Farming/Crafting thoughts

[Xanthippe]

I found a field near Staddle, where a farmer supply merchant was standing next to a workbench.  My crafting tab said I needed 6 yellow onion seeds, 2 fertilizer and 1 water, which I purchased from the merchant, in order to grow a field of yellow onions.

I grew onions until I hit Tier 2, which was about 4 fields, I suppose.  Had to keep buying fertilizer and water, but could make onion seeds myself out of what I grew in the field.  Also ended up with about 20 onions that I could sell to the vendor - or to another player, I suppose.  I didn't check but I'm pretty sure it's a bit of a money sink, if I just vend my onions.  I've read that pipeweed can be vended for a small profit, but I haven't checked.

I don't have a cook toon.

I don't understand why foresters get to be farmers.  I get the gathering wood -> make staves and bows thing, but I don't see how farming fits into that.  It just seems stuck on.  I also don't get why foresters are the people who boil hides for clothiers or leatherworkers or whoever uses boiled hides.  Makes no sense.

Now, if a farmer was a cook and a hide boiler, that makes sense.

The interdependencies are completely and obviously artificially forced in the crafting system, as I understand it now.

I don't mind the mechanics for gathering or growing stuff or making things in LOTR.  I was not a big fan of the EQ2 mini-game crafting system - I think I prefer WOW's (and others') method of node gathering over the mini-game thing.

I agree that crafting is more interesting if there are interdependencies, but the way they are fashioned makes no sense.

Things should make sense in a world game.

I'd also like to see everything used in crafting be dropped, whether it's thread or fertilizer or water or whatever.  It can also be vended, but being able to use loot is cool, and leads to more interesting game economies.

[Signe]

I don't understand the "cooking" bit of my profession, either.  (tinker)  The prospecting and jeweler being together makes sense, but cooking?  Scholar is an odd one, too.  Anway, have a chart!

[WayAbvPar]

Ooooh visual aids!

[Xanthippe]

I should have become a yeoman, clearly.

For some reason, I thought I might have arrows to nock.  I like not having to have arrows, as a hunter.

Explorer looks good too.  I guess you can collect both wood and metals.

I enjoy crafting consumables.  Armor and weapons, not so much.

Interesting, thanks for the chart!

[Signe]

I actually thought I was a yeoman but I seem to be a tinker.

[Arthur_Parker]

I'm not sure if there is much crafting info in the manual, I don't have access to it at work and prefer to spend time playing as opposed to reading when on the computer at home.  So all this is just from what I have read on the forums and first impressions from playing.

I understand why players are forced to pick sets of crafting professions, it's to promote an economy and to prevent everyone going for the most effective picks.  I don't like it though, I want to play a Scholar who is not a farmer, in the current system I can't, that's bad as I'm being forced to play a way I wouldn't choose.  If this was a skill based character advancement system it might be ok, but as it's class based, any system that allows players to make different choices should be encouraged not limited.

I'd prefer a system that lets players pick at least one of their crafting professions based on their preferences, not Turbine's, if everyone picks the same three, make the others more useful.  As long as excessive materials are required for crafting and there are resource gathering careers to get them, nobody will be able to do everything anyway.

From a comment somebody made in /ooc, there isn't a "make all" button for creating more than one of the same item?  If so there needs to be one, Ex WoW players will demand it and it's daft not to have it for release when it will only get added later.

The scattered nodes don't make sense for low level resources, the lowest level resources should be in common supply.  I'd make a couple of woods and a couple of mines where players can gather as much of these as they want and skill up the first few craftable items fairly easy.  This makes sense by giving a "living world" perspective, it also gives some extra quests options, "Find a Miner and tell him to bring me 10 copper bars", "Guard Ted needs a shipment of 20 Bows" etc and can serve as a tutorial for the secure trade interface.  If you wanted to buy ingots in UO you went to Minoc I should know where to go to find low level Foresters and Miners in Middle Earth.  I also like the idea of one player giving an optional quest to another character, if some Dude runs up to me, clicks on me when I'm mining and the quest interface pops with a simple delivery quest for my profession, that's pretty cool for me and pretty cool for him if he gets a quest completion from it.

Scattered specific nodes for higher level resources is fine although I expect to find wood in forests, I guess marshes or rivers at a push.

Currently (I have read) there isn't a level limitation for crafting professions, I really like that and it makes sense (the issues caused can be worked around), a decision needs to be made if that's going to be kept or not.  If players start mule alts they don't intend to level up and find out later that high level recipes are BOP they aren't going to be happy.

Lastly I think the Scholar profession could be used to identify ancient sites (kinda like UO treasure maps), from my limited understanding Scholar's currently give better critical chances to making professions?  Seems like they could be expanded to use the world's history a bit more.

[Xanthippe]

Where's Schild?  I mean, here's a game where a person can be a farmer and nothing else (at least that's how I understand it).  Might have to get to, like, level 7 or something to have a little starting cash.  I thought for sure he'd be farming in this game.

[Signe]

Schild only plays games that he can play with himself.  He's very anti-social with games. 

[Xanthippe]

He can be an antisocial farmer.  He doesn't even have to join Bat Country.  Just hang out on his little acre and grow pipeweed.

[Strazos]

Just wondering, but what prices are you people setting your goods at? I have tons of ore, ingots, and rowan wood, and I have no idea how to price them.

[Xanthippe]

You mean there's a system for selling things?  I haven't sold anything except junk loot.

I never read patch notes.  It makes the game more interesting that way.

[Strazos]

I mean, selling things to other players. I haven't found much use for my Explorer profession yet.

[WayAbvPar]

You mean there's a system for selling things?  I haven't sold anything except junk loot.

I never read patch notes.  It makes the game more interesting that way.

I skimmed the patch notes, but nothing jumped out. Is there some sort of Auction House? That would seriously rule.

[Xanthippe]

I mean, selling things to other players. I haven't found much use for my Explorer profession yet.

Oh, I don't know.  I see people chatting that they want to buy this or that, but haven't seen any prices mentioned.

Then there was the argument the other day that went like this:

"Ash wood and silver ore for sale"

"you want to SELL stuff? This is beta, just give it away, god"

[Strazos]

Repairs and new gear sets are not free.

[Xanthippe]

Yeah, that was my thought too.  But then, I'm a running dog lackey of the bourgeoisie.

[Azazel]

While I enjoy picking things up off the ground, I'm not really interested in trying to puzzle out and time/moneysink into another arcane crafting system.

I only crafted in EQ to make various low level things like stat food and I worked them up for the Coldain shawl quest and then stopped, as there was absoloutely no point in tradeskills unless you could craft the highest end items.

I do it in WoW because despite being mostly-pointless, it's seamless and painless and actually fun.

So far I don't understand the way it works in LOTRO, and to be frank, if I can't figure out the basics at a glance I'm not going to bother with it. I just don't care enough to RTFM and I can only imagine tradeskills either falling into EQ's trap (if you want good stuff, you have to grind trades a LOT, and then you need uber mat drops) or WoW's trap (anything you can make without uber recipies and mat drops is mostly useless because the market is so flooded.)

So anyway, I've been picking up bits of wood, metal and skins/hides. Anyone want 'em?

[Trippy]

So anyway, I've been picking up bits of wood, metal and skins/hides. Anyone want 'em?

You can send any unwanted ore to Olimor if you like.

[Xanthippe]

I'll take the wood.

[Azazel]

done.

no one for hides?

[WayAbvPar]

How do hides get turned useable components for leatherworking? I can't remember...

[Xanthippe]

Foresters have to prepare them.  1 wax per hide, iirc.  I can do that and return them to you if you want.

Who wants hides? I have some already prepared.

[Strazos]

Explorers can also prep hides.

[WayAbvPar]

See, this is exactly why they need some sort of auction house. The interdependence is all well and good for getting people to interact, but it takes too much time to track people down.

[Signe]

I agree.  Either allow for people to choose three professions so they can become self sufficient crafters or give us an auction house so we can buy the bits when we have to. 

It's the right thing to do, Turbine!   

[Azazel]

Yeah, I can't bring myself to care enough about the crafting to do anything with the items.

Xanth, I'll gladly mail you the hides on the condition that you don't send them back to me...

[Arthur_Parker]

See, this is exactly why they need some sort of auction house. The interdependence is all well and good for getting people to interact, but it takes too much time to track people down.

I seem to recall concept art from months ago that had an auction house listed in the shire.  Tried to track down confirmation and from the beta forums found this.

Keth: Yep, we'll have a system for selling items to other players. We probably won't have it be an actual auction, but more of a consignment vendor system.

.................

Question: Hmm. Does that mean I'd need to check every single vendor in every city if I was having trouble locating a particular item? That would be... bad. I'm hoping that even if the presentation is "vendors selling on consignment" that there will be at least regional markets - maybe global.

Keth: I can't say specifically, but as I understand how the system is being implemented, the vendors will be looking at a common repository for all items on consignment. I don't know if that'll be regional or global.

[Xanthippe]

Please be global.

[Yegolev]

I have signed Tarragon on with the Yeoman crowd.  I'll have to see how it pans out, still trying to figure out what to do.

[Arthur_Parker]

Update on Crafting

We've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to get the next version of crafting out the door. The crafting system currently in Beta is a good distance from where we want it to be when we ship - it covers the basic concepts, but there's a lot of fleshing out that's yet to come. Here's the highlights:

- More recipes, dropped recipes, one-shot recipes. All professions are scheduled to get some additional recipes, including a number of loot dropped recipes, and "one-shot" recipes, which will remove themselves from your book after being executed once.
- Name-on-crit. Some recipes will allow you to inscribe a critical success item with a name. A cool way for top crafters to personalize their wares.
- Dyes. That's right, you asked (loudly) we listened. Most armor will be dyeable, for all you fashionistas.
- Optional ingredients and critical results for all (or almost all) recipes. The critical result system is really the aspirational goal behind crafting, and right now those rewards are either incomplete or missing entirely.
- Crafting Accomplishments. A minor thing, but a neat way to further distinguish yourself as a crafter.
- Interface improvements. The ability to see the critical result item before you are eligible to create it (so you know what you're working towards) and the ability to specify how many items you want to make when you have enough materials for multiple creations.

People are right - for the last few stages of Alpha/Beta, crafting has been on the back burner. But we're far from done with it, and we've got some awesome stuff coming down the development pipe. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience and feedback.

It depends on how crafting and the pvp system works out, but at the moment I think I'm actually going to buy LOTRO.  I'm at level 36 now and the higher in levels I go, the more I'm enjoying it.

[Yegolev]

Yes, I am entertaing the idea of a purchase as well, however dropped recipes are Satan.

[Xanthippe]

Not with an auction system!  I love capitalism.

[WayAbvPar]

One shot recipes are a very cool idea, especially if they are rare.

[Yegolev]

I guess I can admit that, if done right, it should be good.  The gear is leveled anyway so I suppose dropped recipes don't matter too much...?  I suspect a low-level crafter isn't going to be allowed to make endgame items.  I don't know what the economic system is going to be like, however since I am spoiled to EVE I think I am probably going to complain about it no matter what.

[WayAbvPar]

he gear is leveled anyway

GOD how I wish they would change this. I absolutely detest it. HATE HATE HATE.