Crafting is one of my favorite parts on any MMO, but as many people said before, most games do not reward crafters as properly as "raiders". Even games as ESO which tries to give us a lot of edge as crafters in the end turn us all in mere "refiners" of raid dropped gears which are way stronger than crafted gear. I think that a good balance of usefulness in low/mid levels of crafted gear and be able to become a top tier player with the crafting gear would be the desired environment for me. But I feel that this is almost and utopic scenario on most MMO's...
I'll be honest... the last time I enjoyed crafting was EQ2. You were actually involved in the creation, even if only a bit. In other games, you click a single button and wait. It's boring and you don't get much out of it.
I especially miss being a carpenter. There were so many things you could create and do in EQ2 as a carpenter. I spent hours and hours on my houses and really enjoyed it.
Landmark? You can do more but the graphics kind of suck in comparison to EQ2's houses (especially those in Frostfang Sea. I've never seen such beautiful housing anywhere else).
Ob'Comp Completist, self sufficient (loner), rarely interested in trade (hoarder). aside from these charming character traits I will usually keep gear and mats for rainy days (for a while) if resource gathering is less about farming then I don't find it such a chore.
in WoW I crafted for bonus stats, spells etc. (granted I had an unhealthy obsession with engineering that provided mostly useless items) jump forward to ESO, I craft because it's actually decent viable gear.
everything in between (most other games), was pointless or all about modding.
I guess what I'm saying is there needs to be some reward in it for me.
When I look at games like Landmark and EQNext I start thinking that one day in the not to distant future, I can imagine games where the crafter's can actually design the gear.
The main thing wrong with crafting in nearly all MMO's is that by the time the player can actually make the items they want to play with, they are often out leveled them or you can find better in loot drops.
As a player who started playing MMO's when Ultima Online was young crafted items were the way to go in the majority of the game and I gained a love for crafted items in RPG's and mmo's in general. This balance though has diminished as the genre has matured, WoW basically destroyed the crafting aspect in mmo's in favour for loot drops.
SWG and Eve Online put crafting back into the game though and did it really well.
As someone who doesn't have the time to raid 24/7 to roll against a RNG at the end for loot I prefer crafting but often find that the items I make a often short lived or of no use to me what so ever. So 99% of the mmo's out there have very short life spans for me as I hit max level and then quit them with a bitter taste in my mouth because the development team has forgotten to put into place a system for other players to enjoy the game.
Face it 99% of MMO's crafting systems are just bolted on for completion sakes. Neverwinter is one prime example with a crafting system that is not needed in a game.
The only modern mmo that has any relevance for crafting is Elder Scrolls Online in that game at least I can make my own armour, potions, weapons etc and actually use them and be still raid and pvp in the game without having to play endless hours to get the high tier armour and weapons needed. I just spend time collecting resources and learning how to craft and at max level I can still enjoy the game when I have the time to play.
I can't see this trend at forgetting crafters in mmos going away any time soon though as more and more Eastern MMO's like Black Desert and Arch Age release the trend is still there to favour the RNG loot generator over the hard work of the crafters. Which is one reason why Elder Scrolls Online is going to be the last MMO I play After that I will be moving on into Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen.
Put in a well balanced crafting system that fits into the end game of a mmo and I might be interested in playing other than that don't wake me up.
I won't play an MMO for more than a month or so if crafting my gear isn't on par with other methods of obtaining it. SWG was my first MMO and it was craft driven. I'm sure that is the defining reason I do what I do but I can say with absolute certainty, it's not going to change.
Gathering mats is where I am happy when playing an MMO. The crafting is just the logical use.
I always have trouble with crafting systems because I am unable to force myself to farm. If the goal of crafting is to provide bonuses like in wow, rather than the participating in economy you speak of, I'll suffer my way through it. If it's just access to the economy then I take advantage of other ways to get funds and interact with the economy only as a buyer.
Crafting for me is part of them enjoyment I get out of playing these games. In fact if a game does not have a crafting system I enjoy I won't usually play long because I get burnt out faster constantly grinding and leveling alts. I am a person who does not PvP. I enjoy the crafting the most on eq2 as it has a lot more to do with everything in the game and is not just for gear. So I think it depends on each individual person, some people enjoy one aspect of a game while another enjoys other aspects more. For me after a tiring day of responsibility and real life I love getting on a game and relaxing while I craft. Then I am ready for some monster killing. I agree that some of the games do not make it as fun, but for me crafting is part of what makes the game enjoyable and makes it feel like less of a job.
Crafters should be able to craft the best items in the game. If that is the case, then crafting will be required in that game.
Examples are DAOC pre-ToA, and Ryzom. The best gear is not from drops, but from crafters. Crafters make the best stuff, are in real demand. DAOC was somewhat boring, since you just bought the ingredients and hit a craft button. Ryzom is the exact opposite: you cannot buy ingredients or items, it all has to be prospected, dug up, and crafted.
It helps if the crafting is a mini-game, and even better if it has real consequences. For example, in Vanguard, crafting is a mini-game requiring concentration to get the best items. In Ryzom, digging is a mini-game, and you can die if you do it wrong.
Too many MMO's today have all the best stuff as drops, making crafting superfluous. It's an activity you can do, but nobody needs to do it.
I craft because my first mmo was SWG and I was hooked due to it's complexity. Being able to use a survey tool to find resources, use harvesters to extract them, use schematics to make items, use a factory to mass produce items and then use a vendor to sell them.
Even though todays mmo's have boring, non beneficial crafting systems, I'm still hooked on crafting. Since SWG shut down, I've become an mmo jumper because I'm always in search of that same crafting feel that I got in SWG. I know there are "alternatives" to SWG, but I'm not investing a lot of time in something that may go poof at some point.
Crafter-oriented players should check out the FPS "Fallen Earth".
Called 'tradeskills' they are: Armorcraft, Ballistics, Construction, Cooking, Geology, Medicine, Mutagenics, Nature, Scavenging, Science, and Weaponry.
A player can learn and practice any of these. They have a 'progression level' separate from your character's 'experience level'. Crafting high-level items will also yield you some exp credit.
You learn higher-levels of a tradeskill by obtaining 'manuals'. The basic 'manuals' are obtained by buying them from a NPC Trainer or obtaining them from a mission reward. The higher-level 'manuals' must be crafted: A level x crafter crafts a level x 'improved or advanced manual' or a level x+1 'basic manual', 'and thereby learns their recipes. Crafting manuals are typically never available via the Auction House.
Raw materials are acquired via: (1) Harvesting of plants, mineral nodes; (2) Scavenging of 'junk piles'; (3) Looting killed mobs (loot on kill, and additionally 'skin' for more components); (4) missions (aka quests); (5) The Auction House (items being sold by other players).
Crafting can be done anywhere and at any time, but a recipe completes faster if you are crafting it while located at a crafting facility. Recipes are start-and forget activities and always succeed, but they take real-time to complete. Crafting continues when you are logged out of your character or the game. You have a crafting queue wherein you can queue-up items to craft.
There are very few character-usable items supplied just via quests (except, perhaps, ammo): To succeed (aka stay alive), you must craft everything you need or buy it at the AH: (1) weapons (hand, melee, ranged); (2) armor. So far, I have found nothing in the game that can not be player-crafted, and about 95% of all items (across all tradeskillls) can only be player-crafted.
Since each of the tradeskills has a separate progression, and all are separate from the character's experience progression, a crafter can always keep a tradeskill high enough so that they are crafting items not only usable but essential to their character.
The typical scenario is:
(1) Level your character via missions. This gives you 'ap' points to spend on the various game skill trees. Leveling also raises the cap on these skill trees.
(2) Increasing certain skill levels raises the cap on (all) your tradeskills.
(3) Increasing a tradeskill cap makes more recipes available for learning or using.
(4) Use the new recipes to craft better weapons and armor - replacing what you currently have. Old stuff can be sold or salvaged.
P.S.
Fallen Earth is F2P, with optional subscriptions (these give you increased crafting-queue size, exp bonus on kills, etc).
PvE and PvP is supported. PvP is limited to specific areas scattered throughout the world. There is no looting of other player's mob kills or bodies. Death causes equipment decay and a limited 'period of reduced exp' but nothing else.
There are clans/guilds. There is no player housing. Players can create 'farms' in certain player-controlled areas and use them to grow/mine/generate crafting materials.
MMO's , used to be about Immersion/ Exploration/Travel/Community/Crafting and also developing skills through use or combat. Add in Lore and Storyline and whatever the questing approach is used to introduce story.
I guess why have crafting , anymore . For me an MMO is all of the above with combat the last requirement. Sadly you dont need vast worlds if all you have left to do is fight. All you need for that is an arena and a small map , as most people seem to be able to cope with little more than instant endgame and a arena to prove how good they are. MMO's are about an Immersed charachter not twitch skills.
Crafting is important and introduces half a dozen game systems that can keep players more than content. It's a must in an MMO especially any that has an RPG element.
________________________________________________________ Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
So far I'd say that makes at least four categories of crafter:
1) crafting / gathering as a break from constant combat
2) crafting as a source of useful items for the player's character
3) crafting as a source of items for trading/guild
4) crafting as a game in itself requiring active or complex systems like EQ2 or SWG (and/or Ryzom/SWG for the gathering part).
with most people being a mixture of two or more categories.
I don't think it would be impossible to design a crafting system that covered all those bases as long as the *different* targets are analysed and identified in advance.
For example a Ryzom/SWG type gathering system would suit both (1) and (4) while being neutral to (2) and (3).
The areas of potential conflict might be
1) people who want an active and engaging crafting process like EQ2 vs people who want something fairly mindless to chill out with
2) people who want crafting to produce the best gear vs people who would be happy as long as it wasn't worse than the random loot drops you got while collecting the crafting mats
I can't think of a compromise for the first conflict at the moment but a compromise for the second could be for standard crafted gear to be above or at least equal to random drops at the same level (although personally i dislike random drops completely) with an enhanced version that requires a second crafting stage with rarer materials. If it turned out that the people who want crafted gear to be the best were mostly the same people who are into the trading / guild supply aspect of crafting then you could make the enhanced version require dungeon / raid drops.
For the author of the article: have you ever tried crafting in a game that actually had a good crafting system, as opposed to one that was just something stupid to grind levels in? You didn't mention any games with a good crafting system in the article; WoW and GW2 both have terrible crafting systems, so if you didn't like those, it might only mean that you don't like bad crafting systems.
The only mainstream game with a good crafting system I'm aware of is FFXIV. Outside of that, you'd have to look at oddball indie games like A Tale in the Desert or Puzzle Pirates. You might just not like crafting, but I wouldn't rush to say that until you've tried it in a game where the crafting was actually good.
The problem with most MMO's is that crafting is a bit pointless, you get the best gear from raids/bosses.
The only ones that get it right are the ones where crafted items are the best available, or even the only items available. SWG, pre ToA DAoC, EVE to name a few.
I actually like crafting but only if it's worth the time and effort. Most of the time it isn't.
I have a problem with your thinking. First, why do you need the best available gear in the game, envy much? What skill does it take to craft, really? Pulease, lets be realistic here. Crafters should only really be able to maybe augment "The best gear", for someone that actually did something for it.
What has to happen for crafted gear to be worthwhile in current MMOs is crafting needs to be made a group affair.
Have one person on the bellows, a head weaponsmith, a support weaponsmith, a couple of enchanters, and a foreman all at the same time.
Complications can happen at any time and it is the job of the foreman to help decide how to deal with them then whoever it is delegated to to solve it. IE a complication comes up -- there are two ways to deal with it -- you can either have the guy at the bellows have to keep a higher or much more consistent temperature or you can have the weaponsmiths have to counter the item losing quality each turn.
Anyone can mess up in their role and take the item down in quality. For a raid-level piece of equipment it might take 15 minutes of everyone doing their job without much error(with few errors like in golf -- you drive into the rough, you have to do a great shot instead of a good shot to get the ball onto the green), pricy/hard to get components, and some luck.
I don't craft as a rule. Only exception was SWG, where I had a BE. I'm a gatherer. I was a supplier of hide, bone and meat to a tailor, architect and chef respectively. In WoW my main is mining/herbalism, and I fish as well.
I don't craft, but a game with a robust crafting system sets the scene for a barter system I enjoy.
I don't craft as a rule. Only exception was SWG, where I had a BE. I'm a gatherer. I was a supplier of hide, bone and meat to a tailor, architect and chef respectively. In WoW my main is mining/herbalism, and I fish as well.
I don't craft, but a game with a robust crafting system sets the scene for a barter system I enjoy.
This actually touches on one aspect that I dislike about many MMO crafting systems. By and large materials and resources take on a value far greater than the items one can make out of them. This value is tied to the crafting level grind rather than the product output.
I'm not sure what can be done about this. I think creating a crafting system in which one needs 100 parts to finish an item, then gain a level rather than simply 100 finished items that nobody wants. SWG was sort of like this because you needed to experiment to create a quality item, so many items ended up trashed.
Comments
This, with extra emphasis on the first part. So tired of stabbing things.
I'll be honest... the last time I enjoyed crafting was EQ2. You were actually involved in the creation, even if only a bit. In other games, you click a single button and wait. It's boring and you don't get much out of it.
I especially miss being a carpenter. There were so many things you could create and do in EQ2 as a carpenter. I spent hours and hours on my houses and really enjoyed it.
Landmark? You can do more but the graphics kind of suck in comparison to EQ2's houses (especially those in Frostfang Sea. I've never seen such beautiful housing anywhere else).
But that's just me.
aside from these charming character traits I will usually keep gear and mats for rainy days (for a while)
if resource gathering is less about farming then I don't find it such a chore.
in WoW I crafted for bonus stats, spells etc. (granted I had an unhealthy obsession with engineering that provided mostly useless items)
jump forward to ESO, I craft because it's actually decent viable gear.
everything in between (most other games), was pointless or all about modding.
I guess what I'm saying is there needs to be some reward in it for me.
When I look at games like Landmark and EQNext I start thinking that one day in the not to distant future, I can imagine games where the crafter's can actually design the gear.
That would be totally cool
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
The main thing wrong with crafting in nearly all MMO's is that by the time the player can actually make the items they want to play with, they are often out leveled them or you can find better in loot drops.
As a player who started playing MMO's when Ultima Online was young crafted items were the way to go in the majority of the game and I gained a love for crafted items in RPG's and mmo's in general. This balance though has diminished as the genre has matured, WoW basically destroyed the crafting aspect in mmo's in favour for loot drops.
SWG and Eve Online put crafting back into the game though and did it really well.
As someone who doesn't have the time to raid 24/7 to roll against a RNG at the end for loot I prefer crafting but often find that the items I make a often short lived or of no use to me what so ever. So 99% of the mmo's out there have very short life spans for me as I hit max level and then quit them with a bitter taste in my mouth because the development team has forgotten to put into place a system for other players to enjoy the game.
Face it 99% of MMO's crafting systems are just bolted on for completion sakes. Neverwinter is one prime example with a crafting system that is not needed in a game.
The only modern mmo that has any relevance for crafting is Elder Scrolls Online in that game at least I can make my own armour, potions, weapons etc and actually use them and be still raid and pvp in the game without having to play endless hours to get the high tier armour and weapons needed. I just spend time collecting resources and learning how to craft and at max level I can still enjoy the game when I have the time to play.
I can't see this trend at forgetting crafters in mmos going away any time soon though as more and more Eastern MMO's like Black Desert and Arch Age release the trend is still there to favour the RNG loot generator over the hard work of the crafters. Which is one reason why Elder Scrolls Online is going to be the last MMO I play After that I will be moving on into Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen.
Put in a well balanced crafting system that fits into the end game of a mmo and I might be interested in playing other than that don't wake me up.
Gathering and crafting are my weekday grind.
I won't play an MMO for more than a month or so if crafting my gear isn't on par with other methods of obtaining it. SWG was my first MMO and it was craft driven. I'm sure that is the defining reason I do what I do but I can say with absolute certainty, it's not going to change.
Gathering mats is where I am happy when playing an MMO. The crafting is just the logical use.
Crafters should be able to craft the best items in the game. If that is the case, then crafting will be required in that game.
Examples are DAOC pre-ToA, and Ryzom. The best gear is not from drops, but from crafters. Crafters make the best stuff, are in real demand. DAOC was somewhat boring, since you just bought the ingredients and hit a craft button. Ryzom is the exact opposite: you cannot buy ingredients or items, it all has to be prospected, dug up, and crafted.
It helps if the crafting is a mini-game, and even better if it has real consequences. For example, in Vanguard, crafting is a mini-game requiring concentration to get the best items. In Ryzom, digging is a mini-game, and you can die if you do it wrong.
Too many MMO's today have all the best stuff as drops, making crafting superfluous. It's an activity you can do, but nobody needs to do it.
------------
2025: 48 years on the Net.
I craft because my first mmo was SWG and I was hooked due to it's complexity. Being able to use a survey tool to find resources, use harvesters to extract them, use schematics to make items, use a factory to mass produce items and then use a vendor to sell them.
Even though todays mmo's have boring, non beneficial crafting systems, I'm still hooked on crafting. Since SWG shut down, I've become an mmo jumper because I'm always in search of that same crafting feel that I got in SWG. I know there are "alternatives" to SWG, but I'm not investing a lot of time in something that may go poof at some point.
Crafter-oriented players should check out the FPS "Fallen Earth".
Called 'tradeskills' they are: Armorcraft, Ballistics, Construction, Cooking, Geology, Medicine, Mutagenics, Nature, Scavenging, Science, and Weaponry.
A player can learn and practice any of these. They have a 'progression level' separate from your character's 'experience level'. Crafting high-level items will also yield you some exp credit.
You learn higher-levels of a tradeskill by obtaining 'manuals'. The basic 'manuals' are obtained by buying them from a NPC Trainer or obtaining them from a mission reward. The higher-level 'manuals' must be crafted: A level x crafter crafts a level x 'improved or advanced manual' or a level x+1 'basic manual', 'and thereby learns their recipes. Crafting manuals are typically never available via the Auction House.
Raw materials are acquired via: (1) Harvesting of plants, mineral nodes; (2) Scavenging of 'junk piles'; (3) Looting killed mobs (loot on kill, and additionally 'skin' for more components); (4) missions (aka quests); (5) The Auction House (items being sold by other players).
Crafting can be done anywhere and at any time, but a recipe completes faster if you are crafting it while located at a crafting facility. Recipes are start-and forget activities and always succeed, but they take real-time to complete. Crafting continues when you are logged out of your character or the game. You have a crafting queue wherein you can queue-up items to craft.
There are very few character-usable items supplied just via quests (except, perhaps, ammo): To succeed (aka stay alive), you must craft everything you need or buy it at the AH: (1) weapons (hand, melee, ranged); (2) armor. So far, I have found nothing in the game that can not be player-crafted, and about 95% of all items (across all tradeskillls) can only be player-crafted.
Since each of the tradeskills has a separate progression, and all are separate from the character's experience progression, a crafter can always keep a tradeskill high enough so that they are crafting items not only usable but essential to their character.
The typical scenario is:
(1) Level your character via missions. This gives you 'ap' points to spend on the various game skill trees. Leveling also raises the cap on these skill trees.
(2) Increasing certain skill levels raises the cap on (all) your tradeskills.
(3) Increasing a tradeskill cap makes more recipes available for learning or using.
(4) Use the new recipes to craft better weapons and armor - replacing what you currently have. Old stuff can be sold or salvaged.
P.S.
Fallen Earth is F2P, with optional subscriptions (these give you increased crafting-queue size, exp bonus on kills, etc).
PvE and PvP is supported. PvP is limited to specific areas scattered throughout the world. There is no looting of other player's mob kills or bodies. Death causes equipment decay and a limited 'period of reduced exp' but nothing else.
There are clans/guilds. There is no player housing. Players can create 'farms' in certain player-controlled areas and use them to grow/mine/generate crafting materials.
MMO's , used to be about Immersion/ Exploration/Travel/Community/Crafting and also developing skills through use or combat. Add in Lore and Storyline and whatever the questing approach is used to introduce story.
I guess why have crafting , anymore . For me an MMO is all of the above with combat the last requirement. Sadly you dont need vast worlds if all you have left to do is fight. All you need for that is an arena and a small map , as most people seem to be able to cope with little more than instant endgame and a arena to prove how good they are. MMO's are about an Immersed charachter not twitch skills.
Crafting is important and introduces half a dozen game systems that can keep players more than content. It's a must in an MMO especially any that has an RPG element.
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
So far I'd say that makes at least four categories of crafter:
1) crafting / gathering as a break from constant combat
2) crafting as a source of useful items for the player's character
3) crafting as a source of items for trading/guild
4) crafting as a game in itself requiring active or complex systems like EQ2 or SWG (and/or Ryzom/SWG for the gathering part).
with most people being a mixture of two or more categories.
I don't think it would be impossible to design a crafting system that covered all those bases as long as the *different* targets are analysed and identified in advance.
For example a Ryzom/SWG type gathering system would suit both (1) and (4) while being neutral to (2) and (3).
The areas of potential conflict might be
1) people who want an active and engaging crafting process like EQ2 vs people who want something fairly mindless to chill out with
2) people who want crafting to produce the best gear vs people who would be happy as long as it wasn't worse than the random loot drops you got while collecting the crafting mats
I can't think of a compromise for the first conflict at the moment but a compromise for the second could be for standard crafted gear to be above or at least equal to random drops at the same level (although personally i dislike random drops completely) with an enhanced version that requires a second crafting stage with rarer materials. If it turned out that the people who want crafted gear to be the best were mostly the same people who are into the trading / guild supply aspect of crafting then you could make the enhanced version require dungeon / raid drops.
For the author of the article: have you ever tried crafting in a game that actually had a good crafting system, as opposed to one that was just something stupid to grind levels in? You didn't mention any games with a good crafting system in the article; WoW and GW2 both have terrible crafting systems, so if you didn't like those, it might only mean that you don't like bad crafting systems.
The only mainstream game with a good crafting system I'm aware of is FFXIV. Outside of that, you'd have to look at oddball indie games like A Tale in the Desert or Puzzle Pirates. You might just not like crafting, but I wouldn't rush to say that until you've tried it in a game where the crafting was actually good.
What has to happen for crafted gear to be worthwhile in current MMOs is crafting needs to be made a group affair.
Have one person on the bellows, a head weaponsmith, a support weaponsmith, a couple of enchanters, and a foreman all at the same time.
Complications can happen at any time and it is the job of the foreman to help decide how to deal with them then whoever it is delegated to to solve it. IE a complication comes up -- there are two ways to deal with it -- you can either have the guy at the bellows have to keep a higher or much more consistent temperature or you can have the weaponsmiths have to counter the item losing quality each turn.
Anyone can mess up in their role and take the item down in quality. For a raid-level piece of equipment it might take 15 minutes of everyone doing their job without much error(with few errors like in golf -- you drive into the rough, you have to do a great shot instead of a good shot to get the ball onto the green), pricy/hard to get components, and some luck.
I don't craft as a rule. Only exception was SWG, where I had a BE. I'm a gatherer. I was a supplier of hide, bone and meat to a tailor, architect and chef respectively. In WoW my main is mining/herbalism, and I fish as well.
I don't craft, but a game with a robust crafting system sets the scene for a barter system I enjoy.
This actually touches on one aspect that I dislike about many MMO crafting systems. By and large materials and resources take on a value far greater than the items one can make out of them. This value is tied to the crafting level grind rather than the product output.
I'm not sure what can be done about this. I think creating a crafting system in which one needs 100 parts to finish an item, then gain a level rather than simply 100 finished items that nobody wants. SWG was sort of like this because you needed to experiment to create a quality item, so many items ended up trashed.