Crafting, and making it new again.

[machineman]

So, it feels like time for another general discussion about crafting in MMOs... I love the idea of crafting as a gameplay mechanic, and economics in virtual worlds, so this is something I think about a lot.

Crafting has always been a basic tenet of the MMORPG genre... but as the genre has evolved, so has the role of crafting in it. In general it seems to have been dumbed down and made less "grindy", also with less risk, for a homoginized reward. Who's to say what crafting even is anymore... it's really an area that hasn't been expanded upon, you could even argue it has contracted its role in MMOs.

So my question is, Why can't crafting finally be a primary gameplay mechanic? Its own "sphere", er "pillar", er... "thing"? Here's what I mean:

An MMO world has lots of room for different kinds of activities... after all, it's a world. It would make sense that there is more than 1 way to exist within this world. In Vanguard, the game had 3 spheres, which in theory was a great idea. Then, waaay on the other side of the scale, you've got Blizzard, and they've literally said as much as "we want you to fight monsters - thats our game."

But what if we turn crafting as we know it into something else? We spend all of this time battling NPC monsters in combat... so, why not create a game mechanic based around NPCs/PvE as the main mechanic around being a successful crafter?

One of the problems with crafting is always that you always end up prodcuing stuff that no one wants to buy, and it ends up vendored. This problem exists because there will never be enough players on a realm to absorb all of the demand for player crafted items (sure, you could argue this, but its tough to control at best.) So why not sell to NPCs? Have entire mechanics that revolve around cities and villages being filled with "residents", who come from all walks and need all kinds of products, resources and even services. Your skill as a crafter is determined by your customer base, store, weatlth, merchant network, etc. You can literally play the crafting game and do all the things we love to do now, but you would instead play a PvE game with the output. Yes, players could also use and buy the items... The point is, there would be a crafting game for you to play just like there's a combat game for you to play... and maybe a diplomacy/political game to play.

The question then is, where do you find the delta of all of the game "spheres" so that at some point all players are relevant to the game world and one another, but yet each player could be playing a very different game. I guess that's a different discussion altogether.

Anway, interested to hear opinions on this...

[Malakriss]

No MMO designer will ever offer a fully fledged and potentially untraceable printing press for gold farmer money. That is why crafting shall be limited forever.

[voodoo13]

Star Wars Galaxies pre-cu was the only mmorpg in my opinion to come up with a good and original crafting system. It was awesome and the crafting professions were actually fun to play. More Developers should be following their foot steps.

[Bobleclair]

Yep SWG crafting was great, i will also love to see crafting involve major world changes (building a bridge to cut travel time or whatever) because making basic items get old fast, i heard horizon had something similar but i never tried it.

[brendan]

I liked the EQ2 crafting system, it was sufficiently complex and time consuming that most people didn't do it, and so the market for crafted items was good.

Crafters were the wealthiest players on the server and it was because they put a lot of time into not only crafting, but studying what produce the adventuring community needed and would pay for.

[Bloodget]

To be honest, I don't like crafting, and I don't want to play a mmo where I need crafters.

But hey, if someone like tradeskill, go for it, just don't make it required for adventuring.
And no, they don't deserve to get all my gold because they combined bear asses and rat dicks for hours so they can make the sword of doom with the recipe i got on the last dwagon I killed. I want the sword directly without having to ask some random faggot to make it.

And i sure don't want joe the blacksmith to make better armor than some ancient relic I found.

Of course, that makes tradeskill useless outside of leveling. As it should on a mmorpg.

Seriously, some people really bought a mmo to craft?

[Talineth]

I don't dare mention the word "Sand**x" again, so I won't. But I just don't see how you can make crafting a truly viable style of play in an Item-based MMO like EQ or WoW.

It worked in UO because you lost your shit when you died so there was a constant need for Exceptional Plate gear or whatever and crafting was time-consuming enough that GM Crafters were relatively rare enough to keep the supply down.

In a game like WoW it doesn't really work because, like Bloodget suggested, it's silly to let a Blacksmith craft a sword that's just as good or better as someone got from slaying some dragon.

[Cuppycake]

Originally Posted by brendan

I liked the EQ2 crafting system, it was sufficiently complex and time consuming that most people didn't do it, and so the market for crafted items was good.

Crafters were the wealthiest players on the server and it was because they put a lot of time into not only crafting, but studying what produce the adventuring community needed and would pay for.

Seconding this. EQ2's crafting is the best of any MMO in the last 5 years IMO, especially after the big subcombine crafting changes that went in some time ago. It's one of the only games where I've felt like even low level crafting items sell for a shit and like they're worth doing even if I don't max it out.

[Palum]

EQ2 crafting + modular, variable parts (ie hilt + wrap + blade + pommel = sword).

Crafting rewards will either be too good or terrible until you can start 'handcrafting' components and there's some variation in outcome. People will always keep crafting if there's a chance for the 'perfect' item.

[machineman]

Originally Posted by Bloodget

To be honest, I don't like crafting, and I don't want to play a mmo where I need crafters.

But hey, if someone like tradeskill, go for it, just don't make it required for adventuring.
And no, they don't deserve to get all my gold because they combined bear asses and rat dicks for hours so they can make the sword of doom with the recipe i got on the last dwagon I killed. I want the sword directly without having to ask some random faggot to make it.

And i sure don't want joe the blacksmith to make better armor than some ancient relic I found.

Of course, that makes tradeskill useless outside of leveling. As it should on a mmorpg.

Seriously, some people really bought a mmo to craft?

Appreciate the discussion going on here, but the post I am quoting here precisely illustrates the problem I am trying to solve...

The idea is that, even in an item-based game, it wouldn't matter because you would be playing a PvE game in selling your goods. Try to imagine where you have a shop, or list something on the auction house, and instead of stats like agility or stamina that make a difference in combat, you would have other skills that would dictate your likelihood to sell an item, and how quickly, and how many. In other words, the better your crafting skills, the better chance you have and producing more money, more items, etc. NPCs would be the purchasers of your goods... in almost a "sim" like way.

Players could also buy your goods if they desire but as indicated above, lots of people who want only combat don't want to/have to rely on crafters... since that's not where the economics of scale lie anyway, it also doesn't matter to the crafter.

Again... the "crafter" would at its base, be a fundamentally different game that just happens to exist in the same world asn the "combat" game. And finding the delta somewhere about where they COULD interact would be the icing on top.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Step 1) Make crafting about creating item augments. Enchanting/JC in WoW = perfect example. Blacksmithing/Tailoring/leatherworking minus the item augments themselves = terrible. Proof? Guess which two Tskills are the most profitable.

Step 2) Remove the "Make 30 copper pots to make 30 iron pots" skill grind. Instead, you can make all recipes at level 1 provided you have the pattern and materials.

Done.

As for the crafting process:

Option 1) Any myriad of click-to-combine shenanigans. Ranging from WoW's click and go make a sandwhich to EQ2's "OH GOD MY PENIS GOT STUCK IN THE BEAKER QUICK HIT THE APPLY BUTTER BUTTON TO SLICK IT OUT" whack-a-mole pretend to pay attentionism. The choice is yours.

Option 2) More preferably, you hire an NPC to be your crafter. He starts out at a novice level and the longer you employ him, the more he ranks up to journeyman, etc...etc...

The difference is in how many production queue's he can manage, his standing wage and how long it takes him to make shit. For example a novice can only make one thing at a time and it may take several days to craft a more elaborate pattern.

By contrast a grandmaster could make the same item in a few hours while working on several other queue's, albeit a bit slower.

For those who enjoy the more interactive crafting experience, you can apprentice yourself to your crafter and enjoy some EQ2 style tomfoolery and in exchange he waves his fee for crafting your items for a set period of time or some bullshit.

[Evelys]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Step 1) Make crafting about creating item augments. Enchanting/JC in WoW = perfect example. Blacksmithing/Tailoring/leatherworking minus the item augments themselves = terrible. Proof? Guess which two Tskills are the most profitable.

Step 2) Remove the "Make 30 copper pots to make 30 iron pots" skill grind. Instead, you can make all recipes at level 1 provided you have the pattern and materials.

Done.

As for the crafting process:

Option 1) Any myriad of click-to-combine shenanigans. Ranging from WoW's click and go make a sandwhich to EQ2's "OH GOD MY PENIS GOT STUCK IN THE BEAKER QUICK HIT THE APPLY BUTTER BUTTON TO SLICK IT OUT" whack-a-mole pretend to pay attentionism. The choice is yours.

Option 2) More preferably, you hire an NPC to be your crafter. He starts out at a novice level and the longer you employ him, the more he ranks up to journeyman, etc...etc...

The difference is in how many production queue's he can manage, his standing wage and how long it takes him to make shit. For example a novice can only make one thing at a time and it may take several days to craft a more elaborate pattern.

By contrast a grandmaster could make the same item in a few hours while working on several other queue's, albeit a bit slower.

For those who enjoy the more interactive crafting experience, you can apprentice yourself to your crafter and enjoy some EQ2 style tomfoolery and in exchange he waves his fee for crafting your items for a set period of time or some bullshit.

I am intrigued by your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[Cuppycake]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

"OH GOD MY PENIS GOT STUCK IN THE BEAKER QUICK HIT THE APPLY BUTTER BUTTON TO SLICK IT OUT"

Hahaha. I loled.

[pooch]

If anyone remembers that fail of a MMO a couple years back called horizon or whatever. Crafting is the only thing that game did right.

[Fog]

Let me make some propositions:

A) Crafters don't want to make things that are inherently inferior. They want to be able to make really good things; if not the best, then almost the best, or the best reasonably obtainable. It's no fun to spend a lot of time making lousy things.

B) Players don't like to feel "dependent" on the whims of other players they aren't personally connected to (i.e. in a guild or a close relationship with.) They want to be able to get the good things without feeling like they are relying on strangers like this.

C) One way to reconcile A and B is by setting up a free market. If there's a vibrant market, you can get a good thing in one of two ways; do it yourself, or obtain it through the market. Getting it through the market doesn't suck as much as getting it from a stranger, since it's reliable and it feels self-directed.

C') Crafters like markets too, since they're inherently game-like and provide structured competition between crafters.

D) To have a free market with reliable goods, the population needs to be proportional to the "depth" of the crafting system; i.e. the more stuff you can make and sell, and the harder it is to make it, the more people you need to have a good market. Too few people, and players get frustrated again when the market fails them by providing ridiculous prices or when the things they want are unavailable.

D') By the way, money has to really mean something to make the market work properly, so you ought to work out some solution for gold farming.

I feel like this is why most modern MMOs end up with pretty dull crafting systems. They don't really have the per-server population to support entertaining or complex crafting systems that provide really meaningful results and still have a competitive market for those items. They also often manage inflation poorly, and it's rarely challenging to make a "lot of money" given some time and mindless farming (i.e. it doesn't take any skill to make money, so players would be angry if money could buy the best goods through a market.)