Poetic Stanziel over at Poetic Discourse had a nice write-up of a player-run skillbook market. I really enjoyed the idea; I think skillbooks should be able to be crafted by players with better learning stats than just what comes stock. If done correctly, I believe it could be a bigger money sink for experienced players while remaining easy, if not easier, for new players to get a leg up on the basic skills. This brought up an idea I've had for a while now which I've been meaning to get down on paper. While I never expect CCP to ever actually implement Poetic or my idea, it's a fun little thought to ponder on.
Let me be hoest, I don't craft in Eve. While I have played and have crafted in many MMOs in my time, Eve's crafting system is something I don't want to undertake half-cocked. One day, when the time is right, I would like to make an alt for industry purposes. And when that day comes, you better believe I'll be ready.
In the MMOs where I have partaken in the joy that is crafting, I have come across a lot of different mechanics that range from overly complex to overly simplified. No matter how good or bad the overall act of crafting is, I've found very few games that don't have at least a single good facet buried in a mountain of terrible. One of my personal favorite crafting features in a good number of those games would have to be any chance-based/critical bonus success. These features would usually create a rarer item in the place of what was being crafted. Example: Getting a blue item instead of a green.
How awesome would this be if applied to Eve?!
My thoughts on how this could work: any time an item is crafted, there is a 0.001 to 3% chance (based on the amount of minerals required for that specific item) of it being a Master item instead of the standard item. So instead of a Omen Navy Issue, it would show up as a Master Omen Navy Issue. How the Master label could affect some items:
- Ships
- Any Master ship could have a bonus to CPU, PG and/or better starting resists
- If you want to get into a crazy level of suggestion, a Master ship could give a +1 level to the main skill needed to fly that particular class of ship. So if a player had a level 5 in Amarr Cruisers for the above Navy Omen, the Master version would count it as Amarr Cruiser level 6!
- Turrets & Bays
- Turrets: Speed up the base RoF / Damage Modifier by 5% or reduce the base Heat Damage taken per cycle. Even adding to the base Structure HP would be a nice buff from the standard mod
- Missile Bays: Pretty much the same, RoF bonus or Heat Damage reduction
- If the above "+1 to level" were applied to anything besides a ship, it would have to only affect damage/tracking/etc for that single specific module
- Drones
- This one is tough. You could just add to their damage and many would be quite happy with that. I think something more for speed in the case of light drones would make things much more interesting. Malediction gets a tackle, the tackled ship pops out 5 Master Warrior IIs that are fast little buggers. It would require some adaptation if encountered.
And you can keep going from there. One of the most important factors to control would be the percentage chance to craft one of these Master items. It should be an extremely rare occurrence to see a killmail that has a Master ship with all Master mods loaded up. If they become the new T2, it would really lose a lot of the "Whoa!" factor which I think is extremely important in Eve.
While I don't think every single item should have a chance to process a Master item (eg. ammo), I do think this would be a really interesting mechanic to have. It seems like this would add another layer to what is already a very large onion but it would be a pretty sweet layer. It would definitely jump start my plans for a construction alt. Something fun to think about for sure.
