Updating Crafting and Equipment to match One Tamriel's open-world style

Baldigar

This revamp is intended to give relevance to all crafting materials once again, and continue with further advancing the idea behind One Tamriel, which is to remove levels as an arbitrary gating mechanic, and rather, using it primarily as a source of Skill Points that a character can earn simply by playing it more and more, doing whatever content they desire (as opposed to specific quests, dungeons, skyshard hunting, etc. that give Skill Points). As such, consumables and equipment do not need to be level-gated as strictly as it is, so I recommend there be changes to make them work a bit more in-line with One Tamriel's approach to the game (I do appreciate that there is importance in making sure crafting and gear progression is still valuable, so I do incorporate those into this idea). I do make several tweaks to some general crafting mechanics as well, based on them simply not working satisfactorily IMO, but I will point those out specifically as such.

Sorry for the spoiler-ception. It would look much worse without them though.


Overview of what will be covered in this suggestion:
Bolded things are specifically what will remain, anything else is simply used for categorization and organization.
The mechanics that will remain the same with this revamp would be the following:

• Crafting Skill Lines
  • Blacksmithing/Clothing/Woodworking
    • "Keen Eye: Ore/Cloth/Wood"
    • "Metal Extraction/Unraveling/Wood Extraction"
    • "Temper/Tannin/Resin Expertise"
  • Alchemy
    • "Keen Eye: Reagents"
    • "Chemistry"
      
    • "Laboratory Use"
    • "Snakeblood"
  • Enchanting
    • "Aspect Improvement" (renamed to Potency Improvement though)
  • Provisioning
    • "Recipe Quality"
    • "Gourmand"
    • "Connoisseur"
    • "Chef"
    • "Brewer"
    • "Hireling"

The mechanics that will change with this revamp would be the following:

• Make all equipment and consumables have no minimum usage level.
  
• New Crafting Processes
• Crafting Skill Lines
  
  • Blacksmithing/Clothing/Woodworking
    • "Metalworking/Tailoring/Woodworking"
    • "Miner/Outfitter/Lumberjack Hireling"
  • Alchemy
    
    • "Solvent Proficiency"
    • [New Passive Skill] Reagent Proficiency
    • "Medicinal Use"
  • Provisioning
    • "Recipe Improvement"
• Various crafting material changes
  
  • Crafting material consolidations.
  • Region-based materials will return.
  • Materials will no longer associate with any given level.
• Furniture Crafting
• Trade Packs
• Modify Crafting Writs

The mechanics that will be tweaked simply for lack of current relevance would be the following:

• Crafting Skill Lines
  • Blacks"mithing/Clothing/Woodworking
    • Metallurgy/Stitching/Carpentry"
  • Enchanting
    • "Keen Eye: Rune Stones"
    • "Runestone Extraction"
    • Keen Eye Skills

Detailed Changes:
Bolded things are specifically what will remain, anything else is simply used for categorization and organization.
The mechanics that will change with this revamp would be the following:

• Make all equipment and consumables have no minimum usage level and scale based on how close it is to the player's level (or skill line rank).
  • They instead have a range of levels at which they can be used effectively. If your character's level, or skill line rank, is higher than the maximum range (or below the minimum range, rarely) of the item, you will receive diminished potency from the equipment or consumable.
  • The rate of diminishing returns would be about 1.5% per level/rank that you are off of the range.
    • For example, if you were wearing a Helm that had a Heavy Armor rank range of 1-20, and you had Heavy Armor rank 50, that is 30 ranks difference, and therefore, the Helm grants only 55% of the potential potency of that item for that given quality. (30 * 1.5% = 45%; 100% - 45% = 55%)
  • Each quality has a different maximum potential potency. Normal = 100%, Fine = 110%, Superior = 120%, Epic = 130%, Legendary = 140%. Note that diminishment of stats is multiplicative, not additive. Treat each of these potency as a base point, and then scale that base point using the % that is to be removed.
    • Using the example above, of the Helm that has a 30 ranks difference. Assume that it is of Legendary quality, and the base stat for a Helm's Normal quality was 1000 Armor. A Legendary Helm would then have 1400 Armor. If a Legendary Helm's potency was diminished by 45%, it would provide 55% of the armor, which would be 770 Armor (1400 * .55). If the quality were normal, the Helm would give 550 Armor (1000 * .55).
  • Generally speaking, most items (except for maybe some equipment sets), will have no minimum level/rank range, so it will be level/rank 1.
  • The maximum level/rank range would be based on, with regard to the process of implementing this system into the game retroactively, whatever the current level requirement on the item is. In the future, after this update would take place, the maximum range of equipment will be based on, either what level you were when you got it, or what rank the crafter was, and how many base crafting materials they used to craft the item.
    • For example, a Two-Handed Sword that currently has a level requirement of 50 and a champion requirement of 160, will now have a Two-handed Rank range of 1-50.
    • For example, if I wanted to make a Bow, and I had Woodworking rank 34, I could make a bow with the range of up to 1-34.
  • If the minimum end of the range is not 1, then the range is absolute; it cannot be increased or expanded to increase the range at which is is optimally usable.
    • This would only ever be used in super niche areas.
      • One example could be a type of leveling gear that they sell in the Crown Store. The range would be perhaps 10-10. This would mean that at level 1, using the gear, you get 85% of the stats, at level 10, you get 100%, and at level 50, you get 40% of the stats. This equipment could each have a trait that greatly increases XP gain, perhaps +10% per gear, but it works on all XP. The idea is, you could use the gear at any level to boost your xp gains, but it is especially helpful at low levels, and then becomes less and less appealing since it will begin to scale poorly. You could use it at level 50 if you wanted to, to help get Champion Points, but you will only have 40% of the stats from the equipment, making it harder to justify, but not impossible. It would be a trade-off. (They may or may not scale the trait as well, making it so at level 50, you would only get +4% xp from all sources, per piece of the gear.)
  • How different stats would scale:
    • any numeric value scales
    • percentage based traits, set bonuses, and so on, would likely not change it’s percentage. it could, but that would be a lot more complicated. I think the numeric values scaling should generally be enough to encourage getting the highest possible range.
• Breakdown of how items will scale, by types of item:
  • Foods: Work almost as they do now. Foods scale range off of your character's level. They currently do have an optimal usage range. I would suggest that be maintained, for the most part, except I would have the minimum end of the range dropped to level 1.
  • Potions/Poisons: Potions/Poisons have no level range or qualities.
    • Usage of them can be slightly improved if you have Alchemy skill and invest in some of the passive skills available there, to increase their potency slightly (up to 30% with Medicinal Use). This should drastically reduce the number of potions/poisons in the game, and help streamline things; and it makes it far less punishing to use rarer materials for a lower level potion, because the potency is now not reduced, and in fact, any character can use any potion. As with everything now, the potencies and durations of all potions should remain as they would be, where all stats are scaled to what used to be CP 160; so potion potency bases should be what CP 160 was.
  • Weapons: Weapons scale range off of your character's rank with the corresponding weapon skill line. The maximum optimal rank range is determined by the rank of the crafter who made the weapon, and the quantity of base materials they used to craft it.
  • Armor: Armor scales range off of your character's rank with the corresponding armor skill line. The maximum optimal rank range is determined by the rank of the crafter who made the armor, and the quantity of base materials they used to craft it.
  • Jewelry: Jewelry scales range off of your character's level. Jewelry's maximum range is based on the level at which you loot the piece. Either that, or all Jewelry, for the time being, would range 1-50.
    • Personally, I want a Tinkering crafting Skill Line that could make jewelry and then upgrade the range of jewelry, but that may not happen.
  • Glyphs: Glyphs are special in that they take on whatever range the piece of equipment they are a part of has. Therefore, they will scale with either character's level or skill line rank, depending on the equipment.
• Various crafting material changes
  • Crafting material consolidations.
    • I want these to be few and far between, but I do think some crafting materials would simply be redundant, so I do suggest removing some of them.
    • Alchemy: There is now only 1 type of Water solvent: Pure Water. When harvesting water nodes from water sources, you will get either: Pure Water, Salty Water, or Murky Water. Water pouches will always give Pure Water.; ponds/springs may give Pure or Murky Water; rivers will often give Murky Water, or, if close to the sea, Salty Water; sea/ocean water will give Salty Water. Salty Water and Murky water must be distilled, but will then become Pure Water as well (perhaps a new window in Alchemy, or perhaps as simple as filleting fish).
    • Alchemy: Poison solvents could simply remain as is, and, like other base crafting materials, simply be used interchangeably for any recipe, or they could also be consolidated into 1.
    • Enchanting: Potency Runes should be consolidated into just 1 type per function: Increase, Decrease. They will also be changed to be called Base Runes. Base Runes should now be much rarer than the other runes, and not purchasable from vendors (or at least only at a very high price). Along with this change, Aspect Runes will be renamed to Potency Runes (not to be confusing, just because it makes more sense, since potency is close in meaning to quality).
    • Enchanting: Add a new Material called Arcane Binding Agent. This can be obtained while harvesting Rune Stones (0-2), deconstructing Glyphs (2-6), or shattering Runes themselves (various, based on type).
  • Region-based materials will return.
    • Certain crafting materials will be able to be found in various zones throughout the world, and certain ones will only be able to be found in certain zones.
      • Alchemy materials will work pretty much exactly as it does now, when it comes to reagents. Solvents are changed to only include Murky, Salty, or Pure Water, depending on where/how you obtain them.
      • Enchanting materials will work largely the same as they do now. Potency Runes are converted into Base Runes, which drop more rarely than they do now; Essence Runes drop the same as now; Aspect Runes are converted into Potency Runes, and they drop the same as how Aspect Runes did.
      • Provisioning materials will drop the same as they do now.
      • Ores/Hides/Fibres/Wood nodes would change drastically (this is just an example of how it could be laid out):
        • Maple/Iron/Jute/Rawhide. Found in Auridon and Grahtwood.
        • Oak/High Iron/Flax/Hide. Found in Glenumbra and Stormhaven.
        • Beech/Oricalc/Cotton/Leather. Found in Stonefalls and Deshaan.
        • Hickory/Dwarven/Spidersilk/Thick Leather. Found in Shadowfen, Greenshade, and Rivenspire.
        • Yew/Ebony/Ebonthread/Fell Hide. Found in The Rift, Malabal Tor, and Bangkorai.
        • Birch/Calcinium/Kreshweed/Topgrain. Found in Reaper's March, Eastmarch, and Alik'r Desert.
        • Ash/Galatite/Ironweed/Iron Hide. Found in Craglorn.
        • Mahogany/Quicksilver/Silverweed/Supurb. Found in Cyrodiil.
        • Nightwood/Voidstone/Void Bloom/Shadowhide. Found in Coldharbour.
        • Ruby Ash/Rubedite/Ancestor Silk/Rubedo. Found in DLC zones.
      • To go along with this, items that are looted in a certain zone will reflect the materials associated with said zone. Dungeon loot is determined by the zone they or their entrance is located in.
      • It may not be a horrible idea to make custom Ores/Hides/Fibres/Wood for each new DLC zone, just so that each zone can have their own market for the materials available there. For example, having Rubedite/Ruby/Rubedo stuff in all of the DLC zones may make people only farm/play on the easiest zone to farm those materials. But it's not a big deal, and I don't really want much more material bloat unless Crafting Bag were made free for everyone.
  • Materials will no longer associate with any given level.
    • All materials can be used to craft equipment that is usable for any level/rank ranges. Basically, when crafting, you invest as many of a material as you want the maximum range to be, up to 50.
    • This means that you can use any crafting material for any items (obviously, if it’s the same categorization; i.e Ash wood can be used interchangeable with Beech Wood).
    • When crafting an item, the highest level/rank that you can grant to an item's maximum end of the optimal usage range is based on the rank of your crafting skill. If you are rank 25 Woodworking, you can make items with up to a maximum range of 1-25. You can use the new Range Improvement feature to increase the range afterwards, if you want to keep the same item going forward.
    • The material an item is made with will be listed on the item, similarly to how the style is listed.
    • There is a new Improvement window in the crafting window. This Improvement window would be for increasing the maximum end of the optimal range on the item. In this window, you can select any item (except any with specific properties that make their range not be increasable, such as if the range minimum is not 1), and then choose what level/rank you want to increase maximum end of the range to. Each level/rank costs an additional base crafting material, and it uses the same material that the item was originally made with.
    • When crafting items, whatever the maximum is selected at for either creating or upgrading the range of item is, that value is the number of base crafting materials that you must spend to make the change. This cost is always the same as the maximum range, there is no deduction for being close to the range before the improvement. Upgrading the maximum range from 1-2 or 1-49 to 1-50 will cost you the exact same number of base crafting materials: 50.
    • For example,If you have a rank 1-25 Bow, and want to increase it to have a maximum range of 1-50, you must be rank 50 in Woodworking, and it will cost you 50 wood of whatever type the item was made of.
  • I was considering an option whereby using different materials (whether solvents, metals, wood, leather, cloth, etc.), it would give a small stat or perk to the result, like +20% durability, but ultimately, even though it’s flavorful, it would be yet another RNG grind, like traits already are. I think it’s best to just basically ignore that there are different types of base materials when it comes to actually altering the stats of the result.
• New Crafting Processes:
  • [Updated Crafting Ability] Creating Glyphs: You select a Base, Essence, and Potency Rune. You now need Arcane Binding Agents to create any Glyph. The required amount is based on the quality of the glyph being created; each quality needs 10 more than the last, up to 50 for a Legendary Glyph.
  • Rune Shattering for Enchanting. You can shatter obsolete Ancient Runes (what were the old Potency Runes), or any other Rune (Base, Essence, or Potency) to obtain Arcane Binding Agent. Drop rates: Ancient (3-8), Base (2-4), Essence (1-2), Potency (1-2 Normal, 2-4 Fine, 3-8 Superior, 4-10 Rare, 10-25 Legendary).
  • Distillation for Alchemy. You simply process Murky or Salty water into Pure Water. Either a tab in the Alchemy Station, or able to be done anywhere by using Murky/Salty Water, similarly to how fish are filleted.
  • Improvement (Increasing Optimal Range) for Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Woodworking. This works similarly to the Improve mechanic, but you select the level/rank you want to increase the item's maximum optimal range to, and spend that many crafting materials to make the change.
• Crafting Skill Lines
  • Blacksmithing/Clothing/Woodworking
    • "Metalworking/Tailoring/Woodworking": 10 tiers, none cost skill points. There is no longer gated access to using the different base crafting materials in a specific order. Instead, each tier, you pick which base crafting material you want to unlock use of (in the form of a morph; you get 1 free morph to start with); each tier grants a +10% inspiration gained for said skill line.
      • Inspiration boost: tier 1 gives +0%, tiers 2-8 give +10%, and tier 9 gives +20%, for a total of +100% at rank 45. This is mainly implemented to counter the loss of tiered materials, and therefore, a reduction in Inspiration gain.
      • Rank gates: (1/5/10/15/20/25/30/35/40/45)
        
    • "Miner/Outfitter/Lumberjack Hireling": 5 tiers. Once every day, resetting on the server's daily timer, you will be mailed a package of resources collected by your Hireling. Each tier increases the number of crates of materials your Hireling will have recovered by 1. Each crate will contain between 20-30 of a random type of the ores/fibres/hides/wood.
      • When investing a skill point into the Outfitter Hireling, you can choose whether you want to spend the point to receive hides, fibres, or either. For example, you can spend 1 in hides, 1 in cloth, and 3 in either.
      • Rank gates: (10/20/30/40/50)
  • Alchemy
    
    • "Solvent Proficiency": No longer used.
      
    • [New Passive Skill] "Reagent Proficiency": 26 tiers, none cost skill points. For every even rank of Alchemy you achieve, you can become able to use an additional Reagent of your choice. At rank 1, your first 2 tiers only give you access to Mountain Flower and Water Hyacinth (which you can use to make health potions). You will never get stuck or need to re-spec these, as you can simply continue to use the older reagents to level your Alchemy, fairly quickly, but if you want access to more combinations of effects, and extra Inspiration that you get from discovering the uses of different Reagents, then you will want as many Reagents that work together well as possible.
    • This isn't entirely needed, it's just to try to keep high-rank Alchemists as important, as otherwise you could make potions of any combination for any level, at rank 1. Alchemy has built in perk passive skills that do encourage you to max it out anyway, so I max be overestimating the need for this kind of thing.
      • Rank gates: (1/1/2/4/6/8/10/12/14/16/18/20/22/24/26/28/30/32/34/36/38/40/42/44/46/48/50)
    • "Medicinal Use": 3 tiers. This is only slightly changed. In the case of Restore Health/Stamina/Magicka, the potency of the initial restore is also increased (if it wasn't).
      • Rank gates: (as is now)
        
    • Additionally, every 5 Alchemy Ranks you have, you gain +1% potency of potions/poisons that you use. (Potency either affects duration, restoration, or is distributed amongst both, where applicable).
    Provisioning
    • "Recipe Improvement": Because of how Provisioning is designed, what with how all crafting materials are already usable by any level of food, I think it's actually fine to keep in the tiers for tiered crafting of the consumables.
• Furniture Crafting
  • Basically, I suggest that there be tons of styles of furniture, and then, in addition to styles, depending on what crafting material you use to craft them, the color of the material (cloth, leather, wood, or metal) will change accordingly.
  • I would recommend using recipes, like Provisioning.
  • Also, I would have Furniture Crafting Stations at Dungeons where you can craft Dungeon-related furniture (which use a Set/Style material from that content).
• Trade Packs
  • This may be unnecessary, given the new use of base crafting materials of all types that come along with the the zone-specific gear (which is considered to be made of that zone’s native crafting material). But the idea is, you can package up (probably 50) refined crafting materials into crates (ingots, leather, cloth, or sanded wood). When crafted, you will automatically equip the crate on your back in your Appearance slot (or a new Trade Pack slot). While a crate is in the slot, you cannot go to any Wayshrines, remotely or manually. If you want to take the crate off at any point, you can, and you will get 100% of the materials used to make the trade pack back as refined materials. The idea of the Trade Packs is you make them at one place in the world, and manually carry it (on foot or on mount) to another place, where you can exchange it for a variety of goods. Generally, the further the pack is taken from where it is made, the more reward you get. Each zone has at least 2 cities/settlements; 1 will be dedicated for crafting trade packs, and 1 will be dedicated for receiving trade packs (if there's 3+, the others are ignored). You can take the trade pack to the other city in the same zone that you made it in, but you will get severely reduced rewards, due to the small distance, and the fact that the materials are already in abundance there.
  • What trade packs can be made in which zones in based on what raw materials are found in the zone.
  • Only the 18 base game zones (for each of the 3 alliances) have these trade pack cities set up. Every other major zone, except for Craglorn, requires wayshrines to enter, and therefore wouldn't work well with this system.
  • While carrying a trade pack, your movement speed is reduced by 20%, on foot or mounted.
  • Each zone has a unique currency that you will acquire for trading these trade packs to them (you get currency for the map that you make the trade to, not where you make it from). These currencies are account-shared and can be exchanged for gold, an equipment box that grants a random set equipment drops from the zone (fine or higher quality), furniture recipes, Surverys/Treasure Maps, and perhaps a few other things. Not sure of the exchange rates for these goods, but they won't be insanely profitable. Profitable, yes, but not unbelievably so.
  • The amount of currency that you get is based on how many maps, at the highest efficiency, you have to cross to get there. If you take a trade pack to the turn-in location on the same zone, you get 1 currency; 1 zone away, you get 4 currency; 2 zones away, you get 8 currency; 3 zones away, you get 12 currency, 4 zones away, you get 16 currency.
  • It might be interesting to have trade packs work in Cyrodiil as well, working with the raw materials that are available in Cyrodiil. You make trade packs at your base, and the further you take them, by foot/mount (not teleporting), the more profit you get. You can turn them in at any friendly Fort, Outpost, Castle, Keep, etc. If you are killed by an enemy player, they will be able to use a situational skill when they kill a player with a trade pack, to pick if they want to pick up the pack. If they already have a pack, or choose to not take the pack, the refined materials will be returned to you, but you will lose 40% of them. If you are killed by a mob, and are not even tapped by a player, you will automatically get the materials returned to you, losing only 20%.
  • If you die with a trade pack on in PvE, you will be refunded 100% of the materials. Even if you revive immediately at the location you died, you will lose the pack.
• Crafting Writs
  • Each zone now has their own equipment Crafting Writs associated with them (consumable writs are universal). You can complete 1 of each writ per day, at anywhere in the world. Equipment writs will request some equipment be made and returned, using a refined material that is not native to that zone; this is random each time, from all of the options. In return, you will be granted a crate of native to the zone (20-30) that are used for the according crafting skill, gold, xp, as well as a good chance at Tempers/Tanners/Resins, and craft-skill/zone-specific Surveys.
  • Consumable writs work pretty much identically to how they do now.

The mechanics that will be tweaked simply for lack of current relevance would be the following:

• "Metallurgy/Stitching/Carpentry": These would maintain the functionality that they have now, but to keep them relevant after one is done researching all of the traits, and perhaps on alts, give them another benefit. For example, each tier, when refining materials, you will gain 0-1 more refined materials (about 50:50 chance to get each additional drop or not); this thus increases the range of items to be created when refining from 7-10 to 7-14, if maxed out.
• "Keen Eye: Rune Stone": Make it so by default, you cannot see the glowing effect of Rune Stones. Then, make the visual lighting effect visible, when within the defined range. Rune Stones are really broken because you simply do not need this at all, it's less than a convenience as is.
• "Runestone Extraction": Make it so the default chance to recover each component rune (except for Base Runes) from a Glyph is 10% per. Each tier of this increases the chance, for each component, by 10%, up to a total of 40% for each component. Base Runes are destroyed in this process and will grant several Arcane Binding Agents.
• "Keen Eye" for all Skill Lines. To make this a more valuable skill, I would recommend granting a 5% chance per tier of getting double drop rates when harvesting a node. This would stack with the Plentiful Harvest champion point perk, for a total of up to 25%. Could also be reduced a little by making it 3% per tier, or by making tier 1 give no chance boost, and making tier 2-3 give 3-5% per tier. I know that this perk is designed to be optional, because if you're skillful enough, you can simply spot them yourself and save a few skill points, which is nice. But I still just like the idea of them being more useful.

Feel free to add your thoughts and suggestions if you think anything is particularly bad/broken about this, or if there’s just anything else you’d like to be addressed.

Baldigar

Another option that I saw on the forums could be to have equipment either use level or CP requirements, but not both, as it is now. What this would mean is that once your account reaches CP 160, you can craft and use CP 160 gear on any character on the account. I think that this would be wonderful, pretty simple to implement, and would achieve a pretty similar effect.

Crafting would still, ideally, work similar to how was originally suggested in the OP. Equipment has a material that is associated with it, based on where it was obtained or with which material it was made. You can upgrade the level/cp level of the gear using the Range Improvement mechanic mentioned in the OP (but if it got rid of the Ranges, it would be Level Improvement).

With this system, you would still have normal gear progression, through the levels, 1-50, but then once you get to 50 once on your account, you unlock, account-wide, more options for outfitting your characters.

The costs to make or upgrade an item to this point would be vary. From 1-50, it would cost 1 refined material per level. From CP 10-160, it would cost 10 refined material per 10 levels (The final price would be multiplied by various values depending on the cost of the item, such as 1H weapons costing ~60%).

If you didn't want to apply this feature to all equipment, which I think would be fine to do, you could also add a mechanic to crafting that lets you remove the level requirement from an item, so that it only has the CP level requirement. It could cost 1 of a new, rare crafting material, and that would be that material's only use.

Basically, any equipment with only the CP level as a requirement would scale the same through all of level 1-50, which is, at very high strength, but once you get to earning CP levels on a character, it will begin to scale down if/when you begin to level up your CP, it gear would do now. It gives an advantage to players who have a capped player, and helps them has to update their gear less often, and own less leveling gear, and so on. (A player who is not level 50 yet will still earn gear for their level, not their account's CP; they could upgrade the level if they wanted, with the mechanics in the thread, if they wanted.)

A big part of this whole thread is bringing lower tier crafting materials to relevancy at cap, but if you didn't get around to implementing any of those complex changes, and just made it so CP gear has no level requirements, which should be super easy, I think you could solve at least half of the current issues that I have brought up; most of the ones revolving around equipment (but not being able to upgrade all equipment to level cap). You may need to look at and tweak scaling a bit though, as I don't know how CP gear is scaled, based on your CP when not at/above 160.