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Crafting: shuffled progression factor
Arya_Yeshe
Member
Would love hearing about what you guys think about this
What if AoC brought a crafting system that under the hood shuffles how players progress in crafting?
So each day, each player will have a different progress factors?
So if a player follows a "craft 100 iron daggers then 100 copper daggers" roadmap from the internet then his progression will always come different than the roadmap suggests
Role play wise this could be justified by saying that someone has to craft many different things so they can improve their skills
So each day the player would have to figure out what is more interesting within his skill reach
Such system could be done by heatmaps and randomizers... in the long run this could be used for helping economy imbalances.
AFAIK this was never done before, this idea comes from my head and we have no real world examples of this
What if AoC brought a crafting system that under the hood shuffles how players progress in crafting?
So each day, each player will have a different progress factors?
So if a player follows a "craft 100 iron daggers then 100 copper daggers" roadmap from the internet then his progression will always come different than the roadmap suggests
Role play wise this could be justified by saying that someone has to craft many different things so they can improve their skills
So each day the player would have to figure out what is more interesting within his skill reach
Such system could be done by heatmaps and randomizers... in the long run this could be used for helping economy imbalances.
AFAIK this was never done before, this idea comes from my head and we have no real world examples of this
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
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Comments
Then you log on and start you crafting pummels and seeing that you are barely progressing with that, so you start crafting something else and you realize this is the sweet spot for the day
This is more engaging because it's based on your character and based on the feedback
Also such system goes under any other systems, any other system could go on top of this
Not understanding what you are trying to say here
If the game has enough crafting options for the heatmap to make sense, it should support this equally well.
I don't hate the heatmap idea at all, but if it's invisible, it's kind of stressful for some players, and if it's totally random per player, I feel that the negative sentiment would outweigh the benefits. Most imaginative players I know will manage to be immersed without 'having the heatmap hidden'.
As example I offer an FFXI Concept as always.
Is this an acceptable compromise for you relative to heatmap?
You could change the reward from 'special items' to 'slightly extra progression', if that was the important thing.
Second and more importantly, I think ashes should provide a world that ~dynamically changes player demand for crafted goods. Your suggestion seems predicated on the idea that players will try to rush to max crafting as soon as possible. I think having high customization in the crafted item stats should discourage something like this. Imagine the crafter can determine some stats on the dagger (+fire damage or +crit for example). Based on player needs, meta shifts, world events etc the high demand stat on the dagger may change. So if you stockpiled a ton of iron daggers with one stat, you may not be competitive in the economy.
I meant for professions progression, the amount of skill/xp for creating a dagger should be different each day
So when you look on the internet for those profession leveling guides they would not work
This wouls stimulate people into crafting different things instead of just doing 100 daggers, then 100 short swords, then 100 long swords thing
I meant shuffling the amount of XP for leveling the profession
So those profession leveling guides would be useless, so each crafter would craft differnt things and find out what's best for him on that day
This would makes things more interesting instead of just following crafters leveling guide and we would have a huge amount of daggers in the market since everybody would craft a bit of everything
Yes, that's what I suggested, it would randomize the xp gains a little for each item in your skill range
So you would have to find for yourself what you want, if you want to craft based on xp gain or based on gold profitability in the market
This would turn useless those crafting leveling guides which tell people exactly what to do so you can as fast as possible come from level 1 to max level
Yes, it would be more difficult finding your own sweet spot, it would be pretty much a quest. I was a crafter in almost all games I play and its quite mind numbing leveling, it's just an uninteresting grind
Yes, my idea is based on the fact that people follow crafting guides and since AoC has no direct item destruction, then the market will become extremely unbalanced
We don't know yet how customizable will the items be, we don't know if it will be like SWG
Even if the items are very customizable, there are components to be made anyway
What the people will do is grinding as much gold as possible and then following a crafting leveling guide and then becoming max level in a weekend and dumping all items in the market, which is exactly what milions of people in MMOs since always
People are doing like that since the 90s and they didnt stop, I am pretty sure people will do it again
I am not sure if this idea is good, it could work, but what I would like to see in newer MMOs is crafting without skill ups. This wouldn't overflood market and it would have stable economy. For progress I would sink gold via vendor recipes, high tier recipes could also need reputation from your node and a lot of gold (at least 20 hours of farming per 1 recipe), consumables would work the same, learned via recipes and restricted with level of your character, same way gear would work.
I am telling this not because of economy, but mainly to do whatever we want to do, without grinding skill ups. There could be some progression on crafts for example if you crafted bags of 6 slot at start, it would have 70% chance to drop quality of bags and turn them into 4 slot bags, this chance would decrease with each few crafts. I see progression that is meaningful and realistic is better then having skill ups that timegate your character.
Definitely there's more ways of doing it.
The soul of my idea is simply countering leveling guides, keeping things interesting and have a bigger variety of items in the market
Yes, having a degree of randomness it's just like adding a bit of spice in the pot, whatever it gives!
The edge in having heatmeaps that contain the information about how skill should be gained is that it could be manipulated by Intrepid if they want to fix the market. The market gets broken in any game because changes in the game, updates and leveling guides, so having a heatmaps under the hood would allow Intrepid influencing and slowly and healthy fixing the economy
Veko, you don't really understand what is a sink, right?
You don't get it my friend
Sink = when you lose something, that's all
If you farm for 20 hours and than buy a recipe, that's just an exchange, you exchanged something for something else... that is a ONE TIME exchange. Plus, after buying the recipe you will never have to buy it again
Don't even get me started with bag's limited to number of slots, thats pure garbage, the inventory and caravan systems are the only things in AoC that are really bad
I don't quite follow, then what does your proposed system achieve? Just create another hoop for them to jump through? If they find their daily hot spot, won't they be able to do this even easier?
While most normal players will just have a strange system that doesn't quite motivate them enough to alter their behavior, but again, adds another hoop to jump through.
Yes, you would have to check it out everyday where's the sweet spot, this would also create a demand a larger variety of materials
In the market in the long run the difference would be noticed, because then you won't have an excessive amount of a few items in the market, beacuse usually following leveling guides overflow the market with a few items and they become valueless
Also having the possibility of following leveling guides makes the materials more expensive then the items themselves
For the crafter the difference won't be huge, but in the market we should see the difference
Also for Intrepid the ability of slowly healing the economy in the long run would be good tool
Have you ever did that in a game? Because I did, doing that is really hard, never put the "just"word in that phrase. Hoarding forces you into poverty for long periods of time
I have experience in this, i hoarded items for many months in a row while waiting market opportunities, this is really hard and engaging
Also, are you serious about being worried that for one day it could have a chance of "flooding" the market and being ok with it being flooded everyday on a daily basis?
Like I said, the sweet spot is different for each person, since each person would be appointed to a different spot in the heatmap... so there would be no "overflooding" of anything ever
Thinking your idea is not a good solution is not the same as not thinking the problem is a problem. Anyways, I truly don't think this would have the same effect you are hoping for and most importantly, it sounds annoying to deal with rather than fun but maybe that's just me.
You don't know the reason why you think it's annoying.
Let me teach you about yourself, I'm not even joking, I will explain why you think it's annoying.
The truth is that crafting is boring, it sucks, it's uninteresting, also PvE is shit in general, playing solo nearly all crafting systems is pure shit, crafting is a disgusting grind in almost all games
Almost all crafting systems in nearly all games in history are total boring shits
So, if you think you detected anything that could bring any kind of hurdle to the shitty crafting systems then you think it's bad, well it's not the fault of bit of randomness. Having a bit of randomness just rips the band aid off
Well, Star Wars Galaxies has the best crafting system there is, hands down the best and it's full of randomness to it... people don't see it as a problem
EVE Online has probably the second best industry and science system, it has randomness too with it's discoveries for high tier industry, people don't complain about it and there's even items that you can add for better numbers in the discovery gamble
If you think that the crafting system is shit and that it's just a grind, then a bit of randomness on top of it could be bad for sure
I'm actually quite amazed as to the leaps you not only take yourself, but take on my behalf too. I have no issues with crafting in most games, in fact I absolutely love gathering in many games. If crafting is made to be fun and great, you would reduce the number of people trying to speed level it with a guide as well, maybe that's a better solution than what you propose. Also, you are not just 'adding randomness', randomness can be added in a variety of ways. Your suggestion is just randomizing xp gain. It is uninteresting and minimally impactful (you say a small amount, because a large change would actually be terrible and I agree).
Let me have a go at being condescending for a second. If you ever have an idea that has never been done before, that is not reason enough to do it. You always need to start an idea with what you are trying to achieve or accomplish, maybe you've identified a problem you are trying to solve, maybe you are trying to discourage/encourage some player behavior. Critically, you have to be open to the fact that there may be a better solution, at least concede that your solution is not the only one (and be ok if someone doesn't like your idea). Other important things to do in order to gauge the quality of your idea should include looking at the extremes. What if your suggestion changed the xp gain super dramatically? What if it barely made a difference? This will give you an idea of how easy it is to tune/balance and how universal may the right number be for different players. Lastly, maybe it's worth thinking about what level of engagement with your system is required. How will it impact a hardcore crafter who is leveling up gradually? What about a casual crafter? A speed leveler (as you suggest)?
My understanding of your system is that it only impacts speed levelers in a way they don't want to be impacted (they will complain). While it provides randomness that can't really be engaged with by players who don't hoard and try to mass produce a crafting output, so... literally every other player type. Your proposed system needs to be minimally impactful so it doesn't randomly punish players for crafting what they want, when they want while still being annoying enough to discourage guided speed leveling, a balance that I would argue is hard to strike. All of this, just to avoid what you say will always happen anyways and could be addressed by having an interesting crafting system, a system which we don't even have many details for, and yet you assume there will be the same problem and propose some solution.
Let me improve your bad system to achieve your goal better: there is diminishing returns in xp for mass producing the same item within some time window. If you create >20 of the same crafting item in <8 hours, you get 5% less xp down to a maximum of -50%. Less lines of code, easy to test tuning, no impact on most players who do not try to speed level by mass production and curbs undesired behavior in a non-random way that is easy to justify therefore reducing negative backlash.
And before you even think about mentioning "what about the positive side of the randomness? the xp bonus?", if this is not a small xp bonus on the 'sweet spot', then you are literally promoting the behavior you are trying to prevent. If this xp bonus is large, players will rush purchase (or hoard) and mass produce some good to farm bonus xp making the market randomly volatile and resource values unpredictable.
So yes, I absolutely know the reason why I think it's annoying, I was trying to be polite and not tell you your idea is bad but let you think and develop it yourself, and the only thing you've taught me about myself is that I really hate it when people try to make large leaps in assumptions about what others think (actually... I already knew that).
I'm going to take a practical example. I do some carpentry on the side, mostly tables. When I first started, I learned a TON - mostly about what not to do.
On the other hand, if I continue to vary the component elements of each table I make, my xp gain is still focused on the crafting of the table. Different woods, different supports, different joinery, different blends / inlays, different patterns for the top, live edges v. cut edges - there's so many ways to keep growing - and that's just tables.
Same basic concept as you're proposing, but a little more 'in the weeds' for crafters who enjoy the process of crafting, not just the end product.
What do you think?
I agree with you 100% that making tables non stop shouldn't give the same xp, it is thinking of this that I thought of having heatmaps for the xp on crafting and each player would be traversing the heatmap each day, so they would be forced to diversify if they want to keep the same steady xp going on
Well, I am a big industralist in EVE Online, I have bilions of units of many hundreds materials and I can buid fleets for wars, from small ships to capital ships. This is only possible because we can calculate how much materials we will spend and set the production lines.
Organizing the hangars from the fatories would be a total nightmare having random materials... in EVE what we have is the possibility of researching better blueprints with better material efficiency and better time efficiency... then we can spend less material and less time, but it's not random.
In Star Wars Galaxis and EVE Online, that are the best crafting systems in history, they are nearly perfect, what we have is randomness in discoveries and random results, so the scientific part it's a bit random... but the production itself is not random to the point which you can use external sites and precalculate your production
In Ashes, a good guild leader will organize a couple people for large industry jobs, for making available huge amounts of consumables and ammunitation for their castle and for their ships, otherwise the ammo and the ships won't be there... so being able to tell how much materials people need beforehand is quite a big deal
Would be ok having random performance... random discoveries if you try to create a Tier 2 or Tier 3 item
In Star Wars Galaxies you travel to another planet for a crafting station if you know you will have a bonus crafting there, that's fine too
Minimally impactful, you are right about that one, it wasn't supposed to have a huge impact
It's just that making daggers non stop, then making swords non stop... and everybody else doing the same, that screams bad design to me
This also opens the door for leveling guides, then you have thousands of people buying the same materials from the market and then dumping the same crafted items in the market
I do not believe that my idea is the best, the best idea maybe it's just making something close to the crafting systems from Star Wars Galaxies and EVE Online, they are proven to be good
This idea of having heatmaps should't be extremely impactful to the players, but it would be a good tool in the devs hands
Yes they will be impacted, but they won't complain, I think they will compliment the system, because I was a speed crafter in many occasions and I hated it, it was sad experience. A system with a bit of spice would remove a bit of the sadness of the crafting grind
Diminishing returns is really good!
I love this idea and I am familiar with dimishing returns from the fittings in EVE
Gameplaywise having diminishing returns is better
The only downside is that it wouldn't be a tool in Intrepid hands
If in the future Intrepid has a small Business Intelience analyzing the market, items and crafting, they could tweak the heatmaps and correct the market in a gentle way without creating too much outcry
So the heatmaps idea may not be big for the gameplay, but it's big for administrative reasons
Yeah I hope and trust this won't be the design though, but we will see
Did you play Star Wars Galaxies too?
In there crafting matters a lot because every little piece matters, since every part is highly customizable... the min maxing there is brutal
1. Without fast travel, it would hard to balance one location having better resources than another for gatherers although the gold rush feel could be positive if done well.
2. Automated gathering leads to very large volume of resources but also removes the funnest part of gathering for me: exploration and looking under every nook and cranny to maybe find something cool.
The actual crafting part with schematics and resource properties were really cool though from what I recall.
Werent you against NPC economy xD.....
when you spoke about why EVE is superior to other MMOs you spoke about how in EVE everything is made by players, but now you say that it is better to have for example exchange between NPCs...
It's still in development (for clarity I don't care what Intrepid does or does not absorb from anything I say, if it's shared, it's for the world, not like anyone can come back later and claim I copied if I somehow get 100 mil).
My current prototype is that while a craft does go up let's say 100 levels, each craft is split into either 5 or 10 subsections.
You can 'get to 100', i.e. Mastery, by any path, but you get specific types of bonus for diversifying. Let's take @CROW3 's example.
Tables and Furniture are part of Carpentry. But so are Siege Weapons. And separately again, Wagons.
So you can 'level up from 1-20 in Furniture' and be a 'level 20 Carpenter'. That 20 levels of 'Carpenter' DOES make it easier when you go to make Siege Weapons or Wagons, but it mostly raises success rates or something.
Your success rate AT Furniture Making is also affected when you pick up other disciplines but MUCH less. If there's a 'high quality chance', probably just getting high in Furniture resolves this.
But making the 'level 20' Furniture is really hard still. Getting your 'last 2 levels in Furniture Making' is really hard.
It's easier by far to get to 'level 75', 15 skill across 5 disciplines, than it is to get further than that. Arbitrary caps still apply.
There will always be someone that works out 'exactly what the best method' is, but this way, you have a good reason to 'make a few Chairs', 'Make a few Ballistae', 'make a few Caravan Wagon parts'. Choose the order you want to do it in so that you can jump straight into immersion.
This is also a good way to avoid people having to do like 30 levels of boring stuff they don't like because the thing they DO care about isn't likely to succeed until they are level 30+.
I've only worked out how to break up 'my own' Crafting Professions into 5 Parts though, I have no idea if Intrepid could manage the same for some of theirs.