Crafting, Alchemy, and Item Repair Success

[Mark Shaun Rushow]

I like the idea if there is to be crafting, alchemy, or equipment repair in the game that I have some influence on the results. A very simple and sweet mini game, timing, or rhythm mechanism. I think of something like Legend of Dragoon battle mechanic with timing or Gears of War reload timing or something else entirely. I never liked the idea that the success of thise catagories was based solely on stats and chance. It drives me nuts. If my avatar is supposed to be actually doing the task then I should get some input on the success of the results. The difficulty can be determined by the stats or whether the task can even be attempted at all. But the quality should be my own fault.

 

[Mark Shaun Rushow]

Real simple real quick I'm not talking about candy crush or whack a mole here. I'm thinking a simple meter like in Gears of War reloading try and hit the mark in a maybe one second pass the speed and size of the mark are determined by stats. miss by too much and fail the success. Or Like Tony Hawk balancing mechanic. a simple meter try and keep in balanced within a range the better you do the better the quality. Or a simple timing exercise that lasts maybe 2 or 3 seconds click at just the right time a few times. sweet and simple and allows the player to have input on quality and success vs a dice roll and stats.

 

[Komuflage]

The problem with this is that it's often quite easy to master these mini-games, which in turn would grant you max quality every time.
The witcher 2 had a mini game like this when you were arm wrestling.
And it didn't take long at all before you could master it, and never loose a arm wrestling match.

Then you can talk about balancing it so that it will be to difficult for even skilled player to succeed every time, however, due to the huge gap between a bad and a good player, those with less skills would most likely "Never" be able to "win" the mini game.

 

[malfunction]

I agree with Komuflage, but maybe there could be a compromise. A huge component of this game is the physics, so if they wanted to be super insanely ambitious they could make a physics based system. Of course, this would be insane to create and I'd hardly imagine at the top of their list of features, but it's fun to imagine anyway.

For example, for a blacksmithing or crafting type situation, you'll have all of the tools and ingredients sitting in your inventory, so why not simulate the entire smelting, molding, tempering, and finishing process physically? You literally have to place your raw steel into a furnace to melt it. Then you carefully pour the molten steel into a mold, and leave it to cool. Then you heat it and hammer it repeatedly, forming it out, grind it down on a wheel, then harden it by super-heating it and quenching it. All of this requires timing and understanding of the process so you get the right properties of strength and flexibility. Then you temper the blade to ensure it isn't brittle, and finally add the finishes like the pommel, guard and hilt.

Each step of the process could be done either through the physical environment (literally carrying over the pot of molten steel and tipping it into the mold; moving the blade from the furnace to the quenching chamber), or through UI elements (interacting with an anvil would pop up an anvil UI which you could move the blade around in and click to apply hammer strokes; interacting with a crafting bench would allow you to drag and drop finishes onto the blade). It'd have to be very carefully designed to make sure it's not too tedious and unforgiving, but engaging enough to make it fun, immersive, and very rewarding.

For an alchemy type situation you could interact with all the flasks, tubes, heating, and ingredients physically. Drop some mossy bark, a vial of blood, and some powdered bones into a flask, hold over the heat and wait for it to fizz up, then quickly pour it through a tube filled with barley strands into cauldron containing a lavender based broth and the resulting reaction creates a cauldron full of HEALING SALVE! YEY.

A system like that would rely on experimentation, real world knowledge, and in game dexterity. It'd have to be highly scaleable, so making a crummy bronze sword would be easy, but a chromium-alloyed pattern welded Damascus steel blade with tungsten edge and olive wood grip would be considerably harder. Alchemical creations which you use regularly would have to be trivial to make, but more complex things would require precise timing and lots of understanding of how things interact. Once again, stuff that could not be "beaten", but rather "mastered" through lots of experience.

And I just think going through the strenuous process of physically forging your own sword after multiple failed trials would be so rewarding, and give a real attachment to the weapon. Self-forged items would have to have some kind of noticeable boon if completed masterfully.

Of course, a lot of this is far beyond any kind of expectations I'd have and just imagining the process of developing this is a nightmare. Still, food for thought.

 

[Omenov]

Wow

I agree with Komuflage, but maybe there could be a compromise. A huge component of this game is the physics, so if they wanted to be super insanely ambitious they could make a physics based system. Of course, this would be insane to create and I'd hardly imagine at the top of their list of features, but it's fun to imagine anyway.

For example, for a blacksmithing or crafting type situation, you'll have all of the tools and ingredients sitting in your inventory, so why not simulate the entire smelting, molding, tempering, and finishing process physically? You literally have to place your raw steel into a furnace to melt it. Then you carefully pour the molten steel into a mold, and leave it to cool. Then you heat it and hammer it repeatedly, forming it out, grind it down on a wheel, then harden it by super-heating it and quenching it. All of this requires timing and understanding of the process so you get the right properties of strength and flexibility. Then you temper the blade to ensure it isn't brittle, and finally add the finishes like the pommel, guard and hilt.

Each step of the process could be done either through the physical environment (literally carrying over the pot of molten steel and tipping it into the mold; moving the blade from the furnace to the quenching chamber), or through UI elements (interacting with an anvil would pop up an anvil UI which you could move the blade around in and click to apply hammer strokes; interacting with a crafting bench would allow you to drag and drop finishes onto the blade). It'd have to be very carefully designed to make sure it's not too tedious and unforgiving, but engaging enough to make it fun, immersive, and very rewarding.

For an alchemy type situation you could interact with all the flasks, tubes, heating, and ingredients physically. Drop some mossy bark, a vial of blood, and some powdered bones into a flask, hold over the heat and wait for it to fizz up, then quickly pour it through a tube filled with barley strands into cauldron containing a lavender based broth and the resulting reaction creates a cauldron full of HEALING SALVE! YEY.

A system like that would rely on experimentation, real world knowledge, and in game dexterity. It'd have to be highly scaleable, so making a crummy bronze sword would be easy, but a chromium-alloyed pattern welded Damascus steel blade with tungsten edge and olive wood grip would be considerably harder. Alchemical creations which you use regularly would have to be trivial to make, but more complex things would require precise timing and lots of understanding of how things interact. Once again, stuff that could not be "beaten", but rather "mastered" through lots of experience.

And I just think going through the strenuous process of physically forging your own sword after multiple failed trials would be so rewarding, and give a real attachment to the weapon. Self-forged items would have to have some kind of noticeable boon if completed masterfully.

Of course, a lot of this is far beyond any kind of expectations I'd have and just imagining the process of developing this is a nightmare. Still, food for thought.

Wow what a cool idea! It would take a lot to implement something like this but I would be so interactive! I could see the recipe you found/bought/earned being a page with the process on it and you just follow the instructions so you wouldn't have to know how to forge a weapon in real life but it would also leave some room for interpretation which could end up being the difference of item quality. Like leave in flame until orange if you took it out too early less durability. (Maybe not fair to our color blind friends but they will just have funny looking swords!!) It would sure be a unique new experience In crafting! We could only dream of such a gaming experience...

 

[fluffydino2000]

I think this is an amazing idea and I'm sad that it's taken me this long to read it. Thanks to @Omenov to making me aware of it.

Anyway, as said, probably not a high priority. But, I think that the idea has such great potential, especially in a game like this, that it might be worth pursuing after development as a mod or DLC. I know that the current stance is that the devs want the player to be an adventurer and not a master craftsmen on top of that.

I think the perfect solution to this disagreement in vision is to make it so hard that it isn't worth doing to most people. Have maybe a sub-skill to do with steady hands or something, but beyond that have absolutely no artificial progression. Make it time consuming and not very rewarding. If a player wants to spend an hour making one sword that is terrible and worse that that of every bandits in the land. Let them. It isn't overpowered, it wouldn't detract from the authenticity of characters in general. Only a small handful of characters would be able to make anything half decent and worth using and that could and should take a few hours of patience and skill on their part.

With a physics based game, as discussed in the Item Durability and Repair thread, this game could realistically and un-artificially differentiate between good quality and poor quality equipment. Just by the way the sword swings, how it reacts to collisions, how sharp it is or how heavy it is. All of these traits could easily be translated from how well it is crafted to the final stats of the weapon.

As for being DLC or a mod, I say this because I feel like the ideal way to control such a complex system is through the Razor Hydra or something similar. Since this isn't something a lot of people own yet, it probably isn't best to make it a part of the main game. And probably best to exaggerate to potential customers that crafting is probably going to be a huge waste of time. Just imagine the gameplay trailer for it though, just an hour of watching, waiting and fine motor skills.

 

[turtleman155]

an hour of watching, waiting and fine motor skills.

yep sounds like blacksmithing to me. (except for the hour bit, more like 10)

 

[Fawz]

I think this is an amazing idea and I'm sad that it's taken me this long to read it. Thanks to @Omenov to making me aware of it.

Anyway, as said, probably not a high priority. But, I think that the idea has such great potential, especially in a game like this, that it might be worth pursuing after development as a mod or DLC. I know that the current stance is that the devs want the player to be an adventurer and not a master craftsmen on top of that.

I think the perfect solution to this disagreement in vision is to make it so hard that it isn't worth doing to most people. Have maybe a sub-skill to do with steady hands or something, but beyond that have absolutely no artificial progression. Make it time consuming and not very rewarding. If a player wants to spend an hour making one sword that is terrible and worse that that of every bandits in the land. Let them. It isn't overpowered, it wouldn't detract from the authenticity of characters in general. Only a small handful of characters would be able to make anything half decent and worth using and that could and should take a few hours of patience and skill on their part.

With a physics based game, as discussed in the Item Durability and Repair thread, this game could realistically and un-artificially differentiate between good quality and poor quality equipment. Just by the way the sword swings, how it reacts to collisions, how sharp it is or how heavy it is. All of these traits could easily be translated from how well it is crafted to the final stats of the weapon.

As for being DLC or a mod, I say this because I feel like the ideal way to control such a complex system is through the Razor Hydra or something similar. Since this isn't something a lot of people own yet, it probably isn't best to make it a part of the main game. And probably best to exaggerate to potential customers that crafting is probably going to be a huge waste of time. Just imagine the gameplay trailer for it though, just an hour of watching, waiting and fine motor skills.

I'm all for having crafting in the game, especially if the player has to actively take part in the process instead of just learning recipes and dropping the right amount of ingredients in the right order at a crafting station. As mentioned I don't think it's a crucial aspect to the game and so I fully expect that we won't see development efforts go towards it until after launch.

Having the crafting process be hard, long and require a significant amount of player skill (You need to think and act quickly) as opposed to character skill (It's not about having the right skill points) would make it all the better. However I really don't see how it would be a good idea to have the Devs toil away super hard (they don't seem to incorporate any feature into the game in a half-assed manner) and then design it to not be rewarding and only accessible to a very small portion of players. It would be a big waste of development efforts to incorporate crafting into the game just for the sake of having it available.

I think it's important to strike a right balance by having it take effort to start learning the craft without holding the player's hand but eventually leading to rewarding and satisfying results. It doesn't mean that the best gear in the game would be crafted items but it could lead to interesting ways to influence the game's economy, dynamic quest system or make custom tailored items of equal quality to normal ones but with the specific look you want (Materials, dyes, ect...)

Oh and here's a post by the Devs on the subject of crafting. It's quite old so their view on the subject may have changed though.

Currently we don't have real plans for player crafting beyond perhaps some consumable items. Indeed to include player crafting it would have to be realistic and this may require significant effort and perhaps even a large deviation from the current direction of the game. On the other hand having professional craftsmen within the world produce objects based on player design is something we have explored in much detail.

As a side note we will allow some modification of items both in terms of appearance and function. We'll give more information on this in our upcoming (hopefully soon!) Kickstarter update on equipment.