Gathering Skills

The time has come to make this game fun, and by fun, I mean not just some beautiful fork of Crossfire, but rather it's own game with its own game mechanics.  One of the major things missing from Wograld, that was never in Crossfire is gathering skills.  By that I mean things such as fishing, lumberjacking, and mining.  Other rpgs have had other various gathering skills such as farming, herbalism (or the picking of herbs), hunting (for animal parts) and skinning (animal and monster hides) and enchanting (removing magic essence from items).

We simply have to make maps that allow players to use the skill on certain spots and gather resources, then, when the skill gets high enough, they can gather different resources.  The resources could be used in crafting, but for now, we could have ways to sell them to npcs.
The crafting system is sort of a separate system and could use parts from gathering skills and parts from other things gotten elsewhere.

Crafting in multiplayer online rpgs

A lot of times, crafting in multiplayer online rpgs leaves much to be desired. Usually, monster loot drops are much better than anything a player can make out of component parts. I would like to reverse this trend. I would prefer to have player crafted items be better than anything you can find on monsters. I feel this would add much to the game. The other problem that I have seen in some multiplayer online rpgs is that you have to craft thousands of items to gain a few skill points. I think this is wasteful of a players time. I think how world of warcraft did it where it only took a few craftings of the item to raise skill at a certain level, and the time consuming part was gathering resources. I feel this is better since it means that players will do less sitting in one spot for hours trying to raise a crafting skill.

The negative side of player crafted items being too powerful, is that it can leave monster loot a little less exciting. But monster loot could still have random drops thosse could be taken apart with something similar to the world of warcraft disenchant skill, allowing the item properties to be separated from the items. Maybe they could be reused to make newer stronger items. The other idea I have for crafting is something similar to the diablo2 gem system. In diablo 2, you could collect gems. With a horadric cube, you would put 3 gems of any property, so long as it was all the same property and the same color gem at the same level into the cube. Thosse three gems could then be upgraded to the next higher level. So for instance, you could put 3 chipped rubies into the gem and get a flawed ruby. 3 flawed rubies would get you a ruby, 3 rubies will get you a flawless ruby, and 3 flawless a perfect ruby. The gems in diablo had different properties depending on what item they were put into. Later, in the expansion, diablo2 added jewels that had the same properties no matter what item you put them into, and runes that became a completely different type of rune when you put 3 of them into the cube. I would like to do something similar with the disenchanted components from monster items, or other stuff that you may be able to find or mine.

I think all items should be like socket items, except instead of being permanite like in diablo, you could break the item in order to remove the components that had the properties in them. People would end up making custom items depending on the kind of monsters/players they were fighting, or what kind of template and stats and skills they had. You could then break the item, so that there would always be a market for armor pieces since you would always need new ones to put the gems into.

I think it would take the flustration out of waiting for ever to find the random properties on an item you need, at the same time make looting monsters fun and intresting. I only wish I had the skill to add this new crafting idea into the user interface. It would make a great addition to our game, while keeping it fresh and exciting forever.

Skill Development Overview part1

As I have already stated, I really don't like a level system in rpgs, I much prefer a skill based system. Many games have combined the two somewhat such as World of Warcraft having a level system for your characters, while crafting is a skill based grind. I have not completely worked out how Wogralds skill and system is going to work out yet, all I know is that I don't want what is currently in crossfire, or another generic level up sort of game.

In Ultima Online, every skill you could use in game from tailoring, to cooking to magic was skill based. But there were also "default" skills, things any character could do as soon as they were made, things that may have actually taken skill points in other games to complete. A good example in Ultima Online is carving the hides off of corpses. This was an easy resource to harvest in that game, while in other games it takes a speacial skinning skill. I often wonder if certain skills should be default, and/or certain skills everyone should be able to learn up to a certain level, such as cooking.

Many games end up tweaking the skill system and the way it works after the game comes out and is play tested. Too many things that seem like a good idea on paper, end up being problematic when there are real people involved playing the game. For instance. Some games have you make thousands of items over and over again to gain a small amount of skill. People find this repetative, and then end up getting macro bots to do the tedious skill grind for them. You can put the macroing into the game, such as in phantasyrpg, where you can simpely tell it how many times you want to mine, typing in a number up to a certain amount of digits.

I like the gain on use idea for skills. I believe this is already in crossfire, with weapons levels going up with usage. There are a couple annoying things with this though. First of all, if you allow skill gaining in pvp, a person could get a sparing partner, train with the same person all day and night, and eventually both people would end up with high skills. The other thing is where newbies fight low level monsters to gain skill up to the maximum amount. We should limit how much you can gain from easier stuff.

Death and Looting

One thing I would like to see added to Wograld is the ability to put stuff in a safe place and then loot the characters body after they die. Wograld, currently based on the Crossfire engine, just has the ability to respawn after you die with experience loss. Once levels are removed from the game and skill as well as stat loss upon death is taken out, it makes sense to have some kind of penalty for death. In World of Warcraft, this was a gold cost for equipment repair and a temporary stat loss, in Ultima Online it was dropping items when you died, that was later turned into a gold cost so that people would not have to keep getting new items all the time.

Personally, I prefer to replace items rather than just have it cost gold. It keeps crafters in game and the in game economy thriving. Even when the shard is made up of mostly veteran players rather than newbies, the economy will continue to thrive when you have to replace your stuff after death. It will mean that monster loot and reasources will always mean something to players given that they will have to be replentished, not just when they wear out, but when you die.

Some people do not like the fact that you can lose a hard earned unique item in the game. They then do not use the item in case they lose it. In wograld, I would like to make it so that the greatest items are crafted by players rather than dropped as monster loot. I do not feel that the gods should craft an elite sword of uberness and give it to a player as a quest or tourney reward or whatever. In Ultima Online, player crafters left their mark on an item. I want to extend the customization of items further. I do not think magic items should drop at all. They should always be crafted by a player character and dropped from a player character when he or she dies.

It may take various skill levels and amounts of resources to make different items, but this should not be the province of the otherworldly beings known as GMs, Seers, Administrators or whatever. It needs to be put in game by the highly skilled player crafters themselves. First, there is the quest, the ability to find that hard to find resource, fight off whatever monsters, players, and terrain to get to it. Then there is the skill required by the crafter to use it. Meaning time that the player has spent training the skill up, gathering resources to train and then learning the skill. Lastly, some crafting would have a chance of failure, using the resources up without giving you the newly crafted item.
Some people feel this takes away from the getting items for quest mentality found in other games. No, you get the resources from the quests, you don't get elite items.

Perhaps it would be possible to find items, but they would need to be repaired and enhanced by a crafter before use. That dragons blade is awfully dull, not to mention it has a curse on it draining the wielder of life as he or she wields it. It would become a mighty and powerful weapon given the help of the right crafter. But you can't just take swords like that without the blacksmith to help you out.
The end result is there would be no unique hard to find items that everyone would need.

I know currently, Wograld does not have what have been refered to in other games as "corpse runs" technically, these do not make a whole lot of sense. You run back to where you died and try to get your stuff back. There has to be a better way to do it while still allowing you to get some of your items back, and allowing other players to either loot you and hold some of your stuff for you, and allow some looting in pvp.