Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Official Harvesting Update

    • 178 posts
    October 15, 2018 8:44 AM PDT

    I think harvesting (and to an extent all forms of crafting) can also be handled as per the discussions above with better tools. What I mean by this is rather than absolutely designing against tiered components that make earlier components insignificant is as your skill level increases you are able to utilize better tools. The advantage of using a better tool is that the time it takes to harvest something takes less time. Without the tool it takes the same amount of time. Better tools may also yield better results (more of something, a stronger version of something (such as getting an item that would otherwise only be gotten through some form of combine method)). Even better is that in order to get an updated tool the one being used has to be upgraded (sort of slow down item inflation). I would like to see harvesting items be created and upgraded through the harvesting and crafting system and not through the looting items system. Obviosuly upgraded tools can only be used by those with the requisite skill.

    And I wouldn't be against harvesting tools once upgraded according to skill become bind items. However, I can foresee how tools could be modified in a variety of ways that would make it frustrating to the harvester if the harvester would have to start all over again from scratch to build up another tool that will be modified in a different way just so that there could be two tools available for use with differing harvesting results that the harvester has to choose to use at the time of harvesting.

    A higher skill allows for the use of a better tool which allows for better efficiency. It doesn't prevent anyone without a better tool from also harvesting and acquiring the materials, it just means it will take them longer in time to harvest as well as quantity to harvest (which could be directly tied into a quality component). Coming at it from a player who likes to engage in crafting as a sideline, I really like the aspect of in order to do it you have to do it rather than in order to do it I'll just simply purchase my way to doing it. I think a lot of crafters are like this and would prefer to see players actually have to engage in the professions to get better rather than not engaging in the profession to get better (or be the best). And keeping the crafting aspects of the game as a side bar that can best be taken advantage of by other crafters and not as a competition with other aspects of the game can appease those who don't like the interference that crafting may bring to the experience.

    • 1785 posts
    October 15, 2018 11:07 AM PDT

    For those interested, I posted more thoughts from over the weekend in an editorial at Pantheon Crafters.  I'm not planning to cross-post it on these forums just yet, just because I'd have to redo all the formatting and I think most of the people who actually care are registered there anyway :)

    • 9 posts
    October 15, 2018 8:57 PM PDT

    This has me worried that we'll be able to do all the proffessions, since we can harvest everything. IMO any game that has allowed the player base to become jacks of all trades has always ruined any sort of trade economy. Instead what the trade is replaced by is a market for only the most rare, or hard to craft items, with no need to sell materials or lower level items since everyone can craft it. 

     

    That being said I am worried a bit about most peoples comments about the node gathering. I would have to agree, but i also think it would be solved by simply limitiing the amount of gathering skills a player is allowed to take. So if i'm in a group (which the game is group heavy) and we are allowed to all gather eveyrthing. Every single node we come accross would need to be rotated through the group. Well this sounds like "of coarse that would be fair and its called sharing" it's not the same, lets say i want to get my alchemy up, but am not worried about my black smithing. Well now if it comes my turn for a node, and its a ore deposit, i don't really want it. Now i could ask my group to go the extra mile and remember that i have skipped my place in que to attempt to get the next flower we find, but that seems a bit needy in my mind. 

     

    Where as if we as players were only allowed to pick a limited number of gathering skills, the odds that the entire group will be one gathering skill is much lower. So maybe only myslef and another person would rotate herbs, while others rotate skinning etc. Some lucky ones might be the only miner in their group so they get all the mining nodes.

     

    While the game play is completely different from Pantheon, i would like to ask the crowds if they enjoyed the crafting in Rift? I found i a nice crafting system because it allowed you to pick a proffession and that proffesion required ingredients from two gathering skills, so you were allowed to pick 3 skills. So this did a good thing in my mind since if you were a wood crafter you needed lumber, and butchered parts of animals (that last one might be wrong i honestly can't remember). Gathering lumber also allowed you to gather plants used in alchemy, since you didn't need them you could sell them to others, thus participating in the economy. I had always thought this was a nice system, granted it simply means make a singular alt that has 3 crafting proffesions, and another character that has 3 gathering proffesions. I would agrue that alot of people like to willing ignore the fact that alot of players will simply have banker accounts and would never sell resources, but transfer them to a crafter account. If thats not the way YOU want to play, good, i don't believe its a good way to play myself, but we cannot ignore the fact that this is a style of play that often occurs.

     

    For a game that is trying to bring back group play, i thought it was strange that gathering (and most likely crafting) is being treated as a soloable thing. I had hoped that this system would bring players together, like a guild of crafters, where if a player want to get a set of armor made, they would know to contact *said guild* because they would have a player in their ranks that could assist them. 

     

    What i worry will happen is a player will need "X" and instead of human interaction, it will simply be "oh lets hop on my alt and make this item". Maybe my ideal system isn't for everyone, but i miss the days where a game felt like a community, and not alot of individuals that happened to be on the same server. 

    • 2752 posts
    October 16, 2018 11:08 AM PDT

    Hijaks said:

    This has me worried that we'll be able to do all the proffessions, since we can harvest everything. 

    They have said 1 profession per character.

    • 1921 posts
    October 16, 2018 12:13 PM PDT

    It doesn't really matter, because it's not one profession per account.  If it's not that, then the only question that needs answering is how many characters per account, and you can still do it all yourself to avoid getting taken advantage of by your fellow player.
    Just like EQ2, which had this same restriction, and at least 10 players in my guild eventually had max level crafters of all types, each all on one account as alts.  They would just switch from one alt to the other to make the sub-combines.

    Honestly, I don't understand why Visionary Realms is going with one profession per character, and then not going the extra step of one profession per account.  If they're not willing to make it one profession per account, then clearly they're ok with it being one PLAYER having all the crafting professions.  So it's ok to have one PLAYER have them all, if they're willing to switch to alts?  Ooooook.  Wildly illogical but I guess we have a path forward?  It's like they set the design goal and then.. half implemented the design that meets the goal?  Not sure what's holding them back.

    • 1479 posts
    October 16, 2018 12:25 PM PDT

    vjek said:

    It doesn't really matter, because it's not one profession per account.  If it's not that, then the only question that needs answering is how many characters per account, and you can still do it all yourself to avoid getting taken advantage of by your fellow player.
    Just like EQ2, which had this same restriction, and at least 10 players in my guild eventually had max level crafters of all types, each all on one account as alts.  They would just switch from one alt to the other to make the sub-combines.

    Honestly, I don't understand why Visionary Realms is going with one profession per character, and then not going the extra step of one profession per account.  If they're not willing to make it one profession per account, then clearly they're ok with it being one PLAYER having all the crafting professions.  So it's ok to have one PLAYER have them all, if they're willing to switch to alts?  Ooooook.  Wildly illogical but I guess we have a path forward?  It's like they set the design goal and then.. half implemented the design that meets the goal?  Not sure what's holding them back.

     

    Probably because saying one player can max all crafts because he can make one alt per craft is as simplifying as saying Integrals are just maths, or barbecue sauce is a sauce. Of course it's true, but there is far more efforts, work, and management to max a different craft on multiple toons than doing it on the same toon. Emplacement, self trades, eventually level (if craft is somehow, gated behind levels) make doing so much harder, longer, and tedious.

    • 1921 posts
    October 16, 2018 12:30 PM PDT

    More work?  You relog. Hehehe.  How is that a significant barrier or hurdle to overcome?  The rest you get yourself from just playing your main character and feeding your alts.  Just like you would if you did all of it on one character.

    I agree there would potentially be more time to level up each alt to max, but they have not confirmed crafting professions will require adventure levels.  Once they do, ok, I'll accept the argument it would take more time.  So, get that confirmation. :)

    • 1479 posts
    October 16, 2018 12:45 PM PDT

    vjek said:

    More work?  You relog. Hehehe.  How is that a significant barrier or hurdle to overcome?  The rest you get yourself from just playing your main character and feeding your alts.  Just like you would if you did all of it on one character.

    I agree there would potentially be more time to level up each alt to max, but they have not confirmed crafting professions will require adventure levels.  Once they do, ok, I'll accept the argument it would take more time.  So, get that confirmation. :)

     

    And how do you perma trade between your alts ? You still have to move around the world and return where they are based, at best, to keep them fed. Cacteristics in EQ were pretty important (at least one pet craft) for the success rate and skillup method, how will a low level character manage thoses ? How will they pay for NPC components, with your money yep, that's even more trades.

     

    Of course if the bank is shared, stats are meaningless, level is meaningless, gear is meaningless, location is meaningless, that'as "almost as having everything on one toon".

     

    But nothing of that is known, either with, or withouth. Let's not make an argument by neglecting every shadowy area, as craft and gather are far to be set in stone and known.

    • 1921 posts
    October 16, 2018 2:08 PM PDT

    So... most of the pledges come with at least 2 accounts.  That's the same as a shared bank, except a little more convenient, because you can move the second character around. 
    I understand your personal views, but what you've outlined will be possible with two accounts, just like any other MMO.

    • 2752 posts
    October 16, 2018 2:27 PM PDT

    Given the following I think it will be much harder than you'd think to be a master craftsman in multiple professions on different characters even if crafting level isn't restricted by adventuring level:

    6.1 Can I just craft and avoid combat?
    To some degree although special crafting areas require some significant combat effort to reach. Players who are both adventurers and crafters will greatly benefit from being masters of both.

    6.2 What type of special crafting areas are there?
    Some items in Pantheon require certain climates to create. For example, located in Amberfaet is The Anvil, a naturally occurring region in the zone and a scorching environment inside a frigid environment. Crafters will be required to acclimate to the scorching environment to eventually use The Anvil for crafting.

    It won't likely be as simple as funneling materials to an alt sitting in a town as I imagine these special crafting areas will be required for making items beyond a certain level. 

    • 1921 posts
    October 16, 2018 2:30 PM PDT

    Aside from a single example of the Anvil in Amberfaet, and/or very very very very few other "special" areas, if you can't "sit in town and craft" for 90% or even 75% of your crafting life, then that would be a major new public design decision reveal.  Is that confirmed, Iksar?

    • 1479 posts
    October 16, 2018 2:44 PM PDT

    Don't get me wrong : I never said things were impossible (Even If I'm not taking  the Serious players having at least 2 accounts as a generality), just that they are harder, longer, more complicated and time consuming that having everything on the same toon. There will be barriers, unless it's GW2/ESO style (which I doubt it will be, with shared immaterial crafting bags...), some will be made of wood, other of stone.

     

    But for a character able to master all crafting skills at once, the only barrier is bag space.

    • 2752 posts
    October 16, 2018 4:41 PM PDT

    No confirmations for anything regarding crafting, nothing is set in stone and most details are still entirely unknown. So pretty much enough information for me to make wild guesses the same as you shooting wildly into the dark claiming one profession per character is going to be a joke and easily sidestepped. 

    • 1921 posts
    October 16, 2018 6:07 PM PDT

    Ah, that's too bad. I was hoping they were going to be transparent about their design goals for crafting and harvesting.

    Oh well, I guess we wait until the NDA is lifted, and speculate in ignorance. :)

    • 1315 posts
    October 17, 2018 7:56 AM PDT

    TLDR:

    1)      One should not be able to buy their way to master craftsman, everyone must spend the same amount of time and crafting takes time

    2)      Level up on making basic items

    3)      Materials for basic items are basically free or unlimited, predictable harvest nodes or salvaging items for their basic raw materials

    4)      Players only want Non-Basic items

    5)      Non-basic items are a combination of basic items with materials from limited node harvests or salvaging Non-basic mob drops

    6)      Salvaging basic items returns basic raw materials, salvaging non-basic items returns basic raw materials and a chance for non-basic materials

    7)      Crafted items are x% better than the non-basic items salvaged to get the non-basic materials

    8)      The coin income per hour of crafting must be approximately the same as or less than one hour of mob killing.

    I keep hoping that they will announce that leveling crafting will be more of a time investment than a material investment.  If each level of crafting takes 7 hours of harvesting and 1 hour of crafting you end up with 350 hours of harvesting and 50 hours of crafting to get to level 50 in crafting.  You also need all the materials you could have harvested in 350 hours. 

    High level people can buy their way out of 350 out of 400 hours to max crafting by selling one high quality sword that is actually wanted in order to buy up enough material to make 100 swords no one will ever want.  This will drive the price of the raw materials low level players can harvest through the roof and so will drive the value of the already fairly useless swords down until it reaches the vendor or salvage value.  When this happens crafting becomes a value subtractive process rather than a value added process (i.e. Real Market Value of raw materials to make a sword is higher than the Real Market Value of the crafted sword)

    On the other hand if it takes 7 hours of crafting and one hour of harvesting per crafting level you must spend 350 hours at a minimum to level crafting and can only buy your way out of 50 out of 400 hours.  This changes mastering a craft from a wealth check to an effort check.  This will in turn make craft masters, using the 50 hours vs 350 hours ratio, 7 times rarer in the effort check system than the wealth check.  This rarity will make actual craft masters more valuable and more of an achievement. 

    The decrease in demand for raw materials in the effort system will significantly decrease the real market value of the materials until the result may be of lower value than the finished product.  If the supply of the raw materials is higher than the demand then the Real Market Value of the raw materials will drop to the vendor price or close to it.  Then if you set the vendor/turn-in value of the finished product to be 10 times the combined vendor value of the raw materials and the time to craft to be 7 times longer than to harvest you have made value added process. (In 8 time units you can collect and transform one set of harvested materials into 10 times the value of the raw materials rather than 8 units of raw materials that can be harvested in the same time period.)

    Leveling Up crafting can all be done using basic raw materials of different types with the intent of the basic raw materials and the finished products from them being used as turn-ins or vendor food.  The crafting writs can be set such that you turn one set of basic raw materials into a finished product that you turn-in for another set of basic raw materials and some faction and or coin.  You will be able to use one set of crafting writs to feed into the next further decreasing the demand on basic raw materials.  This even points to possibly making raw material harvest points being limitless in quantity and only limited by carrying capacity and the time to click through the harvest mini game and traveling.

    Items intended to be used by players rather than being traded to NPCs will contain rare drop or rare found harvest materials.  Finding one of these nodes or having the rare material drop is just as rare and valuable as having the actual finished product but still needs to be processed by a crafter with the recipe/skill to make the item.  There are solid arguments for having the crafted product being 10% more powerful than the equivalent dropped items in the same area to reward the players for going through the effort of actually crafting an item rather than just using a dropped finished item.

    Taking both of these concepts and feeding them back into the salvage skill we end up with a two part salvage system.  All items salvage for most of the basic materials needed to make the basic version of that item.  Those basic materials are usually worth only a tenth of the vendor value of the dropped item.  When salvaging a non basic item you get both the basic raw materials for that item and a chance to get one of the rare components used in player valued items.  Salvaging multiple rare non basic items is a way to both remove rare items from the item economy and based on luck upgrade them to rare+ items.  I could take on average salvaging 10 rare items to make one rare+ item of the same tier.

    The key for all this to matter though is that the crafting process MUST take time.  It cannot be a simple click and done otherwise it totally breaks the value gain balance when compared to the value gain from killing mobs.  It could be something as ugly as walking up to the crafting station, selecting the recipe from a list of recipes you have the materials for in your inventory, and hitting the craft button that takes 8 minutes to finish.  I really dislike the idea of 8 minutes of AFK to make an item and prefer a sequence of mini games that on average takes 8 minutes to complete.  If you are really bad at the minigame you can retry each stage as many times as you need until the item is completed or if you are really good you can speed through the minigames in as little as 4 minutes and so increasing your profits per hour.  Personal skill, character skill, character tools and environmental bonuses could all contribute to being “really good” at the mini games.


    This post was edited by Trasak at October 17, 2018 8:18 AM PDT
    • 1921 posts
    October 17, 2018 9:18 AM PDT

    Timed crafting? Please no.  I'd rather they go with what they've outlined rather than swtor or pfo's temporal crafting systems.  Especially no to the idea that it takes longer the better you get.  That's backwards.  Punishing the player as they get better is illogical and frustrating.  8 minutes afk?  I don't think anyone is going to find that fun, challenging, or innovative.

    There will always be too many raw materials, and they should have no monetary value.  The expectation that you can make a living from harvesting is... problematic.  If you actually make this happen, you have scripted harvesting bot armies, as every game that has tried this has had the same problem.  Similarly, if you can sell finished products for a profit, same problem, it's a scriptable money engine.  Other MMOs have already successfully dealt with these problems, so hopefully VR uses those solutions.

    No north-american MMO has used a mini-game for crafting (that I know of or have played) in the way you describe.. EQ2 probably came the closest, and it was fine (because it was fast), but Vanguards level of "guaranteed failure" was not optimal.  And it was changed, eventually, but far too late.  Doing everything right and still failing?  That doesn't make for happy customers or increased subscriber retention.  Typically, it's enough of a time sink to simply get the materials at all, never mind fail the mini-game or have to endure it thousands of times.  The crafting mini-game would have to be as fun as combat, and I don't see tha that happening unless it's thematically inconsistent.  But consider:  The current time-to-kill in the videos so far is 30-60 seconds.  If you're going to try and say combat and crafting should take similar amounts of time, then.. time-to-craft should match time-to-kill, right? :)

    Personally, I much prefer the idea that NPCs, somewhere, or NPC guilds, always want your crafted goods (grey, green, blue, or otherwise), and are willing to reward you for them, even if it means all you get from the donation is faction to buy more crafting fuel.  What players want will be filled in based on what drops are available, or how item enhancement/enchanting works.  That way, at least, there is always a continuous consumption of all crafted goods, regardless of the customers time zone or available play time.

    • 1315 posts
    October 17, 2018 10:49 AM PDT

    vjek said:

    Timed crafting? Please no.  I'd rather they go with what they've outlined rather than swtor or pfo's temporal crafting systems.  Especially no to the idea that it takes longer the better you get.  That's backwards.  Punishing the player as they get better is illogical and frustrating.  8 minutes afk?  I don't think anyone is going to find that fun, challenging, or innovative.

    *snip*

    The crafting mini-game would have to be as fun as combat, and I don't see tha that happening unless it's thematically inconsistent.  But consider:  The current time-to-kill in the videos so far is 30-60 seconds.  If you're going to try and say combat and crafting should take similar amounts of time, then.. time-to-craft should match time-to-kill, right? :)

    Whole heartedly agree that a time bar is the worst possible way to make a time limited crafting system.  The time suggestion of 8 minutes was just an example. Most crafting systems have had 3 seconds or less to actually craft and those systems are, by definition, materials limited not time limited.  I like the idea of matching the time the mini-game takes to the same amount of time that a combat takes.  The question becomes is that for just the final combine? Is it for each sub combine? Could harder to make and in turn more valuable items actually have multiple mini games in sequence that you must defeat?

    Also making a fun to play mini game for many different crafting operations will be pretty challenging and really would be almost a second game within the greater game.  Doing a handful of different mini games over and over to level crafting may sound repetitive but think of how repetitive combat leveling is already, we are obviously fairly tolerant of a fair amount of repetition.  Figuring out a way to add enough variation to the same few mini games to keep them engaging is 90% of designing the mini game.  Keeping them thematic shouldn’t be too hard but again will still take a fair amount of subject matter knowledge clever game design.

    For a game to be fun there also needs to be a risk of failure and a consequence of failure even if it’s only lost time.  As raid bosses are the highest rewarding encounters they are also the most difficult encounters to defeat and require practice and coordination.  Likewise crafting raid level items should be equally player challenging as well as having all the character requirements.

     

    vjek said:

    There will always be too many raw materials, and they should have no monetary value.  The expectation that you can make a living from harvesting is... problematic.  If you actually make this happen, you have scripted harvesting bot armies, as every game that has tried this has had the same problem.  Similarly, if you can sell finished products for a profit, same problem, it's a scriptable money engine.  Other MMOs have already successfully dealt with these problems, so hopefully VR uses those solutions.

     

    This ties back to having a non-trivial mini-game for both harvesting and crafting and a game client that does not accept console commands for game function.  If you need to click a location on the screen to trigger the desired response of random magnitude and that location is different on every step of the crafting game and different every time with failure options available it will be impossible to accurately script it.

    Building a crafting system like this is fairly revolutionary for the MMO genre but I personally feel it would be worth it.

    • 1479 posts
    October 17, 2018 11:56 AM PDT

    Trasak said:

    vjek said:

    Timed crafting? Please no.  I'd rather they go with what they've outlined rather than swtor or pfo's temporal crafting systems.  Especially no to the idea that it takes longer the better you get.  That's backwards.  Punishing the player as they get better is illogical and frustrating.  8 minutes afk?  I don't think anyone is going to find that fun, challenging, or innovative.

    *snip*

    The crafting mini-game would have to be as fun as combat, and I don't see tha that happening unless it's thematically inconsistent.  But consider:  The current time-to-kill in the videos so far is 30-60 seconds.  If you're going to try and say combat and crafting should take similar amounts of time, then.. time-to-craft should match time-to-kill, right? :)

    Whole heartedly agree that a time bar is the worst possible way to make a time limited crafting system.  The time suggestion of 8 minutes was just an example. Most crafting systems have had 3 seconds or less to actually craft and those systems are, by definition, materials limited not time limited.  I like the idea of matching the time the mini-game takes to the same amount of time that a combat takes.  The question becomes is that for just the final combine? Is it for each sub combine? Could harder to make and in turn more valuable items actually have multiple mini games in sequence that you must defeat?

    Also making a fun to play mini game for many different crafting operations will be pretty challenging and really would be almost a second game within the greater game.  Doing a handful of different mini games over and over to level crafting may sound repetitive but think of how repetitive combat leveling is already, we are obviously fairly tolerant of a fair amount of repetition.  Figuring out a way to add enough variation to the same few mini games to keep them engaging is 90% of designing the mini game.  Keeping them thematic shouldn’t be too hard but again will still take a fair amount of subject matter knowledge clever game design.

    For a game to be fun there also needs to be a risk of failure and a consequence of failure even if it’s only lost time.  As raid bosses are the highest rewarding encounters they are also the most difficult encounters to defeat and require practice and coordination.  Likewise crafting raid level items should be equally player challenging as well as having all the character requirements.

     

    vjek said:

    There will always be too many raw materials, and they should have no monetary value.  The expectation that you can make a living from harvesting is... problematic.  If you actually make this happen, you have scripted harvesting bot armies, as every game that has tried this has had the same problem.  Similarly, if you can sell finished products for a profit, same problem, it's a scriptable money engine.  Other MMOs have already successfully dealt with these problems, so hopefully VR uses those solutions.

     

    This ties back to having a non-trivial mini-game for both harvesting and crafting and a game client that does not accept console commands for game function.  If you need to click a location on the screen to trigger the desired response of random magnitude and that location is different on every step of the crafting game and different every time with failure options available it will be impossible to accurately script it.

    Building a crafting system like this is fairly revolutionary for the MMO genre but I personally feel it would be worth it.

     

    I thought EQ2's crafting was not that bad in that regard. Skill rotation with impredictable events you could (or not) counter. However, the quantity (and quality) of items required either to craft something meaningfull or to skillup was insanely depressing, and far to be my cup of tea (especially with food/drink required to replenish your ressources).

    To some extent, that's a craft I had some fun with, while levelling provisionner (Which required very little cross craft items...).