crafting:
I would have never posted this topic if Brad didnt said in one of the streams that they havent though about the crafting system yet.
so these are my 2 cents about crafting.
in current MMO, there are two types of crafting:
1- recipe centered crafting, you purchase recipe from trainer or get one as a drop and study a very specific recipe of an item, each item in the recipe use different types and amounts of ingredients in the recipe (aka wow crafting)
2- template centered crafting: every item category require the same types of ingredients just made from different materials; for example: a sword is made from blade and a hilt, so in order to craft copper sword you craft copper blade and copper hilt and combine them, and when you craft mithril sword you craft mithril hilt and mithril blade and combine them.
this method is what we have in games like guildwars2 and in ESO.
it is also doesnt matter how convulted the crafting process is( whether it is simple like in GW2 or involves a minigame like in FFXIV or EQ2)
my suggestion is to combine the two:
- the trainer crafting is a template centered crafting, each time you increase in crafting potency you will learn basic item recipes (i.e. sword, axe, cloth boots, leather chest etc...) that you will craft from the same ingredients just from higher level materials.
if you are a good crafter and use quality materials you can equip yourself in a pretty nice set of gear.
- the drop recipes are different, the recepes tht you get from chests and bosses are not template items, but special items with special effects, for example you get a recipe for an orc-slayer dagger,
to create this dagger you will require: mithril blade, ironwood hilt, (that you craft from mithril bars and ironwood planks) vial of royal orc blood and a crushed diamond powder, and it has to be crafted at night.
when such dagger is created the weapon will have special stats like: +15% increased critical chance agains orcs, the weapon glows when orcs are in vicinity (as torch or lanthern for lighting purposes), +10% parry against orcs attacks
and it has double threat against orcs (orcs will prefer to attack you if you hold this dagger).
the special recipes will be related to the lore of the area/ monster etc.
now for the trainer template crafting:
in most crafting systems, the carfted item has only one dimension.
each similar crafted item is exactly the same (in some systems the craft crit, so you get a better type of the same item)
my suggestion for template crafting: (I understand that not everything can be implemented in the game, but ) is multiple dimensions for each item:
dimension 1: material attributes:
each material have its inherent attributes: hard/soft, heavy/light (if encumberance implemented), durable/brittle (if durability implemented), spell resistant/ spell conductive.
hard/soft attribute alters the basic damage or armor of the item, durable/brittle attribute alters the amount of durability the item has before it is broken, spell resistant/conductive attribute alters the magic efficiency of the item.
there are also material attribute that affect damage resistance: silver weapons used to fight werevolves and some undead, but have disadvantage vs regular mobs because silver is soft material, admantite weapons used to fight constructs but very expensive to waste on regular mobs. etc.
for example: admantite have durable attribute, so admantite sword will have higher durability than steel, mythril chain shirt will be lighter than regular steel, dwarven-steel axe will be harder than regular steel axe, gold is highly spell conductive so golden scepter will be more magic conductive than iron scepter, but gold is also heavy and soft, so if you will make a golden armor it will be very heavy and have low defence. etc
the type of the material which is used for crafting the item will affect its stats.
dimension 2: quality of the craft (the lower between the material quality and the crafter mastery)
when crafter crafting any item, the quality of materials and the mastery of the crafter determine the quality of the outcome, the quality is multiplicative, i.e. 100% material quality*100% crafter mastery = 100% item quality.
87% material quality and 73% crafter mastery= 63.51% item quality, the quality affect the item stats.
for example if 100% quality chain shirt have 100 armor points, then 63.51% quality chain shirt will have 64 armor points. same with weapons if 100% quality two handed sword inflict 85-125 points of damage, then 63.51% quality sword will inflict 54-79 points of damage.
this leads to situation when sometimes high quality leather armor will have better armor points than low quality steel armor.
basically this will lead to metagame where the low quality resources used for crafting skills training and high quality resources used for the actual adventuring gear making a spot in the market for all types of materials
the quality dont have to be percentage based as percentage based materials lead to convulsion of storage and trading systems, the quality can be just low quality(30%), standard quality(60%) high quality (90%) and perfect (100%)
dimension 3: rarity of the item:
now rarity is a tricky dimension in MMOs.
usually rarity is controlled by drop chance of the item or drop chance of the ingredients, in this system the rarity is controlled by failure... and double failure.
you can add suffix and/or prefix to armor or weapon of high or perfect quality in the crafting process.
depends on the game world it can be WOW-type suffix and prefix: like "devastating shortsword of the snake" which affect primary or secondary stats(devastating adds secondary stat critical damage bonus and of the snake adds primary stats agility and intelligence )
or D&D-type suffix and prefix like: holy sword of flamebite where the prefix affect the item ability to pass damage resistances, holy prefix makes the sword damage from physical type to holy type in order to hit non-corporeal undead like ghosts and flamebite suffix add some fire damage on the top of the weapon holy damage.
gear with no prefix or suffix is a common quality weapon (white)
the process of attachment of prefix or suffix involves uncontrolled magical rituals that can lead to the destruction of the item.
it doesnt matter if you add prefix or suffix, the basic success rate is 25% (one in four) for high quality and 33% (one in three) for prefect quality. items with lower than high quality will fail automatically.
item with either prefix or with suffix is uncommon item (green)
item with both prefix and suffix is rare item (blue)
in average you need 4 high level common items or 3 perfect common items of the same type to create uncommon version of the item.
in average you need 16 high level common items or 9 perfect common items of the same type to create rare version of the item.
[it is important that there will be no "cash shop" item that will increase the success chance, as it ruins the whole game.]
ofcourse if the developers think that these chances are too high and the items should be rarer, the success rate can be decreased or the required ingredient for the prefix/suffix will be harder to obtain.
there is no epic probability for trainer crafting, epic items crafted only by dropped recipes from raid bosses.
alchemy and cooking: which are basically the same profession: generating perishable stackable item that grant temporary buff.
instead of a static recipe list, you have a recipe template where by combining 3 types of effect reagents and crafters skill, you calculate the final outcome.
these reagents dont have to be "raw" they can be combined from different ingredients themselves.
effect type reagent: determines the actual effect- healing, mana recharge, strength buff, invisibility, magic protection, poison etc...
the type ingredient will not change through the levels, and the availibility of these reagents through maps will be according to the devs vision. (i.e. health reagent will be in the starter area but invisibility reagent will be in the mid game area).
this reagent effect is not affected by the crafters skill level.
effect duration reagent: how long the effect stays on the imbiber, higher level maps will have ingredients which give higher duration. different effect ingridients might alter the duration ingredient,
for example: strenght buff with tier 3 duration ingredient will keep up for 15 minuts, while restoration potion with tier 3 duration ingredient will heal for 15 seconds, etc.
instant effects might require special ingredient or non at all.
effect intensity reagent: how strong is the effect. is it a 100HP heal or 1000hp heal? is it 20% fire resistance or 44% fire resistance? low level maps will have low intensity reagents and high level maps will have high intensity reagents.
the duration and intensity effect reagent are affected by the crafters skill, the higher the crafters skill the easier is to reach the maximal potential of the reagent. (low skill crafter using high intensity reagent will probably create low intensity product)
this way the alchemist will be able to create buffs according to his availible reagent and his skill level.
even if he doesnt have exactly the "right" materials, he can create long duration potion with mild effect or short duration potion with strong effect, according to his needs and availibility of the reagents.
it is good for the economy (low level gatherers are relevant because they gather the "effect type ingredients" which are still used by high level crafters)
good for the crafters, no need to have five tiers of healing potions and five tiers of restoration potions, you have one type of "basic" potion
where you mix the ingredients and just get the potion, with further crafting skill you open more advanced mixes like two types of reagent slots, or composite reagents.
good for gameplay because not all potions are the same and the system is easy to remember and implement (object oriented: you dont have a separate class for each potion but have general potion class with three attributes: effect, duration, intensity and each potion is inherited from this potion class ).
Racial recipes
racial recipes for some items which can be learned only by the specific race (elven bow, elven lembas, dwarven axe, dwarven spirits, Kender Hoopak etc..), other races cannot learn these recipes and cannot craft them.
these items should be little better that their equivalent non racial trainer crafts.
this will create (appologize for the word) - diversity within crafters and make it more fun, it will not be overpowered as the really strong items are from dropped recipes and not trainer recipes.