Recipe Book - Stars Reach Deep Dive

In this first post of what could become a new series, we are going to take a closer look at the intricacies, design philosophy and gameplay effects of the Recipe Book (and it’s limit) in Stars Reach. Stars Reach of course being the new social sandbox MMORPG by Raph Koster (of UO and SWG fame) - which entered into Early Access a few days ago.

The Design Philosophy

Designing for Social Play is a devblog post written by Raph Koster that I keep recommending over and over again. If you manage to really, deeply understand just this one post, a lot of decisions and design choices made in Stars Reach (but also in UO and SWG) will become a lot clearer to you, and you will see the purpose and intentions behind them.

When Raph talks about “social games”, he’s not referring to Facebook games. He’s talking about the social aspects of player interactions in MMORPGs. And the core idea there is, that players form connections to others - some tighter, some looser. This happens through friends, guilds, repeatedly meeting other players in the same zones or regions, repeatedly buying from your preferred weaponsmith, regularly meeting up for some team-activity, or in games that support open world housing: being neighbours.

Raph’s post lays out, that a game is the most fun, if this web of connections between players reaches just the perfect level of density and cross connectivity. (And Raph is the guy who literally wrote the book on fun in games.) If it’s too much, you get increasingly large social structures, economic (quasi) monopolies, and end up with certain people or groups of people having too much influence and dominance. If there’s not enough, then people mostly just play for themselves, next to each other, but not truly together or with each other. But at the perfect balance point, you achieve a game, where even small groups can achieve something, where a single crafter can run a small mom&pop shop and find a sustainable niche to serve. Where a solo player can exist comfortable, and where guilds can stay small and tight-knight enough to offer that family feel.

Eve Online is a game that trends towards the larger side of things. Huge corporations with hundreds of members forming massive alliances, engulfed in large scale politics and attempts at economic dominance. Stars Reach aims to be smaller and more cozy than that.

Themeparks like WoW, SWTOR and FFXIV on the other hand, trend towards smaller social structures. You might have a friendslist of people who you regularly group up with, and maybe a guild large enough, to populate their own raid group - but for the most part, even when grouping and raiding - everyone is playing for themselves. Furthering their own progression, hunting for their own items and upgrades. Guilds may still be large - but mostly centered around raiding, with often relatively little connective tissue besides that. Stars Reach aims to be a lot more connected than that - allowing groups of players to work together to progress a city and a planetary government, and to build their crafting supply chains, regular patrons and regular customers. Where the things one player does, really matter to others - by supporting and enabling their gameplay. Often indirectly and asynchronously, by just being their vendor or supplier.

This is the lens through which we are going to look at the Recipe Book. Because only that way can we truly understand it.

The EA Launch

I’m sorry for going a bit on a tangent here, but we will get to the Recipe Book soon, I promise. But this is still partially relevant to what follows - and I will later show, how it’s all connected.

Regular readers will probably expect me to give my view on how the launch was and how things are going - but in all honesty, it’s just way too early to draw any conclusions. We need to wait at least two more weeks, before we can dare to try tell if player numbers are getting stable. But I’m cautiously optimistic for now.

You might think that 700 peak players at launch is really not a lot (and you’d be right about that) - but that specific number tells you a lot more about how much marketing money has been spent leading up to the EA launch, then it does tell you about the game itself. The way more important statistic is how player numbers change over time - and it seems we are now (Saturday and Sunday) back up to near 350 players daily peak. The typical death spiral of a game looks more like each day having half as many players as the day before, or something like that. Constantly falling numbers.

You might also say, that the review score was really bad at first, and then only went up to mixed. But you must know, that the only games that ever launch to “mostly positive” right away, are games that follow their specific mold to a T. Games where you see one single screenshot and know exactly what they are. Games that share a list of Steam tags with lots of other games, that are exactly the same to play. Everyone who sees that game on the store, knows what to expect and whether they are going to like it or not. And only the people who know to like that kind of game, are going to buy it, and then be happy and leave a positive review.

No game that’s doing anything new, taking any risk, showing any greater innovation, and is not just a clone of something that already exists - is going to be able to match that. People won’t know in advance what they will get. Steam doesn’t know who to show the game to, which “discovery queues” it belongs in. And that’s especially hard for games with tags like “sandbox” and “survival” and “MMO” - because these tags are so vague that there still could be all sorts of different games underneath. And yes, that means that Steam’s review system does work in a way that’s unintentionally punishing for games trying to innovate and break the mold.

Stars Reach is not for everyone. No game really is, but Stars Reach might be more niche than others. Especially now, that this kind of social, player-driven, co-op oriented “virtual life” gameplay hasn’t been done much for decdes. It’s been 15 years since SWG shut down, and many people not only have nothing to compare this game too, they never even played anything that would remotely help them understand what Raph’s secret design sauce is all about. Buyers do not know, often even can not possibly know, what to expect.

As such, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise, that maybe, roughly about half of the players trying out the game, just bounce off of it. And that’s reflected in both the player numbers and the Steam reviews. We don’t know how many of those people bounce off because the game just truly is not for them - and how many people bounce off because of onboarding issues, bugs and jank. But we can see from the numbers, that the overwhelming majority of people who stay for at least one hour - do come back the next day. We also know from the devs, that review scores among players with 1 hour or more of playtime, are mostly or even overwhelmingly positive. And that also perfectly explains why reviews would start out “mostly negative” and only become “mixed” later: Those who bounce off write their negative review after just 15 minutes. Those who play until late night, might not write their review until the next day. The negative reviews simply come in faster.

That this second half of players is staying for the long(er) run, is wayyyy more important than how many people do bounce off righ away. And that’s also why I’m very disappointed to see, that the first impression those “future stayers” get when joining the Discord, is some veteran testers whining about how bad everything is, and how stupid the devs are, and how doomed the game is, what stupid, pointless idea the recipe book and it’s limit are. You are not helping, guys. We need to show these newcomers that this is a community worth staying in - regardless of any bugs and grievances with the game. Some people were always going to bounce off and give bad reviews after just 10 minutes - but it really is those who don’t, that we need to welcome here and make feel at home. And having a good community is such an important part to an MMO.

That’s why I want to praise all the many, many people who are ingame, helping newbies, giving out crafted tools and weapons, answering questions, showing them the ropes, providing freely usable crafting stations, helping people setup their homesteads and everything. Helping bootstrapping the economy, populating the vendors, getting supplies of needed items flowing. Indirectly also helping with player statistics. You people are the reason why new players stay and fall in love with this game. Keep up the good work!

The Problem

EA launched with a ton of changes. Gameplay changes, crafting changes, balance changes, new features, new professions, new skills, new recipes, and so on and so forth. And yes, I’m tossing together the last update patch (which was only live for 6 days) and the EA update itself. Both of those didn’t get enough testing and time to cook and get polished. Therefore EA also launched with a laundry-list of various issues and problems. I’d go as far as calling it a rushed launch.

Now there’s some bugs, some server crashes, some interrupted recipe chains… but especially relevant for the Recipe Book, is the inventory problem. Right now, player inventories are limited to 500 slots, and once a player hits that limit, things get tedious. You have to clear out stuff, but you don’t know what’s important and what is not. You can dump some stuff into your bank, but not any recipes for some reason.

So, you do everything you can. Delete a ton of stuff, move things to the bank, throw out a lot of recipes - trade to other players whatever you can - dump stuff at cheapest price onto the public vendors (not that anything of that will ever sell) - etc. Half an hour later your inventory is already overflowing again, and you have to repeat the whole ordeal. And it never stops.

What makes it even worse, is that there is no “filter by type”, and that the public vendor has no search at all, and that inventory management in general isn’t very polished yet, and sorely missing in QoL feauters and helpers like that. I’ve even seen long-term testers get emotional over seeing this roadmap entry.

And given how many of the items mucking up your inventory and causing this issue are recipes - you are forgiven for coming to the conclusion, that the way the recipe book works, the way it is limited, might be the main cause of the issue. If only the recipe book could hold unlimited recipes, you wouldn’t need to carry any recipes in your inventory at all. You might think that would solve the issue - but then you’d be wrong! And I can prove it.

The Solution

Imagine, the Recipe Book had unlimited space, and could hold all the recipes you ever find. You might believe your inventory wouldn’t fill up, but it still would, just half as fast. You’d have more time until it overflows, but once it does, the problem would be just as bad - and that without any recipes being in there at all.

So, it is fair to say that the recipes do aggravate the problem. But they are not the cause and removing the limit from the Recipe Book will definitely not fix things. How do I know that? Because in reality there is no limit. My character currently has 303/335 recipes, and I can increase that even further. The recipe limit is an illusion - it doesn’t truly exist. You can actually learn every single recipe that exists in the game, and most likely put all of them into your recipe book at once.

Over 300 slots already, and no end in sight.

The way this seems to work is, everytime you learn a new recipe from a skill - you also get a new slot in your recipe book. Skill gives you 10 recipes? 10 new slots. Skill gives you 2 recipes? Two new slots. You can train all the skills and learn all the recipes, and will never run out of recipe book space while doing so. You only run out of space because of recipes you get from loot caches. But here’s the secred: almost all of those recipes can be gotten from skills as well. You’re just getting them early - before you unlocked the space needed for them. Maybe there’s a few more “not-available-through-skills-recipes” in cooking and tailoring - but definitely not in crafting, refining, toolmaking, weaponsmithing, engineering - which I did.

Those many, many recipes that are spamming up your inventory? 95+ % of those are recipes you could also get from skills you simply haven’t unlocked yet. Maybe even more. The few recipes you can’t get from skills, are actually bugs, and will be changed to come from skills again in the future.

The recipe limit cannot possibly be the source of the inventory problem, because there is no real recipe limit. It’s an illusion. So what is the real cause then, and is there a solution? There’s indeed one weird little trick you can do, which will actually completely, permanently solve the inventory problem: delete every loot cache you get, and never open one.

That’s it. Recipes from loot caches are one half of what is spamming up your inventory. The other half is materials (you can’t use) from the very same loot caches. Remove both, and the problem disappears entirely. And that’s the proof, that it’s not the Recipe Book that’s causing the inventory problem. It’s the loot caches.

So, why do people blame the Recipe Book then, and never even consider the loot caches? Because people like loot. People like getting rewards. People like opening boxes. That little dopamine hit you get. People do not want the loot caches to be a problem, or to go away, or to be changed. At the same time, most do not know or understand, why we do have a limit on recipes in the first place. What’s even the meaning and purpose of that?

Let me explain.

The Recipe Book

So, with those misconceptions out of the way, let’s look at what the Recipe Book, and especially the recipe limit, actually do. Well… what it would do, if it were real. We already know that there isn’t really a recipe limit, because that’s only an illusion. Right now, it does nothing - but would would it do, if it worked as intended?

Remember earlier, when we talked about making mom&pop shops viable, and giving every player their own little niche to occupy, and to prevent players or groups from becoming too dominant or even acquiring monopolies? Stars Reach employs many different designs and tactics, to keep that balance of the perfect level of interconnectedness. And the recipe limit is one of those. Among others. But contributing.

The underlying idea here is very simple: a crafter who has a full recipe book, and finds a rare, special, new recipe - then has to toss out something else, to make space for it. What are they gonna toss out? Well, some boring, old, simple, low-tier recipe, that has long ago stopped giving them any XP. And yes, that’s already implemented - recipes will not give you crafting XP indefinitely. But the limit is still so high, you can easily max out your skill tree without noticing too much. But that’s gonna get more balanced over time.

That means, that a new player will be able to craft those starter recipes - and sell the resulting products, with those top-tier crafters being their customers, rather than their competitors. This frees a corner of the market from the dominance of the top crafters. They can no longer dominate everything - opening up niches for other players to occupy.

Regional availability and the “goods slow” mantra contribute to the same thing. Also, you cannot browse a global AH, buy the cheapest thing, and have it magically delivered to your mailbox. That again helps create regional niches. That’s how those small single-crafter mom&pop shops become viable. That’s how no mega-corp can dominate everthing, to the point where a new player simply cannot contribute anything at all.

It creates increased specialization - which in turn creates increased inter-dependency - which increases the level of connectivity in that social web of players we talked about. Especially that low-level background connectivity, where everyone provides something that you used or consume - or is at least part of the supply chain for making the things you use and consume. And that is a very central part of that typical Raph Koster secret sauce, which made SWG special.

Yes, this is inconvenient. Having a recipe book that holds all the recipes would be a lot easier. So would having a global AH. Teleporting item email. Other things. But then you are loosing that secret sauce, and no longer making that game with that perfect balance of connective tissue. I’m not saying that inconvenience is good to have - I’m just claiming that there might be cases where having a well-considered, well-balanced inconvenience might be made up for, by the benefits it enables.

And no, the Recipe Book as it is right now, does not work yet. But the main inconvenience people rile against is not it’s fault either - but caused by the loot caches instead.

The Future

A day or so ago, Raph showed up for a bit in the main Discords voice chat. He was mainly there to inspect some server lag, and reboot some planets to get them running fast and snazzy again. But he also conversed a little bit, with the late night players still on at that point in time, and among other things also said a few words about the recipe book.

And what he said is, that all of this doesn’t matter, if the players reject it. That people blame it for issues caused by the loot caches, or that they don’t understand the purpose it serves, or that it’s not well enough explained ingame, or that’s just too obscure because no other games do that thing, or whatever the reason might be… if it’s rejected it will have to be removed or changed. I don’t know how harsh the feedback and the reviews are with the Recipe Book, because I’ve only seen small parts of that. But it might be, that the decision to get rid of the Recipe Book or the recipe limit is already made or in the making. Regardless of how it’s being misunderstood, or what benefits it might bring to the game. If players reject it, it has to go.

And now, I want to pose a question to you, dear reader: Hearing all this - does it still surprise you, that many modern games appear to be dumbed-down? With all their corners sanded off so much, that everything becomes just a sphere?

If something as clever as this Recipe Book has to potentially get removed, just because people would rather blame it than the dopamine-giving loot caches, and are not willing to put any mental effort into even just trying to understand why it’s there?

Games are not dumbed-down… they are being:

• brain liberated
• zero-thought optimized
• interest free (pun intended)
• low-cognition friendly
• cerebrally economical
• cognitively frictionless
• low-intellect compatible

Look, I’m not saying the Recipe Book and it’s limit should stay no matter what. I’m perfectly fine with axing them, if they cannot merit the inconvenience they truly cause.

I would just hate to see them axed without ever getting a chance to test their merit, just because they are being blamed for inconveniences that in reality are caused by the loot caches and not the recipes at all. That would be a shame - but it totally could happen, just because people prefer complaining over making an effort to think it through.

In Conclusion

The Recipe Book is a rather clever contribution to the very core design philosophy that is the secret sauce behind what made both UO and SWG special. It has the potential to contrinbute to preventing the dominance and quasi-monopoly position of established top-level crafters, and create economic niches for others. It helps to create exactly the right balance of connectiveness within that social web of player interactions.

But the Recipe Book implementation is unfairly getting the blame for some issues caused by the somewhat rushed EA launch and some of the issues and problems surrounding it. The real culprit gets off scots-free, because of the dopamine it provides. The Recipe Book takes the blame, because people don’t bother even trying to understand it’s purpose.

I do hope that after reading this - you do understand the Recipe Book a little better than you did before.

This is the first “Stars Reach Deep Dive” post I’ve written - and this format might become the successor to my previous “pre-alpha test” (PAT) series of posts. But for now, it’s a pilot - a first attempt at something new. If you are in the game’s discord, or see me ingame - let me know if you liked it, and would like to see more of this kind of post in the future!

See you in the Garden!