For this week's Crafter's Roundtable, we'd like to hear how everyone feels risk vs. reward should work in crafting.
Should there be a chance to fail a crafting recipe completely, or should you just get an inferior version of the item? If you fail, should you lose the resources you were using or get to keep them?
Should there also be a chance to get a better version of the item if you do very well, or a refund on resources used?
Let us know what you think is the right balance!
Each week, Pantheon Crafters posts a discussion topic for the crafting community to talk about. We call these Crafter's Roundtables and we post them both on our site's forums as well as here on the Pantheon forums, so feel free to join the discussion in both places if you'd like. Also, for an easy directory to all of them, click here.
There's too many unknowns at the moment to give a specific/elegant answer, but I'll offer this scenario, and then some opinions.
There are no quality of items. Either you make it or you don't. There's no mini games, it's just collect the resources, click combine, and pray. Item loss is part of the deal, and all combines have a 5% chance of failure, even at the highest possible skill level. (<- all just like EQ1)
If that's the case, then I have no problem with resource loss, and no refunds, and a binary success/failure mechanic. I endured it in EQ1, and I might? endure it again in Pantheon, after I have several max-adventure-level characters. It's not fun, innovative, or challenging, but as a punitive time sink, it accomplishes it's design goals.
Nephele said:For this week's Crafter's Roundtable, we'd like to hear how everyone feels risk vs. reward should work in crafting.
Should there be a chance to fail a crafting recipe completely, or should you just get an inferior version of the item? If you fail, should you lose the resources you were using or get to keep them?
Should there also be a chance to get a better version of the item if you do very well, or a refund on resources used?
Let us know what you think is the right balance!Each week, Pantheon Crafters posts a discussion topic for the crafting community to talk about. We call these Crafter's Roundtables and we post them both on our site's forums as well as here on the Pantheon forums, so feel free to join the discussion in both places if you'd like. Also, for an easy directory to all of them, click here.
I would like to see an improved version of crafting along the lines of the Vanguard system in this regard. In that system the crafting process was a bit of a minigame that was augmented by both skill, crafting gear, and tools. There was always a chance that you could fail and end up with a pile of scrapped metal. But crafting could also end up landing you a mundane item or one of higher rarity depending on how high you got the progression bar and if I recall also if you opted to use specific crafting mats.
So yes, I think there should be a chance to fail as well as a chance to exceptionally succeed. That loss can vary from reducing the materials to a useless pile of ash to maybe getting back some of the resources. Failure vs catastrophic failure.
Nephele said:For this week's Crafter's Roundtable, we'd like to hear how everyone feels risk vs. reward should work in crafting.
Should there be a chance to fail a crafting recipe completely, or should you just get an inferior version of the item? If you fail, should you lose the resources you were using or get to keep them?
Should there also be a chance to get a better version of the item if you do very well, or a refund on resources used?
I much prefer the 'pass/fail' approach. Either you succeed or your fail. This is especially true when, as mentioned above, there exist only one version of an item. A Fine Steel Short Sword is a Fine Steel Short Sword no matter who makes it. Upon failure, however, I think that you should get some item which can go through further processing to recycle, at least partially, some of the materials used. So if that sword needed 4 FS ingots to create the blade, and you failed to make the blade, you could get a 'Lump of Slag'. Further refining could return to you 'A Bit of Fine Steel'. Get enough of those and you can remake them into a FS ingot. What you never ever get is a 100% return.
I will also disagree that there should be chances for better versions because those better versions immediately become the only desired version. Nobody will want to buy the 'normal' version when the better version is...well...better. The market price of those better items then become exhorbantly more expensive because the cost of all the non-better version must be taken into account. So if, on average, you only got the better version 1:20 of the time and it takes 10pp just to make each attempt. The seller will require they recoup the cost of materials plus profit. And this is only if there is just 1 better version. If it were some random range of 'better', only the best version will be desirable.
I disagree with what you're (Vandraad) saying about the +1 versions of items. I have seen that exact system used to great effect and it was virtually impossible for players to "only want the better version." When resources are limited and high quality versions of crafted goods are actually difficult to make, it doesn't matter what the demand is because it's mostly supply driven. The standard versions of many items were still highly sought after. Anybody who played FFXI will probably remember Archer Rings and their +1 version Sniper Rings. The regular version (archer rings) were worth a small fortune and having even one meant that you were thrilled. There was never any sort of expectation that people would only want the high quality version because they weren't readily available. You couldn't just crank them out on demand. I remember getting a full set of Koenig Armor that took an incredible amount of effort to acquire. There was a +1 version of that same armor (Kaiser) which was extremely rare because the materials required to make it weren't falling off of trees. I was a hardcore player and absolutely "wanted" the Kaiser set but never managed to get my hands on a single piece.
Failure : Yes, that's the point of trying, you don't allways succeed and you need to put the odds on your side for a success : Skill rank, sub stats, and enough material to retry if necessary.
Reduced version ? No, failure should yield to recycling like Vandraad suggested.
Improved version ? Not a fan either, even if basically Reduced / improved are only a matter of perspective to which one does fall in which category, I'm still in the idea that a more rare recipe should cost more component especially rare ones and a higher skill in crafting.
For me, I don't particuarly like failing and getting nothing. Like if I were to try to knit something for real, I would make something even if it was just a mess of yarn. So I prefer crafting an item successfully always but what you get depends on your skill level - mess of yarn or an intricate scarf.
In that line of thinking, the higher your skill the more chance you would have to craft a better item. The more time spent, the better you are. I like being rewarded for time invested.
I dont think you should get a refund on resources because you are using them so that does not make sense to me, where did they come from? Unless the take on it is that you are so good at making this item, you dont even need to use all the resources!
Risk Vs Reward is tough for crafting. In combat if you die you lose time in two ways: lost experience and lost potential experience you could have been gaining while doing your corpse run. There are certain margins of safety you can pursue to limit your chances at the likely hood of lost experience but usually at the expense of maximum experience earned per hour. Ultimately though any time you fail you can just pick yourself back up again and and regrind the lost experience then start moving forward again.
For crafting we have two different concepts that we are looking at for reward. One is crafting experience or what ever measuring stick is used to show that we are getting better at our craft. The second reward is the output of our craft. On one hand I can see that we should need to risk valuable materials to make something truly great, if you can get the same result every time without trying then the result will not be valued only the raw materials will be. Conversely as you are learning your craft it really sucks to blow through a ton of resources that you will need to stop crafting and go back to fighting for hours to reacquire just to practice your craft again.
As far as I know there is no "time only" cost process you can use to recover from failed crafting attempts. You must spend large amounts of money to recover from failed crafting attempts as typically grinding easy recipes in MMOs is not a way to earn resources like farming easy mobs would be for cash.
A solution to this I can think of is to allow a crafter to spend some time to break down an item they crafted back into the raw ingredients used in it. The crafter could gain experience any time they succeed in completing a recipe and would fail to gain any if they fully fail. The chance to have a non failure result would be based on the crafters skill vs total ingredients challenge rating for that recipe, higher the skill the higher the chance to get a maximum quality result. Anything that was less than maximum quality could be broken down into ingredient and re-crafted, even maximum quality results could be broken down to practice more if the item is worth less than the raw materials to make it.
Another idea that could go hand in hand with the previous idea is to have "crafters confidence". Every time you fail at crafting you lose confidence and every time you succeed you gain confidence. If you fail enough times in a row you could actually regress as a crafter to some degree. Your Crafters Confidence could effect the odds of what quality of results you receive from your recipes.
Some where there should be a balance between trying the really hard recipe that grants tons of experience and the safe and easy one you can practice with.
All of this assumes that the crafting and the breaking down processes are both non-trivial and a mob fight in time length process.
Nephele said:
Should there be a chance to fail a crafting recipe completely, or should you just get an inferior version of the item? If you fail, should you lose the resources you were using or get to keep them?
Should there also be a chance to get a better version of the item if you do very well, or a refund on resources used?
Let us know what you think is the right balance!
Oh, I approve of chances of failure in crafting or in anything for that matter. I also approve of different quality or constitution results in the crafted equipables, as well as gear wearing out over time with a crafter able to repair it back up. I learned from DAoC how crafting systems that are difficult and take an eternity to level are much more rewarding to master than what I have seen in Warhammer Online, WoW, Rift, SWToR (yuck), or GW2. None of those are even worthy of being considered more than a minor gameplay investment (I have crafted in each of those games). If Pantheons crafting system is to be considered robust, it must step away from the "push button/win" methodology.
I think the possibility of partial resource loss upon fail should exist as well. It is not so much about being painful as it is about ensuring that the crafting community is full of those "that really want to" craft to max. I would rather the masses did not craft because of the difficulty to max out (let's not call it a challenge). Close to the same logic used when comparing a P2P player/community against a F2P player/community.
There should be no free rides in crafting. Everything should have a chance to fail and every fail should have a chance at mats loss. There certainly should be no chance whatsoever that it can be focus leveled to max in a few days by sitting at the local bazaar buying mats.
Last thought: I think more tradeskills will be added over future game expansions. The tradeskills Jewelcrafting and Spellcrafting come to mind. In past games, variable quality gear has played a role in "odds of success" in those fields.
I believe RNG has always been a bane in crafting. Whether it be for failing recipes for getting a critical success. Risk is way more rewarding than randomness and risk rewards those that earn it. I am a strong advocate for geared degradation. Repairing items is an ok choice but I feel that the better choice would be items being deleted or braking when the degradation reaches zero. It would be a great idea if you could reclaim mats from broken items with salvaging. This way the crafter's role in the world is always needed. Another system that might be possible is a partial loot drop upon death. With this particular system dropping items will create a competitive market for gear which will make crafters a very lucrative role. Another benefit with dropping items would mean if you want to do world PVP members would think twice before bringing their best gear because they risk losing their set if they die. Is somewhat equalizes PvP opportunities in open world PvP where most traveling groups won't be fully geared and gives the chance for a smaller group that is better geared. This will make gathering locations a lot more viable in games. However, if the dropping loot system is implemented PVP safe zones are a necessity. In these safe places, they will need to be at least low-level tier gathering spots and have higher grade spots in PvP areas. It's also important that there are multiple Gathering spots that are in PVP locations and safe zones. Otherwise, groups that are focused can lock out particular resources to stop other groups from obtaining higher tier gear. A good example of this system working would be Albion online.