Vanguard - A little about taunt and solo crafting

[Braen]

Brad posted here about Taunt/Rescue. Someone asked if taunt was going to be in the game and this was Brad's response:

http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/sh...979#post350979

"Taunt/Rescue has it's roots going back to text MUDs. The ability to rescue another party member that is about to die or isn't as suited to tanking is a key strategy in Vanguard. Given our desire to see combat involve less pulling and often involving fighting multiple mobs at one time, rescue/taunt is very important.'

Also, Silius (the Vanguard crafter guru) responded to a post about concerns with soloing in the crafting sphere:

http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/sh...499#post350499

"Allow me to make two points that I have made multiple times in the past few months.

1. Getting to max level can be done solo producing abstract items with abstract materials

2. Producing real items that are for player use will require some interdependency but this is not how you advance as stated above. Your need to craft real items is based on the desire of other players who need them.

You want to advance solo crafting then you can, you want to produce real items without needing some help from others you can using your secondary trade, but if you want to produce the primo stuff then you will need help from other crafters and eventually the other spheres. Interdependency is a fact of life in a system like this when you are talking about a social game.

Crafting is not meant to be something you pick up and do when you’re bored with adventuring; it is meant to be a large system that can immerse you without the need to adventure as well. Vanguard is built on the interdependency in and outside of spheres and crafting will support this wholeheartedly. If this upsets you I am sorry but it is the way we have decide the game will work and it is what we believe will contribute to a richer experience overall.

Most questions that are being asked here I have answered to some extent in the main crafting thread. Please before you make assumptions as to how the system is going to work go through my responses and find your answer. Try not to go on hearsay and then make a judgment call because nowhere has it been stated by a member of this design team that you will not be able to solo craft."

[Fris_Leafshadow]

Will it be merchant skills or trade skills?

I ask this as EQ became merchant skills as people didn't need to trade to make their equipment, they just learned the other profession as well. Most of the power gamers I know don't enjoy trade skills, while those that like them enjoy gathering things and making new items.

In WoW, people are forced into professions when they need money. Other then grinding mobs for just loot, gathering is still a deceint way to make cash.

[Runnen]

What I would like to know is whether Vanguard will allow players to master all professions if they are willing to invest massive ammounts of time and money towards that goal like in EverQuest, or if players will be limited to 2 professions like in World of Warcraft.


While I enjoy(ed) both games, and while I understand that the reason why the players were limited to 2 professions in WoW was to create a sense of community and interdependency among players, it was frustrating to have to start alts and level them in order to get access to some recipe quests if you did not know anyone able to do what you needed or were not willing to pay the enormous fees often required by crafters.

I think EQ had it right in that it was extremely tedious and difficult, as well as extremely costly, to master all trades, but it really payed off in the end. The very few 'Masters of Club 1750' (250 x 7, AKA all tradeskills maxed) were famous in the Crafting Community and were usually rewarded by GMs for their continued efforts.

Of course, that would mean Vanguard, or any other game willing to emphasize on the importance of working on tradeskills, will have to be very vigilant about third-party programs and various bots that allow cheaters to max out tradeskills in no time.. but from what I read so far, I think they plan on keeping an eye out for the Yantis goons and their horde of farmers / bots.

[Frax]

Originally Posted by Runnen

What I would like to know is whether Vanguard will allow players to master all professions if they are willing to invest massive ammounts of time and money towards that goal like in EverQuest, or if players will be limited to 2 professions like in World of Warcraft.


While I enjoy(ed) both games, and while I understand that the reason why the players were limited to 2 professions in WoW was to create a sense of community and interdependency among players, it was frustrating to have to start alts and level them in order to get access to some recipe quests if you did not know anyone able to do what you needed or were not willing to pay the enormous fees often required by crafters.

I think EQ had it right in that it was extremely tedious and difficult, as well as extremely costly, to master all trades, but it really payed off in the end. The very few 'Masters of Club 1750' (250 x 7, AKA all tradeskills maxed) were famous in the Crafting Community and were usually rewarded by GMs for their continued efforts.

Of course, that would mean Vanguard, or any other game willing to emphasize on the importance of working on tradeskills, will have to be very vigilant about third-party programs and various bots that allow cheaters to max out tradeskills in no time.. but from what I read so far, I think they plan on keeping an eye out for the Yantis goons and their horde of farmers / bots.

Search Silius' posts on the vanguard boards, I'm not a big crafter but I recall reading that he stated you could not master all skills, it would be limited to two or three.

[Taggle]

Originally Posted by Runnen

What I would like to know is whether Vanguard will allow players to master all professions if they are willing to invest massive ammounts of time and money towards that goal like in EverQuest, or if players will be limited to 2 professions like in World of Warcraft.

Vanguard has three seperate "games" built into one, each calleda sphere. Crafting, Adventuring and Diplomacy. Each of the spheres require cooperation between other members of that sphere to achieve the best results. So, in Adventuring, the players can solo rather inefficiently, or group for better loot and better exp. In Crafting, the players can make junk items using junk resources to level up pretty slow, or they can group with other crafters to level up fast and make the best stuff.

Every player is a member of each of the three Spheres, and can advance up them. The advancement time is supposed to be roughly the same for each.

So, unlike WoW or EQ, where crafting is a minigame or a subgame of Adventuring, both Crafting and Diplomacy are supposed to complete whole seperate games that are built in the same gamespace.

Truly great items will be made by a combination of each spheres. The way it sounds, there could well be an encounter where you fight down to a dungeon, kill all of a dragon's guards, and then have the choice of either talking the dragon into giving up a special item, or killing him for his loot table. Or, you could clear an infested mine to let crafters come down to get leet ore to bolster your sword. That type of of cross interdependency has been hinted at.

So, this is a long answer to your question, but dont think of crafting like other games. Think of it as a "crafting mmog" that happens to share the same gamespace as an "adventure" mmog and an "intrigue mmog."

Anyways, you will only be one class each of two types in the Crafting sphere (just examples). So you can be, say an alchemist OR a carpenter, but not both. You will likely need alchemist made stuff to make the best carpenter stuff (oils, etc).

The other type of class in the crafting sphere are the harvesters. Its not like WoW where a herbalist can only collect herbs, but its more like combat. Just by way of example, Reapers (a harvesting class) are the "tanks/dps" of harvesting. They are the guys with the picks and the shovels and the scissors and the saws that "attack" (not really, but just to give you an idea on the mechanics) the tree, or the ore or the like. There are foreman (another class) who are crafting "buffers" or "healers" or some other such support role. One classe affects quantity of loot, another affect quality, and yet another helps by yeilding additional products.

So a solo harvester rolls into the woods and sees a craftable tree spawn. He walks up to it and cuts it down and gets a "rough knotted board" and nearly fails (loses exp or some other form of crafting "death"). A support class joins him and they roll back to the forest and see the exact same tree. This time they cut it down and own it easilly and get a smooth board. They add yet another two folks of the right harvesting classes and "kill" a third tree (by engaging in "combat," healing buffing, debuffing, etc, like you to to mobs...not right clicking on the tree) and get 10 smooth boards and a bit of high quality cork.

They see an entrance to a cave and decide, lets go kill sheet, and pack their crafting supplies into their cart, unload their armor, and now the harvesters are no longer a "reaper" or a "foreman," but instead are a cleric, warrior, etc.

Anyways, Im not a huge fan of crafting, so i am not really interested in it, but it sounds like it could be fun for those that like it. At least when I am running around the world, ill see a caravan of PCs loading up timber, "killing" trees, rather than every guy I see being a knight in shining armor.

At the very least, it will feel more like a "world."

This is how it has been described, at least. We will see how it turns out.

Again the best way to think of it is to think of three seperate mmogs, each with differnet dungeons or portions of dungeons, different advancement and completely seperate. That is much closer comparison than it is to EQ, EQII and WoW's systems I think...although they arent totally seperate, because there will be cross sphere interdependence at the high level.

(It makes a lot of sense from a development cycle perspective. The huge hangup in making a MMOG is the art assets. By tieing three seperate games into the same game space, you can basically co-develop three games that share the same art assets, which will be a huge step for this genre if they can pull it off.)

[orcmauler]

Is it bad that the more I hear about Vanguard the more I don't want to play it?

[Havelock]

They've broken crafting down into crafting trades and harvesting classes, like Taggle said. With crafting trades, Salim said there are five trades and everybody can get two, a primary and a secondary:

Originally Posted by Silius

Herbalist: Potions and infusion
Blacksmith: Metal weapons, armor, vehicular and structural components
Woodcrafter: Wooden Structures, vehicles, furniture and weapon/armor components
Stonecrafter: Jewelry, structural, furniture, focus items
Outfitter: cloth and leather armor and armor components and bags

So you pick a primary trade and pick one specialization and you can max out that specialization, plus you can make lots of other stuff from within the trade. My understanding is that if you pick blacksmith and specialize in metal weapons, you will still be able to make some armor and components, but you won't be able to use the best recipes and you won't be as good at making the stuff as someone who has specialized. Then you pick a secondary trade and can use the basic recipes from that trade, but you can't specialize.

The big crafting thread with lots of dev answers is here.

[Tuco]

I liked the Shadowbane implementation of diplomacy... If you made the wrong political moves your city was burned.

[Taggle]

Originally Posted by orcmauler

Is it bad that the more I hear about Vanguard the more I don't want to play it?

Not really. They aren't trying to make it for everyone.



The game for everyone is over ----------------------------------->here.

[Mkopec1]

Originally Posted by Tuco

I liked the Shadowbane implementation of diplomacy... If you made the wrong political moves your city was burned.

I agree. But the only thing I didnt like about the system was that basically you ended up with one guild or nation of guilds running the whole fucking server. And lets face it no one likes being on the losing side. So essentially you had to kiss ass to keep your shit.

The system would of been ok if they implemented some random "natural disaster" type thing, where periodically your shit would get demolished no matter how big and strong you were. this would of levelled the playing field a bit more. Or even some GM events, where there would be a massive attack on the biggest nations on the server using NPC's.

[Braen]

Originally Posted by Mkopec1

I agree. But the only thing I didnt like about the system was that basically you ended up with one guild or nation of guilds running the whole fucking server. And lets face it no one likes being on the losing side. So essentially you had to kiss ass to keep your shit.

The system would of been ok if they implemented some random "natural disaster" type thing, where periodically your shit would get demolished no matter how big and strong you were. this would of levelled the playing field a bit more. Or even some GM events, where there would be a massive attack on the biggest nations on the server using NPC's.

didn't SB have a test server where they wiped it every so often.. Made the test server a viable server to actually play on for that very reason

[Merklyn]

Glad crafting won't be a shallow system. Good to see more group/region oriented design as well. I hope the items made are worthwhile at most/all levels and the mats aren't worth more than the finished products.

[Cybsled]

I liked the Shadowbane implementation of diplomacy... If you made the wrong political moves your city was burned.

Politically SB was probably the most realistic of any game. Your empire grew and fell by the alliances you made and the enemies you made. The main issue, was was said, was when one power took over the server...it was next to impossible to make a comeback.

SB -almost- had a natural disaster...that demonic invasion years ago. They should have rolled with that and had massive swarms of lvl 70 demons owning towns everywhere.

[Tuco]

They also should've included cross-server wars in SB, where you could go and invade an enemy server and kill some cities. This would've made it much harder to 'take over', especially if you couldn't root yourself in other servers.

Ah, what could have been.

[Fammaden]

Originally Posted by Runnen

What I would like to know is whether Vanguard will allow players to master all professions if they are willing to invest massive ammounts of time and money towards that goal like in EverQuest, or if players will be limited to 2 professions like in World of Warcraft.


While I enjoy(ed) both games, and while I understand that the reason why the players were limited to 2 professions in WoW was to create a sense of community and interdependency among players, it was frustrating to have to start alts and level them in order to get access to some recipe quests if you did not know anyone able to do what you needed or were not willing to pay the enormous fees often required by crafters.

I think EQ had it right in that it was extremely tedious and difficult, as well as extremely costly, to master all trades, but it really payed off in the end. The very few 'Masters of Club 1750' (250 x 7, AKA all tradeskills maxed) were famous in the Crafting Community and were usually rewarded by GMs for their continued efforts.

IIRC, you could only raise one trade skill to 250 during Verant era EQ. Once you had one over 200 didn't it cap the others at 200? In fact was the cap lower before Velious or maybe was it just that some crafts were even more brutal to raise past 200 pre-Velious than they were during? I tend to prefer the limitations. It makes sense that you can only really "grandmaster" one sort of artisan skill in your lifetime. I don't mind the old way of just having most of the raw materials drop from monsters that anyone can kill and then sell to crafters who don't want to farm, although the skinner, gatherer, lumberjack etc. type of shit seems more realistic.

Interdependence sounds great on paper but I think that the farm squads are far enough advanced now that they will be able to work around any obstacles in order to churn out the high dollar trade goods. I hope that the crafting will actually turn out to be as vital and dynamic as we are led to believe, but the cynic in me is assured that it will remain the domain of a niche of players and money farmers until some of the hardcore adventure crowd gets maxed out or bored enough to start doing some crafting their selves. At any rate, the crafted items themselves would likely end up as fodder for NPC vendors until the highest end stuff is revealed unless they severely balance crafted items with what is available from world drops/quests. I saw the results of going to far in the crafter's direction in SWG and while it is an intuitive move for a sci fi RPG I still hated the results. WoW tries to infuse some decent crafted gear into the game but for the raiders it is still lackluster and by and large the results aren't actually traded but just made by players for themselves and their friends. It isn’t hard in WoW to simply level new characters for new trades or just dump one trade for another when you have what you wanted, and of course many people don't craft at all but simply gather in order to sell the materials.

I really do hope VG revitalizes this whole concept and can make it dynamic and interdependent instead of a mini game, but given what I have seen in the past I am "managing my expectations" for crafting to keep them within the boundaries that we have come to anticipate. All the nifty ideas and incentive in the world will not stop players from taking the path of least resistance, which is why power gamers have traditionally ground their way to max level and then revisited trades with the cash and/or combat power in hand to trivialize the process. Place all the restrictions on this mentality that you want but in the end players will find loopholes around the restrictions or in the worst case scenario the restrictions will hurt honest and legitimate players much more than they are able to affect the farmers.

As far as community and GM recognition for grandmaster crafters, what the hell server did you play on? I recall quite a few people maxing multiple and even all of the trade skills not long in Luclin after they gained the AA to do so. By PoP it seemed even more commonplace as the Aid Grimel rewards became apparent and even fishing started to see action thanks to a neat toy reward for summoning ale. Compare this to pre Luclin when if a guildie said "ding! 250 tailoring!" you were DAMN impressed.