So here's my second post for ingame content that (Hopefully) will help make the game a tad better from the start and/or be a way to improve it for later expansions.

So in this installment I'll be looking at Resources, which I'll expand upon in the next installment(s) as Crafting, Trading and the Market/Bartering system since they all tie together and should be addressed as a category and not pieces that should not be thrown together after the others are done. (and hey, if we stir up extra excitement for the game pre-launch, so much so the better right?)

Resources
The root of all evil in MMO's, or a grind of the most epic per portions. Most follow one of 3 models.
Way 1. - Resources come from mobs and 'spawn sites' only, with maybe 1% coming from npc vendors. Aquiring resources can take as little as 20 minutes to as much as 20 HOURS for a single item.
Way 2. - Resources drop the same as way 1, but vendors have an infinite supply that keeps an artificial 'ceiling' on the price of goods, resources and profits.
Way 3. - Set amounts of resources available, that 'respawn' in a pre-determined cycle, (usually 24 hours, or a week per cycle) think Farm plots that are full of crops available to whoever can get out there quickest and snatch them up, then a week later the plot respawns. This gives value to the plot and people not only 'farm it' but they fight over it to make sure they can get ahead of their rivals. Even to the point of neither side getting anything accomplished while the fighting goes on.

I'll be the first to say that none of the 3 can last 'forever' in any game, especially when the game will evolve (see my Installment #1) to see what I mean about territory growing and changing.

In the beginning it's probably best to have a combination of way 2 and 3 and adjust as necessary and as players find ways to 'break' or 'exploit' the system.

For example:

I'm a new player and I go out after going through the tutorial (please oh please make a good one!) and decide it's time for me to make my way in the world. So I decide to start doing some missions/jobs in a small town/campsite. And via those jobs I make a good deal of caps, but I also pick up a small assortment of guns, hand weapons, a few pieces armor, some raw materials for medicine and some random 'vendor trash' (everyone knows the type the rusty axe, soiled loincloth, lvl 1 item that can be made out of balonyium that spawns ALL over the starting area.

Here's what TYPICALLY happens.
I use the best items for my person, sell all the items that aren't the very best, maybe keep the few raw materials, sell the vender trash and get ready for the next set of quests. (.... please sir, may I kill some more rats?)

Yeah no.

Lets take it a step further for a change shall we? (and I won't take all credit some of this is in a combination of games I've played over my 20+ years as a 'hardcoe' gamer. But it seems none of them 'get it right'.)


Why not make it so that even 'vendor trash' serves a purpose other then a raw source of caps. Make every single item break down to a set number of materials. Obviously it won't be everything that went into making the item (as pieces are shaped, molded, casted, forged, machined, etc, etc) but it will give you raw materials if you so choose. OR. The item can give you a small source of parts that would enable you to make higher quality types of the item your taking apart.

For Example:

You have an AK-47 (very common weapon in the world) but it's seen better days, it's been through heavy use, a few owners and more then a few patchwork fixes. So it's time to use it for the more valuable parts and materials rather then fix it up.

Taking it apart there are springs, small bits of metal, levers, a bolt, a wooden stock and hand grip and other parts. From there we can take two courses, we can use the parts in another AK-47 to make it of higher quality (thus more damage, accuracy, whatever) OR we can melt some or all of the parts down for other uses.

The metal when melted down can be used for anything once it's in bar stock form. The wood on the grips can be used for other smaller wood items (recycling and scavenging at it's finest) or even fuel for some of the character owned houses, towns or limited industries (more on industries in a later installment).

The point however is that items shouldn't only be SINGLE use, and they shouldn't be unrecoverable in a setting where scavenging is the key to survival. This will not only add realism to the setting but it will give players more value for the same items, making them rare and worth while to collect or fight over.

I can't stress this point enough, instead of dumping billions upon billions of caps into the system, millions of tons of resources would be a better solution. Yes there will be more direct trading and player interaction BUT it will put up a roadblock to 'bots' as players that play 24/7 and have thousands of tons of resources going through the same account should send up so many red flags that the account is perma-banned instantly.

Also with the way territory, NPC and Character owned, being able to be upgraded (see installment 1), there will be literally hundreds of thousands of sinks for resources to flow into and thus keep inflation at bay (a problem with many 'old' games).

Another point I have to stress, so much that I'll put it in BOLD Make the most EPIC, LEGENDARY, or AWESOME items in the game AND the most basic items have at least SOME of the most basic resources

For example:

In the 'newbie' zones there is probably tons of Iron and Copper, but in the highest zones lies titanium and Uranium. Too many MMO's make a very, VERY simple mistake.

Item 1 is the first item you can make, say a 10mm pistol. You need 5 Iron and 2 copper to make it.
Item 666 is the last item you can make, it's a plasma-rotary-Gauss-laser-targeting-does-too-many-things gun of doom!? It only Takes 100 Titanium and 20 Uranium.
Item 1,000 is only dropable by the end 'bosses' and takes no resources but it 5x better then item 666!
This is a horrible, horrible way to make the game go.

Why?
1. The starter resources aren't in ANY thing other then start weapons and armor, thus after a few years they become useless. Combat this by including those resources in the highest items. If anything make the most common resource (Iron) in EVERYTHING in varying degrees so even the newest player is practically vital to the game.
2. Item 666 is the highest item producable by players, yet, item 1000 and every item between 667 and 999 are also better. So after a certain point what was EVER the point of making those items if commonly dropped items are better? This quickly makes crafting/manufacturing useless and makes the players that sunk all that time into it EXTREMELY angry and bitter.
3. Item 1,000 should be so rare that out of maybe 1 million players on the server only 500 might have one. Yes, true rarity, not the overseer has 500,000 of these things and drops them every tenth fight. Make them horrendous in combat to those being targeted BUT preface that with if the player using it dies or is captured he loses something that's truly worth something.

To make 1 a bit more clear, here's the difference.

plasma-rotary-Gauss-laser-targeting-does-too-many-things gun of doom!? made typical MMO style.
100 Titanium 20 Uranium

plasma-rotary-Gauss-laser-targeting-does-too-many-things gun of doom!? made correct way.
100 Iron, 50 Copper, 10 Aluminum, 5 Leather, 20 Uranium and 5 Uranium

The second way will involve players at all stages and even have players venturing out to gather 'low end' resources, or better yet finding players that gather the lower end resources and having them join their gangs or tribes.

All you need is scarcity control on the resources, Iron is in every single zone, but Uranium and Titanium are only in the most dangerous and lethal environs. Simply because all the easily reachable high value resources have been picked clean over the years by generations of people and mutants.

This makes crafters useful, EVERY player vital to the global economy and everyone feels like the contribute and everything has a value.

I apologize if this installment seems to jump around a bit, I just wanted to make sure everything was put out there, even if it isn't in the best format.

In the next installment I'll be looking at Crafting and item manufacture in depth, stay tuned

-Banlish

"Way 3. - Set amounts of resources available, that 'respawn' in a pre-determined cycle, (usually 24 hours, or a week per cycle)

Long respawn times tend not to work in my experience. If they drop useful resources or epics, they encourage camping by the largest guilds, meaning the majority of players won't ever see them (I'm looking at you, world bosses in WoW).
Even rare spawns that only have achievements are generally camped mercilessly (think spirit beasts in Sholazar Basin). Hell, just remembering the farming of mining nodes in SB makes me shudder still. Masses of players just flying in circuits for hours. Terrible way to go.

I do like the idea of all levels of resources being useful, but I'd rather see the resources spread around the world, than limited to specific areas. If your only putting copper in the starting areas (for example), new players could see themselves edged out of the scavanging experience by high-level players in buggys/motorbikes farming all the spawns much quicker.

To Clarify a bit more about the spread.

There would be many different resources, the most most common types (choose like 3 or 4 out of 20) would be all over the place. They'd be so common it'd be sick, the way to keep that in line is that everything needs those resources AND extraction and refining/smelting takes time so you don't have 1 player just mining Iron his entire life when he knows that if he can go to a more dangerous area he'd be able to find Silver, Aluminum and Lead. Along with the 3 or 4 common materials.

There would be enough 'rare' minerals that you could have literally 100,000 players mining/gathering the best resources in the most dangerous zones BUT they still wouldn't be able to clear it all out before the next respawn cycle (maybe on Monday morning and Friday morning to give everyone a good spread or something along those lines).

A spaceship game does this quite well, but it still needs some tweaks, I've added in and taken out parts from other MMO's I've seen, played and heard about over the years. I'm not trying to take credit for it, I'm trying to clarify it so camping, hoarding and NPC zone 'swarming' doesn't happen to ruin anyone's experience.

Mining ? resources ? in post-apocalyptic world ? dude ... there should not be such thing as mining or gathering . everything should be in process of saluaging. to mine anything in that late age of evolution you need giant drill to get ANY ore out of ground .... not a mining pick .... this is modern world (yeah i know kinda parallel world, but still...) if there survived any mining drills or something , they should be controlled by some NPC faction, or it would be NICE BATTLEGROUND objective for pvp.

If you need something to be done out of metal , gather some scraps or metal stuff bring to forge and you have it.

Its my humble opinion. Who we are is but a stepping stone to what we can become

Hmmm, needs some fixes.
From the begining; best will be to make all items limited of use so there will constantly be a demand of X, Y and Z resources.
Now, for the mining part; there should be saluaging in the early stages. But, after all the time spend in improper conditions, the ammount should be small if not tiny (after refinin, etc, etc and getting only the pure material). Now, world if full of mutans, raiders and huge roaches; people will first care about survival. Now, after some time (a year or so) new items will be available to craft and beeing able to mine some resources in the ground. I'm not talking about few kg or units, but maybe a few gr or fraction of units (will yeld a little bigger ammount than saluaging). At this point saluaging should be a matter of luck to force people to move on, buy some mining gear (no matter the names), and thus a new profession, miner.

Can't say I agree with you there. I'm in the US, one of the countries that has gone CRAZY at times using resources via strip mining and heavy resource stripping. Even in the North East (where the original 13 colonies were) there are mines still operating to this day at full capacity. That's something like 60 years AFTER the nukes were supposed to drop in Fallout.

The reason most mines have shut down these days are economic viability (aka can I get this ore cheaper and the cost of moving it still be less then digging it here at this mine?) and environmentalists and soccer moms with "not in my back yard plz!" mentalities.

Fallout would be more along the lines of "well, cars are rare, what's the closest place to get ore, alright, it might take some time but we need it!!!!" mentality.

I'm not disagreeing that scavenging should be a MAJOR part of the game, and it should be over mining. But to put it into perspective an office building or minor town should provide enough metals to supply at least 40% town of it's former size. It drives me kinda crazy to see mining 'nodes' in games where you get 2 minutes or 4 pick axe hits worth of ore and then you have to go searching for another 5 minutes to find another.

I know it might make players go a bit batty, but seeing a brahman caravan that hauls those half car 'trailers' going into the wastes and carting back tons of rusting Iron to be reforged into useable Iron would be awesome in my mind. On one hand players would be doing it so it'd be happening often, On the other it would add activity to the game besides everyone walking around being warriors all the time.

I like the OP idea. In FO Online tier1 - 6 7 8 harvested nodes doesn't fit this type of world; not only it's unrealistic, it plain doesn't make sense. To refine Scraps, parts, med ingredients etc, makes more sense; and these things can come from vendor trash and old gear you no longer want or you obtain killing raiders and creatures, may even spawn strongboxes, or opening like old containers and such in a more realistiv way; can even have such mats drop from instanced bosses and mini-bosses like they did in EQ2 esp the more rare elements like a plasma cyclinder.

And like the OP suggested, allow more complex crafted items or "upgrade recipe" that can be applied on existing gear to make them better (another concept in LOTR has done which was brilliant) still require lower/common materials so such materials do not become useless.

Better use on that "vendor" trash at the cost of not getting a few caps, rare finds, reusable lower level/comm mats = a consistant valued resource system for crafting that doesn't go obsolete after a few expansions.

This is not at all correct. The whole point of the Fallout universe is that the human race, or at least most of it, has been set back around 7000 years in its sociological and technological developments - hence the Tribals from Fallouts 1 and 2. If you recall, in Fallout 2 you start as a tribal.

A return to the tribal system means a return to tribal habits. Originally, "mining" was simply picking up rocks of unprocessed iron/copper/tin ore from the ground, taking them home and doing what you could with them. This then evolved into a few tribesmen with picks hacking at the seam on the surface, and taking their bounty home with them, thus yielding a much higher quantity than gathering alone will give.

You can still do this. The reason humans don't do this any more, is that it is not economically viable. In the post-Industrial, capitalist age, it takes vast quantities of resources to produce anything, because everything has to be produced on such a large scale to ensure that each individual unit is made cheaply enough to be able to sell as many of them as possible, to as large a consumer market as possible.

The Fallout universe is not an industrial one. There is no need for vast strip mines, and there is no end international consumer market to sell to. It is all about survival, and small pockets of humanity have gathered together in old cities or junkyards and these have developed into the towns around now (Junktown, etc). Therefore, the modern industrial economic model no longer applies, and you have to look back at history to see how humans coped in the tribal economic model. It's now all about just getting something, because getting anything at all now isn't easy. You can't walk into Wal Mart and pick up exactly what you needed, now you've got to scrounge and dig and grow what you need personally.

Scavenging will obviously be a vital part to the game, but remember that the technological capacity to rework steel has been lost, so the best you can do with it now is piece together a rough scrap weapon or suit of armour. If you want to be able to do something productive with it, such as forge something new, you've got to start from scratch and the human race has to redevelop the capabilities it had before. Its not the same thing to smelt copper in a fire as it is to produce steel in a blast furnace.

This is not the modern world, and do not fool yourself just because there are rusted cars and the odd functioning gun laying around.

For example, if players find a handgun, but the barrel is broken, what are they going to do with it? I'll tell you what, absolutely nothing. You can't ever expect to simply find a piece of junk that includes a circular rifled tube to allow the bullet to fire straight and happens to fit the exact dimensions required. It WILL NOT happen.

However, it would be possible for a tribal artisan to recognise what he needs, and to then produce a less-effective (and more prone to breakages) copper or tin one, eventually moving up to bronze or iron in the same way that the first cannons were cast.



I'm afraid I disagree with this too, it should be a player-controlled faction, where the players have requested 100 scrap metal or whatever as a 'quest' for noobs, who then earn some caps and some gratitude from high-level players, who normally just look at noobs with disdain.