold /titanium for the pommel that also has a socketable gem. and then you could put a black onyx gem in. and the combo of things would result in a unique item. this gives crafters WAY MORE variability. crafting is extremely boring if everyone is making the exact same item (cough world of warcraft cough) and thus the only fight would be sale price. that shouldn't be the only factor. if I make the rarest wands in the game, it shouldn't be because im the only person at that high level. it should be because i found a combo that sells like hot cakes.

Crafting should be very dynamic. materials can stack, but only within the same quality level. if people want basic crafting with a basic tier list and everyone makes the same items, they are NOT crafters and personally i think they should be ignored. living in the world of ashes we should strive to be unique, from the skills and abilities we choose to use, to the armor and gear we wear, to the items we craft. and those that dont craft, will be more on the adventure and raiding side of the game. everyone has their place. basic crafting has no place in a world where everything else is super dynamic (in my opinion obviously).

of course you will do WHAT YOU WANT to do in terms of intrepid. but you want input. i gave mine.

Also this type of crafting system would mean you could "twink" new characters like the old days. so you make a level 1 item using highest QL materials and highest Tier materials. Making a noob weapon that does insane damage to make leveling back up easier. Making replaying the game a different way fun. Because the grind isn't as bad yet you can still have fun. the art of dynamic games is lost. no player should be the master of everything there needs to be a strengths/weakness system. a fire mage would be weak to water magic and water based monsters (water temple would be hell for a fire mage). meanwhile, you could equip gear to offset that bias. so instead of wearing fire based gear to boost damage, you will lose out on higher damage bonus with fire for surviving water magic. like having "robes of the water temple" which could give a fire mage some defense against water attacks. skeletons are weak to fire/bludgeon, double damage when using holy, but takes less damage from slashing and zero damage form piercing. and the items you wear, the gear, etc, all effect how you play your character. which is why crafting is so important. MAYBE a player comes to me, and orders a custom set of light armor for the exact reason of buffing a specific magical type defense. I tell them the price and/or materials I need, eventually I craft them, transaction complete.

custom orders would be really fun too. from taking on custom orders player vs player sense, and maybe the type of node that is for crafting, there would be a bulletin board for players to post crafting orders that other players could fulfill. a less indirect way of getting player vs player interaction. maybe fulfilling bulletin board orders for other players also helps the node XP wise. there is so much we can do for crafters in that sense. the worst thing, is to make crafting boring to where every crafter is the same. because you KNOW people will make alts so they never have to interact with other players. its the long time meme for world of warcraft. hell i have multiple characters in wow classic, each specializing in a crafting type. i never have to talk to other players for crafting. and that's wrong. i should have to buy metal from other players. and to interact.

I could literally go on for days. I think special "recipes/blueprints" would be for how armor LOOKS. so crafters have basic armor designs but can use any material for each piece. so if a dungeon drops a legendary blueprint, that then could be used to make a one off item. however im guessing legendary items will require specific materials of a specific quality (minimum wise) to make that item. but player items should be able to match stats but not the overall look. so I could make the same stats using the right really high QL materials, but it wont LOOK like the legendary armor 3d model wise. which makes the game extremely FAIR but also allowing players to feel unique because "no one looks like me". some will want that uniqueness. others will come to crafters to make gear with the same stats but look more "basic bish".

just. YES. tons of crafting items. each with their own level. stats. etc. make crafting dynamic.

Solr

Supply and demand always go hand in hand so i think that the more important thing than discussing the amount of different types of materials is the amount on the market, however, this is not the question this time xD

I definitely believe that less is more because i think finding new ways to combine materials (like metal alloys) is way more fun than just using one or two types of materials for each craftable. It is important note that it is very important that rare materials should be really rare and work as amplifiers to your craft (to make it easier to craft, reducing amount of materials, or increasing amount of materials that can be used to create a more powerful item, etc) rather than just giving more sats.

By combining different amount of materials for a craft, you will get different properties and also makes crafting more personal since it relies on the players memory/skill in how to mix materials to get a more maximized effect, rather than following a game generated recipe.

BunZaga

I like the idea of fewer 'generic' materials per skill, but a verity of 'specific' ingredients for anything higher than a generic item. So for example, perhaps a copper, tin, bronze, steel, etc basic grey item will use the generic resource. But then when you have the rare, epic, legendary items, they will require very specific, perhaps even difficult to retrieve ingredients.

Some examples, RaiderZ, WoW, Strife(moba), perhaps even Dark Age of Camelot, the last of which stands out a bit, since you don't actually craft a 'legendary' item, you craft a base item, but then can 'spellcraft' enhancements to that base item, using specialized resources.

I really like the way DAoC, did it, because you start with a base item, which uses base resources, but then perhaps combine this with how WoW makes you run out and gather a spider eye, or some murloc fins, or whatever, to 'enhance' the base item with special properties, that you can customize to your unique build and play style.

This is how I would do it. Then based on the items quality, would depend on how many spellcrafting/enhancement points you can add to enhance the item. So you could still have a poor quality copper sword, or a high quality legendary copper sword. One would only let you add like +1 hp, but the other might let you add +5 hp +2str and a fire proc?

Just throwing ideas out there, but I like the idea of a base weapon + enhancements of your choice, rather than a prebuilt 'template' or 'recipe' that you and everyone else in the world has. Take a close look at how DAoC did it.

Leylos

For me it is important that all materials stay relevant. Having higher tier crafting recipies still rely on lower tier materials would seem like a good step in that direction.

As for the actual material variety, sometimes less is more. Players that aren't that big into crafting will find having tons of different materials in their bags to be a hassle. Even if you craft yourself, you will usually specialize in a few things and won't be too keen having to sort your inventory.

But having certain legendary items require special ingredients that you might get from dungeons would be fine in my opinion.

Fantmx

I would like to see a mix of both.

I would like to see a system where we pull in completed crafting items as materials from previous tiers that are combined with new materials to create new items. Lotro does a great job of this when looking at their cooking skill. A LOT of the materials you make at the early and mid stages are required to advancing the cooking skill later on. This set up is a lot of fun. It makes every item meaningful to continue making later one. Scarcity becomes more crafter availability than finding components in the wild.

Each material should also have different levels of quality. With quality of material impacting what can and can't be crafted. There was a game called Novus Inceptio many years ago that did this very well. It adds a another great layer to the crafting process.