Long term impacts of Salems humour/skill system

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Long term impacts of Salems humour/skill system

Postby Sevenless » Fri Aug 17, 2012 2:16 am

The new and simplified humour system (compared to haven) is certainly an interesting concept, but I think there's a potential long term impact that has been overlooked. In haven, all the big bear bangers went to the miners and fighters, but all of the cave bulbs went to the jeweller. There was a clear distribution of resources, warriors needed some things, crafters needed other things. One very common thing that was seen in Haven villages was the concept of "warriors first". It's very easy to justify taking all of the con food if the defence of the village rests upon the quality of that character.

The main problem right now is that warriors need all 4 stats, and technically speaking, crafters basically need none of them. It's very easy to play the crafter role with only 20/20/20/20 stats. It's not great, but you don't really need more. Warriors can easily justify needing all the food. Now that's not necessarily a problem, but it seriously shallows the grinding for improvement aspect of haven that made it a game worth playing in the long run for the crafting side of the gameworld. The problem is, we're also seeing the exact same issue with skills. The Stocks/Cultivar bonus is definitely worth getting, but I'm seriously concerned about skills like Frontiers and Wilderness where the benefit is indeed very minor. Once you've got all the skills in the game, if we see more very minor benefits like reduced wear on fishing gear, the crafting end of the game is going to stay shallow. For me, and I think for many crafting oriented players, it's going to severely hurt the long run interest for Salem.

The problem is crafter characters not having a need of their own. Once the game world is old enough, all the warriors will have the skills to bake and there's absolutely no need for a baking specialist character. Anyone can bake as well as anyone else, and this means the crafter goes from important chef to grunt slave doing the work other people just don't want to do. The simplification of humours and reduced importance of proficiencies compared to Haven has caused this effect on a fairly wide basis. Once you've got the skills, you're good enough. Warriors however still have that long term grind that makes a better warrior in the long run.

The Problem Summed Up:

-Simplified humours have cut out the need for crafters to grind humours higher than 20-40, effectively making that entire part of the game "inaccessible" to them in the long run. This problem is intensified if they are living in a village with active grinding fighters who will want every bit of food they can get.
-Weak Proficiency impacts may further render it unrewarding to grind crafting characters in the long run.

We know that with the way Salem works, crafters form an important backbone for any village, including any village willing and able to pvp. That isn't to say PvPers won't do their own crafting, but we're not talking about them in this particular case. And this is especially true since the game is being advertised as a "crafting" MMO, many potential players/customers of this game will be of crafting oriented mindsets.

What the solution needs:

-Meaningful long term grind for crafting characters.

Purity of crops/metal isn't good enough because it doesn't require the actual crafter for that. If a crafter grinds up say 3.00p wheat, anyone can just boot that crafter to the curb and take over farming with fairly minimal influence on the farms ability to function purity wise. This is true for metalworking, gardening, pretty much everything that traditional crafters can do.

We have a couple of options as how to address this. More skills giving meaningful longterm gain for crafting is an obvious one, but with the current systems it's difficult to pick out benefits. A second option is to complicate the current gluttonies by giving the current humours additional effects related to crafting. Finally, a new set of skills or humours could somehow be created to meet this need.

Ultimately, I don't like the idea of giving humours more roles in crafting. Anything where warriors and crafters have the same needs you'll see warriors edging out the crafters because the need is more "pressing" than the crafter's.

A couple skill bonuses I could think of are Pots and Pans giving healing bonus on cooked foods, and sugar and spice giving additional gluttony points on cooked food. This would make very clear and beneficial uses for crafter characters that would give them something to grind for. I'd think the bonus should be a % bonus of the base value that isn't multiplied by purity. For example, a crispy cricket cooked by someone with 1000 Pots and Pans would heal 5.5 Black bile, instead of 5.0 at purity 1. If the cricket were 2.0p, the healed amount would be 10.5 instead of 10. This is of course assuming that the bonus is +10% base healing value per 10 levels of Pots and Pans. This means that at 100 pots and pans skill, not an easy feat, any food cooked would heal as if +1 level of purity. The bonus value of course can be scaled as desired. Theoretically sugar and spice would do the same thing, simply add a flat bonus to gluttony values, but I'm assuming that +10% would be a touch overpowered. Whatever the bonus for pots and pans would be, sugar/spice should naturally give less.

As for the concept of "another system", I have a proposal to consider and this could be instead of giving skills overt bonuses. Currently the combat grind is very monotonous. After the skills are unlocked, all there is to do is bake food and eat it repeatedly. This isn't as much as an issue to crafters because that's how crafting typically works. However, I think it's worth considering adding a third layer of depth to the skill/humour system by introducing a use base increase system called "Professions". Professions would be unlocked with certain skills, and it could be possible to require profession levels in order to unlock higher tier skills as well. Skill increases would come from use of related activity. For a combat profession called "Brawler", dealing damage would accumulate experience in the brawler profession which would increase the damage dealt from any non-weapon based attacks. For cooking, the bonus previously suggested for pots and pans could be a rewarded to a "Cook" profession given when cooking foods over a fire. The sugar and spice bonus given to a "Chef" profession awarded for creating unbaked food items that require baking or smoking to be finished.

Edit: Feel free to discuss. Am I worrying about nothing? Have a better idea? Lets hear it.
Last edited by Sevenless on Fri Aug 17, 2012 4:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Long term impacts of Salems humour/skill system

Postby Bluestone » Fri Aug 17, 2012 2:29 am

It is my understanding that eventually all proficiencies will have extra benefits, and that these have just not all been implemented yet. In such a way that a character with high pots and pans would be a better cook/baker. A character with high stocks and cultivars would be a better farmer etc.

I could have got the complete wrong idea with that but it is what I currently consider to be the case.

EDIT: I like you idea of professions. But would it restrict things for a hermit? Or would the hermit be able to acquire all professions?
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Re: Long term impacts of Salems humour/skill system

Postby Sevenless » Fri Aug 17, 2012 2:36 am

Bluestone wrote:It is my understanding that eventually all proficiencies will have extra benefits, and that these have just not all been implemented yet. In such a way that a character with high pots and pans would be a better cook/baker. A character with high stocks and cultivars would be a better farmer etc.

I could have got the complete wrong idea with that but it is what I currently consider to be the case.

EDIT: I like you idea of professions. But would it restrict things for a hermit? Or would the hermit be able to acquire all professions?


As for the skills, in a conversation with Loftar he mentioned that all skill benefits are supposed to be "side" benefits, not primary game drivers. He also mentioned they probably won't play into combat much.

Professions would be use based, yes I see no reason why I hermit couldn't get them all. It would be like anything else though: less specialization makes you less good in any one field purely because you're splitting your time.
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Re: Long term impacts of Salems humour/skill system

Postby Droj » Fri Aug 17, 2012 4:00 am

Crafters and the skills fe sugar & spice should give additional benefits as well as influencing the purity of the items that they craft. Warriors have it far too easy and don't necessarily rely on the crafters as you rightly said, purity is not in relation to the player but to the objects in the world and what the players do with then. Hence why a newb with agriculture could plant the purest seeds from day one, or anybody else for the matter.
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Re: Long term impacts of Salems humour/skill system

Postby Sevenless » Fri Aug 17, 2012 4:19 am

Droj wrote:Crafters and the skills fe sugar & spice should give additional benefits as well as influencing the purity of the items that they craft. Warriors have it far too easy and don't necessarily rely on the crafters as you rightly said, purity is not in relation to the player but to the objects in the world and what the players do with then. Hence why a newb with agriculture could plant the purest seeds from day one, or anybody else for the matter.


Because of how complicated the purity system is, skills can't exactly directly influence it. And I wouldn't want to see it do that even. But having side bonuses that give "effective" purity by boosting healing without changing base purity? That sounds more doable.
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Re: Long term impacts of Salems humour/skill system

Postby sabinati » Fri Aug 17, 2012 5:07 am

Are you seriously arguing for more grindy mechanics?
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Re: Long term impacts of Salems humour/skill system

Postby Sevenless » Fri Aug 17, 2012 5:22 am

sabinati wrote:Are you seriously arguing for more grindy mechanics?


This is grind we're "already doing". If someone bakes a lot, they will get benefits specific to baking. But if someone does a lot of things, they will get a little bit of benefit towards a bunch of said things.

It just makes sense to me to reward combat characters for hunting, and crafting characters for crafting. Whereas right now all you need to do is be handed curios/food and you're set to do literally anything you want to. What I'm really arguing for is a reward for said grind so that people will benefit if they specialize in a task. This gives crafters a reason to be farmers or bakers. As for warriors, it gives incentive for them to go out hunting, or alternatively to spar with each other since under this system spars would count as experience.
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Re: Long term impacts of Salems humour/skill system

Postby Bluestone » Fri Aug 17, 2012 6:09 am

I would argue in favour of grind. I am sick of games that are too short or lack anything meaningful to strive after.
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Re: Long term impacts of Salems humour/skill system

Postby ElCapitan1701 » Fri Aug 17, 2012 7:56 am

Sevenless wrote:The problem is crafter characters not having a need of their own. Once the game world is old enough, all the warriors will have the skills to bake and there's absolutely no need for a baking specialist character. Anyone can bake as well as anyone else, and this means the crafter goes from important chef to grunt slave doing the work other people just don't want to do.


I like your analysis and your idea. We need crafters and fighters to be on the same level.

I would like to suggest a solution, too:

1. Take "fighters" the abitlity to earn money and prepare (better) food by seperating tanning and cooking skills from hunting skills.
2. Take "crafters" the abilitiy to hunt animals, by seperating hunting skills from crafting skills.
3. Give us some form of inner city trade, so the tanner could buy the hide from the hunter/fighter, and the cook can buy the meat.The fighter would buy back the food/cloth.

This concept of inner city trade also results in a fight for the most effective way of producing a good which could be determined by the "profession" you describe, but also how further ressources are in range, how much time it needs to collect, etc,ect. It also would put some sense to a good infrastructure.

4. Give citys/players the ability to make contracts or simple hire a fighter for defense. They would get a daily pay for which they can buy food/cloth.

This would establish a system of supply and demand and balancing out the game on the whole.
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Re: Long term impacts of Salems humour/skill system

Postby Osmedirez » Fri Aug 17, 2012 9:58 pm

I feel like some of this concern is preemptive, if only because we haven't seen how witchcraft will alter the dynamic between hunt and craft gameplay.

As for another suggestion, I was hoping there would eventually be something along the lines of 'unique' recipes (for crafting).

The way I imagined it was grinding various craftable items to eventually, randomly (maybe randomness decreased by having higher proficiencies/humors? Odd combinations of proficiencies, though everyone probably wants to raise everything...) and once in a great while, you'll unlock a hidden recipe. One that cannot be crafted just by having the skill, as every other crafting recipe in the game has currently. they wouldn't necessarily have to be better than what's already available, but it would be a way to make more 'useless' items useful again, but only to people who have that recipe. This encourages people both to make less than optimal recipes, and it would make each crafter have more specialization. Want a specific piece of clothing? Only a handful of living crafters can make it right now. How about foods that require unlocked pottery items that get used up in the process of making an unlocked special food? Maybe unlock foods have buffs instead of a particular kind of gluttony event to make them desirable?

It would add all kinds of depth to the crafting system, would give people a good reason to go through items they would otherwise have no use for, etc, etc.

third thought about this, seems like darkness exploring/raiding (will the darkness ever invade the light, btw?) might also provide incentive for crafters to buff their humors.
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