A question for crafters

This kinda applies to all artisans, but I was mainly thinking in terms of crafting, hence the title.

Right now we don't have much info on how our artisan XP will be distributed or how its leveling will be designed or any real in-depth info on artisanry overall. So I had an idea for a certain design.

We know that as of now we're supposed to be able to master 2 professions within an artisan path, so this is in that context:

• Artisan progression is semi-lvl-agnostic and is based on points
• Player gets 2 points of progress per lvl of artisanry (50 lvls max)
• Lvling is %-based.
  1. Common item = 1%
  2. Rare = 5%
  3. Epic = 10%
  4. Legendary = 15%
  5. Unique = 20%
  (colors are just for the upcoming example and numbers are obviously subject to change)
• Each 10lvls represent a tier of gear
• Once you go over a 10-lvl threshold, the previous crafting tier starts to give half the xp (repeated at each 10lvls)
• Maxing out a full artisan profession costs 150 points
• Changing your point distribution comes at a set art-lvl-based cost
• Points can be invested into a higher tier as long as the player have already invested into the previous tier at least once

Here's a visual example of a weaponsmithing profession history of an art-lvl 50 player. Each circle represents points invested into specific dials for crafting. Each new investment within a tier gives the player the ability to craft higher rarity of items (colors show the sequence of dials chosen).


This player decided to level up two professions at the same time, so each one took up 50 points. The player started out by crafting both magical and physical weapons. Then their guild's phys parties managed to boost ahead at around lvl20 and needed a ton of good weapons to keep that pace going, so the player went super deep in that period of time. That boost in farming allowed the guild to farm legendary and unique mats for crafting, which led to the player shooting up through the lvls w/o crafting too much at the higher stages of progress.

At this point the player could respec their build to whatever their guild needs, but the respec will come at a fairly high price because the player is at max lvl.

So my questions is obvious, would you like this kind of system?

I feel like it would give a lot of freedom of choice in specialization, while also limiting the ability to be completely self-sufficient. It also allows newbies, that join the game later, to start crafting high lvl stuff way sooner, if needed. And if there comes a point where more lowbie crafters are needed (hope this is the case) people can quickly respec into lower tiers and make a quick gain.

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Yep, I was thinking along these lines. Top quality low tiers should be deconstructible into smth that's used for top quality high tiers.

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A great idea! Would not only keep crafters busier, but would also keep lowbie masters more relevant.

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I attributed rarity to them purely because we'll have rarity in the game. Crafting will require mats which will have that rarity attribute as well, so I thought that deeper specialization in a tier should be linked with your ability to work with rarer mats.

Though, judging by this pic, it seems that there will in fact be "quality" (the "diamond" amount on gear) on top of rarity, so you definitely have a point.

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I thought that too at first, but we can see a green with a varying amount of diamonds and we also see blue and purple with fewer ones. So I assume it's some type of quality indicator, maaaybe related to the amount of additional stats on the item.

So in that pic we see a Spiked Iron Mace with 3 diamonds. And in the stat window of the weapon we see the 3 diamonds represented as dmg, +str and the golden Bleed effect. I assume that "Spiked" name gives the mace bleed, so that "Footman's" version with just 2 diamonds probably has only dmg and bleed stats. "Sundering", then, probably gives 2 additional stats.

There's also the question of those 2 sub-stats under the +str, but I think they just explain what you get for +str on this particular weapon. Though I'm not sure.

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The arrows indicate how much each circle costs within a tier. So for the 11-20 tier you'd need 2 points for each circle. So that pic is showing someone who maxed out 2 professions, 50 points each.

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I explained the pic better in the previous post. But yes, you could in theory max out 1-10 tier and craft uniques to boost your lvls faster, but you'd need quite a few unique mats to do so. But in theory, later on in the game this shouldn't be too big of a problem (depending on how useful the low tier of gear will be), so any newbie could potentially boost their crafting pretty fast, if they have a friend who can support them monetarily.

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Some of the stuff you listed is under processing iirc, so the crafter wouldn't be doing all of that on their own, but yes I agree with the sentiment and my suggestion kinda addresses that.

The circles represent crafting dials, which in turn represent some kind of specializations within your profession. So a circle on lvl1 could be called smth like "hammer a nail into the board" and it would directly boost the atk of your wooden club (the range of attack would be determined by how well you do on the manual craft action). And a circle on lvl40 could be "combine plates by hammering them into proper shapes and clamping them together at the seams", which would give atk speed and armor penetration.

Obviously those are super basic and rudimentary examples, but I do agree that the higher you go, the more refined your crafting actions should become.

As for dependence of higher tier actions on lower tier knowledge, I've thought about that, but due to my desire to limit the player's ability to max out the whole profession, I thought that it'd be better to let people choose their specialization freely. And the "realism" of the system would come from the requirement to put at least one point in the previous tier before moving upwards.

I could maybe see a "these two circles from T1 and T3 are connected, so you'd have to put a point into T1 and craft an item with it, before you can get the T3 circle" thing work, but that'd be up to testing and feedback.

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I definitely want a fair degree of restriction, but I also think that the picture in the OP is too rudimentary to properly show the potential scale of the system. There could definitely be more circles with a better point distribution design, so that people could choose different specializations even within a particular direction.

The rarity thing is only there to make people go deeper into a tier if they want to craft better things in it. The players may choose whichever circles they want to specialize in, so there's still freedom of choice.

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There'll be no randomness in the crafting process' result. You'll get what you were promised by the blueprint, with stats being controlled by the dials. Which is why I said that you'll need rare mats for rare weapons, legendary mats for legendaries and so on.

And that's why I related item rarity to the player's tier investment. If you want to be able to use legendary mats in T3 - you gotta invest enough points into that tier.

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Low tier mats get used in high tier items. And there's been discussions of making low tier crafted gear useful for high tier crafting as well. As for storage, yeah, we'll have to see how Intrepid designs it. I'd hope that we have enough storage to store every single item in the game, at least one of each.

That kind of storage should come at a high price, but for those who like hoarding and/or collecting stuff - it should be doable imo.

NiKr wrote: »

So my questions is obvious, would you like this kind of system?

I feel like it would give a lot of freedom of choice in specialization, while also limiting the ability to be completely self-sufficient. It also allows newbies, that join the game later, to start crafting high lvl stuff way sooner, if needed. And if there comes a point where more lowbie crafters are needed (hope this is the case) people can quickly respec into lower tiers and make a quick gain.

It's better than most, I guess. I wouldn't hate it.

Crafting should be level-agnostic, but at the same time, I would argue any good crafting system will prevent any one player from being able to become a master of absolutely everything. Players should have only so many total points to spread between various crafting skills.

For example with a total of 300 possible crafting points, a player could go with, level 100 Blacksmithing, Level 80 Alchemy, level 60 Cooking, level 60 Leatherworking. Or they could go level 100 on three skills, or dabble in a bunch of different skills, perhaps a little of everything.

It's very important to ensure a level-agnostic system exists, because some people prefer to spend most of their time crafting in MMOs and/or doing other nonviolent things rather than going out and fighting stuff. Some people WANT to be like that merchant down the street, you know?

You might argue that a character who specializes purely in crafting would have a harder time acquiring resources for themselves, and that's correct (and intentionally so) to a point - such players would need to spend more time engaging with the local economy, buying and trading with others, and thus driving game activity as a whole.

You could even have things like Engineers, people who help to repair or enhance fortifications at a given Node location, set up cannonades, that sort of thing.

The 300 point idea I mentioned is an arbitrary number - if I spent enough time conceptualizing, I could probably come up with well over a dozen Artisan skill lines, but I don't feel like it right now. The short version is that any good crafting system should have LOTS of options, for lots of players, and not being allowed to simply master everything makes someone's choices in this system have more weight, and feel more distinct. You need to actually THINK about what you're doing before you commit to a crafting tree.

To encourage experimentation, we could say that the very basic levels of a crafting tree, let's say 1 to 15 out of 100, don't count towards your cap, allowing people the freedom to dabble in a little bit of everything (this is very important for people who 'learn by doing' moreso than viewing a spreadsheet), but the moment you get into specialized stuff, you are, well, choosing to SPECIALIZE yourself.

Solo players can choose to spec into Artisan trees that supplement their class picks, and can possibly extend their choices by crafting stuff for different sub-classes that intrigue them. Group players can decide whether or not to focus on themselves, or their collective, and then you end up with interesting stuff like trading ingots or leather to another Artisan that can make a completed gearpiece for you, at whatever price you agree upon.

TLDR, any good crafting system should feel like a full game within a game - a full economy within the greater economy, and a further set of decisions and choices that emergently create the unique self-definition that should be any given Ashes character.

And if you want to IGNORE Artisan stuff? That's okay too! Go out and kill a bunch of things, and spend your money on the Artisan works of others who prefer the crafting over the killing.


Thank you for attending my TED talk. Good day!

SpaceWolf wrote: »

TLDR, any good crafting system should feel like a full game within a game - a full economy within the greater economy, and a further set of decisions and choices that emergently create the unique self-definition that should be any given Ashes character.

You've pretty much described my exact idea, with a bit of what's already planned for Ashes thrown in too. Except I went even further and the point system I'm suggesting allows you to start crafting high lvl gear w/o being a high arisan lvl character Otherwise, a great ted talk.