Tradeskills - current crafting system

Shadow Phoenix

I understand that this is a bare-bones setup for crafting, and if the intent is to revamp the entire process, then please disregard the following feedback. However, given the current iteration, these are my relevant feelings on the system:

Tradeskills, by name, implies skill involved. At the current setup, all I have to do to craft ANYTHING is input the amount I want (not choose, but a set amount) provide the mats and walk away while it processes for me.

There are plenty of examples of skill based crafting in other games, and I'm sure many of us have tried them out. Some are good, some not so much, but at least there's some input from the player to adjust the crafting process.

Please adjust the current crafting iteration to include some form of skill from the player during the process, and not to just be a click and wait system.

Shadow Phoenix

PS: I forgot to add:

Why does Crafting/Gathering reward combat/adventure xp? The 2 systems have nothing to do with one another. I don't learn to swing a sword by chopping trees, and I certainly don't learn to tank mobs by flipping burgers at the cooking station.

JesterLo

I wholeheartedly agree with you. Crafting needs to involve player skill.

If no skill is required for crafting, then the best crafters are the players who find the most and/or best resources.

As mentioned elsewhere:
Good adventurer = good crafter
If the stats and quality of the crafted items only depends on the rarity of the ingredients, then everything you can achieve in this game depends on how well you (or someone you pay) are at fighting/adventuring:

Fight a dragon -> Gather "Dragons Breath" -> "Craft" flaming sword
Survive a night at a corrupted grave yard -> Gather "Wiggling Bones" -> "Craft" Living Armor
Defeat Giant Tortoise -> Gather it's shield -> "Craft" Shield of Giantness

Rumour

Will the gathering nodes end up being more organic? Stone and minerals up in the mountains, flowers in a valley sort of thing, mushrooms under trees, feels like there's just piles of nodes plopped about randomly, really hope there are nodes in the water, have not found any yet.

JesterLo

I would also like to see something like that. The trees Western Larch and Eastern Hemlock are mostly found at higher elevations. So I guess that sort of local difference in placement of gatherables could be more prominent in the future.

LordPax

Big disagree. As much immersion that having a "mini game" would introduce, its video game, and that system would be 'gameified' and broken. It would end up being one more additional step in an already complex web of artisan skills.

Also, the adventurer xp is glorious - I can be a life skiller AND gain marginal leveling experience!

Shadow Phoenix

LordPax wrote: »

Big disagree. As much immersion that having a "mini game" would introduce, its video game, and that system would be 'gameified' and broken. It would end up being one more additional step in an already complex web of artisan skills.

By this response, shouldn't we just switch the combat system to: Walk up to mob, input 3 different skills, walk away for 20 min and come back and collect the loot? No reason to complicate matters, right?

It's an MMO, the whole point is immersion. There's an ENTIRE discussion based around IMMERSION. The current artisan system isn't a tradeskill system, it's a commission system. It's like walking up to the counter at a restaurant and giving them the ingredients, coming back a few minutes later and collecting your order.

LordPax wrote: »

Also, the adventurer xp is glorious - I can be a life skiller AND gain marginal leveling experience!

Then give us artisan xp (or gathering xp - player chooses what class) when killing mobs. "Hey look guys, I just killed a Highwayman (loots high heels, suspenders and a bra) and I just leveled up my Lumberjacking!!"

Shadow Phoenix

As was also recently pointed out to me, giving Adventure xp for Tradeskill and not the other way around is setting crafters as second class, viewing them as less important.

I would also like to point out, that granting crafting classes adventure xp allows someone to work off possible corruption in a safe environment (like a homestead/guild house with no guards around) with no repercussions.

Mardrik

Everquest 2 was near and dear to me. So much complexity and interdependence. Skill was required to craft and did that ever feel tense/exciting when using a truly rare ingredient you could mess up if not doing your best. I am hopeful though that the skill components are something to come still. With the intent they have shown for crafters and healthy economy, I would be surprised if crafting was left as it is now.

Mtndewme

While I could go either way in this, I barely have time to level, much less gather all the things I need for the "basic" crafting that is in right now. That being said, Phase II introduces the artisan skill trees which I'm sure will be where the "crafting" XP ends up going to. So in a way, I'm sure that it will be seperated in the future.

kadimir

Shadow Phoenix wrote: »

It's an MMO, the whole point is immersion. There's an ENTIRE discussion based around IMMERSION.

This is the worst viewpoint to start from. Here's some advice; Go by a VR headset and some single player games.

MMO = massively multiplayer online.

The thing that makes MMO's different than other RPGs is the SOCIAL ASPECT. if you're looking for immersion in a game where someone runs by with the name "WaffleTank"(Sorry buddy, first one who came to mind) then you're fighting a losing battle. The role of crafting in MMO's strength, social aspects, is the economy and dynamic of relying on other players. The important thing here is how crafting plays a role in the games economy - as some players have just as much fun becoming obscenely wealthy as other players have fun defeating the hardest content or becoming notorious in pvp. I know I'm not alone in rotating these facets of games.

That said, I've got a whole lot of opinions on the current system and I've been collecting my thoughts on it. Problem is - I don't know what will change and what won't but I do plan on eventually making a thread completely obliterating the processing professions from existence when it comes to poor game design. Probably won't change the development direction of the game, but I will hopefully arm the devs that worked on the game with enough ammo to prevent it from making it into another game they work on XD. Outside the fact that processing professions have no right to exist and result in artificial restrictions causing very little artistan diversity at the end game for an entirely AFK 'wait for bars to fill' anti fun craft - there's no real reason to talk about the current crafting system in terms of an overhaul perspective because it's too early in dev. I will say it's worth discussing the actual balance of time spent/ect. If it takes so many swords that they over saturate the economy and have to be sold at a loss just to level weaponsmithing - then it's not balanced correctly. if it takes 10x the leather than you get from leveling hunting to level leatherworking - it's not balanced. These are things worth keeping in check - because no matter if it's bar fillin' or mini gamin' this is a factor that exists either way and will literally make or break the economy and professions as a whole.