Professions as Trade & Economy drivers

[DangerousLee]

As it is now, the professions do not really exist in salem and I guess a lot of players that were initially interested in salem had the idea of getting some profession and being good at it and setup some sort of business based on it. Players would buy and sell items based on their respective proficiencies in various areas. At the moment, I see little reasons to specialize, a lot of things seems to be missing at the moment (I understand it is beta), but it is not clear to me by reading the forums where the devs are going with the skill system and how exacly they want it to be important in the game. I saw that at some point Loftar pointed out that he wanted the skills to be only minor aspect of the game when it comes to its impact on the salem experience (if I understood correctly. viewtopic.php?f=12&t=322&p=3387&hilit=profession#p3387). I think it would be rather disapointing if one cannot feel that the time invested into some crafting specialization did not give you the exact feeling of being superior to others in that particular area. Someone could for instance be one the best baker in the area and make money out of it. (It is not possible with the current system and economy.)

The professions have already been discussed on the forum (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2505, viewtopic.php?f=12&t=960&p=9396), but the system I am proposing is mostly based on systems already available and is quite different from those already discussed.

If I understand Loftar's statement correctly, it is more that they don't want the skills to basically determine the whole usefullness of a given player. This would indeed penalize a lot the casual players who don't invest as much time as some other. The whole community would suffer needlessly from such things with reduced server population. I believe it is possible to make the skills and professions good enough so that some people will put a lot of effort into it, while not penalizing the others that are not specialists so much as to make them useless. Some balance must be reached.

Again I am suggesting modifications that seems to me very intuitive and thus players do not need to understand the whole underlying mechanics to get it. I suggest that some sort of crafting quality factor be added (It could consist of a purity modifier that is directly included in the purity of the final item, or a separate quality of manufacture variable. Ex: A buddies on a branch could have 50% purity while having 25% quality. OR if you don't want to add another factor, the purity of the final product could be affected by the skill of the crafter. It could only lower the quality and not increase it, meaning a 100% crafter would get the quality of the input products.). This would of course affect the items inspirational/healing/gluttony values. Ex : Crafter1 has skill 40% of skill Crafter2 has (100%). Crafter1 buddies on branch would (starting from 100% purity inputs) turn out to be lower than that of Crafter2. The later would get a 100% purity product. (The formula could be linear, but I would prefer something like, 50% of purity of inputs + 50% coming from crafter's skill. A crappy cooker can very well ruin a very good raw steak and reduce its purity but not totally ruin it.) Now this simple idea introduce the concept of professions, I can imagine players with good raw materials (high purity raw steak) and low cooking skills, want the food to be cooked by some specialists in exchange for some silvers, thus creating the cooking profession. You can think of similar reasoning for all the skills and craftable items in the game. An example is given later.

Factors that affect the quality value of the final product would include: quality of raw matrials, quality of item needed (fire, stove, smelter, etc. with weigths according to some logic.). Buddies on a branch could consist for example of 80% fish purity, 15% fire and 5% stick quality for final quality/purity values. It would also be affected by the cooking skill level of the player (Actually more the skill that unlocked the recipe).

Foods could only have a purity value, but manufactured stuff and equipment could very have some quality rating and/or a purity one. A good quality carpenter bench would yield higher quality planned boards for example. (Reaching the theoretical limit of 100% is not easy and should not be, hence it is theoretical.) Or a good quality smelter would see the metal poured from it with a better quality. (Ex: Iron ore determine 40% of output quality, lime 20%, 20% coal and smelter 20%). That would create an incentive to build high quality structures to further process goods (creating demand for good crafters -> economy). If structures would need repair after a couple of use, you would still need a good crafter to repair it to lessen the quality drop. This way items need to be replaced at some point and the economy can get going.

The whole idea of introducing professions is one of customization of characters and also one to make the economy system going. I discussed the economy in another thread (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3045). Also, by having some purity to the forageable items will help create those jobs and more (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3028).

The skill of a player would be determined simply by a weighted average of the proficiencies required to unlock the skill that is being used to do the action. For example, if someone is crafting buddies on a branch, the skill directly linked to that recipe is fishing (600 F&W + 600 H&G). Thus the higher the F&W and H&G are, the better his recipe will be. Since both require 600, they would contribute each 50% to the final quality score. If Fisherman1 has 2000 F&W and 1200 H&G, his crafting score for this recipe would be 0.5 * 2000/600 + 0.5 * 1200/600 = 2.666. Now the higher this score, the better the outcome. But in order to compare apples with apples, we have to compare his score against the best fisherman in salem to make sense of it. I would suggest at this point that the best fisherman (highest score) on the server have 100% quality of crafting (he is the best afterall). (This requires the system to regularly refresh its list of the best score achieved for a character on a given server.). Lets take the numbers 12000 F&W and 10000 H&G for Fisherman2. (If more than one skill unlocks the given recipe, an average of the two skills with some weight could be used. (the same principle would apply, these tables would need to be hardcoded))

That means that your score is not compared to some hardcoded value, but is actually compared to the best there is around which kind of make sense. It also creates a perpetual competition among specialists to be the very best, thus reducing the possibility for a player to be exceptional in a variety of professions (This creates demand and supply for the economy). The relation need not be linear, which means that a fisherman with score 10 is not necessarily twice as good as one with 5. I think it would be a good start if the relation was on a square root scale (All scores would be put in square root). Ex: Fisherman1 (0.5 * 2000/600 + 0.5 * 1200/600)^(1/2) = 1.633 and Fisherman2 (0.5 * 12000/600 + 0.5 * 10000/600)^(1/2) = 4.28. Now it is clear that on that scale, the two are not that much different thus making the extra grind somewhat questionable, but not useless either. In this particular example Fisherman2 is about 2.5 more skilled that Fisherman1. If Fisherman2 is the best on the server, his buddies on a branch would inherit 100% crafting quality (or purity if raw quality is 100%) and Fisherman1 would get ((1.633/4.28) * 100%) = 38% (It could be changed, just the numbers are taken for example purpose. A balance must be reached.). This little example illustrates an important point of my suggestion, that is, everyone can be useful in salem without much effort and yet it rewards the very best, grindy type of people that want to make it their profession. (A square root relationship basically means that for each time you have a 4 times higher score than someone else, you are in fact only twice as effective as they are.)

Please comment, and make sure to read the other threads since this idea is made to fit together with the other ideas I am proposing. Also, if you think you have a better idea, spit it out. Any questions you may have are welcomed and I will answer my best.

[Dallane]

Please comment, and make sure to read the other threads since this idea is made to fit together with the other ideas I am proposing. Also, if you think you have a better idea, spit it out. Any questions you may have are welcomed and I will answer my best.

Why make new threads add to the current ones.

[Procne]

Professions do exist when you play with group of people.
There are farmers who keep increasing their S&C score, and there is no need for everyone to increase that.
There probably are carpenters also who keep increasing their H&N to have better odds when planing boards.
There are also fighter characters.

As different industry branches are more fleshed out, and proficiencies play bigger role, you can expect more and more roles come up. It's all about having one character maxing particular proficiencies instead of everyone increasing them

Also, depending on what people like to do or what infrastructure they have available there may also be smiths, bakers, lime miners.
But, with your ideas about restricting trade, those roles may be gone, because instead of being supplied by people with different roles players may decide it will be cheaper, safer and more convenient to do everything themselves.

[MagicManICT]

You don't need hard defined "classes" (using that term very generally) from the game developer to define your own areas of expertise. While skills here aren't going to be deep enough or long enough to train that you'll get a situation such as in games like EVE Online (where it can take years to fully develop a specific generalization like shipbuilding), I think Procne makes the absolute best argument on that and nothing else needs to be said.

This is part of what defines a "sandbox game," so it wouldn't be changed no matter how much you want it different.

Why make new threads add to the current ones.

I'll be happy to merge or lock new threads with an existing topic, however, I don't always recall the previous ones and that makes it hard for me to find them. If you have one in mind, please point it out. If this has anything new to say, it'll get a merge. If it completely repeats what has already been said, it'll probably get locked with a pointer to the old thread.

[dageir]

I agree there should be high end proficiencies that take alot of effort to get to stop every dog and his granduncle get them. But going as far as having strict classes is too far.

[DangerousLee]

You don't need hard defined "classes" (using that term very generally) from the game developer to define your own areas of expertise. While skills here aren't going to be deep enough or long enough to train that you'll get a situation such as in games like EVE Online (where it can take years to fully develop a specific generalization like shipbuilding), I think Procne makes the absolute best argument on that and nothing else needs to be said.

This is part of what defines a "sandbox game," so it wouldn't be changed no matter how much you want it different.

Why make new threads add to the current ones.

I'll be happy to merge or lock new threads with an existing topic, however, I don't always recall the previous ones and that makes it hard for me to find them. If you have one in mind, please point it out. If this has anything new to say, it'll get a merge. If it completely repeats what has already been said, it'll probably get locked with a pointer to the old thread.

Never anywhere in my idea did I mention of closely stated such a thing as a "hard defined", it is actually much more "soft defined" if you think about it. It would not take years to get to a meaningful expertise level either with this idea. If you want to be the very best on the server then it may take you a long time, but it is not like you did not know beforehand.

Procne does not have much of an argument in my mind. His argument is based on having known friends come to play Salem with him and build a camp (That is what Salem currently offers to players as experience). I remember seeing Jorb on some youtube interview mentionning that most MMOs are basically single player games with a chat lobby. Well, Salem as it is now is pretty much that. People bring their friends they already know, to build a camp somewhere on the map, the farthest away from any other pilgrim (since every other are at best considered a threat) and do everything like in single player games except that they do it with friends this time (more like multiplayer).

You see, a couple of threads are complaining about the lack of interactions between players, and the suggestion I make (and all the others too) are exclusively constructed in such a way that the outcome would be more player interactions. By player interactions I mean players that don't know each other in real life, these ideas would make players naturally group together in Salem because it is in their best interests (Doing everything yourself is sub-optimal). The only way to achieve that, is to make them work toward the same goals (even if they are not aware of it) and this is achieved by the economic system proposed in another thread. This profession thread is an idea that taken together with the other ideas I proposed would be a formidable incentive to create a community of pilgrims that work on common goals and that were not your friends before meeting in Salem.

I hope this clears up things a bit.

As for merging the thread with others, I would prefer not to. The reason is simply because the whole economic thread and sub-threads I posted recently have to be read together to make sense. If you read them individually here and there, you don't see the picture. I am afraid that by shredding the ideas in little ideas in one thread and another will simply make the whole picture not seen at all. A simple experience is convincing, just browse any thread with 3 pages or more and see for yourself that most of it has nothing to do with the ideas expressed on the page 1 of the given thread. Thread derailing is very common here, and the ideas would just be lost into threads.

I even think I should best just wrap all my ideas and put them in the main thread (economics : viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3045). That would make a super huge 3-4 pages of text, but at least people will be able to get the idea, if not then I did my best. Just PM me if you think I should do it and I will help you out clean this mess.

Thanks

[DangerousLee]

I agree there should be high end proficiencies that take alot of effort to get to stop every dog and his granduncle get them. But going as far as having strict classes is too far.

I see most of you probably got confused because I put names like Fisherman1 and Fisherman2, but those are not hard defined, everyone is a Fisherman and everyone is Farmer/Carpenter/whatever in this system. It was just for the example purpose, you could very well replace Fisherman1 by Character1 if that confused you.

What I mean is that Character1 with his list of proficiencies could be a: 41% Fisherman, 38% Baker, 75% Smith, etc... (100% would be the guy with the best score on the server for a given recipe) The "professions" are just lablels that are not hard coded, it is just in your head that you know you are good for this recipe and less on that one and so on for each and every recipe in the game.

[Potjeh]

God no, relative grading is horrible enough in RL education system, I don't need it in my gaming.

[Solon64]

Personally, I like the idea of purity/quality coming into effect. It gives incentive to be good at a certain profession, perhaps even gain fame across the server from it (that one baker from the village a few miles yonder makes AMAZING apple pies! Or that blacksmith who lives out in the woods by himself, his swords are legendary, kill a bear in a single blow!). However, I feel grading relative to a standard (the highest skill on server) to be confusing, illogical, and can scale out of control wildly. Why should my lumberjack fricadel be worse simply because some other guy in the middle of nowhere is slightly better at grilling than me?

It makes more sense, in my mind, to have the standard be the minimum skill to make said sword or lumberjack fricadel, with any skill above it adding a bonus. If you have the minimum skill required and high quality forges or smelters and materials, you make an average quality weapon, say, a quality of 1. Improve any of those and you improve the weapon quality, thus, a sword forged in the heat of the largest and best forge in the land with epic quality iron from across the Great Mountain by the legendary swordsmith xxBobxx should be VASTLY superior to the average tinkers toy blade from scrap metal, and quality alone demands a premium price. But, said tinkers blade isn't worse just because xxBobXx exists, its worse because tinker isn't as good as xxBobXx.

This would incentivize players to specialize so that their product is in demand, there's no.disincentive to follow the same path as some other player (but.of course you can still compete for the title of best smith!), there's now a drive to improve your materials and tools (other professions are now in demand! Calling all miners and architects and carpenters!), and it even drives economy and business. A town known for its smiths will need a lot of iron ya know.

This system would still need basic changes though to function. removal of boston travel, maintenance repairs on buildings or tools that lower their quality, etc. But those changes alone would make players flock to the towns, if nothing else because a good repairman would be needed, materials would suffer decay and thus new raw materials would need gathered, etc.

[HazardousLee]

You are one of the few person that understand the idea behind this and i think you for posting, but there is still something you do not understand.

The point of having the skills of players relative to the others is to always get a competition going. Because if you set a hardcap for specialization, well with the weeks going you will have more and more Perfect specialist, thus eliminating the point of having specialists. Also, at a certain point you will have a character specialist in every domain which in that case, really does not make any sense.

So basically with the idea there should be only one person who would be able to cook a perfect fricadel, but it does not mean the other ones are not good. 99%, 98%, or even 80% of the maximum fricadel properties is not bad at all. Like it was said before, a portion of the fricadel output would be given by the crafter skills and the other portion from the ingredients. A good crafter with crappy ingredients won't make a superb fricadel nor a bad crafter with good ingredients will.

In this way it will be possible to create a dynamic community.