Crafting is at its worst when you are crafting vendor trash. just for the xp.
Agreed. Useless items from crafting is just a time sink.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
If the game sucks it doesn't deserve the players even if they spent 60 bucks on it. But F2P games do tend to have players that atay 2 weeks, quit and get back 3 months later for another 2 weeks and so on.
With regular MMOs the usual breaking point is when people hit the endgame (besides the ones that play 5 level and give up), with F2P game it seems at least as common as people quit when they hit the paywall, and many F2P games have one.
But I think the largest thing is that most players do at least some research before spending $60, with a F2P game they just see a screenshot that looks cool and downloading it so they try games they never would have tried if it was P2P, and that certainly affect retention even if some actually find out that they like it even though they wouldn't have bought it if they research it.
Yeah, nobody is saying these factors are absolute. Nobody's saying paying $60 makes a player play forever, just that it makes them play for longer.
We can safely say endgame isn't the usual breaking point. We know 70% of players quit before level 10 in pre-Cata WOW. We also know that retention graphs look like this one. The graph shows how the number of players lost on any given day decreasing by day. 50% is about average for D1 retention (50% loss) while 30% is about average for D2 (only a 20% loss). This trend continues day by day, so we could safely predict that the next biggest drop-off in WOW would happen from levels 11-20, and not at endgame. By the time you get out to endgame, the daily drop-off would be very small.
While I have seen some fluctuations in retention graphs (occasionally the drop-off from a subsequent day is higher), it's always due to some pretty significant outside influence (most often a technical outage.) Generally all game retention graphs look like a slightly noisier version of the one in that article.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Good crafting depends on who you ask. If you typically aren't a crafter, games like wow and gw2 will have good crafting systems for you. They are simple, solo activities which give your character direct upgrades for combat.
All someone who's main focus in mmos is crafting and they will most likely tell you swg,vanguard,ffxiv,hnh, ryzom, atitd are the best. They typically involve many steps, have customization options, and stimulate a player driven economy. You may not be directly buffing your combat class, but that's not really the goal of a dedicated crafter.
I would say the goal of a dedicated crafter is to make a name for themselves. They thrive on commerce and a loyal client base. Non dedicated crafters tend to prioritize making items for personal use or making the easiest items that yield the highest profit margin so they can buy more items that add to their combat power.
Two very different focuses and playstyles. Most mmos cater to the people who dislike crafting so when someone says wows crafting system is good, I'm not surprised.
Yeah, nobody is saying these factors are absolute. Nobody's saying paying $60 makes a player play forever, just that it makes them play for longer.
We can safely say endgame isn't the usual breaking point. We know 70% of players quit before level 10 in pre-Cata WOW. We also know that retention graphs look like this one. The graph shows how the number of players lost on any given day decreasing by day. 50% is about average for D1 retention (50% loss) while 30% is about average for D2 (only a 20% loss). This trend continues day by day, so we could safely predict that the next biggest drop-off in WOW would happen from levels 11-20, and not at endgame. By the time you get out to endgame, the daily drop-off would be very small.
While I have seen some fluctuations in retention graphs (occasionally the drop-off from a subsequent day is higher), it's always due to some pretty significant outside influence (most often a technical outage.) Generally all game retention graphs look like a slightly noisier version of the one in that article.
70% of the trial players got past lvl 10 back then yes. But I have a feeling that statistics for people who bought the game without a free trial would be slightly different.
The graph talks about freemium games, which usually means F2P games with an optional sub and not a specific game.
Maybe we should make some kind of survey to ask how long people got before quitting in the last MMO they played. For some reason do most of my friends either quit after 2 hours or when they hit the endgame but then again are my friends gamers to the core, not very casual players.
In any case is this far off the topic in this thread.
Good crafting depends on who you ask. If you typically aren't a crafter, games like wow and gw2 will have good crafting systems for you. They are simple, solo activities which give your character direct upgrades for combat.
All someone who's main focus in mmos is crafting and they will most likely tell you swg,vanguard,ffxiv,hnh, ryzom, atitd are the best. They typically involve many steps, have customization options, and stimulate a player driven economy. You may not be directly buffing your combat class, but that's not really the goal of a dedicated crafter.
I would say the goal of a dedicated crafter is to make a name for themselves. They thrive on commerce and a loyal client base. Non dedicated crafters tend to prioritize making items for personal use or making the easiest items that yield the highest profit margin so they can buy more items that add to their combat power.
Two very different focuses and playstyles. Most mmos cater to the people who dislike crafting so when someone says wows crafting system is good, I'm not surprised.
And they aren't wrong. It's good for them.
Indeed but most really casual players never bother to craft anyways. A good crafting system have the potential to draw in all the crafting fans, they don't exactly have anywhere else to go right now and while they aren't a huge group you still would get a rather large group of players without really destroying things for most other players. Casual crafters is also a small group after all and they spread out over all other MMOs but with a good crafting system you can get all the more "hardcore (doesn't sound right here) crafting fans.
Buying customized stuff at the AH is an advantage for the regular none crafters anyways.
So I still think you will win by making a better crafting system, it should give you an increase in players. And if nothing else your game will stand out here which is a good thing when most MMOs are so similar.
I would say the goal of a dedicated crafter is to make a name for themselves. They thrive on commerce and a loyal client base. Non dedicated crafters tend to prioritize making items for personal use or making the easiest items that yield the highest profit margin so they can buy more items that add to their combat power.
Huh. That's almost the opposite of what I would have said. I think the goal of a dedicated crafter is to make one of a kind items, perfectly customized to their own aesthetic tastes and functional needs. Fame and money are really external to crafting, and a distraction from the actual crafting gameplay.
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
1) non-crafters 2) personal use crafters 3) market crafters
I think both kinds of crafter like deep systems with the equivalent of a tech tree you climb up with the personal use crafters wanting to be able to make gear that is at least as good as the gear they can get off mobs and the market crafters want to make gear that is sellable. I think in both cases it's psychological payoff - I like crafting in games as a thing in itself but if there isn't some in-game benefit on top it eventually feels empty.
Some general thoughts
1) Gear for personal use crafters doesn't have to be sellable or the best just useful for the level - you don't want to hunt for materials from mobs that also drop better gear than you can make with the mats.
2) It should be easy to make crafting and dropped gear compatible simply by allocating certain gear slots to crafters e.g. decide tailors make the best cloaks, leaving dropped gear as the best for the non-allocated slots.
3) Searching for high quality materials like in SWG and Ryzom makes for a good crafter minigame.
4) Crafting is more viable with decay - an easier way of doing it might be sacrifice i.e. the game has a bunch of gods who give points for gear sacrificed to them and you can pray and use the points for speed buffs, hp buffs, cure disease etc at any time. Set the game difficulty so that it's a lot easier with the deity buffs and you have a gear sink.
5) I don't think people who like crafting as a thing mind a bit of grinding to raise crafting as long as there's a payoff and that payoff can be either personal use or selling and not only when the skill is maxed but from the beginning.
I would say the goal of a dedicated crafter is to make a name for themselves. They thrive on commerce and a loyal client base. Non dedicated crafters tend to prioritize making items for personal use or making the easiest items that yield the highest profit margin so they can buy more items that add to their combat power.
Huh. That's almost the opposite of what I would have said. I think the goal of a dedicated crafter is to make one of a kind items, perfectly customized to their own aesthetic tastes and functional needs. Fame and money are really external to crafting, and a distraction from the actual crafting gameplay.
I think everyone will and should set there own goals. People will do it to become rich, to become famous, to make the best item, to please many people or just to entertain themselves and provide there guild with good quality items.
There are many reason why someone might become a traders/crafter.
I would say the goal of a dedicated crafter is to make a name for themselves. They thrive on commerce and a loyal client base. Non dedicated crafters tend to prioritize making items for personal use or making the easiest items that yield the highest profit margin so they can buy more items that add to their combat power.
Huh. That's almost the opposite of what I would have said. I think the goal of a dedicated crafter is to make one of a kind items, perfectly customized to their own aesthetic tastes and functional needs. Fame and money are really external to crafting, and a distraction from the actual crafting gameplay.
Like tupodawg said, you most likely fit into the personal crafter archetype. I guess I used the term dedicated incorrectly because of course you can be dedicated to bring a personal crafter. I'm more of a crafter that wants to help drive a virtual world.
70% of the trial players got past lvl 10 back then yes. But I have a feeling that statistics for people who bought the game without a free trial would be slightly different.
The graph talks about freemium games, which usually means F2P games with an optional sub and not a specific game.
Maybe we should make some kind of survey to ask how long people got before quitting in the last MMO they played. For some reason do most of my friends either quit after 2 hours or when they hit the endgame but then again are my friends gamers to the core, not very casual players.
In any case is this far off the topic in this thread.
Yes, the graph is based on F2P games, but the shape of the graph is true of all games. By endgame very little drop-off is happening. It's just the natural result of how if 10 people start playing a game, 5 will drop out on the first day, 2 on the second, maybe 1 on the third, and then the rest fall off very slowly afterward, with 1 player playing for a very long time.
I don't suggest ignoring elder players, but their value is much lower than you perceive it relative to the (much more numerous) other players who stopped playing earlier. A survey in a forum full of elder players wouldn't tell you the truth about retention in MMORPGs. It's like running a Salary Survey at an expensive country club and deciding poor people aren't a problem when everyone asked makes over $100k.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
IMO crafting is a complete waste of time in any game where you craft items, but a similar item or better can be obtained from a drop. That simply negates the whole purpose of crafting. And no, being able to craft the +4 sword doesn't count either.
Why was SWG considered a great crafting game? Because gear was not dropping from every kill.
Same with Ryzom. Same with Fallen Earth.
I saw no point to crafting in Swotor, no point to crafting in LoTRo, etc. Just kill stuff and wait for better loot to drop. Its ridiculous to even put crafting in games like this. Hell I can play Diablo for that. Kill. pickup gear. Repeat. Sell all crap gear. Repeat.
People want more social interaction in their MMO's? Well the way to do that is make crafting / econmomy / combat all of equal importance. Crafters need combat players and combat needs crafting players. Economy ties it all together. Thats what makes an MMO social. Not forced grouping.
As to how to make the process interesting? Just make it varied. It doesn't have to be overly complex but there should be hurdles that need overcoming. And by that I mean, requiring other players help. But the one simple rule is that if you are going to have crafting, then EVERYTHING needs to be crafted. Weapons, armor, potions, cosmetic stuff mounts. All of it. With item decay of course.
Anything else is pointless.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Why was SWG considered a great crafting game? Because gear was not dropping from every kill.
Same with Ryzom.
Although I'm totally in favor of games where gear isn't droppable at all, I just wanted to point out that Ryzom's crafting claim to fame is actually the fact that recipes allow you to put in any ingredient of the correct type. So if a recipe calls for 3 types of ingredients, you might have 3 of each type, that gives you 3*3*3 possible variations on the final craft. Plus you can mix ingredients of the same type if you run out of one. Some people might also consider the use of a detection skill to find underground resource node to be particularly interesting, though in the game it was kind of annoying. That was the problem with Ryzom in general - neither the crafting nor the combat were actually fun, even though they were interesting.
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
EvE then followed by FF14:arr. but, primarily eve as you can build within 1hour of getting in game (with enough financials behind you ofc) but your not handicapped by your age , etc, you can just create toon, stay docked, never undock and build for 10+yrs...
for eg.
I have 1 very specific toon who has only undocked 2 times in last 2years, (yess i have other toons to do other things) but you can live with just 1 toon and have fun... but, (big butt) you must like excel
Its not about click one button and magically them ores are now a purple armor... there is soooo much more to eve building.
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.
@Blecod, I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but Pirates of the Burning Sea used to have the best crafting system IMO. You built a warehouse and crafting facilities in a given port, and had to go around collecting those materials and bringing them to the places you had built the crafting facilities to process them. So, for instance, there were 4 types of lumber I think, and only one type was possible to grow in each port, so you would have 3 ports growing 3 different types of lumber, and have to transport them all to the one port you have a lumber mill at to turn them into something else (a ship hull or mast or whatever). It required guilds to pull off building the biggest ships, and those guilds really had to have someone performing the task of logistics manager to keep everything running smoothly, but it was awesome.
They also had the best Auction House I've seen: you post a material and put in what you want the lowest possible buy price to be. Someone else comes in and says "I want to buy this" - but they don't see your lowest buy price, they only see the average price. So they put in an order to buy, and if they're below everyone currently selling, they don't get their product. But, if they put in a buy and someone is selling at that price or lower, then they buy it at the price they offered. If multiple people offered below that price, then the sale goes to the one who offered at the lowest price (in case of a tie, I think it went to whoever put up the sale first). It worked amazingly well, really, and was vital to the crafting system (since you needed so bloody many of a resource)
The biggest problem I see in creating a crafting system is that it competes with drop and boss reward gear for player attention.
I have no clue how this gets balanced. Pull back hard on drops / boss reward and the PVEers don't get their cookie for pushing the button. Flood drops / boss reward and the crafters are screwed because it all ends up vendor trash.
I have to design this in the next 2 weeks. Not looking forward to it.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
Yes, the graph is based on F2P games, but the shape of the graph is true of all games. By endgame very little drop-off is happening. It's just the natural result of how if 10 people start playing a game, 5 will drop out on the first day, 2 on the second, maybe 1 on the third, and then the rest fall off very slowly afterward, with 1 player playing for a very long time.
I don't suggest ignoring elder players, but their value is much lower than you perceive it relative to the (much more numerous) other players who stopped playing earlier. A survey in a forum full of elder players wouldn't tell you the truth about retention in MMORPGs. It's like running a Salary Survey at an expensive country club and deciding poor people aren't a problem when everyone asked makes over $100k.
In a P2P game those elder players are very important, a player subbing a year pays a lot of money to your company. You need these players or you will earn money on launch month but drop really badly after that, like Wildstar did. The player who stay a year is worth 10 short term players there.
Now, with F2P games that doesn't matter, if someone plays for 3 days only but buy loads of crap the first day you earn more than a elder player staying a long time but just buy something small.
And with B2P it doesn't matter how long time people play, the important thing is that they come back in and buy your next expansion.
So it depends what type of game you run.
As for crafting, crafters tend to stay longer than the average players, many of them like to play the market and if you have a P2P game it makes sense to make the game attractive to those players.
With F2P they tend to figure out how to actually make money on those crafters, but it is a risky game, AAs system for example turned many off and games that lock how much cash you can have or how many item you can have at the AH risk losing those players before they even start. Then again, they could just as well skip crafting in those games since they are a minor income for the devs in most F2P (or at least I assume that, but I can't say that I can back it up with actual numbers), besides AA who actually cateer a lot for crafters.
The biggest problem I see in creating a crafting system is that it competes with drop and boss reward gear for player attention.
I have no clue how this gets balanced. Pull back hard on drops / boss reward and the PVEers don't get their cookie for pushing the button. Flood drops / boss reward and the crafters are screwed because it all ends up vendor trash.
I have to design this in the next 2 weeks. Not looking forward to it.
Well, there are ways you can solve it. Guildwars system of gaining skills from bosses for example works.
You could have certain things that are drops like weapons while other stuff needs to be crafted like armors. That actually make some sense since armors tend to be customize to fit the wearer, you can't fit the ogres gauntles on your elf character and why would the ogre carry around elf sized armor anyways? A sword tend to be more one size fits all even if weight and balance do matter somewhat. The problem with it is that you get less crafting disciplines but you could solve that with having more types of gear than the typical MMO.
I recall UO's crafting fondly... perhaps it's just rose coloured glasses, but although I do remember grinding to level my skill, I also remember being able to recycle those "useless" items back into mats, and even though you needed a whole house to house all your recipe books, mats, tools and the occasional lucky item that was worth vendoring or keeping for an alt/friend, they did have multiple ways to improve your odds of making some really good items(special drop hammers/rares, high level ingots, etc.).
Imo, the biggest obstacle every crafter seems to have trouble with, is storage. I can't even remember the number of times other non-crafter players have poo-pooed my need for more storage and obviously had some influence with how developers decided on if and how to increase it in the games, but these are also often the same players that as long as they have room for one or two sets of gear(which they expect to be able to loot from mobs) and some potions/bandages, tend to either vendor everything else or leave it on the corpses. Two different kinds of gameplay colliding... and devs that don't seem to know how to make a game that can satisfy both, let alone make them essential to each other and in doing so, create community.
I recall UO's crafting fondly... perhaps it's just rose coloured glasses, but although I do remember grinding to level my skill, I also remember being able to recycle those "useless" items back into mats, and even though you needed a whole house to house all your recipe books, mats, tools and the occasional lucky item that was worth vendoring or keeping for an alt/friend, they did have multiple ways to improve your odds of making some really good items(special drop hammers/rares, high level ingots, etc.).
Imo, the biggest obstacle every crafter seems to have trouble with, is storage. I can't even remember the number of times other non-crafter players have poo-pooed my need for more storage and obviously had some influence with how developers decided on if and how to increase it in the games, but these are also often the same players that as long as they have room for one or two sets of gear(which they expect to be able to loot from mobs) and some potions/bandages, tend to either vendor everything else or leave it on the corpses. Two different kinds of gameplay colliding... and devs that don't seem to know how to make a game that can satisfy both, let alone make them essential to each other and in doing so, create community.
In this aspect do GW2s material storage rule. Once you salvage the mats you just click on a simple button and it all goes to your mat storage which you craft directly from. So that aspect of crafting have been solved recently and I think future game will use something similar.
I do remember the same problem from many games. In EQ2 I had containers full with crafting mats in my bank, it always took loads of time to find the specific material. Baank space was never a problem there, I had boxes with 36 stacks in each on the bank but it was still a rather annoying thing when I needed to craft. In certain games have I had several mules full with crafting mats.
In a P2P game those elder players are very important, a player subbing a year pays a lot of money to your company. You need these players or you will earn money on launch month but drop really badly after that, like Wildstar did. The player who stay a year is worth 10 short term players there.
Now, with F2P games that doesn't matter, if someone plays for 3 days only but buy loads of crap the first day you earn more than a elder player staying a long time but just buy something small.
And with B2P it doesn't matter how long time people play, the important thing is that they come back in and buy your next expansion.
So it depends what type of game you run.
As for crafting, crafters tend to stay longer than the average players, many of them like to play the market and if you have a P2P game it makes sense to make the game attractive to those players.
With F2P they tend to figure out how to actually make money on those crafters, but it is a risky game, AAs system for example turned many off and games that lock how much cash you can have or how many item you can have at the AH risk losing those players before they even start. Then again, they could just as well skip crafting in those games since they are a minor income for the devs in most F2P (or at least I assume that, but I can't say that I can back it up with actual numbers), besides AA who actually cateer a lot for crafters.
The importance of those elder players isn't as much as you'd think. For example:
Let's say elder players are the top 10% in a game with 1 million players
Extending the life of 100k hardcore players by 6 months is worth $9 mil.
Extending the life of 900k casual players by just 1 month is worth $13.5 mil.
The cost of keeping a hardcore player for 6 months is pretty substantial -- they demand a constant stream of things to do, whereas improving the game so that a bunch of casual players stay longer is often an easier proposal.
I'm not saying it always makes sense to drop everything to focus on casuals, but the value of these two groups is much closer than you're saying it is.
There's actually a much stronger case for keeping those elder players happy in a F2P game (where whales will continue to pay crazy amounts, as long as you keep them happy.) In a P2P game everyone is equal. In fact this relationship is one of the main critiques players have of the F2P model.
I don't think we can necessarily claim crafters stay longer than the average player. Though high-engaged players tend to do more of everything, which would include crafting. If crafters as a player type were better than the average player then we'd have expected ATITD to do a lot better than it did.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The biggest problem I see in creating a crafting system is that it competes with drop and boss reward gear for player attention.
I have no clue how this gets balanced. Pull back hard on drops / boss reward and the PVEers don't get their cookie for pushing the button. Flood drops / boss reward and the crafters are screwed because it all ends up vendor trash.
I have to design this in the next 2 weeks. Not looking forward to it.
Boss drops and dungeon completion rewards can be SO MANY things besides gear. They can be recipes or mats needed to make that gear, possibly including ingredients needed to craft dye to customize gear or pets/mounts, or crafting tokens if it's a game where crafting per person is throttled to prevent market flooding. They can be crystals or whatever needed to enhance gear, or crystals needed to capture high-level pets. They can be emotes/gestures not included in the basic set - in Dofus for example the "fart" emote is a popular dungeon reward, iirc. They can be tickets needed to play a minigame, or consumable minigame enhancement items (like fishing bait). They can be character customization options like hairstyles, scars, tattoos, or mutations/race changes. They can be costume transformation potions that last for an hour or a day. They can be housing items like a stained glass window, a topiary tree, or simply a pile of raw stone or metal ore. They can be vegetable seeds or pet eggs. They can be inventory expansions or tokens which can be traded in large numbers for small amounts of cash shop currency. If regular monsters don't drop money, bosses might even be the main source of quick cash.
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
The biggest problem I see in creating a crafting system is that it competes with drop and boss reward gear for player attention.
I have no clue how this gets balanced. Pull back hard on drops / boss reward and the PVEers don't get their cookie for pushing the button. Flood drops / boss reward and the crafters are screwed because it all ends up vendor trash.
I have to design this in the next 2 weeks. Not looking forward to it.
Boss drops and dungeon completion rewards can be SO MANY things besides gear. They can be recipes or mats needed to make that gear, possibly including ingredients needed to craft dye to customize gear or pets/mounts, or crafting tokens if it's a game where crafting per person is throttled to prevent market flooding. They can be crystals or whatever needed to enhance gear, or crystals needed to capture high-level pets. They can be emotes/gestures not included in the basic set - in Dofus for example the "fart" emote is a popular dungeon reward, iirc. They can be tickets needed to play a minigame, or consumable minigame enhancement items (like fishing bait). They can be character customization options like hairstyles, scars, tattoos, or mutations/race changes. They can be costume transformation potions that last for an hour or a day. They can be housing items like a stained glass window, a topiary tree, or simply a pile of raw stone or metal ore. They can be vegetable seeds or pet eggs. They can be inventory expansions or tokens which can be traded in large numbers for small amounts of cash shop currency. If regular monsters don't drop money, bosses might even be the main source of quick cash.
Or they can just drop gear. The best gear you can get for fighting monsters. And then you can have other activities which support crafting and gathering. Non combat activities which promote competition between players, creativity, collaboration. Various forms of racing, team sports, horticulture, pet breeding and shows, music, urban art, performing arts, fashion, interior design, architecture, the list goes on.
Then your game becomes more than a hack n slash lobby game. It becomes something akin to a living breathing world which we all claim to want so badly in our mmorpgs. Then combat becomes simply one of many meaningful activities and the loot you get from dungeons can be the best and it won't impact an entire economy based around combat because there is so much more than that.
If crafting isn't the cornerstone of the game, then it's usually crap. In the typical gear treadmill, the best gear will always come from raids which marginalizes crafting. In a crafting based game, the only gear is crafted gear which raises the crafter to the top of the food chain.
Just look at WoW vs EVE Online. In EVE the best readily available gear in the game is crafted, therefore the crafters are essential to the health of the game. In WoW the best gear to be had is from raiding, which marginalizes the crafters. WoW will hardly descend into chaos if most people stopped crafting.
There are a couple of games out there that have successfully melded both raiding and crafting. Age of Conan is 95% a gear treadmill, however, there are some raids that incorporate crafting successfully. For instance, one of the most powerful 1H weapons in the game is crafted during the final boss fight in Tier 2 raiding. You can either beat the boss normally, or raise the difficulty level of the boss by attempting a crafting run while fighting him.
What I would like to see is a hybridized system in an MMORPG. Instead of raiding for equipment the players are raiding for materials to craft the gear that they want. Then crafting the highest level of gear will also require a crafting raid in another dungeon.
The biggest problem I see in creating a crafting system is that it competes with drop and boss reward gear for player attention.
I have no clue how this gets balanced. Pull back hard on drops / boss reward and the PVEers don't get their cookie for pushing the button. Flood drops / boss reward and the crafters are screwed because it all ends up vendor trash.
I have to design this in the next 2 weeks. Not looking forward to it.
Boss drops and dungeon completion rewards can be SO MANY things besides gear. They can be recipes or mats needed to make that gear, possibly including ingredients needed to craft dye to customize gear or pets/mounts, or crafting tokens if it's a game where crafting per person is throttled to prevent market flooding. They can be crystals or whatever needed to enhance gear, or crystals needed to capture high-level pets. They can be emotes/gestures not included in the basic set - in Dofus for example the "fart" emote is a popular dungeon reward, iirc. They can be tickets needed to play a minigame, or consumable minigame enhancement items (like fishing bait). They can be character customization options like hairstyles, scars, tattoos, or mutations/race changes. They can be costume transformation potions that last for an hour or a day. They can be housing items like a stained glass window, a topiary tree, or simply a pile of raw stone or metal ore. They can be vegetable seeds or pet eggs. They can be inventory expansions or tokens which can be traded in large numbers for small amounts of cash shop currency. If regular monsters don't drop money, bosses might even be the main source of quick cash.
Or they can just drop gear. The best gear you can get for fighting monsters. And then you can have other activities which support crafting and gathering. Non combat activities which promote competition between players, creativity, collaboration. Various forms of racing, team sports, horticulture, pet breeding and shows, music, urban art, performing arts, fashion, interior design, architecture, the list goes on.
Then your game becomes more than a hack n slash lobby game. It becomes something akin to a living breathing world which we all claim to want so badly in our mmorpgs. Then combat becomes simply one of many meaningful activities and the loot you get from dungeons can be the best and it won't impact an entire economy based around combat because there is so much more than that.
Local rewarding vs. cross-rewarding is an interesting design issue, but one that has nothing to do with lobby design vs. virtual world design. So I'm going to ignore your second paragraph there. But let's look at your first paragraph. If you think local rewarding is better than cross-rewarding for monster killing, you are kind of logically required to prefer local rewarding for all areas of the MMO. That means racing rewards you with racing stuff, pet activities reward you with pet stuff, etc. In a coherent design philosophy, if monster hunting shouldn't have crafting requirements, neither should racing, pet activities, or other types of gameplay that aren't about crafting gameplay. But for crafting that's a problem. The implication is that crafting shouldn't produce anything useful for anything other than crafting, because if it does it's stepping on some other area's toes by preempting that area's rightful loot. But what would crafting for the sake of crafting even be, that would actually be fun gameplay?
Would you want crafting to be focused around cosmetic items? If so, then you can't sell those cosmetic items in your cash shop, so you might have a monetization problem. Architecture is good crafting fodder but either you give each player the ability to build their own house in the main world, which results in ruins everywhere and doesn't fit with a pro-grouping game, or you require people to band together to build which results in drama and means that each individual doesn't get to do a lot of building gameplay, or you go with instanced housing that most people don't give a crap about because no one else will ever admire it.
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
Comments
Agreed. Useless items from crafting is just a time sink.
We can safely say endgame isn't the usual breaking point. We know 70% of players quit before level 10 in pre-Cata WOW. We also know that retention graphs look like this one. The graph shows how the number of players lost on any given day decreasing by day. 50% is about average for D1 retention (50% loss) while 30% is about average for D2 (only a 20% loss). This trend continues day by day, so we could safely predict that the next biggest drop-off in WOW would happen from levels 11-20, and not at endgame. By the time you get out to endgame, the daily drop-off would be very small.
While I have seen some fluctuations in retention graphs (occasionally the drop-off from a subsequent day is higher), it's always due to some pretty significant outside influence (most often a technical outage.) Generally all game retention graphs look like a slightly noisier version of the one in that article.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
All someone who's main focus in mmos is crafting and they will most likely tell you swg,vanguard,ffxiv,hnh, ryzom, atitd are the best. They typically involve many steps, have customization options, and stimulate a player driven economy. You may not be directly buffing your combat class, but that's not really the goal of a dedicated crafter.
I would say the goal of a dedicated crafter is to make a name for themselves. They thrive on commerce and a loyal client base. Non dedicated crafters tend to prioritize making items for personal use or making the easiest items that yield the highest profit margin so they can buy more items that add to their combat power.
Two very different focuses and playstyles. Most mmos cater to the people who dislike crafting so when someone says wows crafting system is good, I'm not surprised.
And they aren't wrong. It's good for them.
The graph talks about freemium games, which usually means F2P games with an optional sub and not a specific game.
Maybe we should make some kind of survey to ask how long people got before quitting in the last MMO they played. For some reason do most of my friends either quit after 2 hours or when they hit the endgame but then again are my friends gamers to the core, not very casual players.
In any case is this far off the topic in this thread.
Indeed but most really casual players never bother to craft anyways. A good crafting system have the potential to draw in all the crafting fans, they don't exactly have anywhere else to go right now and while they aren't a huge group you still would get a rather large group of players without really destroying things for most other players. Casual crafters is also a small group after all and they spread out over all other MMOs but with a good crafting system you can get all the more "hardcore (doesn't sound right here) crafting fans.
Buying customized stuff at the AH is an advantage for the regular none crafters anyways.
So I still think you will win by making a better crafting system, it should give you an increase in players. And if nothing else your game will stand out here which is a good thing when most MMOs are so similar.
That's the key: good for who?
1) non-crafters
2) personal use crafters
3) market crafters
I think both kinds of crafter like deep systems with the equivalent of a tech tree you climb up with the personal use crafters wanting to be able to make gear that is at least as good as the gear they can get off mobs and the market crafters want to make gear that is sellable. I think in both cases it's psychological payoff - I like crafting in games as a thing in itself but if there isn't some in-game benefit on top it eventually feels empty.
Some general thoughts
1) Gear for personal use crafters doesn't have to be sellable or the best just useful for the level - you don't want to hunt for materials from mobs that also drop better gear than you can make with the mats.
2) It should be easy to make crafting and dropped gear compatible simply by allocating certain gear slots to crafters e.g. decide tailors make the best cloaks, leaving dropped gear as the best for the non-allocated slots.
3) Searching for high quality materials like in SWG and Ryzom makes for a good crafter minigame.
4) Crafting is more viable with decay - an easier way of doing it might be sacrifice i.e. the game has a bunch of gods who give points for gear sacrificed to them and you can pray and use the points for speed buffs, hp buffs, cure disease etc at any time. Set the game difficulty so that it's a lot easier with the deity buffs and you have a gear sink.
5) I don't think people who like crafting as a thing mind a bit of grinding to raise crafting as long as there's a payoff and that payoff can be either personal use or selling and not only when the skill is maxed but from the beginning.
There are many reason why someone might become a traders/crafter.
I don't suggest ignoring elder players, but their value is much lower than you perceive it relative to the (much more numerous) other players who stopped playing earlier. A survey in a forum full of elder players wouldn't tell you the truth about retention in MMORPGs. It's like running a Salary Survey at an expensive country club and deciding poor people aren't a problem when everyone asked makes over $100k.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Why was SWG considered a great crafting game? Because gear was not dropping from every kill.
Same with Ryzom. Same with Fallen Earth.
I saw no point to crafting in Swotor, no point to crafting in LoTRo, etc. Just kill stuff and wait for better loot to drop. Its ridiculous to even put crafting in games like this. Hell I can play Diablo for that. Kill. pickup gear. Repeat. Sell all crap gear. Repeat.
People want more social interaction in their MMO's? Well the way to do that is make crafting / econmomy / combat all of equal importance. Crafters need combat players and combat needs crafting players. Economy ties it all together. Thats what makes an MMO social. Not forced grouping.
As to how to make the process interesting? Just make it varied. It doesn't have to be overly complex but there should be hurdles that need overcoming. And by that I mean, requiring other players help. But the one simple rule is that if you are going to have crafting, then EVERYTHING needs to be crafted. Weapons, armor, potions, cosmetic stuff mounts. All of it. With item decay of course.
Anything else is pointless.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
EvE then followed by FF14:arr. but, primarily eve as you can build within 1hour of getting in game (with enough financials behind you ofc) but your not handicapped by your age , etc, you can just create toon, stay docked, never undock and build for 10+yrs...
for eg.
I have 1 very specific toon who has only undocked 2 times in last 2years, (yess i have other toons to do other things) but you can live with just 1 toon and have fun... but, (big butt) you must like excel
Its not about click one button and magically them ores are now a purple armor... there is soooo much more to eve building.
This post is all my opinion, but I welcome debate on anything i have put, however, personal slander / name calling belongs in game
where of course you're welcome to call me names im often found lounging about in EvE online.
Use this code for 21days trial in eve online https://secure.eveonline.com/trial/?invc=d385aff2-794a-44a4-96f1-3967ccf6d720&action=buddy
They also had the best Auction House I've seen: you post a material and put in what you want the lowest possible buy price to be. Someone else comes in and says "I want to buy this" - but they don't see your lowest buy price, they only see the average price. So they put in an order to buy, and if they're below everyone currently selling, they don't get their product. But, if they put in a buy and someone is selling at that price or lower, then they buy it at the price they offered. If multiple people offered below that price, then the sale goes to the one who offered at the lowest price (in case of a tie, I think it went to whoever put up the sale first). It worked amazingly well, really, and was vital to the crafting system (since you needed so bloody many of a resource)
I have no clue how this gets balanced. Pull back hard on drops / boss reward and the PVEers don't get their cookie for pushing the button. Flood drops / boss reward and the crafters are screwed because it all ends up vendor trash.
I have to design this in the next 2 weeks. Not looking forward to it.
Now, with F2P games that doesn't matter, if someone plays for 3 days only but buy loads of crap the first day you earn more than a elder player staying a long time but just buy something small.
And with B2P it doesn't matter how long time people play, the important thing is that they come back in and buy your next expansion.
So it depends what type of game you run.
As for crafting, crafters tend to stay longer than the average players, many of them like to play the market and if you have a P2P game it makes sense to make the game attractive to those players.
With F2P they tend to figure out how to actually make money on those crafters, but it is a risky game, AAs system for example turned many off and games that lock how much cash you can have or how many item you can have at the AH risk losing those players before they even start. Then again, they could just as well skip crafting in those games since they are a minor income for the devs in most F2P (or at least I assume that, but I can't say that I can back it up with actual numbers), besides AA who actually cateer a lot for crafters.
Well, there are ways you can solve it. Guildwars system of gaining skills from bosses for example works.
You could have certain things that are drops like weapons while other stuff needs to be crafted like armors. That actually make some sense since armors tend to be customize to fit the wearer, you can't fit the ogres gauntles on your elf character and why would the ogre carry around elf sized armor anyways? A sword tend to be more one size fits all even if weight and balance do matter somewhat. The problem with it is that you get less crafting disciplines but you could solve that with having more types of gear than the typical MMO.
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Imo, the biggest obstacle every crafter seems to have trouble with, is storage. I can't even remember the number of times other non-crafter players have poo-pooed my need for more storage and obviously had some influence with how developers decided on if and how to increase it in the games, but these are also often the same players that as long as they have room for one or two sets of gear(which they expect to be able to loot from mobs) and some potions/bandages, tend to either vendor everything else or leave it on the corpses. Two different kinds of gameplay colliding... and devs that don't seem to know how to make a game that can satisfy both, let alone make them essential to each other and in doing so, create community.
I do remember the same problem from many games. In EQ2 I had containers full with crafting mats in my bank, it always took loads of time to find the specific material. Baank space was never a problem there, I had boxes with 36 stacks in each on the bank but it was still a rather annoying thing when I needed to craft. In certain games have I had several mules full with crafting mats.
- Let's say elder players are the top 10% in a game with 1 million players
- Extending the life of 100k hardcore players by 6 months is worth $9 mil.
- Extending the life of 900k casual players by just 1 month is worth $13.5 mil.
- The cost of keeping a hardcore player for 6 months is pretty substantial -- they demand a constant stream of things to do, whereas improving the game so that a bunch of casual players stay longer is often an easier proposal.
- I'm not saying it always makes sense to drop everything to focus on casuals, but the value of these two groups is much closer than you're saying it is.
There's actually a much stronger case for keeping those elder players happy in a F2P game (where whales will continue to pay crazy amounts, as long as you keep them happy.) In a P2P game everyone is equal. In fact this relationship is one of the main critiques players have of the F2P model.I don't think we can necessarily claim crafters stay longer than the average player. Though high-engaged players tend to do more of everything, which would include crafting. If crafters as a player type were better than the average player then we'd have expected ATITD to do a lot better than it did.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Then your game becomes more than a hack n slash lobby game. It becomes something akin to a living breathing world which we all claim to want so badly in our mmorpgs. Then combat becomes simply one of many meaningful activities and the loot you get from dungeons can be the best and it won't impact an entire economy based around combat because there is so much more than that.
Just look at WoW vs EVE Online. In EVE the best readily available gear in the game is crafted, therefore the crafters are essential to the health of the game. In WoW the best gear to be had is from raiding, which marginalizes the crafters. WoW will hardly descend into chaos if most people stopped crafting.
There are a couple of games out there that have successfully melded both raiding and crafting. Age of Conan is 95% a gear treadmill, however, there are some raids that incorporate crafting successfully. For instance, one of the most powerful 1H weapons in the game is crafted during the final boss fight in Tier 2 raiding. You can either beat the boss normally, or raise the difficulty level of the boss by attempting a crafting run while fighting him.
What I would like to see is a hybridized system in an MMORPG. Instead of raiding for equipment the players are raiding for materials to craft the gear that they want. Then crafting the highest level of gear will also require a crafting raid in another dungeon.
Would you want crafting to be focused around cosmetic items? If so, then you can't sell those cosmetic items in your cash shop, so you might have a monetization problem. Architecture is good crafting fodder but either you give each player the ability to build their own house in the main world, which results in ruins everywhere and doesn't fit with a pro-grouping game, or you require people to band together to build which results in drama and means that each individual doesn't get to do a lot of building gameplay, or you go with instanced housing that most people don't give a crap about because no one else will ever admire it.