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It's all about the aesthetics! (Race Based Crafting)
Plastic-Metal
Member Posts: 405
In almost all games on the market, including DAoC, race identity begins and ends within the race's starting zone; sometimes, it doesn't even truly begin there. Camelot Unchained will, hopefully, be something that's not like anything else in the industry.
I would love to see CSE allow crafters to specialize in the aesthetics of a particular race, which would also be infused with certain statistical increases not found within another race's weapons and armor. In addition to this, it would allow individualism as well as pushing Foundational Principal #3: Choice Matter! even further by giving players options in min/maxing their characters with stylized armors.
Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?
Examples:
Race: Dwarven
Realm: Vikings
Race: Norseman
Realm: Vikings
Race: Britons
Realm: Arthurian
Comments
I also like racial diversity in more than just aesthetic senses, and crafting such as you suggest is a great way to add to that while making it player-driven and thus promoting interdependency.
Good stuff
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
Aspiring Game Musician <<>> Inquiring ears, feel free to visit: http://www.youtube.com/user/vagarylabs
Sounds cool. And yes it would be a tremendous undertaking. But they could easily incorporate it in the game without the actual art forms / skins. So you would have a generic graphic / skin but with the actual racial stats. And later in the game via patches they could add the actual finished artwork. Just like the original DAOC launched without an actual bear form for its berserker animation.
Nanulak
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
It could be a tremendous drain on resources for the art team, but it would be pretty easy to implement long term via patches/stretch goals as grogstorm pointed out. In DAoC, there's usually three different types of basic armor models and duplicated every tier level. I would be thrilled with this at launch for each race and have CSE expand on it consistently after release.
As a 3D modeler, once you get a basic template you can quickly customize it in 3ds max/maya or zbrush if you're efficient in the programs. Unique texturing is slightly different.
As the CU community and Andrew Meggs have already discussed though, fluid gameplay > fluff.
Or.... why not let the players submit artwork? Some of the players are surely good enough artists?
After all, we're having input on the game mechanics, why not on the game aesthetics?
Really, all they would need to do is provide a template that people needed to work with, shapes that had already been coded and unpaid player artists could create the textures and skins!
This idea is greeaaaat!!!!!
I really hope CSE team is reading this thread, I would LOVE to specialize my crafter in a paticuliar racial aspect!
Make races matter in craft too please!
By the way you could extend this to some weapons.
They could add one set / race at beginning, as Plastic-Metal (I love your bender) said, it's not that long and could add a real enhancement to the race choice.
Elven daggers.
Dwarven catapults.
Kobold dungeons.
However, I think we all agree that a fluid, steamlined rvr game offering the fundamentals is desired for release, and CSE's resources and time frame prohibit such time-intensive features upon release. Let em start making money and I am hopeful that we will start seeing features like this. That's the beauty of a pure rvr game. Features can be introduced faster than a game where every feature has to be balanced for two different gameplay designs.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
Absolutely. It could apply to all possible crafting professions (which if you look at DAoC, armorcrafting, weaponcrafting, fletching, alchemy, spellcraftering, and siegecrafting).
A dwarven ram could be extremely durable, but slightly weaker than say a Celtic ram. Or, since the Arthurians are directly influenced by Roman occupation/culture, their trebuchets could be vastly superior.
I'm sure we'll see Elves for Celts, so an elvish bow is more powerful than a regular Norse bow.
Possibilities are endless.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
Indeed, sir!
It needs to go further than that.
Like the aptly named Foundry in Neverwinter, CU Crafters should have access to a content creation tool for weapons, armour and jewellery.
Crafters should have to earn their way through the different sections of functionality through the production of items that are actually purchased. More purchases locks in more slots for "styles" or "themes". Like a fashion house for military outfits. A crafter might produce a lot of content, but if nobody is using it, he will just deadend.
The stats and performance variables should be customisable as well within a dev-defined performance envelope that contrains item performance for balance and combat integrity.
One crafter produces weapons and armour all in his own style. Let's call him Krafta. Krafta becomes know amongst the players for both his weapons performance in combat and it's recognisable aesthetic on the battelfield. Some players might like to wear "full Kratfa" sets, others might mix and match with other content producers for thier own unique look. Yet other crafters produce content that is purchased by other crafters. Krafta is a typical colourblind male, but Kraftette is basically a human colour pallette on legs. She makes her name producing colour dyes and even colour themes that Krafta purchases for his sets. Players can buy Kraftettes Dyes/themes and apply them to other crafters items.
Krafta will work with a range of other more specific crafters as well as potentially with the players and theorycrafters. Current Theorycraft says heavy crit% plus strength >>> all for Viking Warrior? Cool he targets his Sets at that profile.
The devs simply have to produce contraints templates to ensure reasonableness and verification for the player crafter produced items. So for every template produced by one dev, the crafting community might produce many thousands of different items. Templates would include basic gemoetry with paramterisation to control polygon elasticity, i.e visual skeleton of the item, and particle effects, proc effects, stat table with parameterised range settings so the crafter can slide a little more strength and crit at the cost of agility and wisdom.
These items go onto the Trading House, which allows players to preview the items, to set favourites and even to like/unlike work being put up for sale.
So imagine
Krafta has an idea for a Viking set modelled after Thor, but he's not a 3d modeller, or even particularly artisitic himself. But he has a vision. He purchases the human style one handed hammer mod set he likes, it includes textures, model, stat package and particles. He doesn't like the particles chosen, it's dripping blood, he wants sparks and mini lightning forks. He takes the hammer to his crafting station, switches out the blood drips for sparks from a previous particle effect template he had learned. He names this new hammer as Molneer and tags it for his Thor set.
Ok, he's on fire now. He pulls his Zeus set of armour pieces up for review, copies them to a new Thor set and begins altering the attributes to better suit a Thor theme. He gets stuck on the metal finish reflectivity and decides to buy an armour texture template from a set he's seen before on another player. Ok save that, preview, tweak the geometry, preview, tweak the particles, preview. satisfied. Package it all up as a Set, name it Kraftas Armour of the Thunder God, put in a blurb about intended purpose, lore whatever. Whack it up on the Trading House.
Stromm goes to the Trading House looking for new gear. He searches, previews, check recommendations/reputation, hmmm he likes this Kraftas Armour of the Thunder King and buys it. The Trading House backend automatically updates its db to recognise credit for Krafta, and for the crafters who produced the content he included.
Who knows CSE may even engage those very popular crafters to produce in-game content for their own cash shop?
Probably full of holes, just off the top of my head, but that's how I would see crafting based content generation working. Especially in CU which has no pve of any note. So the traditional need for new gear has to largely be filled by crafters, so those crafters will have to replace the art devs that usually produce new itemisation content.
I love all the ideas in this thread. It would definately add another element to being a unique crafter.
So instead of people going /region Looking for armorcrafter, they might say /region Looking for female viking amorcrafter with the snow hoodie unlock!
I healed Mistwraith and all I got was this stupid tee-shirt!
Wonderful idea Plastic, thank you.
It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself. ~Declaration of Arbroath
For me pesonally, I'm not in favor of restricting things to specific races, rather I'd like to see armour and weapons that have overall different aesthics based on region/culture but not tied to a specific one-race only restriction.
Rather I'd like to see regional armour designs from crafters with the ability for crafters to acquire the other regional armour/weapon designs through RVR somehow. Bascially a way to unlock those designs somehow and open it up to their races being able to craft other racial themed armour in some degree.
Just like in the real middle ages you had regions that were known for their different armour/designs, like the "Gothic" plate from the Holy Roman empire vs the Millianese plate from Italy.
However this didn't mean that peopel only in those regions had such armour, a knight could acquire a suit of such design through travel or an armoursmith who had developed said skills with that style.
You can tie this into RVR in some degree, by having the ability to craft certain region themed armour be dependent on what area your realm holds/gains, or something more tied to crafters or something different. Give crafters rewards through RVR which open up more customization options.
I'm all for adding customization/variation to armour, not taking it away.
I'd much rather see armour that's heavily customizable, witht he ability to mix-match individual pieces, being able to choose the design of the "base" texture of your armour, then being able to add "layers" of design over it, such as the colour of the armour, then details like Etching, gilding, paintings (IE crests/designs), covered in a decorated cloth that attaches on the armour, etc.
A lot of people assume that armour, just like in most popular movies, was simply shiny metal and that's it. However armour back in the day coudl be heavily detailed with paintings and designs. It's just the paint has worn off (or mistakingly been cleaned off) to the base metal.
IE:
http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=2700
http://www.wallacecollection.org/whatson/treasure/102
Yeah, you're pretty much arguing for the same thing I initially posted about; racial based crafting. No matter how you look at it, it's pretty much the same thing.. the only difference is you're going much deeper into it by adding additional branches from the original root style armor. Either way, I agree. You'd be able to mix and match premade armor styles, just like you mentioned.
At this point, I think as a community we should list examples and visual references for City State / Mark to look at in the event they consider adding this to the crafting stretch goals.
Yeah, I was just under the impression from the first post that you were looking to make racial armour restricted to races and give bonuses to that specific race/armour.
If it's open, and other realms crafters cna obtain the receipies somehow (thorugh RVR or something) for other regional armours (and in turn certain bonuses for that "style" of armour) I am all for that.
The more driverse, customizible, and unique armours people can think up the better imo.
I like the idea that the crafter can determine how the weapon / armor he is crafting looks like. I would love to see that crafters from different races have a set of racial appearance from the beginning. Maybe they can learn the appearance of different races when they practicing their art in the home-zone of that specific race. But I am against the idea of having racial stats connected to racial appearances. Since the player are trying to max out their stats by the equipment, this would lead to higlanders only wearing kilts, since only in kilts they got the special freedom, erm.. boost to their special attribute.
I would like to see highlander crafters who were practicing their skill in the avalon, returning with beautiful ideas of scale-armor back to their forge in the highlands
MMO's played so far:
UO,EQ,DAOC,EQ2,GW,ROM,WOW,WAR,AOC,LOTRO,RIFT,TSW,GW2,POE
Looking forward to: Camelot Unchained, Star Citizen