The thing I don't like about crafting and probably the only thing I don't like is that it's tied to making the players spend more real money on extra space, bags etc.
Why is it that almost any MMORPG has crafting of some sort in it but it never seems to be very useful? I'm currently playing Aion and what a stinker it is! Leveling crafting consists of running back and forth between 2 spots in 1 room for hours.
The only game i saw where crafting was even remotely interesting was Vanguard. Sort of.
Why is it so hard to let you craft useful items with a sort of interestng experience? I know there will be some sort of grind and i don't mind because well let's face it life's a grind but this is just plain riddiculous.
Any idea's?
Primarily because a good crafting system requires a lot of content right off the bat. The first thing such a system would need is depth, and that would necessitate a large variety of items serving a wide variety of purposes. Coding in the recipies for each, designing the models or artwork, and testing all of them is a daunting and time consuming task. Since crafting is mostly considered an optional activity, companies forgo investing that much into it in favor of a skeletal system that you see in most MMO's now - these are the ones that play out more like a mini-side game while leveling up than a truly deep, complex crafting system.
Think of it this way. When designing weapons in a game, developers can re-use most ordinary content simply by creating tiers. D&D (and DDO) has its longsword, then it's +1 longsword, then the +2, etc. It's rather ridiculous to think of a crafting system with +1 hammers (and its been tried to mixed effect), because crafting isn't about the progression as much as it is about the result.
A good crafting system has hammers, nails, wooden planks, vices, nuts, bolts, etc, which is a great deal more investment from development than simply slapping a +1 and maybe a new skin on the old hammer model. Not to mention designing how each of these 'pieces' interacts or serves a purpose elsewhere in the world, testing it, and balancing it for the system, is going to take a lot of people and a lot of their time. All of this has to be done without knowing if the content will even appeal to more than 40 or 50% of the playerase. For a creative director limited by funds or time, its much easier to decide to focus on making things blow up prettier or adding a bigger dragon, appealing to almost all of the playbase, than gambling away resources elsewhere.
Especially with a hulking producer jingling the purse over his shoulder.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
for all you crafters who just like to "craft" try out wurm online it has every thing the above poster mentioned about a good crafting game has to have in it such as planks nails bolts nuts hammers saws mallets etc etc etc list goes on i can bore you all day with it oh and forgot to mention you will have to craft your own tools to craft more craftables, wurm is most likely one of the better crafting mmo's out right now, runs fully on java (no it's not a web browser game) best of all it's f2p.
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Oh my got!!! i neber see a graphic of this before, i neber p2p any game before, but this game i must! ________________________________
In WoW (for instance), what would you tie crafting to, besides combat? What are you going to craft things for, if not combat? You can't just redesign crafting and leave the rest of the game alone. With one exception that I can think of (A Tale In The Desert) you don't design a game around crafting. You design a game, then design the crafting and other non-core features to fit the game.
Developers just want people to play their games and use the content that they program into the games. When they program complicated or complex crafting, most people don't do it. It doesn't really benefit the people who don't do it, so they've spent a bunch of time programming in crafting for a small part of the game's population. When the program simple crafting, many people participate (participation is beneficial), so they've spent less time programming and more people benefit from the crafting.
Come up with a crafting system that has the choices available to UO, but the accessibility of WoW, and you'll have crafting that developers would want to put in their games.
Sigh, how to explain joy of real crafting to someone that seams to have only experienced WoW crafting. I don't think it is possible.
Here is an example. You create a new hunter and instead of having to grind all your levels, grind all the instances for all the phat loot, grind all the raid bosses for the epic loot all you have to do is walk out of the starter area kill one easy mob and you are at max level with all the best gear. That is how empty WoW crafting is to someone who enjoys crafting.
Crafting is supposed to benefit the crafters not the entire population. This is the BIG thing you can't see. Crafting didn't use to be something you did to augment your gear until you get that next drop. It was what you logged on to do. Small part of the game's population you mean like all the time spent on raids that very few people get to see.
Originally posted by Venger Originally posted by lizardbones
In WoW (for instance), what would you tie crafting to, besides combat? What are you going to craft things for, if not combat? You can't just redesign crafting and leave the rest of the game alone. With one exception that I can think of (A Tale In The Desert) you don't design a game around crafting. You design a game, then design the crafting and other non-core features to fit the game.
Developers just want people to play their games and use the content that they program into the games. When they program complicated or complex crafting, most people don't do it. It doesn't really benefit the people who don't do it, so they've spent a bunch of time programming in crafting for a small part of the game's population. When the program simple crafting, many people participate (participation is beneficial), so they've spent less time programming and more people benefit from the crafting.
Come up with a crafting system that has the choices available to UO, but the accessibility of WoW, and you'll have crafting that developers would want to put in their games.
Sigh, how to explain joy of real crafting to someone that seams to have only experienced WoW crafting. I don't think it is possible. Here is an example. You create a new hunter and instead of having to grind all your levels, grind all the instances for all the phat loot, grind all the raid bosses for the epic loot all you have to do is walk out of the starter area kill one easy mob and you are at max level with all the best gear. That is how empty WoW crafting is to someone who enjoys crafting. Crafting is supposed to benefit the crafters not the entire population. This is the BIG thing you can't see. Crafting didn't use to be something you did to augment your gear until you get that next drop. It was what you logged on to do. Small part of the game's population you mean like all the time spent on raids that very few people get to see.
I get that you enjoy a more complex crafting - I do...really. I can even see the point of view where crafting should benefit the crafters only. Let everyone else do their own thing. I don't agree with it necessarily - the crafters should at the very least be selling their items to the players who are busy raiding or running amok in battlegrounds. But that's my take on it and it is not the only perspective. I'm totally fine with that.
The trick is convincing a developer or publisher to put the crafting you like in a game. If it isn't in their best interests in regards to the game they want to make and the audience they want to attract, they won't do put it in there. From a developer's perspective, something that only benefits a small part of the game, and not the game as a whole is expensive, probably too expensive to put in the game, unless it somehow sells the game to their target audience.
I think something much more complex than what we have now is coming...I don't think it's soon though. The smaller game companies are going to start putting out games that actually work when they are released and they're going to get more successful. Those smaller games are going to have crafting that is actually deep, but it's also going to be appealing to a larger audience. That's when you'll see something much better in the AAA games. Until then we get little, tiny steps in the right direction.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
...in terms of providing a spread of fun things to do to make items (and, to varying degrees, whether you can really dedicate yourself to crafting as a full-time sort of activity.)
Lokto has a point, if it was worded a bit rude. Crafting in WoW and in themeparks in general isn't made to be an end in itself. It's made to be an addition to all the other stuff you do. It's not so much that it wouldn't work...it might, but it would dilute the focus of the game.
I think they could do more with crafting in games like WoW, without diluting the focus of the game. Rift is a step in the right direction, where items are useful and you're not producing 50 cr@p items to make 1 decent item, and you can also break the items made down into some component materials. It could eventually degenerate into the WoW version though, where they have to add some bonuses to having the crafting profession to make them more relevant.
Well Alchemy certainly produces purely useful items (although perhaps the low tier outputs arguably aren't.)
Actually even my Tailor/Enchanter didn't do so bad. Almost none of the "trash" items were wasted, because they turned into DE mats, which turned into useful (and sellable) enchants.
Thinking over to the crafting I did in Darkfall, I sure produced a lot of crappy armor. But it was used. But it was basically only used in order to create consumable items, in order to create a massive timesink with tons of tiresome AFKing in front of ore. So some forms of "useful" crafting are really just huge blackholes of time-wasting the developer has created which drag you into pretty terrible non-gameplay.
Whereas at least with Vanguard/EQ2 style systems, the crafting itself is a game. Honestly I wonder how interesting this avenue of improvement could be pushed. If a badass crafter can actually make more/better items out of the same materials, that starts to be a pretty compelling sounding experience.
Of course the other avenue for improvement is ATITD/H&H, where activity breadth is what keeps things interesting. You end up having some activities like baking where you kick it off and then do different crafting while you wait for that particular task to automatically finish up.
I dunno...criticizing the fun of WOW crafting is entirely fair and I see all sorts of ways to have fun crafting, but criticizing the usefulness is what's weird/wrong.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Why is it that almost any MMORPG has crafting of some sort in it but it never seems to be very useful? I'm currently playing Aion and what a stinker it is! Leveling crafting consists of running back and forth between 2 spots in 1 room for hours.
The only game i saw where crafting was even remotely interesting was Vanguard. Sort of.
Why is it so hard to let you craft useful items with a sort of interestng experience? I know there will be some sort of grind and i don't mind because well let's face it life's a grind but this is just plain riddiculous.
Any idea's?
Just a small aside, I enjoyed Aions crafting in my downtime when there were no forts to siege for the next 2+ hours and I had nothing better to do. While I did spend an inordinate span of time in the crafting rooms, I was recipe hunting and would do Work orders where I would gain one skill point every 20 crafts or so. If I wasnt playing Recipe Pokemon, gotta get em all, I could have powered my crafting much faster, and without spending so much Kinah.
I really did enjoy Aions crafting, and when I returned almost a year later to have another run at it, I levelled my alts with Crafting and Lodas amulets (The EXP gains are so juicy, doing 0p work order where they give you all the mats from each craft would make that 1 hour exp bonus something lucrative.
I can see how sitting in that room crafting can be a real big PITA, and when global chat is full of trolling and Gchat is quiet, it can be quite taxing, so go out and hunt some mobs/mats/rifts or log off for a bit. You could always minimixe Aion and watch a DVD or youtube if its getting that boring and you really want to level your craft skill.
That being said, yes, most crafting in MMO's is banal shit boring with mediocre items because giving better items to one section of the population would have the havenots cry rivers of butthurt about it. Having the items capable of being sold is one way to alleviate the problem, but that just opens up the Auction House faceless lack of community interaction argument. You could have it so that in order for a crafted item to be sold (bound to the buyer) they would need to bring the items to the crafter, place them in a crafting window, and then both players click commence. The crafter does not actually take possession of the items, but uses them at his workstation (Anvil, loom, lathe) and the finished product is placed in the buyers inventory completed and bound to him. For the base items themselves, you could implement an Auction house where the materials are sold by players, but also have a street bazaar where you might be able to get a better deal. This way you could implement a system of truly wondrous items from crafters and still have everyone capable of being able to own said item. Now, to factor in a way to either develop through experiment or research improved items, perhaps the crafter would require a workshop to experiment/research. idk, its hot, im tired, and my brain crept out of my skull 5 hours ago. Ill stop now before the rambling gets worse.
Everyone always talks about crafting the best raid gear. Crafting in MMO's need not always be about weapons and armor. Crafters should be able to make things not available on merchants. Boats, house items, houses themselves, food, jewelry, status items, hunting gear, tools of gather with, and so on.
Originally posted by Axehilt Originally posted by lizardbones
...in terms of providing a spread of fun things to do to make items (and, to varying degrees, whether you can really dedicate yourself to crafting as a full-time sort of activity.)
Lokto has a point, if it was worded a bit rude. Crafting in WoW and in themeparks in general isn't made to be an end in itself. It's made to be an addition to all the other stuff you do. It's not so much that it wouldn't work...it might, but it would dilute the focus of the game.
I think they could do more with crafting in games like WoW, without diluting the focus of the game. Rift is a step in the right direction, where items are useful and you're not producing 50 cr@p items to make 1 decent item, and you can also break the items made down into some component materials. It could eventually degenerate into the WoW version though, where they have to add some bonuses to having the crafting profession to make them more relevant.
Well Alchemy certainly produces purely useful items (although perhaps the low tier outputs arguably aren't.) Actually even my Tailor/Enchanter didn't do so bad. Almost none of the "trash" items were wasted, because they turned into DE mats, which turned into useful (and sellable) enchants. Thinking over to the crafting I did in Darkfall, I sure produced a lot of crappy armor. But it was used. But it was basically only used in order to create consumable items, in order to create a massive timesink with tons of tiresome AFKing in front of ore. So some forms of "useful" crafting are really just huge blackholes of time-wasting the developer has created which drag you into pretty terrible non-gameplay. Whereas at least with Vanguard/EQ2 style systems, the crafting itself is a game. Honestly I wonder how interesting this avenue of improvement could be pushed. If a badass crafter can actually make more/better items out of the same materials, that starts to be a pretty compelling sounding experience. Of course the other avenue for improvement is ATITD/H&H, where activity breadth is what keeps things interesting. You end up having some activities like baking where you kick it off and then do different crafting while you wait for that particular task to automatically finish up. I dunno...criticizing the fun of WOW crafting is entirely fair and I see all sorts of ways to have fun crafting, but criticizing the usefulness is what's weird/wrong.
If my priest never touched tailoring or enchanting, my progression in WoW would not be changed at all. Nada. I would be in exactly the same spot if I picked up some combination of Mining, Herbalism or Skinning. I probably would have made more money just Mining, picking herbs or skinning. The professions ended up not really being relevant as anything other than a time sink. Which makes sense since the whole genre is really just a giant millions of players in diameter time sink. :-)
I would like crafting to involve more than WoW's crafting, it's too shallow, but it's very accessible. Some aspects of that accessibility should remain. I would like it to have some aspects of Vanguard's crafting, without the pointless clicking to clear errors and such. In fact, everything prior to the actual crafting mini-game in Vanguard seems great. UO's method of choosing your tools and materials prior to creating your item sounds excellent. Have tiers of crafting so that there is a level of crafting that everyone participates in (perhaps repairing their armor, or crafting quest quality items while leveling) and then a more advanced tier...an alternate advancement system at max level for people who really want to craft and aren't interested in the other end game options of killing bosses or other players. Let the players create products that they would use and other players would use, but also let them create services, whether they would sell those goods and services directly to other players or through an intermediary NPC. Then, finally, make it really, really easy for a developer to implement it in a game so that they would be inclined to implement it in a game. Hopefully in a game where they've actually finished developing everything else too.
Sorry for the wall of text. It's late, and I'm tired.
Crafting that actually appeals to "crafters" I don't think will appear in games like WoW. Just about everything comes from mobs. If you can craft an item by just gathering mats, you can loot a better item by killing a mob. If you can craft an item that's better than what you can loot, one or more of the mats depends on drops from mobs or bosses. The central focus of the game is that type of progression and it will always be that way. This is where Rift takes one step up...some of the stuff you craft is better than what you can loot, and what you can receive from quests. Some of the items you only get from crafting, at least initially. I'm sure at end game it'll come around to killing mobs or other players for all your stuff, but it's nice to see a little break in the pattern. Around the year 2020 or so we'll have a more full featured virtual world and crafting will be full featured and relevant. There will probably be sparkly vampires though...bleh!
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
For me the best crafting system I ever meet is in Fallen Earth. There is many purposes for it, and I think many game devs MUST have lessons how to inject crafting in they worlds.
First, in FE You can learn and skill-up each and every crafting area (weaponry, cooking, medicine etc.) if You have enough time and money - that could be very expensive, esp. closer to top skill lvls. No such artifical borders like in most - say in LOTRO I was top lvl weaponsmith and woodworker, but due not having armorsmith I can[object Window]t craft even simpliest shield or metal plate... dumb?
Next thing, and by all means the most important, is that nearly all player crafted items (armoring, weapons, food and medisine etc) are much higher quality than mob drops. Dome goods like mounts and vehicles can be made only by crafters, yea can buy from vendor very low lvl horses but that[object Window]s it. And one good thing to mention - items don[object Window]t bound to ya char. When ya grow off ya can sell them in AH or give to guildies/friends.
But due the game is skill based (ya are free how to spend ya points) and ya can be jack-of-all-trades or specialize to some like melee fighter, pistoleer, crafter etc. So when ppl build they chars for effective PvP or fighting class, they just havn[object Window]t enough points to be max skilled crafter, and tho there is quiet large market for their goods. My crafting toon have allready built and sold 50+ Interceeptors (most expensive vehicle in game) like Henry Ford.
You can (when You have accumulated enpugh cash) play on AH market, control prices, etc like in real world stock exchanges. So without crafting I think I would close long ago my account waiting til new expansion and areas come out. But craft gives fun still.
Real late to this party, but what the heck, I'll dive in anyways.
MMORPGs that are centered on Loot / Quest Reward Items & Equipment will never, ever, EVER have a worthwhile, useful, nor in depth Crafting System.
1) For a Crafting System to be useful, it must produce alot of worthwhile, desirable gear. Especially in alot of games' "Endgame" portions.
2) For alot of worthwhile Crafted gear to be desirable, it negates the need for Loot / Quest Reward Items & Equipment.
It's harder, IMO, for developers to develop a good, deep, worthwhile Crafting System. Why? Because it's simply easier to design for the game a "Sword of Total Vorpal Awesomeness +5," drop it at the end of some dungeon, or in some high end loot table. The monkeys will find it eventually, or keep slaving away at stupid odds / bosses to get to it.
Doing that is so easy compared to developing a Crafting System that: Provides worthwhile equipment, placement of resources across the game world (especially old SWG's rotation, randomization, and sometimes limited availability of resources), a system that has enough variables and true ways to affect product results (and foster crafter competitiveness), a system enticing enough for players to want to try and actually devote time to.
Someone posted earlier in the thread that a good crafting system would imbalance the game. Because a crafter would have an edge over "normal" players.
Well, MMORPGs used to have an answer for that. The last I saw was Pre-CU/NGE SWG.
The Crafting System was deep, useful. Players actually played the game solely because of that and the Business aspect of SWG. I know it's hard to believe these days of MMORPGs, but yes, that was once so in the genre. Anyways, the main thing was that if you wanted to REALLY get into the deepest and best recesses of Crafting, your character build was totally dedicated to it. Especially if you wanted to branch into other Crafting fields. And even if you DID build towards a total crafting build, you were never truly self-sufficient as a Crafter. Because you still relied on others for crafted components and whatnot.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Actually Aion is one where crafting is definitely worthwhile. Try getting the 500 or so +27 Magic Boosts without having alchemy and combining the +20s into +27s. You might have enough kineh to buy them, but the supply just is too shallow. Try hunting with and without food and potions. It is a lot less fun without them and you are a lot weaker. Somebody has to make them.
And actually some of the best orbs in the game are crafted. While this might not be the case with some of the armors and weapons, really high end crafted items do exist. But they do take a ton of time and kinah to get there. They also take a ton of value in components per attempt.
Comments
The thing I don't like about crafting and probably the only thing I don't like is that it's tied to making the players spend more real money on extra space, bags etc.
Godspeed my fellow gamer
Primarily because a good crafting system requires a lot of content right off the bat. The first thing such a system would need is depth, and that would necessitate a large variety of items serving a wide variety of purposes. Coding in the recipies for each, designing the models or artwork, and testing all of them is a daunting and time consuming task. Since crafting is mostly considered an optional activity, companies forgo investing that much into it in favor of a skeletal system that you see in most MMO's now - these are the ones that play out more like a mini-side game while leveling up than a truly deep, complex crafting system.
Think of it this way. When designing weapons in a game, developers can re-use most ordinary content simply by creating tiers. D&D (and DDO) has its longsword, then it's +1 longsword, then the +2, etc. It's rather ridiculous to think of a crafting system with +1 hammers (and its been tried to mixed effect), because crafting isn't about the progression as much as it is about the result.
A good crafting system has hammers, nails, wooden planks, vices, nuts, bolts, etc, which is a great deal more investment from development than simply slapping a +1 and maybe a new skin on the old hammer model. Not to mention designing how each of these 'pieces' interacts or serves a purpose elsewhere in the world, testing it, and balancing it for the system, is going to take a lot of people and a lot of their time. All of this has to be done without knowing if the content will even appeal to more than 40 or 50% of the playerase. For a creative director limited by funds or time, its much easier to decide to focus on making things blow up prettier or adding a bigger dragon, appealing to almost all of the playbase, than gambling away resources elsewhere.
Especially with a hulking producer jingling the purse over his shoulder.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
for all you crafters who just like to "craft" try out wurm online it has every thing the above poster mentioned about a good crafting game has to have in it such as planks nails bolts nuts hammers saws mallets etc etc etc list goes on i can bore you all day with it oh and forgot to mention you will have to craft your own tools to craft more craftables, wurm is most likely one of the better crafting mmo's out right now, runs fully on java (no it's not a web browser game) best of all it's f2p.
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Oh my got!!!
i neber see a graphic of this before,
i neber p2p any game before, but this game i must!
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Sigh, how to explain joy of real crafting to someone that seams to have only experienced WoW crafting. I don't think it is possible.
Here is an example. You create a new hunter and instead of having to grind all your levels, grind all the instances for all the phat loot, grind all the raid bosses for the epic loot all you have to do is walk out of the starter area kill one easy mob and you are at max level with all the best gear. That is how empty WoW crafting is to someone who enjoys crafting.
Crafting is supposed to benefit the crafters not the entire population. This is the BIG thing you can't see. Crafting didn't use to be something you did to augment your gear until you get that next drop. It was what you logged on to do. Small part of the game's population you mean like all the time spent on raids that very few people get to see.
Here is an example. You create a new hunter and instead of having to grind all your levels, grind all the instances for all the phat loot, grind all the raid bosses for the epic loot all you have to do is walk out of the starter area kill one easy mob and you are at max level with all the best gear. That is how empty WoW crafting is to someone who enjoys crafting.
Crafting is supposed to benefit the crafters not the entire population. This is the BIG thing you can't see. Crafting didn't use to be something you did to augment your gear until you get that next drop. It was what you logged on to do. Small part of the game's population you mean like all the time spent on raids that very few people get to see.
I get that you enjoy a more complex crafting - I do...really. I can even see the point of view where crafting should benefit the crafters only. Let everyone else do their own thing. I don't agree with it necessarily - the crafters should at the very least be selling their items to the players who are busy raiding or running amok in battlegrounds. But that's my take on it and it is not the only perspective. I'm totally fine with that.
The trick is convincing a developer or publisher to put the crafting you like in a game. If it isn't in their best interests in regards to the game they want to make and the audience they want to attract, they won't do put it in there. From a developer's perspective, something that only benefits a small part of the game, and not the game as a whole is expensive, probably too expensive to put in the game, unless it somehow sells the game to their target audience.
I think something much more complex than what we have now is coming...I don't think it's soon though. The smaller game companies are going to start putting out games that actually work when they are released and they're going to get more successful. Those smaller games are going to have crafting that is actually deep, but it's also going to be appealing to a larger audience. That's when you'll see something much better in the AAA games. Until then we get little, tiny steps in the right direction.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Well Alchemy certainly produces purely useful items (although perhaps the low tier outputs arguably aren't.)
Actually even my Tailor/Enchanter didn't do so bad. Almost none of the "trash" items were wasted, because they turned into DE mats, which turned into useful (and sellable) enchants.
Thinking over to the crafting I did in Darkfall, I sure produced a lot of crappy armor. But it was used. But it was basically only used in order to create consumable items, in order to create a massive timesink with tons of tiresome AFKing in front of ore. So some forms of "useful" crafting are really just huge blackholes of time-wasting the developer has created which drag you into pretty terrible non-gameplay.
Whereas at least with Vanguard/EQ2 style systems, the crafting itself is a game. Honestly I wonder how interesting this avenue of improvement could be pushed. If a badass crafter can actually make more/better items out of the same materials, that starts to be a pretty compelling sounding experience.
Of course the other avenue for improvement is ATITD/H&H, where activity breadth is what keeps things interesting. You end up having some activities like baking where you kick it off and then do different crafting while you wait for that particular task to automatically finish up.
I dunno...criticizing the fun of WOW crafting is entirely fair and I see all sorts of ways to have fun crafting, but criticizing the usefulness is what's weird/wrong.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Just a small aside, I enjoyed Aions crafting in my downtime when there were no forts to siege for the next 2+ hours and I had nothing better to do. While I did spend an inordinate span of time in the crafting rooms, I was recipe hunting and would do Work orders where I would gain one skill point every 20 crafts or so. If I wasnt playing Recipe Pokemon, gotta get em all, I could have powered my crafting much faster, and without spending so much Kinah.
I really did enjoy Aions crafting, and when I returned almost a year later to have another run at it, I levelled my alts with Crafting and Lodas amulets (The EXP gains are so juicy, doing 0p work order where they give you all the mats from each craft would make that 1 hour exp bonus something lucrative.
I can see how sitting in that room crafting can be a real big PITA, and when global chat is full of trolling and Gchat is quiet, it can be quite taxing, so go out and hunt some mobs/mats/rifts or log off for a bit. You could always minimixe Aion and watch a DVD or youtube if its getting that boring and you really want to level your craft skill.
That being said, yes, most crafting in MMO's is banal shit boring with mediocre items because giving better items to one section of the population would have the havenots cry rivers of butthurt about it. Having the items capable of being sold is one way to alleviate the problem, but that just opens up the Auction House faceless lack of community interaction argument. You could have it so that in order for a crafted item to be sold (bound to the buyer) they would need to bring the items to the crafter, place them in a crafting window, and then both players click commence. The crafter does not actually take possession of the items, but uses them at his workstation (Anvil, loom, lathe) and the finished product is placed in the buyers inventory completed and bound to him. For the base items themselves, you could implement an Auction house where the materials are sold by players, but also have a street bazaar where you might be able to get a better deal. This way you could implement a system of truly wondrous items from crafters and still have everyone capable of being able to own said item. Now, to factor in a way to either develop through experiment or research improved items, perhaps the crafter would require a workshop to experiment/research. idk, its hot, im tired, and my brain crept out of my skull 5 hours ago. Ill stop now before the rambling gets worse.
Everyone always talks about crafting the best raid gear. Crafting in MMO's need not always be about weapons and armor. Crafters should be able to make things not available on merchants. Boats, house items, houses themselves, food, jewelry, status items, hunting gear, tools of gather with, and so on.
I think they could do more with crafting in games like WoW, without diluting the focus of the game. Rift is a step in the right direction, where items are useful and you're not producing 50 cr@p items to make 1 decent item, and you can also break the items made down into some component materials. It could eventually degenerate into the WoW version though, where they have to add some bonuses to having the crafting profession to make them more relevant.
Well Alchemy certainly produces purely useful items (although perhaps the low tier outputs arguably aren't.)
Actually even my Tailor/Enchanter didn't do so bad. Almost none of the "trash" items were wasted, because they turned into DE mats, which turned into useful (and sellable) enchants.
Thinking over to the crafting I did in Darkfall, I sure produced a lot of crappy armor. But it was used. But it was basically only used in order to create consumable items, in order to create a massive timesink with tons of tiresome AFKing in front of ore. So some forms of "useful" crafting are really just huge blackholes of time-wasting the developer has created which drag you into pretty terrible non-gameplay.
Whereas at least with Vanguard/EQ2 style systems, the crafting itself is a game. Honestly I wonder how interesting this avenue of improvement could be pushed. If a badass crafter can actually make more/better items out of the same materials, that starts to be a pretty compelling sounding experience.
Of course the other avenue for improvement is ATITD/H&H, where activity breadth is what keeps things interesting. You end up having some activities like baking where you kick it off and then do different crafting while you wait for that particular task to automatically finish up.
I dunno...criticizing the fun of WOW crafting is entirely fair and I see all sorts of ways to have fun crafting, but criticizing the usefulness is what's weird/wrong.
If my priest never touched tailoring or enchanting, my progression in WoW would not be changed at all. Nada. I would be in exactly the same spot if I picked up some combination of Mining, Herbalism or Skinning. I probably would have made more money just Mining, picking herbs or skinning. The professions ended up not really being relevant as anything other than a time sink. Which makes sense since the whole genre is really just a giant millions of players in diameter time sink. :-)
I would like crafting to involve more than WoW's crafting, it's too shallow, but it's very accessible. Some aspects of that accessibility should remain. I would like it to have some aspects of Vanguard's crafting, without the pointless clicking to clear errors and such. In fact, everything prior to the actual crafting mini-game in Vanguard seems great. UO's method of choosing your tools and materials prior to creating your item sounds excellent. Have tiers of crafting so that there is a level of crafting that everyone participates in (perhaps repairing their armor, or crafting quest quality items while leveling) and then a more advanced tier...an alternate advancement system at max level for people who really want to craft and aren't interested in the other end game options of killing bosses or other players. Let the players create products that they would use and other players would use, but also let them create services, whether they would sell those goods and services directly to other players or through an intermediary NPC. Then, finally, make it really, really easy for a developer to implement it in a game so that they would be inclined to implement it in a game. Hopefully in a game where they've actually finished developing everything else too.
Sorry for the wall of text. It's late, and I'm tired.
Crafting that actually appeals to "crafters" I don't think will appear in games like WoW. Just about everything comes from mobs. If you can craft an item by just gathering mats, you can loot a better item by killing a mob. If you can craft an item that's better than what you can loot, one or more of the mats depends on drops from mobs or bosses. The central focus of the game is that type of progression and it will always be that way. This is where Rift takes one step up...some of the stuff you craft is better than what you can loot, and what you can receive from quests. Some of the items you only get from crafting, at least initially. I'm sure at end game it'll come around to killing mobs or other players for all your stuff, but it's nice to see a little break in the pattern. Around the year 2020 or so we'll have a more full featured virtual world and crafting will be full featured and relevant. There will probably be sparkly vampires though...bleh!
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
For me the best crafting system I ever meet is in Fallen Earth. There is many purposes for it, and I think many game devs MUST have lessons how to inject crafting in they worlds.
First, in FE You can learn and skill-up each and every crafting area (weaponry, cooking, medicine etc.) if You have enough time and money - that could be very expensive, esp. closer to top skill lvls. No such artifical borders like in most - say in LOTRO I was top lvl weaponsmith and woodworker, but due not having armorsmith I can[object Window]t craft even simpliest shield or metal plate... dumb?
Next thing, and by all means the most important, is that nearly all player crafted items (armoring, weapons, food and medisine etc) are much higher quality than mob drops. Dome goods like mounts and vehicles can be made only by crafters, yea can buy from vendor very low lvl horses but that[object Window]s it. And one good thing to mention - items don[object Window]t bound to ya char. When ya grow off ya can sell them in AH or give to guildies/friends.
But due the game is skill based (ya are free how to spend ya points) and ya can be jack-of-all-trades or specialize to some like melee fighter, pistoleer, crafter etc. So when ppl build they chars for effective PvP or fighting class, they just havn[object Window]t enough points to be max skilled crafter, and tho there is quiet large market for their goods. My crafting toon have allready built and sold 50+ Interceeptors (most expensive vehicle in game) like Henry Ford.
You can (when You have accumulated enpugh cash) play on AH market, control prices, etc like in real world stock exchanges. So without crafting I think I would close long ago my account waiting til new expansion and areas come out. But craft gives fun still.
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Real late to this party, but what the heck, I'll dive in anyways.
MMORPGs that are centered on Loot / Quest Reward Items & Equipment will never, ever, EVER have a worthwhile, useful, nor in depth Crafting System.
1) For a Crafting System to be useful, it must produce alot of worthwhile, desirable gear. Especially in alot of games' "Endgame" portions.
2) For alot of worthwhile Crafted gear to be desirable, it negates the need for Loot / Quest Reward Items & Equipment.
It's harder, IMO, for developers to develop a good, deep, worthwhile Crafting System. Why? Because it's simply easier to design for the game a "Sword of Total Vorpal Awesomeness +5," drop it at the end of some dungeon, or in some high end loot table. The monkeys will find it eventually, or keep slaving away at stupid odds / bosses to get to it.
Doing that is so easy compared to developing a Crafting System that: Provides worthwhile equipment, placement of resources across the game world (especially old SWG's rotation, randomization, and sometimes limited availability of resources), a system that has enough variables and true ways to affect product results (and foster crafter competitiveness), a system enticing enough for players to want to try and actually devote time to.
Someone posted earlier in the thread that a good crafting system would imbalance the game. Because a crafter would have an edge over "normal" players.
Well, MMORPGs used to have an answer for that. The last I saw was Pre-CU/NGE SWG.
The Crafting System was deep, useful. Players actually played the game solely because of that and the Business aspect of SWG. I know it's hard to believe these days of MMORPGs, but yes, that was once so in the genre. Anyways, the main thing was that if you wanted to REALLY get into the deepest and best recesses of Crafting, your character build was totally dedicated to it. Especially if you wanted to branch into other Crafting fields. And even if you DID build towards a total crafting build, you were never truly self-sufficient as a Crafter. Because you still relied on others for crafted components and whatnot.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Actually Aion is one where crafting is definitely worthwhile. Try getting the 500 or so +27 Magic Boosts without having alchemy and combining the +20s into +27s. You might have enough kineh to buy them, but the supply just is too shallow. Try hunting with and without food and potions. It is a lot less fun without them and you are a lot weaker. Somebody has to make them.
And actually some of the best orbs in the game are crafted. While this might not be the case with some of the armors and weapons, really high end crafted items do exist. But they do take a ton of time and kinah to get there. They also take a ton of value in components per attempt.