The crafting system is still in the early stages as I understand it. Which got my gears a whirling about dedicated crafters. Not just something that you would only want to do on a bot account cause it chews up some limited resource of you main. Yet still something that, the normal hero can be okay at, and then there are a few. A few mad scientist. Super smart aliens. Magic tome reading bookworms who dedicate a heroic amount of energy into making something better.
Crafting is obviously big, Minecraft, Valheim, Ark Survival Evolved, Stardew Valley to name a few. All of which I've hundreds if not thousands of hours invested in each. It would fill the 3am void when the Euro's are not on yet and the USA sleeps. It can fill the 45 minute long 5 minute wait for your DPS to get lunch cause you know he never takes any less time to eat then that. It can give your friends someone to dump those 80 different McGuffins used in crafting because they know you'll upgrade their gear for free with "the good stuff" later. It can also form a small community of like minded people.
So I guess what I'm asking is a crafting system with a low barrier to entry, say 80% of what most people will want they can do themselves easily. Then the next 15%, the stuff those elite super hero groups and power players seek likely benefits most by feeding one person if you want it quickly. Then the last 5%, the Best in Slot when you want more than a +4% dodge augment you want the +4.05% dodge augment. It's not really worth it to most people to pay for it, and even less will want to pay the price to get that good at crafting. It is what sets apart Lucius Fox from Hephestos.
So I really hope there is a chance to become more well known as a crafter within CoT than Tony Stark.
The line between knowing and understanding is often blurred.
Cute Kitsune the Anti Villain of Phoenix Rising.
I have more fervor then empathy, I still like you.~Me to a friend
It applies here too, I'm passionate not hostile.
The system is set up so that anyone can craft any item. But there can and will likely be necessary to use the market and have certain types of thresholds which can act as a gate to crafting certain more rare pieces.
As for being known as the crafter I’m uncertain as to the overall benefits and possible pitfalls in the larger social dynamics of the game when it comes to crafting.
That is, some on the team have felt that the blind auction system which creates a form of “market pvp” is the best way to go. If items carry a makers mark / name it moves away from that concept.
I’ve some thoughts on moving away from such a system to a certain degree. But our focus right now in the game play team is getting all the combat systems in place before we move to the non-combat systems.
I’ve designed the crafting system as a base to work from and have the framework for the economy but there are a lot of parts that need to be built to finalize the actual structure of the whole.
As such, there are aspects that I know which are very well defined but I’m not at liberty to discuss right now. Then there are some aspects which are in concept phase that can change depending on one or more factors as we iterate. It wouldn’t be fair to discuss those either because of that.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I believe the discussion might be diverging due to a misunderstanding, so I wanted to make sure we're all talking apples and apples.
As I understand it, there will be no crafting skill in CoT. There was no crafting skill in CoX either, so that is appropriate if CoT is supposed to be its spiritual successor. As I understand it, the only thing necessary for crafting are the ingredients. I'm sure recipes might also be a gated resource, but that is only speculation.
Tannim222 said the following: "certain types of thresholds which can act as a gate to crafting certain more rare pieces." To which we can speculate that the thresholds could be access to recipes based upon reputation, character level, glory, In-Game Currency or even cash shop currency. It could also mean that certain ingredients only come from certain missions. But the only way to keep those ingredients our of the hands of players who don't run those missions would be to make them bound, which I think is going to defeat the plans for a marketplace.
Tannim hinted that there are some developers who would like a crafter-based economy. This would require characters to level a crafting skill. In my opinion that is a bunch of added complexity that is not only unneccessary but would take assets away from developing the base game as it is. I'll be the first to admit that improving one's crafting ability is a large part of the fun for some people, including myself; and not having it would be removing some of the playability and value that many MMORPG players desire. Will the playability and player retention that crafting skills beget result in a positive return on investment for developing a skilled crafting system? Or would such a crafting system be feature-creep in a game that is struggling to be completed in its base form?
Edit: (personally I'd love it if recipes were the result of discovery/research. Imagine you pick a research topic from your research tree that looks like one from a 4X game. As you go on missions you get inspirations, loot and resources and together when they reach a certain amount you achieve your next invention recipe. This is actually similar to [url=http://guidescroll.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/RhJdpDE.jpg]Skyforge[/url] a bit. I think this will increase playability and player retention as they "need just one more mission" for the next 'ding.')
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
One notion I’ve thought about off and on in games is the idea of a “request ticket” system for crafted items, where people can lodge requests for rarer items that tend not to last long in auction house systems. Not entirely sure how to make that work properly, but it might stop some of the problems with richer players buying up rare crafted items and immediately posting them for much higher prices in AH-style systems.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
That's a neat idea, and (in an ideal world) I think it would go much further to being a "known crafter" that Cute Kitsune envisions than being a (potentially anonymous) face among many on an auction house / market board. It could also be very effective for normalizing the market if it provides an avenue for people to have items crafted at cost or for what amounts to a small gratuity. Speaking to that point, such a system would require the person requesting the craft to provide the necessary materials / gratuity, otherwise it'd just be a parallel AH system.
On the other hand, this could hobble the crafting-for-profit aspect of the game. This puts the AH focus squarely on materials, which basically puts you back at square one since it'll be the rarer materials that don't last. Also, I wouldn't underestimate people's willingness to take that extra step if they can the crafted item at a discount through this system and then sell it at a premium on the AH. And if this profit allows them to bog down the "request ticket" system...
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
That depends on what you consider an ingredient and a recipe. Under the hood, they are one and the same really. Let's just say you are right, but probably not in the way you are thinking ;).
There could be specific missions related to an aspect of crafting, but they aren't planned as of it. It is something we've slated to consider for later depending on how the base system works as a whole during play over time as the economy matures. But there is different types of content which can affect a certain aspect of crafting. I don't mean vague, well I do actually, but not in a way meant as a tease.
What I meant was some devs want to replicate the blind-auction "pvp" economy of the old game. Such a system removes any possible aspect of being known as a crafter by having a "maker's mark" or character / global name associated with a crafted item. As a whole though, our system is purely player driven as an economy because there aren't any dropped Augments / Refinements that we are planning for. Everything beyond the Basic Augments in the game will be crafted. I have some ideas for how to impart some form of "way to be known" but we will be considering such later in development.
At one point, early on in our preproduction cycle, we had an entire "non-combat" system what had quasi-skills that were non-combat powers and had ways to improve those powers outside of combat. Crafting was one of those "powers". However, as we iterated, the system was, in essence torn a part and distilled down to something far simpler to implement which removed the "powers" aspect, the improvement aspect, and the possibility of content designed for this non-combat system.
In fact, the only left over part of the system is our travel powers system just to give you an idea of what we were considering.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Yeah, there are clearly some issues with that model. One thought I had to cut down on potential abuse would be to put a low limit on the number of requests you could have outstanding, probably with the ability to withdraw or replace them if no one was biting on filling them. That would limit the people who just wanted to exploit the market, while not really hurting the people trying to outfit characters. The latter could still try to exploit the system by using multiple accounts, but that would raise their real-world expenses.
Ultimately, Tannim’s Glory system might be the real answer; I’m really looking forward to seeing how that will work in practice.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
One of the problems with being a crafter in a “classic AH” system that’s annoyed me, is that you can’t control who buys. If you could put the market manipulators on “ignore” in the AH, that might address some of the issues with that model. Though you’d still have to figure out who those people were, and it would almost certainly have to be done at the account level.
Back in EQ, I managed to annoy one of those types, because I kept flooding the market with inexpensive, low end jewelry aimed at new characters, and he wanted to overcharge for that, assuming that all new characters were being funded by end-game alts. Since the player trade system predated the more modern AH model, instead using PC characters left online operating as basically normal NPC vendors with a limited inventory, it was much harder for him to simply buy out my inventory, since he had to put it somewhere.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
I think this is a nice idea, but it would never work as you plan because nothing is stopping the richest people from putting in their own requests for such items and offering "highest current bid +1" for it. Remember that no matter how a system is designed to perform; if the system includes people as elements, the performance of the system will depend only upon the motivations of the people.
This is a good counter and I think it could go a step towards leveling the AH playing field, or at least limiting the maximum effect that individual market manipulators can have on the AH.[br]
I have fond memories of other games I've played (Dofus, Wakfu, and Tree of Savior among them) in which a player can create a shop in situ when they log out. I think doing this has the best return on investment in games that also have RNG drops as well as hard-earned crafting skills, but i've always found it to be a fun time sink to go cruising through the shops to see what people have to offer. Like "American Pickers," you never know what obscure finds you might stumble upon from a shopowner who doesn't know the value of what he or she has.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Yes, I used to wander the NPC vendors in EQ, too, since they had individual inventories, and retained what people sold them. That’s an aspect I miss in more recent games. It’s actually a good motivation for PCs to explore the world, so they can look for low-value, but rare, items that aren’t necessarily worth hauling to an AH to sell, but could be useful in crafting
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
I recall hauling 8 packs of stuff out to the Commonlands Tunnel, only able to move because of my Selo's. Then spending a casual hour broadcasting my wares.
I find I prefer the GW2 method of posting and purchasing on the AH from Anywhere - one still has to visit the actual Broker, to pick up your prizes.
I like the idea of crafting tickets. One could log in to the crafting table and access a catalog of requests. Spend a bit of time filling orders and collect the pay. Then go out trolling for muggers to gather Parts for the next time.
Another approach would be the NPC Crafter, where one is quoted a price in Parts, FedEx the parts to the Crafter, and receive your prize by return mail. Alternately, the 'cost' could be a mission of some sort.
Be Well!
Fireheart
It occurs to me that there are really two questions, here. One, how does one achieve being "well known as a crafter"? Two, and this is key, what does that actually mean?
Isn't this being "well known" just a social element that amounts to, as Cute Kitsune pointed out in the OP, "give your friends someone to dump those 80 different McGuffins used in crafting because they know you'll upgrade their gear for free with "the good stuff" later"? That's nice if you have a friend or someone in the SG whom you can trust to give you "the good stuff" later. (Let's ignore, for now, the question whether those McGuffins are actually at all useful for crafting "the good stuff".) So, would the "well known" tag indicate that they make stuff at cost, or even for free, for their friends / SG? Does it merely amount to a 'crafts lots' badge?
In my view, if a player wants to be a well-known crafter I'd put it to them to get on the forums, social media, or whatever to advertise themselves. I get the ego-stroking "Go me!" aspect, but that isn't something on which the developers need to spend any time or effort.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
@Dark Fez, thanks for bringing the conversation back to the OP comments.
The OP was wondering if there was a way to become a superhero (or supervillain) who is well known as being an inventor and crafter. I think this is a very valid query. So, rather than poo-poo the idea, I'm going to take a moment to think of HOW we can implement it and make it [i]Cool[/i][sup][size=6]TM[/size][/sup].
Lets suppose that we need more than just ingredients and recipes to craft. Lets suppose we also need a workplace with workbenches. Different workbenches would be needed for different kinds of craftables. One workbench for consumables, different workbenches for the types of augments and and different workbenches for the types of refinements. So in order to craft everything, you not only need to learn the recipe, but you also need to have the facilities to craft it.
And the facilities require a serious investment in time and resources to acquire. Of course, you need to have a lair to put them in first, and that is also a serious investment.
But what about low level players, you ask? NPC crafters should be readily available to craft common and low-tier craftables. They can be at popular hubs or in back alley chop shops. Finding the right NPC crafter for your desired enhancements is part of the fun.
And for those characters who do not have or even want to learn the rare crafting recipes, I propose that they go on a mission to make an ally of specialist NPCs who can craft high-tier craftables for them that would be out of reach otherwise.
This gives characters a few in-word paths to obtaining craftables, one path being to be the actual crafter. It also can create a situation in which certain characters can be known as being able to craft this or that ultra-rare set.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
As I understand it, Cute Kitsune's desire is to take the "situation in which certain characters can be known as being able to craft this or that ultra-rare set" and make it a case of "certain characters [b]are[/b] known as being able..."
Perhaps the devs could make a searchable registry for crafters available to which they can add themselves if they so desire. This would, ideally, provide an easy avenue for people to find crafters either by name or by desired recipe that they can craft. Players who are looking for that item that's almost never on the AH, or simply don't want to deal with the AH, or are hoping for a better deal, could use this to find each other. This would be one way to know which crafters are [i]available[/i]. While it may also help in that respect, ultimately the onus is still on the crafter to put in the effort to become [i]well-known[/i].
It'd be great if MWM provided some tools (the idea of that registry, forums, Discord, etc.) but I really don't see it as being any part of their duties to promote players.
If I misunderstood the intent of the question and the desire is that only relatively few players will ever be able to craft the best items, and merely being willing and able to craft this makes someone something of a celebrity, then that's a rather different conversation.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I'm not really sure I'd want to see a system where everyone is more or less forced to create a "crafting alt" that's somehow specialized to be able to create the best crafted items for the rest of your characters.
Sure there's the idea that some people might not have a problem relying on the the market and/or other players to get the best crafts. But if I want to create character concept X, Y or Z I don't want that character to somehow be fundamentally limited just because they cannot create the best crafts by themselves.
I'd have no problem if a player wants to have a character that is "well known" within the game for creating crafted items. But I don't think there should be any kind of specialized crafting class or skill set that a character needs to dedicate themselves towards to be able to craft the best things in the game.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Amerikatt is known for being crafty. Side-effect of taxonomic profiling, or not?
[size=14]"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." - Pushkin[/size]
[size=14] "One piece of flair is all I need." - Sister Silicon[/size]
I like the idea of elite crafters, but I also liked not necessarily needing that in CoX.
I've played several MMOs. In WoW, across my main characters, I was an Elixir Master in Alchemy, and master cooking, Inscription and Enchanting. I spent a lot of time crafting and put it to good use. My guilds would actually provide ingredients on top of payment to ensure that everyone in our raids was fully stocked on flasks and food buffs, and enchanting as necessary. I loved that I had to do a complex quest (and I believe a raid) to even become an Elixir Master. And I loved the random nature of discovering inscriptions because I ended up with valuable and useful inscriptions right away that separated me from other scribes early on. And the crafting was always useful in that game so it always felt worth the effort.
In FFXIV, I loved the idea of the crafting mini-games at first, but literally never found any crafted item to be useful compared to what I was gaining faster and easier through running dungeons for each of my classes. Plus, the mini-game became tedious really fast. Even my friend who was heavily into the crafting throughout the game only ended up using the crafted stuff to glamour its appearance over his dungeon and raid drops because the crafted stuff could rarely keep up for the effort.
In CoX, for the most part I simply sold what I don't need on the auction house, and used it to buy the recipes and ingredients that I did actually want to craft myself, and still ended up obscenely wealthy in the end. After all that time I spent crafting in games, the CoX style ended up being my ideal scenario because I was able to put more time into just playing the game. With that said, I wouldn't mind if there was more specialized crafting possibilities, so long as specialized crafters can make items that are worth it...but can't enslave non-crafters to their will because of how necessary and valuable those specialized items are over every other option.
Edit: Elder Scrolls Online crafting was also fantastic for the most part. (And elder scrolls games in general)
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Interesting observations. I think one of the reasons CoX was attractive was because of the sheer number of different enhancement sets available. Do I combine several partial sets or do I use several smaller sets or do I use a single larger set or do I just equip a bunch of single enhancements without any set bonuses? These types of considerations, when combined with the rarity of some enhancements, combined to make almost every set in-demand for someone. This led to a viable marketplace alternative to just throwing them out and a thriving auctionhouse, which in turn led to many players becoming professional traders. If there was just a simple best-in-slot system, none of that would have existed. I think this is very important to recognize and it didn't occur to me until I read your post.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
That's a good point. The lack of clear best-in-slot made much more diversity in viable builds, which greatly separated it from many other MMOs.
I remember that I used to buy some travel power set recipes for some characters, but only up to the point of getting a stealth bonus when using my travel power (or something along those lines), but other than that I was able to work towards other expensive (but reasonable) mod sets for my AT. I rarely had trouble keeping up in most content even though I wasn't a hardcore min-maxer. Obviously the exception being some of the crazy Mission Architect stuff designed for hardcore speed farming.
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Maybe we could have a system whereby everyone has to craft their own stuff, by combining required raw material inputs at a crafting location, like in your own secret lair or SG base, or even some public venue, like Dr. Tyche's basement, but you can buy and sell raw materials needed for those items on the market (including recipes, which for all intents and purposes are just another required input, really). So basically, the market would just be for Salvage and Recipes, not actual items. In this scenario, the useable Augments and Refinements would be character bound on creation, is what I'm saying.
I also liked set bonuses, I think those would be cool. Like if you could get a global +0.5% damage boost for having some number of items in a set, but the power itself probably would work better if you frankenslotted it, so you have to choose between making your overall build better, or making the individual powers themselves more useable in combat.
Of course all of this leaves the question of "where are we getting these inputs from?" which I would say should probably be random drops off of badguys defeated. I think end bosses in various places should have some chance of dropping some rarity of stuff, whereas minion level badguys would drop mostly just IGC and some common stuff that you need large quantities of.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Two ways.
Crafted items carry a field on them which details which PC (or NPC?) crafted an item. You see this with crafted items in World of Warcraft all the time. It's how you can tell if someone crafted their own weapons and armor (or not) when inspecting their character equipment loadout. So the items themselves "advertise" who made them. The alternative is more of a social reputation thing where seeing someone at a crafting station is a common sight and thus they get a word of mouth reputation among Players "in the know" about such things.
Ideally speaking, and this is something I advocated for years (and years and years...) ago would be to create a crafting system in which each character BUILD offers unique advantages in crafting the stuff used by that specific build.
What it essentially boiled down to was a cost to craft reduction based on how many powers you would be able to slot a crafted item into. So if you have a Defense heavy powerset, that character is "better" at crafting Defensive enhancements than someone who has no (or very few) Defensive enhancements. In other words, you can craft what you can use more cheaply than you can craft what you can't use. The outcome of the crafting isn't any different ... but the cost of IGC to craft the item(s) would be different depending on who is crafting them.
The key point of such a system is that it prevents a You Can Have It All™ outcome from a single crafting alt (in terms of costs). Instead, each character (in the game!) essentially becomes a "crafting specialist" in the enhancements that THEIR build can use.
Needless to say, a respec of your build (specifically, powers) would then also respec what discounts in crafting costs that character has.
At the same time, every character would be able to craft ANY enhancement in the game ... but which ones can be crafted most cheaply by YOUR character would be different from everyone else who doesn't have your character's build.
The ones you're "bad" at you can still make, but they're more expensive to craft than the ones you're "good" at, so you wind up with crafting specializations.
The crucial underpinning is that what you're good at crafting doesn't PREVENT you from crafting what you're bad at crafting, but it does make what you're "bad" at crafting more expensive than what you're "good" at crafting.
That differential between high and low costs to craft based on character builds then inherently favors the creation of alts (to craft different things) while also creating an economy of "efficiency" based around what you can use in your build versus what you can't.
The idea is to be a subtle thing that favors the path of least resistance rather than a cliff that prevents you from playing (or crafting).
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I really like this idea. It fits with the lore behind what enhancements and refinement are meant to represent: Training, fine-tuning, experimenting, selling another portion of your soul, or otherwise improving your existing abilities by whatever means you can.
So it makes sense that street brawlers would be able to improve their toughness and melee attacks easier than they would be at improving long range vampiric abilities, for example.
Since we don't know how recipes are going to work in CoT, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it will be similar to CoX. By this, I mean that there will be some in-game currency cost, and then some ingredients that range from common to rare. In CoX, the in-game currency represented Influence or Infamy depending on whether you were respected (hero) or feared (villain). I don't know if the CoT currency has been established yet, but I'm sure it will be just as metaphysical.
So it would make sense, then, that we could place the in-game currency and maybe even some generic ingredients into a lump and explain that lump as the amount of "effort" required to tailor your ability, while the special ingredients are explained as the "technique" required to tailor the ability. We can scale the amount of "effort" based upon how many, or how few, abilities you have that this enhancement can fit into, just like Redlynne proposed. In other words, the more the enhancement fits with your existing abilities, the less effort it takes to incorporate the new techniques.
Makes sense to me.
While thinking this through, I had a bit of a crisis when I tried to figure out a lore-enabling way to explain how a crafter can sell an enhancement or refinement to another character. And then it hit me. How many handyman or How-to videos are there on Youtube right now? Zillions. Some made by experts in their field, some made by curious amateurs. To the viewer, all that matters is whether the info dump occurs, regardless of how much time and effort it took the creator to become familiar with the subject matter. The same way with crafting in CoX and CoT. The passing along of information of how to improve one's abilities is all that matters to the consumer, not how easy it was for the creator to make the how-to video.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
It has! We mentioned this in our update on Rewards. The currency is called Credibility.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Ah ... so we've moved away from calling it IGC ...
So the abbreviation becomes ... Cred ... or even just Cr (or maybe just C ...?).
Now I'm having flashbacks to playing Traveller and custom building ships that cost mega-credits (MCr).
As is probably already obvious, I like the idea too. It makes the build(s) you use for your alts meaningful since the system is both open ended (anyone CAN craft anything) while at the same time using differentials of efficiency vs inefficiency to bias Player thinking on the topic of how to "best" craft any particular enhancement type. It's a cheaper vs expensive difference, rather than being a CAN vs CANNOT kind of difference ... and it's one in which every single character in the game has a potentially different mix of cheap vs expensive that is unique and specific to them based on the selection of their Powers.
It could be something as simple as a 3% discount per Power that can accept the enhancement type (so if you have 20 such Powers you would get a 60% discount) ... but the net effect is that every character has a kind of built in set of specializations for crafting enhancements that is tailored to the needs of THAT character, which does require crafting up a quantity of enhancements to fill a bar so you can "memorize" a recipe (and thus craft cheaper beyond THAT point, like CoH was doing). The whole thing then winds up being a kind of self-regulating "churn" of advantages and market watching ... and you don't wind up with a single "crafting alt" for all your characters, since every single character will most likely have a different mix of advantage and disadvantage (and the more alts you have, the broader your coverage of efficient crafting between all of them).
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]