Crafting: shuffled progression factor

Would love hearing about what you guys think about this

What if AoC brought a crafting system that under the hood shuffles how players progress in crafting?

So each day, each player will have a different progress factors?
So if a player follows a "craft 100 iron daggers then 100 copper daggers" roadmap from the internet then his progression will always come different than the roadmap suggests

Role play wise this could be justified by saying that someone has to craft many different things so they can improve their skills

So each day the player would have to figure out what is more interesting within his skill reach

Such system could be done by heatmaps and randomizers... in the long run this could be used for helping economy imbalances.

AFAIK this was never done before, this idea comes from my head and we have no real world examples of this

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Arya_Yeshe

So everyday the system would randomize where your character is at the heatmap of your skill range

Then you log on and start you crafting pummels and seeing that you are barely progressing with that, so you start crafting something else and you realize this is the sweet spot for the day

This is more engaging because it's based on your character and based on the feedback

Also such system goes under any other systems, any other system could go on top of this

Ace1234

Im not sure I follow 100%. Do you mean specifically for craftables, that the ingredients are randomized? Or do you mean that the rate of leveling is randomized? Im kind of confused

So everyday the system would randomize where your character is at the heatmap of your skill range

Not understanding what you are trying to say here

Azherae

I'd prefer a really dynamic economy where the thing that shuffles your progress is 'availability of materials', or 'cost of materials'.

If the game has enough crafting options for the heatmap to make sense, it should support this equally well.

I don't hate the heatmap idea at all, but if it's invisible, it's kind of stressful for some players, and if it's totally random per player, I feel that the negative sentiment would outweigh the benefits. Most imaginative players I know will manage to be immersed without 'having the heatmap hidden'.

As example I offer an FFXI Concept as always.

Is this an acceptable compromise for you relative to heatmap?

You could change the reward from 'special items' to 'slightly extra progression', if that was the important thing.

neuroguy

I am not 100% sure I follow, but if you are suggesting a system that randomizes your xp gain/efficiency based on what items you can craft I really dislike the idea. First off, it would be exponentially more difficult to identify what your sweet spot is the further you progress in the system and more recipes you have unlocked. This also means that as a crafter, you may feel like you should wait to craft something you want just to be maximally efficient, and the more recipes you have unlocked, the less likely the system is to make your desired crafting good your 'sweet spot'.

Second and more importantly, I think ashes should provide a world that ~dynamically changes player demand for crafted goods. Your suggestion seems predicated on the idea that players will try to rush to max crafting as soon as possible. I think having high customization in the crafted item stats should discourage something like this. Imagine the crafter can determine some stats on the dagger (+fire damage or +crit for example). Based on player needs, meta shifts, world events etc the high demand stat on the dagger may change. So if you stockpiled a ton of iron daggers with one stat, you may not be competitive in the economy.

Arya_Yeshe

Ace1234 wrote: »

Im not sure I follow 100%. Do you mean specifically for craftables, that the ingredients are randomized? Or do you mean that the rate of leveling is randomized? Im kind of confused

So everyday the system would randomize where your character is at the heatmap of your skill range

Not understanding what you are trying to say here

I meant for professions progression, the amount of skill/xp for creating a dagger should be different each day

So when you look on the internet for those profession leveling guides they would not work

This wouls stimulate people into crafting different things instead of just doing 100 daggers, then 100 short swords, then 100 long swords thing

Arya_Yeshe

Azherae wrote: »

I'd prefer a really dynamic economy where the thing that shuffles your progress is 'availability of materials', or 'cost of materials'.

If the game has enough crafting options for the heatmap to make sense, it should support this equally well.

I don't hate the heatmap idea at all, but if it's invisible, it's kind of stressful for some players, and if it's totally random per player, I feel that the negative sentiment would outweigh the benefits. Most imaginative players I know will manage to be immersed without 'having the heatmap hidden'.

As example I offer an FFXI Concept as always.

Is this an acceptable compromise for you relative to heatmap?

You could change the reward from 'special items' to 'slightly extra progression', if that was the important thing.

I meant shuffling the amount of XP for leveling the profession

So those profession leveling guides would be useless, so each crafter would craft differnt things and find out what's best for him on that day

This would makes things more interesting instead of just following crafters leveling guide and we would have a huge amount of daggers in the market since everybody would craft a bit of everything

Arya_Yeshe

neuroguy wrote: »

I am not 100% sure I follow, but if you are suggesting a system that randomizes your xp gain/efficiency based on what items you can craft I really dislike the idea. First off, it would be exponentially more difficult to identify what your sweet spot is the further you progress in the system and more recipes you have unlocked. This also means that as a crafter, you may feel like you should wait to craft something you want just to be maximally efficient, and the more recipes you have unlocked, the less likely the system is to make your desired crafting good your 'sweet spot'.

Yes, that's what I suggested, it would randomize the xp gains a little for each item in your skill range

So you would have to find for yourself what you want, if you want to craft based on xp gain or based on gold profitability in the market

This would turn useless those crafting leveling guides which tell people exactly what to do so you can as fast as possible come from level 1 to max level

Yes, it would be more difficult finding your own sweet spot, it would be pretty much a quest. I was a crafter in almost all games I play and its quite mind numbing leveling, it's just an uninteresting grind

neuroguy wrote: »

Second and more importantly, I think ashes should provide a world that ~dynamically changes player demand for crafted goods. Your suggestion seems predicated on the idea that players will try to rush to max crafting as soon as possible. I think having high customization in the crafted item stats should discourage something like this. Imagine the crafter can determine some stats on the dagger (+fire damage or +crit for example). Based on player needs, meta shifts, world events etc the high demand stat on the dagger may change. So if you stockpiled a ton of iron daggers with one stat, you may not be competitive in the economy.

Yes, my idea is based on the fact that people follow crafting guides and since AoC has no direct item destruction, then the market will become extremely unbalanced

We don't know yet how customizable will the items be, we don't know if it will be like SWG
Even if the items are very customizable, there are components to be made anyway

What the people will do is grinding as much gold as possible and then following a crafting leveling guide and then becoming max level in a weekend and dumping all items in the market, which is exactly what milions of people in MMOs since always

People are doing like that since the 90s and they didnt stop, I am pretty sure people will do it again

Freya

i like the thought behind it, and i think with that thought there are many ways to approach it - the thing is we live in an age of information so we can optimize everything to a massive degree and precision farm, which takes a lot out of the sense of wonder and exploration, unfortunatly that sense is literally derived from us being essentially dumb/uneducated on something because it hasnt been figured out yet, so having a degree of randomization that cant be figured out could get a long way in making crafting more engaging and also diversify the market - it probably should still tell you what to you specifically is more efficient to craft though, or maybe this could be handled by randomized npc contracts that have you craft random craft items or a crafting list of stuff they want, it would essentially be the same but that way a player might view it in a different light and less like a punishment for not doing x, but a reward for doing x

VekoKrava

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Would love hearing about what you guys think about this

What if AoC brought a crafting system that under the hood shuffles how players progress in crafting?

So each day, each player will have a different progress factors?
So if a player follows a "craft 100 iron daggers then 100 copper daggers" roadmap from the internet then his progression will always come different than the roadmap suggests

Role play wise this could be justified by saying that someone has to craft many different things so they can improve their skills

So each day the player would have to figure out what is more interesting within his skill reach

Such system could be done by heatmaps and randomizers... in the long run this could be used for helping economy imbalances.

AFAIK this was never done before, this idea comes from my head and we have no real world examples of this

I am not sure if this idea is good, it could work, but what I would like to see in newer MMOs is crafting without skill ups. This wouldn't overflood market and it would have stable economy. For progress I would sink gold via vendor recipes, high tier recipes could also need reputation from your node and a lot of gold (at least 20 hours of farming per 1 recipe), consumables would work the same, learned via recipes and restricted with level of your character, same way gear would work.

I am telling this not because of economy, but mainly to do whatever we want to do, without grinding skill ups. There could be some progression on crafts for example if you crafted bags of 6 slot at start, it would have 70% chance to drop quality of bags and turn them into 4 slot bags, this chance would decrease with each few crafts. I see progression that is meaningful and realistic is better then having skill ups that timegate your character.

Arya_Yeshe

Freya wrote: »

i like the thought behind it, and i think with that thought there are many ways to approach it - the thing is we live in an age of information so we can optimize everything to a massive degree and precision farm, which takes a lot out of the sense of wonder and exploration, unfortunatly that sense is literally derived from us being essentially dumb/uneducated on something because it hasnt been figured out yet, so having a degree of randomization that cant be figured out could get a long way in making crafting more engaging and also diversify the market - it probably should still tell you what to you specifically is more efficient to craft though, or maybe this could be handled by randomized npc contracts that have you craft random craft items or a crafting list of stuff they want, it would essentially be the same but that way a player might view it in a different light and less like a punishment for not doing x, but a reward for doing x

Definitely there's more ways of doing it.

The soul of my idea is simply countering leveling guides, keeping things interesting and have a bigger variety of items in the market

Yes, having a degree of randomness it's just like adding a bit of spice in the pot, whatever it gives!

The edge in having heatmeaps that contain the information about how skill should be gained is that it could be manipulated by Intrepid if they want to fix the market. The market gets broken in any game because changes in the game, updates and leveling guides, so having a heatmaps under the hood would allow Intrepid influencing and slowly and healthy fixing the economy

Arya_Yeshe

VekoCrnogorac wrote: »

eaningful and realistic is better then having skill ups that timegate your character.

Veko, you don't really understand what is a sink, right?
You don't get it my friend

Sink = when you lose something, that's all

If you farm for 20 hours and than buy a recipe, that's just an exchange, you exchanged something for something else... that is a ONE TIME exchange. Plus, after buying the recipe you will never have to buy it again

Don't even get me started with bag's limited to number of slots, thats pure garbage, the inventory and caravan systems are the only things in AoC that are really bad

neuroguy

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

What the people will do is grinding as much gold as possible and then following a crafting leveling guide and then becoming max level in a weekend and dumping all items in the market, which is exactly what milions of people in MMOs since always

People are doing like that since the 90s and they didnt stop, I am pretty sure people will do it again

I don't quite follow, then what does your proposed system achieve? Just create another hoop for them to jump through? If they find their daily hot spot, won't they be able to do this even easier?

While most normal players will just have a strange system that doesn't quite motivate them enough to alter their behavior, but again, adds another hoop to jump through.

Arya_Yeshe

@neuroguy the sweet spot would probably give the standard xp and other stuff would give a little less xp, if you are a smart guy and you are paying attention then you would level "faster"

Yes, you would have to check it out everyday where's the sweet spot, this would also create a demand a larger variety of materials

In the market in the long run the difference would be noticed, because then you won't have an excessive amount of a few items in the market, beacuse usually following leveling guides overflow the market with a few items and they become valueless

Also having the possibility of following leveling guides makes the materials more expensive then the items themselves

For the crafter the difference won't be huge, but in the market we should see the difference
Also for Intrepid the ability of slowly healing the economy in the long run would be good tool

neuroguy

I see, but practically, I think what would just happen is people hoard resources until the sweetspot is an easy to craft item or 'resource efficient'. I think instead of utilizing it as you suggest to try new things, people will just check if the sweet spot is any 1-3 of the items they have hoarded resources for (probably by following a guide) and players will simultaneously flood the market with the same item. If the sweet spot is calculated for all players per day, there would just be a website where people write out what they tested to be it, if it is calculated for each player differently, it would be slightly better but people would complain about personal bad rng.

Arya_Yeshe

neuroguy wrote: »

I see, but practically, I think what would just happen is people hoard resources until the sweetspot is an easy to craft item or 'resource efficient'. I think instead of utilizing it as you suggest to try new things, people will just check if the sweet spot is any 1-3 of the items they have hoarded resources for (probably by following a guide) and players will simultaneously flood the market with the same item. If the sweet spot is calculated for all players per day, there would just be a website where people write out what they tested to be it, if it is calculated for each player differently, it would be slightly better but people would complain about personal bad rng.

Have you ever did that in a game? Because I did, doing that is really hard, never put the "just"word in that phrase. Hoarding forces you into poverty for long periods of time

I have experience in this, i hoarded items for many months in a row while waiting market opportunities, this is really hard and engaging

Also, are you serious about being worried that for one day it could have a chance of "flooding" the market and being ok with it being flooded everyday on a daily basis?

Like I said, the sweet spot is different for each person, since each person would be appointed to a different spot in the heatmap... so there would be no "overflooding" of anything ever

neuroguy

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Also, are you serious about being worried that for one day it could have a chance of "flooding" the market and being ok with it being flooded everyday on a daily basis?

Thinking your idea is not a good solution is not the same as not thinking the problem is a problem. Anyways, I truly don't think this would have the same effect you are hoping for and most importantly, it sounds annoying to deal with rather than fun but maybe that's just me.

Arya_Yeshe

neuroguy wrote: »

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Also, are you serious about being worried that for one day it could have a chance of "flooding" the market and being ok with it being flooded everyday on a daily basis?

Thinking your idea is not a good solution is not the same as not thinking the problem is a problem. Anyways, I truly don't think this would have the same effect you are hoping for and most importantly, it sounds annoying to deal with rather than fun but maybe that's just me.

You don't know the reason why you think it's annoying.
Let me teach you about yourself, I'm not even joking, I will explain why you think it's annoying.

The truth is that crafting is boring, it sucks, it's uninteresting, also PvE is shit in general, playing solo nearly all crafting systems is pure shit, crafting is a disgusting grind in almost all games

Almost all crafting systems in nearly all games in history are total boring shits

So, if you think you detected anything that could bring any kind of hurdle to the shitty crafting systems then you think it's bad, well it's not the fault of bit of randomness. Having a bit of randomness just rips the band aid off

Well, Star Wars Galaxies has the best crafting system there is, hands down the best and it's full of randomness to it... people don't see it as a problem

EVE Online has probably the second best industry and science system, it has randomness too with it's discoveries for high tier industry, people don't complain about it and there's even items that you can add for better numbers in the discovery gamble

If you think that the crafting system is shit and that it's just a grind, then a bit of randomness on top of it could be bad for sure

neuroguy

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

You don't know the reason why you think it's annoying.
Let me teach you about yourself, I'm not even joking, I will explain why you think it's annoying.

The truth is that crafting is boring, it sucks, it's uninteresting, also PvE is shit in general, playing solo nearly all crafting systems is pure shit, crafting is a disgusting grind in almost all games

Almost all crafting systems in nearly all games in history are total boring shits

So, if you think you detected anything that could bring any kind of hurdle to the shitty crafting systems then you think it's bad, well it's not the fault of bit of randomness. Having a bit of randomness just rips the band aid off

Well, Star Wars Galaxies has the best crafting system there is, hands down the best and it's full of randomness to it... people don't see it as a problem

EVE Online has probably the second best industry and science system, it has randomness too with it's discoveries for high tier industry, people don't complain about it and there's even items that you can add for better numbers in the discovery gamble

If you think that the crafting system is shit and that it's just a grind, then a bit of randomness on top of it could be bad for sure

I'm actually quite amazed as to the leaps you not only take yourself, but take on my behalf too. I have no issues with crafting in most games, in fact I absolutely love gathering in many games. If crafting is made to be fun and great, you would reduce the number of people trying to speed level it with a guide as well, maybe that's a better solution than what you propose. Also, you are not just 'adding randomness', randomness can be added in a variety of ways. Your suggestion is just randomizing xp gain. It is uninteresting and minimally impactful (you say a small amount, because a large change would actually be terrible and I agree).

Let me have a go at being condescending for a second. If you ever have an idea that has never been done before, that is not reason enough to do it. You always need to start an idea with what you are trying to achieve or accomplish, maybe you've identified a problem you are trying to solve, maybe you are trying to discourage/encourage some player behavior. Critically, you have to be open to the fact that there may be a better solution, at least concede that your solution is not the only one (and be ok if someone doesn't like your idea). Other important things to do in order to gauge the quality of your idea should include looking at the extremes. What if your suggestion changed the xp gain super dramatically? What if it barely made a difference? This will give you an idea of how easy it is to tune/balance and how universal may the right number be for different players. Lastly, maybe it's worth thinking about what level of engagement with your system is required. How will it impact a hardcore crafter who is leveling up gradually? What about a casual crafter? A speed leveler (as you suggest)?

My understanding of your system is that it only impacts speed levelers in a way they don't want to be impacted (they will complain). While it provides randomness that can't really be engaged with by players who don't hoard and try to mass produce a crafting output, so... literally every other player type. Your proposed system needs to be minimally impactful so it doesn't randomly punish players for crafting what they want, when they want while still being annoying enough to discourage guided speed leveling, a balance that I would argue is hard to strike. All of this, just to avoid what you say will always happen anyways and could be addressed by having an interesting crafting system, a system which we don't even have many details for, and yet you assume there will be the same problem and propose some solution.

Let me improve your bad system to achieve your goal better: there is diminishing returns in xp for mass producing the same item within some time window. If you create >20 of the same crafting item in <8 hours, you get 5% less xp down to a maximum of -50%. Less lines of code, easy to test tuning, no impact on most players who do not try to speed level by mass production and curbs undesired behavior in a non-random way that is easy to justify therefore reducing negative backlash.

And before you even think about mentioning "what about the positive side of the randomness? the xp bonus?", if this is not a small xp bonus on the 'sweet spot', then you are literally promoting the behavior you are trying to prevent. If this xp bonus is large, players will rush purchase (or hoard) and mass produce some good to farm bonus xp making the market randomly volatile and resource values unpredictable.

So yes, I absolutely know the reason why I think it's annoying, I was trying to be polite and not tell you your idea is bad but let you think and develop it yourself, and the only thing you've taught me about myself is that I really hate it when people try to make large leaps in assumptions about what others think (actually... I already knew that).

CROW3

It's an interesting idea, and I wondering if I can propose a variation. What if the randomization occurs at the component level instead of the end result? So instead of crafting 50 copper daggers, I'm crafting 25 copper daggers with peened steel pommels?

I'm going to take a practical example. I do some carpentry on the side, mostly tables. When I first started, I learned a TON - mostly about what not to do.

Over time, I learned how to taper legs - so I made of number of tapered legs, then I changed the scale and type of wood, all learning. I could go back and quantify that learning as xp. Where the more table I repeatedly make, the faster I approach a threshold where my xp begins to approach zero. At the point I'm making a thousand tables a week, I'm not longer learning anything about the crafting of the table itself, but I'm learning about economies of scale - and tweaking efficiency. That could be a whole other track for xp.

On the other hand, if I continue to vary the component elements of each table I make, my xp gain is still focused on the crafting of the table. Different woods, different supports, different joinery, different blends / inlays, different patterns for the top, live edges v. cut edges - there's so many ways to keep growing - and that's just tables.

Same basic concept as you're proposing, but a little more 'in the weeds' for crafters who enjoy the process of crafting, not just the end product.

What do you think?

Arya_Yeshe

CROW3 wrote: »

It's an interesting idea, and I wondering if I can propose a variation. What if the randomization occurs at the component level instead of the end result? So instead of crafting 50 copper daggers, I'm crafting 25 copper daggers with peened steel pommels?

I'm going to take a practical example. I do some carpentry on the side, mostly tables. When I first started, I learned a TON - mostly about what not to do. Over time, I learned how to taper legs - so I made of number of tapered legs, then I changed the scale and type of wood, all learning. I could go back and quantify that learning as xp. Where the more table I repeatedly make, the faster I approach a threshold where my xp begins to approach zero. At the point I'm making a thousand tables a week, I'm not longer learning anything about the crafting of the table itself, but I'm learning about economies of scale - and tweaking efficiency. That could be a whole other track for xp.

On the other hand, if I continue to vary the component elements of each table I make, my xp gain is still focused on the crafting of the table. Different woods, different supports, different joinery, different blends / inlays, different patterns for the top, live edges v. cut edges - there's so many ways to keep growing - and that's just tables.

Same basic concept as you're proposing, but a little more 'in the weeds' for crafters who enjoy the process of crafting, not just the end product.

What do you think?

I agree with you 100% that making tables non stop shouldn't give the same xp, it is thinking of this that I thought of having heatmaps for the xp on crafting and each player would be traversing the heatmap each day, so they would be forced to diversify if they want to keep the same steady xp going on

Well, I am a big industralist in EVE Online, I have bilions of units of many hundreds materials and I can buid fleets for wars, from small ships to capital ships. This is only possible because we can calculate how much materials we will spend and set the production lines.

Organizing the hangars from the fatories would be a total nightmare having random materials... in EVE what we have is the possibility of researching better blueprints with better material efficiency and better time efficiency... then we can spend less material and less time, but it's not random.

In Star Wars Galaxis and EVE Online, that are the best crafting systems in history, they are nearly perfect, what we have is randomness in discoveries and random results, so the scientific part it's a bit random... but the production itself is not random to the point which you can use external sites and precalculate your production

In Ashes, a good guild leader will organize a couple people for large industry jobs, for making available huge amounts of consumables and ammunitation for their castle and for their ships, otherwise the ammo and the ships won't be there... so being able to tell how much materials people need beforehand is quite a big deal

Would be ok having random performance... random discoveries if you try to create a Tier 2 or Tier 3 item

In Star Wars Galaxies you travel to another planet for a crafting station if you know you will have a bonus crafting there, that's fine too

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