Mark Jacobs expunges the mystery of WAR's crafting

I really don't understand why they insist on saying this is not a recipe based system. If you can combine the same ingredients in the same way every time to get the same product, that's a recipe. If you have more options of things you can make, then you have more recipes. Players will figure out which combination favors them the most, and then use that combination exclusively. The devs for some reason prefer to use the word combination to recipe, but it seems the same to me. It's a great system, but it's a pointless distinction.

Cultivators can grow their own weeds... That's going to set the WoW kiddies crazy.

I love the idea of other people looking in your Tome. That's absolutely fantastic. Also, their thoughts on curbing gold farming are right on point.

No, Kyle, they -are- recipes. Let's think a step ahead.

World of Warcraft:
You are tailor. Your two highest crafts are a white and a green hat. For the sake of argument, let's say they both require the same amount of resources to produce. What do you craft? Green hats, simply because they're better.

WAR:
You are a tailor. According to www.exemplarWARfanpage.com your two highest crafts are a white and a green hat. For the sake of argument, let's say they both require the same amount of resources to produce. What do you craft? Green hats, simply because they're better.

Where exactly is the difference? It's rather obvious that a vast majority of players will soon follow the website's directions to make the best goods. It's a nice attempt, but they should have read Bartle's "Designing Virtual Worlds", chapter "Crafting". Been there, seen that; an absolutely futile system.

Exactly Nick. Just because the Devs aren't including the recipes internally into the crafting interface doesn't make it not-a-recipe. In the written interview (not in the video) Mark Jacobs says that a given combination of ingredients will always produce the same result, with a percent chance that a "bonus" result might also occur, but never a random result. So they have a very, very long list of recipes. The fact that they don't give me a list of what I can make is actually a pain. I either have to have all the interactions memorized, or look it up on a website every time I want to make something.
If you play Warcraft, their system is comparable to gemming a piece of gear. There are a lot of available gems (ingredients) that I can combine with a piece of armor to make it better. Although I certainly can combine the ingredients any way I want, there will ALWAYS be combinations that are superior, and I need to go to a website to find out what that combination is for my given role/spec/class. The nice thing about this system is that if you add one new ingredient (or one new type of gem), thousands of new recipes are now possible. Of course, then you only need to wait one week and see which of those combinations are now superior. Or if you're interested, you can take part in that discovery yourself. Either you are putting together a list of good ingredients (making a recipe) or using the list someone else made (using a recipe). I really do like this system, I just don't like all the "not-a-recipe" hub-bub.

Kyle Horner: "So the example of always picking the one hat over the other is a flawed example from the beginning because you can't make hats in WAR"

What exactly is the difference between a hat and a talisman? You will still have items that are superior to others, unless you make them all of "equal quality" (i.e. adding Red Pills gives you +1 Strength, while adding Blue Pills gives you +1 Stamina). In the end though, most people will go for the extremes, e.g. the tanks are almost certain to go for +MAX Stamina.

"Actually, I would guess that the Tome of Knowledge will keep track of the stuff you've tried making in the past. So you should remain in-game while you craft."

So by simply assuming that a certain someone was using the internet, they'll punish the players who were lucky at guessing? Alternatively, would that make them very popular among players? Is it still "not okay" if I ask for recipes over City Talk and get an answer?

"I think it could work and I'm willing to remain optimistic about it until they either fail or succeed."

I'm not saying it won't work or that it will be inferior to the "old crafting system", in fact, I know that it has worked in the past. Quite a few MUDs had/have a pretty much identical system and as far as I am aware it has also been present in one or two more recent single player games (The Witcher coming in mind).

The point is, that it won't work as advertised. The players will create pages with lists of recipes, item generators (i.e. enter the stats you want and we'll tell you what to mix) and so forth. It's all been done before really.

I think you are starting to zone in on what I'm getting at, Kyle. There WILL be hundreds of permutations for each item. There will NOT be hundreds of situations so nuanced that it will be a good idea to use all of them. So only a few will be great, more will be good, and most will be second rate. This boils down to saying that only players that are not interested in optimizing their characters have choice. Competitive players will find the one or two best choices and only make those.

So now we have a system where the first crafter has to go through who knows how many permutations of a recipe until they hit upon that desired optimum. That's a grind. It costs reagents and play time in order to find it. The difference here is the grind only affects those trying to find the optimum, not those who benefit by looking up the recipe that someone else posted online.

Again, I am not arguing against this system! I like the number of choices available. I like it that with every patch/nerf/buff/retooling, a new optimal recipe might arise, and I get it that this is something that does not happen with a less flexible system. But, except for a handful of adventurous souls willing to grind their time and resources to find that optimum, this is still a recipe based system.

I am definitley looking forward to watching how crafting plays out.
So much of running an MMO is based on the way players and devs work together/against one another. This type of system in a heavy PvP framework will be interesting cannon fodder, to say the least.

I'll certainly be happy, I'll get my recipes. Explorer types will be happy, they have something to play with. I wonder if they'll be able to develop a way to reward the explorers a bit more for their discovery over those that choose to cut and paste. It's a hard system to test with an NDA in place.

(Your posts read fine, though a little too enthusiastic for an untested idea. But hey, it's a good counterpoint to my skepticism. The Monarch is a cagey beast!)

As for solutions to the problem, once again, it's all in the book.:P

Rerolling the system with every patch would be somewhat awkward really. To me it sounds similar to changing the laws of physics with every patch. However, what you can do is randomise the ingredients required for each character. So once again, say, Conan needs 3x Silk and 1x Wool to make the [Red Hat of Awesomeship], while Thrall needs 2x Silk, 1xWool and 1x Silver. In the end, it's just as illogical, but there's little you can do about it.

Once again, Kyle, this is not something that would be "exploited" by power-players. Chances are, you won't even have to look it up on the net. This sort of information usually spreads very quickly in a virtual world and becomes the famous 5silk-3wool-4gold-1robe-hat-recipe, a.k.a. 5s3w4f1rht. It's common knowledge.

I actually quite like the fact that they are trying to implement a new crafting system. Maybe not the best bet from the designer's point of view, but it's somewhat original, thus why not? It can work as intended, if they can find a way of dealing with the internet problem, without ripping the immersion apart. Let's see what they come up with.

Hmm... that still sounds somewhat like changing the rules of the game once every so often, but, hey, in the end it's still a solution. I'm just wondering how they're planing to implement it though.