Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Community

    • 259 posts
    June 21, 2018 5:32 AM PDT

    Continuing with my crafting career this week has seen a dramatic slowdown as I have reached a level where my earnings have had to go towards my spell's. So, my crafting had to be put on hold while I used my earnings for updating my class. This seems to be normal for most MMO's around this level. Tradeskills will also begin to increase in cost along with class upgrades. Now that I have finished that I am steadily playing and farming coins to return to my crafting profession. I am currently at level 116 and making banded armor for skill increases.

    After noobie zone I moved to Orc Hill and then inside to hunt in Crushbone. That was a blast from the past. Next it was on to one of my old favorite zones, The Estate of Unrest. I know many of you that have never played EQ have no idea about the zones but take my word that these zones will forever be marked in EverQuest history from those of us that were there. I have had quite a few great experience groups there so a big kudos to you all for the great time.

    Along with the reminiscing I found something in P99 that I have sorely missed, a real caring community. I have missed that since my original EQ days and it's nice to see it still alive and thriving here. As important as community is to adventuring, it is also just as important to crafting. A Crafter needs to feel that same at home and welcoming feeling that you feel in the adventuring community. With Crafters having to depend on each other for their chosen professions, as it was in EQ and still is in P99, the community can make or break the crafting aspect of the game.

    From what I've gathered from earlier discussions and information released about the crafting community in Pantheon, it absolutely is as important to the team at VR as the adventuring community is.

    Quote from the FAQ’s:

    6.0 What are the plans for crafting in Pantheon?

    Crafting is an important part of Pantheon. A big emphasis is going to be on cooperation between adventurers and crafters. There exists a symbiotic relationship, not competition -- both adventurers and crafters will need each other. With as many horizontal content paths as we’re going to have, you’re going to want to seek crafters for those very specific situations. Instead of having to farm a specific piece of gear, it might be more beneficial to find a crafter with that recipe.

    Some items drop when you kill a mob while others are harvestable, and others are crafted. Other than a few class-specific rewards, such as epic quest items, many items will be craftable. Crafting also goes hand-in-hand with dropped items by allowing players to customize their gear. Players can often bring items to a crafter to customize and tailor them to their specific needs. Since a customized item is meant specifically for your character the item will likely be bound (un-tradable) but this allows the crafter to squeeze out some additional power from a dropped item. That said, it is possible (TBD) you could later break down the item into components allowing another crafter to use those materials to augment something for you in the future.

    With the development team at VR feeling that the need for community must be one of the more important aspects of the game, I believe that all of us Old School EQ crafters have a great future ahead in Pantheon for the same type of caring and thriving community that defined EverQuest, and still defines P99. How important do you feel that community is when it comes to crafting?

    • 1785 posts
    June 21, 2018 6:36 AM PDT

    I think that a community is something you build in a game or on a server around shared challenges and experiences.  Raiding and Dungeons, for example, are a shared challenge.  Exploring the world and figuring out quests are a shared experience.

    Crafting and gathering can be shared experiences as well.

    So I think the question you want to ask isn't how community should be important to crafting, but rather, how crafting and gathering can be set up so that they are the type of experience that helps build community.

    Too many games treat crafting as a solo side game, regardless of the fact that you might sell your finished product to someone else.  The right approach, instead, is to build it so that players are invested in each others success.  Whether that's adventurers needing crafters, crafters needing adventurers, crafters needing gatherers, gatherers needing crafters, or crafters needing each other - they're all critical.

    • 3852 posts
    June 22, 2018 12:54 PM PDT

    What Nephele said. And a major factor in that is making crafting useful as one levels not merely at low level or level cap.

    Not to say that crafting-made items need to be as good as raid boss drops but they do need to be good enough that most of us will benefit from having crafting characters or buying from crafting characters after level 5 and before level cap.

    • 259 posts
    June 22, 2018 4:41 PM PDT

    As an adventurer and a crafter this statement has me excited. Which is why I quoted it in my article.

    "6.0 What are the plans for crafting in Pantheon?

    Crafting is an important part of Pantheon. A big emphasis is going to be on cooperation between adventurers and crafters. There exists a symbiotic relationship, not competition -- both adventurers and crafters will need each other. With as many horizontal content paths as we’re going to have, you’re going to want to seek crafters for those very specific situations. Instead of having to farm a specific piece of gear, it might be more beneficial to find a crafter with that recipe."

    Having played these games over the last 22 or 23 years, back to my MUD days, and Dragon Realms before moving to EQ in June of 1999 on my birthday, that have treated Crafting as a secondary skill mostly used to fill time and have fun, or as a solo side game as Nephele says above, it looks like we are finally going to have a game where crafting is as important as adventuring is.

    My opinion is that community is very important to crafting, as it is to adventuring. This quote gives me the impression that VR wants exactly what we want when it comes to community in Pantheon:

    "There exists a symbiotic relationship, not competition -- both adventurers and crafters will need each other."

    I love this!