Queued & offline crafting?

In Fallen Earth you can queue up crafting activities, and this all goes on while you're off doing whatever it is you do in Fallen Earth. Admiring sunsets and running from hermit crabs, apparently.

In EvE, character skills are also learned in a similar way. You queue up skills to learn, time passes, and you get the skills.

In WoW, crafting and learning are done first person. You have to be there, you can't queue anything (without mods), you can't go off and do something else during that time, and you certainly can't log off and expect any progress.

The discombobulating thing with Fallen Earth's crafting is just how the heck does your character manage to craft their thingy while they're busy admiring sunsets and running away from hermit crabs. Similarly with EvE, just how are you managing to do all that homework while dodging missiles from rats and concentrating on that oh so tricky mining operation (ahem).

So, here's a different take on queued crafting: your character doesn't do it, you instead hire NPCs to do it. You install them in your player or guild housing, you buy them equipment, you pay them a weekly wage, you send them materials. They stay back at base doing the boring crafting while you galavant about the countryside slaying dragons and wooing princesses.

They could also be designed to sell their spare stock to others, at prices you choose. And purchase the materials he needs as well. With not too much effort you could even set them up to take build orders from others, if you so wish.

Now you also have a resource management mini-game - if you don't queue up enough tasks, and don't queue up enough crafting materials, your expensive crafting NPC just sits there building nothing.

If these crafting NPCs are geographically dispersed, you've also got support in the game for players to act as traders, seeking out goods at competitive prices and taking them to the local market/auction house.

The NPC wage would also act as a gold sink for the economy.

Hmm ... what happens though if you don't pay the wage?

WoW's AH online app - benefits for the rest of us?

Since it's a web-service based online app, it would be interesting to know if there are any major limits on simply querys of the auction house.

I know there are limits on how many auctions you can post, but are there limits on how many queries you can make?

If there isn't, and if Blizzard don't get touchy at other websites using the web-services API (like they currently don't frown at Armoury scanning websites), then this would mean someone else could set up a website which does frequent and complete periodic scans of all AHs on all servers, and make that information available to anyone, even if they don't have the AH app at all.

Sure would save me logging in at all hours of the night just to run an AH scan.

I'm referring to sites like WOWecon.com here.

Wanted: a bidding mod

My bank alt plays the AH like a battleground.

He'll buy & sell Runecloth constantly, snatching up bargains whenever they appear and flipping to a more regular price. One tactic he also deploys is to bid on all no-buyout auctions. He'll do this even if the item has 48 hours yet to run, knowing full well that someone else will come along and place a higher bid.

So why does he do this? Well, there's a small chance he'll actually win the auction with his bid of course, but more importantly he's forcing the floor price upwards. If his competitors win the auction at a higher price, it means they can't flip it at a lower price. There's also a small psyop element in play in that with constant re-bidding he'll simply exhaust the patience of some other players, letting him win more of the winning bids.

Now, there are auction house mods that facilitate ninja-bids -- placing a bid on items at the last possible moment -- but what I'm looking for is a mod that will place bids from the get go, and do so repeatedly up to some maximum bid, and do so on multiple instances of the same items (eg. those 23 stacks of Runecloth on the AH with a minimum bid of 6 silvers).

Suggestions?

Improving the AH UX

The Moo's bank alt installed a couple of mods this week, to dramatic effect.

The first is AHsounds, a simple addon that will play sounds corresponding to Auction House events. Ka-ching! D'oh! It does nothing to directly improve my profitability per se, but nonetheless it is highly gratifying to now play my bank alt - nothing sweeter than hearing a series of ka-chings! while I'm laboriously running back and forth from the mailbox to the AH, flipping stacks on stacks of Runecloth. While it does nothing in the way of min-maxing the AH activities, it greatly adds to the general user experience – ka-ching! – it now feels more like a game than work.

The second mod is Auctionator - the key features for me is being able to alt-click an item in my bags and have it automatically loaded into the auction interface (saving me from dragging it from the far left all the way to the far right), being able to submit multiple stacks for auction with just two button clicks, and the straightforward price recommendation functionality. If anything, the first two makes it a complete breeze to auction off all manner of junk quickly and simply, and the latter means I'll probably make sales rather than waste my money on forfeited deposits. While this addon, unlike AHsounds, simply improves the UI experience of creating auctions making the work element take less effort (ie. less work, but without making it more game).

leveling the crafting economy

high level recipes with low level components?

will high level players re-visit lowbie zones to farm components, or will the simply visit the AH?

will this provide a source of revenue to lowbie toons, counteracting the problem of high-level toons causing inflation?

Economy chains and item drains

Inflation usually occurs because more gold is coming into the player economy than which is leaving. Gold enters the economy by drops from mobs and from quest rewards. It leaves the economy through payments to NPCs - gear repairs, griffon taxis, basic consumables, training expenses, auction house deposits and fees, and obvious gold drains like Epic Flying skill and Cenarion War Hippogryphs. Players paying money to other players doesn't remove it from the economy, it simply shuffles it around.

So here I am, working my way to Exalted with the Cenarion Circle. Amongst other things, I'm buying various items off the AH and handing them in for Cenarion Logistic Badges .. and it got me thinking that this is also making inflation worse.

I'm removing items from the economy, but the gold I pay out simply gets shuffled to another player. Consequently, while the amount of gold available in the economy has remained the same (ie. not increased), my actions are contributing to making things to spend that gold on more scarce. Which of course means higher prices for those things (ie. inflation).

So, while gold drains should be designed into the game to combat inflation, any item drains should also be carefully and cautiously planned given their effect on the economy. This is particularly important if your game includes item breakage for purposes of stimulating an active crafting ecosystem (not a problem in WoW, but often considered theoretically).

This has also set me thinking that perhaps NPCs could be set up to sell many more items, things which are normally farmed by players and sold on the auction house, things which players need as quest hand ins. A really smart system would have NPCs selling items at a dynamic price competitively undercutting the auction house, but in relatively limited supply. It would have to be a limited supply, otherwise no one would ever buy off the auction house, not ever. Say maybe a max of 2-5 units available, spawning every hour or so.

Now, what will likely happen is that the limited supply would be bought and immediately flipped on to market for a modest margin – the players that actually needs the item for crafting/questing purposes would probably not get the chance to buy it from the NPC. Since there are so many items that would need to be supplied by NPCs like this there would need to be multiple NPCs, each selling (limited supplies of) different items. I would fully expect some players would simply ride around from NPC to NPC, buying up stocks as they spawn, keeping themselves busy that way, flipping the lot onto the market.

While some players will grumble at the NPC farming, they are actually performing a service – they are doing all the tedious running about and gathering and consolidating all the stock into one convenient market place. Only fair then that they extract a modest fee from this process.

The neat thing about this process is that while it is actually a gold drain, the players buying from the NPC would actually be making a profit, and everyone else is benefiting from suppressed inflation and increased supply. Much nicer than slugging all players with a repair tax, or 5,000 gold flying lessons, and so on – all sources of player angst and whines.

Also, if the quantity of the limited stocks that spawn is randomised, as well as the respawn timer, then it's easy to gently fudge the random number generator and thus adjust the supply as the economy demands. During times of peak demand for specific items an increase in supply will keep prices reasonable as well as drain more gold faster. Later, as the server population moves on to other activities, the supply of those items can be scaled back to reduce the surplus from the market. It should be a simple matter of tracking how many of the items are churned through the market and how many are being handed in for quests.

The price of Achievements in WoW

Anyone else notice how much gold is being drained from the economy as players buy 10 tabards, 25 companion pets, 50 mounts, etc etc. I didn't mind paying 80g here and there picking up one of each colour mount, and I was even considering getting the Cenarion War Hippogryph until I saw the price. Which made me stop and think about how much I've already spent bit by bit. Ouch.

crafting some amusement

First, consider a crafting system where the skill for each item is arranged into a multi-branching tree, rather like the tech-tree of Sid Meier's Civilisation games. In such a system there isn't the need to segregate crafting into separate professions, while the more advanced item skills would require learning related item skills and thus there would be "professions" as such. Some item skills are to produce items, and some are simply knowledge skills (to help pad out the tree).

Not all skills lead to dependent skills. Some skills are dependent on more than one skill, some dependencies have alternatives (eg. cannon might require skill in any one of rifle, shotgun, or pistol .. but not necessarily all three or any specific one).

Next, have each item skill be separately improved - apprentice, journeyman, expert, artisan, master. The items you craft could vary in their quality, depending on your skill level. A basic Sword of Striking might net you a +1 bonus at apprentice skill, +2 at journeyman skill, all the way up to +5 as a master. The level requirements to use the item would remain the same however, and thus you're not simply crafting a weapon for higher level toons but instead crafting a higher quality weapon for the same level.

While you are still apprentice skill, there's a strong chance your crafting attempt will fail, consuming the required materials but producing only grey junk. You would however have a strong chance of earning a skill point, learning from both your mistakes and your successes.

Once you have journeyman skill in an item you can reliably craft items without failure. As journeyman, this would also unlock any dependent skills, which you would need to find a trainer for. You could at this point then move on to dependent skills deeper into the skill tree, leaving your skill at this item at the journeyman level.

On the other hand, you could strive to become an expert in crafting that item. Again, the attempts might fail, but at least this time the failures wouldn't be total junk, just slightly degraded efficacy. Sometimes you'd fluke a slightly better quality result too.

As a master craftsman of an item you could also train others in that item skill too. Also, being master skill in an item can also result in discovering one or more of the dependent skills, instead of having to train in it. Interestingly, this means the game wouldn't need to provide trainers other than as necessary to kick-start the crafting ecology/economy. There could even be entire technology branches which remain undiscovered.

Producing the items using those skills can improve your skill rating in that skill item, so long as you are striving to produce the best quality you are capable of. Producing lower quality items won't result in any chance to improve that skill. To improve knowledge skills involves a studying activity instead of producing something and would involve material requirements. You might also gain a skill point in a knowledge skill when producing an item which is dependent on that knowledge skill.

Thus, you don't need to be fully proficient in every item skill to progress up the tree, and you can skill up in any item at a later time as desired. It's quite possible many players will just get to journeyman in many of their item skills, and only excel in the items they particularly care for. This leaves open opportunities to become the only master craftsman of a particular item, carving out a particular niche for yourself. As a master craftsman in some obscure item you might even discover a new branch of technology .. one which you'd keep secret the pre-requisites so as to maintain a monopoly.

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The actual act of producing an item or studying a skill would be a mini game, one which affects the quality of the produced item, the chance of earning a skill point, and extent of wastage of materials (less wastage means you don't use up all required materials). There should be some way of automating the workflow administration of a production that involves sub-units (learning from the tedious and fiddly process of the engineering skill in WoW).

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Inevitably, players will grind their production skilling in pursuit of earning skill points, producing a massive excess of stock which the market would not support. It would thus be useful to provide faction NPCs which accept turn-ins of various crafted goods in exchange for reputation, the same way there is a Cloth Quartermaster for each faction. After all, the town guards need to be equipped, don't they?

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In addition to the skill points/levels per skill, keep track and display the average or recent trend of quality of items someone produces. A bit like maintaining a "high score" for skill in playing the production mini-game. Maintaining a high average might well also accrue bonus reputation with your faction, as a further reward. Remember though that producing high-quality items isn't a one-click grind, you'd have to work at it.

(I also have a followup post on random discovery of new crafting recipes)