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Just a suggestion regarding the Artisan class
Dolyem
Member
This isn't so much a post on recommending different types of branches for the artisan classes, but simply a mechanic to keep artisan profession mastery relevant.
In previous interviews and dev talks, intrepid has explained that you can only master 1 artisan class, which benefits the player by being able to gather, process, or craft rare/legendary items that you wouldn't be able to otherwise if you aren't mastered in the required artisan class. And that is good.
My only concern is that this means mastering a artisan class only matters for endgame, and otherwise doesn't really affect your progression through professions or even your ability to make items to assist you on your way to max level( in other words, crafting better gear or consumables).
What I would suggest is to make different tiers of rare materials, processing said materials, and maybe even items that can be crafted with those materials. What this would entail is basically rare resources that aren't necessarily for max level but are potentially useful at lower levels. These items would require you to have chosen your artisan class in which you want to master in order for you to make the rare resources/items.
This would be mostly for gathering and processing, seeing as from what information we have so far, anyone can gather or process things, and that would cause master-crafters to only rely on other players for the rare materials and not so much the common or uncommon materials that they themselves could go farm and/or process.
Obviously my main concern is relevancy through early game, not just endgame, for each artisan class. I won't sit here acting like its the best idea but its the only one that comes to mind. Everyone feel free to criticize or even add better suggestions that would make mastering an artisan class hold relevance throughout the progression process and not just in endgame.
In previous interviews and dev talks, intrepid has explained that you can only master 1 artisan class, which benefits the player by being able to gather, process, or craft rare/legendary items that you wouldn't be able to otherwise if you aren't mastered in the required artisan class. And that is good.
My only concern is that this means mastering a artisan class only matters for endgame, and otherwise doesn't really affect your progression through professions or even your ability to make items to assist you on your way to max level( in other words, crafting better gear or consumables).
What I would suggest is to make different tiers of rare materials, processing said materials, and maybe even items that can be crafted with those materials. What this would entail is basically rare resources that aren't necessarily for max level but are potentially useful at lower levels. These items would require you to have chosen your artisan class in which you want to master in order for you to make the rare resources/items.
This would be mostly for gathering and processing, seeing as from what information we have so far, anyone can gather or process things, and that would cause master-crafters to only rely on other players for the rare materials and not so much the common or uncommon materials that they themselves could go farm and/or process.
Obviously my main concern is relevancy through early game, not just endgame, for each artisan class. I won't sit here acting like its the best idea but its the only one that comes to mind. Everyone feel free to criticize or even add better suggestions that would make mastering an artisan class hold relevance throughout the progression process and not just in endgame.
1
Comments
If the issue is keeping crafting relevant during leveling, adding rare resources to the lower tier seems like it would instead slow your crafting progress in the early to mid game. Thus if you were most concerned with leveling, you would forego looking for those rare materials, stunting your crafting growth, and outleveling your crafted gear. Especially since some of those rare resources might not even spawn near the node you call home, which means you would need to either purchase them or travel/find/return those materials from where they do spawn.
Also I kinda fail to see why mastery being end game is an issue at all, seems rather obvious mastering something would come at the end of progression not in the middle or start. Even though technically someone could master an Artisan class before leveling at all if they have the money to purchase what they need, since growth in one is not tied to the other.
Lastly, IS has said that low level resources will be needed even in end game crafting, which would logically then apply to mid tier resources, as well as mid and low tier processing and crafting. That alone should help make all periods of growth in the artisan classes relevant to some degree.
My other concern would be relevancy of processors in particular, seeing as they will likely just be fed raw materials by guilds allowing them to progress in each branch rather quickly. Thus making the need of many processors nonexistent seeing as a few would do the job just fine. To counter this I suppose you could make it time consuming to process many materials, thus making more processors a more efficient venture. But even then I doubt that would be a big deal to most. Just feel like the "middle man" artisan class isn't going to have a prominent relevance outside of guilds, except maybe in animal husbandry.
I dont know, I feel like I am rambling now.
To your first paragraph, I think efficiency is exactly what will create the need to utilize others and the market. Even if you can gather everything, how long will that take, once again especially if not everything spawns everywhere in the world. Heck even in WoW a game that is super easy to craft in, and gather most materials, you still buy a ton of base materials instead of doing it all yourself. I could easily go get my own Copper Ore, but why waste time doing that when I can buy a stack for like 1g or something minuscule, and get right into smelting it.
Also we still have no idea how much you can level other professions, or how easy it will be to do so. So it might be super inefficient, from a character leveling perspective, to be trying to keep all your professions(or even just several) up to date as you level. Therefore again I think needing the market will be very much in play. I do agree with you that there should be a cap to how high you can take your non main Artisan Classes. I would even advocate for not allowing anyone to level more than a couple professions, within that Artisan class, and none at all outside of your Artisan class. So if you are a gatherer, you might focus on Herbalism and Mining, but that means you are not cutting trees down, or taming animals etc, unless they are super basic, and you cannot smelt a single ingot, or make anything with that ore at all.
To your second paragraph that is a good question. There is a poll right now about what Artisan paths, and professions people will choose, and interestingly it seems processors are already in the major minority, and a seemingly vast majority of those will be going Animal Husbandry. Now that poll is just one small data point, but I think if that holds true, its more likely that processors will be the bottleneck of the crafting pathway instead of over represented or useless. However with so little info out about the Artisan classes, it is too early to know if processing will just be simple smelting type activity or if there are other more specific uses of processors that make that Artisan class more enticing.
I'd like the crafting progression to be fully balanced for all levels. The leveling should be pretty slow as well so that crafting is more important. Way too often in MMO's I don't even bother with crafting half the time because I outlevel the content before I am even able to build my professions up. Then when I hit max level I am doing them as a chore and not as a meaningful part of the game.
It would be really nice if this game avoided that trap.
U.S. East
I agree that there should be caps to artisan trees and professions you don't master. I agree with @Dicdonya that it makes sense for this to be related to how similar a profession is to a character's "mastered" profession. I also agree with @Yuyukoyay that I would love for the profession system to be fun and balanced throughout leveling up (both class and profession). My concern is that gatherers dominate the field because there is no relevant reason for refiners or crafters to leave towns. This issue could be made worse if gatherers are better at gathering even low level material. Speaking from the perspective of a role player who loves to be the guild master crafter, I don't want to feel like I'm wasting time on my main character as a refiner/crafter if an alt would get the job done.
I really like the idea of playing with efficiency for gatherers, but IMO there needs to be an incentive to push all three artisan paths into the field, especially if the AoC team makes good on their promise that rare/high level material will spawn randomly not based by zone level (sorry can't find the source, but I'm 99% sure I heard this). So gatherers, well they gather obviously, but I was thinking maybe only crafters could have a chance of farming certain crafting recipes. So even if you gather legendary dragon hide, no one gets the recipe for dragon hide armor unless a crafter is harvesting dragons.
I also worry about the refinement bottleneck. In the sage words of my wife, "Seriously, no one wants to turn rocks into blocks... boooring." I might make taming a refinement profession alongside animal husbandry ("refining" a wild animal into a tame one?). That way refiners would need to take to the field to tame and rear pets/mounts needed for overland travel. Anyway now I feel like I'm rambling, but that's my lowly opinion on how we might keep all 3 trees relevant throughout leveling.