Crafting Project

[Zhar]

Dear Strider,

why I generally agree with your way of thinking there are a couple of other factors you must consider:

@ making herbing a social activity:
Be it by the way of "assisting" someone in gathering herbs, thus reducing the required time for herbing, or placing powerful NPCs around more desirable herbs you would need to battle to get to them (risk vs reward factor).
While it's a great idea it comes with a couple of flaws I'd like to point out (note: I am not dismissing the idea, I just think it needs more polish and thought to be succesful):
1. If assisting in herbing would just reduce the time you spend on herbing, and even if it would improve the amount or quality of gathered herbs it would not solve the "solo and scriptable" part of the problem. People would still go about it solo and scripting, just for longer periods. For that to really work you must think of a real incentive for people to a) want to assist in herbing (what kind of reward do they get apart from person's that's doing the herbing gratitude?) and b) provide benefits to herbing with assist that can't be matched simply by herbing solo longer.
2. Placing powerful enemies guarding the treasured and valuable herbs is also a sound idea. The only problem arises when some guilds require this herbs in large quantities for their spells/potions or whatever really. You're then severly limiting the guild (especially its smaller members) which is already handicapped by its members having to spend valuable time on gathering them instead of doing something that others consider productive.

Note: I used herbs in my statements but it really affects all the things you need to gather.

@ making crafting available to people who log in infrequently:
That is also fine, but then we come to a point where you want to treat people who spend a lot of time in the game on equal basis as those who don't. It's a nice idea but completely futile from the perspective of someone who wants to not just attract players but keep them. Crafting is a time consuming process, there are ways to make it almost impossible to script, but --- even according to your previous statements --- allowing people who log in once a week to craft 2-3 items to be just as proficient and succesful at crafting as people who spend 3-4 hours a day, every day on that would be ridiculous. I'm all for disconnecting crafting from combat and quest experience and only basing it on actually crafting things, but still someone who has more time will craft more and thus be better at it than a person who doesn't have as much time to spend on it.

Don't understand me wrong here. I fully support making the game as accessible as possible, both for powerplayers and people who haven't got a lot of time to spend on it. Unfortunately, there are things that can't cater to the "casual" side of it.You can still play and enjoy the game in its fullest by playing it casually, but things like crafting are something that usually require a large amount of time investment and dedication.

Of course, I might be wrong, in which case I'd like you to point me to a MMO or other game that has successfully implemented a crafting system that doesn't benefit time investment.

[Strider]

Zhar, thank you for your kind note and for scaling that wall of text so quickly.

In regards to your points, I don't actually care to break “solo and scripted” herbing any further. The simple fact is that it is so incredibly boring that even herb-bots contemplate suicide. I would think offering an alternative, and I hope mild improvement overall, would be enough.

As for rewards, General Experience for everyone! From there, gratitude and obligation, especially weighed against collective good and imposition are actually valuable things, as they provide context in which characters interact. Given your feedback, it is probably most interesting if the initiating character recovers all herbs, leaving a minor social issue for teammates to resolve.

I do agree that some combination of crafters, casters and coders are going to end up dealing with the introduction of a crafting system. The easiest solution would be to simply have no overlap between crafting components and spell components. I think the best solution might be to introduce graduated components for spells, such that a caster can reasonably acquire their full complement, or waste mana and produce lesser effects with lesser components, or waste more valuable components to no greater effect. This might also provide a useful ladder for those cases when a caster starts out without a stockpile of components.

As for my crafting system mechanics proposal, you have it exactly backwards. I want to make Genesis available to those who cannot usually devote long periods of continuous time to playing, by making crafting a short session, high frequency proposition. I could try to rattle off names, but I am sure either you, or someone you know, have had to pop on to water your crops, put up some zombie fencing, serve something at your restaurant, visit a friend's city or whatever; but the point is that it only takes a moment but you do it all the time.

Further, while it's not like the whole rest of the game isn't geared for longer sessions, I doubt my suggested mechanics would actually put longer session players at a disadvantage, as they're already in the game.

[Zhar]

I understand your concerns, but you must also understand that changing the way feature like herbing would not just change quite a bit of fundamental things around the donut but also require a lot of coding time that could be spent on something else. Such a move must be weighted EXTREMELY carefully.

Another thing, about the short-session crafting system, you mentioned games like Plants vs Zombies (yes, I have indeed spent quite a lot of time watering my gardens there). System like that basically imposes a limit to how much you can do per session. To make it fair for everybody in Genesis there would have to be a hard limit put on all crafting. Example: After forging 10 items as a blacksmith you're unable to forge any more for the next 24 hours.
This would give everyone the same chances at crafting, but in my opinion, it would take away a lot of the depth and scare those who'd like to be real, professional crafters.

[Strider]

I am under no illusion that reimplementing herbing alone or as part of an integrated component gathering system is a trivial fix. However, a new crafting system would require something to produce components, and I do not know anyone who would argue in favor of the current system, let alone expanding it's importance.

I also do not know if crafting limits are a necessary component of a short-session crafting system, especially one that is more risk than time driven. I don't think we cannot deliver a reasonable rate of reward to those who want to keep their characters primarily in the craft guild setting. As for primarily short-session available players, I would argue that Genesis currently has nothing to offer them, such that almost anything is an improvement, although it is worth considering if they would simply be priced out by more frequent denizens.

Now, this does all beg the question if it is worthwhile catering to these hypothetical players, and if crafting is the place to do it. In so far as we've all gone through periods when we had little time for Genesis, maintaining that connection and habit of playing, or building it for players we'd otherwise miss, I think this may be one of the better ways to start addressing our population issues.

[Zhar]

No offense, but I'd rather have a couple people that stay for longer periods of time than many people who log in to stay for no longer than an hour. Genesis (and I guess any other MMO out there) doesn't really cater to such people (bar the subscription fees but that's out the window for us), and I don't see anything wrong with that. After all, if you want to play some RPG in a text environment but don't really have time that most MMOs require then why not just play some rougelike? Sure, you'll miss the multiplayer experience, but if you don't have much time to spend in the game, are you sure you're going to spend it socializing? And how much of that socializing are you going to accomplish?

The thing with expanding Genesis playerbase is not finding just more people, it's about finding just the right people. Take a look around you, Dionysos, Hektor, Marduk, Grampal, Logg, Nikiel, Irk and so on and on. This names pop up over and over again for close to (if not more in some cases) 20 years. Even Laurel, who always seems to whine, sticks with Genesis despite all its flaws.

It's more people like that the donut needs. I don't even think we need any more "newbie friendly" content besides what's already here, we should now cater some to this die hard fans. But that's just my personal opinion.

[Amberlee]

You forget something Zhar.
People tend to play in waves of activity.

[Zhar]

Sinusoid or constant doesn't matter. It's still people who either log in for a couple hours or people who log in for a couple of minutes. Of the two I'd rather have the former than the latter populate the game.

[Strider]

Zhar, I believe you hand-waved past amberlee's point that these are not exclusive groups. I'd argue that the short-session player's we're talking about are most likely to be our current, normal- or extended-session players during a down-turn in their availability or commitment, or former regulars who have dropped off. Again, if we can maintain or reestablish their connections to Genesis, it is likely that they will also, or eventually, spend more time with us.

As for the rest of your recent points, I don't know that any of the negative implications you seem to have ascribed to the short-session mechanic actually hold up to scrutiny. Arguably novelty is a point in the idea's favor and as you pointed out, Genesis isn't trying to maximize profits. I also don't see any of the small cadre of die-hard fans you named asking for something from crafting that is contrary to or could not be delivered in this mechanic, or how introducing it would necessarily defeat the acquisition of new die-hard fans. It's not that I am dismissing these arguments; I simply think they need to be more fully articulated and examined.

[Amberlee]

Sinusoid or constant doesn't matter. It's still people who either log in for a couple hours or people who log in for a couple of minutes. Of the two I'd rather have the former than the latter populate the game.

Sure and i agree with that.
But that is completely besides the point.
Even the most active ones play in waves.
One month they clock in 100+ hours
The next its dow to 60ish..
Then down to maybe 4..
And then back on a spike of 100 again.
All depeds on how much time you have to dedicate to the game, how many of your social crowd in the game thats playing.. And not to mention if you are on the reciving end of a proper beatdown.
Like now, evils are on the rise population wise because some others returned, and then more people join up and things et going.(Just look at BDA).
Some others are on a decline since some are too busy to play which in turn means that others play less because the ones they play with are busy.

Its just a fact, and no matter how much you wave your hand at the problem it will still be there.

[Zhar]

I believe you got to the bottom of the problem Amberlee. What could possibly be done to help people stay with the game would be the expansion of the social sphere. Newsletters, maybe some other forms of out-of-game communication/notification and so on.

But I believe we stray too far off topic here now. I'm still waiting for a more fleshed out crafting project as I'm very interested in everything crafting...