Crafting Additions and ideas
MrGhosty
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I want to preface this very long list of ideas and improvements with the fact that I love crafting in ESO. It is the first and only MMO where I have genuinely enjoyed the crafting aspect. All of these ideas and comments come from a place of love of the game and this is just me dreaming. I understand some ideas may be unfeasible or labor intensive. These ideas are just meant as a way to start a discourse with the community about what we would and wouldn't like to see added.
Crafting- Guild
Just as we have a mages,fighters, and eventually assassin's, and thieves guilds I would like to see a crafting guild be created. This guild wouldn't have a story but rather an auto generated quest giver that sends you specific places to gather rare materials (more on mats in a bit). These wouldn't be grind quests in so much as a way to get your hands on some special stuff. The more of the map you've already explored the greater your chance to be sent on an epic journey. As with the other guilds there would be a skill tree associated with it that would allow you to unlock passives as you complete more missions (more on skills in a bit) These missions and quests could be to go and retrieve a unique item that will then be used to craft a weapon or armor of some sort for a client. The client would be an NPC but crafting this particular item would grant a greater XP gain than just leveling your craft in the usual way. These missions would be random so sometimes you'll get crafting missions, material missions, or a restoration mission.
Restoration and Improvement
Repairing armor should not remain as something only NPCs can do, or force players to purchase repair kits. Those options should of course be available, but crafters should also have the ability to repair the armor for themselves and others. This would use up materials exactly as crafting wood and would require repair hammers that could be found around the world like lockpicks, these repair hammers should also be craftable with materials. The interface could work like a trade screen, but rather than giving someone your armor to repair, you enter into a repair request similar to trade request screen. While in that screen the crafter uses their repair hammers to repair the item and the screen doesn't close until the receiving player pays for services rendered. Obviously some balance issues would need to be worked out to avoid scamming and other bs like it but the idea still stands.
A secondary aspect to repairing that would tie back into the crafting guild, would be restorations. Randomly spawning the world either through collecting nodes, going through wardrobes, etc would be relics. These relics would vary in value going from a family heirloom to great lost relic. These restoration items would have a recipe list associated with them, requiring a certain amount of materials and would take time to complete like researching. Once complete the item can either be kept by the player, sold in a market, or turned into an NPC for an xp gain and some sort of reward.
Styles
The racial motif styles are all well and good but there are some lacking aspects for crafters, particularly anyone who has enjoyed playing through Skyrim with a load of armor mods turned on.
There are armor styles that we as crafters cannot make, such as Jerkins and while I understand the importance to having some items loot drop only I cannot but feel a bit hamstrung by only having a small number of things to make. What I would like to see is the system remain as it is, but then allow crafters to dedicate themselves to learning additional forms such as the jerkin, or a gauntlet for light armor that has some characteristics similar to medium armor (appearance only, I don't want to deal with stat adjustments) Maybe you really like a particular gauntlet, but don't like the bit of elbow padding. Make that a learnable style! Some examples of styles you could learn would be to add some linen to a breton heavy armor cuirass that would be similar to the classic depiction of crusading knights or indeed our own Knights of the nine from Oblivion. Each racial style could have a select number of unique alterations that would only be available to those who choose to specialize in crafting.
These unique items could also be created for the other crafts like provisioning and enchanting. Perhaps with provisioning you could craft food that had racial bonuses so they provided a boost to those with a specific race, enchanting could have some double enchantments, or etc.
Specialization
Just as with combat skills, I would like to see crafting skills granted an "ultimate ability" or specialization. these would begin to unlock after a certain point in the leveling process (higher to encourage investment) and only one ability would be able to be selected once every level or every five levels (exact function may require tinkering) Some specializations that come to mind would be the ability to craft jewelry, other racial motif styles, find greater amounts of a particular node, craft unique weapon or armor sets (not both at same time). These abilities would allow crafters to further specialize in whatever they enjoyed most and would further diversify the crafting community. I wouldn't want this ability to hamstring people in such a way as crafter A wants to build object X but can't unless they buy materials made by crafter B. It would be nice to be able to buy a high quality necklace from a jeweler, and then go to an enchanter who chose to specialize in fire enchantments so my new necklace gives me a 5% chance to summon a phoenix when using melee (just an idea to illustrate example) This fire specializing enchanter doesn't diminish any of the other enchanters, it just caters to those who really like fire enchantments.
Reasoning
My reasoning behind this idea is that crafting requires a big commitment of time, energy, and skill points. Those skill points are points not being put into making our character stronger, flashier, or more effective on the battlefield. We are, if only in a small way, making our characters combat deficient and we do so because we love crafting and the other aspects that an mmo provides.
While the current level of enjoyment doesn't make me regret putting those skill points into crafting, I would like to take it even further. Just as a player can choose not to put any points into crafting and just become a combat machine, why shouldn't crafters be given the ability to do the same for what they love. There would need to be some balance put into place so the players could finish the main story quests ( we all want to play the game) but things like the dungeon delves might then be out of the question or more difficult than usual. This also then provides a new role for the combat types; delvers. These brave adventurers can go into these dungeons and retrieve items of value to crafters which they can then sell. Again I must stress the importance of not hamstringing any play style so these materials would need to be obtainable via other means, but the easiest way would be to buy them from adventurers.
This creates a synergy between all the types of players, those who specialize in combat will need/want armor and other things made for them and those who specialize in crafting will need/want items the adventurers can obtain. The players who choose to split the gap will still have plenty to do in both things. Everyone wins!
Apologies for the wall of text but if you were brave enough to make it all the way through I would love to hear others thoughts on this idea. I'm sure I missed somethings or there are other aspects you other craters would like to see. Let's get a huge discussion going!
-MrGhosty-
Crafting- Guild
Just as we have a mages,fighters, and eventually assassin's, and thieves guilds I would like to see a crafting guild be created. This guild wouldn't have a story but rather an auto generated quest giver that sends you specific places to gather rare materials (more on mats in a bit). These wouldn't be grind quests in so much as a way to get your hands on some special stuff. The more of the map you've already explored the greater your chance to be sent on an epic journey. As with the other guilds there would be a skill tree associated with it that would allow you to unlock passives as you complete more missions (more on skills in a bit) These missions and quests could be to go and retrieve a unique item that will then be used to craft a weapon or armor of some sort for a client. The client would be an NPC but crafting this particular item would grant a greater XP gain than just leveling your craft in the usual way. These missions would be random so sometimes you'll get crafting missions, material missions, or a restoration mission.
Restoration and Improvement
Repairing armor should not remain as something only NPCs can do, or force players to purchase repair kits. Those options should of course be available, but crafters should also have the ability to repair the armor for themselves and others. This would use up materials exactly as crafting wood and would require repair hammers that could be found around the world like lockpicks, these repair hammers should also be craftable with materials. The interface could work like a trade screen, but rather than giving someone your armor to repair, you enter into a repair request similar to trade request screen. While in that screen the crafter uses their repair hammers to repair the item and the screen doesn't close until the receiving player pays for services rendered. Obviously some balance issues would need to be worked out to avoid scamming and other bs like it but the idea still stands.
A secondary aspect to repairing that would tie back into the crafting guild, would be restorations. Randomly spawning the world either through collecting nodes, going through wardrobes, etc would be relics. These relics would vary in value going from a family heirloom to great lost relic. These restoration items would have a recipe list associated with them, requiring a certain amount of materials and would take time to complete like researching. Once complete the item can either be kept by the player, sold in a market, or turned into an NPC for an xp gain and some sort of reward.
Styles
The racial motif styles are all well and good but there are some lacking aspects for crafters, particularly anyone who has enjoyed playing through Skyrim with a load of armor mods turned on.
There are armor styles that we as crafters cannot make, such as Jerkins and while I understand the importance to having some items loot drop only I cannot but feel a bit hamstrung by only having a small number of things to make. What I would like to see is the system remain as it is, but then allow crafters to dedicate themselves to learning additional forms such as the jerkin, or a gauntlet for light armor that has some characteristics similar to medium armor (appearance only, I don't want to deal with stat adjustments) Maybe you really like a particular gauntlet, but don't like the bit of elbow padding. Make that a learnable style! Some examples of styles you could learn would be to add some linen to a breton heavy armor cuirass that would be similar to the classic depiction of crusading knights or indeed our own Knights of the nine from Oblivion. Each racial style could have a select number of unique alterations that would only be available to those who choose to specialize in crafting.
These unique items could also be created for the other crafts like provisioning and enchanting. Perhaps with provisioning you could craft food that had racial bonuses so they provided a boost to those with a specific race, enchanting could have some double enchantments, or etc.
Specialization
Just as with combat skills, I would like to see crafting skills granted an "ultimate ability" or specialization. these would begin to unlock after a certain point in the leveling process (higher to encourage investment) and only one ability would be able to be selected once every level or every five levels (exact function may require tinkering) Some specializations that come to mind would be the ability to craft jewelry, other racial motif styles, find greater amounts of a particular node, craft unique weapon or armor sets (not both at same time). These abilities would allow crafters to further specialize in whatever they enjoyed most and would further diversify the crafting community. I wouldn't want this ability to hamstring people in such a way as crafter A wants to build object X but can't unless they buy materials made by crafter B. It would be nice to be able to buy a high quality necklace from a jeweler, and then go to an enchanter who chose to specialize in fire enchantments so my new necklace gives me a 5% chance to summon a phoenix when using melee (just an idea to illustrate example) This fire specializing enchanter doesn't diminish any of the other enchanters, it just caters to those who really like fire enchantments.
Reasoning
My reasoning behind this idea is that crafting requires a big commitment of time, energy, and skill points. Those skill points are points not being put into making our character stronger, flashier, or more effective on the battlefield. We are, if only in a small way, making our characters combat deficient and we do so because we love crafting and the other aspects that an mmo provides.
While the current level of enjoyment doesn't make me regret putting those skill points into crafting, I would like to take it even further. Just as a player can choose not to put any points into crafting and just become a combat machine, why shouldn't crafters be given the ability to do the same for what they love. There would need to be some balance put into place so the players could finish the main story quests ( we all want to play the game) but things like the dungeon delves might then be out of the question or more difficult than usual. This also then provides a new role for the combat types; delvers. These brave adventurers can go into these dungeons and retrieve items of value to crafters which they can then sell. Again I must stress the importance of not hamstringing any play style so these materials would need to be obtainable via other means, but the easiest way would be to buy them from adventurers.
This creates a synergy between all the types of players, those who specialize in combat will need/want armor and other things made for them and those who specialize in crafting will need/want items the adventurers can obtain. The players who choose to split the gap will still have plenty to do in both things. Everyone wins!
Apologies for the wall of text but if you were brave enough to make it all the way through I would love to hear others thoughts on this idea. I'm sure I missed somethings or there are other aspects you other craters would like to see. Let's get a huge discussion going!
-MrGhosty-
"It is a time of strife and unrest. Armies of revenants and dark spirits manifest in every corner of Tamriel. Winters grow colder and crops fail. Mystics are plagued by nightmares and portents of doom."
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