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The Crafting Thread
So I've been looking around for a new MMO where crafting and economy play a big role. I've done a search on these forums and couldn't find a topic on this subject; perhaps I'm doing it wrong. After an hour or so on Google, I figure I'd come here and ask.
I'm just looking to see what MMO you think had the best crafting/economy and why.
My thoughts:
EVE Online: Very intricate crafting system. Takes a lot of dedication to become on an equal playing field with others that have been playing for awhile. One mistake, you lose everything.
Lineage ][: Played it on and off for a few years. Enjoyed the collection of items to make something. Having to stay logged on to sell stuff was, I think, its weakest point. Another feature I didn't like was you made a dwarf just to craft. Leveling was kinda of a pain if you went to making things (warsmith) instead of collecting items (scavenger).
World of Warcraft: Sitting at the gold cap, I make more money off playing the AH than anything. Majority of items made can be replaced easily if you can find 9 or 24 other people with half a brain. Pretty much you sell raw mats on the AH to those that are simply leveling professions.
SWG: Having never played, I read a lot about this game. Unfortunately I was still playing Age of Empires II and Command and Conquer when this game was out; the MMO bug hadn't bit me yet.
Overall, I think EVE Online probably had my favorite crafting system. I was decent at playing the market. My account only lasted a month before I was scammed and podded losing all my ISK and my ship. Stupid mistake on my part, but still sucked nonetheless.
What are your opinions?
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Two atoms walk out of a bar. The first exclaims, "Damn, I forgot my electrons." The other replies, "You sure?". The first explains, "Yea, I'm positive."
Comments
Always thought the crafting in WOW and Eve sucked personally, they take no real skill to make anything rather than like the crafting in vanguard and Eq2.
Meh. I don't really care for World of Warcraft's crafting either. Just because everything I make anyone with the same profession can make. There's no difference in quality of the item from person to person. Its all the same. I can just play the market really well. EVE was really all about the market. Almost to the point you need a business degree to excel at it. hehe
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Two atoms walk out of a bar. The first exclaims, "Damn, I forgot my electrons." The other replies, "You sure?". The first explains, "Yea, I'm positive."
One of the best crafting mmos is Fallen Earth. Supposedly 95% of the games items are craftable. Im in the middle of crafting myself an ATV right now.
Funny you mention that. I plan on setting 10+ hours aside this weekend just to play the trial.
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Two atoms walk out of a bar. The first exclaims, "Damn, I forgot my electrons." The other replies, "You sure?". The first explains, "Yea, I'm positive."
A game worth buying, a dev worth supporting. The help channel with its volunteers is the greatest thing since beer.
I get what you are thinking. I think that you should check out Ryzom. I am definitely more into crafting and mercantile than I am hunting and casting. I think that this game has a great casting system with a lot of different combinations and options to use. But yeah, EVE has a cool crafting system too, but there is the risk of being scammed.
www.ryzom.com
Vanguard has an interesting crafting system I believe but i'm not sure how well it fits into the game economy, especially as the player population is fairly low.
Out of curiosity, why? Why keep making gold beyond what you can spend? Are you part dragon at heart? Or do merchants need to be nerfed?
I have no idea why. I'm lucky to have $20 left over after pay day. In pretty much any game I play, my goal to to make as much money as possible. If only the two scenarios could be swapped.... >.<
Definitely trying out Fallen Earth this weekend. Considering I build Jeeps and 4x4s as a side job, building vehicles in a game seems to be in my field. =P
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Two atoms walk out of a bar. The first exclaims, "Damn, I forgot my electrons." The other replies, "You sure?". The first explains, "Yea, I'm positive."
Just because everything is player made doesnt mean the crafting is good. The actual act of crafting in FE is awful.
They were talking about having a smartphone interface where you could craft in Fallen Earth from your gadget (iphone, blackberry, not sure?). That being said, being able to queue up the crafting and then go offline was pretty cool. I thought it was one of the better parts of the game.
SWG, hands down, the best crafting. Of course it's not quite the same since the glory days.
Every resources you collected had varying statistics for various characteristics. Some statistics were only for certain types of resources, i.e. flavor was only for food objects. Here's a list taken from a SWG wiki site:
(CR) Cold Resistance
(CD) Conductivity
(DR) Decay Resistance
(ER) Entangle Resistance
(FL) Flavor
(HR) Heat Resistance
(MA) Malleability
(OQ) Overall Quality
(PE) Potential Energy
(SR) Shock Resistance
(UT) Unit Toughness
Each one of those characteristics that was on a resource could range from a quality of 1 to 1000. Each type of resource was finite, and the spawns would shift every 5 days, to 3 weeks, depending on the type of resource and some randomness.
So for example, there might be a type of copper with stats A, B, C that spawns for two weeks, then when it shifts to a new type of conductive copper, it would have stat's of X, Y, Z, and the chances of getting that first type to spawn again was near impossible. So, it was really important to hunt down and stock up on resources with really high qualities for certain characteristics.
Which brings me to the actual crafting. When you craft, the final stats of the item depended on your skill, the quality of tools you used, and what resources you used. Here's an example:
Say you want to craft a new crafting tool. The recipe has three resource slot requirements, one asking for a generic chemical, one asking for specifically a copper metal, and then a third and final one asking for any generic type of metal. Depending on the item you're making, certain characteristics would be more important. So for a tool for example, overall quality and conductivity statistics were really important in increasing the effectiveness of the tool. Conductivity was a property of metal resources, so for the copper and generic metal slots, you'd want to find types of those resources with high conductivity. Luckily, copper is generally a more conductive metal, so if you have copper with decent conductivity, all the better, because you can use it in both the slot asking for specifically copper, and the slto asking for any other generic metal. For the final slot for chemical, any generic chemical compound that has a high overall quality would do.
once you get all of that sorted out, you get to experiment. Experimentation allowed you to select certain statistics of a crafted item, and boost them up. Just how much you could boost it was based on you skill level, and how good of materials you used. Furthermore, depending on your skill, there was also a chance to fail, succeed, or even critically succeed and have the value you experiment go even higher than usual.
More complicated recipies would even require crafted components, and even take their quality level based on their crafting into consideration. It was truly a very deep crafting system that required thought and planning to make the best items. But, it was extremely rewarding to do so if you enjoy crafting.
If you compare it to a game like Fallen Earth, well, Fallen Earth is nowhere near the same. It's extremely shallow and dumbed down. Resource quality doesn't matter at all. The most thought you need to put into crafting is having the right items in your inventory, queuing it up, and then logging out until it's done crafting. There's no deviation in crafted items, they're all the exact same. And worst of all, a character built to be a crafter, can literally craft anything in the game, there's no specialization at all.
EVE has the best of those mentioned, it just takes a while and you have to start small. WoW crafting is just for end-game bonuses and the problem with FE is that everyone crafts so nothing sells, the benefit of FE crafting is that you can salvage it and get back some of you mats to reuse in crafting other items.
I have never been a full time crafter in a game, but respect the playstyle of those who do.
Let me say this though. What you described even to a person such as myself sounds very entertaining. Why other games do not create systems like this is beyond me.
Thanks for posting that Ceridith
What you are looking for is Uncharted Waters Online where crafting is a profession you can practically craft anything is this game from meds to ship parts to furniture and economy is a huge thing in this game since it also focuses on trading and port conquering of other nations heck you can even own your personal island and raise animals there the game does not focuse on combat you can play this game and never have to kill a single enemy if you choose to
My thoughts exactly. Wish I were into MMOs when that game was around. I'd play that for sure.
________________________
Two atoms walk out of a bar. The first exclaims, "Damn, I forgot my electrons." The other replies, "You sure?". The first explains, "Yea, I'm positive."
Not to mention that in SWG items degraded require you to have to replace and/or repair regularly. It was an active maket and crafting system. Compared to the intricate nature of SEG's crafting to FE there is no comparison. I do like FE's crafting currently just because of the sheer volume of items that you can make. There are a number of different crafting trees, 8 I believe, and each tree has 100s of items that can be made. And although people mention that any toon can be a crafter, most crafting toons, do specialize in one or two trees. Therefore there is still a market for crafted items, especially in the less popular trees. Although as with any MMO the resource harvesters tend to do better financially than the crafters.
Gaming since Avalon Hill was making board games.
Played SWG, EVE, Fallen Earth, LOTRO, Rift, Vanguard, WoW, SWTOR, TSW, Tera
Tried Aoc, Aion, EQII, RoM, Vindictus, Darkfail, DDO, GW, PotBS
Out of sheer boredom I actually researched this game and found lots of hate for Netmarble. Apparently they axed another game and unexpectedly rolled out UWO or something like that? Anyways, all I could find in recommendations for this game was "Stay away from this dev."
I mainly play mmorpgs for the crafting. second comes game economy and support classes. been playing mmos for about 13 years now and i can say out of all of them, swg hands down had the best (pre cu of course). still even today, the crafting in that game destroys crafting in anything out right now.
shipwright and chef will still keep you busy in the games current state. if you are interested in experiencing the best crafting engine ever made in an mmorpg, id recommend trying out swg now and making a shipwright and/or chef.
yeah, its nowhere as good as pre cu, but its still the deepest and most rewarding crafting experience to date.
it will make you wish every game had that crafting system as the standard.
I will add another nod for SWG's crafting system, possibly the most fun I have had in an MMO, and I wish another game would do something at least close.
When I quit SWG, My merchant had three shops on two different planets, running mining operations on several planets. I spent an amazing amount of time running around looking for new places to drop harvesters. Left the game with something like 25-30 million credits, and almost never fought anything, unless I was trying to run away. It was a blast...until they decided that they didn't want people playing the game anymore.