Forums » Crafting and Gathering

One Tradeskill Per Player?

    • 46 posts
    December 14, 2016 10:51 AM PST

    You could have the best of both worlds:

       1) Everyone should be able to gain some minimum apprentice-level in all tradeskills (for simplicity, if Grandmaster is 200 skill, lets call this skill 50). For 1-50 skill points, the speed is roughly equivalent to EQ1...slow, painful, but manageable for people dedicated.

       2) From 50-200, substantially increase the effort needed for skill-ups (2-3x slower than EQ1...oh the humanity)

       3) Allow the player to pick one skill to focus on. That skill will skill-up at a much faster rate (1x EQ1 speeds). They can still increase the other skills at the much slower and penalized rate. 

     

    The result: Every player could have one tradeskill that they feel meaningfully contributes to their gameplay, while not trivializing the crafting side of the game or putting up artificial barriers to the more crafting-obsessed types (myself included), who want one character to be able to master all the skills, even if it is painful, time-consuming,  and far less efficient than just making an army of alts. I DO think that a single character grandmastering all skills should be exceedingly rare with only maybe a handful on a server being willing to put the effort in.

    Also important and related: Inter-dependence between tradeskill classes. Skills should not be their own crafting silos independent from each other. A baker should rely on specially crafted cooking utensils from a blacksmith. A blacksmith should rely on padding from a tailorer, and so on. I always loved how despite whatever huge drama was going on on my server between rival guilds, monks training people, and contested spawns, within the crafting community, everyone seemed to lose their drama and guild tags at the door and get along being helpful with each other.

    • 3016 posts
    December 14, 2016 11:40 AM PST

    I like to create alts and use my higher level main to gather harvests/ materials.  :) It also allows me to sample the various races and starter cities. :)

    • 106 posts
    December 15, 2016 4:51 PM PST

    Hello everyone. Having one crafting or not. I like to craft, go out and explore, do quests, adventuring and grouping with random people. We all do. Some more so for crafting. So for our main character, what to do. 

    Tree/tier - Grandmaster or Specialize cracter, one main crafting skill, three sub master skills or support skill tree. Say Weapon Smithing is my goal, Grandmaster Weapon Smithing 500 skill current cap. My three (could be two or four etc) supporting crafting, Blacksmithing 200 level cap, Carpentry 200 level cap, and Armour Smithing 200 level cap. And you can have many other crafting but all are cap at 100 skill. You start with all crafting available to you as you progress. When you eventually hit  100, you have to decide four crafting skills to advance, when you hit 200, you choose which crafting skill you want to grandmaster in (and maybe do a quest for it). So player A can be grandmaster/specialize (if they decide to have a grandmaster title or specialize) in Weapon smithing and has three support crafting skills that can help with making weapons. While Player B can specialize in Tailoring with three crafting, player C decides to specialize/grandmaster in Baking/cooking, etc. Hey Player A needs special material that only Player B can make, but to make that player B needs component that only player C can make.

    Or have one character who does all that and eventually burn out from crafting (speaking from experience). Patheon a community game, not for everyone. They did say there will be some sort of bonus for our alts when we reach high levels, so maybe make an alt that specialize in baking or fletching, etc. Just suggesting, dont specialize or master in every single crafting/tradeskills availble. Five crafting/trades skills as support would suffice for me, one specialize/grandmaster trade/crafting skill. And all others available for general use. No tree line needed, tier chart etc, just select what crafting you want after reaching a certain skill level, say 100, select your choice. Then with those craft skills when you advance to say 200, choose one crafting you want to advance to specialize in, to master in.

    So one tradeskill per player? No, not for me, however, one to specialize in, master in, grandmaster a specific tradeskill...sure.

    • 172 posts
    December 15, 2016 5:14 PM PST

    I agree with Gemdiver and Raven here.  One tradeskill that is your primary.  This skill levels up at normal speed and can reach Grandmaster (or whatever).  You can then choose a few (2-4) secondary tradeskills that level up slower and can only reach Master level (or something, you get the idea).

    Lets say you can have up to 4 tradeskills.  One your primary, and three secondary.  My idea:   Make it so that two of those choices were limited by your race and/or adventuring class, and the other two could be anything. 

    Adding to that, make one racial, one class related, and the other two players choice.  After choosing all of these, you can pick any of them to be your primary.


    This post was edited by JDNight at December 15, 2016 5:15 PM PST
    • 77 posts
    December 16, 2016 11:41 AM PST

    Probably would never happen in any game. It will happen in my dreams though, and my dreams are awesome.

    Drop crafting as a 'sub skill'. Make crafting classes as viable as needing a tank/dps/heal/support. In character selection have crafting class to select. Instead of boss raids, have project raids of having to complete complex crafting of certain 'objects/rituals' with chance of failing miserably and the world be affected by it.

    Praise Khazas!

    • 160 posts
    January 12, 2017 10:52 PM PST

    I'm sorry, but as someone whose cleric achieved 250 in every EQ tradeskill I could get, and who proudly wore both the Coldain Prayer Shawl and Earring of the Solstice, I must disagree with limiting tradeskills. 

    • 780 posts
    January 13, 2017 8:23 AM PST

    Nolvu said:

    Probably would never happen in any game. It will happen in my dreams though, and my dreams are awesome.

    Drop crafting as a 'sub skill'. Make crafting classes as viable as needing a tank/dps/heal/support. In character selection have crafting class to select. Instead of boss raids, have project raids of having to complete complex crafting of certain 'objects/rituals' with chance of failing miserably and the world be affected by it.

    Praise Khazas!

     

    I like this.  I have friends who are only into crafting and would make characters who are crafters by class.  I agree that it's not going to happen though.  I think we'll probably end up with a system where you can choose a harvesting skill and a crafting skill, or where you can work on all the skills you want, but only one or two can go above a certain level.

    • 46 posts
    January 13, 2017 8:39 AM PST

    Shucklighter said:

    I like this.  I have friends who are only into crafting and would make characters who are crafters by class.  I agree that it's not going to happen though.  I think we'll probably end up with a system where you can choose a harvesting skill and a crafting skill, or where you can work on all the skills you want, but only one or two can go above a certain level.

    Yeah, it always bugged me how easy it would be to integrate crafting more into the adventuring side of the game and its never done. Things as simple as a boss mob in a group dungeon that can be weakened by a crafted poison potion with the potion only working for an hour after being crafted (to force the crafter to be there and not just bought before heading into the dungeon) would make the game much more dynamic. Just as in some areas, bringing an enchanter for crowd control or wizard/druid for evac option, you could have some areas where bringing along a player mastered in a particular tradeskill helps the experience run much smoother.

     

    There was a great GoD raid in EQ (never thought I would use 'great' in the same sentence as that expansion) where mobs throughout the zone dropped temporary-flagged ingredients which had to be used to craft items necessary for progressing through the zone. It might have been Uqua but it has been a very long time for me. I remember a couple times when our hardcore raiding guild didn't have a particular crafter on for that night's raid and we would bring along a casual player with that skill just for doing the requisite combines.

    Anything that gives a server's population a chance to mingle and socialize, especially between the hardcore raiders and more casual players is absolutely fantastic for creating a healthy server population instead of everyone existing in their own small bubble of their guild or regular group. 

    • 780 posts
    January 13, 2017 11:44 AM PST

    Your example from that raid later in EverQuest sounds neat and I don't mind stuff like that as long as the trade skills are all represented evenly (mostly, at least) so that a certain trade or two don't become 'mandatory' or obligatory.  I also don't think that those who would play a theoretical 'crafter' class would necessarily all be casual players, either.  Surely, there are a bunch of MMORPG players out there who are looking for a game that is finally going to allow crafting to be more than just a hobby.  I'm not saying PRF needs to be the game for them, but it would be cool if it wasn't just like, "Well, I'm max level now...guess it's time to max my trade skill."  Maybe there could be an opportunity down the line for these players to sacrifice the opportunity to advance their adventuring skills a bit in order to be just that much better at their chosen craft than an adventurer could be.

     

    I know we don't know much about PRF crafting, but I'm pretty confident you won't be able to be a master of every trade skill.  I think they're going to force you to specialize.  They don't want you to be able to do everything by yourself while adventuring, and they probably don't want you to be able to do that with crafting either.  

    • 97 posts
    January 14, 2017 1:30 AM PST

    Even if they allowed multiple professions on 1 toon, I am not sure how feasible that would be storage wise.  For example on my weaponsmith in VG, you had to turn ore into magical ingots.  There were 24 different types of refining dusts/powders/crystals you could use to make those ingots.  You also needed to make secondary items (30-40 different types depending on what weapon you were making).  When crafting the weapon, you could add finishing dusts/powders/shards/crystals to the item to give it an added bonus.  Each weapon usually had 3-4 different type of finishing that could go into each one.  There were 150-200 total options.  If you wanted to upgrade further, you needed rare or heroic harvested ore and a secondary item crafted by a minerologist.  My weaponsmith had a 60 slot crafting bag full, a 60 slot bank full and 1 or 2 of his remaining 4 bags full of crafting mats.  It would not have been possible to have more then 1 profession on 1 toon, and be efficient at it. 

     

    Crafting will be more like VG then EQ.  I would expect there to be some storage problems if you do too much on 1 toon. 

     

     


    This post was edited by Gragorie at January 14, 2017 1:49 AM PST
    • 174 posts
    January 14, 2017 8:09 AM PST

    As long as it's not one tradeskill per account it's all semantics for a dedicated crafter.  My alts live to craft.

    • 521 posts
    January 14, 2017 10:40 AM PST

    Chimerical said:

    As long as it's not one tradeskill per account it's all semantics for a dedicated crafter.  My alts live to craft.

     

    This is exactly what it would take to have any effort on preventing players from cheating the system, if its per character then the effect is the same as if someone can max every craft on one toon. Making it per account would at least force them to buy another account, and that at least helps the game financially, and I suspect much fewer would bother cheating at that point.

    • 3016 posts
    January 14, 2017 11:21 AM PST

    I would say limit tradeskill per character to say..3.   That makes sense if you have to create the nuts and bolts first before you create the main product.   One per account is unduly harsh..  there are lots of us crafters around,  I craft because I take joy in crafting..love it absolutely.   I would have a little more trust in the VR team than that.   They're intelligent people and I highly doubt they would create something so obstructive that it would pee people off in regards to crafting.   I craft with all my characters,  usually do harvesting/resource gathering with one or two.    It also allows me to experience the lore and starter cities of every possible race.    I like to experience as much of the game as possible,  have even done pvp over the length of my gaming time.     I expect a relatively wide open world with a few restrictions that inhibit the gold sellers/buyers and power levelling companies.    Have a little more faith in our VR team. :)

    • 3016 posts
    January 14, 2017 11:23 AM PST

    HemlockReaper said:

    Chimerical said:

    As long as it's not one tradeskill per account it's all semantics for a dedicated crafter.  My alts live to craft.

     

    This is exactly what it would take to have any effort on preventing players from cheating the system, if its per character then the effect is the same as if someone can max every craft on one toon. Making it per account would at least force them to buy another account, and that at least helps the game financially, and I suspect much fewer would bother cheating at that point.

     

    I'm sorry not everyone has the money to spend on two accounts..I'm on a pension..that wouldn't work for me.

    • 97 posts
    January 14, 2017 1:50 PM PST

    HemlockReaper said:

    Chimerical said:

    As long as it's not one tradeskill per account it's all semantics for a dedicated crafter.  My alts live to craft.

     

    This is exactly what it would take to have any effort on preventing players from cheating the system, if its per character then the effect is the same as if someone can max every craft on one toon. Making it per account would at least force them to buy another account, and that at least helps the game financially, and I suspect much fewer would bother cheating at that point.

    I dont agree with per account.  If there are 6 crafting professions I dont want to have 6 accounts.  Would you want to buy a 2nd account in order to play an adventuring alt? 

     

    • 521 posts
    January 14, 2017 2:45 PM PST

    Gragorie said:

    HemlockReaper said:

    Chimerical said:

    As long as it's not one tradeskill per account it's all semantics for a dedicated crafter.  My alts live to craft.

     

    This is exactly what it would take to have any effort on preventing players from cheating the system, if its per character then the effect is the same as if someone can max every craft on one toon. Making it per account would at least force them to buy another account, and that at least helps the game financially, and I suspect much fewer would bother cheating at that point.

    I dont agree with per account.  If there are 6 crafting professions I dont want to have 6 accounts.  Would you want to buy a 2nd account in order to play an adventuring alt? 

     

     

    Adventuring Alts don't produce items so having more than one adventuring alt actually creates more demand for crafters, while allowing players to become their own suppliers (multiple crafting professions) reduces demand from crafters.

    • 174 posts
    January 15, 2017 8:02 AM PST

    I make alts to enjoy the many facets of a game I like.  I will craft items for my other professions, but that doesn't preclude my using other crafters.  I often buy items from other crafters, even if I have the ability to make them myself.  You can only do so many things, and I love buying lower level components from those crafters skilling up.  It helps me move along at a better pace and gives them incentive to pursue their tradeskill career.  Personally I'm for alts, both from an adventuring perspective and a crafting one.

    • 97 posts
    January 15, 2017 11:15 AM PST

    HemlockReaper said:

    Adventuring Alts don't produce items so having more than one adventuring alt actually creates more demand for crafters, while allowing players to become their own suppliers (multiple crafting professions) reduces demand from crafters.

     

    I don't think I have ever played a game where there were too many crafters.  Usually its the opposite.  Especially where the crafting requires a real time effort.  In VG, it didnt matter if you had 10 plat or 1000 plat, it took the same amount of time (100-150 hours) to max 1 profession.  I am hoping it goes that way as opposed to the "credit card crafting" in some games.  In those games it seems everyone is a crafter.  If they go more th VG route, you wont see a huge number of crafters, so supply will be low already.   

    • 780 posts
    January 15, 2017 12:36 PM PST

    Gragorie said:

     

    I don't think I have ever played a game where there were too many crafters.  Usually its the opposite.  Especially where the crafting requires a real time effort.  In VG, it didnt matter if you had 10 plat or 1000 plat, it took the same amount of time (100-150 hours) to max 1 profession.  I am hoping it goes that way as opposed to the "credit card crafting" in some games.  In those games it seems everyone is a crafter.  If they go more th VG route, you wont see a huge number of crafters, so supply will be low already.   

     

    Good to know.  I definitely have played games where there are too many crafters and crafting is an expect of every character.  People are often clamoring for crafted items to be as good as or better than raid items, but when everybody crafts, I don't see how it can be that way.

     

    The more I read about Vanguard crafting, the better it seems to me.  What were the limits on skills there?  I know from the emulator that you had primary and secondary harvesting skills, but the crafting quest was broken.

    • 97 posts
    January 15, 2017 2:09 PM PST

     

    Here is a list of VG crafter skills.  You had station, utility and tools.  You started with a base number of points and received more as you leveled.  You didnt have enough points to max them all (1500 total), so you had to pick where you wanted them to be. I think you had 1030 points at 50.  If you didnt allocate your points correctly and unlock the correct ones when you needed them, crafting became very difficult and even impossible.   There was a plus, minus, and lock to adjust skills if you had them wrong, but it took some time to fix.  There were 4 main attributes as well, finesse, reasoning, ingenuity and problem solving.  The points in skills affected what you unlocked, attributes affected how well you performed the unlocked skills.  For example, problem solving affected how well you fixed the complications.  The higher your PS was in relation to your crafting level, the faster you would clear them.  I believe reasoning was station, ingenuity was utility, and finesse was tool. 

     

     

     

    Station Skills
    1   - Station 1 Action 1: Moderate Progress, 75AP
    30  - Station 1 Action 2: High Progress, 100AP
    80  - Station 1 Action 3: Low Progress, 50AP
    125 - Station Complication Remedy Set 2
    130 - Station 1 Action 4: Very High Progress, 125AP
    180 - Station 1 Action 5: Low Progress, Very Low Quality, 75AP
    190 - Finisher:   "Quality Loss: Low" 50AP
    250 - Station 1 Action 6: Moderate Progress, Moderate Quality, 150AP
    290 - Finisher:   "Quality Bonus: Low" 150AP
    375 - Station Complication Remedy Set 4 - Progress
    390 - Finisher:   "Quality Bonus: Moderate" 175AP
    440 - Station 2 Action 3: Moderate Progress, Very Low Quality, 100AP
    460 - Station 2 Action 4: Very High Progress, Low Quality Penalty, 75AP
    500 - Station 2 Action 5: Very High Progress, 125AP
    500 - Finisher:   "Quality Bonus: Very High" 200AP

    Utility Skills
    1   - Utility 1 Action 1: Moderate Progress, 75AP
    1   - Utility 1 Action 2: High Quality, 100AP
    70  - Utility 1 Action 3: Very High Progress, 125AP
    110 - Utility 1 Action 4: Moderate Progress, Very Low Quality, 100AP
    125 - Utility Complication Remedy Set 2
    160 - Utility 1 Action 5: High Progress, Low Quality, 3x utility item, 150AP
    240 - Utility 1 Action 6: Very High Progress, Moderate Quality, 200AP
    250 - Utility Complication Remedy Set 3
    300 - Blue Dye
    350 - Green Dye
    375 - Utility Complication Remedy Set 4 - Quality
    380 - Utility 2 Action 3: High Progress, 100AP
    410 - Utility 2 Action 4: Very High Progress, 125AP
    450 - Purple Dye
    450 - Utility 2 Action 5: High Progress, Low Quality, 150AP


    Tool Skills
    1   - Tool 1 Action 1: Moderate Progress, 75AP
    10  - Tool 1 Action 2: Low Progress, Low Quality, 100AP
    30  - Tool 1 Action 3: Moderate Progress, Low Quality, 125AP
    120 - Tool 1 Action 4: Low Progress, Moderate Quality, 125AP
    125 - Tool Complication Remedy Set 2
    170 - Tool 1 Action 5: High Progress, Low Quality, 150AP
    230 - Tool 1 Action 6: Low Progress, High Quality, 150AP
    250 - Tool Complication Remedy Set 3
    270 - Tool 2 Action 3: High Progress, Low Quality Penalty, 50AP
    370 - Tool 2 Action 4: Low Progress, High Quality, 150AP
    375 - Tool Complication Remedy Set 4 - Progress
    430 - Tool 2 Action 5: Low Progress, 50AP

    • 780 posts
    January 15, 2017 2:35 PM PST

    Wow, thanks man.  Very helpful.  I'd definitely prefer something like that to just choosing your one crafting skill.

    • 97 posts
    January 15, 2017 3:22 PM PST

    The crafting dev that was in charge of that in VG did work on Pantheon for a little while.  There are some old VG devs as well, so hopefully it will be similiar.  I worry more about if they have the staff to make it this complex. It would probably require a full time dev.   

    • 9115 posts
    January 15, 2017 6:57 PM PST

    Gragorie said:

    The crafting dev that was in charge of that in VG did work on Pantheon for a little while.  There are some old VG devs as well, so hopefully it will be similiar.  I worry more about if they have the staff to make it this complex. It would probably require a full time dev.   

    Correct, Salim (Silius) was the main VG crafting dev and started with us around the Kickstarter era for s short time and we have had Corey (Ceythos) who is also familiar with it on the team for a while now and he is big on crafting and fishing :)

    • 160 posts
    January 15, 2017 8:44 PM PST

    I just don't understand the desire by some to limit others' crafting abilities.  There seems to be a common thread with not liking freedom amongst the playerbase.  If someone can make alts that provide a "grandmaster" in every skill all on the same account, then why bother to limit it at all?

    • 1618 posts
    January 15, 2017 8:52 PM PST

    corpserunner said:

    I just don't understand the desire by some to limit others' crafting abilities.  There seems to be a common thread with not liking freedom amongst the playerbase.  If someone can make alts that provide a "grandmaster" in every skill all on the same account, then why bother to limit it at all?

    I think it comes down to the game tenant: A requirement that classes have identities. No single player should be able to do everything on their own.

    Its basically the same argument in the adventuring class forum. Most people don't want multi-classing, because a player should not be able to switch roles between healing and tanking on the same character. If you want to heal, create a healer. If you want to tank, create a tank. Alts are a key to the game.

    So, I think crafting is viewed the same way. One class per character, while you can have as many alt crafters as you want.

    However, I cannot buy into any limit stopping me from creating as many crafting alts as I want, other than general character slots. If they allow 5 characters per account, I should be able to create 5 toons that are both tradeskill and adventurers. If they allow 10, the same applies. But, I can buy into one tradeskill class per character, just like the existing one adventurer class per character rule.

    In the long term, I want to enjoy as many aspects of the game as I can. 


    This post was edited by Beefcake at January 15, 2017 8:57 PM PST