Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Crafters having a real impact on the World

    • 12 posts
    November 27, 2017 10:18 PM PST

    This idea spawed from a responce from Nephele to my thread about player driven crafting boards. Nephele had the idea of a crafting quest for the town guard to make armor would then have the members of the guard wearing the armor after turning in the quest. I would like to expand on this idea.

    Imagine, you arive in a new adventuring area/zone and there is a town/village/guardpost whatever. The guards are poorly equiped with abused armor and weapons, low quality rations, a lack of healing potions. They have needs to be filled to improve their ability to protect their post and patrol the roads. You have a bunch of crafter's in your guild, so you contact them and get some of them to head on over. It is a bit of a rough area, monsters roam freely and one must be careful traveling the roads to get there even during the day. After your friends arive, they begin working. The Armorsmith gets to work on new armor for the guard. The cook sets to work feeding the town and the guard alike and helping stock their larders. The Alchemist brews much needed healing potions, salves and even afew potions to improve the guards effectivness in combat. The weaponsmith forges swords and hammers and the bowyer carves bows and arrows. Soon enough the guards are looking livelier and sporting their new gear. They start patroling the roads again in force, and can be seen fighting the monsters that dare threaten travelers. Now the area is a much safer place to travel, perhaps even unlocking it for some form of fast travel through the area. From time to time crafters will be needed again to keep everything in order, preferably not all at once and not exactly the same thing. Perhaps in a week the need more food, but they don't want the same food they have been eating for the last week, they want something new. Then a few days later, they find they are running short on arrows and have decied broadhead arrows will serve them better then the longer flight arrows they had made for them last time. They hired on several halflings that prefer a short sword over the longswords.

    This would give a reason for "dedicated" crafters to get out of the major cities and allow them to have some sence of impact on the world. It could also be used as a way to increase in a crafting profession without the same grind feel as sitting in front of a crafting table making item after item just to level your skill.

    • 1785 posts
    November 28, 2017 8:21 AM PST

    Love where you're going with the concept drake!  I feel like this has a lot of potential for making factions matter to crafters too.  Like maybe the more you do for the faction, the more unique/interesting tasks they'll have for you (because now you're one of their go-to crafters).

    • 557 posts
    November 28, 2017 9:20 AM PST

    So how do you make the quest relevant to more than one round of crafting/crafters?  Once the local constabulary have their new gear after the game has been out for 3 days, what do subsequent generations of crafters contribute?

    Do we kill off the guards with orc attacks so there is a constant requirement to replenish the new recruits?   Do the guards quit and get private sector jobs?  What is the state of the city if NOBODY contributes crafted goods a year from now.

    There is another game in development where the zone levels up as players become more active with elements of decay to de-level the area if the player community neglects the region.

    My preference would be to make crafters relevant and important directly to the players such that if you want the best gear you need to engage the services of someone skilled and not just pick up all of the end game gear from dead mobs.

    • 1785 posts
    November 28, 2017 11:48 AM PST

    Great points. Some sort of degradation over time would be key, I agree.

    I also agree that crafted goods need to matter FOR other players. 100%. But I don't think that precludes having good NPC driven crafting content. See my big post in the other thread for my entire crazy set of ideas ;)

    • 334 posts
    December 2, 2017 9:07 AM PST

    Be carefull as not to feed the NPC world too much over (new) players.
    Though I do fancy the idea of needing to help NPC's in tasks as to prevent certain events.
    Like if a bunch of goblins decide to raid a town and you didn't contribute to the guards, then you would not find that item you were looking for on the NPC trader the next day.
    Worse, NPC knowing you could have contributed would not wanting to sell their low stocks

    • 12 posts
    December 2, 2017 1:54 PM PST

    Celandor said:

    So how do you make the quest relevant to more than one round of crafting/crafters?  Once the local constabulary have their new gear after the game has been out for 3 days, what do subsequent generations of crafters contribute?

    Do we kill off the guards with orc attacks so there is a constant requirement to replenish the new recruits?   Do the guards quit and get private sector jobs?  What is the state of the city if NOBODY contributes crafted goods a year from now.

    There is another game in development where the zone levels up as players become more active with elements of decay to de-level the area if the player community neglects the region.

    My preference would be to make crafters relevant and important directly to the players such that if you want the best gear you need to engage the services of someone skilled and not just pick up all of the end game gear from dead mobs.

     

    The quest would be relevent to players in an on going manner. The guards equipment wears out, supplies run low and they need more stuff made. Everything wouldn't be needed all at once unless it is a new area, or the area has been neglected by crafters for a long time. There can also be some quests that are more traditional one and done so new crafters don't run into an area they have never been in that has nothing for them to do because other crafters already did it.

     

    All this would in no way replace the drive for crafters to make things for other players. These quest wouldn't be the reason someone picks a crafting proffesion, they would be something else they can do with it when they aren't making something for a player. It would also give reason for "Crafting" characters to adventure instead of being left in towns neglected while the player is playing on their "Main" Also don't forget that Crafter that makes your high end gear needs to get their skill somehow. "Grinding" craft skills gets boaring, but if you are gainging skill making items for a quest and thus leveling up your crafting skill in the process, that can be more enjoyable.