And some like mmorpg because of their deep economy... (like you)
Quite honestly, I hate mmorpg with a deep economy, because usually that just turn in to harvest(grind) wars. Or flipping wars, where merchant rule the game.
Merchants running the game is a GOOD thing imo.
Commerce is the only thing in MMO, from my experience of playing them, that really binds the players together and creates a microcosm of social interactions in MMO.
Interactions between players and the need to form associations and alliances seems to reduce significantly in games where commerce are not important at least in some way, and technically to me that defeats the purpose of even playing an MMO.
I could play Diablo 3 and get loots if all I wanted to play is a loot game.
There's nothing wrong with what you said.
The problem is everyone have different play style. I want to play fight a dragon online. I dont' want to play virtual stock market or auction house tychoon.
If virtual stock market or auction house tychoon is what you want to play, that's perfectly fine too, that's just not the game for me.
And funny you mention Diablo 3. Because that's what the problem is. Before they toll down the auction house, the best way to make money is not "fighting monster", it's spend all day watching the trading post and see people misprice their item and flip the item.
That's what I hate about Diablo 3. Because the best way to get the best gear in the game, is to .... not fight monster, and spend all day watching the trading post. If that's the kind of game you want, that's perfect too. It's just not for me.
Crafting economy will normally be treated as the ignored stepchild in most games.. Why? Simple.. You can NOT sustain the themepark formula of "chasing the carrot" loot design, if crafting competes with that.. So many games today are designed to have you chase loot drops.. (aka. the carrot) If you remove that incentive or prize, by giving players a reasonable alternative, the chances a player will shorten his stay in that particular game will increase.. Players need a reason to stay and play.. Besides the one reason of friendships, the other 2 big reasons is content progression or character progression.. We all know that creating content is the more expensive route, so devs often choose the easier route.. Gear grind progression = keep chasing the carrot..
There are ways so both can co-exist, I'm just not sure the community and/or devs want to explore those options..
Yep, I would agree with what you said. I suppose I am envisioning a game where high-end content drops are rare crafting materials rather than gear. The gear is created by the crafting classes using the high end drops and/or a variety of other items. It just seems like the developers could meld both worlds together. I vaguely remember a game that did something like that, but I can't recall what it was.
In a game like FF14 where you can level up every job and crafting/gathering class, an individual wouldn't even have to be at the mercy of predatory crafters if they have the time to level those classes themselves.
Crafting economy will normally be treated as the ignored stepchild in most games.. Why? Simple.. You can NOT sustain the themepark formula of "chasing the carrot" loot design, if crafting competes with that.. So many games today are designed to have you chase loot drops.. (aka. the carrot) If you remove that incentive or prize, by giving players a reasonable alternative, the chances a player will shorten his stay in that particular game will increase.. Players need a reason to stay and play.. Besides the one reason of friendships, the other 2 big reasons is content progression or character progression.. We all know that creating content is the more expensive route, so devs often choose the easier route.. Gear grind progression = keep chasing the carrot..
There are ways so both can co-exist, I'm just not sure the community and/or devs want to explore those options..
I think they have explored those options, it's just not that popular. If crafting is the primary source of gear, then the treadmill changes from getting gear to getting mats for gear. Then players have to give the mats and gold to a specific person to get the gear that they want. Unless the system is heavily automated, people have to wait for crafters to come on and for them to be available for crafting.
WoW kind of splits the difference where crafters get the mats, but they can just craft a bunch of things and sell them in the auction house (gems, armor kits, inscriptions, etc.). Since the items are upgrades to existing gear or they are Inscriptions, there isn't too much waiting on the part of either crafters or buyers. If all the best gear was crafted, players would get tired of waiting for crafters to become available, and crafters would get tired of crafting the wrong "in" item this week and wasting their crafting materials.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
And funny you mention Diablo 3. Because that's what the problem is. Before they toll down the auction house, the best way to make money is not "fighting monster", it's spend all day watching the trading post and see people misprice their item and flip the item.
That's what I hate about Diablo 3. Because the best way to get the best gear in the game, is to .... not fight monster, and spend all day watching the trading post. If that's the kind of game you want, that's perfect too. It's just not for me.
The change in D3 is a good example of focus gameplay in a game. It is a fallacy to think that having everything fighting monsters, loots, and trading would be a good thing for the game.
The game is MUCH better without trading in D3 (as most like the changes in RoS).
May be MMOs can learn from that. Either make a trading crafting game (like Tales of the Dessert), or a dungeon pve game (like D3), or a instanced pvp game (like WoT), and don't mesh everything into one game.
The problem with crafting is that it is a solo activity. Solo activities in modern MMOs have minimal reward levels.
Risk is a fallacy though. The death penalties in games are so watered down that risk should not have a part in the calculation. If anything the chance of working diligently at a craft project and having it fail gives a higher risk than some farm status raid somewhere.
If you want crafting to compete with drops from group monsters then you need to have crafting require a group to achieve the crafting of such an item. You need to have say 5 crafters working together at the same time and any one of them can torpedo the item.
If you want crafting to compete with raid drops then you need to add a progression to the crafting, and since the raids drop items that are bind on pickup, so too would be the crafted items. IE anyone in the crafting raid can use the item.
So you have ten people crafting together on items with a process that can fail easily, and you need to do enough of them and achieve specific goals to move onto the next tier of crafted items, then you need to find others who are at that tier to form crafting raids with to make the next set of items.
As long as crafting is a solo activity, it will always produce nothing of consequence.
If you want crafting to compete with drops from group monsters then you need to have crafting require a group to achieve the crafting of such an item. You need to have say 5 crafters working together at the same time and any one of them can torpedo the item.
If you want crafting to compete with raid drops then you need to add a progression to the crafting, and since the raids drop items that are bind on pickup, so too would be the crafted items. IE anyone in the crafting raid can use the item.
So you have ten people crafting together on items with a process that can fail easily, and you need to do enough of them and achieve specific goals to move onto the next tier of crafted items, then you need to find others who are at that tier to form crafting raids with to make the next set of items.
That actually sounds like a really neat idea, wonder if we will ever see anything like that in our lifetime. Would make a crafting guild in a game very important.
If you want crafting to compete with drops from group monsters then you need to have crafting require a group to achieve the crafting of such an item. You need to have say 5 crafters working together at the same time and any one of them can torpedo the item.
and that probably won't fly. It is hard enough to get a group to fight monster ... but find 5 people to click on stuff, and wait?
If you want crafting to compete with drops from group monsters then you need to have crafting require a group to achieve the crafting of such an item. You need to have say 5 crafters working together at the same time and any one of them can torpedo the item.
If you want crafting to compete with raid drops then you need to add a progression to the crafting, and since the raids drop items that are bind on pickup, so too would be the crafted items. IE anyone in the crafting raid can use the item.
So you have ten people crafting together on items with a process that can fail easily, and you need to do enough of them and achieve specific goals to move onto the next tier of crafted items, then you need to find others who are at that tier to form crafting raids with to make the next set of items.
That actually sounds like a really neat idea, wonder if we will ever see anything like that in our lifetime. Would make a crafting guild in a game very important.
Yeah, it sounds like an interesting concept to me as well. However, I'd imagine we would see it in a more niche title before we ever see it in a AAA MMO.
I think the perception is that crafters want to be more self sufficient than other players so the type of group crafting centkin describes isn't as often implemented.
Plus the point that narius made that more people want to fight monsters than craft. Though it would be interesting to me to see the type of system where crafting is at least almost as hard as a raid.
One thing I would wonder is: Should there be a risk of losing your materials if one of your guys mess up? I don't think many people would like that, especially if those materials are hard to get raid mats or rare drops. It would work much better in a sandbox non gear grind game in my opinion.
If you want crafting to compete with drops from group monsters then you need to have crafting require a group to achieve the crafting of such an item. You need to have say 5 crafters working together at the same time and any one of them can torpedo the item.
and that probably won't fly. It is hard enough to get a group to fight monster ... but find 5 people to click on stuff, and wait?
Think of the kind of crafting that vanguard or everquest 2 had but improve it, have it in real time, and figure in multiple people doing tasks at the same time. Complications and other issues while trying to hit specific grade levels in a limited amount of time/resources.
Plus the point that narius made that more people want to fight monsters than craft. Though it would be interesting to me to see the type of system where crafting is at least almost as hard as a raid.
Making it hard is easy (just make the chance of failure high), but it is difficult to make it interesting.
If you use the standard method (clicking on a recipe, and decide to try), it will be super boring, and doing it a chore.
If you put in a mini-game, then you have to essentially design a new game for crafting, which your players (who are probably there to fight monsters) may or may not care.
There is no win. That is why crafting is just a small distraction in most games. It is great to provide some starting gear (which D3 has done a great job in doing that), but making it a main game?
Plus the point that narius made that more people want to fight monsters than craft. Though it would be interesting to me to see the type of system where crafting is at least almost as hard as a raid.
Making it hard is easy (just make the chance of failure high), but it is difficult to make it interesting.
If you use the standard method (clicking on a recipe, and decide to try), it will be super boring, and doing it a chore.
If you put in a mini-game, then you have to essentially design a new game for crafting, which your players (who are probably there to fight monsters) may or may not care.
There is no win. That is why crafting is just a small distraction in most games. It is great to provide some starting gear (which D3 has done a great job in doing that), but making it a main game?
This is why I think BIG companies putting out AAA games should hire A companies to do just the crafting. With it being their entire focus, it would be done well as opposed to having say 2 or 3 people farmed out of the main company to do crafting whenever.
Comments
There's nothing wrong with what you said.
The problem is everyone have different play style. I want to play fight a dragon online. I dont' want to play virtual stock market or auction house tychoon.
If virtual stock market or auction house tychoon is what you want to play, that's perfectly fine too, that's just not the game for me.
And funny you mention Diablo 3. Because that's what the problem is. Before they toll down the auction house, the best way to make money is not "fighting monster", it's spend all day watching the trading post and see people misprice their item and flip the item.
That's what I hate about Diablo 3. Because the best way to get the best gear in the game, is to .... not fight monster, and spend all day watching the trading post. If that's the kind of game you want, that's perfect too. It's just not for me.
Yep, I would agree with what you said. I suppose I am envisioning a game where high-end content drops are rare crafting materials rather than gear. The gear is created by the crafting classes using the high end drops and/or a variety of other items. It just seems like the developers could meld both worlds together. I vaguely remember a game that did something like that, but I can't recall what it was.
In a game like FF14 where you can level up every job and crafting/gathering class, an individual wouldn't even have to be at the mercy of predatory crafters if they have the time to level those classes themselves.
I think they have explored those options, it's just not that popular. If crafting is the primary source of gear, then the treadmill changes from getting gear to getting mats for gear. Then players have to give the mats and gold to a specific person to get the gear that they want. Unless the system is heavily automated, people have to wait for crafters to come on and for them to be available for crafting.
WoW kind of splits the difference where crafters get the mats, but they can just craft a bunch of things and sell them in the auction house (gems, armor kits, inscriptions, etc.). Since the items are upgrades to existing gear or they are Inscriptions, there isn't too much waiting on the part of either crafters or buyers. If all the best gear was crafted, players would get tired of waiting for crafters to become available, and crafters would get tired of crafting the wrong "in" item this week and wasting their crafting materials.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
The change in D3 is a good example of focus gameplay in a game. It is a fallacy to think that having everything fighting monsters, loots, and trading would be a good thing for the game.
The game is MUCH better without trading in D3 (as most like the changes in RoS).
May be MMOs can learn from that. Either make a trading crafting game (like Tales of the Dessert), or a dungeon pve game (like D3), or a instanced pvp game (like WoT), and don't mesh everything into one game.
The problem with crafting is that it is a solo activity. Solo activities in modern MMOs have minimal reward levels.
Risk is a fallacy though. The death penalties in games are so watered down that risk should not have a part in the calculation. If anything the chance of working diligently at a craft project and having it fail gives a higher risk than some farm status raid somewhere.
If you want crafting to compete with drops from group monsters then you need to have crafting require a group to achieve the crafting of such an item. You need to have say 5 crafters working together at the same time and any one of them can torpedo the item.
If you want crafting to compete with raid drops then you need to add a progression to the crafting, and since the raids drop items that are bind on pickup, so too would be the crafted items. IE anyone in the crafting raid can use the item.
So you have ten people crafting together on items with a process that can fail easily, and you need to do enough of them and achieve specific goals to move onto the next tier of crafted items, then you need to find others who are at that tier to form crafting raids with to make the next set of items.
As long as crafting is a solo activity, it will always produce nothing of consequence.
That actually sounds like a really neat idea, wonder if we will ever see anything like that in our lifetime. Would make a crafting guild in a game very important.
and that probably won't fly. It is hard enough to get a group to fight monster ... but find 5 people to click on stuff, and wait?
Yeah, it sounds like an interesting concept to me as well. However, I'd imagine we would see it in a more niche title before we ever see it in a AAA MMO.
I think the perception is that crafters want to be more self sufficient than other players so the type of group crafting centkin describes isn't as often implemented.
Plus the point that narius made that more people want to fight monsters than craft. Though it would be interesting to me to see the type of system where crafting is at least almost as hard as a raid.
One thing I would wonder is: Should there be a risk of losing your materials if one of your guys mess up? I don't think many people would like that, especially if those materials are hard to get raid mats or rare drops. It would work much better in a sandbox non gear grind game in my opinion.
Think of the kind of crafting that vanguard or everquest 2 had but improve it, have it in real time, and figure in multiple people doing tasks at the same time. Complications and other issues while trying to hit specific grade levels in a limited amount of time/resources.
Making it hard is easy (just make the chance of failure high), but it is difficult to make it interesting.
If you use the standard method (clicking on a recipe, and decide to try), it will be super boring, and doing it a chore.
If you put in a mini-game, then you have to essentially design a new game for crafting, which your players (who are probably there to fight monsters) may or may not care.
There is no win. That is why crafting is just a small distraction in most games. It is great to provide some starting gear (which D3 has done a great job in doing that), but making it a main game?
This is why I think BIG companies putting out AAA games should hire A companies to do just the crafting. With it being their entire focus, it would be done well as opposed to having say 2 or 3 people farmed out of the main company to do crafting whenever.