Ok so this FIRST part below - I posted before Xmas already, but we have some updates and in reflection it is posted again (with the new info) I suggest anyone thinking of coming back to AoC or anyone already familar with the crafting in AoC to have a read through!

Crafting changes coming (from a few weeks back):

So I have been hanging out on the test server forums the past week or so even more and following the game new Crafting Tzar developer 'Ilaliya', who has been keeping on top in communicating with the community there in relation to plans pencilled in the short and long term future of the game. I would like to post some of his comments as some here may find it interesting as it offers good insight into when these changes come in conjuction with server merges and how FC is covering lots of bases in improving tradeskills in this area.

IIaliya was posting on a thread asking about some loot changes and a bug found. His replies are as follows;

"Again, there was a technical issue with drop rate you are referring to. I won't go into the details, but it has been fixed, and that fix is scheduled to go out with patch 4. (this is now on test server and patched in) As a side note, all the metallurgy recipes (alchemist recipes that make an alloy) are necessary to craft the culture armors and weapons, which are better than same level blues by design. If there is demand for culture items, there will be a demand for the recipe you found.

Specifically about the technical issue above (recent info):

"The bug appears in cases where one mob (or chest) could drop multiple recipes as part of its loot. Note that city items are world/playfield drop loot, which is handled differently and thus not affected. The drop rates for recipes for city weapons and armor will not change.
However, in most of the cases for alchemist, base, and crafted culture recipes a single monster/chest could drop multiple recipes. So while the chance of getting a specific recipe might be low, the cumulative chance of getting some recipe from that monster/chest should be higher, depending on how many recipes are dropped. This was the bug.

In most cases, the fix will cause drop rates for the affected recipes be improved by a factor of 2x or 4x. In a very small number of cases it will be higher."

"Just a note about risk v reward, since malric83 was speaking to that. As an artifact of the current itemization, the "reward" side of the equation is currently limited by the overall power of items in general. We are increasing the item budgets (making items more powerful). That will give us the ability to increase the reward, which in this case is the item's power.

With culture recipes specifically, there are two main considerations with the drop rates. One is the boss giving the drop -- the time necessary to clear the dungeon to that boss, as well as the difficulty of the encounter, which gates accessibility. Risk v reward also ties into server populations (it's harder to find groups on low population servers), and server merges will make content more available to all players. Some of the bosses with culture recipes can be farmed multiple times an hour, with a good group. There's also the desirability of the dungeon absent the recipe -- basically whether non-crafters would ever run that dungeon anyway.

The other component is that culture items should get more powerful (relative to other items, and in real terms) after the item re-balance. Having those the recipes with a high drop rate now would be a gating factor to any potential buff we could give them with the new budgets. The current drop rates of culture item recipes, and recipes for resources needed to make those items, were designed with the expected effects of both the server merges and item re-balance in mind. But the drop rates are not set in stone. The right time to tweak them is close behind the server merges and the item re-balance. There will also be a point where many crafters are set up to start cranking out these items, and there will be a demand for the dependent recipes - weaving, skinning, alchemy, and the base items. What the economy looks like at that time will drive tweaking the drop rates of those component recipes.

Do players want more powerful items that are harder to get, or less powerful items that are easier to get? We made the determination that what the crafting system needs most in the short term is the more powerful items. Long term, yes we need both.

To be perfectly honest, I prefer a mix of random drops and token-like systems. And collect 300 leather is indeed a token system. I think it best to give players a concrete goal they are guaranteed to get (which might be a moderate reward), and then supplement that with rewards on a random drop chance that may be found when working towards the concrete goal. Implementing this won't happen overnight. As frustrated as an armorsmith might be, we also need to improve the game experience for gemcutters and architects, for example. A lot of it comes down to organizing and prioritizing the upgrades to achieve the greatest improvement in the shortest time, and also ensuring every profession is covered.
We are working on gem revamp. I can tell you that stacking cut gems is something that will be investigated as part of the design. Especially because one of the goals is to reduce the number of unique gems (both cut and uncut), and inventory space is a factor in that goal."

About Culture Armor:

"The main pieces (head, chest legs) have 3 inherent mods and 2 gem slots, while the accessories have 4 inherent mods and 1 gem slot. This is how we organized the 2 recipes for each set. Just as a comparison, I'm sure you've noticed by now that a dropped blue will generally have 3 inherent mods (and of course no gem slots).

The accessories don't use base armors, but they do use the new crafted leathers / cloths.
So why only 1 gem slot on the accessories? One of the reasons the gem nerf had to happen was because crafted armor alone granted 24 gem slots. After analyzing it, we felt that was neither a robust system nor particularly interesting. Part of the goal of the planned gem upgrade is fewer, more powerful gems. All new crafted items were created to be compatible with that goal."

About Skinning Craft:

"We have certainly evaluated skinning as a process effect, but there are no plans to go forward with it at this time. This was for a variety of reasons I can't really go into. The new skinning recipes (and for that matter, weaving) were introduced to give players who invested time in obtaining those feats something useful to create that is consumed elsewhere in the system. I can't really go into details about future plans, other than major upgrades to skinning (and I see any sort of skinning 'process' as a major upgrade) will definitely have to wait until architects and gemcutters get their first round of improvements. And maybe until after other professions, such as alchemist, get their second round of improvements. But we're still looking at minor upgrades to skinning in the short term."

About Gem Crafting:

"As for gemcutters, they should be one of the next professions to see major treatment. We feel gemcutters suffer from similar issues that had afflicted alchemists, which for that profession resulted in the massive change to alchemist mats and recipes in patch 3. Simply put, there are too many gems in general, as well as too many gems that have effects of dubious usefulness. And it's clear that players feel the random element absolutely compounds those issues. We are evaluating some drastic changes to gem mechanics that I think players will be very pleased with. I plan to go into detail for that in a stickied post when the time is right. "

Update:

Gathering Alchemy Resources: (In patch on TestLive)

The current update is update 1.04:

Ilaliya
Tradeskill Czar

One of the back-end changes we made for update 1.04 was a complete data reorganization of how alchemy resources are dropping off monsters. Note this change itself does not affect which monsters were dropping which resources. The reorganization merely gives us better information and control over the drop rates. The original system was organized in a way which made tradeskill resource drop behavior prone to "Age of Resource" situations (cotton, and more recently Aqua Regia). It was also difficult to finely tweak drop-rates so greens drop like greens, and blues drop like blues. This issue became apparent after elevating the status of certain resources in Update 1.03, and the streamlining of alchemy resources in general. And as we move forward with new crafting content, it becomes increasingly necessary to enforce certain ratios between power tiers of tradeskill resource, which is used to fulfill the intended costs of recipes. And also that all resources within a given power tier are dropping to the same degree. Note that Aqua Regia, the first blue alchemy resource, is now being used in update 1.04.

What this means in 1.04 is that alchemy resource drop rates should make more sense in general. If two particular monsters of the same type drop the same resource, we have tuned the amounts so the name or rarity might give clues as to which monster has the higher drop rate. This sort of fine tuning was difficult under the old organization (especially in cases where a resource could be obtained through a cache and off the monster directly), due to tracking reasons that should no longer be an issue. Also, we've made it easier to identify and fix unbalanced drop rates before they crop up. This data reorganization was not applied to cloth and leather, but this is should happen next if everything goes as planned.

We have extensively reviewed this change, but nothing beats real players giving feedback after doing real behavior. Also, remember alchemy recipes have been producing their items in bulk since patch 1.03, which gives each individual resource more inherent value. What players should see on TestLive is that alchemy resources that were dropping too infrequently have had their drop rates increased overall, and resources that were dropping too often have had their drop reduced overall. This is relative to other resources of the same power tier (color). However, there were far more resources that were dropping too frequently (such as Wolf Meat) than too infrequently (such as Ebony Venom).

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Acidbaron
Are these changes already on testlive or is it something that still has to be patched in?

These changes should already be on Testlive.

Quote:
I hope Aqua Regia is used in something 'consumable', knowing people have stocked up alot of those, however it's good to hear that the drop rate was -abnormal-, am i right to assume that this change should make other blue items 'more common' in comparison to how it is on live ofcourse?
I was wondering if you could verify or debunk this 'rumor' surrounding Aqua Regia and that is, that if a mob drops Aqua Regia it also has a chance to drop a recipe.

I'm not quite sure where that rumor comes from. It's true that all mobs that could drop Aqua Regia could also drop City Recipes, but that's only because City Recipes are world drops. But it's not like Aqua Regia was a "placeholder." To answer your other question, Aqua Regia is used in the gem solvent recipe we announced for Patch 1.04, and that item does get consumed with each gem "dissolved." That recipe is in preparation for the gem revamp, since we felt it was necessary to give players the ability to desocket existing gems. (Yes, the gems are destroyed). We expect there to be a big market for the gem solvent.

Quote:
Also Will this 'change' for resources only affect drops or will it also be so that Nushadir Salt what is obtained from basalt becomes less common?

Only resource drops off monsters. Resource drops off nodes are untouched by the change, since tweaking drops off nodes was never problematic. However, they may be tweaked separately here and there as we get more live data back, since it was a mechanic we introduced very recently (Patch 1.03).

Quote:
On the subject of Alchemy Resources, could you look into adding daggamalt to some more higher level mobs as right now they only seem to drop 'often' in level 60(roughly) villas.
Making Health pots rather rare to very rare, I am certain that you can say "you can farm them off all level 60 mage and priest mobs"(What still makes them a rather rare drop) the problem with this 'solution' is that you're forcing higher level players to farm lower level mobs and therefor ruining someones game experience with the upcoming server merges this will only get worse.

This is a pretty subtle point, and something we have been working to address. Another change that was done for patch 1.03 (which you may or may not have been aware of) was expanding the possible drop ranges of all tradeskill resources. This was because we felt the old drop ranges, which were just within the same tier, were too narrow. For example, Wild Dagga can drop up to a level 74 monster and this has been the case since 1.03. Of course, it can also drop off a level 50 monster and serious farmers will find the lowest possible mob for maximum kills/hour. So we feel that increasing the range of daggamalt so it can drop above level 74 isn't the solution to the underlying challenge of how to encourage the desired behavior.

There are two things we are doing in the general sense to address the issue. The first is giving monsters in the Resource and Building playfields a slightly better drop rate (I stress slightly here). This was intended for 1.03, but only with this data reorganization in 1.04 will it happen to any real degree. This goes back to reasons for the change. Thus, over long periods of time it will be more efficient to farm alchemy resources in one's guild city instance. Hopefully this will minimize farmers of low-level resources ruining other people's game experiences. The second thing is releasing new recipes for higher level potions, which will happen either with the item rebalance or shortly afterward. With that change, there should be less of a reason to farm the lower level resources because the higher level pots will exist, and be more desirable.

In reply to a poster called Coffey asking questions:

01-02-2009,
Ilaliya
Tradeskill Czar

Coffey,
First off, Happy Holidays to you Wanted to address some parts of your post here.

Quote:
Resource Zone design is very poor for alchemical ingredients and it has nothing to do with droprates.

There is indeed something to this statement, but I think it's over-simplifying the situation. Just to get it out of the way, the drop rates needed to be fixed. There were a couple of weird issues that kept cropping up in game, such as the "Age of X resource" situations. And in general that resource drop rates in many cases just didn't make sense -- and this was fairly clear to players. Historically these issues would get solved as we found them, but we strongly suspected they were just symptoms of something larger.

So we started going through the underlying drop organization with a fine tooth comb. By drop organization I mean the implementation of which mob drops which resource at what rate, and how we track everything. When we compiled a big-picture view that encompassed every resource and all the different ways it could appear on any given mob's loot table (much easier to do after streamlining alchemy), we realized the current organization was very much prone to obscuring information that we, as designers, need to know when modifying resource drops. This in turn caused behavior in game to differ from the intended design. So drop rates needed to be fixed (tradeskills depend on alchemy drops occuring at certain rates), as well as how we organized our information. This was a must. You can't build a house on a shaky foundation.
To get back to the statement, there's kind of a dichotomy going on.

Conan was not conceived to be a game about picking flowers. Yet we launched with alchemy which uses flowers that players must somehow obtain. We also have gathering zones which are also the building zones, and the same maps are used for the border kingdoms. They're simply not laid out for PvE as the primary consideration. Yet PvE is how you gather alchemy resources. Back in 1.03 we revamped all the camps in those zones to accommodate alchemy resource gathering. But the PvE can never be like the cannibal caves, since the cannibal caves exist for a single reason, while the resource and building playfields have to consider many, many factors.

We're looking at specific ways to make gathering alchemy resources in the R&B playfields more compelling, but the first step of course is to fix all the drop-rates, and the underlying drop organization, so we have a valid data point.

Quote:
For me at least, widening the drop ranges exacerbated the problem, not helped me.
It also didn't really fix anything.

I would disagree that nothing was fixed. We found a lot of players were frustrated that they were doing level-appropriate content and couldn't get the resources they wanted for their green alchemy quests. Also, there were many cases where there would be a very limited number of camps in the game of the appropriate mob type and level to drop a white resource that shouldn't have been rare. The obvious solution is to add more camps, which we did in the R&B playfields for patch 1.03, but there wasn't enough zones in the game to accomodate new camps to give appropriate coverage for every resource drop at the old level ranges. We felt a better solution was a combined approach -- add new camps, and loosen the drop range.

Quote:
Overall, I certainly feel that the Crafting system needs to take more notice of the game around it rather than tweaking droprates and databases to achieve it's goals.

We agree, and I think the crafting system has been on this path beginning with the changes that went live for 1.03. For example, we streamlined alchemy because of the game around it. With patch 4, we're introducing new PvP resources and adjusting the city building order to allow players to get the workshops first in the order. And we have much more planned, such as upgrading gem-cutting.

However, we still need to tweak drop rates when they're broken, and fix underlying issues. "Taking notice of the game"-type improvements need to all be balanced, and this depends on having well-organized data and the fundamentals right. By fundamentals I mean the crafting system taking notice of itself, which is obviously necessary to match the degree we want to increase the ties between Tradeskills and the rest of the game.

Some examples from patch 1.03 would be: Giving skinning and weaving feats a purpose, introducing new kinds of armor and weaponsmithing recipes. And tying the various tradeskills together in interesting and compelling ways, such as the alloys and gathering recipes from patch 1.03, and the new gem solvent in 1.04. These are the sorts of fundamentals we need in place in order to really tie in crafting to the full game experience, any allow for meaningful player choices and an overall fun experience as a crafter within Age of Conan. Just as a note I would consider meaningful player choice and a fun game experience as the key big-picture target areas moving forward.

Coffey, on a completely unrelated note I read a post where you were talked about changing the existing system for tradeskills v. building on top of it. I'm really of two minds on this one.

To be honest, our quest-driven tradeskill progression system has maybe one thing really going for it: it works. It does the job. We analyzed a complete revamp of tradeskill progression at the end of summer in 2008 to specifically make tradeskill progression more a part of the game as a whole, and we were left with a clear choice - do we redo existing content that works, or do we streamline and fix that existing content in order to focus our efforts on new content with new mechanics.

Keep in mind the gem-revamp is going to see all new gems, and the itemization re-balance in general is going to require new progression items for Armorsmith and Weaponsmiths. The exact degree to which the quests will change has not been determined, due to a couple of unknowns. But I can can say there will probably be some stream-lining involved. Certainly with gem-cutters, because there will be less gems.

On possibility of New Feats coming + progression:

I'm not going to go into details, but at some point we will introduce new feats for the existing professions. As this is how progression is defined for tradeskills in Age of Conan, and MMOs are certainly about progression. The groundwork is being laid for this now, and an informed player should be able to make some reasonable guesses as to how the existing tradeskill professions will branch out given the content that was released in 1.03 and what is scheduled for 1.04. It is this continuing player advancement, over revamping the existing advancement mechanics (how players obtain feats now), which is where we feel our energies are best spent.

On Level 80 Crafted Armor:

Quote:
Originally Posted by kluster81
I'm wondering whats going to happen to the level 80 crafted armors when the gemcutting gets re-balanced as 3 gem slots, surely,might be too imba :P

We're evaluating a couple of options. Obviously, all new progression armors (the ones with the 3 slots) will have to be changed so they work with the new gems. This will mean a slot reduction. How to deal with armors already out there is a bit trickier. We have a very promising solution candidate, and I'll make sure to include whatever decision we go with in the announcement that contains the rest of the gem changes. That should give enough time to take feedback into consideration.

On when more Gem changes will be appearing:

Quote:
Originally Posted by heruel
Just one question if you can answer it
Is this Gem change (and also item rebalance) at the moment scheduled for 1.04, for a next 1.05 patch or more ahead in a future patch?
 

It's certainly not for 1.04, which is already on test-live. I can't give any details as to the whens of the item rebalance (and the gem changes which depend on the rebalance being in place), but it is currently a major priority and focus for the relevant teams. I don't expect the priority to shift until it's complete, but that level of direction is far above the scope of crafting.

On Harvesting and the Nodes at 0% / 100% :

Quote:
Originally Posted by engrav0
They don't start out at 100% because the system can be exploited far too easily.
Think about how easily it would be to get a group together, run through an instance of Poitain, clear out ALL the Basalt. Then, everyone steps into TR, then back and it is full again.

I seem to recall reading elsewhere something about Gold Farmers or something that they could easily exploit the system.

What I would prefer to see to everything starting at 100%, is to see everything start at 0%, and build up as it currently does. HOWEVER, if every player leaves that instance, it stays active for a preset amount of time. Something like 1 hour, or even 4 hours. Something to give people a chance to go quest, then return, restart the clock, and go back to questing.

You've very accurately described the reason why harvesting nodes start at 0% instead of 100%. Now on to your suggestion. Currently, if you are the last person to leave an adventure playfield, after a set amount of time (couple of minutes), the server shuts down the playfield. This is a server optimization to prevent a situation where we have a large number of instances alive that nobody is playing in. I believe what you are suggesting is increasing the time an empty instance stays alive. In this case, server efficiency is the trump card.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Axil
server efficiency should not be a concern when we're talking about keeping one instance of a zone open. I don't think there's going to be any significant impact on performance if before a zone shuts down, it checks to see if it's the last zone of it's type, and if it is, waits an hour to do so.

But it isn't just the last zone of its type. For example, there are many, many copies of the Resource and Building playfields to support guild cities. Think about what would occur if every one of those instances were left alive for an hour longer than necessary, as many players gather in their guild city instance. Everything that happens in those instances (think stuff like monster AI) takes server resources.

On city building:
(which would address community concerns (from survey) at least most in this area)

Didek
Age of Conan Developer
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After building the keep of each tier you'll have the choice to build 4 buildings:
- Thief's Guild
- Alchemist Tower
- Armor smith
- Weapon smith
The first two buildings are required to build a Library. The second two buildings are required to build the Barracks. Both the Library and the Barracks are required to build the Temple. The Trade post requires the Temple. Once the trade post is build it's possible to build the Architect Workshop. Once all the buildings are build you can upgrade the keep to the next tier as before.
This should make it somewhat easier for players to get the tier 3 profession buildings while the difficulty to build a complete tier 3 city remains unaffected.
You will be able to build any of the four tier 3 tradeskill buildings even if you have already build some buildings that got moved later in the chain. The requirements to build them is the tier 3 keep and the tier 2 versions of the same buildings.

Ilaliya
Tradeskill Czar
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Let me give a little background on this change.
First off, we feel that being able to craft level 80 blue items has historically been too difficult. Given that, we want to adjust the barrier of entry for crafting city and progression items. As a side note, crafted culture items balance the availability of their recipes and mats to offset the hard work put in to make the workshops required for the city item equivalents. These types of balance adjustments are necessary as part of comprehensive crafting changes. But even still, crafting city recipes (especially at level 80) required an effort out of line with blue items they produced.

Part of the challenge is that, at present, the two driving game factors for guild city building have been access to crafting workshops, and getting the tier 3 keep in order to fully participate in massive PvP. Acidbaron's comment is accurate in the sense that making it easier to get the workshops built (even without touching building costs) will be a nerf to guilds that managed to build all the existing building requirements for the workshops.

However, this is simply due to the fact that at present there are no real rewards for getting those other buildings. This is a different issue, and one we will be addressing.

Here is maybe a more useful way to think about it:
Considering we have a building order, buildings "later" in the order should confer more powerful rewards. If the workshops to craft blues (weaponsmith, armorsmith, etc) are near the end of the building order, it means all possible rewards for buildings earlier in the chain would have to be less compelling than crafting blue gear. In that sense, absent a change in the build order, we would be severely restricting our options for rewarding guilds that spent the time to make the other buildings. To give one example, if the last buildings in the chain were the present workshops, there would be no (different) buildings we could use to be required to craft epics. The optimal solution we worked out to be able to meet the challenges of new content in the future, is to change the building orders. Patch 1.04 is the timeframe we identified that was best suited for this change.

And remember, nothing that goes on TestLive is set in stone. Part of the reason for publishing these changes early in the process is to obtain feedback from you guys.

On Guild Bonuses:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tarkadahl
Many thanks, as usual, Ilaliya for your replies. As always you have hinted on certain things which I'm finding intriguing...

E.G. Take two guilds: Guild A and Guild B.

Guild A makes a Tier 3 keep and builds the necessary buildings to crafter the current L80 City Armour.
Guild B does the same but also builds a Weaponsmith and an Alchemy building.
Are you therefore implying that there could be a possibility that Guild B will have access to FURTHER recipes / facilities than Guild A would have at that point?

Not quite sure I'm clear on what you mean. So let me rephrase the response a little bit.
So lets assume Guild A got the tier 3 armorsmith building last month. In order to do this, they had to build the tier 3 versions of: Keep, Tradepost, Temple, Libary, Barracks, Thieves's Guild, Weaponsmith. This is the existing build order.
After these changes, Guild B also wants the tier 3 armorsmith building. They just build the armorsmith directly after building the tier 3 keep. This is from the new build order.
With future updates, Guild A will have access to rewards better than just the ability to craft level 80 blue armor. This is because the ability to craft level 80 blue armor has been moved from near the "end" of the build order, to the beginning. And guilds can choose between armorsmith, weaponsmith, thieves guild, and alchemy to build first, as these have been put all on the same level.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Acidbaron
I hope these 'future' additions will not take a life time to be deployed on the live servers as i still find you're now forcing thru a complete change on the players end with only half of the content additions and reworks done on the developer and coders end, as you and i both know i wouldn't make an issue from this if the current buildings got a boost and i can respect that these things require more time now with the upcoming itemisation changes.

To address "boosting the current buildings":

Part of the upcoming re-balance entails laying the groundwork necessary, not just to better the itemization, but to be able to improve all aspects of what contributes to overall character power. This certainly includes feats granted from city buildings, and that is planned to happen as part of the re-balance update. The new rewards granted by city buildings (I use reward in a general sense to include buffs, but also include other things) are of course balanced against the magnitude of the achievement of making that building, which is ultimately tied to the build order. So getting a build order which supports our planned features and improves the usefulness of existing features, is the first step. Again, we feel that crafting blue items should not be the "ultimate" reward of building a city at a given tier, rather it should be one of the first rewards. This also allows us to make the later rewards more meaningful (to use my previous example, such as crafting epics).

Note that since we are not changing the cost of any buildings for player cities, or changing (overall) what it costs to complete a given tier, no guild will have "wasted" work.

Crafting Notes for Patch 1.04 ( for now!)

TRADESKILLS
* The minimap will now update a resource node's icon if it is being used by a player.
* The result items of tradeskill recipes now display a stack size if they produce more than one item.
* You should now always see the correct "Tradeskills" category for quests in your quest journal.
* Black Soulstaff, Mottled Cane, and Stygian Deathcoil Vesture recipes items should teach you the correct recipes.
* When removing/unlearning tradeskills, other feats/spells will not be affected anymore.
* Chopping wood should now take the same amount of time as other harvesting skills.
* If you unlearn a tradeskill, the cooldown will always be removed.
* New Woodcutter recipes are now dropping from the following bosses: Vanir Shaman, Diabolist Aino, Metir-Phumon, Occultist Codril-Kau, Crazed Troglodyte Chief, and Atzel General.
* Gemcutting: You should now always have your quest update, without zoning first, after creating a gem. You should also always be able to create gems without zoning first.
* Weaponsmith: Moonsteel Steel Dart goal name is now Moonsteel Throwing Knife.
* Fixed an issue that was causing base, culture and alchemist recipes to drop less than the intended rates."
* Inventory icons for dropped recipes have been upgraded.
* Cleaned up a few minor cases where alchemy mats removed in update 3 were dropping when they shouldn't have.
* Fixed dropped rates of some tradeskill resources that were dropping too frequently.
* Some recipes were not properly requiring the following resources: "Ebony Venom" "Tincture of Bergamot" "Tincture of Mint." The correct recipes now require these materials.
* A new recipe is now dropping in Xibaluku. It allows alchemists to craft a potion that players may use to dissolve socketed gems, destroying the gem but freeing the slot.

* Reevaluated drop rates of all Tradeskill Resources.

Player Cities
The order of the Player City buildings has been adjusted. This should make it easier for players to get the trade skill buildings while the overall difficulty of getting a full tier 3 city should remain the same. We have also introduced an element of player choice, where players can choose which of the tradeskill buildings to build first.
(This change was supported by code changes in the Dec 9th downtime, but the change itself is estimated to be included in Update 1.04).

So there we have a pretty good idea of the direction Crafting will be headed over the next couple months. Player Housing is something that only has marginally been talked about. It never was an aim for the game or a "missing feature" the dev's has taken plenty of feedback in this area from open discussions on the test server forums. I will update as and when more info on that side of things comes through.

If anyone has any questions I'll try best to answer them.

Ahh I missed off: again from IIaliya the Crafting Dev:

PvP Resources

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Hello!

I wanted to briefly take the time to expand a little bit on what was mentioned in the preview update notes for 1.04 about PvP resources. Here's what was said in the notes:

* Resource items will now have a chance of dropping in PvP. These will be PvP Resource items (a new mechanic introduced in Update 1.04). More info to follow...

PvP Resources Overview:

PvP resources originate from resource nodes in the Border Kingdoms, Cimmerian End. There are 12 PvP resources being released with update 1.04. These resources are used to create new building materials for all tiers of Battlekeeps. The recipes to craft the new materials, learnable by architects, drop from chests also found in Border Kingdoms, Cimmerian End. The resources themselves, and the materials, may drop in PvP. This also means a player carrying these items has a chance to lose them to another player.

This is a first step down the road to making PvP more meaningful in larger world conflict terms. As these PvP resources are also used to repair damaged Battlekeeps, we fully expect and encourage world conflicts to spill over to the Border Kingdoms, since preventing an enemy guild from repairing or upgrading their Battlekeep is a perfectly valid tactic to prepare for taking it down. This is a change from the current system, where the standard city building resources gathered in adventure zones and resource & building playfields, are used to construct Battlekeeps.

Consequence System:

As a reminder, the consequence system is disabled for the Border Kingdoms. This will prevent all players from safely harvesting from the new nodes without risk of PvP. Note this feature does not make any changes to how PvP XP is obtained.

The PvP resources, and building materials, may drop from PvP anywhere in the game. However, outside the Border Kingdoms they will only drop from players that give PvP XP. Additionally, murders have twice the chance to drop these items.

Future Plans:

Moving forward, we are exploring additional ways to tie in PvP resources to other areas of crafting and the game economy, sometime after the initial launch of this system. As the PvP resources, and the recipes to make the building materials all originate in Border Kingdoms, Cimmerian End, the other Border Kingdoms - Aquilonian End, and Border to Kush - will likely see other PvP mechanics later down the line.

Very interesting!

I think its BS that they are just making small changes to the crafting system based on things they will do way down the line, why not just remove crafting all together until they can release a complete system that works, whats up with all this piece meal crap... 

The core crafting system is not changing... plus the the risk vs reward for getting recipes and the rare materials required to make them is crap compared to how easy it is to quest to get comparable gear.

Their system is completely out of whack and from what I read they have no plans to change it.  Crafting is going to still be boring and the recipes you get still cost to much to make, so forget trying to run a crafting business, well unless you like spending 4-5 hours harvesting materials to make a item that you can only get maybe 75 silver for. 

Originally posted by monoth

I think its BS that they are just making small changes to the crafting system based on things they will do way down the line, why not just remove crafting all together until they can release a complete system that works, whats up with all this piece meal crap... 

The core crafting system is not changing... plus the the risk vs reward for getting recipes and the rare materials required to make them is crap compared to how easy it is to quest to get comparable gear.

Their system is completely out of whack and from what I read they have no plans to change it.  Crafting is going to still be boring and the recipes you get still cost to much to make, so forget trying to run a crafting business, well unless you like spending 4-5 hours harvesting materials to make a item that you can only get maybe 75 silver for. 

 

 

Name an MMO where crafting isn't boring besides FFXI?

And these changes, along with the changes to the games itemization, are going to be huge and will make crafting a more profitable biz. The city armors/weapons are already better than what can be found questing, and the system will make that even more evident.

Edit: Of course, if you are in a guild that does raids more than 2x a week it may be "easier" to farm the armor, but most players aren't in these types of guild and the culture armor is already t.5.

Originally posted by xpiher

Originally posted by monoth

I think its BS that they are just making small changes to the crafting system based on things they will do way down the line, why not just remove crafting all together until they can release a complete system that works, whats up with all this piece meal crap... 

The core crafting system is not changing... plus the the risk vs reward for getting recipes and the rare materials required to make them is crap compared to how easy it is to quest to get comparable gear.

Their system is completely out of whack and from what I read they have no plans to change it.  Crafting is going to still be boring and the recipes you get still cost to much to make, so forget trying to run a crafting business, well unless you like spending 4-5 hours harvesting materials to make a item that you can only get maybe 75 silver for. 

 

 

Name an MMO where crafting isn't boring besides FFXI?

And these changes, along with the changes to the games itemization, are going to be huge and will make crafting a more profitable biz. The city armors/weapons are already better than what can be found questing, and the system will make that even more evident.

Edit: Of course, if you are in a guild that does raids more than 2x a week it may be "easier" to farm the armor, but most players aren't in these types of guild and the culture armor is already t.5.

Well it is all about the reward. If you crafted item look and is uper enough, it makes the whole thing just so much more rewarding. The changes up here are definitely huge and will restruckture the economy quite a bit when it comes to crafted items and trade resources.

Originally posted by monoth

I think its BS that they are just making small changes to the crafting system based on things they will do way down the line, why not just remove crafting all together until they can release a complete system that works, whats up with all this piece meal crap... 

The core crafting system is not changing... plus the the risk vs reward for getting recipes and the rare materials required to make them is crap compared to how easy it is to quest to get comparable gear.

Their system is completely out of whack and from what I read they have no plans to change it.  Crafting is going to still be boring and the recipes you get still cost to much to make, so forget trying to run a crafting business, well unless you like spending 4-5 hours harvesting materials to make a item that you can only get maybe 75 silver for. 

They are never going to remove the whole crafting system and start from scratch because that would be like admitting failure.

But yea, crafting is totally useless in AoC. it's just one of those Funcom design consepts that I just don't understand. Everyone can see crafting sucks the first second they try it. Why didn't Funcom change crafting years ago when it was just an idea in paper?

Originally posted by finnishguy

Originally posted by monoth

I think its BS that they are just making small changes to the crafting system based on things they will do way down the line, why not just remove crafting all together until they can release a complete system that works, whats up with all this piece meal crap... 

The core crafting system is not changing... plus the the risk vs reward for getting recipes and the rare materials required to make them is crap compared to how easy it is to quest to get comparable gear.

Their system is completely out of whack and from what I read they have no plans to change it.  Crafting is going to still be boring and the recipes you get still cost to much to make, so forget trying to run a crafting business, well unless you like spending 4-5 hours harvesting materials to make a item that you can only get maybe 75 silver for. 

 

They are never going to remove the whole crafting system and start from scratch because that would be like admitting failure.

But yea, crafting is totally useless in AoC. it's just one of those Funcom design consepts that I just don't understand. Everyone can see crafting sucks the first second they try it. Why didn't Funcom change crafting years ago when it was just an idea in paper?

crafting at its core is no different than WoW's crafting at its core. The difference between the two is the amont of things a person can craft and the value of the item. The only thing that AoC currently needs to change now is the value of the crafted item, which is being implemented in the next couple of patches (after mergers and the patch on the test server)

Nice changes are coming, can't say I'm looking forward to it, because of the slow development of the game I quit. I'd be very thrilled by these changes if I were still playing, as an alchemist I really wanted this 1.04, damn. However, as long as you are able to craft a sword out of thin air the crafting system will always be a joke. In WoW you at least have to be beside an anvil or a forge.

Originally posted by Krewel

Nice changes are coming, can't say I'm looking forward to it, because of the slow development of the game I quit. I'd be very thrilled by these changes if I were still playing, as an alchemist I really wanted this 1.04, damn. However, as long as you are able to craft a sword out of thin air the crafting system will always be a joke. In WoW you at least have to be beside an anvil or a forge.

FFXI must have a joke crafting system too then?

AmazingAvery,

Really nice stuff there!

Good that they are improving the game more and more, really nice.

Originally posted by DaveTT

 

AmazingAvery,

Really nice stuff there!

Good that they are improving the game more and more, really nice.

nice sarcasm there

Originally posted by monoth

Their system is completely out of whack and from what I read they have no plans to change it.  Crafting is going to still be boring and the recipes you get still cost to much to make, so forget trying to run a crafting business, well unless you like spending 4-5 hours harvesting materials to make a item that you can only get maybe 75 silver for. 

 

 

If you had read the above there are big plans to change it there. It is obvious you didn't read it or take it in properly.

If I spent 4-5 hrs harvesting I will earn at least 5 gold. I know been there many times. Have you ever harvested that much? Do you know what city materials go for?

You can make a killing out there from some things. Did you read about the changes to Alchemy? you know how much dosh you can make from that? shit loads now.

This update: * Players can now desocket/delete gems in their items by opening the info view of the item and using the shift-rightclick menu on a gem. Desocketing will require a potion crafted by an alchemist. The recipe for this item drops in Xibaluku.
With patch 1.04 is going to make some real rich.

Originally posted by xpiher

Originally posted by monoth

I think its BS that they are just making small changes to the crafting system based on things they will do way down the line, why not just remove crafting all together until they can release a complete system that works, whats up with all this piece meal crap... 

The core crafting system is not changing... plus the the risk vs reward for getting recipes and the rare materials required to make them is crap compared to how easy it is to quest to get comparable gear.

Their system is completely out of whack and from what I read they have no plans to change it.  Crafting is going to still be boring and the recipes you get still cost to much to make, so forget trying to run a crafting business, well unless you like spending 4-5 hours harvesting materials to make a item that you can only get maybe 75 silver for. 

 

 

Name an MMO where crafting isn't boring besides FFXI?

And these changes, along with the changes to the games itemization, are going to be huge and will make crafting a more profitable biz. The city armors/weapons are already better than what can be found questing, and the system will make that even more evident.

Edit: Of course, if you are in a guild that does raids more than 2x a week it may be "easier" to farm the armor, but most players aren't in these types of guild and the culture armor is already t.5.

SWG had a better crafting system, hell even Vanguard had a better crafting system...

And people have already shown in the AOC forums that the city/cultural recipes slight increase of stats of 0.1 don't do crap in battle...   In some cases they give you better stats in certain area but worse stats in other areas, so it ends up being a wash compared to world drops...  

The reason crafting will never matter is because Funcom has designed this game around loot, there not going to screw up the incentive to do dungeons multiple times by giving you better crafted or equal crafted items, if they did then they would actually have to give us more content as nobody would run dungeons multiple times anymore.

Whenever you have a MMO without decay, crafting will never matter.

BTW, Culture Armor is not T5 armor, its set between T0 and T1 gear but its closer to T0 gear then it is to T1 raid gear.

Originally posted by DaveTT

 

AmazingAvery,

Really nice stuff there!

Good that they are improving the game more and more, really nice.

If by 'improving' you mean they are charging people to play the game while they finish *initial development*, then yeah.

Originally posted by monoth

Originally posted by xpiher

Originally posted by monoth

I think its BS that they are just making small changes to the crafting system based on things they will do way down the line, why not just remove crafting all together until they can release a complete system that works, whats up with all this piece meal crap... 

The core crafting system is not changing... plus the the risk vs reward for getting recipes and the rare materials required to make them is crap compared to how easy it is to quest to get comparable gear.

Their system is completely out of whack and from what I read they have no plans to change it.  Crafting is going to still be boring and the recipes you get still cost to much to make, so forget trying to run a crafting business, well unless you like spending 4-5 hours harvesting materials to make a item that you can only get maybe 75 silver for. 

 

 

Name an MMO where crafting isn't boring besides FFXI?

And these changes, along with the changes to the games itemization, are going to be huge and will make crafting a more profitable biz. The city armors/weapons are already better than what can be found questing, and the system will make that even more evident.

Edit: Of course, if you are in a guild that does raids more than 2x a week it may be "easier" to farm the armor, but most players aren't in these types of guild and the culture armor is already t.5.

 

SWG had a better crafting system, hell even Vanguard had a better crafting system...

And people have already shown in the AOC forums that the city/cultural recipes slight increase of stats of 0.1 don't do crap in battle...   In some cases they give you better stats in certain area but worse stats in other areas, so it ends up being a wash compared to world drops...  

The reason crafting will never matter is because Funcom has designed this game around loot, there not going to screw up the incentive to do dungeons multiple times by giving you better crafted or equal crafted items, if they did then they would actually have to give us more content as nobody would run dungeons multiple times anymore.

Whenever you have a MMO without decay, crafting will never matter.

BTW, Culture Armor is not T5 armor, its set between T0 and T1 gear but its closer to T0 gear then it is to T1 raid gear.

True...For good crafting need decay .... but need anti--decay too...same SWG pre-cu

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Originally posted by monoth

Their system is completely out of whack and from what I read they have no plans to change it.  Crafting is going to still be boring and the recipes you get still cost to much to make, so forget trying to run a crafting business, well unless you like spending 4-5 hours harvesting materials to make a item that you can only get maybe 75 silver for. 

 

 

 

If you had read the above there are big plans to change it there. It is obvious you didn't read it or take it in properly.

If I spent 4-5 hrs harvesting I will earn at least 5 gold. I know been there many times. Have you ever harvested that much? Do you know what city materials go for?

You can make a killing out there from some things. Did you read about the changes to Alchemy? you know how much dosh you can make from that? shit loads now.

This update: * Players can now desocket/delete gems in their items by opening the info view of the item and using the shift-rightclick menu on a gem. Desocketing will require a potion crafted by an alchemist. The recipe for this item drops in Xibaluku.
With patch 1.04 is going to make some real rich.

Then why bother crafting if you can make all your money from harvesting alone?   My point is there is no reason to craft and that is what Funcom needs to change.   I'm not the only one who thinks this, the polls people have done have shown that 80%+ people think crafting sucks and the updates you posted do not show that Funcom is changing anything substantial in crafting.

My point is, unless they make crafting gear more unique or have better stats then loot gear, there is no incentive to craft, so even if someone can make a potion to remove gems, nobody is going to buy it unless people switch to crafted gear instead of loot gear, this is something Funcom will not want because the whole game is based around loot gear as the carrot to keep people redoing Dungeons. 

Originally posted by Sixfeetunder

 

True...For good crafting need decay .... but need anti--decay too...same SWG pre-cu

SWG pre-cu problem was the decay rate was set way to high and SOE never changed it...  Personally I could care less if my Atzel Armor chest piece decayed after a couple months of use...  I've done that dungeon so much I already have 10 of them....  

For some reason when it comes to decay people are complete wusses, oh no my favorite sword that I've looted over 100x's might decay.....

I would have no problem with Raid Gear lasting forever because its so hard to get and it can't be crafted, but everything else should have decay on it.

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Originally posted by monoth

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Originally posted by xpiher

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Originally posted by monoth

 

I think its BS that they are just making small changes to the crafting system based on things they will do way down the line, why not just remove crafting all together until they can release a complete system that works, whats up with all this piece meal crap... 
The core crafting system is not changing... plus the the risk vs reward for getting recipes and the rare materials required to make them is crap compared to how easy it is to quest to get comparable gear.
Their system is completely out of whack and from what I read they have no plans to change it.  Crafting is going to still be boring and the recipes you get still cost to much to make, so forget trying to run a crafting business, well unless you like spending 4-5 hours harvesting materials to make a item that you can only get maybe 75 silver for. 
 
 

---

Name an MMO where crafting isn't boring besides FFXI?
And these changes, along with the changes to the games itemization, are going to be huge and will make crafting a more profitable biz. The city armors/weapons are already better than what can be found questing, and the system will make that even more evident.
Edit: Of course, if you are in a guild that does raids more than 2x a week it may be "easier" to farm the armor, but most players aren't in these types of guild and the culture armor is already t.5.

---

 
SWG had a better crafting system, hell even Vanguard had a better crafting system...
And people have already shown in the AOC forums that the city/cultural recipes slight increase of stats of 0.1 don't do crap in battle...   In some cases they give you better stats in certain area but worse stats in other areas, so it ends up being a wash compared to world drops...  
The reason crafting will never matter is because Funcom has designed this game around loot, there not going to screw up the incentive to do dungeons multiple times by giving you better crafted or equal crafted items, if they did then they would actually have to give us more content as nobody would run dungeons multiple times anymore.
Whenever you have a MMO without decay, crafting will never matter.
BTW, Culture Armor is not T5 armor, its set between T0 and T1 gear but its closer to T0 gear then it is to T1 raid gear.

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I said t . 5 not 5 lol. Anyways, I think you are wrong about how FC has designed their system. They didn't design their system around gear AT all. There are players in the game that can kill people with out wearing anything. Thats the problem people have with gear in general, it doesn't make them uber. Its also why people think that stats were broken, because the increase was minimal. FC tried to make a game where gear wasn't important where skill>gear and people hated it. This is why they are redoing how the system works because players think it sucks. This is why the crafting will be improved and actually be sought after when they redo itemization.

BTW, people aren't paying for the game while they finish initial development, the game is done and has been since all the bugs have been fixed. The only reason that FC is overhalling their itemization and stats system is because players can't stand games that deviant from the norm.

I don't know what game FFXI is, I am comparing WoW and AoC here. The fact of the matter is that in AoC you simply get a set of recipes (recently they added that bosses drop them too), get mats for this recipe and voila!, you click on the recipe and you get any item out of thin air. No anvil is needed, no forge, no crafting building, you can make a whole culture armor set in the middle of a swamp. That, my friends, is what I call non-immersive crafting.

Oh, it only took them 5 months to figure out that vendor potions are cheaper than crafted ones

Originally posted by xpiher

 
 
I said t . 5 not 5 lol. Anyways, I think you are wrong about how FC has designed their system. They didn't design their system around gear AT all. There are players in the game that can kill people with out wearing anything. Thats the problem people have with gear in general, it doesn't make them uber. Its also why people think that stats were broken, because the increase was minimal. FC tried to make a game where gear wasn't important where skill>gear and people hated it. This is why they are redoing how the system works because players think it sucks. This is why the crafting will be improved and actually be sought after when they redo itemization.

BTW, people aren't paying for the game while they finish initial development, the game is done and has been since all the bugs have been fixed. The only reason that FC is overhalling their itemization and stats system is because players can't stand games that deviant from the norm.

So true. The thing I think is key is that they should deviant back to the norm to much now. Again which is why when some look at the crafting development they can't see full out changes and don't quite grasp why. The basics are there, it is a case of tweak here and there first off, then introduction of better controlling elements such as the new gems when they come through. Everything leads me to believe it is well thought out plan, integration and polish on the new content is what counts. Got the plan and now they have to back it up in the right way. Current introductions introducing changes originally coming from Patch 3 are on the right road in my opinion. Really looking forward to whats coming, and blast that crafting dev for his intriguing and short snippets ;)