Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Crafter's Roundtable: Crafting and Content

    • 1785 posts
    August 21, 2018 6:54 AM PDT

    It's time for another Crafter's Roundtable.  Each week, Pantheon Crafters asks a question to get people talking about a different aspect of crafting (or gathering) in Pantheon.  Take some time out to voice your opinions on the topic!

    For this week - We tend to talk a lot about how crafting should work when it comes to creating items and equipment for other players to use.  Something we don't often talk about though, is whether or how crafting should tie into game content in some way?  Should there be situations where you need a crafter to build or repair something in order to achieve an adventuring goal or unlock some adventuring content?  Or, should the two spheres remain separate, with crafting being focused on player to player interactions rather than being involved in PvE gameplay?

    If you'd like to view and respond to this one on the Pantheon Crafters site, here's the direct link to the thread.

     

    • 168 posts
    August 21, 2018 8:03 AM PDT

    Crafting should be interwoven into game situations and aspects. An example of how to do this is/was DAoC and the repair of keep doors after a siege (IIRC woodworking was required to be leveled up a bit). Crafted boats reduced travel time to get to an underwater dungeon in the ToA expansion. Housing in DAoC required crafting to create decor (taxidermy), for the very few that I associated with that cared more about RP than the game mechanics, this was a huge deal.

    Crafting systems after DAoC (WoW and newer) were more generic (often push-button/win) and as a result even though I capped many out, I cannot recall any need of crafter wares to advance a PvE agenda. Possibly because everyone else was maxxed out as well and didn't need outside help (plug for wayyy to easy to cap crafts out).

    I am a fan of the idea of crafting intermingling with PvE and PvP.  For the past games where crafting felt tacked on and not built from the ground up, I would never have expected crafting to get enough respect from devs to incorporate it into regular game PvE situations, environments, or storyline content beyond making a special pair of boots, an FR Cloak, or a special torch to carry.

    I think one of the steps of accomplishing this intermingling is to create a reoccurring situational need, again DAoC's RvR (PvP) system and its 24/7/365 nature may be a good reference. There was always a need to repair doors/walls. Boiled down; Crafting is merely a system of making, breaking (salvaging), and re-making (gear repairs and other repairs).


    This post was edited by Dashed at August 21, 2018 8:08 AM PDT
    • 31 posts
    August 21, 2018 9:32 AM PDT

      Oh... this is a rough pill to swallow to consider crafting in this light.  I am all for crafting having a viable impact.  However to create a need for it in actual gameplay beyond equipment seems to be an artifical way to improve the importance of crafting.  To me, my only real hope with crafting is that the items created have value to players as items to be used or to improve quality of life. Examples of this would be items like gate potions, invis potions, poisons to increase dps or generate hate,food that adds extra stats, arrows with unique attributes and greater range.  I have also felt the real value of crafting was ability to do mostly solo for resource gathering (aka with friends are not online) as well as a medium to create community interaction and interdependency.   I loved culteral crafting in Everquest because your race dictated how many other crafters may be present on server.  Throw in raid upgrades with seals.. and the items being equal if not better then raid gear of that expansion. It is one thing to already have access to places limited to certain classes... but tradeskills as well?  I would rather see the time invested in developing the crafting results then to see them take the time to place it in different venues of the game as a requirement. 

       I would stronly dislike crafting to be used in this capacity.  A lock to which progression or exploration is denied.

    • 134 posts
    August 21, 2018 4:18 PM PDT

    The needing crafting for PvE is a slippery slope I feel like. While I do enjoy the idea of a mechanic like that I'm not sure even the hardcore fanbase would fully embrace it. It is kind of shoehorning crafting in where it doesn't belong. As I said though I personally would not be against that, and honestly something like that would make ME want to level crafting more (I say that now lol). I enjoy crafting in FFXIV. It is almost like a mini-game, you can make the item stronger through certain mechanics IIRC I haven't played in a while. I would like to see crafting include consumables as well like potions or food that give players temporary buffs. If there is no fast travel a potion of Wind Walk is a must. It would also be neat to have someone who can repair your gear for you while you are out adventuring instead of having to run all the way back to town. Crafting should allow you to enhance your gameplay, not be required to get through it. They already have some features they are adding to PvE like the Rogues rope and the Warriors battering ram, I think that kind of takes the place of a need for crafting in that area.

    • 15 posts
    August 22, 2018 9:33 PM PDT

    I think crafting should be more interwoven with the experience. 

    I believe gear should be much rarer than it is. Thus making it more valuable. 

    Cloth and leather being more common than chain, chain more common that plate/platemail and exotic/magic gear the rareist of all.

    Also why not allow for more types of armor giving more/less AC? Why stick with like cloth leather chain plate....snoooore...lamellar, woven, scalemail, ringmail....theres so many choices. Sizes? So a suit of armor dropped off and an ogre and a halfling are gonna roll on it cause one size fits all?...why?

    If during the course of a nights play you only got a few items that need to be repaired before you could sell or use them that would add more value to gear and provide work for crafters or entice the player themselves to craft. 

    Mobs should drop varying values of coin, bits of armor perhaps that needed to be assembled into a full piece, spell components or research items that have value. Maybe a salvage skill that is affected by a statistic relevant to the the trade that lets you get a range of items based on a calculation affected by modifiers like buffs or gear etc..

    You should need to kill a ton of mobs to get a decent amount of money. Steel, Silver, Electrum, Gold, Platinum etc..Perhaps complete serious line-type quests or crafting quests to complete gear. 

    No orc is going to carry a decent well made set of armor for example and you wont find armor on an animal unable to fit a creature wearing it into its mouth. Thats just stupid. 

    I didn't like how WoW made you pick 2-3 things you could craft. I think you should be able to craft anything like anyone could, except that you would have to "master" or achieve "Journeyman" status to make better stuff. I liked how EQ progressed in crafting and that someone could learn all crafts if thats what they loved to do. Then when they did there was a reward for doing so, because it was a hell of a journey. 

    I was a high end housing crafter in Vanguard but that was a truly painful grind and I won't do that again. Perhaps progression could be quest related and not just sitting there grinding out the same pieces for hours. Maybe tiers where you have to do a quest to go from 1-49, 50-99, 100-149. No need for tiers to be by a hundred at a time. Some of the time sink could just be people completing a quest to get to the next tier. Maybe you have to visit several halfling blacksmiths and complete quests for all of them before being able to go to the next tier. Something like that, the time spent could be travelling, seeing new areas, all of that which it seems Pantheon wants to encourage. 

    I also don't like the idea of auction houses. East commons was really social and fun in EQ. Having an artificial way to put up things for sale really diminishes the experience and can have adverse effects like people who bought gold in WoW affecting prices in the AH etc. 

    Crafting can really be so much more to the game and its so often overlooked by companies who just want things to be easy. 

     

     


    This post was edited by Gdub01 at August 22, 2018 9:44 PM PDT
    • 29 posts
    November 4, 2018 8:22 AM PST

         I believe the in-game economy should be totally player-driven like the system in Eve online. This helps balance supply and demand and it creates more avenues for revenue. I also believe that having individual player vendors makes the game economy more interesting than having a centralized auction house. Player owned vendors will create more roles within the game such as traveling traders, logisticians, and record keepers. I also believe implementing API (Application Program Interface) into Pantheon would be a great idea for multiple reasons. You can implement data into customizable reports such as killboards, which can create a bounty hunter system, detailed reports for local marketplaces in order to find the cheapest items for sale, find where items yield the most profits, or find the most efficient trade routes between marketplaces. Even if API is not implemented these things can easily be achieved in-game. In conclusion, the more the economy is player-driven, the more opportunities for engaging in-game content is available to the players.