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Instead of Crafters being "sword factories" perhaps this idea would work.
robert4818
Member UncommonPosts: 661
This is a thought I would like tho share, feel free to give your opinion on it.
First, this idea would work best in a non-level based game, but the concept could be tweaked for one like WOW, it just won't have as much impact until end game.
One of the crafting concepts I never liked was that in most games they seem like the crafter is an endless factory of whatever tier of crafting they are on. So long as they have a good supply of the material they need, they can produce any quality of sword in about 5-10 seconds, and then another, and another, and another..... In the end, the basic sword is useless both to the playerbase, and to the crafter. The crafter can't sell it because the market is so flooded that the price isn't worth it.
The reality is that when dealing with one guy, the difference in a good sword and a bad sword is the amount of time the swordsmith puts in it. To this end I propose this system:
To craft an item, the player plays a mini-game. This mini-game can be designed to be whatever you want, from something like EQ2's to Vanguards, the type of game doesn't matter so long as difficulty is scalable, and the game can be lost. When complete the crafter has made a single base-line item. The crafter now has the option to finish, or continue forward. If he finishes, he's finished sword is complete.
If he chooses to go on, he plays a slightly harder version of the mini-game. When this game is one, the items level increases by one, and its stats increment up. He can continue to do this with each increase slowly increasing the stats by a small increment each time. My thought is to have the baseline provide some level of diminishing returns, until it reaches a point where each level's increment is about 1/10 the increment from lvl 1 to lvl 2, but remains steady. This means that someone could concievably create the best sword in the world, but it would take him a while to do so.
A loss at the game causes a reduction in the items stats. My thought is that a loss results in a stat drop of a lvl 1-2 increment, and the process stops, item complete. This of course means that the crafter must carefully weigh his ability to complete the next level before choosing to do so.
Enchanting an item would work roughly the same way. With the stipulation that an Item can only hold as many levels of enchantment as an item has levels. The only difference the enchantments start reletively weak, and increase in power with each level of enchantment, greater returns instead of lesser ones. Of course a loss at enchanting loses 2 levels of enchantment, and the process stop.
This system would still use item decay. If a weapon is repaired there is a chance 5% that it drops one level (Regular and enchantment) However, if a weapon is broken, It will drop 1 level, and have a 10% chance of droping another. (Regular and enchantment).
I use the term enchantment, but this crafting system could be used for any genre, you'll just need to change the name to something else.
What do you think?
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Comments
if you are familiar or have access to the DnD 3.5 ruleset they have a fairly balanced system for enchantment that would be useful for your proposal. (especially since 3.5 is under the OGL and therefore free to use with proper credit given.) this ruleset would be in the 3.5 DM;s guilde.
my books are packed right now as i am getting ready to move or i would lay out the basic principles of the system. i just don't trust my memory enough tbh.
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No worries. I'm quite familiar with the system.
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That's very close to a system I came up with.
Essentially crafting mini games for potions, armor, weapons and the higher the player goes the better the equpment.
Also, some actual visual customization very much like a Neverwinter nihghts "trainer" I used once.
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This is a decent system you purpose, but really they've made a perfect crafting system, just check out old SWGs crafting system, they had it all. The best way to let crafters be something other then weapon factorys would be for a game to not be entirely geared based, which is something we greatly need, also having large amounts of crafting proffesions, but it needs to be in a game where crafters are solely crafters for the sake of making money and crafting, not a game where your a class with a side proffesion into making stuff for your use and sometimes selling. Current games just dont put money into their crafting systems and turn them into addons to your characters, untill this changes, then crafters are just going to stay weapon/armor/potion/ and mild item enchant factories as you say.
I like to play a game to be a crafter, not play a game to be a warrior who knows how to craft.
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I'm a huge fan of interdependency. I believe that is the key to a good economy.
The goal here is to make the creation of crafted items that are "special" be a time consuming process. A crafter shouldn't be able to simply mass produce high quality merchandise, there should be a time investment in the project. As such, since the player put an amount of time into the object, the objects aren't as common. It also won't be as cheap to produce.
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As one of those "Cranky SWG Vets," I have to add that what really made the system work was that all items were consumed / broke for good eventually (Pre-NGE days). Everthing had to be replaced at one point or another.
What this led to was a large number of crafters competing for your business. Prices were fair and not ridiculous like I've seen in many other titles (millions upon millions of gold/credits for a piece of gear?). You can pay premium prices for the highest, super-duper quality gear. It took alot of game knowledge, proper high-end resources, and a bit of luck for a crafter to come up with an item worthy to be elevated above others. Pretty much only the PvPers only went for such gear for any little edge, no matter how small. Other than that, for most people, especially PvEers, a good majority of the gear is quite respectable and wouldn't cost you an arm and a leg.
Crafters had to be conscious to balance pricing for the quality and quantity they offer, because other great crafters on the server will vie for the same business. Lots of options for the consumer back then in that game. And I travelled extensively at times to get to certain merchants that I became a fan of.
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I dont see why they couldnt add that type of feature onto what SWG had. To be fair though SWG crafting in all took a great while if you were mass prodoucing from ore gathering up.
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I prefer my crafting to be automatic. I don't want to watch a progress bar or play any minigames since they will get very old, very fast. I want to do stuff while I am "crafting".
I also don't like the fact that the quality of the crafting is determined either by the skill level of the character (almost always grindable) or the outcome of some minigame. I'd rather have my items draw their stats from the rare materials I find during my adventuring.
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Puzzle Pirates uses a system a bit like you described. It's slightly different in that each item takes a certain amount of work and you do minigames and depending on how well you perform in the minigames the speed at which you create the item is lowered. You can also hire people to do minigames for you. Difficulty of the minigames increase based on the player's skill, but so does the overall production rates.
I really hate how crafting is done currently in most MMOs, and wish more developers would adopt a minigame system.
Upcoming ArcheAge will have system with labor points. Each player will have certain amount of labor points which renew while you play, each crafting action takes some points. So you can craft finite amount of things. What about those who want to craft more? You can get labor points from other players. They can give it or sell them to you. Many people don't craft at all or very rarely so this will work.
Though I don't know exact details about this system , it looks promising.
At least someone is not afraid to try new concepts.
This concept could still work, to some extent, to be a mini-game less style of system.
The primary concept is to make higher quality goods take more time so that the market doesn't get flooded.
To that extent, I would leave item "levels" in. From the crafting window you would choose how many levels you want to put into a weapon. Each level takes (new level X base time) to advance. Until you click "finish" on an item, the item can have more levels added to it (meaning you can keep grinding away on the same sword for weeks if you want).
So, for example:
Lv 1 - 5 seconds
Lvl 1-2 - 10 seconds
lvl 2-3 - 15 seconds.
etc.
Taking 1 sword from lvl 1 to ten would take somewhere around 5 minutes.
Material can take a larger part in this system. The material can adjust the baseline stats. I would suggest having different materials having different effects rather than just having a tiered system. Iron might be more durable, while Bronze is lighter.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
cool idea, however, the eventuality is the same. instead of the market being flooded with crafted_sword_01, it would be flooded with UBAH_200hr_nofail_sword_01
the "control element" of crafting in a MMO is the rarity of the component that goes into the item, not how much time you spent into crafting the weapon. eventually thats what it comes down to.
the "minigame" is simply a distraction to give the crafter something to do. an ego stroke if want to think about it that way. but eventually everybody (crafters) are going to master the minigame if there is profit to be made.
there are only a few "ways" to build the sword depending on what the flavor of the week is (more speed/more dmg/more effect/more proc/etc) and if all it takes is time, then the market would be flooded sooner or later.
Reminds me quite a bit of ORIGINAL EQ2 crafting (not what they have now). You could finish an item with 3 different qualities or fail it completely. When you failed you even lost rare items you were using to craft with, which was.....painful, to say the least. The difference in your idea is that if you succeed (on any level of success, I assume) then you can choose to continue on PAST what would have been completion in old EQ2, and you can improve the item you're crafting (possibly) that way. I like it.
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I think it really depends. The meer fact that the UBAH_200hr_nofail_sword_01 requires 200hrs to make means that it will be much more rare than the other sword.
Plus, Even if someone makes UBAH_200hr_nofail_sword_01, how will they price their time doing so?
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Suppose there was some skill involved? So in the mini game, much like any "arcade style" game, there is always a chance of failure.
I don't think the system has to be as cut and dry as just making it through one leve after another. My thought is that a neat crafting system would involve the components, what "attributes" and "negatives" one might add to the item.
I have always been partial to a crafting system that was like the race creator in Masters of Orion II. Essentially you have a pool of points for positives. Using "penalty traits you could buy a limited amount of points to use, with an eventual cap on how many points an item would have. This and the skill of the player at the mini-game along with the components would determine how good the item would be.
I have no problem with a game where not everyone can be the best.
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I think its a fantastic idea and of course as you push the limits of success your ability to create better base level items increases. Base level items would be for say the Wow next next next crafter that is only trying to raise his skill to make the next base level item.
pricing time is simply a function that the gold farmers have made into a business. the issue here isnt really about how much time or how much twitch skill it takes to make the sword. if there is a profit to be made, the gold farmers will find a way.
it's unfortunate that we live in a MMO world where the gold famers takes the fun out of doing things:/
Hmm.
Its rare that one reads a posting that one partly absolutely loves and, to the other part, absolutely hates.
So here are my agreements:
1. Yes, crafted items should be special. A playermade item shouldnt be your everyday standard item. It should require a lot of work to get the proper ingredients, and the final item should be absolutely great.
2. Yes, the crafting process should be time consuming. You need a lot of time to get the ingredients, remember ? So making the crafting process a simple "click and wait for a certain time" is a no-no. If you can spend hours and days of farming for the ingredients, you can also spend hours and days at crafting the final thing.
And here are my disagreements:
3. No, there is NOT a many hours long time before the item is finished. That would mean a simple server reboot would destroy the item. A crash of the personal computer or a problem with the internet would do the same thing. Also, you would really have to sit in front of the computer for hours and days IN SEQUENCE. Therefore crafting would absolutely have to be split into single steps. You can do the farming in single steps, too, so why not the crafting as well ?
4. WTF we just made the crafting extremely expensive - why the heck do we suddenly need item decay ? Just make it impossible to improve the item further once a craft has failed. Thats more than enough motivation to try to repeat the whole thing again, this time with a higher leveled better equipped better awake or whatever crafter, or simply in hope you get more far this time.
5. In general, "item decay" is on my list of "I'm outta here" things in a game. Sorry, if you want a game of treadmill, GET A DAMN MOUSE and leave human beings alone. When I play, I want to see improvement, not "oh well I just spend hours and days of work just to stay at the point I already was before".
Oh, and this one I'm neutral about:
6. Personally I would have chosen to destroy the item - once any craft fails. Just to make the whole thing more interesting.
It is not crafting that needs to be fixed but the games that crafting is implemented in. If mobs and bosses only dropped components for crafting or upgrading instead of weapons and armor it would not really matter how the crafting was done. People like to feel important. That what they are doing matters.
Right now in the modern MMO crafting is pretty pointless so it really does not matter how much fun you make it if in the end the item you make is inferior to a drop and disposable.
I think this is an excellent idea Robert, I would love to play a game that had a crafting system like you describe. +1
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The problem with the original EQ2 system was the UI. It needed to be organized around the end item with the subparts under it. That is how I think about approaching crafting an item.
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The idea sounds OK. The big point is there needs to be a way to reduce the flood of crafted items. I agree with this and item degrading/repair does seem to be a decent solution. I'm not sure that I completely agree with the idea of spending over 100 hours on a single item, though. You are going to get really sick of that minigame or really pissed off if you attempt and implausible crafting job, especially in the later levels. Craft 10 times to gain a level and one fail sets you back 1 or 2 levels. Not very far along will players beg for some automation to mitigate the monotony. Or atleast something like 3 sucessful crafts in a row you get a free one. I really doubt no mater what the minigame is, if you are crafting only one item for a looong time you are going to have a lot of crafters to give up. Well, thats one way to limit a flood of higher level items.
I like the Outer Empires (space based MMO for iOS/Browser) method of crafting, you buy a basic blueprint (has 3 to 5 stats for the item) and "research" it on a chosen stat at your research centre, when complete your chosen stat goes up and another random one goes down a little and the recipe for production changes. This randomises the crafting to produce different items produced by different people.
The nice thing is the name of the BP then incorporates your character name so a basic shield bp after 1 turn of research becomes a RefMinor.Mk1 bp
This means you can become the go to name for shields for example as everyone knows the RefMinor.Mk11 shield has better stats than the JoeBloggs.Mk11 and so sells for an increased premium.
Research time is exponential by level so limited to maybe 24mks over about a year
Of course the whole concept in this thread can be nerfed by npc's dropping better items than players can produce.
My thoughts on that are to kep the crafting going in the same "stage size" so to speak. In a min-game styled system, the item is saved every time a stage is complete.
In a "standard" style system (think wow) Your crafting would go in stages, each one the same size as the initial lvl took to complete. You could then automate the process and move on. Just like you would with crafting 54 level one swords, you would turn around and tell the computer to create one lvl 10 sword. It would go through the same number of "steps" to get you there. (55 individual crafting timers) each one saves the work you've previously done. This would keep a server reboot from killing all the progress you've made on the sword.
As for Item Decay, I feel its a necessary part of any Item Economy, especially if you will be using the same item for a long time (end game or level-less system). This keeps the economy going, and keeps crafters in business. Otherwise, the demand for the item drops as people simply reach the top and stay there. Also, I've tried to keep the decay fairly minimal for those who "take care" of their weapons. The chance of decay is small for someone who doesn't allow the item to break.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!