10-17-2009, 11:19 AM
I've never really thought much about crafting, but wanted to jot down one idea...
Currently most craft systems work like WOW: you get a bunch of recipes with particular skill levels and you grind your way through them. You may have never made any Brass Buttons but you're an expert at them because you made 150 Silver Cords on your way up the skill tree.
I think that rather than skilling up "tailoring" you should instead skill up individual recipes. If you made 150 Silver Cords, they would be trivial to you but Brass Buttons would still be difficult.
Recipe difficulty would be decreased by your familiarity with the components.
Example:
Widget - 50 difficulty
5 brass gears
2 steel cases
1 cotton string
The actual difficulty of the widget will be modified by your skill in making other items that also use brass gears, steel cases and cotton string. If you've never made anything with those components then making a Widget will be a real experimental item for you and it will be difficult. If you've been making, say, clocks, which use brass gears, then your familiarity with that component will make Widgets easier to build.
Note that you don't need to understand how to make a gear and in fact that knowledge is useless for making widgets; it's the use of the gears in constructing other items that will help you make Widgets.
This should make for some interesting specialization in crafting. Instead of someone having "300 weaponsmithing" and being an expert at making rifles even though they've only ever made pistols, they would instead just be a pistol expert. Since rifles use some of the same familiar elements from pistols, a pistol expert would be better at trying to make a rifle than, say, a tailor, but they aren't just a "weaponsmith" who knows how to make everything requiring "200 weaponsmithing skill".
But this is more than just breaking it down by type. Someone who has made 500 "Bart's Special Pistol" isn't quite as good at making "Slim's Special Pistol" as someone who has actually been making that exact pistol. The components would be very similar so they'd have an easy time building any type of pistol, but you're only really good at what you've actually been building.
Currently most craft systems work like WOW: you get a bunch of recipes with particular skill levels and you grind your way through them. You may have never made any Brass Buttons but you're an expert at them because you made 150 Silver Cords on your way up the skill tree.
I think that rather than skilling up "tailoring" you should instead skill up individual recipes. If you made 150 Silver Cords, they would be trivial to you but Brass Buttons would still be difficult.
Recipe difficulty would be decreased by your familiarity with the components.
Example:
Widget - 50 difficulty
5 brass gears
2 steel cases
1 cotton string
The actual difficulty of the widget will be modified by your skill in making other items that also use brass gears, steel cases and cotton string. If you've never made anything with those components then making a Widget will be a real experimental item for you and it will be difficult. If you've been making, say, clocks, which use brass gears, then your familiarity with that component will make Widgets easier to build.
Note that you don't need to understand how to make a gear and in fact that knowledge is useless for making widgets; it's the use of the gears in constructing other items that will help you make Widgets.
This should make for some interesting specialization in crafting. Instead of someone having "300 weaponsmithing" and being an expert at making rifles even though they've only ever made pistols, they would instead just be a pistol expert. Since rifles use some of the same familiar elements from pistols, a pistol expert would be better at trying to make a rifle than, say, a tailor, but they aren't just a "weaponsmith" who knows how to make everything requiring "200 weaponsmithing skill".
But this is more than just breaking it down by type. Someone who has made 500 "Bart's Special Pistol" isn't quite as good at making "Slim's Special Pistol" as someone who has actually been making that exact pistol. The components would be very similar so they'd have an easy time building any type of pistol, but you're only really good at what you've actually been building.