Player skill, sure, but raiding is really the wrong skill to attach crafting to. The fact that in many games crafting doesn't require skill-based mini-game play is the real problem.
@sunandshadow ; Can you explain 'mini-game' play as used in context?
Sure. :pleased: Bad, non-mini-game crafting would be things like clicking on a node and just waiting for the material to be harvested, or plugging ingredients into a recipe and just waiting for the craft to occur, or worse waiting for 20 of a craft to be processed, some of which will fail, and the rest of which are for grinding crafting XP rather than because they are actually useful.
Good, mini-game crafting could use one of the following mechanisms: sim-style gameplay, puzzle gameplay, or action/arcade gameplay
Sim-style is usually about how carefully you can take care of multiple needy things within a time limit. For example, say you planted a square of crop X. Then a minigame screen would come up, showing several plants of crop X. Each plant might emote that it wanted water, or wanted weeds removed, or wanted fertilizer, or wanted insects removed. Satisfying a need within 3 seconds would make that plant grow one unit, while failing to satisfy 3 needs for a particular plant would kill that plant. At the end of the game, the total crop units among surviving plants would be the player's score, which would determine the loot they got from playing the minigame. The basic loot would be the plant, but high scores could produce bonus loot like an insect, a mutant seed which would result in a different mini-game start, a variant type of crop (e.g. 10 wheat + 1 golden wheat), or a super high score might even earn the player a collectible plushie plant for their plushie collection or a trophy. You might give the player the option to restart any minigame, discarding their current score; this pleases perfectionists and people trying for high scores, and is nice if one is using ingredients that are annoying to get. It allows a player to sink in extra time without giving them a significant economic advantage.
Puzzle gameplay is probably the easiest to buy 3rd party minigames for. Match-3, tetris, solitaire, number-games, word-games, etc. Again, a puzzle screen would pop up when the player begins a gathering or crafting action, then the player's score would determine what they gather or craft. Crafting a sword for example, turning in a set of ingredients might be the cost of starting the minigame, and different sets of ingredients might get you an easy minigame level with low possibility to earn bonuses, or a difficult minigame level with high possibility to earn bonuses. The bonuses would be extra stats on the resulting sword, or a refund of one or two ingredients to make it easier to craft another sword. Record high scores might unlock special sword appearances, unless these are already being determined by the ingredients. Multiplayer competitive minigames might have a gambling mechanic where each player pays the starting cost, each is guaranteed a minimum harvest, but the winner of the hand of poker or whatever gets bonuses based on their winnings.
Action/arcade gameplay includes racing, shmups (shooting gallery click fests), timed jumping over and dodging between obstacles (aka an agility course), galaga-type scrolling shooters, whack-a-mole, etc. Perhaps the player needs to fly a needle through the correct course to successfully sew a piece of clothing together. Perhaps the player needs to pounce on all the desirable red potion molecules and avoid all the bad gray potion molecules to brew a healing potion. Perhaps fishing actually involves playing as your pet water dragon who must beat up the monster fish until it is subdued. Players might race their mounts or pets against each other as part of the process of crafting (breeding) new mounts or pets.
Anything else I forgot to explain or you wondered about?
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.
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...
I played vanguard in it's beta, but never really got too in depth with the crafting. From the sounds of how you describe it, it almost sounds identical to SWG's crafting, the only major difference being in how to obtain the mats.
SWG: Survey dynamic land that holds finite supply of resources and set up (player crafted) machines to gather resources, move machines to different locations after depleting the resources through surveying again. Every resource has potentially several dozen variants, all varying in grade, and output possibilities. (It's possible to farm a rare resource to permanent extinction, (thus making whatever item requires it permanently endangered, and items decay and require upkeep).
After you have your resources, you use the ones with low stats for progression, resources with high stats were used to create high end items. Chance on crafting to create items with varying stats depending on resource grade, location where you craft, what level of risk you're using to complete the process, and several other factors. (Stats such as durability, fire speed, swing speed, damage, stun resist, kinetic resist, fire resist, etc all stat variables.
Anything else I forgot to explain or you wondered about?
Very helpful !!!
Struggling to remember what I'm thinking of, a very basic mini-game. I think it might have been a BBS door (a type of online game from early 90s). Marker slid left to right in a UI, there was a window where you hit a key, if you hit the key inside the window, you won the mini-game. As things progressed the window became smaller making it more difficult to time the keypress.
So am I understanding it correctly, that the value of the mini-game is that it gives the player personal interaction in the crafting process and their performance at the mini-game affects the crafting outcome?
In my own application, I'd be up against not having much in terms of UI. I'd have to build it in 3D space. Like teleport the player-character into a maze in 3D, escape the maze in 30 seconds and crafting is achieved. If not out in 30 seconds, craft fails. Low level crafting mazes are super easy, but get harder as crafting level goes up. Sort of a dumbed down obstacle course that you mentioned.
One other angle to this that I was thinking of is sort of a gambling twist. Insert a certain amount (or type) of materials, beat the mini-game, then the server rewards based on a loot table. Anything from moderately good gear to outstanding, maybe with XP potion bonuses at random, or something like that.
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.
Anything else I forgot to explain or you wondered about?
Very helpful !!!
Struggling to remember what I'm thinking of, a very basic mini-game. I think it might have been a BBS door (a type of online game from early 90s). Marker slid left to right in a UI, there was a window where you hit a key, if you hit the key inside the window, you won the mini-game. As things progressed the window became smaller making it more difficult to time the keypress.
So am I understanding it correctly, that the value of the mini-game is that it gives the player personal interaction in the crafting process and their performance at the mini-game affects the crafting outcome?
In my own application, I'd be up against not having much in terms of UI. I'd have to build it in 3D space. Like teleport the player-character into a maze in 3D, escape the maze in 30 seconds and crafting is achieved. If not out in 30 seconds, craft fails. Low level crafting mazes are super easy, but get harder as crafting level goes up. Sort of a dumbed down obstacle course that you mentioned.
One other angle to this that I was thinking of is sort of a gambling twist. Insert a certain amount (or type) of materials, beat the mini-game, then the server rewards based on a loot table. Anything from moderately good gear to outstanding, maybe with XP potion bonuses at random, or something like that.
That timing game where a marker slides back and forth is IMO an example of a bad minigame because it isn't fun. Minigames, though small, are supposed to be games in their own right - they should be at least as much fun per unit of the player's time as combat. Other than the fun factor, yes you're right that "that the value of the mini-game is that it gives the player personal
interaction in the crafting process and their performance at the
mini-game affects the crafting outcome". Mini-games are mainly supposed to be non-combat gameplay that gives the player a fun alternative to combat, though combat that is distinctly different from the main type is also ok as alternative gameplay. Humans in general don't get bored of an activity (in this case combat) as quickly if it is alternated with something different. Is navigating a maze fun? Maybe if you added some strategic elements within the maze...
I'm surprised that UI would be the issue - I was under the impression that there were several UI toolkits available cheap or free that are widely used for basic windows, buttons, scroll bars, text entry fields, and that sort of thing. Card games, for example, can be made with barely anything besides some rectangular buttons. Word games too require pretty much nothing besides some buttons, or depending on the game, text entry fields. Minesweeper, another game that can be made with nothing but buttons. Sudoku, nothing but text entry fields.
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.
There Istaria it's a pretty old game but i really like the crafting there
This game started as Horizons and it had the best crating I have ever played. everything was crafted. You want to build a House you needed other players. Masons, Carpenters, Brick makers. and others.To sell your goods you went to the main towns for other races and you put items on consignment as all armor and weapons were race specific. You got daily sales reports from each vendor so you knew what was selling were and when to restock.
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.
This game started as Horizons and it had the best crating I have ever played. everything was crafted. You want to build a House you needed other players. Masons, Carpenters, Brick makers. and others.
Horizons was indeed entirely crafting-based economy.. This had definite good and bad sides.. On the positive, it created not only a good reason for crafting, but a definite need.. The negatives of course, included price gouging galore, unforeseeable "black holes" of items no one was crafting, and months of time spent harvesting and placing materials for house plots.. Despite any objections I personally had to it, I think the crafting served its purpose..
It definitely taught me the pitfalls of crafting-system design from a player-in-the-trenches viewpoint..
..because we're gamers, damn it!! - William Massachusetts (Log Horizon)
I think TBC WoW actually did combine crafting and raiding. There was crafted gear that would last you until the big three Outland raids, and even some pieces that were close to BIS for a chunk of the expansion (Spellstrike and engineer goggles come to mind for dps casters). There were definitely real benefits to crafting and being friends with crafters. Heck, they even made PvP worthwhile by making the honor weapons the best you could get until later raid drops. The whole system encouraged multifaceted play: I farmed primals, raided, PvPed, leveled my crafting, and made friends in an effort to better equip my character.
That was eliminated around the time of WotLK because the "new wave" of MMORPG player WoW relied on to expand its player base didn't want to feel they had to participate in any kind of crafting or farming, or to communicate with other players: stick me in DF/RF and let me get my gear with as little hassle as possible.
FFXIV:ARR has actually dabbled in integrating crafting and raiding. The relic/zodiac weapon lines required a combination of crafted items -- which themselves required special dungeon drops -- and running certain content to power the crafted item up. Subsequent powerups required further farming, raiding, and crafted items. GW2 also has requirements for a number of the most desired items (I say desired since power is not necessarily relevant in that game) that involve both crafted and farmed components and running certain PvE content for drops or purchaseables.
Imo, one of the big problems with crafting systems is when they make them needlessly complicated, gated and time consuming, then throw RNG into the mix. There are other ways to keep bots/goldsellers under control besides gating most of the content behind levels(mini-games like those fishing arcs are one, live support is another, and gee, real penalties for those caught might just help too).
I can see where a beginner might have lots of failures, but once you've crafted an item multiple times and your actual skill level in that profession is expert or beyond, failures should be a non-issue. It's like most games make it impossible to craft gear for your own skill level.... seriously, why in the world would you expect someone to want to skill up in something if it doesn't at least help them too? Commonsense.
The only reason I can see why devs do this is to force players to buy from each other(or a cash shop), instead of making systems fun enough on their own that a player doesn't want to spend their time out gathering, hunting, mining etc if that's not their thing and keep spawns on timers that keeps mats common enough that they're affordable to the crafters which affordability can then be passed on to the buyers, but not so common that everyone and their dog has stacks of mats sitting collecting dust hoping to break even on them some day.
Also, the only times imo that you should have to use more than one profession to make a single item(other than perhaps the actual acquisition of the materials, ie. mining, logging, hunting, gathering and yes most games let you take up two or more complementary professions just for that reason because otherwise people make alts, though that doesn't mean they want to have to do those things too) would be for things like houses or vehicles where you need someone highly skilled(which is where games like UO had it right in that you only had so many skill points to invest in any of the professions.. ie. proficient in many but only able to be expert in one) in masonry, carpentry, metalwork, for the structures and then a tanner and perhaps tailoring for things like upholstery. Time can also be used to help limit how fast someone can craft rarer items, like not being able to build a house in a single day... let alone a castle and no I don't care if you have a whole guild "helping", certain items should take more time, just like a good bottle of wine.
But you can see how unless a game specifically tries to achieve those goals, attaching the skill requirement to raiding is the right decision.
Ehh... Even then, raiding is just something a lot of crafters wouldn't want to do at all. Crafting is an inherently solo activity (with the exception of games where players have to work together to build buildings) while raiding is the most heavily multiplayer activity in many MMOs.
Raiding isn't something most players want to do. We've seen reports and numbers on this before and it's only actually a minority of gamers that actively engage in raiding.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
XAPKen said: 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.
What's wrong with having loot items(the harder the boss the better or more varied the item and or quantity) necessary for making higher stat gear?
This can be in the form of either gems that anyone can use, or specific things like special pelts/horns/teeth/etc from the mob that are necessary to actually craft the higher end gear. This is a tried and true method that keeps all players engaged, unless greed takes over and certain groups choose to price fix items... to which I think these special items need to have caps as a form of prevention for the good of the community(ie. cannot have more than a fixed number at any one time on the account).
This helps with community because both pvp/pve'rs need crafters and vice versa. As far as making it more interesting, you could gate the ability to actually use certain gear or loot behind the skill required to either kill a certain level mob or the crafting level to make and/or enhance the gear to do so. You could also have rare one off special patterns drop off mobs allowing players a chance at special items that could be anything from fluff items(costumes, housing items, dyes, etc) to unbreakable tools to high end gear.
One key thing to add would be the ability to salvage any item(either looted or crafted) into re-useable mats(gems, leather, ingots, etc) or even just gold, so as to keep it from becoming vendor trash or flooding the market by those who are making large quantities of items to skill up with(usually guild crafters) and thereby negating the efforts of smaller scale crafters trying to get a foothold.
What's wrong with having loot items(the harder the boss the better or more varied the item and or quantity) necessary for making higher stat gear?
This can be in the form of either gems that anyone can use, or specific things like special pelts/horns/teeth/etc from the mob that are necessary to actually craft the higher end gear. This is a tried and true method that keeps all players engaged, unless greed takes over and certain groups choose to price fix items... to which I think these special items need to have caps as a form of prevention for the good of the community(ie. cannot have more than a fixed number at any one time on the account).
This helps with community because both pvp/pve'rs need crafters and vice versa. As far as making it more interesting, you could gate the ability to actually use certain gear or loot behind the skill required to either kill a certain level mob or the crafting level to make and/or enhance the gear to do so. You could also have rare one off special patterns drop off mobs allowing players a chance at special items that could be anything from fluff items(costumes, housing items, dyes, etc) to unbreakable tools to high end gear.
One key thing to add would be the ability to salvage any item(either looted or crafted) into re-useable mats(gems, leather, ingots, etc) or even just gold, so as to keep it from becoming vendor trash or flooding the market by those who are making large quantities of items to skill up with(usually guild crafters) and thereby negating the efforts of smaller scale crafters trying to get a foothold.
All cool and dandy but you left out the most important part of the equotation - players.
Is that what players want? Would such system be appealing and fulfilling to players? Very likely not...
If looted gear isn't as good as crafted gear, it is unsatisfying to PVE players/raiders. If crafted gear isn't as good as looted gear, it in unsatisfying to crafters.
There is no way around that, both groups want their endeavors to yield best gear. Mutually exclusive design goals.
What's wrong with having loot items(the harder the boss the better or more varied the item and or quantity) necessary for making higher stat gear?
This can be in the form of either gems that anyone can use, or specific things like special pelts/horns/teeth/etc from the mob that are necessary to actually craft the higher end gear. This is a tried and true method that keeps all players engaged, unless greed takes over and certain groups choose to price fix items... to which I think these special items need to have caps as a form of prevention for the good of the community(ie. cannot have more than a fixed number at any one time on the account).
This helps with community because both pvp/pve'rs need crafters and vice versa. As far as making it more interesting, you could gate the ability to actually use certain gear or loot behind the skill required to either kill a certain level mob or the crafting level to make and/or enhance the gear to do so. You could also have rare one off special patterns drop off mobs allowing players a chance at special items that could be anything from fluff items(costumes, housing items, dyes, etc) to unbreakable tools to high end gear.
One key thing to add would be the ability to salvage any item(either looted or crafted) into re-useable mats(gems, leather, ingots, etc) or even just gold, so as to keep it from becoming vendor trash or flooding the market by those who are making large quantities of items to skill up with(usually guild crafters) and thereby negating the efforts of smaller scale crafters trying to get a foothold.
All cool and dandy but you left out the most important part of the equotation - players.
Is that what players want? Would such system be appealing and fulfilling to players? Very likely not...
If looted gear isn't as good as crafted gear, it is unsatisfying to PVE players/raiders. If crafted gear isn't as good as looted gear, it in unsatisfying to crafters.
There is no way around that, both groups want their endeavors to yield best gear. Mutually exclusive design goals.
I suppose it depends on what kind of game these two groups want... a full open virtual world to play in that has more than just an endgame for entertainment(mmorpg) with fleshed out crafting and a place for fishers, cooks, miners, hunters, tamers, thieves, etc to spend their days whiling away their time while enhancing their skills so they can play both a viable and necessary role as part of that world, or a mmog with basically a linear race to the end that only endgame pve'rs and pvp'rs can excel(win) in and perpetual dissatisfaction with running out of content(bosses to raid or ways to kill each other) yet wanting to always have the l33t gear that only the highest level endgame can deliver but that gets nerfed with every expansion...
Iow's, not just mutually exclusive design goals... but two different games, the question is, who do you want to play your game? Personally, I'd rather go with the first group if I wanted a game with longterm potential as imo the second group are those players that will play for a month after an expansion, then cancel their sub until the next one and seldom give a crap about any "fluff" items the game may want to try and sell in a cash shop, whereas the first group is there for the longhaul and will be much more invested in a world they can "live" in and will want to continue to live in as long as they feel valued as a player, so will be more likely to want to sub long term, let alone indulge in "fluff" for roleplaying with.
I suppose it depends on what kind of game these two groups want... a full open virtual world to play in that has more than just an endgame for entertainment(mmorpg) with fleshed out crafting and a place for fishers, cooks, miners, hunters, tamers, thieves, etc to spend their days whiling away their time while enhancing their skills so they can play both a viable and necessary role as part of that world, or a mmog with basically a linear race to the end that only endgame pve'rs and pvp'rs can excel(win) in and perpetual dissatisfaction with running out of content(bosses to raid or ways to kill each other) yet wanting to always have the l33t gear that only the highest level endgame can deliver but that gets nerfed with every expansion...
Iow's, not just mutually exclusive design goals... but two different games, the question is, who do you want to play your game? Personally, I'd rather go with the first group if I wanted a game with longterm potential as imo the second group are those players that will play for a month after an expansion, then cancel their sub until the next one and seldom give a crap about any "fluff" items the game may want to try and sell in a cash shop, whereas the first group is there for the longhaul and will be much more invested in a world they can "live" in and will want to continue to live in as long as they feel valued as a player, so will be more likely to want to sub long term, let alone indulge in "fluff" for roleplaying with.
What matter is the players, always... There is no point arguing that it could work but there would be little people playing your game. No point making games no one wants to play.
You make a mainstream game catering to crafters -> low population. You make a niche game catering to crafters -> low population.
You always end up with low popupation.
Well, you can pretend that crafting based game has more "longterm potential" but one only needs to look around and see how loot driven games are around for many years sporting much mucher population than any crafting game could dream of.
I suppose it depends on what kind of game these two groups want... a full open virtual world to play in that has more than just an endgame for entertainment(mmorpg) with fleshed out crafting and a place for fishers, cooks, miners, hunters, tamers, thieves, etc to spend their days whiling away their time while enhancing their skills so they can play both a viable and necessary role as part of that world, or a mmog with basically a linear race to the end that only endgame pve'rs and pvp'rs can excel(win) in and perpetual dissatisfaction with running out of content(bosses to raid or ways to kill each other) yet wanting to always have the l33t gear that only the highest level endgame can deliver but that gets nerfed with every expansion...
Iow's, not just mutually exclusive design goals... but two different games, the question is, who do you want to play your game? Personally, I'd rather go with the first group if I wanted a game with longterm potential as imo the second group are those players that will play for a month after an expansion, then cancel their sub until the next one and seldom give a crap about any "fluff" items the game may want to try and sell in a cash shop, whereas the first group is there for the longhaul and will be much more invested in a world they can "live" in and will want to continue to live in as long as they feel valued as a player, so will be more likely to want to sub long term, let alone indulge in "fluff" for roleplaying with.
What matter is the players, always... There is no point arguing that it could work but there would be little people playing your game. No point making games no one wants to play.
You make a mainstream game catering to crafters -> low population. You make a niche game catering to crafters -> low population.
You always end up with low popupation.
Well, you can pretend that crafting based game has more "longterm potential" but one only needs to look around and see how loot driven games are around for many years sporting much mucher population than any crafting game could dream of.
What are you basing your info on? Crafters can only play the games available to them... if there aren't any games with good crafting systems, why would they be playing or supporting them? Otoh, loot driven games are a dime a dozen and all I see is them all pretty much going f2p and then dying.... just like games where crafters are treated like nothing more than sheep for pvp'ers.
What are you basing your info on? Crafters can only play the games available to them... if there aren't any games with good crafting systems, why would they be playing or supporting them? Otoh, loot driven games are a dime a dozen and all I see is them all pretty much going f2p and then dying.... just like games where crafters are treated like nothing more than sheep for pvp'ers.
Yeah, that is why there is dime a dozen of those games and they all fail, because investors like to lose money so they fund more and more of them, right...?
I did say one need to look around, you have choosen not to.
I always thought that Eve did this well, the way that crafting builds upon itself, ultimately requiring entire supply chains -- I just didn't like getting popped every time I tried to get some materials ><
SWG was very similar, and I thought it worked out well too. I really liked the idea of shifting resources
Both games, crafted items were pretty much all there was in game, and there were distinct micro-economies.
What are you basing your info on? Crafters can only play the games available to them... if there aren't any games with good crafting systems, why would they be playing or supporting them? Otoh, loot driven games are a dime a dozen and all I see is them all pretty much going f2p and then dying.... just like games where crafters are treated like nothing more than sheep for pvp'ers.
Yeah, that is why there is dime a dozen of those games and they all fail, because investors like to lose money so they fund more and more of them, right...?
I did say one need to look around, you have choosen not to.
Oh really? Where are all the non f2p historical fantasy mmorpgs that use crafting either as the anchor or at least equally as viable as hack 'n slash gameplay... I must be looking in all the wrong places. Seriously.
Those f2p that ont use crafting as an anchor are all making boat loads of money, while the ones that do are very very niche and struggling with only a few thousand if that players. Mobs need to drop gear. When they don't it's boring to the adventurers. It doesn't need to be the best but it does need to be good. They can also drop crafting components to make better gear but it needs to be an easier system to upgrade instead of just relying on a person that might upgrade it next week. .. maybe.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Those f2p that ont use crafting as an anchor are all making boat loads of money, while the ones that do are very very niche and struggling with only a few thousand if that players. Mobs need to drop gear. When they don't it's boring to the adventurers. It doesn't need to be the best but it does need to be good. They can also drop crafting components to make better gear but it needs to be an easier system to upgrade instead of just relying on a person that might upgrade it next week. .. maybe.
The problem here is that the crafting also need to be fun. Make it confusing and complicated and you fail. Using exactly the same mechanics as everyone else because a few of the larger MMOs does it makes little sense, failing games use the same system.
Mobs doesn't really have to drop gear, bosses, yes but trashmobs that drop vendor trash gear ao far from all mobs need to drop gear.
But you are right that some good gear needs to be drop in themepark games, that is the reason I suggested to focus crafting on stuff that needs to be custom made like armors and consumables. That certain types of gears must be crafted doesn't really make getting loot less fun.
You might want to split the armor in a few more parts than what MMOs usually have though, Daggerfall did this very successfully in the past.You also might want to add a few more slots for droppes jewelry, stuff like bracelets and similar as well as a belt slot.
Crafting needs to be both fun or useful or you might just as well skip it, in far too many games today is crafting just a painful waste of time and resources.
Oh really? Where are all the non f2p historical fantasy mmorpgs that use crafting either as the anchor or at least equally as viable as hack 'n slash gameplay... I must be looking in all the wrong places. Seriously.
You seem to misread/mistyped something, somewhere...
Comments
Good, mini-game crafting could use one of the following mechanisms: sim-style gameplay, puzzle gameplay, or action/arcade gameplay
Sim-style is usually about how carefully you can take care of multiple needy things within a time limit. For example, say you planted a square of crop X. Then a minigame screen would come up, showing several plants of crop X. Each plant might emote that it wanted water, or wanted weeds removed, or wanted fertilizer, or wanted insects removed. Satisfying a need within 3 seconds would make that plant grow one unit, while failing to satisfy 3 needs for a particular plant would kill that plant. At the end of the game, the total crop units among surviving plants would be the player's score, which would determine the loot they got from playing the minigame. The basic loot would be the plant, but high scores could produce bonus loot like an insect, a mutant seed which would result in a different mini-game start, a variant type of crop (e.g. 10 wheat + 1 golden wheat), or a super high score might even earn the player a collectible plushie plant for their plushie collection or a trophy. You might give the player the option to restart any minigame, discarding their current score; this pleases perfectionists and people trying for high scores, and is nice if one is using ingredients that are annoying to get. It allows a player to sink in extra time without giving them a significant economic advantage.
Puzzle gameplay is probably the easiest to buy 3rd party minigames for. Match-3, tetris, solitaire, number-games, word-games, etc. Again, a puzzle screen would pop up when the player begins a gathering or crafting action, then the player's score would determine what they gather or craft. Crafting a sword for example, turning in a set of ingredients might be the cost of starting the minigame, and different sets of ingredients might get you an easy minigame level with low possibility to earn bonuses, or a difficult minigame level with high possibility to earn bonuses. The bonuses would be extra stats on the resulting sword, or a refund of one or two ingredients to make it easier to craft another sword. Record high scores might unlock special sword appearances, unless these are already being determined by the ingredients. Multiplayer competitive minigames might have a gambling mechanic where each player pays the starting cost, each is guaranteed a minimum harvest, but the winner of the hand of poker or whatever gets bonuses based on their winnings.
Action/arcade gameplay includes racing, shmups (shooting gallery click fests), timed jumping over and dodging between obstacles (aka an agility course), galaga-type scrolling shooters, whack-a-mole, etc. Perhaps the player needs to fly a needle through the correct course to successfully sew a piece of clothing together. Perhaps the player needs to pounce on all the desirable red potion molecules and avoid all the bad gray potion molecules to brew a healing potion. Perhaps fishing actually involves playing as your pet water dragon who must beat up the monster fish until it is subdued. Players might race their mounts or pets against each other as part of the process of crafting (breeding) new mounts or pets.
Anything else I forgot to explain or you wondered about?
SWG: Survey dynamic land that holds finite supply of resources and set up (player crafted) machines to gather resources, move machines to different locations after depleting the resources through surveying again. Every resource has potentially several dozen variants, all varying in grade, and output possibilities. (It's possible to farm a rare resource to permanent extinction, (thus making whatever item requires it permanently endangered, and items decay and require upkeep).
After you have your resources, you use the ones with low stats for progression, resources with high stats were used to create high end items. Chance on crafting to create items with varying stats depending on resource grade, location where you craft, what level of risk you're using to complete the process, and several other factors. (Stats such as durability, fire speed, swing speed, damage, stun resist, kinetic resist, fire resist, etc all stat variables.
Very helpful !!!
Struggling to remember what I'm thinking of, a very basic mini-game. I think it might have been a BBS door (a type of online game from early 90s). Marker slid left to right in a UI, there was a window where you hit a key, if you hit the key inside the window, you won the mini-game. As things progressed the window became smaller making it more difficult to time the keypress.
So am I understanding it correctly, that the value of the mini-game is that it gives the player personal interaction in the crafting process and their performance at the mini-game affects the crafting outcome?
In my own application, I'd be up against not having much in terms of UI. I'd have to build it in 3D space. Like teleport the player-character into a maze in 3D, escape the maze in 30 seconds and crafting is achieved. If not out in 30 seconds, craft fails. Low level crafting mazes are super easy, but get harder as crafting level goes up. Sort of a dumbed down obstacle course that you mentioned.
One other angle to this that I was thinking of is sort of a gambling twist. Insert a certain amount (or type) of materials, beat the mini-game, then the server rewards based on a loot table. Anything from moderately good gear to outstanding, maybe with XP potion bonuses at random, or something like that.
I'm surprised that UI would be the issue - I was under the impression that there were several UI toolkits available cheap or free that are widely used for basic windows, buttons, scroll bars, text entry fields, and that sort of thing. Card games, for example, can be made with barely anything besides some rectangular buttons. Word games too require pretty much nothing besides some buttons, or depending on the game, text entry fields. Minesweeper, another game that can be made with nothing but buttons. Sudoku, nothing but text entry fields.
This game started as Horizons and it had the best crating I have ever played. everything was crafted. You want to build a House you needed other players. Masons, Carpenters, Brick makers. and others.To sell your goods you went to the main towns for other races and you put items on consignment as all armor and weapons were race specific. You got daily sales reports from each vendor so you knew what was selling were and when to restock.
It definitely taught me the pitfalls of crafting-system design from a player-in-the-trenches viewpoint..
..because we're gamers, damn it!! - William Massachusetts (Log Horizon)
That was eliminated around the time of WotLK because the "new wave" of MMORPG player WoW relied on to expand its player base didn't want to feel they had to participate in any kind of crafting or farming, or to communicate with other players: stick me in DF/RF and let me get my gear with as little hassle as possible.
FFXIV:ARR has actually dabbled in integrating crafting and raiding. The relic/zodiac weapon lines required a combination of crafted items -- which themselves required special dungeon drops -- and running certain content to power the crafted item up. Subsequent powerups required further farming, raiding, and crafted items. GW2 also has requirements for a number of the most desired items (I say desired since power is not necessarily relevant in that game) that involve both crafted and farmed components and running certain PvE content for drops or purchaseables.
I can see where a beginner might have lots of failures, but once you've crafted an item multiple times and your actual skill level in that profession is expert or beyond, failures should be a non-issue. It's like most games make it impossible to craft gear for your own skill level.... seriously, why in the world would you expect someone to want to skill up in something if it doesn't at least help them too? Commonsense.
The only reason I can see why devs do this is to force players to buy from each other(or a cash shop), instead of making systems fun enough on their own that a player doesn't want to spend their time out gathering, hunting, mining etc if that's not their thing and keep spawns on timers that keeps mats common enough that they're affordable to the crafters which affordability can then be passed on to the buyers, but not so common that everyone and their dog has stacks of mats sitting collecting dust hoping to break even on them some day.
Also, the only times imo that you should have to use more than one profession to make a single item(other than perhaps the actual acquisition of the materials, ie. mining, logging, hunting, gathering and yes most games let you take up two or more complementary professions just for that reason because otherwise people make alts, though that doesn't mean they want to have to do those things too) would be for things like houses or vehicles where you need someone highly skilled(which is where games like UO had it right in that you only had so many skill points to invest in any of the professions.. ie. proficient in many but only able to be expert in one) in masonry, carpentry, metalwork, for the structures and then a tanner and perhaps tailoring for things like upholstery. Time can also be used to help limit how fast someone can craft rarer items, like not being able to build a house in a single day... let alone a castle and no I don't care if you have a whole guild "helping", certain items should take more time, just like a good bottle of wine.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
What's wrong with having loot items(the harder the boss the better or more varied the item and or quantity) necessary for making higher stat gear?
This can be in the form of either gems that anyone can use, or specific things like special pelts/horns/teeth/etc from the mob that are necessary to actually craft the higher end gear. This is a tried and true method that keeps all players engaged, unless greed takes over and certain groups choose to price fix items... to which I think these special items need to have caps as a form of prevention for the good of the community(ie. cannot have more than a fixed number at any one time on the account).
This helps with community because both pvp/pve'rs need crafters and vice versa. As far as making it more interesting, you could gate the ability to actually use certain gear or loot behind the skill required to either kill a certain level mob or the crafting level to make and/or enhance the gear to do so. You could also have rare one off special patterns drop off mobs allowing players a chance at special items that could be anything from fluff items(costumes, housing items, dyes, etc) to unbreakable tools to high end gear.
One key thing to add would be the ability to salvage any item(either looted or crafted) into re-useable mats(gems, leather, ingots, etc) or even just gold, so as to keep it from becoming vendor trash or flooding the market by those who are making large quantities of items to skill up with(usually guild crafters) and thereby negating the efforts of smaller scale crafters trying to get a foothold.
Is that what players want? Would such system be appealing and fulfilling to players? Very likely not...
If looted gear isn't as good as crafted gear, it is unsatisfying to PVE players/raiders.
If crafted gear isn't as good as looted gear, it in unsatisfying to crafters.
There is no way around that, both groups want their endeavors to yield best gear. Mutually exclusive design goals.
Iow's, not just mutually exclusive design goals... but two different games, the question is, who do you want to play your game? Personally, I'd rather go with the first group if I wanted a game with longterm potential as imo the second group are those players that will play for a month after an expansion, then cancel their sub until the next one and seldom give a crap about any "fluff" items the game may want to try and sell in a cash shop, whereas the first group is there for the longhaul and will be much more invested in a world they can "live" in and will want to continue to live in as long as they feel valued as a player, so will be more likely to want to sub long term, let alone indulge in "fluff" for roleplaying with.
You make a mainstream game catering to crafters -> low population.
You make a niche game catering to crafters -> low population.
You always end up with low popupation.
Well, you can pretend that crafting based game has more "longterm potential" but one only needs to look around and see how loot driven games are around for many years sporting much mucher population than any crafting game could dream of.
I did say one need to look around, you have choosen not to.
SWG was very similar, and I thought it worked out well too. I really liked the idea of shifting resources
Both games, crafted items were pretty much all there was in game, and there were distinct micro-economies.
Oh really? Where are all the non f2p historical fantasy mmorpgs that use crafting either as the anchor or at least equally as viable as hack 'n slash gameplay... I must be looking in all the wrong places. Seriously.
Mobs doesn't really have to drop gear, bosses, yes but trashmobs that drop vendor trash gear ao far from all mobs need to drop gear.
But you are right that some good gear needs to be drop in themepark games, that is the reason I suggested to focus crafting on stuff that needs to be custom made like armors and consumables. That certain types of gears must be crafted doesn't really make getting loot less fun.
You might want to split the armor in a few more parts than what MMOs usually have though, Daggerfall did this very successfully in the past.You also might want to add a few more slots for droppes jewelry, stuff like bracelets and similar as well as a belt slot.
Crafting needs to be both fun or useful or you might just as well skip it, in far too many games today is crafting just a painful waste of time and resources.