What kind of crafting system do YOU want in AoC?

Im aware is too soon to start talking about the artisan system since there are a lot of things that need to be ironed out first like the combat. That said, I just read this 5 years old article about crafting systems in videogames and wanted to share it with you guys so we can have a discussion about what would be best for AoC in terms of crafting

Here is the article.

https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/5-approaches-to-crafting-systems-in-games-and-where-to-use-them--cms-22628

Personally I would like to see a variation of the "Made-to-Order Customization" since it allow a great deal of customization options by using different materials in the same recipes to get cool variations of the same weapon that are useful in different scenarios

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Comments

Moriawe

I'm so happy to see all the old SWG people here

What I loved about SWG (I know it has already been mentioned) was that you didn't loot THAT legendary weapon that were the ONE AND ONLY best thing in the game and made crafted weapons useless. You looted parts for weapons or armor and you went to your trusted armorsmith or weaponsmith and ordered that special gun/chestplate your wanted. That made good crafters valued allies. The crafters could in turn ask PvE people to harvest a special kind of fur or meat that had good stats this week (cause it kept changing and it was never the same numbers). It balanced the economy. Even low level weaponsmiths had a market in new players who needed a low level gun and as you rose in level you had a new clientel.

The fact that you could run your own store, decorate it and have it in a good spot, like right near the shuttleport or close to Mos Eisley. You could show of what you sold and make it personal (and also ban griefers or trolls). My favorite pasttime was just to browse around peoples stores.

As for recipes, maybe there are a few hidden in the world. Maybe some will be given to you as questrewards, maybe you'll unlock more as you level up or learn new skills or experimenting with new materials.

I'm not for minigames in crafting. A good crafter is good cause they know what they are doing, they have researched the right material, learned how to get the forge the right temperature to get it just right.

xydrassial

One with a lot of different crafting classes 20+ Eq2 amounts.

WhitneyHagasMatsumoto

As a perverted Japanese who has loved manufacturing since I was a kid and learned lathe and welding in high school, let me answer your questions !!!!!

I believe that the "joy of manufacturing" can be broadly categorized into the following three points
1. the never-ending challenge to acquire skills !
2. the production process itself !!
3. the joy of having others use what I have made !!!

The first and second points are related to the crafting system.
With that in mind, at the risk of sounding like an idiot, what I'm looking for is "Ironsmith Medieval Simulator" level crafting.
I'm sorry, I know my love for making things is too deep ......X(

I can't involve you all in my warped love, so I'll answer with "a system that tests the player's skills in moderation and is challenging".
I think that's too abstract to be helpful ......

(I will shed tears of joy if it really becomes an Ironsmith Medieval Simulator

)

*Sorry, I know it's a small thing, but I made a mistake with the name of the game, so I fixed it

×Ironsmith Simulator → Ironsmith Medieval Simulator

Songcaller

You will be disappointed with crafting if you expect excess parameters, mini games or strenuous activities. Steven mentioned the wheels of MMOs and stated the crafting will be the same wheel as other MMOs. This means one click to process all, and straightforward crafts with no skill required except the schematic.

The only RNG will be in Animal Husbandry and over enchanting. We might get SWG Styled components for crafts though. You could experiment with different materials of the same type to get different results but it won't be rng and the effects should be replicated with the right knowledge/notes/plans.

WhitneyHagasMatsumoto

@Neurath -san

I knew that would happen ......
But the node system alone is going to be enough to keep me excited about this game!

Whatever the crafting system is, I'm looking forward to one day having lots of people wearing the armor I made

Songcaller

Yeah, I'm pleased with the direction. I hope they can pull it off. Crafting should be a pleasure and not a chore. The kind of activity you can watch a stream/move or tv show while you process hundreds of ore or craft multiple items of the same type. I appreciate the recent updates from Steven.

Edit: Spelling mistakes.

Kionashi

Neurath wrote: »

You will be disappointed with crafting if you expect excess parameters, mini games or strenuous activities. Steven mentioned the wheels of MMOs and stated the crafting will be the same wheel as other MMOs. This means one click to process all, and straightforward crafts with no skill required except the schematic.

The only RNG will be in Animal Husbandry and over enchanting. We might get SWG Styled components for crafts though. You could experiment with different materials of the same type to get different results but it won't be rng and the effects should be replicated with the right knowledge/notes/plans.

well that depends on your concept of strenuous, I believe Steven stated that he want crafting to be time consuming....I just hope we don't get boring wait games to artificially consume time.like "put the ingot in the oven and come back in 2 hours"

Songcaller

Yeah, I believe Steven referred to the time taken to master the chosen path. Steven also said its 'Good to sit there with one hand and complete with one hand.'

Warth

What we know about the intentions for the AoC Crafting System so far:
Bold = confirmed
Strikethrough = confirmed not to be in the game
Cursive wasn't mentioned yet.

Lycancoffee wrote: »

Because of the mechanics explained above, here is why this system was so awesome:
No two weapons, even of the same kind and rarity, were ever exactly alike.

Because SWG had durability (the way AoC is planning to have) no piece of gear was forever.

The best crafters created meaningful relationships with the best harvesters, PvE players, and non-lifeskillers. Crafters sourced and competed for the best raw ingredients.

Even if your skill was low or you had poor tools, you still had a chance of creating an amazing piece of gear, or harvesting extremely valuable crafting materials, but higher skilled crafters and gatherers could do it better, and more reliably.

You weren't guaranteed to craft "the best item" out of the best ingredients, but having something less than the best ingredients could still let you craft something amazing.

Economies were localized and the best crafters became truly famous. Players would crowd outside their stores waiting for them to put their next great pieces on their vendor.

All crafted items had a "made by" id on them.

Crafters could ban other players and guilds from purchasing at their shop. Getting banned from the shops of the best crafting guild had meaningful impact to both PvE and PvP players.

While each type of crafted item had some measure of randomness. Weapons, armor, and other gear still had quality tiers depending on the difficulty of the NPC's needed to kill to get the rare components.

The best drops from NPCs were the rare/high quality materials that needed to be taken to a crafter to make the best gear. Awesome drops from hard npcs made crafters more valuable, instead of obsolete.

Overall, we can see that most system that were implemented by SWG are also meant to be in AoC.
Primarily, the RNG parts in crafting won't be part of it (which, in my personal opinion is a very good thing, as the RNG part is one thing i never really liked in the SWG system).

They do however intend to bring:
Competition for the best ingredients.

Valued Gatherers and Crafters, that are vital to the progression of a community and have a long progression path themselves to set them apart from other life-skiller.

"Full" Customizability on the items through the crafters + the made by Indicator

Durability increases that take meaningful resources to be repaired

Localized economies

A wide scale of different ingredient qualities that affect the crafting results similarily to SWG.

Warth

Warth wrote: »

What we know about the intentions for the AoC Crafting System so far:
Bold = confirmed
Strikethrough = confirmed not to be in the game
Cursive wasn't mentioned yet.

Lycancoffee wrote: »

Because of the mechanics explained above, here is why this system was so awesome:
No two weapons, even of the same kind and rarity, were ever exactly alike.

Because SWG had durability (the way AoC is planning to have) no piece of gear was forever.

The best crafters created meaningful relationships with the best harvesters, PvE players, and non-lifeskillers. Crafters sourced and competed for the best raw ingredients.

Even if your skill was low or you had poor tools, you still had a chance of creating an amazing piece of gear, or harvesting extremely valuable crafting materials, but higher skilled crafters and gatherers could do it better, and more reliably.

You weren't guaranteed to craft "the best item" out of the best ingredients, but having something less than the best ingredients could still let you craft something amazing.

Economies were localized

All crafted items had a "made by" id on them.

Crafters could ban other players and guilds from purchasing at their shop. Getting banned from the shops of the best crafting guild had meaningful impact to both PvE and PvP players.

While each type of crafted item had some measure of randomness. Weapons, armor, and other gear still had quality tiers depending on the difficulty of the NPC's needed to kill to get the rare components.

The best drops from NPCs were the rare/high quality materials that needed to be taken to a crafter to make the best gear. Awesome drops from hard npcs made crafters more valuable, instead of obsolete.

Overall, we can see that most system that were implemented by SWG are also meant to be in AoC.
Primarily, the RNG parts in crafting won't be part of it (which, in my personal opinion is a very good thing, as the RNG part is one thing i never really liked in the SWG system).

They do however intend to bring:
Competition for the best ingredients.

Valued Gatherers and Crafters, that are vital to the progression of a community and have a long progression path themselves to set them apart from other life-skiller.

"Full" Customizability on the items through the crafters + the made by Indicator

Durability increases that take meaningful resources to be repaired

Localized economies

A wide scale of different ingredient qualities that affect the crafting results similarily to SWG.

Songcaller

For gatherers there will also be constructed extraction structures like in SWG.

Kionashi

Neurath wrote: »

Yeah, I believe Steven referred to the time taken to master the chosen path. Steven also said its 'Good to sit there with one hand and complete with one hand.'

I don't get this quote...do he wants crafting to be easy?

Mowaby

Kionashi wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

Yeah, I believe Steven referred to the time taken to master the chosen path. Steven also said its 'Good to sit there with one hand and complete with one hand.'

I don't get this quote...do he wants crafting to be easy?

Crafting itself in the menu should be easy. Collecting the mats and recipes should be the hard part.

Voidwalkers

Suddenly had this idea:

If the devs want CRAFTing to be a one-button click without minigame, and the argument for that being "it gets tedious quickly", can we move the mini-game from the actual crafting to "recipe formulating" instead?

i.e. Whenever a crafter acquires a recipe, he gets a "base recipe". Then allow the crafter to play a "recipe improvement / customization / whatever" mini-game (player skill/knowledge/creativity/experience/level focused, master-able (but reasonably difficult), minimal RNG) to acquire a "my recipe" version of that base recipe??

Then the crafter can one-button craft off his own customized (better) version of the base recipe forever. Tedious-ness avoided.

How's that?

WhitneyHagasMatsumoto

@Voidwalkers -san
Let me tell you one thing. It's perfect.

You are the bridge between crazy people like me, who take pleasure in fixing my car's A-pillar with resin paint purchased from home improvement store when it's damaged, and sensible people who want a pleasant gaming experience.

I would even like him to be next to me if possible, and always be in charge of translating my passion to others. !!!!!

-PS-
I'm sorry.
I was bored with the lack of information on crafts and was just a little excited to come across this great suggestions.

Anyhow, I'm in favor of his idea.

maouw

Voidwalkers wrote: »

Suddenly had this idea:

If the devs want CRAFTing to be a one-button click without minigame, and the argument for that being "it gets tedious quickly", can we move the mini-game from the actual crafting to "recipe formulating" instead?

i.e. Whenever a crafter acquires a recipe, he gets a "base recipe". Then allow the crafter to play a "recipe improvement / customization / whatever" mini-game (player skill/knowledge/creativity/experience/level focused, master-able (but reasonably difficult), minimal RNG) to acquire a "my recipe" version of that base recipe??

Then the crafter can one-button craft off his own customized (better) version of the base recipe forever. Tedious-ness avoided.

How's that?

Oh this IS a good idea!
It means a crafter might buy 2 of the same recipes - one which he will customize for STR focus swords and another one focused on Attack Speed.

Voidwalkers

Thanks for the appreciation

Just had some more thoughts:

Along the same line, we could let the crafters have different options to modify the base recipes, e.g.

- customize: Each "try" consumes ... some consumables (notes? paper? ink?), and allow the player to reallocate stats of the base recipe with no to little overall improvement. (e.g. sacrifices durability for sharpness (crit rate / atk))

- experiment/prototyping: Each "try" consumes a portion of the materials as required by the base recipe (e.g. if the base recipe for mithril 1h sword costs 10 mithril ingot, may be make the prototype skill cost 5 mithril ingots to cast), starts a crafting minigame which let the player actually improve the overall stats (and may be altering the cost) of the recipe (e.g. end result being a custom mithril sword recipe which gives +20 durability but costs 11 mithril bars to craft).

- imagine/simulate: play the recipe improvement minigame at no cost, but you don't get to keep the resulting recipe. this exists purely for trial / exploration purposes.

The idea is to add a certain cost to recipe customization, so a crafter can't just sit there all day trying to improve recipes at zero cost (other than time)

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