Randomized stats

[Zouls]

i would love to have randomized stats on everything that is crafted, so it may have the same armor rating or weapon dmg but completely different secondary stats like in diablo. that way if somebody is trying to get the perfect thing they are going to gather alot more materials because there is a chance they wont get it, and it would be awesome on drops too but i dont know how hard that is.

[Kuma]

I would second that but with increasing lvl (in smithing) the chance of getting the best stats should increase. That way a master smith would actually be more valuable than just a very good smith even if the can both forge every weapon in the game.

[kristakis]

FWIW I would like there to be no randomisation in crafting at all. It triggers skinner box and gambling psychological effects and encourages repetitive behaviour. Crafting is about fun and creation not frustration at randomised outcomes and the need to craft 10 more items to get the one I wanted in the first place.

For me, anyway 😀

[Zouls]

Thats a deep way of explaining it, but if you can just craft the best gear and be over with it whats the point in carfting at all?

[kristakis]

There’s a few different ways.

• Item degradation.
  ooh, that’s a dirty word 😀 Making items essentially consumable means you have stuff for a good time, not a long time. SWG and Minecraft do this.

• Resources with interesting properties
  If iron has strength and copper has speed then what kind of sword is better – the iron one that does 100 damage 1 time a second or the copper one that does 10 damage 10 times a second? They both have the same DPS but which one is “better” becomes situational and/or subjective. This smells a bit like how Firefall used to roll.

• Vertical progression power creep
  Your fantasic level 10 sword is useless against level 20 mobs, time to get a new one. I don’t like this one and hope this game stays as horizontal as possible. See WoW et al for examples.

• Adaptive targets
  On the red world the red sword is king, but when you go through the portal to the green world they laugh at your red sword and bite you right through your red armor. You need to get a green sword and tend to those bite wounds stat! EVE and Warframe use this technique

I’m sure there are other ideas I haven’t thought of too.

Additionally you would gate access to the “best” weapons through a number of mechanisms like time, skill points and risk/reward decisions. It’d be cool if you could choose to take a chance when making something for the opportunity to get a better version of that thing, but you would need to be risking losing the materials if it failed.

Randomised crafting essentially forces that situation onto the crafter and the entire point of crafting is getting to make meaningful decisions to create an item. If you are just feeding materials into a slot machine and praying something comes out how is that “fun” or “creative” and not just “gambling”?

[Kuma]

Well like I said with lvl based “luck” it wouldn’t be completely randomised and make even more sense. You can not do everything on the first try so why not implement that a bit in the game?^^

[Thorbjorn]

Also to stop things from getting to make it 10 times to get it right maybe if you construct the same weapon multiple times the change of getting higher stats on it raises.

[Kuma]

Yea like you gain experience with forging this kind of weapon or something like this so you fail less.

[Zouls]

What i’d like to see is crafting taking time and mats, that way if it takes time to make it and its randomized try to imagine that its from 0-30, and if your lucky you can get 30 strenght and 30 dexterity which is almost impossible, try to imagine how much a weapon like that would sell for rather than just have a iron sword with set stats.

[Kuma]

Yes but higher levels should have higher chances of getting better stats maybe raise the minimum stat. Instead of 0-30 with lvl 50 you have a range of 20-30. So a master smith would truly be superior to other regular smiths. And as said before maybe add some kind of experience with one kind of weapon which lessens the chance of getting bad stats as you forge them more often.

[Zouls]

Yeah i think that would be cool too, but then again a master smith is going to be able to make things an apprentice cant, so there would be no need for it. but randomizing is a complete pain in the arse but when you get something good you throw your hands up high and go ”FINALLY!!” thats the feeling i want in the game

[Kuma]

Sure a master could do many things which an apprentice couldn’t but what if two masters compete? One is a fresh lvl 100 smith and the other is already a while lvl 100. The one which is longer in business may have made more swords than everything else so he’d use less ressources to get the stats the costumer wants. Therefore the fresh master could either make a lot of swords and compete with the older one or spezialize in another weapon type like a scythe. Now there are two smiths and you know to which one you have to go if you want a really good sword or scythe.

[Zouls]

yeah like swordsmaster exp, maybe give a title and what not. but i dont think we should have a smith being able to make everytype of weapon + armor + stuff and so on. i think it would be cool to have a light weaponsmith and heavy weaponsmith or even one for each type of weapon to specialize in different things, but if they add randomized elements no matter how good you are you shouldnt have a 100% chance and to add ways to compete i think they should make recipe and blueprint drops and over that maybe have special blueprints that doesnt add stats but change the looks so it looks way cooler.

[Kuma]

I would say it doesn’t matter if a smith could make every type of weapon or armor (maybe make two smiths, one for weapons and one for armor) because eventually they would find their niche anyway.
But I agree there shouldn’t be a 100% chance of making a weapon. Even a master can fail.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by Kuma.

[Zouls]

if everybody can do everything then there is no place to compete, so if you make a smith able to make the best of everything without doign anything other than leveling then there are only going to be 1 known smith, so if all weapons had all tiers and you would have to level weapons indiviually you might have 20 diffrent master weaponsmiths 1 of each weapon type rather then just 1.

[Kuma]

Ok yea you’re right^^ if you don’t have to pick one thing you can master then different smiths for every weapon would be a good idea. But eventually even then a person could have every smithing skill maxed out.

[Zouls]

not if everybody could only have 2 skills. am i really the only one who
thinks you shouldnt be able to max out every damn crafting skill on one char -.-‘

[Kuma]

Yes because I don’t want to be restraint and I only have one char (not that I would want more than one but you only have one so) If a human has enough time he can learn everything, why change that?

[Havok40k]

What if you had the ability to craft everything, but had to choose a mastery for a bonus stat in one class of item? You could have master sword crafters, bowyers, armorers, tool makers, etc. Each could get a bonus stat when they craft what they are specialized in. You could take this a step further and give each mastery tiers that require a milestone to be met to unlock the next tier, like craft an item from unique materials or require an item from another profession to craft a unique item (sword maker requires enchanted leather from a leatherworker to make an enchanted sword hilt). That way professions trade between eachother and don’t compete against eachother.

[Kuma]

I don’t like the idea that you have to choose only one mastery and can not master any other skill (even only one weapon mastery). But the Milestones are a great idea and sound like quests to unlock the next tier you can make.

[Havok40k]

Yeah it’s kinda two separate ideas there, I started rambling.
The biggest con I can think of to everybody crafting the best of every thing is you can’t really get a niche in a market and few people are willing to buy something they can craft themselves.

[Kuma]

Yea I see that problem too but why not make it very very hard to master everything? Like if you are an average player, you could master maybe 1-3 skills in a year (or half a year I don’t know^^) then you can only master all skills if you are a very very very hardcore player.

[Thorbjorn]

See more of this discussion here: http://oortonline.com/forums/topic/crafting-pick-one/

Also we could say that when you mastered a skill you could choose a focus which improves your weapon in that direction fx. if you choose the focus hardness your weapons has a longer lifetime

[Havok40k]

Then that player would shut out all competition and ruin the market.

[Kuma]

which one and how?

[Thorbjorn]

An important thing to remember is that if you go solo and do everything your self it will be quite a lot slower to do anything.

[Kuma]

Yes I hope so but it shouldn’t be important to solo the game completely in any aspect.

[Tweekzor]

Please don’t make randomized stats. That is an aspect for crafting that you only see in Korean/asian games with lots of RNG.

Also, I love to be a jack-of-all-trades. Limiting a persons crafting to 1 skill just doesn’t cut it for me. It would be a lot better to just make it a very steep progression through the levels/tiers. Crafting from novice to adapt will be easy, but leveling from expert to master will take a very long time. This way everyone can be self-proficient at the lowers levels when they are learning the game, but will have to seek help from other users when reaching end-game for the first time. Once they have reached end-game they can specialize in crafting if they like and get more traits up to expert/master tiers. If they are not very crafty people they will go and kill titans/build houses/…

[Kuma]

Why wouldn’t you like semi random events while crafting? This will just simulate how good you are with this skill. It’s not like you wouldn’t have any control.

And yes your description is exactly why I don’t want a limit in the skills. It could be like in Runescape where mastering a skill takes a lot of time.

[kristakis]

Why wouldn’t you like semi random events while crafting?

I craft because I am a creative person – I like to build things. I’m a coder in real life for the same reason. I code by taking hundreds of little commands and assembling them in a way that makes an awesome program. This works because each command does one thing and can be relied upon to do that one thing.

How could coding work if the “add” command randomly subtracted instead sometimes? It couldn’t and not only that it would mean that I had to build the program again and again to get it right. This strips away the pleasure of creation and turns it into a chore AND it triggers a number of unfavourable psychological responses that further detract from the point of the activity – which is a game that is meant to be fun.

Also, I love to be a jack-of-all-trades.

I like your idea about how many skills – I think everyone should be able to do the basics so they can see what’s there but you should have to focus on specifics to get access to more interesting options. I like specialisation as it encourages interaction with other crafters – SWG did an awesome job of this and I hope at least some of the devs played that and have similar ideas 😉

[Kuma]

I’m code a little bit myself and see you point. But this works only if the pieces you put together have enough combinations to make almost infinite possible outcomes. If they make the game that complex ok but then a lot of people will not play it. So you have to kind of simulate the possibilities with the randomness.

And well I think I mentioned it enough^^ I’m completely against any skillsystem which locks any skill if you progress to far in another or want to master it. It’s a sandbox game after all so you should have the possibility to master everything, every little piece of the game.

[kristakis]

Yeah, that’s the other thing – the more complex the system is the harder it is for casual players to get involved. I prefer systems where the crafting is complex but optional. If players are not interested in the crafting system then make sure the game can be played without it.

Making the crafting easier and more accessible just makes it boring – look at WoW as an example; that’s not crafting, it’s a vending machine: you put copper bars in and a copper sword pops out.

I want a system where my knowledge, skill and interest can set me apart from other players. PvPers get this option with their leaderboards and PvEers get to brag about their world firsts and epic gear. Where’s the crafter version of this?

This is why I fell in love with Firefall. When I joined over 2 years ago it had a crafting system that most players couldn’t handle but they didn’t have to use it if they didn’t want to. My GF and I spent a whole week disecting it and figured out the algorithms and it was just amazing. Now that game’s out of beta and the crafting has been changed and lacks all that nuance – it’s just another pie machine and my heart is broken.

So I’m here instead – lucky you! :p

[Kuma]

Yes that sounds more like a plan I’d sign in for^^ Randomize things or make a complex crafting system which you have not to use if you don’t want to. Either one is fine with me.

[Guy]

Personally, I’m more for the progression milestone type system.

As a sandbox game, i see it reasonable that this would be the system to go; the more you craft swords, the better you become at it.

(The more you craft-> The better crafting title you get/ the more the system recognizes you’ve done it-> able to craft gear more and more efficiently-> become good at it)

This way, you can be good at everything, like Kuma said, but it would also be very difficult for you to do.

Yeah, you might dominate the market as the best Sword Crater or whatever, but think about it. You’ll be getting your main business cash from Sword Users, only rarely from Crossbow or Magic type users.

[LeoNick]

How about a mini game? Sort of like in everquest i believe. certain things happen during the crafting process and you have different ways of correcting the issues. After the mini game ends the stats of the item are based upon how well you handled the mini game. Have a progression system but instead of progressing to make better items have it so you progress to have more solutions to issues in the mini games with different results. Also could have progression simply make the mini game easier to play.

I prefer a mini game where i can directly effect the outcome of my product rather than a simpler progress bar and random stats. Otherwise i feel all i did was trade a few mats for a random piece of gear completely out of my control.

[Kuma]

I could imagine that this minigame would become very boring very fast. Especially if you had to grind your way up to the max level of a skill. And if you wouldn’t have to then it would be too easy to get everything to the max lvl.

[Author]

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