Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
What do crafters want?
monochrome19
Member UncommonPosts: 723
I'm sure many of you have seen the anime Sword Art Online. After watching it about a dozen times I came to the realization that one of my favorite episodes is the one with Lisbeth. Why? For some reason I felt it was so astronomically improbable for an MMO player to have a FAVORITE/DEDICATED crafter it blew my mind and sent my world into a tailspin (also, only being able to get rare crafting materials if you have a master level crafter in your party is genius!).
After playing a dozen or so MMOs (even FFXIV) crafting seems to be useless. Its not engaging, its not fun, it barely has a purpose, and it just seems to be there.
So, crafters, what would the perfect crafting system be? How would it work? How would it allow you to separate yourself from others?
The idea of having an in-game friend/crafter who I solely come to is so foreign and strange its exciting. Out of every crafter on a server what could possibly differentiate another crafter and make me want them and them only to forge my blade? If a system was implemented that made this possible I would probably enjoy crafting more than PvP.
Comments
Tales of the Desert .. the game is pretty much crafting focus.
It is hard to have a game that does many things well. Many are arguing pvp and pve games should be separate. The same goes for crafting.
I don't see deep crafting is necessarily (at least for me) in combat-centric games.
What would comprise a useful and valuable crafting system is something I have actually thought long and hard about. First off, there are some major Do Not's which I will bullet point below:
No matter how cynical you become, its never enough to keep up - Lily Tomlin
Here's what I want:
I want my own stats relevant to crafting
I want to make dyes
I want to make slotted gear
I want to make the augments that go in those slots
I want a bunch of abilities related to the act of crafting
I want a full set of gear specifically for crafting
I want a crafting resource pool to manage
I want heavy interdependence from other classes
I want experimentation and be able to create a better quality product because of it
I want housing and the ability to craft decor and furnishings for it
I want a crafting niche in pvp
I want to see my character actually craft stuff using tools relevant to their profession
And I want it all wrapped in a cool fantasy setting with good production value, nice graphics, great music and a sub with no cash shop.
Sound too good to be true? hehe
What 99% (not all, I grant you!) crafters want: A way to be able to do something boring that will give them an unfair advantage in the game (since no one else wants to do it because it is so boring.)
What crafters should want: A fun minigame that is enjoyable for its own sake. Vanguard got it wrong on so many aspect, but diplomacy actually was a little bit fun. Just look at Candy Crush Saga: Puzzle games are big business. I am amazed that MMOs have not captured this with a crafting mini game that is actually fun that people want to play for its own sake.
I laughed...till I realized you were serious.
Well, generally i assume it's at a fundamental level the same for any other form of play. They want consequence.
When you have components in a game that are marginalized by other modes of play it makes little sense. Crafting consequently needs to exist as it's own fleshed out mechanic that stands equally alongside every other.
This does have application to combat, and gear in general. How gear is created and utilized in games needs to operate in a manner that fits comfortably both with finding loot and crafting it on equal terms if both means are to exist. Marginalizing one or the other makes for a imbalanced for of play that often means people are neglecting aspects of the game because they are seen as weak elements.
The other aspect is crafters want to craft.
What I mean by that is they want to have some creativity. In the same manner people like to personalize their character's appearances, there are many who wish to design, customize, discover, and simply tinker with both visual and meta elements of things. Allowing crafters to do more than stamp out the exact same object an indefinite amount of times and instead take a basic recipe and tweak the appearances or materials to change it up a bit goes a long way in making it a more involved and interesting system.
On the most extreme end of the spectrum there is the example of Spore. For those that love the game, it was not for the generally shallow gameplay, it was for the editors. The ability to go in and create an up until then unseen variety of elements and have it all play together as a novel and very personal experience.
Or the other hallmark example of Minecraft. All components are the same fundamental things, but what people have crafted out of cubes has seen a plethora of possibilities. From empires to electronics.
There are crafters that love such things. When they can take a basic precept and mould something that they can regard as their very own.
The ability to craft is the ability to create, and that is an aspect that can range from the most mundane to the most fantastic.
"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
One of the dying aspects of what used to make MMORPG communities great, CRAFTING and HARVESTING. I aways said and stick to the statement, that Crafters are the glue that holds MMORPGs togather.
I want to have to work as hard at my crafting skills as I do my adventuring skills.. and in my ideal MMORPG that would be very hard (because I like slow leveling curves)
I want the freedom to create unquie items.. example craft a sword where I get to choose the blade type, the hilt type, the colors, the augments, as long as I have learned the patterns.
I want crafting Items to be relevent, from bags to armor to house items or what ever, I want the ability to craft gear that can be used in all facets of the game to include end game.
I want to have to rely on other harvesters and crafters... If i am making a high end armor peice, i may need to get some high end leather from someone with more skill then me in that area, as well as gems and high end harvested metal ect...
I want everything short of fabled style Items to be craftable.. (as long as fabled style items are extreamly rare) and it would be cool to have fabled material which chould be used to craft fabled items.
I want to have to adventure to learn new crafting skills/ patterens.. Like having to travel to some dark cave and meet an NPC Oger that can teach me new blade styles, make it hard and fun.
I dont want crafting to be repeditive... Make 200 widgets and clog up all your inventory and lose all your gold in the process, and not be able to sell any of them on the market.
I want crafting to be game within a game, hard and fun.
Especially when he mentioned "puzzle games".
IMO people want to play a game, not a game in a game.
(Unless it's stuff like Poker or so in a bar where it fits storywise)
Crafting needs imo to be integrated in such a way that it's a logical/natural "extention" of the game, not a different game.
Crafting needs to be worthwhile doing.
How is it worthwhile?
If every item in the game can be crafted (and has it's use, even if it's the first combine a noob makes in the game even after years after release), and/or the results are equal to or better than drops.
Crafting is even more worthwhile if other players/factions/the world "depend" on crafting.
And, as was mentioned above, a crafter wants to leave his "mark" in the world, e.g. by developing a new combine or "stamping"/watermarking his products (unique looks and/or stats).
Since it was mentioned several times now and i can so not imagine it to be true i thought i'd ask:
Do you REALLY want to play, say, Teris in order to play a house in your MMO?
(a game in a game)
Or wouldn't you rather build a house by first chopping down the trees, cutting them up in a saw mill (or use your axe to build a log house) and use the planks to build the walls that make up the house, to be topped with a roof you build from, say, reed or shingles?
Crafting should be something difficult to master and extremely relevant to the overall gear progression of an MMO.
This everyone can level every craft in less than a month nonsense needs to stop. There's absolutely no point to even have crafting in an MMO if anyone and everyone can master any craft.
It should be an arduous process requiring the help of an entire guild feeding mats to a few players completely dedicated to their craft.
Until something to this extent happens, crafting is pointless in modern MMO's. It'll remain a side project to speed through when you have nothing else going on. It's only function will remain self sufficiency.
You don't know any real crafters do you? Doesn't sound like you have ever played a game where crafting mattered. Just to clarify for you. We aren't talking about WoW style crafting here.
ololo
I agree. I think some of it may have to do with an entire generation of WoW style crafters. Self serving, best in slot chasing, drag n drop crafters, who have no idea what customer service or friendly trade means.
That was Lineage 2 every single day.
You had crafters who had certain recipes or who you trusted to actually take your mats and make something.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Crafters want a game like Horizons where you can change the world and use crafting to reach other areas.
In crafters crafeers were able to tunnel out a mountain over months to reach a new leveling area. They were able to build bridges to unreachable islands. They could fix up harvesting and crafting stations around the world. Unfortunately the adventuring portion oft he game was terrible.
Crafters want many other things. Such as non 1 click challenging mechanics similar to Vanguard. Long and difficult leveling so not everyone can be a master in their craft. Limited recipes so not everyone can make the same items. Ability to participate in endgame. Housing and building. Something similar to Rift's building would be amazing. Ability to build towns and cities. special group crafting recipes similar to what vanguard had planned and never finished.
Crafters want many things but being able to build, create and change the world would make them very happy. Most of all Crafters want to be useful and needed.
Crafters want crafting to matter, and they want it to be fun. The tacked on crafting we see in today's MMORPG games is boring, and largely pointless.
Speaking for myself, I'd like to see more games make crafting a full non-combat gameplay path.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Last sentence hit the nail on the head...I disagree with just about everyting else you posted...but Last sentence is the truth man..
No matter how cynical you become, its never enough to keep up - Lily Tomlin
I know some will grown, but OP this paragraph is Age of Wushu. Here's why people have go to/favorite/only use crafters.
First when a crafter makes a item in Wushu there are 1-8 enchantment slots depending on the grade of the item being made.
Next when enchanting items, you get one line of stats per enchant. Depending on the level of crafter, there is a chance that an item that is supposed to have, say 4 lines may "dud" out at 3, or 2, or even 1. If it duds, it's the crafters fault.
Third each enchant is a random roll depended upon the grade of the item and the level of the enchanter. Iron 6-12, Copper 8-13 ect.
Fourth most items require two professios to enchant. For example the first line of a chest requires a tailor,next a poison maker, then a tailor again until done or dud.
5th, not all crafters of the same profession have the same recipes. Some guys have mats and make swords. Some guys have mats and make boots.
Most importantly all items are made by players. What this all leads to is you having your guy. The guy you trust/love/have the most luck with. Most people will wait, until their guy is online.
Basically put.. crafters should be meaningful. What does that mean? Several things.
Crafters should provide things you can't otherwise get. At all. That creates a supply and demand, making trade meaningful.
Also, they should be able to provide good gear, or provide gear that is otherwise special (like wildstars approach of letting crafters most likely alter the stat distribution of a given base template).
Very important: they should be their own thing. Like no wow-style tacked-on crafting everyone does on the side. More on the lines of FF14 crafting, where you can get good results if you are dedicated and put in work. To everyone who says ff14 crafting is useless.. look again. Sure the leveling might not be hard, but as far as gear goes, crafters can make the best stuff or at least some of it.
But as for "being their own thing", I also mean that a crafter should not have to partake in the adventuring game /at all/. Recipes should be BoE, and materials should mostly be tradable. Have a commission crafting system so that raiders can, for example, farm BoP raid materials, then go to a skilled crafter and commission an item from these BoP materials. EQ2 had something of that sort, and it was glorious.
Crafting should also have gear and mechanics. Again, look to FF14 and EQ2 as for how it can be done right. EQ2 especially gave crafters big recognition by titles, fancy gear, mounts, and putting your name on what you made. FF14 does other things right, like the crafting minigame, which in my eyes is fairly brilliant and feels pretty much where it should be. A bit more skill and a bit less math would be nice, but it is worlds better than what is out there currently.
Housing also ties into crafting, having a furniture maker who can build you things you can't simply buy on merchants. basically making them relevant even more.
Lastly, the role of crafters is also determined by the type of game. In a full-on sandbox MMO, I would be all for a 100% player/crafter based economy. Meaning what people don't craft doesn't exist. No NPC vendors, barely any item loot, no pre-built structures outside the starting areas if you want the extreme of it.
Meanwhile in themeparks, find definite tasks for crafters. Like being able to enhance gear, provide alternate gearing, or provide gear for off-classes (FF14 did that nicely, making your alts either gear through dungeons or crafting if you ran out of quests to grind alt jobs with. They should have focused more on crafting suppliers though), or other similar things.
So in short, crafters need to be dedicated classes that stand apart from the adventurer, but who have a distinct purpose in the game and have their own level, gear, and material progression.
I like to think of myself as a crafter but not many games had that ability for me to be a crafter.
At the end of the day, I think crafters want recognition and a niche. However, it is done, we want recognition and a niche.
I briefly played SWG but had a friend hand me the best mats in the past 3-4 years. I made weapons and i had a weapon store. People came to me for weapons. I'd get texts from people who needed a weapon. That was awesome. I was the weapon maker. I am sure there were others who made weapons, but i was a known weapon maker. That's what a crafter wants.
1) the ability to be known for what you craft.
I think one way to accomplish this is to have crafting require the following.
Piece A
Piece B
Piece C
This makes the overall item
Piece A would require a combo of pieces X and Y
PIece B would require a combo of pieces S and T
Piece C would require a combo of pieces W and Z
Each of the pieces w,z, x, y, s, and t would require base materials found from harvesting or looting. A crafter would have the ability to perfect crafting at many various levels. For example, you could go to one crafter who put skills and everything into crafting Piece C another one would perfect piece B and then another for piece C. You'd be the crafter to perfect the overall item. Hence, many people could have a niche in the market just to craft one item.
My thoughts.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
SWG. You really do not have to look any farther than this game. It had the best resource/harvesting system in any game and the best crafting system of any game. It also went one step further when Jump to Lightspeed launched, and the space crafting+reverse engineering system was also the best crafting adaption when it came to loot.
If you never played it, you missed out. Not on the actual game. The nuts and bolts of SWG never worked properly. It was always a buggy mess. But the systems of the game were incredible and have yet to be approached by any game let alone duplicated.
SWG crafting is what crafters want. I am not talking about part time crafters, like in WOW or LOTRO or whatever themepark MMO, but a dedicated crafting class that has actual impact on the world. SWG had that. Ultima Online had it as well. Horizons also had it, but that game never got off the ground.
Just give me SWG crafting. If it is a fantasy world, just copy and past all the SWG stuff in there and fantasy it up.