Fun for Non-Combat Classes - What do you want?

[Ramsey]

At the overwhelming request of fellow ZAM posters, I copied the partial contents of a thread I created over on the ZAM boards titled: Fun for Non-Combat Classes - What do you want? to the Feedback & Suggestions Forum here...

Only to realize that the section is entirely devoted to Forum Feedback... Ah, when will I learn to read... Since the thread hasn't been moved yet after many days, and the section seems to be a black hole of feedback about anything but the forum... I'm moving it here, I'd love to hear everyone else's ideas, and what they want to see! Read on for details of the question, and a wall of text of popular suggestions.

Click here to read the original post on this forum and any of the accompanying suggestions that haven't been moved here.

The topic of what would make non-combat classes, particularly crafting, has been on my mind a lot lately.

This thread is not about what would "fix" crafting (assuming as some people believe, it is broken), or make it "better." Balancing crafting recipes, recipe levels, working more on the player economy, etc. are not really what I want to discuss. But rather gameplay and content that would make non-combat classes, as a whole, more enjoyable to play.

Many games have attempted to create crafting and gathering classes that are not merely "professions" that exist only to compliment the combat classes. It's obvious that the Final Fantasy XIV team had bold ambitions to make their own attempt. With each passing update, it seems that the failures that coincided with the launch have caused the development team to scrap many of their grand ideas that they half committed to. I'm not here to argue whether or not these changes are bad or good. But one thing that seems to be presently on the chopping block is crafting as a mode of play just as valid and supported as combat.

Many of you may be happy to see that potentially change. Many of us would not be happy. Whether or not it happens isn't really what this is about either. So with that introduction out of the way, the question I am raising with this thread is:

[SIZE="6"]

What would make non-combat classes more enjoyable to you?

[/SIZE]





My responses:

• Customization - Store Fronts and Workshops

  Give us workshops and store fronts! We're merchants and tradesmen, our progression is our business. Allow us to customize, construct, and purchase additions to our workshops and storefronts.

• We are not Adventurers

  Stop making us deliver things into the middle of nowhere! Let us send our retainers out on chocobo-back to make delivers, and receive the reward when they return. Let us hire NPC adventurers. Anything, really.

• Don't be Afraid of A-Symmetry

  Making each craft more unique won't hurt anyone, add something to spice it up. Make the gameplay for each craft more unique. We won't complain.

• We are Townspeople, and that's OK

  It's okay for a majority of our time to be spent in the city. It makes perfect sense. Just liven up the town, add more NPCs, make us interact with them more. Make them do more than just stand around. Add more things to do, and more details. It will only add to the immersion for combat players as well.

• Notorious... Merchants!?

  Why are NMs only for adventurers, and not for us too? Add Notorious Merchants, traders from far away lands that appear on occasion. By bartering (parley) with them, trading one material for another, we may succeed in striking a deal and receiving some rare and unique materials for special synthesis.

• What's Parley Again?

  First of all - make parley more fun. I don't care if you just make it bejeweled, just imagine you're trying to get people to buy it, and make it fun. Then - add in merchants, all around town, that come and go, and can be traded with. Perhaps I have an abundance of ore, and need leather. Yes, it's great to have a player-driven economy, but a lot of stuff gets thrown away or vendored. Strike a balance, and give crafters things to do other than sit in the market wards all day.

• Item Exodus - The NPC economy?

  There's lots of things to do as an adventurer that don't involve other players. Give crafters a few things to do too. Guild tasks are okay, albeit far too simple to be compelling. Have us repairing things around town, providing materials, make NPC supply chains that have supply and demand, and crafters can anticipate the NPC economy. (Balance! It creates a good item sink while allowing a sense of mastery for more players.)

• Raiding... the Kitchen?

  Give us a reason to play with other crafters beyond the "I need your straps for my armor, you need my buckles for your jackets." Group crafting is on the way? Super! Let's see on top of that, "dungeon" equivalents crop up for crafting. Instanced events, a team of chefs cater a noble's wedding? This should be far better SP than grinding. (Just as with combatants)

• Money, Money... Money!

  It's okay for us to have more of it than the average adventurer. Making money is our job. As long as the average adventurer can get by, and the treasure hunters are on par with us. It's difficult and unwieldy to make gil sinks for merchants. Instead, give us reasons to spend money on adventurers, and give them ways to sink that gil. To that end...

• Gambling

  This is self explanatory. Open the platinum mirage, the Colosseum, let us bet on matches, let us bet on chocobo races. What have you. Gambling isn't specific to us merchants, but if we have more money, we're more likely to gamble with it. On that note...

• Sponsored Adventurers!?

  As I said, give us reasons to give money to adventurers. Whether we're sponsoring a Colosseum team to take on some monsters or other adventurers (creating opportunities for others to bet!) or we're funding an expedition of adventurers into a raid or dungeon, giving them a chance to obtain gear, and us a chance to obtain rare materials. Gil sunk, but we're still making money if the expedition is successful.

• Notorious...Minerals?

  Okay, now I'm just being a bit silly. But the same idea applies to DoL as it does to DoH. Rare spawns shouldn't be limited to Adventurers. Exotic bushes, endangered trees, rare mineral nodes and legendary fish. The excitement of spotting one (visual distinction please!) and obtaining the rare resource, and the reward. No reason not to add this!

• Can't We All Just Get Along?

  Levequests, missions and public events that involve all two or more different disciplines. This is self explanatory, but special leves where gatherers are escorted by adventurers, when they gather enemies attack, adventurers must defend. Faster gatherers gather, faster they can move on? This is just one simple example, there are lots of opportunities here.

[Ramsey]

Continued:

[SIZE="5"]Workshops... Detailed! [/SIZE]
I mentioned workshops in my OP, to expand on that: provide a number of unique floor layouts for rooms, the room itself can be simple, so this shouldn't be terribly difficult, re-skinned for each nation. As we level, and can afford it, (charging on a curve per number of rooms) allow us to expand our workshop with additional rooms. These simple rooms can be customized largely by the placement and addition of a variety of furniture pieces and decorations.

• Storage is King!

  Right off the bat, the number one thing that players should be able to add to their workshop is additional storage. Both generic storage, as well as unique item storage. A box of rings to store large quantities of metal rings, a pantry to store spices, and what have you. Much like the Archer's quiver, these furniture pieces could have visual indications of how stocked they are, providing a cheaply implemented sense of immersion. More importantly, the player could cater each room of their workshop to the needs of a specific craft or type of synthesis. While in that room, players could directly access materials from each storage space during synthesis, and synthesizing any material compatible with a storage unit would drop it directly into the unit. Merely targeting the storage unit would allow the player to have direct access to add and remove items. This kind of functionality alone gives players enough reason to use their workshop for long haul synthesis sessions, which is what they should use it for. Our inventory is like an adventurer's action bar, we need more as we level.

• Tools of the Trade

  What smith's workshop would be complete without a forge, what weaver's without a loom? A craftsman is only as good as his tools, right? A sewing needle and a hammer comprise only a fraction of the tools each of these professions uses. We have crystal synthesis to abstract crafting, allowing us to carry around only these small tools with us. But when we are in our workshop, as the NPCs do in the guilds, let us make use of more tools! There's already loads of animations for using various tools in the guilds, and new animations are always in the works for combat classes, so it's not out of the question to toss some our way as well. Various types of tools can provide various benefits, some may allow us to mass produce simple materials more quickly, while others may be meant for improving success on finished items. Start simple, let us have common support whenever we use our basic workbench. As we rank up and can buy new upgrades to use, enhance the bonuses little by little.

• Tools need upgrades Too!

  Let us make additions and attachments to our tools, there's no need to constantly replace them. Each "workbench" (Using this as a generic term) could have a number of attachment slots, that increases as we rank up. Each attachment could provide a minor bonus, nothing too amazing that we never want to craft outside of our workshop again, but a lot of minor things and convenience features that give us a reason to craft there for long sessions of creating raw materials, or for creating very difficult and rare armors and weapons (etc.) Perhaps adding new bellows to our forge reduces the change of causing our fire element to go unstable, just simple bonuses that we'll be more than willing to shell out the gil to acquire.

• We can still Craft Elsewhere!

  The key with our workshop is convenience, we don't want a workshop to become such a boon that it feels wrong to try to craft anything beyond its walls. That said, as I mention above, if we're in for a long grinding session of churning out raw materials, or attempting to high-quality a particularly difficult item, it makes perfect sense that we'd want to do so from our own workshop. One great way to prevent "Oh my god I need to go back to my workshop to do this"-syndrome, is to provide a special item for crafters that reach higher ranks, we can attune the item to a certain room in our workshop, and once activated we will be able to gain all the bonuses of that room in the workshop for the next 30 minutes of synthesis. If we're stuck out in the field needing to make something, instead of feeling like it would be a waste to bother without our workshop, and either heading back at tremendous inconvenience, or waiting to make the item, we have this emergency method of gaining the bonuses we've spent our hard earned time and money accruing, even when we're not at home.

• Crafting Parties! Come on over!

  Nothing would rub me the wrong way more than having the chance to build a workshop and then not being able to invite others over to see it. It's a display of our wealth and hard work, and our friends should be able to not only see, but to benefit from it. Allow us to invite friends and party members into our workshops to use the facilities. This creates even more reason for crafters to befriend eachother, it should be possible, but absurdly expensive and time consuming to create and maintain a workshop for all of the crafting professions in one. On the other hand, merely befriending someone of another profession would be a great way to promote player interaction and crafting guilds. Using another person's workshop would of course have some drawbacks, (mostly related to storage) but it's a BYOM (bring your own materials) affair. Let us give out "workshop keys" so our good friends can access our workshops even when we're not around. Heck, perhaps we can even rent out workshop space for profit! Regardless, if my friend has a great weaving workshop and I have a great smithing workshop, we should be able to use eachother's shops, and gain many of the benefits of doing so. It wouldn't hurt to allow us to purchase and upgrade group crafting equipment, either!

[Ramsey]

Continued:

[SIZE="6"]The Garlean Invasion (Campaign)[/SIZE]
We know it's coming, and if it's not it ought to be. (there's nothing more dissatisfying than playing a game for years set entirely on "the brink of war") There's just loads to talk about here, fun possibilities and ideas, the obvious ones involve combat classes, but I'm going to instead look at the less obvious, non-combat focused content.

First things first, I'm going to base all of these ideas around the idea that these invasions would work in a way that's a cross between RIFT's Rift system, and FFXI's Campaign system. But most of these ideas could be applied regardless of what way they choose to tackle it. A mixture of small attacks and raids, with outpost control and less-frequent larger scale zone-wide invasions where Dreadnaughts are flying around and the music and lighting change, combined with a Campaign style ops.

Let's not let the combat players have all the fun!

• Resource Drive!
  This is a pretty obvious one, a la Campaign, resources should be integral to the war effort! We need a lot of transparency here though, it should be easy to see how the resources are distributed in any given area, what resources are needed, where they are needed etc. Disciples of the Land should be able to accept Ops at various locations to gather resources, which are then added to the total for the region. (For EXP and war credits) Possibly also allowing unwanted resources to be donated to the effort (as an alternative to being vendored.) When excess of certain resources are generated in one area, and needed in another, delivery OPs could be added, as well as convoy escort OPs for combat classes, that would, if successful, relocate those resources to wherever they are more needed.
  
• Processing Resources
  Materials are useless in their raw forms, so put disciplines of the hand to work processing them into ingots/plates/string/leather/nails etc. These ops are made available as raw materials become available. Raw materials and resource processing should occur without these ops being complete, but only at a minimal rate that is required for bare minimum functionality within the camps. Resource processing would be best if it occurred at specific locations, be it hamlets or outposts with crafting facilities.
  
• Industrial Centers
  As mentioned in the above note, it would be best to be wary of player distribution with the invasion content. Repairs are one thing, but it makes sense to have the processing of raw materials occur in a location with facilities. Ore processing ops for instanced offered in a larger outpost, camp or hamlet that has a refinery. Aside from a sense of believe-ability, it also accomplishes many other things. Prevents unnecessary amounts of running around (while a primary mechanic for DoL, this is not the case for DoH), provides key locations that are important to defend in the supply chain; adding depth, centralizes crafters; creating specific locations everyone acting as part of the war effort knows they can go to in order to get certain types of repairs. This is the option for the crafter that is focused on being part of the industrial machine, and mainly doing work in heavily populated areas.
  
• Field Repairs
  For those crafters that are more interested in a little travel and exploration, ops offered to head out into the field and make repairs on outposts and NPC equipment should be offered regularly as needed by the war effort. Various classes will have different leves, to repair very different types of things, but that a-symmetry is what will give each a unique feel for their role in the war effort. Culinarians for instance, would have tasks to go to various camps and cook on the spot, and feed the hungry soldiers, as there are obviously no culinarian repairs.
  
• Open the Way!
  Broken gates, destroyed bridges and rock-slides, as long as they never fully block off a path (but simply force players and NPCs to take longer routes) that require DoH and DoL presence to clear and repair, would be an excellent feature. The Garleans who would primarily drop troops off via airship would be less adversely affected by this, thus creating a very good reason for these missions to take high priority. Let miners do some blasting!
  
• Salvaging the Parts
  After a battle, there's always a need to salvage any equipment, parts or weapons that may have been left behind. Whether it's parts from a crashed Garlean airship or merely weapons taken from allied corpses. As grim as it may be, it's an op that has its place.
  
• Setting Traps
  Disciples of the Hand are often out and about the countryside, ops to set traps in key locations in order to thwart Garlean invasion would be the perfect opportunity for their trips through the land to contribute to the war efforts. These traps could be assembled by DoH at various locations and then transported and deployed by DoL during their gathering trips.
  
• Reconnaissance
  Keeping tabs on the movements and number of Garlean attacks and encampments is important to everyone, updating the map so players can see where they are needed, and head off enemy invasions. Though these sorts of missions needn't be explicitly for DoL players, they are non-combat missions that would work well for the class. Players should be able to accept and report on these OPs through an NPC linkpearl (this should be the case for many OPs, to prevent what happened in XI, where a player would see something happening in Campaign that they could help with, such as a beastman delivery, or recon mission, but would not because they'd receive no reward without the OP previously accepted.)
  
• To your Posts! Our role in Battle!
  When the fighting actually starts, there are roles that non-combatants would be more than apt to perform. Whether it's repairing battlements and cannons etc as needed, or setting traps, etc. There's more than a few ideas to come up with here.
  
• Let's work Together!
  There are various ideas in my previous posts that could be adapted to use within the context of a campaign style system, and many of these ideas could be adapted to promote simultaneous play between adventurers, gatherers and crafters. Whether it be gathering resources while adventurers protect from Garlean raids, parts of destroyed bridges being salvaged by gatherers while crafters repair it, or what have you, there are many opportunities here. Using a public quest style system to promote cross class play, would be the most un-invasive way of introducing it to the player base, and warming everyone up to the idea.

[Alaltus]

I want to see SE revamp the Gathering mini-games, Fishing for example should feel more like fishing i'm sure if they got the part of Nier's team that did Nier's fishing mini-game it would come out great. Catching a fish should be a challenge not just random chance as it pretty much is at the moment.

[Szabtom]

Excellent stuff.

[Maiandra]

The act of synthesis itself needs to be more engaging - not just a menu.
In order for DoH to be taken seriously as equivalent to DoW/WoM, crafting needs to be as active as combat.

I love that FFXIV is designed to be realistic (the look of the world, the synthesis recipes, etc), and I hope that is maintained. But it is still a game. The game-play mechanics need to reflect that. Even though craftsmen are essentially businessmen, crafting should still be fun. And it's okay if the synthesis mechanic "breaks character" a bit. =P

I actually think the synthesis system is very well done conceptually, it's just that sitting around clicking a menu hundreds of times is tedious and boring. If they could just replace the menu with something more involving, they could keep the rest of the system largely intact.

For example: considering the "colored orb" mechanic, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to make a timing/rhythm game out of it. Assign a key to each of the primary colors (white, yellow, red) and add a timing gauge to act as a metronome (similar to the position gauges used in gathering, but continuous throughout the synthesis). The player would then press the key corresponding to the current color of the orb while the timing indicator is within a target field on the gauge. Progress would increase steadily throughout as successes are scored, with durability taking damage for failures; while "perfect" successes could enhance quality.

A complete synthesis should take about as long as a single combat. Rapid synthesis would be more difficult but only take half the time. Whereas, careful synthesis would be as difficult as rapid but take the full time, while providing great bonuses to quality. The wait command could translate into a "pass" key allowing you to skip a turn without penalty (e.g. if the color is unstable). Abilities could be displayed on an action bar, using keys 1-0 as needed/available (the same as in combat). Many abilities affect things like durability loss and elemental stability and wouldn't really need to be changed (any "increased chance of success" widens the target field).

Of course, such a thing would need to be balanced so that any player can consistently complete synthesis of appropriate rank (soon to be called "level"), regardless of real-world eye-hand coordination. But more difficult synthesis should prove very challenging, even for those skilled at such things.

And, of course, add multi-player support. Cooperative synthesis could involve party members working concurrently on separate parts (with shared quality/durability/etc), or a primary artisan working with "assistants" (with supporters working to provide quality or stability bonuses and such for the primary).

I'm sure there are many other ideas floating around, but this seems a logical evolution of the current system into something that would be fun to play.

[Archadius]

I think you have some excellent points regarding making crafting more fun. I hope SE catches wind of your ideas and is inspired by them.

[Perrin_Aybarra]

Well... I will then requote what I said in the other post :P

I must say, I dreaded the wall of text when I clicked on this thread but you have some really good ideas there. I am not a crafter myself but I would most likely try it out a bit with these additions.

•We are not Adventurers
Stop making us deliver things into the middle of nowhere! Let us send our retainers out on chocobo-back to make delivers, and receive the reward when they return. Let us hire NPC adventurers. Anything, really.

For that, maybe there could be a posting board where crafters can put up delivery notice or adventurers can list themselves available for duty. The crafter could then hire the other player to go do his errand. They could kinda use the Leve interface but it would be player create : The crafter would choose the gil/item rewards upon completion.

So it would be kinda of a 2 step quest for the crafter. 1st accept the delivery "quest/leve" from the counter, deleguate the mission to the adventurer. The adventurer comes back to the crafter, gives the "receipt" to the crafter and gets the reward listed by the crafter. The crafter gives his quest back to the counter and gets his reward.

^^

Also, to be fair, maybe crafters and gatherers could start doing things like that on their own. Gatherers should shout for adventurers to come defend them while they gather around high level nodes, things like that, for a fee/hour. no?

[Maiandra]

I like a lot of the suggestions in the opening posts, especially field work and cooperative ventures. A greater variety of activities would alleviate much of the tedium.

Having local leve-quests include dropping off finished items at camps is an obvious balance to avoid DoH having significantly more anima than anyone else. Instead of going out to a camp just for the sake of leaving the town, there should be something meaningful to do at the camp. Hopefully, they will add some of these things (like fixing/building defenses and the like) at the hamlets once they introduce the "hamlet defense" events.

The market stalls (storefront) in the game seem tacked on as an afterthought. They need a lot more customization options, as well as greater shelf-space and longer rentals (at least 25 hrs... otherwise you have to come by earlier and earlier each day to maintain it...) Not to mention, a pink star over your head allows you to stand out from the crowd without the trouble of renting a stall. In fact, the stall actually blocks the view of such a star, making stalls undesirable.
A stall that allowed one to list twice as many items would be worth the rental for a lot of people. It would also be nice if the items displayed on and around the counter reflected what is actually listed (similar to how retainers can now wear clothing that is for sale).

Large enough player organisations (LS/player-run Company?) should be able to actually establish their own market. They can list anything there without penalty, but only members of the organisation can set up shop there. If certain conditions are met, they can provide "facilities" access (with comparable fees to NPC facilities, but payable to the group maintaining the market). Maybe they could even sell a "license" allowing a non-LS member to sell in their market (albeit with some distinction, like a name-color change, to show they are not members).

Other "workshop" suggestions listed above could easily apply here. I think this is a more viable option than each player having a personal workshop.

[Sephrick]

All very great ideas! They can still make DoH/L active in the world outside of making equipment or gathering resources without dumbing things down. DoH/L don't need to go toe-to-toe with Deepvoid Slave, but they still can have a great effect on the narrative of the game world.

This post is chalk full of great examples.


EDIT:


Just to add on my own thoughts, here are some of my own ideas from the thread I had started on the same topic.

Well, the one-year anniversary for Final Fantasy XIV is rapidly approaching, and with it comes the anniversary of the Eorzea Prelive event.

It's been a tumultuous year, especially for those living and working in Japan. But the development team certainly has put their best foot forward, and it's shown.

Since the changes to crafting are something of a hot topic, I was hoping to pester the devs/comm. reps with a question.

During the Eorzea Prelive event, it was mentioned that there would be activities not only for DoH/L but those that would combine all Disciples.

Upcoming guildleve introduction
We will be adding not just normal guildleves, but a wide variety of types of guildleves. First, there will be higher level guildleves. Among those, many will have more variance in the rules/goals as well as being able to fight with more varied monsters in many more target areas. In particular, we heard many comments of "I want to fight more and more NMs!" so we want to respond to that quickly. Also, the faction leves that were in the Open Beta are designed to be a somewhat "different taste" from regular leves, with hidden starting conditions or npcs. The rewards for these are fairly good, so please try them out! Finally, we are going to be steadily adding more and more leves that encourage coordination between all the classes including gathering/crafting/magic/war. Please look forward to it!

Source

I understand that things need to be taken one step at a time. Believe me, as a player since beta I've appreciated the effort. But I was just curious what to hope for in regard to DoH/L classes beyond the standard grind.

Crafters will be able to cooperate in large-scale projects (boats, cannons, wedding cakes! YUM) so more fun for you and your company!

It would be wonderful if someday down the line we could still expect content like this:

There's also a lot of ways for battle classes and DoH/L to coexist within the same content. Take for example the caravan defense events. They could have it so that not only are there mobs to fight along the caravan's path, but also that the caravan takes damage, but can be repaired by DoH classes.

And for hamlet defense; DoL can take on gathering duties to bolster the hamlet's defenses and supplies.