An *idea* for Tradeskill Raids.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Ok I have an Idea, but want the communities input to help flesh it out.

We are looking more for Mechanics, a why, and posibly rewards more than the actuall content of the raid, as the story would need to fit in the EQ story more than we may be able to achieve.

The general idea is this.

First it would need to be in a "predesigned" area where some stationary tools can be placed.

An NPC would be placed who would need our help to get something done fast.

This NPC would summon some helpers when it starts, and then a TIMER would start. This timer would be to add some "tention" to the raid.

Each person in the raid will have to converse with one of these NPC's for the next step. If the scripting system allows, some randomness could be inserted here to twart a bit of the "spoiler" atribute to the raid. Each of these NPC's will "give" the items that need to be worked on, and expect a result to be given back to them. To keep things "tense" these recipes will not be learnable by the new UI. Once something is turned in, another item will be asked to be made... after a certain amount of items are made, all the items are returned, and you are assked to complete assembly. This could be done multiple times to add layers of "dificulty" I.E. for the final part you need 3 parts, each of these three parts are also made of multiple parts. It will finally end with one part from each of these extra NPC's.

Take these parts, give them to the "leader" which then turns in all the parts for the reward/s. (of course this is a "little put in" thing, so the rewards may have to be "small" based soly on time spent.

Failures would be posible, leading to some of the "tension" especially if later combines are failed and one must "start over" in the time limit.

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AN extention on this would be a scavenger hunt, and would require almost a whole zone to achieve.

When the event is triggered... mobs/ground spawns/NPC's would have to spawn around the zone, to have something to hunt for at trigger time, so pedople can't just scavenge before hand.

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these ideas may not be feasable... they are just ideas And Nebulous ones at that.

[Tudani]

I think a scavenger hunt would be fun, provided that it wasn't the ldon type kill mobs till they drop what you want type thing. Maybe if they give you riddles that coorispond to what you need to find in what room. Some you'd get from telling a key phrase to an npc, some from handing in a certain item to an npc, some could be ground spawns or drops, some could be crafted. It'd be more fun if they made it a bit different every time, so that it would stay exciting. Also something that's complex enough that it requires raiders to think on their own rather than just having the raid leader/officers etc decide everything then order people around leaving most of the raid in the dark about the cool stuff that's been done on the raid.

[Verdandi]

Some initial and hopefully at least sorta coherent thoughts:

I love the idea of tradeskill events in general. More dynamism would be neat. Although whatever form they'd take, I would hate to see them become something that makes people HAVE to have all their tradeskills maxxed, because then of course what market there is for some of our wares would disappear altogether. Maybe make it so that only a few people with really high skills are necessary per raid, and most of it can be done by people with lower skills, so that there won't be guilds requiring people be 1750 for membership. If there are multiple rounds, as you say, maybe they could start out needing input from everyone and then as the recipes get harder need less combines and therefore less people, till the last combine is done by just one person. Hmm, but that means everyone else is just sitting there, so that would have to be just a short portion of the time. Well, just some thoughts....

I definitely wouldn't want such events to require people to have more than one skill over 200, or even to reward it much. That would leave the under 50 crowd out in the cold. Not to mention casual players who have trouble getting enough AAs to have a use on raids, much less to put into New Tanaan.

I also worry that this would encourage macroers. Maybe there should be some varying and unpredictable elements thrown in here and there, to discourage macroing as well as to cut down on the spoiler-predicableness as you said. Something like the NPCs chatting at you and you having to respond periodically? Although I suppose macroers could get around that too. Someone who knows more about macroing might have a better thought there.

I love love love the idea of a scavenger hunt event. With the LDoN system's ability to track the number of items you've looted in a given time frame and ignore others that were already in your inventory, people stocking up in advance might not be a problem. Shoot, this could be a way to inject some more commonly farmed items (or underused because they're too rare to be worth it items) without making them too easy to get. For the truly valuable stuff, people could even have to pay an entrance fee, or turn in some cash along with what they've scavenged, as a means to control the use of this a bit as well as pull more cash out of the economy.

Oh but I do love this in principle!

[Akishka]

If there are multiple rounds, as you say, maybe they could start out needing input from everyone and then as the recipes get harder need less combines and therefore less people, till the last combine is done by just one person. Hmm, but that means everyone else is just sitting there, so that would have to be just a short portion of the time. Well, just some thoughts....

Well but what if you had in the first round, easy stuff. In the second round you would make, for example 3 things. One of them (lets say item A) would require a higher level skill but the other two would still be lower end. Also, you could have even the higher combine be made up of lower subcombines. So that if you had 6 people, 2 people would be working on item B, 2 people would be working on item C and you could have 1 lower end and one higher end working on item A. The third round you could bump it up so that all of the final combines were higher end but you could take the final products from round 2 (A, B and C) and add something to each of them, these combines all being lower level (perhaps even a different tradeskill?). As long as you were alternating lower and higher level combines, it should be workable. You'd need a heck of a raid coordinator but that might add to the 'tension' aspect as well.

[KyrosKrane]

Some random ramblings.

EQ is centered around advancement, and I seriously doubt there would be enough interest in this to keep it going (other than as a GM event or a specialized event that's ignored by most players) if all participants in the event can't advance.

So, here's my advice.

Create an instanced zone for the raid to take place. (Maybe make it an expedition zone, so you can invite players in and allow other to leave without having to abandon the whole raid.) An NPC in the zone assigns you tasks: Collect X items, perform X combines, etc. All items needed for the tasks are drops from mobs in the zone (guaranteed one drop per kill of the appropriate mob) or handed to you by the NPC upon hailing.

Make the raid have objectives in stages.

Step 1: You have to collect enough supplies to perform, say, 1000 easy combines (trivial 100 or lower) across all tradeskills. Anyone in the raid can attempt these combines, and to keep in the tradeskill nature of the raid, no one person can contribute more than 50 combines to the final count. (You can do more, and you'll probably have to, but this ensures that at least 20 people are clicking the tradeskill combines.) Spread the combines across multiple tradeskills such that you have a need for people of all skills to be there.

Step 2: Next, make a "harder" combine, trivial around, say, 200. This uses the items made from step 1, plus some items farmed from higher mobs (again, each kill is a guaranteed drop). Let's say you need 200 of these. Since this is a harder combine, it's likely to fail more, so people would have to farm more and make more of the first-stage items. Again, these combines are made across multiple tradeskills.

Step 3: Create 28 items using the results of step 2. There would be two different items per tradeskill, and trivial around 250. Same basic idea as the earlier steps: use earlier combines and a dropped item from harder mobs.

Step 4: All tradeskillers in the raid open a generic tradeskill container. This container doesn't use the individual's skill; rather, it sums up the skills of each person who is using this generic container. The final combine requires at least one person of raw skill 250 in each tradeskill, and a total skill of, say, 1000 in each tradeskill to attempt. 1500 in each tradeskill gives a fair shot of success, and 2000 guarantees success. The raid leader initiates the combine when everyone is plugged in to this system.

The rewards should be similar to the Coldain ring war. The raid leader receives two tradable tickets which can be passed to anyone within the zone; the ticket can be handed in to the NPC for the real reward. The ticket poofs if you leave the zone; no selling them in the bazaar! Then, depending on other factors like how many combines you failed, how fast you completed the quest, how many extra supplies you made, etc., the raid leader gets a number of additional tickets and tokens (similar to tickets but for lesser prizes).

Early on, I mentioned advancement. Here's what I was getting at.

1) People get LOTS of experience due to the killing for farming. Since each mob is a guaranteed drop, there's none of the usual frustrations of normal farming. You need X drops, you kill X mobs, and you're done. Since this is an expedition, not a PoP raid, each person in the group that kills a mob receives full group exp -- not reduced exp like on a raid kill.

2) If the raid is successful, you are guaranteed at least two tickets, and probably several more tickets and tokens depending on how fast or how well you completed the raid. If the raid fails, you can still get a few tokens for lesser rewards as a consolation prize, based on how far you advanced. Allow for a large variety of prizes so that you can do the raid multiple times and still get a meaningful reward. Use the casino Gold Ticket system to ensure you don't get a duplicate LORE prize that poofs.

3) You need people of all levels. Lower-level players can farm the easy mobs, higher level players farm the tougher ones. This ensures that everyone can contribute to the raid, regardless of level.

4) Tradeskills are independent of levels. That level 3 foraging mule with 250 brewing can be a major contributor to the raid.

5) Notwithstanding what I just said, you could have raids targetted at different levels of players. Say, three raids, each aimed at a different strata of player. One raid for players 20-45, another for players 45-65 (pre elemental), and a third for 65+ (elemental geared or higher), each with matching rewards. Players of lower or higher levels than the intended range are not prohibited from taking part; they just contribute less (if too low) or can't use the rewards (if too high).

What do you think?

[Tudani]

Step 1: You have to collect enough supplies to perform, say, 1000 easy combines (trivial 100 or lower) across all tradeskills. Anyone in the raid can attempt these combines, and to keep in the tradeskill nature of the raid, no one person can contribute more than 50 combines to the final count. (You can do more, and you'll probably have to, but this ensures that at least 20 people are clicking the tradeskill combines.) Spread the combines across multiple tradeskills such that you have a need for people of all skills to be there.

1) People get LOTS of experience due to the killing for farming. Since each mob is a guaranteed drop, there's none of the usual frustrations of normal farming. You need X drops, you kill X mobs, and you're done. Since this is an expedition, not a PoP raid, each person in the group that kills a mob receives full group exp -- not reduced exp like on a raid kill.

So the raid would be killing at a bare minimum (1 item combines, no failures) 1000 trash mobs, and more likely 2 - 5 thousand, or even more. This would not be a fun way to spend several hours of time, especially for a reward of only 2 items at the end. It's a good idea as far as it goes Kyros, but it needs to be modified (in my opinion at least, feel free to think of killing several thousand trash mobs as fun if you want to and tell me i'm wrong) to make it a bit more exciting/engaging for everybody on the raid. Problems that I see with such a think:

1) If it's just a click fest that makes it no fun for anybody who doesn't have tradeskills, also I don't see doing lots of combines on a timer as that much fun, just me again, but doing the abysmal quests were something I did cuz I needed to, not because I considered doing the combines a ton of fun.

2) If items are dropped it could become a kill lots of trash mobs event. This is in general fairly boring for most raiders. For anybody not involved in the tradeskilling this is all they'd be doing for several hours.

3) Again, imo, it needs to have some challange besides the kill lots of stuff or click really fast thing. Maybe something where the npc gives you different amounts of stuff to combine depending on if you answer his riddles correctly, or go do small tasks (quest stuff) for him instead of just straight up combines? <shrugs>

Just tossing out some ideas at way too early in the morning.

[kiztent]

What's the point of a tradeskill raid?

As far as I remember, raiding is about forcing people to sit endlessly staring at their screen while not cybering and going AFK and auto following people, hitting their attack button on command (or CH macro) and getting loot at the end.

[Ngreth Thergn]

raid may have been the wrong word, since I am more thinking of a "group" size event, though small raid size could also be posible. Maybe "adventure" is a better word.

Maybe have the reward be "adventure points" with posible outside the adventure drops.

for more interaction, maybe do something like this"

You are given 10 diferent items. You have to match 3 of them and make a combine, match 3 more and make a combine match 3 more and make a combine, then combine those 3. THEN somoene else has the part you need. Trade your item to them. (the original ten and sub combines are ND, the trade combine is no rent) they combine again... or just trade back to NPC. This ads player to player interaction.

Then make up diferent ways that these must group together... Number games, word games, and if art resources are available, even visually. The NPC can give you a hint about how to put it together if you have not figured it out... a "I am not sure but I heard that it is a really odd combine" means you must make odd numbers... (though that specific hint is too general... but you get the drift)

Take the adventure zone idea... and you have to progress through the "adventure zone" and give progressive parts to the "next" NPC.

And defenitely. make diferent tradeskills need... Make it like and adventure zone... you can choose the tradeskill level required. 100 150 200 250 300 350. The rewards and aventure points will be apropriate. Also, it will be timed, so that ONE person cannot do it all.

You could also do "progressive" rewards... so that there is not a total loss if the adventure failes... at each step, the leader can get a progressive "token" this token can be handed in for adventure points for the group, but only to na NPC in the adventure. Each step can be repeated (to overcome failures in the step) but the step tokens are lore, so no token farming can be done. And maybe even have it be a series of NPC, each can take a particular token then despawns/changes state.

Still mostly ideas here

[Ngreth Thergn]

A buch of this dempends on something I don't know about though...

is a Random Number Generator available for the scripting tool

[kiztent]

Ok, sorry, you went too low level again.

What do you want to accomplish?

Are you trying to make tradeskills dynamic? (recipies are dynamic per event)

Are you trying to make tradeskills interactive? (people have to work together again to make stuff, oops, too late for that)

Are you trying to make the rewards on tradeskills higher?

In short, what's your goal?

Is it, say, a group of 18-24 people that work together on a timed set of combines that require combines to be performed in parallel and will yield loot better than single groupable content at that level?

I don't think there's any real point to trying to make puzzle solving in a static game.

I guess I don't see how making you have to work with more people to tradeskill (1) accomplishes anything or (2) how it makes the game more fun.

Honestly the best parallel to raiding that I'd see is if you have a person who is responsible for buying parts for heady kiola and delivering them to people scattered in the various corners of the zone. The leader would hand out swatches and patterns which he collected before the raid, then everyone would click like mad to make cured silk armour for 15 minutes, and once that was done, a bunch of BD armour would spawn in the leaders bags to be distributed (for a successful raid - unsuccessful raids would involve losing swatches because people used the wrong recipe because they were busy watching TV and people losing corpses because someone failed a combine and followed the sign that said "danger, bloodthirsty spiders that will kill you ->" thinking he could get some more silk because he failed a combine because he wasn't paying attention and training the raid with packs of red con spiders).

[Fin]

Heh. So if someone had to leave or LD'ed you might fail the task if they where holding a critical component of the item that you were trying to complete.

It's an interesting idea though. A scenario might be just like building catapults in DAoC. We zone into an area (pocket zone?), and help the NPCs to assemble various implements of war to keep the enemies at bay.

-Fin

[Maevenniia]

I like the one-group adventure idea.

Here’s one example of a BB tradeskill adventure:

Butcherblock Wayfarer npc: Oh, Maevenniia, so glad you’ve agreed to help us! The King of Kaladim is having a feast tonite, and all the cooks are desperately ill. He has demanded that we cater the affair, and we have almost everything we need. Normally we have a full supply of the delicacy he has ordered, but as luck would have it, one of our junior members didn’t secure the food supplies properly last night and wild animals got into the kitchen wagon and ate thge ingredients for this dish. Fortunately, if you can go to the Wayfarer Storage Cavern and speak with Chef Sweeney he will give you the recipe. The ingredients are plentiful there, as well. Please return to us with X# of Spiced Caviar, but don’t take too long, the feast in only a few hours away! Don’t forget to bring: (list of tradeskill containers/tools: jewel kit, spit, tackle box, skinning knife..) you are going to need them! (allows the group to gather necessary items within the 30 min prep time) In gratitude for your assistance, please help yourselves to any of our supplies you find inside, we have a new shipment coming soon!

Part 1) Storagemaster Todd is standing by a forge in the entrance area.. He advises you he lost his keys, so you need to craft a key to unlock a door that will allow you to move further into the zone. The ores you need are lying about in the adjacent rooms as he hasn’t had a chance to store them yet (groundspawns) and you will also need a special tool …but unfortunately this area of the cavern has been infested by thieving pixies and brownies, so you may have to kill a few to recover the tool. ( for every combine you attempt you will need a tool - not returned on failure/success.) Mobs are KOS in this section, with a drop table that includes usual LdoN drops (gargoyle granite, gems, research items, other sellables, some brownie parts & pixie dust too?)

Part 2) Chef Sweeney refuses to give you the recipe, which is vital to completing the mission, unless you give him a ring to replace the one he lost. He tells you that the ring was made of a special metal mined by the denizens of this area of the zone, who might be willing to part with some, if you can convince them. (Answer a riddle or questions about tradeskills.) Also, there are some chests nearby, he says, that may contain the necessary gems. (should be at least 3 chests, possibly more, one of each open-able by caster, priest or lockpicker) Once you’ve crafted the ring (might be a minor reward of its own, if you gather extra ingredients to make more rings, with stats or some interesting right-clicky effect?) the NPC gives you the recipe to the delicacy and the list of ingredients.

Part 3) In the deeper parts of the zone, you have to kill plant-type mobs to 'harvest' 1-2 herbs & use the fishing pole to get Thunder Salmon (or some new fish) that you then convert to fish eggs. Combine the fish eggs and the herbs to create Spiced Caviar. Repeat until you have the required # and win the adventure.

Additional rewards…. crates scattered throughout the zone that when opened contain multiples of tradeskill items (1-2 stacks?) …possible items: Gargoyle Granite (since this is a BB adv), Spiderling silks, pelts, etc with perhaps a chance of getting 1-2 rare tradeskill items (not stacks) like Stonewood Sap or something else equally high end. (limit to “Hard” adventures, perhaps?)

[Ngreth Thergn]

What is the point of ANYTHING in the game?

It is to play.

I am just trying to think of a DIFERENT thing for tradeskillers to do.

If I had to pin something down, it is to have something more adventure like for tradekillers to do, if they want to do it. I am not even pining rewards to it, it is even why I mentioned, maybe just adventure points, or specific tradeskill "dropped" components to make something else. I am just looking for a diferent thing to DO with tradeskills other than just make X item to sell.

The STORY part of the goal... maybe the boat needs repairs quickly to stem off a leak. Maybe the castle wall is about to fall and incaders will come in. The story reason behind it is not what I am looking for here eaither... too HIGH level.

For you it may not be your idea of fun. For me it may be. For me maybe soloing is not fun, but for other people if soloing is not in the game they cannot have fun. So you don't think it is fun, that does not mean the idea for this should not at least be tossed about.

Maybe just talking about the idea is fun, or the posibilities of how it may be implemented is the fun.

Ok, sorry, you went too low level again.

What do you want to accomplish?

Are you trying to make tradeskills dynamic? (recipies are dynamic per event)

Are you trying to make tradeskills interactive? (people have to work together again to make stuff, oops, too late for that)

Are you trying to make the rewards on tradeskills higher?

In short, what's your goal?

Is it, say, a group of 18-24 people that work together on a timed set of combines that require combines to be performed in parallel and will yield loot better than single groupable content at that level?

I don't think there's any real point to trying to make puzzle solving in a static game.

I guess I don't see how making you have to work with more people to tradeskill (1) accomplishes anything or (2) how it makes the game more fun.

Honestly the best parallel to raiding that I'd see is if you have a person who is responsible for buying parts for heady kiola and delivering them to people scattered in the various corners of the zone. The leader would hand out swatches and patterns which he collected before the raid, then everyone would click like mad to make cured silk armour for 15 minutes, and once that was done, a bunch of BD armour would spawn in the leaders bags to be distributed (for a successful raid - unsuccessful raids would involve losing swatches because people used the wrong recipe because they were busy watching TV and people losing corpses because someone failed a combine and followed the sign that said "danger, bloodthirsty spiders that will kill you ->" thinking he could get some more silk because he failed a combine because he wasn't paying attention and training the raid with packs of red con spiders).

[Ngreth Thergn]

and though I said I was not looking for "story" ideas, Maevenniia hit on a story idea outline that would work.

In my "ideal" situation there would not even be any combat, or any combat is trivial so that group level limits were not needed (though rewards may have to be scaled and that is a whole other matter entirely)

It is just an idea to throw around It may inpire Maddo... I mean certain devs wiht ideas of something differnt to do in the game, give people optional things to do

Ideally this would NOT be something you have to be UBER to do.

Ideally, it would not take somoene having 1750 to do, and would even not be posible (due to time limits) to do solo.

Ideally of course in my thoughts

In my idea of things "spawning" there is a cook npc, a smith npc, a tailor npc, a pottery NPC, a jewelcraft NPC, and a brewing NPC.

a simple idea, the smith has you doing nails, the tailor sails, the brewer tar, the cook food for the crew, the jewelcrafter a "spyglass" or some such thing. The smith ends up having to make the tube for the spyglass, the jewelr ends up having to make a special utensil for the cook to use, the cook has to do some special curing on leather... and such to get interaction.

Again, sorta nebulous.

[Gorgin]

Very interesting ideas. To add to Ngreth's stuff I was just thinking of this. I'm part of a raiding guild(Talisman, so fairly far along usually when it comes to progression) so my ideas will be based upon what I'd like to see as a raider to maybe add to some stuff. I'm going to use Ngreth's castle idea in various areas.

Your raid is sent to defend a castle that's walls are breaching. You're put into an instanced zone and given a specific requirement(supplying the troops with armor, repairing the walls of the breached castle, making weapons for the troops, supplying arrows for the archers, supplying food for the front lines). During this instanced zone the zone would be under attack by waves of mobs that would start to decrease as you began to fill the requirements set forth for the raid i.e. as the holes in the walls start to be fixed up less and less mobs are able to get through, or the archers are able to keep more mobs at bay due to being supplied with arrows. Hopefully there would be two endings to this(both with equal rewards) where the first ending could have you supplying your side so well that they eventually overcome the enemy and the commander of your side rewards your raid with items, or alternatively once your raid has been able to fight off enough of the enforcements by doing some of the objectives you might be able to go out and kill the enemy commander to end the scenario. You could easily do this the flip side and be sieging a castle by buidling siege machinery and supplying the troops attacking the castle as well. That's all I could come up with atm.