Hello! I'm Mike Moore, one of TR's senior game system designers, and I'm about to begin working in earnest on improvements to our Crafting system. For all of Deployment 11, I have been working on prototyping some small but important changes to Crafting. On evaluation of that prototype, many of us feel like we're on to something good. So, at this point, we want to polish things up and get them out to the Public Test Server and let you guys have a look.

Now, let me make clear from the get-go that the upcoming changes to Crafting are intended to be incremental. We aren't going to publish this as a massive, game-changing update. Instead, we're going to make small changes over a few upcoming publishes. The idea is to ease TR into a new and improved Crafting system rather than throwing it off the deep end.

We've had a Crafting revamp on the back burner for a few months, and now we're in a position to put some development resources behind it. At this point, our rough (and always subject to change) plans are to get an iteration on Crafting up on the Public Test Server with Deployment 12, and then add more incremental improvements in subsequent Deployments.

Our initial goals for the first Crafting iteration are simple:

• Make the Crafting system easy to understand
• Make the Crafting system more accessible to all players
• Make Crafting into a key component of character specialization

And here's how we think we can reach those goals:

• Eliminate the Crafting skills and leave Crafting without skill requirements
• Remove the maximum item level limitation on module upgrade recipes
• Remove the Crafting components required for upgrading modules
• Introduce a new kind of crafting resource that is a new "currency" like Prestige
  
  • Change Disassembly to allow salvaging items to get the new currency
  • Crafting activities consume this currency
  • Make it so you can choose your own level of risk
• Add in the ability to remove modules from existing items
• Add in the ability to integrate the removed modules into other items

So, when it's all said and done, the Crafting system ends up being pretty simple and straightforward, while allowing full customization of your gear.

Currently, Crafting requires you to create a "mule" clone of a Level 30+ character, so you can buy all 4 Crafting skills up to Pump 5 in order to maximize your chances of success. You have to use your Lockbox to transfer gear, components, and recipes between characters. In order to upgrade modules on equipment, you have to manage a large number of upgrade recipes with fine-grained boundaries. You also have to manage a large variety of crafting components. When attempting the highest module upgrades, you run a huge risk of destroying the item. And to top it all off, there is very little documentation of the system, which isn't the easiest thing to figure out to begin with.

After the first iteration, the system will be tons better in all the basic ways. The list of upgrade recipes will be simplified to just the ones for sale on Prestige vendors, instead of the huge list of recipes with very restricted target equipment classes and restrictive level requirements. (Those will continue to drop as loot, but probably with a much-reduced frequency - less quantity but more quality.) Instead of managing a large list of components with technobabble names, you'll have a new type of currency specifically for crafting. You'll be able to have each character modify his or her own equipment instead of transferring it to and from a mule. You'll be able to easily remove an unwanted module from a piece of equipment and just as easily replace it with another. Instead of risking item destruction, you'll be able to spend extra Crafting Currency (its working name is "Mimeogel", but we're open to suggestions for a better name!) to guarantee success.

In other words, modifying equipment should become a simple and straightforward process, allowing all players to spec (and re-spec) their equipment as easily as they adjust skill levels and attributes.

So, where do we plan on going after that? Well, obviously we would like to build an elder Crafting game, allowing new options for equipment customization and benefits for characters who heavily invest and deeply specialize in it. But before we go there, we have to build a solid foundation. That foundation is what has been described here. We are evaluating designs for future iterations to this system, and at this point we are looking forward to seeing your feedback on this and your ideas for where we can go in the future!

Michael Moore
Senior Game System Designer
Tabula Rasa

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