Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Player Driven Crafting Board

    • 12 posts
    November 25, 2017 3:43 PM PST

    For those unfamiliar with a Crafting Board, it is basically a job board where requests for crafting are posted. Stuff like make X number of Crude Daggers and turn them in for your reward. The thing is, in most games those daggers aren't used, they just get deleted by the system as they aren't going to a player. The point is to give the crafter something to do besides simple grinding and deleting/salvaging of what they made just to raise in skill.



    Instead (or perhaps in addition to the normal "NPC" postings) if Players could post what they want crafted with a reward for crafting it then those items get used. If turning in such postings also reward an increase in skill above what you gain from making the item, it also encourages players to work on skills that are in higher demand as they are easier to level.



    The biggest hurdle I see is making sure that if a player claims a posting, that they actually make the item, and make it within a reasonable amount of time. I see a few ways to overcome this hurdle, here is my preferred solution. Allow multiple people to claim the same posting. The first one to complete it gets the player offered reward, anyone else completing it gets a game determined reward (must be better then what an NPC vendor would buy it for.) Display both rewards, and list the number of players who are currently working on the posting. This gives the crafter a reasonable idea of if they are likely to get the player posted, and presumably better, reward or the default "NPC" reward for the item. When they go to turn in the item, notify them of which reward they are receiving and allow them to decline if they aren't getting the player provided reward. This lets them keep the item and use it to complete another players board posting.



    With this system, it provides direction on what a new crafter should make to level their skill, and can provide both finished goods to players and components to other crafters that can't or don't want to make those components themselves.

     

     

     

    • 334 posts
    November 25, 2017 8:10 PM PST

    This would provide another entry into (more and directer) user interaction.
    Going to a location to sell off your crafted items which my or may not find a buyer...
    Then for game sake not an in game popup but an actual board or shop one has to visit for such.

    • 557 posts
    November 26, 2017 6:39 AM PST

    On the surface this seems OK, but I think it's begging to be exploited as just a way to get better than merchant pricing when selling your crafting grinds.   Hopefully the crafting system is something that we're not having to grind in to progress.    I'm holding out for something innovative where getting skill is more about what you do, what materials you use and where you do it rather than just how often. 

    Mostly I have a problem with your suggestions about how this system gets tied to merchants and quests/pricing.

    Unfortunately I think even a simple Help Wanted board would would quickly devolve into a forum for spammers and gold farmers.  

    People are going to try to subvert any mechanism they can get their hooks into.

    ... and this is why we can't have nice things.

    • 1785 posts
    November 26, 2017 7:59 AM PST

    I appreciate the intent behind this proposal but I would much rather that the game be set up so that this doesn't happen:

    The thing is, in most games those daggers aren't used, they just get deleted by the system as they aren't going to a player. The point is to give the crafter something to do besides simple grinding and deleting/salvaging of what they made just to raise in skill.

    How about we make a game where you're not wasting tons of resources making things people will never buy, just to advance?

    Let me put it this way.  If a player that picks up the game 1-2 years in isn't able to start crafting and have a market for the things they can immediately make - we've failed.  Sure, supply and demand is a thing - but there needs to be something to ensure continued demand for those "low level" items - and, along with that, there needs to be a large enough variety in those "low level" items that if the market for daggers is flooded, a new crafter can switch to maces instead and be able to make sales.

    There are lots of ways to achieve this, or at least get closer to the idea, without resorting to "big hammers" that everyone hates like item decay.  For example, if new crafters can put bane bonuses on the recipes they know, that helps expand the potential market for them.  Likewise, placing strong restrictions on how much people can sell at one time prevents people like me from making a dozen of everything and then trying to monopolize the market.  To keep people from grinding out of convenience, you can do things like say you only get skill gains/experience gains for the first five daggers you create, then you have to switch to something else.  My point is, there's a balance point here, and that balance point *needs* to be in a place where people aren't incented to sit and grind out the same dagger over and over again - because THAT ruins the experience for new crafters and messes up the game's economy.

    Anyway... none of what I said precludes having a player contract system.  I don't see a problem with having a place where players can place an "order" for things they want to make, to help crafters know what people want.  However, when it comes to selling/fulfilling those orders - I don't want to see global market boards either where players are jsut clicking on an item in a list and that crafter might as well be a bot somewhere for all they care.  But that's another topic for when I've had more coffee :)

     

    • 22 posts
    November 26, 2017 9:36 AM PST

    If a player that picks up the game 1-2 years in isn't able to start crafting and have a market for the things they can immediately make - we've failed. 

    Beyond making low level craft items valueable to NPCs in different regions of the world based on scarcity I can't think of great way to do this across the board.  A comparison that comes to mind is spiderling silk from EQ1.  I made a ton of plat relative to my level by farming and selling these to crafters.  This didn't mean I could farm fire beetle legs and get similar results.  Came down to silk being so integral to higher level skill ups and sub components (iirc, never crafted much myself).

    So you could do this with crafting, if you wanted to introduce a grindy mat requirement of some sort (bolts, threads, etc).  Basically take the fuel component concept from EQ2 and boost it up one level.  Make them vital reagents/components for stuff across the game.  That is about the best I can think of, because you are not going to make 'poorly sharpened steal daggers' a high demand item in a mature MMO.

    • 1 posts
    November 26, 2017 10:31 AM PST

    I personally love this idea, in EQ I’d spend hours running from FP to EC making stuff on order. It would be a lot simpler to look at it from the other aspect though.

    One posting goes up, then the said order is completed to the specific request for a full reward. if it is by chance that it is of lesser quality, quantit... the crafter can try to turn it in for the reward. If the person whom reques it wants it for a cheaper price that is their call.

    Example;

    Player goes to the local alchemy shop, requests 10 healing potions. To be picked up in a (X) hours. At which point the posting goes up On the board. If the time requested for pickup lapses the player could get it for cheaper. Coming from the (tax / service) charge. Not from the crafter. 

    Crafter finished a job, or walks in to check the board. Finds the notice, and pulls it down because he thinks he can make it, and has the materials. He then makes it in full, selling it with the notice to the person running the shop for full exp bonus / coin / reputation. If he made less than required he can turn in 5/10 for partial rewards, and the post goes up again but this time for 5 instead of 10.

    instead of trying to creat a full system that revolves around multiple posts, it would be simpler to have the notices restricted to a specific time frame, or location. You take a smithing request you have (x) amount of time to complete it, or put it Back up. If you leave the smithing area you lose the notice. You can’t take the same request again if you lose it, and if you fail to complete it after taking it down. The specific crafting guild would Punish you, decreased reputation, eventually increased cost of renting the space / materials. Unable to take requests until you prove you reliable again. 

     

    So have the requesting person pay upfront for the posting, and stipulate when they want it ready for.

    Discount / refund for late product.

    crafter has limited time to complete the request once they take the notice.

    crafter can put it back up with no repercussion, but can’t take the same order again.

    if crafter leaves the area, or times out the allotted time they have a some kind of negative repercussion.

    partal completion puts a new notice up for the outstanding product.

    Enough failures of taken notices, results in loss of privileges to take work orders, or (decreased reputation, increased costs, ...) they can work at rebuilding the trust through medial and mundain tasks for the guild.

     

    just my 2 copper, on the topic.

    • 1860 posts
    November 26, 2017 11:41 AM PST

    Nephele said:

     

    How about we make a game where you're not wasting tons of resources making things people will never buy, just to advance?

    This makes me think of the item turn in system that has been discussed.  Turn in items you don't want to an npc in exchange for buffs.  This seems like a perfect outlet for low lvl crafted items.

    I'm not to concerned about a player creating items that no one wants to lvl up a crafting ability.  Players are going to make whatever is cheapest/easiest.  Thousands of that item will be made.  At some point supply and demand gets to the point where you might as well vendor them.  It is inevitable.  There isn't anything wrong with that...but having another option, like receiving buffs from an npc for turning them in, is a nice option (and doesn't fill a merchant and ruin merchant mining :) ).


    This post was edited by philo at November 26, 2017 11:42 AM PST
    • 57 posts
    November 26, 2017 1:23 PM PST

    What Elder Scroll Online did was they had daily boards that allowed players to advance there crafting and turn in the items the writ requested to a location for a small amount of gold for there troubles. While how many writs a person could do is something that can be worked out, it atleast gets people crafting and not cluttering the auction channels to hock items that would normally just flood the market. I know I personally hated making hundred of items to try and sell in Eastern Commonlands just to level up and constantly selling the products for barely what it cost to make them because people constantly undercut each other, a process only made worse when they allowed auction houses and you put your product up for x hours or days and never sell anything (I would litterly buy up thousands of items and just destroy them or vendor them to clean up they hundreds of pages on the auction house daily).

    • 1785 posts
    November 26, 2017 8:04 PM PST

    I'm not coffee-deprived now so I'm less grumpy than I was this morning :)

    Let me start off by saying:  I'm ok with the idea of a reverse auction system, or a way for players to post "contracts" to buy things, that crafters can then opt to fill.  So if someone really wants that Fire-edged mythril halberd of dragonslaying, let them post a contract for it, and the first crafter to go make that thing and fulfill the contract (to the contract board) gets the fee.  Win/win.

    What I am concerned about, though, is that we're looking at this as a potential "way around the grind".  That's faulty logic in my opinion - or rather, it's not seeing the forest for the trees.

    In most other games all the way back to granddaddy EQ, the way you gain skill/earn experience as a crafter is by making items.  This is logical and makes sense.  The problem, however, is that if the experience/skill gain per item is static, players will rapidly figure out which items they can make for the most economical skill/experience gains.  Daggers are simpler to make than swords and give me just as much experience as swords, so i'm going to sit here and grind on daggers because I want to level.  That sort of thing.

    The result of that is that the market for daggers gets flooded (along with any other simple, easily grindable items).  That creates problems:

    1) New (or low level) crafters have no way to participate in the economy - they are essentially forced to throw away time and probably money to "catch up" to established crafters, because the only things they can make are the things that have been ground out by the thousands.  This problem gets worse as the game ages.

    2) In the absence of any other distinguishing characteristics, this forces players who do want to sell daggers or anything else to ONLY compete on price - in many cases, meaning that they're selling items at a loss because dangit, they just want to get something back from all that work they put in.

    So in my view, if we just have static experience/skill gain for crafts, and stop there - it's a bad design.

    Now, some games have tried to mitigate this by putting in NPC turn-ins.  This ranges from things where you're crafting widgets for NPCs that a player would never use or care about (EQ2's writs) to daily/weekly/limited turn-ins of adventuring items to NPC factions (FFXIV).  Other games have tried to make quests a stronger method of advancing crafting, but unless those games have cut out experience/skill gain from making the items themselves entirely, most of the time players just default to grinding out items.  So the end result is that markets are still flooded.  In games that have turn-in systems, what happens there is that the markets are flooded whenever it's cheaper/faster/more convenient to grind, and then at the top end of the progression, because everyone just levels up as fast as they can because they all want to make the shiniest shiny things that can possibly be made.  And then they flood the market *there* and undercut each other.

    Net effect:  Same problems.  Flooded markets, barrier to entry for new crafters, not a lot of fun unless you're the type that doesn't mind doing mindless grinding for hours/days/weeks.

    So, what would Neph do?

    1) Experience/skill gain from crafting items that decreases as you make more of them.  That first dagger?  Full experience.  The second, third, and fourth daggers?  Sure, you're refining your dagger-making skills.  Mass-producing them?  Nope, nada.  You already know how to make daggers.  Do something else.

    --> Doing it this way *encourages* crafters trying to level up to make lots of different things, which helps to cut down on market flooding.  Coupled with material requirements for recipes, it's also an incentive for crafters to interact with other players, whether that's going out adventuring to farm up some materials they need, or just buying those fire beetle glands from the people killing fire beetles.

    2) If we're going to have NPC turn ins, they need to feel meaningful.  They can NOT just simply be "push crafting buttons, talk to NPC, get exp".  They can NOT be repeatable tasks on a daily/weekly/whatever timer.  Totally cool if the local garrison needs some new sets of armor.  When they get that armor, the effect should be visible - ie, guards walking around in new armor.  Then, their needs should change.  "Yeah, last week we needed armor, but we're good now.  Do you know anyone who can make arrows, though?"  My point here is, first, that crafting, just like adventuring, needs to feel meaningful in the context of the world.  Lame adventuring quests are not ok, lame crafting work orders shouldn't be either.  Second, these shouldn't be infinitely repeatable.  Crafters should be encouraged to travel around, to do different things for different groups.  Get them out in the world, looking for work.

    --> Doing it this way makes the NPC turn ins into actual content, and not just a disguised grinding mechanism.  Over time, players will be much happier with this - except the ones who only really care about hitting max level, but nothing other than an "instant level" button will really make those folks super happy.

    3) Item diversity needs to be a thing.  Just because I make a dagger doesn't mean it should be the same as everyone else's dagger.  Whether it's an SWG-style experimentation system, or a Vanguard-style modifier system, or some kind of materials system, crafters should have options to distinguish their daggers from other people's daggers.  And each of those options should still be viable - there shouldn't be a "best" option, and there shouldn't be options that are worthless and that no one would use.

    --> Doing it this way allows sellers to compete on more than just price, and gives buyers far more choice than they would have otherwise.  As a newbie crafter, you might see that the market for iron daggers is looking pretty full - but wait, no one seems to be selling iron daggers of insect slaying.  Ha!  There's your niche.  Those annoying giant ants outside town are about to have a really bad day once everyone starts buying your daggers.

    4) The way we buy and sell items needs to be non-global.  By that I mean that I can set up shop in one town selling daggers, but the only people who can buy my daggers are people in that town.  Maybe people elsewhere can see that I have daggers for sale, but if they want to buy them, they need to hoof it over to the town where I'm selling them.

    --> Doing it this way might seem really inconvenient for buyers, at first, but it has two important effects.  First, it allows crafters to compete based on location (in addition to quality and price).  "Hey, in the market for a sword?  You know, you don't have to go all the way to Thronefast to buy a sword.  I'm selling some right here.  Sure, maybe I don't have as big a selection as what they've got over in Thronefast, but if you just need something basic I'm pretty sure I can hook you up."  Second, this encourages crafters to spread out throughout the world, and not just all congregate in the big cities or hubs.  Sure, I could stay in Thronefast and try to compete with everyone and their brother, or I could go set up shop two towns over, and serve a local market a lot more effectively.  Plus, this makes for really interesting tie-ins with the housing system and (hopefully) player towns/cities down the line - but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

    So to sum it up:  What Neph would do is make advancement tied to the variety of items you make rather than the quantity of them, make NPC turn ins far more meaningful and unique than just a repeatable grind button, insure that there's tons of item diversity within each "tier" of items so that new crafters can find a niche and have a chance to compete, and finally, insure that crafters can compete on location as well as on selection and price.  Doing this makes for a stronger, healthier crafting game, and an overall healthier economy.

     

    • 334 posts
    November 27, 2017 11:12 AM PST

    Nephele said:
    I'm not coffee-deprived now so I'm less grumpy than I was this morning :)
    ...
    Doing this makes for a stronger, healthier crafting game, and an overall healthier economy.

    in fact, I dare say, too much coffee.. what a post :)

    • 12 posts
    November 27, 2017 9:50 PM PST

    Reading through the responces, I guess my idea could be simplified if there are Buy Orders in the game.

    I like Nephele's idea about making it so you could make a few of an item before you don't gain skill from it anymore and have to make something different. If the skillups are like EQ where skillups are randomly awarded for making items of the approprite challenge for your current skill level I don't see it working, but if the skillups are more stactic and guarenteed, it could definatly work.

    I REALLY like the idea of crafting quests where you make X suits of armor for the town guard and after you turn it in the guards are now wearing the armor you made. Have the guard's armor deteriorate over time until they need someone to make them new armor again. Heck, the speed of armor deterioration could be linked to events in the area, and the strength of the guards could be linked to the condition of their gear. An area that is neglected will have ill equiped guards that can't defend as well against the normal threats of the area. Bring in some crafters to outfit them properly and the area becomes safer to travel for a time. I think this idea needs it's own thread.

    • 257 posts
    December 2, 2017 11:43 AM PST

    I would prefer a much, much more simplistic version. Have the boards posted outside the corrisponding crafting building. The board outside the Weaponsmith with have a list of names (clickable to /tell or game mail). These people are interested in purchasing a crafted weapon. You send them a tell or mail and ask what they would like. Dialog is nice. Do good work and chances are that person will send a tell directly to you next time before considering the work board. As for using the board as a customer - It has to be easy and convenient to encourage use. I would set up an option in the game mail system so it can be used at any mailbox or workboard. Easy and convenient mean more customers. Also make it easy to remove your name from the board so it stays up to date.