Grinding

[Krhys]

I like your thinking on the crafting. It keeps within the original concept and would LOVE to have that back. You really needed to have an idea of what your frame was capable of and had to have your gear work within those constraints. I REALLY miss Constraints.

I really, REALLY miss the constraints system we had in OB FF. If I wanted an uber gun and armour and was prepared to only have 1 mediocre ability, that's my choice. I loved the way you could do that in the old game.

Having 999 different levels of material qualities was a bit mad but many ppl reckoned if they took it down to say, 100, it would have improved the system. The response, as we know was to simply bin such an original system and go for the vanilla XP.

If I see XP in Ember, I won't be playing it.

 

[NitroMidgets]

Even early on when there was only a handful of different resources, it still worked. We just needed more of them.

 

[OziriusSVK]

I dont care what kind of resources we will use (different quality or only different type), if we can adjust output of our crafted gear (some kind of "Constrains" system), and even basic resources will have their use in endgame content so basic resources wont be meaningless

 

[EvilKitten]

If you do not have any vertical progression then there really is no need for "grinding". In a purely skill based game the focus should not be on grinding out XP and such for personal advancement, but instead be focused on community wide goals that advance the game/plotline forward. EDIT: As such the term grind really only applies to how repetitive the choices are for moving the game forward, as long as there is a wide variety of projects a player can participate in then "grind" becomes a non sequitur.

 

[StormWing0]

I'd let the 1-1000 quality range slide if it had more of a purpose than it did. Like say all that changed between the 1-1000 range was the fact it just says there's different amounts of X Resource Mixed with different amounts of Y resource and you'd be pulling up ores of several resources mixed together and have to refine for 100% purity/quality. That said being able to make alloys out of several resources to get different results would be interesting. A smart move in this case would be to not make them hard coded combos, say the first time someone makes one of these combo alloys they get to name it (Providing the name is appropriate) and it is saved globally in the DB. This way people can see what others have cooked up or haven't yet and maybe could work on some super alloy as a group.

That said there's many ways to make grinding fun but most of the time it ends up being a way to stall someone in the game long enough to push up some silly stat and that's why most hate grinding.

 

[avalon1k]

I never found Mark's version of Firefall to be grindy. I was having too much fun.

 

[DARKB1KE]

There's nothing wrong with grinding and, yes, I understand gated content and the rest.

What I'm objecting to (if I may repeat my OP) is
A) BORING grinding (3 missions, over and over and over and over)
B) Excessive grinding (20 hours of specific missions ('nado) to get the materials needed for one rifle)
C) Random crafting given that it takes significant effort to get high end materials. (having the materials for said rifle and, after crafting, it's a bare 2 points better than your current rifle).

Nobody forced you to repeat the same content though. You chose to.

My play style was aimless, I would do a job board mission, maybe campaign, then drive anywhere and do random encounters. It never got boring to me because I wasn't repeating content.

Yes you will come across same missions but that's unavoidable. The problem with FF was that they couldn't spend time making more content for players to make it different enough.

 

[polarity]

Part of the problem was when they went from a set of dynamic events that could happen anywhere, to set of encounters in set locations, that too made it more repetitive.

At least with the dynamic ones, you could also get some variation from having more than one right next to each other.

Adding a single new dynamic event type would have created far more variety than a new static location, or type of encounter for it, because of how dynamic events could interact with other, and the almost unlimited area where they might spawn.

The same kind of thing happened with thumping, very early on, when people actually started to bother looking for better deposits. That effectively ended people's choice in where they put thumpers, so it wasn't just down to what looked like a fun spot to fight in.

 

[Nubilus]

Having 999 different levels of material qualities was a bit mad but many ppl reckoned if they took it down to say, 100, it would have improved the system. The response, as we know was to simply bin such an original system and go for the vanilla XP.

100 quality levels sounds good, my idea was something like "purity" of said material, The more pure the better. Maybe your base can have some kind of machine to purify lower levels at a percentage loss kind of cost.

If I see XP in Ember, I won't be playing it.

I don't see the your problem with XP. How are you gonna progress through the Tech? Material Based? In my opinion you should have some kind of knowledge in this field or something like that + some prototyping...

Imagine building a prototype of the weapon you want. Then you have to use this prototype and after some time you get enough knowledge on how this kind of weapon system/ability works or should work so you can make the "nomal" one.

 

[Grummz]

I agree that fewer resource types are better and that FF had WAY too many. I only see one or two dozen types at most.

As for units, that's hard. For gameplay reasons its very limiting to keep mass and amount realistic while still making a fun system. Its a bit of suspension of disbelief required here for the sake of gameplay. But yes, Firefall numbers were silly in that regard.

Grinding. I think that once you see how we put a progression of encounters into T.H.M.P.R. encounters, that there will be a lot we can do with just that encounter alone. Not sure why those other mission in FF used fixed locations, it was never the intent. Ember events can occur anywhere they make sense and not in the same places.

Without having read every thread, so I'm not sure it's been discussed... I'd like to discuss grinding.

Firefall, was a royal pain in the behind for this. Early in the game, the thumpers were decent and could defended by a single low level individual and generally gave some decent materials. Once they became so much that they required a team to defend, the materials dropped.

For a while, with one of the sniper frames, you could sit outside one of the fallen spawn points and kill hundreds of them over an hour or so.

At one point, I basically spent 2-3 hours a game day doing the race between the three main towns. It was much better than grinding on thumpers for getting materials and stuff. I built an Asernal from scratch to nearly top tier just doing races and the occasional mission.

The problem, of course, is that all of it was boring to the extreme.

I would finally go hunting for meld tornadoes and try to get into the center, just to get some decent minerals in order to upgrade my gear... which may or may not result in higher quality gear. It would take 10 or so nados to get enough minerals to, maybe, get an upgraded rifle.

That's the complaint. The solution is in several parts.

First, the crafting system needs to be significantly improved from Firefall. Having 999 different levels of materials is just nuts. Reduce the number and values (purity) of materials. We build aircraft carriers, jet fighters, tanks, and everything the infantry requires from oil, aluminum, titanium, iron, carbon, silicon, and copper... and depleted uranium. Further, random results from expensive, hard to grind materials is very frustrating.

Solution. Gear is gear. The plans are fixed. Jacketed ammunition requires copper in addition to lead, results in slightly better penetration, is slightly heavier, and takes a little more time to construct. Simple, results are consistent, and you know what you get when you put those materials and plans in the printer. No randoms. Maybe use titanium instead of copper for jacketing gives lighter weight and slightly more penetration, but at the cost of rarity and/or expense.

Second, the amount of materials seemed crazy weird in Firefall. Each deposit (IIRC) was 5-50 units of material. That must have been grams, because one needed 1500 units of x and 1000 units of y and a 1000 units of z to make a rifle. For example.

Solution is to use reasonable, well understood units. An AR-15 masses less than 4 kilos. Most of that is plastic and steel. Maybe some optics. So, with a molecular printer, you need 4 killos of plastic and steel, maybe some silicon for the optics. Magentite and hematite are each about 70% iron. Other iron ores are less. So maybe you need 4 kilos of iron ore to get the 2 kilos of iron you need for the rifle. Plastic is easily formed (in a molecular printer) from any carbon source... heck, there's a system that makes kerosene and diesel from turkey offal. So maybe another 2-3 kilos of plastic stock material.

That gives the added bonus of making it easy to calculate the change in running speed, etc, for a frame, when weighed down with a couple of tons of iron ore.

Make things interesting. Anyone who played Firefall more than a few weeks knows exactly what mission will occur in which location and how to beat it. I personally found it extremely annoying to be in a location and, all of a sudden, there was a bunch of Fallen popping up because a mission triggered while I was there.
Don't even get me started on the Hunt the White Wolf daily.

Finally, I would encourage a revised and updated economic system. I think that people should be allowed to be dedicated miners or hunters or fighters, without having to have penultimate gear to mine the good stuff. Maybe a bare few people have found the secret location for high quality titanium. So let them mine it (and this encourages the purchase of vehicles, if they are capable cargo haulers) and make a profit.

I know at one point, put orders were being considered for Firefall and I think that would be a great way to encourage activities other than grinding on racing bikes.

Thoughts, comments, and suggestions are encouraged.

 

[Silv3r Shadow]

In beta I farmed resources for hours and hours on end I used to create a good 850q weapon/ability/cores, etc every night and put them on the market and make a sale/s every time I logged back in the next morning. Was my way of business but thumping was made redundant. Thumping got me hooked to the game and was rewarding for new and older players. The introduction of credits is all a credit sink, reducing the value of your earnings of crystite is unsatisfying

 

[DropnLock]

I'm getting really sick of people perpetuating the idea that games like Warframe are pay-to-win, because they conflate pay-for-convenience into the definition. We have separate terms for things for a reason, namely to avoid confusion. You do not just use the word fruit when talking about apples, oranges and bananas, because you want people to know what you are talking about.

Pay-to-win implies that there is no other way to 'win' besides paying. Warframe's in game market does not fall into that category, because every non-cosmetic item of equipment can also have its blueprint bought for in-game credits, and be built from gathered resources. It just takes time, hence pay-for-convenience. 'Winning' sooner than someone else, does not stop them from 'winning' without paying (it's also worth noting that platinum bought gear in Warframe still needs to be leveled, and the time spent doing that on any item, could instead have been used to gather resources to build further items, instead of just buying a lot of gear outright and letting resources pile up while leveling it).

And that is WHY I call it Pay-to-Win. If you do not want to WAIT ingame and farm(grind) for the Blueprints and mats you can PAY for them through their store. Pay-for-Convenience is a sugarcoating or farce of what it truly is.

If I dont want to wait and a better quality weapon that helps me WIN missions I play I can PAY for it. You cna spray all the fancy perfume/cologne of a pile of dung..... but in the end it is still dung. Sugarcoat P2W all you want it is still PAy-to-Win

 

[OgreMkV]

I agree that fewer resource types are better and that FF had WAY too many. I only see one or two dozen types at most.

As for units, that's hard. For gameplay reasons its very limiting to keep mass and amount realistic while still making a fun system. Its a bit of suspension of disbelief required here for the sake of gameplay. But yes, Firefall numbers were silly in that regard.

Grinding. I think that once you see how we put a progression of encounters into T.H.M.P.R. encounters, that there will be a lot we can do with just that encounter alone. Not sure why those other mission in FF used fixed locations, it was never the intent. Ember events can occur anywhere they make sense and not in the same places.

Thanks for the response. That sounds pretty reasonable.

One thing I would suggest, is that you have whatever 'incursion' equivalent not happen in an area with an active player. I hated it when I was working on something then a big ole Chosen drop ship landed right next to me.

The other thing is, while the social aspect can be useful, I rarely play that way. Mainly due to kids and work. So, being able to accomplish at least some tasks as a solo player would be very nice.

 

[Col. Kernel]

Without having read every thread, so I'm not sure it's been discussed... I'd like to discuss grinding.

<snip>

First, the crafting system needs to be significantly improved from Firefall. Having 999 different levels of materials is just nuts. Reduce the number and values (purity) of materials. We build aircraft carriers, jet fighters, tanks, and everything the infantry requires from oil, aluminum, titanium, iron, carbon, silicon, and copper... and depleted uranium. Further, random results from expensive, hard to grind materials is very frustrating.

I agree that the plethora of raw mats at various pureties was hugely irritating in FF. I'd like to keep it that way in Ember, at least at the actual harvesting stage. If inventory space is a problem at that point (it shouldn't be, the T.H.M.P.R. will be hauling everything back to base) then simply average out the purity. If you have 10 kg of raw McGuffinite at 25% purity, and 10kg at 75% purity you have 20kg @ 50%. When you get back to base you refine it, for a cost in money and quantity, to 90% pure. Now for crafting purposes you have a consistent yield.

Solution. Gear is gear. The plans are fixed. Jacketed ammunition requires copper in addition to lead, results in slightly better penetration, is slightly heavier, and takes a little more time to construct. Simple, results are consistent, and you know what you get when you put those materials and plans in the printer. No randoms. Maybe use titanium instead of copper for jacketing gives lighter weight and slightly more penetration, but at the cost of rarity and/or expense.

Second, the amount of materials seemed crazy weird in Firefall. Each deposit (IIRC) was 5-50 units of material. That must have been grams, because one needed 1500 units of x and 1000 units of y and a 1000 units of z to make a rifle. For example.

Solution is to use reasonable, well understood units. An AR-15 masses less than 4 kilos. Most of that is plastic and steel. Maybe some optics. So, with a molecular printer, you need 4 killos of plastic and steel, maybe some silicon for the optics. Magentite and hematite are each about 70% iron. Other iron ores are less. So maybe you need 4 kilos of iron ore to get the 2 kilos of iron you need for the rifle. Plastic is easily formed (in a molecular printer) from any carbon source... heck, there's a system that makes kerosene and diesel from turkey offal. So maybe another 2-3 kilos of plastic stock material.

You forgot about aluminum for the lower receiver in your AR-15 example.

My take on crafting is this:
How does an engineer design something? Simple, determine the desired output/function of the device they are building, then build the last stage to deliver that output, then build the second to last stage to provide the input the last stage requires, and so on until the get to a stage with an input they can supply. I'll break this down with an example below for those who haven't designed anything.

How would this play out in Ember? What I would like to see is sliders for attributes. Say you want to design an Electric Arc Rifle. For the purposes of this we will determine that Electrical damage has the game effects of disrupting the nervous system (slow/stun/hold), and damage. The first choice you'll have to make is which effect is going to be the primary. Then take your slider and adjust it from 60%/40% on up, automatically reducing the secondary effect as you go. The materials required (at an assumed 90% purity) will change as you adjust the slider. For example, the slow/stun/hold may require complex frequency shifting algorithms, and therefore a heftier CPU built into your rifle, therefore amount of silicon/germanium (or the SciFi equivalent) will increase. More damage will require a higher voltage. Assuming your Omniframe is supplying the juice you will have have amplifiers built into the rifle. How wide an arc does this gun fire in, how long a range? Each slider as it gets adjusted will change the amount of crafting materials required. Adjust the weight slider downwards if the weapon gets heavier than you like, but this will result in rarer materials being required to save that weight.

Bonus: Take your 90% purity mats and pass them through a secondary refiner and come out with 95% pure mats. This can result in higher quality devices.

I know the above sounds complicated but it's not really. You adjust the sliders for how you want the device to perform, the system tells you what mats you need. You tell it to process and it tells you when to come back and collect.

And, ideally, I'd like to make it a touch more complex. Hate me yet?

Going back to the AR-15 example, in gross terms the AR-15 breaks down into 3 parts, the Upper Receiver, the Lower Receiver, and the Stock. I don't really want to get more granular than that, but I think it would be cool if the game would create (print) the sub assemblies first, then assemble them. This would allow you to use higher quality mats on the parts that would give you the most benefit.

It's still a fairly simple system, the game itself does most of the work. You just tell it what you want, and the game tells you what it needs to create (print) it. All of the complexity of the 5(?) paragraphs above is handled by the game itself and don't don't have to worry about it, you just play.

 

[OgreMkV]

Col. Kernel, that sounds pretty epic and I agree with you up to the subassemblies level. First, if we're talking about molecular printing, subassemblies are essentially moot. Second, I think FF started out that way, at least one of the earliest versions I played.

IMHO, that part goes a little too far.

 

[Col. Kernel]

Col. Kernel, that sounds pretty epic and I agree with you up to the subassemblies level. First, if we're talking about molecular printing, subassemblies are essentially moot. Second, I think FF started out that way, at least one of the earliest versions I played.

IMHO, that part goes a little too far.

Yeah, this is modeled off my recollections of crafting in FF, only my interface is much improved over theirs.

And the sub assembly idea is take it or leave it, it doesn't really affect the overall concept.

So thanks for your feedback.

 

[OgreMkV]

So, kind of what I imagine is a screen that let's you choose some effect (dmg type: projectile, slashing, beam, explosive, poison, maybe) and some other factors of the weapon (range, mass, dpm, energy use, etc). So decreasing the energy use, decreases the damage and/or decreases rate of fire. Increasing the mass or energy use, gives you more range for the damage, range, effect sliders, at the cost of needing to supply that level of detail.

Most of the sliders will affect others in various ways that should be relatively easy to model.

What might be cool is requiring cash money for cool visual effects. Maybe a flare effect or a nasty beam of dark energy.

The results of that screen are a cost of various materials and time. More materials of lesser purity and more time. Use more pure materials for less time.

It should be possible to make a weapon that is so powerful, no mecha can carry it and no energy source can power it. Just because that's the kind of thing some idiot would try.

 

[Krhys]

What would have been a better system, perhaps, was working backwards from the item you wanted to craft. You choose it, it then shows all the sub-components/mats you require and those you have in a sort of horizontal wire diagram (or such like) at all the various stages in the build. So you know what you have, and you know what you need, without trying to figure out how the damn crafting system works. Would this system really be too complicated to make?

 

[Col. Kernel]

What would have been a better system, perhaps, was working backwards from the item you wanted to craft. You choose it, it then shows all the sub-components/mats you require and those you have in a sort of horizontal wire diagram (or such like) at all the various stages in the build. So you know what you have, and you know what you need, without trying to figure out how the damn crafting system works. Would this system really be too complicated to make?

That's pretty much what I suggested 5 posts up from yours. The last paragraph is a TL;DR, though it's not labeled as such.

 

[polarity]

Would this system really be too complicated to make?

I've seen plenty of games where developers have made it far more complicated than it needs to be, because they failed to follow the 'single point of truth' rule when designing systems.

Look at WoW. Pretty much every patch where they change the values on equipment or abilities, they forget to change some of the tooltips to match, and then have to release a client update to fix them.

If instead the tooltip values were pulled from the copy of the data on the server, and cached until a regular API call to check if the data had changed came up true, prompting a request for the updated data, then the developers wouldn't have to spend any time writing tooltips for clients, never-mind updating them.

If the server included a database that had well designed data structures, and provided an API to query that database, along with the ability to make calls to initiate crafting tasks, then the client wouldn't need to have any design work done on any kind of crafting UI, so long as all the APIs were well documented, and there was a good addon API/UI widgets. Effectively, the players could build their own crafting UI, that works exactly how you described, and save the devs a lot of work on something that rarely gets the kind of attention it needs.