SWTOR

[Ginaz]

Interdependency has a lot of problems on its own.

People will just make sure their characters have different crafting professions and do it all themselves anyways.  Limiting you to any three of crafting, gathering, and missions seems like it'll be more annoying than causing interdependence.

Maybe it could be a way to get people to play other classes, which would tie into their desire for players to make alts to experience the story each class has.  And interdependence worked fairly well in swg, though, the ability to create alts on the same account was more difficult in swg than it might be in TOR.

[Lantyssa]

SWG also had shifting resources.  High-end crafters prospered because they kept an eye out for the best usable in-slot resource and understood what was needed to make good sub-components and final products.  If there isn't the unlimited resource variation, I honestly don't see how they could make it as deep.

Now, if components have a Diablo-style randomness to them, it could very well be possible.  I'll be surprised if they do.  Possibly willing to eat a (gummy) bug, even.

[stu]

Any chance high level loot drops will consist mainly of crafting resources rather than shiny gear? 

[Lakov_Sanite]

What was telling, to me, was the idea of having your companions being the one to craft "so you don't have to stare at a progress bar"  exactly how long are high end things going to take to craft in swtor?

[Nebu]

I've always enjoyed games where the best gear is crafted.  I hope that's the case here.

[Merusk]

What was telling, to me, was the idea of having your companions being the one to craft "so you don't have to stare at a progress bar"  exactly how long are high end things going to take to craft in swtor?

Since they mention that your little elves will continue after you've logged out..  a long-ass time.  Longer than is truly reasonable in a world with interstellar space travel, but hey.. Star Wars always had it's hiccups. (Pikemen on Jabba's barge.  )

I've always enjoyed games where the best gear is crafted.  I hope that's the case here.

Schubert talks like that will be the case.. but he's also listed as the Combat Systems designer on Moby, not the crafting and item designer.   Even if it is the case, I expect the best mats or patterns/ schematics/ recipies that go in to said items to be drops from group combat or whatever will pass for raids/ endgame combat. 

Barring a Diablo random-loot style setup, that is.  But what MMO has really given that a good shot yet? I don't expect this one to.

[Nebu]

Barring a Diablo random-loot style setup, that is.  But what MMO has really given that a good shot yet? I don't expect this one to.

It's a shame.  If the best loot in game is available to everyone from the casual soloer to the hardcore raider, that has the potential to aid retention.  At least for the more casual, adult gamer.

[Goumindong]

SWG also had shifting resources.  High-end crafters prospered because they kept an eye out for the best usable in-slot resource and understood what was needed to make good sub-components and final products.  If there isn't the unlimited resource variation, I honestly don't see how they could make it as deep.

Now, if components have a Diablo-style randomness to them, it could very well be possible.  I'll be surprised if they do.  Possibly willing to eat a (gummy) bug, even.

How did that work in SWG?

Because the way that I envision generating competitive advantage for crafting can happen in only a few ways.

1. Effort: It so damn hard to maintain the skills/proper item input that only a few people will be willing to poopsock enough to do it.

2. Skill: Some sort of system is in place such that crafted items are of variable quality depending on the twitch gameplay ability or puzzle solving ability of the user. *

3. Patents: Grant people exclusive purview to produce certain items or certain quality of items based on either in game or random achievements. This would work a lot better in a game like EVE.

Problems: Assuming people can keep crafting eventually there will be some sort of saturation of items of high quality anyway.

*As I see it you time the trial, the time it takes to succeed is compared against a baseline. Slower and your item is worse, faster and your item is better. I.E. The item receives a bonus to its quality of (1/x) where X is the completion time normalized to the 100% mark. So if you complete it in half the time, its 2x as good. If times are balance such that achieving them is reasonably difficult then you get increasingly large payoff for each millisecond you shave off your puzzle solving/twitch times.

Of course, fixing those so be hard(and not abuse-able) is another issue.

[CmdrSlack]

In SWG, you had to survey for resources. If you played ME2 and thought that its style of surveying sucked, you'd really hate it in SWG.

Those resources had varying levels of quality. Resource A on Planet 1 may be of lesser quality than on Planet 2. The next cycle, that resource could not exist on either planet.

The quality of resources, among other factors, had an effect on the quality of your subcomponents. The better the subcomponents, the better the end product.

The best crafters on Eclipse had to go outside their personal allowance of building lots to get the best resources. They'd buy from people who sourced the stuff. We had an established town, so getting resources was never hard. I think I ended up using all of my allowed building lots for buildings, not harvesters.

[Ratman_tf]

In SWG, you had to survey for resources. If you played ME2 and thought that its style of surveying sucked, you'd really hate it in SWG.

In SWG I wanted to make a weapon/armorsmith, and did pretty well at it, but I got into prospecting and selling resources and had a ton of fun scouting out good spawns and using the scanner to find them.

I fucking hated ME2 surveying. It was godawful.

[Spiff]

Only crafting system I ever experienced where the actual crafter was considered as valuable or even more so than the components was AO (don't laugh  ).
That was because:
- it was so obscure it took an unholy amount of interest to get into it.
- you had to spend skill-points on crafting (earned through levelling) you could otherwise spend on combat skills.
- crafted items were superior.

So basically it was so unfinished/convoluted/ill-conceived few people invested in it, yet to compete at top level you needed crafted items.
Not a shining beacon of clever game-design.

Any alternative where crafting is valuable is completely geared towards poopsock-gatherers in my experience.

P.S.: I was an engineer in AO and a pretty avid crafter, one the many sins of my youth unfortunately.

[Tannhauser]

Were folks griping that you trained when offline in Eve?   Sounds similar to me.
In WoW, the progress bar is fast, the difficulty comes in gathering the crafting materials.
In LOTRO, the progress bar can be pretty slow when gathering the materials is easy, such as farming.

I do hope there is true interdependecy in SWTOR's crafting and that crafted items are some of the best items in the game.  It's an interesting feature with my elves crafting while I'm offline.

[Koyasha]

The only thing I really, really want out of its crafting is that there is no item that cannot be bought and sold freely.  As long as I never have to look at a crafted item and think that I wish I had X profession so I could use that item, I won't be too unhappy with it.  Even if the item is rare and expensive, the important thing is that I have an option other than 'grind the profession up myself' in order to be able to use it.

Besides which, self-only items only indicate that the system has failed to actually make the items worth buying and selling, and therefore must offer other incentives in order to require people to use it.

[Rendakor]

The only thing I really, really want out of its crafting is that there is no item that cannot be bought and sold freely.  As long as I never have to look at a crafted item and think that I wish I had X profession so I could use that item, I won't be too unhappy with it.  Even if the item is rare and expensive, the important thing is that I have an option other than 'grind the profession up myself' in order to be able to use it.

Besides which, self-only items only indicate that the system has failed to actually make the items worth buying and selling, and therefore must offer other incentives in order to require people to use it.

[tmp]

One thing that seems at odds is how they want a casual players to be able to outfit themselves through crafting, but then restrict the same players to single gear crafting category. Just doesn't leave much room for that outfitting oneself...

[Spiff]

In LOTRO, the progress bar can be pretty slow when gathering the materials is easy, such as farming.

Farming such as farming the open world bosses that dropped shards (needed for the highest tier items), which were quickly farmed 'round the clock by catasses that worked out their spawn-timer?
They partly replaced that with a huge faction grind (along with making most of the crafted items obsolete)... and then introduced Legendary Weapon crafting, for which you needed a symbol that only dropped in raids, or 1 particular 6-man instance (which then got farmed).

If you wanted to make money on crafting in LoTRO gathering was always the way to go as well.

What I'm wondering is; if you make different crafts interdependent, what do you do about alts?

[tmp]

Farming such as farming the open world bosses that dropped shards (needed for the highest tier items), which were quickly farmed 'round the clock by catasses that worked out their spawn-timer?

I think he means farming as in literally growing pipeweeds and such. And the rate at which the progress bar moved for each individual act of that.

[Tannhauser]

In LOTRO, the progress bar can be pretty slow when gathering the materials is easy, such as farming.

Farming such as farming the open world bosses that dropped shards (needed for the highest tier items), which were quickly farmed 'round the clock by catasses that worked out their spawn-timer?
They partly replaced that with a huge faction grind (along with making most of the crafted items obsolete)... and then introduced Legendary Weapon crafting, for which you needed a symbol that only dropped in raids, or 1 particular 6-man instance (which then got farmed).

If you wanted to make money on crafting in LoTRO gathering was always the way to go as well.

What I'm wondering is; if you make different crafts interdependent, what do you do about alts?

I sense butthurt.  Yes, I meant farming the profession.

[Ginaz]

SWG also had shifting resources.  High-end crafters prospered because they kept an eye out for the best usable in-slot resource and understood what was needed to make good sub-components and final products.  If there isn't the unlimited resource variation, I honestly don't see how they could make it as deep.

Now, if components have a Diablo-style randomness to them, it could very well be possible.  I'll be surprised if they do.  Possibly willing to eat a (gummy) bug, even.

I don't think it will be as deep as swg's crafting system is either.  However, it sounds more detailed and involving than many though it would be.

[SnakeCharmer]

I still have no idea why anyone thinks the crafting SWG was deep.  Sure, you could make lots of stuff and give it pretty colors with a unique name, but that's about it.  All that required to be the best was to have played since/near launch    Otherwise, if you weren't around for <uber steel spawn>, you had to pay unGodly amounts of credits to buy it (due to a hyperinflated economy from credit duping) or inherit resources from someone that was quitting.  Crafting in SWG was an exercise in tedium.

[Paelos]

I still have no idea why anyone thinks the crafting SWG was deep.  Sure, you could make lots of stuff and give it pretty colors with a unique name, but that's about it.  All that required to be the best was to have played since/near launch    Otherwise, if you weren't around for <uber steel spawn>, you had to pay unGodly amounts of credits to buy it (due to a hyperinflated economy from credit duping) or inherit resources from someone that was quitting.  Crafting in SWG was an exercise in tedium.

It was deeper because inputs weren't the all the same.

[Spiff]

I sense butthurt.  Yes, I meant farming the profession.

I did pick up on that yeah 
Maybe you mentioned farming/cooking 'cause it's the only part of LoTRO crafting that worked, even that it was kinda slow seemed okay imo if you're growing peas in the shire.

Everything else was a resource grind more than anything else, fact that the bar moved a little slow was hardly it's biggest issue. The economy revolved around resources as it usually does when games promise 'crafting that matters'.

I'll be interested to see if SWToR has a remedy for this (one more creative than just setting the drop-chance of high-tier materials to 0.00001%).

[Tannhauser]

You're new around here so I'll cut you some slack.  Resources in LOTRO are abundant, be it wood or ore.  Crafting is one of the funnest parts of LOTRO.  Maybe you haven't played recently but crafting has been improved even further and every profession is useful.  Crafted gear is on par with dropped items as well.

Go play WoW and see which game 'revolves around resources' more.  Nodes in WoW are much more uncommon than in LOTRO.  Hell, my party is always peeling off to go chop wood or dig ore on our way to the quest area in LOTRO.

I am very interested in SWTOR's hands off approach to crafting.  It's a pretty strange concept to me because I like micro-managing my crafting to get the most out of my materials.   

[Shatter]

I still have no idea why anyone thinks the crafting SWG was deep.  Sure, you could make lots of stuff and give it pretty colors with a unique name, but that's about it.  All that required to be the best was to have played since/near launch    Otherwise, if you weren't around for <uber steel spawn>, you had to pay unGodly amounts of credits to buy it (due to a hyperinflated economy from credit duping) or inherit resources from someone that was quitting.  Crafting in SWG was an exercise in tedium.

It was deep because quality meant something.  Any average joe could make shit but only few people could actually make high quality.  This isnt like WOW where you farm X ore and its always the same, SWG materials all had multiple stats all of which would create a different result.  The chance of finding the same material with the same high stats was pretty much impossible but you would always be on the hunt for high quality mats.  For many people who played SWG this was full time and all they did

[Surlyboi]

Look at the difference OQ had on lightsaber crafting. I had dozens of crap sabers that I used just to grind and made out of passable quality materials. Then there was special set I always had set aside just in case I got caught by a BH or ran into a high-end mob. The damage difference was night and day, and it had less to do with the crystals than it had to do with the materials that went in to the construction. My best saber took a year to make because I held out for top quality components throughout.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Look at the difference OQ had on lightsaber crafting. I had dozens of crap sabers that I used just to grind and made out of passable quality materials. Then there was special set I always had set aside just in case I got caught by a BH or ran into a high-end mob. The damage difference was night and day, and it had less to do with the crystals than it had to do with the materials that went in to the construction. My best saber took a year to make because I held out for top quality components throughout.

Something is wrong in any game where you have to say things like "I had to craft dozens of crappy lightsabers"

[Surlyboi]

Not really.

Trial and error was once part of MMOs before everyone had a guide for every goddamn thing.

[Lantyssa]

It took me two days of calculations to reverse engineer tissues and prove their displayed coefficients were incorrect.  That's with everything being fairly straight-forward.

Evening knowing them it became a game to eek out enough high-grade materials to get that 99% quality tissue, or to make a good quality one but figuring out which component you could skimp on.  Storage was my only complaint about the system.

[Shatter]

Look at the difference OQ had on lightsaber crafting. I had dozens of crap sabers that I used just to grind and made out of passable quality materials. Then there was special set I always had set aside just in case I got caught by a BH or ran into a high-end mob. The damage difference was night and day, and it had less to do with the crystals than it had to do with the materials that went in to the construction. My best saber took a year to make because I held out for top quality components throughout.

Something is wrong in any game where you have to say things like "I had to craft dozens of crappy lightsabers"

He didnt have to craft dozens to make a good one, those are just what he crafted until he got the top end mats. 

[Surlyboi]

Precisely.

[Lakov_Sanite]

My point is that the very idea of mass producing lightsabers is fucking clownshoes. A jedi makes one lightsaber, it's their lightsaber, even in kotor this was the case.  Actually having some schlub producing sabers in his discount saber depot is beyond retarded.

[Surlyboi]

The only schlub making my sabers was me.

Sabers were no trade.

[Cyrrex]

And you certainly couldn't mass produce them.  He's talking about creating a dozen over a period of a year or so, not like 50 a day.

Creating a saber is probably the best single crafting experience I can recall having.  Even a shitty, training saber for a brand new Jedi was cool as hell.

[Shatter]

My point is that the very idea of mass producing lightsabers is fucking clownshoes. A jedi makes one lightsaber, it's their lightsaber, even in kotor this was the case.  Actually having some schlub producing sabers in his discount saber depot is beyond retarded.

What about jedi that dual wield....dun dun dun

[Ingmar]

This conversation is giving me flashbacks to DAOC's god-awful system. WTS 112332123 98% quality bows that I made trying to get one masterpiece... /wrists