Forums » Crafting and Gathering

The case for large-scale crafting projects

    • 1785 posts
    May 19, 2019 4:56 PM PDT

    Over the last two days in a game I play, I have watched people who never run a dungeon or an instance together team up to harvest items.  I have witnessed newer players advising multi-year veterans on where things spawn or helping them with gear.  I have seen members of rival raiding groups pooling their resources and working together.

    What was going on, you ask?

    My guild in FFXIV was building a submarine.  Thousands of items gathered, hundreds of items crafted, all of them assembled into a single thing that doesn't even really exist in the world.

     

    Large-scale crafting projects, like FFXIV's airships and submarines, or like Vanguard's ships and guild halls, are more than just big things for crafters to work on.  They bring communities together.  They give people goals that are bigger than themselves, things they can contribute to that are tangible and represent something.

    Pantheon needs these kinds of things.  The experience of crafting and gathering as an individual should be deep and meaningful.  But it cannot stop there.  There need to be activities that harness the collective abilities of crafters and gatherers to build communities, and achieve something just as awe-inspiring as taking down a raid boss is for the adventuring sphere.

    Pantheon should be a game where crafters touch everything.  Weapons, Armor, Clothing, Potions, Tools, Furniture, Accessories.  Ships, Houses, Guild Halls, Taverns, Bridges, Forts, Towers, Markets, Stables.  For players and NPCs alike.  Because when games let us do these things, we do something else too.  We build communities.

    • 372 posts
    May 19, 2019 6:05 PM PDT

    I did not like these.  I'm not saying I never will like these projects, only that I haven't yet. Often it became a function of guild capacity and could be a time sink my guilds. I don't want to argue your points because, frankly, you make fine points.  Just not my cup of tea. I wouldn't be upset to see it in game though.  I mean the idea of needing multiple crafters to achieve something is great. I just am not a fan of the "large" projects. 

    Edit:  I guess it's a good thing and whether or not I like it is not important. It would be great to see crafting guilds pump out items to sell to rich guilds trying to build submarines or .. whatever we have. I had no intention of derailing.  It's a good thread. 


    This post was edited by Tigersin at May 19, 2019 6:13 PM PDT
    • 1785 posts
    May 19, 2019 7:24 PM PDT

    Tigersin said:

    I did not like these.  I'm not saying I never will like these projects, only that I haven't yet. Often it became a function of guild capacity and could be a time sink my guilds. I don't want to argue your points because, frankly, you make fine points.  Just not my cup of tea. I wouldn't be upset to see it in game though.  I mean the idea of needing multiple crafters to achieve something is great. I just am not a fan of the "large" projects. 

    Edit:  I guess it's a good thing and whether or not I like it is not important. It would be great to see crafting guilds pump out items to sell to rich guilds trying to build submarines or .. whatever we have. I had no intention of derailing.  It's a good thread. 

    No worries.  I don't think you were derailing.  If you allow me some freedom of interpretation, I think what you're really pointing out is that while large-scale crafting projects can be good things, like any other part of gameplay they need to be implemented well.  They need to be meaningful in some sort of practical way, so that they don't just feel like a chore or a grind or some kind of impotent status symbol.

    Ships in Vanguard would have been much better if the promised island exploration had really happened.  FFXIV's submarines and airships would be a lot cooler if they actually did something useful other than just occasionally bring back rare crafting materials.  So, simply having these things that people can work together to create isn't enough on its own.  They still need to actually mean something - to the players that built them, and to the rest of the world as well.

    At least as I read it, that's what you were really saying.


    This post was edited by Nephele at May 19, 2019 7:25 PM PDT
    • 4 posts
    May 19, 2019 11:05 PM PDT

    I really like the idea of large scale projects.  I know Atlas isn't an MMO, but getting together with friends simply to gather harvesting materials and build a big boat really brings people together.  Then we go sailing on the open ocean and either plunder booty or get plundered.  Either way, it is fun when the game isn't being hacked by douchebags.

     

    Farming in Archeage was awesome.  So many varieties of things to farm, and the Labor system was pretty revolutionary.  A great way to balance crafting productivity and gameplay.

     

    Just some thoughts.

  • May 20, 2019 10:41 AM PDT

    I love large-scale cooperative projects as well. It just FEELS good to be contributing to something big.

    As Nephele notes above, it is important for the resulting project to have real meaning in game too. Maybe projects that open access to specific dungeons or zones? New equipment types?

    There are as many ideas as there are slots in the OMG FEATURE CREEP list, hehehe.

    • 2419 posts
    May 20, 2019 3:04 PM PDT

    Nephele said:

    Large-scale crafting projects, like FFXIV's airships and submarines, or like Vanguard's ships and guild halls, are more than just big things for crafters to work on.  They bring communities together.  They give people goals that are bigger than themselves, things they can contribute to that are tangible and represent something.

    Pantheon needs these kinds of things.  The experience of crafting and gathering as an individual should be deep and meaningful.  But it cannot stop there.  There need to be activities that harness the collective abilities of crafters and gatherers to build communities, and achieve something just as awe-inspiring as taking down a raid boss is for the adventuring sphere.

    Pantheon should be a game where crafters touch everything.  Weapons, Armor, Clothing, Potions, Tools, Furniture, Accessories.  Ships, Houses, Guild Halls, Taverns, Bridges, Forts, Towers, Markets, Stables.  For players and NPCs alike.  Because when games let us do these things, we do something else too.  We build communities.

    If there is to be housing, then I would prefer it be limited to guild housing just so guild members can work together to build a structure for their guild.  A visual representation of their efforts, their design aesthetic, their cooperation. 

    And while the idea of taverns, bridges, forts, towers, etc is admirable, it 1) won't be in Pantheon and 2) how do you stop the overpopulation of those things in the world?  Take a bridge for example.  A guild decides to build a bridge over some river.  What is to stop another guild from building another bridge right next to that one..and so on?  First come first serve?  Well that screws any guild that comes by later.  Oh, you might say, they can help maintain that bridge.  What is the incentive to fix what someone else built?  Same goes for forts.  You can't just let people put them anywhere.  There needs to be limits and that means some guilds get left out.  Maybe yours..maybe someone elses..but definitely someone will be told they can't do something that others could.

    At least with guild housing, every guild is guaranteed a spot to build their hall.

    • 372 posts
    May 20, 2019 6:22 PM PDT

    My concise answer, Nephele is this:

    I have seen guildmates in a few different guilds get burned out by efforts to complete large scale projects at the request of the guild leader. It depends on the guild, absolutely, but these projects can change the play experience for guild members.

    • 1785 posts
    May 20, 2019 7:13 PM PDT

    Tigersin said:

    My concise answer, Nephele is this:

    I have seen guildmates in a few different guilds get burned out by efforts to complete large scale projects at the request of the guild leader. It depends on the guild, absolutely, but these projects can change the play experience for guild members.

    That's a fair point.  However is that the fault of the game or the system, or the fault of the players involved?

    I mean, over the years it's likely you've seen people get burned out on raiding in a similar way.

    • 372 posts
    May 20, 2019 7:30 PM PDT

    Yes, a fault of the players and very much like raiding.  So yeah, for those reasons, I edited it and decided this was a good discussion despite my own bad experiences. :)

    • 48 posts
    May 21, 2019 3:28 AM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    Nephele said:

    -snip-

    -snip-

    At least with guild housing, every guild is guaranteed a spot to build their hall.

    Doubtful unless it is instanced, which.. We all know, most people would be against.

    There is only so much space in a city, village or designated Guild housing area and too be frank.. If there were Guild housing areas, then the prestige of having one in a place would be quite low as you would see a lot of guild halls around.

    I do like the idea of Guild Halls in the world, but... I also don't mind it being restricted to a limited amount of spots with a hefty upfront price and following upkeep that forces the guild members to donate currency in order to keep them from being demolished.

    I do think it would be cool if you could restore certain things in Game, but I would tie this to events that then have a persistent influence rather than it needing constant maintenance. FFXIV did this in their recent expansion which felt as you actually had an influence in the world. WoW did it with Anh Qi'raj raid/Silithus zone (while I know many does not like WoW, it was still an amazing event to participate in).
    These would be community project and some servers might be slower to complete it compared to other servers. However, in this way we actually get to play a part in the development of Terminus. Obviously you can add certain rewards for participating in tiers which will earn you cosmetic rewards, titles or similar to encite participating from both for Adventurers, Harvesters and Crafters


    This post was edited by Ashreon at May 21, 2019 3:31 AM PDT
    • 193 posts
    May 21, 2019 7:53 AM PDT

    Brasse said:

    I love large-scale cooperative projects as well. It just FEELS good to be contributing to something big.

    As Nephele notes above, it is important for the resulting project to have real meaning in game too. Maybe projects that open access to specific dungeons or zones? New equipment types?

    There are as many ideas as there are slots in the OMG FEATURE CREEP list, hehehe.

    Ships, bridges, buildings, siege weapons, fortresses, etc. should all have meaning. I do like the general idea of large scale cooperative projects, but implementation would have to be right. There's no way to {insert descriptive of choice here}-proof anything in a game, but clear objectives and results for these types of projects would go a long way toward keeping things in check and bringing folks together.

     

    Edit: Glad you're with us, Dorf!


    This post was edited by Percipiens at May 21, 2019 7:59 AM PDT
    • 1315 posts
    May 22, 2019 6:22 AM PDT

    Large-scale crafting makes the most sense when combined with either dynamic world content or large scale player housing, which is really just player controlled dynamic content.

    One application I can think of is a huge outdoor zone that starts with a small NPC fort and several nearby raid zones that are locked at the start of the cycle.  The goal of the cycle is to assist the NPC faction in building up their frontier fort to a fully functioning city on a war footing then extending out the fortifications until the raid zones can be challenged. 

    If you imagine that the fort is at the top of a valley pass that leads to an alpine plateau then the entirety of the alpine plateau is covered with raid tier trash mobs (with very poor drops for their challenge) at the beginning of the cycle.  As the cycle continues the area around the fort becomes more settled and lower difficulty with higher reward mobs begin to spawn near to the fort.  As the fort builds to a city the mobs closer to the city continue to drop in level and have more specialized loot (possibly dropping crafting materials needed to challenge the raid zones attached to the alpine plateau). 

    Eventually when the city is strong enough it will build outer forts to pin in the raid mobs.  Once an outer fort is fully established the true raid zone can be assaulted and “destroyed”.  Once all three outer forts are completed and the raid zones are all “destroyed” then the alpine plateau enters a peaceful period with access to special resources.  After a certain amount of time where the plateau is peaceful a huge force of raid NPCs will burst out of the raid zone entrances and level the forts and raze the original war city back to a tiny fort after respawn.

    Where crafting comes in is as a function of the city build up.

    1)      The main city will have a list of desired raw resources it is requesting.  It will reward players with faction and some token exchange style of area specific credit.

    2)      The raw resources will roughly correlate to the materials needed for crafted items to build up the city.

    3)      Crafters will be able to come to the fort and work at its crafting stations to turn the raw materials into the crafted goods needed.  These needed goods will range across all the crafts and along the progression of each class.  Tasks will be assigned based on crafting progression tier.  The ingredients needed for the items will be withdrawable from the forts delivered stock pile but it will lessen the reward for completing the task if you don’t provide your own materials. Ideally lower skill sub-combines will be assigned to lower skill crafters and higher skill crafters will have the option of withdrawing prefabricated sub-combines.

    4)      As the fort turns into a city and then the forward fortifications are built the requested materials and crafted items will continually shift.

    5)      The zone cycle will require input from harvesters, crafters and adventurers in advancing process loop.

    In a system like this the adventure only players will have plenty of ways to participate through providing resources gathered in combat zones as well as completing combat tasks that allow for crafting task results to manifest.  The range of crafting requests from novice to grandmaster will encourage a large cross section of the crafting community to participate.  The overall process, especially if repeated in a general system sense across the game, could operate as a massive item sync driven by the desire to access raid content.

    • 3 posts
    May 23, 2019 10:01 AM PDT

    I like this idea.. but should it be limited to guild halls and ships?  If I remember the event correctly, in RIFT when they expanded to the first new content (Ember Isle) they had a large crafting event that allowed the portal stone from the faction capitols to the starting area on Ember Isle to be build.  The community of crafters came together and built those portals.   Since there won't be portals in the beginning perhaps the Devs should consider something like that when they decide to add portals or other fast travel to the game.

    • 91 posts
    May 23, 2019 10:11 PM PDT

    It was always fun to complete my own quests using cooperative guild resources and a group. I never cared for guild halls or housing that much necessarily or for things the guild had to build together, but only cared that we did things together...I think the submarine for me would just be a monument to that. I didn't have my own space in a guild hall (Non instanced housing being too much to ask). My guild hall was where my mates were.. neverwinter guild halls had some cool stuff in them, so it was fun to spend time there. Though some systems have strong grindy requirements for upkeep for which I felt I was in a time trap designed to keep me online whether I was having fun or not. More often than not crafting was part of my post-questing fun, like cleaning out my bags or updating my gear. It was something I did alone to work toward goals. For this, I loved EQ2's castleview hamlet where everything was close by even in my own (almost) little quiet corner of the world.  That was the feeling I was going for after the wildness of battle and adventuring, and what I enjoy about crafting.  I should say, I'm biased in that EQ2 crafting was my favorite system.

    In a manner of speaking, as long as Im towing the line instead of the line towing me, contributing to these big projects in a small way could be fun.  Maybe the guild just needs that many more people to build the submarine without a large onus falling on a few?


    This post was edited by Baerr at May 23, 2019 10:19 PM PDT
    • 372 posts
    May 24, 2019 5:51 AM PDT

    Which is the pitfall I've seen happen to some guilds. At the beginning of a project, the guild is so excited. Eventually members lose interest and the majority of the work falls on the few. It can become a chore and, unlike raiding, players aren't motivated by the chance at earning personal gear. In my experience the projects are usually completed but I have often found myself criticizing someone who didn't remain committed or took resources from the project.

    • 223 posts
    May 25, 2019 9:12 AM PDT

    Tigersin said:

    Which is the pitfall I've seen happen to some guilds. At the beginning of a project, the guild is so excited. Eventually members lose interest and the majority of the work falls on the few. It can become a chore and, unlike raiding, players aren't motivated by the chance at earning personal gear. In my experience the projects are usually completed but I have often found myself criticizing someone who didn't remain committed or took resources from the project.

    Vanguard has a nice crafting project mechanic as I recall and you are correct about people losing intrest throughout them.

    • 1785 posts
    May 25, 2019 1:30 PM PDT

    I was trying to think of how different projects could be given meaning both for individuals and groups, to help prevent burnout like Tigersin is mentioning.  Full disclosure:  As a guild leader in games that have these kind of projects, I've found that pacing them is very important, same as raiding.  People need time to work on their own goals too.

    Anyway, here's what I came up with after some brainstorming.

    1) Guild Halls/Houses - The finished building needs to offer some level of convenience for the players or guilds.  In the case of the house, just extra storage and decorating space is probably enough.  In the case of the guild hall, perhaps extra guild vault space beyond what you get from NPC bankers.  If I had my way, both housing and guild halls would be components of a larger player city system which would also enable the construction of public buildings that provide NPC services in that player city - banks, taverns, stables, and so on.

    2) Ships and Vehicles - apart from being cool, these need to provide tangible benefits.  For example, if you can build a wagon, that wagon should be able to carry a lot of stuff (great for moving trade goods between regions).  There should also be content that leverages these items.  If you have ships, you need islands to explore, with interesting and valuable things on those islands.  If you have wagons, the game needs to give you a content reason to use them - for example, delivering relief supplies to the front lines.  Edit, forgot to add link, but it should be on page 1 or 2 of this forum still.

    3) NPC service buildings in (NPC) villages/towns/cities.  Ideally, players building or constructing a service building somewhere should directly affect the NPC services that players have access to.  Build a stable and now you can rent a horse to get to the capital faster.  Upgrade a tavern and the tavernkeep inside gets a better selection of food and drink, or offers a discount.  Ideally, this should tie directly into the Needs idea that I have talked about before - which would mean that even on a mature server, there will always be more work that needs doing.

    4) Fortifications, bridges, and etc.  When constructed, these things need to alter the game world in some way.  The bridge might allow access to a new area.  The fortress might change the population of NPCs in the area or open additional quests or opportunities.  However, there needs to be a provision for these things to get damaged or destroyed over time as well.  Again I fall back on the Needs idea for this.

    5) "Crafting Raids".  Imagine the following:  You and some of your guildmates are out in the wilderness gathering when suddenly, the sky darkens.  All around, hordes of undead begin clawing their way out of the ground, blocking your escape routes out of the zone.  You and most of the others in the zone take refuge in an old ruined fortress, which is somewhere that the waves of undead haven't reached - yet.  Suddenly you notice:  Parts of the fortress are interactable now when they weren't before.  You click on the spot near the gate and see that you, as a crafter, could try to repair the winch mechanism, allowing the gate to be closed to help keep the undead out.  Other spots allow you to shore up gaps in the wall, or even repair some of the old siege engines sitting on top of it.  And there just happen to be a few old crafting stations within the fort as well.  Your reward for doing all this?  A fun adventure with other people in the zone, and maybe if you can deal with the army of undead and stay alive, you can get the doors to the fort's armory open.

     

    Things I don't really like for large-scale crafting projects:

    - Once-and-done projects.  I had fun building wizard spires in EQ2 but when it was done... it was done.  No one ever got to do it again after that.  These sorts of things sound good but the truth of them is that all the people who don't have time commitments in the real world will get to enjoy them, and most others will not.

    - Meaningless projects.  My guild was very proud of the work we put in on our guild hall in Vanguard, but the completed building was little more than a place that just looked interesting.  The housing area was too far off the beaten path to really be useful as a logistical staging area, and the amount of storage granted by the building was not really enough to offset that.


    This post was edited by Nephele at May 25, 2019 1:35 PM PDT
    • 372 posts
    May 25, 2019 2:15 PM PDT

    Good ideas :)   The only one I dislike is crafting halls but housing is interesting... and I might be in love with crafting raids.

    Along that line, I think there should also be Gathering Raids.

     

    A storm passes through a forested zone and after the storm ends, a timer appears for anyone in the zone.  7m 45s Fallen Wood

    For the next 7:45, anyone in the zone can find piles of wood that can be harvested (using the appropriate skill) which essentially make it a short lived 'gold mine' of resources.  

    The Guild Chat goes nuts with people calling all available foresters to get to the zone and gather as much wood as they can in the remaining time.

     

    Something similar can be done in coastal regions, on beaches, where new Ore is revealed for a limited time.  Ideas go on and on in my head. 

     

    Storms chasers. In the event that storms created harvesting hubs, it might give rise to a pseudo-profession for players who wish to be storm chasers.  I would chase storms for these rewards.

    It would take a major project to motivate me of course and that's why I think large scale crafting and large scale gathering fit.

     

    Anyway... yeah.  Fun ideas, Nephele, as always.


    This post was edited by Tigersin at May 25, 2019 3:45 PM PDT
    • 1785 posts
    May 25, 2019 8:49 PM PDT

    Ok.  The weather affecting gathering nodes in any capacity is absolutely brilliant.  I would LOVE to see that happen in game regardless of anything else :D

    • 168 posts
    May 26, 2019 10:51 AM PDT

    I come down on the pro side of this. I disregard previous comments about guild only housing because I don't for one second will ever blame previous games implentation of a "mechanic" as making a mechanic "Bad". Personal housing= yes. Same logic applies to community projects or even faction projects. Again I go back to my starter game of DAoC as examples; While you did not have player crafted ships that I recall, you could (with others) wage battles from the decks. You built much smaller projects such as catapults, rams, and other seige weapons. Granted those were more individual constructs but many folks were doing them at the same time for the purpose of completing a common goal. Repairing a keep was again, multiple people repairing peices and parts of a keep for a common goal.

    These are all community building activities. There are some that wrongfully interprit however what the term "Community " MUST mean. To me, it is simply interacting with others. If those others happen to be in the same guild, it matters not 1 bit to me. Others claim it must entail interacting in a central location with random people outside of a guild. Both are community to me. Projects that are community efforts/creations in either sense are a big plus to a game in my mind. Yes, I will agree they must not exist for the sake of just something to do or build, they must have a legitimate game purpose. Since this is not a sandbox game, it behooves the game developers to implement reasons for being. This does not have to mean just ships, weapons, houses. It could also be clearing out goblins but utilizing crafted goods as mechanics (large scale things built by the community) perhaps the only way to do this is with seige ladders, seige towers, trojan horses, etc.

    I am very much pro community activities in all forms and will never claim it is a faulty idea based on .....some other games method of implentation of an idea or mechanic. I can give the devs credit for looking at bad stuff elsewhere and going on fresh tangents.

    • 1860 posts
    May 26, 2019 11:50 AM PDT

    I like the idea behind large scale crafting projects with one small caveat.  There should be individual benefits along the way as well. 

    In the same way that designing a raid where a few people do everything while everyone else is just  along for the rewards is poor design, designing large crafting projects where a smaller number of players do the majority and a large number of players benefit is also poor design.

    It should be designed in a way that, even if the harvesters/crafters don't intend on completing the large project, there still should be incentives for them to complete various portions of it in order to gain the individual rewards.


    This post was edited by philo at May 26, 2019 11:54 AM PDT
    • 3 posts
    May 26, 2019 3:09 PM PDT

    Nephele said:

     

    5) "Crafting Raids".  Imagine the following:  You and some of your guildmates are out in the wilderness gathering when suddenly, the sky darkens.  All around, hordes of undead begin clawing their way out of the ground, blocking your escape routes out of the zone.  You and most of the others in the zone take refuge in an old ruined fortress, which is somewhere that the waves of undead haven't reached - yet.  Suddenly you notice:  Parts of the fortress are interactable now when they weren't before.  You click on the spot near the gate and see that you, as a crafter, could try to repair the winch mechanism, allowing the gate to be closed to help keep the undead out.  Other spots allow you to shore up gaps in the wall, or even repair some of the old siege engines sitting on top of it.  And there just happen to be a few old crafting stations within the fort as well.  Your reward for doing all this?  A fun adventure with other people in the zone, and maybe if you can deal with the army of undead and stay alive, you can get the doors to the fort's armory open.

     

     

    This sounds and feels very similar to how large scale gathering is in RIFT.  In that game people with high level crafting skills can set off crafting rifts that allow the crafter to obtain rare materials and other items not available off the general garthering nodes.  I like the idea of allowing crafters to use their skills in an event to help the players complete the event

    • 193 posts
    May 29, 2019 7:26 AM PDT

    Tigersin said:

    Good ideas :)   The only one I dislike is crafting halls but housing is interesting... and I might be in love with crafting raids.

    Along that line, I think there should also be Gathering Raids.

     

    A storm passes through a forested zone and after the storm ends, a timer appears for anyone in the zone.  7m 45s Fallen Wood

    For the next 7:45, anyone in the zone can find piles of wood that can be harvested (using the appropriate skill) which essentially make it a short lived 'gold mine' of resources.  

    The Guild Chat goes nuts with people calling all available foresters to get to the zone and gather as much wood as they can in the remaining time.

     

    Something similar can be done in coastal regions, on beaches, where new Ore is revealed for a limited time.  Ideas go on and on in my head. 

     

    Storms chasers. In the event that storms created harvesting hubs, it might give rise to a pseudo-profession for players who wish to be storm chasers.  I would chase storms for these rewards.

    It would take a major project to motivate me of course and that's why I think large scale crafting and large scale gathering fit.

     

    Anyway... yeah.  Fun ideas, Nephele, as always.

    Like this idea a lot. Those lightning strikes in various places might even produce a rare material if gathered soon enough after the storm is gone.

    • 520 posts
    June 13, 2019 10:42 AM PDT

    Love the idea of "gathering events" - I really hope that it'll be implemented in Pantheon, as gathering is one of the activities I like to do in spare time.

     

    As for large-scale crafting projects - it sounds great as long as: 1) this projects are meaningful 2) at least some of the projects are "repetitive" - to prevent the state where every project is crafted and there is really nothing else to do in that regard. Perhaps the project of building a lift that would grant access to previously unavailable part of a mountain - which however would need conservation/rebuilding monthly or even better after some random event - earthquake, goblin sabotage etc.


    This post was edited by Hegenox at June 13, 2019 10:42 AM PDT
    • 1281 posts
    June 29, 2019 10:54 AM PDT

    There is/was a MMO called Horizons (now Istaria) that was suppose to have big group based crafting events where you had to team up to repair a bridge or building. It never happened but it was a neat idea.


    This post was edited by bigdogchris at June 29, 2019 10:54 AM PDT