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Why ESO does not facilitate a thriving player crafted item market
Simple Version
To put it in its simply, it is because ESO is a gear based/class based game, and not a skill based game; and all items are retained upon death. The classic difference is Ultima Online vs. WoW.
TLDR Verion
Ultima Online is, I think, the first (yes, perhaps the very first) MMORPG. Created back in 1997, and used to be solely a skill based game. It has, in recent years, added several aspects of gear-grinding based playsets which makes it much more like modern MMOs.
What is the difference in Class vs Skill based games?
A skill based game is a game in which all of the skills available in the game are available to every single character. Here is a short list of some of the skills:
Swordsmanship, Mace Fighting, Fencing, Archery, Parrying (shield), Tactics, Anatomy, Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Tinkering, Mining, Alchemy, Cooking, Fishing, Magery, Poisoning, Musicianship, Peace-making, Provocation, Begging, Animal Taming, Animal Lore, Veterinary, Resisting Spells, Healing, Arms Lore, Hiding, Stealth, Snooping, Stealing, Meditation, Bowcraft/Fletching, etc.
The maximum for each skill (at the initial release) was 100, considered the Grandmaster rank. And Every character can learn ANY skill, but every character was maxed at 700 skill points total. So if you wanted a pure warrior you might build like this:
100 Swordsmanship
100 Tactics
100 Anatomy
100 Resisting Spells
100 Healing
100 Parrying
40 hiding
30 camping
30 cooking
A Mage:
100 Magery
100 Evaluating Intelligence
100 Resisting Spells
100 Meditation
100 Swordsmanship
100 Tactics
100 Wrestling
Getting a skill to 100 was no small feat. And with so much invested in a character, it became very costly in terms of overall battle-prowess to have a crafter, because you would have to sacrifice other necessary battle-skills in order to build one. Early on in the game, there were very few *Pure* craftsmen (crafters with no fighting skills as all), because a blacksmith would need to be able to mine ore, which would occur in the wilderness among nearly unavoidable monsters or even player killers (PKs), therefore they might want a skill to avoid (hiding) or basic Swordsmandship and tactics to fight weaker monsters.
The difference in Gear based vs Skill based games
In Ultima Online, the items which were crafted were, in the sum, quite ordinary. But a set of armor crafted by a grandmaster smith or tailor would afford excellent general protection, and I would guess all players would use about 90-100% crafted gear at any given time. The only time in which they would not use crafted gear is when they might use a powerful 'dropped set' item or artifact which would boast a 5-30% advantage over crafted gear. The reason dropped set items were used so infrequently was because gear remained on a corpse when a character dies. This means if you are adventuring in the wilderness and are killed by several orcs (filthy, stinky creatures they be), once you were resurrected at a healer, would have to run back to where you died and loot your old corpse. If you were killed by a player, they could loot everything off of your corpse.
This sounds strange to those who are unfamiliar with it, but this system created an extremely satisfying risk vs rewards ratio. Using extremely powerful dropped gear would make you very powerful in like kind, and make you better suited to defeating more powerful creatures, but in similar fashion, the risk of loss is far greater if you die. The incentive to stay alive increases, as does the incentive to play smart and cautiously. This adds a certain sense of danger to playing the game every time you step outside of the guard-protected town limits.
The basic economy of goods then was this, crafted good were the standard. It took a lot of time to gather the resources needed for crafting. People who played a lot would regularly need replacements if they weren't very careful, or were just unlucky. The crafted gear wasn't the best in game, but it was quite good overall, especially because it was the common denominator (that is, almost everyone used all crafted gear). Since everyone used crafted gear, and since all skills were open to everyone, there was much less of a problem with balance in PvP or PvE. In classic UO Mages were ostensibly more powerful than warriors, but they took a great deal more time and investment to level to 100 for all of their skills.
The result was a thriving player economy. Some players spent nearly all of their time crafting and gathering and resources (mining, killing fowl for fletchings, chopping trees for lumber, smelting, forging armor and sewing hides, brewing potions). They could make a killing by doing this. Interestingly, they could even make decent gold just by selling goods to NPCs while leveling, and even after max level when they created sub par gear (not even Grand Masters always craft a perfect item).
Implementation in ESO
I have no clue how to implement such a system into ESO. It seems that gear is so intrinsic to character playstyle and ability that I would be surprised if there could be a change in order to give crafters a way.
However, just because such as system would not work in ESO, doesn't mean there can not be some improvement for crafters. Here are my suggestions which I listed in another post:
First, It seems to me that crafting in ESO is sort of a side-show for virtually every account. As you level up multiple characters, it only makes sense that you take some of your loot and deconstruct or research with at least one character. As such, many many many accounts have maxed out craftsmen, and crafted sets seem to be asked for primarily by new players.
With that being said, it isn't a small thing to spend all of the time to do all of the research, and to level up your character through deconstruction, regardless if several people do it or not. So the issue of 'why is crafting so common (I'm supposing) is another issue.
The issue at hand is to give crafters a viable reason to exist in the market commercially, because presently, there is very little market for crafters outside of crafting for friends and the random person in guild chat.
Solution Offered:
1. Permit crafters the ability to *improve* items bound to another player in some sort of trade window which permits payment during the improvement.
2. Once (and only once) #1 is implemented, make it such that dropped set items cannot reach their full potential until augmented/improved by a crafter
You could really do just about anything in order for the items to be improved. Maybe a 5% or more increase to item stats. It could even just be the improvement from purple to gold. Perhaps in the transaction screen the purchaser could even include the mats plus gold and whatever other items they'd like to trade.
Consideration for Crafting Centric Players
For those players who like crafting most of all in this game, or for those who at least really really love crafting (I am not one of them) perhaps their could be another tier of crafting added to the game to make crafting characters more craft-centric and perhaps even require a greater investment, as as to those who invest a great deal of time in crafting, they will be able to better improve items than those who just do the standard level 50/9 trait craftsmen. I don't know how to implement such a thing, although I think Ultima Online had it right through its crafting system. Even Skyrim seemed to have a much greater investment for crafting than does ESO.
I understand the OP. I personally don't like crafting much. I would rather pay for services rendered by a crafter than level up myself, except crafting is so easy in ESO that I craft, so I have no need to purchase goods from another.
#76
9:49PM
To put it in its simply, it is because ESO is a gear based/class based game, and not a skill based game; and all items are retained upon death. The classic difference is Ultima Online vs. WoW.
TLDR Verion
Ultima Online is, I think, the first (yes, perhaps the very first) MMORPG. Created back in 1997, and used to be solely a skill based game. It has, in recent years, added several aspects of gear-grinding based playsets which makes it much more like modern MMOs.
What is the difference in Class vs Skill based games?
A skill based game is a game in which all of the skills available in the game are available to every single character. Here is a short list of some of the skills:
Swordsmanship, Mace Fighting, Fencing, Archery, Parrying (shield), Tactics, Anatomy, Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Tinkering, Mining, Alchemy, Cooking, Fishing, Magery, Poisoning, Musicianship, Peace-making, Provocation, Begging, Animal Taming, Animal Lore, Veterinary, Resisting Spells, Healing, Arms Lore, Hiding, Stealth, Snooping, Stealing, Meditation, Bowcraft/Fletching, etc.
The maximum for each skill (at the initial release) was 100, considered the Grandmaster rank. And Every character can learn ANY skill, but every character was maxed at 700 skill points total. So if you wanted a pure warrior you might build like this:
100 Swordsmanship
100 Tactics
100 Anatomy
100 Resisting Spells
100 Healing
100 Parrying
40 hiding
30 camping
30 cooking
A Mage:
100 Magery
100 Evaluating Intelligence
100 Resisting Spells
100 Meditation
100 Swordsmanship
100 Tactics
100 Wrestling
Getting a skill to 100 was no small feat. And with so much invested in a character, it became very costly in terms of overall battle-prowess to have a crafter, because you would have to sacrifice other necessary battle-skills in order to build one. Early on in the game, there were very few *Pure* craftsmen (crafters with no fighting skills as all), because a blacksmith would need to be able to mine ore, which would occur in the wilderness among nearly unavoidable monsters or even player killers (PKs), therefore they might want a skill to avoid (hiding) or basic Swordsmandship and tactics to fight weaker monsters.
The difference in Gear based vs Skill based games
In Ultima Online, the items which were crafted were, in the sum, quite ordinary. But a set of armor crafted by a grandmaster smith or tailor would afford excellent general protection, and I would guess all players would use about 90-100% crafted gear at any given time. The only time in which they would not use crafted gear is when they might use a powerful 'dropped set' item or artifact which would boast a 5-30% advantage over crafted gear. The reason dropped set items were used so infrequently was because gear remained on a corpse when a character dies. This means if you are adventuring in the wilderness and are killed by several orcs (filthy, stinky creatures they be), once you were resurrected at a healer, would have to run back to where you died and loot your old corpse. If you were killed by a player, they could loot everything off of your corpse.
This sounds strange to those who are unfamiliar with it, but this system created an extremely satisfying risk vs rewards ratio. Using extremely powerful dropped gear would make you very powerful in like kind, and make you better suited to defeating more powerful creatures, but in similar fashion, the risk of loss is far greater if you die. The incentive to stay alive increases, as does the incentive to play smart and cautiously. This adds a certain sense of danger to playing the game every time you step outside of the guard-protected town limits.
The basic economy of goods then was this, crafted good were the standard. It took a lot of time to gather the resources needed for crafting. People who played a lot would regularly need replacements if they weren't very careful, or were just unlucky. The crafted gear wasn't the best in game, but it was quite good overall, especially because it was the common denominator (that is, almost everyone used all crafted gear). Since everyone used crafted gear, and since all skills were open to everyone, there was much less of a problem with balance in PvP or PvE. In classic UO Mages were ostensibly more powerful than warriors, but they took a great deal more time and investment to level to 100 for all of their skills.
The result was a thriving player economy. Some players spent nearly all of their time crafting and gathering and resources (mining, killing fowl for fletchings, chopping trees for lumber, smelting, forging armor and sewing hides, brewing potions). They could make a killing by doing this. Interestingly, they could even make decent gold just by selling goods to NPCs while leveling, and even after max level when they created sub par gear (not even Grand Masters always craft a perfect item).
Implementation in ESO
I have no clue how to implement such a system into ESO. It seems that gear is so intrinsic to character playstyle and ability that I would be surprised if there could be a change in order to give crafters a way.
However, just because such as system would not work in ESO, doesn't mean there can not be some improvement for crafters. Here are my suggestions which I listed in another post:
First, It seems to me that crafting in ESO is sort of a side-show for virtually every account. As you level up multiple characters, it only makes sense that you take some of your loot and deconstruct or research with at least one character. As such, many many many accounts have maxed out craftsmen, and crafted sets seem to be asked for primarily by new players.
With that being said, it isn't a small thing to spend all of the time to do all of the research, and to level up your character through deconstruction, regardless if several people do it or not. So the issue of 'why is crafting so common (I'm supposing) is another issue.
The issue at hand is to give crafters a viable reason to exist in the market commercially, because presently, there is very little market for crafters outside of crafting for friends and the random person in guild chat.
Solution Offered:
1. Permit crafters the ability to *improve* items bound to another player in some sort of trade window which permits payment during the improvement.
2. Once (and only once) #1 is implemented, make it such that dropped set items cannot reach their full potential until augmented/improved by a crafter
You could really do just about anything in order for the items to be improved. Maybe a 5% or more increase to item stats. It could even just be the improvement from purple to gold. Perhaps in the transaction screen the purchaser could even include the mats plus gold and whatever other items they'd like to trade.
Consideration for Crafting Centric Players
For those players who like crafting most of all in this game, or for those who at least really really love crafting (I am not one of them) perhaps their could be another tier of crafting added to the game to make crafting characters more craft-centric and perhaps even require a greater investment, as as to those who invest a great deal of time in crafting, they will be able to better improve items than those who just do the standard level 50/9 trait craftsmen. I don't know how to implement such a thing, although I think Ultima Online had it right through its crafting system. Even Skyrim seemed to have a much greater investment for crafting than does ESO.
I understand the OP. I personally don't like crafting much. I would rather pay for services rendered by a crafter than level up myself, except crafting is so easy in ESO that I craft, so I have no need to purchase goods from another.
#76
9:49PM
4
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Rohamad_Ali✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭SWG was mostly crafted armor sets . It was very crafter friendly . Only Jedi really had to loot armor robes .0 -
Neoauspex✭✭✭✭✭
✭I remember in old MUDs, you not only risked losing gear... there was a small chance that your character would get deleted completely when you died. Fun times.0 -
Preyfar✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭
I used to go by "Hengeyokai" on Europa shard long ago, and I was mainly a crafter. My little shop became so popular I used to have people call me to put in orders for armor for PVP. I was one of the biggest armorers on the server, and I loved it.isailandshootub17_ESO wrote: »Ultima Online is, I think, the first (yes, perhaps the very first) MMORPG. Created back in 1997, and used to be solely a skill based game. It has, in recent years, added several aspects of gear-grinding based playsets which makes it much more like modern MMOs.
One of the biggest problems in ESO is seemingly everyone is a jack-of-all-trades. Every other person seems like they're a completely maxed out, entirely self-sufficient crafter and can easily hammer out what they need without much effort at all. There's no need for crafting skills. Granted, ZOS has pointed that crafters will be getting a buff with housing, though that's limited to furniture (hopefully more is coming, but... nothing's been stated yet).
I'd love to see player-crafted armor and crafting services get a bump up:- Let players craft armor repair kits.
- Let player-crafted armor take reduced damage or have higher vitality from high end smiths.
- Give players a small (read: SMALL) chance to get exceptional/finely crafted versions of the armor which have a minor stat boost (say, the difference in CP160 -vs- CP170). This would make crafted armor have a chance have that little bit extra.
- Jewelry crafting is a given.
- Allow players to craft armor padding and oils (small timed buffs players could add to their armor to increase the benefits or provide additional perks).
- If a costume system is ever implemented it will give players a chance to craft slots for those items, which is good for the economy.
Edited by Preyfar on December 19, 2016 4:26AM1 -
@Preyfar Interesting suggestions. I understand how you feel about your Europa crafter. I was Catskills since 98. I still log in from time to time. I do hope ZOS is able to rescue crafting economy from its current state.0