Crafting/Crafter's claim to Fame

How exactly can a crafter making armor, consumables, mounts and/or weapons make a name for themselves?

As large as these maps are going to be with massive numbers of players, every guild/clan will have their own crafting core. I assume there will be lootable schematics. What about secret/hard to find armor/potion/weapon quest chains? Titles that grant access to very limited armor/item/weapon templates? Will the leader/mayor of high/max level player owned cities/territories get special plans? Discovery through trial-and-error crafting? Promotional patterns? Hybrid patterns? (requiring two professions to craft like a leather worker and an armor smith) Will multiple crafters be able to empower gear if like five worked on one piece versus a single crafter?

In an ocean of crafters, how does one build a reputation to the point that players actively seek out a specific person or a specific guild to have something crafted?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

rollox

I wonder if crafted items will be etched with the crafters name. Perhaps this is a place where scribes come in. Etching the makers mark onto an item.

That way when players around the world see or inspect items, other players, etc. they see an interesting piece of gear with the makers mark. That is one way in other games I have been contacted to craft items.

Other ways is you start small. As players in your node begin to learn you are making some crazy sharp vorpal black razor sword. As word of mouth spreads others will learn of this legendary item and who makes it. Maybe you end up getting a guild commission to make 20 of those for their guild. That happens also.

Although something as legendary as the sharp vorpal black razor will probably be limited in how many can exist in this game. I remember reading something about rare items like that that only certain numbers could be crafted, or only could be crafted once, while working under a full moon, next to the mountain, with only a rare diamond that is only found in the bottom of swamp at mid day.

Night Wings

Crafters are able to influence what their crafted items will look like.[73][77]
At the moment, harnessing corruption to warp items into demonic or decayed things is not on the cards.[78]
A crafter's name is embedded in the items they craft.[79]
We believe that every item that exists in the world should in some way reflect its creator. As such, there will be extreme versatility in our crafting system – giving crafters the ability to create unique items that represent their strengths and weaknesses.[2]

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Crafting

Basically word of mouth and from the quote above you be able to influence what crafted items will look like so maybe a signature on the item to advertise it.

arkileo

I briefly played Crowfall, which had a crafting system the required some pretty extreme resource pooling. That, coupled with it being a guild-based PvP game, lead to the whole guild funneling resources to a select few crafters, and the output of their labors going exclusively to the guild. It was a closed system and it felt bad. If you weren't one of the guild's designated crafters, you weren't going to progress in the crafting system.

I sincerely hope that Ashes doesn't fall into the same system, because being able to make a name for yourself is a really cool thing. SWG was great at this. I remember a specific shop that had the best weapons around, and I always came back to it. At the very least, with player shops it seems like that's more the direction they're heading.

ReLamas

In Ashes of Creation, crafting has the potential to be a deeply immersive and impactful profession. The game offers several mechanisms for crafters to distinguish themselves and build a reputation. Here are some key points that can help a crafter make a name for themselves:

Unique Crafting Recipes and Schematics: Crafters can acquire rare and unique recipes through various means, such as exploring dungeons, completing quests, or gaining access to special nodes. This exclusivity can set them apart, as players will seek out specific crafters who can make these rare items.

Player-Driven Economy: Since Ashes of Creation emphasizes a player-driven economy, the quality and uniqueness of items crafted by players can significantly impact the market. Crafters who consistently produce high-quality items or have a reputation for fair prices can become well-known in the community.

Titles and Achievements: Gaining specific titles or achievements related to crafting can provide additional recognition. These titles can be earned by mastering certain crafting professions or by completing difficult crafting-related tasks, which can then be displayed to other players.

City/Node Influence: The game’s node system allows for political and economic influence. Crafters who become key figures within a node, such as through trade agreements or political positions, can gain fame and recognition. Being associated with a prominent node or city can boost a crafter's reputation.

Promotional and Hybrid Patterns: The ability to create hybrid items that require multiple crafting professions can be a unique selling point. For example, an armorsmith and a leatherworker collaborating to create a special type of armor can attract attention. Additionally, promotional patterns or items tied to events can offer crafters a chance to showcase their work.

Customization and Personalization: The ability to customize and personalize crafted items can make them more desirable. Players may seek out crafters who can add unique touches or enhancements to their gear, making it stand out.

Word of Mouth and Community Engagement: Building a reputation often involves engaging with the community. Crafters who actively participate in forums, social media, or in-game events can become well-known. Word of mouth from satisfied customers can also be a powerful tool.

In an MMO like Ashes of Creation, where player interactions and community play a significant role, a crafter's reputation can be built through quality work, unique offerings, and active participation in the game's economy and social aspects.

Morashtak

ReLamas wrote: »

Unique Crafting Recipes and Schematics: Crafters can acquire rare and unique recipes through various means, such as exploring dungeons, completing quests, or gaining access to special nodes. This exclusivity can set them apart, as players will seek out specific crafters who can make these rare items.

In addition to the recipes and schematics I'm hoping for variations based on crafting in various seasons and biomes. Example: In order to have a high chance to craft the highest quality cold-based weapon ("Ice Death") one would have to forge it in a cold-based forge in the coldest biome on the coldest day of winter. And with mats gathered from cold-based mobs or harvested in the coldest biomes during very cold days.
Make the players earn their rewards with very high risk/reward mechanics.

Asokka

arkileo wrote: »

I briefly played Crowfall, which had a crafting system the required some pretty extreme resource pooling. That, coupled with it being a guild-based PvP game, lead to the whole guild funneling resources to a select few crafters, and the output of their labors going exclusively to the guild. It was a closed system and it felt bad. If you weren't one of the guild's designated crafters, you weren't going to progress in the crafting system.

I sincerely hope that Ashes doesn't fall into the same system, because being able to make a name for yourself is a really cool thing. SWG was great at this. I remember a specific shop that had the best weapons around, and I always came back to it. At the very least, with player shops it seems like that's more the direction they're heading.

I alpha and beta tested Crowfall as well... until I got banned for calling out the dev one too many times on their bs. Laughed hard when the game was dead on arrival. I do admit the crafting system was interesting. I was also a huge fan of the SWG system until they screwed armor and weapon smiths over night when they removed durability decay. The professions literally died in one day.

Damokles

Crafted items will be on par with top raid items looted from raid bosses.
But that will require legendary crafting benches and specialisation in one profession.

So people who have ACCESS those crafting benches will be in high demand and word of mouth will be the main way to go.

High tier crafting benches require high tier nodes.

Remember, you can only claim to be the citizen of one node per server and even though Nodes wont have hard caps concerning citizenship, they WILL have monthly taxes that increase with node level.

So a high node is required to craft high gear. But high tier nodes require heavy investments to keep using those nodes.
It will be hard for a single player to reach the top of the crafting game, which is why most players that aim for high recognition and top crafting skills join guilds to get supported by them in exchange for crafting.

And through that you automatically gain recognition for your crafted items.

Mardrik

I loved Crafting in Everquest 2
I'm seeing so much of the cross profession requirements going on and I love that. As much as I would love to do it all on one its really not good for the game and conducive to a good economy when players need each other. I loved how skills could be made for classes, in varying tiers so adventurers needed crafters. That recipes came from dungeons and raids so crafters needed adventurers. I very much liked that crafters had to use skills to make things not just hit craft button. That part I'm not seeing and I am hoping will get implemented at some point. That tension when using a several platinum rare and you have to get it to perfection was wonderful. The market board that allowed people to bypass the market fees if you went to their homes and bought directly was great. Gave people a reason to show of their homes as well. I really have that feeling I had in beta for eq2 again and am loving it. Keep it up and thank you.

kadimir

With the way crafting/gathering/processing is broken up - there's 0 chance you'll have success as a solo crafter. Either you're fed mats by a guild and it's the GUILD with the reputation, or you're not going to have a good time.

only thing you'd have control over anyways is the price you charge? I am not imagining that it's going to be something for MLG pink parsers to sweat over.

Lodrig

I think it would be nice if Nodes had options for further specialization post crafting bench selection.

Say if you have a Weapon Smithy a node Mayor can choose a specilization for Critical Hit, which gives all weapons crafted theire more of that stat. Alternativly it could be a material specialization, everything made with Copper could get bonus durability and a chance to roll a higher quality.

These effects could come from options that depend on the nodes dominant race, say your Ren-Ki node has an option for 'thousand folded blades' buff. Then their could be event driven craft bonuses, the material ones seem like they would be ideal for that 'copper mother lode bonus' for 2 weeks.

These concepts won't distinquish individual crafters at the same node, but they DO create regional crafting variations which can act as a first step. It will promote long distance trade so that IF you can get to be a top crafter in a location then people potentially on the other side of the world might want what you can make because their crafting nodes don't have that bonus and it's just not possible to make the item with all the perks.

Tjaeden

This was why I also wanted to see crafting further specialized by unique class buffs.

After seeing some gear from A2, it would work really wel.

Rockshow

kadimir wrote: »

With the way crafting/gathering/processing is broken up - there's 0 chance you'll have success as a solo crafter. Either you're fed mats by a guild and it's the GUILD with the reputation, or you're not going to have a good time.

only thing you'd have control over anyways is the price you charge? I am not imagining that it's going to be something for MLG pink parsers to sweat over.

That's only the case if your output is worthless and that only happens when you need to craft like 100 copper swords to be able to craft Iron Swords etc. If you change that so that you only need to craft 3 or 5 copper swords, if even that, while at the same time requiring a huge amount of resources to do it then you will get less people crafting casually and the people that do it properly will be crafting less items so they can charge a higher markup on what they make (as the market doesn't get flooded). Then a dedicated smith can just go and buy the resources he needs from people that like to gather them or refine them (whom in turn also get a markup as their wares are high in demand by the crafter).

Basically every single game gets this wrong as devs always go "Oh but it's more fun if you craft more stuff to level up", it really isn't as it means that you're just burning money to craft useless junk until you get to the point where you occasionally can help out a guild member or sell something for profit at the very highest endgame tiers.

In addition they almost always make the same mistake with gathering.
"Oh yeah so let's have one dude gather 2000 copper ore to level up to iron, and then have the crafter use 10 copper ore per sword and craft 100 swords to level up to iron", great now every miner outputs 1000 ore more than needed so it's basically impossible to sell and every smith outputs 95 more copper swords than needed so those are basically impossible to sell as well. Now both gathering and smiting are absolutely pointless unrewarding and slightly annoying hobbies that people just do sporadically because maybe they might craft something cool 2 years from now.

While on the other hand, if the economy actually works and you can suppress supply and increase demand in every stage then you get a thriving ecosystem around it filled with social interactions and rewarding gameplay where even solo crafters can participate.

The reason you get cases where you can't go in as a solo crafter is because they only do it half way, you need massive amount of resources but you also get massive outputs, so yes then you need to have a guild to funnel resources to you so that you can craft a ton of junk that no one wants until you get to the point where you're actually useful for your guild.

Another pitfall is making crafted items be on the same quality level as dropped items and then having those items drop way too often. I noticed that item drop rates are fairly low in Ashes right now but even then you grind a truly massive amount of mobs so even if you fix everything on the gathering and crafting side the crafters still risk being outcompeted by grinders. That in turns means that grinding mobs is the only way to play as you cover the economies item demand while getting glint WHILE leveling up. So from what I have seen the past few weekends they should probably just remove item drops all together from mobs with the exception of really rare crafting components and things like named legendary drops from bosses.

kadimir

Rockshow wrote: »

kadimir wrote: »

That's only the case if your output is worthless and that only happens when you need to craft like 100 copper swords to be able to craft Iron Swords etc.

Anyone designing a crafting system should LITERALLY be an econ major. It's insane that so many games get this balance so awfully bad. Imagine being an indie company like blizzard - and managing to make it so that every single stage of the game, even day 1 of expansions. Endless flooding of greens into the market for every profession all at or below cost to make.

On top of that, there is no way for someone who's even remotely planning on leveling their craft as they level. I think if they had to spend twice the time leveling each bracket to gather/craft their gear for the next tier I'd be fine with that... you're kind of working 2 birds with one stone. You don't want to trivialize it by making it so everyone can be self sufficient and craft their own gear each tier with minimal time investment - making crafting largely irrelevant, but you also don't want crafting to take so much time/resources that it's absolutely not something you waste your time doing until you're capped/geared.

on a side note; Lineage II had an insanely good economic structure - I hope they make sure to adopt the way materials function.

Rockshow

kadimir wrote: »

Rockshow wrote: »

kadimir wrote: »

That's only the case if your output is worthless and that only happens when you need to craft like 100 copper swords to be able to craft Iron Swords etc.

Anyone designing a crafting system should LITERALLY be an econ major. It's insane that so many games get this balance so awfully bad. Imagine being an indie company like blizzard - and managing to make it so that every single stage of the game, even day 1 of expansions. Endless flooding of greens into the market for every profession all at or below cost to make.

On top of that, there is no way for someone who's even remotely planning on leveling their craft as they level. I think if they had to spend twice the time leveling each bracket to gather/craft their gear for the next tier I'd be fine with that... you're kind of working 2 birds with one stone. You don't want to trivialize it by making it so everyone can be self sufficient and craft their own gear each tier with minimal time investment - making crafting largely irrelevant, but you also don't want crafting to take so much time/resources that it's absolutely not something you waste your time doing until you're capped/geared.

on a side note; Lineage II had an insanely good economic structure - I hope they make sure to adopt the way materials function.

Agreed on all points.
Regarding crafting while leveling it should be more that you sacrifice time grinding to craft and preferably you would actually make money from the few items you do craft to compensate for the XP you miss out on. This in turn will also let you start building a reputation earlier.
I remember back in Anarchy Online there where several god tier crafters that gave up all their combat potential at endgame just to max out on crafting and being on friendly terms with one was a massive benefit.
I have also played Entropia Universe a fair bit focusing on mining and I used to have a guy that bought literally all my stuff at a decent markup and then he would slap on a percent or so and turn around and sell in bulk to crafters he knew.

Crafting should be a bit of a PITA as it should be fairly complex needing lots of steps and lots and lots of different components, that way you get fewer crafters and those that do it anyway become more important and get a chance to shine. And then you actually start to open up for all of these brilliant social interactions and emergent professions like actual merchants and wholesalers.
But for that to work you need scarcity, friction and profit margins in every part of the chain from mining slate to crafting legendary armor.

Now in real life we often want to remove scarcity and friction as it isn't efficient and reduce profit margins and prices to increase general prosperity. But you don't actually want to have those things in a game. Those are things that make life simpler and convenient but we are literally playing the game to face challenge and adversity. Think about it, if maximizing prosperity was the goal they would literally just give us all a full set of legendary gear when we create our character, and then what?

It's dealing with those challenges, helping others that have problems (by design) and overcoming that friction that lets you actually make a name for yourself because you're being useful to others, but for that they actually need to have problems to begin with.

Child Item