My question about crafting is pretty much this: What plans do you have around game design and the crafting profession?
The reason for my question is this: When starting a crafting run, you need in general to do a large amount of clicks in order to reach some level of statistical results. For the sake of the argument, lets say 2000 clicks. I do not remember the exact time a click takes, but been using as a guideline for myself that 1000 clicks takes around 70 minutes. During this time it is not possible to do anything else in the game except sitting and watching a small circle go round and round and round ... Maybe one exception is that you can access the ah terminal from the crafting terminal and browse prices.
In my opinion this is not a good way to achieve player engagement as this often leads to afk activities. The possibilities here is also abundant to introduce new items that will not change the economics of the crafting, for example items to craft faster. Other way could be to think about what they have done in EVE Online: there you insert the BP in an assembly line, which has a timer until completed, allowing the player to engage in other activities while waiting. Other ideas here is also skills and items that allow you to craft more in parallel.
Then comes the moment that we are all waiting for - a multiplier! Something that we are all hoping for and want to have. In crafting it means often a BP drop ... only to discover that it is the 15th drop of component widget III, IV or similiar ... totally useless. Here I can see a new mini game developing where maybe UL bps can be combined into a bp with higher QR for example. Of course for a cost / decay of a new tool etc. Same thing with Limited bps, would be great if they could be combined into a larger bp. I remember when I bought around 100 ped tt worth of welding wire bps, and had to work on sorting my inventory for 1-2 hours.
Finally, please allow for more statistics. I do not understand why you limit it to the last 1000 clicks. I am also missing history (great to have when you get a bluescreen for example and loose the data from the 1 hour craft you just did), and possibility to export data to a google spreadsheet for example. In the end you use more time to keep track of prices, returns and sales prices outside the game than inside the game
The reason for my question is this: When starting a crafting run, you need in general to do a large amount of clicks in order to reach some level of statistical results. For the sake of the argument, lets say 2000 clicks. I do not remember the exact time a click takes, but been using as a guideline for myself that 1000 clicks takes around 70 minutes. During this time it is not possible to do anything else in the game except sitting and watching a small circle go round and round and round ... Maybe one exception is that you can access the ah terminal from the crafting terminal and browse prices.
In my opinion this is not a good way to achieve player engagement as this often leads to afk activities. The possibilities here is also abundant to introduce new items that will not change the economics of the crafting, for example items to craft faster. Other way could be to think about what they have done in EVE Online: there you insert the BP in an assembly line, which has a timer until completed, allowing the player to engage in other activities while waiting. Other ideas here is also skills and items that allow you to craft more in parallel.
Then comes the moment that we are all waiting for - a multiplier! Something that we are all hoping for and want to have. In crafting it means often a BP drop ... only to discover that it is the 15th drop of component widget III, IV or similiar ... totally useless. Here I can see a new mini game developing where maybe UL bps can be combined into a bp with higher QR for example. Of course for a cost / decay of a new tool etc. Same thing with Limited bps, would be great if they could be combined into a larger bp. I remember when I bought around 100 ped tt worth of welding wire bps, and had to work on sorting my inventory for 1-2 hours.
Finally, please allow for more statistics. I do not understand why you limit it to the last 1000 clicks. I am also missing history (great to have when you get a bluescreen for example and loose the data from the 1 hour craft you just did), and possibility to export data to a google spreadsheet for example. In the end you use more time to keep track of prices, returns and sales prices outside the game than inside the game