My Dream for Crafting...

Everyone who is invested in AoC knows that one of its main foundational pillars is player crafting. It is one of the reasons I am very excited about Ashes. The thought of crafting, shipping goods, and protecting those goods in epic PvP combat fills me with equal parts joy and bloodlust.

I love crafting in MMOs and have spent many 100s of hours farming and crafting but one thing has always struck me as boring and lazy.

In almost all RPGs and MMOs I've played over the last two decades(too many), crafting has been the same for 20 years or more. The same cycle every time. Find items, click items in a menu, and wait for the item to craft. Collecting materials can be challenging and fun on occasion but usually, the crafting side of professions is boring non-gameplay. The only deterrent is it being mind-numbingly tedious. It makes me wonder what if crafting could be different, better, but how?

Imagine if crafting required skills beyond clicking the "create item" button. If there were sort of mini-games associated with each crafting skill. If certain crafting mini-games got very hard at a high level and only certain people on the server could manage to achieve a perfect craft based on their player skill. Sure almost everyone could make a decent piece of armor and you could grind to make great armor but "ArmorSmith McBadass" can just really get it maxed out because all he does is smith armor and is damn good at it.

I'd imagine blacksmithing would be about keeping the fire hot enough, heating the metal to the right temp to strike certain stats into it(+crit but -durability if it's super hot or w/e), and cooling the metal at the right time. I'm no smithing expert but I think a general idea is there.

I think it would add a very nice depth of gameplay and give people something they can just relax in town and grind some crafting skills that are actually fun and give players a chance to shine.

I don't think it's within Ashes of Creation's scope at this point because they are already tackling so many issues and pioneering new technologies but I have had this idea for a few years and would love to see it come to life.

What do you guys think about an active mini-game style crafting vs menu crafting?

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TheSgtPepper

Azherae wrote: »

DrPlague wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

My vote is yes to crafting mini games, not only for more fun but also to deter bots.

I won't be able to make my food and eat during those times. Mini games = more work for everyone. I doubt it will deter that many bots though if that's the case behind it. As a hardcore crafter I'm sure I'll be annoyed by them.

There is literally nothing you cannot make a bot to do.

Especially in this age when the underlying structures required for making bots are easily available, either custom ones that have been built over time due to all the other games, or just extremely boilerplate that is outright available on GitHub.

The only way to defeat bots is to make systems that require a person to think or grow (their character, separately from the system that then uses that growth), not just 'react'.

It's true

Nepoke

NiKr wrote: »

And that is exactly why I don't want minigames. It's about scale and relative amount of crafting per crafter. Guild will have just a few crafters, each specializing in some sub-branch of the system. Each of those crafters will be crafting those specific things for their entire guild (40+ people). So it's, at the very least, dozens upon dozens of crafts per crafter, with some of them crafting thousands of times. And all of those crafts will have to be perfect, because guilds will require that.

This is how things are in other MMOs (with poor crafting systems), and I don't think it should be the goal for Ashes. If crafting is going to be a major part of the game, why should a single smith be able to single handedly supply gear for a full guild? What I want to avoid is the situation that the guild just has "the guy" who gets resource dumped and he has the royal duty of pressing "the button" a bunch. In my eyes this is not really crafting, but rather an economic activity.

Try applying the same to other aspects of gameplay: "A guild will have just a few PvE players, each specializing in their own raid/farming zone. Since every PvEr will have to supply the whole guild, PvE shouldn't have needless chores like 'bosses' or 'mobs' because killing the same thing over and over is just repetetive and takes time"
Clearly bosses and mobs are a major part of gameplay, so this argument is absurd. Why can't crafting be the same?

Additionally, there seems to be an underlying assumption that a guild should be self sufficient in all important aspects of crafting, but this will undermine the interconnectivity that Ashes is trying to create. Consider this: If mass producing weapons at a guild scale would take a number of crafters of the same branch and specialized guild hall production facilities, guilds would have to specialize and trade with each other. This is big good.

To make multiple crafters neccessary, crafting must take time somehow. If there are no energy costs (which is a lazy way to time-gate crafting), then the crafting activity itself must take time. The cost doesn't have to be evenly spread between every activity. My solution? For example, with the current recipe system, if the best recipes are made by the crafters themselves in some intricate process, the individual items could be procduced quickly, but making a top tier recipe could take days. Since a single recipe only produces one thing, multiple crafters would have to work in parallel on different recipes to make all the axes, maces and halbers a guild needs. So if a guild is okay with just basic gear in some aspect, they can just dump basic PvE/Quest/Vendor recipies on their few crafters who will churn out gear. But if they want the good stuff, they'll have to specialize.

Are "minigames" a good thing? Probably not if I have to play a round of Peggle to produce a set of armor. But I refuse to believe that in the current year we can't come up with a crafting activity that isn't at least as engaging as fighting an elite mob. Seriously, great smiths banging metal has been such a power fantasy thing for ages, why can't that feeling be captured in a game?

Finally, just like botting will undermine any mechanical activity, so do wikis, guides and calculators undermine any intellectual activity. Once something is figured out, nowadays it will quickly become public information. The more complex the activity is made, the less people will want to figure it out themselves and eventually a tool will be made that just tells the player what to do. And now if you don't use the tool you will be behind everyone.

Hopefully Intrepid will manage to copy the SWG resource scarcity system, where resource scarcity drives invention and there is no clear optimum. The complexity of the system should also be kept at a level where a player doesn't have to open an excel sheet to understand what they are doing. Or at least the game should supply the excel sheet in the crafting menu.

Ludullu

Nepoke wrote: »

My solution? For example, with the current recipe system, if the best recipes are made by the crafters themselves in some intricate process, the individual items could be procduced quickly, but making a top tier recipe could take days. Since a single recipe only produces one thing, multiple crafters would have to work in parallel on different recipes to make all the axes, maces and halbers a guild needs. So if a guild is okay with just basic gear in some aspect, they can just dump basic PvE/Quest/Vendor recipies on their few crafters who will churn out gear. But if they want the good stuff, they'll have to specialize.

That sounds a bit like EVE's system. But while it makes sense in the context of hugeass cosmic ships being built or stuff for those sips being crafted/researched, I'm not sure if it would fit in AoC's lore. Or if players would even accept that kind of system.

I could maybe see a requirement for several crafters to make a single item cause irl some things would be made by several people at the same time, but this limits future crafting possibilities. What if you need 3 crafters of the top rank to craft some top item, but on the whole server there's only 2 crafters of that rank and they're in the warring guilds. You could say "that's the intended gameplay", but I'm not sure how many people would be ok with that kind of limitation.

Yes, you need cooperation and all that, but there should be a limit on how much cooperation any given thing requires. By the time you come to a point where you can craft the final item, you would have already spent hours upon hours of man-hours across several professions and several characters. Would that not be enough cooperation?

At the end of the day the game is trying to be competitive (considering open world bosses and pvp and shit), so cross-guild cooperation might not be the goal of its design. Either way, we'll have to see what exactly they have in mind for their system.

PenguinPaladin

With crafting leading to the best gear in ashes, crafting a sword isnt just welp there is a sword. You made THE sword. The best sword. Your best sword, that guys perfect sword. Complexity in the crafting to reflect that is okay imo. I wouldnt mind pretty difficult minigames for making top grade gear. Or minigames that progress in difficulty as the gear power scales.

Maybe even have a slider for difficulty/time. Maybe a master smith could spend an hour with an easy minigame for a master level sword, vs a difficult one for a few minutes

TheSgtPepper

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

With crafting leading to the best gear in ashes, crafting a sword isnt just welp there is a sword. You made THE sword. The best sword. Your best sword, that guys perfect sword. Complexity in the crafting to reflect that is okay imo. I wouldnt mind pretty difficult minigames for making top grade gear. Or minigames that progress in difficulty as the gear power scales.

Maybe even have a slider for difficulty/time. Maybe a master smith could spend an hour with an easy minigame for a master level sword, vs a difficult one for a few minutes

That's one of my favorite things about AoC is the crafting impact! Making THE sword is such a cool moment.

I like the idea on paper but if you can decrease the difficulty as you increase the time it would make it much easier to script for bots and more importantly diminishes the reward by making it more accessible.

I think the biggest issue though is that the highest tier of items also needs to have exclusivity or else it becomes a chore that you MUST have all BiS or you cant come to the late game raid/ Castle Siege/ etc rather than "Wow, did you see that guy had 3 perfect craft exotic armor pieces?" so I think it needs to be the hardest to craft requiring the hardest materials for gameplay and balance reasons.

PenguinPaladin

TheSgtPepper wrote: »

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

With crafting leading to the best gear in ashes, crafting a sword isnt just welp there is a sword. You made THE sword. The best sword. Your best sword, that guys perfect sword. Complexity in the crafting to reflect that is okay imo. I wouldnt mind pretty difficult minigames for making top grade gear. Or minigames that progress in difficulty as the gear power scales.

Maybe even have a slider for difficulty/time. Maybe a master smith could spend an hour with an easy minigame for a master level sword, vs a difficult one for a few minutes

That's one of my favorite things about AoC is the crafting impact! Making THE sword is such a cool moment.

I like the idea on paper but if you can decrease the difficulty as you increase the time it would make it much easier to script for bots and more importantly diminishes the reward by making it more accessible.

I think the biggest issue though is that the highest tier of items also needs to have exclusivity or else it becomes a chore that you MUST have all BiS or you cant come to the late game raid/ Castle Siege/ etc rather than "Wow, did you see that guy had 3 perfect craft exotic armor pieces?" so I think it needs to be the hardest to craft requiring the hardest materials for gameplay and balance reasons.

I think a difficulty slider vs time could also be useful for bartering as a smith. You only want to pay me X?.... then im not spending more that 10 minutes on this, and you get what you get.

Also the concept of crafting races for prestige. 10 smiths race for the best sword made.

Bot are going to be bots buddy. Either the subscription fee helps limit them, and their anti cheat and reporting to on staff game masters helps ban them. Or they are going to be there. And be programmed to do what they need to do. It doesnt matter how easy or difficult it is to program.

Also, i would argue programing a bot to do something hard, quickly would be more worth while than programing it to do something easy, but only be able to craft 4 things a day because of the time trade off...

Vlhadus

Just want to say that if they are going the profession route of Star Wars Galaxies then I'm on board. Just need to see a deep dive livestream on the profession system and I will be good

Iffithy

Pro mini game here. It makes me a a crafter feel like I accomplished something. I mean if I am just a mat funnel then I could easily be replaced with a box that says “insert mats here” and what is the point of that.

Also if the mini games deter some people from crafting then it makes the crafter/item more valuable

neuroguy

Reading through some of the comments (didn't read all), there are some really strong arguments against mini-games for crafting the final item. However, I do think there is still room for them in the game. I think actually, during the processing is the best place to implement it both practically and in terms of having some impact without feeling bad if you 'fail'.

Having to play a mini-game while gathering in a PvX game may not feel good, although it's already confirmed that some higher risk gathering activities (at least in fishing) will include mini-games for high reward. A mini-game for crafting a final product feels stressful, especially if it is a valuable item and the crafter is not confident. On the other hand, processing is done in cities/freeholds, the safest places in terms of PvX and has a straight forward input -> output relationship. If Steven decides to go with a SWTOR-like resource system with properties/quality for gathered material, then the mini-games in the processing step could push/pull properties with different potency based on how well they do. If a metal has some +str and +vitality quality, the mini-game would allow processors to either pull some +vitality into the +str or vise versa, curbing some of the gathering rng. This would allow some flexibility at the stage of processing, make that step of crafting more interactive and impactful and there is no 'failing' since you don't lose any stats. Also note that not engaging with the mini-game would also be an option to maintain the original stats of the gathered resource. The mini-games could in principle also impact total processing time and other "can't really fail" variables but anyways.

Azraya

I really don't have much input on this topic aside from my hope that when crafting, you can add whatever stats/enchants you want. You arent restricted to certain enchants/stats depending on the armor slot. It would be nice if you could even add HP and/or mana at the cost of lower stats on the item.

keenow

Yes! I'd really want mini-game-esque crafting! I'm so sick of loading bar crafting with clinking noises in the background. On this topic, there used to be a more cutesy crafting game I played as a kid that had minigame crafting and when you crafted something correctly x amount of times, ("Mastered" the recipe) you would then be given the option to automate it. So you could automate linen production, instead of doing it over and over again. If you "auto" made anything, it would give you the very mid-ground tier of the item, but if you played the minigame you could get extra stuff, like better stats on armor or more materials if it was like linen or iron or some other crafting material. ("You made bronze so well you made three extra for a total of 7!") Aka; the best gear/outcome was always made through success in the minigame, but you could always bypass it if you'd beaten that recipe's minigame before to make something quickly. You also had the option to mass-produce through the minigame. Say.. I want to make 20 chest pieces with this one minigame. The minigame was harder the more instances you stacked on it, but you had a chance to get twenty well-made chest pieces, you had an equal chance to ruin twenty chest pieces. It was very engaging-and fun! I found myself always opting to play the minigame even though I could bypass it with automation just because I liked to gamble on better gear.
Minigame crafting is infinitely more fun than loading bar crafting so I really hope they implement it in Ashes!

TheSgtPepper

TheSgtPepper wrote: »

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

With crafting leading to the best gear in ashes, crafting a sword isnt just welp there is a sword. You made THE sword. The best sword. Your best sword, that guys perfect sword. Complexity in the crafting to reflect that is okay imo. I wouldnt mind pretty difficult minigames for making top grade gear. Or minigames that progress in difficulty as the gear power scales.

Maybe even have a slider for difficulty/time. Maybe a master smith could spend an hour with an easy minigame for a master level sword, vs a difficult one for a few minutes

That's one of my favorite things about AoC is the crafting impact! Making THE sword is such a cool moment.

I like the idea on paper but if you can decrease the difficulty as you increase the time it would make it much easier to script for bots and more importantly diminishes the reward by making it more accessible.

I think the biggest issue though is that the highest tier of items also needs to have exclusivity or else it becomes a chore that you MUST have all BiS or you cant come to the late game raid/ Castle Siege/ etc rather than "Wow, did you see that guy had 3 perfect craft exotic armor pieces?" so I think it needs to be the hardest to craft requiring the hardest materials for gameplay and balance reasons.

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

I think a difficulty slider vs time could also be useful for bartering as a smith. You only want to pay me X?.... then im not spending more that 10 minutes on this, and you get what you get.

Also the concept of crafting races for prestige. 10 smiths race for the best sword made.

Bot are going to be bots buddy. Either the subscription fee helps limit them, and their anti cheat and reporting to on staff game masters helps ban them. Or they are going to be there. And be programmed to do what they need to do. It doesnt matter how easy or difficult it is to program.

Also, i would argue programing a bot to do something hard, quickly would be more worth while than programing it to do something easy, but only be able to craft 4 things a day because of the time trade off...

That's a pretty interesting idea. I just don't see many people opting for a 10 min mini-game that's also designed to be 4-8 seconds. Could it be more resources or some other factor than time? I think the ability to make a range of quality of the same weapon is what gives the player the ability to haggle

I love the race for prestige idea. I like the idea of people knowing their crafters by the quality of their craft.

Oh, I am aware of bots being unavoidable but mitigating them is never a bad idea. I have pointed out in other posts that the purpose of the mini-game crafting is "Fun". It also would deter bots but that is just a synergistic side bonus.

If you have to script a bot to do several actions it is much much harder to code and more taxing to run(so you can't run as many iterations) than a very simple bot that just goes to nodes and right clicks, that's just how it works. That's why you see more bots just grinding mobs or gathering at basic resource nodes and you don't typically see bots farming highly contested high-value resources.

TheSgtPepper

keenow wrote: »

Yes! I'd really want mini-game-esque crafting! I'm so sick of loading bar crafting with clinking noises in the background. On this topic, there used to be a more cutesy crafting game I played as a kid that had minigame crafting and when you crafted something correctly x amount of times, ("Mastered" the recipe) you would then be given the option to automate it. So you could automate linen production, instead of doing it over and over again. If you "auto" made anything, it would give you the very mid-ground tier of the item, but if you played the minigame you could get extra stuff, like better stats on armor or more materials if it was like linen or iron or some other crafting material. ("You made bronze so well you made three extra for a total of 7!") Aka; the best gear/outcome was always made through success in the minigame, but you could always bypass it if you'd beaten that recipe's minigame before to make something quickly. You also had the option to mass-produce through the minigame. Say.. I want to make 20 chest pieces with this one minigame. The minigame was harder the more instances you stacked on it, but you had a chance to get twenty well-made chest pieces, you had an equal chance to ruin twenty chest pieces. It was very engaging-and fun! I found myself always opting to play the minigame even though I could bypass it with automation just because I liked to gamble on better gear.
Minigame crafting is infinitely more fun than loading bar crafting so I really hope they implement it in Ashes!

Sounds like they implemented a lot of ideas I've had myself! Would love to know the game if you can remember it! I'm hoping ashes has something like this but I know it would be a HUGE undertaking and they have a full plate already.

TheSgtPepper

neuroguy wrote: »

Reading through some of the comments (didn't read all), there are some really strong arguments against mini-games for crafting the final item. However, I do think there is still room for them in the game. I think actually, during the processing is the best place to implement it both practically and in terms of having some impact without feeling bad if you 'fail'.

Having to play a mini-game while gathering in a PvX game may not feel good, although it's already confirmed that some higher risk gathering activities (at least in fishing) will include mini-games for high reward.

I believe a LOT of the high-quality materials will come from world bosses and other high-level PvE activities but I hadn't heard about the fishing one. I'm interested to see how they will implement this.

neuroguy wrote: »

A mini-game for crafting a final product feels stressful, especially if it is a valuable item and the crafter is not confident. On the other hand, processing is done in cities/freeholds, the safest places in terms of PvX and has a straight forward input -> output relationship.

I would argue that almost all crafting will be done on workbenches in relative safety. I may have an unpopular opinion but I actually like to feel stress when engaging in high-effort risk/reward activities. It feels terrible to fail but as long as it is within reason (not dozens of attempts for a single piece and it breaks if you fail) it feels even better to succeed, to me. If you make certain high-end pieces too strong or too easy to acquire they become socially required despite not being needed and you've engineered a chore for your players.

neuroguy wrote: »

If Steven decides to go with a SWTOR-like resource system with properties/quality for gathered material, then the mini-games in the processing step could push/pull properties with different potency based on how well they do. If a metal has some +str and +vitality quality, the mini-game would allow processors to either pull some +vitality into the +str or vise versa, curbing some of the gathering rng. This would allow some flexibility at the stage of processing, make that step of crafting more interactive and impactful and there is no 'failing' since you don't lose any stats. Also note that not engaging with the mini-game would also be an option to maintain the original stats of the gathered resource. The mini-games could in principle also impact total processing time and other "can't really fail" variables but anyways.

I really like this idea. Honestly, processors deserve some love too! This could add some really deep and cool customization options with gear. Thanks for the feedback!

I think the main concern definitely lies with the late game/high-impact items and the gameplay loop of crafting one.

CROW3

I thought alchemy in ESO was a fine version of a minigame. Making different combos and extrapolating what effects specific reagents had was great. Yes, folks can go look it up, and get what they want instantly, but for those who want the depth, it’s there.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

CROW3 wrote: »

Guilds will funnel resources to designated crafters anyway because of how crafting mastery works

And that is why I don't want minigames in crafting. Can't even imagine carfting hundreds and thousands of items through minigame

To me, this is kind of the point.

If crafting only takes resources and not time, everyone will be a master cratering some description. This would mean that no one has any marketable crafting to sell.

In order to have crafting being actually valuable, the process itself needs to take time - time the player needs to actively spend on only crafting.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

To me, this is kind of the point.

If crafting only takes resources and not time, everyone will be a master cratering some description. This would mean that no one has any marketable crafting to sell.

In order to have crafting being actually valuable, the process itself needs to take time - time the player needs to actively spend on only crafting.

We'll definitely have to see how they design the system itself. I've been a guild crafter multiple times and ~60% of my gameplay was purely crafting, even though it was just a "press button and get the item immediately". If Ashes makes it so that you can be a 100% crafter, because all you do is play the crafting minigame - I'm not sure if that's much better than me just spending the majority of my time crafting, while I can also do other stuff. Minigame doesn't make the experience more fun, unless Intrepid's attitude towards crafting minigames is the same as to pve content and they literally make a few dozen games with some rng in them, so it's literally a game within a game.

And if, by chance, they do go down that path, my main feedback is - I don't want that. I'm gonna be a crafter and I want to craft a shitton of things for my node. But I do not want to spend literally my whole gameplay just crafting and not doing anything else.

Azherae

I expect to be the processor for my group.

I like it.

I like it in lots of games, and I don't mind a minigame. But I don't want anyone to get the illusion that a minigame that is even slightly repetitive is in any way a solution to either botting or interest. Those that are interesting are usually bottable (I mean, basically they all are except one specific kind that no one will put in as a PROCESSING minigame), and those that aren't worth botting are not interesting.

Once again though, I don't hate minigames for processing, I just don't agree that they have a real purpose except as a stopgap for games with poor itemization.

For actual item crafting such as Armorsmithing and so on, I have no strong opinion other than 'people will bot this if a bot can achieve a perfect result and anything else is dangerous to that perfect result'. I believe you can fight botting with itemization but not with minigames.

TheSgtPepper

Azherae wrote: »

Once again though, I don't hate minigames for processing, I just don't agree that they have a real purpose except as a stopgap for games with poor itemization.

I think it is more fun to play a 4-8 second mini-game rather than watch a bar fill for 4-8 seconds. Could just be a total difference of opinion. It would certainly get stale but I would do two things. 1.) Have an auto-craft button so you can skip the mini-game for a small penalty to the quality of the good. 2.) After X amount of perfect crafts with Y item you can now auto-craft a perfect quality Y item (maybe limit to per day or some CD for end game stuff). So you never end up doing the same thing over and over and over unless you want to.

Azherae wrote: »

For actual item crafting such as Armorsmithing and so on, I have no strong opinion other than 'people will bot this if a bot can achieve a perfect result and anything else is dangerous to that perfect result'. I believe you can fight botting with itemization but not with minigames.

The mini-game's purpose is not to fight bots but it would theoretically make it harder. I tend to not find bot arguments too convincing because nearly every game is plagued with bots. If it isn't botting its hacks. Sometimes it's both. We can only hope Intrepid hires GMs and/or takes active measures to reduce hacks and bots because they will certainly be there.

Azherae

TheSgtPepper wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Once again though, I don't hate minigames for processing, I just don't agree that they have a real purpose except as a stopgap for games with poor itemization.

I think it is more fun to play a 4-8 second mini-game rather than watch a bar fill for 4-8 seconds. Could just be a total difference of opinion. It would certainly get stale but I would do two things. 1.) Have an auto-craft button so you can skip the mini-game for a small penalty to the quality of the good. 2.) After X amount of perfect crafts with Y item you can now auto-craft a perfect quality Y item (maybe limit to per day or some CD for end game stuff). So you never end up doing the same thing over and over and over unless you want to.

Azherae wrote: »

For actual item crafting such as Armorsmithing and so on, I have no strong opinion other than 'people will bot this if a bot can achieve a perfect result and anything else is dangerous to that perfect result'. I believe you can fight botting with itemization but not with minigames.

The mini-game's purpose is not to fight bots but it would theoretically make it harder. I tend to not find bot arguments too convincing because nearly every game is plagued with bots. If it isn't botting its hacks. Sometimes it's both. We can only hope Intrepid hires GMs and/or takes active measures to reduce hacks and bots because they will certainly be there.

Let me clarify.

If you tell me 'If you don't like to play the minigame then you can take a penalty instead, but it will take the same amount of time', you have incentivized me to bot or quit if the minigame annoys me.

And when I say bots I do not mean something that is 'this whole character is a bot'.

I mean 'the person has got to the point where they want to afk craft for a while because they don't like the minigame but somehow have a ton of things to craft anyway'. Then that person boots up a script with some parameters and it runs.

> .processing-ai.sh --config "lb-ingot" -r 60

It makes 60 ingots and stops.

It mimics the player that did the thing. What is Intrepid's anti-botting measure looking for in this case?

Child Item