Real Crafting
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(back story)
So I logged in to wow, tried to sell some pots on AH, and when I checked back in a while there were dozens more pots with a cheaper price there, and none of my pots got sold. Story of our lives, right?
When crafting is dry, and everyone makes exactly the same "stuff", economy always gets down to undercutting prices, devaluing crafters time which essentially makes crafting eventually worthless, and bots always help out drive things down even more...
(question)
Could we get crafting be a skill based process instead of having dry, old crafting style where you combine mats X and Y, and create product Z, and everyone who does this process creates exactly the same Z?
So every time you craft an item, you get a different end result, based upon your active playing skills, applied while crafting something.
So instead of clicking "craft", then AFK-ing for X time while your 100 copies of some item are being created, you would have to actively craft, using your skills, to try to get the better end results.
(optionally there would be an option to AFK while crafting, but then you would get worst possible end results by default)
This would do so much good not only for crafting, but for an entire economy, and multiple other areas of a game.
I know this would require additional development time, but this would definitely be worth it (imho).
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Wurm Online has that, and I hate it.
The crafting "skill" is just click noise plus painful RNG. I much prefer the abstracted, streamlined Albion Online crafting.As to undercutting, that's only an issue with too much supply. I've noticed in Albion that if I pay attention to market throughput, I don't have to worry about others undercutting me: in a high-demand spike, my stuff will sell anyhow.
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@Gothix Do you think that afk items will stop buying? Users will simply buy goods of different quality at convenient prices. In addition, the artisans of high-quality goods can depend on the price to unprecedented proportions. The whole "problem" in the controlled economic system of the players. Everything can come to the fact that the purchase of resources for X cost will be much more profitable than a few hours to extract resources (Yes, I'm talking about the problems of Albion). If the game had a system of a certain mark-up on the goods, there would be another conversation. Example : product Z at nominal value is worth 10 "coins" (conditional support), this product can be was would sell either in 2 times cheaper (5 coins), either in 2 times more expensive (20 coins). But, as I said, the economy is controlled by players and as soon as a product becomes valuable in the market, it will increase its price on an incredible scale, and the product has become less popular on the contrary will fall in price. No, the idea of controlling crafting, of course, seems attractive, but it will turn the game into a dull routine that will later destroy the craft itself (fewer players will start crafting because of the increased time for the production of goods).
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Man this issue has been the bane of my existence for so long. I've always disliked how most games "solve" it by just making certain recipes including rarer and rarer things. So lazy imho. Instead, I love the idea of skill based crafting, which is something at least one of my most anticipated games coming out has as a primary component. I also think you should really have go dedicate yourself to crafting in one area, which in many ways would help with this issue, as people could choose to be a type of crafter which there aren't many of.
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The price of an item in every game I've played with a rich crafting system has been tied to the resources involved in the crafted item. In many of these games I have been at a disadvantage due to macro resource gathering. As long as this is controlled then I'm in a fair market.
As with any fair market model for buying/selling it is going to be based upon supply and demand That is the cornerstone of a free market. If players want to come along and undercut their profit margin by unloading their stuff cheaper that's fine. Markets stabilize at a price that players are comfortable with concerning their profit margin they wish to obtain. If you can keep up the supply and still undercut others then that makes you a good businessman. If that supply is kept up with macroing resources then the system fails for everyone else.
Some games I've played have had systems in place for special materials required or an item quality based upon your tools and skill. These systems were implemented to produce varieties of items so that the market didn't have loads of the same stuff with a didn't crafter's name on them. I'm fine with those systems as well as long as they are not too complicated and burdensome.
Life is Feudal's system was the worst for quality I have ever had to deal with. You literally got one hit off your tool and building you used before all other items crafted degraded below 100% quality. Each successive crafted item was lower quality until the point you had to remake your entire shop and replace your tool. SWG had a very intricate quality system on their materials used in crafting. However, the problem with their system is they rotated resource nodes so that it could be months before you ever saw a high quality on a particular resource needed for some items. Crafters could sell resources sometimes for higher prices than even the final products.
Whatever is used in Fractured crafting/vendoring is my favorite thing to do so it is one topic I plan to try to follow.
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@Roccandil In any game, people will undercut each other ... even if they lose money.
I personally hope Fractured will be similar. Because i make my ingame wealth of idiots on market/AH xD.
In Albion i farmed my gold (before i quit) by simply going to a market, checking the price for stuff and buying it cheap then pedddling it to an market where i could sell it for more.
Someone wants to sell wood T3 for 100? Heck i will sell it for 90, wait a bit and buy off people that undercut me. As my 90 offer has alot of stuff in it~ While doing so i have "buy" orders for 89 too.Check next day or a few hours later (after work) and i can now resell that stuff or craft it into usefull things. And sell these.
Rather then tradeing fully crafted items, i specialized in tradeing materials ... cause everyone wants to craft their own stuff or has a friend that got a crafter.
In the end, high tier stuff crafted sells. Newbie stuff crafted is gonna get undercutted, below material price. Just cause someone is gonna want to sell their equipment someday later.Tldr: Don't mess with the crafting rng too much. But give crafters a way to be better, if they are "really crafters. Stats on Dexerity= Better craft results ? Mage stuff crafted needs dexerity and int. Swordmans stuff strength and vitality. Etc xD. But we will see how fractured handles crafting.
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I like how Albion allows specialization on the skill tree (100 levels of specialization!), but what I don't like is the focus mechanic. Every premium player gets 10K focus per day, which allows them to craft or refine at a much higher efficiency than normal, making a raw apprentice with focus more cost effective than a perfect specialist without it.
That seems to exacerbate the "raw materials are worth more than refined goods" problem.
Of course, with Fractured's horizontal progression, I'm not seeing much room for crafting specialization, other than the initial boost from the attribute build. I could see rare recipes being unlocked via some kind of difficult action, but I'm guessing a lot of the economy will be about rare resources (like bear heads, which haven't dropped for me yet
).What I'm really excited about, though, is market distance/coverage and diverse resource distribution. Am hoping that it will be quite profitable to do long merchant caravans from a region with a unique resource to a region without it.
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I just wanted to emphasize that I am not talking about RNG crafting here.
I hate RNG.I'm just talking about "real" skill based crafting.
With a decent system (not something painful, or even time consuming) crafting can still be quick and even fun, you just couldn't be AFK while crafting. If crafting system is not just about "click random button while crafting", but something smarter, then an actual playing experience could make you better at it, and you could over time start making better and better items (or if you are really gifted and smart to figure it out right away, you might not even need a lots of time to become good at it).
Of course, it is not easy to develop such a system that's fun, smart and good. But if devs could actually devise such system, I would much prefer it, then boring regular AFK crafting where everyone creates exactly same products.
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I'd like research-based crafting, in which you have an immense number of variables to tweak (given the proper tools), and thus have to do a great deal of trial-and-error to optimize what you're making, but I suspect that would also be hard to implement.
And I hear you on the RNG.
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I would like to see some kind of complexicity what it comes for crafting, so those who really are focusing on professions will be separated from sunday crafters. Some kind of skill based minigame could be intetesting if implement well, but in otherhand can get boring quite fast as well. I am ready to see at least quality over quantity (less mass productive crafting), recipes, passive stat bonuses and crafting equipment to have some influence to the result of crafted item.
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Hmm I would like a crafting were the skill influances the outcome.
Have a low skill and the items will have crappy stats too.
Have a good skill and maybe boost from working at a smithy, woodcutting workshop, sewing station and so on results into high quality results, with stats that everyone wants.In Neocron(An mmo noone probably knows anymore, if at all ^^) it was like that nearly. You had high skill, boosted your skills even further with drugs and by being at a crafting outpost. In the end you could archive items with Artifact quality's(120% stats).
That way it would at least give a crafter some reason to hone their skills to perfection to create the items everyone wants.
Also those crafting chars back in NC times were hardly good for anything else. So mostly trading and crafting
Maybe this way we had less jack of all trades and some people specialize in certain fields.
Maybe with a learning debuff if they wanted to raise a second or third profession to that kind of level.
Which would be a huge time investment.Just some thoughts.
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Reading this thread got me thinking,
so how would a skill based crafting mini-game were you have to do research,testing and experiment with amount and types of materials to get different outcomes look like? The standard non mini-game should still be an ingame option if you cant or don't want to for some reason.Example for generic health pot:
Standard, 10 herbs + 5 vials = 5 t1 health pots.
Mini-game, nail the game part with same ingredients = 2 t1 health pots, 3 t2 health pots. The mortar and pestle are like an extension you and your expertise, those herbs didn't stand a chance.
If you fail the mini-game 1 vial breaks you only get 4 health pots.Lets say you have 2 slots for experimentation done some testing and research:
S, 7 herbs + 10 vials +[1 water] +[1 bug juice] = 10 t1 health pots
M-G, nail the game part with same ingredients = 4 t1 health pots, 6 t2 health pots, damn! that bug juice was antiseptic as hell.
Super-fail the mini-game you get bug juice in your eye, drop a vial and step on it, -20hp -1 vial +7 health pots and 2 empty vials.
Experienced epic crafter gets 20% chance to get 10 t2 health pots or something if they do good in the mini-game.All this doesn't really matter and the market you cant do much about but the mini-game tho,
any ideas on what could it be? Should it be different for each type of craft?
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I definitely wouldn't like a twitch-based or RNG-based minigame, but I could see something like this:
- In the game code there exists a perfect recipe for potion X;
- That recipe requires extremely precise quantities of the proper ingredients, developed in an extremely precise, complicated process (heated to temperature A.AAA, after interval B.BBB add C.CCC units of finely ground ingredient D , invoke spell E when potion turns deep purple, let cool to F.FFF and stir G times, clockwise, and so on! );
- Early tools and easily-gatherable ingredients will be unable to come anywhere close to that level of precision or potency, but even so, you'll still be able to craft a very low quality version of the potion;
- Once you have the right tools and the best ingredients, however (which should be a significant logistical challenge of its own), you'll still need to do an incredible amount of trial and error and scientific recording to hone in on the perfect recipe.
I think that would be awesome.
No RNG, no AFK crafting, just good old scientific method.
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@Roccandil sounds good for me
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@Roccandil I agree, something that requires you to use intellect, rather than just some RNG, or click the button mini game that make no sense, would be great.
And there is lot more options (that wouldn't be known) that could exist. For example, besides only messing around with ingredients, temperatures and vials, perhaps...
- some pots would yield better results if brewed at specific locations, perhaps in mountain climate, or near water, or at camp fire,... or perhaps at specific time of day.... all these could be hidden factors (alongside messing around ingredients and other factors) that players could discover (or not) that could result at more potent potions in the end.
Players would keep their discoveries secret, or they could sell something they discovered to another player... which would again be a risk for other player to buy, as he has to believe that it's vaild info. And master crafters would certainly keep most valuable secrets for themselves.
Whoever would have better knowledge would be able to make stronger potions that would be sought out and have great value (due to limited supply, and greater potency).
All this... much better than just having zerg of crafters just herbing daisies and mushrooms and all creating a bunch of exactly the same pots... I really don't see anything attractive in that kind of plain crafting anymore.
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I could also see allowing players to study potions or items others have crafted, to learn something about how they were made (though never everything). Thus master crafters might save their best for themselves, and only sell or trade the second-best.
I'd also love it if crafting were not simply about crafting the best of the best (assuming access to all resources in the game), but also about crafting to the best possible effect with locally-available resources. Given a limited set of resources, what's the most efficient and effective use of them?
That kind of local pressure is one aspect of unique cultures, and I think it would be cool if that could spring up organically.
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Crowfall has blueprints! they have points that you add to different areas which change the outcome of the print. If you used good quality items then the print would be higher quality and may require less materials to craft the next batch.
it allows a player to influence the outcome of crafting while not needing to do it every time.
I like blueprint manufacturing because it allows for a group to quickly get some quantity of items but still allows a crafter the chance to determine the quality of the output. It would make blueprints valuable and the crafter might be ransomed/hired to create better prints for others.
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I think I'd like crafted blueprints or discovered templates, as opposed to "blueprints on rails" (even with options). Was it Two Worlds that let you save your own recipes to repeat later if you had the right ingredients in inventory?
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Problem with fixed blueprints is that eventually everyone would end up with "the best ones" and in the end, everyone would again be crafting exactly the same thing.
Crafting should have many factors, that are determined on the fly so you can't just study up everything and after a while start producing the best stuff without an effort.
Crafting needs to be an effort every single time, your first time, and your 1000th time, or else, eventually all products end up the same.
Good idea would be to require (as one of the factors) that dangerous zone is needed to give bonus to crafting results... so if you craft in safe city, your pots are weaker, but if you craft in middle of danger zone, they are more potent.
Risk vs. reward. And then you can be sure not everyone will end up with same results, but only those that take some risks will.
And of course, there can be plenty more factors involved besides that.
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I wouldn't want crafting to be repetitive: that gets boring.
Recipes are real for a reason! Also, I don't like the idea of crafting arbitrarily being "better" in a risky area. Rather, I'd rather the risky area had some special resource that you'd need to make your crafting better.
I suppose you could have magically-infused locations in dungeons, like an ancient "forge of the gods", that can't be replicated anywhere else, but I'm not sure how I feel about that.
