Ideas for "Useless" Materials
Fri, 11/05/2010 - 14:10
I'm sure that almost everyone has more red/green/blue shards than they know what to do with, and I'm personally tired of finding only Blaze Peppers for 4 star items, of which I now have 12, so I had two possible ideas for how to use these items:
1) Be able to craft semi-permanent dungeon items. By this, I mean do something like 20 Red Shards make the small health restore item, and 50 makes the large one, but unlike the ones dropped in dungeons these will not disappear upon dungeon completion, only upon use. For simplicity's sake, we can say that once crafted they will instantly be moved into the item bar, and if slots 1~5 are full no new ones can be made. We could also just add a new slot in the inventory for "Usables" which, like weapons and armor, cannot be switched out in the middle of a dungeon. Also, to prevent confusion, crafted items shouldn't stack with pickups, so players know exactly when they're using temporary poison vials and permanent ones.
If the inventory system is implimented, then there could even be multiple recipes for them, such as 20x green shards for a poison vial, 50x for a large poison vial, or 1 blighted bone for 5 large poison vials.
2) Have a resource "smelter." Players can dump excess items into the smelter and get a point value for them, say 1 point per star of the item being dumped. Players can then trade these points in for various things, such as equipment, energy, or crafting materials. To prevent some kind of abuse, the items that can be bough would rotate, so today the smelter can be "selling" Blighted Bones for 50 points, but tomorrow it could be selling Blaze Peppers. I would also suggest certain limits to the smelter, as follows:
* For equipment, there will never be anything above 3 stars offered, and even then, only 1 or 2 pieces of that level a cycle (the time it takes for the offers to rotate)
* For crafting resources, I don't know if 4 star items should be offered, or if they should only be offered rarely, but I definitely think 3 star items should be. 5 star items should never be offered.
Oh yeah, the smelter should grant extra points if the item that's being dumped is something above what the smelter offers. For example, if the smelter offers only up to 4 star crafting items, then if I dumped a Plague Essence it would give me 2x the normal amount of points (so 10 instead of 5) or something along those lines.
Fri, 11/05/2010 - 19:43
#2
Shards
I'd love if 5 shards and 0 energy made a mineral.
Either that or rise their price when selling them to NPCs
Sat, 11/06/2010 - 01:03
#3
Looking at the two most
Looking at the two most successful MMOs I can think of, WoW and Eve, they both have constant use for the low game, introductory content. In WoW, it's not because low level ore is any less common than high level ore, but simply because no one wants to mine the low level ore that keeps the demand high. In Eve, everything in the game uses pretty much every mineable resource, differentiating them only by what is needed in insanely massive quantities (the low quality, common ore) and slightly smaller massive quantities (high quality ore). Essentially, both games are efficient in the way that they make all materials worth it in some form or another to everyone.
In this game, the only thing I would ever do with all my junk shards is sell them to a merchant, but for only 1 crown a piece it is not worth my time to shift click my way through them 10 a click. While an auction house would, in a way, alleviate the pool and allow low level materials to be traded to those who need them, it won't stop the game from having an incredibly large amount of useless materials. You also cannot buy materials, at least not until the auction house is implemented, but even then that is entirely reliant on what other players are willing to sell and does not solve the problem of excess 1 and 2 star materials.
I don't know what recipes are in store for the future, but unless there's some fundamental change to the way this game works, there simply won't be a reason for most materials below 3 stars, and there will be a massively large amount of them floating around. After all, this game is entirely about getting more materials to make better gear, but without some kind of restriction on what can be worn (levels in WoW, skills in Eve), there simply is NO reason to ever craft anything of a 1 or 2 star value unless you absolutely need to, especially if you're joining because a friend invited you, in which case you're probably going to start off with full 2~3 star gear. What I suggested are methods that don't directly impact the core of the game, yet give a meaning or purpose to all those items cluttering up my inventory.
If your problem with the idea is that they don't stack, then make it so they do stack. If you equip a potion that you made, it will simply disappear once you leave the dungeon like a normal potion. I have nothing against that, especially since the idea is meant to provide a dump for low level resources anyways.
Sat, 11/06/2010 - 08:10
#4
A lot of people have
A lot of people have suggested allowing shards to be combined into minerals. After all, the description even says that it's a mineral that's too small to be used. If we have hundreds of them, the quantity shouldn't be so small anymore, should it?
There have also been suggestions for upgrading materials. For example, 10 frayed fabric could be combined to make 1 fine fabric, and 10 fine fabric could make 1 miracloth. Maybe they would also require some energy and even a bunch of shards or other materials to combine, so it could actually be 10 fine fabric, 5 blue shards, 2 light shards, and 1 soul dust to make a miracloth. These could all be recipes, and many of those recipes could even be hard to find. Whatever the case, it should be, like you said, a way to get rid of low-star resources.
As for the gear issue you described, I agree, new players won't have much reason to start out with low-star gear if the top-star items are in abundance. To fix this, I think that items crafted from bound items should also become bound. Since you have to level things up (thus binding them) before you can upgrade them, everyone would have to start at the low end and work their way up.
In another thread I suggested a way to unbind items. I've reconsidered that idea, and now I like the idea of individual gear progression. If you have a 5-star helmet, it should be because you earned it, working your way up from a low-star helmet, not because you got it from a friend of bought it for cheap. After all, your gear is your only form of progression.
Sun, 11/07/2010 - 20:39
#5
Useless can be usefull
I actually agree with: upgrading lower tiers wiith higher ones; putting a restriction so you can't begin the game with full 5 stars if your friend is willing to give you lot's of crowns, energy, recipes and materials; More cost efectiveness when selling then to a merchant; and, my idea (at least, i think, still didn't saw it): using them as "coins" for an extra ctivity inside the game, like gambling games for better materials or crown, entry fee for more exclusive dungeons, and leveling method for guilds, letting them have nicier rooms and more things to do as they get lot's of spare materials (like having areas where people can train without profit/heat gain, and withou using energy, or having the lvl of your exclusive shop raised).
Sun, 11/07/2010 - 23:33
#6
I think that's a perfectly
I think that's a perfectly fine alternative as well. I just want SOMETHING to use these massive amounts of materials on, or at the very least, some reason to give them away so someone else can use them. I hate inefficiency.
Mon, 11/08/2010 - 09:39
#7
Yes, there definitely needs
Yes, there definitely needs to be something. Right now, even selling them doesn't feel worth it.
Mon, 11/08/2010 - 15:26
#8
I made a suggestion
I made a suggestion (http://forums.spiralknights.com/node/383#comment-2196) that I kind of like. Use the idea here to turn shards into "crafted minerals". These minerals would be used to power guild gates, but *not* normal gates. Guild gates would then not drop any shards from monsters, but would get normal crystals. Thus we do not dilute the pool of minerals heading to the other gates, and people are encouraged to play the arcade gates in order to get the shards needed for the guild gate minerals. It also creates a market for these shards for the folks who don't want to hunt for them, but would rather buy them off others for their guild.
But really, I'm game for any use for these things.
The "useless" items won't be useless once they finish adding recipes.
I'd leave it at that, but I also want to point out that being able to craft consumables and take them through dungeons, and making it so they don't stack with normal pick-ups would completely defeat the purpose of the system currently in place.
I don't really see how the smelter is different from the buying and selling already in place. It just uses a separate, non-tradable currency.