I like it both when the crafting is worth it. EQ crafting didn't really provide many benefits other than food/drink/bags. However, once Artisan's Prize came out it just felt like busy work. I think that's an example of crafting overkill. Artisan's Prize itself was great, but trying to max it out for months was sort of burn out. The best crafting system I've come across by far is Black Desert Online, where you can actually get valuable gains, something meaningful, where you aren't feeling like a good chunk of time invested isn't worth it.
All of the above... please Sir, can I have some more!!
Life itself has many facets to enjoy.. so why should our avatars be limited to just one path of enjoyment. Full rounding out a character in all possible ways just adds to the immersion factor and increased level of enjoyment. For those that only choose to pursue a single facet of the game, I say do what you enjoy when you enjoy it.
DaveBowers said:All of the above... please Sir, can I have some more!!
Life itself has many facets to enjoy.. so why should our avatars be limited to just one path of enjoyment. Full rounding out a character in all possible ways just adds to the immersion factor and increased level of enjoyment. For those that only choose to pursue a single facet of the game, I say do what you enjoy when you enjoy it.
Well said!
I feel like people around here can probably predict my answer to the question. But I'm a do-everything-seriously kind of player. I will be a top-tier crafter. I will be a top-tier adventurer. And if the game has it, I will also be a top-tier diplomat.
World > Game :)
Oddly enough one of my favorite activities is harvesting. Vanguard had a wonderful harvesting system.
Crafting is also something I enjoy especially where it involves some thought and challenge - again as in Vanguard. Making useful things is actually secondary for me - I enjoy the crafting itself and the hopefully slow increases in skill and acquisition of recipes to become a master crafter.
As with adventuring where getting to maximum level in a few days kills the game totally for me - I want crafting to be slow and progress to be gradual. Same theory as with why almost all of us want adventuring levels to come slowly. Treating crafting as a separate sphere largely independent of adventuring and potentially co-equal was a great strength of Vanguard.
Diplomacy I never spent much time on but I would welcome seeing it in Pantheon.
Kilsin said:Do you enjoy other spheres like Crafting, Fishing and Diplomacy as well as Adventuring or are you a strictly "Adventurer only" kind of person? #MMORPG #communitymatters
Eventually I will partake in and enjoy them all, just not all at the same time. Adventuring is in the forefront for me, the thing that garner the most of my attention. During adventuring I'm always mindful of gathering materials for crafting but only if gathering them does not inpede my leveling progress. Crafting takes up the time when I'm just not in the mood for grouping or when I've stockpiled enough materials such that my bank is overflowing. I'll then go on a crafting binge.
While I did enjoy Diplomacy in Vanguard, it did not provide nearly ennough reward for the tedium involved. Much like crafting, I only engaged in Diplomacy when I wasn't in the mood for anything else. Fishing, by contrast, is a monumental waste of time.
I'm mainly an adventurer type, but, I typically choose a crafting skill that supports my adventuring - blacksmith for tank, etc. I had the monopoly on Banded armor in EQ for a bit at the launch of my server. I enjoyed Diplomacy in VG, but it was very tedious to level as Vandraad said. And fishing... yea, I'd rather do it in real life.
In enjoyed them all, except in Vanguard. Silius's crafting was too punitive for me, and as a result, I had 3 max level adventurers before I could endure the frustration, boredom, tedium, grind, illogic and punishment of leveling even one crafter to max. It was eventually fixed to be fun instead of punitive, but I was gone by then. The whole implementation of: You need better gear than you will ever have, or can ever possibly get, at level, to make this experience reasonable or to be able to respond appropriately to complications? Insane. Silius's glib and dismissive attitude didn't help, either.
My philosophy for non-combat spheres/loops has always been: If you want your paying customers to do it? Make it fun. If you can't make it fun? At least make it simple, quick or fast. Making it complicated, slow, and/or punitively tedious? I will likely not participate in the latest sadistic designer experiment, regardless if it's intended or not. :)
Many beta testers who managed to level up to non-combat max in the first few days or weeks of Vanguard (or some other game, take your pick) due to exploits, unintended methods, or similar acceleration, and then forever, for the life of the title repeat "It's not that hard, what's your problem?" or "There's nothing wrong with these incredibly tedious, punitive, or time consuming mechanics, suck it up, buttercup" or "You just don't understand the _______ mechanic, you need to git gud, or play moar, or l2play" while they're comfortably already at max?
There is nothing worse for the social construct of that sphere than those customers. If it's that bad/wrong/broken? Fix it. Having a vocal minority defend bad design because they took advantage of worse design helps no-one. I've seen it too many times for non-combat spheres. It can poison the community faster than malicious Monk training ever could, especially because it typically happens on the forums and/or social media. :)
I do, thats what I call the "Meta-game" . There is a part of me that wants to do everything there is do to in a game as part of the game, even better if there are hurdles or milestones within a certain - dare I say it- level range. Like I can only get to a certian level of crafting at a certain player level and once your player level increases then you can increase your craft skill level. For the sake of balance or "Meta game" this sort of encourages my character to self-impose restraints if I am heading too fast in one direction.
Socials, on the other hand like diplomacy or factions can be more fluid and go beyond player level, but would have innate(game enforced gates) race inhibitors/boosts with other races or racial indiginous species. I could see the situation arise where a short cut to tailoring may be discovered by using materials obtained in one area where my faction is lousy. Either I can pause and work on improving faction or deal with silk road players who are charging me outrageous prices for those goods- provided they can get here, or are willing to trade protection from me for safe passage for a discounted price. OR this could be compounded with poor language. They may have the goods, but unable to sell them because they dont know the language and stranded in a hostile area.
Not a true story but illustrates a cool point: colonists to australia back in the day. first landed, walking around, meet some aboriginals and see an animal that looks like a giant rabbit that carries its young in a pouch and they ask 'What is that!" and the Aboriginals replied "Kan guru?". It was only years later that a scholar, in deciphering the language learned that "Kan guru" means : "what did you say?"
At the risk of oversimplifying my take, I participate in all game elements largely based on risk versus reward. Part of that reward equation is, however, some personal calcuation of how much "fun" I'm having doing the thing. If I want a particular piece of gear for its stat/appearance/etc and the best way to aquire it is through crafting and the crafting is pure button mashing for days on end, I may very well endure the not fun crafting activity for the item reward.
If "fun" is equal across all the spheres, I would lean toward adventuring as my personal go-to. I'm highly unlikely to play a MMO for the primary purpose of anything other than adventuring but expect those other spheres to provide alternatives for when adventuring is not available for some reason. I've got a few hours to play, I've signed in ... my next inclination will be to find a group and get to adventuring. If that fails, then I look to the other spheres with some internal calculation of risk v. reward for the time I have to play. I can think of examples from all sorts of games where crafting, diplomacy, harvesting, buying/selling, recogn, etc are enjoyable as an alternative to adventuring. The games I enjoy most provide at least 1-2 strong "fun" alternatives to adventuring for those times when it's just not in the cards.
I definitely enjoy other spheres of play...especially fishing if it's available! Adventuring will probably take up the majority of my game time, but I really like having other activities to balance things out. Plus, just knowing other spheres exist in the game makes for a deeper experience in my book.
