Crafting systems

barcode

Well-known member
Jun 2, 2020
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old MO crafting systems seemed deep and incredible. After a time, however, it became apparent that only a handful of recipes were very useful. Lets update this for MO2 yes?

materials:
leathers were almost completely useless in MO1. sure newbies could craft some horrible robes out of them but they were too heavy for the protection they offered, making them something that people never used.

woods had a large variety of weights but spongewood was the universal go-to since it was simply so much lighter than all the others. This made it extremely difficult for other materials to compete, to have some compelling use to justify the increased weight.

horn was too heavy and not as hard as the dental materials, making it of little use since the dental materials were better and not exactly scarce.

crepite was the only useful material for bow bellies. It gave such a big str/dmg advantage over other materials that it was silly to use anything else.

scales were mostly ok, they occupied the middle-weight and middle-defense tier for armors and had some interesting properties in a weapon handle. The higher end scales did seem to get a bit overpowered but that came much later in the game.

carapace could only be used in shields and seemed extremely limited in that sense. Shield stats also had no effect for a very long time in MO so there was no point in anything but making the lightest of shields.

stone materials were also a good balance. decent damage, low durability. not too much to complain about there

iron materials were mostly as you'd expect for weapons and armor. ogh did get a little crazy, tho with how time consuming it is to create, its something that shouldnt be seen very often, more of a 'fun for a rainy day' material.

copper alloys were mostly a disappointment. copper itself was extremely useful for sharp weapons, too good really, whereas bron was simply outclassed for everything. Messing was ok for hammers and the like but tindremic messing was almost always too expensive to make and use as it came at the cost of tungsteel.

sliders:
sliders on armor were always either 0% or 100%. there was no compelling reason to go with some in-between amount. If theres going to be sliders, make them more interesting.

sliders on bows were a letdown. There was no sweetspot to them, it was just choose the best materials and set the slider to the appropriate strength requirement.

weapons dont have sliders but maybe there should be a way to customize them as well, more than just choosing the materials and styles. perhaps the balance of the weapon should come into play, where the pommel could act as a counterweight and would need to be sized appropriately via a slider.

alchemy/cooking:
these were incredible to try and explore. Endless combinations did require maintaining a personal spreadsheet of the various materials and a *lot* of testing/research. A bit disappointing that there was no real way to make 'good' HP food and in the end you simply added moosemeat as a one-ingredient solution. A lot of the later ingredients were very overpowered and obsoleted many other ingredients in the process. Materials should be balanced and if that means adjusting existing materials instead of or in addition to adding new ones then consider doing so. Make the system 'good', dont worry so much about invalidating previous player research.

-barcode
 

KermyWormy

Well-known member
May 29, 2020
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California
I agree with pretty much everything here.

I really would like to see them revisit leathers in particular and give them a realistic place however they were most used in weapon and armor historically.

I think textiles were a little weird as well. From a gameplay perspective I think it'd be better for a material to have one strength instead of 2 maybe. And maybe I need to do some research, but would varying types of silk really be at all more useful as an armor backing than leather based or wool based backings? I never thought silks would be so good at preventing piercing damage particularly.

Would it make more sense if low tier mats were like good at 1 type dmg or mitigation and poor at 2 others, then mid tier materials were good at 1 type, avg at another and poor at the 3rd, and then maybe top tier gets you 2 good dmg and mitigation categories while still having that 3rd property as a weakness?

Regardless I think they could at the very least revisit all the material types and make sure they are at least useful to what they were typically used for historically and balance the properties around that.
 

Livingshade

Member
Jul 4, 2020
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so BINARY mate, either material is super OP or is absolute dogshit IS NOT HOW IT WORKS MATE some LEATHERS must have made good heat armor, or the WOODS can make special SHIELDS or something, you just use it WRONG
 

Eldrath

Well-known member
Jun 18, 2020
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the Jungle. Meditating on things to come.
Sounds like a good analysis.

One thing that has me worried is the fact that there are only 5 armour pieces. To me the interesting bit about armourcrafting was optimazing weight, protection and ideally style. The current set up reduces this by a lot.

I mean if it´s about the tradebroker I think there are easier ways of solving that. Like combining all pieces into a "set" item.

Bowcrafting needs lots of love. Dental materials were maybe too plentiful considering how much you´d get from a single animal.

Also make bron great again.
 

Teknique

Well-known member
Jun 15, 2020
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Sounds like a good analysis.

One thing that has me worried is the fact that there are only 5 armour pieces. To me the interesting bit about armourcrafting was optimazing weight, protection and ideally style. The current set up reduces this by a lot.

I mean if it´s about the tradebroker I think there are easier ways of solving that. Like combining all pieces into a "set" item.

Bowcrafting needs lots of love. Dental materials were maybe too plentiful considering how much you´d get from a single animal.

Also make bron great again.
I think its about bank space on 1 toon, ease of gearing up.
 
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Eldrath

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Jun 18, 2020
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the Jungle. Meditating on things to come.
I think its about bank space on 1 toon, ease of gearing up.

My suggestion: Armour set item = 1
Current system = 5
Old system = 11 (pieces + bag)

The only real problem comes in if you want to switch out pieces. But you could just have a UI for that, like a paperdoll opening up when you click the armour set item.

Anyway I´d rather keep the old system and increase the number items in a bank than reduce one of few fun and working crafting professions.
 

barcode

Well-known member
Jun 2, 2020
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while i agree the old system did allow for more customization, at some point it became like micro management. There are now 5 hitboxes and 5 armor slots, one per hitbox, which is fine by me.

I would be more in support for the extra pieces if there was something more exciting about each armor slot. Maybe certain enchantments (yes enchantments) would affect each piece differently. a generic 'speed' enchantment for instance on boots may increase move speed directly, whereas on gloves may give you more dex. maybe on shoulders it would reduce swing times or on the arm it would reduce stamina cost. The point being that the different armor slots would have a separate purpose.

in MO1 theres no real reason for the alternate arm pieces other than to squeeze out the last bit of defense/wt or perhaps as a a way to make your armor set visually different (as in for guild uniforms or the like). imo both are relatively minor bonuses whereas the reduction in pieces is a great benefit for everyone's banks.

that being said, I do agree there should be armor 'sets' that would take up a single slot and unpack into the 5 pieces that could then be equipped.

-barcode
 

Eldrath

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Jun 18, 2020
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the Jungle. Meditating on things to come.
I think the possibility of visual differentiation by individual armour design is important in an roleplaying game where everything you have created at the start of the game is covered in said armour. But hey, let the steel stormtroopers rule. Gonna look super boring.

The amount of variation was part of the interesting complexity of the system. By reducing it you will uncover an unimaginative blunt/pierce/slashing triangle with a difference in material tiers.

Enchantments were already in development (a donation goal afaik). My guess would be if they make a return they are to replace the former variation. So we are gonna be glowing steel stormtroopers.
 
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