Crafting systems

Blecod

Hello,

I have been thinking lately what are the most amazing and in depht crafting systems in mmos and just games in general.

The first mmo that comes to my mind is Guild Wars 2. 

sunandshadow

A Tale In The Desert's crafting system is the one I'd use as a starting point when designing a crafting system.  Star Wars... Galaxies, I think? is the other one people mention all the time.

Scorchien

Blecod said:

Hello,

I have been thinking lately what are the most amazing and in depht crafting systems in mmos and just games in general.

The first mmo that comes to my mind is Guild Wars 2. 

    Lol .. hmphhh ... one of the weakest , useless crafting systems out come to mind when i think of Gw2

micona

There Istaria it's a pretty old game but i really like the crafting there 

Brenics

The best one I think we ever had was SWG crafting. I so miss that game and the one reason I dislike smedly so much.

fivoroth

I am very interested in this thread as I sometimes want to play some crafting games.

Sadly Saying games which don't exist anymore like swg is not particularly useful...

Lokero

Scorchien said:

Blecod said:

Hello,

I have been thinking lately what are the most amazing and in depht crafting systems in mmos and just games in general.

The first mmo that comes to my mind is Guild Wars 2. 

    Lol .. hmphhh ... one of the weakest , useless crafting systems out come to mind when i think of Gw2

I have to agree with that.  GW2 crafting was fairly worthless and generic.  The thing they did do right, however, was the "dump your tradeskill mats in the bank" from anywhere... loved that.
They tried to make their system seem deep with that little discovery system thing they had, but that was just a poorly done illusion-of-depth.

Obviously, most everyone who comes here will mention SWG for crafting.  The other runner-ups will be EQ2(it's so-so) and Vanguard(never played it after beta, so can't comment).

I never got into Ryzom, but I've seen people mention it from time to time.

Puzzle Pirates had a neat crafting system if you like puzzles

You also have those indie games out there that are less traditional crafting, more extremeley-tedious-realism-crafting.  Iirc, some of those being A Tale in the Desert, Roma Victor(I can't remember if that's the name), etc., where you spend weeks building something.

Camelot Unchained(in development) has an interesting sounding voxel-hybrid type system from what I can gather, somewhat more like Landmark, I suppose.  A system where you actually place bricks and the like.

FF14 had the best crafting system in recent days, but the gathering was a repetitive chore.  The actual crafting was enjoyable, but I don't know if there's really much point to it, in the end(economically speaking), but at least it was fun for a time.

The simple truth is, there really aren't that many deep crafting systems.  Most games throw in crafting as an afterthought and use the traditional system where you click button to create a bunch of worthless stuff that no one will use.

anemo

Haven and Hearth was fun.   While the crafting had "no tricks" the breadth, and that it felt like climbing up a tech tree was pretty neat.

sunandshadow

Lokero said:

You also have those indie games out there that are less traditional crafting, more extremeley-tedious-realism-crafting.  Iirc, some of those being A Tale in the Desert, Roma Victor(I can't remember if that's the name), etc., where you spend weeks building something.

Realism isn't really the right word, since you can have fantasy or sci-fi systems like this.  And if they feel tedious, you're not the right audience segment or the designer did it wrong.  I think the identifying trait of crafting systems like those of Tale in the Desert, Wurm, Xsyon, (idk about Roma Victor) is that they are simulation-style, rather than RPG-style.  It goes hand-in-hand with the SIM gameplay that these type of crafting systems generally focus on a player crafting for themselves, rather than crating useless stuff to grind XP or crafting stuff to sell to other players.  Every player crafts their own house, their own storage objects like chests or baskets, their own basic tools, their own garden, and often a whole array of crafting appliances and outbuildings that make up the player's farm/ranch/estate/whatever.

Blecod

I feel like these days crafting systems lack depth. Its just a check mark on a basic mmorpg check list. Developers usually try to make other parts of the game more interesting and just adding a shitty crafting system because mmorpgs "need" to have it. Usually all the best items in the game can be obtained by killing a boss not by crafting and it ends up being a waist of time

Maurgrim

Vanguard had the best grafting system to date, no other MMOs came close not even SWG.

SidJames

Vanguard, the way you could create ingots of differing stats if you did not overcome the complications during manufacturing, and these had a result on the end product made it a lot more interesting for me compared to the one click make item rubbsh we constantly get thrown at us in most MMO's...

Phry

For me SWG was the best game for Crafting, i've yet to see any other game handle it as well, to have that level of complexity, and yet still be fun, some have mentioned vanguard, but, i don't think they can have experienced SWG, where not only were there various forms of materiels, several types of copper etc, but even of types of the same materiel had different qualities, and there were many more types of crafting materiels in SWG than in Vanguard, which, while the Vanguard crafting system was okay, it was very primitive compared that that of SWG, probably because in SWG you could be solely a crafter.

Loke666

Scorchien said:

    Lol .. hmphhh ... one of the weakest , useless crafting systems out come to mind when i think of Gw2

Well, in certain aspects it is really good but in others it is weak.

I like the exploration parts, how crafting several of the same items speed up and how it handles the materials.

But crafting is too easy which together with the mega server auctionhouse means you can't earn money on it. There is no customization options, if I make a lvl 60 leather armor it will always look the same even if I unlocked and can create all crafted skins I can't make something of a specific level or add any type of customized look. And I can't put my mark on the gear I made, neither does who made it gets mentioned in the description.

It is still better than many other system, you don't have to make a 100 tin swords to unlock the skill to make a tin longsword, you can craft gear that is useful and as good as dungeon drops.

Any minigames in crafting sucks, when I started crafting way back in EQ2 I thought it was fun, for the first 5 tin daggers. a 1000 tin weapons later and moving on to bronze I was bored beyond belief.

It is hard to make a good crafting system, it needs to be fun, you need to get useful items from it, you need to be able to earn money (and preferably a certain server reputation if you are a master crafter) and you should be able to do some customization, both in looks and stats to your crafted gear.

Also, it needs to make some sense, forcing you to craft loads of useless vendortrash turns off most people, it is far better to make it hard to get recepies and rare mats then to let the players spend the time to just grind crap. It surely must be possible to make it so that learning to craft something could be just as fun as any other part of the game, more like a scavenger hunt then a test of patience.

Lithuanian

For me, the best crafting system was Istaria one.
Recipes c an be vendored, but most high lvl drop from mobs. Mobs ten do be hard there.
Then, you cna customize what status you want in the equipment...or just leave empty places for crystals. Crystals are lootable only, no purchase from vendors (though some quests rewarded with these).
Yes, it had "craft 100 bronze swords to be able to make 1 iron sword", but it was not a proble for me.

nomotag

Dead rising 2 is still the best. I think it works because the whole game kind of revolves around the crafting.

Gdemami

Blecod said:

I feel like these days crafting systems lack depth. Its just a check mark on a basic mmorpg check list. Developers usually try to make other parts of the game more interesting and just adding a shitty crafting system because mmorpgs "need" to have it. Usually all the best items in the game can be obtained by killing a boss not by crafting and it ends up being a waist of time

And there is nothing wrong with that.

Crafting in most games isn't shitty, it is just serving different purpose - alternative non-combat gameplay.

For crafting to be complex and in-depth, you would need very different game design because popular gear progression makes it next to impossible to implement together.

Most importantly, people generally dislike complex, crafting-economy systems. They want that alternate rewarding gameplay/minigame.

GeezerGamer

Just going from my memory, I'd say you have 4 options for MMOs with strong focuses on crafting.
1. Ryzom. This is probably the closest game currently running to what SWG had
2. EVE Never played, but from what I understand, everything is player made.
3. Perpetuum. Like EVE, but the game suffers from a very low population.
4. FFXIV ARR. Very intricate crafting system. Probably the most intricate crafting system for the type of Theme Park the game it. But the end game recipies leave me with a few questions.......I'll leave it at that.

Axehilt

anemo said:

Haven and Hearth was fun.   While the crafting had "no tricks" the breadth, and that it felt like climbing up a tech tree was pretty neat.

Yeah H&H gets my vote too. I've heard it copied SWG (which I never played.)

Love how your crafting skill, tool quality, and material quality all combined to determine the quality of the finished product.  Hunting down high-quality nodes was fun.

sunandshadow

Loke666 said:

Any minigames in crafting sucks, when I started crafting way back in EQ2 I thought it was fun, for the first 5 tin daggers. a 1000 tin weapons later and moving on to bronze I was bored beyond belief.

The problem wasn't the minigame, it was the fact that you had any reason to make 1000 tin weapons.  Crafting systems are the most fun when you are crafting one or a few of each item for your own use.  Crafting is at its worst when you are crafting vendor trash. just for the xp.

Loke666

sunandshadow said:

Loke666 said:

Any minigames in crafting sucks, when I started crafting way back in EQ2 I thought it was fun, for the first 5 tin daggers. a 1000 tin weapons later and moving on to bronze I was bored beyond belief.

The problem wasn't the minigame, it was the fact that you had any reason to make 1000 tin weapons.  Crafting systems are the most fun when you are crafting one or a few of each item for your own use.  Crafting is at its worst when you are crafting vendor trash. just for the xp.

Well, that is of course true but minigames still becomes a grind really fast even when you just craft gear for yourself.

Let us instead learn reciepies in the game, a blacksmith might teach you a thing or 2 if you do some stuff for him. You might have a stealth mission to spy on an secretive swordsmith and a tailor might teach you a thing or 2 if you are popular with her political faction in the town.

Another somewhat strange thing is that you need to gather a lot of very common things. In AoC I killed 20 mamoths to get leather for a single belt when the hard thing IRL is to make the buckle, a leatherworker would usually just buy the leather or maybe own a few cows. 

Instead of forcing me to cut down 20 trees to make a bow, at least let me search for a perfect tree instead, maybe a yew and then get bone from a horned animal. The glue to bind it as well as the string are things that are easier to buy (even if you could use tendons from the animal you got the horn from).

Focus on rare materials instead of forcing us to gather common crap that should be more or less everywhere.

Also, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to make that composite bow to any level with stats scaling for it. Not that needing to make a new bow a few times a week makes much sense anyways of course, IRL you only need a new one if the old one break or if your physical strenght changes (bows are made custom to how strong you are, 80 pound bows are rather common for example while those Chinese bows you use your legs to shoot can go to 200 pounds. The hardest bow ever might be some steel bows found in a shipwreck outside Wales that was 300 pounds but many archeologists think they have become harder after a few hundred years under the sea).

anemo

Pokemon all in all is a pretty neat crafting system too.

Blecod

Gdemami said:

Blecod said:

I feel like these days crafting systems lack depth. Its just a check mark on a basic mmorpg check list. Developers usually try to make other parts of the game more interesting and just adding a shitty crafting system because mmorpgs "need" to have it. Usually all the best items in the game can be obtained by killing a boss not by crafting and it ends up being a waist of time

And there is nothing wrong with that.

Crafting in most games isn't shitty, it is just serving different purpose - alternative non-combat gameplay.

But in most mmos today there is just no point in crafting. You can almost always get better gear from bossing and raiding. While crafting is for potions or enhansments. Im not saying its a bad thing but I would like to craft the best end game gear. I like the idea of working towards a goal and currently when ever im crafting I just feel like im waisting my time. 

Loke666

Blecod said:

Gdemami said:

And there is nothing wrong with that.

Crafting in most games isn't shitty, it is just serving different purpose - alternative non-combat gameplay.

But in most mmos today there is just no point in crafting. You can almost always get better gear from bossing and raiding. While crafting is for potions or enhansments. Im not saying its a bad thing but I would like to craft the best end game gear. I like the idea of working towards a goal and currently when ever im crafting I just feel like im waisting my time. 

Yeah, and it is a grindy repetetive form of none combat alternative gameplay.

Crafting needs to be both fun and useful and it usually fails on both those accounts.

Gdemami

Blecod said:

But in most mmos today there is just no point in crafting. You can almost always get better gear from bossing and raiding. While crafting is for potions or enhansments. Im not saying its a bad thing but I would like to craft the best end game gear. I like the idea of working towards a goal and currently when ever im crafting I just feel like im waisting my time. 

Crafting isn' supposed to have depth and be meaningful. Meaningful crafting does not fit the game design based on level gear progression, and people love those so vertical progression won't go away.

Imo, most people who ask for "meaningful crafting", actually just want to be special snowflakes - crafting based on RNG directly via crafting process or through gathering of rare resources, having a name inprinted on the item. But that does not make crafting any more meaningful. Satisfying? Maybe...

If you want meaningful crafting -> EVE Online but that is very far from what those people ask for.

Loke666

Gdemami said:

Crafting isn' supposed to have depth and be meaningful. Meaningful crafting does not fit the game design based on level gear progression, and people love those so vertical progression won't go away.

Imo, most people who ask for "meaningful crafting", actually just want to be special snowflakes - crafting based on RNG directly via crafting process or through gathering of rare resources, having a name inprinted on the item. But that does not make crafting any more meaningful. Satisfying? Maybe...

If you want meaningful crafting -> EVE Online but that is very far from what those people ask for.

Well, crafting and raiding for gear in the endgame do work against eachother. Tiered raid gear becomes useless if crafting is better and vice versa. But not all games have raids or really need to have. 

But you certainly have a point, a good crafting MMO needs to have a different endgame as Eve have and pre-cu SWG used to have. Then again, I think MMOs endgames need to change anyways. I think that putting a more sandbox endgame in a themepark MMO might be the way to go. Far too few of the players in most MMOs play at the endgame and most of them that do just do the early stuff.