Developer feedback request, Crafting and mining: What are the essentials?

[Saito]

Fact of most MMO's the best gear is not available for casual players.. If it was the hardcore players would be bored in a month.

Originally Posted by FeyraN

isn't that kind of a waste that no one's using it? It could benefit the clan more if someone's using it rather than have it sit there. Just having it sit there is as good as not having it at all.

maybe.. but until someone actually earned it we see no reason why we would give it away. The point is that people start to understand that the clan can't magically turn out top gear and they don't have to do anything. If we give them a A grade set while they haven't done anything for it they will keep thinking that and then 2 months later they come to you angry.

"omg wtf im leaving!"
"why?! O.o"
"I'm level 70 and only have B grade juwelry! I told you I wanted A grade juwelry two months ago"
"..."
"go hunt for receipts, parts and mats then if you want them."
"but you have enough parts to craft one in clan warehouse"
"clan warehouse for the whole clan not just for you"

... anyways you get that sort of conversations

[Kalean]

This is a very tough situation. I read a few posts but whatever happens we need diversity.

I'd like a system that has benefits to crafting. As well as the idea that not all items are the same. No body can make a perfect weapon every time. In my head it's a bit complicated but I'll try to explain it. Also trying to keep it in the mind of coding as well to make sure a system is workable....Not just some daydream system that's impossible to code.

Overall...I have many ideas that all would tie together in one system though...But back to the idea that not all crafted weapons would be identical. A range of damage for each craft would be nice. An example would be let's say this crystal blade via the shop (if sold at a shop) would be a attack of 55...If crafted there is a random chance the weapon can have between 50-60 attack. Depending on the quality/sum of materials used to do so. That's an idea just for basic crafting...The range of damage can be smaller also to keep a smaller difference from the crafted version and a version that can be bought out right.

Another feature this system could have is that there are no real recipes...For the shop items a recipe would be displayed but experimentation is key. You can make unique items that have special bonuses that shop item's don't have. Of course there are no recipes...So you'll have to experiment..Just like how you'd really have to in crafting...There would have to be a large pool of item/weapon/armor model's that aren't included in the game through shops...Some can be added to monster drops which would increase the rarity factor. But combining multiple items to create something new would be a great way to have a refreshing taste to the game...Not just the same old +5 crystal dagger or Demon Edge floating about like it was in lineage 2. I loved the idea about removing Might Mortal from the game....So only those floating around were circulating and made them rare. Very great idea. But implementing something similar in a wider fashion would be great. Basically people have to figure out recipes on their own. This would also give a lot of life to crafting and create a interest in it through the game and forums around the net. Like let's say taking holy water from a well known pure fountain in the lore (an example)..And mixing it with pure high grade metals and other materials could create a Sword of Shimmering Light...Which would shield the wielder from a single spell attack every 20 or 30 seconds..It would have a cool down then pop back up to protect from another negative spell. Of course there would have to be a lot of special abilities and weapon skills in a large pool that are pulled by percentage on creation depending on the items used.

Also why not combine certain weapons?...Not just straight up take both and combine..But it'd be nice to have a salvage system that gives more then just materials. Like for example..Let's say we go about getting a drop from a big boss mob int he game...A Chaotic Blade for instance. Which has the ability to absorb the blood of the opponent...The cursed blade would drain the blood of the victim feeding it's malice soul and after 5 or so hits...The 6th hit would do bonus damage releasing It's stored energy..(keep in mind I'm just making up random abilities..)...Instead of salvaging materials..There's a chance you can salvage something more rare..The ability...Chaotic ore or something in that nature...Now taking this Chaotic ore and mixing it with holy water and high grade craft materials...A new weapon can be created through experimentation...You can end up with a Blade of Holy Malice...Which would drain the blood of your enemy and feed their life force into you...As a drain effects. Overall something like this would be difficult to make..There would have to be random weapon/armor/item models that aren't used for weapons..But can be created through percentages of what items are being used...Which would call up for special abilities and the look of the weapon. There would have to also be a vast pool of special abilities that are diverse...Which can be called up by percentage as well through the crafting process....

Overall it is difficult but very unique...Requires more effort for the model and skin department as well as the creativity in coming up with unique abilities. A percentage system shouldn't be VERY difficult to make after you get the core of it down..After the core is down it's up to the creativity and modelers to pull out the rest. But in the long run you'd have a system that isn't limited...You can have many different weapons and lots of creativity..Not the same boring items that you see so many times...Each person could be unique..The main bonus is no one would ever get bored and dulled out with the same boring equipment. Also small updates adding new models and abilities will keep people constantly driving for more and better items.You could also implement different faction weapons together...Let's say each faction has different weapons and abilities..By getting your hands on a weapon of the other faction you can try to salvage out specials abilities to merge together...That would work well for the Blade of Holy Malice...Considering a Chaotic side and a holy side...But yea..Lots of work but the benefits are immeasurable. But keep in mind also there would have to be a fail chance. This would make things more interesting as the weapon creation can fail...Or come out with a same single ability weapon in a different form (even though you tried combining 2) depending on materials.

Hope I didn't through everyone offtrack...lol...

[deathscythe343]

Like a lot of the other posters in this thread I would like to see a really good crafting system put in place.

While I liked the WoW crafting system, I did not like the endless hours of grinding just to pick up the few materials that I needed for an item.

I like the idea of stealing abilities from the opposing faction, however this could get difficult since it would probably require more programming that would be necessary. Perhaps a different approach would be by stealing opposing faction weapons/materials and whatever else crafters could possibly learn hard to find enchants/item modifications and etc.

[Niteo]

wat about haveing a system were there are like ore veins that appear in randome spots. eg

Tin vain appear in 10 different area each vian is bigger or smaller than each other and each has a limit to how much can be mined from it.

once a vain is use up you can't use it anymore and you have to go fine another vain witch will appear anywear random.

Lower ranked materials will have more and bigger vains than rarer Ore's witch may only every have 2 or 3 vians at one time and only have enough to make 5 sets of aroums or so on. also make it longer for an new vian of a rare material to spwan again.

now i know some would ask how do you fine these vains. miners could get exp everytime they mine and get lets say 1 point every 1000 ( just a number of course it would be different) and they can choose to either increase there lvl in finding so they can sense vains from ferver away than other people or choose to increae the minning lvl to allow them to mine harder ores.

Or something like that let me know if you like the idea

[Saint Seiya]

if mining will automatically open a shop for you in the market to sell/buy thingies while your presence there will not be required.. that would save some time, and makes the selling more fun, cause you can see in a corner of screen your shop and also look at your char mining and wait for surprises when you come over a nice gem or rare metal....

Crafting should give random, more random items. As in looks, and stats/bonuses. A surprise bonus/stat that would NEVER repeat in all the game will make every item more valuable. well, never repeat at that value .

Crafting can be very fun, if your work results in valuable rare/unique items, that everyone would give anything to have.

Crafters should have the possibility to choose between some colours, design models and chance for a stat.
I.E i choose (blue-white) (matialsuit) (best chances for defense increse or best chances for a "reflect damage" type of bonus)

[Jiltanith]

i personally like how WoW's crafting system is. though there is a lot that it can be improved upon. it is very easy to get the hang of and gives you more options for customizing your characters.

though fishing in wow sucks... a lot. there is no fun what so ever in pressing a button on your hot bar and then right clicking the bobber. i think that the way fishing was done in Ocarina of Time was the best so far in any RPG. though making.

i guess what i would really like to see is making it more evolved. make it so it isn't just something else to level up while you are leveling your char. and don't make it so you have to lvl up or take up a crafting skill to progress farther, that is just a bad idea.

there would be ways to make it so you don't get ganked while doing some things. like having some warning when a player or mob gets a certain distance and you are fishing, mining etc. etc.
like your character saying "what was that" or something along those lines.

[[PhiberOpticks]]

Originally Posted by Kalean

Overall...I have many ideas that all would tie together in one system though...But back to the idea that not all crafted weapons would be identical. A range of damage for each craft would be nice. An example would be let's say this crystal blade via the shop (if sold at a shop) would be a attack of 55...If crafted there is a random chance the weapon can have between 50-60 attack. Depending on the quality/sum of materials used to do so. That's an idea just for basic crafting...The range of damage can be smaller also to keep a smaller difference from the crafted version and a version that can be bought out right.

I definitely agree with this. On top of that, if it's not to difficult to develop in tandem, the ability to craft items based on skill. That wouldn't necessarily mean that if you're this good, that means you can only create this item at this quality. It would be a game of chance, basically. Taking into account your level of skill, the level of quality would be determined by percentages based on how difficult the item should be to create.

Another feature this system could have is that there are no real recipes...For the shop items a recipe would be displayed but experimentation is key. You can make unique items that have special bonuses that shop item's don't have. Of course there are no recipes...So you'll have to experiment..Just like how you'd really have to in crafting...There would have to be a large pool of item/weapon/armor model's that aren't included in the game through shops...Some can be added to monster drops which would increase the rarity factor. But combining multiple items to create something new would be a great way to have a refreshing taste to the game...Not just the same old +5 crystal dagger or Demon Edge floating about like it was in lineage 2. I loved the idea about removing Might Mortal from the game....So only those floating around were circulating and made them rare. Very great idea. But implementing something similar in a wider fashion would be great. Basically people have to figure out recipes on their own. This would also give a lot of life to crafting and create a interest in it through the game and forums around the net. Like let's say taking holy water from a well known pure fountain in the lore (an example)..And mixing it with pure high grade metals and other materials could create a Sword of Shimmering Light...Which would shield the wielder from a single spell attack every 20 or 30 seconds..It would have a cool down then pop back up to protect from another negative spell. Of course there would have to be a lot of special abilities and weapon skills in a large pool that are pulled by percentage on creation depending on the items used.

Definitely. Although, in order to give structure to this system, I think there would have to be base recipes. So, if you want to make a sword, you need certain basic ingredients. And once you have those, you'll choose from a list of logical ingredients to modify the item. So, let's say, the extra ingredient was diamond. Logically, diamond is the hardest of minerals. Therefore, that would make the sword stronger. So it could increase the damage and durability (if the durability system is applied). And there could potentially be some negative effects of each extra ingredient. That way, you can't create super items so easily. But rarer items could potentially have less negative effects. This could apply to any of the tradeskills in the game.

Also why not combine certain weapons?...Not just straight up take both and combine..But it'd be nice to have a salvage system that gives more then just materials. Like for example..Let's say we go about getting a drop from a big boss mob int he game...A Chaotic Blade for instance. Which has the ability to absorb the blood of the opponent...The cursed blade would drain the blood of the victim feeding it's malice soul and after 5 or so hits...The 6th hit would do bonus damage releasing It's stored energy..(keep in mind I'm just making up random abilities..)...Instead of salvaging materials..There's a chance you can salvage something more rare..The ability...Chaotic ore or something in that nature...Now taking this Chaotic ore and mixing it with holy water and high grade craft materials...A new weapon can be created through experimentation...You can end up with a Blade of Holy Malice...Which would drain the blood of your enemy and feed their life force into you...As a drain effects. Overall something like this would be difficult to make..There would have to be random weapon/armor/item models that aren't used for weapons..But can be created through percentages of what items are being used...Which would call up for special abilities and the look of the weapon. There would have to also be a vast pool of special abilities that are diverse...Which can be called up by percentage as well through the crafting process....

This salvage system could be combined with my idea. Perhaps you could not only create the item with the extra ingredients from the get-go. But you could possibly improve the item by adding extra things later on. With a sword, you can reforge it to add extra effects. But this should have some repercussions, in order to be more believable. So, perhaps if you reforge or re-cook or whatever, the all of the effects could potentially be lessened by the fact that reforging isn't as effective as the initial forging.

On a side note, titles for these things could be dictated by the effects. For example, adding a diamond or another jewel would give it the title of "Shining Sword".

[nielsx1]

Originally Posted by Saito

mmm saw a friend of mine play second life and it basically has a entire design tool build where you can really make anything you want as far as your skill goes with such tools.



which would result in very unique items.

nah... too much things to tweak and such.. im not saying to keep aion simple... but dont make it too hard in the beginning, people dont want to focus on their professions when they just started playing, i'd like to keep the game more focused on pvp, pve and the looks of the world, for example WoW is getting a bit too exited with the professions and being able to tweak almost everything by profs, annoying... and hard to explain really. i expect patches to come like with WoW in Aion so that the game can be improved as people continue to post their thoughts on how to change the game. keep it slightly more simple in the beginning.. and make it more versatile over time, thats my opinion .

[DrkOne]

So...

-We shouldn't need to pick only one craft for the rest of our Character life, we should be able to change craft if we want, but we shouldn't be able to max more than one.

-Materials could be dropped, Bosses/Raided monsters would drop materials for better armor or whatever was going to be crafted.

-Crafted Armor shouldn't be as good as the Armor dropped from really hardcore Bosses.

-Rewarding dedication, it should be hard to max out a craft and so people that took the time to max it. It shouldn't be as WoW where you just press a button and craft until you're out of material with almost +1 skill every time.

-You should be able to sign items to give them as a present to someone.

-No need to buy recipes, like every 5-10 levels you would gain new recipes without the need to buy them, so everyone at the same level would be able to craft the same items.

-There should be 2-3 tiers on every item, with a % depending on your level to craft an high quality item.

-The chance % of getting a skill up and of getting an high quality should depend on a lot of "strange" things, for example on FFXI it depended on the direction you faced and moon, or so people think, you shouldn't reveal the conditions that would change the % or even admit there were, to make it a deeper and more interesting system. ^^

About mining... I was never into mining, but I think the game should have it, there are people that enjoy mining, I personally would prefer to buy the mined/harvested materials and just craft them. Mining, harvesting, fishing at least is a must, Skinning and other Resource Crafts could be changed for dropped materials.

[Isley]

I'm more of a market maker than an actual crafter, but here's some suggestions to the class that will actually craft:

Make them able to specialize in crafting to a large degree. Through leveling, skilling or whatever, let them have higher %'s when enchanting items, repairing or crafting than regular players do... this will make a crafter class very needed economically.

Give crafters the ability to be privileged. Perhaps by allowing them to buy items from NPC shops for a slightly cheaper price, or by allowing them to sell their NPC junk for a slightly higher price.

And an all-time favorite: allow crafters to leave a fingerprint on their creations crafters love to see their "DanTheMan's Barbaric Sword" in action, and players like the prestige of being in posession of some exclusive crafters' signature item.

EDIT: this is all assuming their is even a crafting class... lol! ><

[Cynthe]

There's 8(?) crafting classes so far. ^^

[Wildcard]

Ok well ill be honest. Im one of thoose freeks who LOVES to craft. I have played several differnt games both mmo's and good old single RPG's. They all have different aspect that are awsome.

What i would like to see is the ability to take crafting either way... have it be really simple or make it really complicated... both in the same game. What i mean buy this is something along the lines of makeing your own creations or haveing recipies for them...

So say your jsut starting off, take a book with recipies to get you started makeing lest say a bronze sword... but as you advance you come up with your own recipee for a one time use poison dagger...

Now when i say some up with the recipee i mean you can just learn it any where... like open a book and now you can make it... but like a trial and error... or have some one that knows how to make them give you a list of things... but you have to be a certain skill level before you can craft it...

I just think is would add a cool twist if you could cusomize your crafting... like a differnt type of poison for that poison dagger... one that would paralize or slow... or maybe even a chance of death?

I do have to say that i really liked the taggin system that was in FF online... where the crafted item would retain the name of the maker... kinda a cool way to give props and buissness to excelent crafters.

Over all i would jsut like to see a system that wasnt like you can only do two professions like in world of warcraft. But would alow you to maybe specialize in two but still alow you to do the basics of the other trades... Become a master smith but still be able to make some basic potions/ poisons that you might use in crafting or for jsut personal use. Another example an excelent gatherer but only able to use the most basic materials... this would promote team work but not at a whole cut off somone that likes to play solo.

Just some thoughts.... oh and i have to though this in... i would really like to see guild halls and personal homes.... halls like in guild wars and homes like FF.... adds a bit of extra depth to the game... maybe some built in processess for guild banks? jsut a few other random thoughts