If it is unpopular to say I hate crafting then slap an unpopular sign on me. I play these games for questing, exploring, adevnture and combat. I love finding that cool armour or weapon in a dungeon or raid. I don't have any interest in making it. Which probably explains why my characters are always poor.
Crafting is boring in my opinion. Can't slay a dragon sitting next to the anvil.
Just cause some people play games to kill things over and over and over doesn't mean everyone does.
I loved being a crafter in SW:G, I loved making a name for myself and having a load of strangers /telling me their orders. I enjoy adventuring but i find crafting a blissful release from "grind grind grind, ding! grind grind grind, ding!"
SW:G had it perfect. In a guild with a friendly group of people you didnt even need surveying to get a good spot for some rare resource and if you just spent 20mins heading there you'd be able to make a mint, more than enough to pay for the latest weapons. Not only that but the high end monsters droped really nice loot to enhance weapons. The people in need of top top top weapons were also the people killing these top top top monsters.
The argument in the main debate is flawed. First they say they dont have time to make the gold for the armour, then they say they need the TOP armour for all the instance runs and raids they do. Those two statements are contradictory.
Crafting is most important in that it brings a mature player base into a game too. The less l33t kiddies floating around and the more people working toward an immersive community the more enjoyable I find a game.
Originally posted by Venroth If it is unpopular to say I hate crafting then slap an unpopular sign on me. I play these games for questing, exploring, adevnture and combat. I love finding that cool armour or weapon in a dungeon or raid. I don't have any interest in making it. Which probably explains why my characters are always poor. Crafting is boring in my opinion. Can't slay a dragon sitting next to the anvil. Ven
On the contrary, I think that it's totally cool not to want to craft and to look forward nice drops. Why go on quests if there isn't a nice weapon or piece of armor at the end. But that doesn't mean the playing styles can't co-exist.
At best crafters and people who like to quest at all levels should be interdependant of one another. That to me is the fun of a MMORPG.
Crafting is for the most part a waste in a game. You have people sitting around worrying about what there skill is instead of out there leveling. In some games even crafting is essential if you are even planning on taking the game to end level. I personally would rather spend my time fighting the mobs to get that really cool item. The economy in crafting is absolutely horrid and really makes no sense. People gouge prices so high in the beginning and those who are actually doing the work to make the money are stuck to suffer with those prices. Games like FFXI take crafting to it peak of ignorance. Some items that are crafted cost so much that it just doesn't make any sense. These people spend hours and hours crafting and those who don't have that kind of time are just left to suffer with the economical breach in there pocket book. And I know there are those out there who LOVE crafting and can only sit and dream about it, well, stop bein lazy and pick up a damn sword and fight. Crafting is a lose lose situation, your time is spent doing nothing but crafting and then by the time you are ready to level you have the best gear out there cause your so rich but all those people that you ripped off remember who you are and only wanna be your friend for a discount, or don't even wanna party with you cause your so damn naive. I can only hope that someday they create a MMORPG for those craft addicts called "Craft ur @$$ off" and they can do what they really love and dream about ALL the time.
The main problem with crafting is its boring. A world could be entirely supplied by crafters, and nobody would complain about it if crafting was made fun.
Really not that difficult to do either. Add some simple 2d skill testing games, lore or questions to answer, stuff like that to the process. Not just the 'find this, click here, wait 10 mins' junk.
Originally posted by legacyhax Crafting is for the most part a waste in a game. You have people sitting around worrying about what there skill is instead of out there leveling. In some games even crafting is essential if you are even planning on taking the game to end level. I personally would rather spend my time fighting the mobs to get that really cool item. The economy in crafting is absolutely horrid and really makes no sense. People gouge prices so high in the beginning and those who are actually doing the work to make the money are stuck to suffer with those prices. Games like FFXI take crafting to it peak of ignorance. Some items that are crafted cost so much that it just doesn't make any sense. These people spend hours and hours crafting and those who don't have that kind of time are just left to suffer with the economical breach in there pocket book. And I know there are those out there who LOVE crafting and can only sit and dream about it, well, stop bein lazy and pick up a damn sword and fight. Crafting is a lose lose situation, your time is spent doing nothing but crafting and then by the time you are ready to level you have the best gear out there cause your so rich but all those people that you ripped off remember who you are and only wanna be your friend for a discount, or don't even wanna party with you cause your so damn naive. I can only hope that someday they create a MMORPG for those craft addicts called "Craft ur @$$ off" and they can do what they really love and dream about ALL the time. If you live to live you die trying. LegacyHax
Wow, you do realise that in the end (fighting or crafting) it's all a matter of sitting on your ass for hours and pressing buttons don't you? Also most games involve leveling and building a crafting skill up, much like any other kind of leveling.
I've got nothing against people who don't like crafting, hell I don't do it all the time. I'm trying to figure out how you get your facts and what game you play. FFXI takes crafting to the peak of ignorance huh... Who's ignorant, the one who crafts or the one who pays the price? True the price of food is expensive but the price of items like Emperor Hairpins have nothing to do with crafting.
You can play Guild Wars where there is absolutely no crafting and the game is rampant with botters and scammers. Tell me that the economy (or lack thereof) is good in that game.
There are very few games I've been in where crafting was INTRUSIVE into the game. The only one that leaps to mind was DAOC, and that is because it didnt have a sophisticated auction system to go with it. You were limited to calling out for someone to craft item x for you. And even in DAOC it was pretty easy to get the item you wanted. You just looked up the raw materials needed from a crafting site, bought the materials, and gave them to the crafter with a tip. Three minutes later you had your gear. When done WELL crafting added a third axis of advancement for a game. You could level. You could get money to buy gear or grind gear in dungeons. Or you could find raw materials for crafting. To date WoW has the best crafting. They combined gear thats actually GOOD at levels you can use it, with raw materials you have to hunt for and gather while adventuring. As opposed to just grinding gold to buy raw materials a la EQ or DAOC. I dont even normally enjoy crafting, but I definitely like having crafters around. I DO think there needs to be a balance. One of the things that I hated about DAOC for a while was that spellcrafted items were ALWAYS better than drops. I could cap out my bonuses in my most important stats and skills, and still have enhancement mojo left over for resistances. At that point there was no longer a reason to care about drops. It was all aobut the almight GP instead. And I LIKE getting excited about drops sometimes. The only other major mistake that can be made with crafting is to have a crafter CLASS. I know I'll never do crafting in a game where its all a character can do.
First off, i love crafting if its done right .. I started on Horizons and they had a great crafting system i think .. EQ2's is neat but takes way too long to make anything .. on WOW i just felt like i was waisting my time cause u can get drops that were better, or the stuff i could make took things that i couldnt farm yet cause they were like 20 levels higher than i was to get them .. and most things were not any good till u got to higher levels in crafting, like making the phantom blade etc .. All the gripes in the debate against crafting i felt could b fixed by putting a sealing on what a person could sell things for, u have them for venders why not for people who play also, u get over inflated prices because of the gold that can be sold on E-Bay, and there has to be a way to stop that but i sometimes think the people who make the games are making money at selling gold on E-BAY also .. makes ya wonder anyways .. id just like to see crafting to be more like the real world, it isnt that hard to do things, if things were not so rare or hard to make then prices wouldnt be so high in the first place and everyone could afford things, some things could be rare but why do most things need to be so hard to get or make ? I think that getting drops is great, but i think they shouldnt be as good as something that has been crafted, then you can still play by using drops, and when you hav money get something that is better quality .. anyways.. these are just my humble opinions ..
Originally posted by PlanetNiles Any MMO wherein crafters and merchants can name their own price has a run away economy and a serious problem...I'll say more when I'm more awake.
I disagree because it's very simple to not buy from the expensive folks and go to someone else. I remember in SWG when the crafted bounty hunter first became available. It oonly dropped from BH marks and was a 1 use schematic. I was able to get my set for free because the person who crafted it was a friend of a very dear friend. Also, while she was crafting it we were chatting and she let me know her husband was dying to get himself a set and had been farming unsuccessfully for several schematics that I had plenty of. After she was done with my armor I tipped her well and gave her a couple of the schematics that her and her hubby needed.
Yes, I had the first set of it on my server , but shortly after they started popping up... soon enough there were sets on vendors for millions of credits. But just like in the real world, if you have a friend that owns an auto dealership you probably aren't going to spend the same as some joe that walks off the street.
Originally posted by legacyhax Crafting is for the most part a waste in a game. You have people sitting around worrying about what there skill is instead of out there leveling. In some games even crafting is essential if you are even planning on taking the game to end level. I personally would rather spend my time fighting the mobs to get that really cool item. The economy in crafting is absolutely horrid and really makes no sense. People gouge prices so high in the beginning and those who are actually doing the work to make the money are stuck to suffer with those prices. Games like FFXI take crafting to it peak of ignorance. Some items that are crafted cost so much that it just doesn't make any sense. These people spend hours and hours crafting and those who don't have that kind of time are just left to suffer with the economical breach in there pocket book. And I know there are those out there who LOVE crafting and can only sit and dream about it, well, stop bein lazy and pick up a damn sword and fight. Crafting is a lose lose situation, your time is spent doing nothing but crafting and then by the time you are ready to level you have the best gear out there cause your so rich but all those people that you ripped off remember who you are and only wanna be your friend for a discount, or don't even wanna party with you cause your so damn naive. I can only hope that someday they create a MMORPG for those craft addicts called "Craft ur @$$ off" and they can do what they really love and dream about ALL the time. If you live to live you die trying. LegacyHax
Crafters are lazy?!?!?!?!?! roflmao. Well, in some games yes it is like wow. its something I do there when I am going to go afk for a few minutes. Crafting in other games takes far more skill and intelligence than beating a mob to a pulp lol, take SWG for example. The different availabilities of resource spawns and different stats of raw materials meant that a crafter had to study and pay attention to what they were doing in order to make the very best items possible.
If you dont like crafting thats fine, but there are others that do and to sit there and throw silly insults at them because you dont wanna pay the price for their goods shows the quality of your character.
apparently the two debaters have never really crafted
first crafting in WOW completely sucks - since you can only do 2 professions you are dependent on others for some of your ingredients
and since everyone knows that certain stages of crafting call for certain rare ingredients those that can aquire them charge a obscene amount of gold for them - much more than the ultimate crafted item can be sold for - the same goes for certain stages of leveling where a particular rare item must be aquired (which has nothing to do with the profession being leveled) for more crazy amounts of gold
and in WOW loots drops are always better than what can be crafted at the same level - so what's the point?
so no, you are not dependent on crafters to get great gear in WOW which is the naysayers point of view
so far, of all the MMOs i've tried EVE has the best crafting/manufacturing/market/escrow system
_____________________________________________________________________________________ Frank says:
Methods for balancing this equation could be as simple as making crafting a stand-alone job, no more capable of wielding a weapon then a 3-year-old. This means that combatants only would do all gathering.
This is nice in theory Frank, but doesnt work in practice in my experience as a mmorpg craftaholic, and it also contradicts ur call for skill based games which don't restrict us to one or two bound to become monotonous roles!
I gotta not be the only Dr in SWG who ended up going brain dead hunting the meats needed to make buffs for tedious hrs on end with 3 yr old fight skills given the skill pt limits there cuz the fighters didn't want to do the boring grind of meat collecting not for trade for buffs nor money would they. Same with resource collecting (at least pre-droid surveying when I played). Surveying took hrs and hrs and hrs - and more hrs with survey 2 or 3 of whatever I managed to eek out of the to my mind overly restrictive skill pt limits there.
I play mmorpghs primarily to craft as I find killing the same things over and over, and yawn, over yet again boring, and in SWG and the other games I have played, it comes down to 2 choices for the crafter: get the resouces urself or spend 3/4 of ur game time trying to find someone who will provide them at 10 times the cost of what u would have sold the product for if not reliant on others to provide the components.
The problem as I see it, isnt greedy crafters, but game mechanics which make securing the resources time consuming and boring. Combatants don't want to spend their leisure time doing tedious and monotonous things any more than crafters do. I could walk up to a group of then bleating about no Drs selling buffs in SWG and say, go collect me 5-10 minutes worth of meat and get, I don't want to do that, it's boring. No kidding it's boring, and that's why I don't sell buffs cuz I would have to be bored for 100 times longer than what I am asking u to put up with in order to do so!
What do u do with drops that take tedious hr of farming to get Frank? Put 'em on the market for cheap so crafters can sell things more cheaply? Should I on the craft side of the fence complain about greedy fighters who make me have to grind for endless hrs to be able to afford a component to be able to make something at all?
I think we should all be complaining about game mechanics that make resource collecting tedious, time-consuming and onerous to degree that only the hard core have a hope of accessing them.
Originally posted by riggsville apparently the two debaters have never really crafted
I think you hit the mark. Unless they made a 7 X GM Crafter as I did in Ultima Online, 1998, they might not have the experience some of us do. That crafter took me along time back then when we didnt have alot of macros and when you mined for your ORE there were player killers after you all the time. You could mine for an hour and then some murderer would come and in an instant kill you and take your precious ingots. Upsetting ... yes, but I wouldnt have had it any other way
I think it all depends on the games its in. If a game like WoW, with its high reliance on drops for items and a high reliance on those items for character developement, then it doesnt make sense to have craftable weapons and armor. But if there is the ability to make trinkets, potions and other items that contribute in another way to your characters power or ability to stay alive in the world then i think it should be in.
Personally i think crafting is a great idea. Like many have said it brings people together and they rely on other players. The crafter makes the items, the hunter or warrior finds items that are of no use to him and he sells them to a crafter. Makes perfect sense. Of course this means that you cant be both the best warrior or carpenter. I also dislike mules. 1 char per account for me.
This topic is part of a larger issue that is the game economy. Its all tied together. A game where every creature drops gold doesnt realy seem to fit. Problems aries when people dont wont to get involed with other players. They want a pure kill fest, and its probably the only reason why they log into the game. There are so many games that revolve around the kill fest mentality.
To people who have said that farming for items is boring, then so is farming for a single items that has a 0.0000006% chance of dropping. Which is what most games are like. Think of all the time you wasted praying for that uber drop. Get real.
I would like to play a game where drops are more consistant and regular. And i dont mean uber magical items. The ability for players to use said items in a number of intresting ways and for crafting purposes as well.
Crafting is just another element of a game that has to be balanced. For a lot of people, crafting is a way to stay involved with a game wthout having to play marathon sessions to feel a part of the community. For instance, in WoW, I can't spend 10 hours straight on some marathon monster raid. Simply impossible if you don't have that kind of time. But I can hop on, craft a little, hop off, and over time, I can feel like I'm a useful part of the world.
Most of the problems I see here have to do more with a misunderstanding of how game economies really work. You are in a competition for the best stuff no matter what system you have--crafting or noncrafting. You compete with tons of other players, and if you can't easily obtain something on its own, you are going to have to pay through the nose to get it if it is difficult to find. Period.
Crafters charge a lot on stuff that is difficult to craft. If it takes 10 hours to make, then yeah, you are going to have to pay a lot to get it. But WHY? Because other dudes out there willing to spend 10 hours to hunt for enough gold to pay for it are going to pay more than you are willing to pay. If the item isn't so valuable and cool, then nobody is going to hunt 10 hours to get the gold to buy it. Either that or maybe they are just better gamers than you and came make that gold more quickly.
Very rarely do we see games where crafters magically create their own gold. They almost always rely on hunters to bring it in. So for every so-called inflate price, you have behind it several more efficient or players with more time than you that are paying for those prices for those items.
What it comes down to is that you know that there are some really cool items out there, and you have to work really hard to get them and keep them. It's just like in the real world. To get the good stuff you gotta outhustle and outproduce the next guy, get ahead and stay ahead. Rome wasn't built in a day, most people have to borrow for 30 years to buy a house and still have to scrape just to make the downpayment, and yeah, in virtual games you gotta work for things that other people want.
Should it come as any surprise that even in a "virtual" world that has real people expending their very real time on very real goals in their very real minds, that we see some real life facts enter into the "game." Crafting is just one thing that players can use to get some of those things.
RE: They help fuel inflation with their obscene pricing demands! We know that 'Ebay gold is a large reason for inflation, etc. (more bollocks deleted)
I can easily say that was a gross overstatement.
Having playing both versions of EQ from day one and having a look around others MMORPG's and finally settling in DAOC for a while, I found there is barely ANY crafted item to equal a decent named dropped in any of the pure fantasy games. Altho I can't speak for WOW.
It is obviously a CHOICE you make, if you prefer slogging away at crafting or farming for loot and cash so to each his own. To be honest there is very LITTLE skill involved in tradeskilling and the closest thing to it was probably EQ2 before I bailed the Deadly #$%ly Rot that had set in.
From what I can see of the ingame inflation most of it IS and always WAS caused by certain individuals running large guilds and multi-boxing as many as 12 accounts ( yeah right, hard to believe?) simply to use the members in their guilds help them FARM the high-end mobs for selling OUTSIDE the game for RL dollars. THis started way back in the 3rd year of EQ and a lot of accounts were banned and stuff until SOE decided to try and beat them by sort of legalising it.
It became an industry. I know at least 4 people from my days in EQ who were actually doing it and as I said before there are not too many Crafted items that hold a candle to most of the Boss drops.
If you want to kill things and get the best gear? Join your friendly guild and they will supply you with all you need, crafted or dropped. I think if your grinding to make cash then your either useless at the class or your trying to solo your entire life (another case of "I soloed an enchanter to level 70", what a legend).
If your only interested in LEVELLING and MAYHEM then maybe the games that have crafting in are not your style. Go play Doom3, or any one of the 20 odd online shootem ups (at least 2 are free) ;p
Crafting is a MUST for a good mmorpg, it is cool to do a lot of research, gather the best resources and then at one point in time craft something UBER that you can sell for a lot of money (if you are greedy) or just use yourself if you pick another profession (or let your alt use it)
SWG had a very good crafting system using lootdrops in schematics to enhance the endproduct; Since the NGE launched there crafters are pushed away from the game cause every crafter only can craft the same stuff now with the same level caps on it, so crafting does not matter anymore and the game economy dropped drasticly since then. This is only a small example about how important crafting can be in a game.
From what I read VANGUARD will have a very cool crafting system in their game upon release, that is one I'm gonna play cause I personally like to combine the crafting and the adventuring part in any mmorpg I play.
Lot of good points have been made so far along with some bad. My simple opinion: Crafting is not the problem here. It is the way the economy is allowed to be manipulated by those who have all the time in the world to farm out the game AND by the game maker who doesnt want to devote resources to creating a decent, fair economy so they decide to "have a player run economy!'
Players play game for 2 things: the challenge of adventure, and to make money-->get the best items. Its the truth so I dont want to hear it that its not about the items... We all played Diablo many times over and over just in the hope I would get a different new item!.
I love the adventure in the games, but most players today go through in-game content like it was nothing. EVERYONE i know in WoW has gone into a high level instance more than once. Is it for content? no. its to have a 1 in 40 chance to be able to win an item IF you are lucky enough to defeat the boss AND the item drops (love those .5 % - 1 % drop rates).
The problem is the economy. Players by nature are greedy and will charge as much as they possibly can. Crafters have to charge at least the material cost + a small profit. Many crafters /enchanters charge a small fee and let you bring them the materials. This helps the warrior out there that cant spell 'crafting' much less do it.
The game maker HAS to take a step and get involved. Player run economies are great as long as they are working and balance. We definately lack that. When a player sells an item for an ungodly amount of money, it usually means the item is way to scarce and this needs to be adjusted. These .5% drop rates are just plain ridiculous. Another idea is to have crafters sell the product to an NPC 'auctioneer' and have the auctioner sell the product. Sounds crazy but if the game maker says, 'this purple (epic) item takes these materials to make therefore it should sell for between 50-200 gold', then the vendor would ask the player the price they want to sell it for but at least there is a reasonable range of cost.
I have never bought gold offline. Have I been tempted: yes. That's a different subject. But just remember the basics of economics -> if you have a demand (in this case players dont have enough money or cant make enough money), then a supply will be generated (someone will find a way to farm it and then sell it). I have to cringe when I see a new character spending money he shouldnt have (because he bought it!) because he is encouraging those same players who are farming items and money by buying their inflated priced items. And this is where WoW breaks down.. prices are inflated both crafting materials and for resources because they are WAY too scarce and most players dont have a choice but to buy gold so that they can buy the items they need to stay competitive in the game.
Nothing wrong with crafting. Lots of good uses. The problem is that current economies are left strictly to greedy players and this doesnt work. In our guild, we barter
I had 2 seperate crafting toons in SWG before the nge and I realy enjoted it, I was very cheap and made the best stuff. I did it because our server needed a good bio-eng and I had the resources and I realy think we had as awsome economy goin.
Crafting in the traditional implementation of most of the games on the market I find boring, tedious, or otherwise 'not fun'. At least not after the first 80 hours or so.
I believe that crafting can and should serve as a central part of the player economy, but the questiion becomes 'how to implement a crafting system that is central to the player ecomony without being boring, tedious, or out of control'. I don't have answers.
In one of the MUDs I used to play, I had found a rare gem that was the reward for a quest I had run. I could have sold the gem for a good amount of money to gem collectors in the game (people who just wanted to have 1 of every type of gem) or to an NPC. Instead, I went to a GM Crafter and asked for the gem to be placed inside of my sword's pommel. It did not give any added bonus' to attack or defense, to the sharpness of the sword, or anything like that. It did give the sword a new look.
I like to be self-sufficient, without having to rely on other players. I don't have the time to wait around looking for someone. As a result, I want to be able to craft my own gear. It doesn't have to be the best or most powerful, but it needs to be serviceable and do it's job. The process should not take overly long or be overly complicated. Just gather some hides and tools and piece stuff together. The real crafting in my mind is taking this piece of equipment and enhancing it with something else.
A bard who can add a customized baldric to some armor, or a smith who can sharpen a sword or add a gem to the pommell. These would not be full-time jobs, but rather additional abilities that each character can bring to a town, team, or guild.
What I want to know is - does Frank live in America? Is he some kind of communist who believes people should be "provided" with what they need without payment?
Ok, thats extreme, but seriously... over and over again in this debate he refers to crafters as "ripping combatants off" and taking the costs for their goods, then adding on "for their own greed." Did it ever occur to him that this is what capitalism is all about? The time and effort the crafters have spent building their levels and crafting the gear itself has a cost too. Capitalism tells us the appropriate price for an item is the costs of the goods + the costs of the production. Profit is added, yes, but most accusations of "ripping people off" come from those unwilling to add in the cost of the production, the fair price for the crafter's own work.
As for buying things off vendors and selling them at higher prices, this is a capitalistic reaction to underpriced merchant goods. Thats a failing in the game compensating for its own inflation, which is a reality for these games not because of greedy crafters or even ebay money-selling, but a reality in any game in which money is constantly dumped into the system through the efforts of combatants, but so rarely taken out of the system (through NPC merchants, travel costs, skill upgrades, etc).
What I *really* want to know is - why does Frank find it so completely unacceptable to farm for 2 days for the gold to buy the best loot, created by a player, but likely has no problem doing endless MC runs for weeks to get a single piece of gear?
Its the same tedium - the first just involves another player in further play. Horrible. How dare they "rip you off."
Hey mates, this is Frank Mignone. I am always humbled that so many people take time on their weekend to share their views and opinions. I knew this weeks debate would put be on the ropes, but as you may have gathered from my previous debates, I hate being 'forced' to do anything, including paying obscene prices for items that I need to play my toon. So, if you'll permit me, I will add to the debate, as it seems like support on my side is lacking
I was a crafting GM x2 in UO. Also have very High Woodcraft/Alchemy/ and I forget whatever in FFXI (needed to make bullets etc as a Ranger). Reached level 300 Engineering in WoW, and almost that in leathercrafting and smithing on other toons. my weaponsmith level in Eq2 is every bit as high as my ranger's level. I ran a industrial corporation in EVE, we made megthrons and heavy railguns to mount on them. Hopefully that should satisfy those who assume we've never crafter :-)
Before you assume I am a hypocrite because of that, let me say, i am not crafting because I find it fun. I am crafting because I cannot afford the alternative. I like how some folks will say, "If someone is expensive, go somewhere else". In Ultima, you know how long finding an item for a fair price can take? Everyone and their brother has got a vender selling crap. I could literally spend days searching for a good deal. I found I could spend the same amount of time and boredom crafting my own items. In WoW, everyone sells everything in the AH. So, you don't have that choice, all the prices for that particular item are seen, side by side. No browsing for a better deal, unless you Spam for a crafter in the trade channel and get lucky. FFXI was a nightmare! I was a gun-wielding Ranger. Bullets are more expensive than drugs in that game. There you sell by a hybrid system, there is an AH and everyone uses it. However, you can only place so many items up for sale at a time (at least it was last time I played). So, people can also act as their own vendor and sell from their personal 'bazaar'. However, because there is an AH where current pricing trends are easily checked, bazaar prices are typically similar to that of the AH, although thankfully some people are too lazy to check the AH and sell cheaper by accident.
Now here comes the Rub. Not all crafters start greedy but all crafters end up greedy, whether they know it or not. How many times have you seen an item for sale on the Auction House for like 4 or 5 times the historical price average? You think to yourself 'yea, that will be the day' only to find out later the item, while last to sell, actually sold for that sick price? This is because some gerbil who bought game cash from IGE or where ever doesn't look at that very over-inflated price and say 'omg, you are high!'...They say "WoW that's only like 1% of the money I just bought, no skin off my nose' and he buys it. Now that crafter is stoked (and why shouldn't he be), he makes a bunch more for that price! The other, reasonable crafters see that items are starting to sell for a insane price and say 'omg, I've been ripping myself off!' and they jack their prices up too. It's a cumulative process.
I guess it is arguable that externally obtained game-money is the problem. However, it is like the 'Chicken and the Egg' paradox. People buy gold to afford high-priced items but people sell items at high because people who bought gold will pay. Which came first?
If there is no pricing 'anchor' outside of the control of players, things get out of control. Look how much Hawker knives cost in FFXI, anyone who players there will tell you, I saw them for I think 60,000Gil when i first started playing...I think they are 1 or 2 million now(if I am confusing them with the +1 version, my bad Ive been on a FFXI vacation for a bit)? Thats a pretty serious jump in cost for an item that I can only get from player crafters. As someone, mentioned before, i am not a fan of class systems or arbitrary barriers, so I would not prefer a system disallowing crafters to be combatants. Though it would balance they need system somewhat, it would do it in a very oppressive way imho. My preference would be that all items can be found on an NPC somewhere, who's pricing is outside the players control.
This means crafters can charge whatever they want, and those gits who bought money from Ebay can pay it. For regular Joe's like me, I can hunt around markets for an NPC who's selling the tools I need to enjoy my job. Someone earlier said that I should just make another character to craft for my warrior. My point it, I don't WANT to have to craft to enjoy my combatant character...and I shouldn't have to.
Let people craft, by all means, lots of people enjoy it. Just give me a choice of where I get my goods elsewhere. I don't want to be ripped off because I either cannot play the game often enough or refuse to purchase in-game money externally. While the current prices for Item X may seem unfair, someone is paying it.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone www.spankybus.com -3d Artist & Compositor -Writer -Professional Amature
I voted yes, even tho i loath crafting. I can't stand to waste time clicking buttons or watch a bar fill up over and over again. To those that complain crafting should be able to make raiding quality items, then what would be the purpose of raiding? Most games the crafted items are either too good, or crap. If they are too good crafter greed goes thru the roof, because they know the gear they are making is very needed to compete. then on other games, like eq1 90% of crafted is just for skill ups, no one would want that junk, there is far better and cheaper to buy then the crafting stuff is to make.
What I would love to see is 2 seperate roles for players. Adventures, and Crafters. Adventures, would be your normal Fighter, Casters, Healers, Dps, and Support Classes, who can craft but on a limited basis. At about 2 Adventure levels to 1 Crafter lvl. As for the crafters they should be able to adventure to a point, and should be 2 Crafter lvls to every Adventure lvl. So where as with a game of max lvl is 50. The Adevntures could be lvl 50 and 25th lvl crafter, and the crafters at lvl 50 are a lvl 25 adventure.
This would give Crafters 2 options they can farm some of the harvesting items they need themselves, others they would have to higher a party to aid them, or buy them from adventures. When they decide to go out with a party of adventures to find the rare goods they would need they would also be able to aid in the fight, and not be completly useless.
Also this brings up the one thing i hate most in the newest games that have come out, Attunement, Soulbound, Untradeable junk. This is the worst idea i can think of to "drain money" out of the economy. Just because the sword was owned by 1 person it turns to dust after they are done? Not being able to resell off, or hand it down to another player, takes alot from the game. Even more so on games like Wow, and Eq2 where you need new gear every 2 or 3 lvls, and if you can resell your gear after you paid a fortune to get it, that is just silly. Yes i know it can be sold to a vendor, but if i paid 60g for one item and the vendor will give me 11s. That is not the return i was looking for.
Alot of the reason for the no reselling junk was added to make crafters happy, due to tey were whining that the gear they just sold for 60g is being resold for 15g by adventures after they got done with it. They were complaining they "could not compete"!! Why not just lower your price to the common going rate and shut up.
Personally i have had a crafter on each game i played, on all of them the crafting process was lame. it is either mass clicking, or watching a bar fill up, I would much more like to see something fun. Someone earlier mentioned like a timed sliding tile puzzle, that you have to create the gear could be fun. Make quests out of it could be interesting. A new way that if fast and fun would be nice. The wrst in crafting imo is eq2, wasting 30 to 45 mins for 1 item is insane. then they give crafting quests asking for 20 of them?? Swg was a very good crafting system. Eq was just click combine thingy. Never got into it much on Wow, then again i quit wow after hitting max lvl in 2 months, and alot of other factors. Lineage 2 i didnt play a dwarf much so no real comments on their system. UO i havent played in years lol dont remeber hardly anything bout that game.
Comments
If it is unpopular to say I hate crafting then slap an unpopular sign on me. I play these games for questing, exploring, adevnture and combat. I love finding that cool armour or weapon in a dungeon or raid. I don't have any interest in making it. Which probably explains why my characters are always poor.
Crafting is boring in my opinion. Can't slay a dragon sitting next to the anvil.
Ven
Just cause some people play games to kill things over and over and over doesn't mean everyone does.
I loved being a crafter in SW:G, I loved making a name for myself and having a load of strangers /telling me their orders. I enjoy adventuring but i find crafting a blissful release from "grind grind grind, ding! grind grind grind, ding!"
SW:G had it perfect. In a guild with a friendly group of people you didnt even need surveying to get a good spot for some rare resource and if you just spent 20mins heading there you'd be able to make a mint, more than enough to pay for the latest weapons. Not only that but the high end monsters droped really nice loot to enhance weapons. The people in need of top top top weapons were also the people killing these top top top monsters.
The argument in the main debate is flawed. First they say they dont have time to make the gold for the armour, then they say they need the TOP armour for all the instance runs and raids they do. Those two statements are contradictory.
Crafting is most important in that it brings a mature player base into a game too. The less l33t kiddies floating around and the more people working toward an immersive community the more enjoyable I find a game.
On the contrary, I think that it's totally cool not to want to craft and to look forward nice drops. Why go on quests if there isn't a nice weapon or piece of armor at the end. But that doesn't mean the playing styles can't co-exist.
At best crafters and people who like to quest at all levels should be interdependant of one another. That to me is the fun of a MMORPG.
Crafting is for the most part a waste in a game. You have people sitting around worrying about what there skill is instead of out there leveling. In some games even crafting is essential if you are even planning on taking the game to end level. I personally would rather spend my time fighting the mobs to get that really cool item. The economy in crafting is absolutely horrid and really makes no sense. People gouge prices so high in the beginning and those who are actually doing the work to make the money are stuck to suffer with those prices. Games like FFXI take crafting to it peak of ignorance. Some items that are crafted cost so much that it just doesn't make any sense. These people spend hours and hours crafting and those who don't have that kind of time are just left to suffer with the economical breach in there pocket book. And I know there are those out there who LOVE crafting and can only sit and dream about it, well, stop bein lazy and pick up a damn sword and fight. Crafting is a lose lose situation, your time is spent doing nothing but crafting and then by the time you are ready to level you have the best gear out there cause your so rich but all those people that you ripped off remember who you are and only wanna be your friend for a discount, or don't even wanna party with you cause your so damn naive. I can only hope that someday they create a MMORPG for those craft addicts called "Craft ur @$$ off" and they can do what they really love and dream about ALL the time.
If you live to live you die trying.
LegacyHax
Wow, you do realise that in the end (fighting or crafting) it's all a matter of sitting on your ass for hours and pressing buttons don't you? Also most games involve leveling and building a crafting skill up, much like any other kind of leveling.
I've got nothing against people who don't like crafting, hell I don't do it all the time. I'm trying to figure out how you get your facts and what game you play. FFXI takes crafting to the peak of ignorance huh... Who's ignorant, the one who crafts or the one who pays the price? True the price of food is expensive but the price of items like Emperor Hairpins have nothing to do with crafting.
You can play Guild Wars where there is absolutely no crafting and the game is rampant with botters and scammers. Tell me that the economy (or lack thereof) is good in that game.
If ya don't like to do it...don't!
There are very few games I've been in where crafting was INTRUSIVE into the game. The only one that leaps to mind was DAOC, and that is because it didnt have a sophisticated auction system to go with it. You were limited to calling out for someone to craft item x for you. And even in DAOC it was pretty easy to get the item you wanted. You just looked up the raw materials needed from a crafting site, bought the materials, and gave them to the crafter with a tip. Three minutes later you had your gear.
When done WELL crafting added a third axis of advancement for a game. You could level. You could get money to buy gear or grind gear in dungeons. Or you could find raw materials for crafting.
To date WoW has the best crafting. They combined gear thats actually GOOD at levels you can use it, with raw materials you have to hunt for and gather while adventuring. As opposed to just grinding gold to buy raw materials a la EQ or DAOC.
I dont even normally enjoy crafting, but I definitely like having crafters around. I DO think there needs to be a balance. One of the things that I hated about DAOC for a while was that spellcrafted items were ALWAYS better than drops. I could cap out my bonuses in my most important stats and skills, and still have enhancement mojo left over for resistances. At that point there was no longer a reason to care about drops. It was all aobut the almight GP instead. And I LIKE getting excited about drops sometimes.
The only other major mistake that can be made with crafting is to have a crafter CLASS. I know I'll never do crafting in a game where its all a character can do.
I disagree because it's very simple to not buy from the expensive folks and go to someone else. I remember in SWG when the crafted bounty hunter first became available. It oonly dropped from BH marks and was a 1 use schematic. I was able to get my set for free because the person who crafted it was a friend of a very dear friend. Also, while she was crafting it we were chatting and she let me know her husband was dying to get himself a set and had been farming unsuccessfully for several schematics that I had plenty of. After she was done with my armor I tipped her well and gave her a couple of the schematics that her and her hubby needed.
Yes, I had the first set of it on my server
, but shortly after they started popping up... soon enough there were sets on vendors for millions of credits. But just like in the real world, if you have a friend that owns an auto dealership you probably aren't going to spend the same as some joe that walks off the street.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Crafters are lazy?!?!?!?!?! roflmao. Well, in some games yes it is like wow. its something I do there when I am going to go afk for a few minutes. Crafting in other games takes far more skill and intelligence than beating a mob to a pulp lol, take SWG for example. The different availabilities of resource spawns and different stats of raw materials meant that a crafter had to study and pay attention to what they were doing in order to make the very best items possible.
If you dont like crafting thats fine, but there are others that do and to sit there and throw silly insults at them because you dont wanna pay the price for their goods shows the quality of your character.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
apparently the two debaters have never really crafted
first crafting in WOW completely sucks - since you can only do 2 professions you are dependent on others for some of your ingredients
and since everyone knows that certain stages of crafting call for certain rare ingredients those that can aquire them charge a obscene amount of gold for them - much more than the ultimate crafted item can be sold for - the same goes for certain stages of leveling where a particular rare item must be aquired (which has nothing to do with the profession being leveled) for more crazy amounts of gold
and in WOW loots drops are always better than what can be crafted at the same level - so what's the point?
so no, you are not dependent on crafters to get great gear in WOW which is the naysayers point of view
so far, of all the MMOs i've tried EVE has the best crafting/manufacturing/market/escrow system
_____________________________________________________________________________________ Frank says:
Methods for balancing this equation could be as simple as making crafting a stand-alone job, no more capable of wielding a weapon then a 3-year-old. This means that combatants only would do all gathering.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
This is nice in theory Frank, but doesnt work in practice in my experience as a mmorpg craftaholic, and it also contradicts ur call for skill based games which don't restrict us to one or two bound to become monotonous roles!
I gotta not be the only Dr in SWG who ended up going brain dead hunting the meats needed to make buffs for tedious hrs on end with 3 yr old fight skills given the skill pt limits there cuz the fighters didn't want to do the boring grind of meat collecting not for trade for buffs nor money would they. Same with resource collecting (at least pre-droid surveying when I played). Surveying took hrs and hrs and hrs - and more hrs with survey 2 or 3 of whatever I managed to eek out of the to my mind overly restrictive skill pt limits there.
I play mmorpghs primarily to craft as I find killing the same things over and over, and yawn, over yet again boring, and in SWG and the other games I have played, it comes down to 2 choices for the crafter: get the resouces urself or spend 3/4 of ur game time trying to find someone who will provide them at 10 times the cost of what u would have sold the product for if not reliant on others to provide the components.
The problem as I see it, isnt greedy crafters, but game mechanics which make securing the resources time consuming and boring. Combatants don't want to spend their leisure time doing tedious and monotonous things any more than crafters do. I could walk up to a group of then bleating about no Drs selling buffs in SWG and say, go collect me 5-10 minutes worth of meat and get, I don't want to do that, it's boring. No kidding it's boring, and that's why I don't sell buffs cuz I would have to be bored for 100 times longer than what I am asking u to put up with in order to do so!
What do u do with drops that take tedious hr of farming to get Frank? Put 'em on the market for cheap so crafters can sell things more cheaply? Should I on the craft side of the fence complain about greedy fighters who make me have to grind for endless hrs to be able to afford a component to be able to make something at all?
I think we should all be complaining about game mechanics that make resource collecting tedious, time-consuming and onerous to degree that only the hard core have a hope of accessing them.
I think it all depends on the games its in. If a game like WoW, with its high reliance on drops for items and a high reliance on those items for character developement, then it doesnt make sense to have craftable weapons and armor. But if there is the ability to make trinkets, potions and other items that contribute in another way to your characters power or ability to stay alive in the world then i think it should be in.
Personally i think crafting is a great idea. Like many have said it brings people together and they rely on other players. The crafter makes the items, the hunter or warrior finds items that are of no use to him and he sells them to a crafter. Makes perfect sense. Of course this means that you cant be both the best warrior or carpenter. I also dislike mules. 1 char per account for me.
This topic is part of a larger issue that is the game economy. Its all tied together. A game where every creature drops gold doesnt realy seem to fit. Problems aries when people dont wont to get involed with other players. They want a pure kill fest, and its probably the only reason why they log into the game. There are so many games that revolve around the kill fest mentality.
To people who have said that farming for items is boring, then so is farming for a single items that has a 0.0000006% chance of dropping. Which is what most games are like. Think of all the time you wasted praying for that uber drop. Get real.
I would like to play a game where drops are more consistant and regular. And i dont mean uber magical items. The ability for players to use said items in a number of intresting ways and for crafting purposes as well.
Crafting is just another element of a game that has to be balanced. For a lot of people, crafting is a way to stay involved with a game wthout having to play marathon sessions to feel a part of the community. For instance, in WoW, I can't spend 10 hours straight on some marathon monster raid. Simply impossible if you don't have that kind of time. But I can hop on, craft a little, hop off, and over time, I can feel like I'm a useful part of the world.
Most of the problems I see here have to do more with a misunderstanding of how game economies really work. You are in a competition for the best stuff no matter what system you have--crafting or noncrafting. You compete with tons of other players, and if you can't easily obtain something on its own, you are going to have to pay through the nose to get it if it is difficult to find. Period.
Crafters charge a lot on stuff that is difficult to craft. If it takes 10 hours to make, then yeah, you are going to have to pay a lot to get it. But WHY? Because other dudes out there willing to spend 10 hours to hunt for enough gold to pay for it are going to pay more than you are willing to pay. If the item isn't so valuable and cool, then nobody is going to hunt 10 hours to get the gold to buy it. Either that or maybe they are just better gamers than you and came make that gold more quickly.
Very rarely do we see games where crafters magically create their own gold. They almost always rely on hunters to bring it in. So for every so-called inflate price, you have behind it several more efficient or players with more time than you that are paying for those prices for those items.
What it comes down to is that you know that there are some really cool items out there, and you have to work really hard to get them and keep them. It's just like in the real world. To get the good stuff you gotta outhustle and outproduce the next guy, get ahead and stay ahead. Rome wasn't built in a day, most people have to borrow for 30 years to buy a house and still have to scrape just to make the downpayment, and yeah, in virtual games you gotta work for things that other people want.
Should it come as any surprise that even in a "virtual" world that has real people expending their very real time on very real goals in their very real minds, that we see some real life facts enter into the "game." Crafting is just one thing that players can use to get some of those things.
RE: They help fuel inflation with their obscene pricing demands! We know that 'Ebay gold is a large reason for inflation, etc. (more bollocks deleted)
I can easily say that was a gross overstatement.
Having playing both versions of EQ from day one and having a look around others MMORPG's and finally settling in DAOC for a while, I found there is barely ANY crafted item to equal a decent named dropped in any of the pure fantasy games. Altho I can't speak for WOW.
It is obviously a CHOICE you make, if you prefer slogging away at crafting or farming for loot and cash so to each his own. To be honest there is very LITTLE skill involved in tradeskilling and the closest thing to it was probably EQ2 before I bailed the Deadly #$%ly Rot that had set in.
From what I can see of the ingame inflation most of it IS and always WAS caused by certain individuals running large guilds and multi-boxing as many as 12 accounts ( yeah right, hard to believe?) simply to use the members in their guilds help them FARM the high-end mobs for selling OUTSIDE the game for RL dollars. THis started way back in the 3rd year of EQ and a lot of accounts were banned and stuff until SOE decided to try and beat them by sort of legalising it.
It became an industry. I know at least 4 people from my days in EQ who were actually doing it and as I said before there are not too many Crafted items that hold a candle to most of the Boss drops.
If you want to kill things and get the best gear? Join your friendly guild and they will supply you with all you need, crafted or dropped. I think if your grinding to make cash then your either useless at the class or your trying to solo your entire life (another case of "I soloed an enchanter to level 70", what a legend).
If your only interested in LEVELLING and MAYHEM then maybe the games that have crafting in are not your style. Go play Doom3, or any one of the 20 odd online shootem ups (at least 2 are free) ;p
Have good day!!
an mmo is about carving ur place out in a community
that means theres customization
what better way to customize besides building items with ur own hands
crafting=community
community=mmo
crafting makes the mmo
Just another handsome boy graduate...
Crafting is a MUST for a good mmorpg, it is cool to do a lot of research, gather the best resources and then at one point in time craft something UBER that you can sell for a lot of money (if you are greedy) or just use yourself if you pick another profession (or let your alt use it)
SWG had a very good crafting system using lootdrops in schematics to enhance the endproduct; Since the NGE launched there crafters are pushed away from the game cause every crafter only can craft the same stuff now with the same level caps on it, so crafting does not matter anymore and the game economy dropped drasticly since then. This is only a small example about how important crafting can be in a game.
From what I read VANGUARD will have a very cool crafting system in their game upon release, that is one I'm gonna play cause I personally like to combine the crafting and the adventuring part in any mmorpg I play.
Lot of good points have been made so far along with some bad. My simple opinion: Crafting is not the problem here. It is the way the economy is allowed to be manipulated by those who have all the time in the world to farm out the game AND by the game maker who doesnt want to devote resources to creating a decent, fair economy so they decide to "have a player run economy!'
Players play game for 2 things: the challenge of adventure, and to make money-->get the best items. Its the truth so I dont want to hear it that its not about the items... We all played Diablo many times over and over just in the hope I would get a different new item!.
I love the adventure in the games, but most players today go through in-game content like it was nothing. EVERYONE i know in WoW has gone into a high level instance more than once. Is it for content? no. its to have a 1 in 40 chance to be able to win an item IF you are lucky enough to defeat the boss AND the item drops (love those .5 % - 1 % drop rates).
The problem is the economy. Players by nature are greedy and will charge as much as they possibly can. Crafters have to charge at least the material cost + a small profit. Many crafters /enchanters charge a small fee and let you bring them the materials. This helps the warrior out there that cant spell 'crafting' much less do it.
The game maker HAS to take a step and get involved. Player run economies are great as long as they are working and balance. We definately lack that. When a player sells an item for an ungodly amount of money, it usually means the item is way to scarce and this needs to be adjusted. These .5% drop rates are just plain ridiculous. Another idea is to have crafters sell the product to an NPC 'auctioneer' and have the auctioner sell the product. Sounds crazy but if the game maker says, 'this purple (epic) item takes these materials to make therefore it should sell for between 50-200 gold', then the vendor would ask the player the price they want to sell it for but at least there is a reasonable range of cost.
I have never bought gold offline. Have I been tempted: yes. That's a different subject. But just remember the basics of economics -> if you have a demand (in this case players dont have enough money or cant make enough money), then a supply will be generated (someone will find a way to farm it and then sell it). I have to cringe when I see a new character spending money he shouldnt have (because he bought it!) because he is encouraging those same players who are farming items and money by buying their inflated priced items. And this is where WoW breaks down.. prices are inflated both crafting materials and for resources because they are WAY too scarce and most players dont have a choice but to buy gold so that they can buy the items they need to stay competitive in the game.
Nothing wrong with crafting. Lots of good uses. The problem is that current economies are left strictly to greedy players and this doesnt work. In our guild, we barter
Well Frank..
I guess you have been out voted on crafting
I love to craft in-game! It gives me great pleasure. I feel pride in what I have created!
It's my way "out", when I need the down time from killing, pvping, or what have you.
I respect your opinion, but please devs of ALL on-line games... Leave crafting IN!
"Huntress"
{(RIP)} SWG
Crafting in the traditional implementation of most of the games on the market I find boring, tedious, or otherwise 'not fun'. At least not after the first 80 hours or so.
I believe that crafting can and should serve as a central part of the player economy, but the questiion becomes 'how to implement a crafting system that is central to the player ecomony without being boring, tedious, or out of control'. I don't have answers.
In one of the MUDs I used to play, I had found a rare gem that was the reward for a quest I had run. I could have sold the gem for a good amount of money to gem collectors in the game (people who just wanted to have 1 of every type of gem) or to an NPC. Instead, I went to a GM Crafter and asked for the gem to be placed inside of my sword's pommel. It did not give any added bonus' to attack or defense, to the sharpness of the sword, or anything like that. It did give the sword a new look.
I like to be self-sufficient, without having to rely on other players. I don't have the time to wait around looking for someone. As a result, I want to be able to craft my own gear. It doesn't have to be the best or most powerful, but it needs to be serviceable and do it's job. The process should not take overly long or be overly complicated. Just gather some hides and tools and piece stuff together. The real crafting in my mind is taking this piece of equipment and enhancing it with something else.
A bard who can add a customized baldric to some armor, or a smith who can sharpen a sword or add a gem to the pommell. These would not be full-time jobs, but rather additional abilities that each character can bring to a town, team, or guild.
What I want to know is - does Frank live in America? Is he some kind of communist who believes people should be "provided" with what they need without payment?
Ok, thats extreme, but seriously... over and over again in this debate he refers to crafters as "ripping combatants off" and taking the costs for their goods, then adding on "for their own greed." Did it ever occur to him that this is what capitalism is all about? The time and effort the crafters have spent building their levels and crafting the gear itself has a cost too. Capitalism tells us the appropriate price for an item is the costs of the goods + the costs of the production. Profit is added, yes, but most accusations of "ripping people off" come from those unwilling to add in the cost of the production, the fair price for the crafter's own work.
As for buying things off vendors and selling them at higher prices, this is a capitalistic reaction to underpriced merchant goods. Thats a failing in the game compensating for its own inflation, which is a reality for these games not because of greedy crafters or even ebay money-selling, but a reality in any game in which money is constantly dumped into the system through the efforts of combatants, but so rarely taken out of the system (through NPC merchants, travel costs, skill upgrades, etc).
What I *really* want to know is - why does Frank find it so completely unacceptable to farm for 2 days for the gold to buy the best loot, created by a player, but likely has no problem doing endless MC runs for weeks to get a single piece of gear?
Its the same tedium - the first just involves another player in further play. Horrible. How dare they "rip you off."
Hey mates, this is Frank Mignone. I am always humbled that so many people take time on their weekend to share their views and opinions. I knew this weeks debate would put be on the ropes, but as you may have gathered from my previous debates, I hate being 'forced' to do anything, including paying obscene prices for items that I need to play my toon. So, if you'll permit me, I will add to the debate, as it seems like support on my side is lacking
I was a crafting GM x2 in UO. Also have very High Woodcraft/Alchemy/ and I forget whatever in FFXI (needed to make bullets etc as a Ranger). Reached level 300 Engineering in WoW, and almost that in leathercrafting and smithing on other toons. my weaponsmith level in Eq2 is every bit as high as my ranger's level. I ran a industrial corporation in EVE, we made megthrons and heavy railguns to mount on them. Hopefully that should satisfy those who assume we've never crafter :-)
Before you assume I am a hypocrite because of that, let me say, i am not crafting because I find it fun. I am crafting because I cannot afford the alternative. I like how some folks will say, "If someone is expensive, go somewhere else". In Ultima, you know how long finding an item for a fair price can take? Everyone and their brother has got a vender selling crap. I could literally spend days searching for a good deal. I found I could spend the same amount of time and boredom crafting my own items. In WoW, everyone sells everything in the AH. So, you don't have that choice, all the prices for that particular item are seen, side by side. No browsing for a better deal, unless you Spam for a crafter in the trade channel and get lucky. FFXI was a nightmare! I was a gun-wielding Ranger. Bullets are more expensive than drugs in that game. There you sell by a hybrid system, there is an AH and everyone uses it. However, you can only place so many items up for sale at a time (at least it was last time I played). So, people can also act as their own vendor and sell from their personal 'bazaar'. However, because there is an AH where current pricing trends are easily checked, bazaar prices are typically similar to that of the AH, although thankfully some people are too lazy to check the AH and sell cheaper by accident.
Now here comes the Rub. Not all crafters start greedy but all crafters end up greedy, whether they know it or not. How many times have you seen an item for sale on the Auction House for like 4 or 5 times the historical price average? You think to yourself 'yea, that will be the day' only to find out later the item, while last to sell, actually sold for that sick price? This is because some gerbil who bought game cash from IGE or where ever doesn't look at that very over-inflated price and say 'omg, you are high!'...They say "WoW that's only like 1% of the money I just bought, no skin off my nose' and he buys it. Now that crafter is stoked (and why shouldn't he be), he makes a bunch more for that price! The other, reasonable crafters see that items are starting to sell for a insane price and say 'omg, I've been ripping myself off!' and they jack their prices up too. It's a cumulative process.
I guess it is arguable that externally obtained game-money is the problem. However, it is like the 'Chicken and the Egg' paradox. People buy gold to afford high-priced items but people sell items at high because people who bought gold will pay. Which came first?
If there is no pricing 'anchor' outside of the control of players, things get out of control. Look how much Hawker knives cost in FFXI, anyone who players there will tell you, I saw them for I think 60,000Gil when i first started playing...I think they are 1 or 2 million now(if I am confusing them with the +1 version, my bad Ive been on a FFXI vacation for a bit)? Thats a pretty serious jump in cost for an item that I can only get from player crafters. As someone, mentioned before, i am not a fan of class systems or arbitrary barriers, so I would not prefer a system disallowing crafters to be combatants. Though it would balance they need system somewhat, it would do it in a very oppressive way imho. My preference would be that all items can be found on an NPC somewhere, who's pricing is outside the players control.
This means crafters can charge whatever they want, and those gits who bought money from Ebay can pay it. For regular Joe's like me, I can hunt around markets for an NPC who's selling the tools I need to enjoy my job. Someone earlier said that I should just make another character to craft for my warrior. My point it, I don't WANT to have to craft to enjoy my combatant character...and I shouldn't have to.
Let people craft, by all means, lots of people enjoy it. Just give me a choice of where I get my goods elsewhere. I don't want to be ripped off because I either cannot play the game often enough or refuse to purchase in-game money externally. While the current prices for Item X may seem unfair, someone is paying it.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
I voted yes, even tho i loath crafting. I can't stand to waste time clicking buttons or watch a bar fill up over and over again. To those that complain crafting should be able to make raiding quality items, then what would be the purpose of raiding? Most games the crafted items are either too good, or crap. If they are too good crafter greed goes thru the roof, because they know the gear they are making is very needed to compete. then on other games, like eq1 90% of crafted is just for skill ups, no one would want that junk, there is far better and cheaper to buy then the crafting stuff is to make.
What I would love to see is 2 seperate roles for players. Adventures, and Crafters. Adventures, would be your normal Fighter, Casters, Healers, Dps, and Support Classes, who can craft but on a limited basis. At about 2 Adventure levels to 1 Crafter lvl. As for the crafters they should be able to adventure to a point, and should be 2 Crafter lvls to every Adventure lvl. So where as with a game of max lvl is 50. The Adevntures could be lvl 50 and 25th lvl crafter, and the crafters at lvl 50 are a lvl 25 adventure.
This would give Crafters 2 options they can farm some of the harvesting items they need themselves, others they would have to higher a party to aid them, or buy them from adventures. When they decide to go out with a party of adventures to find the rare goods they would need they would also be able to aid in the fight, and not be completly useless.
Also this brings up the one thing i hate most in the newest games that have come out, Attunement, Soulbound, Untradeable junk. This is the worst idea i can think of to "drain money" out of the economy. Just because the sword was owned by 1 person it turns to dust after they are done? Not being able to resell off, or hand it down to another player, takes alot from the game. Even more so on games like Wow, and Eq2 where you need new gear every 2 or 3 lvls, and if you can resell your gear after you paid a fortune to get it, that is just silly. Yes i know it can be sold to a vendor, but if i paid 60g for one item and the vendor will give me 11s. That is not the return i was looking for.
Alot of the reason for the no reselling junk was added to make crafters happy, due to tey were whining that the gear they just sold for 60g is being resold for 15g by adventures after they got done with it. They were complaining they "could not compete"!! Why not just lower your price to the common going rate and shut up.
Personally i have had a crafter on each game i played, on all of them the crafting process was lame. it is either mass clicking, or watching a bar fill up,
I would much more like to see something fun. Someone earlier mentioned like a timed sliding tile puzzle, that you have to create the gear could be fun. Make quests out of it could be interesting. A new way that if fast and fun would be nice. The wrst in crafting imo is eq2, wasting 30 to 45 mins for 1 item is insane. then they give crafting quests asking for 20 of them?? Swg was a very good crafting system. Eq was just click combine thingy. Never got into it much on Wow, then again i quit wow after hitting max lvl in 2 months, and alot of other factors. Lineage 2 i didnt play a dwarf much so no real comments on their system. UO i havent played in years lol dont remeber hardly anything bout that game.