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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Are there any systems in place to keep low-level crafting useful?
ClintHardwood
Member, Alpha Two
As anyone who has played an MMO with crafting knows, there comes a time that most craftable items become useless. This includes low to mid-level gear and weaker consumables. Poorly developed systems often relegate these items to being little more than fodder for leveling and selling to shops. Others give these items a purpose.
Here's a quick list of how other games have handled this matter in order of worst to best:
Worst: Despite having a crafting system, in Maplestory the best loot mostly drops from mobs and almost all of is useless except for selling to vendors for negligible returns. It's often more time efficient to just drop them.
Middling: In Runescape, crafted consumables are valuable, and while crafted gear isn't, it can be converted into coins via high alchemy or sold to a shop. This provides at least a superficial value to most items.
Best: In Albion Online, all gear and consumables are crafted, and through the black market system, they can drop from mobs and treasure chests in the world. Furthermore, craftables in albion have a chance to be destroyed on death, and combined with players' reluctance to risk their best gear in open-world PvP, low-level items are always in demand. This creates a perpetually bountiful crafting market for ALL times.
What I'm wondering is if AoC has a system in place comparable to Albion's. Something that keeps crafting valuable and constantly cycles all craftables out of the economy.
Here's a quick list of how other games have handled this matter in order of worst to best:
Worst: Despite having a crafting system, in Maplestory the best loot mostly drops from mobs and almost all of is useless except for selling to vendors for negligible returns. It's often more time efficient to just drop them.
Middling: In Runescape, crafted consumables are valuable, and while crafted gear isn't, it can be converted into coins via high alchemy or sold to a shop. This provides at least a superficial value to most items.
Best: In Albion Online, all gear and consumables are crafted, and through the black market system, they can drop from mobs and treasure chests in the world. Furthermore, craftables in albion have a chance to be destroyed on death, and combined with players' reluctance to risk their best gear in open-world PvP, low-level items are always in demand. This creates a perpetually bountiful crafting market for ALL times.
What I'm wondering is if AoC has a system in place comparable to Albion's. Something that keeps crafting valuable and constantly cycles all craftables out of the economy.
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Comments
You needed 30 iron ore for a lv10 sword.
You needed 5 steel for a lv 30 sword. 1 steel was a processed material, needing a bit of iron ore and some coal.
You needed 20 steel for a 40-50 lv sword.
You needed 5 steel mold for a lv60 sword.
Steel mold (or whatever) was a more advanced material. You still needed iron ore and coal for steel.
ESOs crafting/gathering system was bad.
Or just copy SWG, it's fine.
Pardon me for my ignorance as I've never played L2, but how are level 10 swords useful in the economy once most players reach max level? Was there a use for them besides crafting experience? Because in Albion, Tier 4 (low level) swords are regularly bought, sold, and used despite most players being able to use Tier 8 (Max level).
My concern was with crafted/processed goods as much as resources.
The Level 10(No-Grade) ones had no use later on other than being handed over to newbies or straight up sold for gold on NPCs
The level 20(D-Grade) ones could also be used for Over Enchanting, creating C-Grade Dualswords(2 D grade swords+d-grade crystals are used for some C Grade DualSwords), could be destroyed into D-Grade crystals that can be used to craft other same grade gear(aswell as some C-grade), 2 cosmetic items, certain consumables and other key items(Soul Crystals).
So yeah, even at max level, low level items(atleast D-grade or higher) still had meaningful use and were present in the economy.
Aren't we all sinners?
1) Why should a lv10 sword be useful later? The materials it was made for are usefull.
As soon as you can replace your Lv10 sword, sell it or gift it.
2) In L2, Lv20-Lv78 items could be deconstructed for crystals. The crystals were essential in the games economy.
However to keep low level crafting relevant? I can imagine if repairing your awesome demon slaying sword of pwnage is an arm and a leg in costs I think mid to upper tier throwaway weapons a feasible use for grinding or pvp. Low level things I think could utilize something similar to FF14's system where you can turn in old items to your faction. Perhaps in this case node and get either a form of rep or in faction currency. Maybe you are supply/training the guards providing materials so settlements can better defend themselves. Or maybe in a big siege your donations can give npc/fortification bonuses. That would be really interesting to stock up on say iron short swords and when the 24-48 hour warning of a capital siege was announced you feed your materials to the war effort.
Quoted from the Wiki: "Specific and necessary crafting materials for higher tier items can only be obtained through the deconstruction of lower-tier items. This is designed to keep lower tier crafted gear relevant through progression and across expansions."
[Beyond this point I'll start speculating!]
What I could image however would be that lower level crafting skills will stay relevant/viable to the degree of war preparation. When a Node Siege is announced a whole bunch of siege related quests will be generated from what I've heard Intrepid state. This can stretch beyond reinforcing the walls or building siege weapons; I could imagine there to be quests to created motes and provide gear for low level NPC citizens as a militia so to speak, which - if enough low level gear is provided - could improve the stats of lower level NPCs that take part in the siege as for example additional archers on the wall, small zerg groups in the city and such.
This would allow for players with low crafting proficiency to contribute to the outcome of a Node Siege.
Similar things could be done for corrupted areas, where players will basically have to "siege" an area now occupied by the Ancients. And since we are already talking PvE - when a Node levels up, it enables the discovery of new POI in the respective area. There is a case to be made that "expedition quests" to discover these new POIs and to unlock further quests there could require simpler gear and crafting goods, which would give lower level crafters an opportunity to contribute to the development of already bigger Nodes.
And lastly there is a place for lower level crafting in general regarding lower Tier Node guards. There are maintenance costs associated with Nodes and one of them could be keeping the guards gear intact. Players of lower crafting proficiency could be able to provide gear for guards in Tier 2-3 Nodes or take sometime to do direct maintenance quests at the local forge.
Conclusion:
While there certainly is not too much confirmed information about this topic, I think there are "easy" (as far as I am able to evaluate that) ways to make the production of low level gear stay relevant.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Crafting
you think you will breeze the level 10-19 sword in 2-3 days when in reality, 10-19 can take you 14 days. And during those 14 days, the durability should be hit often, having you need to repair or buy a new one.
IDK about L2 or SWG but I assume, both of those games were like EQ in terms of leveling pacing.. They took awhile to level up - so those system makes sense. I highly doubt a deep SWG craftign system would work in a game like New World leveling pace.
In the first week, we would hope to have a strong market for level 20 players. By that, I mostly mean that the market isn't "oversaturated" or "under saturated". The market will always have a clearing price that matches supply and demand. What an economy designer needs to focus on is making sure that the supply of goods is at a point where the average level 20 player doesn't have to be rich in order to get half decent gear, but also isn't able to spend 30 gold to get a full gear set.
Here are some thoughts on how you can accomplish a thriving low level economy for players even in late game.
1. Have almost all finished products be crafted. This makes crafting in general always valuable, and prevents players from getting gear or consumables simply by grinding out mobs. Instead, you get the materials by killing mobs, old treasure chests, gatherables, etc. and then a crafter makes you the finished product.
2. Have lower leveled materials funnel into higher leveled materials. The reason is for lower leveled materials to remain in demand by the entire player base, and the market doesn't become oversaturated.
3. Item deconstruction must be efficient throughout the leveling process. To prevent over-saturation of hand-me-down items, it must be better for a crafter or a player to break down an item than to put it on the market. The main problem with deconstruction is that you can never have the materials deconstructed equal the material cost of constructing the item. Otherwise crafters could endlessly construct and deconstruct the same item to gain crafting XP. And that causes an inherent problem.
I use 10 iron to create an iron sword. If I deconstruct the sword, it will give me back 2 iron. I needed the sword when I was level 10, but now that I'm level 15, I'm going to move onto a steel sword. So do I deconstruct the sword for 2 iron? No! Because luckily, for me, there is another level 10 player who hasn't been playing as much as I have. I sell him the sword for enough gold for 8 iron, and pocket the 6 iron difference. The market dictates that iron swords will only be deconstructed once they're worth 2 gold.
One way to force deconstruction is to have a bind on equip, but that can also be unsatisfying by discouraging friendly interactions between players gear sharing and not allowing lending.
Steven has hinted at a way around all these problems. He wants to have deconstruction, and only deconstruction, create items that are needed for the construction of higher tier items. Now there's a big reason to deconstruct the lower tiered items. And since these are items, they will be tradable. So even if you're not a blacksmith or an arcane engineer, you will be able to make a profit by choosing to deconstruct an item and sell it to a crafter, or directly selling the crafter the lower tiered item. There won't be oversaturation of low tiered items with this system.
4. Ever game needs item decay. You use a sword, it degrades. Eventually, you need materials to repair the sword, or it busts. Right now, Steven wants no items to break, but requires the same materials needed to repair them once item durability reaches 0%. I don't like that system because at end game crafters will become glorified repairmen, but either way it ensures that lower tiered items will also become damaged and need repair.
5. What the other guys said. Longer leveling process = more time and engagement with lower leveled items.
If you have all of that in place, new players 6 months into the game should be able to enjoy the economy just as we all had playing at launch.
I've also been worried about this point you've made. In order for crafters to actually craft items and sell them, there needs to be some sort of item sink. I think Albion does this best in 2 ways:
1) when you die via PvP there is a chance for any item to trash, removing it from the game/economy.
2) Black market (my favorite economy innovation in any MMO). Essentially the game will buy your items, and place them into the world, there is also a chance the item just trashes instead, but you still get the money. This means everything in the world is player made, crafters always have a reason to make stuff, and the economy doesn't flood with items.
If the Crafting system is similar to New World, then the craft is dead in the egg...
In New World only those who played from the beginning made a lot of money and the more the time passed and the more everything costed nothing.
I was one of the first to reach 200 in Jewelries, I became super rich by selling purple (and sometimes orange) jewelries in October 2021. I stopped playing for 2 months, and when I return crafting was totally INFLATED (ressources) and DEFLATED (gold)...
So I hope they will take example all New World as the wost crafting system ever.
thats the issue when equipment last forever, player run economy via crafting is dead in the water if equipment doesnt have decay or required more crafted armor to repair and so on.
I made a post ages ago and used New world tools as an example everyone only ever needed 1 tool at each rank so lets say there 2k players on the servers then only the first 2000 tool of each tier will be valuable and once 2000 tool were crafted then every other tool in the game is worthless since they never need replacing. if a tool broke after say 1 week of use then every week there been a market for 2000 tools but as it stands now like every themepark MMO out there that dont have item decay crafting become useless with the exception of consumables crafters.
Would you say that it would be a good idea to make broken tools deconstructible to have those items not just disappear but at least make replacement slightly easier?
you don't automatically get a weapon appropriate for your tier as soon as you get max level or the next tier. also, because of the soulshot/spiritshot mechanic, many people (such as buffers or summoners) would use low tier weapons, even after being high level or having a good weapon, for many things to save money
also overenchanting. it was easier to have a lower tier weapon or gear overenchanted. also back in the older chronicles, many lower sets were better than higher tier sets for many classes.
also, you might have alts and you want to gear em with inexpensive stuff. or you might have low level spoilers (gatherers basically) to farm some materials that are easier farmed at lower levels. in such cases, a high tier weapon is useless to you.
also, you have to level up your subclasses, which require you to use lower tier gear.
also, crystals. its cheaper to get lower tier gear and break it to get crystals, so you save money. some classes use low level crystals even at higher levels.
buffing weapons for olympiad are lower level weapons too. however, once you get them, you don't really need more than 1 of the same. but you still need to get them
you couldn't kill all epic bosses with max level characters, because of penalties. you needed low level characters for those. 2 of the best accessories were dropped by low level bosses. overenchanting low level gear would make ur low level character stronger. you could kill the boss faster, get the loot, win pvp, etc.
also, because it is so hard to level up in l2, and it would take so long, specially for casual solo players, it was perfectly possible to have lower level gear being sold and resold and farmed and enchanted and traded and resold in the market for months or years.
crafting in l2 doesn't give u crafting experience. you just need base levels on your crafter and the appropriate recipe. and most materials were useful in all levels. you basically needed the same materials but in higher quantities for higher level stuff.
If a L5 finished iron sword is not useful to higher levels, then the early levels of crafting are going to consist of making something only to scrap/vendor it. What's worse is that if low level mats are required to make higher level mats (Ex: iron bar is needed to make a steel bar and steel bar is needed to make a mithril bar), then that low level crafter is going to be competing with higher level players for materials. This is a big problem in a world where a crafter cannot gather.
The solution is to make a crafted and finished iron sword necessary for crafting higher level items. Then, assuming that making a finished iron sword takes a minute or two, there might be a market for that noob crafter to sell his finished product to a higher level crafter. The higher level crafter gets an ingredient he needs and time savings too.
Finding a way to use that L5 iron sword in higher level crafting (in a way that makes sense) can be a problem. It's not like you would re-craft an iron sword into a mithril sword. Extracting crystals (ala L2) or "essence of sword" can work.
That material is also acquirable through some other means that can be controlled by the world manager (quests, mob drops, etc). The world manager looks at how many lowbie swords have been crafted and deconstructed and then adjusts the highbie acquisition values accordingly. If the majority of lowbie swords have been deconstructed - the highbie methods get easier, which brings down the price of the material and also makes the swords method inconvenient. If majority of swords do not get deconstructed (this could probably get tied to some arbitrary timer too) - the highbie methods run dry.
Obviously this would need to be tested and refined, but I do think that you could control this through the planned systems, while also basing it on player actions.
This system could be used to hire and upgrade additional guards, siege NPCs, mercenary NPCs, complete quests about rebellions, node quests, obtain certificates, and more.
If Intrepid could create a few item sinks that aren't required but can be used to create conveniences, it could be a great addition to the game.
If hiring additional NPCs required not only gold, but also equipment, then you could have a great item sink.
That is a risk, but the crafting skillups that most systems use require crafting of an item many times to get to the next tier. A player buying a weapon to use only needs one for several levels. They could also say in town chat "can someone make me an iron sword?"
A successful setup ends up with low level crafted items being worth more than the materials used to make them. A key ingredient is the time it takes to craft them
I think this should be the goal for ALL levels of crafting. I'm not sure what this does on a macro scale, since it is so rarely the case in crafting systems. But from a pure RP perspective...why would turning materials into a usable item ever produce LESS value than the raw materials?
well, the low level item can be deconstructed for special materials to craft high level items iirc...so that's already in the game. you will either sell the low level sword, someone will buy and deconstruct it, or you deconstruct it yourself then sell or use the material
That seems fair.
well, they need to craft stuff of their current level to get exp to level up their crafting...if they crafted lower level stuff, they would get lower exp...
so all you gotta do is balance the exp. maybe 1000 t1 items = 1 t2 item in terms of experience and that t2 item is probably easier to acquire. the important thing is the time it takes to get the stuff. exp per hour
I'd personally prefer to then make crafters forget older crafting (maybe 2 tiers down) and be unable to craft them anymore, but I doubt that majority of people would agree with that approach.
I never understood why is it so important for people to keep low level crafting relevant. i mean if its there, then sure. or if its used to distribute player population, then sure. but some people make it sound like if low level crafting isn't useful, then the game sucks..i mean come on just level up lol.
its like saying a skill at a low level should be as useful as the same skill at max level (skill level, not character level) or the game sucks.