About the proposed minigames for crafting

When you design this for our testing pleasure in A2, please consider your target audience. While there are many demographics that enjoy crafting, a big part of of them are not twitch skill gods or finger ninjas due to age or disabilities or just temperament. They enjoy the more leisurely pace that the artisan skills often provide.

So please, any minigames, or gameplay layers as Steven called them in the AMA, don't make them hard quick time action types or where a very high precision is required for the best results.

Obviously any gameplay layers need to not be tedious after the 100th time either.

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Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I'm gonna go ahead and say that's your guild's 'fault'.

If they collected resources for 20 sets of armor, and it didn't take THEM multiple days to collect, you are in a high throughput guild. For some people this is great. If one doesn't like it, don't join that kind.

In my opinion it SHOULD be that they will stagger this depending on your time and interest. Or, in AoC's case, since the preprocessing would be done by ME, not by you...

You'd log in and find that I put materials for you to craft 4 sets (or 20 Helmets) in your 'inbox', you'd do those, and then go do something else, and the next day it would be another 4 sets (or 20 gloves).

But that's the thing though. I feel like the game would almost require you to do this if you wanna succeed.

You want the reputation of the "best crafter around"? You gotta be the fastest to the top and always be available to craft stuff for people, be it through your stall or in person.

You want your guild to be at the peak performance at all times? You gotta craft everything you can for them asap. Why should a guild gimp themselves just to let you work less?

Obviously those kinds of guilds will be on the rarer side in the grand scheme of things, but what I'm mainly asking for is just some way to do crafting at big scales w/o the requirement for the minigame, because I know for sure that each and every dedicated crafter of a hardcore guild will have to go through thousands of those minigames and I'd assume that it'll get tedious pretty quickly.

Now there's a chance that gear acquisition will be so damn slow that this 1k crafts will be spread over weeks of gameplay. And while I'd be totally fine with that, I dunno how the masses would see it. I'm used to getting a single new piece of gear after a week of grinding money/mats for it, but afaik that's a very oldschool line of thinking.

Just a week? Y'all whippersnappers!

Back in MY day we had to farm FIFTEEN WEEKS just to buy a new Status Removal Spell!

(Statements made in this response are hyperbole and may not reflect the reality of "Scroll of Erase" acquisition)

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I'm gonna go ahead and say that's your guild's 'fault'.

If they collected resources for 20 sets of armor, and it didn't take THEM multiple days to collect, you are in a high throughput guild. For some people this is great. If one doesn't like it, don't join that kind.

In my opinion it SHOULD be that they will stagger this depending on your time and interest. Or, in AoC's case, since the preprocessing would be done by ME, not by you...

You'd log in and find that I put materials for you to craft 4 sets (or 20 Helmets) in your 'inbox', you'd do those, and then go do something else, and the next day it would be another 4 sets (or 20 gloves).

But that's the thing though. I feel like the game would almost require you to do this if you wanna succeed.

You want the reputation of the "best crafter around"? You gotta be the fastest to the top and always be available to craft stuff for people, be it through your stall or in person.

You want your guild to be at the peak performance at all times? You gotta craft everything you can for them asap. Why should a guild gimp themselves just to let you work less?

Obviously those kinds of guilds will be on the rarer side in the grand scheme of things, but what I'm mainly asking for is just some way to do crafting at big scales w/o the requirement for the minigame, because I know for sure that each and every dedicated crafter of a hardcore guild will have to go through thousands of those minigames and I'd assume that it'll get tedious pretty quickly.

Now there's a chance that gear acquisition will be so damn slow that this 1k crafts will be spread over weeks of gameplay. And while I'd be totally fine with that, I dunno how the masses would see it. I'm used to getting a single new piece of gear after a week of grinding money/mats for it, but afaik that's a very oldschool line of thinking.

Anyways now a more serious response:

I don't understand large guilds that have only one crafter.

I don't understand the concept of being 'the best crafter around' to the point where you not only have no competition, but you are EXPECTED to play like this. That said I do know people that DO play like this, and then utterly enjoy it, so I don't see why we wouldn't support their dream.

But I don't see any connection here. Expected by who? If you want to be the absolute top, then yes, you often sacrifice some fun. In fact, I think most competitive games AUTOMATICALLY work this way, because humans only have fun doing the same thing for X period, but pushing beyond that to double the same time has payoffs.

Infinite fun, were it possible, would lead to infinite gains across all enjoyers. It's baked into Game Theory that if you want to be the BEST at something in a game, you will sacrifice some fun unless you have a VERY high tolerance/aptitude for the activity, in which case, good for you, you are naturally the best.

I already know your opinion on that, so.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Just a week? Y'all whippersnappers!

Back in MY day we had to farm FIFTEEN WEEKS just to buy a new Status Removal Spell!

(Statements made in this response are hyperbole and may not reflect the reality of "Scroll of Erase" acquisition)

Same as my statements for the "week"

But with you knowing how long it could take to get stuff, do you think that kind of design would fly these days? Everyone seems to want everything right here right now.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Just a week? Y'all whippersnappers!

Back in MY day we had to farm FIFTEEN WEEKS just to buy a new Status Removal Spell!

(Statements made in this response are hyperbole and may not reflect the reality of "Scroll of Erase" acquisition)

Same as my statements for the "week" But with you knowing how long it could take to get stuff, do you think that kind of design would fly these days? Everyone seems to want everything right here right now.

I think it HAS to.

MMOs falter when things don't take long to get.

Also, part of this is from your lower experience with hard PvE, but for your reference, no one, I don't think even the TOP guilds, will care about the literal best gear BEFORE going to fight a hard boss.

If you don't die like 20 times before you even know what to DO with certainty, then it's not very hard. Mathematically there would be no progression pyramid.

This happens in PvP games too against top players. If you ditch the matchmaking and find a REALLY good player willing to keep fighting you, it takes 10-20 matches before you can even figure out what to do, far less manage to do it. At that point, your 'ability to win/learn because you do more damage or survive longer' is only minimally affected by the types of gear gaps I'm used to.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

That said I do know people that DO play like this, and then utterly enjoy it, so I don't see why we wouldn't support their dream.

But I don't see any connection here. Expected by who? If you want to be the absolute top, then yes, you often sacrifice some fun. In fact, I think most competitive games AUTOMATICALLY work this way, because humans only have fun doing the same thing for X period, but pushing beyond that to double the same time has payoffs.

If minigame tedium is the sacrifice I'll have to make to achieve my dream of being the very best like no one ever was, I am ready to make that sacrifice. I'm just giving feedback on the fact that it might not be the best sacrifice to make.

Tie the minigame to scale crafting. Maybe if you can perfectly beat the minigame your crafting triggers multiple times, if your mats allow for that. Or maybe you gotta do some special action during the minigame to trigger multicrafting. Neither of those things would impact casual crafters in any way, but they would remove tedium from scale crafters.

Mag7spy

Could do like three types

1. Fast crafting where you get your items instantly. Wouldn't recommend for making the best gear int he game
2. Slow crafting where you throw it in there and it takes a while in the oven to make
3. Mini game crafting that can reduce how long it is in the oven and has the highest chance to craft better stats

This way people that hate crafting can still not use the system it will just take longer. And people that want to craft and spend time in town crafting rather than adventuring can do so to make better items and increase their xp faster.

Pretty much my base idea on it so everyone is happy.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Also, part of this is from your lower experience with hard PvE, but for your reference, no one, I don't think even the TOP guilds, will care about the literal best gear BEFORE going to fight a hard boss.

If you don't die like 20 times before you even know what to DO with certainty, then it's not very hard. Mathematically there would be no progression pyramid.

This happens in PvP games too against top players. If you ditch the matchmaking and find a REALLY good player willing to keep fighting you, it takes 10-20 matches before you can even figure out what to do, far less manage to do it. At that point, your 'ability to win/learn because you do more damage or survive longer' is only minimally affected by the types of gear gaps I'm used to.

I meant best gear at your stage of progress.

Wouldn't you need to be your best self to even see if it's possible to beat the boss at your progress stage? Or is that bad Lost Ark-like design of gear score that's not applicable to the games you've played?

ClintHardwood

Mag7spy wrote: »

Could do like three types

1. Fast crafting where you get your items instantly. Wouldn't recommend for making the best gear int he game
2. Slow crafting where you throw it in there and it takes a while in the oven to make
3. Mini game crafting that can reduce how long it is in the oven and has the highest chance to craft better stats

This way people that hate crafting can still not use the system it will just take longer. And people that want to craft and spend time in town crafting rather than adventuring can do so to make better items and increase their xp faster.

Pretty much my base idea on it so everyone is happy.

This is terrible. Please don't do this. You'll be pissing money onto the wind if you're not using minigame crafting, so basically everyone will be forced to use it. How you think people play is not how they'll actually play.

Depraved

Azherae wrote: »

I'm gonna go ahead and say that's your guild's 'fault'.

If they collected resources for 20 sets of armor, and it didn't take THEM multiple days to collect, you are in a high throughput guild. For some people this is great. If one doesn't like it, don't join that kind.

In my opinion it SHOULD be that they will stagger this depending on your time and interest. Or, in AoC's case, since the preprocessing would be done by ME, not by you...

You'd log in and find that I put materials for you to craft 4 sets (or 20 Helmets) in your 'inbox', you'd do those, and then go do something else, and the next day it would be another 4 sets (or 20 gloves).

lol back then it would take several months to collect resources to craft 1 set

unless you were playing in a high rates private server, or hardcore RMTing in retail. even if you were botting 24/7, it would take a long time. to give you a reference, i met this guy who botted with 18 accounts, and it took him 2 months+ to craft 1 set, that wasnt even the hardest set (it was a dark crystal robe) for his main. oh and you had 60% chance to fail each piece when you crafted

iirc steven has said that crafting will take time, effort, and will be a long process. i imagine it will be similar to early l2, so no, u wont be crafting 20 items every day or even every week

in cases like that, a minigame is ok if you can improve the quality of the gear.

he has also said that after you craft your gear, you can add things to it, like stats or elements ( i guess from jewelcrafting?) or modify the tats iirc. so yeah even more crafting

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Also, part of this is from your lower experience with hard PvE, but for your reference, no one, I don't think even the TOP guilds, will care about the literal best gear BEFORE going to fight a hard boss.

If you don't die like 20 times before you even know what to DO with certainty, then it's not very hard. Mathematically there would be no progression pyramid.

This happens in PvP games too against top players. If you ditch the matchmaking and find a REALLY good player willing to keep fighting you, it takes 10-20 matches before you can even figure out what to do, far less manage to do it. At that point, your 'ability to win/learn because you do more damage or survive longer' is only minimally affected by the types of gear gaps I'm used to.

I meant best gear at your stage of progress.

Wouldn't you need to be your best self to even see if it's possible to beat the boss at your progress stage? Or is that bad Lost Ark-like design of gear score that's not applicable to the games you've played?

Those games have laughably bad design.

As mentioned, those 'DPS checks' and other things you see in modern games are just a simplification. They are 'the result of someone who understood only part of older games recreating the part they understand'. I could rant for hours.

The crafting minigame options available for Intrepid's use are many and I am sure they have people on staff with at LEAST my skill level, wouldn't you assume so too?

I doubt there's any need to outline to them all the things they can do to make MMO crafting good. The reason other MMOs don't do it isn't because they can't figure out what to do, it's that they are catering to players who don't want to do harder things, and they limit the potential of the systems based on that.

This is true for nearly everything in 'modern' MMOs. Ashes is in no way required to do the same. Their challenge is actually the one I focus on:

"How can I make this as understandable as possible without dumbing it down?"

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

The crafting minigame options available for Intrepid's use are many and I am sure they have people on staff with at LEAST my skill level, wouldn't you assume so too?

I hope so. I usually assume way too many things (as recently shown by my posts), so it's better to just hope and then see whether the hope was met with reality.

Strevi

I am looking forward to the mini-games where I collect eggs and butcher the chicken

Also milking the cows might be interesting.
Not to mention the animal husbandry.

Azherae

Well then, let's hedge our bets.

In all arrogance, the optimal way for any 'crafting minigame' to work is this:

1) Player begins production
2) One of a subset of random things appropriate to that stage of production happens
3) Player responds by utilizing some very common item (part of the craft itself, functionally) to remedy the status and prevent some RNG-ish degredation of quality
4) Player can also choose not to respond and bet on it not getting worse, to save material (so 2 'ticks' of BadThing requires you to respond, on the first tick you can just 'bet it will resolve itself to save materials and speed up the process while you do some other step)
5) If Player does not have the material or does nothing, on Tick 2, they lose some quality. If they respond but only on tick 2, the chance of negatives (instead of just normal crafting) increases on subsequent ticks.
6) Player can prevent chances of specific negatives by using specific ingredients to begin with (rewards knowledge and gathering) thereby saving on DIFFERENT costs (the stuff needed to prevent/counter those negatives).

Result is that people have their own methods, recipes, etc.

Areas and nodes, too. If you have a lot of 'X resistant ore' that prevents Negative Status A while smelting, in an area, you would get a lot of crafters who don't bother with 'Negative Status Counter Item A' in that region.

A player in a region with neither has to choose if to import 'X Resistant Ore' from far away, or 'Import Regular Ore from closer and also Negative Status Counter Item A'.

The minigame is in pressing the buttons and deciding your risks according to your materials, since 'responding to every fluctuation' takes up 'Crafting Steps' or something that could be used to get closer to High Quality results (if Ashes even has these, I think so far we only know there's less chance of total failure). Doesn't even need to be though, the crafting could be guaranteed but the amount of time and materials required to make sure it finishes, is 'RNG'. Product is a given, Process is not.

There. Now we just wait for it to be better than the above.

EDIT: At least when this is botted (because it can and will be) the bot has to calculate odds, doesn't benefit that much, uses up more material whenever playing it safe, and everyone's bot is different (add enough minutiae in configuration and only dedicated botters and programmers will fine tune it for everything)

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

6) Player can prevent chances of specific negatives by using specific ingredients to begin with (rewards knowledge and gathering) thereby saving on DIFFERENT costs (the stuff needed to prevent/counter those negatives).

If there's a way to prevent any failures by using proper mats - I'd be happy with a system like this.

Mag7spy

ClintHardwood wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Could do like three types

1. Fast crafting where you get your items instantly. Wouldn't recommend for making the best gear int he game
2. Slow crafting where you throw it in there and it takes a while in the oven to make
3. Mini game crafting that can reduce how long it is in the oven and has the highest chance to craft better stats

This way people that hate crafting can still not use the system it will just take longer. And people that want to craft and spend time in town crafting rather than adventuring can do so to make better items and increase their xp faster.

Pretty much my base idea on it so everyone is happy.

This is terrible. Please don't do this. You'll be pissing money onto the wind if you're not using minigame crafting, so basically everyone will be forced to use it. How you think people play is not how they'll actually play.

That is the point as it gives a avenue for people that want to be int he city and craft to do that while having their own gameplay loop. And the people that don't use the instant method or slower method while making money and adventuring.

So you aren't really pissing money out you are just doing the gameplay you enjoy both people having ways to make additional money.

Strevi

Mag7spy wrote: »

That is the point, as it gives an avenue for people that want to be in the city and craft

Somehow reading too fast, I've seen

That is the point, as it gives an avenue for fat people that want to be in the city and craft

I'm so disappointed that it was just an illusion.

WHIT3ROS3

ClintHardwood wrote: »

Please don't put in crafting minigames. They'll inevitably lead to a macro-crafting meta, and anyone who doesn't cheat will suffer.

Another awful take. "Please don't try and implement anything because it might lead to a meta or people cheating" Jesus wept.

Mag7spy

Strevi wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

That is the point, as it gives an avenue for people that want to be in the city and craft

Somehow reading too fast, I've seen

That is the point, as it gives an avenue for fat people that want to be in the city and craft

I'm so disappointed that it was just an illusion.

Hey it is going to be a crafting heavy game, let the people that want to craft and avoid pvp have fun with their own gameplay loop. As long as the mini games are not trash or over complicated and confusing.

Happymeal2415

Give me mini games! Love the idea. Hope the execution goes well.

Strevi

Mag7spy wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

That is the point, as it gives an avenue for people that want to be in the city and craft

Somehow reading too fast, I've seen

That is the point, as it gives an avenue for fat people that want to be in the city and craft

I'm so disappointed that it was just an illusion.

Hey it is going to be a crafting heavy game, let the people that want to craft and avoid pvp have fun with their own gameplay loop. As long as the mini games are not trash or over complicated and confusing.

Mini-games keeps them fit for fight too. In sieges and caravan events.

Child Item