Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

ZyyzYzzy said:

So you want crafting to be useless.

DAoC appraoch (gear quality with ability to make an entire set) is my favorite to date. Plus being able to break down gear, hinge it for profit was nice. Actually leveling crafting and mats being only bought was aids

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What I suggested would make crafting anything but useless. It just means that the best crafted items require dropped components, or alternatively certain items (slots?) can only be filled by crafted items.

Then of course things like consumables or other augments that can be added to equipment which crafters would produce exclusively.

One could call that the exact opposite of useless. Essential would be a good synonym.

I personally hate crafting and I have nothing else to add on the subject.

Ambiturner said:

I personally hate crafting and I have nothing else to add on the subject.

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Thank you! Shit just ain't fun. Fine, I need four items for "THE SMASHING HAMMER OF HAIRY BALL SACKS!". Fine. Now just let me combine them. No need for a mini game, or me needing 5 pieces of coal, along with Bubblicious gum in the forge. Just 1 click. Done.

If an mmo is actually creating a virtual world, there will be parts the appeal to some, but not to others. As long as crafters enjoy crafting, it will be mission accomplished.

Dullahan said:

If an mmo is actually creating a virtual world, there will be parts the appeal to some, but not to others. As long as crafters enjoy crafting, it will be mission accomplished.

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The problem is that for crafters to be happy, you need to pretty much have a crafting based economy. This can be miserable for the PVE player, because it means loot often becomes 2nd fiddle to crafted gear, or worse loot will be reduced to rare components used by crafters to make an item instead of just getting that item as a drop.

I believe developers should decide right up front whether to go PvP or PvE, and then whether to choose a loot based or crafting based economy. Trying to be all things to all players just makes everyone miserable, or at least that's how it's been in my experience.

Balancing combat for PvP ALWAYS fucks up the PvE gameplay, and you can never please PvP players anyway because someone always loses and those people will want buffs/nurfs constantly. The two play styles just aren't compatible, because in PvE the player should feel powerful and unique with class specific abilities and sometimes unbalanced class strengths/weaknesses. Conversely, in PvP everyone needs to be relatively even and balanced, with homogenized classes so that everyone feels equal.

Economy is very similar in that PvE players want to adventure and discover rare items as loot, whereas crafters need everyone to buy their wares in order to justify and financially support their play style. PvE players despise item decay, and rightly so since maintaining looted items until they disappear is a miserable experience, and it goes against the classic fantasy idea of ancient artifacts like Gandalf's sword Glamdring which was far better than could be made in modern times. Oh and Glamdring was even looted from the Troll hoarde too. Crafters on the other hand require item decay in order to maintain continuing gameplay with return customers/item maintenance. Loot can't be better than what they make and nothing can last forever or they'd be out of a job.

Developers should decide which way to go and then stick to their guns, because in my experience you just can't please everyone. Wow, that was really long winded. Sorry.

Skanda said:

You can pay a thousand bucks for the privilege of joining their pre-alpha now. Sounds like a real deal doesn't it?

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Hey those people are already rocking while the rest of us are still just sitting around waiting to rock.

$1000 to be rocking and to be one of the fallen. How is that even a question in anyone's mind not to go for it?

I hate crafting. Boring as fuck, and makes the entire game moot if the best items are just crafted. Why the fuck would I venture deep into the depths of a dungeon to get a sword when Joe Bob can sell me a better sword in town? I don't mind if some of the components that crafters need are in hard to reach places, hence making them valuable, but I absolutely despise people who say that crafted items should be equal or even comparable to looted items.

I like that Grundge very first post on the forums after lurking all this time was to bash Pantheon lol.

Some party is going to be upset by the crafting issue, whether its the crafters or the PVE'ers. If I was really trying to be fair and separate myself from the picture, I would set it up in this scenario. You can dive into Lower Guk and get your 8/24 Sword of Ykesha with its 75 damage/stun proc. Unique in that it cannot be altered any further. If you want a crafted item that is comparable, you have crafter #1 make you a sword (items dont have Durability) which is 6/24 with no effect. You ask him for a sharpening stone also, which when used makes it 8/24 with a durability bar on the sharpening stone effect. So you have a permanent sale with the sword, and a recurring sale with the sharpening stone. Now its an even damage ratio sword with the Ykesha base sword. You go to another crafter which can make poisons that have a durability bar also and apply it. A recurring sale for the poison maker. Durability of the two somewhere between obnoxious and permanent (in your mind). The advantage for going through all the trouble of this crafted shit is that now you have more options. You can choose from a 90 Damage Proc, a 150 damage Dot, a longer stun than what the yak offers, etc.

I personally wouldnt mind that shit. I know now that if Im a Warrior, I want the fucking yak. Plain and simple. If Im a Ranger, I want the damage without the proc. If Im a class that gets a buff to shadow damage, I want the shadow damage dot.

Talking out of my ass, but really, I like that system. You get the Yak, you're done until your next upgrade. You get the crafted version, you're going to be stuck in the loop of consumables as the trade off for not going into Lower Guk.

I hate crafting, with a passion...almost as much as I hate PvP in an MMO.

I think crafting has a place in a MMO, just shouldn't be equal or even comparable to the best loot in the game. Crafters that can make potions, upgrades, jewelry, shit like that, fine, but I would never play a game where the best items in the game are crafted. You should have to earn the best gear in the game, not be able to buy it off some guy grinding his blacksmithing skills to max level.

Drops from raid bosses used to craft the best gear.

This has been done for centuries. You have to raid to get the best, or you have to pay whatever the guild that actually kills the stuff wants in order to buy the best. Ie, feeding directly into the Raiding game, because that type of cash influx can feed a raid guild for weeks/months off one sale depending on the game.

EQ had it (remember the crafted planar gear while people were clearing Elementals?) WoW had it, I'm sure Vanguard had it (actually wasn't the best gear in the game crafted for a minute, before they realized that people were exploiting their shit?)

It's a natural system that lets non-combat related classes participate in the endgame content aside from being consumable bitches. Being the consumable bitch is -rarely- a fun task. Ask any of the Flask makers from WoW. Cool if you sold to randos, peer pressure to use your skills for the good of the guild.

Crafting becomes rewarding when you are providing a real service/resource that you can leverage against people who do not provide resources/services. Ie, the Raider who only raids. He has to get his consumeables/repair kits/whatever from other people, and they have to put in the time to level their ability. Selling to PVPers etc to hit certain skillcaps/whatever so they have an edge.

Here's a thought. Make the best belts/rings in the game crafted; all other slots require raiding or whatever depiction of "heroic" dungeons you want. Throw in the best Cape as a quested item that requires a massively long quest that uses drops from all sorts of normal group content.

You don't have to get -all- the best gear from endgame Raiding. Spread a little of that out and make the player who actually interacts with all facets of the game the strongest, not just the guy who logs on for Raid night and nothing else after he hits max level. Or the guy sitting in EC crafting and selling all day. Let them have their place; the only person it hurts is the silly person who only uses a chunk of the product they pay for and never engages the rest.

Ukerric said:

This is mostly a modern phenomenon. If you look at games in the oughts, then a lot of them started and grew over a year or two (or more). EQ consistently grew from 1999 to 2003. AC1 did for over two years. I think Anarchy Online (mid 2001) was the very first game to exhibit the burst and crash. But until 2004, you had a mix of very succesful games that grew over a year or two or three, and a couple that launched and crashed. It's only since 2004 that the majority of games started to exhibit that behavior.

I'll leave to the reader to decide if it is a change in the playerbase, or the industry that caused that.

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Do you think this had anything to do with the fact that gaming in general grew in that time frame as opposed to modern day where literally everyone who has the slightest interest in video games already plays them? Do you think only MMOs experience the "80million copies at launch and 2 months later there are 4,000 players online" effect?



Edit: Also, UO had the best crafting/drops/player housing/player run merchant npcs system back when I played it of any MMO i've ever played. Also taming and bards!

For everquest and the elemental crafted gear, your guild had to be 72 people or around there and at least a few of them people were going to like crafting in modern mmo's the raid sizes are alot smaller.. Might be a bit harder to find them few people that actually liked crafting. I personally fucking hated it with a passion. I rather just post in OOC asking and paying someone to make something for me. I would just farm stuff til i got the money, which didnt take to long, because i would play 12-14 hour sessions at that time. lol

KCXIV said:

For everquest and the elemental crafted gear, your guild had to be 72 people or around there and at least a few of them people were going to like crafting in modern mmo's the raid sizes are alot smaller.. Might be a bit harder to find them few people that actually liked crafting. I personally fucking hated it with a passion. I rather just post in OOC asking and paying someone to make something for me. I would just farm stuff til i got the money, which didnt take to long, because i would play 12-14 hour sessions at that time. lol

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For EQ there was no contest. I would log into my buddies Necromancer and just farm gems in OOT. A few hours work generally got me everything I needed/wanted. This is actually what started me to dual box. Next thing I know, I have a max level Ranger tracking all kinds of shit for the necro and if it was BOP I would swap over to the warrior as I kite with the Necro. I made good money farming Pegasus Cloaks for people, now that I think about it.

Jarek said:

The problem is that for crafters to be happy, you need to pretty much have a crafting based economy. This can be miserable for the PVE player, because it means loot often becomes 2nd fiddle to crafted gear, or worse loot will be reduced to rare components used by crafters to make an item instead of just getting that item as a drop.

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If done right, they can work together, and have worked together in other games. This just requires more thought and balancing, but really wouldn't be that hard if you just came up with a system (dropped variants of items have X stats, crafted variants have Y stats or X+Y if very rare). Even in DAoC which became heavily dependent on crafting, once struck a balance where you could use some of each.

Like I said, the easy way is to make it essential without competing (certain slots = dropped, others = crafted), which Pantheon devs have suggested doing. I think it would be better to make both an option, with the best items coming from a combination of dropped mats which need to be crafted. Instead of merely hoping you'll go to a dungeon to pull out an item, you hope for materials which you can then have crafted into an even better item.

Jarek said:

I believe developers should decide right up front whether to go PvP or PvE, and then whether to choose a loot based or crafting based economy. Trying to be all things to all players just makes everyone miserable, or at least that's how it's been in my experience.

Balancing combat for PvP ALWAYS fucks up the PvE gameplay, and you can never please PvP players anyway because someone always loses and those people will want buffs/nurfs constantly. The two play styles just aren't compatible, because in PvE the player should feel powerful and unique with class specific abilities and sometimes unbalanced class strengths/weaknesses. Conversely, in PvP everyone needs to be relatively even and balanced, with homogenized classes so that everyone feels equal.

Economy is very similar in that PvE players want to adventure and discover rare items as loot, whereas crafters need everyone to buy their wares in order to justify and financially support their play style. PvE players despise item decay, and rightly so since maintaining looted items until they disappear is a miserable experience, and it goes against the classic fantasy idea of ancient artifacts like Gandalf's sword Glamdring which was far better than could be made in modern times. Oh and Glamdring was even looted from the Troll hoarde too. Crafters on the other hand require item decay in order to maintain continuing gameplay with return customers/item maintenance. Loot can't be better than what they make and nothing can last forever or they'd be out of a job.

Developers should decide which way to go and then stick to their guns, because in my experience you just can't please everyone. Wow, that was really long winded. Sorry.

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In general I think it is best to focus on what you want to do most, but this is really a case where simple solutions haven't been utilized. Which really isn't that surprising considering how clumsily mmos have been designed, especially recently.

Rezz said:

I'm sure Vanguard had it (actually wasn't the best gear in the game crafted for a minute, before they realized that people were exploiting their shit?)

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I don't remember if there was a time that crafted was the best gear in the game, but the Ancient Port Warehouse dungeon had raid dropped recipes, harvestable raid mobs for skins etc.., and the items crafted from those recipes and mats were really good. There were also master crafting components (crystals, etc...) that made normal craftable equipment up to the legendary rarity level.

Xanadu Community

APW wasn't in at release, at least not itemized. I forget exactly when they added it, but until then I'm fairly sure that people were making insanely OP crafted gear due to some bug or other with the way gathering worked. I think it was that they could effectively chain farm the legendary crap, so there was a boatload of people in legendary gear at cap pretty close to release. Not quite the same as the intended itemization stuff like EQ and WoW, but it was definitely a grip of the endgame gear until the actual raid content came out.

Granted, this was literally a decade ago and I quit shortly after hitting 50 when there was effectively nothing between level 40 and cap. Then they sorta itemized stuff, and I think it was right around when they added that farmable armor token stuff in the swamp, before APW came out.