Oghier
1713
Some tips, including things I had never heard of (e.g., “eidetic memory”):
Wolff
1714
Shamelessly borrowed from the reddit thread
Thanks!
The fact they don’t have an AH and the way they implemented Guild Stores is retarded.
KevinC
1716
Why is that? I honestly don’t know myself because I haven’t played far enough, but it could just be that they are going for a different sort of itemization/economy than is typical of most MMOs these days.
Because instead of a centralized AH, they are going to have a bunch of Guild Stores physically spread out throughout the world. As a result, shopping becomes this boring and time consuming activity where you jump through waypoints and run a lot in order to find a certain item or a better price.
Yes, it’s different but not “interesting different”, it’s “almost back to original EQ stupid different”.
Or, it creates a better sense of community and world. I am sick of the AH being the game, now guilds can make a name for themselves as merchants and crafters.
KevinC
1719
You’re making the assumption that you need/want to shop in the same manner that you do in other MMOs. That very well may be a correct assumption, but other than those in the closed beta I don’t think it’s known yet. Implementing guild stores instead of an auction house seems like an intentional move towards a different type of economy, one where the Guild is the main economic unit as opposed to individual shoppers on a world-wide marketplace. The value of crafting probably goes up when everyone isn’t dumping all their wares on the AH. Less ebay.com, more Guilds working to fulfill their own material needs, perhaps? You could potentially tie this to resource control, if keeps and towers held areas rich in crafting resources (absolutely no clue if they’ve done anything like this).
In two months time I might agree with you that the system sucks and that they really need an AH, I just think it’s jumping the gun a bit to call it retarded before we’ve had a chance to see it first hand and have a wider perspective into how the various systems are fit together.
Oghier
1720
I am not sure what to think of the Guild Stores in lieu of a centralized AH. It will be a lot less convenient, but consider how the economy might look when combined with their complex crafting system.
GW2’s approach makes everything a commodity. Buyers and sellers are anonymous, and everything is available everywhere at all times, at the market price. It’s the ultimate refinement of what EQ1 started when they moved trading from that cave to the Bazaar. It’s fantasy Amazon.
TESO makes everything a handcrafted wonder. You may be seeking out a particular swordmaker, or a guild that is known for them. Heck, you’ll have to research who that is beforehand. You will have to travel to make a purchase, and it may not be available when you get there. It’s a fantasy dark ages economy.
I have mixed feelings about this, as they’re imposing a tremendous amount of inconvenience to achieve a different and more realistic economy. I suspect I’ll dislike it on balance. It is a pretty bold design step, though – they’re definitely trying something different. Note that you can mitigate its effect by joining a very large guild (you can join five player guilds at once, with every character on an account being in every guild).
You are making good points but almost everything you said could be achieved without making the player waste tons of time traveling between Guild Stores.
BTW, IIRC players can be in more than one guild, right? So this system will eventually force people into 2-3 fake megaguilds (spawned by Reddit or something) owning stores in the most convenient places. And everyone will just trade there. So much for “a better sense of community and world”.
KevinC
1722
To be clear, I am playing a bit of the devil’s advocate, but I do think that we as gamers jump on things as being bad/stupid/idiotic before we’ve really given them a try. In two months time I might fully agree with you that it was a poor idea, but I’m going into it with an open mind. I should mention that I do come from a UO background where I can still recall my neighborhood blacksmith, Orion, and his awesome shop that he ran in the woods. I smashed many a PK’s face in with my warhammer (with the “Crafted by Orion” mark engraved on the side).
I’m not expecting the same thing here by any means, but I’m also not in love with world-wide AH systems either. They work for a game like WoW, but I’m very open to trying a crafting system / economy that takes a different approach.
It’s not so much a fantasy Dark Ages economy as a fantasy 1980s economy.
It’s intriguing. By attaching a cost to shopping (make it time consuming/frustrating), it changes what one shops for. It creates the category of “good enough,” as in, “this isn’t the best sword or the best price, but getting a better one will take 20 mins of scrounging around,” rather than simply punching exactly what you want into the search bar and clicking “sort by price.”
No, it’s not. “Researching” will involve searching on forums. “Travel” will be partly circumvented by alt mules parked in certain hubs.
The kind of stuff you are talking about is kinda cool and fresh for a couple of weeks. A few months after release, all crafters will be able to make whatever is designated as the most popular items, if not simply all of them. And player community will always find a way to reduce the “fluff” inconveniences, be it trading megaguilds, designated trading hubs or something else.
Oh and, of course, everyone’s favorite “WTS Longsword+15” spam will rule the zone chat of trading hubs. Fantasy dark age economy, hehe. :)
It feels like the whole purpose of this is to make people waste more of their subscription time on mundane tasks, plus some gold sinks.
Guilty as charged. :) On the other hand, bold and arrogant statements like that tend to spark some discussions and this thread was getting kind of stale. :)
KevinC
1726
Dern you molotov-tossin’ Canadians! :)
Based on how it goes in EVERY* mmo that tries to split markets, people will naturally concentrate on a handful of market locations, and the others will be dead. Players will park alts in the areas that are actually used, and 3rd party websites will track the inventory at all markets. The result will be a year or so of tedium before the developers realize the whole thing is stupid and link markets.
*This isn’t EVE, where there’s risk and logistics in moving goods and therefore emergent gameplay.
For a real blast from the past: “Players will now be able to buy and sell goods with greater effectiveness using the Linked Auction House system. Auction Houses in Orgrimmar, Undercity, and Thunder Bluff will now share the same pool of Horde player-created auctions, and Alliance players will find the same to be true when visiting Ironforge, Stormwind City, and Darnassus Auction Houses.”
The type of auction system they’re talking about reminds me a lot of Star Wars Galaxies. In SWG, crafting had so many things that varied the quality of the final product (material quality, the crafters gear etc) that the top quality crafters could really make a name for themselves and their vendors would often become popular destinations for their guilds town. Is there anything in ESO that effects the quality of the final crafted goods or can all crafters wind up making the exact same pieces?
In DAOC, you went to the housing areas and roamed from house to house trying to find the merchants you wanted. I’m not sure it was all that wonderful, but it was kind of interesting; everything was more or less in one place at least, though the housing areas were kind of tedious.
I didn’t get this deep into it, but from the ESO Crafting Guide at TESO Life:
Materials. Once you select the type of item you want to make, you’ll see what material is needed. Item’s quality is determined by materials you are putting into it. The more material you use, the higher level and armor value you’ll get.
Style doesn’t affect quality of the item and it only changes physical appearance of selected weapon or armor. Not all styles will be available from the start as they will unlock with the progression, but you’ll have access to your race’s style at start. You can unlock different styles by finding Racial Motifs Books that are scattered throughout the world. Available Racial motifs in TESO are: Breton, Redguard, Orc, Dunmer, Nord, Argonian, Altmer, Bosmer, Khajit, Ancient Elf, Reach, Primitive, Daedric and Imperial. Of course, every peace of gear can have different style, the choice is entirely up to player.
Traits on the other hand, are far more important since they can change characteristics of the gear in a great manner. They are bonuses that you can add on weapons or armor, but only if you’ve previously learned them. Learning the trait will have to be done at appropriate crafting station, where player will click “research” on the item that already has that trait applied. This process could take up to several hours to complete and the selected item will be consumed for the action. Once the research process is done, player will need trait’s corresponding stone which can be bought, found or extracted from other items.
They also mention that you as a character can level ALL the seven or eight crafting skills if you choose to, but you won’t be able to max any of them out. If you concentrate your skills on just a couple, they say you can max two out. And I think that means that you’re not putting those points into combat skills, right?
So given that, you’d think that “grandmaster” crafters will be fairly rare in ESO.
I doubt it. I think there will be plenty of them and, eventually, they will be pumping out exactly the same items. So no, not like SWG.
Oghier
1732
The way trait research works, this seems unlikely in the short term. There are some significant time-gates which grow as you learn more. The restraint isn’t going to be skill points, but time.
That’s how it looks to me, anyway. I don’t have a complete grasp on their system. MMO crafting never interests me, and it appears to be fairly complex here.
