The Mana World Forums

Rotonen wrote:And to add more frustration to the players: some ingredients should be at their best when they're fresh.

Old ingredients might have special abilities as well. Such as rotting apples containing alcohol. Thinking about the ingredients age we could add ways to stop/slow or accelerate the ageing process. Like putting maggot slime in a jar or adding maggot eggs to an apple.

I like the idea of the need to prepare certain ingredients rather then just adding them to a potion. Like boiling, cooking or distilling.
Also it would be cool if ingredients don't have an effect connected to it, but chemicals. By distilling a solution the concentration of the chemical can be increased. For example you can distil 3 healing potions into 1 strong healing potion. Or 1 healing potion and 1 mana potion into a potion of rejuvenation (adding both HP and MP). You can also split 1 strong healing potion into 2 normal healing potions using water.
Multiple chemicals could have the same effect. Like Chemical A, B and C all restore your HP, so a potion with both chemical A and B just heals extra. Some chemicals might react into another chemical when mixed, the effect might be totally different. Like Chemical A + C -> Chemical D, D being a poison. I was thinking maybe chemicals might react inside the player's body is well, so quaffing A and C right after eachother won't heal the player but slowly hurt him. Quaffing chemical E (E being an antidote to D) after that will make D + E react into a neutral chemical or even chemical B.
This could be combined with Rotonens idea to add colours. Chemical A being red, B being yellow, C being green. An A/B mix potion would be orange, A + C would react into D being deep purple. The concentration could be displayed by making the potion less transparent.
If we will have the ability to throw a potion chemicals might have different vapourisation levels. Like potions that don't vapourise are good for igniting using fire arrows or spells, potions that turn into vapour really quick are good for affecting the creature from the inside... like sleep potions or poisons. Most potions can be used on weapons, so you can have sleeping darts or a poisoned axe. The effect wears off after a certain amount of attacks. In case of ammo you get a seperate pile of affected shots.

It's like a mix of Angband, Oblivion and real life. Maybe this is all too complicated, but I like it.

Crush wrote:how do you want to keep anything secret in an open source game?

the only way would be to put the reciepts into an external file and not to put this into the server package. but that would mean that anyone who want to open a new server would have to create his own reciept file.

I'd like for there to be a generic template for server admins, but I'd like to keep the recipes of our "official public server" a secret. I think most other server admins would like to keep the recipes a secret too.

And as for the complexity of crafting skills: I don't think they can be too complex if we use common sense in designing the systems. The complexity just adds challenge and makes it more interesting than the average crafting systems.

but a system that is so complicated that you need a university degree to understand it can be frustrating for the average gamer. And the more complex a system the more difficult to balance it.

Simple recipes will be simple. Crafting stuff is not for everyone in any case. Everyone will have to find their own field to specialize in.

We should be able to manipulate ingredients at molecular level

ElvenProgrammer wrote:We should be able to manipulate ingredients at molecular level

I don't think we need that kind of presision in TMW. I don't think they had nano-technology there and then.

where and when is there and then?

you mean when this will be ingame? such complex gameplay additions won't be implemented before the new server software is running.

No, I think he is meaning that the world isn't all that defined yet.

Rotonen wrote:No, I think he is meaning that the world isn't all that defined yet.

Yeah.

Yes, I meant the setting of the game's world.