The Crafting System and Its Consequences - By Landsknecht

[Deleted member 4316]

I don't want this thread to be swept under the rug, as I believe I'm not the only person who's disappointed with the current crafting system.​

The idea behind the crafting system was to allow people the freedom to be healers and make medicine, or armorers which supply the resistance with gear. While In some ways it works, there are a lot of issues that people seem to be ignorant about:

Pros

- Access to items that in most traditional servers (ClockWork) were harder to obtain. (Weapons, Ammo, Armor...etc.)

- Makes it easier for admins not to respond to every "I need melted snow!" ahelp.

Cons

- Access to items that in most traditional servers (ClockWork) were harder to obtain. (Weapons, Ammo, Armor...etc.)

- Lack of character development, you can get gear insanely fast without putting any effort into the character.

- The entire focus is on the grind, not the RP people do along the way. People don't care about your character's uniqueness but what hat you're wearing.

I believe more things can be written in the cons section, but the most important ones I've added are.
​

You can't expect to have unique characters, interesting lore, and an immersive setting, with a crafting system that actively does its best to cripple roleplay quality. When a sweep happens and Civil Protection busts a meta base, the players aren't worried about losing the base, but rather what's within the lockers. Anyone can simply log on, create Blue suit #1252 and grind for a few days until they can make a full set of armor and a gun with ammo. This happened before with the "Chinese bots" incident on C24 V2 where the biggest rebel group would meta and send out blue suits to collect garbage for them.

The server allows for so much freedom when it comes to character development, yet most players will actively avoid it because of the crafting system. As a recently accepted vortigaunt player, I've come to realize that the only reason for the rebels and citizens to move through the sewers is to look for crates and piles of trash. When you try to speak to them, the conversation will always start with "I'm looking for three pieces of cloth." or "Do you have *this*". The crafting system also allows the same lazy people to just grind plastic and metal, then just craft without putting even a single proper /me into the process.

Now I'm not just going to bitch, I have a proposition. While staff and the developers won't budge when it comes to removing this system, we could find a way to make it at least acceptable. My idea is to hide certain crafting recipes behind a whitelist. ClockWork HL2RP servers before Willard did that and it worked, so if you wanted to be a gunsmith or an armorer you had to apply for a crafting flag. Guns and armor weren't as easy to ass-pull unless you roleplayed with someone enough for them to trust you with one, or did the goofy ten weeks of ration grinding for a USP and a Rebel uniform because of the inflated prices. That system worked, It made people actually communicate to get their hands on a gun or a kevlar vest. Players on Willard tend to interact with people based on what type of shoes they're wearing and what gear they've got, not what roleplay they can offer.


TL;DR - The crafting system in its unregulated state is unacceptable for any serious roleplay server. Hide some recipes behind crafting flags, while making others accessible after the player can IC'ly learn them. (Cookbooks, sewing manuals...etc.)

​

 

[Donavin Jones]

- Lack of character development, you can get gear insanely fast without putting any effort into the character.

This is 'half' true.
Getting gear in my opinion is quite difficult, thats if your alone which most people are now days.

 

[Deleted member 4316]

This is 'half' true.
Getting gear in my opinion is quite difficult, thats if your alone which most people are now days.

The reason why it's entirely true is that if you took a stroll through the sewers or the slums, you'll find random crafting tables and work stations on which you can craft your things without the need for human interaction.

 

[Donavin Jones]

The reason why it's entirely true is that if you took a stroll through the sewers or the slums, you'll find random crafting tables and work stations on which you can craft your things on without the need for human interaction.

Thats in regard of actually getting the resources needed for them.

 

[Pandafish]

i would gatekeep certain crafting components to player BMDs and events. trash farming would still allow you to progress your rebel in small ways during downtime, but you'd need to seek out roleplay opportunities to get stronger. more things would be craftable too, but because they're reliant on some spawned-in component, it's sort of an illusion to be able to craft more than you actually can. i.e. craftable AK74s but one of the components is 'Broken Assault Rifle' which cannot be crafted. it'd also ground the crafting system a little more in reality where rebels are making things operable again with primitive tooling instead of brand-new factory-style crafting
old suggestion regarding crafting i made in rebel discord that i wanna copy-paste again.

 

[BrennenW05]

As a person who mains a Rebel Engineer Character, i agree 100%, while not having to get an admin every time i want to make a simple bandage is really good, the fact that a majority of crafting requires no RP at all is terrible. I think Low to Mid tier items should be left alone, however high teir items should have components locked behind RP, only gained through expedition and events.
Also expanding the system through crafting flags, flags that can be given to make certain high tier items for example:
Explosives Flag- allows for the production of high tier explosives, C4,IEDs,RPG Rockets, Ect.
Union Tech Flag - allows for the production and modification of Combine tech, Rebel Scanners, Rebel Turrets, Modified Energy Cores, Hacked Cams, Ect.
Modern Weapons Flags - allows for the production of high tier weapons, and attachments - M4,MP7,AK47, most high tier attachments
and more

All of these flags would be earned through RP. or though auths, and will need components only found through rp to make any of the stuff
and a charcter can only have 1 or 2 of the flags, that way you could have more specialized crafters

i think adding stuff like that would give to system way more interaction with rp

 

[Deleted member 4316]

As a person who mains a Rebel Engineer Character, i agree 100%, while not having to get an admin every time i want to make a simple bandage is really good, the fact that a majority of crafting requires no RP at all is terrible. I think Low to Mid tier items should be left alone, however high teir items should have components locked behind RP, only gained through expedition and events.
Also expanding the system through crafting flags, flags that can be given to make certain high tier items for example:
Explosives Flag- allows for the production of high tier explosives, C4,IEDs,RPG Rockets, Ect.
Union Tech Flag - allows for the production and modification of Combine tech, Rebel Scanners, Rebel Turrets, Modified Energy Cores, Hacked Cams, Ect.
Modern Weapons Flags - allows for the production of high tier weapons, and attachments - M4,MP7,AK47, most high tier attachments
and more

All of these flags would be earned through RP. or though auths, and will need components only found through rp to make any of the stuff
and a charcter can only have 1 or 2 of the flags, that way you could have more specialized crafters

i think adding stuff like that would give to system way more interaction with rp

i would gatekeep certain crafting components to player BMDs and events. trash farming would still allow you to progress your rebel in small ways during downtime, but you'd need to seek out roleplay opportunities to get stronger. more things would be craftable too, but because they're reliant on some spawned-in component, it's sort of an illusion to be able to craft more than you actually can. i.e. craftable AK74s but one of the components is 'Broken Assault Rifle' which cannot be crafted. it'd also ground the crafting system a little more in reality where rebels are making things operable again with primitive tooling instead of brand-new factory-style crafting
old suggestion regarding crafting i made in rebel discord that i wanna copy-paste again.

Both Ideas work well with what I'm proposing, but I believe it should be like this:

Entry level crafting (Available to everyone)
Mid crafting (Through IC training or Manuals)
High Tier (Dedicated Whitelists - Chemist for medicine and bombs, Quartermaster for Guns and Armor)

Weapons should be harder to obtain, rebels should be held to a higher standard. You must actually roleplay and provide something if you wanted a weapon, similar to how did CW HL2RP.

It makes no sense both IC and OOC for Timmy Bellyngton from Kentucky to conjure a gun, ammo and armor, just by staring at a workbench for less than a minute. It makes even less sense when said rebel or citizen claim they worked in a kebab shop.

Regulation is what's needed, roleplay when crafting high tier items should be enforced. Even if you don't know how to assemble a brazilian pipe gun IRL, showing ingenuity and writing a few /me's before you click on the yellow button at least proves you're willing to roleplay and not treating the server like Impulse HL2RP.

An Issue I have with staff is the fact that some don't seem to support crafting roleplay, and would rather point you in a different direction than reward you for the ingenuity. Example:
I was making makeshift wrappings by cutting clothes with my machete during the Alaskan event. Staff told me that the only way for me to get bandages was to either go to abandoned vehicles and rp searching them, or use the crafting menu after I find all the tools I need.

 

[Neonity]

Thats in regard of actually getting the resources needed for them.

It has already been confirmed that getting basic guns, armour, and a personal storage container as a brand new character starting from nothing will take you about 2.5 hours if you have memorized trash and loot crate spawn locations. It will take you approximately 6 hours if you haven’t.

Meanwhile you don’t have to RP anything. No chat messages, no /me’s. This is ridiculous

 

[EBoost]

This is an RPG, crafting is needed in order to progress in the gameplay loop.
If anything we need more things to craft, there is hardly any guns we can create now. More needs to be done to add to the current gameplay loop.

 

[ryebredd]

You can't expect to have unique characters, interesting lore, and an immersive setting, with a crafting system that actively does its best to cripple roleplay quality. When a sweep happens and Civil Protection busts a meta base, the players aren't worried about losing the base, but rather what's within the lockers. Anyone can simply log on, create Blue suit #1252 and grind for a few days until they can make a full set of armor and a gun with ammo. This happened before with the "Chinese bots" incident on C24 V2 where the biggest rebel group would meta and send out blue suits to collect garbage for them.

The server allows for so much freedom when it comes to character development, yet most players will actively avoid it because of the crafting system. As a recently accepted vortigaunt player, I've come to realize that the only reason for the rebels and citizens to move through the sewers is to look for crates and piles of trash. When you try to speak to them, the conversation will always start with "I'm looking for three pieces of cloth." or "Do you have *this*". The crafting system also allows the same lazy people to just grind plastic and metal, then just craft without putting even a single proper /me into the process.

mad true btw

 

[vortist]

deleted account, therefore opinion invalid