Post by Azherae on 2021-05-14 09:21:26
I can't exactly say how much I craft because of exactly how I like my crafting, primarily in the style of FFXI.
The amounts of materials matter a lot to me, as does the droprate, since it helps to balance things. It feeds into the feeling of being in the world when you only have to collect 4 or 5 pieces of ore to make an ingot, and you only need a few ingots, and then rarer stuff gets to be just that, rarer. By contrast I hate BDO which is just 'gather 500 of this, then go craft 100 times to get 250 of this'.
In terms of which is the most interesting crafting system type, I also have thought a lot about it and realized a specific thing from FFXI, that's really nice. The final iteration of the 'fishing' system in FFXI starts a small minigame where an indicator would flash and you press left or right (I'd be happy with this expanded to WASD, no problem) to signify your character 'noticing that they have to adjust something or pay attention'. In this case to a fishing line, but I feel this would work well for a LOT of crafts. Every time you press the correct direction, a little progress meter moves down a bit, and when it is gone, you're done.
But most importantly, when you are significantly above the level required for the item being crafted, the meter goes down by itself over time even if you don't respond and press the correct direction at all. It takes slightly less time, and much less effort, to 'craft' in that case. This is also a good way to handle the chances of higher quality crafting, sometimes. Paying more attention and therefore reducing the time spent to craft means you can craft more, which means you have higher chances at 'High Quality' results just by volume, but you could make it so that there's a slightly higher chance of High Quality results when the timer ends up short (basically the player pays enough attention to hit the correct direction once or twice).
Most of the time I believe these systems get botted in one way or another, and I have no suggestions regarding that, other than to make it so your ingredients, instead of resulting in a different item every time, somehow affect the number of 'ticks' or whatever, of this minigame.
e.g. in Carpentry, two similar types of wood, but one is easier to work with, just harder to obtain. The more difficult wood causes a 15-tick crafting situation, the easier wood lowers it to 10-ticks. Mid level crafters are more likely to seek the easier wood, for greater success rates and speed. High level crafters can achieve the same results with the more difficult wood, and can also get marginally better success rates with the easier wood too, causing economic shifts sometimes.
So in terms of how much time is spent crafting, it's better to say that I spend more time on 'the economy around crafting' than the crafting itself, because I prefer games where crafting isn't a matter of collecting huge amounts of resources, but rather 'finding the right ones, and selling other random stuff you also gather, to other crafters'. Bonus points if you can literally 'randomly get slightly better versions of the same materials and use them for increased yield or chances at high quality things'. I like this because it makes it easier for new crafters to dabble, and use the simple things they happen to come across, or check the prices, instead of getting to the point where someone from their guild just 'sends them to gather hundreds of stalks of kelp'.
Any system where the resources in the world are not generally rate-limited by player population, but instead scales in any way with the number of players in the area, seems to turn out terrible. This seems to be countered in Ashes by the limitation on Freeholds, for farming and animal husbandry, at least, so I'm personally hoping that raw materials aren't guaranteed to be any particular thing (for anything other than trees, trees are 100% okay for this) and that they respawn slowly enough to discourage camping and botting, but quickly enough in general that two gatherers could find a rotation together without wanting to kill each other, and they just kill the third one that shows up, if any violence happens at all, of course. (I do not personally condone instantly killing people who show up in your gathering area)
The amounts of materials matter a lot to me, as does the droprate, since it helps to balance things. It feeds into the feeling of being in the world when you only have to collect 4 or 5 pieces of ore to make an ingot, and you only need a few ingots, and then rarer stuff gets to be just that, rarer. By contrast I hate BDO which is just 'gather 500 of this, then go craft 100 times to get 250 of this'.
In terms of which is the most interesting crafting system type, I also have thought a lot about it and realized a specific thing from FFXI, that's really nice. The final iteration of the 'fishing' system in FFXI starts a small minigame where an indicator would flash and you press left or right (I'd be happy with this expanded to WASD, no problem) to signify your character 'noticing that they have to adjust something or pay attention'. In this case to a fishing line, but I feel this would work well for a LOT of crafts. Every time you press the correct direction, a little progress meter moves down a bit, and when it is gone, you're done.
But most importantly, when you are significantly above the level required for the item being crafted, the meter goes down by itself over time even if you don't respond and press the correct direction at all. It takes slightly less time, and much less effort, to 'craft' in that case. This is also a good way to handle the chances of higher quality crafting, sometimes. Paying more attention and therefore reducing the time spent to craft means you can craft more, which means you have higher chances at 'High Quality' results just by volume, but you could make it so that there's a slightly higher chance of High Quality results when the timer ends up short (basically the player pays enough attention to hit the correct direction once or twice).
Most of the time I believe these systems get botted in one way or another, and I have no suggestions regarding that, other than to make it so your ingredients, instead of resulting in a different item every time, somehow affect the number of 'ticks' or whatever, of this minigame.
e.g. in Carpentry, two similar types of wood, but one is easier to work with, just harder to obtain. The more difficult wood causes a 15-tick crafting situation, the easier wood lowers it to 10-ticks. Mid level crafters are more likely to seek the easier wood, for greater success rates and speed. High level crafters can achieve the same results with the more difficult wood, and can also get marginally better success rates with the easier wood too, causing economic shifts sometimes.
So in terms of how much time is spent crafting, it's better to say that I spend more time on 'the economy around crafting' than the crafting itself, because I prefer games where crafting isn't a matter of collecting huge amounts of resources, but rather 'finding the right ones, and selling other random stuff you also gather, to other crafters'. Bonus points if you can literally 'randomly get slightly better versions of the same materials and use them for increased yield or chances at high quality things'. I like this because it makes it easier for new crafters to dabble, and use the simple things they happen to come across, or check the prices, instead of getting to the point where someone from their guild just 'sends them to gather hundreds of stalks of kelp'.
Any system where the resources in the world are not generally rate-limited by player population, but instead scales in any way with the number of players in the area, seems to turn out terrible. This seems to be countered in Ashes by the limitation on Freeholds, for farming and animal husbandry, at least, so I'm personally hoping that raw materials aren't guaranteed to be any particular thing (for anything other than trees, trees are 100% okay for this) and that they respawn slowly enough to discourage camping and botting, but quickly enough in general that two gatherers could find a rotation together without wanting to kill each other, and they just kill the third one that shows up, if any violence happens at all, of course. (I do not personally condone instantly killing people who show up in your gathering area)