Adrullan Online (Formerly Evercraft)

Agraza said:

crafting is the magnet for me. it lets me set a smaller scope pace. some survival craft games make superior RPGs for that reason. i always get hopeful for being able to take it to the pinnacle, no matter how contrived, but devs inevitably pull the rug and point at raids with no crafting elements or derivatives. thats where my game ends.

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I definitely find as I get older and have less attention to game I'm spending more time and effort in games crafting. Curious how you would want to see crafting integrated into endgame in a way that made you happy? I don't think I've seen a game do it in a way that felt good. I guess off the cuff my best idea is simply having raid mobs drop items needed for crafting, but I assume thats what you mean by contrived.

Flobee said:

I definitely find as I get older and have less attention to game I'm spending more time and effort in games crafting. Curious how you would want to see crafting integrated into endgame in a way that made you happy? I don't think I've seen a game do it in a way that felt good. I guess off the cuff my best idea is simply having raid mobs drop items needed for crafting, but I assume thats what you mean by contrived.

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1. The top raid mobs should drop items that require crafting like dragon scales, monster skins etc to make the best gear.

2. Certain raid mechanics should require items only made via crafting, like an orb that can generate a “safe area” around a player when clicked to avoid an otherwise major enemy AoE.

3. Crafting should be the primary way to introduce convenience factors just like real life. Want a dungeon finder? You need a crafted sign board or something. Want a health of targets target? Own a a crafted monocle of intent.

Honestly, I don't spend that much brain power on stuff like this anymore. Zaide has some decent ideas.

I recall watching a stream of ashes of creation where you had to do raids that were basically just escort quests for your player crafters. Things like the anvil and forge in BRD, alchemy labs in scholomance/BWL or racial forges in EQ were down at the bottom of raid difficulty environments. So you roll down to the bottom of a dungeon, bringing your relatively helpless Smiths with you, and spend some time utilizing the location to make stuff.

That's kind of the opposite side of the coin though. Even some stuff Zaide says. Like people who don't want to do crafting are going to get a bit miffed, but I think if it's done well everyone can benefit and enjoy the concept.

I doubt I'd do some kind of raid crafting expedition. I don't have time to do multiplayer at that level of coordination anymore. If someone lets me tag along as a pug I'd follow them, but I just want to be able to keep slowly crafting most of my gear or exchanging services with other crafters to buy their gear. I have spent some sessions farming rare resources, to sell them, to buy gear.

I log in, build stuff, go find some materials, log out.

When the crafting path dries up, the log in option is: try to get a group, hope the group is capable of doing the content, hope the members aren't annoying, hope the random dice drops the correct item, hope no one else in the group wants it, and this whole time I shouldn't go AFK to respect the time of my group and potentially risk being kicked for inactivity.

It's multiple layers of maybe even after finding a group, which is relative to your class demand. It helps that I like playing tanks and healers, so I usually queue into whatever is in demand to reduce the maybe of getting the group. My time is valuable, and I want to be able to out the game down to handle things IRL. So I craft stuff and explore and eventually the game ends when the crafting ends.

Most of those maybes are mitigated by crafting. I can log in and know I'll be like 1% more capable when I log out because I spent my time productively.