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How do you want to obtain crafting mats?
Lawtoween
Member UncommonPosts: 103
I’m curious what other players think about the best way to obtain crafting raw materials in CU would be. I believe everyone agrees that requiring players to travel into the PvP areas to obtain mats and having to travel to other parts of the PvP area to use them is a near requirement for the concept of this game. I’ll leave the length of transport requirements to the other posts, but how do you want to initially receive the materials? I see three main methods of obtaining materials, each with some variations on the details; maybe someone out there has another way. The ones I can think of are:
#1) Raw materials are purchased from vendors with no player gathering required.
#2) Raw materials are gathered by players from nodes in the world.
#3) Raw materials are gathered over time by NPCs hired by players requiring protection.
With case #1 we have the method used in DAoC when I played (pre-ToA). The vendors could be placed in dangerous locations to require players to travel there to obtain a specific material, but the actual appearance of materials in the player’s inventory would be the result of selecting an amount to buy from a vendor in exchange for money, limited only by cost and wealth. The only significant time involved was traveling to where the vendor was located. This method is a money sink, but is generally time neutral (it could be a sink if you have to do a lot of travelling).
With case #2 we have the method employed in WoW when I played (launch to second expansion). Players must search the world for nodes that are “gathered” by some skill in small amounts per node. This method is generally viewed as a money maker, but a time sink.
With case #3 I am actually proposing a method I have not seen in a game in my limited experience, although it is an amalgam of a few systems I have seen. The player may or may not be required to escort an NPC from a spawn location to the location of the material being gathered. Once there (or if it spawns there), the NPC may or may not require protection, but the resource would require some amount of time to collect. Once done, the NPC might also be a porter (and could have (a) pack animal(s) or vehicle) that the player then has to escort back to a safe area, with the materials collected at risk to loss if the NPC is killed. In a system I designed, the NPC being escorted would always be on follow, like a pet. It might have a slower movement than the player, but it would not have a pre-determined course and speed like the resource carriers in WAR (and maybe GW2, but I’ve never played that, just read some things on this board that suggest this to me) so that the player is not the one on /follow. This method sinks some time as well as some money (I have another idea on the money side, but I’ll save that for another post), still forces the player to be in areas where there is likely to be fighting, and doesn’t require the player to mindlessly bang on a rock.
Obviously I favor #3 or I wouldn't have come up with it. What do the rest of you think?
Comments
I would like to a) purchase from vendors using gold obtained from rvr and/or crafting, and
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
What about #4 salvaging.
Most games allow salvaging existing gear into mats in some manner.
MMO history - EVE GW2 SWTOR RIFT WAR COH/V EQ2 WOW DAOC
Tuktz - http://www.heretic.shivtr.com/
Combination of them.
Low level stuff from vendors...medium level stuff from hard to find vendors...or vendors that only appear in certain area if you control them.
High level mats drop off of players? higher rank the player better chance of dropping high level mat?
all of the above. Also a great system that could be added to the above mentioned is to have npcs (also between players) to trade unwanted materials for the ones you want. Something like Path of Exile trading mechanic, but with crafting materials.
I do like salvaging items. I will have to say that some of the crafting in WoW was fun.
I'm one of those players that liked to go out and fish for stuff, dig for stuff, etc. I loved mining in UO, I just don't like gankers kiillng me for my supplies. That will turn me off a game faster than anything.
Silj - Midgard/Guin
Specific mobs that make sense, dragon bones from all dragons, goblin dust from all goblins etc. Don't know how many games I have played that end up dropping something that just doesn't make sense at all.
Salvaging would be a good idea for materials as well.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
ding ding! i got it.
persistent housing. I need some blocks, metal and some wood. I can sneak in to enemy territory with a handy pack of TNT, blast their houses and come back chock full'o'materials
all about pvp, let them come home for their resources.
Always nice to get some loot off players, but i feel like the higher the value of drops, the more open to abuse the whole system is.
I want almost everything in the enviroment be resources, nodes i suppose. But forrests thick with trees, more valuable ones in more volatile areas, being closer to the epicentre between realms. But then you could have mountain ranges and mines for ores, forrests for wood, magical places for magical mats... And capture points near places of interest where you can deposit if you own it.
If all realms are looking to collect in these areas there would be natural tension whilst looking for it, as well as a constant reason for attacking/defending certain places. Also by having almost everything a node, certain items just wont be worth the time for more established players but the lower levels can still decide to hack down some random trees close to base for lower level, easier rewards.
As you move further away from your realms safe zone, the mats increase in value, with the rarest or most important being between the 3.
Also means you can bypass the main fights, go stomp on some farmer on the other side of the map expecting to be farming freely, just means a long run and odds on being outnumbered
/anon
1 or 2 I have no problem with but I have always despised escorting npc's.. it usually ends up being slow and tedious.
If the gathering is to be from nodes it would be cool if people that are grouped together could all gather from the same node.
From what I've read, there is going to be player constructed settlements/fortifications/guild halls in the Frontier. In fact, there might be no Safe area at all.
So... with that in mind. (Or 'mined')
I'd like to see crafting material availability keyed to player-built facilities.
There are more methods to obtain materials than what you mentioned. For example in War there was a skill called cultivating which was a sorta mini-farming game. Every 5 minutes or so you got some materials from it.
Personally, I think a combination of #2 and #3 is good. So a guild can make a mine and hire NPC's to go deep in the mine and over-time fill up the guild coffers with minerals from the mine. But I think players should also be able to go into a mountian and mine the ore themselves. Though, I don't like WoW's method of constantly running around. I prefer EvE's method where you find an area with lots of nodes and each node has lots of resources in it. This way you can spend hours in 1 spot harvesting rather than running around all over the place from node to node. Another reason why I like this system is because it creates an area to defend. If for example you found a rare forest filled with rare tree's. You'd defend it while the harvestors were getting the wood. The enemey might come and try and kill everyone so their own harvesters could get the tree's. If it was just 1 tree here than run 5 minutes to another tree, well the pvp would be very limited.
I healed Mistwraith and all I got was this stupid tee-shirt!
I knew the people on this forum would come up with more ways to gather, that's why I tried to temper my post with these are what I could think of (should have included "at the moment"). As for the cultivating skill in WAR, I've seen it described as "literally" watching grass grow. While I agree to some extent with that description, it assumes you were going to add soil, water and food during the growing process. I successfully leveled a cultivator to 200 without anything but seeds at least once.
Which brings me to another point, I don't want to have to switch between gathering skills to make the things I need (why I say 'at least once'). If we are going to have (in game) skill dependent gathering I would rather it be so difficult to get to the top of the skill that no one would ever consider switching, and have to trade for the other stuff I need, than be able to grind out enough skill levels to get everything I need in a short period of time, but have to respec my ONE gathering skill fives times to do it. I'm assuming in both of these possibilities that the number of gathering skills a character could have would be very limited (one or two at most). If it were unlimited, each should have an extremely steep leveling curve, thus still forcing trade.
Xobdnas sums up how I feel about it pretty good.
As to the point on money for buying mats I mentioned before. I played one MMO where the amount of mats you could harvest (or crafting you could do) was tied to real time. This produced a system where hard core and casual gamers were on a level playing field (crafting wise at least), and resource farming was not nearly profitable enough for the average gold farmer (are you reading this MJ?). It was a subscription based game at launch. It is FTP now, but I'm not sure how they handle
It was implemented by allowing each account (not per character, and not per server!) to have 10 crafting "camps" (they called it something else and I can't recall what) each camp had to be first purchased as a deed (which made it portable until set up) and then maintained with (in game) cash which could be paid in advance up to a week's worth, and was not a very demanding amount to gather in game once you got one character out of the lowest levels. The camps were totally untouchable by other players and delivered the goods to the player's warehouse (bank in most games) which were distinct for each town where the camps could be built. Certain resources were only available in certain places, and you had to set up your camp there to gather it, other camps would be used to refine/manufacture to the next step. This meant that the real currency in the game was real life time, rather than something that could be manipulated in game. Of course there was such a variety of materials and items to be built that no one account could ever do everything and some things would be more highly valued than others so a player would have to get a feel for the economy to know which sort of camp to set up. The real beauty of the system was that as more players played, there would be more resources to supply the higher demand that more players created. Some players might choose to NOT do any crafting (you could generally buy things with cash that dropped off other players and mobs) but that was quite rare. Even if you chose to do no refining/manufacturing, producing raw mats was one way you contributed to your guild (not what it was called in the game). You couldn't enter these camps, they were accessible through a pop-up interface that you could modify your production from anywhere, but had to travel to their location to collect the products.
Drawing from that experience and what else I have read on this thread I would propose having resource nodes that could be built in a realm (or guild) controlled location in the frontier tied to individual accounts (and thus limited). I would only use it for the most raw materials (1st stage, e.g. ore, logs, pre-thread textiles, etc.), probably the higher level ones though, not the lowest level, I think these could be purely vendor provided. Manufacturing could be handled totally differently without losing the real time limiting factor since this would be built in by the mats. It seems most posters like doing something to harvest their mats, but not having to search and move after each unit, so the nodes would be able to produce multiple units of the material, but it would take time to build up. You would put it in place, leave and come back later to do your harvesting. The nodes would be able to be attacked, looted and disabled by enemies. Disabling would temporarily stop the node from building up (making the node invulnerable to further attack for twice the time it is disabled), looting would provide some, but not all of the material already produced, and to loot it the attacker would have to spend some time harvesting (so the attacker can't expect to avoid the owner or some of his friends because it happens so quickly). An attacking player should also leave some evidence of who they were, think spray painted "Lawtoween was here" across the node, so the owning player knows who looted them. The owning player, upon returning to the damaged node, might have to spend a minimal amount to repair it, but could then harvest the materials built up to that point minus any that were looted. Nodes might have the option of being made open to guildmates or even the entire realm if the owning player is so generous. But they would have to have a maximum capacity (possibly tied to some level) as well as some sort of maintenance requirement (which when it runs out would open the node to anyone and make the node disappear once emptied) so that a player doesn't buy an annual account, place their nodes then quit and the nodes remain in place for the whole year. In the game I'm drawing from the camps would shut down after a week and since they didn't have a physical representation in game there was no worry about a player quitting.
A little clarification on my earlier suggestion of NPC hirelings. They were an easy way to create a "node" in game without having to generate tons of art to match up with whatever terrain in which the player decided to place their node. I still think some mats (and certain other in game seige and building items) should be so heavy that one player could not carry very much on their person, so the first level of "pack animal" would have been the NPC porter (with actual animals and maybe vehicles occupying the higher capacity levels). I also don't like the traditional MMO method of escort, that's why my suggestion specifically stated they would follow the character like a pet, although they might restrict speed based on percent of capacity as a tactical decision making point.
I don't think it should be off the table. This is a good idea.
Okay, so you have feathers and eggs covered, but what about all the other mats you need?
Oh wait, wrong kind of chicks
.
If they're hot enough, you could have the eggs scrambled
I'd say a mix of 2 and 3. A slow supply from npcs for each faction and a larger supply collected by players but is shared between factions.
I'd also have the nodes concentrated in certain areas, rather than just all over. Maybe have it so the reasource areas shift towards the weaker factions, giving them a slight logistical advantage.
I didn't mean to imply that the nodes could be placed just anywhere. There would be limited areas nodes of a specific kind could be placed in my idea.
I love your idea that these areas would move toward the under populated realm. You go out to where you have had your node for the past three months and find it is all dried up, have to move it closer to your enemy!
Mix of drops and vendors.
As unoriginal as it might be, so long as it's done right it's fine.
Collecting it physically is just a pain, and if it's resource areas it's nothing but bots or afk people doing a boring and needless busywork.. Same for finding it randomly in areas..
Also helps the economy on the whole always when the poor can sell their mat's as an option.
I would like a wide ranging array of methods to get mats:
Basic mats:
1. Gathering by hand.
2. "Capturing" of a grove/plot and development of it over time to improve resource generation that you collect from every now and then.
3. For certain agricultural or animal products, you could build onto your house various expansions, such as a vegetable garden, herb garden, reagent garden, pig pens, etc.
4. Looted from creatures (e.g. an NPC miner in a mine) or from other players.
5. Find in various chests or other storables (mining carts, trunks, etc) in locations around the world that respawn randomly so often (but not so often or with a frequency or with so many resources as to make them worth camping or botting).
Rare mats:
1. Looted off creatures or taken from enemy PCs you kill.
2. Found deep in certain dungeons
3. Looted from places that have to be first captured by a realm or guild/clan and then developed or at least have a mine or something built onto it.
4. Randomly and rarely from normal basic mat gathering areas.
As I mentioned in another thread, I would like to see more than just "common" and "rare", though. I would like to see 7-8 diffrent grades from poor to highest quality, with the varying levels each having different results on the manufactured end item. Perhaps end items being made up of multiple components, and the quality of mats you use in each component influencing the random success on the final item.
For the record, I would love an Eve-style like economy where NPC vendors don't provide anything and everything is provided by players. Let supply and demand dictate.