Ideas for recreating the crafting system : Text of "The book of Suggestions"

[Dante]

As requested in Devs' meeting on August 16th by other players.
Here's the text of the book I gave to Devs, Which contains suggestions and ideas about remaking the crafting system.

The Book of Suggestions

By "Kingdom of Valour" guild members

Ideas and Suggestions for
Crafting system
(OOC, Top secret, Devs only LOL !)

Durante:

Hello, And thank you for your hard work. Without any hesitation and waiting, Let's talk about the suggestions.

We keep this Brief. In this idea ...

01- There will be no Crafting and Technique books anymore. People can start crafting even in the welcome area if they have the resources and tools.
          Why ? >>> To increase Realism, And to bring it closer to something one can call "the most open world game"
     In real world, you won't put a whole book into your mind to craft something. You may have memorized some techniques and recipes !

02- Crafting skills won't affect What a character can make, But affects How they make it. With a low skill, they might break it into pieces, But also have the chance to make it !
          Why ? >>> To increase Realism.
       No one stops someone who knows nothing about smithing from trying to make a sword. He can try it but ... (go to #3)
03- No one knows how to craft things from the beginning. They must search the library for Player written recipes and technique books, Or they must complete quests with trainers, and listen carefully, So that they will learn the methods of crafting.
          Why ? >>> To increase interaction between players, and yet to increase Realism.
       In a real world, There are different ways to learn something. You can learn it from books, or from trainers, or just ask others and try it on your own, And many other ways.

04- Players can write their own technique and recipe books, and even sell them to others.
Well, Devs might be also thinking of a better way to copy books texts, so that it takes longer, for a better realism. Even printing copies of books in real life take longer than loading a .txt file, which is used to copy books in this game.
By the way, We're not here to talk about writing books !
          Why ? >>> To increase interaction between players, And yet the realism.
       In the real world, People write books, And others read. Books are not needed when you are crafting, They are needed to learn the crafting. Once you know how to do it, You may not need it anymore.

5- What about methods which are in common and use books to separate ? (The main function of crafting books)
For example, With the same method and the same materials, You can craft a shield, a blade or a third thing, Just using three different books.
There are different ways to get rid of this problem, I write two of the best ways, One for a better gaming quality, The other for a speedy / easy development.
5-1- The way of Quality, Is to make changes in crafting methods, Remove and Replace all duplicate methods with new ones, Which are closer to reality ! What the new methods will be ? It can be discussed about with players in forums and or between devs.
5-2- The way of Speed, Is to make some Switches, to choose what kind of thing the player is gonna make, Not what exactly, But just the kind and the family of what it's gonna make. We can put these options and switches somewhere in skills menu.
As an Example, For smithing skills, Some of the options will be "Blade Making" & "Shield Making". When the player switches to "Blade Making" option, What happens in codes and programming, is the same that happens when he equips "The Book of the Blades" in his mind slot. But there's no book to read, It's just an option, letting the game know that he wants to make blades. Those options which conflict cannot be equiped at the same time, Even in different skills. Like if there are options which both have formulas for hammering an ingot, They can't be equiped at the same time, Unless all of their conflicting formulas are the same and make the same thing as result.
The other difference with books here, Is that All of these option are available even in the welcome area. Players don't need to complete boring quests to be able to make things, Quests can be there for learning how to make them. They may want to choose an other way to learn.

Richgar:

   In crafting, combining should have its own steps and duration, where a ratio of corresponding items can be combined with one click. The speed of the combining process would depend on how many sets of items are being combined. This would alleviate skills that require many combining steps such as alchemy or herbal, and make them more enjoyable.

   Food takes effort to make and has value to NPCs, but for players it only has roleplay value. Valuable foods don't offer significant effects when they are eaten.[/font]

[Bonifarzia]

I'm not a team member, and I have not attended the meeting, but I'd like to leave a few comments anyway.

The suggestions do not look very useful to me - encouraging player interaction is good, but you really have to be careful not to kill game-play when the player base is too low for frequent and easy encounters! Also, some "realism" points do not look useful - you always have to keep a difficult balance of realistic, maintainable rules, and FUN to play. The last point is where innovative new ideas are needed. Concerning the books, this is historical decision by design, but hey, what's the real difference to the switch you suggest here? If it is simple and works, then keep it, especially after the efforts to make those books display actual recipes, and not just alphabetical lists of transformation steps. There's one good point in your suggestions: Having skills affect quality and speed, but not what you can attempt to do. This idea has been around for a couple of years. However, and this is the big problem, it will be near impossible to balance such a system in a way that a skill range from 0 to 200 has interesting "rewards" for different levels of mastery. I think players need some goal they can achieve to make training a bit more interesting, especially if the actual practice is that boring and repetitive.

That's all, and thanks for the suggestions 

[koori]

The technique books (more like recipe collections, really) are a good idea but I think the current system can still be optimized. I don't find it logical that when you get a book with more advanced crafting techniques, you can't remember the simpler methods unless you equip that specific book.
Typically you gain access to more advanced books with a higher skill in the corresponding crafting art; why not keep the system where you can unlock recipes as your skill level goes up, but make the books as simple recipe lists that you can consult if you have forgotten them?
In short, once you have the skill level to make a specific recipe, you will be able to do it ad vitam eternam, regardless of whether you have the book on you, as long as you combine the right ingredients. I believe that makes more sense.

There could also be a system of "hidden" recipes, kind of like researching spells by combining glyphs. Then you can write them down and publish them in a book of your own if you want, as Dante suggested.

What do you think?

[CheatCat]

Also check the crafting UI some of the devs was working on.

http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=41889.0

[Dante]

So, I was kinda away for some days !
Sorry there were some problems 
What you said "koori" is exactly one of the goals of our idea here. But there's a problem here :
"once you have the skill level to make a specific recipe, you will be able to do it ad vitam eternam, regardless of whether you have the book on you, as long as you combine the right ingredients. I believe that makes more sense."
Yeah of course it makes more sense, But the problem is sometimes same actions can craft two or more different things based on which book is in your mind slot, Which is why we suggested those "Switch" things !
Or something like that switch to do the job, Like the UI "CheatCat" mentioned. Anything to make it more real.

And you are right "Bonifarzia", "you always have to keep a difficult balance of realistic, maintainable rules".
If the problem is making Rules and Calculations then I take the responsibility. I can do the calculations and make the rules, So if Developers agree and accept we can use it in game. We can even run some tests and debug these ideas.

[Eonwind]

Just a few notes about how the current system implementation. The skill rank is helpful to raise the recipe quality level and to gain access to higher level recipes. Also the needs of different books in the mind slot is not just to oblige players to change the collection but it's required by the engine in order to determine which transformation the player wants to get whenever is crafting. An example: two recipes A and B can produce 2 different results with the same set of ingredients.
salt + water -> recipe D
salt + water -> potion F
The "mind" slot items let the engine understand you want to get the potion F instead of the recipe D.

A few more points that can be of interest for people interested about development:

5- What about methods which are in common and use books to separate ? (The main function of crafting books)
For example, With the same method and the same materials, You can craft a shield, a blade or a third thing, Just using three different books.

We are using common patterns in order to reduce the number of duplicate and improve the DB maintainability. Child patterns are able to display (and make use of) all the transformations and combinations in the parent pattern.

5-1- The way of Quality, Is to make changes in crafting methods, Remove and Replace all duplicate methods with new ones, Which are closer to reality ! What the new methods will be ? It can be discussed about with players in forums and or between devs.

It took a while but we nearly succeeded in eliminating duplicates and now we don't need to rely on them any longer.

[Dante]

It took a while but we nearly succeeded in eliminating duplicates and now we don't need to rely on them any longer.

Really ? By Duplicates I meant to say this >>>

An example : two recipes A and B can produce 2 different results with the same set of ingredients.
salt + water -> recipe D
salt + water -> potion F
The "mind" slot items let the engine understand you want to get the potion F instead of the recipe D.

If these duplicates are really eliminated why not just take those books away ?
And even if we still can't take this switching away, Because as you said ...

The needs of different books in the mind slot is not just to oblige players to change the collection but it's required by the engine in order to determine which transformation the player wants to get whenever is crafting.

There were already some suggestions to replace this Book + Mind Slot method, Which are more real !

5-2- The way of Speed, Is to make some Switches, to choose what kind of thing the player is gonna make, Not what exactly, But just the kind and the family of what it's gonna make. We can put these options and switches somewhere in skills menu.

These switches are gonna work Just as books in mind slots. Yeah lets call them Mind Switches !
When one switches his/her/kra's mind switch to Alchemy it's just like when he puts the Alchemy book in his Mind slot !
There are two differences here,
1- One does not need to carry all these books around and doesn't need to get them through Quests. They already exist and switch-able just as a player joins the game !
2- These switches are not gonna work as Reference books. So the player needs to Memorize the recipes or write them down on his very own recipe book. It makes the game a lot more exciting because players have try to find the recipes on their own, or ask other older players about them, And they can even write and sell or distribute their own recipe books, And it's even more exciting when there might be Fake recipe books written by someone so that the player who reads the books doesn't know if it's gonna work
And besides this >>>

We can put these options and switches somewhere in skills menu.

We can use the mind slot to put these switches if it's gonna be useless after removing crafting books !

[Echoes91]

This looks like an amazing thing to me, the only thing that concerns me a bit is the total removal of crafting techniques books given by NPC. Trainers don't list you all possible recipes during the quest, which means that with the currently small playerbase there's the risk of never finding the recipe you want within reasonable time.

[Dilihin]

Well that risk allready exists with spells, whole community might just miss that one. So why not? =P